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37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Wednesday, February 19, 2003

1330

The Chair (Mr. Joe Fontana (London North Centre, Lib.))

1335

Mr. Phil Rankin (Immigration Section, British Columbia Branch, Canadian Bar Association)

1340

1345

The Chair

Mr. Richard Kurland (Editor-in-Chief, Lexbase)

1350

The Chair

Mr. Eyob Naizghi (Executive Director, MOSAIC)

1355

1400

The Chair

Mr. Kenneth Tung (Vice-Chairman, SUCCESS)

1405

Ms. Lilian To (Chief Executive Officer, SUCCESS)

1410

1415

1420

The Chair

Mrs. Lynne Yelich (Blackstrap, Canadian Alliance)

Mr. Richard Kurland

The Chair

Mrs. Lynne Yelich

1425

Mr. Richard Kurland

Mr. Phil Rankin

Mr. Richard Kurland

Mr. Phil Rankin

The Chair

Mr. Phil Rankin

The Chair

Ms. Lilian To

The Chair

Mr. Phil Rankin

1430

The Chair

Ms. Sophia Leung (Vancouver Kingsway, Lib.)

1435

The Chair

Ms. Lilian To

1440

The Chair

Mr. Phil Rankin

The Chair

Mr. Eyob Naizghi

The Chair

Mr. Richard Kurland

1445

The Chair

Mr. David Price (Compton—Stanstead, Lib.)

Mr. Phil Rankin

1450

Mr. David Price

Mr. Phil Rankin

Mr. David Price

The Chair

Mr. David Price

Ms. Lilian To

Mr. David Price

Ms. Lilian To

The Chair

1455

Mr. Eyob Naizghi

The Chair

Mr. Phil Rankin

The Chair

Mr. Phil Rankin

The Chair

Mr. Phil Rankin

Mr. Kenneth Tung

1500

Ms. Lilian To

The Chair

Mr. Richard Kurland

The Chair

Ms. Lilian To

The Chair

Ms. Lilian To

The Chair

1510

Mr. Jason Gratl (Director, B.C. Civil Liberties Association)

The Chair

Mr. Jason Gratl

Mr. Craig Jones (Director, B.C. Civil Liberties Association)

The Chair

Mr. Craig Jones

The Chair

Mr. Craig Jones

Mr. Jason Gratl

1515

1520

The Chair

Prof. Richard Rosenberg (Vice-President and Professor of Computer Science, University of British Columbia; Electronic Frontier Canada)

1525

1530

The Chair

Dr. W. Wesley Pue (Professor of Law, Law Faculty, University of British Columbia)

The Chair

Dr. W. Wesley Pue

The Chair

Dr. W. Wesley Pue

The Chair

Dr. W. Wesley Pue

The Chair

Dr. W. Wesley Pue

1535

The Chair

Mrs. Lynne Yelich

Mr. David Price

1540

The Chair

Mr. Craig Jones

The Chair

Mr. Craig Jones

Mr. David Price

Mr. Craig Jones

The Chair

Mr. David Price

The Chair

Mr. David Price

Mr. Jason Gratl

1545

The Chair

Prof. Richard Rosenberg

The Chair

Dr. W. Wesley Pue

Mrs. Lynne Yelich

Prof. Richard Rosenberg

1550

Mrs. Lynne Yelich

Mr. Craig Jones

Dr. W. Wesley Pue

The Chair

Mr. Andrew Telegdi (Kitchener—Waterloo, Lib.)

1555

Mr. Craig Jones

The Chair

Mr. Craig Jones

The Chair

Mr. Craig Jones

The Chair

Ms. Sophia Leung

Prof. Richard Rosenberg

1600

The Chair

Prof. Richard Rosenberg

The Chair

Prof. Richard Rosenberg

The Chair

Ms. Sophia Leung

Mr. Craig Jones

The Chair

Mr. Craig Jones

The Chair

1605

Prof. Richard Rosenberg

The Chair

Prof. Richard Rosenberg

The Chair

Mr. W. Wesley Pue

Mr. Craig Jones

1610

The Chair

CANADA

Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration

NUMBER 046

2nd SESSION

37th PARLIAMENT

EVIDENCE

Wednesday, February 19, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

· (1330)

[English]

The Chair (Mr. Joe Fontana (London North Centre, Lib.)): Colleagues, we are into our final leg here in Vancouver. This afternoon we are going to be talking about our settlement and integration programs, and this afternoon we have a number of witnesses. The Canadian Bar Association is represented by Phil Rankin. From Lexbase we have Richard Kurland, who is well known to the committee. He has been with us all morning and is very much appreciated. From MOSAIC--nice to see you again, Eyob; and from SUCCESS we have Lilian To.

We are going to make you permanent members of our committee. You have an awful lot of expertise, and you have given us some great information. We truly appreciate your making the time to spend with us.

Let's move to Phil Rankin.

· (1335)

Mr. Phil Rankin (Immigration Section, British Columbia Branch, Canadian Bar Association): My name is Phillip Rankin. I'm a lawyer in Vancouver and I belong to a number of organizations, but today I'm speaking on behalf of the Canadian Bar Association in B.C., Immigration Section.

We have prepared a very short brief. In general, I think you will find quite a bit of consensus between the settlement agencies and the bar. We saw the draft copies of the MOSAIC brief and the AMSSA briefs, and we have endorsed them in general. I think the principle is that the funding formula as it stands is not benefiting British Columbia. We want a per capita funding formula as opposed to deciding in other forms.

We also are very concerned about the issue of block funding. In a time of negotiating agreements with the provinces, I realize that the provinces want as much flexibility as possible, but a lot of the revenue for settlement goes into the consolidated settlement account and is therefore unaccountable. We prefer a system of national standards. That means we want you to put strings on it. Now, I realize that goes completely against the drift of the provinces, whether it's about medicare, immigration, or any other field. They want the money and they want to do with the money what they want to.

But it's been our experience that the money has not been spent.... For instance, there's a lot of discussion about the money being used for ESL programs in Vancouver. ESL is a provincial responsibility, part of the education program. We don't want to see money diverted from settlement to the schools, unless you want to make a special grant or create.... I think it's an abdication of the responsibility of the province when they hide and say that they're spending money on settlement when the're spending it on ESL programs. Those are programs they would have to spend the money on in any event, but then they take credit for using the settlement money in that way.

I think it's a very bad formula that allows them to basically absorb.... By analogy, in British Columbia there is a special tax for legal aid, but the money doesn't go to legal aid; it goes in the consolidated general fund and they don't use it for legal aid. We have a province where we had one of the best legal systems in Canada, and now we have one of the worst systems. They say that the tax, although it was tended to be for legal aid, is general revenue. And that same thing is happening with settlement money.

The other thing is that there are a number of programs that are overly bureaucratized in terms of British Columbia--and other people will speak to that--and that's with respect to the issue of what level of English will be delivered in the province and who will be eligible for that. There are a lot of bureaucratic differences between B.C., Alberta, and other provinces. There is no standard. B.C. only gives to a level three English; it doesn't give English to long-term immigrants to Canada who are not functional in English. It has too many roadblocks.

Really, the importance of the settlement funds is to have people integrate even if they have been here for ten years. There are tens of thousands of middle-aged people who are in their homes, who don't function in English, whose children function for them, and who should be in the ESL programs. There's lots of capacity here to teach English, but there's not enough money. In general, we think the NGOs do a really unbelievable job for the funds they are getting.

The only thing I noticed that wasn't mentioned in a lot of the briefs was the regulation of consultants, and of course we are always accused of self-interest as lawyers talking about consultants. I have been talking about consultants since 1980, and we still haven't got regulation of them. What are the up- and downsides of it? There are many consultants, specifically OPIC, which has very well-trained people. A lot of them are from the department; they retire and start very lucrative careers, and they do things pretty well above-board. In the litigation area, which is the Immigration and Refugee Board, there are very few competent consultants.

Yesterday I had a young woman from China who has been working for a consultant in Vancouver. The consultant is posing as a Canadian lawyer. He's not; he's a non-Chinese consultant. He advertises in Hong Kong. He has a big office in Vancouver on Georgia Street.

She has told me she believes about $700,000 in fees have gone missing. These clients are hounding her in China. He is basically out of their reach. Because she's Chinese—but also a landed immigrant in Canada—they are going after her family in China. She says the money was paid. They checked the applications at the Beijing office, and there are no applications for dozens and dozens of files.

So this person has taken tens of thousands of dollars in fees; there's no trust fund; there's no compensation; there's no insurance. I said, don't even bother chasing him down in Canada. I can tell you right now—I do a lot of criminal law—he won't have any assets here. I know that. You're just wasting your time. You won't get the Canadians to prosecute, because most of these frauds were committed in China. Even though the frauds have a Canadian aspect, they're not going to be too interested in this.

So there are hundreds of people whose files are not even in the system—these people believe they're in the system—and we have no way of getting them.

Now, if this were a Canadian lawyer, even overseas in China, we would have a discipline. We would have a fund to compensate those people; we would have trust accounts; we would have trust money.

So we have a totally unregulated group, some of whom do good work, some of whom do terrible work. Now, there's also terrible work done by lawyers. I won't deny that there are a lot of lawyers who have done very poor immigration work. But in general there are means to get to them.

What we see at the refugee board—and I have been doing a lot of work at the Immigration and Refugee Board, both at the appeal division and at the refugee division—literally has cost Canada, I am sure, hundreds of millions of dollars. Even in my own observation, there are hundreds and hundreds of fraudulent claims. There are hundreds of fraudulent claims for citizenship, hundreds for refugee status, hundreds of people who are smuggled or for whom documents are provided, all through the work of consultants—consultants usually working in conjunction with interpreters and usually working in conjunction with travel agents.

That is very typical. The travel agents overseas hook up with consultants in Canada; the interpreters in Canada steer people to certain consultants, and often to certain lawyers. This lack of regulation has not only cost society in Canada tens of millions of dollars, it has created a mistrust of our system, it has ruined a lot of people's lives who thought they were getting legitimate services, and it hasn't saved any money. Often people say we're greedy, but the truth is, when looking at consultants, I normally do not see a huge difference in the fees that are charged by consultants. I saw the difference between notaries and lawyers; it's just that there is no savings with consultants.

I would have liked to see consultants regulated out of the IRB. That never did happen—there was a power to do it in the act and say only barristers and solicitors could participate. But if they're going to be allowed, they have to have a code of ethics; they have to have regulations; they have to have insurance; they have to have training; they have to have accountability in some form or other.

And of course we know that Mr. Augenfeld and a committee are studying consultants, but I personally feel we've had about 10 studies on consultants in my career, in 20 years. This is not the first time we've seen consultants.... I have no idea how they have avoided regulation so long. I really don't know why they have avoided regulation, because I haven't really seen anybody say regulation is a bad thing. But for some reason, it's always said that it's a provincial jurisdiction, or it's a federal jurisdiction, or there are complex constitutional problems.

I don't think it's that complex. I think the IRB could easily have passed a regulation saying you must be a member of an organization and you must have a code of conduct. We could have easily regulated them at the IRB. As far as overseas consultants go, I suppose it may be more difficult to do.

Even on the issue of enforcement, there is not enough money put into the RCMP immigration and passport section to actually hunt down some of these people and prosecute them. That itself would have had a deterrent effect. But in general we know, and from the very few prosecutions of consultants—two or three have been prosecuted, one a notorious one in British Columbia that ended in acquittal because the main witnesses were encouraged not to come; they went to Europe; they couldn't get the evidence together—there has been even no deterrent effect by a good enforcement process, because it's expensive. It's very expensive to investigate overseas consultants and it's relatively hard to do it in Canada, particularly, as I told the immigration and passport police, if you don't do what the drug guys do. You have to make deals with the fraudulent refugees and applicants and say, we won't take you to inquiries if you give evidence against the consultants.

· (1340)

It's an unfortunate position, but that's how you deal with the drug people. You roll over, go to the lower drug traffickers and say, “You give evidence against the highers up, and we'll get it”.

We have been reluctant to use the same techniques as we use in drug prosecutions in consultant and fraudulent claims. As a result, we have many thousands of claims. So everybody who's against immigration can point to somebody, because we've allowed it to happen.

I'll close on that and let my colleagues.... In general, we think the NGOs in B.C. are doing a good job, and we believe the NGO settlement system is the only way to integrate. It's probably a faint hope that you're going to get immigrants settling in rural B.C. In reality there are fewer dollars and settlement agencies in rural B.C. There is no HRDC program directed at immigrants. There are really no incentives to go there.

