THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RIGHTS
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Monday, October 30, 2023
The Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights met with videoconference this day at 4:31 p.m. [ET] to examine such issues as may arise from time to time relating to human rights generally.
[English]
Sébastien Payet, Clerk of the Committee: Honourable senators, as your clerk of your committee, it is my duty to inform you of the unavoidable absence of the chair and deputy chair this afternoon and to preside over the election of an acting chair. I am ready to receive a motion to that effect.
It is moved by the Honourable Senator Jaffer and Senator Gerba that Honourable Senator Omidvar do take the chair of this committee. Is it your pleasure, honourable senators, to adopt the motion?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
Mr. Payet: I declare the motion carried, and I invite the Honourable Senator Omidvar to take the chair.
Senator Ratna Omidvar (Acting Chair) in the chair.
The Acting Chair: Good evening. My name is Ratna Omidvar, and I am a senator from Ontario. It is my privilege to chair this meeting this afternoon.
Today we’re conducting a public hearing of the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights.
I would like to begin by acknowledging that the land on which we gather is on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Anishinaabeg Algonquin region.
I would now invite my colleagues to introduce themselves to the witnesses and to the public.
Senator Arnot: Good evening. I am Senator David Arnot, and I am from Saskatchewan.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: Senator Amina Gerba from Ontario.
[English]
Senator White: Judy White, province of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Senator Pate: I am Kim Pate. I live here in the unceded and unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg. Welcome.
Senator Jaffer: Welcome. My name is Mobina Jaffer, and I am from British Columbia.
The Acting Chair: Thank you, colleagues.
Before we start our official proceedings, there is a housekeeping motion that I would like to have someone introduce. The motion is the following:
THAT, notwithstanding usual practice, pursuant to rule 12-17, the committee be authorized to hold this afternoon’s meeting without quorum if necessary for the purpose of receiving evidence, provided that two committee members are present.
Senator Arnot: I move that motion.
The Acting Chair: Thank you. Colleagues, are we in favour?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Acting Chair: Thank you very much.
Today we begin our study on forced global displacement under the committee’s general order of reference. We intend to hear from experts and stakeholders on a wide range of issues relating to the human rights impacts of forced displacement around the world. Topics may include the effects of displacement on children, the efficacy of the global compact on refugees, new and emerging mechanisms for financial support, the role of private sponsorship, the impacts of climate change and Canada’s international role in curbing forced displacement while supporting refugees. It’s going to be big questions to ask and answer.
We start this afternoon with three panels. In each panel, we will hear from witnesses, and then there will be a question-and-answer session. Each panel has been asked to make a presentation for five minutes each.
I’m incredibly delighted to welcome Rema Jamous Imseis, Representative to Canada for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; and the Honourable Allan Rock, Council Member, World Refugee and Migration Council and formerly Canada’s Ambassador to the United Nations. I now invite Ms. Imseis to make her comments in five minutes, to be followed by Allan Rock.
Rema Jamous Imseis, Representative to Canada, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees: Thank you, Madam Chair and members of this committee for studying this critical issue and inviting me to be with you here today.
I would like to start by setting the scene with respect to the state of the world’s forcibly displaced. The committee is meeting at an opportune moment as, just last week, we released our most current data and analysis on forced displacement. Regrettably, the upward trajectory shows no signs of slowing in 2023.
As of the end of September, war and violence have driven global displacement to a staggering 114 million people worldwide — nearly three times the population of Canada. As this only includes data up to the end of September, these figures do not capture the forced displacement taking place in real time in the Gaza Strip. Of this 114 million, more than half have not left their countries of origin and instead have searched for safety within their borders. These are the people we refer to as the internally displaced. Children continue to be disproportionately impacted, making up more than 40% of all displaced people. Over half of all refugees originate from just three countries: Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine. This is an important fact to emphasize because if only one of these situations were resolved, millions of people would be able to return home.
The world does not share the responsibility for responding to forced displacement equally or fairly. The overwhelming majority of refugees choose to stay in neighbouring countries, never leaving their regions, clinging to the hope of returning home when conditions allow. Many of these countries are classified as low and middle income, already grappling with their own challenges, yet they have remained on the front lines of solidarity for years.
As displacement increases, resources to respond, unfortunately, have not kept pace. Our organization, like many others, is forced to make difficult decisions in addressing the needs of those we serve. This year, our operations are only 36% funded, a critical gap that is having detrimental results as we respond to more emergencies than ever. Cutting critical services has become the reality, and those who rely on us for our life-saving support are bearing the brunt. Yet, despite this sombre picture, the right policies, attitudes and support can bring positive change.
In 2022, Canada resettled nearly 50,000 refugees, more than any country in the world for the fourth consecutive year. Though a much-needed protection tool, resettlement remains a limited solution, benefitting less than 1% of the world’s displaced.
Safeguarding the fundamental right to asylum is another area where the international community can signal its commitment to protecting those forced to flee. Globally, and right here in Canada, we continue to observe increases in the number of people seeking asylum. For example, in July of last year, Canada received roughly 5,000 asylum claims. In July of this year, Canada saw over 12,000 claims. If current trends continue, we estimate that Canada will receive 140,000 asylum seekers this year, but when set against the total global of 5.4 million claims last year, Canada still receives a relatively low proportion of asylum seekers.
This country has distinguished itself as a global leader in asylum, maintaining a fair, efficient and robust system for many years. Continuing to provide a strong asylum system not only ensures the country maintains the confidence of the broader public and meets its legal obligations under the UN Refugee Convention, it also provides the international community with a solid example to demonstrate that it is possible to do the right thing when so many states are failing to honour these commitments.
Remaining in Canada for a moment, recent polling data suggests that affordability and housing concerns are challenging a long-held consensus in this country around supporting immigration and, by extension, refugees. As a representative of the UN Refugee Agency, this shift in public opinion is concerning. The economic case for refugees has been made with the help of Statistics Canada census data. We now have empirical evidence to support the claim that refugees are good for Canada. They pay more in taxes than they ever receive in social assistance; they work in skilled professions; they own homes; they create jobs for themselves and for other Canadians; and their children even outperform native-born Canadians in the levels graduating from post-secondary institutions. This fundamentally proves that, over time, refugees contribute to their new countries.
Above and beyond the economics, the international community has committed to addressing forced displacement as a collective responsibility, and solutions rooted in global solidarity are possible. All the tools needed to address forced displacement are at our disposal, whether in addressing the root causes of conflict, creating conditions for refugees to go home, helping them find inclusion in exile or expanding access to third-country pathways. We just have to secure the political will and financial support to put them into action.
Thank you.
The Acting Chair: Thank you very much.
Allan Rock, Council Member, World Refugee and Migration Council and Former Canada’s Ambassador to the United Nations, as an individual: Madam Chair, it’s an honour to appear before the committee. I’m grateful for the invitation and delighted that you’re undertaking this important work on this crucial subject.
May I build, for a moment, upon the statistics given by my colleague and make the observation that when those who are crossing borders go beyond the neighbouring countries and try to go farther, their request for asylum, even it’s if well founded under international law, is too often met with indifference or, worse, callous rejection. The World Refugee & Migration Council focuses on addressing both the international and the domestic issues related to forced displacement. Let me touch briefly on each.
Globally, vast numbers of forcibly displaced undertake what is called “irregular migration,” which frequently involves dangerous journeys across open seas or narrow gaps. In reaction, many governments have closed their borders to those seeking asylum; others download or shirk their responsibilities. Europe is paying Turkey and the racist regime in Tunisia to thwart the flow of migrants and refugees to Europe. Denmark is sending refugees back to Syria because the Danish government is pretending that Syria is now safe. Britain initially refused to accept refugees and asylum seekers from Ukraine and has turned to Rwanda to relocate and process people claiming asylum in the U.K. The Biden Administration has reinstated the inhumane Trump-era “remain in Mexico” policy for migrants and asylum seekers while holding thousands of others in private detention and deporting more than 20,000 Haitians back to Haiti.
Here in Canada, we have, of course, downloaded to America our responsibility for asylum seekers who land first in the United States. Some provincial governments are now saying they cannot or will not take more refugees, and they also want to cap the number of immigrants. They complain that they don’t have the resources or housing in a tight market to accommodate newcomers. In some of our biggest cities, refugees are ending up in homeless shelters, further taxing already stretched social services.
Every aspect of the issue this committee is examining, both globally and here in Canada, is simply bound to become more challenging with the growing effects of global warming and the increasing incidence of climate-induced displacements.
It is relatively easy to describe these problems, but the great challenge the committee will face is identifying solutions. The World Refugee & Migration Council produced dozens of recommendations in its 2019 report addressed not specifically to Canada but, rather, addressing the global response to displacement. Those recommendations reflect four broad themes, which I invite the committee to bear in mind as it does its work.
First, responsibility sharing must be the cornerstone of the global response to displacement based on common but differentiated responsibility where each state must contribute in its own way to the solution.
Second, there must be accountability for those who cause displacement and for those who neglect or refuse to meet their legal obligations to grant asylum.
Third, there must be appropriate levels of funding for chronically underfunded refugee services, including, as we recommend, through compulsory assessments for every UN member state.
Finally, improved governance in the refugee space reflecting sensible regional arrangements, including throughout the voice of the displaced themselves.
With that, I close, and I look forward to questions the committee may ask. Thank you, Madam Chair.
The Acting Chair: Thank you very much.
We will now open to members of the committee for their questions. We are a smaller number of committee members, so I can be more generous with the time that you have to ask questions.
Perhaps I could start off with my first question to Mr. Rock. I note with interest that I am familiar with your report. You talk about responsibility sharing on common but differentiated obligations for states to accommodate the displaced. What does that mean?
Mr. Rock: It’s a term we borrowed from the environmental field where, in responding to climate change and global warming, every state is called upon to contribute to the collective effort, but each in its own way depending on the state of its development, the state of its economy and its capacity.
In the context of forced displacement, what we see as differentiated responsibility is that not every member state of the United Nations is in a position to receive and accommodate those who are forcibly displaced, either because of matters of geography, economy or otherwise, but there are other ways to contribute. There may be regional ways they can contribute. There may be some countries that contribute money instead of actually receiving refugees on their territory.
The point is that we all share in this. It’s not just Uganda that must address the displaced from South Sudan. It’s not just Bangladesh that must accommodate the refugees from Myanmar. It’s not just Colombia that must take those from Venezuela. We are all in this together.
Given the numbers that exist at present and are coming in the future, the need will only be met if each of us does our part, common but differentiated responsibility depending on the ability of each country to contribute.
The Acting Chair: Perhaps I can get Ms. Imseis’ response to that. I think of it as — forgive the language — a cap-and-trade model in a way, because there are certain countries, such as Japan and Saudi Arabia, for instance, that will not accept refugees. Are they willing to increase their contributions to the UNHCR?
Ms. Jamous Imseis: Perhaps to answer that, I will go back to the Global Compact on Refugees, which, as the committee knows, is a compact that was agreed to by member states almost four years ago now. It sets out what we call a whole-of-society approach to dealing with international displacement, recognizing that there are some countries which have borne this responsibility on their own for far too long and that, looking forward into the future, there are many different actors within society that can play a role in helping to alleviate some of the pressures that come from forced displacement.
Whether we’re looking at governments at all levels — from municipal on up — or whether we’re looking at private-sector responders, inclusion sits at the core of the Global Compact, which means, essentially from the beginning, recognizing that refugee flows, while in times past, may have been time-bound, emergency humanitarian situations and people were then able to return to their homes, they’ve now become protracted, and that is, effectively, the new normal. With that in mind, using inclusion as the framework, when refugees do come into your country, you immediately offer the opportunity to integrate them into the school systems and the health system with the support of other international actors. I say that because, as has been pointed out, some countries disproportionately bear that burden just simply on the basis of geography.
The Acting Chair: Thank you.
Senator Arnot: Thank you for coming today, witnesses, and for helping us deal with this very acute situation. We have high expectations for our report.
This question is for Ms. Imseis. It speaks to the comment on the causes of displacement — the usual causes like conflict, persecution, climate change, poverty and governance, which are always well highlighted. Are you seeing any new trends, causes or factors that are contributing and are not well known to the Canadian public?
Secondly, what factors would significantly curtail global displacement? I’m looking at this and thinking beyond international cooperation, honouring human rights and honouring international convention, because I don’t think that asking people — countries — to follow the norms is going to be successful, given the current state of things. Really, I’m interested to know what specifics you think Canada could do and what we could do in this report to advance the cause.
Ms. Jamous Imseis: Very simple questions posed by the senator, and I will do my best to answer those.
As to trends, as I said earlier, refugee situations — displacement in general — have become protracted. These emergencies are not 12 or 18 months. From the outset, people are understanding that it may be several years before they’re able to return home. In and of itself, that has become one of the obstacles to finding durable solutions. When temporary has a way of becoming permanent, people start to root themselves in the countries of asylum. They have children, and they may find ways to cope. The average length of displacement now ranges between 17 and 21 years. I think the protracted nature in and of itself is one of those important factors that continues to prevent us from finding solutions.
