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THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RIGHTS

EVIDENCE

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OTTAWA, Monday, April 8, 2024

The Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights met with videoconference this day at 4:50 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: Good afternoon, honourable senators. As the clerk of your committee, it is my duty to inform you of the unavoidable absence of the chair and deputy chair and to preside over the election of an acting chair. I am ready to receive a motion to that effect. Are there any nominations?

Senator Clement: I’d like to move Senator Omidvar.

Senator Simons: I second that.

Mr. Payet: It is moved by the Honourable Senator Clement that the 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.

I invite the Honourable Senator Omidvar to take the chair.

Senator Ratna Omidvar (Acting Chair) in the chair.

The Acting Chair: Thank you, colleagues. My apologies to our witnesses for the delay, but as you see, we had some formal business to attend to.

My name is Ratna Omidvar, and I’m an independent senator from Ontario. Today, we are 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 the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation.

I would now like to invite my colleagues to introduce themselves to the public and to our witnesses.

Senator Simons: Senator Paula Simons, Alberta, Treaty 6 territory.

[Translation]

Senator Clement: Bernadette Clement from Ontario.

[English]

Senator Petten: Iris Petten, Newfoundland and Labrador.

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 as follows:

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.

Would one of you like to move this motion? it is moved by Senator Clement.

Are we in favour, colleagues, of this motion?

Hon. Senators: Agreed.

The Acting Chair: Thank you. Today, we resume our study of forced displacement, an item that has grabbed the headlines in more ways than one in recent months. This afternoon, we will have three panels. In each panel, we shall hear from the witnesses and then the senators around this table will have a question-and-answer session.

I will now introduce our first panel. Our witnesses have each been asked to make a five-minute opening statement, and I wish to welcome our witnesses and apologize once again for the many delays and postponements of your testimony.

We have here today Ms. Efrat Arbel, Associate Professor of Law, University of British Columbia; and Jamie Chai Yun Liew, Professor of Law, University of Ottawa.

I will now invite Professor Arbel to make her presentation, followed by Professor Liew. You have five minutes. We’ll try to keep this moving.

Efrat Arbel, Associate Professor of Law, University of British Columbia, as an individual: Thank you, senators. Thank you for this invitation and for your work on this important issue. It’s an honour to appear before you today.

My focus today is on the Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement, or STCA, and, in particular, the expansion of the agreement through the Additional Protocol to the Safe Third Country Agreement, which was implemented last year in March 2023. As you well know, the additional protocol operates to expand the Safe Third Country Agreement across the entire Canada-U.S. border and to prohibit refugees who present in between ports of entry from making asylum claims in Canada for 14 days.

In my remarks today, I wish to draw your attention to the fact that the protocol operates in unprincipled and dangerous ways, which carry significant negative consequences not just for refugees but also for Canada. I will highlight two of these consequences for the committee’s consideration.

First, the protocol operates to close the Canadian border to some of the world’s most vulnerable refugees, particularly refugees who are racialized and refugees who are already marginalized. Let me explain how this works.

While the protocol may appear neutral on its face in that it applies to all refugees across the entirety of the border, it is not neutral in its effect. Prior to the protocol’s implementation, Canada developed, for the most part, relatively effective methods to process refugee claims made in between ports of entry — with the most notable example being the unofficial border crossing point at Roxham Road. Prior to the protocol’s implementation, the vast majority of the refugee populations who sought entry into Canada in between the ports of entry — including at Roxham Road — were of populations from the Global South, the majority of whom are racialized.

With the implementation of the protocol, these routes have been closed, which has and will continue to have a disproportionate impact on these populations. Not only that, but the protocol’s 14-day restriction has a disproportionate impact on the most vulnerable refugees within these populations: women, sexual minorities, people with disabilities, people who are pregnant, people who are elderly or parents of young children. For them, other routes of seeking safety may not be accessible. Speaking of the agreement on its own, the few exceptions to the agreement are insufficient. As my colleague Professor Liew will explain in more detail, the so-called safety valves are ineffective, and Canada’s resettlement programs, which you will hear about further today, are not a substitute for asylum protection.

In prior meetings of this committee, you heard from the UN Refugee Agency, or UNHCR, about the staggering and rising rates of global displacement as well as from Human Rights Watch and others about the grim vulnerability of refugees around the world. With the implementation of the Additional Protocol to the Safe Third Country Agreement, Canada is closing its borders to the world’s most vulnerable at a time of dire need, which calls into question not only Canada’s commitment to refugee protection but also its commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion.

My second point is that the protocol has a direct negative impact on Canada’s ability to regulate its borders in safe, orderly and principled ways. It is well established that when refugee host countries like Canada close their borders, they do not prevent refugees from entering the country. They only prevent refugees from entering through known, lawful and organized ways.

Prior to the protocol’s implementation, the unofficial border crossing point at Roxham Road served as a safe and organized way through which to manage asylum claims made in between ports of entry. The protocol and the dismantling of the Roxham Road border crossing point will make it harder for refugees to avail themselves of these safe, organized and lawful modes of entry. This will not only push refugees into the hands of smugglers and traffickers and increase the risks posed to their lives and safety, it will also make the Canadian border more dangerous and disorderly and make the task of safeguarding the border more difficult to regulate and costlier to manage, with the effect of weakening — not strengthening — the integrity of the Canadian border.

With that, I will wrap up my comments. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your questions.

The Acting Chair: Thank you. Professor Liew, please.

Jamie Chai Yun Liew, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, as an individual: Thank you for having me here today. My comments today are in response to the recent Supreme Court of Canada’s decision that dealt with the Charter challenge of the Safe Third Country Agreement. I will be focusing on one aspect of that decision in particular — the fact that migrants may have access to alternative immigration applications and processes if they are ineligible to make a refugee claim. The court called these safety valves. I have submitted more detailed written submissions, but I will give you a brief overview of six mechanisms identified by the court and why they don’t operate as the court envisions.

First, a pre-removal risk assessment is a written application where you explain why you are afraid to return to your country, and you provide documentation to support your fear. Statistics from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, or IRCC, between 2007 and 2014 show that the rate of approval was between 1.4% and 3.1%.

The second is the permanent residence application on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. This is a written application where you are asking to be exempt from the requirements of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, or IRPA, and granted permanent residence based on hardships you may face if you are not given such status. Government figures from 2021 showed the rate of applications refused climbed to 70%.

Third, a temporary resident permit is a written application and is a special permit from IRCC that lets a person live in Canada for a certain period for compelling reasons. This permit may be valid from one day to three years and can be cancelled at any time.

Fourth, a person who has a date set for their removal from Canada may submit a request to the Canada Border Services Agency, or CBSA, to ask for a deferral of removal. This person has to demonstrate why they might suffer irreparable harm outside the normal hardship from removal or that the short-term interests of a child are directly impacted. They are only granted where compelling or exigent personal circumstances warrant the granting of a deferral request.

I want to emphasize that these four mechanisms are both granted on exceptional bases and are discretionary.

Fifth, an administrative deferral of removal is a temporary measure when immediate action is needed to defer removals in situations of humanitarian crises. A temporary suspension of removals interrupts removals to a country or place where general conditions pose a risk to the entire civilian population, such as armed conflict or environmental disaster. These mechanisms are only available to individuals that may be removed to countries listed by the Canadian government. Some inadmissible individuals can be removed despite these avenues.

Finally, sixth, persons may also seek a judicial stay of removal to prevent the execution of their removal from Canada. To do this, a person must have a matter already before the Federal Court of Canada, and the stay of removal prevents removal pending the decision of that matter.

Now, some people may not be eligible for any of these mechanisms, depending on the requirements. It is not within the practice of border officials to offer the menu of these alternative options to those at the port of entry, and laypersons would not be expected to know these legislative options exist. All of these immigration processes and applications require not only a written request, but many require substantive documentary evidence to show that these requests are merited. They are practically unavailable to migrants, unless they hire a lawyer and coordinate the submission of the application and requests when they reach a port of entry. For those who do not speak English or write in English or French and for those who are unfamiliar with our legal system and have no legal support, these avenues are unreachable.

Many of the remedies sought are discretionary and rely heavily on the whim of an individual officer. Success rates are dismal for some of these applications. The reality is that these so-called safety valves are illusory and do not provide the checks and balances we think they do.

I hope I have given you a sober picture of how feasible it is for migrants to not only access but obtain relief with these so-called safety valves. Given that we know many will not be able to access the processes and remedies in the IRPA, the Canadian government should revisit its decision to maintain and expand the Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement. Countless people may be put at risk because of the current misunderstandings we have on how the entire immigration regime functions.

We cannot rely on the fact that some mechanisms exist on paper to justify a system that is counter to our international obligations under refugee law, including the right to non‑refoulement.

Thank you, and I would be happy to take any questions.

The Acting Chair: Thank you very much, Professor Liew, for your presentation. It was crystal clear.

Thank you to you, as well, Professor Arbel.

I just have a question to help us understand the numbers. Before the government closed the loophole in the safe third country agreement, what was the rate of approval of asylum claimants who chose to enter Canada through these gaps in the official borders? Can you give me a figure, any one of you?

Ms. Arbel: I don’t have these rates of approval at my fingertips. What I would say is that it will take some time to evaluate the broader effect of the protocol, in that the protocol had an initial discouraging impact on asylum seekers who were either scared to cross the border or scared of making applications, having already crossed the border. A fulsome understanding of the differences prior and subsequent to the protocol’s implementation will take a little bit of time.

I can try to pull up the numbers for you. It will just take me a moment to do so.

The Acting Chair: It would be very kind, or you can submit them to us later. We’re talking particularly about those who crossed into Canada with the current loophole. Some people have called it a “loophole.” Others have called it a “safety valve,” so we have to try and get our heads around that.

Senator Simons: I’m not sure if this is a fair question to ask the two of you. I am the only senator here today from Western Canada.

There’s so much focus on Roxham Road, but I imagine that there are also significant issues with the border crossings in British Columbia, and I’m wondering if you can give me any sense of what the impact of this has been to irregular border crossings in that B.C.-Washington corridor?

Ms. Liew: I don’t have the specifics with regard to the numbers of people crossing, but I know just from news reports and anecdotal evidence that there have been some troubling accounts of people crossing, for example, in the Manitoba corridor. People have lost limbs from frostbite. People have even succumbed to death, so I don’t think it is beyond our imagination to think about the repercussions on a human scale with regard to what this legal barrier poses in terms of the risks posed to the very safety of individuals trying to get across the border undetected.

Senator Simons: That Manitoba incident predated 2023, just to be clear.

Ms. Liew: It does, but I would argue that these kinds of things will continue to happen, because they want to cross undetected. We can extrapolate from the kinds of decision making that migrants may make and the repercussions that will flow from that.

Senator Simons: I’m not a regular member of this committee, so perhaps you already know the answer to this, but I think those British Columbia border crossings are much, much busier than the ones on the Prairies, for the obvious reason that there are more people living there. Very few people cross the border irregularly in Alberta, let’s just say, because coming up through Montana is difficult.

I wanted to ask about the kinds of people who qualify for the safety valve. I’m thinking specifically now about LGBTQ+ refugees. Canada has given a much warmer welcome, I think, to these rainbow refugees than the United States has.

Do you have a sense of what this change has meant for asylum seekers who are fleeing homophobic regimes and homophobic cultures?

Ms. Arbel: Can I just ask as a point of clarification, what do you mean by a “safety valve”? Are you speaking of the mechanisms that Professor Liew spoke of? Are you speaking of the exceptions to the agreement, just so we can provide you with a pointed answer?

Senator Simons: Well, both. The real question is: Has this new regime had a disproportionate impact on LGBTQ+ refugees?

Ms. Liew: As Professor Arbel said earlier, it is too early to say. We haven’t collected enough data. It’s not known, exactly, the implications that flow from this, but I can say that if you have a regime that does not allow people’s refugee claims to be assessed on their merits to begin with, and you’re telling them, “Well, there are these alternatives that you can turn to,” but the alternatives do not address the question of whether you’re a refugee, which is what, in your question, you’re identifying persons who may be persecuted on the basis of their sexual orientation or identity. People like that may not have the benefit of putting forward the fullness of their claim, because they are already barred from submitting a claim. Instead they’re going to have to try to work their stories into these very tight boxes within a temporary resident permit, an application on humanitarian grounds or pre-removal risk assessment.

All of these applications have not only eligibility requirements, which some of these people may not be eligible for, but also requirements on their own merits. They have separate requirements that are different from those that are in the refugee determination system.

So to say, “We’re not going to review your situation looking at the refugee definition,” and to say there are these other alternatives. However, these alternatives are not a perfect or an equivalent assessment of what potentially they could be facing if they are returning to their home country.

Senator Simons: Let me pursue a different line, then. I think one of the reasons that provinces such as Quebec have wanted Roxham Road shut down is they said they were being flooded with people and they didn’t have the supports from the federal government to provide the care that those people required.

But it seems to me that if you create a system where more people are going to cross completely illegally and enter the country without the proper paperwork, you’re going to have people living in communities who are living under the radar and who will not be eligible for any of the supports that we typically provide to refugees. Inadequate as those may be, they are nonetheless substantive for a lot of people.

