Public Accounts Committee on Oct. 19th, 2017

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

What proportion of the market is in the United States?

[Stan Lazar]

At least two-thirds.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Are there any issues with the NAFTA negotiations that are going on now? Is that a risk to FFMC sales to the U.S.?

[Stan Lazar]

Based on our initial analysis, we don't believe it's a significant concern for the corporation.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Is that because the volumes are so small relative to other fish marketing in the U.S., from marine sources?

[Stan Lazar]

Freshwater fish is not in the scope of a lot of the NAFTA negotiations.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

How much research and development are you doing in terms of increasing your markets for off-quota species?

[Stan Lazar]

I referenced before that we're looking at things like carp. We're looking at numerous marking and new product development opportunities as we go forward.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Okay, great. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you for coming today.

We understand the challenges that you face. We thank you for your service. You've come in, in a very difficult spot. Probably this hasn't been your best day ever, appearing here in Ottawa. You're in a tough position. We thank you for the work you're doing trying to make a bad situation better. Thank you, sir. Thank you for coming out of retirement to try to make it better.

We are going to suspend to go in camera for a moment. We would ask you to exit fairly quickly, because we have some committee business that we have to discuss before our next guests come in.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

I want to welcome you back to meeting number 72 of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts on Thursday, October 19, 2017.

In our second hour today, we will again be considering “Report 2, Detecting and Preventing Fraud in the Citizenship Program”, from the spring 2016 reports of the Auditor General of Canada. We have called this meeting to review the responses we received from the department following our previous report on chapter 2 of the 2016 report of the Auditor General.

As our witnesses, we have Marta Morgan, deputy minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration; Lu Fernandes, director general, citizenship and passport program guidance; Heather Primeau, director general, case management branch; and Mary-Ann Hubers, director, citizenship and passport program guidance.

We will have an opening statement from the deputy minister before we proceed to questions from the members of Parliament.

Ms. Morgan, welcome again to our committee.

[Marta Morgan, Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for the opportunity to appear once again before your committee in order to further discuss the Auditor General's spring 2016 findings regarding citizenship fraud.

My colleagues and I will be very happy to answer any of your questions following my brief opening remarks.

Mr. Chair, as you know, in May 2016 the Office of the Auditor General presented a number of findings regarding the detection and prevention of fraud in our citizenship system, and made seven recommendations for improvements in the areas it examined.

Along with the Canada Border Services Agency and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, IRCC agreed with the Auditor General's recommendations, and last year we shared our management action plan with this committee.

Stemming from the Auditor General's recommendations, this committee provided eight recommendations of its own, to which responses were provided earlier in the year.

Our management action plan established 23 actions to be taken to improve fraud management, including some activities that were scheduled to be completed by the end of March of this year.

Mr. Chair, I am very pleased to report that all actions in the IRCC management action plan have been completed, and ongoing activities continue to receive appropriate attention and resources.

For example, in the spring of 2016 we updated the instructions on creating, updating, and maintaining problematic addresses in the global case management system and centralized the responsibility for the maintenance of such addresses within a single division of our department.

To mitigate the risks identified by the Auditor General, the instructions in the standard operating procedures to systematically enter and update problematic addresses are very detailed. Quality control exercises have subsequently demonstrated areas where staff are adhering to the standard operating procedures and areas for improvement, which have led to further refinements in processes.

We have made improvements on managing fraud risk through internal controls and information sharing, and we are committed to continuously monitoring and improving fraud controls.

We have improved information sharing with the RCMP and CBSA by formalizing practices, by issuing operational bulletins and instructions, and by updating memorandums of understanding.

Although the Office of the Auditor General did not find a significant amount of fraud in the citizenship program, it did find that IRCC was unable to demonstrate the effectiveness of its fraud controls. Since the release of the OAG' s report, we have made significant progress in assessing the effectiveness of these fraud controls. All of the risk indicators have been reviewed using a statistically valid sample of files to verify if they were consistently applied and effective at detecting fraud. We found that risk triaging was consistently applied in 85% of the cases. We have eliminated the risk indicators that were not effective. We have adjusted the remaining indicators to further improve their efficiency, and we have ensured that they are being consistently used. Also, quality assurance exercises have shown that our officers' decisions are typically sound, and that they demonstrate good compliance with fraud detection procedures.

The ongoing implementation of some provisions of Bill C-6 will help us to better detect and prevent citizenship fraud in ways recommended by both the OAG and this committee. For example, the bill's introduction of a document seizure authority, which is expected to be brought into force by the Governor in Council next spring when required regulatory amendments are expected to be in place, responds to the Auditor General's finding of inconsistent practices for dealing with suspicious documents. These provisions will be supported by regulations that provide officers with the process and terms that must be followed once a decision is made to seize suspected fraudulent documents, and with the authority to share the seized documents, as required, with the CBSA.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada takes citizenship fraud and program integrity in general very seriously. The Office of the Auditor General has noted that IRCC has implemented a number of measures aimed at better detecting and preventing fraud in its programs, including the citizenship program, and has continued to conduct various program integrity activities.