You’ve pointed to some of the drivers, which are conflict, insecurity and persecution. I would add impunity to that, where human rights are being violated in plain view, flagrantly, and actors who are the agents of this persecution continue to do so with impunity and without any form of justice or accountability.
Sadly, the international community seems as polarized as ever. The lack of unity, purpose and concerted action at the level of the Security Council, for instance, in finding durable solutions and meaningful political action to end some of these situations is also, I think, one of the reasons this trend of displacement continues. Countries can watch what’s happening internationally and take action, fairly confident that the consequences may be quite limited, and the impact on them for not honouring their international legal obligations is going to be quite limited. Of course, we know this is a very simplistic overview. There are instances when, in fact, the reverse is true based on geopolitical strategic interests and so forth.
How do you curtail displacement? This is an area where I think Mr. Rock is very well placed to discuss some of those issues. I know they focused in the past in their reporting on governance issues and corruption and issues related to the assets of those who are agents of persecution and so on and so forth. Again, I do believe that lack of effective, meaningful action on the part of the international community sends the message that it’s okay and that there will be no price paid for that kind of action.
If I were to point at a few things that I would suggest are necessary in order to move and advance the cause of human rights — though you mentioned that wasn’t one issue you were looking at in particular — it goes back to basic things like equity and the way we share wealth and resources in the world, as well as the way we manage borders. As has already been mentioned by Mr. Rock, climate is now increasingly a driver of displacement. These are just a few issues that are top of mind for us at the moment.
Senator Arnot: Mr. Rock, this is going to be quite succinct. You can amplify your answer as much as you want, sir. I would really be interested to know about your proposals for Canada to take action. I believe you described in the past challenging the legality of vetoes by the permanent members of the UN Security Council, advocating for accountability for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, addressing gender-based violence, proposing the adoption of the Every Woman Treaty, establishing the international anti-corruption court and revitalizing the right to seek asylum. If there are any more that you can enumerate, I would be really happy to hear that, and hopefully you can amplify some of those indicia in your answer.
Mr. Rock: Thank you, senator.
You asked earlier about the causes of displacement. You gave a list, which was very thorough. The one point I would add is corruption. As the council did its work, we visited about 14 or 15 places around the world where there were significant numbers of refugees or forcibly displaced internally. We were struck by the close correlation between displacement and corruption. Corrupt regimes are giving bad governance, which often gives rise to civil unrest, violence, instability and fragility, leading eventually to displacement. We identified corruption as one of the root causes of forced displacement.
We were introduced to a movement that began in America some 12 years ago to create a new international institution called the international anti-corruption court. This would be a court with complementary jurisdiction, like the International Criminal Court, but designed to prosecute those involved in grand corruption. This is the accountability I spoke of for the people who are causing displacement. The list of proposals I made was found in a speech I made at Concordia University in April this year, and I developed at some length why the international anti-corruption court instills hope that it could be a useful instrument in the battle against corruption, which, in many ways, is at the root of displacement. Canada has agreed to support the idea. The Minister of Global Affairs has it in her mandate letter from the Prime Minister. We would like to see that put forward.
Beyond that, causes of displacement and ways to diminish the number of people displaced would be good governance. The fact is that if you look at the countries producing refugees or the internally displaced, the governance is very weak. The rule of law is barely present. If there were more focus put on strengthening governance and accelerating economic development, we could make those countries more stable and less likely to produce displacement. It’s really a part of a larger problem of Canada in the world. How can we best use our energies, whether through international development assistance, advocacy, capacity building or otherwise, to strengthen governance so that we don’t end up with this large number of displaced?
Of course, that’s to say nothing of climate. With the coastal areas disappearing under water, small, island developing states being submerged and droughts undermining the arability of land, we’re going to see people moving to survive. Finding ways to slow global warming and deal with climate change is also of crucial importance.
I’ll leave it there for now, senator.
Senator Arnot: Thank you.
I just want to make a point here. The witness has referred to a speaking event — the Henri P. Habib Distinguished Speakers Series at Concordia University in April. I want the analysts to note that, because I think we can draw from the enumerated factors that the witness talked about now.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: Welcome to our guests, the Honourable Allan Rock and Ms. Imseis.
You mentioned the serious lack of resources, including resources to address the refugee situation. This is even more worrisome since the number of refugees is increasing every day; you said 114 million — and that figure could increase in light of what has been happening recently. What financial instruments could be used to help you in your work in the long term?
[English]
Ms. Jamous Imseis: Thank you for that question.
I’d like to go back to the point of protracted refugee situations and displacement now going beyond months or even a few years. I think there’s a recognition now in our humanitarian sector that emergencies are events that no longer last for contained, short periods of time but rather will drag on for several years. Knowing that from the outset, undertaking from the beginning medium-term planning, recognizing that this is going to carry on for some years into the future, means that the way we address the needs are different. It is much easier and much more cost-effective, efficient and, frankly, humane to plan for five years of services than twelve months of services.
Unfortunately, our funding as humanitarian actors doesn’t allow us to do that. We are mandated to provide emergency assistance and life-saving relief to respond to the crisis, but there are other actors, like development banks, who are mandated to do institutional support and reform and provide additional allocations of resources and different sources of funding that can then be used to do things to promote the inclusion I talked about.
It’s recognized that Syrian refugees are now in Jordan for 12 or 13 years. Had we made that determination in the initial emergency phase, and if we knew we would have children who needed schools and people needed to access health care right from day one and planned for the medium and longer term with the support of development actors, we would have done things in a far more long-term way. This is a lesson we’ve learned as humanitarians. We have now developed paradigms and language for addressing these situations, something that we like to call the humanitarian development nexus, which recognizes that these two things must meet. We need to strengthen the way we plan and our forecasting for the long term, recognizing that solutions are likely not going to be immediate.
Looking to development actors is one particular source. The other is the private sector, which has increasingly stepped forward and provided humanitarian actors with another source of resources and support, recognizing there are things that they can do far better than we can do. Those are two things that we have to draw on and, increasingly as humanitarians, we are knocking on those doors.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: Thank you for your answer. You also stated in your remarks that Canada has a good reputation for welcoming refugees and that refugees are an asset to our country. Are you taking any specific measures to address the perception that some Canadians have of refugees?
For instance, some Canadians are opposed to opening our borders to refugees, even though you said yourself that refugees are an asset to Canada and that we should do even more for those people who have the qualities, skills and knowledge that can be useful to our country. How can you get the message across?
[English]
Ms. Jamous Imseis: In fact, this is quite an important preoccupation for our team here in Canada. We don’t sit on the front lines of an emergency humanitarian response; we sit in a donor capital, one, as I said, that has a strong, robust asylum system in the country, one that is being tested, to be sure, but one we are confident can continue to be strong and stand the tests that it’s now facing.
One of the things we do hear — which is different than we do in other places in the world — is trying to ensure we maintain public confidence in those systems in order to continue Canada’s long tradition of welcoming resettled refugees and asylum seekers. How we do that is by engaging with the public in a number of different ways and with some messages we feel are quite compelling and important parts of defining the narrative in this country and keeping it positive.
One of those things, as I mentioned, is looking at Statistics Canada data to make the case that refugees contribute. We know that refugees require supports and assistance on arrival but, over time, pay back much more than they ever receive in integration supports. We are also doing the best to showcase positive examples, people who have turned Canada into their home and have come to be contributing citizens who employ dozens, if not hundreds, of other Canadians.
These are not easy things to do at the moment. What we’ve seen, not just in Canada but globally, is a shift in the narrative. People have traditionally pointed to refugees as being a source of taking people’s jobs. One narrative we’ve heard in many different places is, “People have come, and they’re taking our jobs.” This is no longer the case because, post-COVID, we recognize there are persistent labour shortages in industries around the world. What we’ve seen is this troubling narrative take hold now that people are coming to take our homes. That’s something we are watching with concern here in Canada. It’s also something we feel Canada is well equipped to manage and take on, especially because asylum seekers are not actually the source of these issues. But it is challenging at the moment to have these conversations.
A pollster recently described to me and my colleagues in a conversation that, increasingly, Canadians — and this is not just Canada; we see this in many parts of the world — are looking at issues like immigration and refugees through the lens of scarcity and seeing it’s much more difficult to maintain the quality of life they’ve been accustomed to. They’re reckoning with affordability and economic inflation concerns. People who once said, “I’m pro-immigration,” are now adding a “but” to the end of that sentence.
As I said, it’s a preoccupation for us here, but we’re one voice, and we work with allies and advocates in this country and elsewhere to try to promote a positive understanding.
Senator Pate: Thank you to our witnesses for appearing.
I travelled to Syria this past summer, and one of the things that really struck me was the selectivity with which the international community is looking at some of these issues. Mr. Rock, you spoke about that a bit. I think of the racism, the poverty and the visibility of certain groups more than others.
When you mentioned corruption, it struck me that there is a level of corruption in some parts of the world even in the voluntary sector. Even the allegations in UNHCR struck me as part of what is countering the additional narrative you spoke about as well in terms of the rise of populism and the ways in which racist, anti-immigrant tropes are being trotted out.
In addition to all of the wonderful work you’re doing and the examples you’ve already raised, I wonder if there are other areas you see some potential for us to move. I’m thinking of some of the anti-violence and the incredible work you did in the 1990s as Minister of Justice leading to look at how we do we deal with violence against women and children, for instance, and the use of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. I’m wondering if there are other mechanisms that we could be looking at to try and ensure that people are regrounded in the importance of this as not just a charitable model, if you will, but as something that is really linked to our own equality and our own continuation. Again, with Syria, Gaza, Ukraine, and even within our own borders, some issues are arising in terms of how we counter this. I recognize the question is broad-based, but do you have any additional suggestions beyond the excellent ones you’ve already provided?
Mr. Rock: Thank you, senator.
We see plainly every day the difference in the response to Ukraine as opposed to refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo or other African nations. It is simply a question of Black and White, isn’t it? I think there is no more compelling illustration of the difference in attitudes, depending on the country of origin, than if you look at our experience with the Ukrainian refugees. We should also say, in fairness, that we have a large diaspora in Canada of Canadians of Ukrainian heritage, which made receiving the Ukrainian refugees a matter of course for us, but we have to watch ourselves, and we have to watch our attitudes and our reactions and responses. Do we respond differently to the needs of those who are coming from some countries than we do to those who are coming from others?
When the council was in Germany, we were in Berlin, and we met with a wide variety of stakeholders as well as government, business and civil society. We tried to get to the bottom of the toxic narrative that was contaminating public attitudes towards newcomers in Germany. Our observation was that it was threefold: first, the arrival of these newcomers is going to undermine our culture; second, these newcomers are a threat to our security; and, third, they are going to take our jobs and damage us economically. There was a concerted effort on the part of the German government and many of the NGOs to tackle each of those myths, each of those silly and non-factual feelings. There was some success at the community level as NGOs tried to introduce local people in villages and towns throughout Germany to Syrian refugees: “Here they are in the flesh. They’re not monsters. They’re people like you. They have kids, and they have needs.” They tried to humanize the refugees. Those efforts to put a human face on people are very important in that regard in relation to everything you’ve raised, senator.
My understanding is that there have been 350,000 refugees received in Canada since 1976 when the program began under the private sponsorship program. The great thing about that is that members of the community agreed to receive and assist the newcomers. They made sure they had snowsuits for their kids when days like today came along, they helped them get into English as a second language courses, and they drove them to the dentist. They have direct experience with the fact that we’re dealing with a family just like our families. It breaks through the barrier of the myth that they’re here to undermine our security, to take our jobs and to destroy our culture. When you see the person as a human being, it makes a world of difference.
To make a long story short, I think we need to do more of that. I know, from my experience going door to door during election campaigns, that when people spoke against refugees or immigrants, it didn’t take much to remind them that many people on their street were immigrants or refugees and became functioning and productive members of our society. It’s not us and them; we’re in this together. I think stressing that and finding ways to illustrate it in people’s everyday lives is terribly important.
I will smuggle in a couple of words on the question of finances raised by Senator Gerba, because it’s an important one.
[Translation]
You are absolutely right: funding for refugee services is clearly insufficient. As Ms. Imseis noted, the funding provided covers 36% of the budgets requested by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. We have suggested at least two solutions in this regard.
[English]
In the 2019 report, the council proposed, firstly, that in the United Nations, we should have compulsory assessments for each member state. It should no longer be voluntary payments. It’s extraordinary that the financing of the UNHCR is entirely voluntary. As my friend Lloyd Axworthy likes to say, it’s like a charity ball, and you can decide whether or not to give money. That’s ridiculous when we’re talking about the desperate needs of 114 million people, 36 million of whom are refugees. We have compulsory assessments in the UN for peacekeeping. The amounts are determined in relation to the size of the member state’s economy. We should do the same for refugee services. That’s the first point.
Secondly, we also talked about frozen assets, a concept that the chair picked up with her private member’s bill, which was adopted by the Senate. Our observation was that, again, the regimes that produce refugees are often corrupt. The kleptocrats don’t keep the money at home; they put it offshore. Countries like Canada freeze those assets. We suggest that they should not only be frozen, but they should be confiscated and repurposed for the benefit of the refugees they created.