I’m wondering whether you think the unintended consequence of this could be that provinces and municipalities will actually have a heavier burden because there will be no one tracking these incomers and no federal supports available to them whatsoever.

Ms. Arbel: I would agree with that assessment. There is a real risk of unintended consequences creating burdens like the ones you’ve noted and creating a larger precarious and vulnerable populations within our borders as well.

In response to your prior question as well, it’s important to step back and understand how the Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement operates in the broader context of global displacement. Refugees who are fleeing for their lives, who are fearing persecution in their home countries, face enormous barriers to arriving on this continent, let alone in this country.

You heard from Professor Young in prior hearings about the externalization of Canada’s borders and the potentially insurmountable barriers that people face.

It may not be feasible for people — even those who wish to enter in British Columbia — to do so depending on the route through which they arrived into Canada, the resources that are available to them or the information that is known to them.

Per your earlier question about the warmer welcome that Canadian asylum laws provide to LGBTQ individuals, this warmer welcome is only accessible if the individual has already crossed the border in a safe way. The so-called safety valves that Professor Liew had spoken of are inefficient to account for the vulnerabilities that these individuals face, and there are no stated exceptions for the agreement that allow refugees who face persecution on the basis of their gender identity or their sexual orientation to enter Canada at ports of entry. None of the existing exceptions to the agreement focus on those kinds of vulnerabilities.

There is a real risk here of creating additional burdens, as you had noted, and there is a real risk of dismantling many of those core protections that Canada’s refugee regime is known for around the world.

Ms. Liew: If I could just add, people are going to come, as you noted, and what is the best way in which Canada can manage the border, as Professor Arbel had stated earlier? We know they will come. We should be organizing around how to best respond to this, and we have the tools in place at ports of entry already to receive people, and we should be using the state‑of-the-art technology that we have in place already.

Senator Petten: In your work, you’ve highlighted the significant mental health impacts of indefinite detention on migrants. Could you elaborate a little bit on the alternate measures that could mitigate these effects while ensuring compliance with immigration proceedings?

Ms. Arbel: This is with respect to immigration detention. The vast majority of individuals who are held in immigration detention are held under the ground of unlikely to appear, meaning that they are deemed by the Canada Border Services Agency as being unlikely to appear for an immigration proceeding. That’s the largest ground for which detainees are held in this country.

In my opinion, there is no need to hold people under this ground. The Canada Border Services Agency has developed sophisticated mechanisms through which people can be accounted for without the use of detention, and indeed, there are many experts in this country who could further develop and implement humane mechanisms through which people can be accounted for, whether that’s through various reporting obligations or otherwise, without the need for immigration detention.

Immigration detention, as you noted, has a profound negative impact, not just on mental health. It is also a deprivation of liberty, and it is unconscionable for Canada to be depriving people of liberty without due process safeguards knowing the profound negative impact that detention has, given that there are a whole host of viable alternatives that are available.

Senator Petten: Thank you.

Maybe I could ask Professor Liew a question as well, and that’s regarding your book, Dandelion, that explores themes of identity and belonging.

I understand that you’ve done some work on some creative storytelling. Is that complementing your legal scholarship and advocacy?

Ms. Liew: Thank you for that question.

It’s important for Canadians and for policy-makers, like yourselves, to understand the emotional and psychological impacts of borders, immigration applications and the processing of creating a home or being treated differently and disproportionately.

Professor Arbel explained how racialized persons are disproportionately treated differently at the border and in our immigration system, and it’s important for the public and for policy-makers to understand that aspect. If any of my creative writing brings light to how that feels and what that experience is like, I think it is noteworthy and important to consider in terms of what kinds of ways we could diminish the impact of the harsh applications of our system to persons who have met the requirements otherwise of our system.

As Canada is trying to live up to its international obligations, we should be mindful of how we do that in a compassionate and humanitarian way, and be mindful about how we should make it easy for people who have already experienced so much trauma in their home countries and in the process of migrating. Thank you.

Senator Bernard: Thank you both for your testimony today. You have both talked about Canada’s closing its borders to the world’s most vulnerable, and you have mentioned racialized folks, and you also mentioned the LGBTQ community of people as well. When you bring an intersectional lens to that, you really are talking about, as you say, some of the most vulnerable.

What’s the politic behind this? Why are these folks experiencing such harsh treatment in countries that profess to be more human rights focused? What’s the politic behind this, and what do we do about it? What are your recommendations for change?

Ms. Liew: If I can be so harsh, Canada is built on a settler-colonial approach. We were a former British colony. Our immigration and citizenship laws flow from the history of how British colonization categorized and identified people by race. It’s no secret that our history of immigration law has discriminated and created exemptions based on race.

The most obvious one that’s close to home for me is the Chinese Immigration Act, 1923, also known as the Chinese Exclusion Act. We do have a history of creating preference for certain kinds of migrants, for prioritizing certain groups of people. It’s just become more subtle in the approach that our laws are written.

While they may appear to be neutral on first reading, I would invite those of you re-examining our entire immigration regime as a whole to think about the legacy of how the laws have been tweaked that still imagine a White settler nation, I would say. Things like inadmissibility, things that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. You can see the same kinds of narratives and policy rationales that were used in historical times when it was more openly and brazenly discussed about why we’re closing the border to certain groups of people.

I would say that this is just a continuation of the same kinds of ideas about who belongs, who deserves to be in Canada, and what kind of community is prioritized through our immigration and citizenship laws.

Ms. Arbel: I would agree with all those comments, and I would add to it that in addition to the history and the present manifestations of these inequalities that Professor Liew noted, Canada’s migration regime not only reflects but also reinforces these broader global inequalities as they exist along the many subject positions that you had noted as they intersect, not just with race but gender and LGBTQ status, class and socioeconomic vulnerability, et cetera, et cetera, the list goes on.

We have the ability not to reinforce but to dismantle those inequalities. Canada is far removed from the world’s conflict zones. Even when we face a so-called flood of migrants, the numbers themselves are relatively small, and we have resources that allow us to respond to these arrivals in, as Professor Liew notes, a humanitarian and compassionate way.

We are not at risk of being quote, unquote “overwhelmed” by migrants, not by refugees and not by other migrants who arrive here seeking a better life, and this is in part because of our geographic location but in part because of those externalization policies that Canada itself has implemented.

We have the resources, capacity and built-in safeguards in our laws, in our constitutional laws, in our human rights commitments, in our refugee protection commitments, that will allow us to respond to these inequalities and ideally dismantle them as opposed to perpetuating them in the way that we are.

Senator Bernard: Thank you, both.

Chair, I think they both missed the second part of my question which was, do you have specific recommendations for us? I appreciate your analysis, the link to the history, the history that still plagues us today, but what do we do? What are your suggestions for us?

Ms. Liew: I would say two things to focus the discussion a little bit is the Safe Third Country Agreement, which Professor Arbel and I have been talking about, I would say revisit that. That should not be in existence at all.

Second, I would say look at our reliance on temporary residents and the Temporary Resident Program. There is a plethora of research out there that talks about how harmful this is and how we should be using more permanent resident programs from the economic to the humanitarian spectrum in terms of how we do migration.

If there’s anything I can nudge the committee to look at, it is that the Safe Third Country Agreement doesn’t work. We have had many years of experience with this agreement already. Even despite the recent closure of that and tightening of that, it really hasn’t changed anything that we have witnessed over the last 10 years. There is a lot of evidence and advocates who are in agreement about this, and that there is more harm than good. It doesn’t allow our border to be run in an efficient way.

Second, I would ask for policy-makers to look at the temporary program, the problems with it, and move away from this temporary program because it really disproportionately affects certain groups of workers, certain groups of persons, and in some ways causes people to talk about racialized groups in different ways.

I know Parliament has done studies, parliamentary standing committees have done studies on temporary foreign workers and temporary programs, and I would say this is an area that could be easily resolved.

Ms. Arbel: I would agree with my colleague’s comments on the Safe Third Country Agreement. I think the evidence shows the agreement does not work. The agreement is premised on the finding that the United States is a safe country for refugees, and the evidence bears out that the United States is not a safe country for refugees and has not been for decades.

My first recommendation is to revisit the legality of the Safe Third Country Agreement. Within the Safe Third Country Agreement, Canada has the ability under the terms of the agreement to create public policy exemptions according to our laws and our priorities. Presently, the exemptions are limited and do not account for these broader structures of inequality that we have spoken of. Canada can create additional exceptions that accord with the specific protections that are already established in our laws.

The additional protocol is profoundly harmful, and that 14-day requirement that I mentioned in my comments has the effect of creating enhanced vulnerability to immigration detention for any individual who’s intercepted in those initial 14 days subsequent to crossing the border.

The immigration detention regime is riddled with problems. The Canada Border Services Agency currently operates as the only major law enforcement agency in Canada without independent civilian oversight. Immigration detention is not subject to time limits, and immigration detention is allowed to proceed with horrific violations of human rights happening in immigration detention centres as well as provincial jails across the country.

Those are a number of proposals as to how to address these inequalities, which are similarly manifested in the detention regime.

The Acting Chair: Thank you very much for those specific recommendations. We really need to hear about them.

Professor Liew, since you talked about temporary workers, people with temporary status, you must have heard about Minister Miller’s announcement to cut back on temporary foreign workers and encourage industries to deploy the talent of asylum seekers. What is your response to that? Is that a good idea? Bad idea? Not going to work?

Ms. Liew: I welcome that announcement. I think it is a good idea to think about less reliance on the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. However, I think it falls short of systemic and needed change in the sense that there is a very real demand for workers in various industries that are not being met by Canadian permanent residents and citizens.

Recruiting people from overseas to come and fill these labour shortages is an important role that the immigration system has. However, recruiting them on a temporary basis really is problematic, not only to the industries that invest and train in this human capital, but also with regard to the fact that many of these people are living in limbo, where they come to Canada, set up lives here and get integrated into —

The Acting Chair: Stay in the lane of asylum seekers. We actually have a Senate study that is almost ready on temporary foreign workers.

Ms. Liew: Okay.

The Acting Chair: Canada does not exist in a vacuum in the space of displacement. We have regional arrangements, safe third country being one of them with the U.S. We’ve recently imposed visas on Mexicans because of the high volume of Mexicans claiming asylum status after arrival.

But we are a player. What recommendations would you make for the study that would position Canada as a regional leader with our partners in North America and, in fact, South America? How can we step up to the plate and be that beacon of light and hope that I think you would like us to be?

Ms. Liew: I guess I would say with regard to the Mexican example that you speak about is that why is it that we default to putting visas and barriers forward when we have a very good refugee determination system? Why is it that we don’t let the system work and assess and —

The Acting Chair: Can I probe you on that? The system is overloaded. Backlogs stretch on for years, so I’m not quite sure I agree with you that we have a well-resourced system. We are going to hear from the chairman of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, or IRB, on that point. How do you conclude that the system is well resourced when we have backlog upon backlog in the asylum system?

Ms. Liew: I wouldn’t say it’s well resourced. What I do say is we have a system in place that does work and can do the work of assessment. Maybe the problem is that we should be devoting more appropriate resources and reevaluating how to properly assess these people rather than dealing with the problem by turning the so-called taps off, because people are going to come, and we can’t deny that.

If we’re going to be treating Mexico as an equal partner in our agreements, then we can’t be treating them differently than our American partners in that respect. If it is a resource problem, it should be assessed and looked at, but the fact of the matter is that the refugee determination process has all the tools in place to do a proper assessment and we should be bolstering that system to be able to take on the cases that come before them.

Senator Simons: The premise of the Safe Third Country Agreement is that you are entering into an agreement with a country whose systems may not be the same as yours but you have faith and confidence that they will also provide protection. We are about to enter a moment — an inflection point — in American history where our partner to the south could go in one of two directions. If President Trump is re-elected, as the polls indicate he will be at this moment, given his track record in his first presidency and given the rhetoric of his second presidential campaign, it seems to me increasingly likely that the divergence between Canadian tactics and American may have a larger gulf.

As more women in the United States are facing prosecution for seeking reproductive health choices, I worry about what could happen if the Safe Third Country becomes significantly less safe than it was in 2023 when this policy came into effect.

Ms. Arbel: In response to that, I would say that the United States has not been a safe country for refugees for decades. It certainly was not a safe country for refugees in 2004 when the agreement first came into effect, and it has not been a safe country for refugees since. The agreement itself specifies what is meant by a “safe country” and references the United States’ international record under the refugee convention, the convention against torture, its practices and non-refoulement, as well as its domestic policies, laws and practices in regard to the assessment of asylum. In all of those respects, the United States falls far below established international standards and also far below established Canadian standards.

I agree with you that I expect that the divergence will only intensify, and I am not alone in this. The Supreme Court of Canada, despite the fact that it upheld the constitutionality of the Safe Third Country Agreement, made two important findings that are relevant to your question. The first is that the court did recognize that there is a risk of harm as a result of refoulement and detention practises in the United States. The court found that it is those so-called safety valves that Professor Liew spoke about that prevents that harm from materializing. I agree with Professor Liew’s comments at the beginning of this meeting as to why that is a finding that is disconnected from the material realities of how those so-called safety valves work.

