Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Nov. 28th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you.

Finally, Mr. Komarnicki.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Thank you very much again for attending and making a presentation. Certainly I have read your material, and it's a concept that is innovative. Having a one-stop place makes a lot of sense. I wonder if you have looked at other models, not necessarily in Canada but perhaps elsewhere, to see if that type of concept has been put in place, whether it can be emulated and whether you can learn anything from that.

I was taken aback a little with some of the statistics you have in terms of the refugees in Burnaby, particularly in the school population. I note that about 255 students out of a total population of 427 in Edmonds were relatively new to Canada. Over 70% spoke languages other than English, and a total of 27 different languages were spoken in the school. That must provide an incredible challenge, for sure.

I noticed that the Open Door Society in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, indicated they had support workers being sent into both elementary and high schools to provide assistance with homework, language, and mediation among students, parents, and teachers, partly because of some of the issues you have raised. So the problems that are being faced are common throughout our country, I suppose, and other countries.

Have you looked at other models, not necessarily in our country but outside, to see how they might be implemented or how they might affect the model you're putting together?

[Sav Dhaliwal]

No. Basically, through our community we got together all the service providers, non-profit organizations that face these challenges every day, and this was one of the models we came up with. When we discussed this with some of the federal counterparts, our MPs and MLAs, it was suggested that this be a pilot project for us to set something up so we can have resources available to meet with people from different parts of the world, resource it and staff it in such as way as to provide some basic needs for their languages and for the cultural diversity from which they come to us.

I'm not too sure if the staff had the opportunity to look somewhere else, other than at this model.

[Basil Luksun]

Mr. Chair, we haven't sort of looked internationally at other examples, but what we have done subsequently through the B.C. settlement and adaptation program, meeting with representatives from the provincial attorney general, employment and income, community services, economic development, children and families, education, the solicitor general, child and youth, and, from the federal government, Citizenship and Immigration, HRSDC, Service Canada, Canadian Heritage, Status of Women, and the City of Burnaby and the non-profit organizations, we met to see what we really need to do to address the needs of the refugees. Of all the issues that came up, the issue of the hub was identified as the best.

[Diana Mumford]

Could I clarify that in our high schools we have over 90 languages that the students can bring into the building? It's an astronomical challenge to meet those kids.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

It is a challenge. Certainly when I read through your material there is no question that there's a significant need that needs to be addressed. Perhaps your approach is the wise one and the way to go.

In terms of dollars and cents, the city intends to put up about $2 million worth of land. You're asking $11 million from the federal government. What proportion are you asking for on the capital side from the provincial government?

Secondly, building the building is one thing, but operating it on a continuing basis and having the staffing requirements and operating costs, how are those going to be apportioned? Were you expecting some of the agencies to contribute to that, or were you expecting to have federal-provincial involvement on an ongoing basis down the road?

[Basil Luksun]

Mr. Chair, we have made the major request for capital funding to the federal government. As I mentioned earlier, the city is contributing $2 million in land. We do have some 80,000 square feet that we are making available to the community.

In terms of operating, what we do foresee is a provincial component. Health is a component. The school board is a component. And depending on the programs that are incorporated into the facility, we would look for operating funding from those sources.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Are you expecting the provincial government to be involved in the capital construction portion of the hub itself?

[Basil Luksun]

If we can't get any provincial funding, we would be happy to take funding from any source, whether it be federal or provincial.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

To date your indication is that there will not be any provincial contribution for capital funding?

[Basil Luksun]

To date we have not had any commitment for any provincial funding.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Of course, as you know, in the budget we had this year, there was $307 million committed to settlement integration, which will go to various settlement agencies. I'm just wondering if you have looked at whether some of that funding could be incorporated in your operation, or have you gone as far as talking to the societies receiving funding, or who will be receiving additional funding?

As a supplement to that, I notice that the Edmonds Neighbourhood Resource Centre is located next to your facility. Are they providing some of the services you will be providing? How do you intend to tie the two together? So there are two questions there.

[Basil Luksun]

Mr. Chair, absolutely, the Edmonds Resource Centre is helping. For example, the question was raised earlier about whether there are other groups helping with the refugee situation. We have many, many community groups assisting, and they just do a tremendous job in the city. There are groups like Burnaby Family Life and South Burnaby Neighbourhood House; there is a major collection of clothing for the refugees; there's an emergency food bank trying to get programs through the Burnaby Christmas Bureau. There is just a host of issues they deal with in a very, very difficult situation, and they do a wonderful job. They are some of the places who occupy the space we provide.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you.

I really wish we had more time, because I obviously have a long list of people who want to have a few words, but hopefully you will be able to get together with individual members of the committee and probably pursue some of these points.

