CIMM Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Wednesday, May 14, 2003

¹

1535

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

Mr. Michel Dorais (Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration)

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1540

The Chair

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy (Calgary—Nose Hill, Canadian Alliance)

Mr. Michel Dorais

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy

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1545

Mr. Michel Dorais

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy

Mr. Michel Dorais

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy

The Chair

Mr. Michel Dorais

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy

Mr. Michel Dorais

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy

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1550

Mr. Michel Dorais

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy

The Chair

Mr. Michel Dorais

The Chair

Mr. Massimo Pacetti (Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, Lib.)

Mr. Michel Dorais

Mr. Massimo Pacetti

Mr. Michel Dorais

Mr. Massimo Pacetti

Mr. Michel Dorais

Mr. Massimo Pacetti

Mr. Michel Dorais

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1555

Mr. Massimo Pacetti

Mr. Michel Dorais

Mr. Massimo Pacetti

Mr. Michel Dorais

The Chair

Mr. Michel Dorais

The Chair

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral (Laval Centre)

Mr. Michel Dorais

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1600

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral

Mr. Daniel Jean (Acting Assistant Deputy Minister, Policy and Program Development, Department of Citizenship and Immigration)

Mr. Michel Dorais

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral

Mr. Michel Dorais

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral

Mr. Michel Dorais

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1605

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral

The Chair

Mr. Michel Dorais

The Chair

Mr. John O'Reilly (Haliburton—Victoria—Brock, Lib.)

Mr. Michel Dorais

Mr. John O'Reilly

Mr. Michel Dorais

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1610

Mr. John O'Reilly

Mr. Michel Dorais

Mr. John O'Reilly

Mr. Michel Dorais

Mr. John O'Reilly

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1615

Mr. Michel Dorais

The Chair

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy

Mr. Michel Dorais

The Chair

Mr. Michel Dorais

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy

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1620

Mr. Michel Dorais

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1625

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy

Mr. Michel Dorais

Ms. Lyse Ricard (Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration)

Mr. Michel Dorais

The Chair

Mr. Michel Dorais

The Chair

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy

Mr. Michel Dorais

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy

Mr. Michel Dorais

The Chair

Mr. Michel Dorais

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1630

The Chair

Mr. Michel Dorais

The Chair

Mr. Michel Dorais

The Chair

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

Mr. Michel Dorais

Mr. Andrew Telegdi

Mr. Michel Dorais

Mr. Daniel Jean

Mr. Andrew Telegdi

Mr. Michel Dorais

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1635

Mr. Daniel Jean

Mr. Michel Dorais

Mr. Andrew Telegdi

Mr. Michel Dorais

Mr. Andrew Telegdi

Mr. Michel Dorais

Mr. Andrew Telegdi

Mr. Michel Dorais

The Chair

Mr. Andrew Telegdi

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1640

The Chair

Mr. Michel Dorais

The Chair

Mr. Michel Dorais

The Chair

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1645

Mr. Michel Dorais

The Chair

Mr. Michel Dorais

Ms. Lyse Ricard

Mr. Michel Dorais

The Chair

Ms. Lyse Ricard

Mr. Michel Dorais

The Chair

º

1650

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral

Mr. Michel Dorais

The Chair

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy

Mr. Michel Dorais

The Chair

Mr. Michel Dorais

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1655

Mr. Daniel Jean

Mr. Michel Dorais

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy

Mr. Michel Dorais

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy

Mr. Michel Dorais

Mr. Daniel Jean

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The Chair

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CANADA

Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration

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NUMBER 059

l

2nd SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

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EVIDENCE

Wednesday, May 14, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

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[English]

    The Chair (Mr. Joe Fontana (London North Centre, Lib.)): Good afternoon, colleagues.

    This afternoon I want to thank the departmental administration, Deputy Minister Michel Dorais, Assistant Deputy Minister Lyse Ricard, Daniel Jean, Alfred MacLeod, Gerry Derouin, and David Dunbar, for being here in response to the Auditor General's report with regard to chapter 5, “Control and Enforcement”.

    So let me thank you on behalf of the committee, Mr. Deputy Minister. We'll go right to your opening statement, and then I'm sure we'll have some questions for you.

    Mr. Michel Dorais (Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration): Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members. Let me thank you for inviting us today.

    As this committee is fairly familiar with our work, I will keep my remarks very, very short and be guided by questions instead.

    The work of Citizenship and Immigration is a constant search for an equilibrium between welcoming visitors, immigrants, and refugees and ensuring that those who should not be in Canada find it difficult to enter or are promptly removed from our soil. Fortunately, almost all of the approximately 110 million people who cross our border every year are here for legitimate purposes and are most welcome in our country.

    There was, is, and will always be a need for enforcement measures to maintain the integrity of our program, and this is the part of our program the Auditor General has commented upon and is helping us to improve. The department welcomes her recommendations, and follow-up work has already started. However, there's no magic bullet, no ideal program designed that can filter out all the bad people and let only the good people in. Our best avenue is to work hard at improving the situation within the limits of the appropriations and the legislative framework approved by Parliament.

    Mr. Chairman, we see our program as a continuum along which potential immigrants go through selection decisions, land in Canada, integrate into Canadian society, and eventually become Canadian citizens. In fact, I should remind all of us that approximately 84% of all immigrants and refugees in our country eventually become Canadian citizens.

    Similarly, every potential journey to Canada is also a continuum, with a series of borders or checkpoints along the way. At each of those points there has to be a match made among the person, a travel document, and intelligence. This concept, which is at the very heart of our action, is known as the multiple border strategy or multiple border system. What is behind this strategy is our intelligence-based enforcement program. This means we take action at each checkpoint along this multiple border to strengthen immigration and refugee screening.

[Translation]

    We have strengthened the first line of defence abroad by removing the visa exemption on several countries. Our network of migration integrity specialists--formerly known as immigration control officers--are engaged in a variety of activities, including interdiction, intelligence, screening and anti-fraud.

    I'm happy to report that 70% of people with improper document trying to come to Canada are now stopped overseas. This is up from 30% in 1990. In fact, our program has been so successful that other countries such as the US and UK are building their networks based on our experience.

    We have our shared border with the US. Canada and the United States have been long-standing partners in the combat against terrorism and irregular migration. For example, both countries exchange systematically lookouts on terrorists since 1997. This cooperation has intensified under the Smart Border Action Plan.

    In June 2002 we introduced the Permanent Resident Card. It is the best of its kind, and it closes one of Canada's most serious vulnerabilities.

    In addition, all asylum claimants are now subject to a full security examination upon arrival and we are vetting advanced information on passengers to better target our inspections according to risks.

[English]

    At a broader level, Canada Customs and Revenue Agency and CIC recently signed a memorandum of understanding. Among other things it sets the stage for an effective evaluation of the primary and secondary inspection lines.

    The domestic enforcement program is one of our biggest challenges, and it is very costly. Canada does not have entry-exit controls to determine with precision whether those who enter Canada temporarily actually leave Canada when they should. We do not detain people systematically, and we do not have a tradition of tracking people when they move around in our country. These are political choices that were made a long time ago. In that context, our approach is to deal with the highest-risk cases first and then to take action. Our key concern remains the safety of Canadians, and this is our priority for where we invest our enforcement resources.

    To conclude, I'd like to reiterate that we welcome the Auditor General's recommendations and that we also welcome this opportunity to discuss her report with this committee. My department clearly faces several challenges, but we have a strategy to follow, we have an action plan, and I believe we have accomplishments whereby we can demonstrate progress to Parliament.

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Dorais.

    We'll move straight off to questions. Diane.

    Mrs. Diane Ablonczy (Calgary—Nose Hill, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for being here, Mr. Dorais and officials.

