Accountants and auditors are not, by definition, given to hyperbole and exaggeration. They're mild-mannered types, if you know what I mean. So when interim Auditor General John Wiersema, commenting on the fact that his office today is for the third time in a decade sounding the alarm that we are giving entry visas to more than 1.36 million foreign nationals a year and we don't know squat about them, says “That's disturbing,” that ought to be a four-alarm call to action.
“By now, The Government of Canada has been in the business of issuing visas for a long time, we should have better processes in place to make sure we're issuing visas to the people that should get them,” Wiersema told me.
Chapter 2 of the Auditor General's twice-a-year report is here and in it, you'll find these indictments of both Citizenship and Immigration Canada and the Canada Border Services Agency, jointly responsible for the visa program:
“…CBSA has not reviewed the effectiveness of its security screening process. It has not requested feedback from CIC on the usefulness of the information provided to visa officers, and there is no process to find out how they use the information. In our survey, about 45 percent of the Canada-based officers indicated that one of the challenges in determining the inadmissibility of an applicant is the lack of relevant information from security partners.”
“The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) is responsible for updating risk indicators, but we found that two of the screening manuals had not been updated for several years; one of these was last updated in 1999.”
“At the time of our audit, the Department had defined only two diseases—syphilis and tuberculosis—as dangers to public health. These same two diseases have defined the screening practice for the last 50 years. We noted that mandatory HIV testing has been implemented since 2002, with the anticipated public health benefit of early detection, treatment, and prevention. Persons with HIV, however, will not be denied access to Canada for public health reasons. They would be found inadmissible only if their health condition might reasonably be expected to cause excessive demand on health or social services.”
And here's something else to ponder: In 2010, 1.2 million foreign nationals applied for visas to enter, work, or live in Canada. All but 668 were approved. That's a statistical oddity that the A-G picked up on:
“We noted that very few applicants, referred by visa officers using the current risk indicators, were found to be likely inadmissible by security partners. In many cases, there may be no information or concerns related to applicants. Of the cases security partners worked on in 2010, only about 1 percent of applicants for temporary residence and 0.1 percent of applicants for permanent residence were found to be likely inadmissible (Exhibit 2.3). We noted that there has been no analysis to determine whether the current risk indicators to help identify potentially inadmissible applicants are appropriate or properly applied.”