Foreign Affairs committee  —and Cuba, we provide consular services to Israeli citizens. We have agreements with the U.K. and other jurisdictions as well.

Foreign Affairs committee  I'll just offer some general remarks, and then I'll turn it over to my colleague Mark Berman to talk about the specifics. Certainly we agree. This is one of the areas that have been of particular focus to us, family-related cases, cases of child custody and in some cases child a

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes. We very much value and are paying very close attention to the different submissions and reports that have been made about ways we can improve our consular services. While the provision of consular services is under the crown prerogative, our policy as a government is to assi

Foreign Affairs committee  In terms of the consular feedback, we have feedback forms online and available in all of our points of service abroad where we invite and request our clients to provide us with their views on the level of service provided. I believe that around 95% of the ones we received have be

Foreign Affairs committee  We have specialized training that we offer to our consular officers for a variety of different populations and vulnerabilities. Attention to women is part of that and includes the specific types of medical services and other things they might need. In different local contexts, we

Foreign Affairs committee  As the Government of Canada, we seek to assist all Canadians. Dual citizens can find themselves at particular risk when they travel to their countries of origin, in light of the fact that not all countries, as you mentioned, necessarily recognize Canadian citizenship and provide

Foreign Affairs committee  I can expand a little bit on that answer. When there are allegations of torture, we take all of these allegations extremely seriously. There's a requirement on all of our consular officers to immediately report those allegations back to us. We have a team of experts who look at

Foreign Affairs committee  I think what we have certainly seen is an increase in the number of complex consular cases abroad as people travel to more diverse destinations where the risks are more diverse. We have more cases that require a longer time to resolve and a more intensive investment of time and a

Foreign Affairs committee  We've devoted a lot of energy to improving our digital tools, given that Canadians primarily find their information through the Internet. We use social media like Facebook, Twitter, and a variety of other tools. In 2016 we had 14.2 million visits to our page, travel.gc.ca, which

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much. First of all, I'd like to thank you for inviting us here today to talk about the work of assisting Canadians abroad. I'd like to begin by introducing my colleagues. Mr. Mark Gwozdecky is the assistant deputy minister for international security and political