THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL AFFAIRS, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Tuesday, June 19, 2012
The Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology, to which was referred Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, the Marine Transportation Security Act and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Act, met this day at 2:30 p.m. to give consideration to the bill.
Senator Kelvin Kenneth Ogilvie (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Honourable senators, I call the meeting to order. We have a very full agenda today. Our witnesses are in place.
Before I introduce my colleagues and welcome the witnesses, I have a couple of reminders for the committee. This two-hour session will end at or before 4:30. We will then have a brief transition and go immediately into the next session, which will end at or before 6:30.
We will not have pages with us for much of the afternoon. With that, unless there are questions from senators, we will proceed with our meeting. We are continuing our study of Bill C-31. I officially welcome you all to the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology.
I will ask my colleagues to introduce themselves.
Senator Seidman: I am Judith Seidman from Montreal, Quebec.
Senator Wallace: I am John Wallace from New Brunswick.
Senator Seth: I am Asha Seth from Toronto, Ontario.
Senator Eaton: I am Nicole Eaton from Ontario.
Senator Martin: I am Yonah Martin from B.C.
Senator Merchant: I am Pana Merchant from Saskatchewan.
Senator Jaffer: I am Mobina Jaffer from British Columbia.
The Chair: Thank you, colleagues.
I am Kelvin Ogilvie from Nova Scotia.
We will have four separate presentations today. Currently here, from the Barreau du Québec, we have Carla Chamass from the Research and Legislation Service; Hugues Langlais, President, Immigration and Citizenship Committee; and Richard Neil Goldman, Member of Immigration and Citizenship Committee.
I understand, Mr. Langlais, that you will be making the presentation for the Barreau du Québec.
From the Canadian Civil Liberties Association we have Noa Mendelsohn Aviv, Director of the Equality Program. By video conference we have Andrew Wlodyka, a partner with Wlodyka, MacDonald, Teng; and as an individual, Catherine Dauvergne, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of British Columbia.
Welcome to all witnesses. I will invite Mr. Langlais to present first.
[Translation]
Hugues Langlais, President, Immigration and Citizenship Committee, Barreau du Québec: Good afternoon and thank you, members of the committee, for inviting us to take part in this debate on Bill C-31.
You must understand that, for the Barreau du Québec, the security and effectiveness of our immigration system are ongoing concerns. As you mentioned, I am the president of the immigration and citizenship committee. I am joined today by Ms. Chamass, a lawyer in our research service, and by Mr. Goldman, a member of our committee.
When Bill C-31 was before the House, we had the opportunity to study it before it was adopted. We made a number of observations that we sent in two letters to the House. You should receive, or have already received, a copy of these communications. One is a letter of May 24, which is actually a reply, and the other is a letter of April 20, 2012, which contains most of the comments the Barreau du Québec made on the matter.
Basically, I would like to sum up our position on some aspects, specifically the fact that the bill still, in spite of everything, provides for people to be detained.
The detention is now reduced to six months, but that duration is still excessive in our society. It could also include the detention of children less than 15 years of age, should they choose to remain with their parents once they have been designated in the category. Countenancing the detention of minors, children, in our society is a major concern for us.
Our other concern is that it is impossible for refugee claimants who have been identified as part of this amended process to return to their homes if the occasion arises during the stipulated period of five years, even in an emergency when they are looking after the health of a loved one or are mourning the death of loved one. We would like to bring this concern to the committee's attention once more so that it can be evaluated again.
Our final concern is that the act would be retroactive to 2009. In our society, acts are deemed to come into effect on the date they receive royal assent. They are not retroactive. I will now turn the floor over to my colleague, Mr. Goldman.
Richard Neil Goldman, Member, Immigration and Citizenship Committee, Barreau du Québec: As mentioned in our two letters, the Barreau du Québec is opposed to refugee claimants being placed into categories. Bill C-31 creates two broad, extraordinary categories.
First, irregular arrivals. We feel that the criteria used to designate irregular arrivals in no way justify the dramatic consequences such as the special detention program, which even includes children, no appeal when the case is denied and no permanent residence or family reunification for five years.
The other broad category involves people from designated countries of origin or safe countries. The Barreau du Québec is very concerned by the fact that the criteria no longer mention human rights in the countries in question and the expert panel no longer exists. The designation is made solely by the minister. The consequences are equally dramatic: a hearing in 30 or 45 days and no appeal.
In a word, the Barreau du Québec is against any discrimination against refugee claimants. The Barreau du Québec is for a system that gives all refugee claimants access to fair and equitable procedures.
Mr. Langlais: We are now ready to answer your questions.
[English]
Noa Mendelsohn Aviv, Director, Equality Program, Canadian Civil Liberties Association: Thank you, senators. I will jump very quickly into some of our main concerns, some of which you have heard. I presume that many of you are familiar with some of the details of the bill.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association is concerned that Bill C-31, if passed and implemented, would violate several of Canada's constitutional obligations as well as our international obligations. This would come at a great cost to Canada and Canadians, ethically and also financially. I would be happy to answer questions on that at a later time.
If implemented, Bill C-31 could provide for three significant violations of our Charter. The first is discrimination. One example of this, as we heard, is the designation of individuals who come as a group who are designated by the minister. Under the bill, the designation does not require that they have done anything wrong, that they be under any kind of suspicion or that there is any risk in connection with them. If you read carefully — and I would be happy to take questions on the provision of the bill — there is no wrongdoing, no suspicion or risk required for the minister, lawfully under Bill C-31, to designate that class of individuals and all the harsh consequences that befall them. There are many other discriminatory categories that Bill C-31 brings in, but I have not the time to list them now. Again, I would be happy to speak about that in more detail.
The second major concern is a violation of the right to be free from arbitrary detention and the right to liberty — both of which are protected in our Charter — and arbitrary detention of people who are aged 16 or older, with a possibility that children will be detained. Many people will be detained for over six and a half months under the bill and the new grounds for detention, which are extremely draconian and offer no opportunity to consider mitigating or humanitarian factors.
Our third concern is that Canada would be in violation of the principle of non-refoulement, the principle that we do not send people in danger back to their country of origin. This is due to the inadequate process that is envisioned by Bill C-31, the lack of appeal and the drastically and irrationally short timelines, which could be easily remedied by this committee.
In brief, those are our concerns. Since our time is short, I want to take a moment to think about the role of the Senate. I do not need to tell you, but for the record I wish to state that the Senate is a house of Parliament. As parliamentarians it is incumbent on the Senate not to pass laws that violate our constitution. As I mentioned before, Bill C-31 violates the rights to equality, liberty, to be free from arbitrary detention and to life and security of the person. That is, in fact, what will happen to people if they are sent back to danger.
It is the role of the Senate as parliamentarians to make sure that the executive branch — the government — does not give itself excessive powers without accountability, and in particular when those powers will violate people's fundamental, constitutional rights.
Finally, I have a word about Canadian history. Canadian history is marked by several stains, including the 1914 refusal to allow a boat of Sikh immigrants to land in Canada, the denial of entry to Jewish refugees in 1939 on the SS Saint Louis, the internment of Japanese Canadians during and after WWII, et cetera. History has judged us, and it will judge us again.
The question now is how will history remember us at this juncture? Will we jail innocents? Will we send desperate people back to danger? Will we take them in only to mistreat them? Will yours be the hands that sign off on a bill that is unconstitutional under Canadian law, a violation of international norms and a violation of basic human rights? You have the opportunity to make a difference. This bill did not get adequate time in the House of Commons. Take it and study it. There is a lot to be concerned about.
The Chair: Thank you very much, and now I will turn to our guests by video conference. Ms. Dauvergne, I understand your time is somewhat limited. I will go to you first for presentation. Please proceed.
Catherine Dauvergne, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of British Columbia, as an individual: Thank you. Can you hear me?
The Chair: Yes, absolutely.
Ms. Dauvergne: I will need to leave after about 50 minutes, and I apologize in advance for that.
My brief remarks today are addressed to the designated foreign national provisions of the bill. My background is as a researcher, teacher and scholar of refugee law in Canada and Australia. I will draw particularly on my knowledge of the Australian immigration detention system in these remarks.
There are three points that I want to make about the designated foreign national provisions in Bill C-31.
The first of these is that the amended detention regime for designated foreign nationals is unconstitutional. It is in breach of the refugee convention and a number of international human rights documents.
A review scheme that begins at 14 days and then goes to a six-month interval is simply far too long to remedy the charge that this is arbitrary detention. A more suitable time frame would be a 14-day review, followed by a 30-day review, then a 30-day review and so on. This is much more likely to pass constitutional scrutiny.
In Australia, the average time that an individual spends in immigration detention right now is approximately three months. Once somebody is detained in Australia, they are on a fast track for review of an asylum claim that they might make because the deprivation of liberty is viewed as a severe infringement. That is a comparison with what has, up until this point, been regarded as the most severe immigration detention system in the world. Our current provisions under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act have been very effective at balancing rights, achieving governmental objects and appropriate criminal sanctions where merited, as the recent charges arising from the MV Sun Sea arrival demonstrate.
The second point that I want to make is that depriving groups of people who are by definition the most desperate of appeal rights and family reunion rights is simply punitive.
There is no provision in the legislation that designates what a group can be. It could be as small as two people. That does not make any sense at all. These provisions are retroactive, which is a provision that is in breach of fundamental principles of the rule of law. The notion that children will be given a so-called choice of whether or not to be detained is an abuse of what the notion of choice is.
In the Australian system, once somebody is detained they have a fast track to an asylum determination and an automatic right to representation through legal aid. None of those options has been considered in implementing this regime in Bill C-31.
Finally, the third point I would like to make is that the experience in Australia demonstrates that severe, mandatory detention provisions will not actually deter people from arriving in boats. Evidence now emerging in Australia shows that a severe regime like this makes people smuggling more profitable. It is already a highly profitable industry. I do not know that we need to do anything to assist this industry to make more money.
The Australian experience of stripping out family reunion rights was that many more women and children began venturing to Australia in boats, and since 2007 Australia has stepped away from this kind of rights deprivation.
What we are referring to as “people smuggling” has been an essential mechanism for saving the lives of refugees throughout the 20th century.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Andrew Wlodyka, Partner, Wlodyka, MacDonald, Teng: Thank you. First of all I want to say that I come from a perspective of both an immigration practitioner and as a former assistant deputy chair of the Immigration and Refugee Board, so I know how difficult it is to strike a balance between an expeditious and a fair system. It is important that we understand that the status quo is not an option. We cannot afford to have a huge board to make decisions on determining refugee claimants.
The issue must be one to be expeditious and fair. In my judgment regarding balance, Bill C-31 is an attempt at being expeditious and fair. Even those people who come from designated countries have an appeal system that is the same as exists now, which has been in existence since 2002. Nothing has been taken away. An added appeal right has been provided for people who do not come from designated countries.
The only problem I have is that I would have preferred the previous language in the legislation, which allows for a more fine-tuning selection of groups within countries. Therefore, those people would still have appeal rights. Obviously, the Roma of Hungary and the Czech Republic are classic examples.
I believe that the government has listened in terms of changing the legislation for detention. It is similar to what is provided for security cases. Despite what some may say, I do believe that the amended legislation will pass judicial scrutiny and is not arbitrary. It is certainly a considerable improvement over the previous legislation.
One of the efforts in deterring people from coming over on ships is to make the overseas selection of refugee determination as transparent as it is in Canada. One of the significant problems — and I have this frustration as a practitioner — is that the offshore selection of refugees is not as transparent as in Canada, and it leads to immense frustration. Significant efforts must be taken to make it worthwhile to apply for asylum outside of Canada, so that it is not necessary to allow people to profit by hiring them to transport groups to Canada by boat.
I do not have a problem with the minister undertaking the responsibility of designating the countries. I believe the minister is accountable to Parliament and the public. Faceless experts are not accountable to anyone. In that sense, I disagree with other speakers. I have faith in our transparent system. The minister has that responsibility and can exercise it.
The only adjustment I would make would be that I do not believe it is appropriate to make orders not susceptible to public comment. I would prefer these designations, whether it is irregular arrivals or designated countries, to be made in the same way as regulatory provisions, to allow for public comment. That would certainly alleviate the situation much better.
I do not have a problem with different appeal rights, given that, at the very least, people would have the same right they have now.
I understand it is always difficult to choose, to make a balanced system, but clearly the status quo does not work. We have an enormous backlog, and some effort must be made to change that situation. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The Chair: Thank you both.
For the benefit of our witnesses, in particular the two of you on video conference, if a question is directed to another witness and one of you wishes to respond in some way, just signal with your hand and the chair will make certain you have a chance to intervene. The same goes for our table guests: Whomever the question is directed to, if others wish to respond, please signal to the chair that you wish to add to that.
I will now go to my colleagues and open the floor up to questions.
Senator Jaffer: Thank you very much, chair, for allowing me to ask questions. Chair, if you would agree, may I just ask questions of Ms. Dauvergne and then stop? My other colleagues may have questions of her. Then I will come back on a second round, because she will be with us only for 15 minutes.
The Chair: That is a very good suggestion, but we will see how it goes. Why not start and we will proceed the most efficient way possible?
Senator Jaffer: Thank you, chair.
I have a question for you, Ms. Dauvergne. In British Columbia, you are very well known for your work on these issues and especially your experience in Australia. I want to ask specific questions. I understand that in Australia they used to detain children under 16 years of age, and now I understand that both the U.K. and Australia have stopped detaining children because of the studies of the terrible, harmful effect that happens on asylum children who are detained. Can you please comment on that?
Ms. Dauvergne: Yes, that is correct. Australia has had extensive experience with what happens to children when they are placed in immigration detention. The most significant study was the one done by the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission that was published, I believe, in 2002, which I will send along to the clerk.
As a result of that study, Australia changed its detention regulations to state that detention of children will occur only as a last resort.
It is unfortunately the case that there are still some children in immigration detention in Australia when they are not able to find another solution and that other solutions have not been forthcoming as quickly as would be hoped. Since about one year ago, Australia has developed a scheme called community detention, which is essentially a release into the community. That is the prioritized route for families who would otherwise come within the mandatory detention regime in Australia. It is also Australian policy to release parents with their children, so that children can be cared for in the community by their parents when they are released into this community detention scheme. That is the new scheme of the past year.
I should also say that I am able to remain with the committee for 50 minutes, so I am sorry about the confusion.
Senator Jaffer: That is my fault, sorry. I will go on, then.
We heard what happened yesterday and looked at what has happened in the House of Commons in the transcripts there, and we have been given a lot of material.
I should not speak for my colleagues, but for myself. I definitely understand the minister wanting to take action. I respect that because there certainly is a need with the four- to six-year wait, which is not acceptable, and you want to keep the integrity of the system in place.
I have been struggling with what suggestions or what amendments we could suggest to improve on this bill. I will give you some examples. As a lawyer who has worked in this area for a long time, we know 15 days will not work. It is a dream. Those who practise in this area know 15 days will not work.
The second thing that will not work, certainly in my province of British Columbia, is that there is no increase in legal aid. I do not want to take too much time, but if a person arrives at a port, he has 15 days to find a lawyer to put in his basis of claim and submit that. It will not happen.
I would like to hear from you on that issue and other issues. We know what is wrong with this bill, but how could we improve on this bill so it will be effective? I would like to hear from anyone.
Mr. Goldman: The Barreau du Québec's position is that what was put before Parliament previously — the Balanced Refugee Reform Act — had many of the suggestions that we would make to improve the system. It has been commented that the status quo does not work, and we agree 100 per cent.
