Public Safety Committee on Sept. 19th, 2024

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the officials for being with us today on this very important topic.

I'll start with immigration, on the 2018 removal of the requirement for police clearance certificates from the country of origin. Pakistan was one of those countries. Is there consideration being given by the department to reinstating the requirement—not the option, but that it be required for Pakistan and others that may have been impacted by the 2018 change?

Is that being considered by the department?

[Dr. Harpreet S. Kochhar, Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

Thank you for the question, Chair.

I think the minister pointed out that we are going to do a full evaluation of what transpired and, based on all the information received, what we can do better. If there are things we need to do differently, we will consider them.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

You can't commit to that. I appreciate that you can't. Thank you very much.

Can you confirm for me—I think the minister did—that permanent residence requires police certificate clearance from countries like Pakistan, but student visas do not. Is that correct?

[Dr. Harpreet S. Kochhar]

Can I please turn to Aiesha on that one? I want to be very sure about that.

[Aiesha Zafar]

Thank you for the question.

Permanent residents are asked for police certificates. There's a difference in the threat and the risk level for temporary residents when they're coming for a temporary purpose, so there are different requirements for those coming for a temporary stay versus a permanent stay.

Permanent residents have different requirements—more enhanced, in fact—because of the rights that would be provided to them and their ability to stay in Canada.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

I appreciate that you described the certificate clearance as a “more enhanced” screening measure. It's my understanding that you used the words “more enhanced”. Is that correct?

[Aiesha Zafar]

I should correct myself. It's not necessarily more enhanced. There are different expectations, perhaps, for an officer, because now they are assessing a different type of resident.

When they're assessing somebody who's coming here for a temporary stay, they will request all of the information and documents they need for that duration of stay. When we have a permanent resident, or perhaps a citizen, they will ask for the appropriate documentation that would satisfy them, based on the fact that they would have different rights in Canada.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

I would just ask, as the official opposition critic for public safety, that in your review you strongly reconsider reimplementing or putting in place whatever additional measures we can to ensure that there's extra screening. I ask that you please do so, as I'm sure you are doing.

I want to ask the RCMP a few questions as well. My understanding is that you got your hands on the alleged ISIS video from 2015 of that individual being dismembered. What was your next course of action? Was it to inform the IRCC, or was it to inform CSIS?

Who found out first, and who told whom? I'm just trying to establish it briefly in one minute, if you can tell me.

[Commr Michael Duheme, Commissioner, Royal Canadian Mounted Police]

Mr. Chair, my recollection is that the RCMP did not have that video initially.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

At no time. That's interesting.

[Commr Michael Duheme]

At no time...when it was shared and it became known.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

What about the CBSA?

[Ted Gallivan, Executive Vice-President, Canada Border Services Agency]

The CBSA took a copy of the video, further to media reports. It's a copy we took in the context of lessons learned and opportunities to improve, going forward.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

You didn't know about it until the media reports.

[Ted Gallivan]

That's correct.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Neither the CBSA nor the RCMP was aware.

Was CSIS aware? I guess you can't speak for CSIS. I'm so sorry. You can. Of course you can. I apologize.

[Vanessa Lloyd, Interim Director, Canadian Security Intelligence Service]

Thank you for the question.

I believe in our last session we spoke about the requirements to be careful about what is shared between the agencies in the context of the ongoing investigation.

I would point the honourable member to the chronology and the reference that as soon as CSIS became aware of threat information, which was in June 2024, we began to take action to mitigate the threat.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you very much, ma'am.

Chair, with my remaining 30 seconds, I'm going to give the floor to MP Shipley.

Thank you.

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Dancho, for this time.

Chair, I would like to move the motion that I put on notice the other day, please, in regard to lengthening this study. I just want to make this a very short preamble, and, hopefully, we can get back to—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I'm sorry. Which motion? You did several motions, I believe.

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

I can read it out. I have it here. It states:

Given that the RCMP have arrested an additional alleged ISIS terrorist, who was preparing to carry out a massacre targeting the Jewish community in New York City, the committee expand its Review of the Foiled Terrorist Plot in Toronto and of the Security Screening Process for Permanent Residence and Citizenship Application by no fewer than eight meetings to further examine how alleged ISIS terrorists are able to enter and reside in Canada; that the Minister of Public Safety and his officials be invited to reappear for no less than two hours; that IRCC officials, CBSA officials, RCMP officials and CSIS officials be invited to reappear before the committee; and that no more than one minister, agency or department testify at a time.

I'll speak very briefly to this, because, as I was saying, Chair, I really do want to get back to our study at hand. Obviously, I'm looking for more time. We're finding a lot of information here, but there's a lot of information yet to come out. One of the interesting things that the minister, just in the last hour, mentioned was that there will be findings in a few weeks of their study. That would be great to be able to bring up in this study that we're doing here. That's one of the other reasons we want to lengthen this.

Therefore, I hope all of our committee members can agree to this. I'm not going to go on long about this. Hopefully, we can agree that this is an important study. Canadians need this. There are some fears out there right now. We need to make sure there are going to be some corrections coming. I'll leave that on the floor. Hopefully, this passes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Shipley.

We go now to Ms. O'Connell.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I'm going to move an amendment to this. I'll just read the entire motion, which begins as Mr. Shipley has put it on the record:

Given that the RCMP have arrested an additional alleged ISIS terrorist, who was preparing to carry out a massacre targeting the Jewish community in New York City, the committee expand its Review of the Foiled Terrorist Plot in Toronto and of the Security Screening Process for Permanent Residence and Citizenship Application to include questions around this more recent arrest in its meetings.

I'd like to speak to my amendment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Is your amendment ending the paragraph there?

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

The difference is that it ends after “Permanent Residence and Citizenship Application” and adds “to include questions around this more recent arrest in its meetings.”