CIMM Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE LA CITOYENNETÉ ET DE L'IMMIGRATION

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, June 1, 2000

• 0919

[English]

The Chair (Mr. Joe Fontana (London North Centre, Lib.)): Welcome, Martha and your company. My apologies for some of our members. It's Thursday morning and a bright, sunny day in Ottawa, so who knows where they're at.

• 0920

Martha, I know you have some opening remarks. As you know, we had the Auditor General in yesterday, and he gave us some views with regard to the economic part of his report that deals with immigration. He pointed out that there are some real challenges, and I'm sure you already realize what those are. He essentially indicated that Bill C-31 will be helpful, but your action plan, even in his opinion, needs a little more work or some timelines or some responsibilities and some administrative and management stuff.

I think today we might dwell a little bit on that. Perhaps you have a response to some of those concerns he raised, and we can start that dialogue.

Welcome again, and thank you very much for coming. If you want to introduce the rest of your colleagues....

Mr. Steve Mahoney (Mississauga West, Lib.): We know them all.

The Chair: Yes.

Ms. Martha Nixon (Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration: I'd be very happy to introduce my colleagues. Georges Tsaï, who is the ADM corporate, is well known to you. Very well known to you are the acting ADM for policy, Joan Atkinson, and my very good colleague, the director general of case management, Bill Sheppit. We have others on the side here to support us.

Would it be helpful for me to go through the remarks very quickly?

The Chair: Sure. As a baseline or as a starting point, I think that might be useful.

Ms. Martha Nixon: I'll put them on the record.

Let me just start off by saying that we're happy to be here to have this discussion. We're very serious and concerned about the observations made by the Auditor General. To us they represent really highlighting the concerns that we ourselves have had. We are very seriously engaged in an ongoing exercise to try to make the improvements. We feel we've been engaged in that exercise for some time, and it's helpful to have this report so that we can work with you and with the Auditor General to push things along.

I'm just going to make some brief opening remarks so that we can have them on the record, and then we can get into a good dialogue.

We're pleased to be here to discuss our plans in response to the AG's report, and I think it's helpful that you had him here yesterday. Our deputy minister spoke to the public accounts committee on May 16 and she pointed out and underlined that we consider these audits to be a very important contribution assisting us to manage our program. We think it is important that....

Are these our committee members joyfully entering the room?

Mr. John Bryden (Wentworth—Burlington, Lib.): They didn't have a quorum, so they've just stopped celebrating.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: They needed me to vote to travel to Chile, and now that's carried and they're all out partying.

Ms. Martha Nixon: Oh, well, they're having a picnic.

We do believe that Canadians need to know that the federal citizenship and immigration program is being properly managed and properly delivered.

Mr. Chairman, I think it's important also that we talk a little bit about context and the background within which the Auditor General made his recommendations.

When our minister was here, she clearly stated that we're working currently on five key priorities. The first is modernizing the Citizenship of Canada Act, and you are very much engaged in that process. Secondly, we're seeking passage of the new Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. I know you will be dealing with that shortly.

We are also developing a multi-year plan for immigration with the provinces and territories in accordance with the social union framework agreement, and we're meeting with them next week. Another priority is to strengthen the integrity of our programs, in terms of both trying to ensure that we are protecting public safety and looking very closely at client services. Our objective is faster and fairer processing. Also, we consider it a priority to continue the international work we are doing, which we feel addresses the very pressing global migration issues that confront many countries.

In addition, we're working hard to contribute to the overall government priority of looking at on-line services to Canadians. The target for that is 2004. At the same time, we are also very cognizant that we have to continue to look at human resources management and those issues so that we can meet the clerk's objective of having government as an employer of choice.

[Translation]

We have to acknowledge the priorities which were highlighted yesterday by the Auditor General. The Members should also understand that we are following up on the recommendations of the Auditor General in the context of a 20 per cent cut in CIC's resources following the Program Review of the early 1990s. Our ability to provide services was reduced over a ten-year period characterized by program growth as the number of applications rose by 37 per cent. In 1999, we issued 76 per cent and 27 per cent more students' and tourists' visas respectively than in 1989.

• 0925

This lead of course to a large increase in the workload. It was therefore difficult to maintain the standard of excellence of our service.

CIC welcomes the Auditor General's latest comments on issues which already concern our management. Our response to that audit will be based on what we have done already and what we are intending to do as a follow-up to the 1990 audit.

Since that audit, we have improved our procedure to deal with misconducts, a rare occurrence among our staff, but which involves serious consequences. We have improved training, especially for our staff involved in assessing the complex applications of immigrant business people. We have made key changes in the legislation to deny access to members of organized crime or to send them back to their country of origin. We are presently taking efficient steps to deal with modern day war criminals.

[English]

More particularly with respect to the audit, we will respond and have been responding by putting a lot of priority on the workload pressures we face—and you've been very concerned with those—and also on dealing with the issues around program integrity. We are also putting a lot of emphasis on the issues of security and criminality screening—and we'll talk in more detail about those—and indeed, of the medical admissibility controls, which we know are of concern to you and to the AG.

The Auditor General's report highlighted the gap between CIC's operational mandate and the funding levels we have been experiencing. I think we saw recognition from the government for our need for more resources, and we are encouraged that there was an additional $139 million allocated in the federal budget. We're hoping to direct this money to strengthen the interdiction that we do of improperly documented passengers, to conduct and focus more on early removals, to look at the work we need to do in enforcement at ports of entry, and to improve the screening of applicants abroad.

Of this money, $25 million will be invested in processing pressures overseas and in Canada, and in working very hard to improve client service. With this increased funding, we expect to deploy an additional 81 temporary duty officers for the next six months. These have been very effective, both in bringing down our inventories and in increasing our ability to produce visas in the last two years. For the longer term, we are increasing by 25% our permanent staff complement overseas, and we do expect there will be an additional 45 visa officers in overseas missions by 2002.

[Translation]

We are developing a pilot project to find out if it is possible to process some immigration applications in Canada. We are improving our processing capability by developing the global case management system which will help us improve considerably our ability to exchange information both within the Department and with our partners.

[English]

Let me talk a little bit about the second of the key issues both for us and for the AG: security and criminality screening. We see this as clearly one of the most important determinants of program integrity. With our determination to work more closely with national and international partners in this endeavour, it's possible, we believe, to more effectively share information, particularly information that relates to organized crime and to modern-day war crimes. I believe we have a good lead position in this regard.

In addition, we have assigned resources to improving our handling of security cases. This includes the development of a national criminal and security screening process that will specifically address the issues at the front end of the refugee process.

• 0930

Within the new legislation, we expect to put in place a more streamlined approach for security certificates, and we will produce a strategy that will improve our ability to interdict improperly documented migrants and work more closely with international partners, including countries such as China, to try to deter the smuggling and trafficking of people that we are suffering from at the moment.

The issue of medical admissibility is one that I know we'll be talking about further today. One of our most important domestic initiatives in this area is the development of a working definition of “excessive demand”—the health conditions of visa applicants that could place unacceptable strain on our health care system. This new definition will provide more objective and transparent decision-making with regard to medical admissibility.

In addition, we are working closely with Health Canada and we expect soon to be in receipt of their advice on whether we should change or add to our routine testing. We also will pursue improvements to medical surveillance and provide better explanations to entrants about certain infectious but inactive diseases and why entrants need to report to public health authorities.

Finally, we will look at ways to reduce the amount of time that refugee claimants are in Canada before they undergo a medical examination. A pilot project has just begun in Quebec, which will reduce that period from sixty to five days. If we can see the effectiveness of this, we will expand that.

I hope that the areas I have touched on here will illustrate to some degree the commitment that we have to retool and streamline our processes and our administrative measures, and I hope it illustrates that we will work very collaboratively with the Auditor General to do this. We are intending to have him sit on our follow-up committee and work hand in hand with us to make these changes.

The additional resources we've been allocated will allow us, I think, to make some crucial investments in our infrastructure and in our partnerships. These will ensure that our operations and program delivery are not only more efficient but, we hope, more effective.

