CIMM Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE LA CITOYENNETÉ ET DE L'IMMIGRATION

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Wednesday, June 7, 2000

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[English]

The Chair (Mr. Joe Fontana (London North Centre, Lib.)): Colleagues, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) we'll resume consideration of chapter 3, “Citizenship and Immigration Canada—The Economic Component of the Canadian Immigration Program”, of the report of the Auditor General, April 2000.

I'd like to welcome our first witness, Mr. Peter Larlee, an immigration lawyer from the great city of Vancouver.

We welcome you and thank you very much for taking the time to give us your thoughts on the Auditor General's report. Perhaps, as a practising practitioner, you can give us your ideas and pearls of wisdom as they relate to immigration, if you could.

Mr. Peter M. Larlee (Individual Presentation): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for inviting me here today to appear before the committee.

I have had an opportunity to review the Auditor General's report, and I will echo many of the concerns expressed by the Auditor General in his report. I will try to provide a practitioner's perspective. Of course I do not and my colleagues do not have all of the information and resources the department has, so really what we have to work on is our own experiences and those of our clients.

I'd like to focus on three areas in the Auditor General's report that are of great concern to immigration practitioners.

Firstly is the issue of a lack of resources in the delivery system. This came through loud and clear in the Auditor General's report, and we too are concerned with the issue of resources. We do not feel—and when I say “we”, I mean I and a number of my colleagues—that it's necessarily correct to simply throw more resources, more money, and more individuals at posts overseas to correct the resource problem. We feel the resource issue can be resolved through a reallocation of current resources and possibly some supplementing of current resources. The way this could be done is through an overhaul, a complete redesign, of the overseas delivery system. This could be done by way of a program the Canadian Bar Association calls Canada-based processing.

In my written notes I indicated that a submission by the Canadian Bar Association was made to the minister late last year. I've checked that, and although I have a hard time pinpointing the exact date the submission landed in the hands of the minister, I believe it was in the spring; I think it was in March. It was submitted through the national office of the Canadian Bar Association, and the proposal was a Canada-based processing initiative.

Under this initiative, all immigration applications originating overseas would be filed initially at a centralized processing centre in Canada. The processing centre would be similar to the processing centres that are now operational in Mississauga and in Vegreville. Although in these centres there were initially some rough spots, I think everybody's in agreement that those centralized processing centres are now working well.

The administration of the immigration file—and I stress administration—would be conducted at the inland in-Canada processing centre. This would include the collection of fees, the opening of the file, the management of the paper flow. It would include a coordination of security clearance checks, the coordination of medical screening. All of the administration would be done in Canada.

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This would result in bringing home hundreds of jobs that are now held overseas by “foreign nationals”, to use a minister's phrase or terminology from the new bill. Canadians and permanent residents in Canada would administer immigration applications. They wouldn't be administered by foreign nationals. Thus, security would be improved, because of course those Canadians would be subject to Canadian law in Canada.

Also, and I think more importantly, significant efficiencies would be achieved. This would be achieved through having essentially one large processing centre handle the administration of the file, the administration of the money. You wouldn't have the duplication and multiplication of administrative services now all over the world. We have it in Hong Kong. We have it in Beijing. We have in Singapore. We have the same functions being handled all over the world. They could be handled in one place.

When the application is ready for interview, should an interview be required, then the file information would be transmitted to a visa officer abroad. And if it was necessary, the whole file could be shipped abroad. Hopefully, that would not be necessary in most cases. And the portion of the file or the essential elements of the file upon which an interview assessment was required would be sent overseas.

The Canada-based processing system would then not allow or permit the applicant to come to Canada for an interview. It is my understanding that it was of course one of the objectives in our current 1978 act to move processing overseas because there was a problem with applicants applying from within Canada. Once they were here in process and their application was refused they would not or did not leave.

I believe the current bill, which I understand will be before the committee, allows for Canada-based processing. So no amendment to the current bill would be required. From my reading of Bill C-31, the change in the definition of “visa officer” would permit Canada-based processing.

The second issue I would like to focus on is the issue of security clearances and security checks. No one wants individuals with criminal records or criminal pasts coming to Canada as immigrants or as visitors. Applicants who pose a threat simply should not be admitted to Canada. So security screening is a very important function in our immigration system.

However, I am concerned that overzealous screening of a majority of the applicants—or all of the applicants, depending on your view—is unnecessary and it compromises the objective. It compromises our objective to detect those individuals who have a security background, who have a criminal background, or who pose a security threat.

It is my belief that most, if not all, applicants are being referred by visa officers for security review. And then CSIS picks up the file and determines the extent of the security. Many of those applicants really do not require security review.

I say we should profile those individuals who pose a security threat and then do a deeper, more careful security screening of those individuals we identify. The grandmothers and the 80-year-old applicants who clearly have no indication on their application of a criminal past should safely be fast-tracked through the process. They should not be required to go through any form of detailed security clearance. In other words, resources should be trained on the high-risk cases and we should go easier on those who warrant no screening.

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The third point I would like to make is with respect to delays in processing. The minister knows that we are in a very competitive environment. We want to attract high-quality skilled workers and economic migrants. We need these people. I think most of us are in agreement on this. If we cannot provide processing within a reasonable period of time, these individuals are simply going to go elsewhere.

Twenty-six months, which is the processing time now quoted for interviews at our largest office, in Hong Kong, is simply unacceptable. It is a service standard we should all be ashamed of, if we want these immigrants. If we don't want them and if, as a matter of policy, we're trying to discourage immigration to this country, then fine; set up a time barrier so high that people will be discouraged. I don't believe that's the case. I believe you want these immigrants. So we have to do better.

We currently charge people an application fee and a right-of-landing fee. If you have a family of four and three of the family members are over 19, those fees are going to total $4,525. That's a significant amount of money.

People deserve a reasonable service. And I believe they should be processed within 12 months. I don't think that's an unreasonable service standard. I think that service standard can be achieved if we implement a Canada-based processing system.

I have two other points I'd like to make that are not included in my notes. I'm cognizant of fact that there is a time limit on my opening remarks, and it is also not my birthday today, so I'm not entitled to too much leeway.

The Chair: Did you hear that this was the code word around here? If you mention your birthday, you get an extra ten minutes or so.

Mr. Peter Larlee: I did hear that, yes.

The Chair: We kept you waiting, and we appreciate the fact that you came such a long way, so go ahead.

Mr. Peter Larlee: Very good.

I was very interested to read the comments by the Auditor General on offshore applications. Just to remind the committee, offshore applications are those applications submitted by applicants to posts outside their region. For example, Singapore is responsible for Taiwan. Taiwanese applicants are encouraged to apply in Singapore, even though Singapore is a lot farther away, and in many cases the officers in Singapore are perhaps as familiar with Taiwan as those officers in Hong Kong. Because of the realpolitik, I certainly understand why the office is Singapore.

I just don't agree, though, with the conclusions drawn by the Auditor General, which he has derived, of course, from his interviews with visa officers. Visa officers are unanimous that this is not a good thing, and regulatory or policy changes should be made to require applicants to apply within their regional area. The problem with this is that we again get back to the resource issue. We don't have the resources in posts such Beijing and Singapore to handle the application flow.

If you require every Taiwanese applicant to apply in Singapore, which currently is running 27 months to interview, you could have processing times right through the sky, upward to 40 months, perhaps even as high as 50 months. So applicants don't go there. They go to another post. They go to Buffalo or they go to some other post where there's a shorter queue.

So this has the effect of creating a self-levelling mechanism. The market dictates the movement of cases, and in a free market economy the applicants go to the post with the shorter queue. So I think this actually helps the process.

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The visa officers and the Auditor General echoed the remark that while the other offices don't have the resources, they're not familiar with the local conditions. I just don't buy that. If our Immigration and Refugee Board members sitting at the convention refugee determination division can determine local conditions in refugee-producing countries through documentary evidence that's available to them through the documentation centre, I see no reason that visa officers located in Buffalo cannot be familiar with country conditions in Taiwan. Again, if there are significant issues, then yes, I suppose the matter should be referred out to a visa office or officer who has familiarity. Again, this is a management issue, and it can be resolved.

As an example, I had a business applicant from Outer Mongolia who had no university degree and had business experience that was difficult to verify. There was absolutely no way I would send her to a post such as Buffalo, because it would be too hard for that office to verify the information. But if I have a Singaporean applicant who has a university degree from an American university, it makes perfect sense for me to send him to Buffalo for processing. There is an obligation on practitioners to be reasonable, and I would hope most practitioners would recognize this point.

