Public Accounts Committee on Dec. 2nd, 2025

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

I'll take them. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Kochhar, I thought your answer to the question on the use of paper, put by my colleague from Milton East—Halton Hills South, was interesting.

In 2019, you introduced a $68‑million program to modernize Canada's asylum system in order to improve border integrity. This project was scheduled for completion in 2022. That program was still heavily based on paper documents. In February 2024, however, after expending 75% of your budget, you abandoned the project.

Does that mean that we're still using paper for asylum seekers? What's causing these delays? Why did it fail?

[Harpreet S. Kochhar]

I mentioned that we have reduced a lot of paper on that. We haven't eliminated paper. We still have some, which actually exists because the applications do come through that route. However, in terms of the asylum, we have embarked on a one-step way in which it is captured electronically in most of the cases, and it is work between the CBSA and IRCC to prepare the case for the IRB. That is where we are at this time on that particular way.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

You developed a program called GeoMatch, an artificial intelligence tool designed to help economic immigrants settle in Canada.

I'd like to know the costs involved in this platform.

I'd also like to know if the platform takes account of region-specific economic immigration needs, in other words, the needs of regions like Abitibi-Témiscamingue and other rural regions, in Quebec and Canada.

Accordingly, I also want to know, if possible, your definition of what constitutes a remote region, a rural region and an urban region. I want to make sure that your choices take this factor into account, and that equity exists among the various regions of Canada.

[Harpreet S. Kochhar]

Mr. Chair, if you allow, I will ask my colleague to answer that, please.

[Jason Choueiri]

Thank you very much for the question. I'm going to answer in English, because there are some nuances.

GeoMatch is a pilot. It's not a full program right now. We partnered with Stanford University, which designed an algorithm to match people coming into the country with different parts of the regions, looking at demographics, characteristics and whether they would settle better in one part of the country than in another. It is a pilot. We are just testing this out right now to see if there will be long-term benefits.

In terms of the cost, it's quite small. I don't have the exact number on me, but we're not talking about a significant amount. This is because we've developed it in-house with our staff, in an academic partnership with Stanford University. It's a very small piece. We do want to evaluate this over the coming years to see if it adds value and contributes to the success of settling in Canada.

I'd have to come back to you on the definition. I don't have the definitions in front of me. However, I just want to clarify that it's pilot project to see if it will advance the interests and help us better match people to parts of the country.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. Lemire, I'll give you time to ask one last question on the same topic.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

I'd like to use the few seconds I've been given to invite you to launch a pilot project that accounts for the needs of more remote regions, where immigrant integration is a tremendous success, and where many entrepreneurs and chambers of commerce are specifically requesting immigrants.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

Finally, Mr. Osborne, you have the floor.

I understand that you want to split your time. Unless you want me to manage it, I'll let you manage it back and forth with your colleague.

[Tom Osborne, Liberal, Cape Spear, NL]

I think you had a question.

[Aslam Rana, Liberal, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you to all the witnesses for their testimony and for spending time with us.

My question is for you, Ms. Walker.

First of all, I definitely appreciate your department's services. Whether it's -35°C or 35°C, rain or shine, in rural areas or in urban areas, your services are there all the time and you guys are trying your best to give 10 out of 10. I really appreciate that recent negotiations between the government and your department went well, and you appreciated that.

I know there's a large deficit. I think my colleagues were mentioning $10 million. Are you guys planning to do something on a structural basis to bring some changes to reduce this deficit?

[Maya Walker]

As I mentioned, when the announcement came from the minister to put in place the recommendations that came out of the William Kaplan report, we welcomed that. The teams put together the transformation plan. That has been presented back to the minister, and we are looking to finalize that.

Our hope is that this can be endorsed so that we can make the changes necessary to make that change and become self-sustainable in the future.

[Aslam Rana, Liberal, Hamilton Centre, ON]

My next question is for you, Mr. Kochhar.

You guys said you're transforming from paper to digital, I think. What are you expecting in efficiency? By what percentage do you think your efficiency will be enhanced or improved once you change and the transition is complete?

