Opening Statement to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts

Citizenship and Immigration Canada—Control and Enforcement
(Chapter 5 - April 2003 Report of the Auditor General of Canada)

12 May 2003

Shaila Fraser, FCA
Auditor General of Canada

Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity to present the results of our audit of Citizenship and Immigration Canada's control and enforcement activities, Chapter 5 of our April 2003 Report. Mr. Chairman, I have with me Mr. Shahid Minto, the Assistant Auditor General in charge of the audit and Mr. John Hitchinson, the Audit Principal who led the audit team. With us also, but not at the table, is Mr. Paul Morse, the lead Director on the audit team.

Parliament passed the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act in the fall of 2001, with most provisions coming into effect on June 28, 2002.

Our audit examined control and enforcement activities. We did not examine the activities of the Immigration and Refugee Board.

Our audit found a number of positive activities carried out by Immigration. For example:

• The Department has taken a significant step to stop inadmissible travellers from entering the country. In the past three years, immigration control officers have worked with airlines overseas to prevent some 20,000 people with improper travel documents from boarding flights to Canada.
• Citizenship and Immigration Canada is also playing an important role in the government's joint control efforts with the United States. The Department has produced the Permanent Resident Card, which has modern security features. It also led the negotiation of the Safe Third Country Agreement with the U.S.

The integrity of the immigration system depends on control and enforcement activities.

One problem is that the Immigration Department does not know how effective its border controls are.

Border controls have not been assessed since the mid-nineties when both primary and secondary screenings were found to have been not very effective.

We strongly urge Citizenship and Immigration Canada to regularly examine the performance of its border controls. It's the only way to be certain that the steps they have taken to improve the security of our borders are effective.

The Department agrees and has indicated that it plans to evaluate both the primary and secondary inspection lines through a combined review process.

Once people are in the country who should not be—for whatever reason—it is the job of Citizenship and Immigration to enforce their removal. This must be done in a safe, effective, and respectful manner while ensuring that the individual's legal rights are maintained. They cannot remove someone as long as that person's legal rights allow him or her to stay.

A problem that we highlighted is the large gap between the number of removals ordered and the number of departures confirmed. This number has grown by 36,000 in the past six years.

Now, we should be careful not to jump to conclusions: this doesn't necessarily mean that all these people are still in Canada illegally, and it certainly doesn't mean that they are all security risks.

Immigration doesn't actually know how many are still here because Canada does not have exit controls and some may have left voluntarily without reporting their departure. I think it's unrealistic to expect this gap to be reduced to zero.

However, the Immigration and Refugee Board had a backlog of about 53,000 cases at the end of December 2002. The Immigration and Refugee Board estimates the historical average of its decisions that resulted in cancelling a removal order at about 45 percent. Therefore, the Department can calculate that about 29,000 more people already in Canada will soon require processing.

Some questions you may want to ask the Department are:

• When will performance measurement and evaluation of the primary and secondary inspection lines at ports of entry begin? How will the Committee and Parliament be informed of the results?
• What measures are being put in place to improve the screening of travellers at marine ports of entry?
• How does the Department plan to deal with the growing backlog of investigations and removals?
• Has the Department developed an action plan to respond to the recommendations?

I hope this brief explanation of our audit and findings on Citizenship and Immigration Canada's control and enforcement activities has been helpful to the Committee. Mr. Chairman, that concludes my opening statement and we would be pleased to answer your Committee's questions.