Thank you for your attention. That will conclude our remarks. We are now happy to get into whatever detail would be most useful for both of us.

The Chair: Thank you, Martha.

Steve.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: Do you want me to go first?

The Chair: Yes, of course. You've been here since nine o'clock. I'm going to go to the people who were here right at the beginning. Go ahead.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: Fine. Thanks.

Thank you very much for that. I'd like you to respond to some of the things that the Auditor General brought up yesterday.

One, in his opening remarks at the end, I pointed out that he actually added a word to his text, which he doesn't often do, and it was a significant word. When he talked about the plan that you've recently published on the Internet, he said “We believe that the department would be well advised to develop an action plan”, but he added the word “real”—“a real action plan”. I asked him about that, and he said he added the word intentionally. So he's clearly not satisfied with the action plan you have published, a copy of which I have somewhere here.

I wonder if you could respond to that. Are you going to put together a detailed action plan along the lines...? I mean, when you talk about reducing medicals from sixty to five days, that's a pretty good action plan. Are you going to do that throughout the program?

Ms. Martha Nixon: Thanks for that question, because we do very much want to stress that in regard to the action plan we put together, we actually started putting it together before the AG published his plan. It was built on our first level of response.

We very much recognize that we have assigned responsibility in broad areas. We are meeting next week. Joan Atkinson and I will chair a follow-up committee. We have put together a working group that will go into much more detail over the course of the summer in terms of specific actions that will allow us to accomplish what we've said in this very preliminary plan. We'll put timelines against it. We will invite the Auditor General to sit with us on that committee and we will have ready for you in the fall a very much more detailed plan that you can then track as we go through it.

We are very committed to the follow-up here. We feel that the actions we've outlined give us a very good beginning and sketch out the broad lines of where we need to go. I think we can very easily take you through parts of that and indicate in detail what we intend to do. But this is indeed a preliminary plan, and we will commit to coming back with far more action-oriented follow-up and timelines for each of them.

• 0935

Mr. Steve Mahoney: Okay.

Much of what was said yesterday, frankly, would cause anyone serious concern if they read it—a statement, for example, like this:

Finally, we found that the Department is particularly vulnerable to fraud and abuse. It has no effective measures in place to discourage people from submitting fraudulent applications....

One of the issues, of course, that critics of your department and this government particularly like to jump on is that there is some kind of a flow of fraudulent applicants coming into the country, that they don't have their security records checked, that they're criminals, they're druggies, they're oozing disease, and all of the above. When someone with the credibility of the Auditor General points that out in very frank, direct terms, it does not behoove us as members of the committee to become defensive, but rather to find out why he's saying that, and if in fact you agree with that, and if you do, what's being done.

I understand you're talking about an action plan in the fall, but you've got an additional $139 million and I assume you're not waiting until the fall to allocate that.

Can you respond? I guess there is a series of questions in there.

Ms. Martha Nixon: Sure. There certainly are.

I'll start off and then I'll ask my colleagues to jump in. I think as officials of the department we are very much aware that the Auditor General has painted a picture that we have to consider very seriously, and his comments I think indicate that the department has reflected probably a period of its history that has been problematic in many ways. I think we often have to recognize that we've been concentrating in the last number of years on getting ourselves set up as a department, in moving forward with major pieces of legislation, in trying to get the framework for our work settled, and that some of the pieces that have been affected and are commented on by the Auditor General result from some of the cuts we have lived through.

That being said, we do feel we are poised now, with a lot of the major pieces now ready. We've worked very hard on the legislation, we've worked very hard to effect a new resource base, and we've worked very hard, we think, to look at some of the additional pieces that we understand we have to do around medicals, around fraud and abuse, and around quality assurance. For those pieces we are not waiting for an action plan in the fall. We are in fact working on those issues now, and I think with the resources, with the legislation, and with the administrative measures we're putting in place, we will have the tools to move forward and make the improvements the Auditor General is asking for.

Maybe if we go through the issues one by one, we can talk a little bit about.... Some of the issues around fraud and abuse, Bill can address, and Joan can go into some of the medical admissibility issues, and we can deal with those specifically. Is that acceptable?

Mr. Steve Mahoney: I wonder if you could also address at some point—and then maybe I'll just let you go—in addition to what I've mentioned, the issue of the levels or targets. It's been suggested that the government is somehow being irresponsible in setting the targets at 225,000. If there is all this fraud and abuse and problems in the system, should we be cutting back on our targets, even though we're not meeting them? Are we in fact exposing Canadians to some dangers by leaving those targets perhaps even artificially high? I'm not proposing we cut them. I'm saying that that suggestion has been made by critics and I think it needs to be responded to with some clarity.

Ms. Martha Nixon: We'll start off with....

Mr. William A. Sheppit (Director General, Case Management, Department of Citizenship and Immigration): Thank you, Martha.

• 0940

There's no doubt, looking at the Auditor General's opening remarks, yes, we are vulnerable to fraud and abuse. Right now somebody can file an application that says virtually anything and we have to prove that it's not as they say. As he points out, our officers overseas resort to detection methods that are extremely costly and can take a long time. If we catch them, we refuse their immigration application and they file a new one tomorrow. There's no administrative penalty.

So we've devoted a lot of time to proving that they are inadmissible or that they don't qualify, and there's no sanction. This is one of the areas that the new legislation hopes to address, whereby in effect there is an administrative sanction of two years, I believe. When we find that somebody has engaged in fraud or misrepresentation, we refuse their application; they're not allowed to make a new application for a period of two years. So that addresses that particular point.

On the broader question, on security and criminality, I think certainly with regard to organized crime we've done a lot over the last ten years. Legislation has been introduced so that we can refuse people for whom we have reasonable grounds to believe they are involved in organized crime. As you've all seen on The Sopranos, or whatever the saga of organized crime is, serious members of organized crime may have minor convictions when they're young and that's it. As they progress up the organization, they don't get convictions because they order people to do things.

So we have legislative ability now, which I believe is unique in the world, to deny somebody admission to Canada if we have reasonable grounds to believe they are involved in an organized crime organization. We don't necessarily need a conviction.

Similarly, on the security side, we've developed MOUs with our international partners. With the Americans we exchange information on a terrorist database. On the modern war crimes side...we had a meeting with the United States, the U.K., and Australia a month or two ago, and it was clear that they look to us as a leader in taking action against people involved in crimes against humanity. Again, the legislation and the program we have in place are unique in the world.

We've done presentations to the European Union, we've worked very closely with the International Criminal Tribunal from Yugoslavia, and we're making a lot of progress in those areas. The challenge is that in all of those areas—organized crime, terrorism, modern war crimes—in a lot of cases you're dealing with allegations and classified information. There are very few black and whites; there are a lot of greys. That's the challenge we face on a continuing basis in the department, the balance between enforcement activities and facilitation activities, because we all want to process the good immigrants as fast as we possibly can, but we want to make sure that they are the good immigrants and that we do a good job of verifying who they are and where their money came from and these sorts of things.

So it's a continuing balancing act.

I'll pass it over to Joan for the other issues.

Ms. Joan Atkinson (Acting Deputy Minister, Policy and Program Development, Department of Citizenship and Immigration): Let me start by addressing the issue of levels, because I think it ties in very nicely with what Bill was saying.

When we were here in front of the committee to talk about levels, we talked a little bit about the reasons behind why the department has been unable to achieve the target in the last couple of years. One of the things we talked about was the shift in source country. This is very important in terms of the issues around fraud and misrepresentation and the program integrity concerns, because in fact we have been taking the program integrity concerns seriously.

• 0945

One of the reasons we have been unable to meet the levels in the last two years—although we came very close in 1999 at 95% of the lower end of the target, which was a tremendous accomplishment—is the shift in source countries to areas of the world where either the documentation is not readily available, or it's certainly readily available and you can buy it at any price, but it's not necessarily credible documentation.