Finally—and this will be my last remark—the Auditor General did make comments regarding consistency of decision-making and the high rate of appeals of visa officers' decisions to the Federal Court of Canada. I am concerned with the proposal that appeals of visa officers' decisions require leave as proposed in the new Bill C-31. This will drastically reduce the number of appeals that go for a full hearing to the Federal Court of Canada, and I'm concerned about accountability.

How can we have consistency of decision-making without an adequate watchdog in place to monitor the decisions made by visa officers? Currently there is no other mechanism in place. There's no ADR; there's no effective watchdog. All we have is the Federal Court of Canada, and if this is taken away from applicants and practitioners, I fear the quality of decision-making will further deteriorate to a very worrisome degree.

The Chair: Can I just ask you a question on this point? Do you have any statistics that show the decisions made by the Federal Court would indicate there's been a problem in the inconsistency of decisions by visa officers?

Mr. Peter Larlee: The success rate is fairly high for applicants applying to the Federal Court. I hesitate to guess before the committee, Mr. Chair, but I believe in the range of 40% to 50% of appeals filed are reversed.

The Chair: We might get those statistics.

We begin our deliberations as early as tomorrow morning on Bill C-31. During the summer months, I'm sure you and your colleagues will want to look at that bill and give us your insights—not that I'm saying it's not proper to bring it up right now, because you know we welcome your thoughts, but that's probably for another day.

Mr. Peter Larlee: Yes. I simply referred to it because of the Auditor General's comments regarding accountability. He did refer to the high rate of appeals, and it was a negative inference in the report. And yes, it is unfortunate that practitioners and applicants have to go to the Federal Court to have decisions reviewed, but it is a check on the decisions of visa officers, and it's a very important check.

In conclusion, I too believe visa officers abroad are committed professionals of high calibre. I'm concerned that they're currently disheartened through a lack of decisive leadership. When I look through the minister's responses to the proposals made by the Auditor General, I see a lot of “We are looking” and “We will be doing this”. It's all forward thinking on the part of the minister and her officials. I don't see a lot of decisive action on many of the proposals made and concerns expressed by the Auditor General, which he reminds us were made nine years ago.

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So I hope that through this committee's work and through the department's efforts, we can finally see many of these concerns expressed by the Auditor General addressed by the department.

That concludes my statement, Mr. Chairman. I'd be happy to answer any questions you or the other members might have.

The Chair: Thank you very much for all of your thoughts on the Auditor General's report and how one can improve the system. That's part of what this is all about. And you're absolutely right; the committee is as concerned as you are with regard to the action plan. We're going to be working very closely with the department, the minister, and the Auditor General's people with the view of making some significant improvements in those areas where we can. So thank you very much for your submissions.

We'll go to questions. I have Leon first.

Mr. Leon Benoit (Lakeland, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, Mr. Larlee. I'm pleased to have you here.

First of all, on your comment about the rate at which the Federal Court overturns decisions made by visa officers, 40% comes as a real surprise to me. I'd heard it was much lower than that. That's a statistic I really am interested in seeing, and I'd like to know where you got that from.

Your comment that the way to solve the problem in Singapore because of the long waiting period is to allow cases that would normally go to Singapore to go somewhere else is an interesting one. It seems to me a much more rational way to solve the problem would be to speed up the processing times in Singapore. Putting the necessary resources there and fixing the system so that the system works is a much more practical way to solve the problem. There are difficulties, as the Auditor General and others have pointed out, in having people apply outside their region. It does cause some problems.

My questions are as follows. First of all, in paragraph 3 of your written presentation and in your comments today, you talked about having administration and certain other functions centralized in Canada when it comes to overseas applications. You've commented that you think that would save a lot of time and money in processing and would also put jobs here in Canada.

You did comment that it wouldn't reduce the effectiveness of security checks, but you only referred to security checks in terms of criminality. You never mentioned health checks, which is a secondary of security that is of concern. What are your thoughts on that? Do you think there could be some problems with this centralized administration in regard to proper health checks being done?

Mr. Peter Larlee: No, I don't believe so. I think we have to maintain the current system, which has designated medical officers at various points abroad. The officers in the Canada-based processing system would, at the appropriate time, forward the medical instructions to the applicant, and the applicant would be directed to go to a designated medical practitioner at a post abroad.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Of course that wouldn't be any good, because then the department wouldn't get the fee out of them twice, as a result of their first health check being done and then the process dragging on and requiring a second one. I say that tongue in cheek, you understand.

Mr. Peter Larlee: Well, it happens. I should note now, and I meant to during my opening remarks, that I have brought with me some documentation, and you remind me of it, sir, because one of the examples I have here is a situation where an applicant was asked three times to go for medicals, and one of the medicals was simply lost by the department.

I also have in my materials a copy of the Canada-based processing submission. It is not before you now because it has not been translated into French, and I apologize for that, but it would be a daunting task for me in Vancouver to do this. Should any of the committee members wish to see this material in English, I do have it available.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I would really appreciate that.

Another comment you made was in terms of screening for security. You feel there are certain groups where people are very unlikely to be a security threat, so for them security checks should in fact be waived. Again, you seem to be referring to criminality. You used as an example an elderly family member—I assume a grandmother or mother or whatever—coming to the country. I'd be interested in your comments on this, that you think age could somehow be used as a screening factor.

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Mr. Peter Larlee: I understand that there had been a policy—and maybe the departmental staff can answer questions on this point—whereby an individual 65 and over received a lower level of security screening. In other words, they were exempted from a more rigorous degree of screening. I understand that this is no longer applicable, that this exemption no longer applies, and that these individuals are basically pooled with everyone else and are screened accordingly. I think this is an issue of risk management. Perfection is unattainable. What we have to do is be reasonable.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Are you suggesting this only for criminality checks, from that side of security, or are you suggesting that for health as well?

Mr. Peter Larlee: No, only criminality. Yes, terrorism and war crimes, that area of security... I didn't really touch on the medical area in my remarks or in my submission. It's a challenging area.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Are you aware that the minister is proposing in Bill C-31 that if a Canadian marries a non-Canadian that person will automatically be allowed into the country without consideration of the possible threat from a health problem or the potential cost to our health system as a result of a very expensive medical problem?

Mr. Peter Larlee: Yes, I am aware of that. I must say I haven't given it a lot of thought. I guess I would be concerned about that. As a Canadian, I would be concerned—-

Mr. Leon Benoit: I would think you could see a tremendous backlash from Canadians—

Mr. Peter Larlee: Yes.

Mr. Leon Benoit: —if they see that non-Canadians could be a huge draw on the public health care system. I think it is important to consider that very carefully.

Mr. Peter Larlee: One of the examples I've included in my materials is that of a client I have who has had his wife with him in Canada for two years. She's not being landed, for security review. There's no explanation as to why this 30-year-old woman from Thailand is undergoing this rigorous security review.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I would like to say that I agree with you on a lot of what you've said. The process is much too slow. There are certainly all too many cases of families being kept apart, where one member is accepted and it can take years for the dependents. I think every MP has cases in their constituency that are brought to their attention, cases where families are kept apart for years. I have one that's now approaching four years, and that isn't acceptable.

I would like to read your submission. I will read your submission on how you think having the administration and some other functions performed in Canada would help that. In fact, if you could, explain a little more to me—someone who doesn't work in the system—about how you think moving the administration and some other functions to be centralized in Canada would in fact speed up the process and save money.

Mr. Peter Larlee: One of the challenges now faced by these officers in all points of the world is the handling of public moneys. As I indicated in my remarks, for a family of four with three over 19 years, you're looking at funds flowing through the office in excess of $4,000. The Auditor General made reference to it. There's great difficulty in handling these funds, so the ministry has appropriately applied significant resources at posts abroad to handle the money.

If we had one entry, one intake point in Canada, for every single immigration application, that money could be handled at one place. You could take resources and apply them in one central office that would receive, administer, and account for the money. You could match visas with the fees, and it could be administered in one spot. Security could be greatly enhanced. Money is missing all the time in posts abroad. We know this. We read about it in the paper. That is one example of where I think you could achieve great efficiencies.

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Mr. Leon Benoit: In your document, did you make any estimates as to how much money might be saved by centralizing this administrative function in Canada?

