Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 2nd, 2008

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

I couldn't agree more.

Mr. St-Cyr, do you have a question or comment?

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

Yes, Mr. Chairman, I have a question. In fact, I have a number of them.

First, I want to thank you for being with us and to thank the people from Moose Jaw for welcoming us to their corner of the country. It's a very beautiful place. Unfortunately, we won't have a lot of time to take advantage of it, and I think that's unfortunate. I would have like to have the opportunity to become a little more familiar with this place, whose name is essentially the only thing we know about it in the rest of Canada.

You said you wanted a special program to be implemented for Iraqi refugees. I would like to know where the barriers currently stand. Is it with regard to the decisions rendered on refugee status claims? Are the decisions too often unfavourable to Iraqi refugees? Are application processing times too long? Do the problems arise after the fact, at the family reunification stage?

[Helen Smith-McIntyre]

There are several aspects to the problem. The first problem is the so-called targeted number that the Canadian government establishes every year. For 2008, the Canadian government is talking about 1,800 to 2,000 resettlement places for Iraqis out of the Middle East. That's the target. Some of those will come as government-assisted refugees; some will be our people coming as privately sponsored refugees.

The targets are not high enough, and there have been no new numbers created for refugees from Iraq. Last year we think there were supposed to be around 900 and then there were 500 or 600 added, but those were added from another location, which means that another post couldn't bring as many refugees. The same thing has happened this year. On top of the established base for Iraqis in the Middle East, places were moved from another post--I don't know where--to increase the number of Iraqis out of the Middle East.

So there have been no new numbers established as a target number for Iraqis, and we need to bring more people. Now, granted it's not the answer to the war and to the number of people who have fled. We can't bring two million people in. We all know that, but we can do our part.

The second piece is the process. The process on our side for privately sponsored refugees is fairly onerous, particularly if we're doing groups of five, because we have to find five people in our community who have sufficient income to support their family and support new families. The government-assisted refugees who come have one year of support, but there doesn't seem to be any possibility of increasing those numbers, so as private sponsors we become the additionality component.

We can bring more people, as long as the resources are there to process the people. That's the other issue. Saskatoon is a large community, but I was told the other day, “Helen, I'm glad you're the only one doing Iraqi sponsorships, because we can't keep up.” This means that when I do a sponsorship and submit the papers, the papers are going to sit in the Saskatoon immigration office for longer than the supposed 30 days. Then when they go overseas, the decision-making is better than it was two years ago. There are many more positive results, and we're grateful for that. But then we have the wait for the visa, and that involves the security clearance piece.

The other issue is that Canadians really don't know what's happening in Iraq, who the refugees are, and how many there are. It's amazing. When we did our news conference a week ago and our pictures were in the paper, so many of my friends came to me and said, “We didn't know. We didn't know that minorities were being targeted in Iraq. We didn't know.”

I think the Canadian government has a role to play, too, in awareness.

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

You talked about the lack of resources for processing applications. In fact, that problem affects the entire immigration field. As a result of the negligence and turpitude of the present and previous governments, processing delays are completely inhuman. People have to wait months, even years, to get an answer and to know what will happen with their lives.

From what I understand, you find the situation in Iraq difficult and you would like a separate program to be implemented to avoid these bureaucratic restrictions. However, you would run the risk of jumping ahead of other people who are already in line in that same rotten and inefficient system. You could well be told that you're going to take the place of people who want to leave Haiti or Sri Lanka as refugees, people who are in situations just as difficult as those of people from Iraq.

How would you respond to people who requested a separate immigration program for Sri Lanka? What should the committee tell them? Those people could point to extremely difficult situations and say that they can't afford to wait for the government bureaucracy to operate.

[Helen Smith-McIntyre]

I've worked with many refugees and refugee communities over 25 years, so I understand how desperate it is for people from many, many countries.

Right now, we're being told that Iraq is the most dangerous country in the world, that we have the largest movement of refugees since the 1940s in Europe. I think there is a basis to say that Canada can do more than it's doing right now.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Mr. Komarnicki, and then Mr. Carrier, if you have some questions.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It was good to hear your presentation, and I commend you on the work you are doing.

I know Alex has indicated that we should bring in more Iraqi refugees than we have been. The minister recently announced that Canada will welcome between 1,800 and 2,000 Iraqi refugees in 2008, up from the 900 in 2007. So it's more than doubling those numbers.

Certainly when you look at that in terms of what actually exists for refugees, the numbers are very small, but as you were saying, Alex, about two million have left Iraq and are in Jordan, Syria, Egypt, or the countries around there.