Refugees, advocates, government — nobody wants to see waits of two or three years for a decision. The Balanced Refugee Reform Act did provide for reasonable timelines: 60 to 90 days for a hearing and a quick appeal with access to everyone on paper to be done very quickly. We feel those were realistic timelines.
Therefore, while we do agree that the status quo does not work, we feel it is important not to throw out the baby with the bath water, so to speak. It is not because we have two or three delays that we need to have people deported on day 31 with no appeal and no possible review of their case.
I would like to comment on what Mr. Wlodyka said, that the people from designated countries have the same appeal rights as they do now and nothing less. That is not correct in the sense that they will no longer have effective access to the Federal Court. They could apply to the Federal Court, but they will no longer have a stay of their removal. As they will have no appeal right under Bill C-31 and no effective access to the Federal Court, they can, in theory, be removed 31 days after they arrive in Canada with no review of their case at all. Under the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, however, they would have access to an appeal.
Mr. Wlodyka: If I may, Mr. Chair, it is true that under the new amended legislation you would have to apply for a stay, but lawyers have been doing that for years. It is still possible to get a stay. We are only talking about those designated countries of origin. This is not the case for the majority of refugee claimants who will not be subjected to those restrictions. These people are coming from countries like the United States and from EU countries; it is not the same for someone coming from Afghanistan or from Somalia. We have to be realistic about this. If you start imposing all of these trappings, then you are back to square one and the status quo.
I agree with what my colleague was saying about legal aid. I think it is scandalous that the provinces do not provide it, especially in my province of British Columbia. It is a crisis there. British Columbia is lax in terms of providing the legal aid that it should be providing. Those are not issues of legislation but issues of money. If the provinces do not step up to the plate, it is up to the federal government to provide the necessary funding to make this system work. If you have legal aid and you have proper representation, then this system has a much better chance of succeeding. If you do not have legal aid and you do not have proper representation, then I agree with Senator Jaffer that problematic issues do arise.
Ms. Dauvergne: That is a wonderful question, namely, how could you amend this legislation. I agree with Mr. Goldman that the previously suggested timelines of 60 to 90 days are appropriate and workable, that the status quo and the long time lags are utterly unacceptable and that measures need to be taken to address those time lags.
I think that there is no strong public objective that is achieved by having the designated foreign national provisions and the new detention regime. I think those provisions should be taken out of the legislation. We have a good, workable detention regime. The one modification that particularly in British Columbia we are acutely aware of is that when you have a genuine mass arrival — that is, a group of 100 people arriving at the same time — the current schedule for detention review is not workable. A detention review schedule that starts at 15 days and moves to 30 days is a more appropriate schedule for a mass arrival situation because we have not been able to achieve what exists currently. Furthermore, it is inappropriate to have a law that the government has no hope of complying with.
One of the reasons for less advocacy occurring about the 15-day time limit is that I do not think many lawyers believe that will happen to anyone. I am not sure what the government strategy will be on day 16 after this comes into effect and we realize that those hearings are not occurring.
In the European Common Asylum directive a requirement for legal aid is written into the European law for individuals who are in the asylum system and are detained. It currently is treated as a question of money rather than law in Canada but that is only because it is not in our law.
Ms. Mendelsohn Aviv: To add a couple of points in terms of the difference in the appeal process for people from designated countries of origin and other categories, first, what happens at the Federal Court is not an appeal; it is judicial review and is far more limited in scope. Second, when the timelines are as dramatically and irrationally short as they are under the current bill, then there is more need for an appeal process than there was under the current Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
Senator Eaton: Thank you all for coming; very interesting points of view. I want to be educated.
Regarding the five-year hardship rule that you cannot return to the country of origin, did Mr. Langlais say that we do not send people back to the country of origin if there is danger? Help me understand: Obviously if you come to this country as a refugee, which I imagine is tremendously traumatic, why would you want to go back to a country that would present danger to you? We have seen what has happened to Canadian citizens who hold dual citizenships in countries like Iran or Syria and they get into trouble when they go back to their own countries. Why do you think this five-year law is such a hardship?
[Translation]
Mr. Langlais: The problem we have with the five-year rule is that, once people are admitted to the refugee process in Canada, they cannot go home for emergency reasons. We are not talking about a vacation, but for an emergency. Returning home means the loss of their status, even if the reason is completely humanitarian. Just think about the death of a loved one; it is human nature to want to be with your family at a time of bereavement. In that specific situation, people classed as irregular arrivals lose the protection they have been granted when all they want to do is be close to their families.
Certainly, we can see a conflict. But at the same time, there has to be a way to balance humanitarian values and a democratic society’s values.
Senator Eaton: Do you have studies or statistics on people who go back as soon as they have been accepted as refugees?
Mr. Langlais: Not in the case of the death or for
humanitarian reasons, no. It is just a reality of life. Things can happen.
Anything can happen in five years.
[English]
Senator Eaton: Mr. Wlodyka, you came forth with an interesting idea that perhaps we should be looking at accepting refugees outside Canada, before they get here, so they know what the prognosis or acceptance is, so to speak.
Could you elaborate on that? Say a country in Africa blows up. Do we open a refugee office? What do we do?
Mr. Wlodyka: At the moment, to educate you a little bit, decisions are made by visa officers. I have had cases like that where I actually attended interviews with claimants who have made refugee claims. They are usually designated by the UNHCR and they have been pre-screened. I can tell you from personal experience that the visa officers treat these claimants worse than dirt. I have had claimants who have been in my presence at embassies where they have had nervous breakdowns because of the nature of the questioning done by these officers. It is no surprise why people want to come to Canada physically to make a claim here because of the way they are treated by visa officers overseas. There have been many decisions by the Federal Court setting aside decisions by visa officers in the way that they handle refugee claims. That is part of the big problem, namely, the visa officers are not trained in the same way as members are trained. It is not as transparent a system. Do you know how difficult it is to do an overseas judicial review of a visa officer when you are representing a claimant designated by a church somewhere in the middle of Africa or in Egypt or things like that? That is a significant problem. You need to make the system as good outside as it is inside.
Ms. Dauvergne: I would add a little bit of information to what my colleague has said. In the Tehran visa office, I was speaking with a woman this past weekend who has been working there for some time. When a refugee wants to be resettled to Canada in that location, the processing time is about two years, and the Canadian visa officers do not accept the determinations of international officials from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. They take that evidence as a starting point only. The process of waiting there will be about two years in that particular location.
For somebody seeking resettlement in Australia, the process of waiting in Tehran is about two and a half months at present. There is clearly a way we can do better on this score, although it is not a complete response to what is happening in Bill C-31. I do not have any statistics about who needs to go home in an emergency in five years, but in a small circle of colleagues here in Vancouver we have had three people with pending claims return in the last few months that I know of, two of whom returned because young adult children were grievously injured and in intensive care. That is a situation in which I think almost any one of us would relinquish our current situation and go to be at a child's side. It is these kinds of situations that are problematic in that kind of bill.
There is a lot of difference between compelling somebody to return to a country and an individual exercising their own autonomy to make that decision.
Senator Martin: Thank you to all of you for the care with which you are examining this bill and advocating on behalf of the people you represent.
I am sort of looking at this from a slightly different perspective. I am not a legal expert, as many of you are, and I am looking at the intent of this bill, which is to achieve the kind of balance that Mr. Wlodyka pointed to in addressing the concerns that were before the minister and the officials before the BRRA, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, would come into full effect. Spikes in some of the asylum claimants from democratic EU countries went up 100 per cent to 5,800 people, for instance, from Hungary.
Looking at these mass arrivals in Canada, in the last 20 years we have not had that many. We know how many there are in total, but anticipating that these events could happen, there was a gap in what we would do.
Detention is not ideal, and we have all talked about that. I wonder what an alternative would be, in that detention is to provide the kind of time that is needed for the officials, the border officers and all of the counterparts involved to address the situation.
Looking at the ministerial powers, I wonder if you heard the minister's testimony yesterday in committee where, in terms of designating country of origin or, in the case of Minister Toews, designating a mass arrival, there are very specific criteria. These are not excessive powers in that it is not being transferred to anybody else but the ministers. It is a great responsibility and has the kind of transparency that is in the system that answers to a number of different stakeholders and groups that are watching at every turn.
I am making a statement more than asking specific questions. In the testimony we have heard thus far from ministers and officials as to the situation they are encountering and why these measures are in place, these are all mechanisms to protect the integrity of our immigration and refugee system and the integrity of Canada as a sovereign country, to really look at what is in the best interests of Canada as a whole.
We had testimony from Mr. De Angelis of the UNHCR, and he, too, talked about the kind of scrutiny and involvement he will have along the way in the implementation of this new legislation.
Did you have a chance to listen to any of the testimony yesterday? They were here and they are on record and answered most of your concerns.
Mr. Wlodyka: From what I have heard from the minister, this is a real, problematic issue. You have to separate refugee determination from permanent resident applications, whether it is unskilled workers, an entrepreneur, or if it is on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.
We have this problem that we are one of the few countries that has a system in place where people who have successfully completed the process of getting refugee determination can ultimately get permanent residency. Not all countries do that. Refugee determination, under the convention, talks about protection and not about permanent residence.
Where you have problems, and Mr. Langlais was talking about this, is when the person goes back to their home country. To me, that is really strange. If your life is at risk and you fled a country and then you are going back, however the problem is, does not make sense to me. That is appropriate for these bars. You cannot justify that.
We see this over and over again, where people have made refugee claims, end up going back to their countries, whether it is Sri Lanka to visit their relatives, and the whole idea of people going through the refugee determination system, saying they have a well-founded fear of persecution, that their life is at risk and then they go back as soon as they can, once they get a travel document or passport, to visit their relatives, there is something fundamentally wrong.
This provision of a five-year bar is designed to deter people from doing that. If you want to be able to go and visit your relatives right away after getting permanent residency, apply as a skilled worker and an entrepreneur, get a work permit and come to Canada, but do not use the refugee determination system and then hoodwink us into believing your life is at risk, and as soon as you get a travel document off you go to visit your relatives. That does not make sense to me.
Mr. Goldman: I would like to point out that the Barreau du Québec's concern about the five-year hardship after a person who is a designated irregular arrival gets permanent residency is not so much about visiting the country. It is about not being able to bring your family members here for family reunification or not having access to permanent residency. That is our main concern.
That said, I would like to address some of the points that have been raised. Senator, you mention that the minister feels we are facing a crisis in terms of arrivals. I have available the statistics of the number of refugee claimants who have arrived in Canada in the last four years.
In 2008 it was 37,000; 2009, 33,000; 2010, 23,000; 2011, so last year, 25,000, and this year, according to the monthly figures, we are on track to about 22,000.
It is hard for us to understand what crisis there is, when we have gone down from 37,000 to the low 20 thousands in the last four years, that caused the minister to want to sideline Bill C-11, which was going to come into effect at the end of this month, and introduce dramatic new measures.
You mentioned the UNHCR's testimony yesterday. I would like to refer to the brief they submitted to Parliament, to which I believe you have access. This is on the designated safe country. It is important to note about the designated safe country that the general assessment of certain countries of origin as safe be based on reliable, objective and up-to-date information from a range of sources. The assessment needs to take account not only of international instruments ratified or existing legal frameworks, but also of the actual degree of respect for human rights and the rule of law evidenced in the country's human rights record as a whole.
The UNHCR does not disagree with the whole concept of safe country. It agrees that it might play a role, as it says, as a “procedural tool to prioritize or accelerate the examination of applications,” as long as the human rights records of those countries are taken into consideration. In its Recommendation No. 9, UNHCR recommends that a designation of a country as a DCO be based on objective, reliable and up-to-date information and be decided by a panel of experts. That is what the UNHCR is saying on record, and also that persons from designated countries of origin, and every other claimant, be allowed a right of appeal.
I will end with this quote from paragraph 49 of their submission:
The right to appeal is a fundamental requirement of a fair and efficient asylum procedure, to which no exception should be made. At the core of the 1951 Convention lies the principle of non-refoulement, whereby those with protection needs cannot be returned to a place where they will be at risk of persecution. . . .
Or serious human rights violations, including loss of life.
The purpose of a second review through an appeals mechanism is to ensure that errors of fact or law at the first instance . . .
Decision making.
. . . can be corrected, to avoid injustice and to ensure respect for the principle of non-refoulement.
Recommendation No. 13: The UNHCR recommends that all asylum seekers have access to an appeal on the merits to the Refugee Appeal Division.
Ms. Dauvergne: In response to your question, yes, I am familiar with the minister's position regarding the detention provisions that I have been speaking of today. I do not think, and I am not persuaded, that there is anything that requires us to have a detention regime where people are detained for six months without access to a court. That is in breach of a basic principle of oversight of what is in fact administrative detention.
I do not think there is an issue here of Canadian integrity, unless it is our integrity as a human-rights-respecting nation. Certainly, we need to consider why we would choose to step away from those fundamental obligations at this point in time without a crisis.
Ms. Mendelsohn Aviv: Senator Martin, thank you for your questions.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, I will speak for myself, but I know many others have been following this since the first bill, Bill C-49, was introduced over a year and a half ago. Although I did not hear the minister's testimony yesterday, I am extremely familiar with his position and have read his public statements and the Hansard on variation occasions.
This needs to be addressed and it is important. If we are talking about the intent of a bill, when it comes to designating what has been called in the bill “irregular arrivals” — and I know the language has shifted in this committee to “mass arrivals” — either way, that is one of the ways in which people escaping danger may be able to organize to get out. That is the way the Jewish refugees tried to escape from Hitler's Germany. They got on a boat and they got out. We should be concerned because visa offices are not available in every place where people are in danger.
If we look at the section that authorizes the minister to designate an irregular arrival, it is extremely broad. It says, in clause 10 of the bill, that:
The Minister may, by order, having regard to the public interest, designate as an irregular arrival the arrival in Canada of a group of persons if he or she
(a) is of the opinion that examinations of the persons in the group, particularly for the purpose of establishing identity or determining inadmissibility — and any investigations concerning persons in the group — cannot be conducted in a timely manner . . .
That is covered under our current immigration act. Administrative convenience in establishing identity is covered in a fair and reasonable way under the immigration act. And when the MV Sun Sea came, people were detained for a long time, some may say too long. Under our current act, those provisions are there; they provide for this.
The second category, which again is extremely broad, is if the minister “has reasonable grounds to suspect that, in relation to the arrival in Canada of the group” — not that anyone in the group did it, but in relation to the arrival — “there has been, or will be, a contravention of subsection 117(1)” — which is the human smuggling provision — “for profit, or for the benefit of, at the direction of or in association with a criminal organization or terrorist group.”
In other words, if someone out there engaged in human smuggling and the poor, vulnerable people arrived in Canada, they are the ones who will be designated. It is, on its face, irrational to penalize people in relation to whom a crime was committed.
I wanted to make a couple of other points, because you asked a number of different questions.
The Chair: Could you do that rather focused? This is taking a fair amount of time.
Ms. Mendelsohn Aviv: Sure. There is one other point that I wanted to make in terms of the five-year bar. A lot has been said about permanent residence, but lack of access to a travel document also means that a person would not be able to go to a third country to see a family member. We know that where there are situations of refugees — and anyone who has friends who have been in that situation — people will go wherever they can to find safety, so one may end up in Finland and one in Canada. They may not need to go back to danger but still want to travel to see family members when they have lost everything.
Senator Seidman: I would like to go back to the designated country provision discussion we were having. There was something said — a lot said, actually — that the minister is granted too much power in determining which countries are safe.