Mr. Peter Larlee: No. That's really beyond our scope, sir. I was on the committee that put together the proposal and of course we're all volunteers and doing this in our spare time. It was a daunting task. I had hoped that we might be able to do that, but it was just too much for us to do. But—

Mr. Leon Benoit: It would be a question for the minister for tomorrow.

Mr. Peter Larlee: It would be a question for the minister.

I don't know, sir, if you've visited posts abroad, but in Hong Kong they have very grand offices. They are quite lovely, with a view of Victoria Harbour, and extremely expensive. A lot of this office space is being occupied by administrative staff. They're not issuing visas. They're not interviewing applicants. They're not selecting immigrants to Canada. They're counting money and moving paper back and forth. I think office space could be reduced significantly. The number of overseas staff could be reduced significantly. We wouldn't need them any more because the administration of the file would be done in Canada.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Thank you.

The Chair: Mr. Larlee, you indicated that you had the Canada-based processing submission with you. It was in only one of our official languages. For the most part, we like it in both, but I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to accept it on behalf of the committee, and we'll get it translated and make sure that it gets out to the committee members and is there for the record as one of your suggestions.

Mr. Peter Larlee: Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you for that.

Rick.

Mr. Rick Limoges (Windsor—St. Clair, Lib.): I'm intrigued by your suggestion of a Canada-based processing centre. Could you explain to me exactly how that would work? Are we talking about basically having the applicants all come to Canada first? Is that a basis of it? Or are you talking just processing?

Mr. Peter Larlee: No. I'm talking just administrative processing. Currently the applicant, if unrepresented, will obtain the forms and the instructions over the Internet, print them off at home, attempt to complete them, and mail them or drop them off at a processing centre. If he lives in Hong Kong he can just go and drop them off. If he lives in Taiwan he needs to courier them to Singapore. Then the file is administered until the interview out of that particular office.

What I see is the same thing: the applicant gets the application, but instead of couriering it to his regional office he sends it to Canada. Among my colleagues we call it CPC Thornhill, but it could be anywhere.

Mr. Rick Limoges: What's the typical processing time you're familiar with in the areas of the world in which you've had clients? Have you been keeping track of how long it takes and by how much it varies, depending on the case?

Mr. Peter Larlee: It does vary widely. I've included in my materials some letters from visa offices because I figured that would be a good indicator for you. The three letters I have included all quote an upper range of 26 or 27 months—and that's to interview. After interview, medical instructions often go out if they haven't already gone out, and just the payment of the right-of-landing fee often happens after interview. It can stretch well into three years.

I'm currently processing applicants in Indonesia, and I must say that this is one area where I applaud the department for making extra effort to assist Indonesians primarily of Chinese descent. Processing there is running from 12 to 14 months. So it's much faster than the Singapore... Excuse me, I should explain. Indonesian applications are administered out of Singapore. Singapore is the responsible office. Singapore is quoting 26 months to interview. We're having applications completed in 12 to 14 months where the applicants are resident in Indonesia. I believe a special effort is being made to assist these applicants. So there is some variance even within an office.

Mr. Rick Limoges: Have you been able to put your finger on what causes the delays? It seems that when those times are excessive... Is there any explanation forthcoming? Have you been able to discern why some of these cases take so long?

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Mr. Peter Larlee: It really varies. Some of it is, I must say, incompetence on the part of the staff abroad. I say staff because often it's not visa officers. We're not talking about Canadian foreign service officers. We're talking about locally engaged staff who are mismanaging the application. Often there are problems with medical instructions; there are medical results being lost.

There is a whole myriad of events that can come into play to delay an application, but I think the principal cause for delay is interview queue and the inability of these officers to have sufficient slots available to interview all of the applications that are scheduled for interview. Unfortunately, most offices are not waiving selection interviews now. The word is out that they are to be very cautious and to call people to interviews if there is a feeling they should be interviewed. In some posts it's almost a blanket policy in some categories of applications. I've been told that in Singapore they will interview every single business applicant. So there's no discretion to waive an interview.

Mr. Rick Limoges: We hear from individuals in our ridings and so on that corruption is fairly widespread in some areas. Have you been able to substantiate any of those types of claims, or do you consider it to be a significant problem, either with the locally engaged staff or otherwise?

Mr. Peter Larlee: It's very difficult to substantiate. All I can allude to is hearsay and anecdotal evidence from various individuals. I hear stories all the time, but it's very difficult for me to prove or disprove. I do believe there are problems with locally engaged staff. I read about it in the newspapers and I do encounter it on occasion myself. Well, it's extremely difficult to prove. It's difficult for me to pick up the phone and call departmental officials unless I have some hard evidence.

Mr. Rick Limoges: I certainly don't want to be on a witch hunt or anything here, but these are things people talk about. What about issues such as racism or prejudice at these offices? Do you feel that is a factor that is affecting the way in which we are able to recruit immigrants?

Mr. Peter Larlee: Some of my clients are poorly treated at offices. They're not treated with respect. They're not treated with courtesy. Usually this disrespect and lack of courtesy are meted out by locally engaged staff. I personally have seen Canadians of Chinese descent, likely born in China, standing in the Canadian embassy in Beijing being treated just terribly. They wouldn't treat me like that. But these people are not really Canadians in the eyes of the locally engaged staff; they're Chinese. They just happen to have Canadian passports and Canadian citizenship. To me that's totally unacceptable and intolerable.

Most of my experience is at interviews. I always ask my client how the interview went. Often where the interview is conducted by locally engaged staff it is a nasty and unpleasant experience. Now, these people are under a lot of pressure, but I don't believe that is an excuse for this treatment.

Mr. Rick Limoges: Is it because we as Canadians tend to be more tolerant, or we just have different expectations of the way people are treated? Could it be local customs, or is there something we should seriously be concerned about with regard to that behaviour?

Mr. Peter Larlee: Some of it may be local customs. I'm taking a Mandarin course, and the instructor said to us the other day that Chinese people don't think they have to be polite to one another because they're all one family. So they tend to speak very brusquely to one another.

The Chair: Sounds like my family.

Mr. Rick Limoges: So maybe there is a cultural element to it when you have a designated immigration officer of Chinese descent. I don't know; I don't buy that completely, especially when the applicant complains to me they've been unfairly and harshly treated.

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I agree that there are times when an immigration officer has to be aggressive to get to the truth, but I think there's a line that shouldn't be crossed. Personally, I don't think locally engaged staff should be conducting immigration interviews. I think it should be done by foreign service officers.

The Chair: Thank you, Rick.

Bernard.

[Translation]

Mr. Bernard Bigras (Rosemont, BQ): First of all, I am somewhat sceptical about your proposal to improve the process given that you believe it would be preferable to reallocate certain resources rather than to inject new resources into the system. Given that we are aware that at the end of 1999 there were more than 175,000 applications waiting at various stages in the process, we can certainly be sceptical towards a strategy such as that.

You say that you are to a large extent in agreement with what the auditor general says in his report. However, you do not seem to draw the same analysis. For example, regarding resources, you believe that the priority should be to reallocate resources, whereas the auditor general is saying that there should of course be some reorganization, but that new resources must also be injected into the system.

With regard to security checks, you say that immigration officers are too zealous, whereas the auditor general tells us that visa officers “feel [...] that they are making decisions that could carry risks that are too high and that could entail significant costs for Canadian society.”

You say that we should be streamlining security checks.

This is what the auditor general says:

Visa officers have little information and support to ensure that applicants are not likely to engage in criminal activities or endanger the safety of Canadians,

Given this statement, would it not be too risky, all told, to base oneself solely on a profile such as the one you are suggesting and to do away with security checks? Would it not be too risky, for security purposes, to adopt some such strategy rather than basing one's decisions on a profile of typical criminals or typical individuals?

[English]

Mr. Peter Larlee: I think we have a situation where a visa officer is sitting across from an applicant, and the visa officer says “You know, I really don't like this guy. There's something about him.” He initiates a full security review, but the review is limited, by its very nature. It goes to CSIS, which makes an inquiry, and it comes back. It's limited because there's only so much that can be done, given the procedures and the resources available.

I'm saying that if the visa officer has those kinds of concerns, let's give him more resources to conduct an even more in-depth review, possibly more than CSIS can do, especially when the visa officer is on the ground in a location like Hong Kong. It could include even hiring a private investigator, or doing all kinds of different things.

