Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for your extraordinarily adequate intervention in the House.
This quote is just so earth shattering, I want to put it on the record. The revocation notice is essentially how people are notified that their citizenship is going to be revoked for fraud. The minister said the following:
In fact, the whole point of sending the revocation notice to the affected party is to allow the party to gather information and provide any personal circumstances to the decision maker so that the decision maker takes those personal circumstances into consideration, which would include humanitarian and compassionate grounds.
When asked about whether the person has the right to counsel, the minister noted, “Absolute right to counsel. The written submissions and the case, you’re allowed to use counsel. There’s no prohibition against having counsel.” He further stated, “You have a right to a judicial review with leave.”
At the same Senate committee meeting, Ms. Hubers, the director for citizenship program delivery at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, explained the process. This is the process by which this happens, so I want to put this on the record for my colleagues. She said the following:
First, one division in the department initially investigates cases to see if there is sufficient evidence that may warrant consideration of revocation. Where there is belief that there is sufficient evidence, the file then gets transferred to a different division that will then make the decision whether to proceed with a notice of intent to revoke. The notice of intent provides all of the evidence upon which the decision maker would be relying at that point in time to make their decision and invites individuals to submit all factors related to that which they should take into account when making the decision, including personal circumstances, such as the length of their time in Canada, the age they were when they acquired citizenship, their ties to Canada and those sorts of things. At that point, when that material comes in, the decision maker will decide whether to proceed with the decision.
What the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship and the department official I just quoted laid out at the Senate committee is that there is in fact a process. This is not just done arbitrarily. It is very wrong to present the fact that people who are undergoing this have no due process. That is not the case. It is also important to note that there is a difference between what the Federal Court ruling said with regard to this issue and what the Senate amendment that has been proposed suggests. They interact with each other, but they are not exactly alike, as the amendment specifically lists the Federal Court as the appropriate appeals body. Further study needs to be done to assess whether this would even be the most appropriate body. For instance, the Canadian Bar Association has stated that the immigration appeals division of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada would be more appropriate.
Therefore, here is what I suggest. Given the Federal Court ruling, given the Auditor General's findings on the lack of ability for our government to detect citizenship fraud, and given the acknowledgement that citizenship fraud is an issue, my understanding is that the government and the minister have put forward a very wordy and convoluted amendment into the record. However, rather than deal with that, because the minister has been silent on this, because we have not had any study in committee on this issue, we have not had any debate on this, we have not heard from expert witnesses on how to reconcile all of these issues with regard to the Auditor General's findings, and because the government has not talked about what the Auditor General's findings were or how to address that, first we should not entertain the Senate amendment. Rather than trying to amend it with words here, we should reject the amendment, have further study, and then the government should come back to Parliament, be it to a parliamentary committee, or with some sort of announcement stating what it is going to do to address the Auditor General's findings, and how it is going to educate people that lying on their citizenship application is a bad thing to do. I also believe that the minister has an onus and a responsibility to tell Canadians why he chose not to appeal that ruling.
The government is running out of time. Not only did it let the clock run out on the time in which it could appeal the ruling, as I pointed out at committee last week—and I would have to pull it from the ruling, but I am also happy to read the entire ruling—but I believe it only has another 30 days to respond before the current situation times out, and I do not think the government has addressed some of the key process issues on immigration in Canada.
In speaking to one of my Liberal colleagues today with respect to our parliamentary committee, I made the point that immigration in and of itself is a very process-heavy department and topic for the Canadian government, because when we accept immigration as something that should happen in Canada, it becomes a question of how and under what circumstances. As a result, a lot of what we are tasked with as legislators is providing direction to the department on how to do things.
One of the great frustrations I have had at parliamentary committee this year—and I kind of understand where they are coming from—was when questioning department officials on process. One of my Liberal colleagues had asked department officials what they thought we should do and how we could improve. The response was that they need parliamentary direction, that as the public service they need political direction, because they cannot just change things.
I believe we need to provide direct and clear guidance to the department on how to ensure people are not incented to lie on their applications. I do not understand what incentive people have to be truthful on their applications under this change. The government has to come up with either some sort of awareness campaign or punitive measure. I do not know what that would be and I would very much welcome an expert study that would address the issue of citizenship fraud.
The Auditor General's findings have to be addressed. To underscore this point, this is an article that was published on May 3, 2016, on the Auditor General's findings. It states:
Despite the former...government’s anti-fraud efforts, ineligible immigrants have continued to beat the system and secure Canadian citizenship, the auditor general says.
