Citizenship and Immigration committee  The 700 is a bit of mystery. We're not sure what the source of that number is. As I noted, when we launched this investigation, we identified about 2,000 files of concern. We then worked with our colleagues at IRCC to further refine them. That's when we identified 1,485 study permit applicants who may have had fraudulent documents.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  This is why I think it's important to talk about the layers of defence. Our colleagues last week here at the committee talked about the efforts being made on the part of the IRCC both overseas and here domestically. The layer of defence where we become involved is doing inland investigations here in Canada.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's all related to the same consultant. We have about 6,000 active investigations under way at any one time. It's a going concern in terms of the integrity of the system.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We do share information. We do have border watch-lists. I'm sure in this particular instance we did that.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I wouldn't be able to hazard a guess in terms of how often it occurs. As part of normal investigative practices, one way of confirming the validity of a letter would be to confirm with the educational institution.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Again, in terms of roles and responsibilities, the IRCC is responsible at the stage of the initial application to assess the validity of the documents. That's their role and responsibility. You've heard what they do to combat fraudulent documents. The particular role we played in this case was doing the inland investigations.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm not aware of any.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm not familiar with the specific example you're talking about. You have to bear in mind that we have 33 million people arriving in Canada in any given year. Our frontline officers do their very best to confirm the validity of every document they see, but 33 million documents are a lot to review.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We have a tip line, the border watch line. That's where it came in.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It was an indication of a concern with an overstay.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No. We looked at 2,000 cases. We've narrowed—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We've tied it back to a single source, if you will, of the documentation, but this is a larger issue with ongoing concerns.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In this particular case—my apologies—it was a tip in 2020 that led us to look into particular documents, verifying the validity of them. That led to about—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We'll have a number of active investigations, from an administrative and criminal point of view, but also from an intel point of view, looking into the integrity of the immigration system. Each of them on their own will generate new information. In 2018, we became concerned with what we were seeing in terms of a pattern of individuals coming into Canada and potentially using the student visa process to join criminal gangs.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We were working with IRCC.