With respect to the court’s other finding, the court sent back the matter for redetermination on the question of whether there’s a violation of section 15 as a result of the disparate treatments that women and other gender-based claimants face in the United States, and that matter is presently before the Canadian courts. There is a wide divergence between Canada and the United States, not only with respect to the reproductive rights point that you had mentioned, but also fundamental discrepancies in how Canada approaches gender-related claims as compared with the United States. There are so many valuable statements of principle in our laws that state Canada’s commitment to gender equality. The Safe Third Country Agreement and the continued recognition of the United States as a “safe country,” works contrary to these statements and commitments.

The Acting Chair: If I may ask possibly the last question for both of you because we are running out of time. You both spoke about public policy exemptions that are possible. None have been articulated so far. What recommendations would you like to see in the report regarding public policy exemptions? Should we have a public policy exemption for minors? Should we have a public policy exemption based on gender and gender identity?

Ms. Arbel: I would say that the public policy exceptions should be crafted by reference to an analysis of the ways in which Canadian law differs from U.S. law with respect to matters of asylum. The list that I’ll provide you won’t be comprehensive — and I know Professor Liew will have much to say on this — but the exemptions have to begin with a principled evaluation of how U.S. law differs from Canadian law in matters of asylum. Gender is front-of-mind. Gender identity is front-of-mind. Sexual orientation is front-of-mind. The vulnerability at these various intersections of race, socio-economics, mental health and disability also come to mind, as well as reproductive rights, family unification and a variety of other ways in which the systems diverge. I don’t want to take up too much time, so I’ll shift over to Professor Liew.

Ms. Liew: Other groups would be unaccompanied minors. I know the United States does not have a system for litigation guardians, for example, in their refugee system. The other thing is to be very responsive to political decisions on the ground in the United States. When President Trump issued the Muslim ban, for example, those kinds of communities should be attended to.

In the United States, there is a ban on submitting a refugee application after one year. People who were, for a host of innocent reasons, unable to submit a refugee claim should be allowed to be exempted as well — being cognizant of the fact that people may not know how law works in a foreign country, the deadlines and whatnot.

Along with what Professor Arbel said, I would add those categories. I would hope that policy-makers on the committee would rethink the entire agreement in and of itself rather than doing a piecemeal exemption approach to this.

Ms. Arbel: I agree with that wholeheartedly.

The Acting Chair: Thank you both. This is a difficult subject, and you have succeeded in adding a lot of substance, important knowledge and information for our committee as we make our decisions. On behalf of the committee, thank you again. I apologize for making you wait.

Colleagues, we now have our second panel. Each of the witnesses will have five minutes for their opening statements, and then we will turn to the senators for questions.

Let me start by thanking both our witnesses. This meeting has been scheduled and rescheduled many times. I apologize. Life in the Canadian Senate is likely as unpredictable as life in the American Senate, Mr. Slocum. Forgive us for this, but we are finally getting to this.

With us at the table, we welcome Gauri Sreenivasan, Co‑Executive Director of the Canadian Council for Refugees, and via video conference, we welcome John Slocum, Executive Director of the Refugee Council USA.

I invite Ms. Sreenivasan for her five minutes, followed by Mr. Slocum.

Gauri Sreenivasan, Co-Executive Director, Policy and Advocacy, Canadian Council for Refugees: Good afternoon, and thank you very much for having me. You’ve added to the fact that the hearing has had to be rescheduled several times, and we’ve just come from having the eclipse. I’ve just arrived from seeing it. It did, in fact, happen. It was incredible, and I appreciate the support of the clerk for all the arrangements.

Good afternoon. My name is Gauri Sreenivasan, and I am the Co-Executive Director at the Canadian Council for Refugees, or CCR. The CCR is Canada’s leading national umbrella, representing 200 front-line organizations across the country working with refugees and migrants.

[Translation]

I would like to thank the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights for its interest in this important subject: forced displacement around the world. It is important to understand this phenomenon because the global crisis is defining the context of forced displacements in Canada and North America.

[English]

Today, the greatest dysfunction of our refugee system in Canada facing this context of forced displacement relates to refugee claimants. I will focus my remarks on what we can do to change that. I am not going to address the US-Canada Safe Third Country Agreement with the U.S. in my opening remarks, since you’ve just discussed it. However, the CCR is the leading public interest party challenging this agreement in the courts, and I’m happy to speak to our perspectives on it in the question period.

Refugee claimants are those seeking asylum after arriving on Canadian soil as opposed to those who receive refugee status overseas. The vast majority of claimants we see — almost three out of four last year — are found to be refugees needing protection. In a country that prides itself on its leadership and know-how in welcoming and settling refugees from abroad, there is — shockingly — effectively no system in place in Canada to deal with claimants who arrive on our shores. Instead, we are seeing a false narrative from political leaders that unfairly labels refugee claimants as a crisis, and we see a policy approach that is focused either on futile attempts to stop refugees from seeking safety here — such as the Safe Third Country Agreement — or costly and ineffective short-term emergency responses that serve neither the public nor refugees.

Far too many claimants in Canada are ending up homeless, in city shelters or bussed to isolated hotels across the country. They are lost in a confusing system without supports or legal counsel. In the past six months alone, two unhoused refugee claimants have died in the Greater Toronto Area for lack of adequate supports. Canadians are rightly appalled.

It is time to change both the conversation and the approach to refugee claimants in Canada. The expansion of the Safe Third Country Agreement last year has done nothing to address forced displacement in the Americas or the actual demand of refugee claimants for protection.

While crossings between ports of entry at the U.S.-Canada border are down, given the growing global crisis of displacement — and as to be expected — the overall number of refugee claimants is also on the rise in Canada. Last year, there were 144,000 claims filed for refugee protection compared to 91,000 the previous year — with a particular rise in claims made at airports. But the number of claimants in Canada will always be minuscule when compared to flows to front-line states in the Global South and Europe.

However, the number of claimants, even at its peak last year, is not the issue. These are people who Canada can absolutely receive and process if we plan. The CCR is calling for a comprehensive and coordinated national approach to ensure the right to asylum with dignity that builds on the infrastructure, skills and capacity that are already in place in this country but poorly deployed. With some key adjustment and a proactive mindset, we can redirect wasteful expenses and replicate what we know works so that those fleeing persecution are treated fairly and are set up for success as future Canadians.

We urge you, senators, to join us in calling for the federal government to work in collaboration with provincial and municipal governments as well as civil society to take action in five key areas. I appreciate that the clerk has already submitted our brief to you.

The first recommendation is to establish reception centres to provide orientation, triage and referral services for newly arrived claimants as well as options for emergency shelter. There is work under way to establish a reception centre for the Peel Region with federal funding, for example. This is a very positive first sign, and it should be replicated.

Second, we must fund and replicate successful transitional housing models to complement the reception centres. Civil society has already developed a network of at least 35 organizations across the country that offer short-term and transitional housing for refugee claimants. These programs operate at a fraction of the cost of hotels or homeless shelters while supporting claimants to find a lawyer and a job and help them move into longer-term housing, critically, therefore, easing pressure on the cities’ emergency shelters. With predictable, long-term government funding, these successful models can be scaled up and replicated with immediate benefits.

Third, we need to make claimants eligible for the support services that are already offered to all other newcomers. The federal government funds a highly developed network of organizations across the country offering specialized services to new arrivals, but their hands are tied as they are not allowed to serve refugee claimants. It makes no sense, and the restriction must be lifted. As a precedent, in 2022, the government saw the obvious logic of extending settlement services to Ukrainians fleeing the war, and refugee claimants deserve no less.

Fourth, we must ensure that legal aid coverage is available across the country. Multi-year federal funding of legal aid will be essential to remove the serious barriers to legal representation that claimants face. This leads to poorly represented claims, delays and backlogs. The federal government also needs to work creatively through proven solutions to address the gaps that exist in many provinces where claimants are not even eligible for legal aid. Notably, this includes New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.

Our fifth recommendation is that Canada must streamline the application and determination process. In the short-term, this would take small adjustments to simplify the initial stage of determining claimants’ eligibility, which would also shorten the time period during which claimants need social assistance and emergency housing. For the subsequent formal hearing process, Canada’s model is already respected the world over, but adequate funding tied to the actual volume of claims is required to eliminate backlogs and shorten the waiting period.

To conclude — and I think you spoke about this at the previous panel — we know that in today’s global context, Canada will continue to receive people who are seeking protection from persecution. We know that refugees have a right to asylum. We know what to do so well in this country to ensure due process to provide supports and set them up for success, and we have all the elements of a plan — yet our heads are in the sand. Canadians expect a plan. They don’t expect the chaos of stopgap measures, and it is long past time to put in place a comprehensive, coordinated and cost-effective system that treats refugee claimants with dignity and fairness, where all levels of government and community groups are playing a role. This is what we are proposing, and we are keen to answer your questions. Thank you very much.

The Acting Chair: Thank you to both of you for providing comments in advance. Mr. Slocum, over to you.

John Slocum, Executive Director, Refugee Council USA: Thank you very much, and good afternoon. I appreciate the invitation to speak at today’s panel. I am the Executive Director of the Refugee Council USA, or RCUSA, which, like the Canadian Council for Refugees, is an umbrella association. In our case, our members include 41 national non-profits in the U.S. that serve and advocate for refugees and other forcibly displaced persons.

Essentially, we are the U.S. counterpart to the Canadian Council for Refugees, and it’s an honour to participate on this panel alongside my colleague from Canada.

I’m going to use my time to provide a general overview of recent developments in U.S. refugee policy, and I would be happy to go into further depth and further levels of detail on any of the points raised, but I want to keep it to this general overview at the beginning.

Refugee admissions in the U.S., as I’m sure you’re aware, were drastically cut under the Trump administration. Each year, the annual admission ceiling was set lower than the year before ending with an all-time low of 15,000 in fiscal year 2021. For several years Canada admitted more refugees for resettlement than did the United States.

The Biden administration has reversed this decline, significantly rebuilt the U.S. refugee resettlement system and introduced significant innovations, including a new private sponsorship program heavily inspired by the Canadian model.

For fiscal year 2024, which began on October 1, President Biden set the refugee admissions ceiling at 125,000. This is the same cap as the two previous years, but for many reasons the actual number of arrivals in those years fell far short. This year we may actually come close to resettling 125,000 refugees.

In the meantime, two successive international crises — the fall of Kabul in August 2021 and Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine — prompted the mass entry into the United States of displaced Afghans and Ukrainians. These populations did not enter through the United States Refugee Admissions Program; rather, the majority of them came through humanitarian parole, which provides two years of legal status and work permission but does not offer a path to permanent residence.

Nearly 90,000 Afghans entered the United States through what was called Operation Allies Welcome. Most received essentially the same benefits as resettled refugees. This helped spur the rebuilding of resettlement infrastructure, but also came close to overwhelming its capacity.

For Ukrainian arrivals, a different approach was used: a sponsorship program called Uniting for Ukraine, which places the initial financial responsibility for Ukrainian newcomers in the hands of a private individual or group sponsor rather than a resettlement agency. In early 2023, a similar sponsorship scheme was put in place for individuals from Haiti, Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela. Up to 30,000 individuals total from those four countries can enter the United States each month, for a stay of up to two years. I should emphasize that those who enter through these parole programs are not considered refugees and do not have to pass a refugee status determination.

In 2023, private sponsorship was finally introduced within the Refugee Admissions Program itself through the Welcome Corps initiative.

One of the U.S. government’s most significant refugee policy innovations is the Safe Mobility Initiative, through which Safe Mobility Offices, or SMOs, were established last year in Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Guatemala. When individuals apply through SMOs, UNHCR performs an initial screen for protection needs. Then, for those who don’t qualify for refugee resettlement or another protection pathway, the International Organization for Migration, or IOM, conducts eligibility screens for other legal migration pathways, including non-immigrant work visas to the United States, Canada and Spain.

This initiative is part of the Biden administration’s larger Western Hemisphere migration management policy, which has the overall aim of providing additional safe legal pathways and discouraging irregular migration across the southern U.S. border.

This approach includes the circumvention of legal pathways final rule, finalized in May 2023, which requires the vast majority of asylum applicants to register through a new mobile app, called Customs and Border Protection One, or CBP One. The rule makes it much harder to claim asylum for people crossing between ports of entry or without having first requested asylum in a country of transit. Advocates understand that these measures place illegal restrictions on the right to territorial asylum. We point to the need for more comprehensive solutions beyond simplistic and unworkable calls to “close the border.”

During the current fiscal year, funding for U.S. refugee assistance and border programs has been at risk due to partisan budgetary battles. In March, Congress finally passed two appropriations bills that keep the U.S. federal government funded through the end of the current fiscal year. In general, federal funding remains in place for key refugee programs, although at far lower levels than needed and without continued authorization of resettlement benefits for newly arrived Afghans and Ukrainians.

This concludes my formal remarks, and I welcome your questions.

The Acting Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Slocum, Ms. Sreenivasan. We will turn to senators for questions.