Think of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, for example. The people we visited in Colombia are having difficulty paying for housing and social services for the refugees from Venezuela. If Maduro had money in Canada, we should take that money and give it to the government of Colombia or to the UNHCR to pay for those services. That would be symmetrical. It would be just. It would involve accountability, and it would make sense.
The chair tabled in the Senate the Frozen Assets Repurposing Act, which brought that concept to life. Before it went to the House for adoption there, the Government of Canada amended the Special Economic Measures Act to provide for exactly that kind of thing. That’s another way we could add to the financing for refugee services.
[Translation]
Both are important and the need is obviously urgent.
[English]
Senator Jaffer: Thank you to both of you for being here. The UNHCR representative has always been a friend of the parliamentary committees, especially the Human Rights Committee. It’s a pleasure to have you here. Mr. Rock, it’s an absolute pleasure to have you here as well. I’m sitting here and thinking you did so much work in Parliament as Justice Minister, and you haven’t given up now. As a Canadian citizen, you’re working on some very important issues.
I had so many questions to ask you, but now I cannot restrain myself from asking you the question on Ukraine. Mr. Rock, you spoke about how Ukraine has this big diaspora, or whatever word you used — and I’m putting words in your mouth now — but it’s not just the diaspora that did it; right? It was also the government that made it easy by having all kinds of special programs to bring Ukrainians here. In the community where I live, people talk and say, “Look at the treatment that our government is giving to Ukrainians compared to Afghanis.” They don’t make it easy for Afghanis to come here. There are all kinds of challenges for Afghanistan people to come, and Afghani people have still not forgotten how they were left behind when Canada left suddenly. Can you make a comment on that? A short comment, because I have other questions.
Mr. Rock: Senator, thank you.
Yes, there has been a difference. Of course, in the case of the Ukrainians, we didn’t use the refugee program at all. We issued special visas, which I think was regrettable. We have a sturdy refugee system. We have private sponsorship available. I don’t know why we took that route. I suppose it was quick, but it did differentiate the Ukrainian newcomers from all others.
In terms of the Afghans, I know from personal experience of trying to persuade the Government of Canada to facilitate the extraction of certain Afghans — especially Afghan women judges who are very vulnerable because they’ve made themselves targets for the Taliban — getting them out of Afghanistan and then getting them out of intermediary countries to Canada has also been very difficult.
I understand that we have met our 40,000-person target, and we’re still receiving more Afghans. The 40,000 is not a ceiling. We continue to take people into Canada. I have great respect for the officials in IRCC. I know they do their very best, but there are impediments standing in the way of an effective and quick response for the urgent needs of certain Afghans, and I do wish we could expedite the processing of their applications. I do wish we could get them here faster.
Senator Jaffer: I know you are working hard to bring the judges here. Thank you for your and Mr. Lloyd Axworthy’s work on this. The fact is that, for most Afghans, the definitions of the convention are applied. For Ukrainians, they aren’t. I don’t want you to comment. I just want to leave it there.
Ms. Imseis, the UNHCR has done tremendous work in Africa. As you know, we are in the midst of a global crisis of illegal immigration in Europe through the Mediterranean Sea. Would you be able to discuss what the UNHCR is doing in that regard and share some thoughts on what can be done from a Canadian perspective?
Ms. Jamous Imseis: In my previous posting, I covered the central Mediterranean movements and North Africa and the flows of sub-Saharan Africans up through the continent and onwards to Europe and other locations. There are a number of things we’re doing. I’m thinking of Libya and Tunisia. We have a very robust presence on the ground here. Libya, as you can imagine, is a very complex operating environment. There are moments where we are allowed to operate, and t here are moments where we don’t have visas and residency permits issued, so we are constantly having to negotiate our presence in the country. One of the things we do there is work in the detention centres. You may have heard these detention centres are places where conditions are unspeakable and people have been subjected to horrors. They’ve been trafficked, they have been enslaved, and the nightmare continues in detention. We are present to try to address some of the immediate needs and to also identify people who we can hopefully submit for resettlement consideration to countries like Canada. That’s one of the things we’re doing.
Another thing that we’re doing in countries across the continent is to describe for people what they should expect to find on their journey, should they try and embark on that journey, and not to be misled by unscrupulous traffickers and smugglers about what they will find, and the conditions in Europe on arrival, as well. We know that Europe is also trying to grapple with this situation as a bloc and to find ways to distribute asylum seekers across the continent to different countries, but also to find ways to ensure effective removals when people are not found to be legitimate refugees.
I could go on, but that is some of the work we do in a country like Libya, which is an important transit point for some of these crossings.
Senator Jaffer: Mr. Rock, you talked about corruption, so I will skip that a bit, but in the 1951 refugee convention and its protocol, do you think at this time corruption or climate change will be covered?
Mr. Rock: No. The 1951 convention is very specific in defining a convention refugee. Those who are displaced by climate are not included, but I have a couple of observations about that. We recently had a retreat at which we had as a guest speaker Professor James Hathaway, who I think will appear before this committee. He’s a Canadian who now teaches in America. He’s a fabulous expert in immigration refugee law internationally. He pointed out that most of those displaced by climate change in the future will not actually become refugees; they’ll be internally displaced. We had thought about whether we should be advocating a special protocol to the 1951 convention to deal with climate change. He counselled against that. He said the refugee convention is fragile enough given the pressures put on it by despots, autocrats and crooks around the world and not to put further pressure on it by talking about it being renegotiated but to leave it as it is.
Remember, too, that other instruments can help those displaced by climate change who do become refugees. For example, the United Nations Human Rights Council has, in the last couple of years, recognized the provisions of the covenant on civil and political rights, and social, economic and cultural rights — those two covenants that form part of the International Bill of Rights — as applying to someone who leaves their country because of drought or flooding and it’s no longer possible making their living running a farm or to feed themselves and their family. The provisions of those covenants may provide protection.
Furthermore, people who have to leave their country because of climate-induced displacement probably fall within the provisions of the statelessness convention. The convention on statelessness of 1954 has been ratified by over 100 countries and has every bit as much protection as the refugee convention did in 1951. It might need a slight amendment to specifically provide for those displaced by climate. Professor Hathaway saw that as a much more promising avenue for dealing with those displaced by climate.
Senator Jaffer: It’s a real honour to have both of you here, as a former refugee myself. Thank you for being here.
The Acting Chair: Let me ask a question of both of you, since we’re talking now about the convention. It was constructed and approved in 1951, in the post-Second World War environment. There was a protocol attached to it in 1967. From your point of view, sitting today in 2023, when the world is falling apart in many regions, creating a level of forced displacement that we have not seen before, is the convention still fit for purpose?
Ms. Jamous Imseis: I firmly believe that the convention is fit for purpose and, moreover, that we have all of the instruments needed at our disposal in order to deal with global displacement, as well as an array of other issues that are subsets of that.
For me, what is absent in many cases are asylum systems that have the capacity to deal with these flows and international solidarity and support for refugee-hosting countries. As I said at the outset, the vast majority of refugees never leave their region. They want to return home, so they stay close by. We need to support those countries that have been hosting refugees for decades. That’s a form of international solidarity and contributes to the realization of the convention’s goals. There are other ways in which you can strengthen asylum systems so that people can receive the protection they need. You can have forms of solidarity, like resettlement to third countries. I believe that what is lacking in most instances is either capacity, resources or, frankly, political will and accountability, but the convention itself is still quite fit for purpose. That would be my view.
Mr. Rock: What a terrific answer. I agree with everything that my colleague has said.
I would add a couple of things, because the council has made recommendations on the very subject of helping host countries. We think now about the country that is the neighbour and is receiving the refugees. Of those countries, 75% of them are in the low-income category, so those least able to accommodate the refugees are those that have the most of them. There are ways we can help.
When we were in Jordan, we discovered that the huge number of refugees in that country — from Syria, Palestine and beyond — were not allowed to work. That was a real impediment. It isolated them socially and deprived them economically. It was a real problem. The European Union made a proposal that Jordan accepted. They said, “We will give you a break on the tariffs of goods manufactured in Jordan coming to Europe if they’re manufactured by refugees. If you allow them to work, it’ll be good economically for Jordan because it will open new pathways for your exports.” Jordan, as a result, issued 100,000 work permits. The refugees got to work. The products made through their labour were exported on preferential tariffs to Europe. It was a win-win situation. That’s an example of responsibility sharing. It’s an example of common but differentiated responsibility, and it’s an example of reaching out to help host countries who are actually doing the hard work of receiving refugees.
We also recommended that the international financial institutions should look at preferential treatment for host countries. When Uganda has 1.6 million South Sudanese in Uganda, Uganda’s national debt arrangements with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund should be adjusted to reduce the economic burden on Uganda to reflect the contribution it’s making by accommodating those refugees in its territory.
There are ways in which we can assist host countries, recognizing the reality that refugees are going to neighbouring countries because they want to go home, as my colleague say, and I fully agree with what she said about the refugee convention. It is indeed fit for purpose, and we should continue to protect it.
The Acting Chair: Thank you to both of you. That is a terrific opening to our study. It is really important to understand the scope of the problems but also to see some points of light. In the end, our report will not just be about understanding the problems, but it will be about tabling some solutions for Canada.
Colleagues, we will now begin our second panel. With us in person, I wish to welcome the Honourable Lloyd Axworthy, Chair of the World Refugee and Migration Council, and former minister of Foreign Affairs and former minister of Employment and Immigration; and, via video conference, please welcome, from New York, Mr. Bill Frelick, Director, Refugee and Migrant Rights Division, Human Rights Watch.
Each of the witnesses have been asked to provide an opening statement of five minutes. We shall hear from the witnesses and then turn to questions from the senators.
Lloyd Axworthy, P.C., Chair, World Refugee and Migration Council: Thank you very much, Madame Chair and members of the Senate. I welcome the opportunity to be with you.
I was just listening in to the last part of your exchange and thought it certainly makes my life easier now that all the answers are there and I can just provide echoing support.
I did want to open by drawing your attention to the World Refugee and Migration Council because in some ways it’s a little bit of a unique institution. It is an international institution. Our council members are really spread out in different parts of the world, which means we’re able to tap into some pretty interesting, contrasting discussions and debates. We just issued a statement last week on what was happening in Israel and Gaza, and we were able to draw on members from the Middle East themselves who were directly involved. It does bring a broader perspective, not one just focused on Western nations or the particular bubble that we live in. It’s a way to provide a broader example.
We are also set up with a very clear commitment about the importance of participation of refugees themselves in making decisions. Many felt that, so often, decisions that impact people don’t include the people who are impacted. I think that’s certainly the case in the world of refugees. There isn’t much opportunity. One of the first initiatives we took is the Girl Project where we had a large number of women in different refugee situations around the world who could plug in through the magic of digital communication to express themselves. It was particularly helpful during the time of COVID because we were able to get a perspective of women who were in the camps or in the communities in Oman and other areas. I remember one statement that was made that has lived with me and haunted me ever since. The woman said, “It used to be that we were at the back of the queue. We’re not even in the queue anymore.” It described how much they were being ignored and the indifference. Many of the large NGO and civil society groups had to pull out because of the nature of the protocols they worked under. It put a major onus on participants themselves to pick up health, enforcement and administration services. One of the things that we tried to organize was a series of trainings in law and administration measures. They didn’t work well because we couldn’t get the nature of the funding we wanted. The government felt that was a step too far, but it really was a demonstration that there is a lot of capacity that goes unexplored and untouched. One of the considerations you may want to make is how there can be a much higher level of direct deliberation and discussion amongst those who are directly affected.
I think I heard Allan and the woman from UNHCR say that displacement is no longer just being isolated to four or five or six hot spots. The level of displacement that went on in Canada this last year because of the fires was a couple hundred thousand people, Canadians. What do you go back to, a burnt house and a community totally razed to the ground? Our preparation and understanding of the displacement and the replacement is something that really does require a much stronger set of connections. The idea is that somehow it’s international and then domestic, and I think the two are really completely connected and interrelated.
I know I only have maybe three minutes left, so I’m going to give you three points to consider.
First, I go back to my days as Immigration Minister in the 1980s and the first Mr. Trudeau’s government. I really believe that what I have seen evolve is a clear entropy in the system, a breaking down. There is a clear sort of financial issue that Allan addressed. Think of the scope by which the United Nations and other agencies are required to meet the demands of displacement, and it’s dependent totally on donor contributions. I wanted to bring to your attention Olivier de Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food. He pointed out that in the latest effort for fundraising for the Rohingya, they got 17% of the required amount. We’re living at a time when there are lots of dollars for things that we on the privileged side of the equation want to have, but not when it comes to this issue. When I was a minister in that area, I had to go through these so-called declarations of intent. It was very reminiscent of trying to raise money for your daughter’s spring prom where you try to match everybody. The level of financing that we have to support is for the most significant, major forces for change and displacement and tragedy in the world, and what do we do? We treat it as if it is a charitable contribution. That’s point number one.