Let's give the officer those kinds of resources. As a counterbalance, let's give the officer the ability to say “Gee, you know, a 72-year-old grandmother who's lived out in a little fishing village—we don't need to do anything on her. We've looked at her family tree and there's absolutely nothing here to indicate that she would have a criminal background. We're just going to let her go right through the process.” That's what I'm saying. That's how I think those particular resources should be allocated.

I appreciate that I might be a little indecisive on the larger issue of reallocation of resources, but I'd like to just comment on your opening remarks about Canada-based processing. I'm not sure whether a reallocation will be adequate. I don't know. It may require a combination of new resources and a reallocation of resources. I don't think it's enough to just throw more money and more bodies at it, because I don't think the system, as it is now, works as well as it could if we had this Canada-based processing component. So I see this as an opportunity to present this to the committee, as a way of dealing with some of the Auditor General's concerns.

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[Translation]

Mr. Bernard Bigras: The overall process obviously involves a good number of partnerships: there is Health Canada, CSIS, the RCMP and others. Given your experience, since you seem to have done a systemic analysis of our immigration system, do you believe that the roles of each and everyone are clear for the various partners and the various stakeholders in the present system?

[English]

Mr. Peter Larlee: It's certainly not clear to me, and I try to read as much as I can. I try to look at the policy material and read the memorandums that come through me. But it's not clear to me, so I don't know if it's clearly defined, even to those departments. I don't think it is.

In reading the Auditor General's report, the conclusion I draw is that the Auditor General doesn't think it's clear. So I think there's probably a need for some more precise definition of their respective roles in the process.

[Translation]

The Chair: Thank you, Bernard.

[English]

Rob.

Mr. Rob Anders (Calgary West, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have two quick questions.

First, in point 8 you make mention of clearer selection criteria. I'm wondering about something I've asked some other witnesses. Right now we have some vagary with regard to what qualifies as a test of knowledge of one of the official languages. When you say “clearer selection criteria”, I wonder if a single test that determines whether or not somebody can read, write, speak, and understand English would qualify as this “clearer selection criteria”, or part of it anyhow, you're looking for.

Mr. Peter Larlee: Yes. Many of us have been calling for language testing as part of those criteria. I appreciate that it raises some challenges as to what that test is supposed to be like, but certainly this would be very helpful to practitioners and to these officers.

Mr. Rob Anders: I have a person who is a Canadian citizen living in my riding who speaks Mandarin and was working not so long ago in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan. He was talking about visiting and thought he had lost his passport. He went into the office there and was surprised by how negatively he was treated. They told him, basically, that if he wasn't there to either emigrate or bring money, they weren't going to be much help to him. This guy, who had spent his life growing up in Canada, felt kind of upset over how he was treated over there. He felt the problem was that the office was staffed entirely by foreign nationals and they really just had no truck or trade with him.

Do you feel that having foreign nationals in hundreds of jobs overseas in these offices opens up temptation for abuse? Not only did he tell me about that particular circumstance, but he knew of numerous stories in Taipei of people cutting deals with foreign nationals operating in our office in Taipei.

The Chair: Excuse me, Rob, just for clarification, if this person were a Canadian, he wouldn't have gone into the immigration section; he would have gone to the consular section of our Canadian office in Taipei. A Canadian doesn't go to immigration. Your point is valid about foreign nationals, but I think that's foreign affairs, as opposed to immigration. I think I'm right there, but it's still valid, in terms of how he was treated.

Mr. Rob Anders: He felt he was particularly poorly treated by our officers in Taipei.

The Chair: Yes, but I'm not sure if it's the immigration people there.

Peter, go ahead and comment.

Mr. Peter Larlee: In Canada, I'm very proud to say, we have no classes of Canadians. If you're a Canadian, you're a Canadian, and that's it. Even if you can't speak one of our official languages, you're still a Canadian—you're 100% Canadian. But that's not true at our offices overseas.

• 1630

As I said earlier, I've seen situations that were similar to what you've described, where Canadians were seeking service. Usually they were trying to make inquiries about spousal sponsorship. They contacted immigration, not the consular authorities, and made an inquiry about sponsoring their wife or bringing their mother over. They sought assistance from foreign nationals because they are the front-line people we deal with when we go to posts abroad.

Often the service is very low quality. The responsibility has to lie with the supervising Canadian officers, who are responsible for managing those individuals. The fault lies there.

The Chair: Is there anything more, Rob?

Mr. Rob Anders: I have just a quick question on point 7 on this whole situation of 26 months, for example, in Hong Kong. You related situations of 27 and 28 months in Beijing, Singapore, and that type of thing.

What's your best advice on streamlining the processing time? You've generally talked about a number of things here, but is there anything else, if you will, on the tray of things to offer that you want to give us, in terms of restricting that time?

Mr. Peter Larlee: I think Canada-based processing would inject such an efficiency into the system that there would be more resources to apply overseas to interview those people who are in interview queues. I think interview queues could be reduced if the department attempted to apply a higher waiver rate—looked more critically at applications and waived those applications that clearly showed no need for interviews.

If a visa officer doesn't need to interview an applicant, the application can be processed in as little as eight months, in many cases. I believe Buffalo is currently processing applications in six to eight months, where interviews are not required. We should be able to achieve that at other offices too.

Those are two things I can think of that would significantly reduce processing times.

The Chair: Leon.

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

My question is on your statement on allocation of more resources. You said you thought reallocating within the system might be a big part of what could happen there. I'm pleased to see that statement there because when you look at the department's budget, you'll see an increase of about 35% in the last three years, and it hasn't solved the problem. There's been an increase of 52% in the last five years, and that hasn't solved the problem. So I really appreciate your statement in that regard. It is important to point out that throwing more money at a system that isn't working well isn't going to solve the problem.

I've forgotten the question I was going to ask in regard to that, but that's the point.

The Chair: Peter, just before I thank you, I've been listening to your Canada-based processing scenario and everything else. You indicate that perhaps there's a better and more expeditious way of serving potential Canadians, which I agree with, and paying that kind of money for 26 months of service is unacceptable. That's why I think everybody wants to fix this system.

I'm starting to get the impression that the problem is more systemic than a matter of who handles the paper. I assume we have good qualified people overseas, and they are given certain directions and criteria on how to process. But I think we're getting this mentality that everybody who wants to come to this country must be checked, rechecked, and triple-checked and everything else to make sure they're not security risks, to the point, as you said, it's about risk assessment and being able to process paper. I'm not sure you can process paper any quicker in Canada than you can by using personnel in those various overseas offices. I'm obviously going to take a look at it, because that's where the problem is.

But I suppose it's a systemic attitudinal something, and if you want to process these applications, why should everybody have to go for an interview? Surely one should design a system on the basis of good risk management to expedite it. I can tell you right now, if that paper flows from Singapore over to Canada and a whole bunch of people take a look at it here, with the mentality or whatever, and the decisions aren't made, you're still going to have to do interviews. You're still going to have to do the security checks and everything else. The paper might be handled someplace else, but I'm not sure that's going to speed up the system at all.

I'd like to take a look at it. I'm sure there are efficiencies to be had. I think Leon asked the question right at the beginning: Wouldn't it be better to deploy effective resources with the new technology with certain systemic directives on how one deals with language, health, criminality, and then be able to process an application with strict guidelines on how long it should take, as opposed to setting up a totally new bureaucracy? Take a look at this bureaucracy. A whole lot of people would be receiving all these overseas applications and then somebody else would have the responsibility to do the interviews and so on and so forth.

• 1635

I want to take a look at it. I have more and more the impression that you think it's a systemic, attitudinal sort of problem, as opposed to a paper-processing problem.

Mr. Peter Larlee: I think it is an attitudinal problem. It is systemic, but I think it's a management problem too. The Auditor General referred in numerous places in his report to the training challenges. They have a course, but they've only implemented it a couple of times. They have a business program, but they haven't had many officers come and take the course. So a lot of it is problems in training, and it's expensive to train.

If you want to see your budget go through the roof, start sending trainers all around the world to give the designated immigration officer course at posts abroad. So these are management challenges; these are budgetary challenges. Wouldn't it be easier just to have one course in our Canada-based processing centre? You have the staff down the hall. You have an hour's worth of training every day until you are up to speed.

