Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Security and Defence
Issue 17 - Evidence
OTTAWA, Wednesday, June 19, 2002
The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence met this day at 8:00 a.m. in camera to discuss future business of the committee and continued in public at 9:00 a.m. to examine and report on the need for a national security policy for Canada.
Senator Colin Kenny (Chairman) in the Chair.
[English]
The Chairman: I call the meeting to continue our study on the need for a national security policy.
I will introduce the members of the committee:
Senator Forrestall is the deputy chair of the committee and hails from Nova Scotia. For more than 30 years, he has served the constituents of Dartmouth as a member of the House of Commons and then as a senator. Throughout his parliamentary career, Senator Forrestall has closely followed defence matters.
Senator Banks is from Alberta and is well-known to Canadians as one of our most accomplished and versatile entertainers and international standard-bearer for Canadian culture. A resident of Edmonton, Senator Banks has been a long-time supporter of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry.
Senator Wiebe is a highly successful farmer from Saskatchewan, is a past member of the legislative assembly, and in 1994, he was appointed Lieutenant Governor of the province. Senator Wiebe has a strong interest in the reserves and has served as the Saskatchewan Chair for the Canadian Forces Liaison Council.
Senator Day is from New Brunswick and is a graduate in electrical engineering from the Royal Military College in Kingston. He received a law degree from Queen's University and Osgood Hall. Senator Day was appointed to the Senate last fall and regularly reminds us of the importance of CFB Gagetown and the contribution of the army, in general.
I would like to deviate from our normal practice and make a comment about the clerk of the committee, Barbara Reynolds. It would be appropriate for the committee to recognize the fact that Ms Reynolds was this year's winner of the Speaker's Award for Excellence. The competition takes place throughout the Senate and is indicative of the Senate employee who has worked to the highest standard within the Senate. The award is recognition by the Speaker of the Senate of the outstanding work that Ms Reynolds has done. We are fortunate that she is the clerk of our committee and, on your behalf, I would like to congratulate Ms Reynolds and thank her for the terrific work she has done and continues to do for us.
This is the first permanent Senate committee with a mandate to examine security and defence. Recently, we concluded an 11-month study of the major issues facing Canada, and we produced a report entitled, ``Canadian Security and Military Preparedness.'' The Senate has asked our committee to examine a national security policy.
Our first witnesses today are from the Department of the Solicitor General Canada. First, we will hear from Mr. Michel D'Avignon, who will address the need for a national security policy and the elements of a successful policy. Last summer when Mr. D'Avignon appeared before us, he told us about the National Counter-Terrorism Plan. Today, we would like to hear about changes in that plan as a result of September 11 and about his thoughts on a national security policy. Mr. Mike Theilmann accompanies Mr. D'Avignon.
Mr. D'Avignon, please proceed.
Mr. Michel D'Avignon, Director General, National Security, Policing and Security Branch, Department of the Solicitor General Canada: Earlier, I distributed a set of my remarks but, in the interest I think of time, I have shortened them so that we can focus on the National Counter-Terrorism Plan.
The Solicitor General is Canada's lead minister for domestic counter-terrorism arrangements. To support him in that responsibility, the department, and my directorate in particular, works on a continual basis to ensure that we have a comprehensive counter-terrorism program in place that encompasses operational readiness and counter-terrorism policy and legislation. I will provide you with an overview of the National Counter-Terrorism Plan, NCTP.
The NCTP is a structure that existed long before the events of September 11.
[Translation]
As I mentioned, the Solicitor General is Canada's lead minister for counter-terrorism. This role reflects his responsibilities for both CSIS and the RCMP. He is responsible for coordinating Canada's response to domestic terrorist incidents. Specifically, he is responsible for the National Counter-Terrorism Plan. The Plan was approved by the government in 1989, following a recommendation by the Kelly Committee that Solicitor General Canada needed to strengthen its role as coordinator of national counter-terrorism arrangements.
[English]
The NCTP takes into account the fact that a terrorist incident can manifest itself in a variety of ways. For that reason, the plan is flexible and allows for a transfer of lead responsibilities, as a situation may require.
For example, the National Counter-Terrorism Plan recognizes the role of the Minister of Foreign Affairs should a terrorist incident have international implications and, of course, the supporting role of the Minister of National Defence, who may be called upon to assist in responding to an incident through the provision of Canadian Forces' assets.
In any given situation, the Prime Minister can designate leadership to whomever he chooses. In most cases, the lead will fall to the Solicitor General as the minister responsible for public safety.
The overall aim of the NCTP is to ensure coordination of counter-terrorism roles, the responsibilities and resources of federal departments and agencies, and other levels of government and law enforcement agencies in Canada.
The department reviews the National Counter-Terrorism Plan on a regular basis to ensure that it responds effectively to the evolving threat environment and the changing roles and responsibilities of the various players.
[Translation]
In the immediate aftermath of September 11, the Plan was extremely useful in helping coordinate the government response. Under the Plan, there is a body called the Interdepartmental Policy Advisory Group, IPAG for short, which I chair. The IPAG brings to the table all federal departments and agencies with counter-terrorism roles and responsibilities. Representatives are at the Director General level. Following the events of September 11, the IPAG coordinated on both communications and operational issues.
[English]
This group acted as a secretariat to the assistant deputy minister level public safety and anti-terrorism committee, chaired by the Senior Assistant Deputy Solicitor General. The main role of the committee — which was an expansion of an existing ADM level public safety committee — was to ensure an integrated government response. I am sure you can imagine there were many horizontal issues that crossed jurisdictional lines following the attacks. This issue was a forum where these cross-jurisdictional issues were discussed and ironed out. It proved to be very effective mechanism.
The ADM committee is not specifically recognized in current version of the plan, but it will be included in the wider review of the plan that we are currently carrying out. The review will encompass lessons learned in the wake of September 11 and the impact of new legislation, as well as consultations with partners and stakeholders. For example, since the response to a domestic terrorist incident will likely involve both crisis and consequence management aspects, we are commencing our review of the plan in close collaboration with the Office of Critical Infrastructure Protection and Emergency Preparedness, OCIPEP.
[Translation]
As demonstrated over the past nine months, Canada's ability to respond to a domestic terrorist incident depends on the capabilities and skills of many different organizations, individuals and levels of government and, to an extraordinary degree, on interagency and intergovernmental coordination and cooperation.
[English]
The NCTP is supported by the Operational Readiness Program, ORP, developed and managed by the department of the Solicitor General — my directorate to be specific.
The objectives of the program are to create awareness of the principles of the NCTP among first responders and other levels of government, including federal counter-terrorism responsibilities, resources and arrangements; providing training opportunities where the integration of the policy and operational response to terrorist incidents can be practiced; promoting the use of best practices in counter-terrorism response; identifying areas for improvement and ensuring that our national counter-terrorism arrangements are in keeping with the threat environment; and building stronger links between all of Canada's organizations with counter-terrorism responsibilities.
[Translation]
Since 1997, under the ORP, the Department has sponsored 11 major training sessions in cities across the country. The primary audience for these sessions has been municipal first responders and municipal and provincial officials. In all, some 3,000 to 4,000 responders have participated in an ORP training activity.
[English]
Under federal emergency policy, primary jurisdiction for responding to the consequence management aspects of an emergency — terrorist or otherwise — lies with municipalities and provinces. The federal government provides a support role and does not become involved unless a request is initiated by a province or territory.
Other examples of recent exercises include a Solicitor General-hosted counter-terrorism tabletop exercise conducted in February of this year with several Canadian federal departments and agencies, one province, and corresponding U.S. organizations. The purpose of the exercise was to practise response mechanisms and arrangements to a terrorist incident. As well as falling under the umbrella of the Operational Readiness Program, the exercise reflected the commitment made in the December 2001 smart border declaration, whereby both countries agreed to engage in more frequent joint counter-terrorism training activities.
[Translation]
In addition, we have also recently held two counter-terrorism seminars and tabletop exercises related to the upcoming G8 meetings. Conducting exercises in advance of major events is what the NCTP is all about. As I noted earlier in my remarks, only through regularly exercising roles and procedures can we maintain, and improve, our capability to respond to even a threatened terrorist incident.
[English]
You have heard me use the terms ``crisis management'' and ``consequence management.'' Let me take a moment to clarify these terms. Crisis management — also called incident management — can be defined as ``those measures required to prevent or resolve a terrorist threat or an act of terrorism,'' such as law enforcement, intelligence, negotiations, investigations, search and rescue, decontamination, public health and safety. I should note that the NCTP is primarily a crisis-management tool. However, consequence management — that is measures dealing with the effects of a terrorist incident — is also a major component of our response.
In fact, in most, if not all, cases involving terrorist incidents, crisis and consequence management occur in parallel. With this in mind, the strengthening of consequence management capabilities is important. We are working closely with OCIPEP in this field.
As you may know, Budget 2001 allocated an envelope of $513 million to improve national capability to respond to the threat of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear terrorism, CBRN. This includes funding for equipment and training for first responders. I should note that provincial and municipal authorities are responsible for first responders, which are police, fire and emergency medical personnel. OCIPEP, given its federal responsibility for consequence management issues, is taking the lead on this work.
[Translation]
The Department of the Solicitor General, given its lead responsibility for domestic counter-terrorism arrangements, continues to work with OCIPEP to strengthen our counter-terrorism response capability. In this context, the ORP is also designed to ensure and maintain an adequate state of preparedness to deal with threats such as chemical and biological terrorism. This is achieved through training activities, such as exercises, seminars and workshops.
In addition, an important element in our efforts to strengthen consequence management for incidents of chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear terrorism were the provincial and territorial consultations we carried out last fall with OCIPEP and other departments. The results of these consultations are being worked into the government strategy for dealing with CBRN terrorism.
[English]
The Solicitor General of Canada is also coordinating and, with assistance from OCIPEP and Health Canada, funding a case study of how the City of Ottawa first responders have organized themselves to respond to CBRN terrorism. The document will be available to first responders from across the country to assist in their own planning for responding to CBRN incidents.
The National Counter-Terrorism Plan and the Operational Readiness Program exemplify horizontal cooperation in counter-terrorism planning.
[Translation]
The Canadian reaction to the events of September 11 demonstrated that the architecture currently in place to respond to a national security incident, such as a terrorist attack, is effective. Governments at all levels responded in a cooperative and coordinated manner, due in part to pre-existing protocols and well-established working relationships between stakeholders. For example, in the early days of the crisis, this was evident in regions of the country that handled the unexpected arrival in Canada of over 200 diverted flights. Through the cooperation and coordination of all involved, including local police, firefighters, health services, immigration officials, customs officers and airport authorities, over 35,000 stranded airline passengers were processed and cared for.
[English]
At the local, provincial and federal levels, cooperation among law enforcement and security agencies was demonstrated. The RCMP was clearly a common denominator across the country, whether through policing of local jurisdictions in contract provinces or through the provision of federal services across the country.
The RCMP's national tip line received more than 9,000 calls. In turn, this generated criminal investigations, which in many cases became joint, multi-jurisdictional efforts. The Mounties worked in partnership with many other police services and intelligence agencies, including CSIS, the Criminal Intelligence Service of Ontario, the Criminal Intelligence Service of Alberta, the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary and the FBI to name a few.
Canada's efforts were recognized at the time by our American colleagues. Recently the Department of State's report entitled ``Patterns of Global Terrorism, 2001,'' stated that ``Overall anti-terrorism cooperation with Canada is excellent, and stands as a model of how the US and another nation can work together on terrorism issues.'' The State Department report also highlights the excellent law enforcement cooperation between the U.S. and Canada.
[Translation]
Despite the successes, the response to September 11 also identified areas that need improvement, including: our response capabilities in areas such as CBRN terrorism; the interoperability of systems for exchanging information; Canadian public relations in the United States; and legislative gaps, among others.
[English]
Since that terrible day, efforts have been made to fill these gaps including the passing of the Anti-Terrorism Act and the tabling of the Public Safety Act 2002, the Smart Border Declaration, the creation of Integrated National Security Enforcement Teams, as well as increased funding to law enforcement and security agencies in the recent federal budget. Some of the identified gaps have yet to be filled, but efforts are being made to address those. Admittedly, national security plans can be enhanced to further ensure the safety and security of Canadians.