I suppose, in the end, you might be able to encourage immigration to the rural parts of B.C. if you had the diversity program of the United States, where they give 100,000 spots to people from countries that might prefer to go to rural areas, like some people from western and eastern Europe who would probably like smaller towns. But in general it's going to be urban immigration unless we develop real incentives to send people elsewhere. It's almost an impossible task, from what I've heard, to find techniques to get people to live out there. What I see with the shrinking dollar is less encouragement to go there, not more.

Thank you.

· (1345)

The Chair: Thank you, Phil.

Even though we're not talking about consultants today, we expect to see something by April or May because that committee is finishing its work. So hopefully after 10 to 15 years of waiting we might finally have something.

Richard.

Mr. Richard Kurland (Editor-in-Chief, Lexbase): Our recommendation concerning settlement relates to increasing francophone immigration to the heartland. The federal level must recognize that upfront seed money is required to dramatically improve francophone settlement facilities outside the major cities in our provinces. This is a one-time expenditure in the national interest to build a stronger united Canada. We heard certain views expressed on this point this morning, and the words that stuck to me were un grand rêve, a big dream. The context was not as in Martin Luther King's “I have a dream”; it was pejorative--you're dreaming.

The remarks raised the historic injustice committed in years past to the francophone communities primarily in western Canada. The difficulty those communities are experiencing today in terms of assimilation rates can't be ignored. But I do have a dream--the better word is perhaps vision--that the immigration system can be used to strengthen the existing francophone communities that are currently in our heartland in Canada.

I'd point out specifically that bilingual schools here in the city of Vancouver--and I mean bilingual English/French--are difficult to get into. Our two-year-old, Tiffany Hana Kurland, faces that choice. It is difficult to find the places. So in reality, west coast Canadians have a dream, which I can attest to personally. Even though some on the west coast are not francophone by birth, they certainly desire the attributes of Canada's official language stance. They want to grow and flourish as bilingual members of Canada.

The importance here is that the pressure to find entries into bilingual schools in Vancouver is great. It cuts across demographic lines and is evidence of a dream.

I say there should be a direct infusion, having heard my good colleague and friend Mr. Rankin's concerns regarding indirect financing. The direct seeding of existing francophone settlement facilities in our heartland would lay the foundation for more francophones to arrive and be accepted in our provinces outside Quebec. That one-time seed money could dramatically improve the conditions, allowing more francophones to indicate as their small town of destination something other than Vancouver or Toronto, yet somewhere outside Quebec.

That was my opener.

· (1350)

The Chair: Your dream may have partially come true. I'm looking at the budget here, and it says there'll be $114 million in the next two years to launch an action plan for enhancement of official language services. So if I were you, I would immediately get that proposal of yours into the hands of someone, because I think it's in keeping with what we parliamentarians heard and the fact of wanting to build on Canadian values and culture. We can discuss that maybe, but I thought I would bring it to your attention; it was announced yesterday.

Eyob, welcome again.

Mr. Eyob Naizghi (Executive Director, MOSAIC): Thank you, Mr. Chairman and committee members. On behalf of the board, the staff, and the communities we work with, I would like to thank you for allowing MOSAIC to submit to you a few of our comments on the issue of settlement and integration for immigrants and refugees.

MOSAIC, one of the major immigrant-serving agencies in the Vancouver area of the Lower Mainland, promotes the settlement and integration of newcomers through a number of services and programs, but more so through the promotion of organizational and institutional change to embrace diversity and an inclusive society within the Canadian social context.

Our submission touches on eight issues, and we just followed the committee's recommendation on what they would like to hear. We talk about pre-arrival, pre-departure orientation, we talk about the obstacles or barriers to integration and participation, and we talk a little about the Canada-B.C. agreement for cooperation on immigration. We also talk about the funding formula, we touch on administration issues, and we talk about geographic dispersion as well as public participation and the broad indicators of refugee and immigrant health.

I would like to emphasize that MOSAIC's issues...usually when we talk about newcomers we like to differentiate between immigrants and refugees because most often the issue of refugees gets lost in the discussion on immigrants. Every time you hear me talk about newcomers, please remember that I'm referring to immigrants and refugees, but there will be occasions when I make specific reference to refugees and refugee claimants as pertains to MOSAIC's standpoint.

For the sake of time and knowing full well that the committee has heard these issues from others--my colleagues, including Phil, who spoke earlier on--I would like to limit my oral presentation to the following areas: primarily the issue of pre-arrival and pre-departure orientation, issues on obstacles to integration and participation, the public perception, and if I may, geographic expression and the broad health indicators if time allows me. I'm allowed five minutes, so I'd better watch it.

On the issue of pre-arrival and pre-departure orientation, I do remember that we have been in discussions with the regional and the national office of CIC, saying that it is very important that newcomers to Canada get pre-departure, pre-arrival information sessions or orientation on Canadian values and Canadian life. I would not like to assume that immigrants, particularly those who want to make Canada their country of choice, do not gather information before they arrive in Canada or before they make a decision to come to Canada.

However, of particular interest for us is the refugee issue, which is a different case. In most cases they are escaping hardship situations, political, military, or what have you, and they have less access to information of any sort.

It's also related to the reliability of information so newcomers can form realistic expectations, information that will lessen culture shock and assist them in the early days of settlement. I think there will be quite a few savings even within the Canadian context if we are able to have pre-departure, pre-arrival information and orientation sessions.

We do make a number of recommendations in that area, and one of them I like is, as much as possible, to have a non-profit organization that has a good understanding of settlement and immigration delivery oversea. Considering the technology age, that could be also supplemented by a web-based session for information delivery. This would be particularly helpful for the professional and trades immigrants we have been encouraging to come to Canada. Time and again I will mention the issue of foreign-trained professionals and tradespeople who migrate to Canada, where we are not able to use their resources and fulfill their expectations.

On the issue of obstacles to integration and participation, I would personally acknowledge that we have made progress in that we have recognized the demographic shift in Canada and we have tried to address it, through either multiculturalism policies or what have you, to enhance the participation of newcomers. However, I would argue that we need to shift our thinking away from an attitude of individual deficiencies to an attitude that looks at systemic barriers.

One of these factors that actually complicates the level of integration and participation of newcomers is this lack of interdepartmental and intergovernmental coordination. MOSAIC would particularly like to emphasize the need for coordination between CIC and Human Resources Development Canada on the issue of labour market integration for foreign professionals and skilled people.

The other concern is related to the access of settlement and integration services for refugee claimants. As it stands now, although the provincial government allocates a limited amount of resources and does allow us to support refugee claimants, by and large the federal funding is limited to landed immigrants. That's the definition, whether it's for accessibility to English language training or accessibility to settlement and information sessions. That has been an issue for quite some time, and it continues to be an issue for MOSAIC and so many other organizations.

The other one--I think Phil Rankin spoke to it--is the extent of availability of ESL, English as a second language training, for adult immigrants. I think in B.C. it's very limited, basically to level three. That does not even enable the newcomers to participate in the labour market. We see a number of our clients taking English language training in our centres. However, we cannot refer them to the next stage, which would be an employment service or employment training, because they don't have that capacity. These people, particularly women, live in a very isolated situation.

· (1355)

Of course, I talked about the coordination of stakeholders to address the issue of foreign-trained professionals and skilled people. I think there has been a lot of talk. I've been participating, actually, as an executive director of MOSAIC in the innovation strategies the federal government has been leading over the last two years, and time and again the issue of foreign-trained professionals and skilled people comes up. I am encouraged, I should admit, because I just received an e-mail that the federal budget has earmarked about $40 million plus to skill and training enhancement. So we'll wait and see, but from MOSAIC's perspective on that issue, we are encouraged.

The issue of public participation--and this also was raised by MOSAIC when we did our submission on Bill C-18--is full and meaningful participation. As I reiterated in my introduction, MOSAIC endeavours to promote systemic societal change through community-based research, as well as by partnering with community organizations to bring about change that embraces diversity and inclusiveness.

As a matter of fact, we strongly believe that this is fundamental to enhance integration and meaningful participation of new Canadians.

The horrendous incidents of September 11, however, have created a series of public fears, and the public support and empathy toward immigrants and refugees has significantly changed in the negative. This is further exacerbated by the specific things we are witnessing on racial profiling, which affects particular segments of our communities, specifically Muslims in general and people of Middle Eastern ancestry. I'm quite sure you have heard it time and again, but I would like to put it on the table for you.

Although Canada has an international reputation in being proactive to combat systemic discrimination, over the last five years we have not put the necessary resources to maintain and enhance what we have gained in this field over the last three decades. I guess I'm speaking to the issue of resourcing and supporting public awareness and education in that field.

On the issue of geographic dispersion, our concern is the availability of employment and the resources. I think Phil Rankin spoke about it. There is a lot of talk about incentives; however, we should be very careful. We are concerned about those incentives becoming coercive elements--having any form of coercive elements.

So our recommendation is that one should look into the employment situation in those rural areas or small cities as well as at the resources necessary to support local communities to integrate the newcomers.

The other feeling we have is the B.C. government has already signed the provincial nominee program, so we felt it might be more appropriate to integrate this dispersion action with the provincial nomination.

One last point I'd like to make is on the indicators of health.

Our comment here is limited to the psychological impact on immigrants and refugees due to what I call the “failed expectations and missed opportunities syndrome”. This refers to how we recruit immigrants, particularly skilled immigrants from overseas, and what kind of expectations we set for them. I think as a nation we are expecting too much from our immigration officers overseas. They are the enforcers, they are the recruiters. At the same time, they are also the providers of information on what the potential immigrants expect in Canada. That's what I am calling this syndrome.

The other particular group is refugees resulting from past traumatic experiences.

Once again, I would like to thank the committee for giving me the opportunity to present these issues.

Thank you.

¸ (1400)

The Chair: I thank you, Eyob, for your recommendations and your insight into our settlement program. I'm sure we have some questions for you.

Lilian and Ken.

Mr. Kenneth Tung (Vice-Chairman, SUCCESS): Thank you very much.

Mr. Chairman and honourable members, good afternoon. My name is Kenneth Tung, board member of SUCCESS. With me is Lilian To, the chief executive officer.

Today we are indeed encouraged by the government's determination to modify and improve Canada's settlement and immigration funding and services. However, we wish to submit our concerns regarding current funding and services in the following five areas: the national settlement funding formula, comparable services, funding accountability, immigrants being assessed to professions and trades, and federal-level coordination.

On the national settlement funding formula, while the number of immigrants and refugees to Canada has steadily increased in the last five years, the funding of the immigrant settlement programs has remained unchanged at roughly $173.2 million, not including Quebec. A total of 175,000 immigrants were admitted to Canada in 1998, whereas the number has reached about 250,000 for the past two years.

Immigrants actually contribute toward immigration and settlement programs through their $550 registration fee and close to $1,000 landing fee per person. So for a family of four, it costs them almost $4,000 from their savings. However, increased government revenue from increased immigration contribution has not been reflected in the allocation of the settlement funds.

On the contrary, for the past three years there have been substantial funding cuts in federal payments to British Columbia for immigration, settlement, and language training programs. If the Government of Canada is committed to welcoming immigrants and increasing the immigration numbers to 1% of Canada's population, then they must also provide sufficient resources to assist and facilitate the settlement and integration process of the immigrants.

A fair funding formula should reflect increases in immigration level and demands as well as increases in corresponding revenue, as mentioned. Federal settlement funds should not be capped in spite of increasing numbers and needs.

SUCCESS welcomes the minister's current review of the national funding formula. We recommend that ministers set a minimal and reasonable threshold of funding according to the landing data of the communities to maintain and expand services needed to support the immigrants' settlement and integration process.

On comparable services, the British Columbia Coalition for Immigration Integration earlier conducted a comprehensive review of all settlement and language training services across Canada. The findings reflected service disparity among different provinces and a lack of comparable programs and standards across the nation.

For example, in language service provision, the ELSA, ranged from level three in British Columbia to level eight in Manitoba and level five in Ontario. Most other provinces, including the Yukon Territories, offer language training up to level six for permanent residents. As the other colleagues mentioned today, in British Columbia the ELSA language training is level three, which is equivalent to lower intermediate level, and it's too low for many of the independent immigrants, who require college level language training--levels six to eight.