To me, it makes so much sense to have a centralized system. You'd be able to train people, you'd be able to monitor them, you'd be able to supervise them, and you'd be able to wipe out corruption. You won't see any money disappear, and if you do, we'll catch them.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Peter, for spending this time with us and giving us your insight as a practitioner in this. Some of what you said has been very useful to us, so thank you very much.

On Bill C-31, if you're talking to your colleagues, obviously we want to hear from you as we start that public dialogue tomorrow.

Mr. Peter Larlee: Thank you very much.

The Chair: Colleagues, perhaps we could move to our second set of witnesses from Citizenship and Immigration Canada. We have Jean Roberge, who is the director general for the international region, and William Sheppit, the director general in case management.

Gentlemen, I want to welcome you both to the committee and thank you also for taking the time to come here. We as a committee want to do a little more than just hear from the Auditor General. We want to try to participate in or be part of looking at solutions on how we can best serve our potential citizens and how we can get better service.

We actually wanted to talk to the very people who were on the management and administrative side so that we could hear directly from you on some of those things the Auditor General may have said... but more importantly, to answer some of our questions.

I would invite your opening comments over the next five or ten minutes, and then we'll get right into questions. Who wants to go first, Bill or Jean?

Mr. Jean Roberge (Director General, International Region, Department of Citizenship and Immigration): I'll go first, Mr. Chair. I have a short opening statement.

I am pleased to be here with my colleagues to discuss the plans of the international region in response to the Auditor General's report. As our deputy minister explained at the public accounts committee on May 16, and our assistant deputy minister, my boss, at this committee on June 1, we consider these audits to be very important to the management of our program.

[Translation]

The International Region has been tasked to take the lead in ensuring that the action plan drafted by the department meets the definition of “real” as stated by the Auditor General. The initial plan was drafted to outline the broad parameters of what was required to address the concerns of the Auditor General's report as well as facilitate discussion with the Office of the Auditor General.

[English]

The resources that allow us to develop a more detailed action plan have now been identified. We are working closely with the Office of the Auditor General to ensure that their concerns and suggestions are incorporated into the final action plan. As the assistant deputy minister, Martha Nixon, indicated during her appearance here last week, the department intends to table this final plan with the committee in the fall.

• 1640

I would like to take this opportunity to state that I agree with the Auditor General when he indicates that some of the issues raised in the report can be addressed quickly through administrative and management practices. We are committed to doing what is possible quickly while making sure the long-term projects also get completed.

The new resources assigned to the region as a result of the February budget are a key component that will assist the international region and the department in ensuring a successful response to the report.

[Translation]

Although much of our energies will be directed towards this action plan, we will also continue to address issues of the future relating to the new Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the operational implementation of the multi-year levels plan; we also want to strengthen the integrity of our programs both in terms of protecting public safety and improving client services with fairer and faster processing.

[English]

Members will note that we are responding to the Auditor General in an environment where the international region has undergone a reduction of over 100 officers overseas and the closing of 22 offices overseas during the past decade. This required a major realignment of offices and staff and a general rethinking of how we do business while adjusting to increases in workload on the non-immigrant side of the program.

The non-immigrant side of the program continues to increase. For example, in the first quarter of this year versus the same period in 1999, visitor or tourist applications have increased by 18%. That's 115,000 versus 97,000. Applications for student visas have increased also by 47%, 13,000 versus 9,000. For example, in Beijing, our key post for students, the increase has been 176%. In Taipei, which was mentioned before, the increase in student visas was 107%. And in New Delhi it was 73%. Those are real increases. I'm not talking about an increase from one to two visas or from one to five, or whatever. Those are major posts. At the same time, temporary worker applications have increased by about 50%—21,000 over the 14,000 last year.

The international region has been focusing in the last few years on program integrity issues raised in the report. Among the initiatives that have been undertaken are the following: we have developed an inventory management strategy; we have also initiated a litigation management action plan; and we have increased training, especially in the case of our program managers.

We will be accelerating our efforts in this area as a result of the receipt of the new resources in the February budget. This will allow us to strengthen the interdiction of improperly documented passengers. We have already posted five new officers, in the late summer of 1999, and we will be posting a further 12 new officers this summer. Those are immigration control officers.

[Translation]

To address the processing pressures and improve client service, the number of officers sent on temporary duty has increased from 55 in 1998/99 to 112 in 1999/2000.

With increased funding, we have deployed an additional 81 temporary duty officers during the first six months of this year. For the longer term, the International Region deployed five new officer positions overseas in the summer of 1999 and 19 new officer positions will be deployed this year to process immigrants.

[English]

The international region is also actively involved in developing a pilot project to test the feasibility of processing certain immigrant applications in Canada. That's part of our planned service initiative.

I hope the areas I have touched on illustrate the degree to which we are committed to addressing the issues in the report.

I thank you for your attention, and I would be happy to respond to your questions.

[Translation]

The Chair: Thank you, Jean.

[English]

Bill, did you have anything to add?

Mr. William A. Sheppit (Director General, Case Management, Department of Citizenship and Immigration): No.

The Chair: Okay. We'll go to questions. Leon.

• 1645

Mr. Leon Benoit: Thank you, gentlemen, for being here this afternoon.

In your opening comments, Mr. Roberge, you said the international region has undergone a reduction of 100 officers overseas and the closing of 22 offices. Yet the budget has been increasing pretty steadily. Why has it been necessary to reduce the number of officers and the number of offices overseas? These are people on the front line. If anything, we should be increasing those numbers at the same time as budgets have been increasing.

Mr. Jean Roberge: Well, the budget side is not my area of expertise, but we have increased the last budget for new resources. Also, in the last few years we have undergone program review in the Government of Canada and we have had to reduce several offices looking ahead toward centralizing some processing so we would be able to respond to the pressure. But as I have indicated, the increase in what I call non-discretionary workload, such as tourist applications, student applications, temporary workers, has been very fast, much faster than we would have anticipated. That's something we have to respond to.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Yes, Mr. Sheppit.

Mr. William Sheppit: I would just like to add one other thing, Mr. Chair, with regard to the budget increases prior to this year. I think it's important to recognize those were primarily for specific purpose funds. Some of that money was for the war crimes program we have in CIC, with the justice department and RCMP. A very significant chunk of that money was devoted specifically to Y2K and conversion of computers and systems to prepare for the millennium change-over. That was strictly a loan. So while it appears on the books as a significant increase in our overall budget, it was for a specific purpose and it wasn't available for general processing activities.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Okay. I'd just like you to respond, both of you, if you could from your point of expertise, to the proposal that has been put forth in a very broad fashion by the minister and then was presented as well by our first witness today.

Mr. Jean Roberge: What proposal?

Mr. William Sheppit: What proposal?

Mr. Leon Benoit: The proposal for centralizing administration and certain other functions in Canada.

Mr. Jean Roberge: From our point of view, what we have done is that as part of a client-service initiative, we have contracted Consulting and Audit Canada to develop the parameters of a centralized processing office that would carry out some activities in Canada. We want to evaluate—

Mr. Leon Benoit: That's the test project you referred to.

Mr. Jean Roberge: That's right, the pilot project. At this time, I would say we want to see what the actual intricacies of this project will bring. We want to evaluate it. We are told the project has to run between 15 and 18 months, including evaluation.

Mr. Leon Benoit: How long has it been running now?

Mr. Jean Roberge: It's starting in the fall.

Mr. Leon Benoit: It hasn't started yet?

Mr. Jean Roberge: It hasn't started yet. They are developing the parameters now and trying to put it in place.

Mr. Leon Benoit: So you're looking at probably a minimum of four years down the road before there would be any broad implementation. Probably closer to six to eight years for broad application of that type of service.

Mr. William Sheppit: It's a challenging area. Ten years ago I was probably one of the more vocal people screaming against offshore processing, and I probably still do it occasionally today. It's a tough issue, with no easy solutions. Part of the challenge is that at the current time now, where we don't designate where people can make their application, we end up chasing the clientele. The lawyers and consultants will submit their case for good and valid reasons—

Mr. Leon Benoit: Explain what you mean by saying you end up chasing the clientele.

Mr. William Sheppit: I will. The lawyers and consultants will submit applications at varying posts for different reasons. Some people want to go faster, some people want to go slower. I was manager in Hong Kong at one point, and we actually got complaints because we were processing faster than our advertised standards, because they had planned the kids would finish school and how dare we process faster than we had said. Other people process presumably so there's less expertise applied to their application. Other people apply because it's a backlog.

