Bill C-11 (Historical)

Balanced Refugee Reform Act

An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the Federal Courts Act

This enactment amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, primarily in respect of the processing of refugee claims referred to the Immigration and Refugee Board. In particular, the enactment
(a) provides for the referral of a refugee claimant to an interview with an Immigration and Refugee Board official, who is to collect information and schedule a hearing before the Refugee Protection Division;
(b) provides that the members of the Refugee Protection Division are appointed in accordance with the Public Service Employment Act;
(c) provides for the coming into force, no more than two years after the day on which the enactment receives royal assent, of the provisions of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that permit a claimant to appeal a decision of the Refugee Protection Division to the Refugee Appeal Division;
(d) authorizes the Minister to designate, in accordance with the process and criteria established by the regulations certain countries, parts of countries or classes of nationals;
(e) provides clarification with respect to the type of evidence that may be put before the Refugee Appeal Division and the circumstances in which that Division may hold a hearing;
(f) prohibits a person whose claim for refugee protection has been rejected from applying for a temporary resident permit or applying to the Minister for protection if less than 12 months have passed since their claim was rejected;
(g) authorizes the Minister, in respect of applications for protection, to exempt nationals, or classes of nationals, of a country or part of a country from the 12-month prohibition;
(h) provides clarification with respect to the Minister’s authority to grant permanent resident status or an exemption from any obligations of the Act on humanitarian and compassionate grounds or on public policy grounds;
(i) limits the circumstances in which the Minister may examine requests for permanent resident status or for an exemption from any obligations of the Act on humanitarian and compassionate grounds; and
(j) enacts transitional provisions respecting the processing of pending claims by the Minister or the Immigration and Refugee Board.
The enactment also amends the Federal Courts Act to increase the number of Federal Court judges.

Balanced Refugee Reform Act

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Madam Speaker, I indicated in my speech that I thought it would be best to refer the bill to committee before second reading so as to have complete latitude to improve on it, not to change its nature or redesign it, but to make sure that improvements that could be agreed upon unanimously and would make it possible to move forward would not be rejected for somehow going beyond the intended scope of the bill.

I do not know what motivated the government to deny the request made to it to refer the bill to committee before second reading. It hope that was not done in an attempt to use procedure to avoid having to consider certain amendments. At any rate, it would not be a great strategic move on the part of a minority government looking to get its political agenda passed to refuse amendments about which there might be a consensus simply because it has procedure on its side.

The minister and hon. members who spoke today said they were prepared to negotiate, to look at improvements that might ultimately provide interesting results. Let us assume that everyone is acting in good faith and hope that, in committee, we will not get caught up in procedural wrangling and have to debate whether an amendment is in order or not. Amendments should be considered on merit, based on how useful they can be to claimants.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Madam Speaker, the member raised a very important point. I have worked with a number of countries helping them develop their regulatory regime, particularly in the environment field. One of the methods I have encouraged them to follow, which I found useful in a number of jurisdictions in which I worked in Canada, is that at the same time the legislation is being developed, and the interacting regulations and guidelines, they get an idea of exactly how much staff will be needed and that they gear up to train them. In that way, the minute the law is implemented, they are ready to go.

I am wondering if the member could speak to that in more detail. It would be very useful, frankly, in the review of the bill to see the full force of it. My concern is that the bill be implemented with officers having full discretion, rather than what the legislation seems to provide for, that there would be some fettering in the discretion and some criteria in the treatment of these applications.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Madam Speaker, we asked that the regulations that go along with this bill be presented to the committee. The minster said he could provide us with at least some rough drafts. That is a good start. That would give us a general idea. However, it is by no means a final solution, because the regulations can be changed at any time without consulting Parliament. We must therefore ensure that the bill includes all the basic principles and that the regulations contain only administrative features, and that Parliament does not shirk its responsibilities regarding the principles of the legislation. I say yes to regulations. I think they are fundamental. Studying this bill with no information about the regulations would really be like signing a blank cheque for parliamentarians. We must go further. We must ensure that the main principles of governance are included in the legislation and that the regulations deal only with administrative matters.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is a privilege to speak to Bill C-11, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the Federal Courts Act. This bill came out of a lot of work that was done when the Liberals were in government in 2004 to 2006. We are pleased to see the minister has listened to members from all political parties and has tried to craft the bill in a way that will deal with something that has been a very vexing challenge for any government that has served our nation.

