The Auditor General of Canada has released its fall report, which contains a section on the process for determining inadmissibility to Canada.
The CBC provided a rather bleak summary of the Auditor General’s findings when it reported:
The audit identified a number of problems: it found that many of the criteria used by visa officers to identify high-risk applicants are outdated; CBSA analysts who provide security advice to visa officers have not received the necessary training; their work is rarely reviewed; and there was no evidence that mandatory checks were completed.
Wiersema said many of these problems have been identified by previous audits and the department has committed to fixing them, but they haven’t followed through on those promises.
“I find it disturbing that fundamental weaknesses still exist,” he said.”It’s time that CIC and CBSA work together to resolve them.”
Wiersema said the security manuals used by visa officers when making their decisions haven’t been updated since 1999. The audit also pointed out that medical screening for danger to the public has focused on syphilis and tuberculosis for the past 50 years, even though health professionals are required to monitor and report on 56 diseases.
Citizenship and Immigration has not reviewed whether visa applicants should undergo mandatory testing for some of those diseases and it also doesn’t review its decisions to grant visas later to ensure the right decisions were made.
“This means that CIC and CBSA don’t know if a visa was issued to someone who was in fact inadmissible,” Wiersema said.
The interim auditor general was asked at his news conference whether the flaws in the system means there are people who were granted entry to Canada who should have been kept out.
“The department is not able to provide us with assurance that that’s not happening,” he responded.
The complete list of recommendations, and CIC and CBSA’s responses, were:
| CBSA and CIC should ensure that operational manuals, risk indicators, and relevant country-specific information are complete, up to date, and made available to visa officers in a timely manner to help them identify foreign nationals who may be inadmissible. | A review of current risk indicators has begun in consultation with security partners. Also in consultation with security partners, a strategy will be developed to ensure that necessary country-specific information is available in a timely manner to support admissibility decision making. In addition, a review and update of policy manuals will be undertaken to ensure that accurate operational guidance is in place for all staff and management involved in the admissibility screening process. These measures will be completed by June 2012. |
| CBSA should ensure that all information that can be obtained from security partners and is relevant to security screening is used to provide advice to CIC. | A comprehensive approach will be developed to ensure that all relevant information is available and shared with CIC. An assessment of information needs will take place in consultation with security partners, identifying any gaps and resulting in an information management strategy to ensure that necessary information can be accessed to support admissibility decision making. In addition, existing information-sharing arrangements between CIC, the CBSA, the RCMP, and CSIS will be reviewed to ensure that they are complete and serve the needs of the security screening program. These measures will be completed by March 2013. |
CBSA should
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CBSA has restructured its security screening program to provide more focus on quality assurance and performance management. A review of training requirements for screening officers is under way and a high-level plan has been adopted to provide screening officers with a competency-based training program and supporting tools, to be implemented incrementally. In consultation with CIC and security partners, the CBSA will review service standards and make necessary program adjustments to ensure that the needs of all partners are met. These measures will be completed by December 2012. |
In order to meet the objectives of IRPA to protect the health and safety of Canadians, CIC should
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CIC has initiated and continues to develop a risk assessment and management strategy to better address danger to public health and danger to public safety in the immigration context. Among the activities conducted are the completion of a discussion paper on defining danger to public health, and the completion of an HIV policy review. CIC will implement a strategy that will result in consistent admissibility criteria, standardized processes, and improved monitoring of its programs. These measures will be completed by September 2013.
CIC has started examining the excessive demand processes and will pursue its collaboration with the provinces and territories to review factors generating limitations and inconsistencies in the evaluation of excessive demands and will address the identified deficiencies. This measure will be completed by June 2013. |
| CIC should implement a standard quality assurance process to protect the integrity of the medical examination system and to ensure consistency and quality in the assessment of medical admissibility. | CIC has already completed the development of a Quality Assurance Framework for its immigration medical examination and assessment programs. This framework will be integrated into the departmental Program Integrity Framework, providing the tool required to monitor and evaluate the quality of its immigration health program, worldwide, including the designated medical practitioners, other examiners, and CIC employees involved in the health assessment process. CIC is also in the process of implementing eMedical (an electronic medical system), enabling standardization and centralization of the medical examination process. These measures will be completed by March 2013. |
| CIC and the CBSA should fully implement their joint risk management and performance measurement strategies and monitor the results. | CIC and the CBSA will implement and monitor their joint risk management and performance strategies for the shared delivery of the immigration and refugee program, including visa issuance. In this context, CIC and the CBSA will complete a review of Canada’s admissibility policy, in collaboration with security partners, in order to assess whether it is continuing to meet the needs of Canada and Canadians; to identify any gaps; and to recommend amendments to relevant legislation, regulations, or administrative guidelines.