The global security environment is dynamic and our national security framework must continually adapt to the evolving circumstances in a volatile, threatening environment. September 11 demonstrated that the existing architecture works and served to underline the importance of this national security apparatus. Its inherent strength and flexibility has, in the months since the attacks, allowed the government to further enhance the framework thus ensuring the safety and security of Canadians and fulfilling Canada's commitments and obligations as a member of the international community. By working together, and using the new tools available to us and sharing resources we will be ultimately successful.
The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. D'Avignon.
Senator Banks: By way of background to my questions, when our committee was in Washington, we heard much concern from senior American security officials about the lack of communication, inter-operability and integration of effort between various security organizations. There has been more information about that since then, which gives some meat to that bone.
Along the same lines — but less onerous — in a different committee yesterday, we heard that on a Canadian forces base there was a necessity to install a six-inch tall post in the ground for a purpose of an electrical drop. It took six days to get the authority to do that. My concern has to do with effectiveness, efficiency and timeliness.
I am worried about the confusion that I have, and have heard expressed by some other Canadians from whom we have heard. I understand now that first responders are of necessity and usually municipally based.
I would like you to expand on the extent to which and the circumstance in which the Solicitor General would be, as you have said, the lead in this. In that context, I am asking you to assuage my fears.
Let us talk about terrorism. We are looking at a National Counter-Terrorism Plan dealt with by the National Security Directorate, which has a national security policy division, a counter-terrorism division and an unlawful access division. We have CSIS. We have the RCMP and the interdepartmental policy advisory groups. We have the ADM- level Public Safety and Anti-Terrorism Committee. We have the Office of Critical Infrastructure and Emergency Preparedness. We have the Operational Readiness Program, and then we have the provincial joint intelligence groups.
Therefore, are you comfortable that in the event of some awful thing happening, that all of those groups can talk to each other quickly, deal with each other quickly, react quickly and be made use of quickly and effectively for their unquestionably well-intended purposes? Will it work?
Mr. D'Avignon: My short answer to you is, yes, it will work.
I say that because I have seen it work. I have seen it work in the context of September 11. I have seen it work as well in the context of special events such as the Summit of the Americas. All of these various players are professional and competent in their respective areas. In the context of their day-to-day work in discharging their responsibilities, they have a network of communication among themselves, which has the officers talking with one another sharing information on a daily basis — quite apart from exercises that are conducted to reinforce aspects.
I will take the National Counter-Terrorism Plan as an example,
Mr. Theilmann spends a fair bit of time moving about the country and holding tabletop exercises with first responders and provincial officials. He makes presentations at the National Police College and the Royal Military College to ensure that the people who would have to act within that framework should something happen are aware of the plan, its functioning, roles and who has responsibility for what aspects of it.
Beyond that, we have had exercises, which are broader in scope, that have brought these people around the table. In February, we conducted an exercise with the Americans that brought together all of the departments that would have a role to play — from immigration through to food inspection. In that particular instance, we also had a provincial representative.
It was the first time that we had engaged the provinces in an exercise. That was a direct result of the events of September 11 and the recognition of the need to ``tighten up'' and to broaden the nature of those activities.
Again, if I go back to the events of September 11, you saw that 200 planes were diverted to Canada virtually within a matter of minutes of the events occurring in the United States.
Senator Banks: Did that involve any of these bodies?
Mr. D'Avignon: Absolutely. The minute that the incident had occurred in New York, the structure to which you were alluding kicked in. That morning the Interdepartmental Policy Advisory Group, IPAG, which exists under the planning for which I am responsible, had telephone conferences across the various departments that are engaged with the service to clearly get a sense of what was happening. These included the RCMP, OCIPEP, the Department of Immigration and so on.
The assistant deputy minister responsible for that committee met that afternoon with all the necessary people to determine who was doing what and how they were mobilizing to deal with events as they were impacting upon us. Representatives from Transport Canada and the CCRA were around the table, and so on. They had already gone into action, however, so they were not waiting for this committee to meet to start doing things.
At this meeting they reported on who had gone where and how they were airlifting personnel out to Gander and various other sites. They explained how they were getting the bomb technicians out to the airports to check the planes. Health Canada explained what they were doing in terms of ensuring that medical facilities were available to care for people who might need medical attention. All those things were being reported on, and the plans that were in place to deal with the subsequent days' events were discussed.
The intent was to ensure that nothing had been overlooked in that process and that we were dealing in an operational sense with all of the dimensions of the issues at hand. To the extent that there were policy issues that needed to be clarified and moved up the line, they were being identified and dealt with as well. Information regarding what was happening and whether Canada was likely to be a target and so on was circulated.
All of those issues were being dealt with. At the request of the Clerk of the Privy Council, that ADM committee met twice a day for the next three months to continue to maintain horizontal discussion and check the pulse of activities within the individual departments.
Quite apart from the operational response of the people who were engaged in the doing and the coordinating in a horizontal sense, the more senior-level structures — the clerk's committee, the interdepartmental committee and security and intelligence — were engaged. My group was generating reports on a daily basis that were drawn from the activities of each of those departments. We were collating the major pieces of activity that were going on and identifying them.
Senator Banks: Were the political actors involved in this process, and to what extent?
Mr. D'Avignon: Very much so. That was beyond my level of engagement, however. Ministers were being briefed as the events were unfolding. They were kept informed as to what was happening and how we were dealing with these events.
Senator Banks: As things unfolded would the political actors have been in on the game?
Mr. D'Avignon: Absolutely. The upshot of that was the creation of the Committee on Public Security and Anti- Terrorism chaired by Mr. Manley.
Senator Banks: We heard problems during our travelling across this country while speaking to first responders. I am sure you have established priorities, and I am sure it is more likely that an occurrence would happen in a bigger city than in a smaller one. In any event, if something did happen in a bigger city, the consequences would be of a greater dimension. I am sure you are rolling this thing out gradually.
We heard from first responders across the country that they did not feel comfortable in terms of the extent to which they were integrated into the efforts about which you are talking. Some of those first responders were in Toronto and other major cities.
You talked about 11 training exercises — orientation — having taken place involving several thousands of people across the country. Will that roll out further? Will it get to everyone sooner or later, and every town of any size? Will they become aware? The things that we are talking about could happen in Fort McMurray, for example, which could perhaps be even more likely in some respects than they would happen elsewhere.
Have you dealt in those exercises with the people who will actually be the hands-on individuals who will go out and be at the site doing the job, or have you been talking to the managers, the planners and the supervisors of those people?
Mr. D'Avignon: Perhaps I could ask Mr. Theilmann to answer that.
Senator Banks: Have the people on the ground been directly involved in those sessions?
Mr. Theilmann: Absolutely. That has been one of our primary target audiences, the people making the decisions on the ground and the primary responders — the police, fire and emergency medical services.
In the last four or five years we have probably reached about 3,000 to 4,000 people through these training sessions. We have addressed the broad gamut of issues with which they are concerned, from what are the national arrangements for responding to a terrorist incident and where do they fit in, as well as specific issues.
One of our major focuses in the last four years — long before September 11 — has been chemical, biological, radiological terrorism and the issues that it poses for first responders. We have often looked on these training sessions to act as a catalyst for planning at the local level to start thinking about these threats to raise the awareness level.
A good example is here in Ottawa, where some years ago we conducted a training session for first responders. We chose Ottawa at this particular time because all the foreign embassies and so forth could make it a high-threat area. It was a priority. We called in all the first responders. As a result of that seminar they went off and formed their own local committee here to develop an inter-agency of municipal response for CBRN terrorism. They have been doing great work for the last four years with as much support as we could give them along the sidelines. We do focus on a practical level and try to assist them.
Senator Banks: Mr. D'Avignon said that some part of that $513 million was allocated to the funding for equipment and training for first responders.
Is there a national standard for things such as decontamination or bomb defusing? Is that kind of equipment subject to a national standard? I ask that because sometimes when bureaucrats in central locations do things it gets wacko. The Town of Jasper ended up with a federally purchased fire engine that would not fit in the fire hall because no one thought of that at the local level.
Do we have municipalities buying things that will be obsolete and communication equipment that will not integrate with everyone else and have people come along and say, ``I do not know how to use that. I learned on a different system.'' Do we have national standards for all of this equipment?
Mr. Theilmann: We are conscious of that particular challenge. As Mr. D'Avignon mentioned, we carried out consultations as part of a strategy that was ongoing well before September 11. Between October and December of last year I was specifically focusing on preparedness for the consequence management aspects of a terrorist attack.
Senator Banks: I absolutely trust that you would be aware of the extent of that challenge. Are we doing anything about it?
Mr. Theilmann: Yes, we are. In the budget we got $59 million over five years to establish a CBRN training program for first responders. That addresses issues such as the type of equipment used. Of course there are liability issues associated with recommending a particular piece of equipment, but you can sketch out the general parameters, such as a piece of equipment should be able to do this and afford this level of protection or do this particular job.
We are establishing a national training program because one of the messages we heard back on those consultations was that we need national standards. We must take in the possibility of multi-targeted attacks, where we might need help from Vancouver to go to Edmonton. We must ensure that the fire hoses in Edmonton hook up to whatever equipment is brought from Vancouver.
Senator Banks: Exactly.
Mr. Theilmann: The Office of Critical Infrastructure Protection and Emergency Preparedness oversees that particular training committee, which is overseeing that envelope. We have already come up with a training matrix and will be bringing in first responders later in the year for vetting.
Senator Banks: Given that it took six days to put a six-inch post in the ground at this military base, how long will this program of ensuring inter-operability, intercommunication and integration take before it is done?
Mr. Theilmann: I cannot give you precise figures, but I would say in the very near future. That is as precise as I can get right now.
Senator Banks: Weeks, months, years?
Mr. Theilmann: I would say it will be a matter of months. We have already done the training syllabus in draft form. We will get together as a working group and start planning all the training products. We have identified the basic structure, and we are well on the way to getting that program up and running in the fairly near future.
Senator Forrestall: Be careful of the use of the term ``the fairly near future.'' I am still looking for helicopters 10 years after I was told ``almost immediately.''
To what degree do the National Counter-Terrorism Plan and the Operational Readiness Program foresee the possibility of terrorist incidents involving both Canada and the United States — a trans-border type of thing? To what degree has the cooperation is sufficiently sophisticated to allow smooth integration and rapid response?
Mr. Theilmann: The events post-September 11 demonstrated that there are sound structures in place. In the law enforcement and security side, arrangements are in place for the sharing of information, coordination and investigation. Those worked well and were sound.
However, there are some areas where we could do a job of coordinating what we do when responding to a terrorist incident that affects both sides of the border. There were huge reverberations here in Canada following September 11. The seminar that we hosted here on February 4 and 5 of this year was at the assistant deputy minister level. Approximately 14 Canadian federal departments and about 13 American departments were represented. We focused specifically on cross-border mechanisms that we should examine.
For example, the United States has now instituted a national, colour-coded, alert system. Every time they issue an alert, it has a ripple affect in Canada. How do we coordinate better sharing of information so that, when an alert list is issued, we know how to position ourselves here in Canada?
Another example is public communications coordination. If we have a biological threat and the U.S. wants to go out with information to the public, of course we have a populous that listens to American media and they are concerned as well. How do we coordinate our communications to approach that and ensure that there is public confidence and not panic?
We have been working on some guidelines and we hope to address some of these issues for more exercises. We have a commitment to more joint training exercises in the Ridge-Manley declaration, the 30 points — number 30 being joint training. We hope to refine and develop some of these coordination mechanisms further as we do more of this stuff.
Senator Forrestall: I did not know we had a colour code to tell us what was going on with anything.
Mr. Theilmann: That is the U.S.
Senator Forrestall: To elaborate a bit, in the event of a transnational incident involving both countries, who talks to whom. I do not mean the ``Office of Very Great Important Matters,'' but who. Who is John Doe?
Mr. D'Avignon: That is a hard question to answer in some respects because it depends on what is happening at the working level. For example, if you were to take the incidents of September 11, the minute that those events occurred, the security intelligence or CSIS here was in touch with their American counterparts in the FBI asking, ``What is happening? What do you know?''