In fact, it is my understanding that the minister does not have the power to determine that in a subjective way but that there are quantitative and qualitative criteria, outlined in clauses 58 and 84 of Bill C-31, the proposed bill. Quantitative factors to be considered are the number of asylum claims from the country that are abandoned or withdrawn and the number of asylum claims rejected by the independent Immigration and Refugee Board, for example, and these factors are very specific. There are qualitative aspects as well; the country in question will be reviewed by Citizenship and Immigration Canada officials. In fact, qualitative aspects such as the human rights record of the country in question and the availability of mechanisms for seeking protection and redress will be considered.
Just to go on, to tell you how many factors and criteria are actually listed in regulation and will be listed in regulation and in law in this bill: Recognizing that a country might not be safe in all regions, for all groups, is available as well, so that a particular part of a country could be specified or a class of nationals could be specified as not falling within the safe country designation.
That is my understanding of the bill. I am making the observation here that we have not really dealt with that. We have said that it is the minister's subjective power and authority to make that decision. I do not think the bill says that. I think that Mr. Goldman was the one who first mentioned it, and I do believe that Mr. Wlodyka had some observations about this. I would appreciate hearing from him in terms of what he might add to this.
Mr. Goldman: I appreciate your comments about section 58. I have it right in front of me. There are two words missing from that section: “human rights.” This is just for cases, a small number of cases, I believe, where it talks about independent judicial system, democratic rights, civil society. With all due respect, that is not the same as the human rights record of the country.
Again, I think it is useful to look at the international bodies that have appeared before your committee and the parliamentary committee. I refer you to paragraph 32 of the UNHCR submission, where it is recommended that the actual degree of respect for human rights and the rule of law, evidenced in the human rights record of the country, be relevant criteria. They were criteria under Bill C-11. There was an independent panel of experts. It seems that the minister saw the importance of those criteria and that panel of experts. The Barreau du Québec is at a loss as to why it is to the advantage to take out those two safeguards, the criteria of respect for human rights and the independent panel of experts.
Mr. Wlodyka: I believe that the criteria that you have highlighted do provide the kind of protections that people need in terms of showing objective criteria for designating countries.
If you look in clause 58 at paragraph (b)(ii), “basic democratic rights and freedoms are recognized and mechanisms for redress are available if those rights are infringed.” What else are human rights? That is exactly what is provided in there. You do not need two other words put in there.
Civil society organizations exist. You have UNHCR and Amnesty International. All of those organizations exist to make sure that these countries handle these issues based on the rule of law. You have an independent judicial system. The minister has the tools to do the job. I prefer the minister to do the job. He is accountable to the public. He is accountable to Parliament. Are you suggesting that the government officials are incapable of doing this job and giving proper advice to the minister? Frankly, I disagree with that.
You are putting in faceless experts who are not accountable to anyone. Frankly, this is a much better provision than the previous provision in the previous legislation, and I commend the minister for doing it.
I have trust in the minister. I have trust in the government officials. I believe that they can do a proper job, and it is transparent enough in terms of publishing it. I would prefer a regulatory system that people could comment on as opposed to an order. However, in terms of the actual legislation, I think that you, Madam Senator, have pointed out absolutely that this does provide the required protection.
[Translation]
Mr. Langlais: As a final comment, I would like to remind you of our opposition to this on page 4 of the letter of April 20. The last part of our comment reads:
The Barreau is afraid that, with no such guarantees, provided by an expert panel, the vagaries of politics and economics may well take precedence over principles of fairness and of law.
You just have to think of the purely economic considerations,
Canada's obligations to our economic partners. Take Mexico as an example, a
free-trade partner of ours. No one around this table, or probably anywhere else
in our society, will admit that there is a ban on homosexuality. But day after
day, we see decisions that confirm the discrimination faced by homosexuals in
Mexico. But we cannot say that too loudly as it puts Mexico, a trading partner,
in a bad light. Except that the Barreau’s concern is precisely that, that
economic concerns may be placed ahead of humanitarian concerns, by which we mean
the goals of the convention and of international law.
[English]
Senator Wallace: I was interested to hear a couple of you comment. Ms. Dauvergne, who I guess has now departed, is one who made such comments.
Mr. Wlodyka: Yes, she has departed.
Senator Wallace: Ms. Mendelsohn Aviv, you commented as well on the constitutionality of the bill. I believe that both of you made the comment that you felt that it was contrary to the Charter, to the UN convention and to the UN protocols. I was very interested to hear that. When the minister was here with his staff, I specifically asked that very question, whether they were of the view that it was not in violation of the Charter, the UN protocol and the UN convention. He left no doubt in my mind that he felt that it was in full compliance. I am not surprised. We have many bills before us. I can think of very few times when we have had the Canadian Bar Association or the Barreau du Québec appearing before us that it has not been suggested that a particular bill is contrary to the Charter. We do hear that. It is not to say that it could not be legitimate, but we seem to hear that with every bill that comes before us. How do we reconcile that? How do we take the minister and his staff's opinion and reconcile it with yours?
Ms. Mendelsohn Aviv: That is a tough question because, in effect, I think it is asking me to explain the minister's position when I see something that appears unconstitutional. We also have Supreme Court of Canada decisions that have said that provisions far less dramatic than these are unconstitutional. Take, for example, the Charkaoui case, in which somebody who was suspected of no less than terrorism and who was put on a security certificate for that purpose was put in administrative detention for 120 days. That is less than half the period that most people are likely going to be sitting in detention under this bill. The Supreme Court of Canada said that 120 days is arbitrary detention and is a violation of section 10 of our Charter. We have Supreme Court of Canada decisions about discrimination. The Supreme Court has not talked about immigration status, but we are not even comparing different classes of immigrants here. We are comparing refugees and refugees. How do you explain the fact that a designated foreign national would have different grounds of detention, for example, than a non-designated foreign national, both of whom may be asylum seekers? How do you explain the fact that Canada has put this person through a process and has determined that, “Although you were designated upon arrival, you are now a refugee. We recognize that your claim is, in fact, accurate. The sad story that you told us is, in fact, genuine. You have your refugee status. Nonetheless, you have to wait five years before you can get permanent resident status and before you can leave the country. Do you want to set up a business in the United States like many Canadians do? You cannot do that because you have not got a travel document.” Yet, somebody else who got refugee status in Canada would be able to get a travel document. How do you explain that other than extraordinarily obvious and arbitrary discrimination?
I suppose it goes without saying that it has been many years since Canada turned away refugees. I am grateful for that, but we certainly do have Supreme Court of Canada decisions saying that we are responsible for sending people to situations of danger and not just when they are innocent. Even for people who may have committed offences, if we want to send them back to a place where there is a death penalty, our Supreme Court has said that that is not on. It would be a violation of our Charter if we, responsible for this person — they are in our custody — send them back to a danger to their life, which is section 7 of the Charter.
I cannot explain to you how the minister reconciles it. I certainly see it as extraordinarily unconstitutional.
Mr. Wlodyka: When you look at the security provisions that are in the current legislation, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, those current detention provisions are done by a Federal Court judge, and the timelines are sort of similar to what is in the new proposed legislation. I tend to favour the view the minister has of this law. We are talking about people who have invariably used organized criminals to come into Canada. These people are not blind and naïve. They know exactly what they are doing. They are paying $30,000 to $40,000 to $50,000 to get on a boat to ship them across to the country.
You have to look at this process not in isolation but in terms of the global thing — making overseas refugee determination fairer. You have to also realize that people have other means of applying for permanent residence to Canada. We cannot just look at these provisions in isolation.
I think a lot of rhetoric is used in terms of these people. These people are not refugees. They are refugee claimants. It is a different situation. These people, if they are in detention and are legitimate refugees, will be out of detention faster if we have a system that is able to get to them, hear their cases quickly and make decisions to get them out of the system.
We have to create that system that makes quick decisions, and we cannot look at these things in isolation.
A court that is reviewing the detention provision will be looking at the whole picture globally and not just in isolation. Thank you, senator.
Senator Wallace: Mr. Wlodyka, you said earlier that the status quo is not working, and I think you then went on to speak about the processing time that it takes for asylum seekers, and you have touched upon some other issues. Bill C-31 seeks to address these problems with the status quo. Are there any other issues you would see as significant shortcomings in the existing system that you feel Bill C-31 addresses and addresses satisfactorily?
Mr. Wlodyka: First of all, I think one of the important things is that you want the refugee determination system to really deal with real refugees by creating a system whereby people who come from refugee-producing countries have all of the protections that are available. Those other countries, EU countries, countries like the United States, are still going to have access to a refugee determination system, but they are not going to be going through the appeals that drag this whole process on and on and on so it is four to six years later and huge backlogs are developed. You will not be able to hire enough board members to deal with all of the cases. Some effort has to be made to make the system expeditious and fair, because if it is expeditious and fair, then issues such as detention will not be as big an issue because they will be out of detention because their claims will be resolved quickly. If you have all of these roadblocks, you end up back at square one, and we have accomplished nothing. Then huge gobs of money will have to be thrown in, which we do not have. Thank you.
Senator Wallace: Thank you for that.
Mr. Goldman: If I could respond to a couple of those points, in terms of being expeditious and fair, at the risk of repeating ourselves, we do feel that the 60 to 90 days in the Balanced Refugee Reform Act were very reasonable, but once we are getting down to 30 days for a hearing, it just becomes impossible to find legal counsel, properly get evidence or even begin to deal with overcoming trauma of torture, sexual assault and so on.
In terms of the backlog of cases, we do all agree that things should move much more quickly. We just do not think they should move as quickly as 30 days. A large part of the backlog has to do with the under-resourcing of the Immigration and Refugee Board, and this problem will continue. If it is not properly resourced, then nothing will improve, no matter what timelines are written on paper.
Mr. Wlodyka mentioned that he felt the intention of this law is that people who come from refugee-producing countries will have all the protections, but some others will be fast-tracked. Under the designation of irregular arrivals, it has nothing to do with what country you come from. You could be coming from Sri Lanka, Eritrea, Somalia or Syria. You are designated an irregular arrival, which means that a group, which as Ms. Dauvergne pointed out is not defined and could be as few as two people, shows up with false documents, with the assistance of any type of smuggler. They can be designated an irregular arrival and suffer all the dramatic consequences.
Since attention is given, I think justifiably, to the view of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, I would like to read into the record their comment on the irregular arrival differentiation. At paragraph 8 of their brief they say this designation is also problematic from a non-discrimination point of view. UNHCR does not believe that the stated grounds for the designation as irregular arrival provide for a legitimate justification for substantially differentiated treatment of refugees and asylum seekers with respect to detention, access to an appeal or access to permanent residency. The legislation may therefore be at variance with human rights-based, non-discrimination guarantees, example, Articles 2 and 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and also Article 3 of the 1951 refugee convention.
[Translation]
Senator Verner: I would just like to go back to your view — I would like to go back to it quickly even though it was dealt with fully — about people losing refugee status for going back to their countries. I venture to say that the point of view that you have expressed is certainly shared by a large majority of Canadians. But that said, my question goes to you all.
Logically, a person obtained refugee status because he feared for his life in his own country. Having obtained the status, imagine that he goes back to his country for whatever reason, to see his family, for an emergency or for humanitarian reasons. If he goes back for an emergency, you would like to hope that the country will respect his right to life and would back off during the visit for humanitarian reasons. But if the country really is one where human rights are not observed and our person ends up in danger of his life or of being imprisoned, could you tell me what Canada's obligations are at that point?
[English]
The Chair: Mr. Wlodyka, you were mentioned specifically. Do you have any comment to make on this?
Mr. Wlodyka: Until the person is actually a Canadian citizen, Canada does not have any legal obligations to that person. Canada's obligation is to protect that person while they are in Canada. They have been designated as a refugee. As they are not citizens yet, the legal obligation would be on the state that the person is a citizen of. If they go back and they are Canadian citizens, then it depends on which passport they use to go back on. We heard the story of these Iranian Canadians who have gone back using an Iranian passport, so Iran does not consider them to be Canadian citizens, because as a Canadian citizen you need a visa to go to Iran. If you have got a citizenship, then clearly you have to travel getting a visa as a Canadian citizen. Someone who is not even a permanent resident yet, in my judgment, we do not have any legal obligation as a state to offer protection to that person if he ends up back in prison.
Again, it goes back to the fundamental thing. I cannot understand why a person fleeing a country because they are afraid for their life would then go back to the very country where they were fearing for their life. To me, if you wanted to avoid all of that, then approach Immigration and apply for a skilled worker work permit that way, and then you do not have to worry about any of this.
(French follows — M. Langlais: Les dispositions relativement au retour)
[Translation]
Mr. Langlais: Provisions dealing with someone who has been granted refugee status returning to their home currently exist in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act we have at the moment. These provisions mean that anyone returning for reasons other than the permitted ones causes the status granted by the board to lapse. Currently, it is seldom, if ever, used, to my knowledge. My colleagues could confirm that.
What we are heading towards is a situation whereby someone in the designated category leaves the country for humanitarian reasons or in an emergency will lose his or her status. We have two systems depending on whether or not people arrive legitimately in a designated country, if they come from a designated country or not. Why should one lose status and the other not?
Secondly, there is a big problem in that the benefit that Canada provides is certainly permanent residence. Five to eight years can easily go by before families can be reunited. That is a very long time. Is it humane to keep families apart for that long? That is the basic question. The Barreau du Québec is strongly against any restrictions to family reunification that might contravene article 10 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. As things stand, separating families could violate that article.
So, in terms of your first point, I agree with what has been
said, that Canada has no obligation. But, when you think about it, there is more
to be said.
[English]
Ms. Mendelsohn Aviv: I want to bring in some clarity. I feel like we have been talking a lot about this hypothetical person who goes back to their country of origin. That is almost irrelevant to Bill C-31. None of the provisions that we have been talking about — the designation of groups, the designation of mass arrivals, the discrimination, the detention, which have to do with the inadequate process, the lack of appeal and the very short timelines — none of that is in relation to a person who has gone back to their country of origin at any point along the process.
There is a piece, as Mr. Langlais said, that addresses that in our current immigration act. Most of what Bill C-31 is doing, the vast majority of it, is in relation to people who arrive in Canada and say, “There is danger in my country of origin. I cannot go back. I want refugee status.” Some of them will face an inadequate process and be sent back potentially. Some of them ultimately may be recognized as refugees; nonetheless, they are going to be detained arbitrarily as a group, so on. Most of what we are concerned about in Bill C-31 has nothing to do with this piece of it. I want to put things in perspective and in proportion. Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Verner: I have one comment. Mr. Langlais, when you
say that families cannot be separated, the decision to do so was not the
Government of Canada’s. In this whole process, I feel that the individuals made
the decision to do that.
[English]
Senator Merchant: I will deal with something a little bit differently with regard to irregular arrivals. Mr. Wlodyka and Mr. Goldman touched on the costs. We have a system that is very costly. The Australian experience is that holding them or treating them the way that we do has not acted as a deterrent. The supplementary estimates tabled in Parliament in February 2010 revealed that the Canada Border Services Agency spent over $22 million for 492 detentions from the MV Sun Sea.
Mr. Wlodyka said that we have a very expensive system. You have also had some concerns that there is not enough money in the provincial treasuries to help these people with services such as lawyers and hearings. Are we misguided in treating the irregular arrivals differently than we treat other asylum seekers? What do you see as a remedy? Many of you have talked about the costs.
Mr. Wlodyka: When we are dealing with irregular arrivals, we have to understand that these people have engaged criminal organizations to get them here; so this is a fundamental thing. It is not just somebody getting a false passport and coming here on a plane. They have engaged a large criminal organization. It is difficult to prosecute people if they are not here. Usually the profiteers are in a third country. We have to use methods to discourage people from using that kind of system.