CIC and the CBSA will complete a joint priority-setting exercise based on key risks with respect to the intelligence program (including visa issuance) and resulting enforcement priorities. CIC and the CBSA will also complete work on key performance indicators with respect to visa issuance, which will be used to monitor the effectiveness of shared programs and to track the implementation of joint priorities. These measures will be completed by December 2012. |
My Thoughts
As an immigration lawyer, it is not often that I get to praise the men and women that work for the Canada Border Services Agency and Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Indeed, I spend much of my day writing arguments challenging their decisions. However, in the wake of the media hysteria following the Auditor General of Canada’s report on weaknesses in Canada’s visa system, I feel like a great big “calm down.. they’re doing just fine” is in order.
Judging by the media headlines, you would think that Canada’s borders were porous, with hordes of terrorists, serious criminals, and people with dangerous, contagious diseases flooding into our country. You would think that the people working for the CBSA and CIC were all inexperienced, poorly trained rookies, unable to keep up with the flood of inadmissible people entering the country. However, while there are certainly some procedures that can be changed, in my opinion, on the whole the CBSA and CIC are quite good at implementing Canada’s immigration laws.
As the Auditor General report noted, in 2010 Canadian immigration officials processed over a million applications for people seeking temporary residence in Canada, and 317,000 applications for permanent residence. I have yet to read one media report that mentions an actual incident of an inadmissible person gaining entry to Canada and doing something that causes a danger to the public, let alone one inadmissible person being admitted to Canada as a result of an inexperienced immigration officer. The Auditor General’s report also does not mention one specific example. It is all hypothetical.
Indeed, contrary to the perception of weak enforcement currently being created in the wake of the Auditor General’s report, it is more likely that people who do not pose a threat to the public are denied entry to Canada because of how broad Canada’s inadmissibility provisions are, and how competent and vigilant our immigration officers are in enforcing them.
For example, criminal inadmissibility is so broad that anyone who has committed an offense abroad whose equivalent in Canada is either a hybrid offense or an indictable offense under an Act of Parliament is inadmissible to Canada. The result is that every year thousands of people who have committed offenses ranging from drunk driving, to minor assaults, to (in one case that I recently dealt with) failing to properly display a boat license, are denied entry to Canada. In many cases these individuals committed their offenses several years, sometimes decades, ago.
Such people are often able to obtain a Temporary Resident Permit to overcome their inadmissibility to Canada. According to Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s 2011 Annual Report to Parliament, in 2010 CIC issued 6,451 Temporary Resident Permits to people that were inadmissible to Canada for general criminality, and 907 permits to people that were inadmissible to Canada for serious criminality.
In each of the above cases, an individual was declared to be criminally inadmissible to Canada. Although that individual was later able to overcome the inadmissibility (often at great expense), the point is that Canadian immigration officials caught them, and initially denied them entry to Canada.
On the issue of medical inadmissibilites, the Auditor General’s report created the perception that people are only denied entry to Canada for two diseases: syphilis and tuberculosis. However, a quick review of health inadmissibility cases that were litigated in Federal Court show that people have been denied entry to Canada for diseases ranging from mental handicaps, Rheumatoid Arthritis, cleft palates, autism, Cerebral Palsy, schizophrenia, Down Syndrome, osteoarthritis, and many more.
Certainly the families of these poor people that were denied entry to Canada would question the notion that hordes of medically inadmissible people have are constantly waltzing into Canada.
So to answer the question of one reporter who asked whether Citizenship and Immigration Canada and the CBSA are not “winging it” when it comes to protecting our borders, my answer is no. A quick review of Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s Operational Manuals, Operational Bulletins, as well as the literally thousands of cases which shows how things work in practice demonstrate, our immigration officials are doing a more than adequate job at protecting Canada’s borders.