So immigrants in this province do not have equal access to comparable services in other regions. There does not seem to be a national standard set for different provinces across Canada. SUCCESS recommends the minister review the funding allocation to provide comparable and adequate services to immigrants in all provinces and territories.

Now I would like to ask Lilian to carry on.

¸ (1405)

Ms. Lilian To (Chief Executive Officer, SUCCESS): The third point we want to present is about funding accountability. I just want to say we support what the Bar Association, MOSAIC, and AMSSA have presented. We are all agencies serving the settlement community and we all work together really well.

As to the whole issue about funding accountability, I think Eyob also referred to it and Phil talked about it a little earlier. With this agreement for Canada-British Columbia cooperation on immigration that was signed in 1997, the funding for settlement programs--including ELSA, which is language training, and the host program under ISAP programs for settlement--has been transferred from the Department of Citizenship and Immigration to the province, and B.C. of course is one of the two provinces where settlement funds have been devolved to.

During the first three years of the agreement, the federal government has allocated about $46 million to B.C. annually for administering immigrant settlement and language training programs across the province. Then, of course, as Phil also pointed out, the province has retained half of this transfer payment in the consolidated general revenue account. At the same time, the transfer payment has dropped--the transfer from the feds to this province--by approximately $7 million annually since the year 2000.

While all immigrant- and refugee-serving agencies in B.C. were already operating under very stringent budgets and insufficient funding, further reduction of another 7% will be effected by the provincial government next year despite anticipated increases of immigrants landing in this province.

These issues about the federal government actually getting the revenue from immigrant landing fees and capping funding for settlement, and then the provincial government also taking half of what the feds are giving them into consolidated general revenue are concerns that were raised earlier. We are hoping, or recommending, that the federal government would enforce some national standards and require some accountability from the provinces on the federal transfer of payment for immigrant settlement services, because essentially it benefits the whole province, the whole country. The settlement funds are helping to facilitate faster integration of immigrants so they can contribute to our region.

The fourth point is about immigrants' access to professions and trades. Again, a number of speakers referred to this issue earlier. I think it's very clear from census data that, for example, about 21% of the immigrants who arrived between 1991 and 1996 have university degrees, whereas only 13% of those who are Canadian-born have university degrees. Also, the immigrants' English language ability actually has increased. However, a recent report suggested 50% of these immigrant families have incomes below the Statistics Canada low-income cutoff. In fact, although they are more educated and even more speak English, they are getting lower incomes because they are not able to access the professions and jobs they are trained for. That's a simple fact reflected by reality.

Of course, as you are aware from the Conference Board of Canada's recent study, 540,000 Canadians actually could earn an additional $4.1 billion to about $6 billion annually if their learning experience and credentials were recognized in the workplace. What it means is that we are losing about $6 billion a year and the government is losing taxes from that because we are not using their credentials. That's because we have engineers washing dishes. I mean, it's a good job, a useful job. It's just that we are not using their talents and experience and training.

¸ (1410)

In fact, of course, recent immigrants face multiple barriers. Some of them do have a language issue. They need some language training up to level eight and so on. Some of them need some kind of bridging employment training.

With just a little bit of investment, we can make use of what their government has invested in them--20 to 30 years of investment in education and training and experience. Then we just put in a little bit. In fact, they pay for it. Each person pays $975 plus the registration fee. Why are we not investing and using that money to make the best use of these talents? Why are we wasting all of these talents?

Of course, as we see in the paper, they face multiple barriers, including often being accused of lacking local experience. Their credentials are not recognized. There's sometimes employers' exploitation and discrimination in hiring practices. It's been very challenging for many of the immigrants to compete in the labour market without appropriate support and assistance. Of course, we have unemployment and underemployment among very highly educated and highly skilled professionals. We have tried to provide a whole range of integration services and a holistic model of employment, for job training programs to help them, but it's not sufficient.

We have seven employment service centres. We have achieved an 80% to 90% success rate in helping these immigrants get jobs, because we have to achieve that in order to get the HRDC support. But only about one-quarter of them are able to get jobs that they're trained for. That's because their credentials are not recognized, employers are not hiring them, they don't have the licence, and all the other barriers I talked about.

So we're working very hard on it. We did this study and we work with other agencies. We think on the whole the government regulations, or the regulating bodies, employers and CIC, together with HRDC and the government, should really work together to make it possible for them to access professions and jobs.

You should realize, with regard to the HRDC funding that helps with employment assistance programs, that many of the programs are geared only to people who are on UI. Very few immigrants are on UI, because they don't even have a job to start with. Of course, immigrants also lack access to labour market language training and job training programs. None of the job training programs that HRDC offers is targeting immigrants. They are all geared to people who are either on UI or on welfare. Again, very few immigrants are on welfare as well. It's a vicious cycle where they're not able to use the skills, and it's such a waste.

We need a strategy by the federal and B.C. governments in conjunction with the professional bodies and multicultural service organizations. Together we need not only to attract more skilled immigrants but to work together to help reduce the barriers to their full participation.

Our recommendation is that the federal and provincial governments, in conjunction with all these groups and institutions, should work together to develop strategies that would address these issues of foreign credential recognition, prior learning assessment and recognition, the needs of immigrants for language job training, as well as their opportunities for integrated services and work experience.

We believe this is a very important issue we're all talking about. Of course, Eyob also mentioned the innovation papers, and the HRDC paper also addresses this issue, but we are hoping there's concrete action being taken to deal with it.

As a last point, Eyob referred earlier to federal and provincial level coordination. Settlement programs and services are provided by many community agencies to support and facilitate immigrants' integration, but there is a lack of coordination between the different government departments in the federal and provincial government. We recommend a stronger communication and coordination strategy among federal and provincial governments, including CIC, HRDC, Industry Canada, Canadian Heritage, and other provincial departments to work together, as I said, with other community organizations and regulatory bodies to address issues of immigrant settlement in order to help them not only make the best use of their skills, but also use their skills to build our economy and country.

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In conclusion, we hope the committee will consider all these recommendations we have made, and we all concur with what has been said. We believe it is vital to the interests of not only new immigrants but the whole country to help immigrants access professions, trades, and adequate and reasonable funding for settlement services. Some national standards need to be developed for comparable services in all the different provinces in our country.

¸ (1420)

The Chair: Thank you very much, Lilian, Ken, and everyone, for your very comprehensive submissions. I'm sure we have some questions that relate to our settlement programs.

Lynne

Mrs. Lynne Yelich (Blackstrap, Canadian Alliance): Mr. Kurland, I want you to talk about increasing francophone immigration to the heartland. In reality, even though I know you have this dream, it really wouldn't work when we're so low on English second-language classes and settlement. There have been substantial cuts in both language and settlement. Today, if $114 million is allocated to official languages to help francophones settle in the heartland, that's almost asking a little bit too much for just one group of people when we're so short on English second-language funds.

In my area, if the books could come in Chinese it would be a lot more practical than in French. I'd love to be able to speak the language but I can't. I grew up when we became an official bilingual country, but I do not speak the language because it just isn't spoken in the Prairies as an official language.

Mr. Richard Kurland: I'm delighted to hear that the birthday present came the day after the recommendation popped out. But to address directly the ESL and settlement funding--and, practically speaking, several of the interventions--an inexpensive solution may be available by taking the following overview.

The way I look at it, every skilled worker application process from overseas into Canada that results in back-end settlement fund expenditures beyond the norm is a selection failure. By tightening up the front end you can reduce your back-end expenditures. The following policy recommendation might save the taxpayers a heck of a lot of millions.

Go to selection buffer zones in the United States and similar economies, where foreign workers have proven their track records in economic performance in their intended occupations. If an Asian or European foreign worker in the United States on an H-1B has consecutive years of positive tax returns, they have just demonstrated English language settlement capability and occupational desirability. If they want to come to Canada temporarily or permanently, open the door.

The pools in the United States, other English-speaking democracies, and France contain the appropriate demographic composition, so we could respect the multicultural choices inherent in our overseas selection policy. In other words, we can get cheap workers representing the globe from three or four areas and reduce back-end settlement costs by simply cherry-picking the inventory over there. So maybe some thought should be.... It's sexy.

The Chair: Tasty too.

Mrs. Lynne Yelich: Phil, I would like you to expand on that. We believe B.C. should get the same per capita settlement dollars as other provinces, notably Quebec. I would just like you to expand on that.

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Mr. Richard Kurland: Quebec of course has more than 50% of the refugee flow for national policy reasons. The refugee flow is characterized by a higher, if not the highest, need for settlement dollars, and Quebec justifiably has a need for in excess of $100 million, perhaps $200 million, in total funding. There's no way around that.

Other provinces have, behind the scenes or not behind the scenes, expressed a distaste for attracting a refugee flow to their jurisdiction. In the province of British Columbia there are minimal numbers, 4,000 to 5,000 refugee claimants or something like this, in the year.

Now, refugees demonstrate a positive economic benefit to Canada after their first year, and certainly after year seven they earn more than provincial averages. They pay more than provincial averages and national averages in tax, and the children of refugee claimants utterly excel scholastically. These are the long-term studies, so they are net economic winners, every single refugee claimant, when you look at the entire pool. You make money in the long run with the refugee flow.

Yet Quebec is the only jurisdiction that wishes to invest in the long-term pool of human resources in terms of refugees. So yes, up front, sure, we are paying more to inventory the refugee claimant, but in the long run it pays back. It's not Quebec getting a bigger share because it's Quebec.

Mr. Phil Rankin: You're from B.C., right?

Mr. Richard Kurland: That's right.

Mr. Phil Rankin: I think Quebec has signed an agreement that guarantees it, as I understand it, a third of the settlement funds. The original agreement was based not on numbers but based on a sort of idea that they would receive a third of settlement dollars even though they don't receive a third of the immigrants or refugees. They have gotten a share of the dollars that is bigger. We're not even against their getting less, we just want to get the same.

In reality, we're not saying that we want to see Quebec cut down to size. We think that a lot of the programs they have in Quebec would be very useful to have in a lot of other provinces, particularly in British Columbia. We're not out to strip them of something, we're just out to say, we like what you are doing and we think we should do that in other provinces.

I don't know if my friend's statistics are right. I doubt whether refugees pay more taxes after the first year, but I'd love to see those studies. I just don't believe it, because I do a lot of refugee work here.

The Chair: We will send you the facts.

Can I just do a supplementary on this funding, though I don't want to get into it.

Mr. Phil Rankin: I'd like to see that. I'm pleased to hear that--if that's the case.

The Chair: I want to ask you a particular question, because in fact B.C. is getting--even SUCCESS provided us with this information--$21,078,990 in settlement and language services. They have 37,319 of the landings; this is 2000 stuff. They are getting $565 of the landing fee, but in actual fact you are getting $45 million for 40,000 people, which represents about a thousand per landing, which is what the fee is.

You know where you are getting screwed--excuse the language. It's that B.C. isn't giving you the money we're giving to them. If you got the money we gave to them, you would be on a par with practically everybody else. I would agree--and we will get into the resources--but the raw facts and figures point to the fact that you're getting screwed because B.C. isn't getting you the money, right?

Ms. Lilian To: It started in, I think, 1998 or 1999. We started to get about $45 million. It used to be about only $23 million for the longest time, so B.C. had not been getting its fair share. We were only getting about half. It's only a few years ago the feds started to match funds, to give us what we should have been getting, and fund us accordingly. But then the problem is, as Phil was indicating earlier and as I said earlier, that the provincial government is taking half of it for the central treasury board.

The Chair: You're so much more diplomatic than me, Lilian. You're just taking it. I'm describing it in other terms to get some real shock value, as Richard or Phil would tell you.

Mr. Phil Rankin: If the provinces were going to get into settlement or into any agreement with the feds, they would say the same thing they say in medicare or anything else--we are the ones who are best to decide on the payment. Unless you can reverse the trend that says the federal government is going to be involved and we're going to have national standards, you have to spend the money and keep the standards to a certain level, whether it's medicare, settlement funds, or whatever.

The provinces are ganging up and saying that the federal government has too much power, that we want you to devolve and give us the money or give us the tax base and we'll make the decisions. We know the local thing best. We're saying, because we've seen what they've done, we can't trust them to do what's best for us. They have too many economic issues and priorities that are not necessarily consistent with the immigration program.

