Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, witnesses, for being here.
I sat through the first two hours this morning and listened carefully, and I'm still concerned, as Canadians are, about how this happened. The confidence they need to ensure that it doesn't keep happening—we haven't had that yet today. I appreciate the fact that our national security apparatus acted responsibly and efficiently to thwart the attack. Kudos to them. However, a failure occurred. We need to ensure that this failure doesn't keep happening.
Mr. McCrorie, CBSA has a critical role and responsibility in the process to protect Canadian citizens from those coming into Canada with dangerous or divisive ideologies that pose a threat to our national security and public safety and to not allow them entry. You've talked about the multiple ways you do that. What's interesting is what I found when I went through the timeline we were given just before this meeting today about the various times the accused in this matter, the senior, was refused as a “non-genuine visitor” and then received a temporary resident visa. He was not refused. He was given it. He was then assessed and a risk indicator was found. That happened over and over and over again. These risk indicators are when CBSA is supposed to step in and take over.
What checks did you actually conduct to make that happen? Do you have access to the database that my NDP colleague talked about, the Schengen database? Did you run this individual through the FBI database or through the Homeland Security database? Did you run them through anything that would give rise to...?
Obviously, someone in an office who was interviewing this individual had concerns. They identified a risk. That same risk appeared again months later. It appeared again years later. Yet this person was able to get temporary status, permanent status, and then become a Canadian citizen, all while these risks were being presented.
How can we sit here today and assure the Canadian public that we know there's a problem when we don't know the...? Obviously, this timeline identifies the problem, and yet he was still able to be here. I'm actually quite concerned about what that actually means.
You also indicated in previous testimony that the CBSA has a role to play in removing the people who are ordered removed from this country. Of those people ordered removed, how many actually remain at large? Do you know the answer to that?