All of us know and hear about the tragic stories and have met refugees who have come to our country. They have endured lengths of time of great uncertainty in their lives, fleeing countries and environments that have been, at best, disconcerting to them and, at worst, life-threatening to them and their families.

The stories of terror and horror that they, their families and loved ones have been subjected to are often difficult for those of us who have lived in our beautiful country to understand or truly empathize with. It is a reality in far too many countries where the milk of human kindness does not run through some of their leaders and they and the people who follow them have inflicted crimes against individuals that are beyond our worst nightmares. Yet the people who members see in their offices have come to our country to find a better life, security, enjoy freedom and, above all else, to be protected and free of the kind of viciousness and brutality that infects too many countries in the world.

The genesis of the bill is to ensure that individuals who come to our country, or are selected to be refugees or apply to be refugees are true refugees in our country and are able to go through a process that enables them to enter into Canada in an expeditious fashion with uncertainties removed. More important, it ensures that individuals who try to take advantage of the system, queue jump and enter our country from other countries with no just cause are not allowed into the country, that they are removed from the system and sent back to their countries of origin expeditiously and that the moneys that come from our citizens are used wisely and responsibly.

The Liberal Party will support the bill going to committee. We do this not because we think it is a perfect bill, it is far from it, but we believe it is important and responsible for us to ensure the bill gets to committee where witnesses can appear and members of the committee from all parties can ask the tough questions, which will allow us to ensure the bill is crafted in the most responsible and effective way possible.

We are, however, concerned that the government took four years to put together a bill such as this, given the fact that Conservatives and their offices, like ours, have heard about the challenges and problems within the immigration and refugee system. It is very important that at the end of the day the bill be rooted in fairness and efficiency.

The reform package incorporates recommendations that have come from the Liberal Party, including the establishment of a refugee appeal process. The government, however, has given no guarantees that the backlog of refugee claims will be addressed any time soon. We are concerned that it will not preserve the fundamental rights of all claimants. We have called for assurances from the government to ensure that the new refugee reform measures will actually reduce the backlog and ensure that we have a balanced refugee system that will ensure individual rights.

Why does the backlog exists? It is important to go back to look at history. The government, for reasons known only to it, has spent an extraordinary amount of time dragging its heels, not filling chronic vacancies that exist within the Immigration and Refugee Board.

In the first place, we feel the appointment process, as has happened in many other areas, has been heavily politicized. By not having a full board has resulted in an explosion of refugee claimants. Right now there is a backlog of 63,000 applicants waiting in line. This has not always been the case. Prior to the Conservatives forming government, 20,000 people were waiting in line. That number has exploded to 63,000 because the government has failed to make appointments in an effective and efficient manner.

This malaise that affects the government's inability or unwillingness to appoint people to boards and to structures that are important to the function of our nation has infected other areas. The Veterans Review and Appeal Board is a good example. This is an important appeal board that resolves challenges facing our veterans. The government has heavily politicized this board, too, by appointing individuals who do not have the competence to handle these complex cases. As a result, we are seeing a backlog in the Veterans Review and Appeal Board and we are seeing that in the immigration and refugee appeal board system.

The government has failed to deal with this big challenge. In the process it has really done a huge disservice to our country and our citizens. The function of these government appointed boards relies on them having a full complement or an effective critical mass of people who can do the job. If these boards do not have that, we see an inefficient execution of the duties of those boards and people suffer as a result.

I want to go back to the Veterans Review and Appeal Board, which has to do with our veterans, veterans who have given to our country, veterans who have served our nation, veterans who need good health to maintain their standard of living. Our veterans have served our country throughout their lives, but when they need assistance and go to the VRAB they find a mess, which results in a lot of them suffering. I appeal to the government to grasp what I have said and fix the system because it cannot continue in its current form.

We need to have a fair and just process that will take the concerns relating to safe country of origin seriously. My colleagues and others in the House have mentioned that. We want to ensure that we have the tools to deter refugee fraud, while at the same time protect bona fide refugees.

