Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the opportunity to be here and to question the witnesses.
I looked over this report in detail and have a number of questions. I just want to reiterate the crux of the report and many of the remarks by the Auditor General. My understanding of the report is that the goal was “to determine whether the Canada Border Services Agency, in coordination with [the department of immigration] and the Immigration and Refugee Board...removed individuals ordered to leave Canada as soon as possible to protect the integrity of the immigration system and maintain public safety.” Further, the AG had found that “[f]ailed asylum claimants make up the largest share of those ordered to leave”.
I just want to reiterate some of the highlights from the AG's remarks in English—she gave them in French. She said, “[W]e found that the agency's approach to managing removal cases had not resulted in the timely removal of inadmissible foreign nationals” and, further, that “in April 2019, about 50,000 had accumulated, and many had not been enforceable for years.”
That, in particular, I found very concerning.
“[T]he agency had not known the whereabouts of about two thirds of the individuals ordered to leave”, and she found two main issues with this. “First, the agency's efforts were hindered by poor data quality, which meant that the agency did not have the information it needed to track enforceable removal orders.” They didn't even have the technology to sort of know and find where these individuals were. There were 50,000 at the time. She also mentioned that there was a “poor flow of information between Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and the agency”.
The second one, in particular, I found quite concerning. “[P]oor case management led to significant periods of inactivity for thousands of cases. The agency did not have an effective system that pushed it to act on removal cases, even high-priority cases” that were time-sensitive. She said that “the agency had not acted on about 1,500 cases for about 2 years” and that more “of these cases had, on average, still been in the working inventory [for] four years and in the wanted inventory of arrest warrants” for a decade.
What I think the public will be particularly concerned about is “the agency's inability to effectively prioritize removal cases”, which “is concerning for the small number of criminal cases that may pose a risk to public safety. Criminal cases had been in the agency's working inventory for an average of 5 years.”
Now in her report, she mentions that criminal cases, particularly the serious ones, were with regard to “those convicted of crimes punishable by a maximum sentence of 10 years or more” and “who, in the opinion of the [border] officer, [would] pose a threat to the public or individuals.”
I did find that concerning. She specified that there were “150 cases involving serious criminals [that] had not been worked on”.
So, what I was hearing in her remarks and in her report was that there were 150 known criminals that they weren't sure where they were and that they weren't working on finding. Further, there were 2,800 other criminal cases, as well, that they didn't know where they were and that they weren't working on.
Now we know that this report is from data from a year and a half ago—April 2019—so I'm hoping today to hear an update with progress for the Canadian people who are concerned about criminals who, essentially, have illegally entered our country and that we're not able to find and are not working on finding, at least at the time of this report.
Mr. Ossowski, how many of the 2,800 criminals that were identified for removal have now been removed in the past year and a half, and how many warrants for the arrest of failed asylum claimants who are individuals who are criminals exist in Canada right now?