• 1650

We don't control the workload. We will have x number of resources in their particular posts, and the workload might increase significantly. We need to put resources in there to deal with the backlog or the crunch of applications, because otherwise it takes us too long to process.

At the same time, the ability to allow offshore processing provides a safety valve. When we expanded our embassy in China, for all sorts of reasons that I don't think anybody understands it took ten years to do the expansion project. We're going through another expansion project now. Essentially, as soon as we opened, it was too small. You need the capacity to have the safety valve, because there's no space.

Mr. Leon Benoit: So is that an argument for having centralized processing in Canada? It's much quicker. You could respond to that aspect that much—

Mr. William Sheppit: There's an element of that. The challenge with centralized processing in Canada—and it relates directly to what the Auditor General pointed out—is local expertise. You raised it last week, if I recall correctly. Yes, there may be administrative efficiencies that can be obtained through file creation, but you need to know if Parliament Hill is a respected address in the nation's capital, or if it's a back alley in a slum in some country you've never seen.

You need to know if, in the documents provided, ABC Business School is the leading school in the country or if it's a diploma mill that just churns out stuff. That's the challenge of centralized processing—you have to have the local expertise and you have to refresh it on a regular basis.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Just an aside on that, I know your statement was... On your comment that it's important to have local people or people with the expertise to know which institutions are reputable in terms of diplomas, degrees, or certificates in a technical area, etc., I've been told on a couple of occasions in questioning that in fact applicants aren't tested for the legitimacy of the institution they went to. There's no real testing of that, no screening.

Mr. William Sheppit: In a lot of cases the legitimate institutions are known to the visa officers overseas, as are some of the diploma mills.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I don't mean just legitimate or not legitimate; I mean the standard of the institution, which would be very important. You have people who go through one of the top-level institutions, and their degree or whatever may be quite similar to what you'd get in Canada. Others may not be.

Mr. William Sheppit: Oh yes, very much. But not only do you need the expertise, you need to keep it up. I was in Hong Kong five years ago on posting for five years, but I wouldn't pretend to know what's going on there now, just because things have changed so dramatically and it's such a volatile environment.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Okay. As a response to what the former witness has suggested, that you have the administration and certain other functions centred in Canada, what are your thoughts on it now? Do you think it is something that may make sense to pursue, or should we forget about that and try to keep up what we have?

Mr. William Sheppit: I think that's why we do the pilot. It's not quick, but it's a real tough issue and there aren't any easy answers to it. We're looking at the pilot and we'll see how that works. With Consulting and Audit Canada we've set up a significant number of performance measurement indicators in terms of both the efficiency and the effectiveness of the process in looking at criminality, security, and documentary legitimacies.

Mr. Leon Benoit: But I'm concerned that we'll have the Auditor General's report ten years from now and we'll have the same concerns expressed as now. And maybe at that time we may be talking about making a switch to centralized—

Mr. William Sheppit: With all due respect, for a bureaucrat, dealing with the Auditor General is a challenge. I say that with specific reference to his comments on security and criminality screening and the use of local staff, because after his 1990 audit he made recommendations on empowering local staff, giving them more authority. At the time we did refer all immigrant applications to CSIS for screening. He recommended we make greater use of profiles, and we did. We did a follow-up study on it two years later that said it was working very nicely.

• 1655

Admittedly, we haven't done all we would have liked to have done, because of the reality of program review and restructuring, the new department, reorganization, increased non-discretionary work, and all that stuff that happened. But of course now the Auditor General is saying there's too much authority to the local staff, we've centralized too much, and they're not sure about the security screening. To some extent, you almost feel it's some mythical creature pushing a rock up a hill, and it keeps falling back down and you keep starting all over again.

We are all concerned with delivering the program in the best way we can. We're all committed to the benefits that immigration brings to Canada. We don't have 24-month processing periods because we like it. But the whole challenge of immigration—as you've been told on numerous occasions—is the balance between facilitation and control. On the one hand, yes, you'd like to set up a profile so the 80-year-old lady doesn't go through a detailed security or criminality screening, but it's entirely conceivable that an 80-year-old lady could have been engaged in crimes against humanity during World War II, and we wouldn't want her in here. So that's the constant challenge right across the board, and it applies to centralization, to security screening, to interview waivers—it applies to virtually everything we do.

Mr. Rick Limoges: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Notwithstanding that we expect an Auditor General's report to uncover some difficulties in virtually any department—I mean, that's the reason for the report—there were also some things said in the report that were complimentary. I'm sure you've also been following this committee's hearings, and you've probably heard a lot from MPs offices across the country with regard to difficulties that are being encountered.

Overlaying the fact of statements by the minister and others about our desire to increase levels of immigration dramatically over the coming years, do you think it's possible? Do you think your department can deliver on the promise of streamlining the system and moving forward with higher levels of immigration?

Mr. Jean Roberge: We're certainly committed to delivering the levels in 2000. We've been working quite dramatically, I would say, toward this goal. I think it was pointed out before to this committee that if you take the long view and look at the levels over a longer period of time than a year, you'll see that overall this department did not do so badly in meeting the objective of the government of the time to deliver a very high number of immigrants throughout the years.

Quite apart from the Auditor General, you had a presentation, I think, from Joan Atkinson, the policy ADM, to talk about multi-year planning. That's what we are engaged in now, and we will look at the results before we start delivering.

Mr. Rick Limoges: Do you feel the department has the resources to be able to carry out their mandate in an efficient manner, or is more training required? I suppose training is ongoing no matter what, but is there a much higher level of intensity of training required than has historically been the case? What other things do you think the department will need in order to ramp up the performance?

Mr. Jean Roberge: If I turn myself back, we have been increasing the amount of training that is given to officers under various programs. The last federal budget gave us a sizeable amount of money that will be translated into hiring for us and deploying new officers abroad in parallel with some of the projects we have engaged in. I think it's too soon to say, but we have appointed new officers abroad. We're looking to assign them to various places next year.

• 1700

We are at times concerned. We're looking at the physical plant in all those several areas where, as the bill has alluded to, the embassies are maybe too small to accommodate what we would like to see. So we're looking at that.

Mr. Rick Limoges: What about some of the comments we've heard about a need to reallocate resources and put resources in areas where they're actually doing the work of meeting with prospective immigrants and processing these things? We always hear comments that maybe you have a lot of staff who are doing all the wrong things.

Mr. Jean Roberge: I would beg to differ with that. The staff are not idle. Before I came back to Ottawa, I was a manager abroad, in two of our largest missions, Manila and New Delhi. The officers I had under me and the locally engaged staff I had under me were not ordering clips and stuff like that. They were all working.

It is one thing we have heard. We don't have the luxury at times to meet applicants in person as often as we would like. We certainly don't have the luxury any more to meet representatives, lawyers, or consultants as often as they would like. That is one of the concerns we've had so far.

We've tried to devise ways to see them more often as a group, for example, because we have said as far as we are concerned, as Canadian visa officers and as Canadian public servants, we want to treat everybody the same, whether or not they are represented. But we understand that the representative has a concern over an entire gamut of a particular program rather than a particular case, so this we are willing to do, and several posts have done that. Once a month or whenever required, they will meet groups of practitioners to be able to tell them what's happening and what are the processing times. Today we heard a lot about letters from posts about long processing times, but I say processing times are changing all the time. So when you have a letter, it indicates a particular snapshot.

Mr. Rick Limoges: Are you experiencing, much like the private sector seems to go through, reorganizations and so on in order to reallocate resources on those things that are most pressing, or those things that are the priorities? Do you feel the department goes through that same type of reorganization, or are we still doing things the way we've always done them and feel that's the best way?

Mr. William Sheppit: A couple of things are important. We've been forced, through program review and the creation of the new department in 1995, to examine how we do things, because we simply couldn't continue to do them the way they had done them.

The big thing that strikes me, particularly with regard to overseas processing... There's a line about alligators and swamps that seems appropriate. Yes, it's a good management practice to meet with your staff, review their decisions, go out and promote immigration, and all of that stuff. But you're not necessarily able to afford it in that environment, particularly with the amount of non-discretionary work that's gone up. The important thing about the resources we got in the most recent budget is they'll allow us to do that.