One way of doing it, obviously, is to face the prospect of detention if you come by way of a ship. If you can have an expedited refugee determination system, the people who are genuine refugees who are willing to take that risk will be pulled out of the system; but there has to be a deterrent. Another way of deterring the use of this kind of irregular activity is to make the overseas process more transparent so that people do not end up waiting two, three or four years at a visa post abroad to get designated as a refugee so they can come to Canada. We have to look at the whole global thing.
Other people are using it simply to come to Canada, expecting that they will be tied up in a backlog long enough to be able to establish roots on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. A lot of people who came on boats, the most recent arrivals, already had family here in Canada who basically funded their trip here through the criminal organizations. They are able to post bonds and obtain lawyers for them. You have to look at the reality of the situation. We cannot have these people doing this. We need to put deterrent mechanisms in place that show there is a cost for them to do this. The vast majority of refugee claims by irregular arrivals, and I do not have the up-to-date statistics, have been turned down. The Canadian taxpayer has funded $22 million for a lot of the cases that are not successful refugee claimants.
You have to look at this issue globally and understand that the minister has a tough job. He has to make a designation based on criteria around who is an irregular arrival and who is not. He will have to use the criteria set out in the legislation. If he does not, that order he makes could be challenged in court. Remember, if it is based on trade agreements with a third country where there may be some military considerations, it is an irrelevant consideration. That person could challenge that order in court as it applies to him.
The minister will be under the gun to make decisions that are justifiable in law as reviewed by a court, which ultimately might be the case. However, you have to deter people from doing this. If we do nothing, there will be more boats, more backlogs, and we will achieve nothing. We will be back to square one, and nobody wants that.
Mr. Goldman: Thank you for the question, Senator Merchant. I think it is very important that this committee understands what we are really talking about. Mr. Wlodyka said it is not just two people who jump on a plane with false passports. Unfortunately, that is not correct.
A provision of the proposed law, clause 10 of Bill C-31, proposes to amend section 20 of the Balanced Refugee Reform Act. The minister may by order, et cetera, designate as an irregular arrival in Canada a group of persons. “Group” is defined nowhere. A group could be two persons, at least according to the dictionary. If you as a committee believe that the intention is just to designate groups of 50 or 100 or 25, send it back to the minister and say, “Please be clear that you are talking about a group of a substantial size.” What does this group of two people or more have to do? Well, the minister has to be of the opinion that the examination of a number of things, including their identity, cannot be conducted in a timely manner.
With all due respect to Mr. Wlodyka, two people who jump on a plane with false passports, whether from Syria, Iran, Eritrea or another human rights abuser of your choice, could be designated with all the drastic consequences that you have been hearing for the last hour and a half: mandatory detention, no family reunification for five years, no appeal, and so on. It is very, very important that we be clear what we are talking about.
Ms. Mendelsohn Aviv: I want to address this issue that we must deter people from coming. That was Canada's feeling many years, many decades ago. The world community got together and passed a refugee convention saying that we must do things differently. If people escape danger, then we must take them in. We must exercise our humanitarian abilities and rescue people from danger when we are able. If a few hundred people come to Canada desperately in need of safety and we have a process under our law, as we would have under Bill C-11 had it been passed, then we must take them in, and we do not need to mistreat them in the process. We do not need to deter people who are escaping danger. There is no requirement, there is no need and there is no crisis, as has been stated.
Senator Jaffer: I want to clear up something that was said by Mr. Wlodyka about visa officers. I know he did not mean that, but I want to ensure that none of us in this committee think that all visa officers are —
The Chair: Of the nature described.
Senator Jaffer: Yes. I have worked with hundreds of visa officers and we can be very proud of them. A visa officer saved my life, so I have a lot of respect for visa officers.
I will ask for very short answers, and it does not matter who answers my questions.
A 17-year-old child comes to Canada under irregular arrivals, so he is a designated foreign national. He gets detained, has a 14-day review and is given six months in jail. Are we breaching the Convention on the Rights of the Child?
Ms. Mendelsohn Aviv: Yes, a child is anyone under the age of 18. They do not even have to be 17; they need only appear 17. They might be 15.
Senator Jaffer: I have real concern about the detention, especially of the unaccompanied child. Even Australia and the U.K. have stopped that. France has an amazing program for unaccompanied children. Yet, we are detaining those children. We will not give them permanent residence or sponsorship for five years, which is punitive. The convention says you are not to punish. I am convinced that the courts will not uphold this. It is punitive; it is treating people differently. For the record, what convention are we breaching?
Ms. Mendelsohn Aviv: With your permission, senator, I would like to talk about what it will cost us financially, if Canadians are concerned about costs.
The Chair: Could you first answer the question that was asked? If we have time for additional information, we may go there, but we are getting into the last segment of this hearing and the senator asked a specific question. Could you address that question?
Ms. Mendelsohn Aviv: Arbitrary detention is prohibited under the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights.
Senator Jaffer: What about sponsorship, reunification of family?
Mr. Goldman: It is covered by both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Senator Jaffer: My next question is on humanitarian and compassionate application and the pre-removal risk assessment. We know that for hundreds of reason, none of which are the fault of the refugee, their application can be turned down. We had the humanitarian convention and we had the pre-removal risk assessment. Now they have to choose. If they choose the hearing route, you have to wait for one year to learn whether they can do the PRRA. I have great concerns about that.
Mr. Wlodyka: This is exactly the point I was making. Are we dealing with an immigration system or a refugee determination system? I find absolutely nothing wrong with having that choice. If you choose to go on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, then that is the way you should go. You can make a humanitarian application in Canada or outside of Canada, but refugee determination is for people who genuinely fear persecution. You need to make that choice.
Where the issue is problematic and where I made that comment is in the question of legal aid and proper funding so that refugee claimants can make an informed choice on which way they want to go and have access to lawyers and that kind of thing. If you do not have that in place, the issue becomes more problematic.
However, in principle I believe that refugee determination should be a system for refugees, people who fear persecution. If you are raising humanitarian and compassionate concerns, that is not for refugee determination. If we end up with both in the stream, we are back to developing a huge backlog, encouraging people to use irregular arrivals, not because they have any fear of persecution but they will be tied up in the backlog and can use that backlog to develop roots here and have family here, hoping that at the end of the day they will be able to come to Canada on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. What about all the other people who followed the system and applied offshore? These people become queue jumpers and are not refugees at all. In fact, as with the latest ship, most of these people are being turned down and the Government of Canada has paid $22 million of taxpayers' money.
Senator Jaffer made a comment about visa officers. I have only been speaking about those visa officers with whom I have had personal experience from attending interviews. I am not suggesting that all visa offers act the same way.
Mr. Goldman: As to the acceptance rate for people who arrived on the Sun Sea, I do not have the statistic. I understood that the acceptance rate was high. Since Mr. Wlodyka does not have it either, I would strongly suggest that the committee get that information if you are going to take that into account in your deliberations.
In terms of the post-claim recourses, the humanitarian and compassionate and the pre-removal risk assessment, the Barreau du Québec's main concern is that there will be no avenues for any type of review for many claimants.
Clause 36(2) of Bill C-31 creates a list of seven exceptions of groups that will not have access to the Refugee Appeal Division. We will finally, after decades of talking about it, have a Refugee Appeal Division of Canada, yet it seems that perhaps the majority of claimants will not have access to it.
Tied with that is that those same claimants who do not have access to the Refugee Appeal Division will also not have access in any effective manner to the Federal Court. Mr. Wlodyka said that is no big deal, that if you do not have a stay of removal automatically, you just go for a stay. This is getting a bit technical, but to put together a stay of removal at the Federal Court requires many hours or days of procedures. It is a very heavy thing and usually is not covered by legal aid. It is very expensive and most people will not have access.
Many people under 36(2) will not have access to the Refugee Appeal Division. Tied in with that, they will not have access to the Federal Court. Also, due to the way the law is worded, they will not have access to a humanitarian and compassionate application. It is true that that does not cover the same material as a refugee claim. It covers best interests of the child, family ties and so on. They will not have access to the pre-removal risk assessment, so the checks and balances that were in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that were supposed to continue in the Balanced Refugee Reform Act are virtually all being removed with Bill C-31.
Senator Jaffer: I want to talk about the irregular arrival where, for administrative reasons, a person can be held. The impression is sometimes left in committee that we are talking about a few, a maximum of 1,000 boat people. Two per cent came that way last year.
I am talking generally about people who come here — for whatever reason — and are classified as irregular arrivals and will therefore be designated foreign nationals and will not get permanent residence for five years and will not be able to sponsor their families for five years. This is a much bigger class than we can imagine, and this will lead to many problems.
Can you please speak about that?
Ms. Mendelsohn Aviv: One of the problems is that people will be held in arbitrary detention and it will cost Canadians a huge amount of money, both in keeping people in detention and in paying them reparations and compensation. The U.K. recently paid out 2 million pounds for detaining only 40 children and youth, in some cases for less than one month. We are talking about detaining people for six and a half months.
We also have a problem as a result of designating people that they would also be held on stricter grounds of detention than any other category of people. Therefore, where other people have to reasonably cooperate in helping to establish their identity, these individuals have to proof-positive establish their identity to the satisfaction of the minister, something that may be difficult to do when you are thousands of miles from home. It might not have been safe for you to travel with travel documents. Perhaps your human rights abuser regime does not give you travel or identity documents that you can use. Perhaps the people in your home country are also in danger and you cannot reach them, or they are sitting in a refugee camp and you cannot reach them.
These stricter grounds of detention apply to these so-called irregular arrivals, who are simply people who have tried to find safety.
Senator Eaton: The witnesses have talked a great deal about mandatory detention.
Mr. Wlodyka, tell me about detention and children. Are children separated from their parents? Are they not fed or schooled? Is it like going to jail? What does detention involve? I do not know.
Mr. Wlodyka: From my limited experience in dealing with the detention of children, there is still the principle that the detention of a child is a last resort. You have child welfare agencies coming into the picture to look after the children.
Senator Eaton: Are they separated from their parents?
Mr. Wlodyka: They can be. Sometimes arrangements are that they are together. I believe these cases are dealt with on an individual basis. Each case may be very different, but we are talking about arbitrary detention. Do not forget there is an integration division member who will be dealing with the detention at first instance. If the identity is established, the minister himself or his representatives will be able to intervene to expedite the release of individuals.
The system is really designed to deter people from putting themselves into this position in the first place by using other means. You cannot have a foolproof system. If you take away some of the deterrents, then we are back to square one again. It is not an easy solution.
Senator Eaton: I do not disagree with you at all. I am picturing myself running from a country where I am in danger; I can be persecuted. I have two little kids. The detention centre in Canada is reasonably clean, I am getting three squares a day and no one will shoot me. Is that so terrible, and how long are these claimants detained, on average?
Mr. Wlodyka: The criteria depend. At the present time, with the immigration division member, the judicial review is normally required within 48 hours. Then it is seven days, 30 days and then 30 days as it goes on. There are some presumptive provisions in the legislation in terms of identity; the minister has to show reasonable effort to establish the identity of the individual. As long as the minister is making a reasonable effort to establish identity, then that is sufficient to keep the person detained.
At the point in time where the immigration division member is no longer satisfied that the minister is making reasonable efforts to establish the identity of an individual, the immigration division member can order release on terms and conditions.
That immigration division member will still be there and will still be able to order release on terms and conditions, if the minister does not justify the efforts that are being made to identify these individuals.
The immigration division members are public servants. They are very well trained. They have bent over backwards in terms of facilitating the releases of individuals. Many times, the ministers have to go to Federal Court to get stay orders. They are very cognizant of their responsibility, especially with children and parents, to facilitate release at the earliest available opportunity. No one wants to keep children in detention.
The Chair: I think you have answered the bulk of the question and we are running out of time.
Senator Martin: I wanted to put something on the record because some things were mentioned. I want to add additional information regarding the five-year ban and the concern that we have of what we will do with these refugees. In terms of the benefits that they are entitled to, I asked this question specifically to the officials because it is a concern for all Canadians that they will get the protected-person status, that they have the benefits of the Interim Federal Health Program, and that they will receive a work permit and social assistance. As a Canadian society, we are taking these measures to ensure they are given these benefits.
I did ask the minister's office regarding very specific travel for some of these refugees. Case by case, the minister will take into consideration and provide things under exceptional circumstances. As you say, we are talking about exceptional cases. However, again, there are these exceptions that the minister is aware of.
In regard to this whole system, every claimant is entitled to a fair and independent hearing with the IRB and they will have access to one recourse mechanism.
I have one question for Mr. Wlodyka. With the IRB decision maker who is interviewing and reviewing a case, from your experience, if there are claimants who are too traumatized to speak, the documents are difficult to get a hold of, et cetera, have there been exceptional cases where extensions have been given in these exceptional circumstances so there is that slight flexibility within the system?
Mr. Wlodyka: Yes. As a former board member, I sat on refugee cases. If the claimant is traumatized and not able to give their evidence, you will postpone the case. If you do not, the Federal Court will set aside your decision, anyway, whether you have access to the immigration RAD or not.
The answer to the question is that the system with the rules in place from the refugee board will be flexible enough to allow for situations such as that and to make some accommodation. In most cases, it will not be necessary. Most refugee claimants are able to give their evidence. The initial decision makers will be public servants and not GIC appointees. The GIC appointees will be with RAD.
The public servants will be selected through a competition system very much like the immigration division members. I have ultimate faith that the public servants will do a very good job of making that first important decision. It is really the critical thing to make that first hearing fair and make the decision right in the first instance. Then you do not need to worry so much about the appeal mechanism. If you get it right the first time and are able to select the refugees and pull them out of the system, then everything will be done.
In the end it needs to be fair and expeditious, because if you have people languishing a long time, we are back to square one.
The Chair: I think you covered the question in terms of what was asked, specifically.
I wanted to give Senator Jaffer a chance to have an additional question if she has a specific one. These have been debated considerably, Mr. Goldman. If you have a quick, precise input on either of the last two issues, please go ahead.
Mr. Goldman: Mr. Wlodyka said that postponements are rarely necessary, but he is talking about that system where it takes two years to get a hearing. Our fear is that if you have a hearing within 30 or 45 days, vulnerable claimants will not be able to testify, will not have their documents, and so on.
The Chair: We understand that point clearly.
[Translation]
Mr. Langlais: Senator Martin, when you talk about the benefits that the granting of status provides, you are referring to the services and coverage provided under the interim federal health program. I am sure that you are aware that this was amended very recently. It has been cut back to the point that most, if not all, of the health care professionals across Canada are now complaining about it; they feel that the benefits provided to people covered by the program have now largely been lost.
[English]
Senator Jaffer: There may have been a misunderstanding that board members or decision makers have an ability to decide whether someone goes to jail.
The way I read proposed section 55, it specifically says that for a designated foreign national there will be mandatory arrest and detention. There is not a choice. It is mandatory.
Senator Eaton asked a good question: What are the conditions of people who go to jail? Yesterday we were told — and my colleagues will correct me if I am wrong — that there are only 299 detention places. We were also told that a lot of people, at least in my province, are guests of the provincial government, which means that they go into prisons. Can you please expand on that?
Ms. Mendelsohn Aviv: I am not very familiar with that, but I do know that on the MV Sun Sea, families were separated because the facilities were separated along gender lines.
Children who happen to travel with the parent of the same gender may wind up together; otherwise, there may well be separation. From the Australian situation we know that children who end up in detention suffer severe mental health consequences, including enormous risk of self harm, suicide attempts, and so on.