One of the major concerns of the Liberal Party with respect to this is ensuring that true refugees come in to Canada, but we deter fraud and weed out those individuals who abuse the system. We need to protect those bona fide refugees who want to come to Canada, sometimes need to come to our country to protect their own lives.

Elements of the bill also seem to be somewhat improvised. The government has committed more than $540 million over five years toward reforms that it wants to implement, and that is a good thing. However, this number was simply not in this month's budget. It comes just after the government announced a freeze on departmental spending.

If the government is committing $540 million to implement these reforms, but is planning to freeze spending, then where is it going to get the money? Is the government going to cut something else? If it is going to cut something else, then what is it going to cut? We only have silence from the government. The responsible thing for the government to do would be to let the Canadian public and the House know where it will get the money to do this.

Canadians also cannot afford the gross mismanagement that occurred last year when the government took a really ham-fisted approach toward Mexico and the Czech Republic by putting visa restrictions on the two countries. It seemed like a band-aid solution and a knee-jerk response to a spike in refugee claims from these two countries. We know what the government's intent was, and do not dispute it for a second, but the way in which it did this was extremely damaging to our country.

By announcing out of the blue visa restrictions on Mexico, with no consultation, for example, the government cost many companies hundreds of millions of dollars. Language training groups, tourism companies and others relied on being able to attract people from Mexico. They had contracts signed for them to come to Canada so they could learn English, which has happened for a long time. That was stopped cold. There was a great deal of uncertainty. Many people's lives and businesses were ruined by this glib, offhand implementation of visa restrictions last year.

You and I know, Madam Speaker, from living on Vancouver Island, that this affected quite number of businesses in our communities and cost them millions of dollars. In fact, some of them went out of business. It was completely unnecessary. As I said before, I fully understand where this was coming from with respect to the spike in claimants. We know some of the rationale behind that and some of the legitimate concerns the government had with respect to that spike.

However, our contention is there was a better way of doing this. I would posit for the government that if it considers doing something like that in the future, it should consult with the businesses involved that could be hurt by this. It should listen to a number of the companies that benefit from bilateral relations with these countries. Their concerns from an industrial perspective and an economic perspective need to be listened to.

I would submit that listening to them would enable the government to come out with a better series of solutions to deal with the very real challenge they were faced with at that point in time. We are certainly willing to work with the government to provide it with information and ideas on this. I know it has its sources to utilize, too.

This is a little background. In 2004 the former Liberal government implemented changes to the appointment process to the Immigration and Refugee Board. These changes included an advisory panel made up of a number of individuals involved in the refugee process, which screened all applicants for the IRB.

When the current government came to power, it delayed appointments to the board, while it reviewed the process, which was its right to do. However, then it structured the system so the government could simply appoint half the people as members of the panel. It held off on appointments to do that. Rather than pursue a course based on merit, it has pursued a course based much more on politics. As I said before, this delay caused a massive spike in the backlog, from 20,000 to 63,000 now.

We know our folks at Citizenship and Immigration Canada work very hard. The minister knows this very well. They are tireless and all of us try to work very hard in our constituencies. My staff, Jeff and Vikki, in my Victoria office work very hard to try to resolve these issues in a timely fashion. It takes up a lot of their time.

The members and staff at Citizenship and Immigration Canada work very hard, but I would submit for the minister that he would be well-served to listen to the on the ground members of his ministry, those who work in the trenches and who do the person-to-person work. He would be well advised to ask them directly how he could change the system in a more effective way. In doing so, he would be getting information from those staff members who work on the ground and have to deal with the challenges every day.

He would also be wise to ask the tireless individuals who work for us as members of Parliament in our constituency offices about what they face. They have some very good ideas and solutions that the minister could utilize to ensure we have a better immigration system.

By listening to his staff, the staff who work in our offices and those who have gone through the immigration and refugee process, I think he would have three populations that could provide him with a lot of constructive solutions to make a better bill, one that would serve Canadians, immigrants and refugees very well.

Because of the changes the government introduced in terms of the appointment process, the chair of the board resigned and alluded to the fact that the politicization of the board was a factor in the chair's departure.

In the March 2009 status report of the Auditor General of Canada, chapter 2, Ms. Fraser noted her concerns regarding the timely and efficient appointments and reappointments of decision makers to the IRB. Ms. Fraser said very clearly that this process and how this is being done is something that is of great concern to her.