There's a lot of pressure, I imagine, at these federal-provincial meetings between premiers and the central government. The trend in fact seems to be away from having national standards, from tying money up or earmarking money. We just want to raise the issue, saying not to give up on that. Whether they like it or not, we can't count on the provinces to spend the money. There's no use in their saying, well, we are spending it in some other way for integration. We don't think that by taking pressure off their education budget they are serving immigrants.

¸ (1430)

The Chair: There was a big section in the budget yesterday that talked about accountability at all levels for all governments. Especially, as you indicated, there are transfer moneys from the federal to the provincial governments, and people wanted them to be held accountable or at least to know where that money was going--and if not, why not? It's simple as that.

Sophia.

Ms. Sophia Leung (Vancouver Kingsway, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I just want to follow up on our discussion on the trend. I think it was 1998 when Minister Robillard came and signed the agreements that would increase the settlement funds to $45 million. It's very obvious that the provincial government is not accountable. We don't know. This is where we're assuming we've been giving the amount you are benefiting from.

But also, I want to comment on your concern about foreign credentials. I think we have all expressed a lot of concerns. I have for many years. I even talked to the Prime Minister; of course, he gave me different answers.

Anyhow, the thing is that I think CIC entered the leadership.... I don't know if you're aware of this, but last year Minister Coderre started the first meeting in Winnipeg. He invited all the ministers from the different provinces to try to get coordinated and see what kind of partnership we could work out together to develop as a joint effort. Just recently he mentioned--I think Joe knows--that he's going to continue this and have another meeting in B.C. on foreign credentials. I think it's very important. Even in Ottawa many PhDs are driving taxis. We know that, Joe. This is why we want to stop that. Then he also has to work with the professional group, and these are the three groups who have a concern.

I just want to share this. After lunch I had a closer look at the new budget, and I had a lot of questions about how we are going to try to channel the immigrants to other cities besides the major cities. The federal government will spend $3.8 million in the next two years in partnership with provincial governments to conduct regional pilot projects designed to test new approaches that could help all regions to help benefit the immigrants. This is interesting news.

Of course, we know the government has already committed $140 million annually to deliver basic language training, but the new budget will provide $10 million over the next two years to provide seed funding to interested partners to provide labour market language training. We talk about language training, but there are different levels when you want to enter to obtain jobs. I think SUCCESS should crank it up to see what you and other groups such as MOSAIC can do with this $10 million that has been earmarked.

Earlier I mentioned encouragement for special venture capital. The government will invest $190 million in equity to the Business Development Bank of Canada to help new and growing businesses. This is new. I just found out yesterday. I think this is very good news. It's not just for Canadians; it's for whoever has aspirations and wants to seek....

There are a lot of questions about how we are going to attract more new skilled immigrants. Another new thing here is $41 million over the next two years to help new skilled immigrants. It will help them integrate, maybe polish their language training or whatever. I think this is very encouraging and addresses some of the concerns.

I would really like the local organization to follow up on foreign accreditation. I know it's quite a thing for Denis Coderre. It's going to come in B.C., so maybe some of you can join.

¸ (1435)

The Chair: You talked a little bit, Lilian and Eyob, about your experiences in helping people come here to resettle. We've heard about it ad nauseam over five or six years. It's been in seven of our reports. The ministers are finally going to start talking a little bit about it.

Do you think there's the political will provincially to do this? It's not a national jurisdiction; it's a provincial jurisdiction because of the trades, professions, and so on. We just keep getting mixed messages. Everybody talks about it, but I think a lot of people out there want to keep those PhDs driving taxis instead of working as doctors, and so on. I wonder if you could talk about that.

Ms. Lilian To: First of all, is there a saying that your heart is where your money is? The government talks a lot about how they value immigrants, recognize the barriers, and so on, but if they're not really putting in the resources or money, their heart may not be there.

I was glad to hear Sophia say that the federal government is committing funds for labour market language training. That will help new immigrants. I also heard reports yesterday that they're going to fund setting up job training programs or centres in some outlying areas. So I'm very glad to hear that some actual action is being taken to address the issue.

One issue is whether that's sufficient for the whole of Canada. How many regions can we cover with that amount of funding?

Secondly, if the training centres are only set up in outlying areas, there's still a large number of professionals and skilled people in the cities who will also need labour market language training as well as some kind of job training to help them access professions and trades.

You mentioned the provincial government. I have not heard from the province about that kind of commitment to help immigrants access professions and trades. We may just have to wait and see, but we may have to put some pressure on them through the federal government and community groups.

However, I'd still like to address the issue of how the provincial government has spent the settlement money and pocketed maybe half of it. The federal government may help us in further negotiations with the province, but the federal government itself, as I think it mentioned in the paper, has received more money from immigrants in landing fees and registration fees. They pocketed it in the central treasury as well, but the money targeted for immigrant settlement across the whole nation has remained constant for the past five years or more, capped at only about $176 million.

We are hoping that the government reviews this whole situation. I understand that it's not CIC's problem; it's more up to the Treasury Board or the finance minister how funding is allocated to CIC. If there is something the community can do to voice our concerns, opinions, or suggestions, we would like to do that.

¸ (1440)

The Chair: Well, you're doing a very good job today.

Mr. Phil Rankin: But the question is, in whose vested interests is it to limit the people entering trades or professions? Obviously, I come from a profession, the lawyers, and we have our vested interests in making sure that only our own.... We don't recognize foreign law degrees.

Doctors are even worse. At least you can go to a law school here, and presumably you can article, but for instance, for foreign doctors trained in British Columbia, there is one hospital in Vancouver, St. Paul's, where I think they have only three residencies for foreign doctors. In other words, there are only three places for people who were trained in India, or Saudi Arabia, or someplace. You have to get into the residency program, you have to do a year of residency, and then you have to write the exams.

There are only three places--three places, and that's it. Why are there only three places? We have a lot of hospitals; why doesn't Vancouver General Hospital have a residency program for foreign doctors, or Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria?

It will be the same in engineering. We don't want to see people who can't do the job getting professional recognition, but we don't want to see the barriers.

Medicine is an obvious one. Nursing is another obvious one.

A lot of the problem is English, obviously. If you don't have a high enough level of English, you can't write the nurses' exam. But there are other problems, because in a lot of the professions there is no encouragement; there is no reason to want to recognize foreign credentials. The purpose of professional organizations and unions and trades historically, from the Middle Ages, was to limit entry and to keep a certain level of wages up. That was the historical purpose for guilds and unions. But I think if there was some encouragement, particularly in rural British Columbia, for people to come who are welders or something like that, whether you could give a subsidy to employers to have people go there to do some kind of...a straight HRDC subsidy where you could hire those kinds of trades they say they're short of, and where they will be trained along with the tradesmen of B.C., and you could partner with somehow B.C. recognizing them, as long as they reach a certain level of qualification.

Medicine is one of the hardest ones. I know that's almost an impossible barrier in British Columbia, and I'm sure that if we went to engineering and to many of the other ones, we would find the same thing.

Nursing is an obvious one. We have all those live-in caregiver programs. The live-in caregiver program is really a program for Filipino nurses to come to Canada to take care of children, because the program is no longer for professional nannies; it's for nurses who want to get landed immigrant status eventually and work as nurses.

The Chair: We talked yesterday about that very same thing.

Eyob, did you have a quick comment?

Mr. Eyob Naizghi: Yes. A quick comment about that is that provincially, as Lilian indicated, on the practical side, we don't see a lot of commitment. However, there is one small secretariat called the foreign credentials secretariat that's working with community organizations. It started just about five years ago, I believe. Infantile though it may be, there is some element that would indicate that.

My question would be, where should the leadership come from? There are professional associations that are the gatekeepers. Government has a role. The federal government has the main responsibility of screening, selecting, and bringing immigrants, and I think that's where the leadership should come through.

In our submission, we talk about coordination. We talk about the stakeholder partnership. There are a number of initiatives in B.C., to some degree, but mostly in Ontario, that are actually working with professional associations, both in the field of health as well as engineering. I think the federal government, particularly HRDC, could provide a greater role, and CIC.

The Chair: Okay.

Richard.

Mr. Richard Kurland: Absent from the scene is a provincial champion for immigration matters in the province of British Columbia--pure and simple. And if the number of ribbon-cutting ceremonies federally were to include a provincial immigration champion, that might well be the magic mark to bring all of these concerns to one player. That's what's missing. That's why the system's broken in this province.

¸ (1445)

The Chair: Okay.

David.

Mr. David Price (Compton—Stanstead, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Just to continue on yours, Eyob, it goes a lot further. I come out of the construction industry in Quebec, and we can talk about the provinces, yes, but we also have to include the unions and union association. They do as much blocking as anybody else. And B.C. is a very strong example. I had a large number of electricians who worked for me who, in some parts of the year, would decide to come out to B.C. They had a terrible time getting in here, and the reverse is the same. It happens from province to province.

We have to solve that problem first, and unfortunately it's not going to happen at the federal level. I think it should be a national standard, but I realize, working within, that's not easy to do. It probably has to start right at the labour level.

But to go on to what I really wanted to talk about, first of all, I have to say I'm probably going to be the last one who would be defending the current Quebec government by any means, but I do have to give them some kudos. They've taken the federal money, yes, and they put all of it toward immigration. They use their own, too. They invest a lot in it. They're actually taking a look at immigration in the long term, and I think they're one of the first provinces to do that.

Granted, there's a little bit of, I guess, madness in their method of doing it. They're locking the immigrants into the French language. That's quite obvious. They bring them in and they make sure they get a good base in language training. They make sure they get a good training in their trade, and they do the very best they can to get them out into the field. They're looking at it in the long term by the people they bring in.

I think they've realized right off that those aren't the people they're aiming at. They're aiming at their offspring, the next generation. Those are the ones who are going to bring success to the whole program. That's why I say it's long term and it's wise. It's dangerous in some ways, but it's very wise. It's not working great right now, because, as I say, it's the next generation.

I'll give you an example. In my own riding, which is two hours south of Montreal, just far enough out of the big city to be uninteresting for immigrants, there are 300 jobs at any one time there. They're not bad jobs. They're jobs that are probably 50% to 100% higher than minimum wage, the types of jobs that pretty well we could get anybody to do. There are also subsidies given by the municipality to bring people in, and they still don't come. They still tend to gravitate to the big city.

But the next generation--and we're starting to see some of them now--are making the move. Granted, there are just not enough of them yet, but that's where the long-term thinking has gone, and I believe they are heading in the right direction.

I just wanted to bring that point up.

I guess, Phil, you were talking about the consultants. As Joe said, we've heard so much about consultants, but you must have seen a setup somewhere, in some country, for consultants, to control them in a certain way. Do you have any suggestions on that?

Mr. Phil Rankin: I know the United States has similar problems to Canada's, so I can't say let's go to the United States, other than that they seem to be a lot more active in prosecuting them, from what I'm reading. My friend says Australia has a system of registering and organizing consultants.

I don't really think it's a problem. Really, OPIC and a number of these people have already figured out the basics, that they need a registrar, they need to have some system of trust accounting, they need to have a compensation fund, and training courses.

We already have the courses in place, for instance, in British Columbia. All we'd really need is the will of the government to say you must create.... The elements are already there. Once you insisted, it wouldn't take the industry by surprise. They've been waiting for it for decades.

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Mr. David Price: But there again, can it be done federally?

Mr. Phil Rankin: Yes, it can be done federally. I think clearly the case that came from the Mangat case, which went to the Supreme Court of Canada, says it can be done federally. It's always been, no, you guys do it, you guys do it. If we waited for each province to do it.... I'm quite happy to see that it actually can be done federally, because if we had to do it province by province we would still be here in the next millennium talking about it.

It can be done, and actually it won't cause a hardship. The people who are reputable consultants are ready for it. Demand it, and they'll do it, because it'll kick out the parasitic group who register themselves as consultants. There's this whole parasite group. They would just go very quickly. They would all scramble to get into the legitimate consultants' organizations. What we'd have to do is make sure the legitimate ones really did put some code of conduct and some teeth into it. In other words, we'd know that the disreputable ones would rush forward to those organizations to immediately join. They're not members any more; they don't need to be, but you'd have to insist that those people have an arm's length registrar and code of conduct and a way of policing their own members. You'd still have problems, but at least you'd have something to turn to. At least you wouldn't have the amount of rip-offs we have.