    I have a number of questions and probably won't get to them all, but my number one question is with respect to the secondary examination process controls. As we all know, when someone attempts to enter our country, the first person they see is not actually a security immigration person but a tax collector, someone from customs saying, do you have anything to declare? Only if that tax collector from another department--CCRA, the revenue department--decides to refer an individual to immigration, do we have any chance at all of deciding whether that person should be in the country. That's as I understand it; you can correct me if I'm wrong.

    The report found that your department only evaluated this secondary examination activity in 1994 and has not done so since then. The examination found that in 1994 this secondary examination was only 50% effective in controlling the entry of inadmissible travellers.

    So my first question is, when the department's examination of secondary process controls found that it was so very ineffective at finding people who were inadmissible, why has this ineffective process been left unexamined for nearly ten years now?

    Mr. Michel Dorais: First, let me confirm your interpretation of the functioning of the border. Effectively, in Canada it's a customs officer who has delegated authority to act as immigration agent and make the first decision.

    Evaluations were made at the beginning of the 1990s--a couple of times, in fact--the last one being in 1994. We agreed with the AG that an update of that evaluation was greatly overdue. I won't attempt to justify why it was not done before. There are some explanations that account for the delays; for example, in 1994 a new department was created, it took a number of years to put the systems back together, and that delayed the whole thing.

    It's way overdue, and this is why we signed an agreement with the customs agency on March 6 that has built into it a mechanism to define the protocol to examine the efficiency and effectiveness of the primary inspection line, on which they as well as we depend. The primary inspection line also refers individuals to secondary customs as well as secondary immigration, and we need to assess whether that referral is effective or not.

    So that agreement contains that protocol, and we hope to have everything in place by fall to start the evaluation on a systematic basis--not only on an occasional basis, but on a systematic basis.

    Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: I would just point out that it is difficult for our committee and for Canadians to have confidence in the department when such a critical area of responsibility goes virtually unsupervised for such a long period of time. I would really urge the department to be on top of these things and be able to demonstrate it as a matter of confidence.

    Others may want to go into exactly what this memorandum of understanding contains and what kind of action plan there will be to make this examination. I'm willing to wait until the fall, until you have this finalized, but I would simply ask, would we be able to review the action plan you are going to be following in order to make a full and complete evaluation of this whole area of secondary examination?

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    Mr. Michel Dorais: Absolutely, Mr. Chairman. Not only will there be the action plan, but I hope we'll be able to inform Parliament of the results of the assessment on a regular basis.

    The one point I'd like to add if I may, Mr. Chairman, is that although this evaluation was made, it didn't go totally unsupervised for a number of years. A number of measures were taken at that time, and over the years that followed there was an increase in training and in the exchange of information with the primary line. The only thing that was not done was an assessment. We did an internal audit of the ports of entry in 2001, as the committee knows. I think the results are coming out very shortly and will lead to a series of recommendations as well.

    Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: I will tell you--and I don't have time to get into the details, but--in my conversations with people from the customs side of CCRA, who are responsible for border measures, they paint a story of a serious lack of communication and coordination between immigration and revenue. I'm sure this is no surprise to you. They recommend, as I understand other commissions and studies have recommended, that the functions actually be brought together under one umbrella. Is there any possibility of that happening, or are we still going to have two different turfs, two different bosses, and two different corporate approaches to this important area?

    Mr. Michel Dorais: I'll divide my comments into two points. The first point is that your observation is accurate, and in certain areas and in certain ports of entry communication could be a lot better. It's very uneven in the country now, but there are ports of entry where we've made huge improvements in communication, whether at the large airports or in the larger ports of entry, where there's a lot of communication.

    As far as the machinery issues are concerned, you've heard the Minister of Citizenship and Immigrant publicly say a number of times that it's maybe time we started talking about this, but obviously it is a prerogative of the Prime Minister to decide on the organization.

    Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: That may be something for the committee to recommend. I notice that at the top of your second page you talk about the immigration control officers--who, I guess, are going to be renamed now--having a lot of success. But I remember when the new act came in there was a recommendation--I'm not sure if it was this committee's, Mr. Chairman, or someone else's--that there be 100 new immigration control officers appointed. Was it from us?

    The Chair: All good ideas come from this committee.

    Mr. Michel Dorais: No doubt.

    Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: I would have expected that, but in fact only 12 new immigration control officers, barely 10% of our recommendation, were put into place. I'm just curious, if this committee in its wisdom, having travelled to our posts abroad and talked to a number of people, felt 100 more were needed and we only got 12, how could there be such effectiveness with such a small move toward what we felt was needed?

    Mr. Michel Dorais: I think the department and the committee are very close on this one, Mr. Chairman. What we've done internally is, after September 11 we examined the 44 immigration control officers we had, the ICOs. As you were probably in a position to observe abroad, in most of our missions the immigration control officer does not only do interception work but they work on fraud and they work on intelligence. After September 11, once we created the Intelligence Branch, it became obvious that the information those people had obtained had to be pulled together.

    This led us to review the function, and we now call them migration integrity specialists. That position combines what the ICOs were doing before with the anti-fraud work and the intelligence work. We moved the total number to 84, so we're not yet at 100, but we're at 84 individuals around the world who perform those three functions and are now called migration integrity specialists.

    Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: Do they talk to each other? One of the frustrations the ICOs we talked to had was that the information, the intelligence, wasn't coming to them; other people were doing it. They were being kept in the dark and were finding out almost by accident some of this very important background information that would help them do their jobs.

    Can we have some information about whether there is coordination, or is it another revenue versus immigration split?

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    Mr. Michel Dorais: Mr. Chairman, that shows the member understands very much the intelligence work coming. There is no point in having intelligence officers who carry information and don't talk to each other. There is no point in having intelligence if you can't communicate it. This is why the department created the Intelligence Branch here, whose first task was to develop the network to communicate between these individuals in the various ports of entry where intelligence is needed in order for our people to do the enforcement work.

    I can't tell the committee that the network is now perfect, but this is the first priority of the Intelligence Branch in Ottawa, to make sure the intelligence that needs to circulate does circulate to the right people at the right time. This is a precondition for their effectiveness, I agree entirely.

    Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: Well, I have other questions, but I'd better pass the torch, Mr. Chairman.

    The Chair: Just for the interest and information of the committee, I'll point out that the committee had asked for an additional 56 in order to get to 100 immigration control officers, what you now call migration integrity specialists.

    The other thing is that in our boarder security report post-September 11, where we did spend an awful lot of time examining the issue and did talk to an awful lot of front line primary and secondary personnel, we had a list of recommendations you might find useful.

    I'm just wondering, Mr. Dorais, is it possible that you could table that memorandum of understanding with us, or is it something that--

    Mr. Michel Dorais: The one with CCRA? Yes, of course we can table it.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Massimo.

    Mr. Massimo Pacetti (Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    I'm just going to ask the same questions I asked the Auditor General because she asked me to ask them to you.

    Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

    Mr. Massimo Pacetti: I'm just trying to remember what they were.

    If I remember correctly, you made the same type of presentation to the public accounts committee. One of the things you said was that 70% of the people with improper documents who try to come into Canada are stopped overseas. I just want to know how that is calculated. It's a pretty high percentage, so I think it's a pretty good success rate.

    Mr. Michel Dorais: I'll let my colleagues go into the details on how we calculate it, but we have to be very careful about that number in itself, as we always are with numbers. The important point is to compare it with the numbers obtained in 1990, and what we compared was the number of individuals who actually reached the Canadian border with improper documents. We were catching 30% abroad in 1990 and the rest were caught at the border entering Canada. Today we're catching 70% of those people abroad and only 30% reach the Canadian border. That's the improvement, the difference that is very important.

