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Canadian Citizenship and House of Commons

RCMP: The issue isn't the department alone — the auditor general found they weren't getting timely or enough information from border officials or the RCMP either to help flag suspect cases. "This finding matters because ineligible individuals may obtain Canadian citizenship and receive benefits to which they are not entitled," Ferguson wrote in his spring report, tabled Tuesday in the House of Commons. "Revoking citizenship that should not have been granted takes significant time and money." The problems range from immigration officials not routinely checking travel documents against a database of known fake papers to a failure by officers or their computers to flag problematic addresses that could point to residency fraud, according to Hamilton Spectator. In one instance, it took seven years for official to cotton on to the fact a single address had been used by at least 50 different applicants during overlapping time periods. Michael Ferguson audit of citizenship applications between July 2014 and last fall found the Immigration Department has granted citizenships based on incomplete information or without all the necessary checks because it not applying its own methods to combat fraud. Of the 50, seven became Canadian citizens. In four cases, the RCMP failed to tell the Immigration Department about criminal charges laid against people who'd already passed the criminal records check step of the citizenship process. A review of 49 cases where an individual address had been flagged as problematic concluded that in 18 instances, citizenship officials didn't follow up to see if the applicant actually met residency requirements. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.