Thank you for coming. It's very much appreciated, indeed. Please be assured that we do have people here from the Department of Citizenship and Immigration, and we have the parliamentary secretary, who's on the committee. So your requests and concerns will certainly be made available to the minister; he will know about them and we'll be getting an answer back, I'm sure.

Thank you for coming.

I notice we have our second group of witnesses here, so we'll suspend for a minute.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

I think we'll begin.

On behalf of our committee, I'm very pleased to welcome this morning Archbishop O'Brien, Archbishop of St. John's, and Archbishop Roger Ébacher, Archbishop of Gatineau, who are representing the Episcopal Commission for Social Affairs, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Welcome, Your Graces, to the committee.

We have until about eleven. What we generally do is invite our witnesses to make opening comments, if they wish. Then our committee members, I'm sure, will have questions and comments they want to make as well.

So we pass it over to you, Archbishop Ébacher. Thank you.

[Most Rev. Roger Ébacher, Chairman (Archbisbop of Gatineau), Episcopal Commission for Social Affairs, Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops]

Good morning, Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, Members of Parliament.

Firstly, allow me to thank you for welcoming us so warmly. I believe that this meeting is very significant because the issue we will touch upon today is very important to us.

To mark the 93^rd World Day for Migrants and Refugees, Pope Benedict XVI has chosen the “migrant family“ as his theme. Recognizing that the experience of migration often leaves refugee and immigrant families disfigured and weakened, the Pope challenges us — churches, social society and governments alike — to make certain that everything is done to guarantee the rights and dignity of these families.

Allow me to put this call in a clearer context. Today, two children from my diocese are lost in Rwanda. Patrick is 10, and Angel is 14—

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Could you slow down a bit? Sometimes our interpreters have problems if it's too quick.

Thank you.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

If they have an extra copy of their speech, maybe they can give it to the translator.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

I think that's been done. They have it down there.

Sorry about the interruption, Archbishop.

[Most Rev. Roger Ébacher]

Patrick is 10 and Angel is 14. They were removed from Canada by the Department of Citizenship and Immigration with their father, Mr. Jean Bosco Rwiyamirira, on October 3, 2006. After living eight years — most of their lives — in Canada, these children, like many young Canadians who were born elsewhere, embraced Canada as their country.

Mr. Rwiyamirira worked in the secretariat of the Rwandan embassy in Ottawa. Making an astonishing break from diplomatic protocol, he denounced the violation of human rights during the Rwandan genocide. This action put his family at risk, and so Mr. Rwiyamirira — as any father would — put their security first: he claimed asylum as a refugee in Canada.

Mr. Rwiyamirira wasted no time in making an exemplary contribution to Quebec society. In 2005, Premier Jean Charest awarded him an honour in recognition of his contribution to the common good.

Canada, as you know, has a moratorium on deportation to Rwanda — for good reason. Nevertheless, one official in the Department of Citizenship and Immigration — not a judge, not a court of law — had the authority to order this family's removal without any possibility of appeal. And the Department did this in violation of Canada's obligations under article 3 of the International Convention Against Torture. Unfortunately, the circumstances of Mr. Rwiyamirira and his family, along with many similar cases, suggests that in practice, Canada does not always respect its international treaty obligations.

Today, my diocese has lost direct contact with Mr. Rwiyamirira. We know he is in prison in Kigali on a charge of desertion. This is an alarming state of affairs, because it shows the consequences of Canada's violation of the strict obligation not to practice refoulement in international law. We have intermittent communication with his children: they are in the care of distant relatives, and have left behind every semblance of their lives in Canada.

Your committee, Mr. Chairman, may not be the place to review specific outrages like this. We recognize that you are not the de facto appeals court provided by Parliament in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. However, the situation faced by this family is a powerful illustration of the core message in our pastoral letter “We are aliens and transients before the Lord our God”.

The core message is this: human dignity is neither theoretical nor abstract. When it is wounded, you know it. The wound can last for the rest of your life. This is especially so in the case of a family.

We recognize the positive elements of the Canadian refugee system. However, serious reform is essential so that human dignity can take precedence over all other considerations. We do not make this assertion out of episcopal idealism. Every day, in the pastoral life of our dioceses across Canada, we witness the struggle of people seeking asylum in Canada, and especially the injustices that persist in view of the government's failure to implement a transparent and effective appeal system, as required by the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

We witness the ordeal caused by inordinate delays and fees which prevent family reunification. We witness the very real suffering of people whose status is under a moratorium, and specifically the youth who see their lives destroyed by delays that can last many years. We witness the impoverishment of agricultural workers, immigrants and refugees who, due to the lack of adequate support services and the persistent failure to recognize foreign accreditation, suffer higher rates of unemployment and lower earnings.

