CIMM Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE LA CITOYENNETÉ ET DE L'IMMIGRATION

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, March 2, 2000

• 0909

[English]

The Chair (Mr. Joe Fontana (London North Centre, Lib.)): Colleagues, members, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we shall resume our study of all aspects of the refugee determination system and illegal migrants. Our witness this morning is the Canadian Security Intelligence Service's Mr. Ward Elcock, the director.

Mr. Elcock, I want to officially welcome you to the committee and thank you for making the time to address this committee on a very important matter. We're going to ask you to take about 10 minutes to go through your opening statement and then allow us the opportunity of asking some questions for hopefully the next hour or beyond. Again, I want to thank you very much for taking the time.

Before we officially start, I'm going to have to ask that the media, or at least the camera, must go. Thank you.

• 0910

Mr. Elcock.

Mr. Ward P. Elcock (Director, Canadian Security Intelligence Service): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to speak to you this morning about our role in respect of citizenship and immigration issues. I hope that will be of some assistance to you in your deliberations.

Let me begin by highlighting the key elements of the security screening program and the role we play in support of other government departments and agencies. The security screening program is a key CSIS program for the protection against possible threats to public safety and threats against Canada's national interests. Our goal, in fact, is fairly simple. It is to prevent those inadmissible on security grounds from entering or gaining status in Canada and to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive government assets.

Basically, security screening has two main components. The first is immigration screening, under which program we provide advice to the Department of Citizenship and Immigration in relation to the immigration and citizenship acts. The second area is government screening, where we provide assessments to federal departments and agencies, with the exception of the RCMP, on individuals requiring access to sensitive information, assets, or locations. In both cases, we do so at the request of the department and government agencies concerned.

In order to do our job, we rely on information from a variety of sources, which include checking open databases as well as our own databases, which are the sum of the information collected under various investigations. We also conduct trace checks with a variety of agencies, and of course we conduct field investigations across Canada and outside of Canada. For overseas cases, we have security liaison officers, whose responsibilities include assisting Immigration in security matters on applicants for permanent residence.

Let me focus today on the service's role in the immigration screening program, which is probably the program of most interest to you. CSIS is responsible for security screening in Canada under the mandate of the CSIS Act. Section 14 of the act allows the service to provide advice to the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Section 15 of the CSIS Act gives us the authority to conduct such investigations as are required to provide that advice.

Unfortunately, our role in the citizenship and immigration screening process is not always clearly understood. First, CSIS provides Immigration Canada with advice about whether an applicant for a visa or for status in Canada is inadmissible on security grounds. The final decision, by law, rests with Immigration Canada, not with CSIS. Secondly, the advice we provide to Immigration Canada relates to security concerns under the inadmissibility criteria of subsection 19(1) of the Immigration Act and not to “threats to the security of Canada” as that term is defined in section 2 of the CSIS Act, as many appear to believe.

I won't try to read through the provisions of subsection 19(1) of the Immigration Act, as I'm sure the members are familiar with them. They refer, among a variety of other issues, to people who, there are reasonable grounds to believe, have engaged or will engage in espionage or terrorism. The section also refers to members of any organization that engages in those activities, while other provisions relate to persons who have committed an act or omission that constituted a war crime or a crime against humanity, and government members or officials who are or were engaged in terrorism, systematic or gross human rights violations, or war crimes or crimes against humanity.

Our primary responsibility, of course, is with respect to providing advice on espionage and terrorism issues. But if we have information on other issues such as war crimes, for example, we would provide that to the responsible authority.

In order to better illustrate how we at CSIS approach this, let me explain further. As you know, Canada has welcomed over one million immigrants and refugees to our country over the last five years. While the vast majority of those immigrants and refugees want nothing more than to be valued participants in our society, some slip through bent on trying to use Canada as a place from which to conduct activities of a security concern.

As well, our shared border with the United States charges us with the responsibility that we not let Canada become a base or a transit point for targeting the United States. We do that in partnership with other Canadian government departments and agencies as well as our allies.

Let me talk about the different elements in the immigration process where the service plays a role. A key program is the vetting of individuals who apply for visitors' visas to Canada. We assist Immigration Canada in screening individuals for possible terrorist or hostile intelligence links. We do that by assessing applicants against the criteria built into the program. Though difficult to quantify, we believe the existence of the program serves to deter some individuals from applying to enter the country.

• 0915

Last year we vetted more than 14,000 individuals for possible terrorist links, while in the counter-intelligence area we looked at more than 30,000 visa applicants.

The next process in which we are involved is applications for permanent residence. The service handles roughly 55,000 applications for permanent residence per year, from both inland and abroad.

Like any other business, the technological revolution has changed our way of doing things. Through the development of electronic processing and profiling with the immigration centre in Vegreville, the service is now able to complete almost 80% of inland applications for permanent residence with roughly a nine-day turnaround by allowing our computers to do much of the work.

Applications from overseas are still processed manually, which increases the turnaround time to roughly two to five months at a minimum for non-adverse cases. Hopefully, in the future, computers will allow us to shorten that time as well, but there are some larger security concerns when you're looking at computer links abroad.

When we have indications that there may be security concerns, in order to provide our advice, we conduct investigations. This can include checks with a variety of agencies and interviews of the applicants and other individuals. For a variety of reasons, those cases can take a much longer period of time, depending on how far the investigation has to go in order to provide a complete assessment.

Once our investigation is complete, our advice is forwarded to Immigration Canada, which, as I said earlier, makes the final decision.

The final area I'll briefly talk about is the screening of applicants seeking citizenship. Last year we screened close to 160,000 applicants for citizenship. These are received electronically from the citizenship centre in Sydney, Nova Scotia, which allows us, as in other areas, to process most cases within days.

As you're aware, the current threshold with respect to the act limits denials on security grounds to future activities only. Proposed changes that I'm sure you're aware of that are currently before the House would bring the Citizenship Act more in line with the Immigration Act, where the current and past activities can be considered.

To conclude, I hope I've provided you with a slightly better appreciation of our role in respect of citizenship and immigration issues. If there are any questions, I'll certainly do my best to answer what I can.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Elcock.

Before we begin, Mr. Elcock, I note that on June 24, 1998, you appeared before the Special Senate Committee on Security and Intelligence, and you made a statement. Most of the other part of the meeting was in camera.

I want this meeting to be as productive and useful to the members as possible, and so during the questions, for the next little while, obviously, it should be in public. But if there are certain things that obviously are of a national security issue and should in fact be for members only, you may indicate that you might want to talk about those things a little later, and I will take the opportunity after 10 a.m. to perhaps have a session in camera, if that's what you'd prefer.

I'm sure, as I said, when you appeared before the special committee of the Senate, all the questions were in camera. I want to let you know from the outset that if that's what you want to avail yourself of, I think that would be proper to do.

Have you any comments on that, Mr. Elcock?

Mr. Ward Elcock: Mr. Chair, I should perhaps make clear that it was the decision of the Senate committee, as was explained to me, to hold their hearings in camera because many of their witnesses wanted to appear in camera. We said very clearly from the start that we would say whatever we could say, and it really made no difference to us whether it was in camera or not. So it was totally at the choice of the committee that it was held in camera and not at our request.

The Chair: That's fine, but I want to make sure that if there was anything in particular of a sensitive nature...unless you want to program it to the rest of the world that this is what CSIS is doing. That's fine by me too. But in case you may want to avail yourself of something like that, I will make that point after the formal part of it.

Mr. Benoit.

Mr. Leon E. Benoit (Lakeland, Ref.): Thank you, Mr. Chair, and welcome, Mr. Elcock.

In your presentation, on page 3, you say:

...the advice we provide to CIC relates to “security concerns” under the admissibility criteria of Section 19(1) of the Immigration Act, and NOT to “threats to the security of Canada” as defined in Section 2 of the CSIS Act (as many believe).

Could you explain to me why you put that in there and the significance of that?

Mr. Ward Elcock: That is our legal mandate, to provide advice to Citizenship and Immigration. We're providing advice to them under the Immigration Act. Those are the provisions under which they deal with individuals seeking permanent residence in Canada. That's the only basis upon which we can provide them advice.

• 0920

Mr. Leon Benoit: In terms of looking at it from a security point of view, do you think that somewhat limits the value of the advice you can give to the department?

Mr. Ward Elcock: The provisions have been tested before the courts and they have proved to be useful. At the end of the day, we're an intelligence agency; we're simply a collector of information. The policy decision about what the provision should be is really a matter for Immigration, not for us.

Mr. Leon Benoit: But I wasn't asking you about the policy. I was asking you, from your point of view, being a body that is responsible for doing checks and so on, that does provide security for the country, that improves the security of the country, because of the fact that you're collecting under subsection 19(1) of the Immigration Act and not under section 2 of the CSIS Act, does that somewhat limit the value of what you can provide, looking at the country as a whole, not just looking at the Immigration Act?

Mr. Ward Elcock: No, and let me be precise. We collect information under our own mandate with respect to threats to the security of Canada. Our powers are broader, in a sense, because the issues are, in effect, broader than simply immigration issues. Under the Immigration Act, there are the specific provisions in respect of which we provide advice to CIC. There haven't proven to be any serious problems. The sections are very broad as they read now.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Then why did you include that statement in your report?

Mr. Ward Elcock: I think there are many people who think we provide advice on all things under our mandate for threats to the security of Canada. In effect, I'm just trying to make clear that it's a simple fact that we report to Immigration Canada under subsection 19(1).

Mr. Leon Benoit: So the issue, then, is really what you report to the immigration department, not what you gather and what you use in terms of providing security for Canada.

Mr. Ward Elcock: Yes. Much of that would be entirely unrelated to immigration.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Okay. I understand your point now.

There are several people in key positions who commented on Canada's security and on the scrutiny of people coming into our country. Of course, the security subcommittee in the United States, which is chaired by Lamar Smith, has made some pretty strong statements about Canada pretty much being a sieve for terrorists and people who have committed serious crimes and organized crime figures. Others have made similar comments.

In an article in the National Post on February 24, Mr. Winer, who is a former deputy assistant secretary of state for law enforcement and crime, said last November in Washington, D.C.:

When they apply for asylum in Canada, there is no system to do a background criminal check and often they are not detained. These people decide they don't want to be in Canada and cross into the U.S.

That's the same kind of comment from this former Washington D.C.-based.... Now he's with a law firm.

There is a lot of criticism about the ability of CSIS to do a proper job in scrutiny, and I would like you to comment on that. Many other people have made similar comments. Why is there that feeling out there that Canada is a sieve, and how much responsibility does CSIS take in that?

Mr. Ward Elcock: I'm aware of those hearings in the United States, and like everybody else, I've read the newspaper reports. How credible the reports are or how credible even the people who presented the views are is not for me to comment on. Many of them I don't know and have no ability to judge their credibility.

From our point of view, in a sense, you're talking to slightly the wrong person. As I said, we do what the law allows us to do. If people change the law, we'll do what the law allows us to do in another way. If it allows us to do less or more, we'll do whatever is required. At the end of the day, it is for Immigration to decide what the policy should be, what the rules should be, and for the Parliament of Canada to decide what rules it wants in place, and not us.

• 0925

Mr. Leon Benoit: So you're saying CSIS is doing a good job and that it has the resources necessary—never enough, of course—to do a proper job in terms of the requirements under the Immigration Act?

Mr. Ward Elcock: Well, as I've always said, Mr. Chairman, we would always like more money. That goes without saying. You can always do more with more money. We have always been clear, however, that we had sufficient resources to deal with the serious risks. Now, that's looking at a much broader range of issues than simply immigration. But in terms of what the Immigration Act now expects us to do, what the process expects us to do, we have sufficient resources to do it.

Mr. Leon Benoit: You know, it's not just these people who've made statements about how porous Canada's borders are. I hear it overseas when I meet with parliamentarians from eastern European and other countries. The same message is that Canada has that reputation. You're saying that's not the fault of CSIS; it's the fault of the department.

Mr. Ward Elcock: No, I'm not saying that, Mr. Chairman. I didn't say that at all.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I thought maybe you wouldn't say that. I just thought I'd put it to you that way anyway.

You've certainly highlighted it in the past, and I think you're providing a public service, because I think it is accurate that there is a problem, for example, with terrorist groups coming into Canada. In your quote that was given to the Senate committee—which has probably been used more than any other quote you've ever given—you said:

With perhaps the singular exception of the United States, there are more international terrorist [groups] active here than any other country of the world. ...the Counter-Terrorism Branch [of CSIS is currently] investigating over 50 organizational targets and about 350 individual targets.

This is certainly a pretty damning quote in terms of Canada's security, and I would just like you to state whether you believe that quote is still accurate today.

Mr. Ward Elcock: By way of an answer, Mr. Chairman, let me read you a letter that I sent to Mr. Smith, dated January 24, 2000, which I think clarifies some of the—

Mr. Leon Benoit: Mr. Smith being whom?

Mr. Ward Elcock: Lamar S. Smith, congressman.

The Chair: Hopefully to educate him, right? I know he's a fan of Mr. Benoit's. They're mutual friends.

Mr. Ward Elcock: I'll provide the committee with a copy, but it might be simpler if I read it first. It's short. It states:

I am writing to correct impressions that may have been created by comments I am alleged to have made to a Senate Committee in Canada which have been inaccurately reported by the media in Canada and in the United States, and which may be relevant to hearings which your Subcommittee has held or may hold in the future. As I am sure you are aware, such inaccurate reporting can, on occasion, be misused.

I appeared before the Special Committee of Senate of Canada on Security and Intelligence in June of 1998. The sole purpose of that statement was to provide Canadians with information inter alia about the terrorist threat to Canada. The statement was not a comparison of our situation with that of any other country. While no two countries' situations are identical, if one were to make such comparisons, ours is comparable with other western democracies, including the United States.

In my statement, I made a number of references in relation to the nature of the terrorist threat in Canada that have been subsequently misconstrued or misinterpreted. In particular, I have recently been quoted as suggesting, in my statement to the Senate Committee, that Canada is the leader in harbouring active terrorists from around the world. In fact, what I said was: “With perhaps the singular exception of the United States, there are more international terrorist groups active here than any other country in the world.” As you can appreciate, this has significantly different applications than the wording that I am alleged to have used.

As I have also said—which may not have been reported—the actual number of individuals who would give us concern is very small, numbering only some 350, the vast majority of whom are associated with groups that pose no threat to the United States. Clearly, however, in order to effectively counter any level of threat to both of our countries, cooperation between intelligence and law enforcement agencies on both sides of our borders is paramount in dealing with that threat. Indeed, the level of cooperation between Canadian and American agencies, particularly in recent cases, is an excellent example of the effectiveness of those relationships.

Another comment that has been misconstrued, subsequent to my statement, is in relation to the suggestion attributed to me that Canada is a safe haven for terrorists. This suggestion is totally without foundation.

I have said, as is true of every western democracy including, again, the United States, that some see Canada as a safe haven, some actually seek to find safe haven here, and some may indeed achieve it. I, therefore, also said to the Special Committee that we will maintain our vigilance so as to ensure that terrorists will be prevented from entering Canada, or, if successful, will be identified so that they can be removed. I believe that our past and continued aggressive counter terrorism efforts here in Canada and the historically strong and effective cooperation arrangements that we share with our international partners, including the unique exchange that occurs with our American sister agencies, will preclude Canada, or the United States for that matter, from becoming an attractive sanctuary to terrorists.

In the context of any upcoming hearings, I felt that it was important to correct some of the inaccuracies proliferating in the media.

• 0930

Mr. Leon Benoit: Quite frankly, Mr. Elcock, that sounds like a confirmation of what you said—

The Chair: Order. Your time's up.

Mr. Elcock, I'm sure if you could provide us a copy of the letter, that would be fine.

Mr. Bryden, please.

Mr. John Bryden (Wentworth—Burlington, Lib.): Mr. Elcock, the budget provided for increases to Citizenship and Immigration Canada and the Solicitor General's department in order to address the problem of migrants and other transborder issues involving people who are trying to get into this country. Can you give us a sense of whether any of that money will go toward CSIS and how it might be used?

Mr. Ward Elcock: Mr. Chairman, we're still trying to get a complete debriefing on what was in the budget. They keep it very secret, even from us. I understand we had been seeking some additional money in respect of technological issues confronting us and law enforcement agencies across the country, and I understand there is some money in that respect.

I understand as well that Citizenship and Immigration Canada did receive some funding, but I don't know as yet what level of funding they received or for what purposes they received it. So on the immigration side, I can't give comments.

Mr. John Bryden: Of course not.

One of the focuses of this committee's deliberations recently has been the problem of refugees and migrants. Does this category of an individual who's trying to enter the country, who may be without documents, who may even refuse to identify themselves, present CSIS with a particular security problem? Can you describe the nature of that problem?

Mr. Ward Elcock: There's no question, Mr. Chairman, that if somebody is abroad and making an application and has to submit documentation, which everybody has a period to go through, it is easier to stop people who are outside the country from getting in than those who have already arrived.

The reality of some people in the refugee stream is that they either do not have identification, they destroy their identification, or they have false identification in those few cases where somebody is seeking to defeat the system. In those cases, obviously it can be difficult for us to establish a person's identity and exactly what their history is.

