Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 10th, 2009

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

As I already said, ministerial responsibility rests with me; I am not trying to shirk it. I am told that the partisan involvement of this individual was with a provincial party that no longer exists. I do not know this individual on a personal level, nor on a political or partisan level. At any rate, Mr. St-Cyr, among all the appointments to the IRB, only one of the appointees out of 25 has a link with the Conservative Party of Canada. In other words, almost 100 percent of the appointments we made have no link whatsoever to my party, as far as I can see, and 100 percent of the appointees were pre-selected by the IRB.

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

I did not say that there was effectively such a relationship, but appearances leave room for such an inference.

If an individual wanting to immigrate to Canada lies or makes false statements, he or she becomes inadmissible. We can even retroactively revoke the resident status of that person. You heard the news this morning and I imagine your officials have already made inquiries. Did Mr. Pierre divulge to the IRB in his application...

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I was informed that he has provided to the IRB a resume that mentions his involvement in Haiti.

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

And despite that, the people at the IRB were of the opinion that...

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

They recommended his appointment and in my role as Minister I passed it on.

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

You realize that asylum seekers from Haiti, for example, would be very concerned to be interviewed by this board member, especially since they would not even have any appeal available. As you know, and we already discussed this, it is impossible in Canada to appeal a decision since, despite what the act says, the Refugee Appeal Division has still not been created. Ultimately, even if there is a majority of good board members, from time to time one who is more questionable slithers in.

Does this not illustrate the importance of establishing a full-fledged refugee appeal division?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I know that you promote the establishment of this refugee appeal division. As I already said, I am not against this idea in principle, but if we set up such a division, we will need first to reform the refugee claim system. I am open to discuss this with you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Mr. Minister.

Ms. Chow is next.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Of the appointments that you've done with the IRB, the Immigration and Refugee Board, and the citizenship judges, you made 12 in that round—there's a Mr. Pharès—and then you made 13 on January 23. I have the entire list here with me. Are there any other of these appointees, out of the 25 that you've done in the last two months, who have links to the Conservative Party, for example, working as a legislative assistant, a party member, executive, fundraiser, etc.?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Mrs. Chow, thank you for the question.

I made reference to one I'm aware of who has a connection as a former legislative assistant and Conservative candidate--

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Is it John Cryer?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Exactly, Doug Cryer, who was recommended and went through the pre-selection process. I'm not going to veto anyone who comes to me through the IRB pre-selection process just because they happen to be Conservatives.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

So there are none other than Mr. Cryer?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I don't know if none of the other 24 have ever made a contribution or voted Conservative, but he's the one I'm aware of who has a partisan connection to the Conservative Party.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Cryer was director of development for New Connections Ministries, he's director of public policy with the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, and his studies are in religious education. I did not see from his curriculum vitae that he has a tremendous amount of experience in working in the field of refugees.

You and I know that right now there's only one person, one board member, who would interview these refugees. Some board members would approve 80% of the people they interview and others approve maybe 10% or less, a very small percentage. So really, the life and death of a refugee, whether the person will get sent back home facing torture or even death, is really in the hands of one board member. If this board member makes a wrong decision, this person really, because the system right now has no appeal process.... There's no refugee appeal division. Even though Parliament has said over and over again that we must have one, it hasn't been implemented, so as a result these board members have tremendous power as to whether to say yes--like 80% saying yes--or saying no, and then out of the 80% or 90% who get rejected there might be a few who get deported.

Mr. Cryer, for example, in the CV that was in front of us, doesn't seem to have any experience or extensive experience in being a judge, being a lawyer, or anything of that nature. So how could he be justified as a board member?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Thank you, Ms. Chow, for the question.

I'd invite you to call Chairman Goodman of the IRB to the committee, who can explain the criteria the IRB uses to assess candidates for pre-selection.

