Citizenship and Immigration Canada investigated 106 cases of malfeasance and employee misconduct at its offices in Canada and overseas last year, most of them involving allegations of preferential treatment, unauthorized release of information and solicitation of bribes.
An internal audit substantiated 15 of 54 complaints involving employees in Canada and six of 52 complaints involving immigration officers at missions overseas in the period from October of 2004 to September of 2005, according to a CIC report.
Police were called in to assist in 15 cases domestically, including an alleged insider-corruption scheme in Ottawa. Diane Serre, the 34-year-old operations manager for Ottawa's CIC office, has been charged with conspiracy to commit fraud, breach of trust and various other charges in December of 2004, and the case is still before the courts.
Ms. Serre, her boyfriend and three others are alleged to have bribed applicants of Middle Eastern origin for as much as $25,000 to be allowed to stay in Canada.
Overseas, officials investigated 52 cases of alleged misconduct, more than half of them at missions in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific region. Police were called in to investigate five cases. Twenty-nine files remain open overseas and 21 files are being investigated in Canada.
Critics believe the problem of malfeasance highlights management problems in the Immigration Department, which has a backlog of 800,000 cases. Immigration lawyer Sergio Karas said Ottawa should centralize the processing of visa and permanent resident applications in a Canadian office, where authorities have more ability to prosecute wrongdoing.
"This should be a wake-up call to CIC. We need to get away from locally engaged staff and create an in-Canada processing centre," Mr. Karas said, adding: "It is extremely difficult to prosecute locally engaged staff in other countries. When you have employees who are well paid by local standards, but they're making $500 a month, they'll be more open to bribes and temptation."
There already is an in-Canada processing centre in Vegreville, Alta., which deals with all applications for extensions of temporary resident status and all in-Canada applications for permanent residency.
But Marina Wilson, a CIC spokeswoman, said using overseas locals to process all other immigrant applications has proven cost-effective.
"Locally engaged staff overseas have local insight, knowledge and language skills. The overwhelming majority are ethical and honourable," she said. "We have attempted to tighten controls and increase training in posts that have been designated high risk."
The internal audit found that at missions overseas, the most common complaint dealt with unauthorized release of information to third parties, while the most common unfounded allegations involved solicitation of bribes and visas. Four locally engaged staff were dismissed and three were reprimanded or disciplined.
In Canada, there were nine substantiated cases involving harassment, conflict of interest and misuse of CIC's information systems. Five employees were reprimanded, two resigned, one was dismissed and three more faced disciplinary action.
Ms. Wilson said the number of complaints of malfeasance had decreased from 140 in 2003-2004. "It is not a growing problem."