Mr. John Bryden: Does this put you in a particularly difficult situation, where the pressure is to release these people into the community before, presumably, you've done an adequate security check? Is that a problem?

Mr. Ward Elcock: As the rules currently stand, Mr. Chairman, we don't do a check on refugees who are entering the country. We would only do a check on somebody who had refugee status when they came up for permanent status, either landed immigrant status or citizenship or whatever, or if they came to our attention as part of our other investigations.

Mr. John Bryden: My final question is whether this then represents a security problem, that people enter the country seeking refugee status without documentation, yet they're not subject to security checks before they're possibly released into the community.

Mr. Ward Elcock: At the end of the day, Mr. Chairman, it really is a policy decision as to whether or not the Parliament of Canada wants us to do that. If we were asked to do it, we would do it. It is not entirely a cure to screen all refugees, because if you don't know their identities and you don't have their personal histories, you're still in the same boat.

Mr. John Bryden: Well, I actually asked for a qualitative reply. I appreciate where the lines are drawn for policy. I asked you whether this, in your view as the head of CSIS, poses a security problem if these people are not being checked before they are released into the community.

Mr. Ward Elcock: As I said in the second part of my response, Mr. Chairman, since we haven't done it, it may well be six of one, a half dozen of another to some extent, because with the people who arrive with no papers or false documents, you still don't know who they are. You still have to go through a long process of identifying them, and you may not be able to identify them.

Mr. John Bryden: Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Mahoney, for the remainder of the time.

• 0935

Mr. Steve Mahoney (Mississauga West, Lib.): Thank you, sir.

I want to follow up on comments you allegedly made and also on your letter. Given that we have the longest undefended border in the world, it must make your job somewhat difficult at times to track some of the entry points or alleged entry points. But I think it's important that we not be overly defensive, as others are being overly aggressive, in saying that we either have a problem or we don't have a problem.

I'd like you to tell us a little more about your relationship with your American counterparts and how they work, how they see CSIS, how they see this country, in terms of the allegations that we're a sieve or we're perhaps not, I guess the implication is, very professional in dealing with our security issues. I'd like your reaction and maybe a little better explanation about how you work with your American counterparts.

Mr. Ward Elcock: We work very closely with all of the American intelligence services, and there are a few. Our closest relationship, and the closest relationship we probably have outside of domestic relationships with the RCMP and other police forces in Canada, would likely be with the FBI and their national security division. As professional agencies, I think we're all aware that unless you live in a totalitarian state, if you live in a western-style democracy, absolute control of all people at all times is impossible. Even tyranny has never managed it. So you will not always be successful. You will not always be on top of every issue. That goes without saying.

I don't think Canadians would want to have the kind of rules that would be necessary to provide absolute assurance at all times about all people. That said, certainly my experience with our colleagues in the United States is that they are professional. They think we're professional. Both of us are trying to do the best job we can to provide, if you will, along with all of the other agencies, a layered defence to the problem we both recognize is there.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: Are you able to deal with any specifics on the case of the terrorist threat for the year 2000 that occurred? Of course, we only saw it from the end of the inherent publicity. But are you able to tell us anything more about your role in detecting or helping the Americans to detect that problem? I'm referring specifically to the difficulties on the west coast, Seattle.

Mr. Ward Elcock: We had through that period a large number of exchanges with the American agencies. Indeed, as a result of ongoing investigations, we had a considerable amount of information to provide them. I'd be reluctant to go further, partly because there's a court case involving Mr. Ressam in any case, but also because some of those investigations continue.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: We've heard about almost the reverse flow, where refugees are coming through borders, notably in the province of Quebec, from the United States and crossing into Canada. Is there any indication that there's a problem on the other side? Perhaps the United States—and I'm not making the accusation—to use an analogy, is indeed a haven or sieve to terrorist activities. Do you have any concerns about that?

Mr. Ward Elcock: To go back to what I said a few minutes ago, in any western democracy, whether it's us or the United States, or the European democracies or others around the world, if you're going to be successful, you accept a degree of ease in the transfer of money and the transfer and movement of people that by definition creates opportunities for those who have other goals. That is true of the United States as well as of Canada. It is possible for people to get into both of our countries and to have goals that we would regard as unacceptable. It happens in both directions. I would only add the other comment, which I have also said publicly, that generally speaking it is more often the United States that is the target of specific action rather than Canada.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: Right.

Mr. Ward Elcock: We are somewhat fortunate in that respect.

• 0940

Mr. Steve Mahoney: I have a final question. We had a witness before us yesterday. She was a refugee who is here as a convention refugee but cannot get landed status. The reason she was given, in a letter—albeit from Immigration, but I assume it's as a result of investigations that your department would have done—is that in the past she was a member of the PLO. I think the dates were 1978 to 1983, if I'm not mistaken. I don't have the letter in front of me.

This is a person who is here as a refugee but cannot get landed status. You've stated that for citizenship the current law only allows you to look at future problems, and hopefully that will change and give you more latitude. But for landed status, obviously you can delve into the past of individuals for security reasons. How long does this stay on a person's record like that? Is there any opportunity or way that they could deal with you, with your department, in cooperation with Immigration to perhaps cleanse a record? Certain other records are eliminated at certain points in time as time passes. Is this something that these individuals have to carry on with the rest of their lives, or do they have any kind of reprieve?

Mr. Ward Elcock: At the end of the day, our role in the whole process is simply to collect the information and provide it to the Government of Canada, in particular Immigration. It is within the power of the Government of Canada, as has happened in a number of cases, to decide to give somebody status notwithstanding previous information. I can think of a couple of cases off the top of my head where ministers' permits have been issued to people who otherwise would have fallen within the act.

At the end of the day, that is very much a policy issue. We're simply the providers of the information to provide a history for people, to provide some history that people may not otherwise want to disclose in the course of seeking permanent status in Canada.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: Thanks very much.

The Chair: Mr. Bigras.

[Translation]

Mr. Bernard Bigras (Rosemont, BQ): I would like to come back to a report by your service dated December, 1999. I don't know whether you made the statement yourself or whether it was a statement by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, but the report states:

Canada is an attractive venue for terrorists...

The report also states that terrorist groups

attempt to establish an operational support base in Canada, to enable groups to send in hit teams for attacks on targets of opportunity;

Your service apparently said that. What led them to do so? Is it because of a shortage of technical and financial resources? Is it because of the Immigration Act? Is it a lack of training for officers? What led you to make this comment in December 1999?

[English]

Mr. Ward Elcock: My only purpose in saying it, as I said in the letter that I read a few minutes ago, was to explain to Canadians that indeed we do have, like every other western democracy, problems in that area. We are not immune from those problems, because I think there are many Canadians who believe that as a country, as a society, we are immune from those problems. The reality of it is, as I said a minute ago, that given the nature of modern western economies and given the degree of freedom we all expect, and given the degree of freedom of movement that we expect both in terms of money and ourselves, it is always possible, it is inevitable, that there will be some few people who will be able to exploit it.

My intention was no more than to say that, and as I tried to clarify in my letter to Mr. Smith, it's a situation that prevails with respect to many other countries.

[Translation]

Mr. Bernard Bigras: Mr. Chairman, can our witness confirm for us that terrorist groups are trying to establish operational support bases in Canada? That is my question.

Earlier, our witness said that he had been misquoted, but can he confirm this fact on the basis of the information he has?

• 0945

[English]

Mr. Ward Elcock: I have always said, and the statement does say, that there are groups that do seek to operate in Canada and seek to collect money and obtain support to operate outside of Canada.

[Translation]

Mr. Bernard Bigras: The special Senate committee found out that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service prepares profiles that help pick out possible security threats among people wishing to enter Canada. Could our witness tell us of some of the parameters used in these profiles?

[English]

Mr. Ward Elcock: Basically what the profiles provide us with is a mechanism to essentially allow, in many cases, a computer search, or, in the review of candidates, characteristics or criteria that would cause us to do further investigation. That's their only purpose. In some cases, it can simply be run by a computer program; in other cases, it's assessed by individuals. But we don't release those criteria, those profiles, for obvious reasons. If we were to release them, it would be possible for everybody to beat them. The profiles themselves can include a wide variety of characteristics. It can be age, it can be education—it can be any number of things.

[Translation]

Mr. Bernard Bigras: Mr. Chairman, our guest speaks about confidentiality. Can he confirm for us that these computerized profiles in foreign consulates are in fact secure and that no one has ever had access to the files contained in the databases?

[English]

Mr. Ward Elcock: Certainly our profiles are confidential information and they are kept secure, I hope, by all of those who use them. That is certainly the requirement.

[Translation]

Mr. Bernard Bigras: Can our guest confirm that there have been some irregularities in some Asian countries regarding computer files that apparently disappeared, particularly in Hong-Kong?

[English]

Mr. Ward Elcock: That is not anything in relation to the service, and I'm not in a position to comment on those. I know no more than I have seen in the newspapers about those issues.

The Chair: Mr. Benoit.

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

Mr. Mahoney commented earlier on people entering the United States and then coming to Canada, indicating that the United States has a problem in their immigration system just as Canada does. I would suggest that people entering the United States with legitimate papers head to Canada because our refugee determination system is weak. This is demonstrated by the fact that less than 20% of the people who apply for refugee status are known to leave the country. That means our effective acceptance rate is somewhere around 80%. So of course we're viewed as a soft touch. I think that clearly is a problem with Canada's system.

The Chair: I'm sure you don't expect Mr. Elcock to debate government policy.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I'm moving it along.

The Chair: All right. Ask him a question.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Then people enter Canada whose final destination is the U.S., again, because Canada's immigration system, the refugee determination system in particular, is a soft touch. I would suggest that both are problems with Canada's system. I don't believe—

The Chair: You're using up your time.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Mr. Chair, let me use my time the way I'd like to use my time.

The Chair: Not by giving speeches when Mr. Elcock is here to answer some good questions with regard to security issues.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: Do you want some questions?

The Chair: Yes, we can provide you with some.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: I have questions.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Mr. Chair, I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't interrupt. That would be appropriate.

The Chair: Time is marching on.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Mr. Elcock, I don't believe CSIS is the problem, although I have no way of judging, really. How do we know? I believe it is the refugee determination system.

But you made a comment earlier that you don't do security checks on refugee claimants until they're farther along in the process, which I was aware of, and that seems to me to be a funny way of doing things. You release people into our country, many don't show up for their hearings, they effectively disappear, and yet there hasn't been a security check done. Do you have a concern with that?

• 0950

Mr. Ward Elcock: Mr. Chairman, as I said in reply to an earlier question, doing a security check on refugees who arrive is an option. But it's an option that might not mean much progress—we haven't done it—because if an individual arrives without papers or with fraudulent papers and declines to tell you where he comes from, what he did, or what his background is, you are still in the dark as to who he is, what he did, what his connections were, and so on.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Because most people are allowed to stay, it may not be helpful.

I think you also said in your presentation—and I'd like you to correct me if it isn't the case, because it isn't in the script—that in terms of the immigration department, much of your effort is directed toward doing checks for citizenship.

Mr. Ward Elcock: One of the things we do is checks for citizenship.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Do a lot of your resources go toward that?

Mr. Ward Elcock: No, much of that is handled by a computer transfer of tapes, and many of them would go almost automatically through our system.

Mr. Leon Benoit: So it's information that has already been gathered at some other point in the process.

Mr. Ward Elcock: Yes.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Okay. I did misunderstand what you were saying, because it seemed to me to be very strange to be doing security checks on people who are applying for citizenship when they've already been in the country for years.

Mr. Ward Elcock: As I said earlier, we'd do a check at that stage and we'd do a check at the landed immigrant stage.

We also, as I said, frequently come across individuals who are a problem or a concern to us, and of course there are other investigations. We pursue investigations against all of the groups that exist in Canada. Obviously, some are more worrisome than others, but we pursue investigations against all of them to the extent that—

Mr. Leon Benoit: So people have been missed at previous checks. Then something shows up, so you catch them at the later....

Mr. Ward Elcock: Usually, people of concern would come to our attention at some point.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Yes, because of investigations or....

Mr. Ward Elcock: Some people may arrive in Canada with no connections and become connected here. So it's not simply a refugee problem or an immigrant problem. It happens.

The Chair: This will be your last question.

Mr. Leon Benoit: In your presentation on page 6 you say that applications from overseas are still processed manually. Do you know why that is? Is it just for lack of equipment, lack of a system, or are there security concerns about transferring information from overseas by computer? Just why is that?

Mr. Ward Elcock: There have traditionally been many security concerns about whether you can make those electronic transfers secure. In a sense, the development of encryption and other things, which give us problems for other reasons, does offer us in the future perhaps some way to deal with those problems so that we will be able to do more of the things we do abroad by electronic transfer back to Canada. That's certainly something we would like to explore, and we are in the process of exploring that now.

The Chair: Mr. Price.

Mr. David Price (Compton—Stanstead, PC): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'm sorry for being late. I missed your presentation.

In looking through it, though, I see that you talk about security concerns under section 19 and threats to the security of Canada under section 2, but you really only talk about the section 19 part. I'm not clear on the differences between the two.

Mr. Ward Elcock: Section 2 of our legislation deals with the issue of what are threats to the security of Canada, which in effect defines our mandate as an intelligence agency.

In terms of our relationship with Immigration Canada and our provision to them of advice on specific landed immigrant status, citizenship, or whatever, we do that under section 19 of the Immigration Act. Those are the grounds on which they can deal with somebody, so we provide advice in respect of those grounds.

Mr. David Price: But when you're looking at a claimant or someone, you're—

Mr. Ward Elcock: If we're doing an investigation under our own authority, then we're doing it under a threat to national security, section 2.

Mr. David Price: My particular riding has seven border crossings in it. One of them happens to be Beecher Falls, the famous Seattle connection. At that particular time, I noticed an incredible beef-up in the security across the American side of the border, and yet on our side I didn't see any change at all. In fact, in talking to officers on line there, they knew about the threat. They knew about this person travelling back and forth.

• 0955

It might be difficult for you to be specific, but were you beefing things up on the CSIS side at that point? We didn't have any visible beefing up on the Canadian side.

Mr. Ward Elcock: We don't police border crossings, Mr. Chairman. That would be for other agencies, not us. It's not one of our functions. But we had a lot of people working on that a lot of extra hours over Christmas.

Mr. David Price: How about the sharing of information? We know the Americans have an incredible database set up. What kind of access do you have to that? I'll just go a little farther. Our people on the borders tell us that they do have access to parts of it. Americans take certain information on people going down and coming back. They can get a little bit of it out, but only parts of it. Do you have access to more of that database?

Mr. Ward Elcock: We have with the bureau probably the freest exchange of information, certainly that I'm aware of, than with anywhere else. We exchange virtually everything with them, unless it's a matter of their own national security, which they are not able to exchange. But the exchange of information between us and the bureau in particular is very wide.

Mr. David Price: Has that slowed up at all because of the problems in the leaking of information, which we've heard of over the past year?

Mr. Ward Elcock: I'm not sure what problems. Most of the ones I've read about are imaginary. But no, I've never—

Mr. David Price: There haven't been any.

Mr. Ward Elcock: I have never heard any concerns expressed by any of the American agencies about those alleged leaks.

Mr. David Price: How about our access to databases in other countries?

Mr. Ward Elcock: In many cases, we might not have access to the databases, but we have relationships with something in the order of 250 services around the world. The number is high because many countries have more than one service. Almost 150 of those would be important relationships. The reason for having those relationships is in order to facilitate the exchange of information.

Mr. David Price: Now comes the big question.

Mr. Ward Elcock: Is it a hard one?

Mr. David Price: We're sitting here trying to improve the system. You're sitting in one sector looking in at what has happened. What do you see as things we could improve?

Mr. Ward Elcock: I don't mean to sound as if I'm ducking, but it will certainly sound that way. We're not a policy agency. We do what we're told to do and we do it in accordance with the law. We have a bunch of people who spend a large amount of their time trying to make sure we're doing it in accordance with the law.

Mr. David Price: But you certainly see points, even if they're small ones, we could aiming at to help improve the way you work and the way the system works in general.

Mr. Ward Elcock: It would be unfair of me and inappropriate for me to comment on the responsibilities of the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. She can comment on that better than I can, and her people can comment better than I can because they know more about it. From our point of view—

Mr. David Price: But she needs input, and that's what we're supposed to be giving.

Mr. Ward Elcock: I understand that, Mr. Chairman, but I can only comment on those things for which we're responsible.

One of the things we've been looking for, as I said in response to an earlier question, is some additional funding for technological tools. Some of those technological tools will be the kinds of things that will help us in terms of databases, the management of databases, and so on. All of those things are grist for the mill and the kinds of problems you're talking about.

The Chair: Ms. Augustine.

Ms. Jean Augustine (Etobicoke—Lakeshore, Lib.): Thank you.

Mr. Elcock, since somehow you can't comment on how the whole system could be improved, perhaps we can talk, then, about your service and your service mode. I'd like to get to the whole issue of timelines. I can give a practical example of someone who for 12 years has been in the system just waiting for the final investigation to conclude so that the individual can get on with his life here in Canada. I wonder if you can speak about the investigative process and the training of officers. Is there some recognition of the hardships this delayed and prolonged process of investigation has on the lives of individuals? And how could that process in some way have timelines that are within your service mode?

