Evidence of meeting #27 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was rad.
A recording is available from Parliament.
10:20 a.m.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Maurizio Bevilacqua
Thank you so much, Ms. Dench, for your presentation.
We will now hear from Mr. James Bissett. Welcome.
10:20 a.m.
James Bissett As an Individual
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Our asylum system is really in a mess. It doesn't serve the needs of genuine refugees, it's enormously expensive, it encourages and rewards human smuggling, it presents our country with a serious security risk, it undermines our immigration program, and it has damaged our bilateral relations with many friendly countries. It compromises our trade and tourist industry; it's the primary reason that our southern border has been, in effect, militarized and that Canadian goods and services and people can no longer pass quickly and freely across the border.
No other country in the world that I'm aware of would even dream of allowing anyone to enter the country simply because they claim to be persecuted. Yet in the past 25 years we have allowed over 700,000 people who claimed to be persecuted to enter the country. Last year, 37,000 claimants came to Canada, and we're getting about 3,000 every month.
Even now, these people who come in don't have to meet any of the immigration requirements. There's no medical screening before they come, no criminal screening before they come, no security checks conducted before they come. They simply walk in and claim that they're persecuted. We then invite them in, put them up in hotels, show them where they can go to the welfare office to get welfare. We permit them to work, we give them free medical care, and they're free to travel once they leave the airport. We haven't the slightest idea where they're going and what they're doing.
They come from large numbers of countries. In 2002, we had citizens of 152 different countries apply for refugee status in Canada. Among them were Germans, Swedes, Swiss people who were coming from democratic countries where the rule of law prevails, countries that have signed the UN Convention on Refugees and are obliged to look after asylum seekers as well as we do.
So our policy has been deeply flawed and has been flawed for many years—for 25 years, I would say. Every attempt to reform the system, even modest reforms to bring our policy on asylum seekers in line with most of the other western countries of the world, has been strenuously resisted by special interest groups.
In 1989 new asylum legislation was introduced in Parliament. It was designed to establish a system that was fair and equitable to refugee claimants but was realistic, in the knowledge that any quasi-judicial body, whether it's a court or the IRB—the Immigration and Refugee Board—cannot function if it allows universal access to itself. Without some form of front-end screening, any quasi-judicial body breaks down by sheer volume.
Professor Edward Ratushny—many of you may have heard of him, a distinguished professor at the University of Ottawa law faculty—was appointed by Lloyd Axworthy to study and recommend new legislation on asylum seekers. In his report, among other things Ratushny recommended as his first recommendation that access to any new system be limited by screening out clearly unfounded or incredible claims; otherwise the system would be overwhelmed by individuals using the asylum route to gain entry to Canada.
Ratushny pointed out how Germany's very generous asylum system was being exploited and abused. In 1980, Germany received 108,000 asylum claims and spent $250 million on welfare for those waiting for a decision to be made. That's an amount that, as Professor Ratushny pointed out, could have had tremendous value, had that kind of money been used by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in his efforts to look after real refugees in camps around the world. He added at that time in his report that Canada was fortunate in being able to deal with such potential problems before they materialized. However, Ratushny warned, there's no reason for any sense of complacency.
In 1980 Canada received 1,600 asylum claims.
What the Germans did was tighten up, but they didn't tighten it up well enough, because in 1993 they received 438,000 claims for asylum. It so alarmed the German government that they had to change their constitution, which allowed anyone from any country to come and claim in Germany. The Germans changed their constitution in 1993, and their legislation now is very tough. And it's tough because they keep out people who are coming from countries that are obliged, as signatories to the UN convention, to look after asylum seekers and that are democratic and follow the rule of law.
In 1989 the legislation that was passed in that year relied heavily on Ratushny's recommendations, and that allowed the drafters of the legislation to design an asylum system that was intended to be a model for the globe. It was going to be an independent board; the hearing was to be non-adversarial. And that's very important, because that means, in effect, that the story that the asylum seeker tells the board pretty well has to be accepted. They can't be cross-examined.
A two-member board was envisaged, and if a negative decision was handed down, both of the board members had to agree to it. There had to be a unanimous refusal, in other words. Second, a positive decision did not require written reasons by members of the board, but if they turned someone down they had to give written reasons. And a refused claim could be appealed with leave to the Federal Court.
However, to have such a generous system depended on restricting access to the board, and the instrument that was used at that time to achieve that was to give cabinet the power to list countries that were considered to be safe for refugees. Again, all of the European Community countries implemented this long ago. There is no possibility of someone coming from a democratic country with a rule of law, from countries that have signed the UN convention, to make a refugee claim in any of the European countries.
