Public Safety Committee on March 8th, 2012

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Citizenship and Immigration. Okay, great.

[Claudette Deschênes]

Yes, but at arm's length, in terms of decision-making.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Right. No, that's good, but I think you, probably, if anyone, would have some information on the IRB, which we don't have before us today. Would you be able to help us at all in answering any of the questions? What I'd like to get into is this. If there are conditions placed on someone who has a removal order, could you talk a little bit about what some of those conditions may be? Are you aware of what they might be?

[Claudette Deschênes]

You really should be talking to CBSA about that. Normally, there would be a hearings officer from CBSA who would be discussing with the IRB member, to come up with conditions that would make it...where the risk to Canada would be mitigated.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Okay, thank you.

You talked about an inadmissibility report, and you said those are rare.

[Claudette Deschênes]

Those are rare in terms of CIC officers writing them. Normally, what we would do, if we got to that situation, is we would refer the case to an enforcement officer, or it would be at a port of entry. It is rare, but it's not unheard of that a CIC officer....

I don't know if you would want to...?

[Caroline Melis, Director General, Operational Management and Coordination, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

The only things I can think of would be in relation to serious criminality cases.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

I'm sorry, I can't hear you. Speak up.

[Caroline Melis]

Sorry. The only concern would be in relation to criminality cases. Once you're going into enforcement, then you're referring them to the partner to deal with the enforcement issue.

[Claudette Deschênes]

So if a client comes to an inland office, a CIC office, and we become aware that there's a criminal record or something, we would normally refer that case over to CBSA, but there are cases sometimes where a CIC officer might write the inadmissibility report and pass it on. We could give you a sense of that. We could go back and check, in the total number of reports that are written each year, how many a CIC officer would possibly do.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

That's it. Thank you. We're already over time. We'll come back to you, though.

We'll go to Mr. Sandhu, please, for seven minutes.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I also would like to wish a happy International Women's Day to all my colleagues here and to those who are listening on the Internet or on TV.

We know from the numbers that we can certainly do more for the advancement of women in Canada. I know the numbers show that we don't have as many women in certain high-ranking positions, but that's for another discussion.

Let me just go back.

The role of the immigration department, which is your department, is to order people deported, and then once that order is issued, it's up to CBSA to carry out that order.

[Claudette Deschênes]

That's not correct. For our officers overseas who are processing visitors, immigrants, and so on, we may come across situations where we would refuse a case to come to Canada. If someone arrives at a port of entry, that's CBSA; CBSA is processing the cases. They may find that somebody is inadmissible, write an inadmissibility report, and order them deported or removed. Or they may be in Canada and have gone through a process but suddenly are no longer entitled to stay in Canada. In that case, at that point they may be written up for being inadmissible. Then it could be written up by somebody at CBSA and, in some small circumstances, by officers at CIC. Based on that removal order, CBSA would take action.

But because often the inadmissibility report is written after an investigation of some type, or an enforcement action, the large majority of those are CBSA actions.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

How many deportation orders were issued last year?

[Claudette Deschênes]

I don't know. We can—

[A voice]

That's CBSA.

[Claudette Deschênes]

That's a CBSA matter, but we can certainly work with CBSA for that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

We have that information from a former meeting, haven't we?

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

It's 18,000 in the last two years, I think.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Again, do you know how many were actually removed by the CBSA?

[Claudette Deschênes]

Again, we're not sure. What we did say is that we know for sure that they did more over the last few years than in the past. But I don't have the number off the top—

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

You would agree that if 15,000 orders were issued, not all of them were deported.

[Claudette Deschênes]

Yes, and the process under the immigration act is that sometimes you will issue one and be in abeyance while certain processes are finalized.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

We still know where these people are, though, the ones who haven't left the country...?