• 1000

Mr. Ward Elcock: We do recognize it is important to do the investigations as quickly as we can. I don't have the figures off the top of my head, but the average turnaround times on landed status or on citizenship are very short. We don't have a backlog in our processing of those cases at this point, and we process most of them very quickly. Indeed some of them are virtually overnight. There are, however, cases where we're not going to be able to do that.

To be perfectly honest, I don't know the specific case you're referring to, so I can't comment, but it may well be that we've long since provided whatever information is necessary. There may be other reasons the individual.... Usually it doesn't take us twelve years to investigate somebody. What the reasons for the delay in this particular case are, I don't know.

Generally speaking, I can't think of a case that's taken us that long. If it is a case that's taken us that long, then I don't know what.... Any number of things can make it difficult for us. In some cases individuals seek to hide information from us. In other cases it's impossible to obtain information confirming their stories, because civil governments in their part of the world have collapsed and it's impossible to find any information to confirm their stories. In some cases it can take us a long time simply to get information that allows us to confirm their stories. Other countries don't work with the same computer databases we work with, and sometimes by the time they've gone through our files, you're looking at a year or two of time expended.

There can be many reasons for delays. In some cases there can be delays simply because the story everybody is being told is not the true story.

Ms. Jean Augustine: Are your offices country-specific, or do you deal right across the board with every country in every situation?

Mr. Ward Elcock: We deal with services around the world. There are a number of services around the world we don't deal with, for a variety of reasons. Sometimes we just simply don't have a relationship, because it's not a sufficiently important exchange and there are real concerns about the nature of the organization and its role. But we have a wide range of relationships around the world.

Ms. Jean Augustine: Thank you.

The Chair: Ms. Leung.

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

I have just a couple of small questions. Number one, I understand you have security liaison officers to oversee cases.

Mr. Ward Elcock: We have a number of officers stationed at a variety of embassies around the world who are liaison officers. Their primary role is to perform liaison with the services in a variety of countries, but they also do assist immigration officers. That's part of their responsibility.

Ms. Sophia Leung: Okay. Is CSIS currently involved in working closely with any other country such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, or China?

Mr. Ward Elcock: We don't, and they don't, talk about the relationships with countries with whom we have relationships, outside of the fact that we have acknowledged that we have officers in the three obvious bases: London, Paris, and Washington. But generally we don't identify where our officers are stationed, nor do we identify the countries with which we have relationships. We have relationships with a wide variety of countries.

Ms. Sophia Leung: Are you involved in any work to try to track down some of the organized crime in Asia?

Mr. Ward Elcock: That's primarily a police responsibility, not an intelligence responsibility. We do participate and we do provide some information to law enforcement in organized crime areas, particularly those that are not domestic but foreign in origin, but it is a very small part of our responsibilities. It is largely a law enforcement issue, not an intelligence issue.

Ms. Sophia Leung: Okay.

A number of refugee claimants disappeared, went underground, before appearing at the court hearing. Are you involved in any work to try to trace them, or any follow-up work?

• 1005

Mr. Ward Elcock: No. That would be a responsibility of Immigration, or of law enforcement to the extent that they needed assistance from law enforcement. It would not be our responsibility.

That said, if, as a result of our investigations and under our own authorities, we became aware of individuals who were being sought, we would provide the information to Immigration or to law enforcement.

Ms. Sophia Leung: Who is going to do the follow-up if you are not responsible? Who? The police? The RCMP?

Mr. Ward Elcock: It would be the police or immigration officials.

Ms. Sophia Leung: I see. So there's a lot of—

Mr. Ward Elcock: It's just simply not part of our mandate.

Ms. Sophia Leung: Usually by request of CIC?

Mr. Ward Elcock: What we do for Immigration is reviews of applicants for visas. We have a program that does visas. As you'll see in my statement, we also look at applicants for landed status as well as citizenship. That's essentially our role vis-à-vis immigration.

Ms. Sophia Leung: Do you get involved in any sort of investigation for visitors' visas?

Mr. Ward Elcock: We do. We have a program that looks at visitors' visas in respect of certain criteria to try to identify people who either have terrorist associations or indeed have intelligence associations.

Ms. Sophia Leung: Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Sophia.

Leon, one question, and then we'll go to Paul.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Mr. Elcock, in response to several questions, you have said that's not something for CSIS; it's a policy decision to be made. I understand that, and I've learned from past committee meetings with you that you don't comment on policy. But just looking at things from a CSIS point of view, if all people who came illegally to our country and then claimed refugee status were detained until their hearings, and if that whole process were sped up so that people were either accepted as refugees or rejected and deported immediately, if that were put in place, do you believe that would help you in terms of the resources that would be required for CSIS to deal with all security issues?

In other words, the way things work now, even people who come illegally are most often allowed free into society. Some never show up for hearings. Quite a large percentage just abandon their hearings or whatever. So you have things to deal with down the road as a result of that.

If, instead, everyone who came illegally and claimed refugee status were detained, would that reduce the cost and the amount of time and resources CSIS would have to put into the whole security issue?

Mr. Ward Elcock: I'm inclined to doubt it, largely because it isn't only refugees who give us concerns. From time to time, some of the people who give us serious concern are Canadian citizens who have been here for a lot longer than one or two generations. So it's not simply a refugee function or a function of having refugee status.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Do you keep track of how many people you end up dealing with who come as refugee claimants?

Mr. Ward Elcock: No, we don't.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I'm not talking about people we've accepted as refugees. I'm talking about, most often, people who are rejected and still remain in the country. It's a very high percentage of total claimants.

Mr. Ward Elcock: Our only concern with those is with respect to security. There may be other reasons that others have concerns. Ours is solely security.

I'm not sure it would assist us very much or reduce our resources, in terms of the things we have to worry about, if refugees were all detained. That's a very much larger policy question than simply the CSIS involvement.

Mr. Leon Benoit: It's not refugees being detained, by the way. It's claimants. It's quite a different thing.

A voice: All claimants?

Mr. Leon Benoit: All people who come to our country illegally and then claim refugee status.

The Chair: Why don't we just put bars around the whole of the country?

Mr. Bigras.

[Translation]

Mr. Bernard Bigras: I would like to come back to the profiles you spoke about earlier. Naturally, you said that one of the important parameters was Canada's security, and I agree with that. That's the right thing to do. Obviously, you are there to give the CIC advice on people who come to live in Canada on the basis of a visa or claiming some kind of status. Political considerations—of whatever nature—would surely not be one of the parameters. I would like to know whether your service can assure us that you are not making a political judgment about the personal political convictions of individuals seeking refugee status.

• 1010

Let us be clear. An individual who would be disreputable in his own country could come here for reasons of personal safety by seeking refugee status. I want to make sure that your service does not conduct a political assessment on the basis of the country's domestic policy, but just an assessment on the basis of Canada's security.

[English]

Mr. Ward Elcock: Mr. Chairman, we don't have any interest in the politics of individuals. Our function is to deal with those people who seek to advance whatever political aims they have by violence. To that extent, we have a limited interest in their political views, but only in the sense that if they're seeking to advance their aims by violence, wherever they're seeking to do it, they would fit within the definition of people of concern to us. But I have no interest at all in their political views per se, and neither do we as a service.

The Chair: Mr. Limoges.

Mr. Rick Limoges (Windsor—St. Clair, Lib.): Mr. Elcock, I guess the reality of the arena in which you work gives you knowledge that's not generally available; therefore others will always try to draw conclusions from your comments that further their political aims. It's become clear that we're not immune, on this side of the border, to irresponsible political commentary and hyperbole.

But back to the refugee status issue, I guess the issue of you having connections with 200-plus agencies leads to a concern regarding the reliability of information you get. For example, other governments might have different priorities, laws, or agendas, and their information may be prejudiced. We have people here who, for example, have refugee status and are perhaps being denied landed immigrant or citizenship status.

I'm just wondering what kind of in-depth investigation goes on. Are we investigating not just them but perhaps their family ties? To what depth do we go in providing information to the agencies that are making decisions on citizenship or landed immigrant status?

Mr. Ward Elcock: We try to provide Immigration with the best information we can. With respect to your concern about the information we receive from other countries, we're sometimes portrayed as being entirely dependent on other countries, but we're not. We have a number of ways of checking information.

We have a considerable degree of experience, and most of the relationships we have are long-standing ones. Inevitably, because that's our profession, we get to know who we can trust and who we can't trust. There are patterns to the kind of information you receive.

Mr. Rick Limoges: Perhaps you might be able to trust them on one issue but not on another because of—

Mr. Ward Elcock: Those are judgments we have to make. Everything we do in that respect is reviewable by SIRC. If I try to think back to various SIRC reports, they have generally been very satisfied with the way we've handled that information.

We try not to provide inappropriate information to some services, and we look very carefully at the information other services give us. We have a number of other sources of information, not the least of which is our own ability to investigate, both here and outside Canada.

Mr. Rick Limoges: So it's safe to say that your agency may have extensive information on an individual that, because of the mandate of the other agency, you wouldn't provide in totality.

Mr. Ward Elcock: That's right.

Mr. Rick Limoges: You might only provide them with what they're entitled to.

Mr. Ward Elcock: It depends very much on which agency you are talking about and what the situation is. It is different in every case and with every agency, but we only provide the minimum we need to, and if it is inappropriate to provide any information, we don't.

• 1015

Mr. Rick Limoges: I'd like to sneak in one more, and that's with regard to the legislation under which we're operating when it comes to Immigration and Citizenship and so on, and refugee claimants. Can you enunciate any frustrations you might have with the current legislation that you feel are making your job more difficult?

Mr. Ward Elcock: With the current immigration legislation?

Mr. Rick Limoges: Yes.

Mr. Ward Elcock: No. I think the legislation...if there are changes, we'll deal with those changes. As it stands now, we can work within the legislation. The legislation has in many respects been tested by the courts, and that creates some advantages.

Even if one can think of improvements, you have to go through a long period in testing it before it's probably going to be useful to you. Change by itself is not necessarily always a good thing. One needs to be very sure about what the change will ultimately do.

If you look at some of the processes that we've gone through under section 40.1, for example, where we deal with the deportation of individuals from Canada.... Those sections have been tested every which way to Sunday in the last five or six years. It has really taken five or six years to try to get to a point where the sections are effective.

Mr. Rick Limoges: Thank you.

The Chair: Mr. Telegdi.

Mr. Andrew Telegdi (Kitchener—Waterloo, Lib.): Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much for your presentation. I'm sure many of us will help you clean up any misinformation that might have gone out before.

My question to you is this. Many people come into Canada claiming status and either abandon their claims or use Canada as a point in transit, such as Gold Mountain in New York, if you will. The people from Asia or China will come here and then they'll pass on to end up in New York. You're aware of that.

Mr. Ward Elcock: I've heard reports in the press, the same as everybody else, Mr. Telegdi.

Mr. Andrew Telegdi: I just mention that because these people tend not to report to Immigration Canada saying they are abandoning their claim and leaving the country and going to New York. So I just raise that point to show that not everybody.... The 80% numbers that we got from some of the members of the committee are not necessarily accurate.

The next question I wonder about is this. When you make a report on an individual applying for landed status, and I know you do quite a few reports in the course of a year, but once you make a report, and you make 55,000 for permanent residents.... If you have a security concern, is there any mechanism? Do you periodically revisit those concerns, particularly as they relate to people who are in Canada and in a limbo?

Mr. Ward Elcock: Once we have provided the information, Mr. Chairman, it's for Immigration to make the decision, not for us, so the process from there on in doesn't really involve us, except to the extent that an individual comes under investigation as a result of one of our other ongoing investigations because of their participation with a specific group or whatever.

Mr. Andrew Telegdi: But say I were to apply for landed status and you had a security concern. This report goes on to Immigration. Five years down the road, it might be possible that you wouldn't have the same security concerns, but the same report is still with the citizenship and immigration department.

So I guess what I'm wondering about is if you have a security concern—and you would want to err on the side of caution, I imagine—that situation can change in a period of five years, so would it be useful to have some kind of mechanism to revisit that?

Mr. Ward Elcock: If we were asked by Immigration to do so, we would look again at a case, but I'm not.... In a sense, because of the legislation, we're providing information on all of the activities of the individual. We're not really making a judgment, ultimately, as to whether they're a suitable citizen for Canada or not. It's really for Immigration to make that judgment, but if we were asked to re-look at a case, we would.

Mr. Andrew Telegdi: Thank you.

• 1020

The Chair: David, final question.

Mr. David Price: If I could just follow up on Mr. Limoges' question, do you think that by having the necessary resources there are more things you could do for CIC? Or do you think maybe you should be doing less and some of those things should be handed off to others such as the RCMP?

Mr. Ward Elcock: I think the things we're doing for CIC we are better placed to do than.... The RCMP have a similar role under section 19 in terms of advising Immigration on criminal issues. That's not our role, but we're better placed, I think, to provide information on issues of terrorism or espionage than others are, so—

Mr. David Price: Are there more things or less things that you think you should be doing?

Mr. Ward Elcock: If we're asked to do more, we can do more, but we would, in many cases, require additional resources to do more. The reality is that we have the resources to deal with the risks and the mandate we have now. If that has to be extended, then we either cut back on what we do in order to do that new function or.... Running an intelligence agency is always managing the risks. If you have to manage the risks differently because you have a broader mandate and no additional resources, then you do so: you stop doing one thing and do whatever is a higher priority, a higher risk.

The Chair: I wonder, Mr. Elcock, if I could just add a couple of supplementaries to some of the fine questions that have been asked by both sides of this committee, albeit there might be some differences of opinion as to the approach.

Hopefully in writing this report for the minister, and learning not only from past experience but obviously from organizations such as yourself, we'll learn how we can ensure that those wanting to come through the front door of this great country, be it in terms of refugees or immigrants, in fact legitimately come through, and that those who might want to come through the back door through some illegal means are obviously precluded from doing so.

I wonder if I could just ask some questions. I take it that all of these things, including some of the things you've suggested, such as better technology, newer technology, maybe even more human resources, because in order to protect the back door.... I'm just wondering about it in terms of technology that would allow you to give that good advice, good information, at the front end of the service in terms of when someone wants to come in, a pre-screening based on criminality, security issues, human rights issues, and those kinds of matters. Would that be able to help, and would it make your job a heck of a lot better as you get involved in the process at a later stage? Would that be helpful?

Mr. Ward Elcock: If you're talking about somebody applying from outside of Canada, we already do a screening at that stage.

The Chair: That's part of it. Would additional resources and/or technology help you to do even more? Would that help?

Mr. Ward Elcock: Oh, I think that certainly additional technology as we go down the road.... I know that both Immigration Canada and the service—we're looking at it as well—are looking at the kinds of technology that will allow us to exchange information faster, to move the information faster. In some sense, technology more than anything else in the last few years has enabled most of the exchanges, most of the reviews, to be done far faster than they could ever be done on a paper basis.

If you're talking about ultimately the exchanges from abroad, if you're talking about doing it on a paper basis, you create a file somewhere, the file has to be couriered back to Canada or, at best, faxed back to Canada, and then moved on a paper basis. If you can do it on a tape basis, a computer basis, it can be virtually instantaneous and you can do the basic reviews much faster and provide the information faster, which is ultimately a fairer system.

So certainly technology will have a big role in responding to those issues. As encryption gets better and so on, it becomes more possible to do those things. There have been concerns in the past about security, and there will continue to be security concerns, but certainly some of those problems are being alleviated.

The Chair: We also learned, I think, through talking to some of our witnesses that this is not only a problem in Canada or in the U.S., but that it is in fact an international problem, with regard to the flow of migrants—20 million or so throughout the world—some obviously trying to get in illegally as opposed to some trying to get in legitimately.

I know that some of our bilateral arrangements with other countries, or more importantly, some of the multilateral arrangements.... You talked about CSIS having something like 150 areas that you work with other countries on. Is that an area that we have to strengthen?

• 1025

In order to deal with something, doesn't one need an international solution for an international problem? To what extent can CSIS, with some additional resources and/or technology or in fact looking at some legislative changes, ensure that an international problem gets solved internationally as opposed to each trying to do our own thing, if it is an international problem?

Mr. Ward Elcock: I don't know of a service, Mr. Chairman, that as a result of events of the last few years regards itself as uniquely able to resolve the problem on its own. Certainly we're a participant in a number of international multilateral groups, if you will, addressing some of the issues around immigration, as well as other issues. There are number of issues that are subject to those kinds of multilateral discussions.

Most of the relationships we pursue are obviously bilateral. Most of the sharing that goes on between intelligence services is very much on a bilateral basis and not usually beyond that. We do our best to maintain those relationships and to broaden them where we need to in order to get the best information we can.

At this juncture, we have about as many people abroad as we can afford. It's a pretty expensive enterprise to send SLOs abroad. If we needed to strengthen those, we would certainly need additional resources to do that. There are some areas where perhaps in the future we'll be able to expand.

The Chair: I wonder if I could just ask you this question. If it is problematic to you, maybe you can tell me and we can go in camera. Mr. Bigras asked a very good question. Does one take into account the politics of certain individuals, certain people? You indicated not necessarily, as long as violence isn't part of it. I want to make sure that Canadians feel reassured. Obviously they need to have confidence in not only our immigration system but our intelligence system.