So that legislation was about to be passed. Three days before it was enacted, the Minister of Immigration at the time said it would pass into legislation but without enacting the “safe country” provisions. The result of that was, of course, that the whole system collapsed, and it's still collapsed today. So the failure to use the “safe country” is very serious.
On the issue you're looking at today, it doesn't make any sense at all to add another level of appeal to the system we now already have--not at this point, when the minister has recommended legislation in the House soon and when we have a backlog of 62,000. Bring this second level of appeal in and you're going to find that the backlog is going to be 80,000, 90,000, 100,000, and the waiting period, which is up to three to five years now, is going to be probably five, six, eight years. It just makes no sense.
I would have much to say about this, but I'll end by saying that anyone who suggests that this should be accepted by the committee would be.... As my grandchildren term it, it's a no-brainer.
Thank you.
10:30 a.m.
Liberal
October 8th, 2009 / 10:30 a.m.
Rivka Augenfeld Representative, Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes
Good morning. Thank you for inviting us.
Briefly, the Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes is a coalition of 137 member organizations throughout Quebec. Collectively, we have over 35 years of experience in services on the ground, and of knowledge of the problems, the legislation, amendments, regulations, policies and operations, and, as an official said, ways of doing things, sometimes. I will come back to that later.
Individually and collectively, we support the position of the Canadian Council for Refugees. I therefore do not want to repeat everything Ms. Dench has said. However, I can tell you that in my years of experience I have spoken with virtually every minister of immigration, over 20 in the last 30 years. Too often—not always—the words are the same, year after year: front door, back door, false refugees, false claimants, everything that discredits refugee claimants.
The term “false claimants” is a very unfortunate term, because a person can sincerely believe they have a case and be refused. You can be the victim of violence and not fall within the definition. Some people come here before the headlines. We saw that, going back to the time when Mr. Bissett was in the department, with the Salvadoreans, the Guatemalans. The Sri Lankans came before the headlines. When the Sri Lankan Tamils were really victims of persecution and came in the eighties, we didn't know why they were coming because we thought Sri Lanka was a democratic country and part of the Colombo Plan. Well, we learned. So sometimes it's the refugees who bring the story.
I will just say that the 1951 convention, which Canada only signed onto 40 years ago--but we're proud of that and we're celebrating the 40th anniversary--was partly the result of a total absence of protection for Jews and Roma and many others during the Second World War and the Holocaust. The convention came into being to try to prevent such a catastrophe from ever happening again. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work.
We have to be careful with our vocabulary. It's a catch-22 to try to speed up a process to match the resources rather than to concentrate on what resources and what places you need, what types of resources, at what point, and an analysis of what really happens, as opposed to the types and numbers of processes that are being bandied about. They vary from speaker to speaker and from minister to minister. I'm not blaming the ministers; they're given the information.
I would suggest, as one of the previous speakers said, that you need good statistics. You need to see how many people are really going through how many processes, what the real story is. You need to look at why the accelerated, expedited process is being used so little at the Immigration and Refugee Board. We only have about 10% of the cases being accepted at that level. Only 65% of people actually go to leave to appeal. Of those, how many go on to make H and Cs? I hope you have the statistics; it would be good to have them.
The resources and the implementation of certain processes are not included in the Act and never will be. The question is therefore: why do things get bogged down at some points? It is a matter of resources and the will to do it, and sometimes a matter of bureaucracy. There is no appeal.
There is no appeal. As we speak, anyone who tells you there is an appeal on the merits, it's not the case. It's mistaken. A very minuscule number, as our previous speaker said, are referred back to the Immigration and Refugee Board. That is costly; that is not effective. It could be prevented if you had an appeal.
No system is infallible, and this we need to repeat as often as we have to. Mistakes are made even by experts, and that's why even for traffic tickets and taxes and drunk drivers, you have an appeal.
It is trite to reiterate that this is a matter of life and death.
Almost is not good enough. The fact that we helped x number of people will never justify sending even one person back to torture or death or imprisonment. I think we also need to remember that the resource exchange was made with the IRPA. We went down and the NGO community agreed to reduce the panel from two to one because we were mindful of resources, one member of the first hearing in exchange for an appeal. So we went down to one member and we never got the appeal. This is forgotten. Now we're talking about this as if nothing was ever sacrificed for the appeal, and there was a sacrifice. Now we're stuck with one member, no appeal.
The institutional memory of everything that's happened, unfortunately, sometimes lies with the community organizations, and it's nobody's fault.
Members of Parliament join the committee, but they leave. You have a lot of goodwill, you have expertise, but next year you may not be here. Some people who were here no longer are. The same is true in the Department: most people there were not there 10 years ago. And so we are the only ones with this expertise.
