Public Safety Committee on Sept. 23rd, 2025

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

We will certainly come back to this later.

I now invite Ms. Kirkland to speak for five minutes.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you so much for being here today.

I would like to ask one more question in continuation of the last line of questioning, and it has to do with the promised 1,000 border agents. It sounds like we're working toward that.

Can you give us some indication of how long it would typically take to accomplish the hiring of 1,000 new border agents?

[Aaron McCrorie]

I'm going to struggle, because I'm not the human resources person. We are probably looking at a two- or three-year runway to put those in place. As I suggested, some will have to go through our college, but not all of the staff we would look at hiring will have to go through the college, because criminal investigators, for example, do not necessarily come from our frontline ranks of BSOs.

A lot will depend on what mix of employees we need and where we want to allocate them. We look at how we allocate them on a risk basis. Where are the risks and where do we need them—

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

I'm sorry for interrupting.

To clarify, we're looking at a runway of two to three years, potentially more.

[Aaron McCrorie]

I would say so, yes.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Do you think it will be more than three years?

[Aaron McCrorie]

It's hard for me to say. I think it's a two- to three-year runway.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Two years is probably the minimum, from what you're saying.

[Aaron McCrorie]

I would say so.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

It's a minimum of two years. Okay. Thank you, Mr. McCrorie.

I will continue with a couple of quick questions. Earlier this year, there was a joint CBSA and OPP investigation into the illegal hiring of foreign nationals that led to the sentencing of three businesses— actually, in my riding of Oshawa—and I have a couple of questions regarding that. My understanding is that, in total, there were 700 foreign nationals who were employed without authorization.

Are there any concrete measures that the CBSA is taking to prevent similar large-scale illegal hiring networks from operating—especially in the GTA and eastern Ontario—in these corridors and border towns?

[Aaron McCrorie]

I'm not familiar with the specifics of this particular case, but I'd say that's exactly what our criminal investigations function is all about. It's about looking at pursuing criminal investigations where we think there is illegal hiring of people or an exploitation of people, and conducting the investigation either on our own or in partnership with law enforcement.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Excuse me. I have to ask this question, because you said you weren't familiar with it, yet you were quoted in the article about it. You said:

The charges and the sentencing reflect a thorough investigation and our commitment to maintaining the integrity of Canada’s immigration system. CBSA officers and investigators work diligently with law enforcement partners, including the OPP, to secure the border and ensure that those who break the law are held accountable.

That's specifically on this instance.

Can you tell me any concrete measures that are being taken to prevent that kind of large-scale...?

[Aaron McCrorie]

The measures that are being taken are the criminal investigations that we undertake through this process.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

So is it preventative? Is the plan to prevent?

[Aaron McCrorie]

Criminal investigations are reactive. If you think about the entire immigration continuum, part of it sits with IRCC, from a visa point of view, and we work with IRCC on the issuance of visas, for example.

There's a whole continuum of measures. They're preventative in terms of what needs to be fulfilled for somebody entering the country, and then once they're in the country, they're based either on tips or on undertaking investigations.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you very much. I'm going to move on.

I have a question or two, if you don't mind, for Ms. Grainger.

We know there are a number of missing foreign nationals who were convicted and supposed to be deported, but have not been. They've disappeared. We believe there are probably about 600 of them.

Can you tell me what is being done to locate them? Can you share any of that? Would it be better for Mr. McCrorie to answer that?

[Aaron McCrorie]

As part of our inland immigration enforcement program, we have inland investigators. Part of their role is to actively seek people who are in our wanted inventory. Offhand, I think there are about 30,000 people in that. We have active warrants on those. We're actively monitoring and investigating that inventory and looking for people as we pursue those removals through our own investigations—or if local police come across these people, they'll be referred to us. When we find them, more often than not we need to put them in detention because they are a flight risk, so we'll put them into one of our three immigration holding centres, and then we can—

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

I'm sorry to interrupt, but these are folks who are missing. In terms of finding them, what can we possibly do to find them through these investigations? Is there anything specific?

[Aaron McCrorie]

Normal investigative techniques look at understanding who they are, what their patterns of behaviour are and what their relationships are, and following up on those. As I said, we have warrants for them. Sometimes they come to our attention because police of jurisdiction have come across them in a traffic stop or something, so there are any number of investigative leads that we can follow.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Thank you.

I'm sorry, Ms. Kirkland, but you—

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Am I out? I wanted to ask another question, but maybe I can do it off to the side.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

We'll be pleased to hear from you later, hopefully.

That leads me to MP Sari.

[Abdelhaq Sari, Liberal, Bourassa, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all very much for being here today. I appreciate the very interesting and encouraging information we have heard today.

You know that the chair, even though he seems very nice, will interrupt me after five minutes, so I would be very grateful if you could keep your answers quite brief.

I would like to address two other aspects, which are related to two key words.

The first is integration. I have heard this term used several times today. Could you give me an idea of how you operate in terms of information integration, in particular?

Mr. McGillis, I found the conclusion of your presentation regarding the need to equip yourselves with certain tools to be very relevant. Are there technologies that are common to all three levels of intervention here in Canada, but that we also share with our partners to the south? Can we talk about this level of integration?

Are there any technological gaps that need to be filled?

The question is open to anyone.

[Sean McGillis]

Thank you for the question.

I spoke about integration in my opening comments. We work very closely both with our domestic law enforcement partners and with our international partners. Collaborating, working together, is probably the fundamental thing that we need to be doing as law enforcement.

Part of our operations requires intelligence, so we have a new effort under way, called the joint operational intelligence cell, which is bringing together the security and intelligence community within Canada in a way we never have before. We're using classified and sensitive information to help inform our law enforcement's investigative efforts across the country. At a federal level, we work in that space all the time, from a national security perspective, and we are able to turn that into actionable intelligence that we can share with police of jurisdiction, either at the provincial or at the municipal level, who would typically not have access to this information. A lot of efforts are happening, in that sense, to work more closely together as a broader law enforcement community. When I say that, I include CBSA, FINTRAC and others in that discussion.

There is also quite a bit of work.... I think all of us touched on the point of the importance of taking action against money laundering and financial crime. There is another effort under way that we are leading with financial institutions, in which we are sharing intelligence with the private sector in ways that we'd never been able to before. This is part of the opportunity to bridge the gap between the public and private sectors, and to work closely together to tackle some of the most serious criminality that's affecting Canadians and Canadian interests.

[Abdelhaq Sari, Liberal, Bourassa, QC]

This brings me to the subject of partnership and information exchange and integration with our partners to the south. I understand that the United States has commended our efforts to combat fentanyl.

Are we basing this on indicators of results, performance or efforts that you could tell us about today?