walktheline said:
I wonder in what circumstance CBSA told you all that information. I travel very often and never was told such information by CBSA.
I also ordered my travel history from CBSA, it only contains entry information and specifically says exit information is only tracked by land borders after 2013.
So there are really conflicts of information reported here from the official CBSA information.
Not really any conflict in the information itself, but a lot of misunderstanding about what it means.
There is a huge difference in what information is accessed and considered in the course of an agency's decision-making process in
routine versus non-routine inquiries or investigations.
The rather limited information in a
routine CBSA travel history is a lot less than what CBSA can dig up, in its databases, pursuant to a particular inquiry or investigation.
Remember, there is a difference between information the government compiles regarding a particular individual, and thus has in a form (typically connected records in a particular database, the client constituting a connection between the individual records, the particular fields of information stored in the database) which essentially amounts to what was in the old days a file, versus the huge, huge body of information the government collects and stores which can be queried to find information about an individual. Moreover, a lot of information about individuals is maintained in separate silos, that is, in non-connected databases maintained by different parts of the government.
The information an agency like IRCC can access directly is one thing. The information the agency can acquire by making an inquiry or referral to another agency is something else. And, even within an agency, the information connected to a particular individual is only a portion of the information the agency might have the capacity to mine from its databases if and when it conducts an investigatory query.
For example, if a PR has a criminal conviction in Canada, that will not show up in the IRCC's GCMS database such that it will be disclosed to the individual who makes the ATIP application for IRCC's information about the individual. But, IRCC will nonetheless have access to that information, by referral to RCMP, or potentially also by an inquiry into the PR's FOSS records. In regards to the latter, the PR can obtain non-redacted information in the PR's FOSS records, but doing so will require a customized ATIP application. Indeed, the routine ATIP application to IRCC tends to divulge very little the PR should not already know.
Similarly with CBSA, albeit what information a PR can obtain from CBSA regarding records for oneself is not so well known. Since CBSA is virtually a law-enforcement body, the information in its records is far more difficult to access.
In any event, from the border control initiative with the U.S., to Bill C-51 adopted by the Conservative government, and many other relatively recent changes in the law and regulations, the scope of information being collected and maintained is growing dramatically, and the capacity of the government to share that information between different departments has also grown dramatically.
I do not remember if it was in this forum or another similar one, but a couple years ago, or so, I posted a lot of observations resulting from quite a lot of research into publicly disclosed databases and publicly disclosed interrelationships in sharing information in those databases, and the scope of that is staggering.
Without revisiting those observations, which of course are now dated since this area continues to evolve toward capturing and storing more information, and broader inter-government sharing of information, I can say that what CBSA includes in its travel history is far less than what it can find and report on in responding to specific inter-government inquiries.
Thus, for example, the fact that certain information about exits from Canada, and destination country when exiting Canada, is not a part of an individual's CBSA Travel History, my understanding is that the government has sufficient data stored in its databases to find at least a significant amount of this information.
Typically, inquiries or investigations can only be conducted if certain criteria are met, and only for specified purposes. That noted, here too the criteria justifying the more extensive research into data has broadened considerably, and similarly the scope of purposes for which this can be done has broadened.
Perhaps the most extensive broadening of criteria and purposes has been in expanded relative to CRA, that is, Canada Revenue data and Canada Revenue's capacity to access data captured and maintained by other government agencies. But, it is clear there has been similar expansion of the criteria and purposes governing data maintained by CBSA and IRCC, and their respective access to data stored by the other.
Added note:
What information IRCC digs up depends, in large part, on the extent to which IRCC has concerns. For citizenship applications, for example, it appears IRCC relies largely on the applicant's application information in conjunction with examination of Travel Documents and some questions at an interview, cross-checked against background checks with RCMP and CSIS, and CBSA travel history. If something triggers IRCC to go beyond the routine process, however, the scope of what it can and oft times will do, expands dramatically. The scope of information IRCC can obtain from other government bodies, especially CBSA, expands a great deal once IRCC decides to make investigatory referrals.
Contrary to much of the whining about how long non-routine processing takes, such as RQ'd cases in citizenship application processing, or Secondary-Review cases in processing applications for a new PR card, there is a reason for the extended timeline, and that reason is often rooted in how long it takes to get the results from an investigatory referral made to a different government body.
And because that process is investigatory, it is not disclosed in response to the ATIP application. So, for the PR, it looks like nothing is done or has been done or is being done . . . because information about investigatory methods is confidential and not disclosed.