In addition to the growing backlog of applications, the recent spike in claims from certain countries has resulted in an ad hoc method of visa restrictions to constrict application volume. As I said before, we saw this in Mexico and the Czech Republic. We certainly hope that the government does not have a repeat performance on this because what would happen is that we would see simply another choke point in the system that would not serve things well at all.

The bill certainly provides a lot of further flexibility to the minister to deal with unusual spikes in refugee claims from democratic source countries and streamlining the removal process for unsuccessful applicants. We certainly support the streamlining of the removal of unsuccessful applicants. Right now the situation is actually quite grim in the sense that it takes an excessive amount of time for individuals to be processed.

I think the bill should be commended that it proposes changes to every stage in the in-Canada process. Currently people with successful claims are waiting an average of 19 months for a decision, and it takes an average of 4.5 years to process and remove an unsuccessful claimant. Obviously this is unacceptable, and we want to make sure that when the bill goes to committee the process that comes out of this is going to ensure that the wait time for individuals is going to be less than 19 months. That is a very cruel length of time, and the time it takes to actually process and remove an unsuccessful claimant at 4.5 years is also completely unfair to Canadians.

Some of the things the government wants to do at this point in time include having an information-gathering period, which currently is 28 days. It wants to shorten this to eight days. That seems like wishful thinking on its part, and I submit that is really not where the big backlog is that is causing a problem. There are other areas that can be much lengthier.

For example, the first-level decision phase is done by a government-appointed counsel appointee and is done within 18 months. Under the new process the first-level decisions would be made within the IRB within 60 days. That is a welcome objective, because if we could shorten that period of time from 18 months to 60 days, we would certainly have a much more efficient and effective system. However, we want to ensure that the individual, who is making these claims and will be the subject of these investigations, will be treated fairly under the system.

What is important also is the appeal process. Primary concern for us is that the introduction of a refugee appeal division must ensure that the first-level decisions that are going to be conducted will be done in a way that protects procedural fairness and fundamental justice sufficiently to avoid the RAD's becoming another bottleneck in the process.

If we look at the U.K.'s example, and that would be a worthy one to do, the U.K. has had a number of significant challenges in implementing this. In fact, in its process it has had a huge backlog of up to half a million asylum cases as of 2008 and it can take, get this, it is quite remarkable, 10 to 18 years to resolve. That is quite remarkable.

I know my time is ending, but I want to offer one other suggestion concerning refugees. Their children have a great deal of difficulty and there is a remarkable project called the Sage Youth project run by a remarkable immigrant called Tamba Dhar. She did this in Toronto. Essentially she provided children with mentors from their own community who would empower these children who may not have had good family situations. They provided solid adult anchors for those children within their own communities. I strongly encourage the government to work with the provinces to take a look at what Tamba Dhar has done with the Sage Youth program because the outcome is that these children were able to stay in school. None of them has run afoul of the law. They were not taking drugs. They had better outcomes. They had better employment outcomes and better educational outcomes.

I look forward to any questions.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for his very clear and cogent comments on this bill.

I would like to ask the same question of the member that I have asked of other members who have spoken on this bill, and that is along the lines of the way the government has described the process and why it has brought forward the legislation the way it has, compared to what people who are critiquing the bill are saying.

The government has described the process it is bringing forward in the bill. Everybody agrees that the process needs to be improved and we need to have a better process for hearing claims by refugees, but the government describes what we need as a fast and fair process and others seem to be suggesting that what we really need is a timely and just process.

I notice the minister supports the need to have a timely review, in fairness also to the claimant, but there have been concerns raised that the timeline is far too quick and too fast, and it may be that certainly victims, particularly those suffering from sexual abuse and so forth, need more time to deal with their issues and to communicate that. They may not trust officials and may in fact end up discombobulated in what they are presenting.

We certainly have had the experience in our constituency with people who have come in to assist us in immigration matters, where they have given slightly different stories in the initial interview and then later on. In many cases, it appears clear that they simply were intimidated, frightened or trying to give answers they thought they wanted people to hear as opposed to telling the full story.