Senator Forrestall: This is CSIS, not the RCMP?
Mr. D'Avignon: The RCMP would also be engaged. Both bodies would be working together with their American counterparts — the FBI would be their main point of contact initially — at least, to find out everything they could about what was happening — what information do they have, what are the effects on Canada, if any, for example.
The Department of Transport would be talking with their American counterparts — I do not know what agency that is — because the Americans closed down their airspace and diverted those planes to Canada. They would be talking with one another and communicating with the airports and so on to decide which airports could accommodate those planes as they were coming here.
That level of conversation is occurring in an operational context to try to deal with the situation and to obtain as much information as possible to be able to inform the system as to who else must be engaged and in what manner. That level of communication is occurring.
At a higher level, senior officials are speaking with one another as well to try to develop a broader picture of how this is working across a series of agencies. No doubt the Prime Minister would be seeking to talk to, in this case, President Bush. I am sure that the Minister of External Affairs at the time was talking with his counterpart in the United States also. It is a pyramid that starts to connect on a series of levels.
The Chairman: This all sounds too good, Mr. D'Avignon. I appreciate you are describing something that is theoretical. However, none of us around the table think it really works this way. We think that phone lines are busy and that CNN was probably your best source of information. We think the penny did not drop for a whole lot of people for a long period and that things simply do not click, even under the best of circumstances. We know how difficult it is to get a meeting in town with three people from different departments.
Help us. It would make it more credible for us if you would say, ``This is the theory, and, in fact, we could not get half of the people to this meeting, and three of the people at another meeting showed up and did not quite know what was going on in their department.'' Tell us what happened.
Mr. D'Avignon: That was not my experience in the context of September 11. I am not saying that every time someone made a phone call that they contacted with someone at the other end. However, I know that when I arranged a conference call to pull my colleagues together to talk about what was happening, it was up and running by 11 o'clock and the people attended and talked to me. I was able to generate a report. I know that when my boss called his meeting at the ADM level for 2:30 that afternoon, that all of the people that he wanted around that table were at that table.
The Chairman: A few minutes ago, you had the Prime Minister talking to the president. We know that the president was scurrying around from air force base to air force base. Did they really have a good chat that afternoon?
Mr. D'Avignon: I said I assumed that that communication was occurring. I do not know. I was busy doing other things. I do not know what is happening at the fine point of the pyramid. I am working within the structure at my level. What I was seeing at my level is essentially what I described to you. The sense that I was getting from the nature of that synergy that was unfolding at the time is that at the working level where people were trying to get information, yes, they were tapping into open sources. It is only logical that they would do so. They were also getting information from their counterparts in various other agencies and from the United States.
There was a tremendous amount of information flowing from the service and the RCMP toward the FBI to help them in their investigations as this was unfolding. That is the reality that I lived and I saw. Mr. Theilmann and I were very much in the middle of it. I do not know if he was seeing the same things as I was seeing. However, that is what I was seeing.
Mr. Theilmann: The basic response structures and coordination mechanisms we have in place are quite sound. Experience has demonstrated they work fairly well. Can we improve? Yes, we can.
We are just starting a review of the National Counter-Terrorism Plan. We want to look at some of these issues as to how we can make that coordination work even more effectively.
A good example of an exercise that has risen in the past and something we have done recently is sharing the information with the provinces and territories. We receive a lot of classified information. Sometimes there is information that might inform emergency managers and consequence management, for example, at the local level. They will need that information to beef up an emergency operation centre or call in extra resources. There must be a mechanism to get that information down to them. There are channels to convey that information to the local level. However, they tend to be on the police side and, perhaps, do not make the link with the consequence management community.
We can improve in some areas, but the basic structure is sound. Yes, you can always do better. That will be one of the points of the review of the National Counter-Terrorism Plan we are doing now.
In that regard, we have a series of national plans. We have the Federal Nuclear Emergency Plan, the National Support Plan with the Office of Critical Infrastructure Protection and Emergency Preparedness. We have the National Counter-Terrorism Plan. All those plans are based on systems that work well. They have their channels that they use. For example, Health Canada uses their public health officials. We have coordination mechanisms at the top, but we might be able to make them more efficient and tie them together. That is one of the issues we will be looking at in our review of the counter-terrorism plan.
Senator Forrestall: I am still not sure who talks to whom. I should like to know that. Perhaps it will take two or three more incidents before we have our act altogether.
Following what happened on September 11, based on my observations on visits to the United States — Colorado Springs in particular — a couple of first-class Canadians were in charge of the world for the first 24 hours. It was not the Prime Minister of Canada, the President of the United States or anyone else. A couple of fellows knew what was going on and took steps. We are still running to catch up to that efficiency that comes when someone is in charge. I will not pursue that any further.
I accept the fact that all these things take time to develop to put into place and to refine. Have any joint Canada and United States exercises been held in this regard, or are any planned?
Mr. D'Avignon: Yes. The February exercise to which Mr. Theilmann referred was a joint Canada-U.S. exercise. As we were saying, we brought some 17 departments together with their American counterparts and had provincial involvement as well around a scenario.
Senator Forrestall: Was there a scenario for this? It was not sitting down in a seminar?
Mr. D'Avignon: No. These exercises are all scenario-driven specifically so that we can get at what is happening and who is talking to whom as the scenario unfolds. We ask: How are you using your system of communication and information to deal with this event? How do we know what these things that we have seen mean? You have Health, Immigration, National Defence and others who are engaged in that around that scenario.
Senator Forrestall: Staying with that scenario, let me ask whether or not we have any confidence in or do we play a role in ensuring Canada's provincial plans? As we move into the city-state, is there any way of ensuring that these areas for incidents, if you will, are compatible with the plans in the United States, in particular, because of the nature of our border? Is anyone looking at this? I am thinking of transborder movements, such as the housing and everything else that goes with the pursuit of an objective.
Mr. D'Avignon: This was a transborder exercise dealing with an incident that was occurring that had transborder impacts. That is why we had the provincial people there.
Senator Forrestall: Could you tell us what the scenario was?
Mr. D'Avignon: It was a biological scenario. In this particular case, we had the Province of British Columbia there to ensure where they plugged in and how they would respond to the incident on the ground from a provincial point of view. Similarly, the Americans were present and did similar things from their side. In this way, we could see where the pieces connected from a communication point of view, from an action point of view, et cetera.
It was an ambitious scenario and exercise. The consensus was that it was successful. We learned a lot from it. We committed to doing certain other things that would make the next one that we do a little better. This was not the first time that we have done exercises with our American colleagues. We have done them before.
Senator Forrestall: Was that the first time it was done with a sense of urgency?
Mr. D'Avignon: Yes, urgency as a result of the events of September 11, which is why there was more of a concern around the biological scenario.
Senator Forrestall: What are we doing about a communications plan and public relations with respect to Americans knowing what we are doing, why we are doing it, and so on?
Mr. D'Avignon: There is a rather elaborate set of activities going on in the Privy Council Office around the whole Ridge-Manley relationship, the 30-Point Action Plan and all the things that flow from the Smart Border Declaration and so forth. In context of these commitments, there is a lot of communication activity associated with that to convey what we are doing, how we are doing it, how well we are doing it together, the kind of things that are being agreed upon and put into place. Much of the communication ties in to how we work well together and how we make the borders more secure. Of course, that ripples out into relationships between the security agencies and the law enforcement agencies.
Mr. Theilmann: You asked about emergency plans at the local level and they being complementary and contiguous with the U.S. border. My experience gained from working across the country is that they have robust plans with their neighbouring states. Windsor, for example, can respond to fire emergencies in Detroit and vice versa. They attend each other's exercises. I have seen that across the country. It was demonstrated post-September 11 in how well the local communities dealt with the influx of passengers suddenly dropping out of the sky.
With regard to public communications, were you referring to public communications coordination in a crisis?
Senator Forrestall: Yes. Transparency is also is vitally important in all of this.
Mr. Theilmann: That major issue came up on the tabletop in February. There will always be operational communications between departments and their U.S. counterparts.
With respect to national messaging for public reassurance and confidence, we have signed principles and agreements with the Americans. For example, we have guidelines of cooperation and CBR on terrorism — signed in May of 1999 — that commit us to sharing information on an incident and public messaging. We have to put meat on those guidelines. We say we will do it, but how will we do it? We will be following up on this issue in joint training activities with the U.S.
Senator Wiebe: There are different definitions for the term ``exercises.'' With regard to the events that took place a week after September 11 in Canada, the training and the capabilities had been done and established, and the successes were a result of the people who were actually on the ground and doing the physical work.
I understand that, when we talk about tabletop exercises, those are basically exercises taking place among the generals and the officers and not so much by the actual troops on the ground.
Could it be that a reason for many of these exercises is that we have many agencies that have to be coordinated to work together in order to then advise the troops on the ground as to what to do?
My next question is, of this $513 million that you have budgeted for 2001, is there consideration given to looking at ways to reduce the number of agencies that have to be dealt with to improve communications and create efficiencies?
Is that a proper understanding of what you have been saying so far this morning?
Mr. Theilmann: On the issue of exercises, they run the continuum from the simple paper exercise through to a field exercise for deployment of forces on the ground that covers the entire response spectrum from first responders right up to government decision-makers.
Senator Wiebe: How many of those do you have?
Mr. Theilmann: We tended to do them in parts. The last one we did together and which involved the entire response system, was probably at the Halifax G8 in 1995. It moved right up to the ministerial level.
Senator Wiebe: That was prior to September 11.
Mr. Theilmann: Yes. We focus. We do not just concentrate on the generals, as you term it. We do the whole continuum. When we do ones at the local level, we bring in provincial officials and first responders — the people doing the job. We also make them aware that they are part of a broader response structure that goes up to the federal level.
We also have exercises that concentrate on the Ottawa end. We have had exercises focused only on the interdepartmental policy advisory group, and how that meets, what it does, and how it organizes itself. We take lessons learned from those and try to incorporate them in our planning as we go down the road.
We do not focus on the generals only. We try to capture everyone, because everyone is part of the structure and has a role to play.
I know our allies, such as the U.S. and the U.K., have very robust exercise programs. They stress the value of those programs and how much they provide in terms of lessons. A plan is only as good as the awareness people have of it. A plan that is not exercised is a plan that will fail. I think scenario-based exercises are an incredibly valuable tool.
Mr. D'Avignon: It is also a way of being able to focus the attention, without necessarily having to spend enormous sums of money. If you start to mobilize equipment, it becomes an expensive proposition.
These are tried and true. They have been used in all sorts of contexts and they have proven their worth. They generate good results and they do work. As Mr. Theilmann says, we do it across the spectrum of people who have to respond to an incident.
With regard to reducing the number of agencies, I have not seen anything at this point that would indicate that there would be such a reduction of agencies engaged in the training that will flow from that $513 million.
Mr. Theilmann: There is not a reduction of agencies but there is a concerted effort to bring together the people who have an important role to play and ensure they are all working together to develop the same product and not running off and doing one-offs.
One example is the money allotted for CBRN counter-terrorism training. You have at that table National Defence, RCMP, Health Canada, the Canada Nuclear Safety Commission, the Office of Critical Infrastructure and Emergency Preparedness and our department. Each of us has a role to play, preparing first responders for CBRN terrorism. It is a communal effort. We ensure we are not duplicating what the others are doing. We are doing it together. It will be a concentrated uniform training program in which we are all involved and will have an ongoing role in delivering.
Senator Wiebe: Do you feel that has the potential of working efficiently?
Mr. Theilmann: Yes. I have been working on that particular issue for the last five years. We were helped by the report of the Kelly Committee in 1999. We took our direction from the government response to that to begin working on these issues connected with CBRN terrorism. This is one of the results.
[Translation]
Senator Day: My questions flow from questions you have already provided answers to and from the documents you have produced.
[English]
First, I would like to ask Mr. Theilmann about the various plans.
You talked about various national plans such as the OCIPEP national plan. Has somebody put these together in a binder? You mentioned many of them that you are trying to coordinate. Does someone have these all drawn together that you can share with us so that we can know what is in existence now?
