Public Safety Committee on Oct. 19th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

We are straying a little bit from relevance to Bill C-21, so if you could, please confine your response to how Bill C-21 may or may not respond to the concern raised by Mr. Paul-Hus.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

That was the purpose of my question.

[Michael Ferguson]

It is a bit difficult to answer that.

We conducted several other audits that might be of interest to the committee.

In the audit you refer to, we identified problems pertaining to the management of corruption risks at the border.

In the context of the bill, it's another example of the challenges the agency must meet at the border. In studying the bill, it is important that you be up to date on all of the challenges the agency must try to meet.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Chair, you said that my question was not related to Bill C-21. However, the bill refers to the exchange of information on individuals among border services. If there are corruption issues, this could eventually be connected to the bill.

I'm done.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you.

I just caution all members that we are studying Bill C-21. If we can tie our questions to Bill C-21, all questions are relevant.

Mr. Dubé, you have seven minutes.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Ferguson, in 2011, you testified before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. I want to take this opportunity to congratulate you on your French. You made the commitment to work on it, and it is excellent. I wanted to say so publicly.

Before the chairman takes me to task regarding the relevance of my questions and comments, I'll get back to our topic.

I want to discuss another aspect of the audit report regarding the decision to communicate information to several departments, and the privacy concerns that are raised in this report.

Could you give us more details on that aspect?

[Martin Dompierre]

As we mentioned, we examined the performance metrics, and we noted that the main obstacle to pursuing the work on this initiative was the possibility that it could be extended to other departments. We also noted that the Privacy Commissioner had taken part in the discussion and had shared his concerns in that regard.

We did not do any additional work beyond that. We simply acknowledged this delay and provided the reasons for it in our report.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Fine.

My next question concerns human resources at the border, both for the entire program and for the specific aspects that have been raised. The union president explained that there was a concern as to the capacity of the human resources to execute some elements of the bill and of the program.

Could you share your thoughts on that?

[Martin Dompierre]

We did not necessarily examine the human resources aspect in detail, nor the agency's capacity to implement this initiative. In our report, we mentioned that the agency had a budget of 121 million dollars for the period from 2011 to 2014. Initially, the initiative was supposed to end in June 2014. A new deadline was set and now it is supposed to conclude in 2018.

As to whether the human resources are sufficient, I cannot comment.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

In that case, can you tell us more about the observation regarding how the money was spent? Where were the investments made, specifically? If not in human resources, was it infrastructure?

[Martin Dompierre]

In the context of the Entry/Exit Initiative, there were specific deliverables regarding the development of a system to collect information and communicate it subsequently. I can say that most of those deliverables were attained.

As I mentioned earlier, there were delays pertaining to phases III and IV which prevented activities from continuing. I think the report even mentions that Treasury Board must release funds for that initiative to continue. Once the amendments have been made to the Customs Act, the agency will be able to continue its work with its partners.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

The Entry/Exit Initiative already exists in a certain form. Since 2013, certain specific persons who are not citizens have been targeted. In your audit, did you discuss the current program concerning permanent residents, for instance?

[Martin Dompierre]

We did look at performance indicators. Eight performance indicators concerned those activities, in the main. We noted that out of those eight indicators, there were three about which the agency could report. We deemed the indicators to be reliable. We noted that the agency was in a position to prepare its own departmental report to submit to Treasury Board and Parliament.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

I know that you talked about this, but I would like to follow up on the comment regarding the lack of performance indicators and the fact that you think that departments and agencies will now be able to provide more information for a proper assessment.

You may have said it already, but I want to make sure I understand why there is a lack of performance indicators and an inability to provide information. The program was implemented in 2013, and I feel that three indicators out of eight is little, given that the program is already in place, although it won't apply to Canadian citizens until the bill has been passed.