I wonder if the member could speak a bit more to that, about whether he thinks that the timelines imposed in the legislation actually will provide for a just review.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Madam Speaker, this is one of the unknowns and that is why we are actually supporting this bill to go to committee, to ask those tough and cogent questions, to be able to have those answers to ensure the process that is going to be elucidated from this will be both fair and expeditious.

There are a couple of things that can be done.

For those who are claiming refugee status, if they have family already here, then those individuals could be fast-tracked forward. If there is a history of that family coming into Canada under an existing refugee claim, other members of the family, under the same circumstances, can be expedited.

The other one is for children who do not come with the parents and who are not medically examined. If they are not medically examined and do not come with their parents, they have a terrible time trying to get into the country, so this actually fractures the family apart and obviously is extremely unfair and horrible for the family involved. They are fleeing a country but they had to leave a child behind.

One solution for this that the minister may want to take back is to allow those children to be medically examined and to come in through family reunification. That would prevent the dislocation within the families of children being left behind in countries that are in turmoil and ensure that those children are able to be reunited with their parents.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Madam Speaker, I listened to my colleague's remarks.

I know that he is motivated by strong principles. That being said, I would like to take this opportunity to ask him about his colleagues' behaviour during the vote on Bill C-291. I talked about this earlier today. I know that the past is the past, but if we want to move forward, we have to figure out what happened.

When I introduced a bill that was voted on here in the House to implement the refugee appeal division, 12 Liberal members were absent. Four Liberal members were present, but abstained knowing full well that the opposition had won the previous vote by three votes. Their strategy seems to suggest that, on the one hand, they were in favour of the refugee appeal division, but on the other, they did not want the bill to pass in the House.

We will have to work with the Liberals to improve this bill, enhance it and change a few of the principles in it.

Will we be able to count on their sincere support this time? Can we be sure that they will always act in accordance with what they say in public and with their values?

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Madam Speaker, my colleague obviously has a lot of experience and knowledge in this area and he brought a lot of that to bear in his superb speech.

As the member knows, we did pursue the Refugee Appeal Division through changes in the past. The government did not do that, so the resolution of this is going to come in committee by working together to ensure that this is going to be resolved, whether it becomes a part of the bill or not. It is certainly a solution that the Liberal Party put forward and we look forward to working with the member to try to convince the government that this ought to be part of the bill and done in an appropriate, sensible and effective way.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Madam Speaker, I want the people out there who are listening to just imagine if someone, one person, came to their house one day and said that they could no longer be in Canada, that they had to leave and could never come back.

Basically that is the situation that faces refugees in the present system. There is one person who makes that decision. That person is not elected or accountable in any particular way. If he or she got up on the wrong side of the bed or had something personally against someone, there is no way to appeal that.

There are very few things in the Canadian administrative justice system where there is no appeal. This is one of the very rare examples.

Removing that unfairness in our administration in Canada would go a long way to standing up for Canadian ideals and principles. I wonder if the member wants to comment on that.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my friend for his very astute question.

I think one of the things we would like to make sure of when this bill goes to committee is that the first decision phase would actually be effective, that there would be a proper assessment. If that happened, then it would actually be possible to be more effective at separating those people who are trying to take advantage of the system from those who are true refugees.

There are a lot of sieves that could be put into place within that first decision-making phase that would enable us to accomplish that goal. I think giving our front-line workers the direction to do this is important.

My colleague also brings up a very important question about the individuals making this decision. Will they be political appointees, or will they be people of merit? Will they have the skill set to do this?

This is certainly one of the concerns the Auditor General has, and the concern we have, that the government is going to appoint individuals who are going to have the expertise, knowledge and training to be able to execute these very serious duties in a professional manner.

That is what we are going to ensure happens when this bill goes to committee.

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the question to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment is as follows: the hon. member for Charlottetown, The Budget.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to Bill C-11. At the outset I, too, want to make note and compliment the minister for getting his bill this far and the fact that he has been here for all of the presentations is a big plus for him. I know that in the provincial legislature, and the only one that I am familiar with is the Manitoba legislature, that is an expected practice. The minister is always there to listen attentively to the speeches of the members. Therefore, I am really impressed that he would do that.

Also, I think there is a bigger issue here. The government is in another iteration as a minority government and it has taken this long for the government to figure out that that is what it is in, a minority government and that majority government possibilities are not guaranteed. Therefore, it has to make the best of the situation it is in.

