The federal government is seeking the power to cancel applications for groups of visa holders at least in part due to concerns of fraud from India and Bangladesh, according to internal documents obtained by CBC News.
A departmental presentation to the immigration minister’s office said that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and unnamed U.S. partners are aiming to identify and cancel fraudulent visitor visa applications.
The Canadian entities and U.S. partners formed a working group looking to beef up authorities to refuse and cancel visas, according to the presentation, which singled out India and Bangladesh as “country-specific challenges.”
A section explaining how mass cancellation powers could be used listed hypothetical scenarios such as a pandemic, war and “country-specific visa holders.”
Publicly, Immigration Minister Lena Diab has listed a pandemic or war as why the government is seeking these powers, but has not mentioned country-specific visa holders.
The presentation provides a further glimpse into Ottawa’s motivation for gaining those mass cancellation powers.
The provision was tabled in Parliament as part of Bill C-2, the government’s sweeping border legislation. That bill has since been spun off into two pieces, with mass visa cancellation folded into C-12, which the government is hoping to quickly pass.
More than 300 civil society groups have raised concerns over the legislation. Some, such as the Migrant Rights Network, say group cancellations would give the government the ability to set up a “mass deportation machine.”
Immigration lawyers have also wondered if the mass cancellation ability was being sought to allow the federal government to reduce its growing backlog of applications.
The federal government will cut permanent immigration to Canada by over 20 per cent in the next three years, leaving groups like temporary workers and foreign students in limbo. This follows polling that shows most Canadians’ attitudes toward immigration have soured.
Asylum claims from Indian nationals increased from fewer than 500 a month in May 2023 to about 2,000 by July 2024, the document said.
The presentation says that verifying temporary resident visa applications from India slows down application processing.
It said processing time rose from an average of 30 days at the end of July 2023 to 54 a year later. It said approvals also started to decline in 2024 as it committed more resources to verification, from more than 63,000 in January to about 48,000 in June.
The presentation also noted a rise in “no boards” in India — passengers not allowed to board airplanes — as of the summer of 2024. By July 31 of that year 1,873 applicants had been identified for further questioning and sent procedural fairness letters outlining their rights and potential legal recourse.
No data about claims from Bangladesh was provided in the document.
Last month, IRCC told CBC News in a statement that new powers were not being proposed “with a specific group of people or situation in mind,” and that “decisions would not be taken unilaterally.”
A separate document from October 2024, a memorandum to then immigration minister Marc Miller, urged him to push for the department to be given extra visa cancellation powers without naming any individual countries.
“The ability to cancel temporary resident documents reduces security risks and limits potential misuse of such documents,” it noted.
The memo also said that the risk of applicants seeking judicial review of the cancellations would “depend on the particular facts of each case, notably whether procedural fairness was followed.”
‘Concrete steps’ to control immigration
CBC News sent questions about the documents to Diab’s office, as well as the Immigration Department and Global Affairs.
The Immigration Department said in a statement it has taken “concrete steps to minimize unnecessary border volumes, increase information sharing and reduce non-genuine visitors and illegal crossings at the border.”
The department said those actions, including heightened scrutiny of temporary resident visa (TRV) applications from “countries with the highest rates of abuse,” have led to a 97 per cent drop in illegal U.S. crossings by foreign nationals into Canada from its peak in June 2024.
The department also said there has been a 71 per cent drop in asylum claims from TRV holders in May in comparison to the same time last year, and a 25 per cent increase in visa refusals for fraud from January to May, also compared to the same time last year.
It did not directly answer a question about why Bangladesh and India were singled out in the internal presentation seen by CBC News, and why a scenario of mass cancellation for country-specific cases was not made public.
IRCC also did not identify the U.S. partners mentioned in the document, saying it cannot comment on bilateral discussions with foreign governments.
The department said each use of mass cancellation powers would be “decided by the Governor in Council” and be published in the Canada Gazette to explain “why the order is in the public interest, who will be subject to the order and how they’ll be impacted, any exceptions, refunds or other relevant considerations.”
Mending fences with India
While the department is seeking these powers, the federal government has also been trying to restart its relationship with India.
The two countries have been at odds since 2023, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused agents of the Indian government of potential involvement in the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist activist, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, in British Columbia.
The Indian government has denied those allegations.
More recently, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Canada in June during the G7 summit in Kananaskis, Alta., at Prime Minister Mark Carney’s invitation and over the protests of Canada’s Sikh community. The two expressed an interest in rekindling the bilateral relationship.
The two countries renamed high commissioners to each others’ jurisdictions in August.
The IRCC deferred a query about what impact the powers it is seeking might have on ties between India and Canada to Global Affairs, which has not answered a question from CBC News on the matter.
