Mr. Chair, thank you for this opportunity to discuss our 2016 spring report on detecting and preventing fraud in the citizenship program.

I'm accompanied by Nicholas Swales, the principal responsible for the audit.

In our audit we examined whether Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada had adequate practices to detect and thereby prevent fraud in adult citizenship applications. We looked at practices intended to ensure that citizenship applicants met the program's residency requirements, that they had no criminal prohibitions, and that they were permanent residents of Canada.

We looked at several important controls designed to help citizenship officers identify fraud risks, and we found that these controls were inconsistently applied. As a result, people were granted citizenship based on incomplete information or without all of the necessary checks being done.

To meet residency requirements, individuals sometimes use an address that is known or suspected to be associated with fraud. Although the department had a database to help it detect the use of such problem addresses, we found cases in which data entry errors and inconsistent updating prevented officers from having accurate or up-to-date information about these addresses.

In addition, even when information was available in the system, officers did not always act on it. For example, in 18 of 49 cases, citizenship officers did not carry out the required additional procedures when the department's database system revealed the use of a problem address.

Another method of simulating residency in Canada is by altering passport or visa stamps to reflect shorter or fewer trips, thereby increasing the number of days an applicant appears to have been present in Canada. We found that the department's practices for dealing with suspicious documents were inconsistent and that its guidance was ambiguous. As a result, some regions seized problem documents but others did not, creating a risk that fraudulent documents would continue to circulate.

The department's task is further complicated by poor information-sharing with the RCMP and the Canada Border Services Agency. Although each citizenship applicant undergoes a criminal clearance check early in the application process, we found that the department had weak processes for obtaining complete information about criminal charges.

We looked at 38 cases in which the RCMP should have shared information about charges with the department and found that it had shared the information in only two cases.

We also found that after the criminal clearance check was completed, the department had no systematic way to obtain information directly from police forces, other than the RCMP, on criminal charges against citizenship applicants.

With regard to investigations of immigration fraud by the Canada Border Services Agency, we found that the agency had not shared information with the department in 11 of the 38 cases we examined.

We also found that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada did not have in place all the elements it needed to successfully manage fraud risks in the citizenship program. For example, the department did not have in place a rigorous process to identify, understand and document the nature and scope of citizenship fraud risks. As a result, the department could not make informed decisions about which risk indicators it should use to detect or prevent residency fraud.

Furthermore, the department did not have a way to verify that existing measures to detect and prevent fraud were working as intended. As a result, several adjustments that the department recently made to its fraud control measures were not supported by evidence.

We made five recommendations to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and two recommendations to both the department and its partners, the RCMP and the Canada Border Services Agency. All three organizations agreed with our recommendations and have committed to taking actions to implement them.

Mr. Chair, this concludes my opening remarks. We would be pleased to answer any questions the committee may have.

Thank you.

Transcript

Discussions (0)