I think an investment in the hearing and appeal would have been much more fair and cost-effective in 1989 when my learned colleague was the director of immigration. We have to remember that in 1989 there were two levels. There was a credible basis to have a case heard, which supposedly screened people who didn't have a credible base. Over 90% of those cases went through to a second level of a full hearing. Now, that's not efficient.
I'm not trying to tell you to go back to the good old days, but all the way back then we could have had a two-level system at the time, which would have been more cost-effective, 20 years ago. The agency doesn't prevent removal. As we said, the PRI is not an appeal. It was designed to be post-appeal. The PRA....
The PRRA was after the appeal.
To finish, I make two points. Everyone is complaining that only 10% of the Mexicans are accepted. Well, let's remember that 10% of several thousand people is hundreds of people. Hundreds of people need our protection from a country like Mexico, where some people perceive there to be no problems. We would submit that there are.
I would finish with this point, Mr. Chair. The NGO community has an enormous amount of experience and expertise. We've seen what works. We've seen what doesn't work. We all want the same thing. We want refugees to get speedy protection. We want those who don't need our protection to have a speedy determination, but we will not sacrifice the safeguards that are needed to make sure that no one is mistakenly refused. I think we have to remember what the UNHCR says in this booklet, which you can get from the representative who is here, that there is no such thing as a safe country. Any country can produce refugees. We have to be careful not to decide that it's not possible to be a refugee from certain countries.
I would really beg you to include in your recommendations that the NGO community be included in discussion pre-legislation, to offer our expertise. Once the legislation is on the books, it's a little bit late. We have a lot to offer. We are offering you, mostly for free, our advice and our expertise and all the grey hairs that have come from being involved with this issue for such a long time.
10:35 a.m.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Maurizio Bevilacqua
Thank you so much for that presentation.
I want to move to the question and answer session, but I am going to ask members as well as the witnesses to keep our questions and answers concise, precise, and to the point. That way we can get a lot more information and get valuable insight from you. We do have a vote in thirty minutes, but that's not going to affect this committee, because it takes us less than ten minutes to get to the House.
Mr. Karygiannis, you have five minutes.
10:35 a.m.
Liberal
Jim Karygiannis Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
Thank you.
Thank you to the panel for coming.
I have to make a point. Some of the panellists are saying that bogus refugee claimants that come over are terrorists. The majority of people who seek refuge in Canada are genuine individuals who are fleeing from persecution in their own country. To have some examples of people who have been here for 20 years, a very low number, 1% or 2% of the people, is something everybody around this table has to dissociate themselves from, because Canada is a country that gives people who come here seeking refuge an opportunity to excel. The fact that some of my colleagues around this table are trying to associate refugees with terrorists is a sad approach.
I have a question to the panel. In every level of deliberations--Canada Pension Plan, EI, or ODSP, the Ontario disability benefits, or WCB, or whatever you're applying for--you've got a number of levels of inside appeals. If you're applying for Canada Pension Plan you have the first level you're applying for, and if that's not given to you then you go to the board. And if that's not given to you, then you can go to the ombudsman. When people are applying to get something in the non-legislative area, outside the court process, we as Canadians citizens give our people a second and third appeal, so why are we not giving the people who are coming to Canada the same opportunity? Why are we cutting them out by saying that if they're applying as refugees, they've had their hearing and if they disagree they should go to the Federal Court? As people applying for Canada Pension Plan, they can go three steps before they must go to the Federal Court. Why are we treating them differently? Can you please...?
10:40 a.m.
Liberal
10:40 a.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Council for Refugees
I would underline your point by remarking that the decision before the Immigration and Refugee Board, when a claimant appears before them, is quite possibly the only decision that is made by a Canadian tribunal where you are potentially deciding on the death or life of the person, because the consequences of a wrong decision can be, and in some cases are, death for the person that is refused. So this is an incredibly important decision.
One asks one's self, how is it that we can be allowing that decision to be made by one person without an appeal on the merits, when trivial matters are subject in Canada to appeal on the merits? The only conclusion that many of us can reach is that it is showing a lack of respect for the lives of those refugees, those people who are asking for our protection.
10:40 a.m.
Representative, Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes
To further underscore, because somehow there is a perception.... We could be doing public education in the other direction. Every human being is a human being, as General Dallaire says. When we truly believe that every human being is a human being, their status is secondary to their need for protection and their need to be heard.
If a person comes to this country.... I hate to disagree with my learned colleague here, but we are not the only country in the world that allows people in simply because they claim protection. That is the convention. The convention is about
non-refoulement until it is decided whether the person needs our protection or not.