As Bill has said, we all want to be able to facilitate and process quickly the immigrants we know we want and need in this country, but we constantly have to be vigilant because we are operating in environments where fraud and misrepresentation are very evident and where it's very easy for our applicants to buy or obtain fraudulent documentation.

So in a sense, we have had to slow down our processing in order to make sure we are being vigilant and we are looking at the risk and we are ensuring we have program integrity. But we need to do more, as the Auditor General has pointed out.

Bill has spoken to the issue of the legislative changes that will give us better tools to deal more effectively with fraud and misrepresentation. In the meantime, missions abroad have been taking action, have been doing some of the investigations that Bill points out in some of their casework and in some of their areas to try to identify the types of fraud we are facing.

We want to take a look at that as we allocate the new resources that are coming to us and look at areas where we can strategically place those resources to devote more time and attention to fraud and investigation, to continue to improve on some of the measures we have taken in some parts of the world to ensure we know where the fraud is coming from and how it's being presented to us and take appropriate corrective action in terms of our processes.

So that's an ongoing process, and part of our action plan refers to developing and consolidating the anti-fraud activities we do to make sure we're spreading those best practices around the delivery network. We're paying more attention and devoting more of our resources to looking at the anti-fraud activities.

In terms of meeting the levels, as I said, one of the reasons we have not been as successful in meeting the targets is because of the shifting environment out there and the need for us to be more vigilant with applications, given the shift in source country.

There have been other factors as well: the resource cut that we've talked about, the fact that we had a downturn in the Asian economy in 1997-98. There's a series of factors.

In terms of meeting the levels, as we talked about at this committee when we talked about levels, we need to take the longer-term view. If in fact you look at our planning ranges over the last 20 years and at the department's performance in terms of meeting those planning ranges, you find that we were above and below those planning ranges but that we did a pretty good job over a 19- to 20-year period, if you take the longer-term view, in terms of meeting the government's target and the government's desired outcomes on immigration levels.

What we have to remember when we talk about levels is that we're talking about a target, a desired outcome. There are a lot of factors that are beyond our control that sometimes impact on our ability to be able to meet those targets, but if you take the longer-term view, I think you'll see that we haven't done a bad job at all in terms of meeting those targets. Over a 19-year period, the planning range was about 3,467,000 immigrants landed. We actually delivered 3,461,000, so we're about 6,000 off over a 20-year range in terms of meeting those planning ranges.

As I said, there are a variety of factors that go into the reasons we are either above or below the targets in any given year, and certainly the program integrity issues are very important parts of that.

The Chair: Thank you.

Leon.

Mr. Leon E. Benoit (Lakeland, Canadian Alliance): Ms. Atkinson, that 20-year period included a couple of general amnesties that occurred because the system failed so badly that there was a terrific backlog. That's something you didn't mention.

There are four main areas on which I want to focus today. I'm going to start with what I see as a real problem in work between your department and Parliament. I don't know why this exists. I think it may be kind of a general thing between the various departments and Parliament, but it's something that was pointed out by the Auditor General in 1990 first, when he said in his report, on page 3-12: “Information to Parliament on the immigration program is incomplete and fragmented.”

• 0950

Management's response at the time was that the immigration department has undergone a new structure that will provide Parliament with the tools to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of the department.

Then, in April 2000, in his report, the Auditor General addressed the issue again, saying on page 3-42—and he was very specific—that information provided to parliamentarians is limited.

I'd like to talk a little bit more about this. I'm aware that the department has a so-called action plan. The Auditor General yesterday did say he doesn't consider it to be an action plan, but I'm aware that it does exist. It was distributed to the committee sometime over the past week. It was talked about at the public accounts committee. In fact, at public accounts, when I asked the deputy minister, Ms. Cochrane, a question about that, she said that in fact it's on the website; it's certainly not a secret document. Is that true?

Ms. Joan Atkinson: Yes.

Mr. Leon Benoit: It's on the website?

Ms. Joan Atkinson: It's on our Intranet.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Intranet?

Ms. Joan Atkinson: It's on our internal Intranet site, but it's certainly not a secret document.

Mr. Leon Benoit: But it's not on a public website?

Ms. Joan Atkinson: Not yet.

Mr. Leon Benoit: But it's not a secret document?

Ms. Joan Atkinson: It's available to anyone at all.

The Chair: It's obviously not secret now. It's public.

Mr. Leon Benoit: But if it's a public—

The Chair: It's not—

Mr. Leon Benoit: Mr. Chair, I'd appreciate it if you'd let me ask my line of questions as I see fit. I really don't need your interjection.

The Chair: I'd like the truth, okay? I don't want you to lay any ambiguities out there that the public wouldn't understand.

It is now a public document. It is now in the public domain. The clarification on Internet and Intranet is fine.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Mr. Chair, my line of questioning was to point out the problems in the department accounting to Parliament properly. I would appreciate it if you'd let me ask my questions. It would be much appreciated, in fact.

So the deputy minister at that time said this was on the CIC website. I don't know; I don't consider the Intranet to be on the CIC website. I do see that as a sign of a problem, though, of trying to keep information from this committee, from Parliament.

In fact, in regard to this chart that we did get finally, dated April 11—I believe that's the day of the Auditor General's report, or shortly after—I don't understand why that chart couldn't have come to the committee, at least, right at that time, to help us deal with the Auditor General's report.

Surely there should be cooperation between the department and this committee and Parliament in general, because we are really the main way in which your department is held accountable by the public. Particularly when documents like this aren't on a public network, I think that's a real area of concern.

Ms. Martha Nixon: I think we have been pushing ourselves toward the presentation we were making to the public accounts committee. We have never had any intention of making this other than a public document. We tabled it with the public accounts committee. We assumed there was some crossover with the public accounts committee.

We're very happy to table it with this committee today. We have been working on it for some time. We felt it was important to put on our Intranet site because we want every single one of our employees to understand that we are taking this whole report and our action plan very seriously. It is extremely critical that each of them understands that we have outlined areas of work that need to be pursued very intensively.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I'm not trying to say what the reason would be for that not being put on the public network. I'm just encouraging you in future to do what you can to be really helpful.

It may not be fact, but when you see this kind of thing happening, it really appears that there isn't the kind of cooperation you'd like to see, and—

The Chair: But that would include committee members also, so—

Ms. Martha Nixon: In fact I'm trying to make our annual report to Parliament a document that will be much more indicative of all the work the department is doing.

As you know, we do a report on plans and priorities each year, which is very public. We are very anxious to be as transparent as we can. We have nothing to hide here. We feel that we have actions laid out. We have said that we will commit to making these actions indeed more specific and with timelines attached. That will also be public.

Mr. Benoit, we are committed to being transparent about what we are intending to do.

• 0955

Mr. Leon Benoit: That sounds encouraging. I guess I get a bit of an attitude when I see things that make it very difficult to get information.

A second example is the search engine on the CIC website. When I became immigration critic for the Reform Party—the Canadian Alliance—a year and a half ago, we went to the website and tried to use the search engine to find things, and it doesn't work. Now I find out it hasn't worked for the four years that.... We thought it was something that would be repaired, that it was temporarily down, yet it doesn't work. So you have no search engine to really find information the website, which makes the website virtually useless, frankly, or next to it. Could you just talk about that a little bit?

Mr. Georges Tsaï (Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Department of Citizenship and Immigration): If I may, Mr. Chair, yes, we recognize the fact that our website is probably not the most technically advanced one you can find in the world. But our intention is to improve our website through the government online initiative.

We have established the governance structure to implement the project, and we are meeting the deadlines that have been established by the government in relation to this initiative, which can also be referred to as e-government. The first deliverable we'll be accountable for is to have a website that is much more user-friendly by the end of this calendar year.

So while our website does contain some very useful information.... The number of hits is quite significant—85,000 a month—

Mr. Leon Benoit: But it just takes so long to find what you're looking for.

Mr. Georges Tsaï: I agree with you.