Senator Simons: Ms. Sreenivasan, I wanted to start with you. I’m curious, because in my previous life as a journalist I often wrote about immigration and refugee issues, and I was always really intrigued to see how the pattern of whom was making the refugee claims changed over time in response to international crises of various sorts.

Could you give the committee a sense now of where the primary sources of people making refugee claims who are — I don’t mean people being settled through UNHCR, but people who are making claims at the border or airports. Where are they coming from, primarily?

Ms. Sreenivasan: Claimants are coming from a variety of countries. Notably Mexico is the highest country this year. Also from Turkey, India, Iran, Colombia, Haiti and sub-Saharan Africa. There are a number. When you look through — the Immigration and Refugee Board, or IRB, actually lists by country, and you can see from the numbers. I actually did that check just before I came.

Senator Simons: You’re saying three quarters of those claims are accepted. I would imagine that would vary greatly by the source country.

Ms. Sreenivasan: There are variances in source countries. I will also say that if you look back over the last four, five years, you see a pattern still of a great majority. Just to be clear, it has been as low as two thirds and it has been as high as three quarters. Last year it was 72%. The most important take-away is that the overwhelming number of these people — and it’s actually fairly complex to qualify as a refugee. There are five narrow — you’re nodding your head. You know this well. There are five criteria. I don’t have it at my fingertips what the different acceptance rates from different countries are. That is also easily discernible, so I can follow up with you to provide some of that. But it’s the overall — in a context where 72% are found, the variations between the countries are not going to be significant.

Senator Simons: I wanted to ask you and Mr. Slocum — I don’t wish to manifest the outcome, but if there is a Trump victory this fall — and I remember the last time it had a dramatic impact on people who were coming here making asylum claims, especially people from Muslim countries who had entered the United States legally and suddenly found themselves with no place to go.

I’d like to hear from each of you what you expect the impact of a regime change might be for the pace of refugee claims and the source countries of those refugee claimants, people perhaps, as previously, who were in the United States who might then be compelled to leave.

Ms. Sreenivasan: There’s so much of me that doesn’t want to go there because I don’t want to think in that way. Mr. Slocum is smiling.

Obviously, we can’t know the outcome. We have seen from your previous witnesses that the patterns of human rights violations, for example, in detention, have continued. They were significant under Trump, but they have continued under Biden. If we were to see an extreme increase in those pressures — it’s less about source countries — I would say that one of the things that we would see is a return to increased land border crossings, which makes the US-Canada Safe Third Country Agreement even more difficult because it already drives people to dangerous routes. I know you spoke about that, but I think that would be one of the patterns to note.

In general, we have seen a drop in apprehensions between points of entry since the extension last March because it has been made more difficult. We know that some people have gone into hiding, or have fatally attempted river and forest crossings. This is an example of something that I would expect to increase.

If a presidential regime change doubles down on the southern border, you would expect to see increased arrivals from Latin America. I would be very clear that often those who are arriving as claimants from Latin America are not originally from Latin America. There are many claimants coming from Asian and African countries who have made perilous journeys through very difficult passages such as the Darién Gap — I’m sure you’re familiar with that — and who are looking to come to Canada because they do not feel safe. I think those kinds of land border crossings would increase.

Mr. Slocum, I don’t know if you have a comment about other kinds of patterns.

Mr. Slocum: Thank you. Maybe I could just make a couple of general comments. First of all, I am somewhat more optimistic regarding the direction in which the country is heading in the next presidential administration, but that’s not the topic of this hearing.

The lessons learned were learned on both sides. For the personnel of a likely second Trump administration, they have learned how to be much more effective in carrying out some of the restrictive measures that were introduced the first time around. I expect them to be more careful, for instance, in the drafting of executive orders and so forth. But, by the same token, those of us on the civil society side are under no illusions and we are prepared to push back hard against restrictions on the right to seek asylum, against the kind of immigration restrictions being talked about by candidate Trump at the current time, which are shot through with references to less and more desirable countries of origin in a very racialized discourse.

That having been said, the asylum grants in recent years have gone overwhelmingly to claimants from Latin America, Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti, Guatemala, Colombia and Honduras. Those are the leading countries in recent years. Since many of those countries are covered by the new parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, I would expect that many of those individuals who are already in the country under those programs would feel quite vulnerable and there would be significant pressure for them to be deported, frankly, under a second Trump administration. Those are the countries of origin, in the first instance, that I think Canada may see more from.

Senator Simons: That’s very helpful. If there’s a second round, I’d like to be on it.

The Acting Chair: Thank you. That was indeed very helpful. I want to ask a question of clarification, Mr. Slocum, and then a question about recommendations you’d like to see us make.

The question of clarification is actually about the parole program. This is not the first time the United States has had these kinds of parole programs. What has happened to the people who are in the United States for two years and then they get extended or they don’t? What happens to them? Where do they go?

Mr. Slocum: That’s a good question, and I can’t provide you with the historical answer to that question. In the resettlement community, we advocated strongly in the case of Ukrainians that they come in through a refugee channel rather than through humanitarian parole. But they came through parole for many reasons, not least of which were Ukrainian national and Ukrainian diaspora sensibilities that refugee status would have been an admission of success on the part of the Russian invaders.

It is the case that the United States has, in the past, provided mass programs of status adjustment to refugees from Southeast Asia and from former Yugoslavia. It is an unfinished piece of business in the United States to provide that assurance for Afghans, in particular, who are now in their second round of either an extension or re-parole given that it’s been more than two years since their initial arrival in almost all cases.

We would hope that in the current Congress we can finally get an Afghan adjustment act passed. It is the case that some 38,000‑plus Afghans have already successfully received asylum in the U.S. The Biden administration is prioritizing Afghans in terms of asylum adjustment, but that, frankly, is drawing resources from somewhere else. It would have been better to have a program which would allow them to access permanent status more easily.

As to where they go, you can see from the hundreds of thousands of border crossers already in the United States under various statuses that many of them remain and will remain, but that provides fuel for the anti-immigrant forces. It leads people to experience lifelong precarity in many different respects, and certainly vulnerability in the workplace, given the under-regulated workplaces in general and the perception that those without stable status are easily exploitable.

The Acting Chair: Canada cooperated, I believe, very well with the United States in airlifting many Afghan refugees either to the United States or to Canada, and I would say that’s a good thing.

Canada is a middle power. We are a small country in the large scheme of things, but we somehow stand on an outsized reputation in this field of refugee resettlement. How do you think Canada should exercise its reputation in this way to encourage the United States and maybe others to follow the UNHCR convention and not to abrogate it, as we have seen happening in many parts of the world? What would you like to see in our report about Canada’s role in the world?

Mr. Slocum: I endorse the view that Canada has, at this point, a well-deserved outsized reputation in the field of refugee protection and resettlement. Obviously, the Canadian system is imperfect, but its imperfections are smaller than the imperfections of some of its other peers in this respect. While it’s on my mind — and Ms. Sreenivasan gave a great overview of the recent report from the Canadian Council — the very notion that Canadian law treats asylum seekers different terminologically as “refugee claimants.”

One of the things I would love Canada to continue to emphasize in international fora is that a high proportion of asylum seekers are, in fact, refugees. They perhaps have not yet been recognized as such, but particularly in the United States, the political discourse on this count has become terribly degraded. We have not seen a robust enough defence of the notion that seeking asylum is legal, frankly, from the Biden administration. That’s one item.

I’ve mentioned private sponsorship. Canada is definitely a world leader in this regard. It is a wonderful complement to a traditional resettlement system. I sometimes worry that it’s seen as a potential replacement for that system here in the United States, and I would hope that when Canada talks about private sponsorship, it emphasizes the fact that it goes hand in hand with a strong and well-resourced government-led resettlement system. I think there are pieces of that infrastructure, even for private sponsorship, that the United States doesn’t yet fully embrace, such as the idea of a settlement agreement-holders association, which is a powerful part of the system in Canada. Something analogous has not yet been formed in the U.S.

I do think that Canada should be prepared to face the possibility that they would once again become the largest resettlement country in the world. They should continue to encourage smaller and emerging countries of resettlement to continue, strengthen and grow their programs. At a recent international meeting, it was noted that it’s the smaller countries that resettle; at this point, it’s 40% of all refugees globally. Every country counts in this regard, and Canada can continue to exert leadership there.

I’ll leave it at that, but I could provide a few more examples, if you’d like.

The Acting Chair: Let me ask the same question to Ms. Sreenivasan. I know you deal with the many imperfections in our system, and we recognize that, but stepping aside from the Canadian context and resting on our reputation as a global world leader in this space, what recommendation would you like to see in the report that speaks to Canada’s role in persuading others to abide by the UNHCR convention and accept that asylum seekers are refugees and have a right to make a claim and be heard?

Ms. Sreenivasan: There are important things that Canada is credited with. It’s always an interesting challenge when we’re with our American colleagues as we identify, comparatively, what is not so bad. Really, we need to look at the bar of what is acceptable and what that is within our power as opposed to our performance relative to others.

For example, what is of core value in the Canadian refugee resettlement system are the components and the nature of the system: permanent residence on arrival; comprehensive settlement support; working collaboratively with civil society to think about how community groups are a key part of that settlement and integration; and a message to the public about the role, value and importance of refugees.

What I’m proudest of is that, when we actually have programs, as we have for Syria and Ukraine, Canadians are buoyed and moved in the right direction because their government actually speaks to the opportunity and the contribution that refugees can make. That makes us feel proud to be a welcoming nation.

The role for Canada to talk about the need to maintain and build as opposed to helping to erode public support is very important.

We are at a very difficult point to actually be pointing lessons, however. I say that because we are increasingly seeing a kind of opportunism in which decades-old social problems are being laid at the feet of immigrants and refugee claimants. So when I say the things that are great about Canada are the qualitative natures of its system, where we fall so very short is quantitatively. We are actually very hard-pressed to speak on the world stage, with the exception of two other wealthy countries that are also not resettling. But we can’t look Germany, Jordan or Lebanon in the face. We actually just came out of a global refugee forum in Geneva, which we went into as a global leader with declining resettlement targets as the global crises increase and the head of the UNHCR pleaded with the international community to reconsider burden sharing.

Canada has capital and cache to discuss with other OECD countries what is a more appropriate way that we should share burdens, but it would need to include itself in the conversation. That kind of humility would go a long way. Canada is credited, because it resettles more than others, but to be praised for being the highest among a group of laggards is not very exciting.

We need to think about the scale of the global crises we’re looking at and how Canada can play a much stronger role to look at how the international system can support burden sharing, which would have to include increased quantitative resettlement targets for ourselves. We need to ask ourselves some tough questions about how we maintain what is, in fact, an almost unparalleled international asset, which, to this day, is that we have a Canadian public that feels very strongly and positively about refugees and immigrants. We would lose that at our peril.

This government is very aware of that and is working hard to think about how we message, but they have been leaders in messaging positively. I feel they have been falling very short this year, both in terms of the response to Gaza and this whole question of refugee claimants, overall.

You are right, Mr. Slocum, that we insist there is a right to asylum in Canada, but it’s actually less clear among government leaders whether they are committed to that. One of the main reasons of the rationale for issuing visas to Mexico was this notion that some of the cases of those who are coming aren’t real.

You either have a right to make a case or you don’t. If you defend the right to asylum, then you need to provide the opportunity for people to have a fair hearing.

I’m on tricky ground when you ask me that question, but I hope that was helpful.

Senator Petten: I was just listening to Mr. Slocum, and he indicated that they are using some novel approaches from the refugee council in the U.S. to support and integration of the refugees and asylum there. Would any of the approaches they are using be beneficial to Canadians? Is there something you think Canada should be emulating to make it better for what you are doing in the U.S.?

Mr. Slocum: At the outset, perhaps I should emphasize that Refugee Council USA, or RCUSA, is not, itself, an operating service provider. We, and our membership more broadly, though, have been supportive of some of the innovations. One that is currently being rolled out by the U.S. government is called virtual reception and placement. That is an effort to try to deal with the increasing numbers not only of refugees but also special immigrant visa holders from Afghanistan, which is a distinct category. The U.S. may admit as many as 40,000 under that category in this fiscal year. It’s straining the resources of the resettlement community, frankly.

Providing as many services as possible by video and remotely is something that’s currently being tried.

There is something the U.S. and Canada have both innovated in recent years, and that is promoting the meaningful participation of refugees in policy arenas. The Refugee Advisory Network of Canada, and now the United States Refugee Advisory Board, were stood up with that goal of making sure that those with lived experience are at the centre of the conversation. We have a long way to go, but one accomplishment of the United States Refugee Advisory Board is that it has managed to work with our State Department to place a refugee advisor on every significant delegation to UNHCR meetings that the U.S. has participated in over the last two years.

Finally, although RCUSA itself is not a service provider, we are working with one of our member agencies right now on a project to develop more sophisticated and responsive measures of integration success. U.S. legislation posits early economic self-sufficiency as essentially the sole criterion of success for a resettled refugee. On the face of it, that is utterly inadequate. So we’ve developed a series of indicators that we’re currently testing right now with a pilot survey.