In the same way, the police have to get enough money to do.... You have to say it's a government priority to stop the abuse, the false citizenship applications, the false refugee claims, the false documents. You have to prosecute, not just the people who actually do it but the people who have organized them to do it, not just the guy who says he was in Canada for 1,700 days--he's just the wire--but the person who's doing a whole mill of those is the person you want to get. And it's much harder to get them. It's always harder to get the person who doesn't sign the application. The person who signs the application, you can prosecute him pretty easy. You want to get the person who organizes them in a large way to do the false stuff.

Mr. David Price: We've certainly heard all the stories.

Could I have one more question, Joe?

The Chair: Sure.

Mr. David Price: Actually it was to Kenneth. You talked about the national standards on education language levels. Should I understand you to say that maybe the financing should be tied to that, that there be national?

Ms. Lilian To: I think what we're trying to say is there has not been a national standard about services being delivered in different provinces. Ours is almost the lowest. We're offering only level three language training for new immigrants. People who have professions and so on do not need this level of language training, they need a higher level. And it's part of the settlement fund that we get out of B.C. Out of $45 million, there's $23 million allocated for settlement services. And out of $23 million, most of it is given out to different organizations and colleges as well to provide language training to new immigrants. These are for adults. And of course there's reduction. We don't get $23 million now. We get more immigrants but we get fewer dollars from the federal government.

Mr. David Price: But I guess what I'm getting at is this. If you were saying that right across Canada everybody should have funding to reach level six, let's use that just as an example, should funding be tied to make sure that you are set up to reach level six?

Ms. Lilian To: Yes. I think there has to be some kind of accountability that when the federal government funds the province it will make sure they administer the funds in such a way that level six or eight language training is available to immigrants.

The Chair: Finally, on the consultants, as I said before, we're hopeful that by April or May we'll be done. The same could be said about this jurisdictional problem with regard to accreditation. Australia had exactly the same problem with its provinces until such time as the national government said enough is enough with regard to accreditation and then set up the national accreditation board and worked with the professions to make sure people understood before they applied where the expectations were--here are the levels, here's what you have to do to achieve these levels of accreditation, even if you come. People then know they're going to have to write a test. They may need experience in a hospital. They may have to work as a nurse. They may have to work in a mechanic's shop to become a welder and get--

But people ought to know that. Right now it's all over the place and nobody knows. Hopefully, I think the committee has taken this on, that the provinces and the feds will do something. If not, the option is always there to be able to set those kinds of national objectives, or whatever, in order to achieve it.

I wonder if I could ask one question. All of you have mentioned, and we know because we've heard across the country, that there is a new national funding level review going on with the department in terms of what those settlement dollars should be. What we also have heard is that there isn't one program that fits every refugee or immigrant who comes here, even though everybody has also said that the kinds of basic programs we have--the host, the ISAP, the RAP program--are very good. Money obviously is required and there needs to be a lot of work with HRDC and other horizontal government levels to bring some other stuff to the table--training and so on.

I know that's going on. I have asked this of other groups in other provinces because I'm trying to understand. I know you can't put one dollar because one immigrant, as an example, may have all the attributes of language and so on and settlement may not be a really big issue, because pre-arrival to citizenship is a continuum, as we understand. Some people will take more, some people will take less time, money, and so on.

I'm just wondering whether or not anybody has thought about the model that needs to be constructed. Then it will give us an opportunity as policy-makers to say, well, how much money is it going to take to establish this thing? If you're in the front lines, it's a client-based system. If I talk to Eyob, I'm going to find out from Eyob that you need language, you need some of this, some of that, some of this. Lilian may only need this. David might need a whole bunch of stuff because he comes from wherever.

But my point is, what's the success model? Has somebody ever given it any thought to ensure that if we invest in people, pre-arrival to citizenship, you're bound to do it, because it's people and it's money? Has anybody looked at a model? If you have, then perhaps you can share some of those ideas with us. Let's face it, you all work on the front lines so you would know that. I don't know if it's somewhere where we can see it and take a look at it.

Lilian or Ken or Eyob, any comments?

¸ (1455)

Mr. Eyob Naizghi: I think probably coming up with one model will be very difficult for the same reason, Mr. Chairman, you alluded to earlier on, because it is within the continuum. Everybody is starting at a different level, so it will be very difficult to come up with a model that fits all. However, the only one I do remember is the CJC from Toronto from the early eighties. I do remember they had a model when they were assisting quite a few of the Jewish community immigrants from Poland and a number of other places.

But one of the things that we know works is the follow-up.

The Chair: But let me ask you in reverse, then, because maybe I'm making it a bit more complicated. I think you are getting there. When you assess a person, once that person arrives, or pre-arrives, you are assessing their language capabilities--whether or not it should be at level six and not a three or whatever--and determining that they are going to need some job training, some other stuff, orientation issues. Surely within that model you are then able to know how much time and how much money it's going to take in order to get a person fully oriented into the system. I'm a business guy. I think I can measure that.

Mr. Phil Rankin: There is a huge gulf between, say, someone with a background in Asian languages and someone who comes with a Romance language from France or from Germany or--

The Chair: Italy, Phil.

Mr. Phil Rankin: Oh, Italy, Italian.

The Chair: Yes, the romantic language.

Mr. Phil Rankin: Depending on the culture you are dealing with or the language, it just seems to me the language needs for certain cultures are going to be much more intense and different than for people who have the same alphabet as a Romance language. If you come from the Cyrillic alphabet from eastern Europe, it's a bigger problem. There isn't going to be one model that is going to deal with it.

Mr. Kenneth Tung: I think you point out a very good objective. I think that from different agencies, different areas, it varies from Vancouver to Prince George. But I think we would like to see the difference between even a single immigrant or family immigrant. We need family and youth services, some other elements as well. I think that is important to reflect. But I think our organization does have a wider range, to support those different areas.

Maybe, Lilian, you can add to this, and maybe Richard.

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Ms. Lilian To: First of all, the ideal is an integrated model, what we call an integrated case management model, that should include a number of components. But that actually depends, as Eyob was saying, on the level of their need. Some come in with higher language needs, some come in with lower language needs. Some need housing assistance, some don't need more employment programs, and some need family counselling, and so on. There are different needs and different levels of need.

But the ideal is an integrated model where they can access a whole range of settlement services from the initial on. For example, we offer airport reception to an immigrant, then settlement services, information referrals, some adjustment counselling and helping with housing or education or medicare, all of that. Then if they need employment services, it's employment counselling and job training or language training, the whole set. But if there are family problems, they need to have a stable social support network where there is help for them to resolve their family difficulties.

The Chair: Lilian, I think we're all saying the same thing. We all know what the ingredients are. But I'll tell you and then I'll go to Richard.

No wonder you're having so much trouble telling the government how much money you need, because you can't tell me. I'm sorry to be so critical, because I know what you want to provide to all of these people, but surely to God you should be able to say it's going to take $2,000 a person. And if you can't tell me that, no wonder CIC won't give you any money, or the federal government won't give you any money. I mean, I wouldn't give you any money if you came to me. I know what you want to do. But if you don't say how much money you want, because what you're getting is not enough, you know what I'd do? I'd say maybe I'm going to keep it at the same level until somebody can tell me.

Richard.

Mr. Richard Kurland: The treasure box you seek is in Ottawa, and Sophia knows this. It's at the Privy Council Office. I think it's still called the social affairs committee and the economic desk. There, all the strings of government go in, the per capita analysis you seek, from all departments by cultural community, how much per person. It's there--

The Chair: Well, it may or it may not. Trying to get into that PC box is...PCO is something else. My point is, everybody knows what needs to be done. And surely to God, there is a model and one could say on average, or whatever, because right now you're getting $575 because the B.C. government isn't giving you the rest. But unless you can say that it's going to take this amount of money per immigrant on average--there will be some who take more and everything else--governments are going to turn around and not do anything.

Ms. Lilian To: Yes. Mr. Chair, I think you have a very good point and I think we must be more specific. However, I don't think we can give a ballpark figure. We could say for the initial settlement, the orientation settlement, it costs so much. We can give you that figure. For language training at certain levels, up to whatever level, we can give you that figure. The same thing for job training. We can give specific figures for--

The Chair: That's what I want you to do. I want you to get specific. I don't want you to be airy fairy and all that sort of stuff. I get enough of that b.s. all the time. I mean, we're getting specific.

Ms. Lilian To: We certainly can come up with those figures. I just don't--

The Chair: I've been here too long. I must be getting tired.

Okay, are there any other questions? No.

Thank you very much. This is important information. Obviously settlement is a very important part of making sure that immigrants become successful citizens, and that is what we're doing. Thank you so much.

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The Chair: Colleagues and guests, we're at that part of our session where we're looking at the national identity card issue and we look forward to your presentations.

We have with us today Jason Gratl and Craig Jones from the B.C. Civil Liberties Association. From Electronic Frontier Canada, we have Professor Richard Rosenberg; and we welcome back Wesley Pue, from the law faculty at the University of British Columbia. Welcome, all.

To give you a bit of background, you probably heard or didn't hear, but we have a blank piece of paper. Somebody said, do we need a national identity card in this country? And if you were to have a national identity card, then start thinking about what it would be, what the purpose would be, how it would function, who would get this access online and offline, and about data systems. There's a big debate about the difference between privacy on the one hand and security on the other hand, and also about whether or not it would facilitate people's lives or protect their identity. So we have a blank piece of paper, and the minister says let's have a debate.

We're having a debate across the country--although I don't know what our colleagues out east are doing--and while there has been some polling and Canadians, generally speaking, are not opposed to a national identity card, the problem is that when you start talking about what its purpose is and what will happen if you have one or don't have one in your possession, and who's going to require one, then people start to get awfully nervous. Therefore, a lot of people have come forward and said, scrap the idea, forget it, don't even go there. Other countries have or have not.

So we would like to thank you for coming and we invite you to give us your comments with regard to a national ID card.

We'll start with Jason and Craig. Welcome.

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Mr. Jason Gratl (Director, B.C. Civil Liberties Association): I would ask the chair how much time we have to speak.

The Chair: We would ask you to take five to eight minutes to make your presentation, so that we can have time to dialogue and question your premises or your point of view.

Mr. Jason Gratl: Thank you.

Mr. Jones has a few comments to begin.

Mr. Craig Jones (Director, B.C. Civil Liberties Association): Thanks.

I think you've touched on the biggest problem we had in putting our presentation together here, which is the nebulousness of exactly what's being proposed. We're as confused as you are.

The Chair: I'm not sure that we're confused.

Mr. Craig Jones: No? Perhaps you should take the five to eight minutes and explain exactly what's going to happen.

The Chair: I'm leaving it to you.

Mr. Craig Jones: We're going to try to outline some of our objections. We want to express, and I'm sure it's been expressed before..... We've read Mr. Loukidelis' submissions, and we're going to try not to duplicate those.

I would start by saying that it is a question of balancing security and privacy. Obviously there are many aspects in which we do this in our day-to-day life, but the first thing that has to be established, the foundation that has to be established, in our view, is the scope of the problem.

The problem, as we understand it, is twofold. One is identity theft, and the second is terrorism writ large and terrorism exploiting identity theft perhaps, on the one hand, or simply methods of using central identification to provide enhanced security to prevent terrorism in a more global sense.

But what we're missing in that equation is any quantification of the problem itself. We don't know to what extent terrorists take advantage of false identities. We think of the greatest terrorist incident in Canadian history, for instance, the Air India bombing, and it wouldn't have mattered a whit whether the terrorists involved had national identity cards or otherwise. So we're not sure exactly what the problem is from the terrorism perspective, and we're concerned--and I think Jason will address this more--that the flag of terrorism is being waved for something that really isn't going to help that problem.

For identity theft, essentially our concern is the same. We've had nothing from the government, and this information may exist, but we haven't received anything that actually quantifies the extent of the problem of identity theft in the government realm as opposed to the commercial realm, which I take it this card is not being proposed for.

So with those opening comments, I would turn it over to Jason, who will discuss our concerns with national identification in general.

Mr. Jason Gratl: The committee will appreciate perhaps that making comments on this proposal is a little bit like wading into a room filled with smoke and trying to clear it out, but I will identify a few of the concerns that the civil liberties organization has identified, specifically with reference to some of the possibilities about what an ID card might look like.