Mr. Leon Benoit: You understand why I get that feeling that they're trying to hide something. I don't believe you are, you know; that's not what I'm saying. But that's the impression you get.

And then when my staff phoned the minister's office on at least two occasions—and I phoned some other offices too, to try to get this straightened out—we never got a reply. That really was a concern, you know—just another stumbling block in the information flow between my office, the committee, Parliament generally, and the department. It's something I really would like to see improved.

I know it may sound a little bit picky, but even in the document we have today, there's no translation. We have the English section in English, the French in French.

I came in here late. I felt I had no real alternative but to rush through it, and part of it is in French, which I don't read very well. So that's just something, if you could—

Ms. Martha Nixon: We'd be happy to give you—

Mr. Leon Benoit: Again, I don't mean to sound.... I really start to wonder why this information is so difficult to get sometimes. I really would appreciate it if you would work on that. I think it is extremely important. You understand the concept of accountability of the department to Parliament—I know you understand that.

Ms. Martha Nixon: I think you've heard us talk before, Mr. Benoit, about our endeavours to improve client service, and one of the areas specifically that we have highlighted for action is how we can be more responsive to members of Parliament. We particularly want to make sure we are giving as timely a response as we can. We have been dealing with huge volumes, and a lot of it has to do with the status of cases and that kind of information.

We're looking at one of the first projects that we are trying to deal with in terms of moving to new technology, which is to see whether we can't have some technical way of making available the status of cases, for instance, through an online mechanism, with all the proper privacy kinds of things around it. But I think we are endeavouring very sincerely to make our ability to respond to members much more efficient, and I hope when you call our offices you won't have problems.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I thank you for that.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): I would just like some clarification before I go to Mr. Bryden. The document you referred to receiving this morning, partly in French, that's the opening remarks. Is that—

Mr. Leon Benoit: Yes. My copy has part in English, part in French.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Yes, so does mine. Of course we have translation, but it's normal that we get these the morning of.

Mr. Leon Benoit: In both languages, I believe.

• 1000

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Steve Mahoney): In both languages, but the morning of. So we wouldn't get it in advance, would we?

Mr. Leon Benoit: Well, I'd appreciate it, especially from the department. There's no reason we shouldn't get it at least the day before so we can have a look at it.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Steve Mahoney): In every committee I've been on, including public accounts, you get it when the Auditor General comes in.

I don't need your assistance, by the way. You work for this man and not for me. So you can keep your motions to yourself.

It's my understanding that opening remarks are presented the day of, because they're considered confidential, I would have thought.

Anyway, I just wanted some clarification on that.

Mr. Bryden.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I'm just saying this document is in—

Mr. John Bryden: The witness has read those opening remarks, and had you been here, Mr. Benoit, you would have heard them in translation through the translators. So I don't think it's a point we need dwell on.

Can I just take us into some other areas?

You mentioned in testimony that there has been a shift in source countries. Can you comment on that a bit?

Ms. Joan Atkinson: Certainly. I think one of the things we have seen in terms of the program in the overseas context is a fairly dramatic shift in our source countries. China is our number one source country now. It has been since 1998.

Hong Kong used to be our number one source country. In 1996 and 1997, Hong Kong was our number one source country. It dropped to number four in 1998, and it's not even in the top ten any more. That's an important shift.

It's important not in terms of the quality of immigrants, because we are receiving very high-quality immigrants out of the People's Republic of China, tremendously skilled worker immigrants and business immigrants and so on. But what that has meant for us in terms of our operating environment is a growth in applications that are coming from an environment where the kind of documentation we require in order to process a case quickly and efficiently is much more difficult to get.

That has meant we've had to spend more time on individual applications in terms of verifying information and documentation to assure ourselves that the individuals who are applying to us are who they claim to be, have the qualifications they claim to have, have the money they claim to have, and so on. And the Auditor General has rightfully pointed out in his report that this is something we need to continue to not only be vigilant about but to improve on.

In addition, India remains our number two source country. Pakistan is another country that has moved from being our number six source country to being now a number three source country. Again, that's another area of the world we are receiving very high-quality immigrants from, but it's an environment in which we need to continue to be vigilant about the types of documentation and so on that we're receiving from individuals.

Mr. William Sheppit: If I could just add to this and put it in a more practical context of what this means in terms of the visa officer overseas, when you were dealing with the case of Hong Kong, you had a western political system, a western judicial system, and rule of law. You had a very reliable and efficient police service. You had the independent commission against corruption, which looked specifically at Asian organized crime. You had a very good business registration system and an income tax system similar to Canada's.

In a lot of cases you would get documentation from somebody and be able to make a decision on the basis of the documentation that was in front of you. Or if you required an interview to clarify a couple of points, you could bring them in. The vast majority of them spoke English, and you could clarify it in a half-hour interview.

When you move to China, we're in the situation now where it's often necessary for our staff overseas to go out and visit to determine if the claimed business actually exists at the site. You're dealing with interpreters. You're dealing with much more in-depth and timely interviews, and obviously, just in terms of the number of interviews a day that a visa officer can do, there's a considerable difference.

Mr. John Bryden: Do we or should we control in any way this list of source countries? And which ones are creating the most traffic? Do we attempt to control that?

Ms. Joan Atkinson: Canada's immigration policy is a universal policy, and it applies to anyone regardless of where they're coming from. The selection criteria are designed to ensure we are selecting the people who are going to be able to successfully establish in Canada on the economic side, regardless of what country they're coming from.

• 1005

In the current legislation we have the tools available to impose limits on classes of immigrants, but certainly not on the basis of country of origin. The nature of our immigration policy has been, for many, many years, and will continue to be, one that is universally applied, regardless of country of origin.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Mr. Bryden, I'm actually next, but I'll give you my five minutes if you want to go right through for the ten minutes.

Mr. John Bryden: Thank you. I'll go for whatever time we have.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Go ahead.

Mr. John Bryden: I have a lot of questions I'd love to develop here.

Let me tell you where I'm coming from on this, because this is an opportunity to discuss. I've often been fascinated by the fact that in Europe quite a number of people who are working in countries like France, and particularly Germany, will never have the opportunity to become citizens. These represent people who have developed very fine skills.

I've often wondered why a country like Canada can't target these particular types of people for potential immigrants. Very specifically, I'm thinking of, in Germany, for example, the people of Turkish descent who are working there and are extremely well skilled. Can we do anything to attract that type of person?

Ms. Martha Nixon: We probably all have views on this, but let me just say that I think this is part of the discussion that has to happen around looking at a multi-year immigration plan, and trying to decide, as you look at the 1% target, which the minister has spoken about, if you're going to move to achieve that level, what that would mean in terms of being more proactive.

We haven't in the recent past been very proactive about going specifically to countries and saying we're going to raise a campaign here to attract these people, but if we look at the fact that many countries are going to be out looking for good, promising immigrants in the next number of years, and we know we want to continue to recruit very high-quality people, then that may well be one of the things we will have to consider.

Ms. Joan Atkinson: Perhaps I could add to that. As Martha has indicated, again, one of the things we haven't been able to do as comprehensively as we would like, given our resource situation, has been active promotion and recruitment.

We have done some promotion and recruitment specifically in partnership with provinces. One of the things the minister has talked about in terms of looking at immigration levels is our desire to try to find ways to disperse immigrants away from the three large urban areas to some of the smaller communities and cities in provinces that are desperately looking for immigrants. In that vein, we have signed provincial nominee agreements with a number of provinces. The Province of Manitoba has been the most active in terms of their provincial nominee program, and they have been very successful, in fact, in terms of some of their promotion and recruitment activities to attract immigrants to the province of Manitoba.

We certainly have been assisting and supporting any province that has been out there doing promotion and recruitment. We ourselves have been trying to tap into, in a limited way with the resources we do have available, some of those exact pools of people that you're talking about.

In the United States, for example, there is a pool of individuals who came to the United States on the so-called H-1B visa, the temporary worker visa. They've reached the upper limit on that visa and many of them are looking for a place to remain permanently, not necessarily wanting to return to their home countries.