From personal experience, unfortunately what you hear in the paper, based on what happened last Christmas, is that the United States gets a little bent out of shape and therefore starts hurling all kinds of accusations that we're the problem as opposed to looking at some of the things they might do.

As I understand it, most of the people who want to come to this country want to come because either they're being persecuted and they fear for their life or their safety or they want a better life in Canada than they have in other countries. From your standpoint, from your vantage point, how many people do you actually think want to come to this country because they have a political agenda? In other words, they are terrorists for the purposes of getting into either our democratic institutions or those of the United States.

I'm sure there are a lot of those wackos around this world, but I'm trying to quantify so that we put this thing into a proper perspective. What if 99.999999% of the people who want to get into this country really just want to get here to live here and have a good quality of life, as opposed to that .000001% who may want to come here for political reasons and are terrorists who want to get to us or to the United States' institutions?

Mr. Ward Elcock: I don't have an absolute number for you, but I'd go back to the number I've used. If you relate it to a population of about 33 million people, we have about 350 individual targets. That's not a large percentage of a population of 33 million people. We don't assume that all people coming to Canada are terrorists by any means. It is a tiny fraction. That's not to say it isn't a problem. One is too many and one gentleman with a bomb is far too many. That said, it is a very small number of people.

With respect to your comment about the reaction of the United States, newspapers and other reports of people and their comments are not always reality. There is the press release that the director of the FBI released over Christmas. I don't have a copy of it with me, but if we have one I'll get it and pass it on to the committee. I think it is more indicative of what the United States government thinks about these issues than the words of a group of other people who are free to say whatever they want to say.

The Chair: It would be useful if you could provide us with that.

• 1030

Finally, just as a follow-up, in order to reassure Canadians that you're on top of it, as for those 350 targets you have mentioned, is it a question of resources? You obviously know what those 350 targets are. Are they a security risk to our country? Do you feel satisfied and confident that Canada has that under control?

Mr. Ward Elcock: I'll hold a piece of wood while I do that. I think this is faith. Managing an intelligence agency, Mr. Chairman, is a risk management business par excellence. Outside of a tyranny, to provide an absolute assurance is very difficult. Most of the tyrannies I can think of had lots of loopholes as well.

We think we can manage the situation and we think we have the resources to manage the serious risks we confront. We've said so in the past. We continue to feel that we can do that. Certainly the events over Christmas stretched us. There's no question about that. It will cause us to look at some of the things we do and whether we need to change the way we do them or whether indeed we would need some additional resources to do them better. That said, we still believe we can manage the risks we're dealing with.

The Chair: Thank you.

Leon, against my better judgment, I'll let you have one last question.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is just a quick question.

Was the individual who was caught taking explosives across the border around Christmas one of your identified targets?

Mr. Ward Elcock: We don't identify our targets. Frankly, I would like to say as little as I can about that case, since it is before the courts. The last thing I want to do is prejudice—

Mr. Leon Benoit: Yes or no would do.

Mr. Ward Elcock: I'm sure yes or no would do. Let me just say, Mr. Chairman, that my understanding is that the individual in question came back into the country under a different name and with a different passport than the alert for him, so it made life difficult.

The Chair: Mr. Elcock, thank you very much. Your information and your answers to the questions have been most helpful as this committee tries to submit a report to the minister. As for the document you referred to, the FBI would appreciate it if you could pass that on to us.

Mr. Ward Elcock: We'll pass that on to you.

The Chair: Again, thank you and the organization for your fine work and your input today.

Mr. Ward Elcock: Thank you very much.

The Chair: Colleagues, as you know, I've ordered lunch, and after this witness we were going to have a working session to continue our own internal dialogue as it relates to the drafting of the report and keeping some guidelines. That's where I intend to go, but I understand Mr. Benoit has a point of order.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I have two issues I'd like to deal with, Mr. Chair. Thank you. The first was that a notice of motion has been given on this. We have copies here. I'll just read it while the clerk is passing it out:

That the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration be requested to appear before the Committee after March 30, 2000, when the Reports on Plans and Priorities are tabled in the House, but not later than May 31, 2000, to address the estimates for the fiscal year 2000-2001.

• 1035

It's quite a routine motion, and I'm sure it will be supported by the committee.

The Chair: Yes, and I think what we might do when we get into the steering committee is firm up a date so that we can have the minister here. You're absolutely right. I've already advised that obviously the committee would want to deal with the estimates for the new year, so that motion is perfectly in order. I don't think there's any objection to it, but we can deal with it in the steering committee if you want.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Could we just have a vote on it now? I have another motion, too, which I again have given out.

The Clerk of the Committee: We don't have a quorum.

The Chair: Sure we do.

The Clerk: You need nine.

The Chair: Here's Rob Anders, so we're fine.

I'm going to call this. Are there any objections to this motion? It's perfectly fine.

Mr. Leon Benoit: The other one says:

That the Chair of the Immigration Refugee Board be requested to appear before the Committee after March 30, 2000, when the Reports—

The Chair: Yes, that's fine. Thank you.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I'm going to table that one too.

The Chair: Yes.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Okay, good.

The next issue, Mr. Chair, is of great concern to me. I wrote a letter to you regarding the issue, and that's the issue of this committee meeting in camera on the subject matter before us now.

Committees certainly do meet in camera when a draft report has been issued and is being debated. I'm not saying I believe that's the way it should be, because I don't. I think that should be done in public. But we have no draft report here. All we're doing is hearing from individuals. You made this clear at the last meeting, Mr. Chair. We have individuals presenting their thoughts on information on these various issues that witnesses have brought before us. We're not even discussing a draft report, because none has in fact been put together. Yet we're meeting in camera, and I have a couple of concerns about that.

First of all, there's the meeting in camera itself. I just don't understand it, and I don't think it's proper that we hold in camera meetings for any reasons other than those relating to public finance, personnel issues, or national security issues when there is a dangerous or undemocratic practice. I believe this process is a dangerous and undemocratic practice, and it contributes to the irrelevance of this committee's work, really, Mr. Chair. So I'm quite concerned about this.

Of course, I was at the last steering committee meeting, and there was no discussion whatsoever on doing this at that meeting, so I went on a trip to Europe. I think it was a very important trip relating to my critic role, certainly, but also to my constituents. The plans somehow were changed from that meeting to the next, and I got back and found that I'd missed the first of these in camera meetings. When I left, there was no indication that the meetings would be held in camera.

Secondly, I understand that there was no vote taken on these meetings being held in camera. In fact, it was a decision made by the chair. There was no discussion on it. It just happened. As I said in the letter, I'm quite upset by this. I believe it's out of line completely, and I think we should hold our discussions at public meetings.

As I stated in the letter, I think this matter of illegal immigration is a serious one that affects the health and security of all Canadians. They have a right to know about the deliberations held by members of Parliament who are developing recommendations for the minister on this very serious problem. That's from the letter, Mr. Chair, as you're quite aware.

I also said in the letter—and this is a statement that I thought about at some length before I made the statement—that if we go in camera, I will tape the proceedings of the in camera meeting. I haven't decided whether or not I would divulge any of that information. I haven't made that decision yet. I understand that would be considered contempt of committee, and that it's a very serious step to take.

• 1040

But there are some other contributing factors to this whole situation. Routinely this government has leaked reports from committees. We have in camera sessions once we are actually discussing a draft report. Those discussions and what's in that report are routinely leaked to the media. It's not just now and again; it is absolutely routine.

The Chair: It's not necessarily only by government members.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I can assume that's probably going to happen with this one too, once we get to that stage, and I think that's completely improper. I think we have to stop pretending that even once we do get to that stage, the information will be kept confidential.

Look at the budget. What in that budget had not been divulged to the media before the budget was actually presented—and it's a very sensitive document. That shows how far this has gone. It's a serious problem in this Parliament. The Speaker has dealt with it in this.... Of course, Beauchesne's makes comments on that and talks about in camera sessions, and the Speaker has referred to that. It's also in this new M and M, the new procedural book. The Speaker says:

In response to concerns arising from the leaking of committee reports, the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs studied the issue of confidentiality with respect to in camera proceedings and confidential committee documents. In its Seventy-Third Report, the Committee recommended that committees exercise discretion in deciding to meet in camera. It also recommended that the reasons for such meetings should be made public, either on the notice of meeting or by the Chair in public session....

That, Mr. Chair, I believe is something that should be taken seriously.

Again, here we're not even talking about a draft report. The precedent has been set for that. Again, I don't agree with it, and I asked before for those discussions to be held in public. What could any one of us possibly have to hide in terms of the discussions on these notes that were made by our researcher?

The Chair: Well, Leon, you've posed a number of questions. I think I tried to answer some of your concerns, not yesterday but the week before, when we started to get into it.

First of all, as a member of the procedure and House affairs committee that drafted that 73rd report, I believe wholeheartedly that the more we can do in public, the better. There's no doubt about it. There are obviously certain issues that shouldn't be dealt with in camera and ones that sometimes should be.

As far as the government leaking committee reports is concerned, I think the procedure and House affairs committee—which I sat on for a year or two—would tell you that all sides of the House were responsible. Let's face it, everybody tries to get a political advantage when they can and on whatever issue. Therefore, sometimes they unfortunately will leak copies of the report and/or information before the House of Commons and our own colleagues have virtue of knowing about it.

I'd like to think that when we're in this room, when 15 of us are around this table, we are representing 301 members of Parliament. They obviously can't all be here, so we have to respect them too. Why should the media, why should people, other members, not know before the public knows what our deliberations are? I'm sure that when you're here—and Rob as well—that you're here representing the Reform Party's point of view on a particular issue. It's the same for Bernard, the same for Paul, and the same for us. We're here on behalf of 301 members, and until we table a report in the House of Commons, that's being courteous, that's having respect for members of Parliament regardless of political stripe.

Now, with regard to in camera meetings, first of all, I never asked the researcher—nor was it done publicly—to draft a report. The only thing I asked her to do was to start to summarize, to put things in summary form. That was to help all of the members of the committee with some of the issues that have been raised by all of the witnesses. I don't know about you, but when you start receiving ten pounds of information over the course of two or three months from all witnesses, unless you're very good and you have an awful lot of staff...I don't know who can do that work for you. I only asked Margaret to put down a series of comments and questions that were raised by all the witnesses in order to help us in our deliberations as we start to hopefully put together a report.

Mr. Leon Benoit: But that's exactly my point.

The Chair: My point is this. With regard to you unfortunately not being here when that week became a redundant week because we couldn't get witnesses, having heard those witnesses and having to wait until yesterday and today to hear these final witnesses, the only thing I wanted to do was to be able to start in our own very constructive way, and in a very non-partisan way, the process of thinking about what that final report or draft report might look like.

• 1045

I tend to think that sometimes closing the door and the microphone is much more constructive in helping us to do our work in a non-partisan way than is perhaps leaving the microphones on and opening doors so that we begin to grandstand as opposed to doing some of the fine work that I think we could do as a committee. I'm not averse to having these kinds of little discussions until we finally start to get down to the final draft, and then going in camera and looking at that. I don't have a problem. But I tend to think that as long as the spirit of cooperation and non-partisanship can exist, at least in the committee stage, as we try to get a consensus in an awful lot of areas...I know for a fact that we'll probably disagree. It's the nature of the beast for us to disagree, but to perhaps also agree on an awful lot of points. So I don't mind. I have no problem talking about these things in public, as long as it's genuine that we want to work together in a consensus-building exercise.

In my opinion, a report that comes with the signature of Bloc, Reform, NDP, Conservative, and Liberal members has far more clout than a report that comes divided along political lines. I don't have to tell you, Leon, that the government will listen to the government members on the committee at that point, perhaps more than it might listen to the opposition. But I'd like to think that, at the end of the day—and I've been on many committees over 11 or 12 years—when all parties have been able to agree maybe even on 90% of the things, at least the government then says the report has an awful lot of standing. That's what I hope to achieve. Let's work to agree on as much as we possibly can, and when we disagree on something, you'll have a dissenting page or two, or a report that you might attach to our report. But let's see what we can work on together to build toward a consensus. That's all I'm saying.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I want to get this clarified then. We will be holding these meetings in public. They won't be in camera.

The Chair: I'd like to start working on the rest of the stuff today, as I already indicated. If you want to do it in public, I don't have a problem with that unless...I'm your master or your servant, so to speak. You tell me what you—

Mr. Steve Mahoney: Which is it?

The Chair: I can play both parts. It doesn't matter. In some cases, you do.

Anyway, I don't have any difficulty from the standpoint of discussing some of the issues that we've already talked about. If you want to do it in public, that's fine by me. I just ask you that it's with the proviso that it be done genuinely, in the spirit of trying to work in a non-partisan way towards a common objective if we could, as opposed to grandstanding.

As for your threat about having a tape recorder—

Mr. Leon Benoit: There's no threat.

The Chair: —I'm not sure it would be fine, Leon. To tell you the truth, I would move that it wouldn't be allowed. You know, from here on in, I could start turning on my cellular telephone in order to let my best friends or my favourite newspaper know exactly what's going on too. I don't want to get into that kind of stuff.

Anyway, for the purposes of discussing, does anybody have any objections to staying in public at least in the initial stages? Steve, and then Rick.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: I just have a couple of questions for Margaret.

As I understand the issue, this is a fairly standard way of proceeding. You would bring what are in essence options for a report before the committee, and that process would be listed on our agenda as consideration of a draft report. Is it the case that all committees generally move in camera when they get to that stage, or is there any kind of rule or tradition or anything of that nature?

The Chair: I think the clerk might....

The Clerk: This is a discussion paper, so this is different. Generally speaking, when committees meet to consider reports, they do have a meeting in camera.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: We're at the point where I guess we can safely say that what we're doing today and what we did during the meeting that Mr. Benoit missed is simply discussing options for a report.

The Clerk: Yes, Steve.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: That tradition is sort of open, so we could do that in a public way.

The Clerk: It's not a report as such; it's only a discussion paper.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: There's nothing here that disturbs me about talking about it publicly.

The Chair: Margaret has something to say.

Ms. Margaret Young (Committee Researcher): Could I just put it in a slightly broader context?

There has to be a bridge between the time when the final witness on a committee study walks out the door and when you start looking at a narrative draft report. There has to be a bridge through which or by which you instruct me what your wishes are. Sometimes that can take 45 minutes; sometimes it can take days and meetings.

• 1050

In order to structure those discussions, the researchers will prepare a document. Sometimes it's an issues and options paper; sometimes it's a list of potential recommendations. I've done as many different documents to bridge that and help you discuss that as I have committee reports. I've called this document “Options for a Report”. It's just another of those documents; it's no different.

Speaking here personally, as a researcher, I don't see this as just a chance for you to discuss. It's more than that, and it was certainly more than that at the last meeting. It is your chance to discuss, but then to instruct me on what you want to write. So it is your discussion of a draft report. That is what we're doing, from my perspective.

The Chair: Technically you're right, but we're discussing options and certain questions here.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: If that's the case, I guess we need to come to an understanding of a definition. I notice there's a recording device sitting over by Mr. Benoit. I find it absolutely offensive and mind-boggling that a member of this committee would sit there and try to tape proceedings, if indeed the committee votes to go in camera. To suggest it or threaten it—which is how I took it—is the most unprofessional parliamentarian tactic I've ever seen in my 20 years in public office.

The Chair: Let's not deal with that right now.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: I think it's important to deal with that because I'm not going to be intimidated by that.

I don't have a problem if we discuss Margaret's document here in a public forum, but once we get down to writing the draft report, there may be things that both sides will want to add or delete. We traditionally have a role here where we move in camera, so I want to be clear on that. Any attempt to subrogate the hearings by taping them, or to intimidate members of other parties is just an unacceptable tactic.

The Chair: Thank you.

Rick.

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

Perhaps we're all dealing with different issues here, but with regard to whether or not we go in camera, I think it's important that there be some clarity. Frankly, what I saw us doing the other week was more an opportunity, because we had met with so many different witnesses, to recap information and help our staff determine which information was relevant to the issues at hand and which information we might want to give further consideration in drafting a report.

I don't consider it necessary to go in camera for that. Frankly, I think we can get away from the argument of whether or not there is a legitimacy to an in camera meeting, if prior to going in camera we actually have a vote, or a consensus to go in camera, at least. At that point we can also outline the reasons for going in camera and make it clear to everyone around the table why we're going in camera.

I think most parliamentarians, even if they're on the short end of the vote, would respect the committee's decision. They might argue about that decision but would respect the in camera nature of the proceedings, once the proceedings were underway. I think we can expect that of each other.

For the purposes of what we have to discuss today and what we discussed a couple of weeks ago, not being totally familiar with the procedures of various committees, I was uncomfortable about going in camera because I really didn't see a need to be in camera on these issues. I come from a municipal perspective, where there are very clear daylight provisions in the legislation in Ontario that clearly outline the reasons under which you can go in camera. You have to clearly enunciate what you will be discussing and the reason why it will be an in camera discussion. I think that's a very good model that we ought to follow. Then all of us around the table can respect each other and respect the process.

• 1055

The Chair: Okay.

Mr. Bigras.