Our first concern is that an ID card might involve the mandatory carrying and production of ID. We're opposed to any requirement that Canadian citizens carry any particular form of ID and would be required to produce it on demand in any circumstances exceeding those in which it's required now to produce identity. We're concerned that the ID card might become an excuse for routine identity surveillance on demand. It would open up the possibilities for harassment, for investigation based on suspicion rather than reasonable and probable grounds. The Civil Liberties Association, I think I can say, hears echos of the jackboots from behind the Iron Curtain. It's a real concern that this ID card proposal might be proposing something like that.

Second, the Civil Liberties Association is concerned about the possibility of total surveillance. On the one hand, biometric indicators might be used in combination with face recognition software and possibly closed-circuit TV to allow for the secret tracking of citizens, so that a computer database would process the location and identity of citizens without their knowing.

On the other hand, the Civil Liberties Association is concerned that less secret tracking might be made possible--that is, with the use of thumbprints or retinal scans--in circumstances where people are required to pass through portals; for example, entering a building. If giving a thumbprint is mandatory under those circumstances, surveillance might also be possible. Although that type of surveillance would be less secret and slightly less nefarious, it would still be nefarious, in our view.

Third, the Civil Liberties Association is concerned that an identity card of this type might be used simply for the purpose of collecting and storing the biometric data of citizens, such as measurements of the various parts of their face and mandatory fingerprints, thumbprints, and retinal scans for everyone. Certainly, this isn't permitted under our present system, and we have heard no justification as to why the government requires that type of biometric data. We're concerned about the mere collection and storage of that data.

Fourth, we are also concerned about commercial synergies. In addition to transactions with public officials, this type of card might become, as the SIN card has, a gateway to credit checks and to renting accommodation. This national ID card might become a gateway to all commercial transactions, and in that way the possibility for combining public data, such as medical, personal, and police information, with credit card data, telephone data, and so forth looks very ominous from the position of the Civil Liberties Association.

Fifth, we are concerned about function creep. The accuracy of the data plus the fact that the information that would be collected would have no boundaries set upon it by the nature of that information, that it could be used for many other purposes, and that there would be a flexibility of use--all of this sets up the spectre of function creep. An identity card of this nature containing biometric data might become a technological foothold that would allow for many other types of uses, some of which we have canvassed already.

Sixth, there are many possibilities of abuse for a card of this type. Just offhand we have considered three types of potential abuse. One is that the data collected could leak into the wrong hands. It could leak out possibly for non-government usage or criminal usage. Moreover, there might be abuse of the data by law enforcement officials and other public officials. In particular, the requirement to present a card on demand might lead to certain types of harassment, particularly of disenfranchised groups, by public officials.

There is a concern as well that data that have no bearing on a public official's decision in a particular context might get into that public official's hands. A person's income assistance status, for example, might get into the hands of a police officer, who might make a decision regarding arrest on the basis of that information , which of course has absolutely no relevance to the issue of arrest.

Moreover, there is the matter of the abuse of the better form of ID. A better, more accurate form of ID allows for a better, more dangerous type of exploitation. If ID cards become stronger, then the masks and disguises of people who have false ID also become stronger. That's a concern that I think might come full circle in terms of the security threat that this form of ID is supposed to answer.

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Last is a more general concern that insofar as this ID card is being proposed as an answer to the question of terrorism, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association is very concerned that general proposals of this nature, which have no specificity to them, are being coupled with general threats of terrorism that have no specificity to them either.

The concern is that the government might perceive a threat of terrorism, might attempt to answer it, and might thereby feed the threat of terrorism in the mind of the populace. Terrorism, it should be said, feeds on terror. And so one should be very cautious. Our government, we would suggest, ought to be cautious before proposing answers to nebulous threats that might make fear feed on fear.

Those are the specific concerns we have for the committee.

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The Chair: You just added another 20 or 30 questions to the questions that we have.

Professor Rosenberg, welcome.

Prof. Richard Rosenberg (Vice-President and Professor of Computer Science, University of British Columbia; Electronic Frontier Canada): Thank you. The organization I represent today, Electronic Frontier Canada, has been in existence almost nine years. On its web page the following statement of purpose appears:

Electronic Frontier Canada (EFC) was founded to ensure that the principles embodied in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms remain protected as new computing, communications, and information technologies are introduced into Canadian society.

I'm sure this committee has heard many arguments on the issue at hand. Nevertheless it's my intention--and I won't do it here, I do it in my document--to review the recent history of attempts to introduce ID cards in a number of countries and the associated arguments challenging these attempts.

It is inevitable that in the aftermath of crises such as September 11 concern for the security of the nation will seem to outweigh individual privacy rights. This government has introduced a number of bills that raise serious privacy issues, and in the context of such legislation as well as the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency database on foreign travel activities, the lawful access discussion paper, the current proposal for an ID card strikes many that the government is clearly overreacting.

Simply put, Canadians neither need nor desire a national identity card. It's being advertised as a solution to identity theft and as a means to ensure with as much certainty as possible that terrorists can be identified and apprehended. In addition, the convenience of a single piece of identification for facilitating the multitude of transactions that Canadians must deal with is also being promoted as an advantage.

Finally, warnings are being issued that without an ID card Canadians will have difficulty entering the United States. It should be noted that in spite of efforts shortly after September 11 to introduce a national ID card in the U.S., no such system has been implemented and none is on the horizon. Furthermore, many conservatives and liberals voiced public opposition to this idea.

For example, the conservative columnist for the New York Times, William Safire, expressed his opposition as follows:

However, the fear of terror attack is being exploited by law enforcement sweeping for suspects as well as by commercial marketers seeking prospects. It has emboldened the zealots of intrusion to press for the holy grail of snoopery--a mandatory national ID.

Why then should Canadians be required to carry an ID card? In what follows I'll attempt to survey--necessarily briefly--a variety of positions on the introduction of national ID cards, concluding that only under very special technical conditions can they be effective for certain purposes. However, it must be emphasized that in principle ID cards can be dangerous devices inimical to the basic tenets of a democratic society.

They contribute to the loss of anonymity because they will encourage law enforcement officials to demand their presentation anywhere and any time. It's also inevitable that their purpose and application will expand so-called function creep, not because it's necessary but because it's possible.

Witness the history of the social insurance number in Canada. The availability of an apparently unique identifier resulted in a host of mundane uses beyond any initial expectations. And Parliament seemed to be unable or unwilling to curtail such extraneous applications.

In this document I go into examples in other countries, and that I'm not going to mention here. But you can find these examples of people in a variety of countries, including in this example countries like Greece, Singapore, Brazil, and Portugal, and on and on.

What I would like to talk about now very briefly is some issues that will have to be taken into account.

For example, about a year ago a number of organizations, both conservative and liberal, sent a letter to President Bush expressing their concern about the issue of whether or not one could convert state drivers' licences to a uniform format that would serve as a national ID card. Among their concerns were that a national ID would not prevent terrorism,; a national ID would depend on a massive bureaucracy that would limit basic freedoms; a national ID would be expensive and direct resources away from other more effective counterterrorism measures; it would both contribute to identity fraud and make it more difficult. This is in the submitted document.

Finally, a national ID could require all Americans to carry an internal passport at all times, compromising our privacy, limiting our freedom, and exposing us to unfair discrimination based on national origin or religion.

I have provided some examples in this document of what is on the identity cards of different countries around the world, expressing their concern and their needs to identify certain categories of citizens, whether by religion, whether by social status, whether by a whole bunch of characteristics that find their way onto the national ID card. For these reasons and for many more, I think one should certainly limit these.

I also tried to provide some technical and professional concerns. Given that I am a computer scientist, after all, I suppose I have some knowledge about the kinds of technologies underlying these cards, but again, it's difficult to discuss these in the context of this presentation.

There were hearings held in the U.S. in 2001, I think in November, on the question of a national ID card that ultimately led to nothing. But in those hearings, computer scientists testified, and representatives of the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union, and others, all arguing against it. One of my colleagues, Professor Ben Shneiderman of the University of Maryland, a member of the ACM, which is major professional organization for academic and research computer scientists, presented arguments against the card, and he made the following note:

Proponents of the National ID system suggest that cards will authenticate the identity ofindividuals. However, the positive identification of individuals does not equate totrustworthiness or lack of criminal intent. [Original emphasis]. ..A national ID systemrequires a complex integration of social and technical systems, including humans to enter andverify data, plus hardware, software and networks to store and transmit. Such socio-technicalsystems are always vulnerable to error, breakdown, sabotage and destruction by naturalevents or by people with malicious intentions.

The committee would be wise also to look at a report issued by the National Research Council in the U.S. in 2002 after it had been asked by the government to look into this issue. It's rather short, but it has, I think, some very interesting issues raised about the use of such cards. Of course, they mention many of the same things you have heard already and are hearing today. For example:

Given the potential economic costs, significant design and implementation challenges,and risks to both security and privacy, there should be broad agreement on whatproblem(s) a nationwide identity system would address. Once there is agreement on theproblem(s) to be solved, alternatives to identity systems should also be considered aspotential solutions to whatever problem(s) is identified and agreed upon.

They have a lot more to say, and the committee that actually made this proposal consists of computer scientists and social scientists, all very prominent given the importance of the National Research Council in the U.S.

Let me go directly to some conclusions.

Let me clearly state in conclusion that Electronic Frontier Canada is opposed to the introduction of the national ID card both in principle and in practice. Such cards will not work for the purposes enunciated by Minister Coderre; namely, of identity theft and ease of crossing into the U.S. In addition, they will not deter terrorism, as the mere possession of the card cannot supply the information needed to apprehend a suspected terrorist. Among the other concerns are the potential loss of a major right in democratic society, the right to be anonymous, the right to be let alone. The existence of an ID card would see an increase in the demand to see the card by law enforcement wherever and whenever they see fit.

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Let me just mention here the five reasons against the national ID card proposed by the American Civil Liberties Union, which should reinforce our local Civil Liberties Association's position. A national ID card would not solve the problem that's inspiring it. It would lead to the slippery slope of surveillance and monitoring of citizens. It would require the creation of a database of all Americans--read “Canadians” for these purposes. ID cards would function as internal passports that monitor citizens' movements. ID cards would foster new forms of discrimination and harassment.

The call for discussion and debate on ID cards is premature; Parliament has not done its homework. This submission and many others, I'm sure, have raised a host of serious questions about the need, purpose, and dangers associated with an ID card.

I include in this proposal some of the work by Dr. Stefan Brands, a former scientist at Zero-Knowledge Systems, a privacy company, who now has his own company. He is the author of a very well-known book on encryption, and he argues that on the face of it such cards violate privacy. He makes arguments about some technical means that could limit that if implemented.

If there remains a serious interest in national ID cards after this series of hearings, then the House must undertake a serious study of associated technical, political, and social issues. However, challenges mounted in this submission and no doubt in many others, including the results of studies in other countries as well as historical evidence, should provide convincing reasons to terminate further consideration.

As I mentioned before, the U.S., the primary target of international terrorism on September 11, has decided yet again not to proceed with the introduction of a national ID card system. In this context Canada should follow suit.

Thank you.

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The Chair: Thank you, Professor.

We now have another professor, Wesley Pue.

Dr. W. Wesley Pue (Professor of Law, Law Faculty, University of British Columbia): Thank you.

I'm delighted to hear the presentations of my colleagues, all of which I endorse.

We all confront the common problem: what is this we're talking about? It's a bit imprecise. On the other hand, I think it's not a bad idea for a minister to float an idea and see what kind of reaction it generates. It's one way of getting information, so I applaud the opportunity to participate in that.

The Chair: It seems Parliament is damned if we do and damned if we don't. Usually we get accused of stepping up to the plate after the fact as opposed to, as I said before when we started, having a blank sheet and having Canadians debate a concept or a view before a government or anybody puts something on the table. I think I rather like this idea a heck of a lot better than sometimes having to respond to legislation that's preconceived, pre-designed, and pre-everything.

Dr. W. Wesley Pue: And it may be very hard to get it off the table once it has been introduced.

The Chair: Precisely.

Dr. W. Wesley Pue: Let me go back to what Parliament should be thinking about, then, with regard to this particular problem.

When Parliament considers introducing a new program, I think it should keep three questions in mind. First of all, what problem is in need of being fixed? Second, is the possible proposed solution to that problem economically feasible and cost-effective? And third, is it desirable in a social and political sense?

My tentative conclusion on all that is that we don't know what the problem is that an identity card might fix, and that in itself is perhaps a good reason to back off on the idea. As to the second and third questions, the answers are pretty clearly, I think: no and no.