[Martin Dompierre]

When it comes to all the initiatives, the challenge is to collect information and be able to make a report afterwards. If there are delays, it is more difficult for the department to make a report. In the context of the entry/exit initiative, I believe that departments and agencies have already reported on the indicators I mentioned. It remains to be seen whether, once the initiative has been implemented, the department will be able to develop those indicators and collect the required information.

Concerning all the initiatives, the biggest challenge consists in collecting information beyond activities and deliverables. Departments often tend to say that they held a meeting and developed a policy. Those are not really long-term performance measurements used to show the benefits of the beyond the border initiative.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

That's great.

I have one last question about citizens' ability to challenge the accuracy of the information provided. Representatives of various departments have told us that, if an investigation has been launched—for example, with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada on the status of an application for permanent residence or citizenship or even for employment insurance with another department—the citizen could challenge the information specifically as part of that investigation. That would not necessarily be done directly with the relevant department or agency.

Do you have an opinion on whether there should be a mechanism Canadians could use to challenge the information provided by the agency regarding their entries or exits?

[Martin Dompierre]

In our audit, we did not look at whether there was a challenge mechanism. We limited ourselves to performance measurement and the reaching of objectives by the beyond the border initiative. So I cannot give you my opinion on that.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Dubé.

Mr. Fragiskatos, go ahead.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you for being here today, all of you.

I want to ask about smuggling and the illegal movement of goods more generally. You have found that improvements are needed to combat the illegal export of goods, such as illegal drugs and stolen property.

Can you elaborate on that finding and tell us exactly what the problems have been in that regard?

[Michael Ferguson]

Again, I will start and then turn it over to Mr. Swales.

First of all, Canada has certain obligations about controlling exports, what is going out of the country. It's important that they have ways of making sure they are doing that. You mentioned things like illegal drugs. We identified that the Canada Border Services Agency had determined that the export of illegal drugs was a high risk, but then, because they felt they didn't have all the authorities they needed to do random inspections of exports leaving the country, they didn't end up doing a lot of specific work aimed at identifying the export of illegal drugs.

Maybe Mr. Swales can provide more detail.

[Nicholas Swales]

Certainly. There were four things we were primarily concerned about. One was that it looked as if there was a risk that the electronic system they used for targeting was about to be switched off without a plan in place to replace it. Then we observed that even when items were targeted, as I mentioned before, they weren't always examined because of a variety of reasons, one being staffing levels, so we recommended that something be done to improve that.

Then the issue that relates most directly to the subject matter of Bill C-21 was that there were certain kinds of parcels, under certain circumstances, that they couldn't open. This meant they couldn't even do the risk analysis, which would be the start of the process of figuring out what they should be looking for.

Finally, back to the staffing point we were discussing earlier, the last one had to do with the fact that in some places where exports went out, they simply didn't do any export reviews at all, because of staffing issues. You shouldn't be able to predict, as an exporter, where you are not going to have any chance of being looked at.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

We've heard this at the committee before, but I would like your thoughts on this. Is it safe to say that a gap exists? The power to inspect with respect to imports is in place, but with respect to exports, there's less ability and less authority, and therefore a need exists to remedy that. Could you comment on that?

[Nicholas Swales]

Yes. One of our observations was that there was a difference between the authorities to examine goods that were coming into the country versus those leaving the country. Specifically, agency officers can look at any package, any shipment when entering the country, but when they are leaving the country, there are certain rules the officers have to follow.

Those rules are primarily that either the shipment was reported—and many shipments are not because there are rules that allow you not to—or they had to have a reasonable suspicion, which meant that they had to have already seen some indication that there was a problem they could justify in terms of a legal process that might follow.

Those are different authorities and they meant that the ability of the agency to do risk assessment in some key areas was limited. Risk assessment is sort of the foundation for being able to do efficient border control, because that determines where you put your efforts and how much effort you should put into certain types of activities.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Much has been said in your report and here today about performance indicators. I want to ask a general question about the best ways to implement performance indicators from your perspective, from a very high level perspective. What are the sorts of performance indicators that you're hoping to see or had hoped to see?