Mr. Theilmann: We can follow up and get copies of the plans. We share each other's plans. I have copies of the National Support Plan in my office and they have copies of the National Counter-terrorism Plan in theirs. We can certainly follow up and provide you with copies.
Senator Day: If you are coordinating these, you must know what is in each one of them. It would be helpful for us to know what you are trying to coordinate.
Mr. Theilmann: Each of these plans has a different lead minister. The Federal Nuclear Emergency Plan belongs to Health Canada and the Radiation Protection Branch. The National Support Plan belongs to OCIPEP.
We are trying to bring the community together. It is often our role to be catalyst and coordinator. We say, ``We must sit down and look at these. We must make them work in harmony.'' Many of these plans were not designed for terrorist incidents. It does not matter; the consequences are the same. For example, a deliberately caused agricultural terrorist attack will have the same effect as a naturally occurring outbreak.
As I said earlier, all the systems work well, but we need to tie them together better at the top.
Senator Day: I am suggesting that you bring them together so that we know what they are, and we will know what you are trying to coordinate.
Another point arises from Mr. D'Avignon's comment in relation to a supplementary question by our chairman. You said you did not know whether the Prime Minister was talking to the President or not. You were busy at your level. There must have been a post-mortem after September 11 to discuss how well the system had worked and what the shortfalls were. One of theses must have been the communications issue at the upper levels. It surprised me when you said that.
Mr. D'Avignon: It was said in the context of the fact that I have every confidence that those communications were occurring. Mr. Manley's committee was established to provide coordination at the ministerial level and to provide a focus for the channelling of information and communications at that level. Therefore, within that mechanism, I am certain that the Privy Council Office was supportive that that kind of communication was occurring. I have no reason not to believe that.
I was referring to the parts of this incident for which I was responsible. My level of communication was with the people who were doing the work and pulling it together to feed it to the committee that my boss chairs. The reports that we were generating were going up the line. I know that the reports were shared with ministers and they were used to brief ministers and senior officials.
Senator Day: Are you saying that for us to know whether the overall crisis management took place and functioned the way you want, we will have to talk to someone else who has an overview of this?
Mr. D'Avignon: The person best able to describe how that was unfolding is the Coordinator for Security Intelligence, Mr. Fadden, in the PCO.
Senator Day: I understand that we will have an opportunity to talk with him. I appreciate your highlighting that for us.
I believe it was Mr. Theilmann who mentioned the study, in Ottawa, on first responders. Is that study complete?
Mr. Theilmann: We are just reshaping a draft right now. It was thrown off track because it was in train to be done when September 11 occurred. Ottawa tends to be on the cutting edge because of the amount of work that has been done in the last 4 years in developing this municipal response model for CBRN terrorism. Ottawa is a model for inter- agency cooperation at the local level. We wanted to capture what they have done, how they overcame challenges, what their protocols were and how they worked together. That could be a document to share to inform planning efforts at the local level across the country.
Senator Day: Could you share that with us? I would like to be put on the distribution list.
Mr. Theilmann: We can do that, Senator Day.
Senator Day: Is there someone in your department who monitors U.S. Homeland Security Director Ridge's actions with respect to homeland defence in the United States, the lessons learned, the changes and the responsibilities, more precisely than we would be able to do through reading the national newspapers.
Mr. D'Avignon: After September 11, more resources were made available, and in that context, my department received additional resources. One project underway involves a new staff member to the directorate who has been assigned to follow the homeland defence issue as it unfolds in the United States. In that way, we will develop a sense of what it means, the activities surrounding it and the potential impacts on us.
We are not the only ones monitoring. The homeland defence initiative also affects Customs and Excise because of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, INS. The American customs people are all part of the homeland defence initiative. There are people in various Canadian departments who are directly affected by the activities of the various American departments that are also monitoring these activities.
All of the monitoring and interaction is feeding through to people in the Privy Council Office who support the deputy prime minister in his relationship with Mr. Ridge. The information funnels up to that level so that there is a coordinated sense of all that is happening. As well, it helps to contribute to the maturing of that relationship.
Senator Day: I will follow up with the Privy Council Office when we have the opportunity.
The final area of questioning concerns your written presentation.
At page 8, you state:
Under federal emergency policy, primary jurisdiction for responding to the consequence management aspects of an emergency, terrorist or otherwise, lies with municipalities and provinces. The federal government provides a support role and does not get involved unless a request is initiated by a province or territory.
Is there a written federal emergency policy? Is it one of these plans or is there something else that we could see, in writing?
Mr. Theilmann: There is a federal emergency policy that dates back to 1985, and OCIPEP has that policy. I could obtain a copy of that policy for the committee.
Senator Day: I became somewhat ill at ease when I read that this responsibility is primarily municipal and provincial, and not federal. The federal government provides a support role and does not become involved unless a request is initiated by the province and territory.
Mr. D'Avignon: That is the constitutional structure of the country.
Senator Day: Surely something such as a terrorist threat or attack is beyond municipal or provincial jurisdiction and is a matter of federal jurisdiction by virtue of the expense of it. Why would you say that you do not have jurisdiction to become involved unless you are invited?
Mr. D'Avignon: As I say, the constitutional distribution of powers regulates it. Those responsibilities are provincial and municipal.
If you had a major incident, for example, Bill C-36 on anti-terrorism recognizes that the prosecution of terrorists in the context of a terrorist incident, which would normally be a provincial responsibility, can also be a federal responsibility. It recognizes that there is, potentially, a dual responsibility and that the federal government could become involved sooner.
Similarly, in the case of an incident, there is a requirement for the provinces to request the assistance of the federal government. An example is a situation of the type that happened in the Saguenay, where there was a request from the province for federal assistance to engage armed forces personnel to assist. The structure is fairly well honed to ensure that assistance can be requested and delivered.
Senator Day: I understand how that request can be made through the provincial government. My concern is that most of these terrorist events will be something international, or happening in more than one province. We need to know that there is coordination and a national policy in place to handle this.
On page 12 of your presentation, you say some provincial and territorial governments have not enhanced their capabilities. Some can afford to and some cannot. If you are saying the federal government cannot do anything until invited to, then you are suggesting that there is not national coordination, notwithstanding what you have said.
Mr. Theilmann: It is important to stress that it is not as if the federal government is standing on the sideline waiting to be sent into the game.
On the consequence management side, if a province needs assistance, that is coordinated by the Office of Critical Infrastructure Protection and Emergency Preparedness. It is their job to coordinate federal consequence management support. They have regional directors in every province who work hand-in-glove with the local emergency preparedness community. They are the federal eyes on what is happening there. We are not sitting idly by, we are monitoring. If they need assistance, they can get it quickly.
One example occurred in the wake of September 11. Several provinces needed emergency supplies such as blankets and cots and so on, and they were able to access the national emergency supply stockpile that Health Canada manages. They accessed those supplies from the regional stockpiles very quickly because there are mechanisms in place to ensure we are ready to step in the minute they need help.
Senator Day: I recognize that some provinces can afford to do more than other provinces. Does OCIPEP determine what extra help the federal government has to provide in certain provinces and coordinates what the emergency measures people are doing in the different provinces, or is that Solicitor General?
Mr. Theilmann: That is OCIPEP.
The Chairman: We are seeing a disconnect. We do not hear the same message from first providers. It is the committee's intention to have them come before us. I would encourage you to double-check whether your federal officials are as in touch locally with the first providers as you say. I think you will find that is not the case as we have anecdotal evidence thus far. We will get testimony before this committee asking them that very question. We will be doing that soon, so I would encourage you to ensure that you have your facts right on this because we will be comparing what you have said to us today and putting those questions back to those first providers.
Senator Wiebe: On page 10 — and this is rather confusing — you say you have ``allocated an envelope of $513 million to improve the national capability to respond to the threat of CBRN terrorism. This includes funding for equipment and training for first responders.'' You go on to say, ``I should note that provincial and municipal authorities are responsible for first responders...''
When the Toronto's chief of police was before our committee, we asked him what kind of assistance his department has received since September 11 in order for him to react to a similar situation that happened in New York. His response was that he received nothing from his municipality, his province, or the federal government.
Has any of the equipment and training for first responders been distributed, or are we still in the planning and talking stage?
Mr. Theilmann: On the issue of equipment, the budget allocated $12 million over the next couple of years. That is available to the provinces through the OCIPEP. It is on a 75/25 cost share split, with the federal government picking up 75 per cent.
Senator Banks: Can you tell us how much of that has been spent to this point?
Mr. Theilmann: I cannot tell you. I can find out. I know that grants or applications for money are already coming in. It is coordinated through the provincial governments' emergency measures organizations in most cases. You would have to check the details with OCIPEP.
Regarding the $59 million for training, one message we heard across the country was the need for national standards. If the money was parcelled out and given to the different jurisdictions, there would be no national standard. Each jurisdiction would come up with its own training program syllabus. That is why we are looking at a coordinated effort in response to that message from first responders. They will be the beneficiaries of the training. The federal government will develop all the training materials. They will be delivering it and subsidizing travel to attend courses. Some courses will be offered locally using venues already available, such as the various training institutes in the provinces.
I can speak to those two particular pools of money.
Senator Wiebe: Am I being unkind by saying that everything we have learned as a result of September 11 is still in the planning and strategy stage and nothing has made it to the field yet?
Mr. Theilmann: The equipment money is being distributed. That is a concrete thing. The training is not being delivered at the local level yet, aside from what we have been doing over the last four years through the Operational Readiness Program, where the focus has been on assisting local responders.
The Chairman: Mr. D'Avignon, we wrote you on April 30 and requested a response relating to the Kelly Committee's report in 1999, asking if you would indicate to us how many of the recommendations had been implemented. Two weeks later, we heard back from a member of your staff — I believe it was Ms Banulescu — saying that you were going to undertake that. Could you advise the committee when we are likely to hear back regarding the 31 recommendations?
Mr. D'Avignon: I have signed a response back to your request. I am surprised that you do not have it yet. I am sure you appreciate that a number of people must be brought together to do this. We are anticipating having it for you at the end of the summer. By then, we should have brought everything together.
The Chairman: We are anxious to see how you have fared in that regard. In summary, my understanding is that you and your colleague have undertaken to advise us on how the funds in the post-September 11 budget were allocated, and what expenditures have been undertaken across the system. You were going to do so through your capacity as catalysts and coordinators, I believe.
I would appreciate a list of the exercises undertaken to date, and what was involved in those exercises. It would also be helpful if you could provide us with a list of the first responders, by community, with whom you have been in contact, and how often. There is some concern on the part of committee that that part of the loop is not being closed, or if is we are not aware of it. That would be helpful to us.
On behalf of the committee, I would like to thank you both for appearing before us. It was a useful session and we had an opportunity to become updated. We look forward to having you back regularly. As we are working on our fall work plan, we will be looking for dates that are convenient for you to reappear before us.
I would like to introduce Senator Cordy from Nova Scotia. An accomplished educator, she also has an extensive record of community involvement. Coming from Dartmouth, she is especially proud of the local military presence, 12 Wing in Shearwater.
Other members of the committee will join us as the hearing progresses.
Our next witness is Ms Atkinson. She appeared before us last January, prior to our fact-finding visit to Washington, where we discussed border security with our American counterparts. A few weeks ago, when our committee visited the land border crossing at Lansdowne, Ontario, we heard about a number of refugee claimants coming into the country for whom there appeared to be little follow-up in the following months. We have asked Ms Atkinson to address this issue.
Please proceed with your presentation.
Ms Joan Atkinson, Assistant Deputy Minister, Policy and Program Development, Department of Citizenship and Culture: It is a pleasure to be in front of this committee to talk about the work that Citizenship and Immigration Canada, CIC is doing.
[Translation]
I would like to take a few minutes today to speak about Citizenship and Immigration Canada's hard work and ongoing commitment to maintaining public safety and national security while keeping our borders open. I would then like to speak about our refugee determination system, our new legislation and, finally, our security budget.
[English]
As you can appreciate very well, effective management of the international movement of people is economically, politically and socially integral to Canada. Over 100 million travellers arrive here each year, which presents a huge challenge for Canada with respect to both free trade and border security and finding that balance between being open but being vigilant to those who may cause us some problems.