We look to people like the minister, and he is not alone because there are one or two others over there who show a similar kind of appreciation for how they fit into the grand scheme of things. Unfortunately, there are many people on the government side, members and ministers, who do not appreciate that and it makes it much more difficult to work in a situation like this.

I think that under certain circumstances the government may last the full five years. I know I have said this before but if no one party moves up substantially in support, what would be the point of forcing Canadians to spend millions of dollars for an election that will probably produce the same results.

The fact is that our voters are out there and they want to see results. Whether it is that particular minister, another minister or the government who wants to make accommodations with opposition parties, I think that should be encouraged because it will hold us all in a better stead at the end of the day.

I have always said that there are advantages to minority parliaments. I am a fan of minority governments because I think that they do produce results. We had a very successful run in a minority Parliament of Lester Pearson from 1962 to 1968 where we got the unification of the armed forces. People would have thought that would be impossible to do. We got a new Canadian flag which also at the time seemed like an impossibility. All of that happened during minority situations. I am very positive that this minority situation can produce really good results.

Another point is that all we need to do is look at where this party started, where it warped from. Can we imagine the old Reform Party members looking ahead? I think they would be in a state of shock if they could see what some of their ministers are actually doing. This was a party that was very rigid and extreme in its views and, in some ways, it has come a long way.

I am actually fearful of a majority Conservative government because then we would see the ministers marching in here, dropping the bills on the desk and using a take it or leave it approach.

This particular bill has a lot of potential because of the minority situation. If the government truly wants to get it through, which I think it does, then it is prepared to make some amendments at committee.

One of my colleagues earlier talked about the idea that we should have sent the bill directly to committee and that would have given the committee more authority and more leeway to make more radical changes to the structures of the bill. The government did not agree to do that, which is fine. We now need to work with what is in front of us

I think all the representatives of the opposition parties have indicated that they look forward to the bill going to committee. Therefore, the issue becomes how the bill will play out at the committee stage. That remains to be seen because our critic has some positive things to say about the bill and some negative things to say about the bill. Perhaps some of her concerns can be dealt with and allayed at the committee.

I also want to note that our critic is a very hard worker in this area and understands her critic area very well. More important, she actually gets along with the minister. It is very important in a legislative environment that the critic and the minister get along, to the point where the minister himself mentioned that she had been invited and had attended a briefing session on the bill before it was introduced. That is a battle we had with the previous member. The member for Souris and I, in a past life, sat in sessions at the provincial level. Some ministers would provide information. The ministers who were considered the best and got the best results were the ministers who invited the opposition into their offices and gave them a briefing on the bill. There were other ministers, on the other hand, who just flatly refused and would not allow it at all. At the end of the day, they got poorer results, a rougher ride and a lot more stress than they would have had, had they adopted the more open approach.

I now want to deal with some of the issues in the bill. The refugee issue has been a cause for trouble and concern under previous Conservative and Liberal governments for many years. I remember both the Mulroney government and then the Chrétien government making political appointments to these board and then running into trouble with their decisions. We understand that political parties win elections and become government and it is accepted that they have the right to appoint some of their own people into positions, but this was one area where making blatant political appointments did not work out very well.

We have some stories in Winnipeg where people were literally abusing their positions with the refugee board. We also dealt with the area of immigration consultants, which is just a terrible area. We have had in Manitoba multiple times where immigration consultants have been called on the carpet for charging ridiculous fees, taking advantage of not only poor people and people who are refugees, but on the immigrant investor program, highly educated, intelligent, fairly wealthy immigrants being hoodwinked by shady people in the area of immigration consultants.

I am not sure what the answer is. Manitoba has some laws dealing with the issue provincially that I believe have some merit and work reasonably well, but I am all in favour, and I think all of us probably would be, of trying to rid the landscape of these immigration consultants, because more often than not they are tied into other businesses. They have a travel agency on the side or do income tax on the side. They essentially grab people in a web and control them, capture them and hand them off to one another. It is not the type of environment we want to be in.

Canada has an honourable past but it also has a speckled past in dealing with refugee issues. It is true that we have accepted a higher proportion of refugees, one of the previous speakers mentioned the numbers, relative to our size than any other country in the world, so that is to our credit, but we have other examples in our past for which we are currently not overly proud.