We witness the very real vulnerability of women in what the Vatican describes as the “feminization of migration” and the absence of resources to shield them from economic exploitation and men's violence against them.

We witness the abomination of human trafficking as women and children are reduced to sex slaves.

We congratulate the minister for announcing in May that Immigration officers will now have the power to issue temporary residence permits for up to 120 days to the victims of human trafficking, for exempting them from processing fees, and allowing access to benefits under the interim Federal Health Program.

At the same time, if the CBC is correct, they continue to face serious barriers to immigration. There still does not seem to be an integrated, proactive strategy to eradicate human trafficking from Canada.

We witness the vivisection of human dignity in slow motion, and it is clear in the work of this committee that you have witnessed this also—in the testimony you have received, and in your visits to detention centres. You have seen how measures that are intended to keep Canadians secure against terrorism in fact flout deep democratic values like respect for human rights, the rule of law, and the intrinsic worth of each person.

The courts have seen this, the Arar Commission has seen this, and you have seen this too. However, Canadians often fail to see that human dignity also requires that no woman, man or child be forced to migrate or seek asylum.

It is therefore vital that the Government of Canada redoubles its efforts to counter the environmental destruction, famine and disease that come with global warming by taking meaningful action to implement Kyoto further to the report of Sir Nicolas Stern; to stop the trampling of human rights and civic freedoms under the heels of despots by building international support for the just application of the responsibility to protect; and to reverse the engineered impoverishment of vast populations by delivering on the promise of integral human development.

The message to take up in your report to the House of Commons and in your discussions in your respective caucuses is that: it is within our power as a country to solve these problems. It is within our power as a country to build a refugee and immigrant system in Canada that places human dignity, first. Such a system would treat the two children of my diocese—Patrick and Angel—with the care and attention they deserve as children with an eternal destiny, and never dehumanize them as administrative burdens. It is within our power as a country to answer a global culture of fear of strangers, a culture of suspicion and deeply rooted terror, and to replace it with a culture of peace, a culture of unequivocal and authentic hospitality.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you, Archbishop.

Archbishop O'Brien.

[Most Rev. Brendan M. O'Brien, (Archbishop of St. John's), Episcopal Commission for Social Affairs, Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops]

If I might, first of all, I also want to say how pleased I am to be invited to speak before this standing committee.

As Archbishop Ébacher mentioned, each year in the Roman Catholic Church we have World Day for Migrants and Refugees. It's celebrated in the middle of January. In 2006, on that occasion, this document “We are aliens and transients before the Lord our God”, Pastoral Letter on Immigration and the Protection of Refugees, was published, which was distributed throughout the country and is available on our website. So in my remarks I want to bring out a few of the ideas and a few of the concerns that are mentioned in this document.

In the Hebrew Scriptures or the Old Testament, King David proclaimed to his people, “We are aliens and transients before the Lord our God, as were all our ancestors”. I think this awareness of our precariousness reinforces the importance of welcoming the stranger. This is why hospitality is, you might say, the ancient name for justice.

Our Lord holds in judgment people who, out of hypocrisy or callousness, fail to welcome the stranger. The sin is an offence against the beatitudes, and it is one that can be committed both in our personal failures and collectively.

We might ask, why should hospitality matter? Well, it matters because human beings are created to live in communion with each other, and to deny this, to exclude, to shun, to render, or refouler is to dehumanize profoundly a person. So in ancient times and in many parts of the world today, the refusal of hospitality ends up being a death sentence.

If I might suggest, Mr. Chairman, a core question for your report to the House of Commons could be how does Canada's refugee and migrant system meet the test of hospitality as justice?

I would propose four elements of an answer, drawing, as I said, three of them from our pastoral letter, and the last from recent developments in the Vatican's international examination of counter-terrorism.

Let me begin with the first. In entering into the safe third country agreement with the United States, Canada has left in the hands of a foreign government the determination of the final disposition of people to whom we deny refugee status. This places us, then, at risk of violating our international obligations under the United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, to respect the principle of non-refoulement.

The safe third country agreement allows Canada illicitly to wash its hands of these obligations, leaving it for U.S. officials to render, refouler, or hold in detention people who could otherwise have had a viable refugee claim, and there is no appeal and every likelihood that the safe third country agreement violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Furthermore, the safe third country agreement is problematic in the context of recent developments in U.S. counter-terrorism legislation. The passage in September of the Military Commissions Act further embeds the category of material support of terrorism.