The Chair: We are running a discussion here. I want to get the answers to the questions on the record.
Ms. Mendelsohn Aviv: There is something from the detention; this has been studied.
My understanding as well is that many people will end up in jails, that the immigration detention facilities are separated along gender lines and that there is every reason to be concerned about putting children in detention under any circumstances.
The Chair: Thank you.
I will make some observations now. It is obvious that this is a very challenging area. It is clear that all the persons who have spoken have a deep and abiding interest in this area. It is obviously complex. We realize that society has great difficulty dealing with a range of issues for which there are not simply A or B choices and that we are dealing with human beings under very different circumstances.
It is also clear that people who have looked at these issues for a very long time can reasonably wind up with very different views on the appropriate way of dealing with these issues and, indeed, the meaning and interpretation of rules that we develop as we move forward.
It is the task of my colleagues and of me to chair my colleagues in reaching conclusions on a bill that is brought forward with the intention of moving these very important issues forward. We have heard certainly that time is an important factor, as is the way in which people are considered during the time that it takes to deal with these issues.
I want to thank the witnesses who have appeared before us here today. I think it is obvious that you put forward your genuine and firm views on all of these matters. You have provided us with a range of diverse views on these critical issues and some firm examples of the way to look at some of these issues.
With that, on behalf of my colleagues, I want to thank you.
Honourable senators, in this next phase of our afternoon hearings we have four different groups presenting. From the Centre for Immigration Policy Reform we have Mr. Martin Collacott, who is the spokesperson. From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, we have Mr. Gregory Thomas, who is both a federal and an Ontario director. From the Canadian Council for Refugees, we have Mr. Francisco Rico-Martinez, who is a co-chair of the Inland Protection Working Group, and Ms. Gina Csanyi-Robah, who is a member. From the Rainbow Refugee Society, we have Ms. Chris Morrissey, who is the chair, co-founder and a volunteer.
I welcome you all to this meeting, and I will start with the Canadian Council for Refugees
Francisco Rico-Martinez, Co-Chair, Inland Protection Working Group, Canadian Council for Refugees: Thank you very much for allowing us to be here today.
The Canadian Council for Refugees is a non-profit umbrella organization that is committed to the protection of the rights of refugees in Canada and around the world. We have 175 organizations that are members of our umbrella organization.
I will synthesize the concerns we have about Bill C-31 into eight points. The timelines that deny refugees a fair chance to prove their claims will create more people without status in Canada because they will not be able to access the system but they decide to stay here. The process for designating certain countries as “safe” eliminates an expert, independent advisory body, which is going back centuries in the discriminatory treatment of refugees and poor immigrants in this country.
The bill gives the government extensive powers to imprison refugee claimants. The cost of detaining refugees doubles the savings to Canadians that will happen due to the cuts in health care for refugee claimants.
The bill, even with the amendments, still makes permanent residency status temporary for some people. This is a violation of the international obligations of Canada.
The reference of the Minister of Immigration to bogus claims is an egregious misrepresentation of the reality of refugees. The law is not technical any longer. It is an ideological aggression against the vulnerable people.
Why is it so bad to allow rejected refugee claimants to have access to humanitarian and compassionate applications? It is just an expression of humiliation against the most vulnerable, in my opinion.
Canada's humanitarian safety net is gravely weakened with the bill. Do not pass this bill, please, because this is going to change the lives of many people who work around us. Please go back to the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, which was passed with the unanimous approval of Parliament. You would just have to make a few changes to that act to make it fairer and it will be okay.
Now I would share the floor with the Roma community, a member of the CCR, which is one of the refugee communities in Canada most affected by this bill.
Gina Csanyi-Robah, Member, Canadian Council for Refugees: Honourable senators, I am the current executive director of the Roma Community Centre based in Toronto. I am a teacher for the Toronto District School Board. I have recently had the honour of receiving the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for my work on behalf of the Roma community for the past few years.
Roma refugees have arrived in Canada en masse without support available to them. The vast majority of Canadians do not know who the Roma community is unless we identify ourselves as Gypsies, a name that was given to us during the medieval time period in Europe when we were mistaken as Egyptians by the British Empire. Since then, “gypsy” has become an umbrella label for groups that exhibit similar stereotypical characteristics that have historically been attributed to us — the one authentic diaspora of people originating from the Indian subcontinent in the 10th century.
Many people are horrified to learn about the treatment that we have endured as people for the past millennium in Europe, with mass killings, extreme and cruel marginalization from society and enslavement for 500 years. This includes a terrible, ugly history of losing almost 2 million lives during the Holocaust. We have been left out of the history books.
Since the fall of the Iron Curtain across Central and Eastern Europe, ethnic nationalism has emerged with a vengeance. Currently in countries such as Hungary, Slovakia and Czech Republic there is endemic discrimination that many international human rights bodies have described as apartheid-like conditions. Despite what other people have told you, there is enough discrimination to be considered persecution.
There is a fatal war of hatred being waged against the Roma. Hate is killing the Roma people, mentally, physically and emotionally. Children's spirits are being crushed at the hands of a portion of the ethnic majority population in these countries. At least 1 million ethnic Hungarian Magyars have voted for an openly racist extreme nationalist right-wing neo-Nazi political party whose members currently have 47 seats in the National Hungarian Assembly. This party is called the Jobbik party. It stands for a movement for a better Hungary. The rhetoric and language it uses have really targeted the Roma community. Its rhetoric includes public announcements of the leader Gábor Vona slapping mosquitoes and comparing the Roma community to mosquitoes, and the way to get rid of them is to kill them.
Right now there are high concentrations of Roma in places such as Miskolc, where the U.S. State Department documented in 2010-11 human rights reports that significant unabated brutality is inflicted upon the Roma community by police officers and members of the Hungarian guards that are the paramilitary arm of the Jobbik party.
Miskolc is also where Minister Kenney's office recently distributed info pamphlets discouraging Roma people from seeking asylum in Canada.
Human rights only exist on paper in Hungary, with very little implementation and enforcement. For the past two years, I have been trying to share this information with the Canadian government about what is taking place and why people are coming to Canada to seek asylum.
I will tell you that the Roma community has been nothing but shamed and humiliated across this country for the past three years. We have been characterized as a collective group of criminals. This all stems from one case that took place in Hamilton, Ontario, involving five victims and one family that have been put in prison for 10 years now.
Across Canada, we have been looked at as people that have come to take advantage of the welfare system. At the Roma Community Centre, people who happen to survive from welfare need help from food banks to survive. They are not benefiting by collecting social assistance, and when people do withdraw claims, they are giving up the right to receive welfare.
People are characterized as taking advantage of the health care system, but like other Canadians, Roma people have to wait almost six months for a family doctor.
There is overwhelming documentation of persecution against Roma in Europe. At the very least, our country can treat the Roma with compassion, respect and dignity while the IRB decides on the validity of their claims without political interference or manipulation of statistics.
The Roma community in Canada and countless Canadians do not want the creation of a designated safe country list, and the Roma people hope with all our heart that you will reconsider having this bill go through, if you choose to do so, without at least having an independent human rights panel of experts making this decision.
Please, we need an objective, independent decision-making panel deciding which countries will be designated as safe countries and which will not be considered safe countries.
Second, when I came to testify in the House of Commons at the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, at that time there would be a 12-month bar from Bill C-31 for people from safe countries from applying for humanitarian and compassionate applications as well as a federal appeal.
Since I testified, two days later Minister Kenney's office raised that bar to 36 months. I want to plead with this committee that if you do allow this bill to pass, please bring it back at least to the 12 months that was originally proposed. I do not know why we are being punished all of a sudden with a 36-month bar. Three years is way too long to be able to review cases when we have people coming into the Roma Community Centre with denied applications. Sometimes they are being denied because they are not believed to be Roma. We have seen many, many mistakes where we cannot allow three years to go by.
I am happy to answer any questions that you have and give personal stories from the Roma community.
Chris Morrissey, Chair, Co-founder and volunteer, Rainbow Refugee Society: Good afternoon. I am pleased to be here to present to you today.
Just a little background: Since 2000, Rainbow Refugee has been supporting people both inside and outside Canada who are making claims on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. A little over a year ago, Minister Kenney initiated a blended program with Rainbow Refugee Society to encourage the sponsorship of LGBT refugees from outside Canada.
While we agree with many others with the necessity to decrease the refugee processing times, we cannot support many of the changes proposed in Bill C-31.
In the time available, I will focus on only two aspects of the bill, which have already had much airing today.
First, with respect to the designated country list, we are seriously concerned that the centralization of the authority in the hands of a minister of immigration, no matter what political party she or he belongs to, sets a dangerous precedent. It allows decisions to be coloured by politics, economics and international relations rather than human rights.
The criteria for determining whether a country is safe include that it is democratic, has an independent judiciary and civil society organizations. South Africa, for example, meets all those criteria and, in addition, included same-sex marriage in its constitution in 2006. This appears to be the most progressive country on the African continent with respect to sexual orientation and gender identity. Will it be on the designated country list?
Human Rights Watch has done an expensive report on the experience of lesbians and trans men, acknowledging they experience sexual violence and are persecuted because of their sexual orientation, and this is not taken seriously by the South African authorities. They report that there are 10 cases a week in which lesbians have been targeted for corrective rape and police have done nothing to investigate. Clearly, South Africa is not safe for lesbians and trans men.
However, there is no guarantee that a lesbian or trans man from South Africa will have a positive decision at their refugee hearing; yet, if they were to lose their cases, no appeal or any other process would be available to them before their removal to a country where they would face cruel and unusual punishment simply for being who they are.
It is unconscionable that one person have that much power over another's life. Members of our communities, as well as other vulnerable people, will be disproportionately affected by the lack of an appeal. All individuals must have access to an appeal. Fairness cannot and must not be sacrificed on the altar of efficiency.
The second point we wish to focus on is the unrealistic timelines identified for the filing of the basis of claim and for the perfection of the appeal to the appeal division.
Omal came from a country where homosexual acts are criminalized. He was being threatened and beaten by a police officer who was the brother-in-law of his boyfriend. He was beaten up and injured. Once in Canada, he was glad to be in a place where he experienced safety, but he had no idea what to do. Eventually, he came to the next Rainbow Refugee monthly drop in. It took him almost a year to share with us how his father had attempted to burn down the family home with him and his mother still inside because of the shame of his son being gay. For obvious reasons, he did not report any of this to the police. He was afraid to go to the hospital because there were always police in attendance, so he went to a local healer rather than a doctor. There were no official records. He had to rely on whatever information he could get.
With no appeal, because there is no RAD currently, he was sent back. He is still in hiding. It is possible that this will occur for anyone from a so-called safe country, which was the decision made in Omal's case. He came from a safe country. It is clearly not true.
Sexuality is very intimate and seldom talked about, never mind to strangers, especially by those who have kept their sexual orientation hidden as a way of staying alive, out of prison or from the wrath of their own families. As with Omal, LGBT individuals often do not know that it is possible to make a claim on the basis of their sexual orientation. After all, these grounds are hidden under “members of a particular social group.”
The priority of LGBT individuals is to escape persecution. One of our members escaped over the roof of houses when police arrived, having been called by a neighbour. He escaped using a smuggler while there was a warrant out for his arrest. As we can see in Omal's case, it is frequently difficult to get medical and/or police records. In some cases, they do not exist or it is extremely difficult to access them because this would cause them to face serious consequences.
The first decision-maker, the decision-maker of the first instance, should have the best information possible in order for the system to be fair and efficient. Fifteen days is not adequate to file and perfect an application. At least, maintaining the current 28 days, this does not significantly reduce timelines, and it provides a much more reasonable opportunity for a fair hearing. Because of how homophobia and trans-phobia manifest themselves, many of the changes in Bill C-31 will disproportionately impact LGBT individuals.
You, the Senate, are the last government officials who have the power to make the difference in the lives of many. The vast majority of asylum seekers and refugee claimants are not bogus or queue jumpers, but rather desperate people looking for freedom. Thank you.
Martin Collacott, Spokesperson, Centre for Immigration Policy Reform: Thank you chair and members of the committee for inviting me here today. I will not try to comment on all aspects of the bill in the time available to me, but I will certainly answer questions on other parts.
I believe the various elements make good sense and they constitute at least a beginning in terms of dealing with the mess that our refugee determination system has been in for more than two decades.
These proposals did not come out of the blue. They are designed to deal with very concrete and real problems. One provision of the legislation that should have been in place years ago is the one that will give the government authority to designate safe countries of origin. That will have an impact on the hundreds of Americans who claim refugee status every year in Canada, plus smaller numbers of Brits, Australians, New Zealanders, Swedes and so on.
Therefore, it is high time that we put a system in place that reduces to a minimum the time and resources spent on such claims and bring our practices and policies in line with those of other countries. I think the procedures in the bill for doing this reflect a good balance of qualitative and quantitative considerations.
I also strongly support the measures in the legislation designed to deter human smuggling. The importance of this can be seen in the recent experience of Australia in this regard. After a large number of boatloads of asylum seekers organized by human smugglers arrived in Australia in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the government there introduced a policy under which claims of such arrival would only be processed outside of Australia and not be allowed to arrive on Australian soil. In Canada, even if their claims were turned down, they could delay their removal with an almost endless series of appeals and reviews that could go on for years.
As a result of that policy, hardly any boats arrived for several years. In 2007, however, the Australian Labor Party was elected to office. The new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, decided he was going to make Australia a kinder, gentler place. He made it possible again for asylum seekers coming illegally in boats to be allowed in Australia. In consequence, 314 boats carrying asylum seekers have arrived in Australia since then. An estimate last week by an Australian newspaper put the cost to Australian taxpayers of these arrivals at $1.1 billion for the current financial year, $2.3 billion over the past three years. The opposition estimated it is $4.7 billion for the past three years or about a quarter of a million dollars on each asylum seeker.
Our costs may be somewhat lower, but former Deputy Minister of Immigration and former secretary of the Treasury Board Jack Manion estimated before this committee in 2001 that this system was costing us several billion dollars a year all together.
By comparison, if we look at how much money we give to the UNHCR to take care of people in refugee camps, it comes to about $2 or $3 a year per person. There is a bit of a discrepancy. Why, you ask? There is not a powerful lobby pushing for the people in the camps. There is a powerful lobby that has been persistent and successful in pushing for generous treatment of claimants in Canada.
What the government is proposing makes good sense. However, there is one massive item that is lacking in the legislation, and that is a robust system for designating safe third countries as distinct from safe countries of origin.
What is a safe third country? In the 1950s, when the United Nations refugee convention was drafted, Canada had no expectation of becoming a country of first asylum for any significant number of refugee claimants. We resettled 180,000 displaced people after World War II, took thousands of people after the Hungarian uprising in 1956, Czech in 1968, the Asian Ugandans in the early 1970s and Indochinese people in the late 1970s. I had in-laws among the boat people, so I am familiar with that problem.
We never expected to become a country of first asylum because of our geographical location. We expected to be a country of resettlement. To get here, the vast majority of refugee claimants have to travel through other countries. Under generally accepted international rules, they should have sought asylum and, indeed, they could have and should have sought asylum if their primary purpose was to reach safety. Many asylum seekers who already reached safety in countries such as the U.K., France and Germany, however, decided they would move on to make claims in Canada because of our more generous benefits. This practice is known as asylum shopping.
We had a chance to bring this problem under control in the late 1980s when the legislation for the Immigration and Refugee Board was being drafted. We had provision in that for establishing lists of safe third countries where people could have made claims, but there was a persistent lobbying by the refugee advocates to convince the then Minister of Immigration there was not another safe country in the whole world but Canada.
