Public Safety Committee on March 12th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you. You may have just a brief question.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Is your agency supportive of the report issued by Justice O'Connor, which suggests that the government put in oversight over your agency?

[Stephen Rigby]

I think that would be a policy position of the government. I have no view on it today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. Rathgeber, please.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for your helpful testimony here this morning.

I'd like to follow up on a couple of lines that my friend Mr. Comartin began. I must premise my remarks by saying his experience is much different from mine, I suspect. He lives in Windsor, and I live in Edmonton. I live a long way from the border. I travel to the United States very infrequently, and almost never by land. I know nothing about this, so if my questions appear to be of a general nature, forgive me, but I'm sure they'll be easy for you to answer.

We hear all the time that between the United States and Canada we have the largest undefended border in the world. I have some knowledge of the geography, of how many kilometres and miles it is, and there are great areas with little population. I'm thinking of the Great Lakes in particular, and in the west we have mountainous terrain between Montana and Alberta and between Washington and British Columbia. In Saskatchewan, where I was born, there are very sparsely populated areas south of Estevan and in southern Saskatchewan. I think you made reference, Mr. Rigby, to barriers being installed in Quebec. What percentage of the border is barriered, as opposed to barrier-free? I appreciate that you might not know, but you might make a guess.

[Stephen Rigby]

I don't have that figure today, sir. I can get it for you. In terms of ports, the majority of our ports are manned ports. There are some that have barriers, and there are some that are unguarded, in fact. I think it's our long-term proposition, working with our friends on the American side, to look at what the future of all those unguarded roads and gated roads is going to be and at what the balance should be going forward in terms of what should be manned and what should not be.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

I'm correct in assuming, for example, that in Saskatchewan, where the land is typically quite flat, if one had an all-terrain vehicle, one would have very little trouble crossing the border cross-country.

[Stephen Rigby]

That is correct. There are places where the border is essentially field or scrub. I've been to a lot of places throughout Canada. The border runs through backyards, through schools, through the middle of forests, and so on.

So yes, there are places where you could cross with an all-terrain vehicle.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Thank you.

I want to pick up on a question Mr. Comartin asked about statistics. Of course, it's always very newsworthy when weapons, specifically, are smuggled into Canada, and anecdotally or otherwise, are involved in criminal offences. He said that seizures were actually down. I'm not sure how he knows that. Why does border security not publish more of its success stories, its successes in apprehending illegal weapons and apprehending individuals who are attempting to smuggle either weapons or drugs or other contraband? We always hear about the stuff that gets through, but we never hear about the good work you are doing.

[Stephen Rigby]

I think you raise a very good point. I think there are times when we could be more aggressive in publicizing some of this information, and it's something that I hope we can do in our regular plans and through other fora. There are times when we would choose not to, largely because we don't want to disclose a particular enforcement technique or a pattern of effort we may be pursuing. So those sorts of things we tend to keep a fairly low profile on.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Thank you, sir.

Am I still good?

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Yes.

[D/Commr Raf Souccar]

May I just add that sometimes this non-publication is at our request because of ongoing investigations, for example.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

With respect to Mr. Oliphant's question about a recommendation in the O'Connor report, I appreciate that when people are detained at the border and they're asked for paperwork or they're questioned about how much money they spent on their trip across the border, it's an inconvenience. I suspect, initially, that there's probably a lot of unhappiness with the work your agents do at the border. Commissioner Rigby, you indicated that you do receive complaints from individuals who feel that they have been mistreated at the border.

I'm curious about volume. I'm assuming that if people feel that they've been mistreated or that their time has been wasted, after they go home and think about it, it's probably not that big a deal. But I don't know. Do you get a high volume of complaints that come to your attention?

[Stephen Rigby]

Formal complaints--and again, if I'm misspeaking here, I'll write and correct the record--I believe are in the 600 to 700 range per year, and that's on 95 million transactions. There's a range of other informal ones that wouldn't be in that count. So the total number is probably higher.

We see complaints that are serious, and we look into them and we mediate them. There are others, quite frankly, where an allegation has been made, and it's the view of the border officer that the event did not unfold that way, and we simply have no way of corroborating one way or another. But we take all of them very seriously, and many of them, as I say, are referred for internal investigation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you.

That's it. We can come back to you later.

We'll go to Ms. Mourani, please.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for being here.

I have three questions for Mr. Rigby. First of all, I'd like to go back to the matter raised by my Liberal Party colleague about detentions, which are your responsibility. It has been brought to my attention more than once that those persons being detained in holding centers include mothers and their children.