    That's a direct result of our interception work through the ICOs. The hope is that with the increased forces we now have abroad the percentage will increase. I assume there is a threshold we can't go beyond; there will always be people going through that line. What's important to realize is that in 10 years we've improved from 30% to 70%.

    Mr. Massimo Pacetti: What are the criteria for somebody to have improper documents?

    Mr. Michel Dorais: Canada requires a set of documents, depending on where you come from and under what conditions you enter Canada, so an expired passport is a problem and a person without a visa or with a visa that has expired will be considered inappropriately documented.

    Mr. Massimo Pacetti: The airline agencies would see to that?

    Mr. Michel Dorais: The airline agency could point it out. In some airports we have immigration officers who are there checking documents with the airline industry before people actually bring them on board the plane. That's especially true in hub airports; Heathrow, for example.

    Mr. Massimo Pacetti: According to the auditor's report there were 36,000 people who were not accounted for between the removal orders and the confirmed removals, right? The Auditor General said the target should not be zero, but what is the target the department has set or is going to set, or is there a goal?

    Mr. Michel Dorais: I will admit, Mr. Chairman, that the number the AG put on the table was 36,000 unexecuted removal orders. At this point in time I'm not in a position to confirm or deny that number. There are many ways you can ask questions of the system that can yield slightly different numbers, either lower or higher. Those are automatic removal orders we issued when there was an infraction of the Immigration Act.

    What is very important, however, is another number I find is a lot more solid, and that's the 14,000 arrest warrants that were issued during the same period. Those are people we've taken action on. Those are people we're actively looking for. Those are the people who are a concern, and this is why we've taken this action of issuing an arrest warrant.

    As to the unexecuted removal orders, the list is composed of all kinds of people who are in the system but who we're not necessarily actively looking for. What is the right number? It's very difficult because it varies according to the sheer volume of people who come into Canada; a year where we have 47,000 refugee claimants versus a year where we have 30,000 would yield a different number.

    It also varies according to the source country of people. For example, for years we had people coming from Algeria but imposed a moratorium on removals to Algeria, so that number stayed there and kept growing. We did not attack it; we did not reduce it.

    There are quite a number of factors that enter into this computation, and the actual number is not as relevant to our enforcement operation as the number of arrest warrants we issue, which is 14,000.

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    Mr. Massimo Pacetti: If you use the arrest warrants as your horizon, shouldn't that be what you should be looking at to minimize? Is there not a plan on how we could reduce these?

    Mr. Michel Dorais: It's very hard to say.

    Mr. Massimo Pacetti: There could be something like a non-refundable deposit. Maybe some of these people have actually left, but is there some way we can encourage them to check out?

    Mr. Michel Dorais: They're all encouraged to check out when they've been ordered removed; that's part of the instructions. However, they don't and that's a fact.

    The 14,000 arrest warrants we have cover all kinds of people. It's very difficult to determine with precision whether someone has left or not. In fact, as the AG has pointed out to the public accounts committee, there are some arrest warrants in the system that date back to 1980 or 1979. What does it mean? It means that person has never been arrested for a traffic offence, has never tried to get a security clearance, has never been caught in any criminal offence, and has probably left the country. We leave the warrant on the books because if someone tries to re-enter Canada, at that point the warrant is automatically activated at the border point. That's our check and balance in the system right now.

    So it's very hard for us to tell the committee this is the right number we should aim for. It depends on the year. Ideally, it should be as low as possible.

    The Chair: It might be helpful to remind the committee members of your priority with respect to removals, because I think that's key. I know that when we were looking at it, there was a hierarchy of who it was important to remove, and as you got to a visitor who may have overstayed their visa or somebody else.... Perhaps you can just cover for the committee again the priority by which you establish removals.

    Mr. Michel Dorais: There's no doubt serious criminality is the first priority. In fact, we move with very concrete action on serious criminals. Criminals are the highest priority as well, then failed refugee claimants, and then and only then do we move to the rest of the people. So for example, with temporary residents here on an expired visa we would not actively look at them at this point in time unless all the other priorities had been filled.

    The Chair: Madeleine.

[Translation]

    Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral (Laval Centre): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Madam, gentlemen, good afternoon. As you know, we met yesterday with the Auditor General and I do feel compelled to tell you that to the question we asked her, she gave us an absolutely wonderful reply: those are political decisions. There you are, it's quite pleasant.

    In her report, the Auditor General regretted that the agreement between Canada Customs and Revenue Agency and Citizenship and Immigration had not been updated for a while, which has now been done. Therefore, after that long period of time, I assume that there are different things in the new agreement, namely regarding security because I do presume that there is, as everywhere else, a benchmark date.

    I would like you to give us some information regarding the main points of this agreement which are different from the previous agreements.

    Mr. Michel Dorais: I will ask the Assistant Deputy Minister in charge, to answer your question but it is important to understand that this agreement, which was negotiated towards the end, which was signed late--I agree with you about that--reflected a situation or informal agreements which existed since that time. Therefore, it is not something entirely new which has been negotiated on March 6, but there are new things in it.

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    Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral: There are certainly new things in it. And it is on those I want to hear your views.

    Mr. Daniel Jean (Acting Assistant Deputy Minister, Policy and Program Development, Department of Citizenship and Immigration): Indeed, one of the things that this agreement achieves is to better define the roles and responsibilities, in particular in the new border environment, at the ports of entry, in particular at the airports. Mechanisms are put in place which will allow us to consistently evaluate the performance of the primary and also secondary inspection lines, and both agencies will work on that together. Therefore, we will develop mechanisms, and the performance monitoring of these mechanisms will be done jointly.

    We did something else. We tried, as best as we could, to define as clearly as possible the roles and responsibilities. For example one of the things which has changed in the environment and which was mentioned by the Auditor General , is the matter of people who destroy their documents upon their arrival. To that end, we do some checking at the exit door of the planes to make sure that on the flights where there are risk indicators, people are in possession of their documents upon arrival. This has also been included in it.

    Therefore, we do not monitor only the primary inspection line or the secondary line which were the notions held in the past but rather the whole continuum: from the port of entry, where the airplane lands, from that door to the primary inspection line, to the secondary line. New tools have also been added such as information before passengers' arrival, in order to better target the risks.

    Therefore, instead of simply monitoring the primary line, as was done in 1992, or the secondary line as was done in 1994, we are going to evaluate the performance to target the risks in the whole continuum from the port of entry.

    Mr. Michel Dorais: I think that the other elements which can be found in the agreement are the exchange of information, the training of customs officers at the port of entry, the continued evaluation, as I mentioned to the honourable member a few minutes ago, and a system of conflict management when conflicts develop between the department and the agency, regarding namely what we are doing and how we manage it.

    These are very significant elements for the operation of border posts.

    Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral: When the Auditor General made her report public, one of the major revelation was the fact that 36 000 people apparently had disappeared without a trace.

    I was wondering about these people. For instance, when someone arrives in a country with a visa bearing a return deadline, are you considering to make it a requirement for these people to inform the officials of their departure date and what means they will use when leaving the country or are we simply trusting them? Is it something which has been considered?

    Mr. Michel Dorais: At the present time, we ask people who have been issued a time-limit visa--all visas have a time limit--to renew their visa or to leave the country before the expiry date.

    The problem will remain as long as Canada doesn't have a policy aimed at monitoring the people exiting the country. As several other countries, we do not have such a monitoring system in Canada which means that any of us can take a plane and leave the country without any system registering that information.

    As long as these components are not put in place, it will be impossible to state with any degree of accuracy who has left the country. f course, for the removal of people with escort, this is a known fact: we know that the individual has left the country. The same happens for important removals when someone accompanies the individual leaving, right to the door of the plane, to be absolutely sure that he has left. With regard to other cases, we rely a great deal on the honesty of people but there is no control system.

    Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral: Have you set up a billing system? Because, of course, airline companies especially must incur the removal costs because in fact they are somewhat responsible if a person comes into the country without the proper documents.

    Did you develop a system? I think that everyone here regrets that the funds appropriated to Citizenship and Immigration are insufficient. At any rate, it is the way we see it, the way we feel. On the other hand, we know that when some amounts are due, although they may be small, but perhaps in the end they are rather important amounts... Have you developed some sort of process which would guarantee that? And if you don't know how to go about it, ask taxation, they're pretty good at that?

    Mr. Michel Dorais: In fact, the system is already in place. Guidelines are in place but the Auditor General pointed out that the system wasn't implemented systematically which is rather a disturbing comment for anyone concerned.

    Following the audit report, we have set up a system which allows us to check these matters. We have again issued guidelines to our employees. You are perfectly right it is absolutely critical to have a system not only to identify on board of what plane and which airline company the individual has arrived but to be able when the time comes to deal with the case and to send back the person, to send the bill to someone. I hope that we have set up the systems which will allow us to proceed in a very systematic way. But the system is already underway . It may not have been followed as strictly as it should have been.

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    Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral: That's all for now.

[English]

    The Chair: The idea of a people toll is very, very interesting, a revenue enhancement, and if we could get a guarantee from the finance minister that we would get the money back into immigration...I like that idea. We may want to propose that.

    Michel, could I just ask you, though, because I think someone raised the question, if one wanted to turn in their visa, where would they do it? Is it the responsibility of the airline? Do we have an office in an airport where, when they're leaving, somebody can actually take their visa and say, here, I'm going to turn it in? Are there instructions? Most people are law-abiding people or at least are gracious enough perhaps...but where would they deposit such a thing, making sure that it was secure, of course, that it wasn't just put anywhere?

    Mr. Michel Dorais: They would simply signal that they'd left the country. That's what you're referring to, I assume, how to make sure they register their exit from Canada. Any immigration office in any port of entry that has international flights or international departures can take that information, but it's not being done on a systematic basis.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    John.

    Mr. John O'Reilly (Haliburton—Victoria—Brock, Lib.): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I thank the witnesses for attending. I'm sorry I had to leave; if my questions have already been answered, I apologize, but I'll ask them anyway.

    I wanted to deal with paragraphs 5.45, 5.46, 5.53, 5.63, and 5.111 on pages 12, 15, 18, and 27.

    Paragraph 5.45 from the Auditor General's report indicates that contrary to Canada Customs and Revenue Agency policy, the length of an examination line “can influence a primary inspection line officer's decision on whether to refer.” I'd like you to expand on that.

    In paragraph 5.46 they say that except at one air terminal and one land port of entry, they found no feedback at the sites they visited.

    I find the recommendations to be very broad and the answers to be broader, with no actual specifics in them. I wonder if you could comment on those to start with.

    Mr. Michel Dorais: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Effectively, we read the recommendations and the observations of the AG. The AG essentially says that when there's a long lineup, the customs officers don't tend to refer cases to immigration. Obviously, this should never happen, and in order to prevent that we've reissued directives to our staff, and the customs agency did the same thing, to make sure that this never happens regardless of the lineup. If there is a referral that has to be done, it's being done.

    I'm assuming it's being done now, but it will be part of the assessment protocol we'll put in place for the fall.

    No feedback? It's part of the agreement we signed on March 6, which includes this loop of feedback we constantly give and the exchange of information on the effectiveness of both the primary and secondary inspection lines. So hopefully, we'll be able to correct that.

    In certain ports of entry there's an excellent feedback loop. In fact, we do have immigration officers who work on the primary line with customs officers and vice versa. We have customs officers who come and work sometimes with us on the immigration line. When that happens, it helps the exchange of information a great deal, and we tend to encourage that kind of behaviour.

    Mr. John O'Reilly: In paragraph 5.53 the Auditor General found inadequate monitoring. The recommendation is that you regularly examine the performance, and the department agrees. What, in the department's mind, would be “regular”?

    Mr. Michel Dorais: That is, as I referred to earlier, part of the March 6 agreement we signed with them. What we define as “regular” is an ongoing evaluation, not something we do one year or, as the member pointed out, something we do every six or seven years without anything happening in between. This would be on a continuous basis year after year to provide constant results and encourage immediate reaction.

º  (1610)  

    Mr. John O'Reilly: Paragraph 5.63 mentions gaps in training. The immigration officers have indicated that they need more in-depth and more frequent training in identifying false documents and that there is no refresher course available. Are we in a transition period where airports and ports of entry will all have readable document equipment and iris scans in some high-security areas? Is this late in coming or is it not as accurate?

    Mr. Michel Dorais: What is being referred to is training to detect fraudulent documents, which is, I have to admit, not easy in today's world. However, I have to say that immigration and customs officers are among the world's experts in identifying documents. It was two weeks ago Sunday I was at Pearson with our staff, and I was surprised because one of our staff picked up a document and said, this one is false. I said, how can you tell, and he showed me how the corner was cut by scissors rather than cut by machine. It's little details like that.

    I would argue that our staff is very well trained. You've seen them at ports of entry. Now, there's no absolute training. In some cases you need highly sophisticated equipment to detect what's a false document or what's a good document, and we may never be able to reach that level, but our staff is generally well trained.

    One has to factor in, however, that at the primary line the officer has a few seconds to determine whether they make the decision to refer or not. That is maybe where some immediate training needs to take place, in the more intensive places.

    Mr. John O'Reilly: This committee is going through a process of examining a common identifier card, and we have visited some of the very secure locations of companies that are giving us information on that. I think the chairman would agree that some of the equipment we have seen is very sophisticated and that this equipment is actually already available.

    Passports are all issued in the same size and with the same type of information in them, much like for the security of a bank note and so forth. Some passports have an embedded chip in them. There are ways to upgrade everything, of course. Passports are good for five years and for some countries it's ten, so I guess it can't be done overnight. Is there not some type of bar-coding or documentation identification that would be available that's better and more sophisticated than what we have, something that isn't out of line as far as cost is concerned?

    Mr. Michel Dorais: I was about to say--until you said the last sentence about an affordable cost structure--there are lots of ways to positively confirm the identity of bearers of documents, but the more secure they are, the more costly they become, obviously. Throughout the world various techniques have been used. One country, I think it's Singapore, uses embedded chips in their passports, which is very good except that no other country but Singapore is equipped to read the chip.

    In the end, the passport remains the must universally used document. Passports can be faked to various degrees and can be manipulated with photo substitutes; that creates a number of difficulties, but it's still the document that is used the most.

    We have put together the Permanent Resident Card, which is, according to U.S. experts, the best card from a security point of view in this category in the world now. I don't know if it will still be the case five years from now, but that's the kind of future we have.

    Mr. John O'Reilly: When I look at the ISO--the International Organization for Standardization--and the equipment that's presently in use.... I just moved into a new apartment building in Ottawa and they gave me a thing to hang on my van mirror--which messed up my whole computer system, but we won't talk about that. It's a card I swipe when I go into the parking lot, and I have to swipe it to get out. Now, I can get exit from and entry into my own parking lot and they know I've come and gone; surely if that equipment is available for a 200-car parking lot, it must be available at a cost that could be very easy for the government to bring in.

    As I lead into that, I note that the “global case management system” is supposed to be in effect by 2005, and I wondered, what does that global case management system involve and is it compatible with systems in other countries? Is it compatible with other, not only airport systems...? With a number of the entry and exit places now, some of them look like a little sugar shack when you're going across a border; they have no equipment.

    You're right. If you're trying to smuggle something through an airport, you pick the longest line because the person on that line is the person who's going to be most tired, so you can sneak through. I've never done that, sir--

    Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

    Mr. John O'Reilly: I want to make it straight, here, but I've heard from people that if you want to sneak something through customs, you just pick the longest line. They're the most tired people and finally, if you're near the end, they start shoving you through in a hurry. You didn't know that, eh?

