Preventing Corruption in Immigration and Border Services

Opening Statement to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts

Preventing Corruption in Immigration and Border Services

(Report 3—2017 Spring Reports of the Auditor General of Canada)

29 May 2017

Michael Ferguson, Chartered Professional AccountantCPA, Chartered AccountantCA
Fellow of the Order of Chartered AccountantsFCA (New Brunswick)
Auditor General of Canada

Mr. Chair, thank you for this opportunity to present the results of our report on Preventing Corruption in Immigration and Border Services. Joining me at the table is Nicholas Swales, Principal, who was responsible for the audit.

In our audit, we examined the steps Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and the Canada Border Services Agency took to address the risk that immigration and border services staff could be corrupted. For the Department, we focused on risks and selected controls related to issuing visitor and international student visas at Canadian missions abroad. For the Agency, we focused on risks and selected controls related to land border crossings where the first point of contact is a border services officer.

Overall, we concluded that both organizations recognized that their employees could be vulnerable to corruption. We also concluded that both organizations need to better implement their procedures to address this risk.

Neither organization adequately monitored its controls to ensure that the controls were working as intended. Better information about the effectiveness of the controls would help both organizations improve these controls and proactively detect corruption.

Limited monitoring also meant both organizations were unaware that their staff did not always follow control procedures.

For example, we found that Canada Border Services Agency officers did not always follow the Agency’s policy that officers enter all travellers’ information into the Integrated Primary Inspection Line system. As a result, we estimated that over the course of a year, officers did not collect the information they were supposed to collect on the people who entered Canada in some 300,000 vehicles. Without this information, officers could allow someone to enter the country who is not entitled to or who should have received further examination.

We also found that border services officers shared their user log-ins, even though it is Agency policy that they should never do so. As a result, it is difficult to link transactions to specific officers to identify who did or who did not follow policy.

Agency superintendents are meant to monitor whether border services officers follow required policies and procedures. However, we found that most superintendents did not believe they had enough time to do so. Over the course of a year, only half of the superintendents used reports intended to help them fulfill their monitoring role, and we found that they had not completed required follow-ups on 56 missed lookouts.

At Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, we found that 14 locally engaged staff had viewed their own visa records. These actions violated the Department’s code of conduct. On at least one other occasion, a similar action signalled the inappropriate sharing of other people’s visa information.

I would also note that where we found effective monitoring, we also found the effective implementation of controls. For example, we found that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada appropriately monitored who could access its Global Case Management System, and it removed access rights when those rights were no longer required.

We made five recommendations in our report: two to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, two to the Canada Border Service Agency and one to Global Affairs Canada. All three organizations agreed with our recommendations, and they committed to take corrective action before the end of the current fiscal year.

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