Citizenship and Immigration committee  Madam Chair, if it's okay, allow us to come back to the committee by the end of the day today to confirm the timeline by when we can provide the details requested by the member.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The answer is yes. The U.S. mission in China has a different operating model—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm sorry, Madam Chair. In response to your question, VFS does operate for the U.S. government in China where VFS is a subcontractor. However, there is no visa application centre. It's a very separate process for Chinese nationals applying to the U.S. Thank you.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Madam Chair, as I highlighted earlier to the member, we operate with three different facility management companies in Beijing alone across a number of client governments. The reasons articulated earlier, operational requirements, timelines to set up a visa application centre, vol

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Madam Chair, to the member's second point, facility management companies' employees undergo the same level of due diligence as all across China, including the approval of the client government that we operate for.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As far as the process is concerned, I highlighted earlier, all our IT equipment hardware is fully hardened. There is no access to emails and no access to USB drives. The data is fully encrypted—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Madam Chair, the staff processes the applications within the software that is VFS-owned and VFS-protected through and through, and this data is hosted at the servers in Canada.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Madam Chair, I would not be able to comment at this stage. There is a response due to the committee. We will ensure to bring this up as well. Thank you.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  To respond to the first part of the question, every single employee who works at the visa application centre undergoes a two-pronged due diligence check. One is from a VFS perspective and covers, as we mentioned earlier, employment, criminal, identity and education. Client govern

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Madam Chair, I can respond to that. The requirement in order to operate a visa application centre is that companies need to obtain an entry/exit licence, which is available only to Chinese local companies. Thank you.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Precisely. This rule applies to all foreign companies that run visa application centres. Thank you.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Madam Chair, since 2004-05, our operations there have been extremely robust. We work for 33 client governments in China, and we have not had any concerns whatsoever. In fact, we've seen—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I recall this is a response pending from your earlier session. We have two other facility management companies that we operate in Beijing, Beijing Eastern Tian Show Business and Beijing Balino Investment and Consulting Company in addition to VSFSC.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Madam Chair, as highlighted earlier during this session, a number of operating requirements stipulate the use of a particular facility management company. Most important to note is that every facility management company is duly approved by the respective client government. Requ

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Madam Chair, this is something, if the members permit, we should be able to come back to you on, however—