Point two is that there has to be a serious look — you’re a human rights committee — at the real failure of people to exercise fundamental human rights. As I’ve also pointed out, the right of asylum goes back to ancient Athenian days when cities were required to provide sanctuary under law. Now, we’re finding that there is weaving and dodging and ducking by all kinds of governments to find ways that they don’t have to do it. Even for a country like our own, which is one of the few that still has a level of caring, the fact that we have a third-party agreement is a way of basically brushing off those who seek asylum. We also know that when asylum seekers come here, they can often be put into provincial jails. As well, we know there are a number of circumstances where the effort of people to provide proper legal aid coming to the airport because of the third-party agreement is now totally overwhelming the system. So whether it’s —
The Acting Chair: I’ll give you a minute more for your third point.
Mr. Axworthy: My third point is basically that fundamental issue that we need to find a way of responding in more than just a transactional “today” way. With the surge of change, migration and numbers, the integration of efforts is really a pallid shadow of what it has to be. A couple of years back, I was meeting with David Suzuki, a well-known environmentalist. We talked about how those dealing with migration and sustainability live in their own silos. I said that if the two could come together, we might have a powerful force for change, reform and readjustment. Part of the reason for this is, as you know, that this is the way of government. We have a department of environment and a department of immigration, and I suppose they talk to each other over the coffee urn at the cabinet meetings, but they don’t go much farther than that.
Thank you very much.
Bill Frelick, Director, Human Rights Watch: Thank you to the committee for the invitation.
While the attention of the world is focused on unfolding events in Israel and Palestine, and recognizing the need for robust advocacy in defence of human rights during this ongoing crisis, I want to take this opportunity to sound a warning that other actors may see the world’s attention on Gaza and Israel as their chance to force back long-standing refugee populations. I want to highlight four places where Canada should keep a close watch, though, unfortunately, this is by no means an exhaustive list.
First, Pakistan announced on October 3 that all unregistered Afghans had to leave Pakistan by November 1 — that’s the day after tomorrow — and that any remaining would face deportation after that date. Broad calls by Pakistani officials for mass deportation have coincided with an increase in harassment, assault and arbitrary detention. At least 2.2 million Afghans live in Pakistan without legal status, in addition to more than 1.3 million registered Afghan refugees. Although many of the unregistered fled after the Taliban takeover in August 2021, they are not recognized as refugees simply because they have not been allowed to register. Despite Canada’s Special Immigration Measures Program and special humanitarian programs, which were meant to relocate Afghan women leaders, human rights advocates, persecuted religious or ethnic minorities, LGBTI individuals and journalists, many Afghans who have applied for resettlement in Canada, including highly vulnerable women and girls, remain in danger in Pakistan. They are now at risk of deportation back to Afghanistan, where they would face persecution by the Taliban.
Second, in Turkey, on multiple occasions, Turkish President Erdoğan has expressed his desire to resettle over a million Syrian refugees into a Turkish-controlled so-called safe zone in northern Syria. As we will be showing in a soon-to-be-released report, this area is far from safe, and returns to these and other parts of Syria remain dangerous to refugees who fled the conflict there. Turkey hosts the largest number of refugees of any country, but it is currently deporting large numbers of Afghans and Syrians and violently pushing back asylum seekers and migrants on its borders with Syria and Iran. Canadian humanitarian support and resettlement are essential to maintaining asylum space in Turkey, as is advocacy for upholding due process rights for refugees, migrants and asylum seekers and defence of the principle of non-refoulement.
Third, on September 14, the Dominican Republic closed its border with Haiti as part of a dispute over the construction of a canal. There are many indications that the dispute is wider than the diversion of water. Prior to the border closure, the Dominican Republic had been constructing a 118-mile wall on the Haitian border, and deportations of Haitians have spiked this year, with more than 120,000 Haitians having been expelled since the beginning of the year. Canada has long-standing ties and engagement with Haiti, and Canada should continue to work with CARICOM and others to reduce community violence, strengthen the rule of law and support development, stabilization and humanitarian needs. Canada should provide support for Haitian refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in the Dominican Republic and advocate against collective expulsions of Haitians from the Dominican Republic and other countries in the region.
Finally, in Lebanon, which hosts the largest number of refugees per capita of any country in the world, summary deportations of Syrians have increased this year, targeting thousands of Syrians without legal status across Lebanon, giving no consideration to their fears of persecution if returned. Human Rights Watch issued a report earlier this year on these arbitrary arrests and summary returns and documented detention, torture and forced conscription of returnees. Lebanon has banned UNHCR from registering Syrian refugees, so currently only 17% of Syrian refugees hold legal residency.
In all four of these cases — and there are warning signs in other places as well — Canada should ensure four things.
First, Canada should provide generous and timely humanitarian assistance to support refugees in their countries of first arrival as an essential element of preserving asylum space and maintain such support in protracted situations.
Secondly, Canada should continue to act as a world leader in refugee resettlement, including through private sponsorship and other innovative programs that prioritize resettlement of the most vulnerable refugees.
Third, Canada should look holistically at refugee situations, including by working to address the root causes of forced displacement in countries of origin.
Fourth, and of great importance, Canada should match its humanitarian assistance, development and resettlement support to refugees in host countries with close monitoring of collective expulsions or repatriation programs that purport to be voluntary but which, in fact, are coerced and robustly intervene when the principle of non-refoulement is at risk of being violated.
I would be happy to answer any questions.
The Acting Chair: Thank you very much to both our witnesses.
Colleagues, we are going to questions. I am going to limit senators to four minutes because we now we have more senators here and we want to accommodate everyone. Everyone has important questions to ask.
Senator Arnot: Mr. Axworthy, you’ve mentioned that the United Nations basically has voluntary donor contributions, which is a major flaw. Mr. Rock mentioned the same thing. My question is this: Given Canada’s influence at the United Nations — and you and Mr. Rock are both very familiar with the workings of the United Nations — this seems to be a common sense, fundamental solution to the issue. It really does strike at the heart of the credibility of the United Nations. What is the probability of Canada’s success or the United Nations’ success in moving to making those contributions mandatory as a member of the United Nations? What do you think Canada needs to do to push for that strategically? I’m asking this question because this could be a major recommendation of this committee since it comes from you very credible individuals with great knowledge.
Mr. Axworthy: Senator, in answer to the first part of the question about what chance or percentage, I would say about 3% or 4% under the present circumstances.
The change hasn’t taken place — this has been an ongoing effort, and even when we were on the Security Council, we tried to sort of manœuvre — because there is just a fundamental systemic resistance, mainly coming from large countries that think they’re going to get stuck with the bill. The opposition, then, is from other big, rich countries that don’t like to contribute anything at all. There are members of the Security Council whose contributions are less than Puerto Rico. They are just not giving. I don’t think that we have been able to generate the leadership at the top to lead that charge. However, I also think that my intuit, my political nose, is telling me that I think we are seeing, increasingly, forms of stronger, bottom-up efforts to make those changes.
Could Canada take the lead? Absolutely, it could, but we have to clean our own act up first. We have not been particularly highly regarded in the UN for our level of international development assistance. We’ve pulled that back. We’ve had a very strong commitment on the feminist foreign policy, and there is some good work done, but again, it’s very limited in its scope. Here is a point I learned in my political days: If you want to become a champion for some change, you better make sure that your own backyard is pretty clean as well. Right now, we have some serious rights issues, in my view, in this country that we would have to restore and rehabilitate if we’re going to try to do that leadership.
Senator Jaffer: Thank you, Mr. Axworthy, for being here, and you, Mr. Frelick. You’ve made interesting presentations, and I’ve learned a lot from you.
I know your work, Mr. Axworthy, from when you were a minister. One of the amazing things you started and were a proponent of was women, peace and security and the UN resolutions. There are many UN resolutions.
I’m honoured to tell you that I chair a group of 40 women across the world, and we still work on your concepts. We still push the UN to expand the resolutions and include more women. One of the programs that I remember you began, if I’m not mistaken, was about women at risk, widows and children in refugee camps. More and more at our tables, we talk about women sitting at the peace table, but also about how women are left out in camps and left out at home because they do not qualify under the Refugee Convention or our country is not willing to bring them here. How can we make progress on this when widows and children are left behind in refugee camps?
Mr. Axworthy: Senator, you point to a very significant element. There are already in place a lot of tools, levers and mechanisms to make it work, but you need the politics to drive it, and we’re not getting that. If I can be critical, which I can because I’m kind of a cranky old guy now, the reality is that we shut down the world’s most effective peacekeeping centre, which had a special and quite committed view of the involvement of women in peace and security issues. The previous government shut it, and we have never restored it. We have basically dropped out of peacekeeping.
I listened to Mr. Frelick and the things he would like Canada to do. That’s nice. We’d all like to see that, but we’re not doing it. Right now, our Defence Department has no interest in peacekeeping. After the Rick Hillier days in Afghanistan, our Armed Forces, which used to be probably the best and had a lot of involvement in a much broader sector, that’s all gone. It’s funding to find a new mission.
What I keep coming back to, because my roots were as a street politician, is that you have to do your homework here first. You have to make sure that you’ve got the right sort of issues and resources and infrastructure in order to make it work. If you’re not doing that, it’s pretty hard — to go back to Senator Arnot’s point — to go to the UN and say, “Hey, pull up your socks and get these things done,” when they say, “You don’t do peacekeeping anymore.” Mr. Frelick was asked about Canada in Haiti. We refused to become involved in the peacekeeping initiative mission even though the Americans and the CARICOM were asking. We simply said that we don’t do that anymore.
You’re in the committee. You can begin to raise these issues. I’m simply saying that we’re going to have to do some reckoning. To be a leader, you have to make sure that people pay you with respect because you’ve earned it. You simply can’t be a megaphone.
Senator McPhedran: Welcome to our witnesses. It’s an important moment to have this conversation.
Mr. Axworthy, in December of 1999, I sat in your office when you were Minister of Foreign Affairs, with Sally Armstrong and other very committed Canadian women, and we said that we want you, on behalf of Canada at the UN, to call out what’s happening to women from the Taliban. You did. You were the first in the world to actually put on the record that they were thugs and what they were doing to women. But you also said that for what you want us to do, you have to mobilize Canadians. We went away from that meeting, and organizations like Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, which just testified at our Foreign Affairs Committee very recently, were founded and now are still operating.
We’ve had a shift within our larger country context. This is not an easy question, but I think a crucial one. What are your thoughts on the kind of very specific initiatives, including from the Senate, that could be taken to address this shift away from the kind of collective compassion that there was more of in the 2000s?
Mr. Axworthy: Let me first say that the response that you, Sally Armstrong and others made was to come back with 20,000 names of women demanding their release and working against the Taliban’s atrocities. I tabled that at the Security Council, and we actually held an open session, which takes me back again. A lot of commentators around this town keep saying, “Oh, it doesn’t matter whether you’re at the UN or the Security Council.” Darn right it does. We were able to be in a place where we had a voice. We could help mobilize opinions, and we came up with resolutions. I think it’s 1352 where we shifted peacekeeping to actually protecting civilians.
I’m looking at what’s going on now in terms of the atrocities against civilians. There are all kinds of things on the books that could be used and aren’t being used because there’s nobody prepared to say the protection of civilians is a major of question of human security. It’s an old word and people kind of laugh at it, but I think the Senate could be a very important instrument in going back and looking at a little of the history and doing a proper inventory of the tools we have. You should use your capacity for meeting to draw a lot more Canadians.
I listened to the commentary in the previous suggestion about Canadian support for immigration and refugees. There’s no question it’s diminishing because we don’t give Canadians enough chance to participate anymore. We basically have put the sponsorship program on hold. We’re not using it, because it’s too expensive, according to the bean counters in this town. That’s a real tragedy that’s going on.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: Welcome to our witnesses. My question is for the Honourable Lloyd Axworthy.
You said that countries are trying to escape their responsibilities for welcoming refugees and that this is a failure in the eyes of individuals who are simply trying to exercise their fundamental rights.
You also mentioned the example of the safe third country agreement concluded between Ottawa and Washington in 2002, which was recently renewed. Some people doubt that the United States is indeed a safe country for refugees right now — and many organizations share those doubts. What are your thoughts on that?
[English]
Mr. Axworthy: I think the evidence is very clear that in the United States, the level of acceptance of refugee applications is minuscule. Mr. Biden’s administration has retained a lot of the practices that the Trump administration brought in in terms of assessment and application and the whole question of families’ connection. My god, Joe Biden is even talking about putting the wall back up. It’s an ongoing concern.
We have a different value system in this country. We were formed on a different set of historical reasons. Immigration has always been, until very recently, a very strong sense of purpose and identity for Canadians. Last fall, I think it was, a poll said 75% of Canadians supported active immigration and refugee applications. That’s down now into the 40s because I think people have now been overtaken by concerns about housing and settlement. Those are public policy issues.
I believe that the sponsorship program needs to be reinstituted. That’s one way you can bring Canadians into being part of the solution. It’s not just a matter of reading about it or what a minister says on the open talk shows. Actually, as Allan put it, they’re actually meeting real people and realizing these are not thugs or hoodlums or traffickers. They’re just people who are really escaping some pretty awful circumstances.