[Translation]

Mr. Bernard Bigras: My first reaction was one of astonishment when I received the notice about this committee meeting and saw that we were going to study in camera the document that was sent to us. It was supposedly confidential, having been prepared by the library.

In my view, there is nothing confidential in this document. It contains summaries of testimony that are already in the public domain and to which journalists already have access. So I don't think that we have to meet in camera to study this document. That is my view. Why? Because it contains summaries of options, and I see no problem in having journalists or others seeing the document, because they may even have been present at the meetings.

However, I would hope that we would study the real draft report in camera, the one our researchers have prepared for us on the basis of the options we choose. I say that for two reasons.

In my view, the committee report, or even the dissenting views from the various parties must be based on our research as parliamentarians, but also on the testimony we heard. I think that is fundamental. If we do not study the draft report in camera, there could be an article in the press at some point that could influence the report itself. That would be serious.

I think our report must be based on the testimony and on our research, not on the opinion of a certain journalist who may write an article that will appear on the front page of a particular newspaper at some point and could have an influence on some committee members.

If we study the report in camera, I hope we take the necessary steps, as responsible parliamentarians, to ensure there are no leaks.

The Chair: That is true. Thank you.

[English]

Jean.

Ms. Jean Augustine: I think, Mr. Chairman, most of what I was going to say was said by Rick, but I want to express my appreciation for the research that was done—given to and summarized for us. That has somehow or other taken away from going back to all the UNHCR's and Ms. Jackman's statements and all the other pieces that are excerpted here for our consideration.

I also think that in most of the committees I have worked on in my few years here, there has been a measure of collegiality and respect for one another. I hate to work in a situation where there are threats—if you don't do this, then I'll do that. I think we have to get beyond this and work as parliamentarians.

So if there is an objection from a member, we present the objection, we discuss it, but not under threat of some reprisal if we don't go according to whatever the objection is.

There's nothing here that we can't do in open session. This is the will, it seems, of most of us. Let's get the work going. Let's forget about recriminations. We throw barbs back and forth. This is the nature of the place. Two-thirds of the time when I do it, it is more in jest than it is any serious animosity toward any other member. So let's work and let's produce a good report in the best interests of Canadians, because remember that what we are doing here is not for the House or for our own personal whatever. We are working in the name of all Canadians.

If we could turn out a good refugee determination process, this is what Canadians expect from us. So let's forget about all the other nonsense that's going on and be respectful of each other. Let's do what is expected of us as parliamentarians.

• 1100

The Chair: Thank you.

Listen, the consensus is clear. While we are considering a summary—and you can call it what you will—of what the witnesses say or whatever, we will do that in public.

Before we went in camera last time, I think I indicated....

I didn't hear any objections, Leon, including from your colleague from Reform.

I want to thank you—

Mr. Rob Anders: Mr. Chairman, I'm suffering from the flu today, so I've been kind of quiet.

The Chair: Yes, you have.

Mr. Rob Anders: I just want to make it clear that I didn't catch the drift that we had an in camera session the last time. It was my colleague who brought that to my attention. I don't think we should have been in camera. I don't see any reason for it.

The Chair: That's fine. Everybody agrees.

Mr. Rob Anders: I should have objected at that point.

The Chair: Not a problem.

Listen, I would agree. For whatever reason, it happened.

Thank you, Leon, for bringing it to our attention.

Here's what we're going to do. We're going to continue our discussions, in camera, on the paper that was prepared by Margaret, for the remainder of the day, which we set aside as per the agreement before. At the end of this meeting, I would hope this committee would give final directions to the researcher to prepare the final draft so that when we come back—we're off next week—we can start the work of the final draft report, which we would want to submit to the minister at least by the week ending March 15 or 16.

Leon.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I think Mr. Limoges' suggestion that the committee or the chair—or someone—gives notice of motion before we go in camera is a good one. I would in fact like to put a motion before this committee right now that we hold a vote on all in camera meetings after notice of motion has been given and that clear reasons be stated as to why the meetings should be in camera.

Again, I think it's a reasonable suggestion. At the start of our last meeting—

The Chair: I don't think we need a motion, but I like what it says. At the appropriate time, Leon, that's not a problem. We'll put it forward. I think that's exactly the consensus we've achieved, that if we're going to go in camera, we would....

Mr. Leon Benoit: Well, Mr. Chair, I put a motion forward here.

The Chair: Yes, but I could stick to the procedures too, which means you have to give 24 hours' notice. We could go through that.

I'm just trying to tell you, when you have a win, you should take it with some grace, you know. It's not a problem.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I'm looking at the future, Mr. Chair.

The Chair: That's what I'm looking at, and so far—

Mr. Leon Benoit: Keep in mind, Mr. Chair, at the start of the meeting, as soon as I realized it was in camera—I didn't even realize it was, although I would have if I'd read the notice carefully, and I couldn't believe it when I did see it—I asked for that meeting to not be held in camera, and you refused to go with that.

The Chair: Yes, but that's the past.

Mr. Leon Benoit: So why are things different now?

The Chair: We're talking about today, about tomorrow.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I'm pleased that you have agreed that it was wrong to hold it in camera.

The Chair: I didn't say it was wrong; I said—

Mr. Leon Benoit: I think you did it, Mr. Chair, arbitrarily, without consultation. I mean, my colleague didn't even realize it was in camera and he was here at the first meeting.

The Chair: Leon, I don't know what your point is. We agree with you. What is the point?

Mr. Leon Benoit: The point is, I want to make sure that in future, when—

The Chair: Well, if you want to bring forward a motion for that, I said we're all in agreement with it, so procedurally, that's what we'll do. But right now I'd like to get to the work at hand, which essentially is the consideration of that summary report and everything else.

Your motion, if you want to table it with us, sounds good in principle. If you want to put it in writing, we'll consider it the next time.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: On a point of clarification, just to be fair here, I think what I've heard—and I think Mr. Bigras said it as well—is that it is the intent of most members that we'll move in camera to consider the draft report but not this.

The Chair: Right.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Just for the record, I don't agree that the draft report should be discussed in camera either. I want to make that point. That's been a position the Reform Party has taken on several occasions.

The Chair: I'm sure we'll have that vote or that discussion before we make that decision.

Can we move on, then, to our continuing discussion on the summary, in the time I blocked off?

Mr. Steve Mahoney: And we're in public.

The Chair: We're in public.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: So I'm assuming Mr. Benoit's toy is not turned on.

The Chair: It doesn't matter whether it's on or not. We hadn't gone in camera anyway, so it doesn't matter.

Let's move on. If you remember, I think we've so far dealt with about three sections. We talked a little bit about the pension. We talked a little bit about the initial considerations regarding the refugee claim. We talked about the access criteria. We talked about the hearing stage.

• 1105

Now we are at page 4, section E, which refers to other matters related to the refugee determination system. Page 5 takes us to migrants, and so on. Why don't we just continue our discussions with page 4. Maybe we could start by having Margaret take us through a couple of those points as an overview.

Ms. Jean Augustine: Have we got a new one?

The Chair: No, it's the same working document.

Margaret.

Ms. Margaret Young: I think it would be helpful if we grouped number 1, number 2, and number 4, because they all deal with the problem of removing failed or refused refugee claimants. They are not really compatible. The first one says detain all of them or at least it says explore them. This was raised by members of the committee. We had no testimony on that.

Mr. Leon Benoit: What section are you referring to?

Ms. Margaret Young: I'm referring to section E on page 4 in the English version.

With regard to number 2, one witness suggested requiring everybody, whether accepted or rejected, to appear in person to receive the final decision, and then the department could be there for security or whatever.

Number 4 was a recommendation by the UNHCR that other countries give them money if and when they depart voluntarily. The money is given to them at the airport after they check in and go through. They're at the airport, so the final step is taken.

Those are three suggestions by witnesses or committee members that have to do with how you facilitate the removal of refused claimants.

Let's not forget, however, that refused claimants have certain legal rights, such as putting in an application for judicial review. So you can't just say, you're refused and now we're going to march you to the airport. I don't want to give that impression.

The Chair: Why don't we start that way, with a grouping of numbers 1, 2, and 4, which gives us an idea as to what we could do with failed claimants, either the process of having them appear before the IRB publicly or whatever before a final decision is made and what incentives there may very well be for failed refugee claimants to go to either third countries or countries of origin.

We'll start with Leon.

Mr. Leon Benoit: First of all, if you do as the Reform Party has proposed, which the chair reacted to so negatively today—which I don't understand, because even the minister has toyed with the idea—if you detain all the people who come to Canada illegally and claim refugee status until they've gone through the process, but speed up the process so that it'll be a very short detention, then that really won't come into play.

The Chair: I have a point of order. I don't believe the minister or the government has ever agreed that we should detain everybody who's trying to access the system.

Mr. Leon Benoit: She has presented the idea as a possibility. I think you'll find that to be—

The Chair: No, I'm not sure even as a possibility. Anyway, that's a debating point.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I was surprised at your reaction earlier, quite frankly, Mr. Chair, because it's something that has been talked about. I think it's a good idea, and I don't think it'll mean any more people being detained.

It depends on what we do with that and whether we agree to that in the report as to how we deal with these issues. It would of course be automatic that if someone were rejected, they would remain in detention until they're removed from the country. Under the proposal Reform has put forth, anyone who comes illegally and claims refugee status is detained. So that would make that kind of a moot point.

Mr. Andrew Telegdi: Mr. Chairman, I didn't hear that. I've been trying to listen.

The Chair: You can put your earpiece on. Some of us can't believe what we hear, so it's not a matter of you couldn't hear. But go ahead again.

Mr. Leon Benoit: What we propose is that anyone who comes to our country illegally and claims refugee status be detained until they're put through the process. If the process is working properly, you're talking weeks and months rather than years, as is now the case.

Mr. Rick Limoges: Can you define “illegally”?

Mr. Leon Benoit: I think you can certainly define that yourself. You know what coming to the country illegally involves.

The Chair: I have a list. Hang on a second.

Mr. Leon Benoit: So if we agree to that, it will change the way we deal with these other issues. That's my point.

• 1110

If the committee doesn't agree with detaining all the people who come to the country illegally until they're through the process, then certainly it makes sense that they at least be detained once they've been rejected, because the risk of flight is even increased under those circumstances. So that makes sense.

The Chair: You would agree with 1, but you're going farther than 1. Is that right? I'm asking just so I can get an understanding.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I thought we talked about that earlier in the report.

The Chair: Okay, that's fine.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Is that not right, Margaret? Did you not have that as a point that was brought up by some witnesses that all claimants who have come illegally be detained?

The Chair: We had a discussion about section A in terms of detention—

Mr. Leon Benoit: I thought we had done that.

The Chair: —where in fact there was some discussion as to those who are not cooperative and who pose a security risk. We talked a little bit about prescreening for security, criminality, human rights violations, or uncooperative people. If that's your definition of illegal, okay, that's one point. I don't want to get into a debate, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but we're at the crux of that matter. We did deal with it a little bit in section A. Perhaps Margaret could give us some insight as to what was decided.

Mr. Leon Benoit: The Chinese migrants came to Canada illegally. After the first boat arrived and so many disappeared, the minister agreed with exactly what I'm saying. She detained those applicants. I assume that most of them will remain detained until the process is complete and they've either been removed or accepted as refugees. That should be expanded, of course, to those who come through our airports in the same fashion.

The Chair: I think we're getting into debate.

You're up next, Jean, and then Andrew and Steve.

Ms. Jean Augustine: I'm unclear as to whether a failed claimant is an illegal—

The Chair: Person.

Ms. Jean Augustine: Yes. I think there seems to be....

Mr. Leon Benoit: I would suggest that—

The Chair: I'm not sure that she's asking you, Leon.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I thought I could clarify things.

The Chair: We know what you think. Everybody's illegal no matter how you get here.

Mr. Leon Benoit: That's nonsense.

Ms. Jean Augustine: Perhaps Margaret could clarify that.

Ms. Margaret Young: People who have no status in the country—in other words, they don't come in with a valid visitor visa or any other kind of legitimacy—and make a refugee claim are given conditional removal orders. Now, what I gathered from—

Ms. Jean Augustine: Are they legal?

Ms. Margaret Young: No. They have a conditional removal order, which becomes final when all of the processes related to the refugee claim are complete. At that point the removal order becomes executable.

I'd like to get back to Mr. Benoit's issue regarding the option of detaining all people who enter illegally. I'll take a stab at defining “illegally”. I presume you mean without the proper documents. Is that correct?

Mr. Leon Benoit: Not necessarily.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: That's one category.

Mr. Rick Limoges: How is that illegal?

Ms. Margaret Young: If that's not what you mean, then we do need to discuss it. Let me just say that there was no option presented in this paper because none of the witnesses suggested that anybody who entered without the proper documents should be detained until the process was ended.

The Chair: That's true.

Ms. Margaret Young: The options that were presented were numbers 1 and 2, that refugee claimants who lack proper documents and who refuse to cooperate should be detained because there are security concerns and whatever.

Mr. Leon Benoit: That's 1 and 2 under what section?

Ms. Margaret Young: It's the very first section on page 1. That was one suggestion.

Number 2 is where there's evidence of organized smuggling, then they become a flight risk, because you know that the intention is not legitimately to claim refugee status and stay in the country but to try to get somewhere else or they're smuggled in.

To answer your question about the Chinese, they were initially detained on grounds of identity. Once they very quickly got the proper documents from China, they were detained after the evidence of the first boat where the people absconded. They were detained because they were flight risks. So they were detained on those two bases.

Essentially, Ms. Augustine asked, what did we decide? Basically, you decided that yes, both number 1 and number 2 were perfectly valid reasons for detaining people.

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The Chair: Those were the exceptions, not the rule.

Jean, are you...?

Ms. Jean Augustine: My final point is number 4, “The government should facilitate the voluntary departure of failed refugee claimants...by giving them financial assistance...”. Well, I think if someone is determined to stay here, financial assistance will not attract a lot of people to go back to whatever situation they are coming from.

The Chair: That was the UN's suggestion. That's what they proposed.

Ms. Jean Augustine: Payment to go back? Why would they want to go back?

The Chair: Okay.

Andrew, Steve, then David.

Mr. Andrew Telegdi: I think, Mr. Chairman, one of the reasons you have in camera sessions is that if somebody makes a mistake, it's protected, and they're allowed to get to their conclusion and try to establish their position.

Going back to the last session—and this session—one of the things that I heard Mr. Benoit say—and I think it's important for us around the committee to be clear on it—is that all people coming to Canada, making the refugee claim—and you said it at the last meeting, which was in camera—do so illegally, and that we should therefore incarcerate all illegal entries into the country.

Now that means that we have about 25,000 to 30,000 a year who make the claim inland. So if you incarcerate all those people, that's a huge expense, probably much more than the budget we have for the department to do everything we do. It also raises the question that half these people are children. So we could have visions of all these folks being in custody, being incarcerated. I think if that's the Reform position, they should be able to define it, because I certainly have no problem accepting that this is their position. I certainly very strongly disagree with it, but so far that's all I have heard.

I think we might want, for the record, to put a price on it, because it's an option that's been proposed, but it's an option that would totally devastate...there's no way the department could meet it with its present resources. I'd say you would probably have to put $1 billion into the system to make that happen. If that is the Reform position, that's fine. It's their right to take that position. It's also the right of everybody else to disagree with it.

Looking at it in that context, it becomes very obvious that we're going to do detention very selectively, and that's what we have been talking about, certainly the other parties, outside of the Reform Party.

The Chair: Is that it?

Steve.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Am I going to be able to respond to this?

The Chair: Yes, when we get to you.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: You may want to listen to what I'm going to say.

Mr. Leon Benoit: You misstated my position.

The Chair: We're going to give you an opportunity to clarify it. That's why some of us are so confused.

Steve.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: Actually, I didn't hear Mr. Benoit say that at all. I'm sorry, but I think the issue in this case is.... In the first section, we dealt with the issue of the lack of proper documents, but maybe what we need to do is ask Margaret to spend some time defining or setting up the parameters—and I'm not even sure it's the correct word—of the word “illegal”, because if we're talking about detaining people who arrive at a point of entry into this country that is not a normal point of entry, for example, the migrants on the boats or the people walking ashore, or there was another group stumbling around, I think it was in Belleville, and they found them all starving and everything else—they had come across a river.... How did they get here? They're wandering around, and it's obvious...they would, in my view, be considered illegal migrants to the country. That doesn't mean they won't qualify to be refugees.

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I think the point is that until you make that decision, you don't just turn them loose and hope they'll come to a hearing. If you can define no papers and no cooperation.... We know that refugee claimants arrive at Pearson airport without papers all the time, and there are very legitimate reasons in some instances why. They left in the middle of the night—whatever.

The flip side of this retention is another idea that was put forward, which I support, and that is that when we determine that someone is indeed a legitimate refugee, we let him go immediately. We should cut to the quick on this stuff. Let's stop putting them through one or two years of torture and hearings and everything else and let them get into the country, get into the system, and maybe even help them with their application for landed immigrant status. So there's a flip side to it.

There is a tendency—and I'm as guilty as many—to sometimes try to paint a particular picture that Reform might take on this issue, but I believe what I'm hearing is that if you can determine that they are illegal—no papers, no cooperation. As far as I'm concerned, you don't turn someone like that loose in the community. You can't find out about them.