My sense is that notwithstanding that Canada is reshaping its refugee goals to focus more on the Iraqi refugees, the fact is that there are millions of them out there, really, and I'm wondering if the focus should be on not just bringing some in, a small percentage, but helping the countries that are taking Iraqi refugees and that have really hundreds of thousands or millions of them there. What's your sense on that, on focusing your resources towards helping those countries that the Iraqi people are fleeing to?

I'll hear from both of you.

[Helen Smith-McIntyre]

I don't think it's an either/or; I think we have to work at all levels. So other departments of government, I trust, are trying to find and support peaceful solutions to what's happening in Iraq.

The Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration can respond by establishing new spots for refugees from Iraq, not borrowing from another country, which is where this additional 900 is coming from.

We need to help Syria and Jordan. When my colleagues were at the executive committee meeting of the UNHCR in Geneva last fall, the government representatives from Syria pulled no punches in terms of how isolated they felt in this world, trying to look after all these people and trying to do the right thing and not send them back.

So we need to help at every level.

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

Alex.

[Alex Istifo]

My view is that the Canadian government doesn't have enough resources in Syria, because it handles Jordan, Syria, and basically the rest of the Middle East besides Egypt. Egypt is dealt with more like Africa.

We have no processing coming out of Turkey. The Canadian embassy in Turkey has not been doing private sponsorship for the last four or five years.

[Helen Smith-McIntyre]

Since 2004, the Canadian embassy in Turkey has not been processing sponsorship agreement holder sponsorships.

[Alex Istifo]

It's only dealing with the UNHCR cases. The rest are all dependent on Syria. I don't think the Canadian government has enough resources in Syria to process the files they have.

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

In fairness, when I look at it, it's a difficult situation because of the huge numbers. When you're talking about two million people, 1.4 million in one country, that's a lot.

When you look at what the world takes in, if my statistics are correct, it's about 100,000 refugees worldwide. So when you compare that number with what we're talking about in real refugees, it's a very small percentage.

Yet when you look at Canada, one of every 10 refugees of that 100,000 come to our country. We do about one-tenth of the load of bringing refugees in, compared to 19 or more countries that take them in. We're doing a fair bit, comparatively speaking.

My sense is that when you compare that with the number of refugees, it doesn't matter if you increase it proportionately; you're still not addressing the issue, which is the huge number of people who are displaced. I'm wondering if the focus shouldn't shift towards providing resources to those regions that are actually dealing with the huge numbers. We can increase our numbers by another 10%, but it's not going to make a significant dent in the refugee situation.

[Helen Smith-McIntyre]

Yes, and it's a very, very difficult situation. There's no question about that. I think our position is still that we need to do all of it. We need to be as generous as we can be in terms of aid to Syria and Jordan. We need to bring more refugees and save at least a few lives, and we need to be working at rebuilding the socio-economic infrastructure in Iraq itself.

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

I guess what I'm saying is that I agree with you that we could do more, but even if we do more, it's going to be very marginal compared with what needs to happen. Might your resources be better spent directly, ensuring the infrastructure and the ability to care for them in regions like Syria and Jordan or wherever, where there are actually not 5,000 or 2,000 but hundreds of thousands?

Should your resources, if you're going to use resources, start to focus predominantly on assisting those countries that are facing a situation not necessarily of their own doing but facing huge numbers that really make all of what we're talking about here pale in significance?

[Helen Smith-McIntyre]

It has always been my life philosophy that not only do you catch the babies at the bottom of the river but you try to prevent them from entering the river upstream. So I think we need to do it all.

We're saying that if you get us some people in Saskatoon, we'll look after them. It's not going to cost the government a penny, and they're going to contribute to this society very, very quickly.

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

In fairness, I guess, from what you're saying, the private sponsorship program, where you have the community prepared to look after and help people integrate—as you're saying, at fairly low cost to the government—might be a light you want to shine on in terms of getting more in to fit positions that you feel are presently open in various occupations, and maybe we should have a closer look at increasing the sponsorship side as opposed to government-sponsored refugees. Is that what you're saying?

[Helen Smith-McIntyre]

This is a community right across Canada that will look after their own as long as we can get them here.

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

Of course, we are going to be increasing the numbers fairly substantially in 2008. So there needs to be a progressive step up in terms of what you're doing to ensure some order in the settlement integration, wouldn't you agree?

[Helen Smith-McIntyre]

The block is in Damascus, and if the numbers are going to be increased, the resources need to be increased in Damascus.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

When you consider the number of refugees worldwide, there are 100,000. Is that what you're saying? That's the amount that's coming in, 100,000?

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

And we're taking about 10% of that into our country.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

That's a pitifully small amount, though, for democratic countries. With all the refugees in the world, millions right now, the entire group is 100,000.

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

So, Mr. Chair, where would you direct your funds if you had a set pool of funds?

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

I don't know. But it seems that it's a small number, and I guess the message you're trying to get across to us today is that we all need to do more.