I think that to the extent that we are in this project, and in many others, co-designing with the participation of those with lived experience, those with lived experience leading the project on as many levels as possible, that’s really the way we’re headed in civil society, and we routinely talk about that in international settings as well and encourage other countries to do the same.

Senator Petten: Did you have any comment about that?

Ms. Sreenivasan: I think, if I understand your question, you’re wondering if there are practices in the U.S. that we can kind of —

Senator Petten: Yes.

Ms. Sreenivasan: I actually think, humbly submitted, that I haven’t followed that well enough, so I’m not sure — I’m sure there are, actually. Honestly, I have no doubt, because we fall down in many ways, but I don’t have anything immediate to respond on that.

Senator Petten: I was just wondering, the other question that occurred to me when I heard Mr. Slocum say that we could be considered as Canada the largest resettlement in the world, I’m wondering how that makes you feel. Do you think that would be an accurate reflection?

Ms. Sreenivasan: That Canada is the largest resettler? Yes.

Senator Petten: Yes. That Canada could become known as the largest resettlement in the world.

Ms. Sreenivasan: We currently resettle more refugees, so we actually have that designation already, the largest in terms of a northern OECD country. We have a very large resettlement program relative to others, but overall it is very small and it is shrinking.

Senator Simons: Ms. Sreenivasan, you remind me of a conversation I had a couple of years ago with high commissioners from CARICOM countries. At the time, I was on the Canada-CARICOM Parliamentary Friendship Group, and we were supposed to be discussing immigration. I think those of us on the Canadian side thought we would be talking about immigrants and refugees coming from CARICOM countries to Canada. What they wanted to talk about was the fact that some of the smaller Caribbean nations have been overwhelmed with refugees from Venezuela, an issue I had known nothing about. So I think sometimes we get caught in this — we compare ourselves to the United States as our only point of exemplar, and it’s obviously not the only part of the world where this is happening.

I wanted to ask Mr. Slocum a question from a different perspective. I think, again, it’s part of our Canadian sense of self-satisfaction that we imagine that everybody wants to come here, whereas we’re seeing reports from the United States of an increasing number of people coming into Canada as a way to get into the United States. And when candidate Trump started talking about building a wall, I think a lot of Canadians laughed because we said, thank you, we’re not interested in coming.

But I am worried about an increasing notion that people are using Canada as the back door to enter the United States. I wondered, Mr. Slocum, if you could talk a little bit about that. Traditionally the flow has always been from the south over the Mexican border, but are you seeing an increasing number of refugee claimants or, what do we call them, irregular migrants, coming from Canada into the United States, or is that being exaggerated for political reasons, somewhat?

Mr. Slocum: Currently, I don’t have access to statistics on that. Even anecdotally I’ve heard so little about it that it does not — I’m sure there are some political operators in this country who will find anecdotal evidence that suggests that this is a trend, but I simply don’t know, and I would hesitate to speak on it.

Senator Simons: This is one of the reasons, I think, that was given when Canada reinstituted visas for Mexican citizens was this idea that they didn’t want people using Canada as the trap door to get into the United States.

I’m curious then to know, Ms. Sreenivasan, maybe the way I could turn this question around is if the Americans start making the border more difficult to cross in a bid to keep real or imaginary refugee claimants from coming over the Canadian border, what impact does this have for people trying to enter Canada? You know what I mean? We always presuppose that people want to come here and stay here, and I think we’re almost a little bit hurt to read that they are just using us as their sneaky way into the United States.

If that border becomes less porous, there are all kinds of trade implications, but what are the implications for the flow of refugees?

Ms. Sreenivasan: Thank you very much. There’s a lot there. I was just flipping through my stats. I didn’t bring them with me, but we have seen recent statistics that we have seen from the American government about the numbers of apprehensions at the northern border. They have been increasing in terms of people trying to cross from Canada into the U.S., but they are minuscule compared to the pressures of the southern border, and really they are just a reflection of the failure of policy at the southern border.

People are trying to reach family connections in the U.S., and in principle, in the context of the mobility of people and trying to find, it is both predictable and understandable that there will be some of that, and I don’t think that Canadians need to be offended or surprised by that.

The much greater concern is that in the context of the Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement, or STCA, those that have been trying to cross have, again, been finding themselves in great danger. There was just in January the case of the pregnant 30-year-old Mexican woman who was trying to reach her husband in the U.S. who died trying to cross. So the general notion of the STCA remains, I think, an important issue.

I don’t really think that the frames of the front door or back door are useful, because I think you need to be able to knock on doors and ask for asylum, and you need a fair hearing, and then you need to have an answer in a reasonable time frame.

In fact, what I did look up is that the percentage of Mexican claims that were withdrawn or abandoned — meaning they showed up in Canada, started to make a claim but then abandoned the claim — was only 7% of all those referred to the IRB in 2023.

The overwhelming majority of Mexicans who arrive in Canada are trying to see their claim through in Canada. I think that’s another important context.

Senator Simons: We are talking about Mexican citizens, not people who —

Ms. Sreenivasan: Mexican nationals.

Senator Simons: Okay. Then I have one more question for you. You alluded to the fact that Canada has long prided itself on the fact that — how accurate it is or not — we believe that we are open to refugees. My mother came to this country as a refugee, so this issue has always been very close to my heart.

But I do worry that as the political discourse in Canada changes — I mean, I’ve talked about government changes there, but we have to think about what it means here too.

How important is it that we get our refugee system working smoothly so that it cannot be weaponized as a way to sow political division? Because it seems to me that we are welcoming to refugees as long as we believe that the system is working properly for them, and if refugees don’t get the support that’s when there’s a backlash.

Ms. Sreenivasan: I couldn’t agree with you more. I think the danger is significant. In the last year, I don’t think we have seen any significant shifts in the values of Canadians in terms of their interest to be open and to provide safety. But they are being repeatedly told that refugee claimants coming to Canada is a crisis. When you actually have conversations with Canadians, it is not the refugee claimants that they have a concern with. What they have a concern with are people ending up homeless, people in shelters, a sense that it’s disorderly, that there’s no plan, and they are absolutely correct in that.

I would just return in terms of recommendations from this committee, it’s incredibly important that Canada gets its house in order in terms of a refugee claimant system. We have all of these skills and know-how, and we are actually expending enormous amounts of money on emergency short-term measures. The minister will announce in January that he will provide support to Ontario and the City of Toronto for housing for claimants, and the money runs out on March 31. Again, it is a head-in-the-sand approach. We know there’s nothing about April 1. That doesn’t mean claimants will still continue to come.

What we have failed to do is redirect the money spent on expensive emergency measures to solutions that work for the volume of claimants that we are seeing. We have the systems in place. We have the civil society organizations with the transitional shelter models. We know we need reception centres. We need to extend the resettlement support service that the claimant is eventually eligible for anyway but, instead of in two years when they finally get their “yes” from their hearing and when they no longer need it, give it to them at the front end when they need it.

You will find, and it shows — repeatedly, we can see — refugee claimants are then set up for success. They have support in filing their paperwork. The paperwork is filed correctly the first time, in a timely way. They have support to get a work permit. They find a job. They also move out of short-term housing into the longer-term, transitional housing, often in a communal way.

With all of that assistance, we can — at a fraction of the cost, a third to a quarter of the cost we’re spending on emergency measures and hotels — house and support refugee claimants. We will ease the pressure on the city shelters. We will have better outcomes. We will save money and lives. Canadians will applaud us if we do that.

It’s very important that we recognize the need to formalize and set up the rest of the system. We basically have a hearing process with the IRB, but we have no other system set up to deal with claimants. It’s leading to perverse outcomes.

If we were able to do that, it will be harder to weaponize the outcomes that we are seeing otherwise. It will actually grow Canadians’ pride and help set up future Canadians for success.

The Acting Chair: I’d like to shift to the multilateral context. The United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention, imperfect as it is, is the convention that we have which defines who is a refugee, who is not, et cetera. Member states of the UN have signed on to the convention, yet, bit by bit by bit, they are, in different ways, stepping back from it. You think about the U.K., Italy, Libya, Turkey, Australia and the U.S., in part.

My question is this: First, do you believe that the convention fit for purpose in today’s time, remembering that it was conceived in a post-Second World War environment? Second, if it is fit for purpose, then what can Canada do to underline and stress the global world order through this convention?

There are 110 million displaced people in the world today. We need order as opposed to chaos.

Ms. Sreenivasan: I’m interested in Mr. Slocum’s reflections on the convention as well. Go ahead if you want to start.

Mr. Slocum: I have a couple of observations.

Is the convention fit for purpose? A regime that was put into place smack in the middle of the 20th century, it’s implausible to think it will be as fit for purpose by the time we get to the middle of the 21st century.

Those who are policy-makers, academics, practitioners in this arena ought to be actively thinking of how that system needs to move and what can be done to bend the trend lines in a better rather than worse direction.

A good example is climate displacement, which is not covered in the convention. We know it’s a reality. We know there are a lot of definitional issues attached to it which make it hard to put numbers on the phenomenon. It’s something which, nonetheless, perhaps through the accretion of soft law — but probably more importantly through some signal advances in hard law, in key countries — finding good humanitarian pathways for those displaced by climate is going to be something which is increasingly important.

It seems implausible that such legislation could pass in the United States at the present time, yet a number of our representatives in the U.S. Congress have co-sponsored the Climate Displaced Persons Act, which was reintroduced in a much improved form in November of 2023. It’s worth taking a look at as an example of what’s possible in that direction.

The number of countries that have passed legislation is vanishingly few. I believe Argentina has a climate humanitarian visa program. I’m not aware of too many others.

The problem seems to be that it’s transnational diffusion of nationalist attitudes. I don’t know how we get at that, because I think it’s symptomatic of the current phase of the global political economy as much as anything else, where you have a global racialized capitalism which reinforces the types of inequalities that were spoken about during the previous panel when it comes to who gets to move and under what circumstances around the world, something that the multilateral arena — because it’s a states-led initiative — is perhaps not the ideal place for this.

Those of us who speak in that arena can continually point out the fact that we’re talking about the global movement of people. It’s worth emphasizing that this is not an aberration, that this is a necessary part of human existence.

Whether it be for humanitarian or economic reasons, or family unification, there are bona fide reasons that people ought to and should move, and the benefits of that accrue to so many parties.

I don’t know how to turn the tide of this transnational diffusion of these very reactionary and ultranationalist ideas infused with racialized notions of the nation-state that seem to be growing in so many parts of the world.

Ms. Sreenivasan: I was going to go in a similar direction. In my mind I was thinking about, do we fix and change the refugee convention or do we need other instruments?

Certainly, I think the context we’re looking at now is the one you’ve named, Senator Omidvar, which is 110 million people forcibly displaced, which is in addition to the regular reasons that people move. The question of how people are forcibly displaced is more diffuse now than the original five definitions in the refugee convention.

The interesting leadership that we have also seen from the UNHCR is for the international community to have a conversation about what the obligation is to facilitate safe pathways for people facing forced displacement — recognizing there are multiple motivations and causes for that, climate being one, absolutely — and figuring out the range of tools and international instruments that are possible to support this.

The other side of it, which is sometimes forgotten in the discussion, is the importance of addressing root causes. That’s the other critical element in a discussion about growing displacement, recognizing what the drivers are and the obligation of countries like Canada to address those.

There is a lot of work that the Canadian government can do to address root causes, both in the context of climate — also in the context of resource extraction — and accountability of Canadian companies overseas.

It’s a combination of increased work that’s needed to address root causes and a more systemic conversation internationally about the range of instruments that are required. I don’t have a position at the moment about whether that means changes to the refugee convention. But it does mean changes to the ways we manage and ensure safety for people who are driven for a variety of reasons.

The Acting Chair: I wish to thank both our witnesses. This has been a fascinating conversation. Unfortunately, we have to stop because we have a new panel next and we need an eight‑minute break to on-board them, colleagues.

Thank you very much, Mr. Slocum, Ms. Sreenivasan, for enlightening us. If you have any further thoughts, please feel welcome to send them to the committee clerk. Otherwise, I hope you will see some of your words reflected in our final report and recommendations.

Colleagues, we move on to our third panel. I would like to introduce our panellists. Thank you for being with us in person and online. We have with us Jennifer Bond, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Pathways International and Chair, Global Refugee Sponsorship Initiative; via video conference, we welcome Shauna Labman, Executive Director and Associate Professor, Global College, University of Winnipeg.

You will both have five minutes to make your opening presentation. As you can see, we are a small committee, so we will have a lot of time with you to ask and probe and get your wisdom. Just as a heads-up, we are looking for recommendations that we can embrace and reflect in our report.

With that, Ms. Bond, please proceed.

Jennifer Bond, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Pathways International and Chair, Global Refugee Sponsorship Initiative, as an individual: Thank you, Madam Chair and honourable senators. I’m aware that many of you have made special efforts to be here today. Thank you for that and for the privilege of speaking with you.

I’m going to speak briefly to three issues this evening. The first is the global state of play around refugee sponsorship, the second is the Global Refugee Sponsorship Initiative, and the third is Canadian leadership.