From an immigration perspective, we believe that there is a real need to take a different view of what constitutes a ``border.'' In our view, a border is not simply a geopolitical line that divides two sovereign nations. Rather, it is a checkpoint. A checkpoint is a place where one can check an individual against the travel document that they carry, against information you may have on that individual or apply knowledge about that individual and where they may be coming from.
If you look at a border in that concept, then we have multiple borders. If you envision it as a series of concentric circles: The outermost circle would be overseas, where individuals may first come in contact with an immigration or a visa officer at a Canadian mission abroad if they are seeking a document to come to Canada. If they do not contact a mission or a visa abroad, the next concentric circle would be the international airport where an individual is getting on a plane to come to Canada. Moving along that continuum, the next concentric circle would be when they depart from one plane and board another, when they are in transit through a third country. The land border between Canada and the United States is at the centre of those concentric circles.
In our view, the best approach to try to deal with security is to look at your border in the broadest perspective and try to identify individuals who will be of concern to you at the outermost limits of that concentric circle. By the time an individual who may pose a threat to you arrives at your land border, it is almost too little too late at that point to be able to do the sorts of effective interventions that you may want to take. It boils down to prevention and trying to prevent the arrival in Canada and in the United States of individuals who may pose a problem for us.
With that in mind, even before September 11, CIC worked closely with our domestic and international partners to try to combat terrorism, international or transnational organized crime, migrant smuggling, and other serious threats. Since 1997, the CIC and the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service have had a border vision group that has worked on these issues. Together with our partners at Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, and our U.S. counterparts on the American side and U.S. customs services, we have the Canada-U.S. Accord on our shared border, where the four border agencies work together.
Since September 11, and under the Smart Border Accord with its 30-Point Action Plan, a number of the initiatives that we had started well before September 11 and some new initiatives since September 11 have been highlighted and moved forward more quickly. Since September 11, the Border Vision itself has become considerably more action oriented, meeting every two to three months, expanding the number of working groups and putting more resources into building that essential collaboration with our American counterparts.
Some of the initiatives that have been developed under Border Vision, which you also see reflected in the 30-Point Action Plan, are information-sharing agreements. Obviously, one of the key fundamentals to supporting this multiple border strategy is intelligence and information sharing with our partners on the American side and with our partners elsewhere, outside of the North America, with our other allies and partners in other countries.
We need to ensure that we proceed to share information within the parameters and respecting always the privacy considerations and privacy needs of individual Canadians and non-Canadians alike. The work that we are doing on information-sharing agreements very much involves consultations and discussions on Charter issues, privacy issues, and so on. We are, however, working towards an umbrella information-sharing agreement with the United States. This agreement would comprise a number of subcomponents, including: information sharing on specific population such as asylum seekers and refugee claimants; information sharing abroad with our respective Canadian and American missions on visitor visa applicants; and information sharing on our respective ``lookout lists'' of those individuals that each country has identified as being of particular concern.
Second, the immigration services in Canada and the United States have been looking at developing a risk management framework, identifying those common areas of concern and identifying mitigation strategies. We have been looking at deploying more immigration control officers overseas and we received money in the security budget to expand our complement.
We are looking at expanding the concept of immigration control officer to go beyond dealing with transportation companies and improperly documented passengers getting on airlines to come to Canada to look at a broader intelligence role and an anti-fraud prevention and anti-fraud detection role. We hope that, with the monies that we receive through the security budget, we will be able to substantially increase that network overseas.
The Americans have also committed to expanding their network of immigration control officers overseas. Given that both countries will be expanding their networks, there are opportunities for us to share our resources and, perhaps, do joint interdiction operations and joint initiatives together overseas to try to prevent the arrival of undesirables to both countries.
In addition to the risk management framework, we have agreed to undertake joint threat assessments of global and country-specific irregular migration patterns. We have been speaking to the Americans about the use of biometric identifiers on travel documents. The Americans have some clear objectives in terms of biometric identifiers on travel documents in legislation. We, as well, are looking at the possibility of looking at biometric identifiers on some of the documents that we issue. We have agreed that, while we may not have exactly the same biometric identifier, we should have the same common standards and interoperability between our systems so that we can read each other's biometric identifiers.
We are moving forward quickly on a key document for us, namely, the permanent resident card that is issued to permanent residents in Canada and newly arriving permanent residents. We are working on a review of our respective visa policies to identify where the differences are and where we may need to work together in terms of coordinating our visitor visa policies. Finally, we have been negotiating a safe third country agreement on asylum seekers that I will speak to later.
I would like to speak now about our refugee determination system, as I know that the committee is very much interested in that. We need to start by looking at what is the basis for our refugee determination system in Canada. Canada, like many other countries, has agreed to certain international legal obligations. We also have certain domestic legal obligations that very much are at the foundation of our refugee determination system.
First and foremost is the 1951 Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees, and its 1967 protocols. Other international human rights instruments that have had a profound influence on our refugee determination system would include the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and domestically, of course, the Charter has had a significant impact on refugee law in Canada and the way in which we have put into operation our refugee determination system.
In terms of what our international legal obligations require of us, the 1951 convention and the 1967 protocol require signatories to do some very specific things with respect to refugees. Article 33 of the convention contains a key obligation, namely, the non-refoulement principle, which states:
No Contracting State shall expel or return (``refouler'') a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers or territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.
The convention requires that states not refoule or return individuals who are in need of protection to the country from which they fear this persecution.
The 1951 convention does allow states to balance the protection needs of the individual refugee claimant against the broader interests of society. It also contains exclusion clauses for individuals who have committed serious non-political crimes, war crimes or crimes against humanity. Those individuals are excluded from the protection of the convention in order to allow states to balance those needs.
What the convention does not do is it does not prescribe any particular approach to the determination of refugee status. The definition is there in the convention and we have incorporated that definition in our own domestic legislation but the convention does not tell you how to apply that definition.
We have been influenced by the Charter and the jurisprudence that has developed around it. In particular, you are probably aware of the Singh decision, which was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in 1985 that set some clear parameters in terms of how one should process an individual and how one should deal with an individual who is claiming refugee protection under the convention.
Similarly, the convention does not prescribe the status that should be accorded to individuals who are found to be in need of protection. In Canada, our approach has been to accord permanent resident and, ultimately, citizenship status to persons who arrive and are determined to be in protection under the convention. Other states do it quite differently.
Some of the challenges for our refugee program today are challenges that are not unique to Canada. Most western developed countries face the same challenges of irregular movement of persons and illegal migration. We characterize the primary challenge as what we call the ``asylum-migration nexus.'' That is, that increasingly, people coming to our countries are a mix of genuine refugees genuinely in need of protection. This mix includes: those who are economic migrants seeking to better their individual situation in their home country but are not in need of protection in the Geneva Convention sense of the word; and individuals who may pose some threat or harm to our societies and whose purposes in entering our country are neither for protection nor economic interest.
The real challenge for all western developed countries is to distinguish between those three groups of individuals and to be able to ensure that those who are in need of protection get the protection they need and the others that come in that mixed flow of migrants are dealt with in an appropriate fashion and as expeditiously as possible.
We have used immigration control measures such as interception or interdiction of smuggled or trafficked migrants wherein we try to stop individuals from getting on planes or boats or trains before they arrive in our territory and ensure that those who are in need of protection in that group of people that we intercept are appropriately dealt with.
[Translation]
An other way in which we hope to do this is through the negotiation of a responsibility-sharing agreement with the United States and the Smart Border Accord. The governments of Canada and the United States have announced that they will pursue a ``safe third country'' agreement.
Cooperation between our two countries will enhance the orderly handling of refugee claims, strengthen public confidence in the integrity of our asylum systems and help reduce abuse of refugee programs. This will allow both countries to better manage the flow of individuals seeking to access their respective refugee systems while at the same time enhancing security at our respective borders and continuing to offer protection to individuals genuinely in need of protection.
[English]
Under a safe third agreement with the United States, a claimant arriving from the United States would be returned to the U.S. to claim refugee protection in that country. Similarly, a refugee claimant arriving in the United States from Canada would be returned to Canada to have their claim for refugee protection determined in Canada.
Let me turn now to our new Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, which, as you may be aware, received Royal Assent in November and is scheduled for implementation on June 28, 2002. A number of important new tools in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act will assist in dealing with security threats and those who are attempting to gain access to Canada. The act will give us stronger authority to detain and arrest criminals and persons posing a security concern and those whose identity is in doubt. It gives us wider grounds for denying entry or deporting individuals who are members or for reasons of transnational organized crime. The act eliminates the right of appeal to the Immigration Appeal Division for certain inadmissible individuals — including those who are inadmissible on security grounds, organized crime and serious criminality — which should help us expedite the removal of those individuals from Canada.
It gives us a streamlined process for barring from the refugee determination system individuals who have no right to that protection claim under the exclusion clauses of the Geneva Convention and those who have already had ample opportunity to make their claim for refugee protection. It gives us a streamlined process for removing persons who pose a national security threat. The act also provides us with a broader ability to use sensitive information and intelligence that we often use to present our case that an individual poses a security threat beyond what we have now and allows us to be able to present that evidence in administrative hearings in addition to the Federal Court. Finally, it provides us with a new offence for trafficking in persons, to equate trafficking in persons to trafficking in drugs and the offence under the Criminal Code.
Since September 11, we have taken a number of steps to try to enhance our security. We did receive monies in the first tranche of the security monies that were provided, and we received additional monies in the December 2001 security budget.
We have, with the money that we have received, decided to set a new direction for ourselves in Citizenship and Immigration, to become a real intelligence-led organization. This has led to the creation of a new intelligence branch within Citizenship and Immigration to more effectively consolidate all of the intelligence functions that we currently perform within Citizenship and Immigration. We will expand our ability to be able to analyze the intelligence and information that we do collect and to be able to use it effectively — both for our own decision-makers and in collaboration with our partners in the law enforcement community here in Canada and abroad in the United States and with our other partners.
We received in the security budget some $675 million over five years. Three key elements of our investment strategy are: building a stronger capacity for intelligence; improving our screening mechanisms in Canada and abroad, again, in line with our multiple border strategy; and, expanding our capacity to deal with those who might already be in Canada. We want to ensure that we have the tools to be able to take the prevention, the detection and deterrence activity abroad and to take appropriate measures to sweep up those individuals who are already in Canada.
With respect to building our intelligence capacity, I have talked about the network of immigration control officers and expanding that function to include intelligence and fraud prevention and better capacity for analysis and information. Within Canada, we are working with our American partners and our partners on the border, Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, to participate and build joint passenger analysis units at our major airports here in Canada.
I have already mentioned the new permanent resident card to help improve screening. We have also instituted — almost immediately after September 11 — a new front-end security screening process for refugee claimants. Previously, a refugee claimant would arrive, they would go into the system, and we would not conduct in-depth security screening until after they had been through the Refugee Board system. We have now moved that to the front end of the process so that as soon as a refugee claimant arrives in Canada, we conduct in-depth background checks and security screening so that we know with whom we are dealing at the front of the process.
We have reinforced our processing capacity at ports of entry to deal not only with the front-end security screening of refugee claimants but other increases in our volumes. We are working with our partners on obtaining better information through Advance Passenger Information/Passenger Name Record, API/PNR, system from airlines and looking at alternate means of examination to facilitate the low-risk travellers so that we can concentrate our resources on the high-risk travellers. We will be putting in place disembarkation teams at our airports to meet flights when they arrive and to deal with passengers as soon as they get off the plane, and we have given ourselves better technology and tools, including an automated fingerprinting system that is being installed at all of our major ports of entry and inland offices.
Finally, I mentioned the sweeping up of those who are here. We will be expending more resources on hearings officers and investigators and removals to try to ensure that we deal with those individuals who may be a concern but are already here in Canada.
I would be happy to take your questions now.
Senator Cordy: Thank you, Ms Atkinson, for an excellent overview of what has happened since September 11 and how Bill C-11, the new immigration bill, is being implemented by your department.
You mentioned that your key focus is prevention. I think all of us would agree that must be the focus because it is easier if we can keep out people who are ``up to no good.''
You mentioned the Safe Third Country Agreement, a measure that has been on the books since 1995. I know that it is part of the action plan signed by Ministers Caplan, MacAulay and the Attorney General of the United States. My understanding was that this would be implemented in June of this year, or that was the hope. I have been reading in the paper that, perhaps, the negotiations with the U.S. are not going as well as we might hope.