If I had a recommendation — I think I’m running out of time — to make for the committee to consider, it would be the issue of developing special pathways based on human rights considerations. I’ll give you one example. As the chair knows, we hosted a major task force on migration in the Americas. One member of our council, a former foreign minister from El Salvador, had the courage and the guts to accompany the convoys, people moving from the Central American sort of triangle to the U.S. border. She gave testimony in Guatemala when we were doing a consultation, and probably the most chilling words she said was, “In that convoy, there’s a toll station every 70 or 80 miles, and the price of the toll is ’give me your daughter.’” The level of sexual repression going on was unbelievable. We’re now working with the Canadian government to find alternative ways to bring the women who have been violated and have endured the atrocities committed. Those are things we can do, but we have to want to do them, and we need that political push to do it.
The Acting Chair: Mr. Frelick, you talked about Pakistan, Turkey, the DRC and Lebanon, where things are falling apart. Could you comment on the situation of children in the context of the four countries and what you observe in terms of their human rights? Is there anything that is being done specially to protect the rights of children?
Mr. Frelick: I was doing research myself in Turkey, looking at the situation of Afghan refugees there. I was particularly struck that most of the refugees I spoke with who were being abused, pushed back at borders and deported to Afghanistan were unaccompanied young people, teenagers who looked to be between 13 and 19 years old. Many of them don’t know their own birthdays. It’s difficult to say that there’s this red line and suddenly one day you go from being a child to an adult, particularly since oftentimes the age determination processes were far from accurate or scientific, and they don’t give the benefit of the doubt to the child, which, of course, is a standard under the Convention on the Rights of the Child as well. I actually talked to people who said, “I told them I was a child, and after they beat me, they forced me to say I was an adult.” That was the age determination process.
At the airport in Ankara, I witnessed hundreds and hundreds of young men and boys who were being herded onto airplanes and flown back to Kabul, where they disappear. We don’t know what happens to them. They can’t go back to their villages in most cases because of the structure of the Taliban being what it is, and that’s the men. What we saw with girls — which we saw less of in Turkey because the trip is extremely dangerous and hazardous for them, to traverse Iran and the borders with Turkey. Oftentimes they’re abused trying to get into Bulgaria and Greece, where we also documented pushbacks.
In Pakistan in particular, as I said in my testimony, the government is just not allowing registration of refugees. There’s a cut-off date that’s from years back. Basically, anyone that’s arrived since well before the Taliban takeover but since the takeover don’t have status. That’s what we see in Lebanon as well. Only 17% of refugees have refugee status. This, of course, is particularly difficult for children who not only are at risk of being deported and subject to arrest because they’re regarded as illegal immigrants, but they have no opportunity to go to school or continue with their basic life development. As I think some of the previous witnesses have said, despite the very good intentions of the Canadian government to identify women and girls in Pakistan as being in need of resettlement, which they definitely are, there are enormous barriers that have been put into the processing of refugees by the Pakistani government, and this is a huge obstacle.
Of course, we don’t even talk about resettlement out of Iran, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. It’s extremely difficult for Afghan women and girls to get out of the country.
I’ll give you one example, and I hope it’s not running too late, but it’s so compelling. I interviewed a woman from Herat whose husband abused her. She fled with her four young children — the oldest one was 10 years old — across Iran, had all kinds of trouble getting into Turkey, was not allowed to register as a refugee in Turkey and was exploited working in a sweatshop where I interviewed her. She was living across the street from it. I had the chance to talk to her 10-year-old daughter. She told me she had never left the compound of the house they were living in where they were being abused in Afghanistan. The mother was not allowed to even self-teach her in the house. She had never left that house in the 10 years of her life until they fled the country. That’s the condition of girls in Afghanistan. This young girl was the same age as my granddaughter, and I’m looking at her and seeing that she has no legal status in Turkey, no hope for resettlement to Canada or any other country, and is in great fear of being deported to Afghanistan. Her mother is being exploited in a sweat shop, in the meantime. She’s not going to school.
The Acting Chair: We may choose to come back to this topic of children and exploitation.
Senator Pate: Both witnesses can pick up on this. I wanted to pick up, Mr. Axworthy, about your comment about the need to look at sexual exploitation, and Mr. Frelick also talked about this, but also talking about the impact of atrocities on civilians. The most public is rolling out.
I mentioned earlier — I’m not sure if you were in the room yet — that when I was in Syria this summer, I was shocked by what I saw, heard and what was going on in terms of the risks and the targeting of civilians in a context that is also then feeding extremism in all kinds of ways, including within the camps. We are seeing families not sending their children to the limited school availability that exists for fear the daughters will be raped and the sons may be abducted or taken in by ISIS cells. It struck me that we’re turning away or not even paying attention to those sorts of situations. At the same time, the whole situation was arising in Gaza, and I was getting messages from folks in Syria about the number of bombings of schools and public housing and the like.
I’m not certain how we move from here. To echo some of my colleagues, what are some of the recommendations we might make out of this committee that might assist this process? It seems like something the majority of the world is not paying any attention to, including our own country.
Mr. Axworthy: As I said, there already are certain tools in the kit that aren’t being used. I go back to the time when we had a special unit in Foreign Affairs on children’s rights, and it was based on Graça Machel’s report. Child soldiers were a major focus at the time. Senator McPhedran, you’ll remember we hosted a meeting in Winnipeg of close to 3,000 people from around the world on children’s rights. We were able to draft a protocol that we were then able to take to the Security Council and get a Security Council resolution. That was a slice of it. The focus was on child soldiers.
There’s a very different focus now. Everybody here has mentioned how the displacement really opens people up to huge vulnerabilities. I don’t know if we can bring Allan Rock back to the table, but he’s worked very closely with a group through the WRMC, a lifeboat group that is already bringing in women and girls from Jordan and the camps around Greece who have been sexually violated. It may only be a couple hundred people, but that’s a beginning. We’re not talking about trying to do the same thing in the Americas for the same reason.
It’s not a big deal. I can tell you right now that I’ve been working in my hometown of Winnipeg, and there are all kinds of interests from the mayor and others saying we’re prepared to provide that sponsorship. The problem is that it has to be declared as a policy and has to have an open and clear-cut process so you’re not just trying to lobby and negotiate every step of the way. There has to be a set policy.
I haven’t seen the full text, but I think our Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly gave a major speech about that today. Let’s see if there’s an incumbency on children, and then it should be applauded. If there isn’t, it should be brought to attention. You do have a Senate committee to make those cases.
Senator Jaffer: I want to go to another thing that you are working on now, Mr. Axworthy, and that is corruption. You’re working with Mr. Rock on this. I was wondering, when you travel — and you travel a lot, and you’ve had some success — have you talked about the inclusion of women, not how women are affected more by corruption, and what you can do? Have you dealt with the issue of women and children?
Mr. Axworthy: I personally haven’t. We could probably ask Allan Rock to do a supplementary.
We connect our work on refugee migration to corruption because corruption is one of the major reasons it happens. Also, when you’re asking countries to make contributions to their development programs, the number of sticky fingers who end up taking the money — there are records. In Lebanon, the whole system is based on everybody gets their payoff.
We’re trying to work on a system. There is a movement under way, of which we’re a part, in terms of developing an international anti-corruption court that will have a similar kind of capacity as the International Criminal Court. Allan Rock was working this summer on behalf of our council with a group of other legal experts to draft an alternative, which is what Senator Omidvar is committed to, in terms of repossession, to actually find a court based on civil action, not criminal action, to make it easier to call people to account, the oligarchs, the people who have basically stolen the money. If you came out swinging on that, that would have a big impact.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: According to the United Nations, extreme climate events over the past decade have displaced an average of 21.5 million people per year. That is more than twice the number of people displaced by conflicts and violence. By 2050, the World Bank predicts that climate change will displace 216 million people per year.
What would you recommend with regard to persons displaced by climate change? How might we think ahead and manage this situation?
[English]
Mr. Axworthy: That’s a very complicated question. I will answer in fairly direct terms.
I would like to see Canada take a lead on the issue of merging or interconnecting migration and climate so that people can’t dismiss it and they see the problem as being part of the same issue rather than dividing it and separating it. I’ve become a strong believer that a lot of our practices in institutions aren’t capable of coping with the scope and dimension of the issues we’re now facing. Therefore, we have to be a little more creative and imaginative in the nature of how we respond to these things. Right now, we’re still kind of working on the backs of the AI age. One of the ways to do that is there has to be a much stronger opportunity for women and girls in particular to be able to have their voices heard on these issues directly. Canada needs to become the vehicle bringing to the age of the circles of decision-making.
Senator Arnot: Mr. Frelick, I’d like to thank you for your work on investigating human rights abuses. Human Rights Watch is important. There is a lot to be learned from your work.
I’m wondering if you’re seeing any examples that this committee could use or should consider where the global village is actually effecting some constructive change. What would you describe as working? As a second component of my question, given the scope of our study, if you were holding the pen, what would be your key recommendations that this committee could make?
Mr. Frelick: Thank you for sort of an impossible question to answer.
At Human Rights Watch, we’re sort of the watchdog gadflies, if you will. I’d be hard pressed to really tell you the success stories. They are all about refugee resilience. They are about a lot of refugees helping each other, remarkable people and the things they do, and local communities as well, and the international community sometimes not getting in their way and letting them solve their problems. Not to overstate it, but that’s recognizing, I think as Lloyd Axworthy was saying, that listening to the refugees themselves and following their lead in many respects is probably the wisest course of action.
To your broader question — I’ll take the opportunity to sort of respond to three or four questions from the previous panel and this one as well in fashioning my answer to you. On the question that we just heard from the previous senator about climate change and I think from the chairwoman about the fit to serve question about the Refugee Convention, while I have great admiration and respect for Professor Hathaway and Ambassador Rock, I would differ with them on whether the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol are actually fit to serve the situation that we do see today.
I think we’ve already seen in regional instruments from the Cartagena Declaration on the Americas to the OAU Convention in Africa an expanded refugee definition that recognizes that while the well-founded fear of persecution standard is extremely important, it’s very narrow and limited. In those regions, they have expanded it. In the European Union, there’s a qualification directive that includes victims of armed violence and victims of inhuman and degrading treatment, which is also not in the Refugee Convention itself. You do have to go to other instruments. You have to go to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as has been mentioned, and the statelessness convention. There are things like women being listed in the same way that race, religion and political opinion are listed. We try to shoehorn them into membership into a particular social group. What’s happening on the ground if women are seeking asylum is that in many countries, they are not recognized as being persecuted on the basis of their gender and they’re not recognized as being members of a particular social group.
You don’t have to take on the whole rewriting the Refugee Convention and putting that up for a vote, but Canada itself can look at its refugee definition and decide that, in addition to the 1951 Convention definition, it might want to expand the refugee definition to include, as refugees, women, and to include, as refugees, victims of generalized violence when there is a nexus to a real threat of serious harm, looking to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as a standard for looking at physical integrity and the right to life. As was mentioned in the context of climate change, when you have rising sea levels and islands that are going to be under water, that’s a direct threat to life. Such people should be recognized as refugees, because whether you die at the hands of a torturer or whether you die because you’re drowning, your life is being threatened one way or the other.
Canada could lead the way. Canada could provide a model for a refugee definition that actually addresses in a holistic and a real way the threats that the refugees of the world are facing today. In doing so, it works as an expedient as well, because rather than spending all this time in convoluted ways of trying to fit square pegs into round holes, a wider, expanded refugee definition means you can recognize meritorious cases much more easily, grant them asylum and find cases that don’t qualify and remove people that don’t have a need for international protection. The need for international protection itself, the standard, is completely out of whack with the realities that we’re faced with, and you have an opportunity to change that.
The Acting Chair: Mr. Frelick, if you would like to put pen to paper and suggest what Canada’s definition of an expanded refugee status would be, we would be happy to receive it.
Mr. Frelick: I would be delighted to do that.
Mr. Axworthy: As some of you know, we were the initiator of the whole responsibility to protect initiative at the UN. You have to realize that that first arose from Francis Deng, who was the Secretary General’s Special Representative on Internally Displaced Persons. He said there was nobody else speaking for them. The international community has to do it. We tried to apply that. It got a little skewered, focusing only on violent conflict issues. I think Mr. Frelick said exactly the right thing. You can be killed by an AK47 or you can die of starvation; either way, you’re dead.
The Acting Chair: I wish to point out to Mr. Frelick and others that Canada has taken the lead before in other contextual situations, as we did when we announced that female genital mutilation was a ground for refugee protection. We need to recall that proud history.
Senator McPhedran: My question builds on the points that have just been made. I’d like to focus our attention on the question of accountability and, to some extent, transparency.
Here’s the scenario. Two years ago, Kabul fell. Canada made clear, on-the-record promises to the world, particularly about Afghan women who are at risk. Many of the indicators that, Mr. Frelick, you mentioned, we mentioned or our Canadian representatives mentioned as being indicators, criteria that we would follow. I was involved directly in almost 200 Afghan women athletes who met the criteria that we had promised the world we would respect. We got them out of Kabul, and the government knew that they were coming out. Not one of those women has been resettled in Canada. They’ve all been taken, over a period of two years, by other democracies.