I'd like to know whether that's true or whether it's an urban legend. And what do you think about incarcerating children? I'm willing to believe they're waiting to be deported, but I was also told they could be detained for long periods of time.

Furthermore, complaints from my constituents have often been brought to my attention. Those complaints concerned treatment at the border based to a large degree on racial profiling. These individuals were questioned either because they were of Arab extraction or because they looked Arabic. They could be Latin American, but had a certain type of face and were questioned endlessly, whereas they were Canadian citizens who were innocent and who were simply going to the United States on vacation and were coming back.

There is one last subject. In 2007, we looked at the issue of arming border officers. One argument was repeated in favour of officers bearing arms: when information was received from the United States to the effect that vehicles were going to cross the Canadian border carrying weapons or drugs, border officers could not intervene because they feared for their safety. For example, the RCMP could not intervene at that point to make arrests or to take action. Consequently, the need to bear arms was justified on the ground that it would enable officers to proceed with arrests and to intervene when this type of information was brought to the attention of border officers.

Do you have any figures? Have you noticed a change in the number of seizures or arrests compared to when your officers—you now have 750—had no weapons? Do you have any figures on that?

[Stephen Rigby]

Thank you for your questions. With regard to children in our holding centres, the answer is yes.

There are children who are detained in our facilities from time to time. It is our general policy to keep families together. When there is a detention of one or the other parent, generally speaking it's our practice to keep the families together in the detention centre.

These aren't prisons. They are centres where people are held while their files are being dealt with. I think the conditions in which the children are kept are more than acceptable. We work with the Red Cross and other organizations to ensure that the conditions in our detention centres are appropriate.

With regard to complaints about racial profiling, certainly from time to time I too see complaints alleging racial profiling. I can tell you that today we do not practise racial profiling in any way, shape, or form. We act on intelligence quite significantly and frequently. Sometimes there is an association between a certain origin country and that intelligence, but it is not based on ethnicity, religion, or any other profiling; that is not something that we do.

Concerning seizures, yes, I can provide you with figures on seizures. In weapons seizures, for example, as I've said, corroborating comments made earlier, the numbers have been essentially flat or moderately up over the last few years. We have seen an increase in narcotic seizures over the last year. Sometimes the increase is the result of several large seizures occurring, and that's generally the result of good intelligence.

I would not, however, attribute it to any linkage whatsoever between increases in seizures and the arming of our officers. That initiative is designed to ensure their protection and was not undertaken to allow them to be more aggressive in the undertaking of seizures.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you.

We'll go over to Mr. McColeman next, please.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Thank you. I share the thoughts of my colleagues about your taking your time to be here today. We really appreciate your being here to field our questions.

I have a couple of questions. I'll start with NEXUS. It seems to me that it is a technology that has some potential for good and for future growth. Is it the only technology—or are you looking at it in that way—for a much broader application, or are there other technologies you're looking at in parallel to it that could enhance the security at our borders?

[Stephen Rigby]

The key technology in NEXUS is an RFID chip, which allows it to be actively read by a machine. I think, speaking broadly and without reference to any specific initiative, one of the things that all border agencies globally are interested in is the possibility for exploiting biometric technology, going forward. It is one of the true enablers of identification. It cuts down on identification fraud, etc.

We are constantly looking at possibilities. We have no specific initiatives that we'll be announcing in the near future around this. But as we look to the sorts of things that would offer a good option for providing additional safety and security at the border, this is an area we will continue to examine and continue to develop options around.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Could you describe to me what this entails? What are the technologies that are being explored in the biometric area?

[Stephen Rigby]

Biometrics generally involve the capture of just that, a biometric profile of one sort or another. The sort we use with NEXUS, for example, is an iris scan. You can also use one-, five-, or ten-print fingerprints. There is also biometrics involving facial recognition software, which is used by some countries around the world. Those are the typical sorts that other administrations have been using.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Okay.

I need the definition of one term for which, in my mind, I can't get clear definition. What do you mean by “inland teams”?

[Stephen Rigby]

The typical customs role in the past was border-focused; it dealt with our operations at the border. In the immigration business, a lot of the activity that we pursue involves working with people who are either in the immigration system in one of our detention holding centres or who are the subject of an immigrant warrant that we have issued for their arrest because they have not appeared for a hearing or some other activity.

We have teams of approximately 350 officers who work inland on these sorts of things: doing investigations, running down warrants, going out and arresting people who have not appropriately presented themselves for immigration hearings, etc.