Could you give us an update on what is happening? Most of our refugee claimants come from the United States. We cannot have a safe third country agreement without the support and cooperation of the Government of the United States.
Ms Atkinson: You are right, senator, when you say that we receive a great number of our refugee claimants from the United States. Overall, 37 per cent of the total intake arrives from the United States. At ports of entry, however — both at land borders and airports — 70 per cent of claimants arrive directly from the United States.
The Smart Border Accord and the Safe Third Country Agreement are commitments made not only by Minister Caplan and Attorney General Ashcroft but also by Deputy Prime Minister Manley and Governor Ridge. Given the high level of commitment on the part of the American government, as reflected in the Smart Border Accord and the 30- Point Action Plan, we are hopeful that we will achieve a negotiated agreement with the Americans.
I cannot give you the exact details of it, obviously, because we are still negotiating with the Americans on what that agreement might look like. I can tell you, and I think Minister Coderre has indicated this publicly as well, that the agreement will not be an absolute, in that there will be some exceptions built into it.
Some of the exceptions will be obvious, for example, family members. If a claimant arrives from the United States and most of his or her family — particular their close and immediate family — are in Canada, then both sides will probably agree that there should be an exception to that sort of situation in such an agreement.
It is our intention, however, that we take the responsibility for managing the flow of asylum seekers between Canada and the United States very seriously, which is what the Safe Third Country Agreement is about.
Given the commitment on the part of the American government in the Smart Border Accord, we are hoping that we will be able finalize those negotiations soon. Once we have an agreement, we will get to work immediately on trying to implement and operationalize it as fast as we possibly can.
That is probably all I can say on that point at this time. We remain hopeful that we will be able to complete negotiations soon.
Senator Cordy: How exactly would it work? I read some information from the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. They used the term ``direct back.'' Is it the case that someone coming to the border as a refugee claimant from the United States would be told, ``Go back to the United States''?
Ms Atkinson: ``Direct back'' is a provision of the current legislation. It will also be a provision of the new legislation. It is an exceptional measure taken when an individual arrives at a port of entry and we are unable to examine them because we do not have the appropriate persons or the appropriate facilities to do so. For example, if a senior immigration officer is not available and it is a remote port, then the legislation allows us to direct that person to return to the United States and come back for an examination when we have all the appropriate mechanisms, individuals and facilities in place to be able to examine them. It is meant to be an exceptional measure. It is not meant to be a routine measure to send people back to the United States.
The Safe Third Country Agreement would work in the context of an eligibility determination. When an individual arrives and says, ``I want to claim refugee status,'' the examining officer first determines whether her or she is eligible to make a refugee claim. One eligibility criterion in the legislation asks: Did the person arrive from a designated safe third country? When we reach agreement with the United States and it is designated as a safe third country, an examining officer could determine that an individual was in the United States just before arriving in Canada and is not eligible to claim refugee status in Canada. They would then send the person back to the United States. The agreement with the United States would be to the effect that that individual would then be examined by the United States in the context of their refugee determination system. The notion is that the individual would have the opportunity to make his or her protection needs known and to claim protection. However, in this case the claim would be made in the United States because they are ineligible to make that claim in Canada.
Senator Cordy: What is the number of refugee claimants going from Canada into the United States?
Ms Atkinson: That is a good question. I do not have a direct answer for you. We do not know the number of individuals going from Canada into the United States. Our American counterparts have not provided specific numbers.
We know there are individuals who are smuggled across our border. We know that the Americans take that very seriously. In a safe third country context, individuals who arrive through ports of entry or land ports on either side — whether they are smuggled or not — could be returned to the other country for consideration.
Senator Cordy: I would like to talk about refugee claimants who come by air and who have no travel documentation when they arrive.
Particularly, since September 11 — but even beforehand — you would have to have travel documents to get on the airplane at the port from which you start your travel. Certain airlines are known to arrive with a greater number of refugee claimants than others. There has been some discussion that, perhaps, on certain airlines people would relinquish their travel documents when they got on the plane, or just before getting on the plane, and pick them up when they arrived at their destination.
There has also been discussion about scanning travel documents at the point of entry so that the Canadian government would know upon arrival who is on the plane and be assured of the accuracy of identification.
What is happening in this area? Is it going anywhere?
Ms Atkinson: We are concentrating on building an API/PNR system together with our customs counterparts. The advance passenger information and passenger name record system would allow us to have, in advance of arrival in Canada, the passenger manifest together with information that is on travel documents. The API data would include name, date and place of birth, passport information, et cetera.
We are working on establishing with the airlines a system whereby we can receive that information electronically. For every flight arriving at any Canadian airport, we would have that information in advance of its arrival.
The PNR information would provide us with information as to when an individual books a flight or makes a reservation. It could include additional information beyond tombstone data that could be helpful to identify particular trends or issues or, perhaps, flag circumstances that may be of concern.
In an intelligence context, it is important for you to know when the ticket was bought, how it was paid for, how many tickets were purchased, who is seated beside that person and where he or she is sitting on the plane. Those are all pieces of information that, when we are building a profile or trying to determine a particular trend, can become very important in an intelligence context.
In the new Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, we are given the authority to require airlines to provide us with both the advance passenger information and the passenger name record information.
We are working, as I mentioned, to establish passenger analysis units at our major airports that would allow us to receive that information. We are working with our partner at the border, Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, and our American partner agencies — the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and the U.S. Customs information — to review that information and share that which pertains to individuals who pay pose a high risk to either country. That advance passenger information will be an important tool for us in terms of trying to determine the identity of individuals.
Second, I mentioned the immigration control officer network. Immigration control officers work closely with airlines and other transportation companies to try to intercept or interdict improperly documented passengers from getting on planes in the first instance.
Immigration control officers are in an advisory capacity to airlines. It is still the airlines' decision whether or not to carry an improperly documented passenger, but as you may be aware, the airlines are responsible once they have taken that decision, and if an improperly documented passenger is subsequently found to be inadmissible to Canada and is ordered removed, the airline pays a fine. Therefore, there is an incentive for the airlines to thoroughly check passengers before they board the plane.
I think that those are important tools for us.
The third thing I would mention is the front-end security screening that I talked about for every arriving refugee claimant. Part of the benefit of in-depth security screening at the point of arrival is that it allows us to determine, to the best we can, the identity of the individual. We fingerprint and photograph every refugee claimant. We run their fingerprints and compare their tombstone data against the databases available to us — for example, CPIC, our own immigration databases, and any other information from our partners — to determine if there is any information against those individuals.
Finally, detention is the last tool we have at our disposal, although we use it strategically. The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act provides us the authority to detain individuals whose identity we are not able to establish. Individuals may not have travel documents, passports of other documents of that nature. However, they will often have some documents with them. It may not be a passport; it may be an employment letter, a phone bill, or some other document that helps identify where that individual lived and who they are.
Detention is a last tool that we can fall back on when we are dealing with individuals who are being uncooperative with us in trying to determine their identity.
Senator Cordy: Is this passenger information part of the new bill that will be implemented in June?
Ms Atkinson: Yes.
Senator Cordy: Will we be receiving that information when this bill is implemented or are we receiving it now?
Ms Atkinson: We are not receiving it now. We will receive it once the new bill is in place and once our computer systems are up and running, which will not be on June 28. We hope to have the computer systems in place and running and our passenger analysis units in place by the fall.
Senator Cordy: It is important that the computer systems at our points of landing are interoperable with computer systems around the world.
Ms Atkinson: That is correct. We have had numerous discussions with the airline industry. The airline industry is anxious to cooperate with Canadian authorities as well as with authorities of other countries, because Canada is not alone, obviously, in wanting advance passenger information. The United States has been receiving this information from airlines for some time. The Australians have been receiving it for many years. The UK has been receiving this information.
We have been trying, through forums such as the International Air Transport Association, IATA and the International Civil Aviation Organization, ICAO, to develop standards for the collection of this information. This way, the airline industry does not have to build many different systems or provide the information in many different ways to many different countries, because, of course, that would be costly to them.
We will be building on the existing SITA network that the airline industry uses for reservations and ticketing information, and extracting the information from that network.
Senator Cordy: You talked about disembarkation teams. Would you be targeting airlines or flights that may be problematic? It would seem you could not have them in every small airport in Canada.
Ms Atkinson: That is quite correct. We need to use those resources in an intelligent way. Yes, the disembarkation teams would be targeted and would be used only on those flights where there is a particular concern, for example because of the historical patterns of this particular airline or this particular flight, or, in instances where we receive advance passenger information, and have identified specific passengers that may be of concern.
Senator Forrestall: I have a supplementary to the line of questioning that Senator Cordy was pursuing. We hear this question frequently and I would like to have your response on the record.
Why do we need an agreement with the United States? We know it is a safe country. Why not just turn back the refugee claimant at the border? Why go through all this rigamarole?
Ms Atkinson: That would not be in the spirit or intent of the Smart Border Declaration, the Smart Border Accord, the Accord on our Shared Border, and the border vision.
Our purpose in working with the United States under all of these agreements is to work collaboratively. We share common goals in many respects with the Americans. We have different laws, different immigration systems and different refugee determination systems, but we share many of the same objectives. It is our mutual desire to work together to resolve these problems.
In terms of using the tools on safe third, it is important for us to have agreement with the Americans. It must be reciprocal that when individuals who are intercepted at the border, are put into their respective refugee determination systems. In respect of support for a safe third country provision within the legislation — including our ability to support it in the federal courts — it is important that we have an agreement that sets the parameters and clearly identifies how an individual who is turned around at the border will be dealt with by either country.
Senator Forrestall: Would you care to do, in a forensic sense, a quick audit of your action plan for creating a secure border? You have touched on the biometric identifiers. I would like to have a sense of whether it will be 12 or 24 months or as quickly as two months? What are the time parameters for arriving at a norm for your current plan?
Ms Atkinson: Biometric identifiers have proven to be a fascinating but complicated area. As I mentioned, we have agreed with the United States that we should work towards having compatibility as opposed to having agreement on which biometric identifier. Our research and analysis has shown that the biometric identifier may change according to the purpose for which it is used and the population that it targets.
For example, together with Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, we are planning to put in place an expedited passenger processing system for frequent air travellers in major airports. We hope it will be complete in the fall.
Senator Forrestall: Can you be specific? We do not want frequent travellers' expectations to be too high. Do you think it will be this fall?
Ms Atkinson: We are planning to have a system in place before Christmas that would enrol frequent, low-risk air travellers. We will use iris scan technology as a biometric in that program. We had been working on this with our customs colleagues before September 11, and we still plan to proceed with it. We are hoping to have the system up and running before Christmas of this year.
That is an example of where we use biometric identifiers. We have been speaking with the Americans about other situations or programs where we may want to use biometric identifiers. We have discussed it in the context of the NEXUS program, which is at the land border, and facilitating low-risk travellers there. It is our intention in the enrolment process to collect a biometric, a fingerprint so we can check individuals against our respective databases. We are not yet talking about putting a biometric on a document that we would issue.
We will introduce the permanent resident card and have it available for newly arriving immigrants on June 28.
The single alternative inspection system — the NEXUS pilot project — will be operational at the Douglas border crossing at Blaine, Washington, by June 28. We are looking to expand the NEXUS program to border crossings in Ontario. I do not have a timeline for you on that. We are hopeful that we can get the additional NEXUS sites up and running before the end of the calendar year.
With respect to the refugee asylum processing, as I said, we remain optimistic that we will soon have an agreement on safe third countries. Information-sharing on refugee and asylum seekers will not likely be in place until September or October, but we are working toward that time line.
We have already moved on visa policy coordination. In December 2001 we imposed visa requirements on an additional eight countries. The Americans imposed an additional visa requirement in January-February. We do not have a timeline on additional visa requirements at this time. We continue to work together in terms of reviewing our respective visa waiver lists.
I cannot speak to air pre-clearance. That, unfortunately, is not my area of expertise.
We spoke about advance passenger information and the passenger name record, API/PNR. We expect to have our system up and running and our joint passenger analysis units in place by September-October.
