Thank you to all the witnesses for coming here today. I'll start with the new deputy minister.
It was brought to my attention that you just started four weeks ago. Is that correct? I'll take your nodding as a yes.
The IRCC gave testimony on Monday. I don't want to say there were a lot of excuses, but the words “funding” and “budget” were used repeatedly. My thoughts and questions today will come from the public accounts perspective of protecting taxpayer money or acting for the taxpayer. There are some numbers here that I'd like to share with the committee and the witnesses.
The funding for the IRCC has gone from $3.16 billion to $6.5 billion in about five years. That includes doubling the labour force from about 6,300 to 14,000, between 2015 and 2023. Those are big numbers. The budget for IRCC is massive. We started to investigate, after testimony by the Auditor General, which I found great but concerning.
The Office of the Auditor General's funding is about $127.5 million a year. They were able to help find the 39,500 individuals who were not supposed to be here. Their office did that with the help of all the other offices, and they took it upon themselves to find those numbers. What's concerning is that their budget is very small, and IRCC's very big. Obviously, IRCC does a lot more than just that, so I'm not going to dwell on that. However, that's why I wanted to start with figuring out the dollars.
A few things came up today. My colleague from Hamilton raised some great concerns and valid questions. The member from the Bloc Québécois also raised some interesting questions. We also heard from the vice-president of CBSA. One thing I want to touch on is fraud, which leads to screening and communication between agencies. The gentleman said that they are figuring out how to balance efficiency and time, and manage bigger volumes. These are all valid issues.
As a member of the public accounts committee, I would now like to move a motion, if that's okay.