This was first introduced in the U.S.A. Patriot Act. This category is used routinely to deny asylum to refugees fleeing from religious persecution, terrorist cabals, rape gangs, and despotic regimes. It is used to return them, then, to the hands of their oppressors.

So when Canada shuts the door on people who might but for this safe third country agreement have bona fide refugee claims, we become complicit in a bureaucratized evil that is correctly denounced by a growing number of inter-religious consensus in the United States.

So we make our own the words of these Jewish and Christian and Muslim leaders who insist that refugees cannot become the unintended victims of the war against terror.

This situation shows that there is a painful Canadian reality in the Holy See's response to the report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, where it says:

A certain deterioration of the legal concept of asylum appears to be taking place as some states give preference to national legislation or bilateral agreements over international refugee law.

We recommend, therefore, that Canada abrogate the safe third country agreement. Preparatory to this, we urge the committee to recommend a comprehensive, objective, and high-level review of what has become of the people who were turned away thus far through the application of this agreement.

Though we speak at considerable removal from the world of the House of Commons, the second point I want to make is that it is hard for us to understand how governments can fail to implement the appeal provisions of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and not face some form of meaningful censure. It was on the promise of a fair and timely appeal system that the legislation carried. The executive branch's failure to fulfill this promise is a sign of obdurate defiance of democratic authority.

In the absence of an effective right to appeal, many parishes and denominational congregations are placed in the position of having to make agonizing decisions of whether or not to grant sanctuary. As other witnesses I'm sure have testified to you, it is very rare that churches choose to grant sanctuary, notwithstanding the many requests they receive. They do so only after close examinations of the facts before them, through an extensive process of communal deliberation. Granting sanctuary, then, for these churches is an exercise of their informed conscience that must take into account the prospect of breaking the law, risking fines and imprisonment, or violating conscience and the imperative of hospitality.

When all other recourse has failed, I think granting sanctuary is a way to call the government's attention to an exceptional injustice and a way to denounce a specific and unacceptable failure of the immigration system in faithfulness to the Lord's own call to hospitality as justice. We recommend, therefore, that the committee unanimously call upon the government to implement a rigorous, transparent, and timely appeal system, as required in the act.

The third point would be that there seems to be a lack of political will to make private or collective sponsorships work. One of the most arduous burdens a family can bear is to be separated and uprooted for a prolonged period of time. For example, according to the department's own figures, 50% of the cases in Africa and the Middle East have delays of 22 months, with 70% to 80% of cases taking 29 to 34 months. From this, it seems that the delays are in fact a form of systematic discrimination, a head tax exacted in time, not in money. We also note, by the department's own numbers, that 70% or 80% of cases reuniting refugee women and men with their children take up to 16 to 21 months.

We recommend to the committee that it call upon the government to eliminate obstacles that impede the speedy reunification of families and reduce the waiting time for collective sponsorships. For our part, we stand ready to collaborate with the government to make this system work.

Finally, on October 5, 2005, the Holy See intervened at the United Nations High Commission for Refugees to denounce the mushrooming of detention centres for asylum seekers and a generalized policy of detention that is more a rule, prompted by national order and security, than an exception. This is a product of a culture of fear, a culture that cannot be reconciled with democratic values. It feeds, in the words of this intervention, racist and xenophobic behaviour.

We recommend that the committee call upon the government to guard against a generalized policy of detention, ensuring that our system is in accord with the values of a free and democratic society.

It is for this committee to continue the work of reasserting the primacy of human dignity, human rights, and respect for the rule of law as core democratic values that make demands on Canada's refugee and migrant system. It's good to remember that the Roman Catholic Church is comprised of people from every part of the world. You can see this in any church or cathedral in the country. Moreover, the country has grown stronger through its capacity to embrace religious pluralism, to authentically reflect the face of the human family.

You do not therefore work alone, but instead have a vast constituency of Canadians, ourselves included, who continue to believe that Canada's vocation is to be a sign and safeguard of a new global culture of peace and hospitality. This culture of peace and hospitality comes first of all from our affirmation, in the face of terrorism, nihilism, fanatical fundamentalism, and militarism, that every woman, man, and child is of equal human dignity and we share a common transcendent destiny.

We have every confidence that the imperative of hospitality asserted in your work as legislators and in our work as pastors will preserve democracy and allow it to flourish because it has allowed faith, solidarity, and communion to flourish.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thanks to both of you for these very interesting presentations.

I think we have approximately seven minutes per party to make some comments or pose some questions.

Mr. Karygiannis.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Welcome to our committee. The work the church has been doing--not only the Catholic Church but all the churches--with different immigrant and refugee communities right across Canada is to be commended and recognized.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

So sorry to interrupt, Jim.

If people wish to share their time with other party members, please feel free to do so.