Instead of having a moderate number of people accessing the system that we could process thoroughly, we were deluged and have been ever since. Right now there is only one country that has been designated as a safe third and it is the United States. Other countries have quite a long list of safe third countries.
Unless we establish such a list, we are not going to be able to really manage the system properly. There are some issues involved in that. In the IRPA legislation, it said that a consideration would be whether we have an agreement with another country as we do with the United States. I do not think that legislation binds us the way it is worded to having such an agreement. We can consider such an agreement. If it does bind us, we can change the legislation.
In conclusion, I urge the government to put in place a comprehensive safe third country list as a matter of priority and do whatever is needed to make it operational. In the meantime, Bill C-31 is a move in the right direction. The critics will claim that it constitutes a step backwards by Canada as a compassionate and welcoming country. I do not think this is the case at all. With its passage, we will still arguably be the most generous country in the world in terms of our treatment of refugee claimants. At the same time, we will have made major progress towards reassuring Canadians that we have a fair and expeditious system that is not open to widespread abuse. Thank you.
Gregory Thomas, Federal and Ontario Director, Canadian Taxpayers Federation: Thank you senators and members of the committee. My name is Gregory Thomas. I am the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. We are Canada's oldest and largest taxpayers’ advocacy group with over 70,000 supporters across the country and offices across Canada. We have been active since the early 1990s.
We are here because we welcome this legislation and the constructive initiatives embarked upon by the Government of Canada to make Canada's refugee system more effective in its overall objective, which is broadly supported by Canadians, of providing refuge to the peoples of the world whose lives are threatened in the nations where they live.
We believe that the evidence put forward for these reforms speaks for itself. The current processing time for a refugee claim is 1,038 days, and so much of this is taken up by processing claims that are spurious and fraudulent.
We know that in thousands and thousands of cases people make an initial refugee claim and then do not even show up for their hearing.
We also welcome reforms such as the changes to the Interim Federal Health Program which put refugees on the same playing field as ordinary Canadians.
I brought along a news clipping from Vancouver dated June 18, which was on the weekend. It talks about health professionals who benefit from extended health benefits, eye glasses and dental care in their collective agreements. They are advocating for Canadian taxpayers to continue to provide these to refugee claimants.
Yet, millions of Canadians do not have dental plans or access to free dental care or access to eyeglass treatments. The existence of programs such as these has the opposite effect to that which we all desire, to live in harmony with refugees, by putting refugees on a higher level than ordinary, working Canadians who are paying for this care.
We believe that these reforms are constructive. To cite one example, we looked at the controversy surrounding family reunification claims and the introduction of the 10-year super visa, and yet Postmedia News, Tobi Cohen, reported in mid-May that since the introduction of the program, 4,400 applications for super visas have been processed within eight weeks of receipt, and 83 per cent were approved. Here you have an area of social policy, the unification of families, bringing elders and parents into the country in a way that brings harmony to our nation, and here you have a practical reform that was instituted by the government and has resulted in decisions being rendered in thousands of cases in the space of eight weeks, with positive outcomes for the applicants in over 80 per cent of the cases.
When you take the lure of other people's money, other people's money paying for eyeglasses or dental care or extended benefits or whatever, you remove that from the mix and get down to the basics of providing refuge to people, reuniting families and dealing with humanity on a human basis like all other Canadians, you eliminate so much of the controversy and strife surrounding these issues.
We believe that these reforms will save Canadians money. They will streamline the process; we will get fair decisions and we will have more real refugees being treated more fairly in a reasonable amount of time, and this will speak well of Canadians.
The Chair: Thank you. I will open it up to my colleagues for questioning.
Senator Jaffer: Thank you very much for your presentations.
Mr. Collacott, I have known your work for many years. When you speak of sponsorship, I am 100 per cent with you that we should be spending more money to assess refugees abroad and spending more money on the UNHCR camps. I am pleased to hear that the minister is going in that direction. He has agreed to have 2,500 more people come through that process. I would like you to elaborate on how important our involvement in that process is, because you have real expertise on this.
Mr. Collacott: I think it is important. Our money is well spent in that regard. There is the question of how many should be resettled to Canada, and I think Canadians in general strongly support the resettlement of a reasonable number, and we select most of them with the help of the UN. They are one group that might get the benefit of the health care, at least for the first year until they get settled.
Mr. Thomas referred to certain provisions, and I have to agree with him. On the whole, they are sound, especially government resettled and perhaps private resettled refugees, because they have a sponsor here, and they might be able to help out in that regard.
I think we should be giving more to the UNHCR if we could spend less on massive numbers of claimants. Some are genuine, but many are not. That is the problem. This is why this legislation has been put forth. We could spend more money where it would be much more usefully used.
Senator Jaffer: The minister spoke about this yesterday. You are experienced in this. When you say some more money, can you be more specific? You spoke about Ugandan Asians, and I am a Ugandan Asian who was brought here. We used to have programs when there were problems in a country that we specifically brought a group of people, not resettled UN refugees, but we had a country group program. I do not think we have that program any more. May I hear from you as to whether you think that kind of program would also be useful, or has the time for that program finished?
Mr. Collacott: I think on occasion the government has used that. Someone mentioned earlier the Hindus, the Nepalese who had to leave Bhutan, and we took several thousand. We took Karens from Burma, so from time to time those programs do make some sense.
Basically, though, we should be taking most of our refugees from resettlement. People who make claims in Canada often use people smugglers, not just the mass arrivals. One RCMP expert estimated that 90 per cent of people who arrive in ones, twos or more were brought in by a people smuggler. We should emphasize help to UNHCR and resettlement from overseas.
Senator Jaffer: Ms. Csanyi-Robah, I really commend the chair and the steering committee for inviting you, because we have heard a lot about the Hungarian refugees. We also heard what you had to say, and I am sure it has left an impression on us. Can you tell us whether our system has found people from Hungary who are of the Roma, identified as Roma, to be convention refugees?
Ms. Csanyi-Robah: Yes, senator. Two large waves of Roma refugee asylum seekers came into Canada. One was in the late 1990s, and one began in 2008. If you go through all the different Central and Eastern European countries, you can see that the vast majority of the refugees coming from those countries are certainly members of the Roma community. I have gone through all of these documents, and I have seen that since 1997 there have been close to 3,000 Roma refugees accepted into Canada. In 2011, there were 167 Roma refugees accepted from the people that managed to make it all the way through the system to the time that they had their hearings. Yes, Canada is accepting Roma refugees and is acknowledging that Roma are a persecuted people.
Senator Martin: Thank you for your presentation. My first question is to you as well, and I want to thank you for your impassioned testimony. All of us listened and are concerned about the plight and what is happening.
I am of the understanding with this bill that special consideration will still be afforded to claimants that are identified as vulnerable, so every Roma asylum claimant, even after the bill, will be given a fair hearing by an independent official. That process will be there so that if there is a compelling case for protection, then that will be afforded to the individual case by case.
I know that you were talking about the DCO, designated country of origin, and being very worried about that, but in the designation as well as in the overall process going forward, every claimant will get a hearing, and case by case the decisions will be made. Are you worried that people will not be heard in their claims?
Ms. Csanyi-Robah: Yes. There will not be a fair process. There has not been a fair process already. In 2008, when primarily Czech Roma refugees were coming, there was an 80-plus per cent acceptance rate at the Immigration and Refugee Board. Not long after that, when public discourse began about Roma refugee claims being bogus and the language started to turn everyone to be suspicious about Roma refugees, and then that unfortunate case happened in Hamilton, the acceptance rate at the Immigration and Refugee Board dropped within a month to zero. It remained at zero for approximately four months, an entire quarter, before it slowly climbed back up again. Since 2009, there has been anywhere between an 18 to 28 per cent acceptance rate of Roma refugees from different parts of Central and Eastern Europe.
This definitely exemplifies — and there is academic data that supports this — that, in fact, there has been interference in the independent decision-making process at the Immigration and Refugee Board.
Second, under the new legislation, people will come and they will automatically be predetermined and prejudged. The way I see it, you are being judged to be coming from a safe country. When people come from a safe country under the current legislation, Roma will have 15 days to submit a refugee application.
Some of the most educated members of our community have a difficult time with 28 days. We have asylum seekers that have come from the Roma community who are engineers, politicians and academics, and these people have a very difficult time being able to get their application in within 28 days, so I certainly do not think that 15 days will be appropriate.
Second, it is very difficult to get police records and medical records backing up the claims for the Roma community because it is difficult to make police reports about people who will likely brutalize you for making the reports to begin with. It takes time to apply for and receive these reports, and 15 days is absolutely not realistic.
Then when people are not accepted as refugees, they will not have an opportunity to access the Refugee Appeal Division. They will not have a chance for someone to look over their claim and have that extra level of accountability and oversight if they have been indeed turned down on their refugee claim. They will be sent back before they have a pre-removal risk assessment, which is critical, and definitely will not have the ability to submit a humanitarian and compassionate application for a certain time period. It is not a fair process, and it will be an even less fair process.
Mr. Rico-Martinez: It is not possible to do an assessment of how vulnerable a person is in the time frames that we have right now. You can verify that with the Immigration and Refugee Board. This is exactly the serious problem they are having — how they will detect and identify vulnerable claims. They do not have a clue. They say the amount of time does not allow them to do anything like that. Your intentions are very good and you are taking vulnerable claims the same way we take them, but there is no procedure in the law to identify those claims as it stands right now.
Senator Martin: As I said, on a case-by-case basis, I guess I will put more faith in the system in terms of the applications being considered.
You talked about numbers. I was curious; it seems that Canada is carrying quite the responsibility of refugee or asylum claimants from Hungary, the Roma people. For instance, if there were 4,400 claimants in Canada in 2011, only 47 in the U.S. and only 33 in France and Norway, I realize Canada is quite a ways away. In terms of receiving 95 per cent of the claims of the Roma people of the world, the numbers themselves really show this discrepancy. I do not know if you want to comment on such numbers.
There are so many other member nations, and I am aware of the 10-year action plan of the European countries, which are looking at this as a focus and a concern. It is the responsibility of the member nations as well as the world, but Canada is holding up 95 per cent of the overall claimants.
Ms. Csanyi-Robah: There is the Decade of Roma Inclusion that was initiated in 2005 and was supposed to last until 2015, but it seemed more like the decade of Roma exclusion rather than inclusion because things have actually become much worse in the decade since the Council of Europe announced this initiative.
Many people have said that you could spend billions of dollars on initiatives and come up with program after program, but none of them would be successful if you do not deal with the core base of the problem, which is hate. It is a huge problem. The hatred that leads to discrimination is a disease of society, and no matter what program you create, it will not be effective until the root cause is dealt with.
Roma people do belong to the European Union, but there is a pact between European Union countries that says that a member of the European Union cannot apply for refugee status in other European Union countries. Roma people can travel to other European Union countries, but they can only stay for a period of up to three months if they cannot demonstrate that they have a job.
Being Roma, it is very difficult — especially if you are identifiable as Roma — to be able to secure employment. There is mass prejudice and stereotypical beliefs that Roma people are disproportionately criminal, and no one wants a criminal working for them. There is a vicious circle that seems to be impossible to break, and that has been going on for centuries.
With regards to the United States, from what I understand, the United States has a completely different refugee asylum process from Canada.
Senator Martin: There were 4,400 in Canada in 2011 and 47 in the U.S. That is quite the contrast. Are you saying you are looking at Canada as the best system?
Ms. Csanyi-Robah: Could you repeat that?
Senator Martin: I said the numbers are shockingly different in that there were 4,400 claimants in Canada in 2011 versus 47 in the United States. Is that indicative of how you see Canada as the most generous system, perhaps?
The Chair: Is there a specific answer to the question as to why so many come to Canada and so few to the United States by comparison?
Ms. Csanyi-Robah: Other than the fact that I believe the U.S. has a completely different system and you cannot apply for refugee status in the United States the way you can in Canada, but I am not an expert on that. Maybe a person who has expertise in that area could answer that.
However, the Roma community is a very collective community in terms of sticking close together. In 1997, when a significant number of Roma refugee claims were accepted and families settled here in Toronto, specifically in the Parkdale area, which now has the largest Roma community outside of Europe anywhere in the world, people have been coming to where their families are. People have been coming to where there is already a collective community established.
When people come over, it leads to a decision of where they will perhaps seek refuge; they will go to where there is already safety and comfort, and that is why I understand that the Roma community has established themselves in Toronto more than any other place in the country.
In one building alone within Parkdale, on West Lodge Avenue, there is an entire village of people that have resettled together because that is characteristic of the Roma community during travel. It is a survival technique. It has been a technique that has kept us alive as a community for a thousand years away from our homeland. The community stays close together.
When a family arrives at an airport, there are usually three generations together. On October 19 when there was this uproar of 100 Roma refugees, which must be a significant sign of human trafficking, that was six families. That night, an entire family, including grandparents, children and grandchildren, slept on a street in Scarborough, Ontario, because there was no room in a shelter.
You have to know a little bit about the community to be able to understand how they stick together and they build where they are already established.
Senator Martin: Are there very few Roma in the U.S.?
The Chair: I am going to Mr. Rico-Martinez and then the next senator.
Mr. Rico-Martinez: As an example, you can compare the number of refugees of Mexican origin in the United States, and you will see it is very low. Here in Canada, there is a higher number.
It is very well known that the Americans politically decide about refugee situations, and that is why there are some communities in the U.S. where refugees know they do not have a chance to make an application because they will not be accepted. That is why they do not do it. You can ask the same question to Mexicans, the Roma people and many other communities. If you ask the Cubans, they are accepted just by touching the shirts of the United States. That is why people choose Canada, because they believe this country has a less politicized system for refugees, but we are creating one in this bill.
Senator Merchant: Most of my questions have been answered. Thank you very much for your answers. I was interested in the Roma because we heard yesterday, I think it might have been from one of the minister's staff, that they had the option of settling somewhere else in Europe. You have already answered, I think, that question differently as to why the Roma would choose to come to Canada. Again, I am very satisfied with your answer because I come from the Greek community and I know that is how people work. They want to go where there are people they can identify with. In the beginning they speak the same language and understand each other.
When people are leaving their own country and they come to a strange country of customs and they cannot speak the language and have been traumatized somewhere else, they cannot manoeuvre in the legal system here, so they come because there are supports here for them. That seems to me to be simple.
How many Roma are there worldwide who are misplaced? I would like to know the numbers.
Ms. Csanyi-Robah: I wanted to tell the committee that the Roma Community Centre in Toronto is the only one in North America. There is no other organization like us in Canada. There are a couple of culturally based organizations with Roma people in the United States, so this is a unique organization that we have.
We have Roma people coming from all parts of Europe who eventually end up with us, looking for help. They believe that Canada is a mecca for human rights. They are sure this is the promised land of human rights and that they will be treated fairly and equally here.
There are approximately 15 million Roma in Europe, dispersed throughout Europe, but the largest concentration is in northeastern Hungary, western Romania and the Transylvania area. It is the largest community of Roma in the world located right there.
There are approximately 2 million Roma dispersed mostly in South America, Central America and Australia. That is due to times of colonialism when Roma were enslaved and exported to different parts of the world.
There are approximately 120,000 Roma people in Canada, and some of us have been here from the early 1900s. My family, in particular, came in 1956 from Hungary.
Senator Cordy: Thank you to each of you for being here today. My first question is about the safe country, and I know you explained that Hungary can be perceived to be a safe country but not necessarily if you are Roma.