In accordance with our citizenship program integrity framework, IRCC has established baselines to monitor refusals and fraud controls. As I mentioned earlier, we have reviewed and assessed risk indicators to verify if they are being consistently applied and if they are effective at detecting fraud.

We have also established a new random selection process to continuously monitor existing fraud controls and identify emerging fraud.

In addition to the fraud controls examined by the Auditor General, IRCC has access to CBSA's border passage history checks to view applicants' entries to Canada, and we have established expertise in each region to deal with exceptional cases and to better detect patterns of fraud.

Mr. Chair, my intention with these brief opening remarks has been to offer committee members a broad overview of this topic.

My colleagues and I will now be pleased to respond to questions from the committee, and to go into greater detail on any topic that members would like to further explore.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Ms. Morgan.

Before we go into the first round of questioning, and since we are being televised, I want to make it very clear for Canadians, for other members of Parliament, and for the guests that are here that the Auditor General has given a report in relation to immigration fraud. Our committee did a study and invited you to appear as witnesses before that study. In our study and in our report, we listed a number of recommendations. Those recommendations went to you. You've been called back again today, more specifically, because our committee could not clearly determine if three of the recommendations that we issued in that report were being addressed at all, or were being addressed to the satisfaction of our committee.

Our committee is a vital arm of accountability and transparency in making certain that the Auditor General's recommendations are addressed and that our recommendations are also addressed. For that reason, we have called you back today.

Now we'll move into our first round of questioning.

Ms. Shanahan.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much for being here with us again this morning.

This is something our committee is adamant about, that not only do we do our best to meet all departments that are being audited by the Auditor General, but when we present a report and we have recommendations, we want to see an action plan and responses to our recommendations that are indeed satisfactory.

Let me get to the heart of the matter, which is recommendation 6:

That, by 31 March 2017, the Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada provide the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts with a report outlining how the Citizenship Program Integrity Framework and its associated baseline were established, and how the Department will monitor the refusal rates of files.

In your response of February 2, 2017, you gave an explanation as to why the department feels that a detailed report cannot be provided to the committee. I would like to hear more on this.

[Marta Morgan]

Mr. Chair, first of all, let me just say that I regret the fact that the committee did not find our responses sufficiently detailed, and I hope that our presence today will allow us to provide the additional information you require. I would like to assure you that we have taken the report of the Auditor General and the committee very seriously, and we have implemented all of the items outlined in our management action plan.

Specifically, on recommendation 6, let me provide an update on how the citizenship program integrity framework was established. It was established in accordance with existing departmental frameworks related to fraud, program integrity, and risk management. It was validated by an independent third party familiar with risk frameworks.

We reviewed the citizenship grant program from the perspective of program risks and identified the following four key risks: first, entitlement fraud; second, identity fraud; third, procedural error; and fourth, decision-making error. For each of these factors, we considered the impact and the probability, and how to mitigate each of those risks.

We have also put in place a governance structure as part of the development of the framework, whereby there is oversight by the deputy minister and a three-year work plan, which is approved annually in order to ensure the implementation of the framework that has been developed.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

I'm sorry, Ms. Morgan. Please let me understand. You are giving us an update now, but what was it that prevented you from providing us with a detailed report?

[Marta Morgan]

Mr. Chair, it was our intent in our report to provide you with the information that the update had been developed, and that it had been developed according to the recommendations of the Auditor General. My intent today is to provide you with more information. I am hoping that this will be satisfactory, Mr. Chair, and will really answer your questions in more detail.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Okay. Please continue.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Go ahead. She is inviting you to continue and make clearer the actions taken.

[Marta Morgan]

There were two other questions that were asked, Mr. Chair.

One was about how the baselines were established. We established the baselines using the overall refusal rate for citizenship applications, and also for cases associated with risk indicators. We monitor these refusal rates by looking at monthly data to see whether there are any deviations from the norm based on those indicators.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Mr. Chair, how much time do I have?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

You have two minutes.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

It's time to pass it over to my colleague.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Morgan, let me start with the good piece of news that during the last two years, the efficiency of your department has increased considerably. From when I started as a member of Parliament, about two years back, until today, things have been going better and better. However, I should say that this past summer, from three visa offices, there was a spike in rejection rates of visitor visas without any reason as to why that should be.

Coming back to this particular audit, I am concerned about recommendation 4. You mentioned that you have an agreement with the RCMP and CBSA on information sharing that will prevent people who have committed fraud from obtaining citizenship. However, the RCMP has noted that there is a problem in the implementation of the notification process, because information regarding criminal charges is gathered by non-RCMP policing partners at municipal and provincial levels, and all these services have the discretion not to share information with IRCC due to operational requirements.

What are you doing to address those things?

[Marta Morgan]

Mr. Chair, as we noted, we have significantly improved our processes regarding the sharing of information, and criminal charges against permanent residents and foreign nationals, and working together with the RCMP.

The issue that has been asked about is really related to the RCMP, and the RCMP's collection of information. What I would say on that is that the RCMP has taken important steps to promote the sharing of information with respect to permanent residents and foreign nationals charged with a crime. However, there are some limits to their ability to require that information, particularly because it is gathered by non-RCMP policing partners, and there is discretion that police services have regarding sharing information with the IRCC.