That is a potential pool of highly skilled immigrants that we want to continue to tap into. We've had some success, with the limited resources we do have, in the United States in terms of promoting Canada as an immigration destination when the opportunity presents itself to those particular pools.

Mr. John Bryden: If I may, speaking for at least one person in Parliament, I'd urge you to continue to be proactive on this particular file.

Can I continue?

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): You have a little bit of time.

Mr. John Bryden: There's another thing I'd like you to discuss a little bit. When we're talking here about long-range policy and developing programs, how does it work administratively within your department? I see you are assistant deputy ministers and deputy ministers. How are plans developed? Does the deputy minister sit there and all the assistant deputy ministers sit around? What actually happens?

• 1010

Ms. Martha Nixon: There are only three of us. You have the whole complement here.

Mr. John Bryden: Then how do you go about developing your policies? What's the mechanism?

Ms. Martha Nixon: I'll just start off and then go to Joan, who has years of experience with this.

The process is probably not unlike what happens in many departments. Generally speaking, a conversation with the minister might set some general sort of idea of where you want to go. Then there are people at the director general level, director level, and below who work on a policy piece. Generally speaking, they would start off with a document, which puts out a variety of scenarios or ideas. That is then probably discussed with the director general and the ADM level in preparation for discussion up through the deputies and with the minister.

So there's an iterative process that happens most frequently, often fed into by the provinces, people we consult outside the department. Over the course of time, the consultation may be more formal, more wide-ranging, or less, depending on the issue and how broad it is.

Joan's done this many, many times.

Ms. Joan Atkinson: Thank you, Martha.

As Martha said, it can be both top-down and bottom-up. The minister may express an idea and a desire to explore a particular initiative and the department then takes that and develops it in the way Martha has described.

It could also come bottom-up. That is, if there is a problem in the way the program is being delivered, managers and line officers in the field identify an issue, a problem that needs resolution. If they can resolve it locally by changing their processes locally, they do so. If it involves a policy change because the policy is not delivering on its objective or it's causing a problem in the way it's being delivered, then they bring that to the attention of headquarters and we work on developing a new policy from the bottom up because it's come to us from the field.

Either way, whether it's a top-down or a bottom-up approach, we have in the department—and I would say this is probably similar to many departments—a policy and operations committee that brings both operational managers and policy managers to the table. When we are developing our policies, we very much want to make sure they are grounded in operational reality because there's no point in developing a policy that is undeliverable. We go to some length to ensure that when we're developing policies, we bring the operational side to the table at an early phase in the process to discuss the feasibility and the implementation of such a policy before we take it too far.

As Martha has said, in public policy across government, we work very horizontally in the sense that we engage in discussions not only with our partner departments at the federal level—and in the immigration field we have many—but we work with HRDC, Health Canada, RCMP, CSIS, the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, etc. We work with a whole series of partners at the federal level because our program touches on so many other areas of public policy.

We also work outside of the department, with provinces and territories that have an interest in the policies we develop and with stakeholders, with NGOs, some of which are familiar to this committee because they have appeared in front of you. We work with industry and with business to ensure that we are receiving the widest variety of views on our policies. Then, as Martha has said, when we have the policies at a certain refined stage, we take them up through the system and have that discussion with the minister, who ultimately, with her cabinet colleagues, makes the decisions.

Mr. Georges Tsaï: Perhaps I can add very briefly that when we discuss a new policy proposal at the policy and operations committee, all the resource implications are also reviewed at that time in terms of the technology involved, human resources, and financial resources.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Thank you.

Leon.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I'd like to ask about offshore applications. As you're probably aware, I did ask the Auditor General some questions about this yesterday. Of course, what we're talking about is applications that are submitted in a third country. Maybe it should be looked at slightly differently, because not every country has an office, but not in the most obvious office, let's say.

• 1015

Between 1992 and 1998, the number of applications increased from 7,600 to 39,000, which is a pretty phenomenal increase. More than 48% of those received in 1998 were economic immigrant applications. So it's a substantial portion. The Auditor General talked quite a bit about this in his report. I know many department officials have also said this is a problem area.

Why do you think this increase has happened? It's such a dramatic increase, fourfold in a few years.

Ms. Martha Nixon: I think it's probably necessary to look at offshore processing in terms of both risk management and client service, because we have to do both of those things in this business. When you look at the way the world is today, certainly the way business works and the way people move around, sometimes there are reasons of convenience for which people would choose one office over another.

We've looked at offshore processing, and there's no doubt that it's something we've been watching carefully and monitoring over the last number of years. We have certainly tried to address it in terms of the efficiency of our own processing through the business centres as a model, for instance. We prescribed nine business centres and four subcentres in 1998, specifically so that we could have a locus of expertise and we wouldn't have business applications spread so far and wide that it would be more difficult for us to have the knowledge and the expertise in these centres. So we're watching carefully how that's affecting people's choices and the business patterns, patterns for the business program.

We've decided right now, looking at the comments that we know our own officers have made and some of the experiences we've had.... Certainly there is a protocol in place in offices now as to how people are to deal with an offshore application. That means they are to check back with the visa office where there might be found greater expertise in the background of that particular applicant. If they're an Indian applying in Los Angeles, then the Los Angeles office, if they need to have additional information about that applicant, would be expected to go back to Delhi and ask for that information.

We're also acknowledging—

Mr. Leon Benoit: Are you saying that really what you've done already then is designated a particular office to have the expertise when dealing with applications for people from a certain part of the world?

Ms. Martha Nixon: No. In the case of business immigration—

Mr. Leon Benoit: Only business. Why hasn't that been expanded to all economic immigrants? It makes so much sense to me. It would go a long way to dealing with a very difficult problem.

Mr. William Sheppit: It's not so much designating offices with expertise, but the office responsible for the country from which the person comes obviously has more knowledge about that office than an office in the United States, for example. If somebody is from India, lives in India, and applies in an office in the United States, the processing office will refer that application and any questions they have about the environment, the credentials, or the qualifications to the office in India for verification. It's not a question of designating particular offices; it's just that the office on the ground has more knowledge than the office halfway around the world.

Mr. Leon Benoit: But there are no checks done with other offices to see whether other applications have been submitted?

Mr. William Sheppit: That's part of that process.

Mr. Leon Benoit: In all offices? So whenever someone submits an application, there is a check made in all other offices to ensure that the person hasn't submitted an application in other offices?

Ms. Joan Atkinson: You can do that in our existing computer-assisted immigration processing system overseas. You can tap into the global database on that from any office in the world.

Mr. Leon Benoit: You can, but is it done in all cases?

Ms. Joan Atkinson: Yes, it is done. That is part of the protocol Martha was referring to. You do a check against the global database to determine whether there was an application submitted. If an application was submitted at another post, then as Martha has indicated, you go back to that particular post and get details on that particular application.

• 1020

Ms. Martha Nixon: I think it's important to point out that we've been really trying to weigh the issues here, and one of the things we are going to do is go forward with a client service pilot project. I think we've mentioned this before at this committee. We're looking at this issue and asking ourselves if we can in fact achieve more efficient client service by bringing some of the vetting of applicants into a centralized processing unit in Canada. So in a sense what we're trying to decide is how you can achieve efficiencies by perhaps eliminating some of the issues that you deal with overseas and setting up a pilot that will look at processing in Canada.

The issue there really is how you deal with the kinds of expertise that you need about so many different parts of the world. So we feel that we have now got a way of importing or asking for some of that expertise from overseas offices, but we're going to put a very rigorous evaluation framework around this pilot project. We're going to give ourselves 18 months to make it work. We're going to look at it specifically in terms of a limited number of visa posts from which we will be drawing applicants. And we're going to come up, we hope, in a couple of years with a really good answer around the offshore issue—does it make sense, does it not make sense?

Of course you're always balancing the client service issue. If you are living as an Indian citizen in Los Angeles, is it fair for Canada to say you have to go back to Delhi to be processed? Is this something people really feel would be good client service? Yet we know we need to, in a sense, find a way to import the expertise that they would have in Delhi either to Los Angeles or to a central processing unit in Canada.

