Opening Statement to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration

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

Citizenship and Immigration Canada—The Economic Component of the Canadian Immigration Program
(Chapter 3 - May 2003 Status Report of the Auditor General of Canada)

Citizenship and Immigration Canada—The Economic Component of the Canadian Immigration Program
(Chapter 3 - April 2000 Report of the Auditor General of Canada)

5 June 2006

Shaila Fraser, FCA
Auditor General of Canada

Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity to meet your Committee and discuss our most recent audits on Control and Enforcement and the Economic Component of the Canadian Immigration Program. I am accompanied by Richard Flageole, the Assistant Auditor General in charge of this portfolio, and Paul Morse, who directed our two audits in 2003.

It is important to keep in mind that our comments will be based on what we have observed more than three years ago. Since then, significant changes have occurred, including

• the full implementation of the new Immigration and Refugee Protection Act; and
• the transfer of all intelligence, interdiction, and enforcement functions to the Canada Border Services Agency, which is also responsible for managing the Canadian borders.

In our April 2003 chapter on Control and Enforcement, we identified a number of problems with detentions, removals, and screening at ports of entry. For example, there was a growing but unknown number of people who remained in Canada despite Citizenship and Immigration Canada's (CIC) having issued a removal order against them.

We reported that Citizenship and Immigration Canada had no current information on

• whether Customs officers were referring the right people to Immigration officers, or
• how effective its own secondary examination was.

We also commented positively on the work of CIC abroad to identify people attempting to travel to Canada with improper or false documents. Most of these activities are now under the responsibility of the Canada Border Services Agency.

In 2003, we conducted a follow-up audit of the Economic Component of the Canadian Immigration Program that had been audited in 2000. The aim of this program is to recruit skilled workers and business immigrants.

In 2000, we expressed many concerns about the Department's management and delivery of this program. For example

• Visa officers needed better selection criteria, training, and tools to assess immigrant applications more effectively.
• There were significant weaknesses in medical assessments of prospective immigrants and serious constraints in establishing their criminality and security admissibility.
• There were also inadequate controls over revenues, visa forms, and computer systems in offices abroad.

Given the seriousness of these problems, we questioned whether the Department had the resources and operational capacity to deal with the annual immigration levels set by the government.

In our 2003 follow up, we reported that the Department appeared to be heading in the right direction and that the new Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and its supporting regulations addressed many of the issues raised in 2000. However, it was too early to determine the full impact of the new Act and of some of the corrective actions. We also noted that the Department needed to pay more attention to the medical surveillance of immigrants and refugee claimants.

I would like to take this opportunity to let you know that we have initiated a risk-based planning exercise to help us identify future audit work in the areas of citizenship, immigration, and refugee protection. As part of this process, we would like to meet with some of you, early next fall, to discuss any issues that may be of particular interest to the Committee and that we should consider when conducting our audit work over the next three to five years.

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my opening statement. We would be pleased to answer your Committee's questions regarding our previous work or any other matter relating to our role, mandate and audit work.