Ms. Morrissey, you also spoke about the challenges of the safe country and the dangers you thought there would be for the LGBT community. Could you expand on that from the comments you made earlier? Again, a country that might be perceived to be safe for a majority might not be safe for the LGBT community.
Ms. Morrissey: That is the point. The way all of this seems to be packaged is to take a big swath and look at everyone through the same magnifying glass. I do not think that is possible because we are not all the same. People are not all the same.
Even though there are countries where it appears that they are democratic, the reality is on the ground. That is where it needs to be considered, not what is on paper but what is actually happening on the ground to people who live there.
Certainly, most gay, lesbian, bi and trans people would never go to the police to report something. It just would not occur to them to do it because they know what the consequence of that will be.
The fellow I worked with for years got sent back to his country because he could not prove that he had, in fact, been physically assaulted because he went to a local healer. He was afraid to go to the hospital because the police were there looking, watching them.
It is not so much what is written on paper in any country. I think in many places we are looking at there are always groups of minorities and there are always exceptions. We cannot just throw a blanket over the whole country or over a whole group of people and say, “Well, this is a safe country for everyone.”
Mr. Rico-Martinez: There is an article in the newspaper today talking about the three European countries that will not meet the definition for designated country of origin. One is Bulgaria and the others are Romania and Lithuania. The rate of acceptance of refugee cases from those countries are over 50 per cent and the number of claims are low.
The mathematical formula that the minister has created to designate a country of origin does not work even for the continent that he wants to exclude. In that case, it is not possible just to take a numeric approach when it is related to human rights. You have to have the international obligations and have to review the records that country has in order to accept the determination of that country as safe.
We are not against the concept of safe countries. We are against the procedure and the mathematical formula, that it is not taken arbitrarily, because all that information is created here in Canada and not in the country that we are talking about.
Senator Cordy: I would like to go back. Mr. Thomas, you spoke about the reduction in the health care program for refugees. The basic medical care has been replaced by what is being called “urgent and essential care,” although people are not sure of what the definition of “urgent and essential care” is. I gathered diagnosing a cough and fever would be covered; birth control discussions, no; checkups, preventative care, no; mental health treatment, no; but a psychotic episode, yes. It seems almost penny wise and pound foolish.
You can correct me if I am wrong, but I thought you said refugees should have the same playing field as Canadians. However, refugees do not have the same playing field as Canadians. Many of them have spent everything they have to come to Canada. They have nothing. They have no money; they have used it to try to get access, to get transportation to Canada. They arrive here with nothing.
I am wondering why we have to make it an “us against them” kind of scenario. Why do we have to say Canadians should not be paying for health care and basic services for refugees coming in?
Why do we have to play one against the other? Why can it not be that we contribute for a while to make them very productive citizens in our country?
Mr. Thomas: When you provide a level of benefits far in excess of those offered anywhere else in the world, then you have a situation where Canada becomes the destination for people whose lives are not in danger and who are not threatened and are looking for financial benefits, extended health benefits, eye glass treatment and dental care. It becomes such a burden on the Canadian population that the spirit of the nation, which is to extend protection to people whose lives are in danger, becomes obscured.
The facts on the ground are that our refugee system has a waiting period of over 1,000 days. It is evident to anyone paying attention that there is widespread fraud and abuse from people who are not genuine, United Nations convention refugees.
As Mr. Collacott has pointed out, people who are in war-torn parts of the world, where there are genocidal wars going on, are not making it to our shores. They are not getting lawyered-up and enjoying half a dozen years of litigation to promote their cases. Canadians turn away and shake their heads in disgust.
Ms. Morrissey: I would like to make two points.
One is that, under the new Interim Federal Health Program, government-sponsored and privately sponsored refugees will not have those benefits either, so I do not understand. We have been given $100,000 for supporting for three months. We have to come up with the remainder of the money to support people for the other nine months. Now, on top of that, we have to make sure that we have enough money to cover ordinary preventative care. As well, what bothers me about this is that many of these people have spent years in refugee camps. They have not had access to health care.
I am one of those Canadians. I am retired. I have no eyeglass care. I have no prescription coverage, and I know that many of my friends do not resent people who have experienced real persecution in their lives having the possibility, at least, of being able to see a doctor and have their teeth taken care of. I have to pay for all of that, and I would pay again to make sure that others had the same right.
The Chair: Senator Cordy, do you have a quick question?
Senator Cordy: It is about wait times, so second round would be great.
Senator Eaton: Of course, people know what a rough time Roma have throughout Europe. You do not have to be blind. I have been to Europe several times and heard about that, but why have 95 per cent of claimants from Hungary abandoned their refugee claims?
Ms. Csanyi-Robah: Senator Eaton, I am very happy that you asked me that question.
That statistic has been manipulated. I just recently met with a man named Professor Shawn Rehaag who works as a professor of refugee law at Osgoode Hall in Toronto. I asked him to help me to understand where Minister Kenney continues to get his numbers because those numbers are not the official IRB numbers that all of us can access on the Canadian Council for Refugees website. He explained to me that Minister Kenney is taking the positive claims and dividing that by abandoned, withdrawn and rejected claims. That is not the actual number of claims. That is a statistical formula that has been manipulated to come up with a number that has tarnished and shamed the reputation of the Roma community across this country and delegitimized Roma refugee claims in Canada.
Of the claims that the Roma have submitted, a small number have been abandoned, which usually happens not because the person has abandoned them but because something in the process was missing. For example, a refugee named Paul from a city in Hungary. Everybody knew what happened in that city when neo-Nazi paramilitary troops held it under siege for three weeks. It is widely documented. He came here as a refugee. Minister Kenney heard his testimony at the Roma Community Centre on October 29, 2011. Paul came to me and showed me a letter from the Immigration and Refugee Board saying that his claim will be considered abandoned because he has not submitted translated documentation of his personal information form, which is his refugee narrative. Those are the things that are leading to Roma refugees having abandoned claims, not submitting the proper documentation that needs to be submitted.
When it comes to withdrawn claims, there has been a significant number, but a lot of that has to do with people who have been living on the margins of society for a long time. They come here with very little support, and they cannot navigate through a very complex immigration and refugee system. On top of that, they find a very unwelcoming environment when they arrive. The Canada Border Services Agency is already going into the international area and looking for people with Hungarian passports, and those who have a one-way ticket are being told to get back onto the planes. They are being told, as they pass through customs, “We do not want Gypsies in the country.” When they arrive here, they are seeing headline news calling Roma refugee claims bogus. They are losing hope. Hope is being strangled out of them. If they wait until they receive a letter from the Immigration and Refugee Board saying that they must leave the country, they have to get to that airport in three weeks from the date of that letter, with their bags and children, and return to be homeless in Hungary. Some people have lost hope. They have decided that they will save a bit of money so that they can at least have a home for their kids to go back to, and they have withdrawn their claims because they have lost hope of staying in this country.
Senator Eaton: Do you have a support system? You told me that you are a teacher. Do you have a support system for Roma wanting refugee status? Do you help them navigate through the system?
Ms. Csanyi-Robah: As a teacher?
Senator Eaton: No. Is there a support system in your community? You told me how close you are. You gave me that very heartbreaking story about that fellow who could not get his documents translated, but I would have thought that, as a community, somebody would have said, “Here, give me your thing, and I will translate it for you.”
Ms. Csanyi-Robah: I am very happy that you are asking me this question because, up until now, I have been a volunteer executive director of the Roma Community Centre. We have had zero funding. When Roma refugees started to arrive in 2008, there was no Roma community centre for them to go to. We have existed on paper as a non-profit organization, and we have been housed in a large immigration settlement organization called CultureLink in Toronto. We were housed there for 10 years because we never had funding to be able to open up our own organization. When people started coming, there were very few Hungarian translators. Hungarian is not a widely spoken language. There is very little access to information in Hungarian anywhere. People were coming. There was very little access to translation or to any knowledge about the immigration and refugee system and how to navigate through it. Shelters were full. People did not know where to go. We just opened up the Roma Community Centre — in our own physical office — in October 2011, through us doing fundraisers. Now we have a base of support for the community.
Senator Eaton: Good for you. Keep it up.
Ms. Csanyi-Robah: Thank you.
Senator Eaton: Do I get one more question? I want to ask Ms. Morrissey a question.
The Chair: Not right now.
Mr. Collacott: I think that there is a fundamental issue here that has to be discussed. It applies not just to the Roma community but also to the LGTB community. They both suffer from discrimination, and I do not think anyone in this room would argue that the Roma community, especially in Europe, do not suffer a lot.
The issue is this, though: The UN convention was designed to accommodate people suffering from persecution, essentially by the government. Now you can argue — and it has been argued — that, if the government cannot stop discrimination, that is equivalent to persecution. If you use that standard, though, we have to take 160 million untouchables from India. There are social problems, obviously, for the Roma, but we cannot solve everyone's social problems, throughout the world, by bringing them all to Canada. The whole idea of the UN convention was for a fairly limited number of people suffering from government persecution. This is the fundamental problem with arguments in favour of Roma who do live in a democratic country. It is true that it is not functioning as well as it might in terms of taking care of everyone, but most of our First Nations could probably claim refugee status in some other country if you are going to say, “Well, if you suffer from discrimination, you can claim refugee status somewhere.”
Mr. Rico-Martinez: The Roma community put their name forward to be invited to this committee, and they were not lucky. The Canadian Council for Refugees is donating the airline tickets, and we are sharing our time with them in order that the committee has a chance to hear from them. Originally, they did not have the possibility of doing so.
Senator Eaton: I think it makes the community stronger if they help themselves, but that is a personal opinion.
May I ask a question of Ms. Morrissey? Ms. Morrissey, I understand what you are saying, that what happens on the ground is sometimes very different from the official version.
However, when there is a high profile case of a gay woman who comes from the United States wanting refugee status in Canada, I think that it does not say very much for our refugee system in its present state.
Ms. Morrissey: I would like to answer that by saying that in any situation where a sensational event happens, it is sensationalized. It is blown up. Everybody pays attention to it. In doing that, it illegitimatizes all the others.
Senator Eaton: Yes, it does, unfortunately.
Ms. Morrissey: We do not have control over individual people and what they do.
Of course every system will have people who, for whatever reason, believe that they need to leave their country. I have corresponded with lesbian couples from the South. Obviously, I have had to tell them that one of the things we look at is the internal flight alternative. However, in the environment in which they live, they experience persecution, not just discrimination — persecution because people heckle them and throw fire bombs at their houses. It is really unfair to single out one example and use that example because in every group there will be somebody who will try to do that. Even of those who do try, I genuinely believe that they think it is what they need to do.
Senator Eaton: Thank you for your answer.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Ms. Morrissey, Could you tell me approximately how many LGBT refugees have come into Canada in a year, on average, over the last five years?
Ms. Morrissey: That number is very difficult to provide because they are all designated as members of a particular social group, so there are no stats. We have no way of being able to detect that. All we have is anecdotal information because we have been holding monthly drop-ins for 12 years now. We have contact with a number of refugee lawyers who focus in particular on people making claims on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Certainly, we know that over the past five years there have been somewhere around 10,000 to 12,000.
Senator Nancy Ruth: What percentage is that of all refugees to Canada in the last five years?
Ms. Morrissey: It is very small. I do not have the stat on the number that came in overall; but it is a very small percentage.
Senator Nancy Ruth: You said that the safe country category makes decisions on politics and economics and not on human rights; and that is an issue for you. When the safe country list becomes a reality and if the minister were to make an exception for LGBT from safe countries, would that help? Would it cause other problems; and if so, what would they be?
Ms. Morrissey: That is something that we have discussed a lot because it was thought that might be one of the possibilities. Our fear and concern around that is that, in fact, because so many doors and windows are being closed, people would try to make a refugee claim based on sexual orientation. That does not help our cause at all.
Senator Nancy Ruth: I do not understand you. Give me an example. Tell me a little story.
Ms. Morrissey: I can tell you a story about somebody who came to one of our drop-ins. He would not tell us his name and would not identify the country he was from. A lot of things were going off in our brains and we were not convinced necessarily that this particular man was gay. If there are designated countries, and considering how many could be designated, people who are desperate enough to come to Canada to find a place where they can be safe will recognize the opening: They can say they are gay. That will not help anybody, in particular genuine refugees making their claim based on sexual orientation.
In Canada, of those who come to us, we have a pretty good idea because under the current system because we have known them for one to almost three years. It is very easy for us to be able to say that we have no doubt in our minds. However, in 15 days, that will not happen. The shortened timelines will not only make it difficult for people who have a genuine basis of claim, but will also lead to the possibility of others. The man who was the Western Yukon B.C. head of the refugee board until just recently said that sexual orientation claims are the hardest ones to determine because of the complexity and because so many different factors are involved.
We had thoughts about a different way that might be possible. It would do away with the whole thing around designated countries. We have that in our brief that outlines another possible route to go. It would involve the CBSA being able to make random checks and review certain things. I do not have all the details in my head because there is so much to it. There are alternatives, and that is important to look at.
Senator Nancy Ruth: I will ask Mr. Thomas about eyeglasses and dental care. I could not help but look around this table and think of the poor taxpayer that pays for most of us to have a certain percentage of our eyeglasses and dental care looked after too. I was interested when you said that refugees should be treated the same as other Canadians. To my knowledge, refugees are not allowed to work when they first come to Canada. When you cannot work, you cannot buy dental care, unless you come with a lot of savings, which of course Senator Cordy has made clear that often they do not. Did you know that?
The Chair: If I may interject, it is important to note that most Canadians and most of the people at this table do not have public support for eyeglasses and dental care. That is an issue.
Senator Nancy Ruth: How is that so, senator?
The Chair: Certainly not in my province.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Certainly we at this table have it.
The Chair: It is not publicly paid.
Senator Nancy Ruth: The taxpayers pay for it.
The Chair: You are a member of a group health plan. That is a different issue.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Most people in Canada do not have health plans either because they are in part-time jobs, but they are allowed to work.
Do you agree with the fact that refugees, when they first come to Canada, cannot work and earn money and, therefore, cannot purchase health care?
Mr. Thomas: Yes, so the commitment of the government to have a decision to extend permanent residence status within 45 days to DCO refugee claimants and within 216 days to non-DCO refugee claimants will have a salutary effect similar to the one we are seeing with the 10-year super visa. I believe the government is in the process of setting up an adjudication system that will render fair decisions in a reasonable time period so that genuine refugees will be able to achieve permanent residency status and join Canada and begin to contribute.
The facts on the ground are that Canada has the most generous regime of other people's money that it throws at refugee claimants. We are spending 1,038 days to sort out whether or not these claims will be accepted, and it is a huge incentive for people to come here.
Senator Nancy Ruth: I do not know whether it is an incentive or not. I would think there would be other things that would be far more crucial for anyone who chose to come on refugee status, in any country.
Mr. Thomas: We are getting 95 per cent —
The Chair: Mr. Thomas, we will not get into a debate on this. You can answer the question and we can ask questions.
I will move to Senator Seth, to be followed by Senator Wallace.
Senator Seth: Thank you. All witnesses have given such great information. It has been very interesting.
I deeply sympathize with the problems of the Roma community. Canada is a very generous country and has been spending millions of dollars on Roma refugee and asylum claimants, providing welfare and a super health system, which I am aware of. I am a physician. I write prescriptions. Eyeglasses and dental are all fully covered. I know that from my years of practice and filling out so many forms for them.
While their refugee status is in process, they have a work permit. What percentage of the Roma community is employed or seeks employment or looks for education?