With regard to your comments about the possibility of increased levels, there are a couple of things. There's certainly room for recruiting more immigrants, and we're in a reasonable position, or we will be within a year, as we get these resources rolled out, to deliver on higher levels. There's another element though of a whole necessary period of domestic consultation, because we're in the situation now where a significant number of people go to Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, and you get situations where Manitoba, Prince Edward Island, Saskatchewan, and other provinces are looking for immigrants.

• 1705

I don't know how we encourage people to go outside the three major urban centres, but that needs to be done, for all sorts of social policy reasons, not the least of which are the desires of the various provinces, because everybody has their own goals. Ontario would like them outside Metro Toronto. Manitoba would like them anywhere.

The Chair: We may do that through Bill C-31.

Mr. William Sheppit: Yes.

Mr. Rick Limoges: With regard to the complaints we receive in our offices as members of Parliament, I understand there will always be complaints whenever somebody disagrees with a decision that is made, and hopefully many of those can be sorted out one way or the other, but do you see that the new legislation might actually change things a little bit, in terms of in particular visitors' visas and so on, in order to help us facilitate the entry of persons into the country—visitors firstly and potential immigrants secondly?

Mr. William Sheppit: As the director general of the branch that probably deals with the bulk of the complaints in the bulk of the MPs' and senators' offices, I can only hope so.

Voices: Oh, oh!

Mr. Rick Limoges: That's good enough.

The Chair: Can I just ask you a few questions before I go to Leon?

Our previous witness indicated... Obviously you interact at our foreign offices with CSIS in waiting for those security checks to come back. Do you work with CSIS at all in making up those security profiles that might help in expediting? That happens to be one area where there are an awful lot of delays. Do you discuss that? Do you do any of that profile work yourself, or is that entirely left to CSIS?

Mr. William Sheppit: We develop profiles annually with both CSIS and the RCMP relating to criminality and terrorism. There are a couple of things. We've devised new training courses in both areas within the last two years. We've devised a new training course for war crimes.

The profiles are updated annually, and we basically sit down in a room with CSIS and look at the referrals we've got, the hits we've got, the validity of the referrals, changing problems from various countries, changing situations. So yes, we work closely with them.

The Chair: Okay. How about on waivers and waiving interviews? We've heard also that in some cases... Again, does this come back to perhaps a systemic or a certain mentality that you're going to interview everyone? Or does the profile and a whole bunch of local expertise, which I think is absolutely necessary in trying to make that judgment about a particular person...

Do you do an awful lot of waiving of interviews?

Mr. Jean Roberge: I would say we do waive a lot of interviews. We study each case on its own merits, but the interview waiver, for example in the case of family class, is above 45%. In the case of economic immigrants, it is much lower, because we have seen throughout the months and the years that sometimes it is not advisable to waive.

I can give an example from my background. When I was in India, we used to be able to waive people who were working in the Persian Gulf, because the experience we had was that the Persian Gulf employees, whatever task they were doing in those countries, were quite well trained and quite well skilled. Indians speak English; it's one of the official languages. So the interview was often not necessary.

But then we found out that after a while, applicants and often their local agents realized that if you had worked in the gulf, we were going to waive, so they would say they'd worked in the gulf. We called a few for interviews, and they told us they'd never been outside India. So we said, “But you say here in your application that you've been working in Abu Dhabi” or whatever. “Oh, never. I never did that.” So we realized we had to convoke more people.

That's a discussion we have often with practitioners, lawyers, and consultants. Things have changed all over the world. We have a lot of applicants from countries where we cannot rely on documentation. Whether it is from places such as China or India, they don't have the same kind of system we have in Canada to make sure that the degree you get from a certain university is recognized. So we have to interview to have an idea of what the person is really up to and capable of, and that's what we try to do.

• 1710

The Chair: Both of you gentlemen have experience abroad. You've heard some of the indications. When you're working with local people, do you find that there is a cultural thing involved? Do you find the way in which prospective immigrants are treated... I mean, that's something that should be of concern. Can you comment on how our... I don't care if they're Canadians or people working at Canadian embassies or offices; surely we should treat all kinds of people with respect. It doesn't matter whether they're applying or not.

Can you comment on that? Because that really struck me.

Mr. Jean Roberge: In my experience, we treat applicants with respect in every case, I would say. A lot of times, when you have a locally engaged employee, the knowledge of the culture, the knowledge of the local language that this person has, will not always be welcome, because sometimes she'll be able to interview and know what the applicant is up to much more rapidly than a new officer who's just arrived, for example, who will take some time to come up to speed in those matters.

It is something we have to make sure about. When I was in the Philippines, for example, there was an assumption, I guess, that if you left the Philippines to go work in Canada, you did not necessarily come from a very high background in the Philippines, so you should not be talking too much above your standing. So we had to work often with our local employees to explain, you know, the person has gone to Canada, and things have changed.

The Chair: So we make sure all those local employees understand the Canadian standards of charter, and that we may have a certain standard we want to uphold and move there as opposed to...

Mr. William Sheppit: That having been said, there's always a challenge. Certainly I dealt with this with a number of years ago in Hong Kong. One of the questions we had then had to do with allegations of rudeness on the part of the staff with business clientele.

As the previous witness talked about, in the Chinese culture, in that environment, there wasn't a lot of time invested in social niceties. So if somebody came in with an application... When I first got there I was surprised, because the people would come in for their interview, they would submit the documents, we would review them, prepare for the interview, and at no time did you hear “Please”, “Thank you”, or “How are you?” It was very much “Okay, this is what you want. I'm giving it to you. Let's get on with it. Time is money.”

In some cultures the word “no” doesn't exist. You don't say it to somebody because of the loss of face it will create. Well, if you're a visa officer, it's really tough to refuse somebody without saying no. So you get into big, long...

As a manager it's always a challenge, and obviously we try to bring the Canadian standard to our local office.

The Chair: Okay.

Leon.

Mr. Leon Benoit: In your presentation, Mr. Roberge, you said:

The international region has been focusing in the last few years on program integrity issues raised in the Auditor General's report. Among the initiatives that have been undertaken are: development of an inventory management strategy...

Could you explain what that initiative is, and what you've done there?

Mr. Jean Roberge: First of all, we went to our data system to try to establish the number of cases that were actually in the pipeline, and the year or the date those cases had entered the pipeline. Then we went to every mission with target dates to say “By this date you should be finishing with the number of applications started during that year, and by the following date it should be the first six months of the following year”, and stuff like that.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Okay. Then the next bullet says “litigation management action plan”. What's that?

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Mr. Jean Roberge: As was alluded to by the previous witness, we noticed the increase in judicial reviews that were done. We went back to the missions with a training plan and said “Review the cases, and have, for example, a better refusal letter” to try to diminish the number of cases that go up to judicial review.

If the decisions were incorrectly based in law, we went back and said “Okay, this is a common issue”—the fairness principle, for example, or things like that. The fairness principle is where in law you have to explain why you're saying no. You have to give the reason and you have to give the applicant a chance to response to your concern. We went back to our training and reminded our people of the importance of this, of making sure this was done. So that was part of the education plan.

At the same time, here in Ottawa we looked at the outcome of the various court judicial reviews done to monitor the number of times there was a withdrawal or waiver of a case, the number of times the decision was solid in law, and the number of times it was not solid so that we could make comparisons and go forward that way.

Mr. Leon Benoit: With the previous witness, the number that was thrown out was that 45% of visa officer decisions were overturned. That was the number that was given. Could you just comment on that?

Mr. William Sheppit: Before I do so, I'll add a couple of things on the litigation action plan, because we've done a couple of other things. For example, in the past year we've gone overseas to six of the ten highest-volume litigation-producing missions with one of our lawyers from the field, from the Department of Justice, Toronto or Montreal, one of our lawyers from headquarters, and one of our immigration officers to deliver an intense, local, hands-on training to all the staff there.

We've also been training on the Immigration Act to our Department of Justice litigators, because there's been a significant changeover with them. We've given them the basic visa officer training course so that they realize what it is our visa officers face.

Then we've developed, over the last three years or so, strengthening visa refusal courses, which we're now offering twice a year to about 20 or 30 people at a time.

Mr. Leon Benoit: So you're only dealing with litigation. Were you dealing at all with appeals to the Federal Court in the number of cases?

Mr. William Sheppit: This is Federal Court litigation, not Immigration and Refugee Board, not immigration appeal division. During the last five years the applications of judicial review have gone from about 150 a year to not quite 900 in the past year. But we'll send the official statistics to you.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I'd appreciate that, yes.