So we have to figure out what makes sense here, and do it carefully and with, we hope, some evaluation of the pros and cons of moving in that direction.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I would guess that a lot of people would be happy, even in the case you just mentioned, to go back to Delhi to apply and provide some information if the process took maybe a third as long as it does now. So if you can bring some efficiencies into the system so you can process much faster, I think people would be quite willing to do that in a lot of cases.

One option certainly is to have a centralized system, but another would be to require that people apply from their home office in virtually every case. There would have to be some exceptions, but in most cases it's certainly an option. Have you looked at actually not allowing offshore applications?

Ms. Martha Nixon: Well, we have the capacity within our current legislation to in fact direct people to apply at certain places, which is what we've invoked in using the business centre concept. So we are looking at this. We are discussing the issue, and we do hope the pilot project we are undertaking will advise us in this direction. But I think we need to look at a number of options as we move towards what we hope will be greater efficiency through all kinds of different measures.

Mr. Leon Benoit: What we have now is immigration consultants shopping around, and when they get a client wanting to immigrate to Canada, they will look to the office they think is going to work best for this particular client, the country he or she is from, and the circumstances they're in, their background and so on. I would expect that from an immigration consultant if I paid one to do that task for me. But as long as there's so much difference.... As the Auditor General has pointed out, it's a huge problem in terms of the inconsistency between offices in making decisions in similar situations. You may have similar backgrounds, and yet the decisions can be quite different when you look at the portfolio of that office, let's say. As long as that's there, you will have people shopping around—as long as this is allowed.

Ms. Martha Nixon: One of the things, Mr. Benoit, that we've certainly been moving towards—and we are going to increase our efforts in this regard—is putting in place a quality assurance system. We've asked Consulting and Audit Canada, as part of our client service initiative, to help us design one. Certainly there are quality assurance processes happening in some offices abroad and some offices in Canada, but we recognize that it's inconsistent. We need to be able to monitor, as you say, the efficiency with which offices are dealing with cases and the integrity they're applying as they go through the process.

• 1025

So we will be coming back to you with proposals around how we will put that in place, and we have this as a very high priority for the course of the next year.

Mr. Leon Benoit: What you have, though, is the Auditor General, back in the 1990 report, pointing out this problem of inconsistency. Here we are ten years later, and I hear you saying only now are you going somewhere to try to get a program put in place to try to bring more consistency into the system. My question is what's been going on for the last ten years?

Ms. Martha Nixon: The Auditor General observed ten years ago that we needed to pass more delegation to our locally engaged staff and give them in fact more delegated authority. We've moved in that direction, and this year he's criticizing us for giving too much power to our locally engaged staff and having a case of malfeasance—

Mr. Leon Benoit: Well, I think what he said is that you have to be a lot more careful in screening staff, and I think what he said is that you have to have continual audits that will pick out a problem. That's what he said. So let's be fair about what the Auditor General has said here.

Ms. Martha Nixon: We are moving to try to increase our audit capacity, and Georges can talk about that. We are also moving to increase the amount of training. If you look at the training, we have probably put about 50% more resources into our training budget over the past two years than we had previously. We have very much concentrated on giving our officers abroad and our managers going abroad increased training, and we've recognized that there's been good payoff for the training that we have put in place. We have also brought, I think, a very active training course for our designated immigration officers abroad, and they are coming into Canada regularly to be trained and enabled to do their jobs better.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Of course the Auditor General did say that by and large staff working for the department are very capable, in many cases well trained—very positive things. And that's a feeling I have generally about the civil service, whether it's the immigration department or others. I think more and better training certainly is necessary, but it's not going to solve the problem. In spite of what the Auditor General said about the staff being very capable and good people, there still are all these problems.

That would lead me to say it's a management problem. If you have the good people, then you have to provide them with the tools and with the system and with the law—and not just management, but government providing the law that allows them to operate efficiently, and certainly one of those issues has to be the offshore applications. It is huge. I'd like your impressions about—

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): I think I have to ask you to finish on that remark. There'll be more time, I think.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Yes. Can I just ask that one little question, though?

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): All right, sure. Ask one more.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I'd like your general view on how big a problem this offshore application is and also, if that can be fixed, either the method you're proposing or talking about as a trial project, or just not allowing it in a very limited way. How far would that go to solving the problems of both not enough resources in the department and just making the system work better?

Ms. Martha Nixon: First of all, let me just say I appreciate very much your comments about our staff. I think one of the encouraging things in the Auditor General's report was that recognition that our staff are indeed very professional, very dedicated. I've been in the department just about two years, and I have to say I have never seen staff who want to do their jobs more than our people do.

When we look at the issue of offshore, I think it's far more complicated than just that. I think offshore processing is a factor. I think in a sense we can look at the issues the Auditor General has raised as a very large piece. Some of it certainly speaks to the tools and the capability, the administrative measures that our staff need, and we've recognized that. I think they will be encouraged by the fact that we do have new legislation pending, by the fact that we have been recognized for more resources, that we will be able to put more ICOs, more officers, abroad.

We do have systems that we're hoping will start to improve our capability of dealing with the information that one office has that another office needs to have, and that will be available. Our capacity to have that information will be enhanced.

• 1030

The offshore question is a difficult one. We need to have a network across the world. We need to be able to be accessible in places where people are. We need to be able to respond to a workforce that's increasingly global and isn't just located in one place—it moves around. I don't think we have all the answers.

We're hopeful that the centralized pilot will tell us something. We have to keep talking to our own staff. We have to look at whether the measures and improvements we bring forward are going to allow us to work more efficiently. I'd be happy to come back on this issue, as we move forward with some of the things we hope to do, because I think it is an important question. I appreciate that.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Thank you very much.

Before I go to Mr. Bryden, I just have a couple of questions, if I might.

The issue of speeding up the processing sounds like the right thing to do, but the other side of the coin is the potential for increased fraud, sloppy medicals, maybe not detailed security checks, and that kind of thing, particularly on the medicals. Yesterday I specifically asked if it was the quantity of the medicals that were being done, in terms of the timeframe, or the quality. I recall the answer was that it was the quality of the medicals that were being done.

I was recently in Nairobi, and I think of the medicals done there. We had a terrific medical team of our own, which may be gone now. I think they were moving on to their next posting. But we use local medical people. Do we get the same kind of quality in a place like Nairobi that we might get in London, for example, where we'd be dealing with more western medicine and perhaps different training? I don't know if it's fair to say better training. Also, there are very different issues. One of the issues in Nairobi is whether there should be mandatory testing for AIDS. So speed may be a laudable goal, but not if it's going to be at the expense of the fraud.

As an aside, I saw them do a computer check on an applicant right in an interview, and I was most impressed by how quickly they brought up all the information they needed to help them make the decision. They rejected the applicant because of what they found on the computer. So I think that system is working quite well.

The other thing—and then maybe you can respond to everything—is the relationship you have with organizations like CSIS. Is it reasonable to expect that our visa officers are well enough equipped to deal with technical issues like medicals, or information CSIS or Health Canada might have to deal with?

Ms. Joan Atkinson: Let me start by addressing the medical issue. As you point out, Mr. Chairman, we do medical assessments overseas by using networks of designated medical practitioners locally. They are chosen very carefully and monitored. It is part of the job of the Canada-based medical officer to do the appropriate monitoring and quality control of the work that comes from the designated medical practitioner network in their particular area.

There is certainly more that can be done, in terms of monitoring and quality control of the designated medical practitioner network, and that's probably one of the issues the Auditor General was referring to. We have recognized that, and in terms of our plan for audits and review of various activities in the department that is something we want to tackle.

It's been very difficult for medical officers to do as much quality control and monitoring of their designated medical practitioner networks because of the resource cuts. The medical officer cadre was cut back, as was the visa officer cadre, during the program review exercise.