As some of you know well, refugee sponsorship is a uniquely Canadian way of welcoming refugees. For over 40 years, millions of Canadians have opened their communities and their hearts to newcomers. While our program isn’t perfect — there are improvements that can and should be made — we have a lot of data that show us that sponsorship is good for refugees, it’s good for sponsors, and it’s good for host communities. We also have millions of stories from sponsors in big cities and small towns all across our country. Sponsors are faith organizations, business people, walking clubs and elementary school kids. They’re in all parts of our country, and they take many different types. Sponsorship is something that is deeply Canadian.

In 2017, the Global Refugee Sponsorship Initiative, or GRSI, was formed to help governments and NGOs outside of Canada introduce their own sponsorship programs. The GRSI is a unique, multi-sectoral partnership that includes the Government of Canada, the UN Refugee Agency, or UNHCR, several private-sector philanthropies and my organization at the University of Ottawa.

Our mandate has been to support programs outside of Canada, because until our formation, Canada for decades had the only sponsorship program in the world. A year after we were formed, the Global Compact on Refugees — which I know is a topic for this committee — explicitly encouraged countries to work with the GRSI to design and introduce new sponsorship programs. Since then, we have worked in over 20 countries and seeded over 30 sponsorship programs all over the world. You can see on the map and in the table we submitted as evidence in advance of today’s hearing where those different programs are located.

I also submitted as evidence a map that gives you a taste of the global ecosystem of actors that the GRSI has helped create. This is not comprehensive, but it’s meant to give you just a little taste of the many different kinds of stakeholders all over the world that we now work with to help sponsorship grow.

We have learned a lot over all these years about sponsorship alongside all these different governments, NGOs, funders and many others. We’ve tried things, and sometimes they’ve failed. We’ve taken risks, and occasionally they’ve succeeded. Just like here in Canada, none of these programs are perfect. We’re all still learning. But sitting here today, I can share with you that we are closing in on a very exciting milestone. Nearly one million people have been sponsored since the GRSI launched its work. This means that many millions of sponsors all over the world are now actively welcoming newcomers as their new neighbours. They are finding and furnishing homes, getting kids registered in schools and helping adults find jobs and integrate into local communities.

The 40-year-old program is no longer just an idea just for Canadians.

I want to take a moment to highlight some of the developments in the United States in particular. I did see most of the comments from my colleague, John Slocum, so I think this will add to some of his testimony.

The U.S. has introduced three major sponsorship programs in the past few years. Uniting for Ukraine is a humanitarian program that has now landed over 182,000 people. The humanitarian program, CHNV, for Cubans, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan nationals, has landed over 386,000 people to sponsors and continues to welcome at a rate of 30,000 people a month. Just think about that in the context of Canada’s numbers. They’re extraordinary numbers — 30,000 people landing to sponsors each month.

The U.S. has also introduced the Welcome Corps, which, like our own private sponsorship program, allows sponsors to name refugees from all over the world. That program opened fully in late December, and since then, over 60,000 sponsors have applied to support more than 35,000 refugees from every region in the world. Again, that’s just reporting since December.

Many American experts note that this is the most significant transformation in the U.S. refugee program in over 40 years. It doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot more work to be done. There is. A lot of the programs and maps in front of you are fragile. They are imperfect. Many are temporary. Unlike in Canada, sponsorship is not well known in the general population. There isn’t a robust network of sponsorship agreement holders or other experts available to support sponsors in their journey. There is not a multi-decade experience from which to draw. However, we’re off to a really good start at a moment when the refugee system desperately needs the engagement of these millions of welcomers.

I wanted to say a few brief words about the GRSI itself. This is a very unique partnership. As I mentioned, it involves six very different institutions. I’d be pleased to take your questions if you want more details about how we work and what we do together, but here I just want to flag that these institutions are all very different. We have different mandates, different staffing models and different risk profiles. This kind of partnership is not easy. It’s actually a lot of work, and it’s especially difficult for governments. I want to acknowledge and thank the officials at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, or IRCC, who have made this very unusual partnership possible for all these years.

Through its leadership in the GRSI, Canada has not only helped bring sponsorship to the world — though clearly they have done that — it has also shown a new and powerful way of doing capacity building and migration diplomacy — one that has been noted with thanks by many governments — and it has also demonstrated a new way of doing partnership — a hard way, and a way that can succeed. I’ll note that the Global Task Force on Refugee Labour Mobility and the Global Task Force on Third Country Education Pathways, which also come out of the Global Compact on Refugees, are modelled directly on the multi-sectoral approach and work of the GRSI.

This brings me to my last topic, which is the urgent need for ongoing Canadian leadership in the global refugee system. It has actually never been more important. Today’s system is not built for our current challenges. It isn’t serving governments, NGOs and communities, and it certainly is not serving refugees.

Canada is a critical actor, in part because of our willingness to lead and to innovate. We need Canada to pioneer new programs and pathways and take bold new ideas here at home and then share those experiences honestly — the good, the bad and the failures too — with others. We need Canada to keep pushing the envelope about what kinds of public-private partnerships are possible and that will allow us to maximize the impact. Frankly, we need Canada to continue sharing its experiences with sponsorship too. The work is not yet done, but seven years into this experience, I am more convinced than ever that sponsorship has the potential to significantly reform the global refugee system for the better.

Here, I’ll close with some numbers from our colleagues at More in Common, which has worked with leading polling firms across the world and whose research has consistently found that sponsorship increases public support for refugee protection. For example, 7 out of 10 Americans support sponsorship — and that includes the majorities of both Democrat and Republican voters. Additionally, 26% of American adults, which equates to roughly 50 million people, express an interest in being personally involved in sponsoring refugees into their communities.

We have similar data from other places. In the United Kingdom, a population segment that is the most opposed to the intake of refugees in that country, with a 50-point margin of opposition among that group, has changed to a three-point margin of support. So, from 50-point opposition to three points of support when the concept of sponsorship is introduced.

I’m going to stay in the United Kingdom for my last comment. Over 145,000 Ukrainians have been sponsored to the U.K. through the Homes for Ukraine scheme. This is a unique sponsorship program that requires sponsors to host refugees in their own homes for six months because of the housing shortage and because of public concerns around the use of housing to support refugees. We worked on the design of this program. Frankly, I was very skeptical that sponsors would be willing to put people in their own homes — on their couches and in their spare rooms — for six months. But it worked, and 186,000 Ukrainians have been welcomed into U.K. homes and successfully supported by their sponsors.

What I find incredible is that the data tells us 81% of those sponsors had a positive experience, and more than 50% said that they would host refugees of another nationality if offered the opportunity to do so again. For me, that is the potential and power of these programs and why I would encourage this committee to consider recommending Canada’s ongoing leadership in sharing sponsorship around the world for the next phase of this work.

Thank you very much.

The Acting Chair: Thank you very much. Ms. Labman?

Shauna Labman, Executive Director and Associate Professor, Global College, University of Winnipeg, as an individual: Thank you for the invitation to appear before this committee. I am the author of the 2019 UBC book Crossing Law’s Border: Canada’s Refugee Resettlement Program, which examines the intersection of international rights, responsibility and obligation in the absence of a legal scheme for refugee resettlement, and co-editor of the 2020 book Strangers to Neighbours: Refugee Sponsorship in Context, which seeks to explain the origins and development of refugee sponsorship, paying particular attention to the unintended consequences and ethical dilemmas it produces for refugee policy. The focus of my research since 2007 has been Canada’s international legal obligations to refugees, the evolution and operation of sponsorship in relation to government resettlement and asylum, as well as the promotion of sponsorship to other states.

An important starting point and premise of my academic work is that sponsorship cannot be examined in isolation. Too often, the attributes and benefits of sponsorship are celebrated and the program promoted without adequate attention to how it fits within the broader humanitarian admissions and global refugee responses. Sponsorship must be understood relationally. Typically, sponsors articulate this as the complementary nature of sponsorship in relation to government resettlement, commonly referred to by sponsors as the principle of additionality.

I want to be clear that understanding private sponsorship relationally also means examining how and whether sponsorship and government resettlement influence access to asylum, which connects back to the panel discussion on the STCA with Professors Arbel and Liew. In fact, in 2019, Jamie Liew and I co-wrote an article titled Law and moral licensing in Canada: the making of illegality and illegitimacy along the border, where we argued that moral licensing can explain Canada’s dichotomous treatment of inland and overseas refugees, whereby curtailing access to asylum is insulated from critique because Canada has seemingly done its humanitarian part in resettling thousands of overseas refugees increasingly through sponsorship.

It’s important to note that resettlement, including sponsorship, will never be the solution for most of the world’s refugees. It is, in fact, a small piece of the puzzle and does not eradicate the need and desperation that propels people across borders on their own to claim asylum. What must always be central is to broaden protection access. Resettlement must always be in addition to asylum and not in lieu of it, and sponsorship and newer language of complementary pathways must complement resettlement admissions as opposed to competing with or replacing government resettlement.

In Canada, what we have seen is an overall increase in resettlement admissions but also an increasing reliance on sponsors for the largest proportion of these admissions. Government resettlement numbers were in the 7,000 range throughout the first decade of the 2000s, with private sponsorship numbers at less than half of that, reaching a high of 42% of resettlement in 2011. Current numbers and planned admissions are higher, at over 40,000 resettlement admissions, but they put sponsors responsible for almost 65% of these admissions.

Sponsors are able to name those they wish to resettle, meaning sponsored refugees are often known by or have pre-existing connections to Canadians, and it is that personal connection that compels sponsors to commit the undertaking. It also leads to an echo effect of subsequent sponsorships of linked family and connections that arguably is what has made sponsorship in Canada so sustainable and speaks to why the Blended Visa Office-Referred, or BVOR program, where naming is not permitted, has been less successful.

To be sure, sponsorship undoubtedly builds community connections between citizens and refugees, engages citizens in refugee advocacy, and creates an atmosphere of welcome for newcomers, but the shifting proportional reliance on sponsorship must be continued to be understood in addition to government resettlement commitments and not in any way replacing them.

When looking at the global refugee population and access to solutions, UN data shows the projected need for resettlement is over 2.4 million refugees in 2024, a 20% increase from 2023. Government resettlement referrals come primarily from the UN and are of Convention refugees prioritized for resettlement. Sponsorship may fall within these priorities but also expands admissions beyond the Convention refugees to a broader category of humanitarian protected persons. So government-led protection-based resettlement ensures protection exists for those most in need. This requires a firm commitment to maintain government resettlement while facilitating and encouraging sponsorship and other complementary pathways and ensuring access to asylum in the way of protection.

I’ll leave it at that for now and open it to questions. Thank you.

The Acting Chair: Thank you both very much.

Senator Simons: Thank you both very much.

I have to say, Ms. Bond, that was really inspiring. I had no idea that that work had happened, and it makes me all choked up and proud as a Canadian to think that we have exported this model. I also understand the argument that Professor Labman makes that if you’re overly dependent on the community, not only does that put a lot of pressure on civil society groups to step up, it also has this ripple effect. It makes the refugee system a little bit unfair in the sense that you are choosing who comes, and if you don’t have a second cousin or an affiliated church group or something, you are less likely to be able to come, even if your situation is every bit as dire.

You’ve given the examples of the United States and Great Britain. Where have you found the greatest challenges in getting this off the ground, and are there things that we can learn to make our system better as you watch other countries work through the growing pains of this?

Ms. Bond: Thank you very much. If I may just address your first comment about the fairness in the system before answering your second question about the lessons we’ve learned.

The first thing is just a definitional point. Without becoming technical, the language of sponsorship in the way that I’m using it here does include individuals who are sponsoring UNHCR-referred refugees, like the BVOR program. I want to mention that because I’ll come back to some lessons learned about the different types of policy settings, but when I use the word “sponsorship,” I really mean programs which empower our communities to come together in groups and lead that welcome and integration effort.

The policy settings are different in all these different countries. That’s what has actually allowed us to learn so much. We’ve had live experiments on all of these different ways of mixing and matching policies in different contexts, in different countries. But it does mean that we have tried, actually in quite a few European countries in particular, taking the capacity in our communities and matching it with an UNHCR-referred refugee.

That’s to your point on fairness. To your point of whether it is overly burdening of our civil society organizations, I am constantly surprised — I gave you the U.K. example; it’s the most pronounced — by the fact that when you empower sponsors, they do magical things, and they want those responsibilities.

It doesn’t mean that we don’t need to be careful about the civil society infrastructure and the burdens on organizations whose role is to support sponsors, but I constantly find myself underestimating the power and the appetite of communities to be invited into this process in a meaningful way.

By way of example here in Canada, we have a two-year wait list of people looking to sponsor refugees, so there’s not a sense in the actual sponsorship groups that we’re asking too much or they don’t want this opportunity. In fact, people are often angry because it takes so long. They want to have an opportunity. There are caps in place. The programs are too restrictive. They want to do the basic act of welcoming, and I think sometimes we get in the way of that, or we convince ourselves that it’s too much to ask.

Senator Simons: [Technical difficulties] which has an extraordinary history, of which I’m immensely proud, dating back to the Vietnamese — I hate to use the phrase “boat people,” but the people who left Vietnam right after the war — and Edmonton has had this knock-on effect of generations of this sponsorship.