Here’s my question: How do we build in more effective accountability mechanisms when this kind of rhetoric is delivered in this kind of crisis? It will not be our last.
Mr. Axworthy: The answer is in this room. You hold the accountable minister for that, and if not, name and shame them. I was on the Human Rights Watch board for six years when Ken Roth was the director, and he was a master at naming and shaming. He used it like a rapier. I think we have to be more aggressive in calling it what we see and how we do it. We have to break out this kind of centralized mode where everything is homogenized. I really do think that Parliament in both its houses does not live up to its full capacity to do that. I speak as somebody who was around here for quite a few years.
Senator McPhedran: Mr. Frelick, accountability measures?
Mr. Frelick: I don’t know about it specifically with regard to the Canadian criteria that’s applied for refugee resettlement. Generally, when we’re talking about accountability in human rights context, we’re talking about accountability for violations of human rights. As we just heard, that involves naming and shaming at the outset, but it also means documenting so that we don’t have the question of impunity that the UNHCR representative was talking about and that we hold violators and corrupt officials accountable. It’s a due diligence question that does put the onus on governments and parliaments to oversee the work that they do. It should be an integral part of every one of these processes.
Unfortunately, when it comes to refugee resettlement, if there’s endemic corruption and fraud, and people are desperate and there’s money to be made, it’s going to be found there as well, which undermines the integrity of the entire system and hurts people who genuinely are vulnerable and need international protection and are not getting it because they’re stigmatized and vilified as bogus asylum seekers, frauds, terrorists or job takers, all the things we hear against refugees.
It boils down to recognizing and understanding people would have absolutely legitimate claims, would absolutely need to be protected, and ensuring that the most vulnerable people are identified and that priority is given to them. What languages they speak or whether they’re likely to get a job quickly, those are considerations, but they’re not the fundamental considerations when it comes to refugees. Those considerations really should look, first and foremost, at the groups that are in the greatest danger, and not just in their countries of origin but oftentimes in their host countries as well, so the LGBTI refugees in camps and women and children who have no say whatsoever in their lives. Those are people where resettlement and donor countries need to focus their attention on, and I think that will really make a difference on the ground.
The Acting Chair: I’m going to take the privilege of being chair to pose a final question to both of you. We haven’t talked much today about the Global Compact for Refugees. It’s a compact; it’s not a convention. It was hailed as a set of promising practices that nation states would coalesce around. Have you actually seen any of that promise being realized? Let me go first to Mr. Frelick and give the closing comment on this to Mr. Lloyd Axworthy.
Mr. Frelick: We’ve not seen the Global Compact for Refugees as being a particularly useful instrument, just to be frank about it. Ironically, and somewhat to our surprise, we actually found the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration to be the compact that had a list of very clear objectives having to do with migrant detention, for example, and ending immigration detention, starting, of course, with the detention of children, which is something this committee is greatly concerned about. We’ve actually found the benchmarks of the global compact on migration, from a human rights perspective, to be a better measuring stick to hold governments accountable. That also reflects that we’re a human rights organization. A humanitarian organization dealing with equitable responsibility sharing would read it differently. There again, one of the problems is it’s not binding, as you said, so whatever responsibility sharing is a coalition of the willing, so to speak. For us, it’s words on paper, but until governments step forward, we haven’t found it to be particularly useful, to be frank about it.
Mr. Axworthy: Our council is a direct product of the discussions of the UN. We were given a mandate to try to provide more practical, kind of workable, commonsense solutions because we know that large international statements of intent and purpose and values are very important catalysts but sometimes don’t actually have the teeth to make a difference. We used that as our lodestone.
I agree that it hasn’t had the kind of repercussions or consequences. I hate to do this or sound this way, but it goes back to there has been no political leadership at the UN by any country to bring it forward and hold it to account and dangle it in the face of the Secretary-General and of certain countries and say, “Wait a minute; here are commitments you’ve made,” and to go back, whether it’s naming and shaming or providing resolutions. It’s there like you buy an old picture and put it on the wall and never look at it again. I think that’s been our problem.
Politics has a lot to do with this issue. We always talk about political will. Political will is a nice word to camouflage having to do the hard work of mobilizing and organizing a political effort to get something done. As I said in my opening remarks, there’s a regression taking place rather than a progression. If you want to take a little PR kick, maybe it’s time for a global compact 2.0 and we ask our UN representatives to go to work on it. If you want to run for a seat on the Security Council, run on something pragmatic and clear like that rather than simply saying we want to be there because we’re nice guys.
The Acting Chair: Thank you very much to both witnesses. This has been a fascinating conversation. Our first and second panels have set us up pretty nicely to progress on our study.
Welcome to our three witnesses who have joined us in person. It’s always good to see people in person. Our guests are, from Global Affairs Canada, Mr. Matthieu Kimmell, Director, Humanitarian Policy; from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, Michelle N. Mascoll, Director General, Resettlement Policy Branch; and Mary Da Costa Lauzon, Director Migration Policy Branch.
Each of the witnesses will be asked to make an opening statement of five minutes. That will take 15 minutes of our time. You can also choose to not do that. It’s up to you. We will then turn to questions.
Michelle N. Mascoll, Director General, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada: My name is Michelle Mascoll, and I am the Director General of Resettlement Policy at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. I’m joined by my colleague, Mary Da Costa Lauson, Director of Migration Policy.
I understand the committee is beginning a study of forced displacement. We join the committee in acknowledging that forced displacement is a pressing global issue as we see protracted crises deepen, new conflicts appear and new challenges emerge, including climate change and natural disasters.
Canada is a world leader in refugee protection, with a sustained commitment to refugee resettlement, regional cooperation and responsibility sharing. Today, along with my colleagues, I would like to share with you how we work to address some of these challenges.
In 2018, Canada was proud to join the international community in supporting the launch of the Global Compact on Refugees to address this important issue. The compact is a framework for responsibility-sharing and international cooperation with four objectives: to ease pressures on refugee-hosting communities, to enhance refugee self-reliance, to expand access to refugee resettlement and to support conditions in country of origin for return in safety and dignity.
Refugee resettlement refers to refugees moving from the country that has granted them temporary asylum to another state, such as Canada. Resettlement countries grant permanent residence to refugees and thus provide a durable solution to their plight. Complementary pathways are also emerging, which provide refugees with solutions on the basis of principles, including family reunification, education and labour mobility.
While I will share with you information on how Canada responds to forced displacement when a refugee resettlement response is warranted, we know that because of finite resources and practical realities, solutions for the vast majority of forcibly displaced persons will not include resettlement to a third country.
My Global Affairs colleague, Mathieu Kimmel, will be able to tell you about investments Canada is making in building resilient communities and meeting humanitarian needs abroad in support of the forcibly displaced.
Canada is at the forefront globally in resettlement. In 2022 to 2023, Canada resettled the highest number of refugees in the world. Canada’s total resettlement target for 2023 is over 51,000 persons. The United Nations Refugee Agency, or UNHCR, has noted Canada’s leadership and the work that Canada does with other vital resettlement, humanitarian and development partners. We also know there are areas for improvement and more that needs to be done to address the scale of forced displacement.
In discussing forced displacement, I would also like to set the broader context for Canada’s immigration system and clarify some important terms that will help us explore this subject effectively.
Having a managed immigration system with a multi-year planning horizon allows the federal government, other levels of government, partners and stakeholders to be well prepared to welcome immigrants and refugees to Canada on a permanent basis. This has been the bedrock of our immigration system and resulted in strong support from Canadians who want to see immigrants and refugees settled in their communities in a sustainable fashion.
As part of Canada’s managed immigration system, the number of refugees Canada hopes to welcome each year is set out in the Multi-Year Immigration Levels Plan. The department will be tabling the 2024-26 Multi-Year Immigration Levels Plan in the coming days.
In Canada, refugee resettlement is facilitated through a number of programs, primarily the Government Assisted Refugee program and the private sponsorship of the refugee program
The definition of a refugee is set out in the 1951 Refugee Convention, as well as the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. The term refers to individuals who are outside of their country of nationality and are unable or unwilling to avail themselves of the protection of that country because of a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.
Unlike “refugee,” the terms “forcibly displaced person” or “displaced person” are not legal terms. They may refer to refugees, but also to internally displaced persons or other people displaced by natural disasters or other types of emergencies.
Currently, the international refugee protection system is structured to address the needs of persons who meet the refugee definition and works to prioritize resettlement for those most in need of protection. This can create challenges when responding to the needs of all forcibly displaced persons, as our existing frameworks, legal tools, operational structures and partnerships may not be available. Responding to these types of situations is inherently complex and may be taking place in a crisis context, where supporting movement is even more challenging.
That said, IRCC has responded to various situations affecting forcibly displaced persons who do not meet the refugee definition or are otherwise victims of an urgent crisis. Our department is currently undertaking a Strategic Immigration Review that aims, in part, to enhance our department’s crisis response mechanisms to better enable more nimble and sustainable immigration responses to humanitarian crises as part of a broader Government of Canada response.
I look forward to your questions about Canada’s refugee resettlement system and forced global displacement.
Matthieu Kimmell, Director, Humanitarian Policy, Global Affairs Canada: Thank you, Madam Chair and senators, for the invitation to be here with you today.
Today, more than 114 million people around the world have been forced to leave their homes, 29 million of them have crossed a border and 17.5 million of them are children.
Driven by worsening and protracted conflicts, disasters and extreme weather events, humanitarian needs have reached record highs. Conflict in Sudan earlier this year has created the world’s fastest-growing displacement crisis, overtaking Ukraine. Just in the month of October, hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced from the catastrophic earthquakes in Afghanistan and escalating conflicts in Azerbaijan, Myanmar, Syria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and now in Gaza.
The climate crisis is leading to new movements and exacerbating needs in fragile and conflict-affected states. This can impact overburdened institutions that are already weak, leading to a vicious cycle of vulnerability.
At the heart of all these movements are people. They are fleeing violence and persecution, human rights abuses, discrimination and xenophobia. They are seeking a safe environment where they can find shelter, food, education, the ability to earn a living and ultimately contribute and give back to their communities.
The reality is that the majority of refugees live in protracted situations with precarious circumstances and increased vulnerabilities that put them at high risk of human rights abuses. Their freedom of movement is curtailed. They face a greater risk of violence, with limited recourse to justice. women and girls, in particular, are more likely to be subject to sexual and gender-based violence. Children are more likely to be trafficked, exploited or abducted or recruited and used in armed conflict. Girls face higher rates of child, early and forced marriage, which keeps them from reaching their full potential. And then there is education. Close to half of all refugee children — 48% — remain out of school, with girls facing even more barriers to attending and eventually completing school.
Being on the move does not deprive refugees of their rights. On the contrary, the rights and protections enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1951 Refugee Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child remain as relevant as ever.
Many, but not all, of the world’s refugee-hosting nations are signatories to these conventions, and it is the fundamental duty of states to uphold and effectively implement the principles of the international refugee protection regime. However, they cannot do it alone. Low- and middle-income countries host 71% of the world’s refugees. Many do so while dealing with existing pressures, and at times, full-scale humanitarian crises of their own.
It is in recognition of the enduring generosity of refugee-hosting states and communities that Canada is committed to the spirit of responsibility sharing that is at the heart of the Global Compact on Refugees.
[Translation]
As my colleague from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada so clearly illustrated, Canada is a world leader in refugee settlement.
In 2023 thus far, Canada has allocated more than $900 million to humanitarian assistance around the world. Of that amount, close to $80 million went to the High Commissioner for Refugees to support refugees, internally displaced persons and the communities welcoming them.
Canada is an ardent defender of child protection in hot spots and conflict zones. In 2017, we launched the Vancouver principles on peacekeeping and the prevention of the recruitment and use of child soldiers.
That is not enough, however. To ensure long-term success, we need to find new ways of working together — among humanitarians addressing issues of development, climate, peace building and immigration — in order to support refugees, while also attacking the underlying causes of displacement and proposing broad, long-term solutions. In that way, we must promote the active participation of refugees themselves in discussions that concern them, and ensure that our decisions are informed by their input and by that of those who are internally displaced.
In situations such as the one in Colombia, our development efforts seek to support the meaningful integration of refugees in national systems. In countries such as Jordan, Lebanon and Equador, our investments through the World Bank’s Global Concessional Financing Facility gives low and middle-income countries access to low-cost loans in recognition of the global public interest they serve by welcoming refugees.
In closing, in chairing the G7 summit in Charlevoix in 2018, Canada made the education of girls and adolescents in conflict and crisis zones the top international priority. We thereby triggered an historic commitment of more that $4 billion U.S. We continued this leadership with the Together for Learning international campaign in order to prioritize the education of refugees, host communities and other children and youth forcibly displaced.
The campaign will culminate at the second Global Refugee Forum, in December, a unique moment to demonstrate global solidarity and to work collectively to defend refugees’ rights and to seek long-term solutions to their predicament.
Thank you for this opportunity to speak to you this evening. I will be pleased to answer your questions.
[English]
The Acting Chair: Thank you very much to all our witnesses.