• 1035

As you would have seen when you were in Nairobi, medical officers are currently responsible for not only the immigration medical assessment and evaluation, but public service health and occupational environmental health. In a place like Nairobi, the medical officer has a huge territory to cover. He has responsibilities not just for the immigration program and the processing of those medicals, but also for ensuring the health and safety of Canadians who are posted overseas in that area—not just in Kenya, but in a very broad area. So it's certainly one of the areas we will continue to pay a lot of attention to.

We also try to ensure some consistency in the quality of the medical assessments done by designated medical practitioners, by having standard guidelines, processes, and approaches to the assessment of medicals. As you know, we have a standard medical examination that is applied to everyone around the world, with certain routine tests. Every designated medical practitioner that is chosen receives some information and training in terms of how to do the medical examination for Canada.

In some parts of the world we are also looking at moving to other potential organizations that can assist us in doing those medical assessments, such as the International Organization for Migration. If that's available, we can tap into that organization in certain parts of the world. So those are certainly areas where we're paying a lot of attention.

In terms of routine testing, you mentioned in Nairobi the issue around HIV testing. As we talked about before at this committee and at the public accounts committee, and as Martha mentioned in her opening comments, we plan to modernize our immigration medical examination. We want to look at a series of routine tests for HIV and other diseases.

We are engaged in a process with Health Canada for them to provide us with scientific evidence to support the decisions we make on how we modernize our immigration medical examination, so we can properly examine people who want to come to Canada, not just for infectious diseases, but also in terms of some of the diseases and conditions we look for on the excessive demand side as well. We're very hopeful we'll be able to make some changes to our immigration medical examination system in the near future.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Then there is the staff side of the question I asked, on whether it's reasonable to expect a visa officer to be a medical student, a super sleuth, and all of those things.

Ms. Joan Atkinson: It's not reasonable to expect a visa officer to be a medical student, and we don't expect them to be. That's why we have medical officers overseas who are of course trained medical doctors.

The medical officer assesses the results of the medical examination done by the designated medical practitioner and makes a determination, on the basis of their assessment, as to whether the person is admissible to Canada or not. When the visa officer receives that information from the medical officer, the visa officer checks it to make sure it's consistent and there are no contradictions apparent in the decision that has been received from the medical officer. But it's very much the medical officer and the medical officer's expertise that is brought to bear, not the visa officer's.

Mr. William Sheppit: Just to follow up on that point, with regard to super-sleuthing, as with the medical doctor, we get the technical expertise and opinion provided by the subject-matter expert, but it's not impossible that somebody was a member of a terrorist organization in their home country twenty years ago because they had to belong to that group to get a job. They may have taken out membership because they wanted a civil service job—they wanted to work as a teacher—and handed out pamphlets. They would be technically inadmissible, and CSIS would provide us with that information. But there might be valid reasons for them to come to Canada, notwithstanding that inadmissibility: it happened a long time ago; they weren't involved in any activities that were a threat to public safety or security; they may have married a Canadian; or they may have children. There may be other reasons, outside the technical inadmissibility, that would argue for them coming to Canada. In that case, the minister has the authority to authorize their entry.

• 1040

It's similar with medical. Somebody may be medically inadmissible and the doctor will say to us, “In my opinion, this person is inadmissible”, but they're coming here for treatment or they're coming here for a temporary period, or again, they're married to a Canadian. You balance the inadmissibility against the other factors. That's the expertise the visa officer provides.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Thanks.

Mr. Bryden.

Mr. John Bryden: Just pursuing this line of thought, with respect to designated medical practitioners, in a country, say, such as Pakistan, where corruption is endemic at all levels of society, how do you guarantee that your designated medical practitioner isn't going to be sensitive to bribery?

Ms. Joan Atkinson: Again, it's part of the job of the medical officers overseas to do the monitoring and quality control of the designated medical practitioner network.

We also have put in place some security measures in terms of our medical assessment process, specifically with reference to the medical examination form. We have put in place measures to try to ensure that the individual who goes for the medical examination, gives the urine sample, does the chest X-ray, etc., is indeed our applicant. We insist that photographs be attached to every medical assessment form, and those photographs are attached by the visa office, and stamps are put on the photograph to ensure it was in fact attached by the visa office. The individual, when they go to the designated medical practitioner, must bring corroborating documentation with a photograph to match, to show that the person who is appearing in front of the designated medical practitioner is indeed the individual applicant, and so on.

Mr. John Bryden: You see, as MPs, we of course get all kinds of stories from the people we see.

Ms. Joan Atkinson: Sure.

Mr. John Bryden: My question to you is, do you actually spot-check, say, the blood sample or the urine sample? Because the opportunity to substitute is the way it's done, not just the photographs. Do you actually spot-check?

Ms. Joan Atkinson: I can't comment on whether or not we actually do spot-checks, and I don't know whether any of my colleagues on the side have any information in terms of whether we do spot-checks on chest X-rays or urine samples.

I don't know, Neil, whether you have anything you want to add to that.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Could I just ask you to identify yourself?

Dr. Neil Heywood (Director, Immigration Health Policy, Department of Citizenship and Immigration): My name is Neil Heywood, and I'm director of immigration health policy for CIC.

Yes, we do some spot-checking by way of exit interviews. It's possible that our medical officer, who has total authority over the immigration medical examination and assessment process, will go, as part of the area visits, to see DMPs. They don't necessarily give advance notice of these visits, and they may, during a particular area visit, go to a DMP and see people as they come out of the DMP interview; check the quality of the information that is captured by the DMP on the standard form, which Ms. Atkinson reported to you; and make, as a clinician, their own interpretation of the clinical findings.

This is regretfully rather limited in its application, because of our resources. We only have now nine medical officers overseas, so it is obviously very limited. But it is an extremely effective tool, because it keeps our DMPs certainly very honest where this has happened.

The other thing is that medical officers, by virtue of seeing on an ongoing basis the reports made by DMPs, have great expertise in comparing the results from day to day and from month to month. So if they see something out of the line of the normal pattern from a particular DMP, that can be investigated and is investigated.

Mr. John Bryden: But if I may make an observation, you haven't really satisfied my worry here, because there's the opportunity to buy a good blood sample. You can pay a lot of money. If you have AIDS or if you have antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis, and if you have the money, it would appear to me, just from what I gather, we really don't have the ability to wink out that type of activity that might be occurring.

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Ms. Joan Atkinson: As Dr. Heywood has described to you, we do have in place processes that the medical officers engage in to try to identify if there may be an issue, to do the spot-checks, to do the quality controls and exit interviews of people leaving DMPs' offices. But as we've also said, it's not perfect. We know that's one of the areas where we need to do more work, and that's one of the reasons we are committed to doing a thorough audit and review of the designated medical practitioner network.

Mr. John Bryden: I won't pursue it any further, but you do see where my area of concern is.

Ms. Joan Atkinson: Absolutely, yes.

Mr. John Bryden: Because these designated practitioners could be doing it, and unless we have a way of catching them, we can never be sure.

Let me ask you what I consider a truly hard hypothetical question in the same vein. In considering the medical exams of refugees who arrive on our shores, in terms of current legislation or the proposed legislation that's before the House, can we, do we, and should we expel a legitimate refugee claimant who has antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis? What should we, can we, and do we do in this instance?

Ms. Joan Atkinson: What we can and should do and are doing when we find a refugee claimant who has an infectious disease such as tuberculosis is our best to react quickly to make sure that individual gets the appropriate treatment and is monitored.

We cannot and will not exclude those individuals from the refugee determination process itself. It would be contrary to the Geneva Convention and it would be contrary to our own Charter of Rights and Freedoms to exclude an individual who may have an infectious disease from actually being able to make a refugee claim and have that claim heard.

Mr. John Bryden: Let me just finish up on that line. I'm not talking about a treatable infectious disease. I'm talking about something like these terribly frightening things that are developing globally and are going to develop even more. When somebody is coming into the country with a disease such as antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis, we can't keep them in detention forever. What do we do? Do we have to accept them?

