Security screening of immigrants to Canada remains a hot topic in an already over-heated Parliament. Recent concerns have been focused on how a father and son duo, Ahmed and Mostafa Eldidi, arrested and charged with terrorism offences on July 31, were able to gain admission to Canada and in the father’s case, citizenship. [1]
Concerns were heightened by the arrest by the RCMP near the Canada-US border of an individual from Pakistan, Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, age 20. Khan is facing extradition to the US on terrorism charges. [2] He was admitted to Canada on a student visa.
The Public Safety committee (SECU) of the House of Commons held its second meeting today of a planned six sessions to explore potential failures in the security screening process. The issue is already deeply politicised, as I noted in a previous substack (“SECU screens security screening,” August 28, 2024) [3]
The Committee’s first meeting on August 28 was dominated by testimony from CBSA about its security screening practices. Today, it was the turn of the IRCC (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada). Between them they share responsibility for flagging security threats and determining inadmissibility to Canada.
The Committee heard in its first hour from the IRCC Minister, Marc Miller, accompanied by the usual bevy of senior officials from his Department.
As Minister Miller indicated, the security screening process is layered—it takes place initially outside the country, then at a port of entry, and finally when an individual is present in Canada. IRCC takes the lead with initial security screening. Should the application of risk indicators (“packages”) by IRCC officials indicate the need for further and more comprehensive security screening, this is done by CBSA in combination with CSIS. CBSA and CSIS then return a recommendation back to IRCC on admissibility. It’s a complicated process.
As the committee heard at its first meeting in late August, an internal review of the security screening process is still underway; we now are told by the Minister that this internal review is meant to be completed within two weeks (this time frame got a little fuzzier—"a few weeks” as the Committee progressed) and will be shared publicly. That sounds like a very accelerated timetable and a clearer promise of transparency, compared to what officials had to say at the last meeting.
There was some partisan back and forth about police security certificates from countries of origins. The Conservative charge was that the Liberals had abandoned back in 2018 requirements from some countries such as Pakistan for police certificates as part of Canadian security screening. That was posited as a serous weakness. The Minister put more stress on biometric identifiers, which can then be shared with security partners abroad as part of the screening process.
Later in the proceedings the Committee came to its collective senses and realised there was not much more to be talked about until the internal review of the security screening process was available (or at least had “progressed). Amendments and sub-amendments to motions followed. What fun it is to be an MP! Eventually it was all agreed that future meetings would take place to address the findings of the internal review.
MPs departed into a hot Ottawa evening.
[1] https://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/en/news/2024/father-and-son-arrested-terrorism-offences
[2] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/pakistani-national-charged-plotting-terrorist-attack-new-york-city-support-isis
Accepting police certificates from countries of concern is ridiculously naive. Russians protesting Putin's war in Ukraine are criminal by definition and would be rejected in a heartbeat by CBSA.
I suspect that – as with the criminal law - no significant “reform” of immigration law is likely to take place, until the federal government is prepared to legislate, and to use the “notwithstanding clause” if necessary, to make the law more congruent with the wishes of the public. Until then, the seats occupied by these officials will only be Luke warm. And all the rest is political theatre from a now totally discredited actor and demonstrable fabulist.
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[Note: I composed that cynical comment before the new dispatch listing the PMO’s latest “security talking points” - framed in multiplicity and at such a high level of generality as to be virtually meaningless. And, as usual, divorced from any expectation of concrete prophylactic action.
They should stick to promising two billion trees. Because ordinary people just no longer believe any of it; meanwhile, it must be hugely discouraging for those responsible for the actual security plumbing - the group from which disgruntled leakers emerge].