We have completed the ferry terminal review. There is little to report on that.
With respect to compatible immigration databases, the Americans are planning to put in place, at a number of their missions abroad, a system that builds on Canada's support system for intelligence. That is ongoing. We will see implementation of that in September-October.
We will be deploying the first of our immigration officers overseas this summer. By the end of August, we will have a number in place.
Senator Forrestall: Could you give us the number?
Ms Atkinson: The exact number this summer will be five, and additional numbers over the next 12 months. It will take some time for us to get them all in place.
We have no specifics to report on international cooperation and undertaking technical assistance to source and transit countries. However, under international cooperation, we are doing joint presentations in international fora, particularly with the European Union, on our multiple border strategy. There will be meetings later this month with the European Union, where Canada and the United States will be making joint presentations and engaging the E.U. on issues such as technical assistance and interdiction, interception and prevention programs.
Senator Forrestall: Will this meeting be a scenario-simulated gathering?
Ms Atkinson: This conference is hosted by one of the regular working groups of the European Union on asylum expertise.
That gives you a snapshot of where we are with these initiatives.
Senator Forrestall: When you use the word ``soon,'' it is this calendar year?
Ms Atkinson: We are hoping to show progress this calendar year on most of these initiatives. Many of them will carry on. International cooperation, visa policy review and coordination are ongoing activities that will continue for the foreseeable future.
Senator Forrestall: The smart card will be individual and presumably lifetime unless a significant change occurs? In other words, it will not expire on September 2.
Ms Atkinson: The permanent resident card will have an expiry date. A person can lose his or her permanent resident status. If they have left Canada and are no longer residing in Canada, they are no longer entitled to permanent resident status. There is a need for us to review permanent resident status. That is the first reason.
Second, our research shows that 80 per cent of permanent residents in Canada do become Canadian citizens and most obtain their citizenship within the three-year period. We do not want people who no longer need their permanent resident cards to be carrying them around.
Technology is always changing and adjusting. In the document issuance business, we are always trying to keep one or two steps ahead of the document forgers. With our permanent resident card, we think we will have the most up-to- date, current, high security card of just about any country in the world. It does not have biometric identifiers on it at this time, but it does have the capacity to hold biometric identifiers. Clearly, since we are committed to having biometric identifiers on our travel documents, there will be another generation of these permanent resident cards once we have determined that we have everything in place and that we have met all of the requirements surrounding privacy and legal issues of biometrics. It is our desire to have a biometric identifier on that card.
Senator Forrestall: Will that be soon or sooner?
Ms Atkinson: That one is definitely not in the calendar year. I would not say that it is necessarily within the next 12 months because we have much work to do to ensure that we have all of the issues resolved before we move to biometric identifiers on that card.
Senator Forrestall: Do you anticipate a one-, two- or three-year expiry?
Ms Atkinson: Obviously, there is a cost to produce these cards. We would not want them valid for only one or two years because it would be costly to continually replace them. Five years is the number that we settled on. We will always have the ability to issue cards for a shorter period, but I would suggest that we would not likely go beyond a five-year expiry date.
Senator Forrestall: I am pleased to hear you say that it will be expensive for you and not for Mr. Hughes and not for me. Will we eventually pay a fee for these cards?
Ms Atkinson: Yes.
Senator Forrestall: Is there any idea of the cost of that?
Ms Atkinson: Yes. When the card is implemented on June 28, we will start charging a fee of $50.
Senator Forrestall: Does each member of the family have to have one?
Ms Atkinson: Yes, they will be issued to individuals. We have no group cards.
Senator Banks: I wish to re-plough old ground. I have a large number of constituents who, over time, have made me aware of their great concern about, specifically, asylum seekers and refugees.
I am asking this question in recognition that the vast majority of Canadians do not have to go back very far to find ``the immigrant.'' Most of us are immigrants or relatively recent descendants of immigrants. That is how this country was made and we all know that we need more of them.
My questions concern not necessarily the ``bad guys,'' but the group of people that occasionally contains some bad guys. I understand everything that you have said; you have been extremely clear. However, I want to follow it through in an anecdotal, scenario fashion.
First, concerning someone boarding an airplane — and you have answered this and made it clear — there is ordinarily an understood requirement imposed upon that airline by virtue of landing rights agreements to require that some form of identification be presented by the passenger. These are usually documents, which may include a passport. You said that if the person gets off at the other end and those documents are found to be insufficient for admission of that passenger, the airline is fined.
Why can we not fine the airline if it allows someone who does not have proper documentation to board one of its airplanes? Would that not solve many of the problems that occur at the other end of the flight?
Ms Atkinson: We fine airlines if they allow people on their airplanes without properly checking their documents.
Senator Banks: Is that just for that offence? If an airline allows someone without the proper documentation to board one of its airplanes that is destined to land in Canada, will we fine that airline?
Ms Atkinson: We fine airlines for carrying improperly documented passengers.
Senator Banks: Is that done as a matter of course?
Ms Atkinson: We have a system of carrots and sticks. Every airline that flies into Canada signs a Memorandum of Understanding, MOU, with Citizenship and Immigration. That MOU sets out the expectations of due diligence that the airline must exercise in checking passengers before they board the airplane to determine that they have the proper documents. In the event that an airline that does a good job of exercising due diligence has a passenger that is improperly documented then the airline is fined.
Senator Banks: How would this happen?
Ms Atkinson: For example, it could happen if the document is an extremely good forgery. The airlines will often hire firms that specialize in fraud detection. Companies specializing in checking documents of people boarding aircraft have spring up around the world. Rather than have the airline employees do it, there are forensic experts at the gate to check documents as people board. However, no system is infallible and some documents are much more difficult to detect than others.
There could also be perfectly legitimate documents in the hands of the wrong person — an imposter. That is more complicated for an airline. If the document checker suspects or believes that the individual is not the rightful holder of that document, he or she must question that individual about where they are coming from, where they are going and what do they know about the place that they are going to, et cetera. Sometimes, imposters get through the system as well — proper documents but the wrong holder. It happens, obviously, that even airlines that exercise due diligence, have good systems in place and have document checkers, experience people getting through the screening process to board planes that come to Canada.
If an airline has put all the appropriate processes in place, has the proper resources in place to screen the documents and the screening is done in good faith, but a small number of individuals still get through, then the fine is levied at the lowest level of the threshold. If they do not have the appropriate processes in place and do not take the screening process seriously, they are fined at the highest level each time there is an improperly documented passenger. Through this system, we try to encourage airlines to have the right mechanisms in place to screen people as best they can.
Senator Banks: It sounds like that would be a good system. Unfortunately, we cannot do a comparison to find out how effective it is. However, one hopes it would work.
Take me through a non-airline passenger who arrives at the Canadian border. This person has been in the United States, specifically. I refer now to the question that was asked by both senators Cordy and Forrestall. Never mind how this person got into the United States, he or she did and knows, as we know, that refugee claimants who succeed in entering the United States are treated differently from refugee claimants who, in the main, come into Canada. We are not quite so restrictive with most refugee and asylum claimants.
This person has somehow made it into the United States. Rather than claiming asylum and refugee status there — and we are talking about 23,000 people every year, give or take — they decide to come to Canada because we are less likely to confine them in a concentration camp, or whatever happens, and they are more likely, historically, to get past the border and go out into the country. I do not need to tell you that the popular perception is that we lose thousands of such people and we do not know what they are doing. They may not be bad guys, they may turn out to be wonderful people, but they entered here unfairly or wrongly.
When they step on to Canadian soil, are they now eligible to make a claim for refugee status simply by saying that they have lost all their documents, they are from such-and-such country and if they return they will be killed? Is it the case that, by virtue of the fact of their standing on Canadian soil, we must put them into that system? Who decides — at Blaine or Sweetgrass or wherever — whether they will be put into that system? Who decides whether they will simply be allowed to move into the general population or if they will be detained? What is that process?
I am asking you that question not because of my constituents having asked it, but also because there is a perception elsewhere that if that person gained entry into Canada on an airplane from somewhere else we have a sieve in this country. I believe the Americans are wrong, but go through that process for me, please. What happens to that person?
Ms Atkinson: When a person arrives at a port of entry at the land border and claims refugee status, the first step in the process is determining who they are. Obviously, the examining officer will ask for whatever documents they may have in terms of trying to establish who they say they are.
Senator Banks: Assume they do not have any.
Ms Atkinson: The examining officer will then take fingerprints and photograph the person. The examining officer will take the information that the individual does provide in terms of their name, date of birth, where they are from, how they came to the border, and so on, and will run that information against the databases that are available to that officer to determine whether there is any connection or any hits.
Senator Banks: On the basis of what you said earlier, I am assuming that if the person is uncooperative in providing that information they are more than likely to be detained.
Ms Atkinson: Yes.
Senator Banks: Let us assume they have given that information and are then fingerprinted and photographed. What happens now?
Ms Atkinson: The examining officer does an in-depth interview with that individual to get as much information as possible on the person's background.
We ask them to fill out a form. This form asks for details about where they lived, what their employment has been, what groups or organizations they belonged to, the names of their family members, or whether they ever did military service. The series of questions tries to get at the background of this individual. The examining officer uses this information to determine whether there are any particular areas of immediate concern. Is this individual claiming to be a member of a terrorist organization? Now, you would probably say that most people would not so indicate when they are talking to an immigration officer, but in some cases individuals do tell us that they are members of certain organizations because they think that will help them in terms of their refugee claim.
The examining officer looks at all the information and determines whether there are grounds for detention at the port of entry. Grounds for detention would be if the individual may pose a public security threat; if we believe that he or she is a flight risk, where they will try to abscond; and where we cannot confirm identify and the person is being uncooperative. The examining officer has some choices in terms of whether there are grounds to require detention based on the information that he or she has.
Senator Banks: Are we talking about confirming identity on the spot?
Ms Atkinson: We cannot always confirm identity on the spot because if the person has no documentation all we have is the information they provide us with.
Senator Banks: Assume in my scenario that the person has been very forthcoming. We do not have a means now — at this point in Blaine or Sweetgrass — of verifying that information. What happens now?
Ms Atkinson: The information is also sent to CSIS. We have an electronic link, so the data goes automatically to CSIS. CSIS, who obviously have access to more information and data than we have at the port of the entry, can also run this data against their information to see whether they get a hit. We do not get the response from CSIS instantaneously. It does not come back five seconds later. It takes some time for CSIS to get back to us with that information.
What do we do in the meantime? If there are grounds for detention, we detain. If there are no apparent grounds for detention, then the individual is documented and they are instructed on their next steps.
Their next steps are to contact the Immigration and Refugee Board and get a hearing date or the process in front of the board. They are instructed to get a medical examination because we try to quickly determine whether we are dealing with someone who may have a communicable or contagious disease. They are told where to go to get their examination done, and so on. The documentation gives them an acknowledgement of intention to claim, which then gives them the ability to access services. We do not have reception centres or camps, and we do not detain everyone. We give people access to services so that they are not on the street.
Senator Banks: Are they then released?
Ms Atkinson: Yes. Unless there is reason to detain, they are released.
Senator Banks: On what basis has the officer determined that this person may be subject to unusual crime or punishment if sent back to the country of origin?
Ms Atkinson: The officer does not make that determination. The officer's role is to collect as much information as possible and determine, based on that information, whether the individual is \eligible to claim refugee status.
Those people who are deemed ineligible to claim refugee status are those who are security threats, serious criminals, war criminals, persons who committed crimes against humanity, or members of organized crime. This would also include persons who, when we get the safe third country agreement with the United States, come from a safe third country, and, in the New Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, repeat claimants. Those are individuals who claimed refugee protection before, went through the immigration and refugee system and were found not to be refugees, subsequently left the country, and are now coming back.
If you are in the new system, effective June 28, you only get one chance. If you made a refugee claim before and were denied refugee protection, you do not get another chance.
The officer makes an assessment as to whether or not an individual falls within any of those ineligibility criteria. He may or may not have all of the information to make his case. If he does not have all of the information to make his case, again, the choice is detain if you have grounds for detention or release.
Senator Banks: Is there a third option of denying entry?
Ms Atkinson: No.
Senator Banks: That is a big hole that worries everyone, including me.