Hundreds of thousands of people stream across borders in very poor countries, asking for protection. We do security checks up front now. Before a person can go through the system, there is a security check. So this constant bandying about of “terrorist” is a scare tactic to scare people. It's not true that we don't check people. We check them up front.
10:40 a.m.
As an Individual
On the security issue, I'm inclined to agree: very few asylum seekers have been found to be terrorists. But some have, and one of them, of course, is the famous “Millennium Bomber“, Ahmed Ressam, who came here as an asylum claimant from Algeria. He didn't even bother to appear before the board. He eventually tried to blow up the Los Angeles airport.
Perception is the greater part of reality. If you talk to the people in the Department of Homeland Security in the United States, they'll say the reason they are building up the border is because they know that we let anyone in who comes in, and they don't get a security check. The security check starts after they're in, and it may take months for it to be carried out. So it's the perception of it. That's all I want to say on that.
On the other question, I agree that there should be levels of appeal. There are levels of review, though. You have leave to appeal to the Federal Court. Then you do get a humanitarian and compassionate review by the department, and there are very large numbers accepted. Then if you are ordered deported, you get a pre-removal risk assessment and an oral hearing at that, and if it's refused, then you can again seek leave to the Federal Court.
If you look at the removals, there are very few failed asylum seekers being removed--maybe 5,000 a year.
10:40 a.m.
Conservative
Terence Young Conservative Oakville, ON
--maybe you could tell the committee what time you want us to adjourn to go to the House.
10:40 a.m.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Maurizio Bevilacqua
We'll finish with the witnesses, and we'll conclude at eleven o'clock.
10:40 a.m.
Conservative
Terence Young Conservative Oakville, ON
That gives us only seven minutes to get to the House. There's not enough time.
10:40 a.m.
Conservative
Terence Young Conservative Oakville, ON
That would be fine, I would think. I would like to suggest that perhaps we could divide the remaining time evenly among the three parties.
10:40 a.m.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Maurizio Bevilacqua
Absolutely.
I won't count your intervention as your time, though.
Mr. St-Cyr.
10:40 a.m.
Bloc
Thierry St-Cyr Bloc Jeanne-Le Ber, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Bissett, I am not going to ask you any questions. I was somewhat surprised by your testimony. My impression is that you made a lot of gratuitous accusations and threw out messages that do not correspond to what we see on the ground. That seems a little too easy, to me.
Before the 1995 sovereignty referendum, we granted citizenship to thousands of Canadians at top speed. There was one terrorist in that batch. No sovereignist will say that federalism encourages terrorism. That has nothing to do with it. There are processes, but some terrorists manage to get through the cracks. That is not a reason to toss out our whole system.
I will now address Ms. Dench and Ms. Augenfeld. The government tells us there will be a thorough reform. The system is going to be rebuilt from the ground up, so this is not the time to be adding a new refugee appeal division. Under the Act, the government has one year to bring about this reform, that we have been talking about for eight years.
Do you think we should wait and see whether there will ultimately be a reform and whether it will be a good one, or should we rather create a refugee appeal division immediately and pass the bill? Next year, if the government brings us something worth considering, then we will analyze it.
10:45 a.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Council for Refugees
The current Act has been in force since 2002. One of the reasons the government cites when it talks about it being impossible to create an appeal division is that it is planning to amend the Act. We have been hearing this argument for seven years, since 2002. It is not a new one. A system was developed, and it was approved by Parliament. So why are we not implementing it? If we have to make changes afterward, we will at least know whether the system is working or not. We will have more information for any future reform.
10:45 a.m.
Representative, Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes
I agree with that, and I also think it has to be done now. However, it must not be done without resources. There absolutely have to be adequate resources. The bill already provides for time for obtaining resources. As long ago as 2002, draft regulations were being considered. We don't have to start over from zero. We have got to take action. As Ms. Dench said, we have been talking about reform for years. Several ministers, in two governments, have talked about it.
It think it is simple, and it would solve a lot of problems. The use of resources will be more efficient, not the reverse. It will also be fairer. How could anyone decide not to do it? That is a mystery to us. It should have been done long ago. In any event, you now have the opportunity to make the recommendation to your own parties.
10:45 a.m.
Bloc
Thierry St-Cyr Bloc Jeanne-Le Ber, QC
With the current Act, there is a lot of talk about the opportunity of unsuccessful claimants to appeal, but also about the fact that the Minister may appeal a decision by a member that he thinks is too lenient. The government talks about all these people who have slipped through the net, false claimants and people who do not have Convention refugee status who manage to stay in Canada. So it is somewhat inconsistent for the Minister to be opposed to the opportunity to appeal bad decisions by board members.