Public Accounts committee  Yes, we found that IRCC did comply with the requirements, particularly in its quality management of the automated decision-making tool. Our concern was that in using the tool, it wanted—and getting into advanced analytics—all applicants to be able to benefit. However, we found th

Public Accounts committee  We examined country of citizenship. We looked at application processing times and decisions by country of citizenship. We found that there were differential impacts among different countries of citizenship. In terms of government-assisted refugees, we did not do a breakdown of

Public Accounts committee  We could absolutely provide you with the processing times. It was a matter of a few months. Processing times were shorter for residents in Canada because of the travel restrictions during the pandemic. The government prioritized processing the applications for individuals who wer

Public Accounts committee  We did look at enforcement in other jurisdictions. Many other countries required their travellers to quarantine in government-approved hotels. Travellers were generally expected to stay in their rooms at these facilities for the duration of their quarantine, and they were not all

Public Accounts committee  Certainly. Of the 8,000 incoming travellers who had tested positive, we found that the agency had not contacted 14% of them, or 1,156.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you. We looked at the security measures that the Public Health Agency of Canada required of the quarantine hotels that it had approved to receive incoming air travellers, as well as the arrangements that were put in place at its quarantine hotels. We saw that in both case

Public Accounts committee  We didn't interview members of the public or travellers who had stayed at quarantine hotels. We contacted different agencies that were involved in setting these up—for example, hotel organizations—and they talked about the situations they saw at the hotels that were put in place

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. In that response, I was referring to the public health emergency of international concern, a PHEIC, that was issued by the WHO, on January 30, 2020. In issuing it, the WHO recognized that the risk assessment was very high for China and high at the glo

Public Accounts committee  The risk assessment is called for in PHAC's pandemic plan. The WHO did issue a pandemic risk and called attention of the global community of the risk of COVID-19, but we found that at that time PHAC did not update its risk assessments and only did so in mid-March, at the directio

Public Accounts committee  There was an alert by the WHO, yes.

Public Accounts committee  With regard to the number of removals that CBSA effected each year, we found that over the past decade, since our last report in 2008 when there were about 12,000 removals, the number had steadily gone down. However, it had recently increased, in the last year that we looked at,

Public Accounts committee  We found there were a large number of cases of enforceable removal orders that had accumulated and that existed, regardless of the number of new removals that came into force each year. Based on the surge in asylum claims over the past three years, the CBSA expects there to be a

Public Accounts committee  We have had a chance to review the action plan and the responses to our recommendations, as well as the measures that were put forward in budget 2019, which occurred after our audit had completed. It is very hopeful that the reforms that need to be made to the system and that w

Public Accounts committee  Our audit did focus on the physical security, knowing that it indeed does work in tandem with operational security and intelligence to make up the entire security posture of a mission abroad. We focused in on physical security because Global Affairs had received substantial fundi

Public Accounts committee  In our six missions that we examined, we looked at what security measures had been recommended by Global Affairs security staff. We looked at their threat and vulnerability assessments, and those examined both the physical and operational security measures. They made a number of