Mr. William Sheppit: With regard to our success rate, lies, damned lies, and statistics come to mind. One of the comments we've heard is that the department wins less than 50% of the cases, which is true. Of the cases that are actually litigated, however, we win 75%.

The Chair: So why do you give up so soon?

Mr. William Sheppit: The difference is that 25% of the cases are withdrawn. The judicial review is filed, the person gets the documents, and then for whatever reason they decide not to proceed.

Perhaps I could comment further on the point the previous witness raised with regard to Bill C-31. The leave provision will not reduce accountability of visa officer decisions—there will still be opportunity to go to the Federal Court—but as with all immigration cases in Canada, you can apply for leave to go to the Federal Court.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Frivolous cases would be thrown out then.

Mr. William Sheppit: The Federal Court decides whether or not it's a serious issue. There will still be the screen, the difference being that the frivolous cases, the 26% of the cases now that we work for and then are withdrawn, would be screened out.

As I said, we'll be happy to provide you with our statistics.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Okay.

How long have you been working on these two, the inventory management strategy and the litigation management action plan? How long have you been working on those?

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With that in mind, I'd go back to Mr. Limoges' question as to whether or how soon the department could increase capacity to the 300,000 level that was put out in the 1993 red book and has been put out by the minister recently. Looking at that time period, the actual number of cases being processed has been reduced on a steady basis, yet the funding has been increased. I know you've explained that, but with that all in mind, what timeframe might it realistically take to get up to that 300,000 target?

Mr. William Sheppit: The litigation action plan has been in process for roughly two years. It's a work in progress. We got one or two people out of the budget exercise for litigation, so we'll do more work. We'll do further review of the court decisions and we'll publish the court report six times a year instead of three times a year and that sort of stuff.

With regard to the possibility of further levels, as I say, I don't know that. I think there's a whole different discussion that has to take place at a different level over what resources would be required for what level, part of which is based on a general political decision as to what kinds of people we want for Canada, what the demographic needs of Canada—

Mr. Leon Benoit: So you're looking at a long timeframe for all that to be discussed and then to actually happen.

Mr. William Sheppit: Yes. It's certainly—

Mr. Leon Benoit: Would it be ten years?

Mr. William Sheppit: No—

The Chair: You can't expect him to answer on behalf of the Liberal Party of Canada—

Mr. Leon Benoit: It's going to be the Canadian Alliance in a year.

Mr. William Sheppit: As good and loyal bureaucrats, we do the bidding of our political masters to the best of our ability.

The Chair: Thank you for that endorsement, Bill.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I'm kind of looking at your thoughts on what kind of realistic timeframe we're looking at to get up to those levels.

Mr. William Sheppit: There are too many unknowns at this point.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I understand it's a difficult question. Thank you.

The Chair: I should say, and Leon could have mentioned it, obviously, that this committee commenced a study on Canadian immigration, Not Just Numbers, and it's exactly about having that dialogue with Canadians and doing what Bill and Jean suggested. It is a matter of deciding, as a country, not only the numbers, but all the other factors that need to be taken into account.

Gentlemen, before I thank you... With regard to trying to get the process to work much better so that... Obviously, 26 months or 27 months is unacceptable in any service-oriented business, government included. And while I appreciate, Bill, that you said some people want you to manage their files according to their own schedules—whether or not they want the kids to leave at precisely the right time, or whatever—surely that's not the way we manage the cases. But I understand that's what happens.

On the non-immigrant files, which are increasing in number even in my own office, and I'm sure Leon and Rick will tell you the same thing—visitor visas, student applications, and temporary worker visas—I would like to understand what is happening. Temporary workers are very important to this country, so I'm trying to understand if the levels of your work are prioritized. If all of your personnel have to deal with immigrant issues, immigration issues, and/or processing a visitor's visa because they want to come and visit their relatives or see the country for the first time, and you have to determine whether or not it's a legitimate visit or not, I understand that.

I get a lot of letters from people because we sometimes refuse visitors' applications, depending on the country they come from, or student applications, obviously. Do we process these things ahead of the immigrant applications? I ask that because obviously visas for visitors, students, and temporary workers are pretty focused or specific requests that come in.

How do you determine whether or not you work on a whole bunch of people who want to come and are good for the country? We're going to have, hopefully, a Canadian landed system that essentially could have the temporary workers stay here if they want, the student also. That's what Bill C-31 is all about. But how do you decide how to manage that caseload, whether or not you deal with a visitor's application or whether or not you deal with that immigration application that's been sitting on your desk?

Mr. Jean Roberge: Obviously that's one of the difficulties and one of our management challenges. In most countries both the student and the visitor visa aplications tend to be concentrated in certain periods of the year. For some reason, not many people want to come to Canada in January. They tend to want to come in July or August.

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The Chair: They could write me and ask me when is the best time to come, of course.

Mr. Jean Roberge: And we have to do that.

Of course the great majority of students want to come just before they start school in September, so we often have to concentrate resources on those cases to get them out quicker. Temporary workers are normally throughout the year, but, as you said, they are seen as very important. They are going to fulfil a real need in Canada very quickly.

I think we alluded before in other testimony that we have a pilot project for software workers, for example, where we process applicants as rapidly as we can up to... In my time there were about seven different kinds of applications in that field, different kinds of work in that field.

The Chair: Will your action plan... As you know, we're very interested as a committee, after hearing testimony from the Auditor General and from other people, in being able to look at the action plan, at least a broad plan, that has been put forward by the minister and so on, and get it to a point where we want a little more... I think the Auditor General would want a lot more substance to that action plan as you develop it. The deputy minister indicated that it would be here in the fall.

Do you see that kind of action plan being detailed enough to look at certain aspects, including the non-immigrant files that your people are handling overseas? And how could one help that situation? I tell you, Bill C-31 and legislation may improve the overall system—understanding the Auditor General—by about 20%. Maybe that new bill, if it's really good, will help guide the implementation. But 80% happens to deal with practical resources and management and administrative issues and how the process and the system should work better.

I'm just wondering whether or not, in order to get to that level of efficiency, you have to have a pretty detailed action plan.

Mr. William Sheppit: Mr. Chair, I think the action plan will be fairly detailed but not to that level.

We have statistics and we've spoken to the committee previously about processing times on student visa applicants. If I recall correctly, 80% or 90% of visitor visa applicants are processed the same day or within 24 hours; 50% of students are processed within a month, and a lot faster if they don't require a medical exam.

Looking at the action plan in general, though, there are a number of broad categories we need to look at. For example, the Auditor General talked about accountability issues on security and criminality screening. I'm chairing a working group on that, and we have a meeting scheduled with our partners for next week, I believe, or the week after. We're going to sit down and thresh out the screening process: how to do it from start to finish, what information should we get, what do we do with it, who does what with it, what's the best way to do it. We'll develop an action plan within the next two or three weeks and start working on it, because you'll appreciate, particularly dealing with overseas missions, that it takes a while to consult, to make sure it's feasible. Once we get into it, we'll go on it.

The Chair: The same can be said about the medical admissibility and language testing—

Mr. William Sheppit: The same things, yes. Language testing is... I mean, we all like to do it, and we've encouraged our managers to do it, and where it's available we've gone into it to varying degrees. But it's not always available everywhere. You get into issues of who does it, what company, fairness on making referrals. Should it be a Canadian company? Should it be a Canadian test? Can you use an American test? What about a British test?

Nothing is as simple as we would like it to be. I think it's safe to say, though, as Martha Nixon said last week... She and Joan Atkinson, the ADM for policy, are chairing the steering committee. We have a meeting with them this week, where basically they're asking us: What are you doing? And the department is committed to following up on the action plan.

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The Chair: Thank you very much, gentlemen. I've gotten an awful lot from your personal experiences, both at the managerial level and more importantly out in the field. I think that's what the committee has appreciated, being able to get right down to the nitty-gritty of trying to understand how the system is supposed to work and sometimes how it doesn't work. Hopefully we can work toward finding improvements so that at the end of the day our customers—who are Canadian clients and taxpayers—and the new immigrants we want to bring to this country get served very well.

I want to personally thank you very much for your helpful information. And I look forward to working with you on that action plan and hopefully developing our own tracking system, or coming up with a tracking system that will show the Auditor General that improvements are being made on a real plan.

We adjourn until tomorrow morning at nine o'clock, 269 West Block, televised, to start the minister on Bill C-31.