[Harpreet S. Kochhar]

I think it is hard to quantify it in terms of percentage. What we are hoping to achieve is speed or efficiency with which we will process these applications, a reduction of the backlogs and fitting into the processing times, which are the service standards on that.

Right now, because of the volume of people who want to come to Canada—Canada remains a destination of choice—we have a lot of people applying for that. What we are trying to do with our transformation is get the use of technology and innovation to obtain rapidity in our decision-making.

As we say, we want to be fair, fast and final in our business. That is what we are hoping to achieve with the transformation.

[Aslam Rana, Liberal, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I really appreciate our immigration system. Because of that system, I came as an immigrant in 2003, as a civil engineer, to this beautiful country.

My last question is for you. Due to this digitalization, do you think some people will lose their jobs or will everybody keep their jobs?

[Harpreet S. Kochhar]

I don't think the digitization actually results in reduction of the jobs or things like that. We have a complex immigration system. We will be using expertise in a different way. It's hard to predict if advanced analytics, automation, artificial intelligence or others will make an impact on that. It will only be possible to see that once we actually adapt those technologies, fit them into our business and see what the outcome of that is.

What we want to achieve out of this is, as I mentioned earlier, an efficient system that is to the betterment of the client experience, which we serve.

[Aslam Rana, Liberal, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Ms. Walker, are you guys bringing artificial intelligence to your department, too?

[Maya Walker]

Artificial intelligence is something that is around us, so when there is a requirement—I can speak from a procurement perspective—we would obviously look at what that is and make sure that we have very clear requirements when we compete anything that we need to help support our business.

[Aslam Rana, Liberal, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. Osborne, take two minutes. You've learned a valuable lesson here today.

[Tom Osborne, Liberal, Cape Spear, NL]

Mr. Chair, have you ever read the story about giving a mouse a crumb?

Mr. Kochhar, you've answered the question already, so I will ask Mr. Settano and Ms. Walker.

Can you tell us your plans to move away from consultants and rely more on in-house capacity and expertise?

[Christian Settano]

We have to understand that, in the banking environment, the majority of the consultants are from IT teams. The way it is structured is that we have a percentage of that workforce who are consultants versus in-house employees.

We have significantly reduced the number of consultants over the past three to four years, and it's still going down. We'll never get to zero, because we'll always need that specific consultation expertise to complete the work of the employees. Sometimes there are specific projects that last for only one, two or three years, and then you hire your consultants for that period of time. It's much more efficient and much more profitable for us to work that way.

We do understand that there is a cost to consultation, and we always keep that in mind. We are, as I said, financially sustainable, and making a profit is one of our targets.

[Maya Walker]

On our side, as well, the implementation that we put in place regarding our process of following the guidelines of the Treasury Board has really helped us, as has the training that we've done with the business function owners around really understanding the role they play in making sure, first, that consulting is needed. This is not work that can be done in-house or day-to-day activities.

Usually we would continue to use consultants when we need advice outside of our subject matter expertise, such as looking at other global postal industries or looking at the competitors in the market that we're in. I can say—and maybe, Nathalie, you have the number—that we have considerably reduced using consultants since the report and since the government's recommendation to reduce consulting in our operating spend, making sure that our investments are appropriate.

I don't know if you have anything you would like to add.

[Nathalie Séguin]

I think we're following the direction of the Government of Canada to reduce consulting spend. For Canada Post, this is less than 1% of our overall $7-billion operating expenses.

[Tom Osborne, Liberal, Cape Spear, NL]

Thank you.

Mr. Kochhar, I have a question for you based on your opening remarks. You talked about strengthening documentation and verification processes. Can you elaborate on that?

[Harpreet S. Kochhar]

We have multiple ways to detect fraud and to make sure that the documentation that is submitted to us is verifiable through different ways, for example bank statements or language rules. All of that is to say that we have embarked on something that would allow us to clearly verify with a connectivity, for example, to financial institutions or to academic institutions.

I'll give an example. We get students who apply and who have been accepted by a university. They have put in a note that says they have been accepted at this university. We connect through a portal with that university to make sure that it is true, rather than just believing the document.

There are a few of those things that we are putting in place so that we can have ways to interact digitally with different parties. That strengthens both our fraud detection and the document verification. That's what we are focused on.