Ms. Joan Atkinson: First of all, we have to step back from this and put into context the fact that we can't put a bubble around Canada, as I know you can appreciate. While people look at refugee claimants as a particular group of people who enter Canada, the millions of people who cross the border every year into Canada, including Canadians returning from visiting, working, or living abroad, can all potentially carry infectious disease, such as multiple-drug-resistant tuberculosis, depending on the area of the world in which they have been living, working, or spending time. So it's important to put into context this issue of infectious disease, because it is not just an issue of refugee claimants, first of all.

Secondly, when we do run into a situation as we did with a group of Tibetan refugee claimants coming across the border in southern Ontario, we work very closely with the provincial public health officials and with our colleagues at Health Canada to ensure the public is being protected appropriately from individuals who do have diseases such as multiple-drug-resistant tuberculosis. We work with the public health authorities to ensure appropriate precautions are being taken to ensure the safety of Canadians from those individuals when they arrive.

But again, I caution, we have to put it into context.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Thank you.

Mr. Benoit, you can take us home.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to follow up on the medical thing and something you said earlier: that now you're having someone from Health Canada, I believe, evaluate whether testing should be done for hepatitis C, HIV, and so on. These problems have been really at the forefront in Canada for a long time now, and I'm wondering why this is happening only now and not ten or more years ago, and why there hasn't been routine testing for these things over the past ten years.

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Ms. Joan Atkinson: The process has been in place for some time. It's not that we're just starting to look at it. We have engaged in a process with Health Canada that involves not just Health Canada but in fact infectious disease experts from other countries, including the United States, the U.K., and Australia.

What Health Canada has put in place is a process that brings together infectious disease experts from within Canada and other countries to look at infectious disease and migration. They are looking at a series of diseases—not just HIV, but also tuberculosis, other sexually transmitted diseases, hepatitis, and so on—and they will provide us at the Department of Citizenship and Immigration with the very best available scientific evidence on how we should be approaching the infectious disease issues from the perspective of—

Mr. Leon Benoit: It's not only the infectious aspect; it's also the potential draw on our health care system, which is the other factor you evaluate for. I understand that the infectious aspect is extremely difficult to deal with, because we have visitors from all around the world, not only people who are coming here for immigration purposes. The other issue that is extremely important is the potential draw on our health care system, which is already overburdened, as we all know. That's a critical consideration, which applies more to people who are immigrating in any fashion.

Ms. Joan Atkinson: While we have been working on coming up with a regulatory definition of excessive demand, we have made some changes and improvements in the way in which we conduct our medical examinations, even in the context of our current regulatory and legislative framework. We have provided, and in fact continue to provide, as much up-to-date information as we can to our medical officers on treatment protocols for certain diseases and conditions in Canada, which will allow them to be able to make an informed decision when they do determine that someone has a disease or condition that might cause excessive demand.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I would ask you to table with the committee your current definition of “excessive demand” and “an acceptable level of risk”, which are a couple of terms that are used often. You say that you're working on trying to define it. I'd like to see where you're at right now in that regard, and then we'll see where you move over time.

Ms. Joan Atkinson: We can certainly table with the committee the medical officers handbook, which is the manual and the guidelines that our medical officers currently use in terms of assessing excessive demand. In terms of our regulatory definition of excessive demand, that is something we will be—

Mr. Leon Benoit: What about where the department is right now in terms of trying to determine what is an acceptable level of risk and what is excessive demand on our health care system, that type of thing?

Ms. Joan Atkinson: As the minister has promised, when Bill C-31 does come to the committee and we are looking at the bill, it is our intention to provide to the committee as many details as we can in terms of the regulations it will support. Included in that will be the regulations on excessive demand.

Mr. Leon Benoit: What the Auditor General said yesterday and what his office has said many times before is that a lot of these things don't have to wait for this legislation. The legislation could take sometime yet. A lot of the very important changes could take place completely isolated—I shouldn't say completely isolated, but certainly without having to wait for the legislation to go forward. I'd like to see where you are now, and we'll see what comes out in the final regulation. It will be interesting to see. I think the public, for accountability purposes, really has a right to see how the department is moving on this.

Ms. Joan Atkinson: In terms of excessive demand, we have been engaged in ongoing consultations with provinces and other stakeholders on that particular issue, in addition to our colleagues at Health Canada. As we said, with all the regulations that will accompany Bill C-31, the regulation-making process is a very open one, and it is indeed open to the public.

Mr. Leon Benoit: If we could get some of the information as to what the different provinces have indicated they see as an acceptable level of risk and what is excessive demand from their point of view, I think that would be extremely helpful. They're the ones who foot most of the bill for that.

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Ms. Joan Atkinson: In terms of the medical officers handbook, it is the guideline and the manual that our medical officers use currently, and I think that will give you a lot of information on how we currently assess excessive demand. Certainly in terms of the new excessive demand regulation, we will be coming to the committee with information on that for sure when the bill does come to the committee.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Am I running out of time here?

The Chair: No, you're okay.

Mr. Leon Benoit: First, I'd like to ask a very direct question. If a Canadian marries someone who's not a Canadian and that person is found to have some disease that could cost our health care system a lot of money, could that person in fact be refused entry to Canada, or is it that in all cases the spouse of a Canadian is allowed to come? If a Canadian marries someone who has never been accepted in Canada, in all cases are they allowed to come?

Ms. Joan Atkinson: Currently, anyone who is found to have a disease or a condition that causes excessive demand can be refused, regardless of what category, so that would include sponsored spouses.

As you know, what we have proposed in the context of Bill C-31 is to create an exemption to that inadmissibility for sponsored spouses, dependent children, and convention refugees selected overseas. One of the reasons we have done that is that even though a sponsored spouse could be refused under the current Immigration Act for having a disease or condition that would cause excessive demand, given the humanitarian and compassionate considerations and the objective of family reunification, one of two things often happens: in looking at all of the considerations of the case, including the compelling humanitarian and compassionate considerations, the visa officer may decide to issue a minister's permit to allow that individual to come to Canada despite their medical inadmissibility; or the sponsor may file an appeal with the Immigration Appeal Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board, and the board may find that despite the fact that the person is inadmissible to Canada, there are compelling humanitarian and compassionate considerations, and it will in effect overturn that refusal, and an immigrant visa will be issued.

Mr. Leon Benoit: So are you saying that you expect that once the regulation for the new bill is tabled, it will give a blanket exemption for spouses of Canadians?

Ms. Joan Atkinson: On the grounds of excessive demand, yes, that is the intention.

Mr. Leon Benoit: What would the cost of that be to our medical system?

Ms. Joan Atkinson: I don't know that we have precise figures in terms of what the cost is. But as I've said, when we look at the current situation, many, if not most, of the sponsored spouses end up coming to Canada in any event, either through the minister's permit route or through the appeal route because of the strong family reunification objectives and the apparent humanitarian and compassionate considerations in cases like that. So the net increase in cost to the Canadian health care system, in our estimation, will probably be quite small.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): We will have ample opportunity to go through that when the bill comes here.

I would think the potential for fraud is something you'd want to look at as well, where there could be marriages of convenience just to—

Ms. Joan Atkinson: Absolutely. We will continue—

Mr. Leon Benoit: You're not saying I suggested that, Mr. Chair.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): I just hammer you because it's my job. That has nothing to do with it.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Okay.

Ms. Joan Atkinson: Obviously, Chairman, we will continue to ensure that our processes, our regulations, and our legislation have a strong marriage-of-convenience clause.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): I want to thank you very much for coming. I think it has been very helpful and very interesting. We appreciate your candour and your directness in answering these questions. I'm sure we will see you again. Thank you to all of you.

Before we adjourn, Mr. Benoit, I just want to personally apologize for biting your staff's head off. I don't mind doing it to you, but I shouldn't do it to them.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I don't mind you doing it to me either, but not to my staff.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): This committee is adjourned until 3.30 p.m. Wednesday, June 7.