    A Voice: I do that with my groceries, go to the longest line.

    Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

    Mr. John O'Reilly: Yes, you always go there with your 25 items.

    Anyway, going back to the report, I'm on paragraph 5.111, where it says you'll implement the global case management system by 2005. If you could, please expand on that a bit.

º  (1615)  

    Mr. Michel Dorais: There are a number of elements in your questions. Let me just quickly deal with the card you swipe to go in the parking lot. This works very well but it's relatively easy to defraud, to change the code in there. It's not a very secure card but it works.

    The second element was about the global case management system. I just want to disentangle a number of things people sometimes mix up. The first system the AG refers to is what is called the national case management system, which will be in place in June of this year. This is a system that allows us to keep track of all the people in the system, removal orders, warrants, what stage they are at, court appeals, and these kinds of elements. So that's one system.

    Then we are working on a bigger system called the global case management system, which will be in place in 2005. That system is a complete change in our entire high technology infrastructure. I think it's around $200 million total. It's a huge system change.

    What that system will do is integrate the some fourteen different systems we have in the department now to manage immigration, refugees, and visa systems; it will integrate all of these into one system that will be available at various ports of entry and various points of service. That's a very different system.

    Not the whole system will be compatible with the rest of the world's systems, but some of the key information we need to exchange with our partners will be available, and we call that “interoperability”--I wasn't sure if I would be able to spit out that word in English. It means that systems can talk to each other to have the necessary information without allowing people to penetrate our system, where there is a huge amount of private information, obviously.

    The Chair: Diane.

    Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: Just on that global case management system, it's my understanding that the department is close to a quarter of a billion dollars into the development of the system but that it still isn't particularly close to being operable. I also understand you've just put out some tenders for outside help to bring this thing to a place where it can be used. Is that a good summary of where the system is right now?

    Mr. Michel Dorais: No, but I hope I'm referring to the same thing. No, it can't be a quarter of a billion dollars. The total budget is $195 million over a number of years to complete the entire system. We did call for tenders, but the first big contract has been given to a firm and work has started.

    We are, as the AG pointed out, experiencing a delay of six months in the overall implementation of the project. Other than that six-month delay, which was due to the contract procedures and some of the legal elements of the contract to finalize it, I can say we're on time now under the new schedule and we're on budget. I hope we will stay on budget and I hope I'll be back to this committee to say, we've completed the project on budget.

    The Chair: I'm going to hold you to that, because your whole career is depending on it.

    Mr. Michel Dorais: I'm holding my whole team accountable for that. I want to complete this on budget.

    Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: We will look forward to that.

    I want to get back to this growing gap between people who are ordered removed from Canada and those who actually are removed. In practice--I understand it and I confirmed this with the Auditor General yesterday--the gap is not 36,000; the gap has grown by the amount of 36,000, and it was presumably some other figure before it started to grow, although the Auditor General was not able to say what the gap was before it grew by 36,000.

    I'm a little disturbed by the language you use when you discuss this issue. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but you say things like, it's a challenge, it's very costly, we don't have entry-exit controls, and it's not our style to track people. Then you say, we deal with the highest-risk cases first.

    But it seems to me it's pretty hard for you to know this if the gap between the people who are supposed to leave and the people who are removed is growing by quite a bit and we don't have any way of tracking people--it's not our style--it's a big challenge, and all of that. How can you possibly tell us that the highest-risk cases are being looked after first, and how can we have some assurance that you have some kind of action plan to respond to this issue?

    The reason I raise it is not just to pick on something. This committee went to Washington a month or so ago, we met with our counterparts there, and there were some serious concerns on the part of our neighbour--and you're aware of this--that our security measures are not up to snuff. Of course, they're somewhat paranoid, but they're certainly very anxious about this whole issue.

    We've been told that one of the ways we can deal with their concern is to point out the ways our security measures are working very well. I want to be able to do that as a Canadian and as a Canadian parliamentarian, but when I see this kind of growing gap and I see language that sort of says, well, we're doing okay and it's tough, then it's hard for me to say to someone in the U.S., my counterpart in Congress, look, we're on top of this.

    So respond to that concern. I'd appreciate your help in knowing how to respond and how to be reassured.

º  (1620)  

    Mr. Michel Dorais: I certainly wouldn't venture to say that everything is okay; that's not true. We have to work very hard; we have to work harder.

    I think what I'm saying is that the gap is there and the AG is absolutely right to point to the growing gap. I'm saying that this is one fact, but what does it mean? It means that there were more people coming in during those years. It means that there could be other measures, such as a moratorium on certain countries whose migrants make this gap grow, depending on which year you look at it. I'm hoping the last six years are not a trend for the future and that this number will sort of fluctuate downward.

    But the actual number of unexecuted removal orders is not a direct reflection on enforcement measures. It measures something different. What we should be looking at are the warrants and the activities we do. With all the criminals and all the people who have criminal backgrounds, we are taking action. That is to say, we issue a warrant, which means we've asked all the police forces of the country to look for certain individuals with us.

    For the serious criminals we have special teams that work with the RCMP to look for them. For the terrorists, the dangers to Canadian society, or any other very serious criminals, we have special teams--not only us but the provincial forces, the RCMP, and others--that spend their entire day looking for those people actively. For other, minor criminals, warrants are issued, and once those people are caught, they are either detained or removed. So that is for the people of concern.

    What you have in the other pool of people, where it's very hard to point to an exact number, are people who may have extended their visas; they could be family members who have not left the country in time. They are not a security concern for the country.

    Of course, the more money we give to security, the more we can expand our action in terms of active removal. But we now have a very solid program for going after people who cause security problems and for going after a sizable portion of the failed refugee claimants.

    Now, what do we do? We've done a lot of things in terms of security. Every refugee claimant who comes into this country now is screened at the border. If there is any doubt, there is a huge security interview involving CSIS that takes place. If there is any doubt as to identity, those people are detained until we are reasonably satisfied we know who the person is.

    We've been very active on the removals. We've done joint removals with the United States, for example, and have had very good results indeed. We can do targeted removals like we did for the Chinese boat that came into this country two years ago, and we've removed just about every single one of them. We didn't get any more boats afterwards, so those targeted removals work in terms of disincentive.

    Those are some of the measures we've taken. The exchange of information, the visa imposition on certain countries, and the Safe Third Country Agreement we've negotiated are all part of a set of measures that will allow us to tighten this element of it.

º  (1625)  

    Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: I'm a little bit puzzled by that because we have been told that the resources for the removals unit of CIC have actually been cut back. I'm not sure how a unit whose resources have been cut back could be more effective.

    Mr. Michel Dorais: No, I would say the removals unit has not been cut back. In fact, we received a lot more funds to assign to removals.

    I don't have the exact figure, but I can provide the member with the additional figures we have. The total number of actual bodies we've hired on the security front since September 11 is what? Lyse, can you give me that number?

    Ms. Lyse Ricard (Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration): It's around 400.

    Mr. Michel Dorais: We've assigned around 400 new people to the entire intelligence and security apparatus to help us tighten security, so in the last two years we've added a lot of forces to it. Is it enough? It will never be enough. It's like the police forces; it will never be enough, but it's certainly had an impact.

    The Chair: Is that both inside and outside the country?

    Mr. Michel Dorais: Yes.

    The Chair: Diane, do you have another one?

    Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: I just wanted to draw something to your attention. It's not really in your department, but it kind of reflects on it. In my constituency office--and maybe other members are finding the same--just this month four different constituents called, and this is their problem. They went to the passport office to get a new passport--and I know that's DFAIT, but it's still interconnected--and they were told they had to get a new Permanent Resident Card. All these people are Canadian citizens, they've been here more than 30 years, they have a valid Canadian citizenship certificate, yet they were still told they had to have a Permanent Resident Card. The perception is that somehow their citizenship is now under attack.