Ms. Csanyi-Robah: First, people do not ask to wait for 1,038 days to have a hearing and a final decision. People do not want to have to wait that long. Because there are not enough judges at the Immigration and Refugee Board, that is what prolongs the time period more than anything else. People want to have a decision and get on with their lives. It is very difficult to live in the mental, emotional and physical state of not knowing whether you are going or coming, for a three-year period, especially for children and youth in school. They do not know what their life will look like from one minute to the next. People do not choose to be in this system for three years.
Second, from what I have seen during my time at the Roma Community Centre, many people come and ask for help with work permits. We have volunteer university students who help with teaching people how to build their resumé, to find volunteer positions out in the community, and to have some integration and socialization experience in our Canadian community. Children are going to school.
We have refugees who came in our last large wave in 1997 who were accepted and are now college and university students. They are volunteering at the Roma Community Centre and giving back to the community.
We are no different than any other community in Canada. People want to work and go to school. We are no different than anyone else. There is nothing about us that makes us averse to work or school.
When it comes to health care, there is no huge lineup of Roma refugees running to abuse the Canadian health care system. In fact, people have to wait so long for a family doctor that they often do not even get access to health care. Average Canadians cannot find a doctor. We have to wait for six months. Do not think that refugees go to the front of the line for a doctor when they get here, because they do not. They have to wait in that same lineup, often behind Canadian people, before they can access a doctor.
We have children who need prosthetics, who are missing limbs, for example. They cannot get to a doctor when their leg has outgrown the prosthetic, and they cannot leave the house until they have a properly fitted prosthetic.
There are many issues in the community with regard to being able to access the health care system when needed. No one is running to Canada to go to the dentist or to get glasses.
There are murders happening in the Roma community in Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Just three days ago, an off-duty police officer was convicted of killing an entire Roma family in Slovakia.
It is not just Roma who are coming from these countries. Jewish people are coming from these countries as well. The current regime in Hungary is not just attacking the Roma community; it is attacking the Jewish community. We have Jewish refugees coming from these countries as well, and high-profile ones, some of whom you have not heard about yet because their cases are in the system and they cannot take the chance of ruining their cases.
Senator Seth: Thank you. However, I am telling you what I see in my office. Everything is provided to the refugees. When it comes to the workforce, it is very hard for them to go back because they have been sitting so long at home, not working. They are not used to it. They need education. We encourage them so much: “Please fill out the form.” “I cannot go. I have this.”
Maybe we see a small number of people. Whether it is Roma or any kind of refugee, they are the same. They have the same trend, unfortunately, and that delays things quite a bit. How come we do not get similar benefits? Our government has been very generous.
The Chair: That last question is not relevant to the specifics here. Mr. Rico-Martinez, if you can stick to the fundamental question.
Mr. Rico-Martinez: Yes. If you review the statistics of social service recipients anywhere in Canada, you will see that the community that spends the least time receiving welfare in Canada is the refugee community, and that includes the Roma community.
Senator Seth: Thank you.
Senator Wallace: Mr. Collacott, I was interested to hear you say — and Mr. Thomas said much the same — that in your view, Canada is the most generous country in the world in terms of our refugee requirements and what we provide to those seeking refuge.
Along the same line, the opening comment you made was that in your opinion we should bring our immigration policies in line with those of other countries. When you say that, what countries are you comparing us to that you believe we should be brought into line with? Second, to what extent do you believe that Bill C-31 is a step in the process of bringing us, as you say, into line with those other countries?
Mr. Collacott: Each country has its own system, and they vary considerably, but there are some common features. Certainly some of the European countries do not accept people who come through safe third countries, where they should have made their claims. Most of the European countries have been struggling with large numbers of illegals, and not just refugee claimants, but others.
The government, as far as I can make out, has studied what some other countries are doing to see what works well and what does not work well. I think most other countries have more sensible systems than we do. I think the question has been asked several times: How come we get 95 per cent of the Hungarian claims in the world? In 2003 we took two thirds of the Sri Lankan claims for the whole world. We took 1,100 people and the rest of the world took 700.
Our system can justifiably be argued to be too generous in some respects, and this has had an impact on public support. Canadians do support taking a significant number of genuine refugees; there is no question about that. However, they are very much aware of the abuse of the system, and it has been allowed to fester for too long. Most of the things in this legislation are to respond to those problems. If we do not do that, I think we will significantly lose public support for it. I believe we should be taking a certain number of genuine refugees, but the system has been so widely abused.
Other countries have had some of the same problems. I mentioned the Australians, when they got soft on letting boats arrive. They have had over 300 boats, including 18,000 claimants, arrive since then. You get into trouble. That resulted in one Prime Minister in Australia losing his job, Kevin Rudd.
I think you have to look at public support. You also have to look at international principles and what the refugee convention intends, although I think it is out of date. There are a whole bunch of issues here, but I think public support is essential.
The people of Canada are well aware that the system is working very badly. This legislation tries to address at least some of it. It does not address the question of safe third countries — that is the big gap that will probably prevent it from having a major impact on what is happening.
Senator Wallace: As you point out, we are always concerned about being a leader when it comes to democracy and having an open and welcoming country. We all arrived here by boats — my family did 200 years ago — our forefathers and our foremothers.
If there are best practices, there are better ways of looking after these matters that we see in the world. My sense is that the government is conscious of that and looks for the best practices. My sense is that is reflected to a large degree in Bill C-31. However, I think we need to look toward where we fit and where we place.
Mr. Collacott: We like being the most generous country in the world, and we are, but perhaps we are generous a little too much. When I was an ambassador and high commissioner and people told me what devices they used to get their relatives into Canada, we were actually the laughing stock. We do some things very well and I think we should take credit for it. However, we are an international joke to some extent as far as the refugee system is concerned. We have to do something about it, especially if we are to maintain public support.
Senator Seidman: I do understand that there is enormous emotion involved and very serious issues at stake when we speak about these things. However, serious accusations were made of the minister and of his department — accusations about manipulating numbers. I do think that the record must be corrected.
For the record's sake, I will put the official statistics from IRB for 2010 for Hungary on the record, if I may. Six per cent were rejected by the IRB; 9 per cent were abandoned; and 83 per cent were withdrawn.
That is pretty much what I would like to do, namely, have that on the record.
Ms. Csanyi-Robah: Can I answer that, please?
The Chair: You made statements with regard to numbers. This was another set of numbers related to the same point you made. If you have a point of clarification, please go ahead.
Ms. Csanyi-Robah: Yes; please. The 2011 statistics, though, show that the withdrawal rate is 55 per cent. If you look at the 2011 statistics, it is less than half of 2010.
The Chair: We have numbers on the table.
I am into the second round and there are three senators on it: Senator Jaffer, Senator Martin and Senator Cordy. Senator Jaffer, you have been good at focusing your questions. I will ask you to continue to do that. I will ask Senator Martin and Senator Cordy to minimize their preambles and to get directly to their question and identify a specific respondent. To the witnesses, I will ask you, as well, to answer the question as clearly as you can. I would like these three senators to have an opportunity to get their questions to you and to get a quick answer.
Senator Jaffer: Ms. Morrissey, you have been working on this issue for years and years.
Listening to you again today brought home to me the issue of safe countries. Unfortunately, I did not get to ask the minister because I prioritized wrongly, but I did ask the officials about the designated countries of origin.
I am not necessarily against that designation if it is going to give integrity to our system, but the angst I have is the same one that you have. I gave the officials the example that you can come from the United Kingdom, where you have an issue of honour killing, and you come to Canada. You gauge that it is a safe country, but it is not safe for that individual. Here, the U.K. it would be a safe country. I was told that the gender guidelines would be looked at.
I believe the time has come for us to work with the minister to have eligibility question guidelines to deal with the issue that you have raised. Do you think that would be a way to help the situation?
Ms. Morrissey: Absolutely. We have been asking for that for a long time. Many of us who work particularly around the refugee system for sexual orientation and gender identity think we desperately need it.
Senator Martin: I have one note to also put on the record regarding the designation of DCOs and the concern that you expressed. I have done my research and know that in part of the process of designating countries there will be a DCO country review that includes input from the Government of Canada partners, through the interdepartmental country review committee. There are other quantitative criteria that you described, but there are also qualitative criteria, which are contained in clause 58 and are enshrined in the legislation. I think it is important to note that it will be quite a process and it will be carefully undertaken. We hope that the officials will work closely and consult the stakeholders.
My question is to Mr. Thomas, who represents the taxpayers, all of us around this table.
The Chair: Will you rephrase that? Simply put your question to Mr. Thomas.
Senator Martin: For Mr. Thomas, who is representing his federation, from surveys or work that you have done with your organization, would you speak to how this legislation is making the system more efficient and balanced to consider the burden on Canadian taxpayers and the fact that we are overly generous and that we are maintaining or achieving more balance through this legislation?
Would you speak to that?
Mr. Thomas: Yes. I believe that our refugee system, although it is somewhat characterized as overly generous, is also quite punitive to the people who are wrapped up in it, as Ms. Csanyi-Robah alluded to. When you speak about children who are in their schools, and it is going on three years and there is no decision — they do not know where they will be — this is a system that has lost the confidence of both the people who have applied to come to Canada as refugees and the confidence of Canadians. It is not a credible system.
The onus is on the government. This legislation is popular legislation. It is broadly supported in the Canadian public. Despite the attacks that have been waged against it, the legislation is being put forward. After all, this is a political government; the minister is a politician. It is popular legislation and people want this.
The legislation has not been enacted; we are only speculating about how it will work. However, when we look at super visas for family reunification, for bringing elderly parents into the country, in eight weeks we have had 83 per cent approvals and over 3,000 parents have been reunited with their families as a result of an initiative similar to this, which is to bring a rules-based system to have more accountability and to eliminate a lot of the gamesmanship associated with the system. I believe that the reforms that are proposed here do have a practical aspect to them.
Claims have been made by the government about cost savings, and we do find the idea of saving money to be attractive. However I think all Canadians want a system that makes speedy, fair decisions and that identifies genuine refugees and offers them refuge in Canada so that they can support themselves and make a contribution to Canada.
We believe that these reforms have a good chance of success. Similar reforms that this government has introduced are succeeding.
I hope I have answered your question.
Mr. Rico-Martinez: The super visas and the IFH are not part of Bill C-31, so the comments about how effective this legislation will be from the taxpayers' perspective is out of order, in my opinion.
Second, having a specialized independent committee of experts to determine which country will be considered a safe country is totally different from asking for input. The Canadian Council for Refugees believes that that committee is the way to go to analyze the countries we are facing.
Third, what will be the impact on taxpayers of the detention of refugees? We believe that the savings in the Interim Federal Health Program will be less than it will cost to keep families in detention for up to a year. Detention is mandatory for six or seven months. The cost analysis must go deeper.
My last point is about work permits. To get a work permit in Canada now takes between four and five months. These people have no way to pay for anything in Canada because the Minister of Immigration does not issue work permits to refugee claimants in a timely manner. The process is very bureaucratic. People need help to go to the doctor, for example, and someone has to pay the bill. If they do not have money, who will pay the bill?
The federal government is dumping those expenses on the provinces because the provinces administer the hospitals and they have to open the door for people in emergency situations. Someone will pay the bill. Taxpayers will continue to carry that burden as a result of the federal government’s dumping it onto the provincial government.
Ms. Morrissey: The conversation around the super visa is a red herring. You cannot compare apples and oranges. Super visas will work in the case of people who have adequate money to pay for the insurance. We are talking about refugees, which is a very different group of people. I agree with Mr. Rico-Martinez about the issue of work permits, but I would add that there has already been a huge complaint from immigrants who come to this country with professional qualifications and are not able to work in their field. Refugees have even less chance. Most refugees that I know work two and three jobs. They start out with the worst shifts that no other worker will take. We are not talking about refugees who come and very quickly become leaders in business or anything like that. There are some real misconceptions around the comparison between visitors' visas, super visas, immigrants and refugees.
Senator Cordy: Mr. Thomas, I agree with you that the processing time is far too long. People should not be waiting 1,000 days, three years. That is unacceptable.
Most of the correspondence that I have received on this bill is about the 15-day period for the appeal process. The appeal involves gathering up the information and evidence that was presented at the IRB, and recently the IRB announced that they would not prepare transcripts of hearings for people who appeal. That means that they have to listen to the testimony, which will take hours.
We know that a judicial review at the Federal Court takes 45 days. Do you think 45 days would work better than 15 days for appeals?
Mr. Rico-Martinez: If you talk to lawyers, they will ask for more than that. We have become used to the idea of 15 days to submit the first form to apply for a judicial review and 30 days to perfect the file. Most of the people advocating for refugees understand that you have to set up times. Fifteen days to submit the application and perfect the file is not enough. That is why we are requesting that you make it 15 days for the application and 30 days to perfect the file. That will accord with Federal Court procedures.
Ms. Morrissey: In addition to the timelines for the appeal, when you look at designated countries, people who lose their hearing at the first instance will not have the opportunity to get a stay of removal, will not have the opportunity to file on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, and will not have access to the appeal division. In other words, if the single person who makes the decision about the person's refugee claim makes a mistake, the applicant's life can be in jeopardy. I think that principle is absolutely morally wrong.
Mr. Collacott: On that last point, there are many other countries in the world where someone can claim refugee status.
I was asked about what other countries do. The Netherlands has a system where a refugee claimant has six days to prepare their case. After another eight days, they are either fast-tracked because they seem to have a very strong case or they are flushed out of the system through some kind of review process because they are considered to not have a good case at all, or they are in the middle, in which case the process takes much longer, and that is the case for many of them. Essentially they triage.
In the United States they used to let asylum seekers, as they call them, work. We are the only ones who use the term “refugee claimants,” although it is the same thing. Now they try to complete the process in six months. Asylum seekers or refugee claimants cannot work in the United States. They found that allowing them to work gave them incentive to put down roots and try to stay indefinitely. That is a comparison with a couple of other systems in certain respects.
Senator Martin: Ms. Morrissey, in terms of an appeal process, every claimant has at least one recourse mechanism, one of which could be to ask for a judicial review. If that one IRB official, that one first interviewer, makes a mistake, there is still at least one recourse mechanism for every claimant.
Ms. Morrissey: With due respect, I would like to disagree with that. First, you have to request leave from the Federal Court. The Federal Court does not always give leave. You have to get a stay of removal and you cannot always get a stay of removal. Therefore, while it sounds good, it does not always function that way in reality.
Senator Jaffer: I understand the Federal Court just looks at the record; it is not another oral hearing.
Ms. Morrissey: That is right; it is only the record.
The Chair: Thank you all very much.
As I said at the end of our previous session, all we have to do is listen to the discussion at this table today to realize how complex, challenging, difficult and yet important these issues are and how very reasonable people with very different experiences can come to different points of view with regard to the issues. It also shows how facts are difficult to come by, even on such an issue as the awareness at this table of what Canadians in general actually have access to in terms of supplemental health benefits. It is obvious that is an issue that not everyone fully understands, and the people at this table do not represent the overwhelming majority of Canadians with regard to that kind of access.
All that is simply to indicate the complexity of the issue we are dealing with and how we are responsible now for making recommendations on this important area.
I want to thank my colleagues for framing their questions to attempt to get answers to help us in reaching decisions on this bill, and I want to thank the witnesses for attempting to provide us with the answers. Certainly, you have provided us with the answers that are based on your experiences and awareness in these areas.
With that, on behalf of my colleagues and the committee, I want to thank our witnesses for being here with us today and for contributing to this process. With that, I declare the meeting adjourned.
(The committee adjourned.)