A House of Commons committee voted Thursday to probe how an admitted human smuggler received a new Canadian passport through Service Canada after he was forced to surrender a previous travel document under court-imposed conditions of release.
The Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration agreed to hold two days of hearings on the issue with testimony from Immigration Minister Marc Miller, Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, along with passport officials, representatives of the RCMP, Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and officials with Public Safety Canada.
“There are some really serious questions to be asking if the Liberal government can’t do the basics right, which is don’t give known criminals who are forbidden from having a travel document by court order a legal passport, so they can use it again,” said MP Tom Kmiec, the Conservative critic on the immigration file, who tabled the motion to hold the hearings.
Admitted human smuggler Thesingarasan Rasiah was ordered to surrender his passport and barred from applying for a new travel document after he was charged and arrested for arranging to smuggle a Sri Lankan national from the U.S. into Canada through Cornwall, Ont., in April 2021.
The passport ban was one of several release conditions that also included an order requiring him to wear an ankle bracelet for monitoring.
Smuggling network linked to river deaths
Investigators with a police border task force discovered Rasiah had obtained a new passport after they executed a search warrant at his Montreal home in June 2023.
By the time of the raid, police believed Rasiah allegedly led a human smuggling network that was linked to the drowning deaths of nine people on the St. Lawrence River in March 2023.
The dead included four members of a family from India and four members of a family from Romania — including their infant and toddler — and the man piloting their boat on a human smuggling run into the U.S.
Liberal MP Chris Bittle said the committee’s support for the Conservative party’s motion was an example of “how parliament is supposed to work.” He said the passport case exposed a “serious flaw” that needed closer scrutiny.
“At what level did this information not get into the hands of Passport Canada?” he asked. “Where did this break down, at what level?”
MP Jenny Kwan, the NDP’s immigration critic, said she wanted to examine what blame the court system shouldered in this situation.
“The court decision related to travel documents did not come from Passport Canada or IRCC (Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada), that actually came from the courts. So there is a real question about the failure of that system,” said Kwan.
Passport process separate from police, court systems
No dates have been set for the hearings, but according to the adopted motion, they must occur before Dec. 18.
Immigration Minister Marc Miller’s office said in an emailed statement that it wouldn’t “speculate about potential future appearances.” The statement said the minister has asked officials to investigate the issue and that any findings would be disclosed “when there is an update to be shared.”
Experts say passport officials conduct superficial screenings of applications and the process operates in a silo, separate from police or court database and systems.
Service Canada administers the passport program on behalf of IRCC.
Matt Eamer, a retired Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) detective sergeant who was part of the border task force, told CBC News that it’s believed Rasiah continued to operate the alleged human smuggling network while at home on conditions for the April 2021 case.
Rasiah was awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty in the April 2021 human smuggling case when police found the new passport in his home. The passport was issued on April 11, 2023, and would have been valid for 10 years.
The border task force — which includes members of the RCMP, OPP and CBSA — arrested Rasiah for breaching his conditions during the June 2023 raid. He was sentenced to 15 months in jail in September 2023 for the April 2021 human smuggling case.
Rasiah was re-arrested this May and charged with multiple human-smuggling related counts along with eight other co-accused. The RCMP said in a June media conference that Rasiah allegedly led a human smuggling network with an international reach that smuggled hundreds of people north and south across the Canada-U.S. border.
Rasiah, who remains in custody, is scheduled for a two-day bail hearing on Nov. 27 and 28 in Morrisburg, Ont.