I know a number of people have come to me to complain that the pre-selection process is now too rigorous, that they applied, they wrote the test, and they weren't recommended. That indicates to me that the IRB is screening out a fairly high number of applicants to be IRB panellists. In every instance, I've only made recommendations to cabinet of those who have been recommended to me according to the pre-selection process governed by the IRB. I have no capacity to interfere in that process, and indeed, they don't require a legal background per se, as I understand it. There's a diverse background, and I think the idea is to end up with a body of members of the IRB who come to the refugee cases with diverse backgrounds.

Finally, I would reject the notion that it's one IRB panellist alone who determines someone's fate. Of course, multiple appeals are available in our system and are very frequently used by refugee applicants. If they are rejected at the IRB, they have access to our entire court system and the independent judiciary. In fact, our IRB, as I understand it, has a much higher acceptance rate for asylum claims than virtually any other parallel democratic country does. So I don't think we have a system that's imperilling the rights of refugee applicants. I think we have quite a fair and, in fact, generous system.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Mr. Minister.

Mr. Shory.

[Devinder Shory, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Before I ask my question, Mr. Minister, I'd like to give you an opportunity to respond to, or address, any issue you think you were not given an opportunity to respond to.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Oh, there are far too many!

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I'll probably get into trouble if I take you up on that, Mr. Shory, so I'll just take any question you might have.

[Devinder Shory, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

Do you have any comments, suggestions, or information that will help this committee do some productive work?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Thank you for that.

Yes, there are two things that I raised in my opening statement. One was the issue of immigration fraud and how we can combat it, the whole issue of third parties. I know this committee has looked at that in the past, but what can we do more systematically to protect applicants for immigrant status or visas to Canada, or prospective applicants, from unscrupulous operators, who often get people into trouble and who clog up our system? This is a very important issue, and I think you could actually make very useful recommendations to the government on this on a non-partisan basis.

Secondly, we're spending a lot of money on this whole issue of integration and settlement services now. We've basically tripled the federal investment in settlement services, and not infrequently when I'm out there talking to people in the immigrant communities, they raise concerns with me about the effectiveness of the investments we're making.

When I was in India, I sat in on an interview of a Canadian citizen who was sponsoring a spousal application. This was a Canadian citizen who had lived in Canada for, I think, 14 years, but who could not conduct an interview in English with the immigration officer. It was a woman in her thirties who's lived in Canada for nearly 15 years and who was not competent in English, which says to me—and I hear many, many anecdotes like this—that we're failing, and that we're failing that woman. If she didn't know that the LINC program was available before she became a citizen, if we're not.... We don't want to end up in a situation in this country where people are excluded from opportunities in our society because they don't have language capability.

This raises another question as well—which I raised the last time I was here, and which could be another subject of study for the committee—about the citizenship process. How could someone like that become a citizen, which requires basic competency in one of our two languages, without actually being able to demonstrate it?

So I think these are all important questions. I'd like to see best practices. There are some immigrant settlement organizations that I think have a very strong track record, perhaps more so than others. There are different jurisdictions abroad that have very successful programs, as I understand Germany does. So I think we could review both international and domestic best practices in that respect.

[Devinder Shory, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

It's very good, Minister, that you touched again on the settlement and language training programs. We have been spending and we intend to spend, as a government, a lot of money on settlement training programs and foreign credential recognition. I personally have been through this process. My question is, once your foreign credentials are assessed, what opportunities can we provide to newcomers to upgrade their education or requirements?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Those education opportunities are obviously largely administered by the provinces.

One of the things we're trying to do, through the foreign credential referral program and an innovation fund that we've created, is to get people to assess, after their invitation for permanent residency in Canada, before they're landed here, their education and qualifications par rapport of the requirements of credentialling and licensing agencies in Canada. If they see they're falling short, perhaps they could go back and pick up supplementary education in their country of origin.

Another idea that's been floated would be for us to work with Canadian colleges that could set up abroad and provide training to Canadian standards. For instance, set up a Canadian nursing college in Manila, where we get a lot of applicants as nurses, to ensure there is a supplementary training program to reach Canadian nursing standards before they come to Canada so that they can practise as nurses immediately.

These are some of the things that I think we're all looking at in the context of the new program funding for foreign credential recognition.