    You look puzzled, so you may not be aware that this is happening. I just wanted to make you aware of it.

    Mr. Michel Dorais: It's a good point, I think, and we'll verify it. We don't issue Permanent Resident Cards to citizens, so these officials can't be asked. I'll check on it.

    Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: Exactly. We're trying to get to the bottom of it. I just thought you'd be interested to know that on top of everything else--

    Mr. Michel Dorais: If you obtain more information, we'll be very interested in knowing as well.

    The Chair: With regard to removals, I heard you at the public accounts committee--I think I might have asked the question of the Auditor General there, but I didn't get a chance yesterday--and you gave an answer as to how Canada stacks up against other countries in terms of removals. I think that's a relevant sort of statistic the committee may want to at least have, just to see how we rate with other countries in removals.

    Mr. Michel Dorais: In fact, Mr. Chairman, I was reading from a document I'd be pleased to table with the committee at any time. When the AG came out with this report, I said, how are we doing on removals compared to other countries? Removals are difficult; they are not something you do overnight. It's very complex. When a country does not want to issue travel documents, we cannot just take people and dump them at the airport in a foreign country.

    We have about a 16.3% success rate in removing failed asylum claimants. Denmark has 16.5%, the Netherlands 13.2%, Sweden 26%, and the United Kingdom 11.5%, so that tells me we're having as much difficulty as everybody else. I don't have the figures for the U.S., but I think they're probably, if I can recall the discussion we had at the Four Country Conference, in the same ballpark.

º  (1630)  

    The Chair: They won't count the 8 million Mexicans who are in their country.

    Mr. Michel Dorais: It's probably a little more than that.

    The Chair: They don't know precisely.

    Mr. Michel Dorais: No, they don't.

    The Chair: Andrew.

    Mr. Andrew Telegdi (Kitchener—Waterloo, Lib.): I have a question. As your best guesstimate for the department, how many illegals do you think we have in Canada right now?

    Mr. Michel Dorais: That I don't know, and I don't know if one of my colleagues wants to venture an answer on that.

    We have 14,000 arrest warrants. If none of those people have left Canada and none of those people have been caught, obviously you can say you can still get as many as that, but probably the vast majority of those have already left Canada. It's very difficult.

    Instinctively--this is not based on figures--I would say that it's a lot more difficult to be an illegal in Canada than it is in the United States, for example, because we don't have that kind of black market that's developed in the United States. Notionally, I would say that our proportion is probably a lot smaller, but we can't tell.

    Mr. Andrew Telegdi: It would be nice to get some kind of guesstimate that has some relation to reality.

    Now, you mentioned we needed to work harder. Yes, we might need to do that, but maybe we need to work smarter. Has the department ever considered some kind of process with a refundable deposit, where if we said to somebody, hey, we want you to leave, there'd be some kind of surety bond?

    With visas what could happen is, if somebody's going to get a refund, they have some interest in turning it in. In a reasonably passive fashion we'd keep better track of the numbers. In the case where somebody is expected to leave, they can put up an amount of money and then get it returned when they leave.

    The reason I mention this is because the courts do it each and every day when they deal with people who might be a risk to the community. As you're aware, sureties are often put up; bail is often put up. It might give us a much better and easier handle to deal with some of the numbers, and the department has never really considered it.

    Mr. Michel Dorais: We've looked at a number of aspects of it. There is some work that has been done abroad on that.

    I'll ask Mr. Jean to comment on this.

    Mr. Daniel Jean: We've looked at that before, and we've always felt it would be very difficult to implement because the amount would have to be so high. If you're willing to pay $10,000 or $20,000 to be smuggled or to come in, how high is the bail to be? The amount would be so high that it wouldn't be very popular.

    As a matter of fact, two years ago the United Kingdom looked at trying to implement this. They actually decided not to because it created a lot of uproar. There was also a sense from people that we would start asking bail for people who might be legitimate and for whom there was no reason for asking for bail. So there's also a negative to it. Maybe there are people who normally would be identified as no-risk, and then suddenly to be more cautious you'd start asking for bail.

    All the countries I've looked at basically came to the conclusion that it's not practical.

    Mr. Andrew Telegdi: Well, the courts in Canada make the determination all the time, and they do it on the basis of risk assessment to the best of their ability. Some people are released with absolutely no bail, some people are released with a surety but no deposit, and some other folks are released with quite a high cash bill.

    What I'm saying is, you talk about assessing risk and managing risk, and that's certainly one of the ways you can do it. Now, if you even get away from that as your rationale, if on a visa you would....

    I don't know what the figure is that's going to hurt somebody's wallet so you can make sure they let you know that they're leaving the country. Is it $50? If that captures the majority of the people, then it would give you a mechanism to get a better handle on the numbers we do have, because one of the problems is that we don't have any handles.

    To me, working smarter is looking at some of the other institutions we have in Canada that are into risk management and maybe borrowing from some of those because they certainly seem to be working.

    Mr. Michel Dorais: We're certainly willing to look at the bond system again. It looks attractive, but when you start digging, you find it creates all kinds of issues and problems. We used...des arbitres. What's the word?

º  (1635)  

    Mr. Daniel Jean: Adjudicators.

    Mr. Michel Dorais: The adjudicators use it in that context and it works, as it does in the courts. But when you talk about visas, as my colleague pointed out, we know that some people have paid as much as $50,000 U.S. to be smuggled into Canada. So what is the right amount of bail? If it's $50 to get a visa on a bond basis, then it's a very cheap way to get smuggled into Canada. You'd have to have such a huge bond there that it wouldn't make much sense.

    The other thing we have to be very careful about is that if you have a bond system, you have to administer it. You have to have a place to collect the money, a place to register all of this, and a way to reimburse the money to the individual, and in the end a cost-benefit analysis comes into the picture. If it costs three times the money you've saved by not having to actually pursue people who are illegal, then it doesn't make much sense.

    So far our assessment is that it would not yield huge results in terms of security, but we're certainly willing to look at it again if the committee feels this is an avenue we should explore.

    Mr. Andrew Telegdi: It would certainly give you a much better handle on your numbers.

    Mr. Michel Dorais: It wouldn't on the number of visas, just on the number of people who have--

    Mr. Andrew Telegdi: Coming and going.

    Mr. Michel Dorais: But in fact, if you have $100 bail or $1,000 bail, people would come pay the $1,000 and then not tell us anything about it. It would not give us any more than an unexecuted removal order. We would be in the same place.

    Mr. Andrew Telegdi: No, that's not the point I'm getting at. The point I'm getting at is, you issue a visa and you assume they leave because you have absolutely no exit controls. Now, if you issue a visa and they get a refund when they leave, when they wave goodbye to us at the airport and tell us they had a great time, then you know for sure that they've left. It gives you a way to deal with the numbers, and it gives you a better way of assessing what kind of management tools you have to have for the other stuff.

    Mr. Michel Dorais: You're absolutely right, it would give us a better assessment, but the danger is that the bad people who want to stay would stay anyway for $1,000 or $2,000. The ones we might be penalizing are the people who have exceeded their visa by two days because they visited their grandmother or something like that. We would then see those people who had to come in two days later. Is this the target group we want to go after? That's the question we have to ask.

    The Chair: Michel, I wouldn't spend an awful lot of time with this. Let's put this into proper perspective. If in fact we have all these checks and balances in there and we have 100 million people who come into our country, it's about managing the risk. Surely to God we're not talking about, what, getting a bond and payment from every one of those people, because at the end of the day, look, even if you have 100,000 people who are here illegally and have yet to leave, that's 0.1% of the 100 million people who come in across our border. Let's keep everything in proper perspective.