The person is now released and two days later the immigration officer gets a note from CSIS saying that person is a bad guy. By now, he is in Sault St. Marie or someplace on Vancouver Island. What happens next?
Second, what happens in the same circumstance if the person has somehow entered Canada and is going in the other direction? Do the Americans also only have two options; to detain, or release into the general population, or do they have a third option of denying entry?
Ms Atkinson: The Americans do not have that last option. Every country that is a signatory to the Geneva Convention must consider a person's claim for protection.
The countries will make the determination of that claim in different ways, but the obligation under the Geneva Convention is if an individual arrives on your soil and says, ``I need protection. I am a refugee,'' you must consider that. If the person is in need of protection, you must not refoule them to the country from which they fled.
To come back to the question, what happens if two days later we get notice from CSIS that this is an individual about whom we should be concerned, our investigation springs into action. Our investigators normally work with the RCMP in respect of going to the place where we believe the person to be based on the information they provided at the port of entry. If they are not there, we follow up. We work with the RCMP to track these individuals down if they are a serious threat and detain them under the Immigration Act.
Senator Banks: Assuming he was a bad guy and was going to Toronto, he would say, ``I am going to Dawson City.''
Do you have any indication of how many persons have come and told story A, been released into the population and we find out later that it is story B? How many do we get? What percentage do we find?
Ms Atkinson: The only figures that have are based on our outstanding warrants. An examining officer issues a conditional removal when a refugee claimant arrives. That removal order becomes active when an individual has either been denied refugee status and has gone all the way through the system or when a person disappears and we cannot find them. When a removal order becomes effective and an individual has not shown up for their removal or we cannot find them, we issue a warrant for their arrest.
We have a warrant response centre that operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week that any law enforcement officer or agent across the country can access information on any of our outstanding warrants. The person who does not show up goes into the outstanding warrants area.
The number of outstanding warrants that we have at any time is around 25,000. That does not mean that all 25,000 are in Canada. We do not know how many of those people may already have left Canada, because we do not have exit controls. We will sometimes find out from the Americans that a refused refugee claimant who is on our list of outstanding warrants has shown up on a list in the United States. However, we do not have a way of tracking the exit of these individuals.
Senator Banks: The only way of solving that big hole is refugee camps, concentration camps in effect, is it not? There is no alternative.
Ms Atkinson: If we were to keep the entire refugee claimants in one specific location, then we would know where they were at all times.
Senator Day: My first question flows from Senator Cordy's question in relation to the Safe Third Country Agreement and how that does not seem to be proceeding.
I had the impression that there may be some legal impediment slowing that down. However, you did not indicate that. You said that it was just negotiations.
Ms Atkinson: That is correct. There are no legal impediments in the way.
Senator Day: We do not have any problem with the Singh case and the due process under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms?
Ms Atkinson: No. We have been working closely with our colleagues at the Department of Justice. At this point, there is no legal impediment. It is simply a case of negotiating the agreement.
Senator Day: In Saint John in the summertime we have tourist ships arriving. There are 40 or 50 boats. Some have 300 people on board; some have 2,000 or 3,000 people on board. It is the same with Halifax and other big communities.
What does your department do in relation to those people who are only coming in for a few hours? Do you have a manifest you check beforehand? You could not possibly document all these people as they are coming off the ships. What do you do?
Ms Atkinson: Our plan was to receive advance passenger information on cruise ships and other conveyances. I am not 100 per cent certain, but I believe that we receive some form of manifests from cruise ships now, and we do verify. However, I do not have details on that. I would have to get back to you on exactly what we have now. As of June 28, we will have the authority to require cruise ships to provide us with advance passenger information. However, I am not entirely clear what we get now from them.
Senator Day: June 28 is coming up fast. Could you let me know what you will do? You have the authority to require. Could you tell me what action you will be taking? I would be quite interested in knowing that?
You described that information was received about how many tickets were purchased, who is sitting by whom and that kind of thing. That seems to be the kind of intelligence that CSIS would want have — probably more so from a potential terrorist coming for intentions other than claiming refugee status.
I was surprised that $135 million a year for security and intelligence has been added to your budget. Is that an admission that CSIS has not been able to do the job for you and that you have to create a separate intelligence group within Citizenship and Immigration?
Ms Atkinson: The $135 million a year, or the $675 million over five years, is spread across a number of different initiatives. That includes, for example, the permanent resident card. Although we are charging a fee for it, it is not cost- recoverable. There is a fair amount of money within that pot of money that we will be using to get the permanent resident card up and running and the continued operation of that.
We have a good working relationship with CSIS. We work very closely with them. They provide us with a great deal of information and data, which we use under the Immigration Act to make determination of admissibility, eligibility, and so on. I do not think I could characterize our creation of the intelligence branch as a reflection upon any shortcomings or failures on the part of CSIS. The branch was created out of the need for us to be better organized so that we can work more effectively with CSIS, the RCMP and our other partners.
We have an intelligence function in the department and have had an intelligence function for many years. We have intelligence units in each of our regions across Canada. We have visa officers and immigration control officers overseas collecting information and intelligence. We have had a very small strategic intelligence unit. We have had a unit that supports our immigration control officers overseas and supports our support system for intelligence, which is the place where we pool all of the information we have on irregular movements of individuals, the use of improperly documented, passengers and the routes used by smugglers and traffickers.
However, this has been dispersed throughout the department. By creating the intelligence branch, we have brought one focal point in the branch for all of those functions so that we have a much more coordinated and cohesive approach to intelligence across the department.
Our case management branch also has a security review unit that has a major interface with CSIS on dealing with terrorism and security cases. We have a war crimes unit that deals exclusively with war crimes and has a very robust war crimes intelligence function within it.
In creating the branch, we have brought all of those functions together. We think that will help in our relationship with CSIS. It is fair to say that our partners have been somewhat frustrated at times with the fact that when they want to get information or give information, they had go to different parts of the department. There will now be one focal point for that coordination of all our intelligence functions. We concentrate specifically on the immigration specifics of the intelligence function. Our system collects information on migrant smuggling, improper use of documents, and so forth. There is a distinction between our role and that role of CSIS, but clearly there are areas of overlap where we are analyzing common information and intelligence. We are using it for our mandate under the Immigration and Refugee Act, and CSIS obviously is using it for their mandate.
Senator Day: With this additional funding, are you increasing your collection activities of intelligence?
Ms Atkinson: We will, particularly through our overseas network. As I mentioned, we are expanding our immigration control officer network to include a more robust intelligence collection function. We are also hoping to create more intelligence liaison officer positions so that we can bring our immigration intelligence expertise to the RCMP, CSIS, and to our other law enforcement partners across Canada. We are looking at the possibility of having liaison officers in other jurisdictions, such as the United States, so that we can collaborate and bring that expertise that we have on the immigration side to those intelligence functions and units.
Senator Day: Our concern has been that there are so many government departments gathering intelligence and there is a coordination role. Is your increased activity within your department being made known to the Privy Council office, to CSIS, to the RCMP? Does everyone understand that your increased activity in this area will result in further information that can be shared with other departments?
Ms Atkinson: Absolutely. Our intelligence-led strategy has been communicated to all of our partners across the system and the Privy Council office. It is fair to say that they are all very supportive.
The Chairman: I have some concerns about the responses to Senator Day's line of questioning. Is there a document that describes the rationale for this reorganization?
Ms Atkinson: Yes, I believe that we can provide a document describing our strategy on how we decided to allocate the funds that we receive through the security budget.
The Chairman: That would be helpful. Is there a protocol with CSIS that would be available on how you share information?
Ms Atkinson: We have an MOU with CSIS, yes.
The Chairman: Could that be shared with the committee?
Ms Atkinson: I believe that is possible, yes.
The Chairman: What is the current backlog in refugee cases right now?
Ms Atkinson: The current pending caseload at the Immigration and Refugee Board is approximately 50,000 claims.
The Chairman: In addition, there are 25,000 people who have disappeared and for whom you have issued warrants?
Ms Atkinson: There are outstanding warrants of approximately 25,000, correct.
The Chairman: Would that make 75,000 loose fish?
Ms Atkinson: I would not say that the 50,000 are loose fish.
The Chairman: Do you know where they are?
Ms Atkinson: Yes. There may be some overlap between the 50,000 and the 25,000, but the vast majority of the 50,000 claims are people who are in process and we know where they are located. They want us to know where they are because they are in the process of making their refugee claims. Most of those 50,000 are at various stages of their refugee determination process.
The Chairman: Do you test that? For example, could you pick refugee applicant X and say they are on 275 Lombard Street in Toronto, then go out there and actually find that person at that address?
Ms Atkinson: We will be putting that to the test because part of the funds we have received through the security budgets have been allocated to look at all of the claims — or as many as we possibly can — that are in the Immigration and Refugee Board backlog. Shortly after September 11, we instituted a screening mechanism at the front end, when refugee claimants arrive. We have also expended resources on looking at that existing inventory of claims to do a security screen on those claims to determine cases that may be of concern to us from a security or criminality perspective.
We are in the process of establishing a follow-through mechanism for identifying those individuals out of that backlog who may be of concern, to find them and take appropriate action against them under the tools we have available in the Immigration Act.
The Chairman: How long will it take you to dispose of that 50,000 backlog?
Ms Atkinson: You would probably have to put that question to the Immigration and Refugee Board itself in terms of how long it will take them to process that 50,000 backlog.
The Chairman: Based on your experience, how long does it take?
Ms Atkinson: It currently takes the board 11 months on average to deal with a single claim. Those 50,000 are at different stages of the process so it is hard for me to say. I would imagine, however, that it would take two, possibly three years to work through that entire backlog.
The Chairman: If I understand correctly, either we change the international protocols that we have signed, or we change the Charter of Rights, or we find a way to process people by putting them into detention camps, or we find a way to process the claims quicker. Those are the available options.
Ms Atkinson: I am not sure that those are the only available options. We have to look the refugee determination system from the broadest perspective. We need to go back to the concept of where our borders are. We have to take action on all fronts. We have to try to deter improperly documented, irregular migrants who are not in need of protection from getting here in the first place.
The Chairman: I heard that part of your testimony. I am saying that, at the end of the day, despite the programs in place, 50,000 people will in fact get through. They are here and we are processing them and it is a three-year wait. We will not know until the end of the third year whether these people are in the country appropriately or not. We either find a place to keep them or we find a way to deal with them faster.
How much would it cost to deal with them faster? If we wanted to cut the wait down to six months, how much money do you need?
Ms Atkinson: I cannot answer that question directly.
The Chairman: Could someone look at that question and come back to the committee afterwards and say, ``Okay, here is what it will cost us if we cut these waiting periods down''? Is that a reasonable question for your department to look at?
Ms Atkinson: We can certainly look what the overall cost would be. Every country has a different way of determining refugee status and there are different ways of putting individuals through a system. The system that we have in Canada is with an independent tribunal that makes the determination on the claim as to whether or not there is protection. Every system in the world has a mechanism by which claims are heard, with different levels of appeal, different levels of access to the Federal Court and so on.
The Chairman: You are hearing members of Parliament tell you that they are uncomfortable with how long it takes. They are uncomfortable with the delays in the process and with the gaps. My sense of what the committee has been trying to communicate with their questions is that we see difficulties here and we are not comfortable with the answers we are getting.
The question of intelligence agencies comes up. What sort of oversight is there of the intelligence operation within your department? Who is responsible for the independent oversight?
Ms Atkinson: We do not have an independent body that oversees the intelligence collection within the Department of Citizenship and Immigration.
The Chairman: Are there proposals coming forward to develop some form of oversight?
Ms Atkinson: There are no proposals on the table at this time to have an independent body to oversee the intelligence function within Citizenship and Immigration.
The Chairman: Could you obtain for us the department's position on whether there should be an oversight function and, if so, when it intends to introduce legislation to that effect?
Ms Atkinson: I can come back to you with that.
The Chairman: Thank you. This topic is of great interest to us. We expect to return to it often in the coming months. We expect to have the opportunity to see you frequently, and we look forward to it.
We will reflect on your answers and the information you have undertaken to provide us and try to have better questions for you when you come back. On behalf of the committee, I thank you for coming today.
The committee adjourned.