Public Accounts Committee on Nov. 24th, 2020

[John Ossowski]

Well, no.

I said that one of the silver linings of the pandemic is that I've had some officers that I can reallocate to do the cleanup of the warrant part of the system. That's where we've made some big progress.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Is it possible to have an overview of the situation from the agency and from IRCC? I don't know if those figures exist, but if they do, could you share them with us? It's important to have a more general, more complete view of the situation. So I'm going to ask you a series of questions.

Currently, in which provinces of Canada do we find the people who are under removal orders that have not been enforced, in your opinion?

Where do those people come from? How did they get to Canada and where did they come in?

What are your action plans, province by province, to resolve the situation?

Earlier, you mentioned visas to Mexicans. How many of these removal orders come subsequent to the government's decision to no longer issue visas?

[John Ossowski]

That's a very complicated picture to paint, but we can do our best to give you some sort of a broad overview.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

With regard to IRCC, could someone provide us with an overview of the situation and tell us where the people waiting for a decision on removal are to be found?

I can name some people in my constituency who are still waiting, and others who have received decisions but are still here, because we are not enforcing the removal orders at the moment.

[Catrina Tapley]

Most of this falls within the purview of our colleagues at the Canada Border Services Agency, but we will work with them to make sure you have as complete a picture as possible.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Thank you very much.

The figures I asked you for would actually have let me establish a link with the illegal entries on Roxham Road. That would have told us what the status is.

Have the illegal entries on Roxham Road decreased a little, a lot, or by a huge amount?

Do you have statistics on those entries since the pandemic began last March?

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

I'm sorry, but we're over time.

Please make your response very brief.

[John Ossowski]

On average we get one claimant a day at Roxham Road, down from about 50 per day last year.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you.

We go now to Mr. Sorbara.

Go ahead, please, for five minutes.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, everyone.

On this report by the Auditor General and the team, I just want to say thank you. Obviously, it's very, very important to the integrity of our immigration system and border. We know that in a normal time, we would have approximately 500,000 people crossing the border back and forth almost every day between Canada and the U.S. We know that millions of people travel to Canada. They obtain their ETAs. They travel here. They leave and go back. There are tourists and so forth. Hundreds of thousands of people come to Canada every year to study, to work, to move here, to live and to create a better future. We know that our system for the majority part, I would argue, is very robust and remains very robust, but we can always do better with certain aspects.

When I read the report, one thing that stood out for me was on page 13, conclusion 1.47. I do wish to read it into the record:

We concluded that the [CBSA] did not remove the majority of individuals who were subject to enforceable removal orders as soon as possible to protect the integrity of the immigration system and maintain public safety.

We've gone over that point today. There are some action plans and improvements happening, which is great to see. It continues—

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

A point of order, Mr. Chair.

The interpretation is having some difficulty right now.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

I've stopped the clock on a point of order.

I couldn't hear you, Mr. Berthold.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

In French, the interpreter said she had a problem with the interpreting.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

I'll slow down.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Okay. Thank you.

I'll start the clock up again.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The conclusion continues:

Poor data quality and case management weaknesses resulted in avoidable delays for thousands of cases. Deficiencies in information sharing with [IRCC] also delayed cases. We did not find issues with the information shared by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada.

I found that last sentence very interesting.

As I read this paragraph, Auditor General, between the silos, or between the departments, once the information is transmitted from IRCC to CBSA, the information is accurate, but there's something going on in between for the information to be either not transmitted or to be not transmitted on a timely basis. Is that a proper interpretation of this conclusion 1.47?

[Karen Hogan]

Yes, it is a proper interpretation of the conclusion, but many factors contributed to the removals not being done in a timely way.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Do the folks who are here today from CBSA or IRCC wish to comment on this?

[John Ossowski]

Yes. I would say, on the casework we get from IRB generally, we have no problem ingesting that. I would just say, though, that it could go backwards as well. Somebody could get denied, for example, at their first refugee protection division hearing. They could choose then to appeal that decision, and then it goes back to them.

So there is this back and forth. The challenge is with all the hand-offs that we were referring to earlier in our remarks. If we had one integrated system, which is what we're working towards and that was funded in budget 2019, we would have better capture of that at one point in time where somebody is in the process.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Yes. On that point, budget 2019 did allocate significant funds for that integration to occur. I think if we continue along that path, we should definitely get to a better place.

Finally, to CBSA, this may be more generally a compliment, I would say, in terms of being able to meet the 2018 target of 10,000 removals for the fiscal year 2018-19, which in fact came out close, but it seems to be that we're still playing catch-up from prior years. That's the interpretation I received and also understood. Is that an accurate interpretation, or am I missing something there?

[John Ossowski]

No, I think for sure we set that as a macro-level target as we saw the volumes of claimants increasing over the last three years. Obviously, travel has slowed down, so there's an opportunity for us to try to catch up a little bit.

The point is that once all the due process has happened, it's often several years before we can get into the removals part of it. At the very beginning, we're dealing with the border management, the security screening up front, and making sure that people are not a danger to the public when they come into the country. Then we play out the process that we have in Canada.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll stop there. I believe my time is now up, if I'm not mistaken.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Yes, you're just about right on time. Thank you for all of those questions.

We have time for another six minutes for each of the parties.

We'll start with Mr. Green—sorry, Mr. Lawrence. I found you.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

That's the compliment of the year, being called “Mr. Green”.

[The Chair]

Separated at birth.