Normally, when people from Edmonton who are mad about the system write to me, it’s because they have been waiting two years for their person to come and they have knit all the socks and they don’t —

Ms. Bond: That’s right, exactly. I think when we launched GRSI, the then Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, the Honourable John McCallum, was in the seat here and he made a comment that has always stuck with me at one of the opening events. He said he felt that he was the only immigration minister in the world whose population was angry at him for not bringing in enough refugees fast enough. That has really resonated with me.

We go all over the world where everyone is talking about restrictions and border arguments. There are a lot of parts of our system that are divisive, that are difficult and are shutting down, and here’s a program where, if you can get the policy settings right, there’s an overwhelming appetite from the grassroots, from our public, asking us to bring in more newcomers. I think we have to be really thoughtful about how to bring that power into the system in a moment where, frankly, the system is failing. We need more of this. We need the support of our communities to welcome more people, and I think this is a policy tool that — as you know from your own experience — is incredibly powerful for that reason.

We have learned a lot, so I want to come, if I may, to your question about lessons learned. The first thing is that programs can be risk averse that they don’t allow sponsors to do what sponsors know how to do best. In Canada, we have four decades of experience. Again, our program is not perfect, but the idea that sponsors can be trusted and can lead has permeated our program for a long time.

When we go to countries where they have relied exclusively on professional NGOs, they are used to social workers with clipboards who do things and file reports, the idea that you would be trusting your citizens in this way with this very important responsibility feels uncomfortable. Some governments feel or have felt that they want a more incremental approach, and they have really made it difficult to be a sponsor. When you make it difficult to be a sponsor, you don’t get the power of sponsorship; you lose the creativity. You’re trying to put people in a box when, actually, communities have so much to teach us when we let them lead. That’s the first lesson. The power comes from really empowering and really trusting sponsors.

The second one, which I think is a little bit more challenging, is that I do think that our sponsorship program is strongest when it allows for naming. We have heard already today the difference between the success of the private sponsorship program that allows naming and the BVOR program here in Canada. We began by taking the idea that we wanted that sponsorship capacity and that community support to be underneath UNHCR-referred refugees, especially in Europe. Frankly, those programs have not scaled. They have been extremely difficult. As soon as you open up the possibility of naming, you end up having big wait lists. You end up with people highly motivated. I think there are opportunities to discuss why that is.

Certainly, there are links of various kinds. It’s not usually immediate family links, but extended family, friends, best friends and relatives is one reason. We think there are a lot of other reasons, including that naming allows us to leverage the specialization of different NGO groups. LGBTQI groups, for example, are very well positioned to identify people in the field, and in our local communities, to find appropriate welcomers. Universities, one of the largest and longest-running sponsorship agreement holders, or SAHs, in Canada is the World University Services of Canada, or WUSC. They use naming to be able to create a very inventive program and select students using their own specialized processes and match them to universities. I don’t think it’s an oversimplification to reduce naming exclusively while it’s about family. I think it’s a very powerful model and one of our main lessons is that is where we can motivate and mobilize the most.

The last thing I’ll mention — and I’m certainly pleased to say more about this — we are still trying to understand the power of having a one-to-one match between welcome capacity, including housing, and people coming into our communities. Again, I’ll point to the fact that there are currently, in most receiving countries around the world, housing crises, but there are also public perception of housing crises. Those are, in my mind, two distinct issues. There is a shortage of housing, and there is people’s sense that refugees are taking houses away from locals and that creates a tension in the system.

Sponsorship is, by definition, perfectly matching reception capacity with the number of people arriving in our communities, and that allows you to do really interesting things, like big uncapped programs. I’m not saying every country would want that, but it allows you to experiment with these ideas because you take away the constraints. Nobody’s able to come unless there’s a house. In the United States, it’s expensive to sponsor because sponsors have to take on health care costs. Nobody can come unless the sponsor agrees to take it. We still have these massive numbers. Again, you can start to figure out what the constraints are on bringing people to our country, how we can do some policy design around those constraints and live in a world where we don’t have an inventory management issue, where we have too many refugees wanting to come or too many sponsors signing up, and you are able to live in a world of equilibrium between those. I think there is a lot we still need to learn about how that can really be transformative across the refugee system.

Senator Simons: Thank you very much.

Senator Petten: You mentioned your work on the academic institutions, and I understand that at the University of Ottawa refugees have been a pivotal part of your work. How do you see the academic institutions playing a role in shaping refugee policy and community engagement moving forward?

Ms. Bond: Great question. I will answer it, if I may, in three ways. I promise I’ll be brief.

I wear a lot of different hats. I’m a professor at the University of Ottawa. I do think that academic institutions, like the university, have a huge role to play as welcomers. They are a huge institution. We have a lot of services. We have a lot of people on our campuses, and we are one of the many campuses across Canada that welcome refugee students through sponsorship every year. We think there’s a massive opportunity across the world to mobilize colleges, universities and other post-secondary institutions as sites of welcome. If you think about that a little bit, they are then able to train people, to integrate, and provide language and peer support. It’s all built into those campuses.

Reinforcing my point about the power of naming, Homes for Ukraine is another named sponsorship program allowing civil society to be involved in some of those decisions. The University of Oxford immediately stepped up and used Homes for Ukraine in the U.K. to bring refugee students onto their campuses and support them. I think there’s a huge opportunity there.

Obviously, wearing my academic hat, I think that there is a lot of work to be done. We don’t understand in an honest way the failures of the refugee system. A lot of service delivery organizations work extremely hard just to meet the needs of people on a day-to-day basis. My academic colleagues around the world, including in Canada, play a very important function in trying to understand what’s working and what isn’t, and provide important recommendations for the future of the system.

The third point I might make — and this really speaks to the work of the GRSI — I thanked the Government of Canada for its leadership in this unusual partnership. The University of Ottawa has likewise been a partner in this unusual partnership for all these years, and I think it shows what can happen when you think outside the box. This is a university that has committed its resources and its strengths to go around the world and help do capacity building to bring this model to other places. That’s an unusual role for a university, but I think we should encourage them, like our government friends, to really think about different roles, different types of partnerships and how we can be creative in what we need to do.

Senator Petten: Can I also ask Professor Labman a question to do with the academic area? I’m wondering what more you think can be done to bridge the gap between academic research and on-the-ground implementation.

Ms. Labman: Academic research is really important because what happens with the on-the-ground implementation is that we have siloed groups. In your previous panel, you had the Canadian Council for Refugees. When the Canadian Council for Refugees talks about things, they talk about inland and overseas. Professor Bond does incredible work for private sponsorship, and I don’t counter anything she says, but the academic work is where you have people looking at both sides of it.

Refugee sponsors are always going to advocate for more sponsorship; refugee lawyers are always going to push for more access to asylum. The academic side is where you can take a step back, look at the whole and understand that it’s not a criticism of sponsorship or advocacy, or something else, but understanding that it’s not the grassroots piece of it and not the place that people want to do sponsorship. Of course they do, but the interests of states might look a little different.

Regarding the timing of what Canada’s doing, much of my work looks at the timing of some of the Government of Canada’s announcements on sponsorship expansions timed alongside limitations to access to asylum and directly constricting our ability, including what we talked about on the previous panel, namely, access to the safe third country agreement to give people access to protection. The overall picture needs to be one where we’re not looking individually at what benefits are here or there, but looking at the whole picture; that is, are we broadening protection and holding true to our legal obligations as well as expanding discretionary, creative alternatives that are so necessary in the increasing need that we’re seeing worldwide? I think that broader academic view takes us away from the particulars of individual programs and has us look more broadly at the whole and where those failures are.

Senator Petten: Thank you.

The Acting Chair: I am a proud sponsor of many refugees. It actually brings me to tears every time because I do know it is the best thing I have ever done.

Having said that, the paperwork was incredible. Thank God we had a member on our team who was a lawyer. The application is now 60 pages. It used to be three pages when Howard Adelman started all of this in the 1970s.

The numbers, Professor Bond, are not increasing in Canada. In spite of the enthusiasm of sponsors, the government is cutting back, and the long lineups are a source of frustration.

I hear you, Professor Labman. When our team was presented with 12 files to choose from, I did feel a little uncomfortable that I was playing God. We didn’t know any of them. Ultimately, we chose a family because they were hard to serve.

In your opinion, can the different parts of the system not live alongside, which is the UNHCR-certified refugees who come through the government programs, the private sponsorship programs, and the asylum system? There are problems in all three of them, but can they all not live alongside one another? That’s a bunch of questions. Professor Bond, maybe you will go first because I’m frustrated with the bureaucracy that has now become institutionalized in the system. It takes away the personal contact that you so ably advocate for.

Ms. Bond: Yes, thank you. I attribute that to risk. It was an important question about what we can learn from other countries. That is a good lesson we can bring home to Canada. If you become too risk averse, if you become too bureaucratized because of that risk — which tends to be how governments respond to risk; they create more forms and checks and paperwork and things you have to validate — that risk aversion risks stifling the program.

Finding balance is always the challenge. We do a lot of work with government colleagues all over the world to try to understand what is a perceived risk versus an actual risk because often people are scared of things that are not real. Also, what is a catastrophic risk? If this thing happened, what really will be the problem?

Again, regarding homes for Ukraine, it’s possible that people don’t like each other. That’s probably not the worse thing that can happen when, at that moment in the crisis, Ukrainians are being trafficked off of railway stations every day and kids have nowhere to sleep at night. Maybe they don’t like each other like roommates don’t like each other. We will have to figure out how to rehouse them, but that’s not catastrophic.

We then have to pin down issues such as we’re worried about trafficking, abuse and these sorts of things. Make sure that your solutions or your ways of mitigating those risks are fit for purpose.

I think the Government of Canada has added layers to the private sponsorship program. I think they are doing that in an attempt to manage risk, but it would be appropriate to make sure that there’s a calibration between what the risk is they are trying to manage and what interventions are actually needed to manage that risk. Of course, there’s always a trade-off. What is the consequence of the 60-page application form? Who is no longer sponsoring? Who is being discouraged from sponsoring? What is the implication?

I think we’re learning a lot from Canada. The early reports of some of these new measures have not been positive, and I think other countries are, again, watching and learning and trying to figure out how to balance those different factors across all these programs.

The Acting Chair: And the numbers?

Ms. Bond: In the current numbers, I think it’s a little misleading. We have to go back a bit before the Afghanistan bump to understand the trajectory.

The Government of Canada chose to bring in a number of Afghans, and they put them into the resettlement levels plan. So we see an increase that has not been sustained. Some of their more recent interventions, including in Sudan and in Gaza, for example — also there’s a new program linked to Latin America, 11,000 people — are not being counted as part of the resettlement numbers. They are coming in through different pathways. They are not being part of that levelled planning process.

I certainly support bigger numbers. I think Canada can do more. I would like to see those numbers increase, but I do think some of the current analysis is a bit simplified in not trying to understand what’s being counted where across the course of the last probably 10 years since Operation Syrian Refugees.

The Acting Chair: Ms. Labman, can everyone grow stronger together, all the different pots of the system?

Ms. Labman: I think that’s the model, right? That’s what makes me passionate about it, namely that asylum is our legal cornerstone. The previous panel asked about whether we need to remake the system. I think that principle of non-refoulement is the cornerstone. It’s the legal obligation, but that doesn’t mean it’s the whole. It’s never been the whole. Canada became a country of resettlement because it wasn’t a country of asylum at the time. It didn’t recognize itself as a country of asylum until the mid ’80s when more flows and people were able to come here.

Private sponsorship evolved as a complement to resettlement because ever since the Second World War, Canadians were saying, “Canada, let us help you. We know people. We want to bring people in.” That energy has sustained and grown.

The challenge is this: We can see it as foundational blocks or we can see it as dominoes that lean on each other until they all fall. I have an upcoming book chapter called, “The Necessary Reassertion of Government-Assisted Resettlement.” My concern is when we look at the numbers moving forward, in 2026 the target for government-assisted refugees is just over 15,000 and the target for privately sponsored refugees is 28,000. We’re seeing a growth in some ways, but it’s differential. Why is it that the government isn’t keeping up their commitment? Why isn’t there an enthusiasm for matching this energy instead of a reliance on it? If you look at the previous election platform of the Conservative Party of Canada, in 2021 they proposed to replace public government-assisted refugee cases with more private and joint sponsorship places.

Sponsorship is not the problem. The concern is what happens when we put too much reliance on this program which, as you said, can become burdensome and tiring when the paperwork is too much. I think part of the problem is the legalization of it all, the technicalities. As someone who has written on it and studied it for years, the first time I did a sponsorship application, I felt headachy. That shouldn’t be the case. That shouldn’t be how it works. There is a need to ensure the system is secure, especially as the numbers grow. These numbers are not nearly as large as they might be, but they’re significant numbers for monitoring and there are expectations and responsibilities on that. If the government is putting more responsibility on sponsors, there’s an importance to ensure that those resettled through the program are doing well. The way it’s being done has a lot of space for improvement but more so, why aren’t we holding the government to account for its leadership in government resettlement?

