Refine by MP, party, committee, province, or result type.
Citizenship and Immigration committee No, I wouldn't specify specific countries, because if a person is a good immigrant, it doesn't matter where they come from, as long as they have the capacity to integrate into our labour market and into our society. My wife is an immigrant from Vietnam, and I'm quite in favour of
February 28th, 2012Committee meeting
Martin Collacott
Citizenship and Immigration committee In connection with terrorist threats in particular?
February 28th, 2012Committee meeting
Martin Collacott
Citizenship and Immigration committee No, not necessarily, but to the extent people do come from these areas, I think we should be particularly careful in our screening. As I mentioned, because of the resource shortages, the deputy director of CSIS said we only screen 10% of the people. So I think if people are going
February 28th, 2012Committee meeting
Martin Collacott
Citizenship and Immigration committee Sure. Fair enough. If you go back far enough, you can look at the huge intake of immigration in the early twentieth century. We needed large numbers of immigrants; we needed large numbers of unskilled immigrants to fill up the west in particular. Then there were periods when we d
February 28th, 2012Committee meeting
Martin Collacott
Citizenship and Immigration committee Well, 25 at the time was a considerable number. It's a minuscule part of the total flow, and I want to make that clear. Most refugee claimants are not criminals or terrorist supporters. I did give the example also that—
February 28th, 2012Committee meeting
Martin Collacott
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
February 28th, 2012Committee meeting
Martin Collacott
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
February 28th, 2012Committee meeting
Martin Collacott
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
February 28th, 2012Committee meeting
Martin Collacott
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
February 28th, 2012Committee meeting
Martin Collacott
Citizenship and Immigration committee Well, we either increase the level of Canada-based staff so we can do a more thorough job of looking at people or we should reduce the numbers to what resources are available. Not be able to do the job adequately is a risk to Canadians, and it's sometimes unfair to the immigran
February 28th, 2012Committee meeting
Martin Collacott
Citizenship and Immigration committee All the documents are checked. The question is, though, if you get a document that you think is fraudulent, whether you have the time to follow that up and check with the institution that's supposed to have issued it. I don't think any document goes unchecked. I think to do th
February 28th, 2012Committee meeting
Martin Collacott
February 28th, 2012Committee meeting
Martin Collacott
Citizenship and Immigration committee Yes, it is. Thank you.
February 28th, 2012Committee meeting
Martin Collacott
Citizenship and Immigration committee The number would be very small compared to the total flow. I can't give you an exact figure. I did give the example, though, that of 25 identified terrorists—
February 28th, 2012Committee meeting
Martin Collacott
Citizenship and Immigration committee Yes, I was there in the 1980s.
February 28th, 2012Committee meeting
Martin Collacott