There is a long-standing tradition in many cultures of offering refuge to those fleeing persecution. In Europe, people during the middle ages could seek sanctuary in a church. In fact, there are cases in Winnipeg right now where people are in a church. Giving sanctuary was considered a sacred act.

Americans fleeing slavery were given protection in Canada in the days before the U.S. Civil War. Although there have always been people fleeing oppression, it was not until after World War II that world governments recognized the need to create formal legal obligations for countries to accept refugees. Prior to World War II, there was no legal distinction between immigrants and refugees. Even today, many people are unsure of the difference between the two.

In 1951, the refugee convention defined a refugee as someone who has a well-founded fear of persecution because of race, religion, nationality, membership, social group or political opinion. When we apply a definition like that to what the minister is trying to do, I wonder whether he can see how people might be concerned about the whole issue of a safe countries of origin list. He has a lot of good things in the bill but this is one of the stumbling blocks.

It makes sense administratively and it would be quick and easy to just put a country on a list and say that everybody from that country should be seen in a certain light. However, I think we have moved beyond that in our thinking and want to look at the individual. I know it is hard for people to comprehend that somebody from France, England or the United States could be considered a refugee but the reality is that, even using the definition going back to 1951, there could be people practically under our noses who would qualify because at that point in time there was no list of countries.

I am not on the committee but I can appreciate that there are probably reasons why the minister feels this list of countries is required. He has gone the extra step to let opposition parties know today that he is prepared to work with that list and explained that it was not as black and white and arbitrary as we think.

Now we get into the regulations. Anybody who follows legislation knows that the bill provides the tombstone information that is not going to change but the regulations provide all of the details of how the bill is really going to work in practice. Those are changeable by the minister. If the government or the minister does not like something that requires a regulation change, they can simply go ahead and do it.

In opposition, we are always very careful that we do not give away too much. When we pass a bill, in our own minds we are pretty clear about it, but the reality is that once the regulations get promulgated we find out there are a lot of things in it that we did not really like. That may be part of the problem. If the minister could somehow convince the critics that he is not out to do bad things and has solid arguments, they may be convinced at the end of the day.

At the end of the day we know that no matter what we do we can always make changes. One of the beauties of the democratic system that we have in our country is that if we make mistakes, and we do make them, we have the ability to correct them and try to make them right.

I have some hope, unlike some of the other ministers over there, that in his case it may be possible to do something. It seems to me to be very arbitrary that we could say that people coming out of Hungary must be on that list or they will not qualify as refugees.

That may be true. Let us grant the minister that that may be 100% true. However, we should not be doing it on the basis of putting the country on a list. We should be looking at each individual applicant separately. If the individual does not qualify, then by all means he or she does not qualify.

Major regional bodies have attempted to refine and extend the concept of refugee. In 1969, the Organization of African Unity and in 1984, the Organization of American States, OAS, extended the refugee definition to people fleeing generalized violence in these regions. Today, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the international organization that safeguards the rights of refugees, estimates that there are 12 million refugees and over 6.3 million internally displaced people who are in need of protection.

There are people living in refugee camps in the Middle East who are probably into the second generation. I could be wrong. I do not think anybody is third generation. In my mind, that is where we should be putting a lot of our attention and concern. People are living in tent cities and they are stuck there for years and years. To me, it would be very easy to decide that they would qualify as refugees.

I would assume that is where church groups are really important in this whole process. They have been historically and have done a fabulous job. I remember that churches were involved in bringing the Vietnamese boat people over to Canada. Churches were very involved in that whole area. They should be encouraged. They have a sense of where the problems are in the world. They know that the people living in the refugee camps are people who need help right away. I trust their compass and direction in how to deal with the refugee situation.

Today, there are 12 million refugees and 6.3 million people who are internally displaced. Those are huge numbers. I do not have the statistic at my fingertips, but we are only dealing with 100,000 out of those 12 million per year. By the time we work our way through that group of people, there will probably be more people on the list.

