Public Accounts Committee on April 22nd, 2026

[Ted Gallivan]

I'll make a couple of quick points, and then turn to colleagues to detail this.

Starting in January 2025, changes were made to the provincial allocations. That wasn't in time to be picked up by the OAG's report. That proactive adjustment process had started already.

This spring, we are engaging with provinces to understand how we can tweak the allocation model and customize it in order to help address the concern you're expressing. We've also committed to giving them better data and better information so they can plan within their jurisdictions. This is very respectful of their responsibility for education—giving them data.

Finally, we've committed to another round of tweaking this fall.

Alexis, I don't know whether you want to detail some of that for the members.

[Alexis Graham]

Yes, I'm happy to provide additional details.

I think we completely understand and agree that attraction in smaller centres is a challenge and that the changes have had impacts across the country and in smaller jurisdictions.

We have embarked on a fairly detailed and robust engagement plan with provinces and territories to better understand what is causing approval versus refusal rates. We have also adjusted the allocation formula to take into account the approval rates of certain jurisdictions. In practice, that means we will give more allocations to those where we are seeing higher refusals, so that they can add more students and they don't get penalized.

In general, these are conversations that are happening through multiple layers, starting with the minister and going down to working groups to really unpack that, share information, generate more complementarity between the programming and really understand what is at the root of this, so that DLIs and recruitment efforts can focus on the students who are going to be successful.

[Tom Osborne, Liberal, Cape Spear, NL]

Thank you. I appreciate the answer.

How do both agencies, I would think, balance the reduction in new arrivals with the need to attract and retain skilled workers, especially in areas where we have skilled labour shortages such as medical health professionals, for example?

[Ted Gallivan]

Again, I'll make a brief start and then turn it over to Alexis.

There were two prongs to the strategy initiated in 2023. It was to get both the numbers and the integrity under control, but also to increase the quality. In terms of the definition of that, it was working with jurisdictions to make sure world-class students who really make a difference in terms of the Canadian educational landscape are there.

Alexis, do you want to comment a bit on the quality aspect?

[Alexis Graham]

In terms of the volumes and just the composition, we do see that there is a shift. For example, the proportion of university-bound students is back to prepandemic volumes of about 40%. It has shifted away from colleges and back into that university space. We also see that top research universities are leading the new study permit recipients and are welcoming more students in STEM. For example, that's up 3.6% from 2024 to 2025, and there are fewer in those oversubscribed business programs. We are seeing some adjustments already and some changes in those behaviours and outcomes.

I would also note that doctoral students applying to study in Canada and their family members now also benefit from 14-day processing. We've really tried to speed that up for that particular cohort, and IRCC is meeting that commitment.

[Tom Osborne, Liberal, Cape Spear, NL]

Thank you.

I will commend the Auditor General for bringing some of these concerns to light. I commend IRCC and the Canada Border Services Agency as well for how you've reacted to those recommendations.

I want to ask both agencies if you could expand on some of the improvements that have been put in place as a result of the findings of the Auditor General, including the fact that last year you reviewed 100% of the potential fraud cases. What brought you to be able to do that? For example, what measures were put in place? What other improvements were in place as a result of the recommendations?

[Ted Gallivan]

Maybe I'll start, Mr. Chair.

It was unfortunately the Auditor General who shone the spotlight on the discrepancy letters, the 153,000. It wasn't, in fairness, until the OAG report arrived that we started looking at those in detail. The letter process was new. I think there was a sense within the IRCC that the number would come down naturally as people got used to the process and there would be fewer mistakes, and that after several years, it would be a good time to kind of pounce and start looking in detail.

What I would describe is a process of weeding down that list, but we're not done. There is work ahead of us in terms of confirming whether the people without status have effectively left the country or not. I don't want to leave this committee with the impression that the work is done. We have narrowed down the list to people who don't have valid status in Canada, but we have yet to fully confirm whether they have actually left the country or not. Finally, on the hard work—the people who ought to have left the country and who haven't—that's going to be tough work, and that work is ahead of us.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you. That is your time, Mr. Osborne.