    I think the question is, how can we better manage the risk? Even the Americans told us that. They'll use technology and they'll do everything else, but to suggest that you're going to subject every--I didn't hear; was it permanent residents or asylum seekers?

    It could be visitors, it could be anybody with a temporary thing. We're talking about the global community who comes into Canada, and the last thing we would want to do, I think, would be to impose things such as bonds, payments, and refunds on people, even though we're looking at the incentive.

    One of the incentive systems, I believe, is that we have a stick, where we say that if you don't leave and you get put into the system and need to get deported, guess what? You can't come back to this country for five years. That in itself is either a carrot or a stick. In my opinion, it's one way of letting people know that when you're invited into a country, you should leave when you've overstayed your welcome, and if you don't, there are some repercussions you will suffer.

    Let's not spend an awful lot of time studying how we're going to do it.

    Mr. Andrew Telegdi: Mr. Chairman, we have a lot of people who come into the country, and most of them do not require a visa; that's the vast majority of them. But I'm saying that in the places where we require a visa, if we had some incentive for them to give us those numbers so we'd knew what the success rate of the country was.... Those are the ones we're looking at for any kind of risk assessment. I think it can work quite well and give us lots of information for the decisions we make as to whether we require visas for which country and--

º  (1640)  

    The Chair: It would be an interesting debate for this committee to undertake, but--

    Mr. Michel Dorais: Let me just add that one element that is important to consider is that we're already charging $75 for a visa, if I'm not mistaken. Then we're open to the criticism that if you have money, you can come to Canada, but if you don't, you're in trouble. So there are many factors to take into account.

    The Chair: I'll just ask a couple of questions, if I could, based on what the committee has asked.

    On the detention side of the equation, I think the Auditor General had asked that question and I think some of the committee members had also asked it. There was one question I asked the Auditor General and it had more to do with policy than it had to do with actual numbers. Some of the committee members had raised some questions with regard to the number, whether or not the number of detainees was directly related to the capacity we had in the system. It's much the same as, if the lineup is too long, we might move them in quicker, probably not detaining those we should because we don't have any room at the inn, so to speak.

    I'm wondering, though, about the quality of the decision making with regard to detainees, because we spent an awful lot of time looking at that. I know, Mr. Dorais, you talked a little bit about uncooperative, undocumented, and so on and so forth. I'm also wondering about what happens once they're in detention because there have been some horror stories about people being detained. There was a woman detained who was having a baby; there were children who were in the hospital, and we were spending money to essentially make sure that these small children didn't escape, or call it what you will.

    I'm just wondering about first, the quality of the decision to detain, and second, how often we are in fact looking at whether or not some of those people, under the circumstances they're in, actually have to be kept in detention. I wonder if you could cover that, because the AG had talked a little bit about detention and so on.

    Mr. Michel Dorais: There are many elements to your question, Mr. Chairman. One is the issue of capacity versus the same thing as the lineup. After the AG observed that, I could neither find nor deny that some decision had been taken in the past that the inn was full and therefore we wouldn't detain. I have no evidence those decisions were taken, but I have no evidence either that they were not taken.

    The one thing I can tell you for certain is that we reissued the directives, and they are very precise. Our ADM spent part of the morning today with the regional director, and this was on the table again; that should not be a factor. I was myself at Pearson at 11:00 at night and we had three detainees. The inn was nearly full, but we found a place to put those people. That should not be a factor in the decision as to whether we detain or not, and we know the criteria we have for detention.

    In terms of quality of decision, I was asked by the public accounts committee if we were detaining people for long periods of time, people who should not be there. I was not quick enough to react, but there are built-in detention reviews 48 hours, seven days, and 30 days after. We can't detain people indefinitely for no reason. When we detain someone for 48 days, we have to justify why we're detaining them. If the adjudicator says no, it's not good enough, we have to release those people. So there are built-in safeguards there, and I certainly hope we're not detaining people for no reason.

    As for some of the stories you've mentioned, obviously the best interests of the child have to be taken into account by our agent, but it's not always obvious how this is to be considered. I'm not denying we may have made some mistakes in the past or that we'll probably make some again, but I hope that in general our criteria are all right there.

    The Chair: I have a general question with regard to enforcement and how that fits into the overall strategy or work plan of immigration. I know the program review caused an awful lot of difficulties with regard to human resources in the department in so many ways. This committee has been trying to be very supportive of the department by getting you the human resources you need, not only to process applications as quickly as possible but to do a good job on the intake side.

    We also talked a lot about human resources on the enforcement side. I know the program review, but I don't know whether or not you're still at the levels you used to be at. I'll use an example. Even in my own community, where we used to have 21 people in immigration, now we have eight or nine people. Some of those people have to be immigration officers, they have to be enforcement officers, they have to be a number of things, and I understand that. I don't know how one person or two, given those kinds of conditions, can actually do a perfect job.

    Enforcement is very, very important, especially in light of 9/11, and people want to be assured about the integrity of the system and that we're actually doing the work. Can you tell me how many people are directly related--how many positions, because some people do more than one job--on the enforcement side? How much money do we spend on an annual basis just on the enforcement part?

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    Mr. Michel Dorais: I will let the ADM Operations respond if she can locate those data, or someone responsible for finance can give you the exact number.

    But let me say one thing, Mr. Chairman. I'm glad you made reference to the committee's work. Because of the committee and because of the reaction of the government and the commitment of the government, this department has a budget that is now $1.1 billion. A few years ago it was just over $600 million, so there have obviously been a lot of new responsibilities that have been added to the department's role. Our overall budget has grown quite dramatically over the last few years, and that's a reflection of the work of the committee and the commitment the government has made on immigration-related issues.

    The Chair: While they are looking at numbers, can you just answer another question for me. In one paragraph you talk about asylum claimants now being subject to full security examinations upon arrival. That is something we as a committee were talking about to our people at the border, the fingerprinting, the screening, and so on. But we understand that there was still that 72-hour provision for trying to get all the information to determine whether or not a person was even admissible to our country. That was one of the main front-end systems we wanted.

    But it has taken, as I understand it, over a week to get any criminal records back from other bodies, records you need to rely on for information, whether or not it's the RCMP, police forces, and so and so forth. I'm just trying to understand how you can reconcile doing a good job on the front end while it's taking you a lot longer to get the information on enforcement on the other side.

    Mr. Michel Dorais: It's obvious the more time you have, the more information you can get on people, but I would say the 72 hours allows us to immediately pull the obvious cases, those that immediately pop out. But don't forget that in the system the committee has seen with the new legislation we can pull people off the refugee determination system at any time as the information comes out.

    When we implemented the act, the 72 hours was, I remember, a big deal for our staff because they said we only had 72 hours to do our work. That's not true. They have a lot of time to do the work. The 72 hours is there just to make sure the obvious cases are immediately pulled out. The work continues afterwards, and if there are cases that need to be pulled, they are pulled off the refugee system.

    Do we have the numbers?

    Ms. Lyse Ricard: Oui.

    Right now, for the enforcement function--that would exclude the ports of entry--we have about a thousand full-time equivalents. That's just for investigation, appeals, intelligence, war crimes, detention, and things like that. There are about a thousand people as of last December.

    Mr. Michel Dorais: So it's about 20% of the--

    The Chair: How much money of the budget does that represent? You don't have to get it right now; I'm just trying to get a flavour of what it is.

    Ms. Lyse Ricard: I don't have the dollar amount with me, but if we take the management of access to Canada activity, it's now about $377 million for 2,900 full-time equivalents, but that would exclude port of entry and everything related to how we manage access to Canada.

    Mr. Michel Dorais: We can give the breakdown to the committee.