The Chair: First of all, you should understand that what we are doing perhaps now is breaking new ground, because there is no definition for “illegal migrant” anywhere in legislation now. That's why I want to take a little bit of time to talk about what we mean by migrants, illegal and so on. We're starting to put together a definition of uncooperative and no documentation as perhaps being illegal. I'm sure that's what we'll start to discuss, but Margaret maybe you could be—

Mr. Steve Mahoney: Excuse me a moment. I was trying to finish my points. I know you want to move the meeting along, but I've asked that Margaret in fact take some time to come up with those boundaries, and I think they must include things like no papers, no cooperation, entering the country outside of what we would define as a normal point of entry—that could be land, sea, or air—or if they are obviously identified as a security risk or a flight risk. Those would be the immediate ones who come to my mind, and maybe you could expand on it further.

We do not want to build a bunch of jails, regardless of whether or not it might be politically sexy to say just put these people away. But we don't want to have people who are breaking the queue, who are cheating, who have been sold a bill of goods by some smugglers or whatever just coming into the country.

Ms. Margaret Young: From where I sit, I would prefer, personally and for the committee, not to use the word “illegal” at all. What we have in the Immigration Act are offences. In fact, when you look at paragraphs 94(1)(a) and (b), the first two cover the first two groups that were given as examples. The people who try to sneak in through no port of entry at all are those who are guilty of an offence for coming into Canada at any place other than a port of entry and failing to appear before an immigration officer. So those are your people who sneak in.

Then there is 94(1)(b): “comes into Canada or remains in Canada by use of a false or improperly obtained passport, visa or other document”, etc., or by means of any fraudulent misrepresentation of any fact. Those people are guilty of an offence. Loosely speaking, they are often described as illegal because they can be charged and convicted of any offence under the Immigration Act. However, the word “illegal” is so charged that in my view it doesn't assist us. That's why I don't believe that in the options I talked about undocumented people, which is what the offence—

The Chair: The title is “Illegal Migrants”.

Ms. Margaret Young: I know, but I didn't choose the title.

The Chair: I know, but we did in terms of our reference.

Ms. Margaret Young: The thing is that at no place in the Immigration Act is there a definition of “illegal migrants”. We can discuss it. Basically, anybody who doesn't come in with proper documents is illegal in a sense, except if they are a refugee claimant they are given a conditional removal order, and then that's never executed if they're found to be refugees. At a certain point they become—

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Mr. Rick Limoges: Wouldn't a court of law have to determine what their true illegal status was?

Ms. Margaret Young: Only if they were charged.

Mr. Rick Limoges: So they're not illegal until they've been charged and proven guilty.

The Chair: David.

Mr. David Price: With regard to what Margaret said, that's what I was coming up with. This is going to be tested. The first time we put this down on paper it's going to be tested immediately. If somebody is illegal, that means they have to be charged and it's a criminal offence. That's the only point at which they are actually proved illegal. So we have to be really careful about putting this into words.

I think we all agree that with people who are really coming in and breaking all the rules, we have to find a method of detaining, but we have to be very careful. We can't generalize. We can't just say, with regard to everybody who comes in, we're going to throw them all in jail. We couldn't possibly build enough of them. But we have to be careful with that word. And we're still stuck with the Charter of Rights thing. The minute we say somebody's illegal, the next thing you know they'll sue us for saying they were illegal.

[Translation]

Mr. Bernard Bigras: That is not an easy question to deal with. I would say that individuals entering Canada on some inadequate means of transportation should not be described as "illegals" but rather as people “without status”. I think such individuals would become illegal to the extent that... This is an important point. I think that people who enter using inadequate transportation are "without status" not “illegal”. They become “illegal” after a decision is made about their request for refugee status.

Consequently, I am opposed to detaining all those who come into our borders. I think detention should be restricted to people without documents, who refuse to cooperate and who are a threat to the country's security.

The Chair: Thank you.

[English]

Leon.

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

Margaret, if I can ask you a question before I make my comments here, roughly how many people who are claiming refugee status are detained right now in Canada? Or maybe now is not the best example. Let's say at any one time, an average over the last five years. I'm looking for a rough figure. Would it be 500? Would it be less?

Ms. Margaret Young: In general it's very few. I would expect it would be much fewer than 500.

When the committee did the study on detention and removals, the department did, at our request, look up the information as to how many people were being detained at that point. They gave us figures, but it was not large. Unfortunately, I don't have those figures with me. But it's not a large number.

Mr. Leon Benoit: So now it may not be much over 600 or 700, or something like that?

Ms. Margaret Young: I don't think it would be anywhere close to that.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Right now, though, with the Chinese.

Ms. Margaret Young: I'm sorry, yes, with the Chinese.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I think it is important that we discuss what an illegal entrant or illegal migrant is. I appreciate Mr. Mahoney bringing it up in such a straight way, because I think it is a key point and we can't get on with how we're going to deal with a situation until we do have some kind of a definition for that.

I would consider anyone to be an illegal entrant if they've come with improper documentation. At least I believe they should be detained if they've come with improper documentation and if they claim refugee status. So some people may come with improper documentation. There are all kinds of situations. They could say something went wrong and they didn't realize it. That is one possibility. Another is that they present themselves for some other reason, acknowledging they have improper documentation. Anyone who comes with improper documentation and claims refugee status I believe should be detained.

Dealing with the issue of detention, someone said we'd have so many in detention. How many would we have in fact if the system were sped up dramatically? Right now we have somewhere over 500 people in detention, but the process is taking months. We're at seven or eight months for the first Chinese who came in. The process is much too slow. They could well be in detention a year from now. That's not unrealistic in any way, and I believe that's absurd. It's not fair for them; it's not a good thing to have happening at all.

There are about 24,000 who claim refugee status inland right now, and probably those people have all come to our country illegally.

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The Chair: Pardon?

Mr. Leon Benoit: No, that's not true. Most would have.

Margaret, do you have a percentage as to how many?

Ms. Margaret Young: The percentage varies, but 60% to 65% apparently, we have been told, come undocumented.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Yes, so they're here...you didn't like to use that term. But the other 35% have come with the proper documentation and decided they want to stay. So we're dealing with the 65%—my math isn't all that good, but say 18,000 people who under my definition have come illegally. I'm trying to show you some numbers here. If you have a process that works for most people within a couple of weeks, which is possible for a high number, a high percentage of the people who come illegally, if it works in a couple of weeks you're going to have probably 700 people in detention at any one time.

So with regard to the person who is saying that's ridiculous, we'd have so many people in jail we'd have to build jails, I don't think that's the case. The answer is to speed up the process. It's better for the refugee claimants, it's better for taxpayers, it's better for everybody.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Anders.

Mr. Rob Anders: I apologize, I went to go and grab a copy of the report that was in the office—

The Chair: You were lucky then.

Mr. Rob Anders: —and the comments and notes I had made in the margins. I take it we're now on the section that's titled “Illegal Migrants”, on page 5. Is that correct?

The Chair: No, page 4, paragraph E. In sections 1, 2, and 4 we're getting into this whole discussion of who we detain and who we define as illegal.

Mr. Rob Anders: I take the point that if we use the term “illegal”, even though it is something that is part of the popular culture, much as social assistance is called welfare even though it's not technically termed that in law, we could be running into complications, because then there's the whole idea of whether or not you have to make a decision.

I know it's part of popular usage. Certainly I think we're all coming from the same perspective in the sense that if somebody shows up without documents or with false documents, we have a problem. Whatever we call that in law, we have to have some way of dealing with it.

I'd like to put on the record that I'm in favour of the idea of detaining. If we haven't made a determination and then those people go free, into the population.... I'll point out that Montreal is an area that deals with and has to suffer through the consequences of having people who perform terrorist activities out of Montreal as a base because we're not doing our job in detention.

So I support that type of system. I think that makes sense because of the cost we'll be incurring otherwise. We have to look not only at the cost of what detention will be—and I think speeding up the process makes a lot of sense—but if we don't detain, those people are free to go about in the population, and maybe some are involved in terrorist activities and maybe some are going down to the United States to work in sweatshops in New York, or what have you. But I don't see how we're doing anybody favours if we're not coming to a clear determination of whether they're legitimate or not first.

The Chair: Thank you.

Andrew.

Mr. Andrew Telegdi: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Now I'm getting a better definition of what's going on here. So 60% to 65% of the people who come are undocumented. I wonder if the researcher could tell us, what percentage do you have for false documents?

Ms. Margaret Young: Undocumented includes no documents, false documents, real documents that don't belong to the person. It includes the gamut.

Mr. Andrew Telegdi: So we're talking approximately 20,000 out of the 30,000 who do make applications in any given year?

Ms. Margaret Young: It's 15,000 to 20,000. I don't know that anybody actually has a real solid figure, because it varies from year to year, and it seems to vary from the people who are giving it to us. But that's an average.

The Chair: Was that your question, Andrew?

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Mr. Andrew Telegdi: Yes. About half of those would be children and of course many of them would be women.

The dilemma and the confusion, I think, come from the fact that it's not illegal as such to make a refugee claim. If you make a refugee claim, that's not an illegal status. They have a legal status in the country. They might have a conditional removal order, but that is a legal status to be in the country. That gives them legality for being here. They're not people wanted on warrants and what have you, in terms of the legality of their situation. Anybody who is a refugee claimant and is going through the process has that legal status.

Ms. Margaret Young: Could I—

The Chair: No. This is a point of view. I know we're all—

Ms. Margaret Young: “Legal” and “illegal” don't help. They're not removable.

Mr. Andrew Telegdi: That's right.

The Chair: Okay. We're looking for some clarity on the issue. It's no use trying to define “illegal”. You just said your point of view is that it's not illegal to make a refugee claim in this country. That's fine.

Sophia.

Ms. Sophia Leung: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think we're a little bit confused about this. To me, “illegal migrant” is very appropriate to use because we know there are two separate categories. All people come as immigrants and then you claim refugee status. That's separate. We've been using that. Whoever doesn't have the appropriate documents we'll call illegal migrants.

The next step is that if they wish to claim to be refugees, that changes it to another category. That's my point. It's perfectly all right for us to use that term because it's been commonly known and accepted. That's one point.

My second point is about the detention. I'm from B.C. We all know how much fuss, how much difficulty, we have. We have literally 600 people now. There is no detention centre in B.C., as all of you probably now know. We only put them in jail. To me, that's improper and inhumane. They are not criminals. They came, and if we treat them....

The second step is that if they want to claim to be refugees, they have the right to due process. What I'm saying is there are two separate categories. They came in as illegal migrants.

I do not support that we detain everyone. It incurs so much cost, it's incredible. I don't think any government can afford it. It's not proper. Some of them are probably innocent refugees. Again, the Province of B.C.—do any of you come from B.C.?—has no intention of building or setting up jails just for illegal migrants, I can tell you this.

Thank you.

The Chair: Rick.

Mr. Rick Limoges: Thank you. I guess at some point we should discuss the issue of the previous two meetings we've had. We've already had someone referring to things that were said in a previous meeting, which everyone considered to be a closed meeting. Now we're discussing many of the same issues in an open format.

I'm wondering, Mr. Chair, if maybe it wouldn't be in order to find out whether there's any objection around the table to actually retroactively open up those previous two meetings in terms of the information that was discussed there. I don't know if there's any procedure for that.

The Chair: That's not a problem. In fact, when we first started discussing this, Leon wasn't here but Rob was. That was on the detention section, which was A. The fact is that we are now talking detention again with a different slant, because it says other matters that weren't categorized.... I have no problem with that.

Mr. Rick Limoges: My point is, though, that either they're open or they're not. If we're kind of referring back and forth, it's very difficult to try to keep things half open and half not.

The Chair: That's fine by me.

Mr. Rick Limoges: I'd like to comment also on the issue of improper documentation and illegal migrants. Frankly, as soon as someone makes a refugee claim, they are no longer an illegal migrant, no matter how you want to define it, because they have a legal right to make that claim.

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Let's not forget what we heard last night from a couple of refugee claimants who have been considered to be legitimate refugees, according to the convention. In many cases, it's virtually impossible to get proper documentation in the country they are fleeing. Therefore, it's reasonable to assume that a lot of people who are by definition refugees and who will qualify for refugee status cannot be expected to have that documentation.

We're all over the map on this discussion, but I think we ought to keep in mind that we're not dealing with people who are necessarily bad. They are fleeing oppression, and by the very nature of their situation they cannot be expected to have that documentation.

The other thing, with regard to detention and trying to detain everyone, is that it's absurd to think we can speed up the process to get them on their way within two weeks. The other thing we heard from the representative from CSIS is that even under tyranny, it's not really much better to have a situation.... You couldn't control a situation much better. I hope we don't get to a situation where we're considering detaining everybody, as we would in a tyrannical situation.

Now to the issues at hand. We heard from Margaret that issues 1, 2, and 4 are related. She also mentioned that they might be somewhat mutually exclusive. I would disagree. I think those three issues are issues that we ought to look into a little bit further. In some cases they might work together.

If somebody's making a decision for security reasons, as an example, the person has to be there for their final hearing. Then a decision can be made on whether they should be removed cooperatively, whether they should be detained for security purposes, etc. A decision can be made in any case as to whether it be detention, removal, or helping them in a voluntary removal. I think those are things we can further explore.

On issue 3, which was put forth by CCR, I believe these types of situations should be on request only, because it is an extra step. I don't think we're looking to put in too many extra steps; we really want to shorten the process if at all possible. I have no problem with number 5. Number 6 I disagree with because frankly I think the people who were putting that forward have a conflict of interest themselves.

The Chair: You don't have to comment on every one of them. If you don't agree or disagree, just ignore them. We're trying to build some consensus. If we can just stick to the—

Mr. Rick Limoges: I have one more. I believe number 11 is an extra step and I think it's unnecessary.

The Chair: Okay. Bernard.

[Translation]

Mr. Bernard Bigras: I won't go back over what I consider illegal or otherwise. I think I made my position clear to the committee.

I will come back to detention, but for the last time, at least for today.

I think we are on the wrong track when we try to focus the discussion on the incarceration rate of immigrants, whether they are illegal or not. The ability of our prison system to house so-called illegal immigrants is not an argument on which we should dwell. We should rather be examining the questions of principle. That is what I would like to stress.

Furthermore, I think foremost considerations must be given to the person, not to the capacity of our prison system to house so-called illegal immigrants. That is my view.

I am opposed—and I am repeating this for the second time—to detaining any individuals who come into the country using an inadequate means of transportation.

Whether or not the person has documents is one thing. However, we have to realize that if this rule is applied too rigidly, it can mean, as Mr. Limoges pointed out earlier, that people who could not go through the normal process in their country will be detained. That would be unacceptable. In extreme cases, we could be imprisoning children and teenagers. We have to realize that. We have to think about the international impact such a decision could have for Canada.

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Canada has always been an open, welcoming country. It has always had a reputation as a humanitarian place. So such a decision could have a very significant impact internationally.

So I think we have to start by examining the situation of the individual involved, rather than dwelling on the ability of our prison system to house immigrants, whether they are illegal or not.

[English]

The Chair: If I could, you just made a very good point, Bernard. I'm not a lawyer, but we're starting to define “illegal”. In this country, the last I heard was that you're innocent first until you do something that's wrong and unlawful. It then might become something illegal. We have to be very careful about assuming that someone's illegal before they've even been given due process.

I'm also concerned that some of us may not know our history. In 1951 we signed the refugee convention of the United Nations, which says that people have the right to declare themselves refugees. That's not an illegal act. So let's put it into its proper context.

Steve.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: I understand, and I think the points made are very valid. But I'm hopeful that Margaret can take from this some way of coming up with either another word or definition. When we're having this discussion, I guess it's unfortunate that we even drafted our orders of the day the way we did, because we said we were studying illegal migrants. We referred to the illegal migrants, and all of this came about as a result of the people in boats coming from China.

The Chair: But at the end of the process we may give further clarity to what illegal migrants or migrants are, really.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: I don't want to beat this to death either—I agree with many of the comments that have been made—but there's no way we can say that if we have 24,000 people coming to our land asking for refugee status, they're mostly or all illegal. That was the comment Mr. Benoit made, and I just reject that out of hand. Once they ask for refugee status, then you have to go through the process of determining if they should or shouldn't get refugee status.

It's not just a question of no papers. If they have no papers but they're fully cooperative and explain why they have no papers—they left in the middle of the night with someone shooting a gun at them—that's a different story if you can verify it. That goes down to the line of better training for members and things of that nature. Not one of these by itself, such as arriving here without papers, makes them illegal; it makes them a refugee claimant. We then have to determine whether or not they can succeed at that.

So it could be any number of things, but I think we may be giving you an impossible task, Margaret, in asking you to come up with another word to replace the word “illegal” and/or a definition of what it is that we're talking about.

Personally, I would not want to be part of a report that made a claim that every person who comes in here claiming refugee status is illegal. I just think that's an outrageous statement.

The Chair: I think we're going to wrap this part of it up, if we could. We've gone around the ring about three or four times each in trying to define this.

David Price.

