Good afternoon and thank you.
Thank you for inviting me to discuss the Auditor General’s findings concerning Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.
The department appreciates the Auditor General’s review of its visa approval processes.
I am pleased to be joined today by my colleague, Robert Orr, the assistant deputy minister for operations at IRCC.
As you know, Mr. Chair, IRCC's role in controlling the entry to Canada of foreign nationals is to arrange their visas. From April 2015 to March 1, 2016, we approved 1.4 million visas for those wishing to visit or study in Canada. Our visa officers process visa applications at 57 Canadian missions around the world, and our staff consists of about 280 immigration officials and 1,100 locally engaged staff.
With respect to IRCC, the objectives of this audit were to determine whether we had implemented controls to address corruption among our immigration staff. I am pleased to say that the Auditor General did not find evidence of corruption and found that IRCC has various risk controls in place that work well.
More specifically, the Auditor General found that IRCC's controls are effective at preventing a single individual from inappropriately completing all visa processing and approval steps. This finding is important because the separation of duties among staff reduces the risk that they could engage in malfeasance or other activities.
Of the 1.4 million visas that IRCC approved during this time, the Auditor General identified 69 cases in which one person completed all the processing steps to issue a visa. In each of these cases, the exceptions were justified for various reasons: to correct an error on a previously approved visa or to facilitate urgent travel. While the Auditor General's findings are positive for IRCC overall, we recognize there is room for improvement. The department agrees with the Auditor General’s recommendations, and we have since implemented measures to address them.
The Auditor General's first recommendation for IRCC is to develop a comprehensive internal fraud risk assessment, based on an analysis of the effectiveness of its various controls.
To further strengthen its programs against fraud, IRCC has since developed the international network professional conduct standard. This manual focuses on the comprehensive management of risks related to internal fraud, and provides detailed guidance on how to prevent and monitor these risks.
Essentially, our risk prevention and management strategy involves a continuous cycle of prevention, detection, assessment and reporting. We expect to be making full use of the conduct standard by 2018.
The Auditor General's second recommendation for IRCC is to further enhance our monitoring activities to ensure that our risk controls are working.
The international network professional conduct standard also contains detailed guidance on monitoring practices, and will ensure that the department captures ongoing data related to activities associated with internal fraud. This will include baseline data such as the number of incidents of unauthorized information access in GCMS, the number of allegations with respect to misconduct, fact-finding activities related to allegations and mandated investigations, and the number of single-processor visa cases. Establishing this baseline data will allow us to track our progress and better identify trends or anomalies.
During the course of this audit, a review of the use of the GCMS found that 14 locally engaged staff had viewed their own files. Although these actions had no impact on the decision-making process, they nonetheless contravened the department's code of conduct, which prohibits staff from using their roles for their own perceived or actual advantage. The department is in consultation with Global Affairs Canada and the respective immigration program managers to further investigate the reason staff accessed visa records and to determine next steps. In the meantime, all immigration program managers have been reminded that staff should not access records they are not authorized to work on, including their own.
The department is also working to improve the values and ethics training among our staff. The Office of the Auditor General was able to confirm that only 20% of locally engaged employees had completed the mandatory values and ethics training provided by Global Affairs Canada, and it recommended better oversight to ensure the course had been completed. IRCC supports the response from Global Affairs and agrees with the importance of values and ethics training.
In addition to tracking the completion of mandatory training provided by Global Affairs Canada, the principles contained in the department's values and ethics codes are regularly communicated to staff at our overseas missions through other activities. IRCC offers values and ethics training during other training sessions on the departmental code of conduct. Immigration program managers also foster a culture of ethical behaviour through regular communication at staff meetings. In addition, as part of the annual performance management process, all IRCC employees, including locally engaged staff, must confirm in writing that they have read and understood the code of conduct.
At IRCC, we're continuously looking to improve our fraud prevention and detection methods, and this report will help us do so.
Based on the findings in the report, IRCC has adopted an even more comprehensive and effective risk management strategy for processing applications overseas. We’ll also be able to monitor these risk controls more systematically.
Thank you very much to the members of the committee for your attention today. We will be happy to respond to your questions.