Public Safety Committee on March 8th, 2012

[Sylvain Chicoine, NDP, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

It would apply solely to the U.S. border? If you fly to Europe, for instance, it would not solve the problem on that end?

[Claudette Deschênes]

Not initially, but we hope to build a system that will cover everything in the long term. We do everything step by step.

[Sylvain Chicoine, NDP, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

That is it for me. Does anyone have any other questions?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

That's fine.

Ms. Young, I think, has another question.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Thank you so much for being here today. I didn't have the time earlier because I was being harassed by my chair.

I would like to welcome you and say thank you, again, for being here.

I wanted to ask you about the dangerous offender and/or criminal removal unit, or some such. I don't know exactly what it's called. Can you tell us a little bit about this unit under CIC and about the work they do?

[Claudette Deschênes]

We don't have a removals group, so I'm not quite sure what you mean. We have a unit at CIC that deals with danger opinions. That would happen when people are making a case that they may be at risk if they return to another country, but they're also dangerous from the perspective of being criminals, and so on. We have a unit that balances the risk to the person with the risk to Canadian society. That's the unit that does that.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Can you tell us a bit more about the role of this unit and the kinds of cases they might have? How does one become a case within this unit, for example? What happens? What kinds of things do they look at? How do they assess people? And then what happens at the end of that process?

[Claudette Deschênes]

I probably won't cover all the examples. Basically, often it would be someone who has been granted refugee status in Canada or who is making a case that there's a risk of returning to a country because of torture or persecution or that type of thing. That case would normally be prepared by a representative for the client—

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Could I interrupt just for a second?

Would it also include someone who might have criminality, or who we are concerned may be a danger to the Canadian public or society?

[Claudette Deschênes]

First, it's someone who we want to remove, and then I'll get to why we want to remove them. We normally would want to remove him because of criminality, or security reasons, or something like that, something that having these people living in Canada among us causes us concern.

The officer would consider the criminality, the aspects, everything to do with the charge, with the conviction, and with the lifestyle of the person. They would also take what the person is claiming would be their risk when they returned to their home country. They would do some research on what they believe to be the real situation in that country, and they would balance those things out. They would write a decision, a report. It would be presented to the client and normally their representative. They would have a chance to rebut that information, and then a final decision would be made. And if the officer came to the point of saying that the risk to Canada is greater than the risk of this person having a problem when they returned, that case would go into active processing for removal. Normally, it would also be taken to court, and it would be looked at for judicial review to make sure the officer didn't make any wrong decisions.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Our immigration system is one where the bulk of the people who come apply from abroad, and then they are either approved or not approved, and we check criminality before they receive their approval. Would you say that the majority of the people who end up in this unit are ones from what kind...? How did they get to Canada? How did they end up in this unit?

[Claudette Deschênes]

It could be a mixture. It could be people who we've processed overseas and we missed something, or it may be people who were processed overseas, came to Canada as young people, and then got into gangs and crimes and that type of thing, or it could be people who arrived in Canada and claimed refugee status. There's a whole variety of those cases.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

How many active cases would there be at any given time?

[Claudette Deschênes]

I don't know, but we could check. I don't have that off the top of my head.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Out of the cases that you have, roughly how many are removed or not removed? Do you have any idea of the statistics around that?

[Claudette Deschênes]

I don't, but we can check that. Again, it's a rolling total because some cases—

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Right, but generally, are we talking about a thousand a year or ten thousand a year? Do you see what I mean?

[Claudette Deschênes]

Yes. I'm not sure we're talking that many, but we can look into that.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

Welcome to the committee, Mr. Côté. You have five minutes.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, ladies.

I must say that, as a newcomer to this committee, I had a bit of trouble keeping up. In Quebec City, specifically the Beauport—Limoilou riding, there is a high proportion of immigrants. If I understand correctly, you were talking about an approach by Citizenship and Immigration Canada that would involve holding immigrants accountable.

Is that a common approach of yours? Do you find it produces satisfactory results?

[Claudette Deschênes]

We work from the premise that the majority of people in the immigration system will follow the rules. Obviously, that is not the case for everyone. Citizenship and Immigration Canada wants to step up efforts to ensure that those we think are going to follow the rules in fact do so.

All the measures that must be taken by the Canada Border Services Agency also come into play. What it boils down to is that the government could always invest more money in these kinds of measures. The idea, however, is to figure out how to manage our risks as efficiently as possible, and if there are risks, can further measures be taken to manage those risks.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Time's up?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Yes, we go to 4:15, and then at 4:20 we have the.... Yes, we have different time schedules here in this committee on occasion.

We want to thank you both for coming. We realize that, as you said, you have kind of shown us that this isn't a major area of what CIC or what you specifically are going to be involved with as far as the electronic monitoring. Thank you for coming on our second invitation and for making that abundantly clear.

We will suspend just for a moment or two, and then we will go via the teleconference to Edmonton. We are suspended.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

We'll call this meeting back to order.

In our second panel this afternoon, appearing by video conference from Edmonton, Alberta, from the Edmonton Police Service, we have James Clover, the project manager of electronic operations in the behavioural assessment unit. As well, we have from SafeTracks GPS Solutions Inc., Robert Aloisio, director of business development.

Our committee wants to take this opportunity, first of all, to thank you for taking the time and making the effort to share your information with us. As you know, in our study we have been looking at electronic monitoring in both a corrections and conditional release setting as well as an immigration enforcement setting, with a view to determine the effectiveness, the cost-efficiency, and the implementation readiness of such technology.

Welcome from the committee to all the way there in Edmonton, and thank you. Perhaps you have an opening statement or some comments to make. We would certainly also appreciate it if you would take some questions from our committee.