“People were granted citizenship based on incomplete information or without all of the necessary checks being done,” Michael Ferguson wrote in an audit of the citizenship program tabled Tuesday in the House of Commons. “Since revoking citizenship after it has been granted is costly, while the cost to grant it is far less, it is important to ensure that only eligible applicants receive it in the first place.”
That statement goes to the heart of it and exceptionally and adequately summarizes the point I am trying to make, which is that we do not have an adequate response from the government on this particular issue. It is extraordinarily inadequate.
It continues:
The auditor general investigated citizenship applications between July 2014 and last fall and found Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada did not have a systematic method of identifying and documenting fraud risks and that existing guidelines were not followed consistently by staff.
In response to the report, Immigration Minister John McCallum said he is working with the Canada Border Services Agency and the RCMP to improve information sharing and to put in place a new integrity system by December.
December has passed. Where is the new integrity system? What has happened? I would love to hear the response from the minister in the context of both this amendment and the Federal Court ruling.
It continues:
“We have thoroughly reviewed all cases flagged by the Office of the Auditor General to determine if citizenship fraud may have occurred. As a result, we’ve opened investigations toward possible citizenship revocation from about a dozen individuals....”
In this article the minister is talking about the fact that the government is acknowledging that this is a problem, yet we have not heard anything about what is being done in the context of this particular amendment.
It continues:
“We are continuously looking for ways to improve fraud detection and prevention processes in all of our programs.”
To become a citizen, permanent residents must have lived a minimum amount of time in Canada, pass a language and knowledge test, and obtain criminal clearances from the RCMP.
The most common fraud involves pretending to have lived in Canada to maintain permanent resident status and meet residency requirements for citizenship, the report said.
Another article from May 3, 2016, underscores this point. It was a busy day for citizenship fraud.
Immigration Minister John McCallum says the government will investigate dozens of new Canadians that the federal auditor general found may have obtained their citizenship through fraud, and pass new laws to catch such cheats in the future.
Where are those laws? I do not see them in Bill C-6. As well, the minister has not gone to committee.
I am going to pause reading this article for one moment. I have really tried to make this point in Parliament over the last two weeks. I spoke at great length in the parliamentary committee last week on the need for the minister come to committee to talk about what the government is doing to address this issue. Unfortunately, debate was adjourned on my motion. It was a very sad moment in time for democracy in Canada, because I believe if the minister had gone to committee, there could have been a much more constructive and productive debate on this particular bill.
The article further stated:
The promises came in response to a damning auditor general’s report released Tuesday that criticized the immigration department for failing to catch dozens if not hundreds of fraudsters and suspected criminals before they were sworn in as Canadian citizens.
Auditor General Michael Ferguson said serious holes in the immigration department’s screening failed to weed out prospective citizens who were obviously trying to cheat the system or who otherwise should have been ineligible to become Canadians.
Reviewing only a small sample of the more than 260,000 people who became citizens in 2014, Ferguson and his staff were able to find nearly 50 cases where immigration officials failed to catch what in hindsight should have been fairly obvious cases of fraud.
The terminology that is used is “obvious cases of fraud”. Why is the department incapable of catching this? As for what the minister said earlier in this article, where is the plan that was promised?
The article continued:
“The steps we took to try to identify these cases of citizenship fraud were not complicated.... It was fairly simple for us to find these 50 cases, and so I think it’s 50 cases too many.”
Because they were able to avoid detection, the citizenship cheats were sworn in and able to enjoy all the benefits of being Canadian, including access to health care and other social services as well as the right to vote and obtain a passport, without having met the government’s requirements to become citizens.
That leads me to my next argument on why the government needs to have a think. We should very strongly not support the Senate amendment. There is a term about polishing fecal matter that I could use in this case, but I believe that would be unparliamentary, so I will not. Rather than undertaking that particular process, the government should take some time, certainly the next 30 days, and be very transparent with Canadians about what it is doing in response to the Auditor General's findings.
There is something I have not made the point on yet. When people become Canadian citizens, they have access to the benefits of being Canadian, including access to health care, social services, voting, and obtaining passports. I saw a study that ranked the value of Canadian passports as very high. I think it is one of the top 10 most valuable passports in the world. We do not want to send a message to our major trading partners and allies that there are holes in the process by which people can obtain Canadian passports. A Canadian passport is one of the most treasured documents on the face of the earth, yet this Ottawa Citizen article on the Auditor General's findings clearly lays out that we might have a problem in terms of long-term benefits being given to people who are not entitled to them.
Rather than the government massaging the wording of the Senate amendment and taking some time to come up with a process, as alluded to earlier, the other reason that members in the House should not accept the Senate amendment is that the parliamentary committee has not yet produced its report on—