    The Chair: Maybe you could make a comparison, because I think it's important. As Diane has indicated, it would be nice to have--maybe we'll talk about that at estimates--some good, factual information. We know from talking to our counterparts in other countries that there are a lot of things we're doing well as to how we're managing the enforcement in that whole security sort of envelope.

    It would be nice to have some facts at our disposal to show where we've come from and how we're getting there--because I think that's some positive information--and so we can deal with the perception that we have a porous border, that we're not being as hard as we should, and that we're not detaining as many people as we should. There are so many myths out there, and I think the only way you clarify myths is with some good facts. I agree that we need to do a lot more and we hopefully will, but it would be nice to be able to have some facts right at our disposal in order to be able to do that.

    Madeleine.

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[Translation]

    Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral: I have a last question. The Auditor General noticed that there was a lack of available detention space . This is the situation at this time. I think I understood you clearly when you said that the shortage of detention space did not mean that individuals were not being detained although they should.

    Besides, when the agreement on the safe third countries is going to be implemented--we still don't know yet when this will be but it will certainly be with the US regulations, but at any rate--hypothetically, there should be fewer refugee status claimants, which I would imagine will clear up some detention space. Do I not properly assess the situation?

    Mr. Michel Dorais: Honestly, it's hard to tell. When the agreement on the safe third countries is implemented, there should be fewer refugee status claimants at the border to the South, but invariably, the number of refugee status claimants within Canada, in the large cities, is going to increase. By how many? It is extremely hard to tell at the present time. This is something you cannot predict.

    As regards the number of space, I'm always hesitant to answer the question because it is always difficult to link the number of space to the detention capacity because if we have to detain someone, we have to find space but it is not because we have space available that we detain people. Therefore, we have to be very careful about the equation. This is why we have space available at the present time but we also have an agreement with most provincial authorities, where we can go and get additional space if we ever ran out.

    In Ontario, as you probably know, there will be a new detention centre as of next year. We carry on our negotiations to make sure that we'll have available space on a permanent basis; a certain rotation is always necessary but it is difficult to predict with certainty how much space will be required. That is why our agreements provide some flexibility.

[English]

    The Chair: Diane.

    Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: I'll just pick up on a couple of things in your presentation. The chairman mentioned that asylum claimants are now subject to full security examination upon arrival. I just want to know how you can say this because I understand that to get background checks back from the RCMP and CSIS can take weeks, literally. How can there be a full background check when you really can't get security information from our security agencies?

    Mr. Michel Dorais: In fact, the routine verification, the one we do out of our posts abroad, for example, will take a number of weeks, but we can also get very fast verification. In some cases a CSIS officer is present during the interview and does the interview with us; they have direct access to all the CSIS data banks immediately on the spot and can ask directly related questions. In cases like that, either we detain for lack of identity because we're not sure who the person is and we need a little bit more time, or right there at the airport, during the three- or four-hour interview with the CSIS officer present, we can determine or judge whether the person represents a risk or not.

    The Chair: What if you've done the interview and everything shows up clear, but a week or two later, while this person is waiting for their refugee claim...? As you said, Mr. Dorais, you can take them out of the refugee line as quickly as you want, depending on the information you get. Suppose the initial, cursory intelligence look and fingerprinting didn't raise any suspicion. All of a sudden the information did come back, but that person was out in the community and had not been detained because there had not been a problem in that regard. Would the enforcement people try to identify this person first, or would you issue an arrest warrant? Maybe you can just take us through the continuum of that process.

    Mr. Michel Dorais: I'll ask Daniel to complete my answer there, but obviously it depends again on what the security risk is. We can decide to issue a warrant, or if the security risk is higher, we can assign that case to a team composed of the RCMP, CSIS, the provincial authority, and ourselves to actively find the person.

    Daniel, do you want to...?

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    Mr. Daniel Jean: The nature of the risk and what you find will dictate the response. If it's a very high risk, we will first go and try to make the arrest directly. If we cannot find the person, we will issue the warrant, and we will be actively looking for that person. If we find that it's a person who has had minor criminality but misrepresented the facts when we interviewed them, then we may call them into our office first . If they don't show up, then we will issue a warrant for their arrest. The degree of risk will dictate the kind of action we take.

    Mr. Michel Dorais: But if we look at it, Mr. Chairman, with the amount of information and lookouts we exchange with the United States, the very high-risk people will be picked up very, very quickly, within the 72 hours. Who we're dealing with are people who might not have declared their criminality or might have minor criminality and we find out later.

    Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: It just seems to me it might be more accurate to say they're subjected to an intensive...but that it's not false is my point. We want to be accurate when we're talking to people about this.

    The other thing that puzzles me is that the department told us a few months ago that 60% of asylum seekers are undocumented. That's what the department said; that's from the record. Yet this report you're giving us today says 70% of people with improper documents trying to come to Canada are now stopped overseas. Those two figures don't compute in my mind. If we're stopping 70%, how come 60% of people who actually get here are still undocumented?

    Mr. Michel Dorais: I think they deal with different populations. The 60% of inadequately documented people would be part of that 30% of total flow coming in.

    Now, that 60% is a little lower now, but “inadequately documented” includes all kinds of things. It's not because refugee claimants have no documents they are deemed inadequately documented. In general, one can take it that if someone is fleeing their country because they're persecuted, their government will not issue them a passport or a valid visa and all the other papers.

    Sometimes they have partial documents or a passport that's outdated, these kinds of documents. With an outdated passport, quite often an immigration officer can say, the person is not adequately documented but I'm quite satisfied the person I have in front of me is the right person. We have to be very careful about those kinds of things.

    Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: I understand that, but remember that the Deputy Prime Minister told us a few months ago that 72% of asylum seekers come from the U.S., so they're obviously not fleeing persecution. They've been living, working, visiting, or whatever in the U.S., 72% of them, yet given that figure, we're still finding that 60% are undocumented. So again, something is not computing there.

    It just seems to me that we have a difficulty here on the face of it because unless we know where people came from and who they are, how can we assess what kind of risk they're going to be for our country?

    Mr. Michel Dorais: The 72% are, if I'm not mistaken, the number at ports of entry only, not the number of claimants inland; that's just for the record.

    What you're saying is, if they don't have the right documents, how can we assess who they are? In fact, most people have some kind of document, and we can trace back who they are and where they're coming from with a relative level of satisfaction.

    Those who are absolutely undocumented we detain. If we can't assert the identification, we detain, and we go to the 48-hour detention review. We can usually justify in front of the adjudicator that we should detain that person until we have information. What usually happens in those cases is, documents appear in the mail, someone from the community comes in, or there is some other way to verify the identification. But we do not let someone go without any documentation or any satisfaction that we know without a reasonable amount of doubt who the person is.

    Mr. Daniel Jean: One last caveat is with respect to what “undocumented” means. It means their data has been historically undocumented according to the Immigration Act, so you may have people who arrive with a valid passport and there is no doubt about their identity, but if they don't have a visa, they're undocumented. They're not a risk, it's just that they don't have the appropriate document to enter.

»  (1700)  

    The Chair: When the committee travelled, in part of the assessment we were told that we had to be very careful about what words we'd use in the reporting that was going to be done. “Improper documentation” may conjure up all kinds of questions as to why one person is getting in as opposed to someone who is totally undocumented whatsoever. I know that might be part of the review, especially in light of the fact that there are primary and secondary and you're going to be looking at a number of performance-based measures. That kind of information obviously would be very useful not only to you and the minister but also to this committee as we study the thing.

    Thank you very much, Mr. Dorais and your associates, for taking the time.

    I guess the next time we'll see the administration is on May 26 and 27 with the minister on estimates and on May 27 with regard to some matters on Bill C-18. Then the following week we might get to the clause-by-clause of Bill C-18.

    Thank you very much. A pleasure.