The British Conservative government under John Major contemplated introducing a national identity card and backed off on the idea very quickly when they concluded that it would not produce the kinds of benefits that common sense seemed to suggest it might.

Crudely put, the problem of crime or terrorism is not one of people concealing identities but of people concealing intentions until it's too late. Police officers tend not to have trouble confirming the identity of somebody who's been arrested. If people declared themselves as terrorists intent on great evil, then it would be one thing, but they tend not to do that.

The cost of a national identity card is hard to estimate. Figures produced by the privacy commissioner of Canada suggested something like $3 billion to $5 billion dollars to implement a program. Ontario's smart card was estimated to cost something like $500 million in setup and then to have annual costs after that. In Britain estimates are between £1 billion and £3 billion to set up a program and hundreds of millions of pounds each year to sustain it. So it's not inconsequential on the financial cost side.

The Chair: It's like the gun registry, right?

Dr. W. Wesley Pue: I thought it would be impolitic to mention the gun registry in any forum such as this. I'll let you folks do that later.

The Chair: I can.

Dr. W. Wesley Pue: Now, is a card useful? An identity card you carry around with a fingerprint on it could presumably be fairly easily forged by a sophisticated criminal or terrorist. It becomes useful only if the card one carries around is linked to some kind of permanent database that contains information that aids in identifying the individual. This requires application-level access to that database by a large number of low-level functionaries if they are to confirm identity. If you don't have that kind of access, you have a severe problem with forgery. If you do have that kind of access, you have a severe problem with privacy.

My colleagues have mentioned the problem of function creep. I would like to add another problem, and that's data creep. A card that has minimal information presents minimal danger to privacy, but a card that has minimal information is of minimal utility to anybody. The more useful a card is from the point of view of security, identification of individuals, or anything else, the more information it must contain.

There is a mutually reinforcing circular relationship between the demand for data and the demand for functions. As a new function is envisioned, new data will be required to be maintained on the card or the central database it links to. As new data is added to the card or the central database, more functional demands will be made of it. There is indeed a downward spiral of greater and greater intrusions on privacy as times goes on.

The question of access to international travel, in particular to the United States, has been in the background of this debate. I think it's important for Parliament to bear in mind that there are two relationships Canada wants to deal with. One is the relationship of Canadian citizens to their own government, and that's a sacred relationship, a very special one that should be respected and accorded a great deal of privacy. The other is a question of what relationship foreign governments might have with our own citizens as we travel abroad. That is a different question.

If the United States or another country makes privacy invasion demands of us as we travel, we have a choice as to whether to go to those places. We don't have a choice as to whether to stay in our country or not. The Canadian government should be very reluctant to engage in a course of conduct that threatens our privacy domestically for the purpose of providing greater access to international travel.

The only other thing I'd add about that is that if we are indeed concerned about access to travel to the United States, it's worth bearing in mind that other countries will require parity over the course of time with whatever arrangements are made with the United States. There are other countries, frankly, that are not as nice as the United States. They have governments that are not as trustworthy as that of the United States and that do not have traditions that respect civil liberties in the way we do, and it might be very, very dangerous to share detailed data with them about Canadian citizens as they travel.

Thank you very much.

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The Chair: Thank you.

I should point out to you that we also had a submission from the B.C. privacy commissioner, and as well this morning we heard from Frank Work, who is the privacy and information commissioner of Alberta. Both are on record as being against it, but I thought the commissioner for Alberta had a great line in his submission as to the potential problems some of you have indicated: don't leave home without it.

Anyway, let's get to some questions. Lynne.

Mrs. Lynne Yelich: Actually, I'd like David to tell them why he thinks the ID card is a good idea, and then I'd like to hear all four of them say what they would answer him in their defence.

Let's start with David and then I'll ask my question. Then I would like each of you four answer why you think his reasons....

Mr. David Price: First of all, my idea on it was definitely not tied to a database. What I was looking at it, the idea I thought had a possibility, was identity theft. That's what bothered me the most. I have had my credit cards stolen twice and have gone through that hassle. What I had in mind was something more along the lines of biometrics on a card.

But as I say, I'm looking a little more at it. First of all, I think it would have to be provincial. I don't think we can do it federally. It would be something that would tie in my driver's licence, my medicare card, and probably my birth certificate, all of which are done right now by the same operation in Quebec. I'm from Quebec. As we speak, it's one operation there, but there are three separate cards. I would like that on one card with some type of biometrics on it in the sense that the reader is not tied to a database. It's just to prove that I am that person.

That's an overall view of what I have in mind.

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The Chair: Okay.

Do you want to respond to that?

Mr. Craig Jones: Maybe I'll answer for the civil liberties, and I'll turn it over to my friends.

I think when we debated this at the BCCLA, I probably had more sympathy for that position than most of the members of the board. Let me tell you why I've changed my mind.

We have a lot of types of ID. I went through my drawers and my wallet and actually collected them--and this is just government ID. I have my social insurance number, which of course has a unique identifier, an early--well, not really unique--biometric identifier in the form of a signature; my American social security number from student days; my Canadian citizenship card, again with two biometric identifiers, a photograph and a signature; a pair of passports; and then of course, the foundation of them all, ironically, is my birth certificate, which is probably the most easily forged and certainly the easiest to get a copy of. And this is the foundation of all of them.

The Chair: You can get big money for that if you're travelling.

Mr. Craig Jones: I'll keep that under advisement.

What I take your proposal to be is simply a self-contained card with harder biometrics than currently exist in the form of a photograph or a signature to prove that the person in front of you is in fact the person on the card. The difficulty with that is the same as the difficulty with the current biometrics, which is that anyone with sufficient sophistication can forge them. And given the level of sophistication in computers in the private sector now, I think there's probably at least as much sophistication there as there is in the government.

So I don't think a truly hard independent identifier can be created, and I think if that sort of regime were put in place, once the flaws in it were realized, they would say, oh well, we just have to go one more little step. And that's to have the central database, where the guy in the field can simply hit the button and the biometric can be compared with the centrally stored biometric. And then you open up, of course, the world of problems we've been talking about.

So it's not that conceptually I have a great deal of difficulty with the idea of a stand-alone biometric. It's simply that it won't work, and once that's realized, then they're going to have to creep up, as it were.

Mr. David Price: I would go a bit further and say that one of the reasons I look at.... My wife is an immigrant and has a nice citizenship card that I can't have, and I actually become the second-class citizen because I don't have that card. I mean, she uses that. She doesn't need a birth certificate. She doesn't need anything. But if I go to apply for a passport, I have to have my original birth certificate. She doesn't need that; all she needs is that card.

Mr. Craig Jones: Yet, there's nothing on that card that is concurrent with the government's present proposal.

The Chair: Don't keep referring to it as a proposal. There is no proposal.

Mr. David Price: After having my credit card stolen twice, I now have a card that has a picture and my signature imbedded in it, not just the one that you write on the back.

The Chair: Maybe the question could be whether there is an existing document that can be used as a national identity card, something that was proposed or thought of before--a SIN, a passport, a citizenship card, a maple leaf card, a provincial card--that can serve the purpose. I think that's the other side of the argument. Is there a particular card now in existence that can also function as a national identifier?

Mr. David Price: I think, Mr. Chair, one of the things the minister had in mind also was that we didn't want to talk about passports, because they actually show the place of birth. We wanted to eliminate that to stop racial profiling, or at least to help out in that situation.

Mr. Jason Gratl: One of the specific problems that have been identified is the question of credit card fraud. As far as I know, every company in the world requires a signature on the back of that card because signatures are generally very unique and difficult to copy. Signatures are required for security purposes. They are essentially biometric. One body can produce them, other bodies can't, so the person who can duplicate that signature is to a high standard of probability the same person whose signature is on the back of that card.

In this situation I think we have a widespread failure to use that biometric identifier. A lot of credit card transactions are processed without reference to that signature. A security system is already well in place but it's not being employed. The answer to this problem is not a national identity card; it's verifying the signature on the back of the card. What proportion of credit card fraud relies on the failure to use the existing security system? I don't know. There is no reliable data that I'm aware of.

I think issues like this keep coming up. Problems exist, but the answer is not to flee to this draconian measure, effectively eliminating privacy and mounting total surveillance against the population. The answer is to look on the micro level. Where does the system break down? How can we answer that specific problem? In the case of credit card fraud the answer is obvious. It rests with the failure--

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The Chair: I have to move along because other people want to answer.

Richard.

Prof. Richard Rosenberg: It's not quite that simple, because there are people involved in these systems, and one of the breakdowns with a credit card is that people don't look carefully at the signature. Even so, people don't sign the same way twice. There's enough variance in a signature that there is a lot of flexibility in deciding whether to have a signature or not.

A report came down last week from the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, formerly the National Bureau of Standards. They looked at two forms of biometric identification, pictures and fingerprints, and reported that neither one was sufficient to uniquely identify anyone. Combined, they work okay if the database doesn't get too big.

One of the problems is that we have limited time to do this. You want to get a service but can't wait around while they run through large databases of individuals. The trouble with pictures is to verify a picture you need to take a picture of someone and match it against another picture, and it depends on how the picture was taken. The current one must have been done extremely carefully. Too much sunlight...a whole bunch of things.

This is the state of the research now. In my former life in computer science I did artificial intelligence, which is where some of these techniques are coming from. I wish I were back there now, because the funding is extremely good for facial recognition, fingerprints, and any other thing you care to look at. But these are all difficult technologies to work with on a large level. We're not as big as the U.S. We only have a tenth of their population so we're better off, but we're not that much better off, in the current state of the technology.

So the forging of documents and the difficulty of matching appropriately make this whole area quite problematic.

The Chair: Wesley.

Dr. W. Wesley Pue: I actually think I might be happier giving my thumbprint to my bank than to the Government of Canada.

Mrs. Lynne Yelich: On function creep, that's really an interesting new buzzword. We're going from bracket creep to function creep. I would like you to tell us what you mean by function creep. How many functions do you think can creep into this card?

Prof. Richard Rosenberg: Why was it necessary to give my social insurance card to rent shoes at a bowling place? Is that the only way?

I moved to Nova Scotia, where I lived for a couple of years. When I got there I wanted to get cable TV so I could watch movies. They asked me for my social insurance number. I asked why they needed my social insurance number for me to watch television, and they said they wanted to make sure they could reach me if I took away the equipment. I couldn't leave them a deposit; they needed my social insurance number.

A few weeks later there was a visit from the CRTC exploring some of the companies there. I sent a letter saying I'd like to appear before the CRTC to talk about the licence for the cable company. I got a letter from them saying they didn't actually need my SIN; they could get by with my health card. But in some places the health card has the SIN number, so at some point they said, oh well, give us a credit card number--which is what most places do when you rent. When you rent a car, you give them your credit card number so they can recover it in case you split with the car.

Well, that's a personal experience of mine. What was the SIN card produced for? For health reasons. Of course, it was mandated to be used for the Wheat Board as well if you were in the Prairies.

A colleague urged me to introduce the famous statement of Prime Minister Pearson in the House. When asked by former Prime Minister Diefenbaker to assure him that this card, the SIN number, would be used only for the purposes for which it was introduced, Prime Minister Pearson assured him and the House and the nation it would.

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Mrs. Lynne Yelich: Yes, that's a good example. Are there any other examples?

Mr. Craig Jones: Well, I think you can look at any form of identification and see how it, or close alternatives to it, are demanded in a host of circumstances. The driver's licence purpose was obvious at the time it was introduced, but because it has a particular series of linkages--because it links the name with the face and also with an address--it's of particular use, especially commercially. Again, when you rent a video, maybe they're not going to ask for your social insurance number but they're certainly going to ask to see your driver's licence. They're going to want to know your address. Anyone who wants to know your address is going to ask for this particular bit of information. You're going to be entered into a database. You're going to get junk mail, and who knows what they're going to link it with.

I think you can look at any piece of identification and find that whatever it links to that is of interest or value to someone, then those are the areas where the creep is going to occur. But it's not just government, obviously, that we have to worry about. There are huge commercial interests. Information is money.

Dr. W. Wesley Pue: I'd like to take that to another point, which is to recognize that civil servants are not necessarily bad people, that most people working in government bureaucracies and police forces and security forces and customs and immigration and passport control think they are doing good thing, and indeed they are doing good things for the most part.

The problem of function creep, to me, occurs purely from recognizing that, and then to imagining, once we have this technology, what are the reasonable demands, bit by bit, incrementally, that well-meaning, good people will put upon the system?

