Canada Border Services lost track of 2,800 criminals that should have been deported

The 2020 Spring Report by the auditor general states that there are 4,450 criminals that the Canada Border Services Agency has failed deport and it has lost track of 2,800 of them.

This comes as the federal auditor general reported that the agency has lost track of a total of 34,700 people.

"We concluded that the Canada Border Services Agency did not remove the majority of individuals who were subject to enforceable removal orders as soon as possible to protect the integrity of the immigration system and maintain public safety," said the audit, which was released Wednesday morning.

The report—covering 2018 to 2019—says that there have been 1,250 criminals confirmed removed, 1,650 in working inventory and 2,800 in wanted inventory.

The report adds that the average time a criminal spends in working inventory is 5 years and the average time they spend in wanted inventory is 11.

Officials at the auditor general’s office said there are a number reasons the agency lost track of so many people including people skipping their reporting conditions and and not attending hearings.

"Clearly, this is another example of the Liberal government being unable to ensure that we have a fair, orderly and compassionate immigration system," said Andrew Scheer at a press conference this morning.

"Obviously we need a government that takes this kind of thing seriously, that when people have been found to have either fraudulently represented their cases or found to be ineligible to be in Canada — in order to respect the integrity of our system — that those decisions have to be followed up."

The audit said the delays in processing data played a large role in cases missing from the inventories.

"Because of delays in processing data received from federal partners, the agency did not have the information it needed to track the status of removal orders," it said.

"Among cases with enforceable orders, we found that many were inactive or stalled because of poor case management, even some that were considered high priority. Furthermore, many cases we examined were stalled because of missing travel documents, such as passports — yet little was done to obtain these documents."