Mr. David Price: To follow up on Bernard's idea, look at the single line that we already have in place. Somebody comes here, they land, and as soon as they land here they come under the charter. From that point, they can be accused or charged if there's something they're doing wrong. From there, they're arrested, detained, and go to trial.

I think our job here is really to look at ways, at criteria required, to charge them with something, something they are doing, something to determine that they are illegal. On the other end, we should be looking at means of removing them after the trial part. It seems to me we're getting far away from all of that.

The Chair: Again, at some point in time today we're going to direct the researcher to provide a document to us for consideration.

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I heard an awful lot of consensus, and I'm not sure we're far off, save and except one thing that we're getting into. Perhaps one should distinguish the process we want.

Secondly, one then defines whether or not there has been any criminality with regard to that individual. I didn't hear that we should detain everybody and brand everybody as being illegal no matter how they come to this country. In fact, I thought I heard two weeks ago that the exception would be detention on the basis of security risk, criminality, or human rights. We would probably detain those we suspected of those particular things, but the great majority of the people, 90% to 95% of the cases, would in fact be allowed to make a refugee claim. That's where I thought we were coming from before, and it has been confirmed to a certain extent here.

There may be some differences of opinion between the political parties, but I think we've discussed this enough now. We should allow Margaret to come back to us with a particular definition as it may relate to what an illegal migrant is and whether or not we have to in fact define that at all. Or do we in fact discuss the phenomenon of what migrants are and then try to determine what offences and/or criminality would make them illegal, as opposed to defining that all migrants are illegal or that there is a phenomenon called illegal migration? As I said, there's nothing in the act to do that, so why don't we ask the researcher to come back with some ideas on how to do it? I'm sure we'll discuss this further.

Rob, did you have something else?

Mr. Rob Anders: Since I took the time to read through the section and make comments on all the different parts, I'd like to just get them on the record for the researcher's benefit.

The Chair: That's all I wanted to do with regard to.... No, we're going to continue with paragraph E but with regard to “detention” and “illegal”. Is that what you wanted to do?

Mr. Rob Anders: I just wanted to have a chance to run at this here.

The Chair: Oh, you will.

Mr. Rob Anders: Okay.

Under point 4, the idea of giving people financial assistance to return home, I generally agree that we should help facilitate voluntary departure of failed refugee claimants, but I just wonder about the aspect of financial assistance. If we set ourselves up for potential cash transfers, we're opening ourselves up for a huge amount of abuse. It's the difference between giving somebody a ticket or giving them a cheque or some money to get them back home or whatnot.

I realize this touches on the whole idea of the carrier or the transport company possibly picking up those costs—whether it be ship or airplane—because they expressed some concerns over it. I just hope we don't ever stray down the path of cash transfers on that, although I realize there's an expense any way we do it.

I'd like to also touch on point 6. I agree with Mr. Limoges that if we say there should only be lawyers on the IRB, we're setting up a barrier to entry for people to serve in that capacity. I think we've heard before—and I certainly would agree—that just because somebody's a lawyer, it does not make them an expert in these matters. We have many people with the IRB who are not lawyers but who are good at what they do. There should be some sort of criteria and some sort of merit-based appointment process. To restrict it to lawyers would be a favour to the profession, and those who are lawyers and advocate it are probably serving some sort of vested self-interest.

I'd also like to comment on number 9, that being that there should be a right to paid counsel at all IRB refugee-related procedures. I recognize that we want to give people the best due process we can, but does due process necessarily mean they all have to receive paid counsel? That's the question, because I realize there's a great expense incurred there.

Also, in a sense, those people have a vested interest to be working for the client whether the client is, who knows, a potential drug dealer, a person who's involved with the slave trade, a terrorist, or whatever. They're there to represent that client as opposed to the interests of the Canadian public or the government. So there's a question there. I think we can do due process without requiring everybody to have access to paid counsel.

The other aspect is number 11, the idea that there should be an immigration ombudsperson. Once again, I think Mr. Limoges hit the nail on the head in saying that would be like adding another level of appeal. I don't think the purpose of what we're trying to do here is to add more loopholes and make the system more complex.

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I wanted to comment quickly on the issue of documentation, because we've been focusing a good deal of time on that this morning. Documentation is merely a hurdle for somebody if they're a smuggler or a trafficker, and those are the ones we're really trying to aim at here with this legislation. So if we open up that system and say, well, it's okay, you don't need to show up with documents, we'll let you go free—and they're free to be on their way within Canada, and then goodness knows where else, because we have such a porous border with the United States, for example—all we're doing is making it that much easier for smugglers and traffickers to go ahead and ply their trade.

By requiring documents and saying that unless you have a document, we're going to hold on to you for a while, and hopefully it's going to be fast.... I'd prefer a quick system, and I should think everybody would. But if we don't say we're going to hold on to them and determine whether or not they're legitimate, then it just makes it that much easier. The people who are smugglers and traffickers say, great, I have a pro bono here. I get to bring people in. I don't have to worry about even trying to facilitate a false document, or smuggling, or anything like that. I'll just get them inside any way I can, in a container ship, by the bundle, I don't care.

So by requiring documents and detaining them unless we have documents, we're at least putting them through one more level. I mean, at least they have to have the facilities in that case to falsify documents, for goodness' sake.

The Chair: But don't forget, Rob—and I can't remember whether or not you were at previous meetings—we were going to hammer the smugglers and traffickers like you weren't going to believe, we were going to confiscate their boats, we were going to put the captains and the crew, and all of that other stuff.... So I don't think you can take anything in isolation.

I would agree that in terms of hurdles, documentation is important, but I think on the other side, though, there was consensus on this committee that we really did want to hammer the traffickers and the smugglers.

Mr. Rob Anders: Mr. Chairman, you know I support that. I've read the legislation, though, and we've had a chance to interview people about it, and we do have on the books the ability to process these people with some fairly hefty fines. But as the witness told us, the last time somebody actually got charged as a trafficker under our section of the act was 1993.

The Chair: We may make suggestions, as you know, and that's the whole purpose of what we're trying to do. So thank you for those excellent suggestions.

In fact, I thought we were going to deal with 1, 2, and 4, because they related to detention and some sort of discussion about illegality, so to speak—and I think we have some clarification there—and then, of course, move to some of the other points. You've taken the opportunity of doing that, and so have Rick and others.

I thought with regard to the IRB, there was consensus too that we wanted to make the point that appointments should be based on merit. As to whether or not that meant they should all be lawyers or not, I'm not convinced of that...or other things that we said about the IRB. I was going to leave separate the discussion as to what sort of recommendations we would make with regard to appointments to the IRB and what kind....

I have Mr. Benoit, and then Jean Augustine.

Mr. Leon Benoit: With regard to the IRB appointments, of course, I think everyone agrees they shouldn't be political appointments and they should be based on merit. That's a motherhood statement, but it's time that was implemented. With regard to the tenure, though, something that isn't said here is....

In point 7, Margaret, your point is the IRB members' tenure should be more secure by providing longer terms of duration, and I agree with that. But there should be a very short trial period, between a year and two years, I would say, where it's very easy to remove someone if it becomes apparent the person isn't competent—

The Chair: Can't do the work.

Mr. Leon Benoit: —and isn't good. So have a longer tenure, possibly 10 years, but only after you have that initial one- to two-year period where a careful evaluation is done and where it's very easy to remove a person at that point.

So it would be a temporary contract of between one and two years, at the discretion of the person who does the evaluation. That's what I would recommend.

Ms. Margaret Young: It might interest the committee to hear a couple of facts.

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First of all, the act provides that the maximum appointment now is for seven years, which is a fairly lengthy period, and it can be renewed. I took a look at the last time we got notice of appointments and reappointments. The new appointments all seem to be for a period of two years, which is exactly in line with what you're saying. Then subsequent appointments may be longer than that, but there were many new appointments at two years.

If I could just add one other thing, our testimony from the board in past years has indicated that it takes about one year for a member to be trained, to get some experience, and to be up to speed, and then it's the second year when you can determine whether the person is going be a good member.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Exactly.

Ms. Margaret Young: So certainly I wouldn't want to say one year, because basically that's the training period. But I could definitely put in something about shorter periods, because I think that's what they're aiming at now anyway.

Mr. Leon Benoit: That's why I said that period between one and two years is a period when there should be flexibility to terminate someone very quickly if they're not capable, competent, and good at their job.

But besides that, there does have to be a removal process available for people, even during the longer period, under circumstances where audits determine that a person is way out of line with expectations or with other board members in terms of their approval rate and so on.

The Chair: I wonder if I could make a suggestion. Can we just take five minutes to get our sandwiches and our stuff, and then continue working through lunch? We have some stuff to do. We have Question Period at 2 o'clock, and a number of things obviously need to be done before we can call it a day. So why don't we just suspend for five minutes until such time as we can get our food?

Some hon. members: Agreed.

The Chair: Thank you.

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The Chair: I wonder if we could continue. Bernard has had to leave and so has Leon.

We will continue with sections E and F of the paper. I have Jean Augustine next.

Ms. Jean Augustine: I want to make my two points very quickly. One is on number 6, and that is that we want good representatives of Canadian society, people who can make sound judgments. We don't necessarily need people to have a legal background in order to do this.

Secondly, I have to agree with the discussion that went on earlier about the tenure of members. I think we should get people who would develop some expertise in the area. Flipping people in and out does not give us that expertise. I think performance appraisals are essential so that those people can write good, sound decisions and that they're able to administer the statute.

The Chair: Thank you.

Sophia.

Ms. Sophia Leung: Thank you, Joe.

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I want to say that I strongly believe we should not use detention for all the illegal migrants, especially refugees. Just imagine the Governor General when she was three years old. The whole family would have been detained and treated as prisoners.

The Chair: Well, that's why it's important, Sophia, that maybe we stop talking about this term “illegal migrants”. I'm still confused as to what that means. Maybe as we—

Ms. Sophia Leung: No problem.

The Chair: If that was the definition, the Governor General may very well have been an illegal migrant way back when and been put into detention.

Ms. Sophia Leung: No, she came as a refugee.

The Chair: That's right.

Ms. Sophia Leung: So we shouldn't just detain all the refugees, in other words.

On number 5, the process of appointing the training for IRB, I think we have to stress very clearly.... We heard a number of witnesses. In Vancouver I also heard a lot of complaints.

During the interview with the IRB, and I don't want to use any names.... I think it's very important that even if they are qualified as lawyers or whatever professional training they have, they must have special training for focus on cultural understanding and a sensitivity of people. Even yesterday we heard that refugee claimants were treated—

The Chair: So the key words were “cultural sensitivity” as well as....

Ms. Sophia Leung: “Understanding”.

The Chair: Okay.

Ms. Sophia Leung: It would literally make them really have to be organized. Maybe a couple of weeks.... I think it's very easy to focus on understanding and even learning interview skills, interpersonal conduct. Yesterday—

A voice: They have the training.

Ms. Sophia Leung: Yes, they have the training. You just have to give them solid training to be prepared, especially people who come....

There was a lot of frustration. They should learn how to handle them. Thank you.

The Chair: Okay, thank you. Any other comments on that particular section?

Ms. Jean Augustine: Number 9, the right to paid counsel at all IRB refugee-related procedures, is one I think maybe we should spend some time looking at.

The Chair: So far I think I have only two people who have spoken on that particular one, you being the third. There was no consensus as to whether that should be in there or not. I take it that....

What did you see?

Mr. Rick Limoges: I think the lawyers would like that one.

The Chair: Of course.

Ms. Jean Augustine: But I say no to that.

The Chair: Okay. So there's no consensus on that one.

David.

Mr. David Price: I wonder if Margaret could tell us just a little bit about item 10. I don't remember what the reference was.

Ms. Margaret Young: Let me read to you from Mr. Bauer's testimony on this point. He said:

One of the proposals I would make to you is that the information available to that tribunal [meaning the IRB, the refugee division] is not particularly good, in my view. It's contradictory. It goes in all directions. It's from public sources. There should be a role for DFAIT, as external affairs is now called, and its missions abroad to provide detailed information about certain aspects of things.

Mr. David Price: So the area the person is coming from, its background?

Ms. Margaret Young: Whatever he had in mind. I presume, yes.

The Chair: Okay. We'll now proceed.

With regard to the refugee—

Ms. Margaret Young: But how do we feel about that?

The Chair: About what?

Ms. Margaret Young: About more cooperation with missions overseas. Do we want to talk about that?

Mr. David Price: Are we expanding on that?

The Chair: Well, if I'm not mistaken, I thought part of the.... At some point before we talk, there has to be more done bilaterally and multilaterally, as a government. Obviously that would mean that for instruments of the government, namely the IRB, any time there could be more cooperation, as number 10 would suggest, then that would be fine.

Ms. Margaret Young: He's talking about things that would help individual claimants.

Mr. David Price: The people sitting on the IRB right now try to choose people who are familiar with the particular country, who have an idea of the background in that country. At least that's the way I understood it. Whoever they're interviewing, they have a background of that country.

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But I think what they're looking to have here, in the cases in which they don't have that background, is access directly to somebody who is much more knowledgeable about what's going on in that country at that particular time. Whatever this person is claiming for, they can then have something to back it up. I guess that's the general idea that we're....

Ms. Margaret Young: If I can maybe give an example—this isn't a real example, but it might be the kind of thing Mr. Bauer was talking about—let's say the public sources available in the documentation centre at the refugee division suggested there was still fighting between clans in country X, that the government was unable to stop it, and that it was producing refugees. Let's also say that information was a year and a half old.

If I'm interpreting Mr. Bauer correctly, it might be his suggestion that the board would put a request in to the Canadian mission in country X to see what the updated situation is: Is it true, as it was 18 months ago, that this is happening? They could say yea or nay, and that might help with the individual determination of the board, which is slightly different from international cooperation to deal with migrants.

The Chair: I would hope that's an automatic. If we're not doing that, I would really be troubled by the fact that we're dealing with information that's 18 months old. Surely to God, we're much more professional than that.

I take it that if nobody mentions this, Margaret is not supposed to do an awful lot of work on it. Therefore, there either is consensus that it's not important or consensus that it is important, unless a whole bunch of people—

Mr. David Price: Should we go one step further and maybe put an actual timeline to it? Should we say documents at an IRB hearing shouldn't be any more than x number of months out of date?

The Chair: If you just want to make a general statement with regard to the idea that there should be better cooperation between the IRB and Canadian missions, as Mr. Bauer has suggested, that's a given. Maybe we should mention that under the international context, or the whole process of how better informed the IRB can be—not only its own members, but as an institution—and how better up to date it can be.

Mr. Rick Limoges: Maybe if we're going to make motherhood statements, they should just be something like encouraging cooperation amongst the agencies—

The Chair: Of the government and Canadian missions.

Mr. Rick Limoges: There should be good two-way information flow.

The Chair: Rob, did you have something to add to that?

Mr. Rob Anders: Yes, I just want to say that I agree we should try to strive to have the most current documents possible, but I worry that if we actually stick in some sort of limit of 18 months, we may run into a scenario whereby documents that are older than that could provide context for something that's gone on. Some of these people, including some we had testifying before us as witnesses, have situations going back over decades of their involvement, in order to give context. If we had anything in there that would somehow limit the ability of using those historical documents for context, I see problems.

Mr. David Price: No, I didn't mean that. I just meant they would be brought up to date on a very regular basis.

The Chair: Okay, if we can go on now to the next section, why don't we just say to get rid of that term “illegal” for the moment and say “migrants”? That I can identify. It's the movement of people. I don't want to classify them as being illegal or legal at this point. Let's just talk about migrants for a moment.

Ms. Margaret Young: Let's call it border control.

The Chair: Yes, or border control, if that's what we need to do.

Are there any comments? There are 19 points and they're all over the map, of course, but they deal with a number of things that have been told to us by a number of witnesses. To tell you the truth, they're all very good suggestions, so take the time to look at them. Obviously, feel free to comment on those that you feel are worthwhile. If I see some heads nodding and so on, I'll take it that it means there is a consensus, which means that not everybody has to comment on all of the points or something like that.

Rick, and then Mr. Anders.

Mr. Rick Limoges: Further to what's in here, I think there ought to be some sort of cooperation between governments around the world with regard to stolen documents. For example, here's a situation that I'm familiar with. A hockey team from eastern Europe that came to my community over the Christmas holidays had two dozen passports all in one bag, all stolen at the same time, together with visas, passports. The whole bit for this hockey team and their entourage was all stolen. Now obviously that would be information that would be recorded in the country in which it happened, but it might not be information that's available to us at our borders. When those situations arise, I think there ought to be some sort of cooperation so that the information can be transmitted and we can be on the lookout for these valid documents being used improperly.

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The Chair: Rob.

Mr. Rob Anders: Yes, I'd just like to run down a number of the points. First, once again, there were a few different groups that spoke about the idea of intercepting improperly documented people trying to come to Canada. I don't know if that's a direct reference to detention, if you will, but certainly there are others who recognize that we have some issues with that.

Most of the comments I have with regard to that section deal with the second page or page 6. Section 10 deals with shipowners or their insurers being required to post guarantee bonds, as was done in the past, in order to relieve the obligations on maritime agents. I had a general question there. I generally agree with the idea of posting guarantee bonds and whatnot, but after I'm finished commenting, maybe somebody can offer some insightful comments on that. They would be interesting to hear.