Private sponsorship is a civil society movement and there’s leadership there that is spreading. That is wonderful, but shouldn’t the Government of Canada hold account to its government resettlement?

The commitment in 2015 to Syrian refugees was government-assisted resettlement. It was 25,000 Government Assisted Refugees, or GARs, and we did that. That was achieved. But since that time, the GAR numbers have not kept pace with private sponsorship. I think, Senator Omidvar, that the goal would be those three pillars together, and then surrounded by other complementary pathways and creative models that can bring more people in. But we never want to see these models of resettlement as a justification for closing borders or limiting access to those who will never get selected for protection through these other mechanisms.

The Acting Chair: Professor Labman, I think I hear you saying that you are concerned about the privatization — to some extent — of the system. Has there been any research on the attitudes of private sponsors themselves? Has that interaction with sponsoring opened up their hearts and minds to other refugees? Because I would imagine A equals B.

Ms. Labman: I don’t know about particular research on that, but I am part of a project with Audrey Macklin and others, in which over 500 private sponsors of Syrian refugees were interviewed. We have a number of articles on their feelings towards sponsorship, from the sponsor’s perspective. The most recent piece that I just recently put out with Audrey Macklin and Anna Korteweg speaks to some of the challenges that sponsors see in the reality of doing a dual responsibility. Step one is the life-saving: the action of protection by which you are bringing someone to protection. But then there is the 12-month temporal trajectory of helping that person settle in a new country. That’s a very different job and a very different responsibility, and it shifts how they think about it.

One of the most interesting things we saw in that piece — interesting to me that I saw — was that sponsors saw their roles quite differently. Some wanted the idea of really helping someone who needed their help. Others celebrated the fact that the refugee family they helped bring over was already capable of achieving that temporal timeline. Some of the comments spoke to the need for greater support from the government on doing this job because it is very complicated. This job challenges Canadians to work together. A group of sponsorship isn’t an individual endeavour. You need a group of at least five people to come together to do it, working together and sharing a vision of what that job is.

I do think there is a better understanding — absolutely — of refugees’ needs when you are meeting refugees one-on-one. But you also hear in some of those comments and in the book Strangers to Neighbours that I edited, we have this with the Yazidi resettlement and the BVOR Program in Nova Scotia. In chapters in that book, you have sponsors feeling that the work they do is the best way to achieve this protection. While some of it may speak to broader refugee support, some of it may also have that counter-suspicion of refugees coming by way of claiming asylum, suspicion of those refugees who need to make irregular access to come because they see the value of what they’re doing. It’s more complicated because each individual sponsor has a very different view of it.

The Acting Chair: Ms. Bond, you spoke about the jewel in the private sponsorship crown, which is the World University Service of Canada, or WUSC, where universities across Canada through student fundraising pulled their money together and sponsored refugee students. It’s absolutely marvellous. Are there other examples of institutional sponsorships? I remember during the Syrian movement the Chartered Professional Accountants of Ontario and the Professional Engineers Ontario and school boards, et cetera, all put themselves forward. Has that been formalized or was that a flash in the pan?

Ms. Bond: Thank you. I think one of the things that we’ve learned about named sponsorship in particular is that this one policy idea can allow a government or a community to achieve a lot of different policy objectives. Because what happens when you introduce named sponsorship is that civil society organizations and other institutions find ways to take advantage of the policy space that’s available to them. What that means is that in each of the programs that I’ve mentioned that is a big named program — so the Uniting for Ukraine in the United States, which has landed over 180,000 people, the Homes for Ukraine program in the U.K., the Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, or CHNV program, which is landing 30,000 people a month — all of these programs are named programs. What that means is that in each of them, there are examples of institutional sponsors. There’s a whole movement to figure out how to get employers involved in naming in particular to bring in some people who are able to take hospitality jobs, to fill labour shortages in critical markets. How do you leverage workplaces to be — again — a natural site of welcome? I’ll give that as one example. LGBTQI groups I have already mentioned are very active and involved. The United States government is actually funding something called Welcome Corps on Campus, and that is to take their basic naming program instead of setting up a separate pathway just for education. So you see there’s a lot of interest in pathways around the world right now, and there would be some governments that say we’re going to do a special pathway that’s only for students. What the United States has said is we’re going to use our named sponsorship program to bring in people who are students. We want to encourage universities and colleges to get involved, so we’re going to fund, as a government, NGOs to go and set up that program similar to what WUSC has done here. They have invested and provided carrots to try to encourage that use, but it’s a wide open program. The short answer is, yes, there are many hundreds of programs around the world where sponsors and civil society are allowed to be creative. They are creative, and one of the things they’re very good at doing is matching institutional actors in the system, which is what we need in order to see the capacity increases that I think we all want.

The Acting Chair: Has a municipality ever been a sponsor?

Ms. Bond: Yes. There are a number of examples in Europe where individual local authorities or different types of sub-state actors have become sponsors, and they sometimes call themselves super sponsors because they come in and take an organizing function where they are mobilizing individual groups underneath the structure and leveraging the structure of the municipality or the local authority.

Senator Simons: I’m curious. In my anecdotal experience, a lot of the groups I’ve known who have done sponsorships have had a religious background. I don’t mean even a capital “R” one, but I think for some of my friends, it has been a reason for them to plug back into a faith community because it’s given them a sense of purpose.

I’m curious how that translates in other countries where they have a very different religio-political culture. I’m curious if you think it’s ever an issue. When an Anglican Church group sponsors a refugee, they’re not sponsoring other Anglicans. But are there any instances where the refugees who are being settled feel uncomfortable because they’re being sponsored by a faith group that is not aligned with their own faith and values?

Ms. Bond: Great question, both aspects. I do think that faith communities are obviously a critical part of the Canadian sponsorship story, and I think must be a critical part of the story in other places. So we encourage all different types of organizations to get involved in sponsorship. Our role is really to try to support local actors to do this work. We don’t stay; we don’t operate stuff. We’re really there to try to help things get set up and help them succeed. Definitely, one of the pieces of advice we would offer is that you need to reach your faith institutions. The reason for that is actually less based on the ideology although it’s consistent with many faiths to do this kind of work, and a big range of faiths, in a way that I think is interesting and helpful, but it’s actually the way they’re structured. Faith organizations tend to have community-based structures. They have umbrella organizations and then very grassroots ones. So that is a very convenient structure to do sponsorship at scale.

So yes to the faith communities. They are not actively engaged in all places where sponsorship is introduced, and I think it’s a huge part of what needs to happen to see those programs scale.

In terms of discomfort, I actually think that is where important program and policy design really matters. The kinds of things that I think sponsors need to be screened for is making sure that they understand that their role is not to evangelize and that faith institutions can sponsor because they’re motivated by their own beliefs and their own faiths without feeling as though their job is to engage in conversion of some kind or other types of acts of persuasion.

A lot of countries are experimenting with different types of safeguarding mechanisms across all aspects of their programs. Do sponsors need to check in after the first week, the second week, the sixth week? Is there a site visit? All of these questions are constantly being considered and debated, and those types of issues would be the kinds of things that policy-makers are trying to balance when they’re thinking about how much to intervene and how much to screen at the front end.

Senator Simons: I had a question about support for the sponsoring groups. I remember in Edmonton, when there were many, many groups sponsoring Syrian refugees, that the Edmonton Mennonite Centre for Newcomers acted as — I want to say — an umbrella, but it was a resource for all of those sponsor groups if they had challenges or issues. Then they brought all of the sponsored refugees together occasionally for social events, and it was important, because then the sponsor groups could also talk to each other.

I don’t know how formalized that is. In this case it was very specifically because there was that huge influx of forcibly displaced Syrian people. I’m wondering, to what extent there are these connective tissue groups that reach out to help sponsors navigate some of their own issues and to mediate when there are concerns that arise so that the sponsoring groups can learn best practices from each other?

Ms. Bond: That is another great question, and it is something we’re constantly learning.

Each country has introduced its own, sort of, civil society structure around all of this. I’m happy to give you some examples, but there is a huge variation in what civil society infrastructure has been created, who’s funding it and what its purpose is. We’ve been learning a lot about what does and doesn’t work.

I think what is clear is that the absence of informal mentorship is a big deal. In Canada, if you become a sponsor, you likely know someone or can easily find someone who has sponsored, and they will connect you into a community, and you will find support. All of these other countries have to design for those gaps, and that’s much harder, it’s more expensive and it’s more complicated.

Where I think we’ve seen the most success is where there are bigger numbers, for the reason that you’ve just mentioned. If there are a lot of newcomers coming and a lot of sponsors engaged, civil society organizations will come out of the woodwork and do what they do best, which is to solve problems, organize, bring people together and figure out what the gap is. Maybe it’s peer-to-peer mentorship or opportunities for sponsors to socialize. I think civil society is amazing and powerful where there’s a need.

If only one sponsorship group exists in your community, and one family is coming, civil society is not going to react in the same way. You don’t end up with that same impetus to act, and it really has to be something that’s designed.

Again, I think we’re still learning. Civil society organizations in many countries are still figuring out what their role is. Some of it is by design, and some of it is really relying on their creativity, and the growth in numbers helps a lot.

Senator Simons: That critical mass.

Ms. Bond: That’s right. We’ve even considered clustered approaches. Germany landing one person per large region all across Germany doesn’t really give a sense of momentum or community, so maybe it’s better to say if there are going to be 300 sponsorships this year, let’s try to put them all in the same sort of geographical proximity, and they can have the picnic, and the services will spring up. People will become creative.

That cuts a little bit against one of the benefits of sponsorship, of course, which is right now in the United States that there are sponsors in every single territory, every single state, so you get the geographical reach if you don’t try to constrain. But you don’t, then, get the density, unless you have large numbers.

The Acting Chair: I have a question for clarification. You’ve talked about the United States and the numbers of private sponsors, Ukrainians and others. John Slocum talked earlier about the Ukrainians and the Afghans and whether they were privately sponsored or not, they are there temporarily. That’s a real difference from the system we have here, where we sponsor for permanency.

Ms. Bond: Yes, I think that’s right, and that is an accurate reflection of those programs. They were humanitarian parole programs. That is the same for the CHNV program, that I’ve mentioned as well. The Welcome Corps program is based in the U.S. refugee resettlement system, so you see them experimenting with sponsorship in different parts of their overall program.

I’ll take a moment to take off my hat talking exclusively about sponsorship to talk about the broader world of pathways in the refugee system.

The refugee system, in my view, is collapsing. It’s failing. The global refugee system is not meeting the needs of the majority of people. I think there’s been, in the last few years, quite a lot of experimentation trying to figure out how to work around a refugee system which is no longer fit for purpose.

In the United States, the Afghanistan response is the first great example of that. I don’t think anyone can argue that Afghans are not refugees. Canada welcomed them under our refugee resettlement program, as I mentioned. The United States couldn’t do it. The refugee program in the United States was so cumbersome and so challenging, people would still be waiting. There are five-year security checks, very long medical processes and a very inefficient operational model, and they were keen, in that instance, as we all know, to move people very quickly into the United States. Refugee processing simply was not an option for them.

I think it’s actually a failure of the refugee system that because it’s not an option, people have to look for alternatives, and they took to the use of their humanitarian parole program. As you know, and I’m sure as John Slocum reinforced, over 85,000 people have come in through that program. Many are now seeking refugee status through their asylum claims process. Because they used that mechanism, they were able to get people landed in a couple of days.

I think we have to look in a really honest way. I know a lot of my colleagues — I’m a lawyer by training in the refugee bar — a lot of academics are very keen to preserve the refugee system. I, of course, share the animating goal of supporting displaced persons, but I think we have to be really candid that the refugee system is profoundly broken, and we can’t just tinker with it. We have to acknowledge it’s no longer protecting people who need protection.

The use of humanitarian parole has been criticized, in part, because it’s a shorter-term solution, but, frankly, people were not able to be moved through the refugee system, because it’s so flawed.

I think there are a lot of lessons in this for all of us, and we need to confront very honestly why the refugee system is no longer able to protect even very vulnerable refugees, even when governments do have political motivation to do so.

The Acting Chair: I think I hear a very good recommendation coming out of that.

Professor Labman, final thoughts from you, please. What would you like to see in our report?

Ms. Labman: I’ve been following the Senate committee in its whole, and I think I would like to see a recognition that there are obstacles to refugee protection through all of these systems, and the complementary nature of them requires commitment and leadership on all fronts.

I don’t think the refugee system is functioning well right now, but in contrast to Professor Bond, for me, the refugee system, the principle of non-refoulement and the refugee convention is not a system; it’s an obligation in law to protect those when they need protection, and there’s no reason the system that builds up on that should lose sight of that legal obligation.

I have concerns that if we fall too far on discretion, discretion can absolutely open more doors, but it can just as easily close doors. That would be my concern.

The Acting Chair: Thank you to both of you. This has been a remarkable conversation, and we thank you a great deal. I hope you will be pleased with our report. I’m not able to say when it goes public, because we’re nowhere close to the end of our study.

Please reach out to the committee clerk if you have additional submissions or thoughts. We’re always happy to hear from you.

Thank you so much for being with us in person and online.

(The committee adjourned.)