To begin our third round, I'm going to go to Mr. Stevenson for five minutes.

[William Stevenson, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

I have several questions. Most of them have been partially answered, so I'll try to be succinct on these.

The first one will be for the Auditor General.

When you found those fraudulent cases in your audit, did you see any pattern within those cases that linked them to specific institutions?

[Karen Hogan]

I think you're talking about the 800 cases.

[William Stevenson, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Yes.

[Karen Hogan]

Those were identified by the immigration department. What we did notice as a pattern in them is that a little over 700 of them claimed that they had attended an educational institution that did not exist.

[William Stevenson, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Was it all the same one, or were there different names that were...?

[Karen Hogan]

I'm going to have to ask if someone across the table from me has that answer.

I don't think we have that answer, but it just shows that the majority of them had that fraudulent documentation. That would have been an alert—something that the immigration department should have seen.

[William Stevenson, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

With those numbers, was there any indication of an agency or an individual who was promoting this to say, “Come to Canada through this student path”? Is there no real link between the individual cases?

[Karen Hogan]

We didn't go that far into each of those individual cases. The pattern we did notice was that over 700 of them had this one fraudulent letter or claim of an institution. About 68% of those 800 were approved through the student direct stream. We were, again, connecting to a bucket that came through on a “light touch”, faster process. This just raises other flags around.... Having a control is good, but the control is only as effective as the enforcement and the follow-through.

[William Stevenson, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

I'll go to Mr. Gallivan or Ms. Graham.

On the “light touch”, is that part of your, as you said, plan of action that's to be completed in 2026? Is the light touch being addressed, as maybe that it's not a good process going forward?

[Ted Gallivan]

There are two parts. The program itself, which was a lighter touch, was discontinued. That's happened.

Now we have the students who were ingested during that lighter-touch period. They are still in Canada and have transferred. That's where we've taken a commitment in 100% of the cases to take into account that they received less scrutiny. If they're renewing their student visa, there's extra scrutiny. It's managing the population that came in while the program was live.

[William Stevenson, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

We had discussed earlier that there was a doubling of the number of people in your department. By the sound of things, it's not that you needed more staff for your plan of action, because now you're doing the 100% follow-ups on those, but you didn't do it before.

Was that a choice by the department, or was that indicated before? Was it that they'd save some money and this is how they planned on doing it?

[Ted Gallivan]

In the first instance, this idea of letters was a new process. Let me say this bluntly. The number of suspected fraud cases should drive the allocation of resources, rather than a fixed budget that management decided. The commitment we're trying to make is that we have sufficient resources—although 14,000 is a little generous; we're not quite that large. We have sufficient resources, so we ought to reallocate resources to deal with the risk.

[William Stevenson, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

If you have numbers—and if you don't, you can get back to us later—can you tell me, as a percentage, how many people in your department and in your process are actually focused on just investigating the claims versus the administration of the rest of your program?

[Ted Gallivan]

I've asked the same question. Part of the challenge is that we have visa officers who are both facilitators and compliance officers. They get a visa application and it depends on the veracity of the claim. That wasn't a very satisfying answer to me, but that's where I am right now.

We have very few full-time compliance officers. All of our officers, when they look at a visa, are thinking about compliance and service. It's really the nature of the application and the facts of the file that dictate whether they're facilitative or not.

[William Stevenson, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

When you get to the bottom of those and you find somebody who should fail the system and get kicked out, are you doing a data dump to the other departments to say, “Here are all the individuals”? Is that part of your action plan?

[Ted Gallivan]

Part of the action plan is to have dedicated compliance teams. That would be the second tier, so for the visa officer, if we have a problem, or in a program we have a problem, we are striking dedicated compliance teams. I'll have a better answer in terms of how many people work full-time on compliance going forward.

We want to take the first cut before it goes over the wall to the CBSA. Again, sometimes somebody has merely failed to inform us of changing educational institutions. That's not okay, and we have to enforce it, but I think it's premature to initiate a forced removal until we ascertain that's the circumstance.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

That is your time, Mr. Stevenson.

Ms. Yip, you have five minutes, please.