Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Chairman. I have been asked to comment today on what further actions should be taken to enhance the security of Canada's immigration system. This covers a fairly wide range of topics, so I'm not going to try to cover all of them, but I'll be happy to respond to questi

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you for the questions. They're both very good questions, Mr. Leung. On the question of understanding the local culture, this is an area where you've got to provide as much good briefing as you can when an immigration officer arrives. At one point when I was in Sri Lanka, w

Citizenship and Immigration committee  What I wanted to say on biometric measures is that what we're doing is good. We need to do a lot more. We need to not only get biometric checks on everyone coming in who isn't a Canadian, but also we have to have exit checks, which serves another group and is a valuable thing. Th

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, I was there in the 1980s.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  These are challenges. I would add, though, that a lot of the interviews will be with people applying to come here as skilled immigrants, independent immigrants. If they can't speak enough English to take part in the interview, they're going to have a problem in Canada. This is a

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Were you asking a question? I'm sorry.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Absolutely, yes. As long ago as 1997, a government-commissioned report, not just numbers, determined that ability in English, or French if you're going to Quebec, was one of the key indicators of how well someone would do. You could hit the ground running if you were reasonably

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The title was high commissioner. I was the high commissioner to Sri Lanka from 1982 to 1986.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. We didn't have a visitor visa requirement when I arrived, actually.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I certainly have experience with overseeing visitor visas. I, myself, never actually processed one. I had a large visa section to do that. Do you have a question?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That is correct, yes, particularly for permanent residents.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That is true, not just so we know who's in the country who is supposed to have left, but in the case of permanent residents waiting to get their Canadian citizenship, we know a lot of them don't put in the requisite residence period in Canada and claim that they have, and it's ve

Citizenship and Immigration committee  They will do as good a check as they can, but if you have a fraudulent document, it often takes time if you really want to try to get to the root of the problem. Sometimes visa officers will have to go over to the institution themselves. They certainly will do a visual check of a

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, on the visitor's visa, they're certainly going to have to check the documents. What I was referring to more was where someone's coming here permanently, as a permanent resident, checking that person's documents. There is a problem in checking the documents of temporary wo

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No. It used to be fairly standard, but now for resource reasons we just don't do much of it, and I think that should be reinstated. But keeping a Canada-based officer and his family overseas, Mr. Davies, is very expensive. It doesn't come cheaply, and if we're to do it, we've got