Number 11 deals with a very similar issue, and that has to do with the two-year sunset provision. I realize shippers would like to have some sort of cutoff period, so a sunset of two years for them would be appropriate. My worry there is that we can do that, of course, if the process speeds up significantly. If we don't speed up the process significantly, or even if we have the odd exception that falls beyond the two-year limit, as currently happens, then all of a sudden we have these people who may slip through the cracks and wind up in this limbo, whereby it's not the responsibility of the shipper to remove them because the sunset clause has removed their responsibility.

I'm not sure what criteria this situation would fall into. As a result, we could wind up having people who all of a sudden have to remain in Canada because that two-year sunset clause has disappeared, so I think we have to be wary about removing that provision. Ultimately, I think the answer for everybody, including the shippers, is for the process to just be sped up rather than giving them an actual sunset provision and an out.

Number 16 has to do with more prioritizing being done concerning who should be removed, and it says that people who have been here for long periods or from childhood should not be removed. In some respects, we're penalizing ourselves by our own generosity there. With any potential problems we have with our process, it's tying our hands. The reason people are here for a long period of time is probably that we're trying to be as judicious with the process as we possibly can be, and we are trying to sift out as best we possibly can whether they're legitimate or illegitimate, cooperative or uncooperative, and all the rest of these things.

By us somehow saying that because somebody has been here for a long period, that automatically exempts them from any potential deportation, it really just opens us up to further abuse. It encourages people to take even greater advantage of our generosity and the Canadian system as it stands. While I don't want to see long periods for people going through the process, or see the process taking a decade to do, I recognize nonetheless that if we give them some sort of “get out of the Immigration Department free” card because of the length, then all we're going to do is encourage everybody to queue up in the system and cause clogs.

With regard to number 17 here, “Pressure to improve their human rights record should be put on countries that generate significant migration because of human rights abuses”, obviously that's something I've spoken on a few times. Out of respect for fellow members on the committee, I won't go into any great detail on that, but I think we should also be looking at tying our foreign aid. I want to tie that in because here it talks about improving their human rights record and calling shame or something like that, I guess.

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I would also like to see a furtherance of that. If we are receiving a huge amount of people from certain jurisdictions in the world because of human rights abuses, I think we should seriously re-examine—and maybe this touches upon foreign affairs—our whole policy of giving foreign aid to those countries when it would merely help those regimes to enforce whatever draconian measures they're putting on their own population to force them to want to flee. I think we should be doing more to curtail any aid to those violators, those dictators, torturers, etc.

Number 19 says:

Fewer removals would be challenged in court if the procedures were fairer, e.g. a final case review by an officer not part of enforcement who would look at all the factors of the case.

The decision process already seems long enough. My worry with number 19 would be like the one I had with number 11. Really, what we're doing is lengthening the process, and it's already long enough as it is. I'm not sure that going through that and creating more loops and hoops to jump through is really helpful in terms of streamlining the process.

Those are my comments.

The Chair: Andrew.

Mr. Andrew Telegdi: Number 17 is something I think we can continue to reinforce. I think it will serve us well, particularly when we're dealing with other democratic countries. If we're going to be more effective, we should be dealing with everybody, but I'm just saying that if we have democracies, we can really reinforce that.

On number 15, I think it's something that goes both ways. We have people working underground in Canada, on the black market, and they have people working in the States. I don't know if I want to get into finger-pointing at the Americans. It talks about people working illegally, and I don't know if the finger-pointing is going to do much good. It might be better if one were to discuss how one stops people from working illegally in both countries, pertaining to the black market.

In terms of number 8, there is one issue that we have. Oftentimes you have somebody sponsoring relatives from abroad on a visa for a visit. The people can then show up here and claim refugee status. I wonder if we could look at something to the effect that if you sponsor somebody to come for a visit, and if clearly the situation is that the person is going to apply for status, then you as the person will sponsor that individual. You should have some financial liability in supporting that individual while the individual goes through the system.

The Chair: Number 8 talks about a new offence. I know where you were coming from, but I think it's a different point than number 8.

Mr. Andrew Telegdi: Yes, but it's a related point.

The Chair: I think number 8 is creating a new offence when people assist through fraud and misrepresentation. You were talking about the other side of the coin, which I agree with—

Mr. Andrew Telegdi: The other side of the coin, yes.

The Chair: —but the question here is whether or not you want to talk about that one.

Mr. Andrew Telegdi: The reason number 8 set it off in my mind in that way is that it becomes very difficult to prove fraud or misrepresentation, but we know we have....

We see it in our offices all the time. We have people coming in to us saying they want to have some person in for a visit, and they give you all sorts of guarantees. The point is that we, as members of Parliament, really do not know. One of the considerations made when somebody applies for a visitor's visa is, are they going to return? If the person has purposely tried to get somebody's old visa so that they can apply for status, I think we should have some financial obligation from that individual in terms of support, because if the person comes and claims status, they can apply for social assistance. The person helping them get in should have some financial responsibility. I think we'd go a lot further with that than we would with somehow trying to prove in a court of law that somebody got somebody in here through fraud or misrepresentation.

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The Chair: I would agree. If other people agree with what you've just said, that's fine. I think numbers 5 and 6 are probably a better way of dealing.... Really, the big problem is traffickers and smugglers. Really concentrating on an offence and trying to get them out of business is perhaps better than it is to try to, as you've just said, do number 8, which is a bit more problematic to define.

There's a better way of doing this, that is, to insist on some financial guarantees or bonding of some sort for the proponent of such a person. I think that puts the onus on both, and it's not a bad approach. It's the carrot-and-stick approach or the carrot-and-responsibility approach.

David.

Mr. David Price: I'm wondering, if we look at smugglers as a group.... CSIS looks at security problems and terrorist groups and that type of thing. It's a question we should have asked them when they were here: do they consider smugglers to be a group that they look at? If not, maybe that should be, because they are an organized crime group. Do they go as far as examining that possibility when they're doing their research?

The Chair: Sophia.

Ms. Sophia Leung: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Number 6 is the same penalty for—

The Chair: I'm sorry, Sophia. Hang on a second. I've moved too quickly.

David.

Mr. David Price: What I'm looking at is whether, in CSIS right now—it's a question I should have asked when he was here—they look at organized crime in the sense of a danger, security-wise, to Canada. Do they look at it in the sense of organized crime as smugglers?

The Chair: I think I asked that question at the end, and I think they commented, obviously, that the RCMP would have dealt with that particular aspect, so—

Mr. David Price: But maybe CSIS should be the one, since they have the contacts worldwide—

An hon. member: Only the violent smugglers....

Mr. David Price: Only the violent smugglers...?

The Chair: I don't have a problem dealing with those kinds of deterrent measures, that we put something in.... That's a good suggestion.

Mr. David Price: Tie it together and then hand off the information to the RCMP.

The Chair: Precisely.

Sophia.

Ms. Sophia Leung: Thank you.

On number 6, I think I asked CSIS and they said that's a police matter; they're not involved.

Mr. David Price: Yes, but I guess—

The Chair: They can provide intelligence. That's what David has said.

Mr. David Price: That's right. My point is that it is part of organized crime and they should pass on that information even though they're not dealing with it. They should just pass it on.

Ms. Sophia Leung: They're not directly dealing with it. They have the information.

Let's support number 6, and not only confiscation of the assets but fines. I think we did—

The Chair: Big fines.

Ms. Sophia Leung: Big fines, yes, heavy fines.

The Chair: And all of those moneys should be returned to Immigration so that they can do something. It's just like proceeds from—

An hon. member: Profits from crime.

The Chair: —crime should be rolled back into the department that is collecting them.

Ms. Sophia Leung: Yes.

An hon. member: I agree with that.

The Chair: Wouldn't it help the whole enforcement situation? That's what happens with the RCMP.

Ms. Sophia Leung: Sure.

The Chair: Do you like that?

Ms. Sophia Leung: Yes.

Some hon. members: Agreed.

The Chair: We'll put that in the equation.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: I think it should be distributed to committee members.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

The Chair: For all of the abuse we take and the hard work we have to do. I know.

Sophia.

Ms. Sophia Leung: For number 14, not only that, I think the Canadian government should prepare a multilingual video to coordinate the actual facts of how we treat illegal migrants in Canada.

I want to say that I did have a little discussion in September with the Chinese government and they are very interested. They say that if we provide a video, they know—

The Chair: Number 13 talks about pamphlets. You want to talk about—

Ms. Sophia Leung: I want to add a more—

The Chair: Add a number of things, such as any multilingual—

Ms. Sophia Leung: A multilingual video.

The Chair: Communication stuff, or whatever.

Ms. Sophia Leung: Communication stuff, yes. The Chinese government was interested—

An hon. member: It's not—

The Chair: I know it's not about that, but if she wants to make that decision, that's fine.

Ms. Sophia Leung: I want to make that suggestion.

The Chair: She's talking about pamphlets and videos for the—

Ms. Sophia Leung: Additional ones. You do not have that here.

Okay, Margaret? Unless I missed it, I didn't read that.

The Chair: It's just that number 13 is not exactly what you're talking about.

Ms. Sophia Leung: No.

Ms. Margaret Young: May I just explain? Number 13—

Ms. Sophia Leung: It's not the same, Margaret. You have to understand that.

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I'll just use one government example. The Chinese government said, yes, we will do our public education for our people in China, but you also can help to bring an educational tape. Because these are false promises, that this is Golden Mountain land in Canada. It's not so. The people didn't know that. The Chinese would do their part. We should provide a video, a sort of documentary on where those people end up in B.C. They're in detention, but nobody knows—

The Chair: That's a good suggestion, but you referred to it in number 13, and I think that's why Margaret wants to explain. Because ATAC.... That was put in there for an entirely different purpose. One of the problems when you referred to number 13 as you did.... We're trying to correct—

Ms. Sophia Leung: Yes, but this isn't that. You say “to give to passengers”. How would you know passengers? They're illegal. They come here. They won't let you—

The Chair: Stop using the word “illegal”, Sophia.

Ms. Sophia Leung: “Illegal”—and I want to stress that—

The Chair: No! Stop using the word—

Ms. Sophia Leung: No.

The Chair: —because I don't know what you mean by that.

Ms. Sophia Leung: No. That's what it is. You cannot pretend.

The Chair: Now we're going to talk about how all the passengers are illegal. No, no.

Ms. Sophia Leung: So we need to.... Because even number 13 is not realistic. All the pamphlets are to be given to passengers. Some passengers don't want you to know they're passengers heading to Canada. We know that. So there are two separate things: the Canadian government should prepare a multilingual video and other educational material to coordinate with other governments—

The Chair: That's fine.

Ms. Sophia Leung: —to present an actual—

The Chair: Margaret wants to clarify.

Ms. Sophia Leung: Margaret, go ahead.

Ms. Margaret Young: At the last meeting we discussed the importance of a publicity campaign or a communications plan to send to countries, to do in countries, that were sending illegal migrants. I will add your point, which is excellent, about a video to go along with that.

Number 13 is the point about ATAC. The Air Transport Association of Canada said, look, we have a very hard time when people are wanting to board our flights and it's an hour and a half before flight time and we don't think their document is good. They think we are trying to keep them from boarding the airplane, said ATAC. They don't understand that we're acting as agents for the Government of Canada. Give us a pamphlet, they said, that we can give to the person to say that it's not us doing this, it's the government requirement. That's what number 13 is about.

Ms. Sophia Leung: I see. So that's really for helping the airline and has nothing to—

The Chair: I thought there was a lot of consensus on how we can better communicate with the passengers, help the airlines, help the shippers, help everybody understand what our rules and something....so it's all within that context.

Excellent suggestions, Sophia and Margaret.

Ms. Sophia Leung: But, Joe, you know it's two separate things I'm talking about.

The Chair: Of course.

Ms. Sophia Leung: I'm talking about prevention.

The Chair: Yes.

Ms. Sophia Leung: Don't wait until they get here. Do it before. You have to think about how to discourage them.

The Chair: And I think you should be the moderator on that video. I think you should be right in that video. Could I make that suggestion?

Ms. Sophia Leung: I don't want to be identified by those snakeheads.

An hon. member: Are you illegal?

Hold it, she's illegal.

Ms. Sophia Leung: I would need RCMP protection.

The Chair: Okay, let's move on here.

Mr. Rick Limoges: Sophia, you would want to tell people that Canada is a great place. I don't know if we want to have a video telling them that it's not good to come here.

Ms. Sophia Leung: Tell them the truth.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The Chair: Listen, does anybody have any objections with regard to 1, 2, and 4? I think those are all excellent suggestions that were brought up by our witnesses as to how we can improve our system of, again, what I would call preventative measures, such as what Sophia talked about. But numbers 1, 2, 4, maybe 5, 6, 8, not necessarily 8, are all preventative measures—including number 9, to tell you the truth.

Does anybody have a problem—number 12—with any of those suggestions of a preventative nature? They all seem rather common sense to me. So if we don't have a problem.... I want to make sure Margaret might cover them off in a particular section and everything else.

Mr. Rick Limoges: If they seemed like common sense to you, maybe we should read them over again.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

The Chair: No comment.

Mr. Rob Anders: I'd just like to say, Mr. Chairman, that on points 2, 3, and 9 I didn't see any problems, but I have lots of check marks by—

The Chair: Go ahead. I just want to make—

Mr. Rob Anders: I did note in number 1, though, that others thought we should be intercepting improperly documented people trying to come to Canada, not just letting them flow free without any holdback—

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The Chair: Obviously, that's one area we can cover, documentation being one of them.

Are there any other comments?

Mr. Steve Mahoney: Sophia twigged something that I saw last night. It may be more for information, or you might look to include it. There's a group of young people out of the University of Toronto who have developed a system to make the Internet multilingual. Apparently this is brand new—the language of the Internet is basically English. If we're going to do a video, we can put something together....

Quite seriously. Why are you laughing?

The Chair: Which one was that? Who did the multilingual...?

Mr. Steve Mahoney: I have to understand something. Why are you laughing?

Ms. Margaret Young: If you're talking about a multilingual video, we can do that now.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: Yes, but I'm talking about using the Internet, if you want to talk about how to communicate.

The point I made at the last meeting was that we have to start some kind of communication plan to people in other jurisdictions to convince them this is not the land of milk and honey and they shouldn't take these boat rides, and all that kind of stuff.

Ms. Jean Augustine: It's the number one country in the world in which to live.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: Right. All of that is good, but you don't want them showing up here and then have to put them in jail. You can't have it both ways.

The Chair: I'd like to wrap this up.

David.

Mr. David Price: Has the report on the immigration detention and removal that was done just a while back been taken into consideration in the document we're going to be preparing?

Ms. Margaret Young: Yes, although we haven't discussed all of them. For example, number 14 refers to that report. I didn't hear any discussion on that. Some of the things you want to recommend now were recommended then, and I'll put that in.

The Chair: I think number 14 is fine.

Ms. Margaret Young: So 14 is a “yes”?

The Chair: Yes. I thought I'd mentioned that, but if I didn't, I'm sorry. I think that was a very important point.

Is this your last question?

Ms. Sophia Leung: Yes.

The Chair: Okay. Are you sure it's your final question?

Ms. Sophia Leung: I really think prevention is very important for us, instead of sitting here and waiting for them to come. The thing is, they did participate last time.

Number one, I want to say the work with other governments is very important. The Chinese government actually stopped six boats. Just imagine if they had reached B.C., we would have been in real trouble.

Number two, our navy was involved in surveillance, so I think we should add one sentence saying we should encourage the joint effort and work with whatever—the surveillance—since we have more funding now for that.

The Chair: You're going to spend it for him before he's going to. That's fine.

Ms. Sophia Leung: No, I really want prevention.

The Chair: I just want there to be consensus. Bernard indicated—Jean, don't go anywhere just yet—that he had no difficulty, and I think, Rob, you're here.

I want to give direction that Margaret go ahead and prepare this document for us so that we can review it on Tuesday, March 14, from 3.30 to 6 p.m., because if we really need to do some work and make some changes, it will be prepared in both official documents. If other parties want to have dissenting opinions, as you know, they need to be submitted 12 hours before tabling to the House. I really would like to be able to table a document by the end of that week.

So if there's no objection, there would be a meeting on Tuesday, from 3.30 to 6 p.m. for the purpose of considering the first draft report—in camera.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: Make sure you tell Mr. Benoit.

The Chair: Rob.

Mr. Rob Anders: I think if we can possibly look at tabling some time next week...we'll have to, of course, get any of these tapes—

The Chair: Of course. Not next week, the following week you're talking about—the next sitting week, the week we're back.

An hon. member: If you're still here on Tuesday, it would be nice to bring it to the House on the following Tuesday.

The Chair: I'd like to get it there Friday. This is March 14 I'm talking about, for the purposes of considering the draft report, between 3.30 and 6 p.m., and let's see what happens. My timeline is to have this thing reported to the House of Commons by the end of the week, which probably would be Friday. If we can't, it will have to be the following week, but I'd like to at least set some time parameters to what we're doing.

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There's no objection to coming back on Tuesday the 14th, for the purposes of this thing.

Thank you.

It will be in camera unless...

Mr. Rob Anders: Unless we object.

The Chair: Meeting adjourned.