Public Safety Committee on Feb. 18th, 2016

[Gina Wilson]

No. As good public servants, we take on whatever initiatives the government provides to us.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Okay. Very good.

Where I'd like to go is to timelines on this. Could you explain a little bit about the process, as briefly as you can, and some of the differences between government-sponsored refugees versus private. My riding's probably no different from any other riding. I have quite a number of private groups sponsoring. Could you touch on that?

[Gina Wilson]

Certainly, and thank you for the question. It is an initiative that Public Safety has been very involved in, particularly from the safety perspective and the security screening aspect.

Certainly there are elements of that question that would probably be best directed to officials at CBSA, who are more directly involved in the technicalities of the security screening and so on, as well as IRCC, or Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, who are dealing with the aspect between privately sponsored and government sponsored.

Craig, I would ask you if you want to add anything to that.

Craig has been very involved in this initiative from the government operations centre, so he may have—

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Okay, as long as we can answer that then, because if the CBSA is who I should be asking, I don't want to waste my time on it.

[Craig Oldham, Director General, Government Operations Centre, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Certainly, the differences between private and government sponsored is not something we're really qualified to answer. That should go to Immigration and Refugees Canada. Our colleagues from CBSA are here, behind us, to answer some details. But if you would like some broad overview of the program and where we are in the screening in general, we can provide that.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Okay.

I have a couple of other questions. Approximately how long would each interview be with each refugee? I'm quite sure that language was an issue. How was that handled? Can you speak to that at all?

[Craig Oldham]

I think the key thing to understand here is that the process of screening refugees is not some sort of abbreviated process. It is, in fact, the same kind of process we use for all refugees or immigrants to Canada. It's a multi-layered approach that includes the United Nations HCR, CBSA, and immigration officers who are trained and experienced in doing this kind of work. Initially, during our planning process, absolutely translation was an issue. But that was something we were able to overcome rather quickly, and we have put a considerable number of resources on the ground overseas to help us do that. We did initially anticipate that kind of issue, but it did not, in the end, turn out to be the case.

We are using the same screening standards we use at any other time, and those include screening for criminality and human rights violations. We are screening based on recommendations from our security partners. We are screening against both domestic and United States databases, and wherever there's any sort of doubt, those cases are set aside so that we can achieve the objective of bringing 25,000 by the end of the month.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Could you comment on the length of time for each interview or screening? Also, at any time while carrying this out, did you or the officials feel undue pressure or anything like that in any manner? Can you speak to that?

[Craig Oldham]

I can't speak to the length of time for the interviews. I will defer to CBSA, which is coming in behind me, for that. It's a complex operation, involving over 10 time zones, in a period of time, but we are professionals, and we plan and adjust as required. We're at a little over 21,000 now, and I fully anticipate that we'll make our goal by the end of the month.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Did you hear any feedback, Mr. Oldham, from your officials at any time? Did they feel uncomfortable with the process laid out and the time that they had to do it? Can you comment on that at all?

[Craig Oldham]

The government operations centre led and coordinated the planning and execution of this operation in consultation with our partners, including all the provinces and territories, the Red Cross, and the International Organization for Migration, all of which are working within my operations centre now to deliver this.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you, Mr. Oldham.

I will remind the committee that we're into the five-minute rounds now.

Ms. Damoff.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you for being here.

I want to just touch on the need for our first responders and public safety officers to be able to perform their duties at their very best. It's important not only for the individuals themselves but also in a broader sense for our public safety and national security. PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder—it's now being called an occupational stress injury, which I think is a better term—includes mental injuries themselves, as well as the high incidence of depression, suicide, alcohol and addiction issues, and marriage breakdown that we see in our first responders and public safety officers.

One of the things I've read about is how a lack of research and a coordinated national strategy dealing with OSI, and also focusing on prevention, education, and recovery, is holding a lot of institutions back from being able to deal with this. I'm just wondering where we are on the development of a national strategy, and also whether you can speak to the coordination of efforts, because this certainly covers a broad range of agencies.

[Gina Wilson]

Thank you for that.

I, along with our parliamentary secretary, Mr. Michel Picard, attended a round table very recently, which was called by Minister Goodale. There were, I would say, probably 50 people involved in those discussions. First responders were well represented there. Certainly research did come up, as well as prevention, education, and all of those issues you mentioned. I certainly saw a tremendous amount of convergence at that particular table, and I would say we're well on our way to launching a national action plan per se, or to building the foundation for that national action plan. The sense was that more work needed to be done amongst the constituencies of those first responder organizations in particular. They needed to go back to the grassroots and get a better sense on some of those pieces.

Craig, is there anything else you need to add on that particular issue in terms of an update on the actual action plan?

[Craig Oldham]

Really, the round table with the University of Regina was very important and made great headway. The things that came out of that worked to define the problem and exactly what it is to talk about options around developing evidence-based national standards for assessment, treatment, and long-term care. That, of course, will all feed into the plan. That's where we are at this point.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Has anyone ever looked at what the cost of OSI is?

[Gina Wilson]

I would say that's a really difficult item to tabulate at this point in time. We've probably been able to tabulate some early key deliverables in moving the agenda forward in the next few years, but we definitely don't have a sense of the costs at this point in time.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

I ask because one of the issues I suspect is that there's not really a definition of what's included. Is that probably a good—

[Gina Wilson]

That's correct. As Craig said, a lot of the discussion at the round table was about putting some definition to what we're looking at. There are probably various aspects of this that we haven't even contemplated yet in the consultations that we're moving forward with.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Something else that I've read is that it's probably under-reported because of the stigma attached to it. We likely—in fact, I know we do—have people working today who are suffering with issues and who probably shouldn't be at work but should be getting treatment.

[Gina Wilson]

That's absolutely the case. That too was raised as a significant issue at the round table.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Do you do any work with Roméo Dallaire's institute? He's been doing a lot on this. There's certainly overlap between veterans and public safety officers, first responders, and I know he's been doing a lot of work on that.

[Gina Wilson]

I can't say if they were represented at this particular round table. Certainly, Veterans Affairs was there with some of the expertise they have in working on this issue. Thank you for that note. We'll certainly follow up.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

I think that's all I have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

With the chair's prerogative, used sparingly, could I ask if there is or will be a public report from that round table, or is this an internal...?