Somebody was adding up the number of wars in the world and came up with 30 to 50 wars that the average person would not even know existed. We could ask the average constituent questions about whether there is a war going on in the Congo or elsewhere and they would be totally unaware of it. The fact of the matter is that people are only aware of issues when they see them on the television news on a particular night. They are quite aware of what is going on in Afghanistan and Iraq, but beyond that, the awareness just is not there.

Madam Speaker, did you indicate one minute? I do not see that well. Time certainly does fly. I have not even started on this. Maybe I will have to go to committee and see how the committee process works.

I did want to talk about the bad experiences we have had here in Canada. Anti-Semitic immigration policy proved deadly in the years leading up to World War II, when European Jews were refused entrance into Canada.

In 1939 the ship St. Louis left Germany carrying over 900 European Jews seeking refuge and protection on the other side of the Atlantic. They were refused everywhere they went. They had to return to Europe and most of those people died in concentration camps. That is an example of a very bad situation in our history.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship]

Madam Speaker, I want to commend the member for Elmwood—Transcona for his thoughtful remarks. He is trying to fill the big shoes of his predecessor who brought a lot of common sense to this place, and I think he is doing a good job of it.

In my speech I also remarked on the restrictions on European Jewish refugees before and during the second world war. My colleague is absolutely right. That is a cautionary tale for all of us when dealing with these issues. I am pleased to tell him that our government has launched a project of remembrance and education about the restrictions on Jewish European refugees before and during the war. He may be interested in following up on that.

On the bill, I want to assure the member that the concerns he has raised about the notion of the designation of safe countries are exaggerated. I do not mean to say he is seeking to mislead the House in any respect, but let me explain what this is about.

Most of the western European asylum systems have a process to accelerate the appeals on claims coming from countries that they deem to be generally safe. We are not proposing at all that asylum claimants from designated safe countries be denied access to our asylum system.

We are so generous in Canada that even under these proposed reforms everyone who makes a claim, regardless of whether he or she is coming from a safe country or not, would have an opportunity to put that claim before an independent, highly trained decision maker at an oral hearing on the merits of his or her claim at the IRB in a manner that is totally compliant with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and exceeds our international and domestic legal obligations. There would be no restriction on access to the system for people coming from safe countries of origin.

If an individual is coming from a country where there is a very large number of overwhelmingly unfounded claims, and some of these countries have 98% and 99% rejection rates, the individual would have access to only one appeal and that would be to the Federal Court, rather than two appeals, being the refugee appeal division and the Federal Court.

Having said all of that, I am very open to considering amendments at committee stage to outline in the legislation the criteria for designation of safe countries and to share with the committee draft regulations for the independent and transparent process by which those designations would occur.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I thank the minister for his clarification.

I want to take this opportunity to point out the merits of the bill as seen by our critic. Our critic thinks that one of the positives in the bill is the speed, as refugees are desperate to seek the reunification of their loved ones, especially those who are languishing in refugee camps or slums. She thinks that is a positive part of the bill. She also thinks that the establishment of an appeal process for some refugee claimants is another good part of the minister's bill. She also thought that more funding to the refugee board to clear up the backlog is very forward looking and positive.

We do see some positives in this legislation, but when we are dealing with different political parties, as with any bill, there are going to be differences in opinion. We are trying to find a way to resolve whatever differences there are. At the end of the day, if we cannot resolve those differences, then the minister's party will vote one way and we will vote the other way.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Madam Speaker, I am very happy that the member mentioned the millions of refugees around the world. In particular, as chair of Parliamentary Friends of Burma, I just wanted to remind people of the hundreds of thousands of Burmese refugees in India, China, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and even more in Thailand.

I know the minister is very sensitive to this and has been very helpful in this area. In fact, maybe on another question and answer he could explain more about how this legislation will take care of some of those people in desperate need. They are the type of people we want to help. I think he is hoping that is what this legislation will do. The government renewed the funding to those refugees recently at the Thai border and we are all very thankful to the government for doing that.

Some people work three, four or five years in Canada before they get the ultimate decision. By that time, the mother is on the school board, the father is the volunteer of the year, the two children are captains of the football team and the dance club, and then someone shows up at the door and says they have to leave Canada.

I am sure that is what the minister is trying to deal with. I would like the member to comment on that situation which presently occurs in Canada and what could be done to deal with that, both with this legislation and otherwise.