Ms. Mascoll, in the previous panel, we heard a recommendation that Canada has the capacity to redefine and expand or be more elastic with the definition of a refugee in our own national matters. Has Canada been elastic and flexible in the past? Have we expanded how we define a refugee now and then? Can you give us some history on that?
Ms. Mascoll: Thank you, Madam Chair, for the question.
Canada’s refugee definition is consistent with the definition in the 1951 convention. However, as I noted, we have had moments where we have had to respond to humanitarian situations where the population may not fit nicely within that definition. Therefore, we continue to assess situations on a case-by-case basis and, where necessary, support those who are forcibly displaced if an immigration measure is warranted.
The Acting Chair: Do you have an example?
Ms. Mascoll: Top of mind now is the Ukraine response. That was not a traditional refugee situation. However, we did implement measures to support.
One of the things we are looking at is a crisis response policy framework, and that will enable the department to not only leverage the refugee definition but perhaps look at other options that can enable the department to respond to crises in an equitable and sustainable manner, including those that may not fit neatly within our definition.
The Acting Chair: Let me ask my brief next question. You talked about a crisis response strategy. We’ve had lots of experience in the past two decades. We’ve had experience with the refugee crisis in Kosovo in Serbia, and we’ve had experience with Syrian, Afghani and Ukrainian refugees. Has any of this coalesced into what I would call a rapid response mechanism so that we are ready, willing and able to use the collective knowledge of our immediate past to spring into action to protect refugees?
Ms. Mascoll: Thank you for the question, Madam Chair.
That’s exactly what we’re looking to implement through the crisis response framework, and it was one of the feedbacks that was received from the Strategic Immigration Review. At the moment, we’re working through that policy framework to leverage all of those lessons learned so the Government of Canada can have a more nimble and sustainable response going forward and so it’s less ad hoc. We’re working through that at the moment, and policy is being developed.
The Acting Chair: Colleagues, you’ll forgive me if I take a minute more on this question.
I actually don’t see lessons learned being embedded into our policy. We had a terrific policy during the Syrian refugee crisis where we waived the requirement for individuals to be certified by the UN, and they could come to Canada — or other places as well, I imagine — as refugees. We haven’t actually used that wisdom in a really effective way since then. Why not?
Ms. Mascoll: I acknowledge that our response to each crisis or each situation varies. We assess the situation, looking at the particularities of that particular crisis or that particular emergency. However, I think we have, through the Strategic Immigration Review, heard exactly that feedback about what we could do going forward, and that’s exactly what we’re exploring right now as part of the crisis response policy framework: how to leverage the tools we have in a more consistent manner going forward.
The Acting Chair: Especially in terms of women and girls.
Senator Arnot: This question is for both IRCC and Global Affairs. I would like to hear your response to the question, please.
In 2018, the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration in the other place wrote a report calling on Canada to be part of a global compact charged with responding to displaced persons and refugees. Last year, the Honourable Bob Rae, Special Envoy on Humanitarian and Refugee Issues appointed by Prime Minister Trudeau, reported that Canada had taken leadership roles, including on the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration. Canada has a range of innovative diplomatic tools at its disposal, including international assistance, immigration resettlement programs, trade agreements and support for refugee initiatives. He also referred to a new Refugee Advisory Network model in Canada, which is supported by both your organizations. I would like you to describe the tools Mr. Rae is referring to and how they’ve been effective in dealing with recent concerns. Could you provide some specific examples?
Also, please expand on the developments of the Refugee Advisory Network model for each of your organizations. How is that group’s work translating or transforming Canada’s policy on the global stage? That’s an advisory group, but are their advice and recommendations being taken seriously and actually being transformed into better policy for Canada?
Ms. Mascoll: Thank you for the question.
Canada does support the global compact on refugees, and at IRCC, we champion the third objective around refugee resettlement. In recent years, we have created innovative tools. For example, we recently expanded our human rights defenders program, which is a stream within our government-assisted refugee program. Through that, we’re now eligible to resettle up to 500 human rights defenders annually in conjunction with our partners at the UNHCR, ProtectDefenders and Front Line Defenders. That is just one example of innovations that Canada is undertaking to support the global compact on refugees.
In addition, Canada is a member of a number of advocacy groups, for example, the Global Refugee Sponsorship Initiative and the Global Task Force on Refugee Labour Mobility that aim to enhance and support complementary pathways that are additional to Canada’s resettlement program.
With respect to the Refugee Advisory Network, I’ll allow Matthieu to expand a bit further, but I do want to highlight that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada does attend a number of global international fora, and at the 2019 Global Refugee Forum, Canada was the very first country to have a refugee delegate as part of its delegation. We’ve continued that tradition ever since. Refugee advisers do form part of our delegation and help us shape our national statements. We work closely with groups like the Canadian Council for Refugees and others to really work through and have discussions around policies and programming.
I’ll allow Mathieu to expand on the great work that Global Affairs Canada does in this work as well.
Mr. Kimmell: Similar to IRCC, on the Global Affairs Canada side, we have a range of tools at our disposal to facilitate our support to the Global Compact on Refugees. I spoke a little bit about them in my intervention, but in essence, first and foremost, we do have our humanitarian assistance, which we deploy to provide life-saving assistance to those in need in crises around the world, whether they be refugees, internally displaced people, or IDPs, or others. However, recognizing the nature of humanitarian crises and the fact that, in most cases, they involved an element of displacement, most of our humanitarian assistance would be providing a benefit to refugee and IDP communities. On top of that, we have targeted assistance through organizations like the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. That’s on the life-saving assistance piece.
Then, of course, there is the development investments that are in some ways more bilaterally driven. These longer-term investments really look at addressing the root causes of conflict and displacement, as well as supporting host countries and host communities in managing the pressures that are created by these huge influxes of refugees, which, as we heard in previous panels, do happen in countries that are already dealing with their own crises.
So we have a range of humanitarian and development tools at our disposal, and that’s on top of the advocacy work that our network of missions around the world can and does do in order to advance human rights, whether it’s multilaterally through the Human Rights Council or the UN or bilaterally in engagement with states that are hosting refugees or refugee-source countries.
On the Refugee Advisory Network, definitely echoing Ms. Mascoll’s comments, we genuinely value the contributions that refugee voices in Canada have provided to the elaboration of Canadian policy on refugees. The Refugee Advisory Network is a group of 12 refugees who come from across Canada. They all have lived refugee experiences. They have very different experiences one from the other. We meet with them regularly in advance of these global meetings to shape Canada’s policy. We will be engaging with the Refugee Advisory Network — we already have and will again — in advance of the Global Refugee Forum in December. They will be a part of the delegation there, just as they’ve been part of delegations in the past. They are one element or one group through which we consult with refugees. There is also the Refugee Education Council that has helped shape the Together for Learning campaign. Of course, we encourage all of our humanitarian partners around the world to work closely with refugees in the countries in which they operate and to make sure their operations are supported and informed by refugee forces.
Senator Arnot: I have just one follow-up question on the network. They’re 12 people from across Canada. They probably have different opinions on different things, but are there some themes that come out in what they’re saying? Is there consistency? Are there common denominators? If so, can you give an example of how Global Affairs Canada and IRCC have benefitted from that advice and maybe made some changes in the approach they’re taking?
Mr. Kimmell: I can speak to one particular element that has come up, in fact, at the latest Executive Committee. The issue of LGBT rights around the world is a complex issue. At the UNHCR Executive Committee, we’ve seen it become a more prominent issue. In a way, it has politicized the discussions in what should be an apolitical body that looks at the governance of UNHCR. Across the network of refugee advisers, they have had a consistent message to us in terms of how to approach this delicate issue in a context like UNHCR. They’ve been supportive of Canada taking on a strong voice but have also helped negotiate on the ground in terms of how these statements should be crafted in order to achieve the best result. They’ve delivered our statements for us, and they’ve participated not only in the big, formal meetings, but they come to many of our bilateral engagements in Geneva around these issues and help us on the ground day to day to refine our messaging.
Senator McPhedran: Welcome to our committee. It’s a real pleasure to see you in person again in some cases and for the first time in others. I am familiar with each of you from various long email lists and communications.
I’d like to explore with you, to the extent that you can engage, the learnings from Afghanistan. We have just had our Foreign Affairs Committee issue a report. I’m sure you’ve perhaps even lost count of the number of times you’ve been called before various committees. We know this is still an area of focus and concern.
My question is about the de facto transition that took place after the fall of Kabul and the extent to which this may or may not be formalized between your departments. Here, I’m going to give you my experience, which at the height of the crisis of getting people — in my case, primarily women — out of Afghanistan, the primary gatekeeper was Global Affairs. Please understand, I’m trying to be factual here. I’m not trying to be blaming or critical, just factual. The gateway crashed, in my experience, at least three times. Each time that happened, everything the people, who were desperate to get out, in many cases, had put into the system was lost. Then, at some point, there was a transition where IRCC stepped in and said, “We’re the lead,” and basically, “Don’t talk to Global Affairs.” I certainly saw a dramatic change at the embassy and high commission levels, where there had been very considerable efforts to facilitate and find solutions. When that shift took place, the diplomatic responsiveness declined, and IRCC had claimed this leadership role.
In all of these examinations that have gone on, has there been any change to your policy in how your departments communicate? Of course, I’m not mentioning Defence, which was a major department at that time, because we don’t have anyone from Defence here. To the extent that you can, from your very practical, pragmatic requirements to get the job done, is anything going to improve? Is anything going to change in terms of that kind of transition?
Ms. Mascoll: Thank you for the question. I’ll turn to Ms. Mary Da Costa Lauzon.
Mary Da Costa Lauzon, Director, Immigration Policy Branch, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada: Thank you for the question.
Certainly, due to the grave conditions on the ground, Canada did remain nimble to an ever-changing environment, as the government worked to get as many people out as possible.
What I will say is that Afghanistan has been a unique opportunity to derive lessons learned. One of the key lessons learned that came out of both the Special Committee on Afghanistan recommendations as well as surfaced in subsequent engagement with our partners and stakeholders was the critical importance of having very solid both interdepartmental and internal governance structures in place to be able to enable the government to rapidly and proactively respond to crises.
Further to Ms. Mascoll’s comments earlier, within the department, in acknowledgement of the critical importance of this governance, we have set up a crisis response and planning sector, whose purpose is to work in very close collaboration with our other federal colleagues, as well as across our department, to be able to help us be responsive, proactive and to plan and prepare for crises, both current and emerging.
Senator McPhedran: I’d like to follow up on that. I would like to understand if the scenario that happened with Afghanistan, where people were directed to GAC and then redirected to IRCC, is going to happen again?
Ms. Mascoll: We’ve taken back a number of lessons learned on things that have happened in the past years. As we work through the crisis response policy, our goal is really to be able to have a consistent response and clear roles and responsibilities. The international affairs and crisis response sector for the department will lead on that and have that singular voice. That’s how we plan to implement those lessons learned and perhaps be a bit more nimble in a more sustainable manner going forward.
Senator McPhedran: Does that mean that IRCC begins as the lead agency and continues as the lead agency throughout an entire humanitarian crisis?
Ms. Mascoll: Every crisis has to be assessed on a case-by-case basis. I think part of the response framework is being able to determine who will lead and who will not. We will obviously work very closely with Global Affairs Canada, which plays a significant role on the ground as well. It’s just a matter of having that consistent response so that we are able to understand and determine who leads what and when. I can’t say right now that IRCC will lead for everything because each crisis is unique and the response in and of itself is also unique. However, we will have a framework that will allow us to manage them a bit more effectively.
The Acting Chair: I would like to comment that our moment in the sun, if I may call it that, was during the Syrian refugee crisis. One of the distinguishing features of our management of the crisis was not only waiving the requirement for being certified as a UNHCR refugee, but it was also the way we managed the system. There was the cabinet committee. It was headed by Minister Philpott, who was the Minister of Health. The Minister of Immigration sat on the committee, as well as the minister for Global Affairs, the minister of Canada border and security, et cetera. It was managed at that level with corresponding levels of public service leaders at the table. I think what Senator McPhedran is likely alluding to is a lack of that leadership, either at the public service level or at the political level. That’s not a question. That’s just an observation. I’m not sure I’m allowed to make an observation at this point, but maybe I can turn it into a question for you.
Mr. Kimmell: While I can’t speak to how things happened in either the Syrian crisis or the Afghanistan response, because I wasn’t particularly involved in either of those, I can speak to the public sector-level coordination of an international crisis, which remains as Global Affairs Canada lead as the first point of call. The Emergency Watch and Response Centre at Global Affairs Canada maintains the responsibility to bring together all implicated departments in Canada around any given crisis. While that centre was born out of a consular mandate, it has expanded and taken on additional responsibilities in managing how Canada responds to crises more broadly. That doesn’t mean that GAC or the EWRC in particular will manage every element of a crisis. For example, in an Afghanistan context, where a lot of the crisis revolved around IRCC leadership, GAC wouldn’t take on responsibilities that would otherwise be IRCC’s, but they would be coordinated through this mechanism to feed into a broader Canadian response to an international crisis.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: I want to welcome all our witnesses. The auditor general recently pointed to some very worrisome delays in the processing of refugee applications. The average was 26 months per application, and the countries in question are mostly in Africa.