So let us go from the point of now having an ID card. For it to be useful, it has to be linked to a central database. Otherwise, it's too easily forged. Now there's a central database that has my name, my age, some physical characteristics and a thumbprint.

The very next thing that's bound to happen is that the police are going to start asking for proof of identity whenever they have to stop you. Police have lots of good lawful reasons for stopping people and asking who they are and what they're about. They also stop them for bad reasons, but they have lots of good reasons. When a cop stops somebody for a good reason, it will be natural to ask for a national ID card if such a thing is in existence. Well, when the police have that, they're going to go and ask the next question: how come, when we access this card, we can't find out whether somebody's a convicted pedophile or a rapist, or the rest of their criminal record?

So there will be data linkages immediately and at every stage along the process, as very well-meaning, good Canadian public servants do their jobs, adding a little bit of information here and a little bit of information there until you have a mega database, the accuracy of which can't be guaranteed entirely. The accumulation of these multiple additions and small functions, I think, is the very slippery slope you're on. At each stage it's logical. The technology seems to mandate that you add the function.

The Chair: Okay. Andrew.

Mr. Andrew Telegdi (Kitchener—Waterloo, Lib.): There is a real desire on the part of people to reduce the volume of their wallets. Many of us have sore backs. But this is not the way to do it.

I disagree with the chair. I think that before a minister floats an idea like this and takes a great deal of time across the country, we have more input out there, and I think this criticism came from one of the privacy commissioners.

The incredible problem with databases is.... On a smaller scale, we saw what happened with Co-operators Insurance in Saskatchewan. Yesterday in the National Post I saw that somebody gained access to 3.4 million credit cards, with 100,000 Canadians involved. Credit cards are a problem, and some of them are really stupid.

I know about six months ago or so, I didn't get my receipt from a gas station where I had put my credit card in. The next thing you know I was buying flowers in Montreal and all over the place while I was someplace else. When I looked at the problem, I said why the hell did you guys put the whole number on it? I phoned up the bank and told them it was stupid, and they actually fixed it, ultimately. They don't give out your whole number now, and I guess maybe I had something to do with it.

You mentioned the Civil Liberties Association, and I'm glad to see, Craig, you've pulled out your citizenship card. Your colleague mentioned the echo of jackboots behind the Iron Curtain, particularly for disenfranchised groups. I happen to have heard the echos of jackboots behind the Iron Curtain, having come from there. It's interesting to know that Hungary, which under the Iron Curtain used to require a national identity card, once it became democratic had no national identity card.

But getting into those particular comments and the role of the Civil Liberties Association, I really hope you take a look at the Citizenship Act and give us some feedback, because there really are jackboots echoing on the revocation of citizenship, and you might be surprised just how vulnerable your citizenship card is. I doubt if there was good intent behind those people when they made those proposals for the existing act.

I agree with you, it's a frightening thought. We're going back to 1984 in terms of what this represents in the future.

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Mr. Craig Jones: Earlier on in the question you identified something we haven't talked much about. Professor Pue identified the problem of well-meaning people using this card for unintended purposes. But of course there is another problem, which is people using it illegally for abusive purposes.

Then there's the third problem that you alluded to in the second part of your question, which is that we can't necessarily ensure that 10, 20, or 30 years down the road the people working in the federal government are always going to be the well-meaning people. Governments change. People come into power and have access to this information, which in retrospect we would not give them.

I wish I knew more about the present Citizenship Act, and I would be pleased to make submissions on that on another day.

The Chair: I like the way Andrew worked it in. No, I know that. I'm just joking.

But you might be interested in that, and I know the Civil Liberties Association was supposed to show up on a couple of occasions and didn't. So you might want to take a look at that.

Mr. Craig Jones: Was that the B.C. Civil Liberties Association or Canadian? Do you know?

The Chair: No, I think it was B.C.

Mr. Craig Jones: I can't imagine we passed up an opportunity to talk.

The Chair: I know. You might want to take a look at it and give us your opinion on it.

Sophia.

Ms. Sophia Leung: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

So far I haven't heard any positive comments on the ID card. I assume that's your consensus. Let's start this way.

Suppose someone, for business or personal reasons, has to travel around the world. In many places, including the U.S., without any control it's easy to be pulled off to the side and told, we want your fingerprints. It's really an insult, right? How, in this process, can we have a preventive measure to protect the Canadian in global travel?

Another thing, Professor Rosenberg, is that in your paper you cited five other countries that use this. Can you comment on whether there has been any positive reflection on using the ID card?

Prof. Richard Rosenberg: The examples I gave were taken from a survey done by Privacy International, a British organization similar to our local one. I think, obviously, in the case they were making they wanted to provide quotations from individuals in different countries who were unhappy with the way their countries function. We know that Singapore is not the most democratic country in the world, and clearly the ID card is used there for purposes that are not terribly benevolent. Many countries include racial and religious information on their card, and I would guess that a Canadian card wouldn't have such information.

The issue is that in times of great stress and difficulty there's a real temptation to put on that card information that at that time is seen to help identify and control the access and movement of people belonging to certain nationalities, groups, colours, and religions. How would you resist it? We'd say, no, we can't do that. Canadian principles don't allow that. But we're in a different situation now. We have to do something.

Following up on what Professor Pue said, it's also the population that will change in a generation. The existence of a certain kind of card at one stage may be difficult to live with, but if you live with that card for one generation, that's a way of life for the next generation. That's not something to be particularly concerned about; we've always done it this way. That's the concern I have.

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The Chair: On the fundamental question that Sophia asked, would a card serve the purpose of better protecting Canadians--

Prof. Richard Rosenberg: I'm not sure why it would be better than the passport.

The Chair: That's a good point. Is a passport okay?

Prof. Richard Rosenberg: I'm not sure. I hadn't thought about that. I've travelled overseas many times. The passport has been my basic identification. That's all anybody wants to see. Hotels want to see it when you register and so on, and that seems to be sufficient. That's used for that particular purpose at that time, not as a universal identifier.

The Chair: Sophia, on the same point, and then we have to move on.

Ms. Sophia Leung: There are several incidents of Canadians being pulled aside. That is my concern.

Mr. Craig Jones: That's what I'd like to address. The suggestion was that perhaps a national identification card that was strong and secure but did not identify, for instance, place of birth might actually allow people to pass more freely between Canada and the United States. The problem is that right now the United States is interested in the place of birth because that's one of the filters they're using for terrorism. If that isn't on the card or in the database being provided to the U.S. authorities, then they're going to want to collect it. They have the right to control their own borders. This card doesn't provide any solution to that problem, in our view.

The Chair: A recommendation that was brought up two or three times was to change the passport and get rid of the place of origin or birth. It would not be required, and therefore it would not cause anybody any problems.

Mr. Craig Jones: I think that would be an excellent idea. But they would still be free to try to collect that information on their own.

The Chair: Sure.

That gets to my point. It goes to the three tests. What's the motivation behind this? This country has debated a national ID card before for different reasons. Let's face it, the federal government doesn't have national ID on a lot of things. Their foundation documents are mostly provincial. We have the SIN, the citizenship card, and the passport. Not everybody is a citizen, so how do you deal with that? We now have made the leap. Not everybody has a passport.

Is it about identity theft? If it is, will a card achieve that objective? If the answer is no, because it can be done in so many other ways.... I'll give you an example. Right now Joe Fontana has 14 cards in his pocket that identify me as Joe Fontana. If I were to throw all those away and have only one card, is that going to make it easier or more difficult to steal my identity? I'm afraid that it would probably make it easier. When one person has to duplicate that one card, all of a sudden they don't have to worry about trying to replicate 14 cards, as inconvenient as that might be.

But is that the ultimate protection, having so many cards obviously linked to different databases but forcing someone to have to do more than one function? That's what the commissioner said. Boy, that one card is going to be worth an awful lot of money somewhere in the world if they want to steal your identity for criminal, commercial, and other types of uses.

What is the motivation? If it's identity theft, how can we deal with it if it's a real problem?

Secondly, is this all about the United States causing us some difficulties? Any national identity card will have to be accepted internationally or they'll ask you not only for your national ID but, as Richard said, for your passport, because it's the international travel document that's accepted by everyone.

So is it to deal with a transborder situation and appease the Americans? They may want to ask everybody in the world to have national identity cards, but if you asked them to do the same they'd say, of course not, you're not going to invade our privacy. That's what they've already said. Everybody in the world except them should have national identity cards. That's rather peculiar.

I want you to deal with those issues. What do you think are some of the problems, if we have any problems? Is it a question of fear? In this era of post-September 11 that everybody's talking about, we're reacting as opposed to being a little more proactive.

Richard, in your estimation, what has been the failure rate with some of those biometric identifiers?

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Prof. Richard Rosenberg: It's hard to say. The first major test was done about three years ago at the Super Bowl in Florida, where they photographed everybody going into the stadium--80,000 people. They had a database of 10,000 photographs of suspicious people--possible terrorists, criminals, and whatever. They didn't have one hit. So maybe no one in their database was there, or someone was there and it didn't work. That was highly publicized and was seen as an example of the technology not being as good.

Since then, because of September 11, an enormous amount of money has been put into this area and the systems are getting better. The computers are faster; the techniques aren't that much smarter.

In the NIST test, if you used both fingerprints and faces you got at best in the order of 70% accuracy, which is not bad. It could be a lot worse.

The Chair: If you're looking for a terrorist, 30% is a big margin, isn't it?

Prof. Richard Rosenberg: That's right. It only gets the good ones if the photographs taken of people.... A camera photographs a person and that picture is compared against stored pictures. The fingerprints are then taken in.

By the way, it turns out that fingerprints, which a lot of the criminal prosecutions rely on, are not that good either. If you look at some of the ways fingerprints are matched, there's an enormous amount of personal opinion involved. You can't match fingerprints solely by computer. Computers narrow the possible range of fingerprints to look at, and then somebody has to look at them and say whether they match on a certain number of points or not. A personal decision is made.

The Chair: Do we have any problem whatsoever? Wesley, if there's a problem, what's the fix? The existing foundation documents, both provincial and federal, have to be fixed to be the answer to identity theft or better identification. Can you comment on that, Wesley?

Mr. W. Wesley Pue: I guess we've all watched those old movies where the bad guy goes to the graveyard and finds a baby born in the same year they were and steals their identity. Proving identity is something we need to be concerned about, but the idea that there's an easy fix to it is another one.

In response to Ms. Leung's question, I think it is really important to distinguish between what we do for our purposes domestically in Canada in relation to our government and what we do to satisfy another country, be it the United States or somebody else. The slippery slope of the identity card is that as we add that to the pre-existing international document, the passport, and layer more and more information upon that, we end up sharing that not just with the United States but also with France, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and other places we may not want to.

So from the point of view that there may be a problem with cross-border travel in North America, where we've had privileged access in the past, we need to confront that question square on. We may have to accept the fact that we may need to have passports in the future to go to the United States. Hopefully we won't need visas, but if we do, we'll have to live with that. There may be international pressure to increase and improve the security features around passports, but I think all of that must be dealt with in the international arena and with the knowledge that you're not creating a document just for the United States.

If we go the other step and create something just for the United States and then find it's in demand in much nastier countries, we'll have done a great disservice not only to the relationship between our government and ourselves, but also to our citizens' relationships with other places where they may travel.

Mr. Craig Jones I'd just add that the clumsiness of the passport, like the clumsiness of the multiple ID system itself, does have some value. If you actually have to staple a visa into the passport, put a physical stamp in a passport, there are advantages to that.

First of all, it disappears when you renew your passport. In five years you can go to a country and they can't see the complete history of where you've been. If you're using a single card as a substitute for the passport, you have to tag it some way. You have to tag it with the visa information and the history of travel information. You might want to match it with the airline information we're now collecting. Who will that information be available to?

I think Professor Pue has outlined some real concerns, because you're going to have to make that available, at least on a limited basis, to the security forces of other countries. That could be a very dangerous proposition.

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The Chair: Thank you very much.

Again, this is only the start of the debate. The debate may not last long at all. It might shut down fairly quickly or go on. We might want to look at the experiences, positive and negative, of other countries.

Obviously we want to totally canvass everyone on the issue and the idea and make some sort of report. I thank you very much for your thoughtful input and for providing us with some guidance and, more importantly, some questions. Thank you so much.

We're adjourned. Thank you, Vancouver. See you tonight and tomorrow.