I would like to know the reason for these long delays, first of all, and what is being done right now to address them.
[English]
Ms. Mascoll: Thank you.
We acknowledge the Auditor General’s report and recognize the delays in processing of refugee applications, among others. A number of factors can contribute to the long processing times. In some cases, it has to do with challenges with exit permits from certain countries and difficulties in obtaining biometrics. There are a number of factors at play that can lead to that wait time. However, the department is undertaking a number of improvements to the process. We’re looking at bringing on the private sponsorship and certain government-assisted refugee referrals through an automated system rather than having to go through the paper-based applications. We’re trying to find efficiencies in that manner as well.
Also acknowledging the delays associated with certain countries, the department has committed to implementing a pilot to begin collecting voluntary data, ethnocultural data from applicants to better understand what’s happening and better analyze that in alignment with our anti-racism strategy. We’re still working through what that looks like.
There are no timelines right now, but we are looking at finding efficiencies in our processes and perhaps streamlining, including through submission of electronic applications.
Senator Gerba: Thank you.
The Acting Chair: I should note again that it’s very interesting that refugees are deprived of so much when they leave their country but are digitally savvy and connected on the net. I would suggest, as Senator Gerba has pointed out, that online applications could be a real solution.
Senator Gerba: I know that the online solution is already being used for some countries. Can you explain why those online applications are not used for some other countries, such as African countries?
Ms. Mascoll: The refugee applications are being brought online. We have had electronic applications for other immigration streams, but we’re looking to bring in the refugee streams for all countries into that online portal as well. All of that is to happen later this year, early next year, to have them all brought online. It will be made available to those who will be able to access it, and that should hopefully facilitate the reception of applications.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: Have you tried Express Entry, the new format that is being used for Ukraine, for instance? Can it be used for other countries to avoid the normal process which requires biometrics and so forth? Can the process be sped up by omitting biometrics?
[English]
Ms. Mascoll: At the moment, we haven’t really explored further. We’re taking it iteratively with the first step being the online application. We will continue to work with partners to find out how to make improvements to refugee processing going forward as well.
The Acting Chair: Ms. Mascoll, the private sponsorship program is a program that Canada is rightly extremely proud of, and I’m delighted that we are spreading the word and the initiative to other countries. I follow that with great interest, having sponsored close to 20 individuals myself. It’s likely the best thing I’ve ever done. We heard in the previous session that the Government of Canada is scaling back on its commitments to private sponsorship programs. I would like to ask you to confirm that. Are we reducing the numbers? If so, why? Perhaps you can educate us a little.
Ms. Mascoll: Thank you for the question.
I believe that may relate to measures that were part of the Budget Implementation Act, whereby we were seeking authority for the minister to have instructions to cap the applications. The levels for privately sponsored refugees year over year are actually established in our Immigration Levels Plan. It’s a very separate process that involves consultations with provinces and territories and stakeholders to determine the number year over year. The driver behind it is we receive more applications than can be processed in a year. The end result is that is adding to delays for refugees abroad because it is taking longer to process.
We’re looking to basically echo what we do for sponsorship agreement holders who already have a limit on how many applications they can submit each year and porting that over to groups of five and community sponsors to limit how many they can submit each year so the number of applications that come in on an annual basis is aligned with what’s outlined in the Immigration Levels Plan. It’s not a reduction, but rather, it’s a way to more effectively manage the number of applications received so it’s consistent with what’s outlined in the Immigration Levels Plan.
The Acting Chair: What is the current number for this year on PSRs?
Ms. Mascoll: On PSR — I should know off the top of my head — I believe we’re in the 20,000s, but we’ll confirm.
The Acting Chair: Is that an increase from last year?
Ms. Mascoll: The numbers have increased slightly, but they remain relatively consistent, noting that, for example, some of the numbers of resettlement overall may include our Afghanistan commitments. There may be a view that the numbers are decreasing; however, it’s just because the Afghanistan commitment is coming to an end. We can circle back with the exact numbers for the PSR program.
The Acting Chair: The numbers will be public this week some time.
Ms. Mascoll: Yes.
The Acting Chair: The committee may want to take a hard look at them.
Senator McPhedran: I will go back to the collapse of the online applications during the Afghanistan crisis. Picking up on the point that Senator Gerba has made, which is really a question about a fairly normal day in the course of IRCC working, we will have more humanitarian crises. We will not have normal days. We saw massive failure through the systems, the actual technology that was promised. As a result of that, we saw people who were not fairly and fully treated because we lost their information. By the time we said, “Okay, you have to do it all over again,” they were in hiding and couldn’t access their computer, et cetera. What has changed? How is this kind of reliance on technology being addressed not in a typical day but where there’s a humanitarian crisis?
Ms. Mascoll: Thank you for the question.
The department is currently working on its digital platform modernization, so that really is effectively the next generation of how IRCC’s digital platform will be managed. That will, of course, incorporate lessons learned from previous instances that sort of have to do with our current platform. All of those lessons learned are being incorporated. However, for specific details on the systems, we can come back in writing with information on that particular one. If you give us the question, we can come back in writing if we have information on that one.
Senator McPhedran: I may also direct this to Mr. Kimmell, please, because it was the GAC system that crashed at least three times in my experience in those very difficult days right after the fall of Kabul.
Mr. Kimmell: Thank you for the question.
Unfortunately, I’m not in a position to provide the answer. I don’t have enough information on how and what happened in that situation.
Senator McPhedran: I’m asking, then, on behalf of the committee, if we could please have a written response from somebody who does know.
Mr. Kimmell: Absolutely.
Senator McPhedran: Thank you so much.
The Acting Chair: Mr. Kimmell, we heard in the previous panel a lot of concern for children who are refugees, who are displaced, their rights, their exploitation and the abuse they face. You yourself noted that 17.5 million of those who are displaced are children, which is a really high number. Do you have a department within Global Affairs Canada or a deputy minister, director or a person whose responsibility it is to protect the rights of children in conflicted situations overseas?
Mr. Kimmell: We have a division responsible for human rights more broadly, but the rights of children is a shared responsibility amongst a number of teams, including, for example, the education team, which has been leading the efforts of our Together for Learning campaign to bring refugee children into education systems. I can’t remember the title exactly of the team that’s leading The Vancouver Principles to prevent the recruitment of children by armed groups in the context of armed conflicts. There isn’t a team that is dedicated solely to children. There is a human rights team, and the responsibility for children falls to the various teams that have a role to play in advancing the rights of children in conflict.
The Acting Chair: Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: I would like to ask the same question, but for women. We touched earlier on redefining the term “refugee” since women are not considered refugees in general. Yet, there are many women in refugee camps.
Are women treated in a specific way? How do you consider that category in your normal processing of applications?
Mr. Kimmell: Thank you very much for the question. As you know, Canada has a feminist international assistance policy. The reality of women and girls is central to our entire international assistance commitment. That includes our humanitarian assistance.
Canada does not provide humanitarian assistance directly. We work through a network of partners, such as the United Nations, the international Red Cross and non-governmental organizations. With all of our partners, we strive to ensure that the reality of women and girls is central to the response, and that their unique and specific concerns are considered in the development of humanitarian projects and responses.
Further, we have a team specializing in gender issues, which helps us ensure that our programs are informed and address gender characteristics in the humanitarian context.
Senator Gerba: Thank you. Ms. Mascoli, would you like to add something?
[English]
Ms. Mascoll: Thank you for the question.
With respect to IRCC, we do work closely with United Nations Refugee Agency, or the UNHCR, to resettle the most vulnerable. In many cases, the most vulnerable, on their assessment, can be women, girls and children. For us, we continue to leverage our partner, the UNHCR, and we obviously have established Government of Canada priorities that we share with them and ask them to consider through their resettlement efforts as well. We leverage our partners to refer, and with their assessment, if they determine that’s who should come to the forefront, we trust their assessment on that. They do hear our priorities and acknowledge them as part of their vulnerability assessments.
Senator Gerba: Thank you.
The Acting Chair: Ms. Mascoll, perhaps you can tell the committee a little bit more about the labour mobility pathway for refugees, another Canadian innovation with I think some promise. Perhaps you could update us on its progress, its challenges, what your future plans are, et cetera.
Ms. Mascoll: The Economic Mobility Pathways Pilot is one of Canada’s streams that supports complementary pathways. That’s recognizing that refugees are more than their vulnerability and that they do have skills that can benefit the Canadian labour market.
Through EMPP, the Economic Mobility Pathways Pilot, refugees and displaced persons come to Canada as economic immigrants. That basically brings them in on a whole different wave and gives them different opportunities. In many cases, they do have a job waiting when they arrive. Recent expansion to the program allows for refugees with certain skills to not necessarily have a job offer, but we recognize that their chance of employability is quite high so they would be able to be accepted into the pilot.
We continue to work closely with partners, such as Talent Beyond Boundaries, the UNHCR and others to recruit employers that can be part of the program as well as to recruit refugees and displaced persons who can be admitted through that stream.
Also, noting on refugee labour mobility, Canada is a member of the Global Task Force on Refugee Labour Mobility. We also use that forum to advocate for other states to develop similar programs in the aim of increasing resettlement safe spaces through that labour mobility pathway.
The Acting Chair: Just as we’ve applied a labour mobility and labour market lens to refugees, are we applying an educational lens, accepting refugees as international foreign students if they’ve received the authorization from the university or the designated learning institute to study in Canada? My understanding is that it’s extremely hard for them to come in as students. Could you comment on that?
Ms. Mascoll: Thank you for that question.
We do, as part of the private sponsorship program for refugees, work with the World University Service, WUSC, to resettle through the private sponsorship of refugees program. That is one way that refugee students are able to come to Canada.
Through a number of committees, we’ve heard the feedback about the challenges that refugee students have in coming over — to be very frank, just the concern around a lot of the requirements to come through the International Student Program. As part of our commitment at the Global Refugee Forum in December, we’re exploring a potential pledge around refugee education. It’s still very much in its early days, but we do take that feedback, and we are looking to see if we can develop programming that can support that as an additional complementary pathway. Again, it’s still very early days, and there is a lot to work through to ensure that it’s done in a very meaningful manner.
The Acting Chair: Thank you. We look forward to that.
Senator McPhedran: I want to build on the conversation you just had with our chair and ask about not students but those in refugee situations and in humanitarian crises who have academic qualifications and whether part of your plan is to work more closely and support in more concrete terms, for example, funding the Scholars at Risk programs. I would include Global Affairs Canada in this question. Certainly, coming out of the ongoing crisis with Afghanistan, I can speak to tremendous difficulties in getting support in post-secondary institutions across this country for refugees who are already coming quite well educated. An obvious place for them to do well would be to situate them within our post-secondary system. It’s not happening in many cases.
Ms. Mascoll: Thank you for the question.
Our education complementary pathway is still being developed, but I think that is very good feedback to take into account and take into consideration in the development of the programming. We’re still very much in the policy and programming and very early seeding days on that one. We do take that feedback.
I will turn to Mr. Kimmell to speak a bit about Canada’s various investments in terms of education.
Senator McPhedran: Before you speak, Mr. Kimmell, I want to make a point on the record, and that is that we would like the fullest possible update once you get further along on this, and please don’t tell us you’re going to limit it to private sponsorships. That’s not an acceptable answer, just so you know.
Ms. Mascoll: Noted. Thank you.
Mr. Kimmell: Thank you very much for the question.
Of course, on the Global Affairs Canada side, the mandate is to support education for refugees and other displaced persons in the host communities where they are. That is at the essence of the Together for Learning campaign and the Charlevoix commitments of the Government of Canada.
Along those lines, yes, our investments have been in supporting education programs for refugees in the context in which they find themselves and supporting the integration of refugees into national education systems, and that’s been done through the Together for Learning campaign.
Earlier this year, we launched the call for proposals for refugee education in Africa. We launched a call for proposals for Canadian partners to develop programming that would seek to build education and better integrate refugees in education systems in African contexts, in particular. That’s up to a $40 million commitment that was made in March of this year.
The intent and, I think, the hope where it can connect with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, or IRCC, is that these programs will help refugees maintain their access to education while they’re in precarious situations of displacement and, therefore, have access to IRCC programs but much more broadly to livelihoods and other opportunities.
Senator Gerba: I have a very quick question. I just wanted to know if you have some data regarding the private sponsorship from Africa.
Ms. Mascoll: Thank you for the question.
For the private sponsorship program, we can actually come back with specific data. We do know that the key or the main populations are, for example, the Eritreans and Somalis as well, but we can circle back with specific data about source countries.
Senator Arnot: Ms. Mascoll, you were going to answer a question that I asked earlier about Iran. Can you just provide that in writing, please? Thank you.
The Acting Chair: Witnesses, you have been very generous and patient with our questions and fulsome, as much as you could be, with your answers. You’ve made a certain number of commitments to get back to us. We look forward to receiving those responses.
Colleagues, it has been a long but rich evening, I would say.
(The committee adjourned.)