Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Dec. 6th, 2010

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I think there may be some confusion here. The enhanced detention provisions for those arriving in designated smuggling operations would apply prior to the refugee determination, not following it. So 500 people arrive in a vessel and we need to determine who they are. They are currently put into detention. I think we're at month five for most of the Sun Sea arrivees.

The difference is that we have to go back constantly, sending lawyers and CBSA personnel into a revolving door at the IRB every 30 days for detention renewal just to say, look, we still don't know who they are. We need a period of time to be able to establish who these individuals are, especially when they come in large numbers and the system is really strained.

Under what we propose in Bill C-49, we would simply say we can detain people for up to a year without having to constantly go back for these renewals. This would allow us to focus our resources on the actual work of identification. And if during that year they get a positive determination as a refugee, they are automatically released.

By the way, under Bill C-11, which comes into effect next year, the bona fide refugees would be released from detention in two or three months. I don't think that's a firing squad. I think that's eminently reasonable.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

But the other punitive measures, not the up-to-one-year detention, which we argue is not going to be constitutionally valid, are my bigger concern, because those measures are actually for people who have already been determined to be refugees. So if Bill C-11 works, this doesn't make sense to me.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Mr. Oliphant, I would contend that family sponsorship is a privilege and not a right. There's no international legal instrument, no charter provision that says people have an a priori fundamental right to sponsor family members.

Now, we do recognize that refugees who are in need of a permanent resettlement solution should in due course be able to sponsor family members, and Bill C-49 respects that, but we say they'd have to wait five years.

Why? You have to look at the rationale. This is not, in our judgment, punitive. It is practical. Why are people paying $50,000 to smugglers? It's clear if you talk to the experts and the people who operate in the transit countries that the $50,000 price point is calibrated not for one person's prospective entry into Canada, but for that person plus the family members the person plans to sponsor. What we are trying to do in this provision of the bill is reduce the price point, so the smugglers can no longer afford to target Canada.

In Australia, between 2002 and 2008, when they went to a temporary protection visa for those determined to be bona fide refugees, it worked. Since they went back to a permanent residency visa and the right of family sponsorship for irregular marine arrivals who are later determined to be bona fide refugees, over 10,000 people have arrived in this way.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Minister, you're travelling a lot. I chase you around the country and everyone gets--

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I'm chasing you.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

You're chasing me and I'm chasing you. I just say to my colleagues that you're doing your job.

Have you been to the Peel Tamil Community Centre?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I'm not sure. I've been to Peel and I've been to Tamil community centres; I'm not sure if I've been to that one.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

That's because it doesn't really exist. When I looked up the phone number and I got this other place, I went to see the office and I took a picture. It's a guy's little business. I can only find one member of the group, but they've endorsed Bill C-49. They're the only group of that ilk that has supported your legislation.

They tell me they were actually negotiating with the government for future favours to support the legislation.

Do you have any comment on that?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

First of all, I've met with a number of members of the Canadian Tamil community broadly, in different organizations, to discuss Bill C-49, and a number of different organizations have endorsed the bill. I'd be happy to furnish you with a copy of those organizations.

In discussions I had at round tables with members of the Tamil community, in Toronto in particular, they probed me on the issue of a regional protection framework. We have raised this publicly, and in our discussions with Australia, as a potential long-term solution to some of the irregular migration pressures in Southeast Asia.

I did say that we had given a green light to Australia to begin pursuing with the International Organization for Migration, and other regional partners in the Bali Process, the prospect of something like possible resettlement at the back end of a regional processing framework.

I said this was very early in the process and we're not making any commitments. I said nothing to them privately that I haven't said publicly.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Monsieur St-Cyr.

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

Thank you.

I would now like to ask you a few questions about another subject that I informed you about earlier, the use of French at the immigration board in Montreal.

For several years, there have been lawyers who have criticized the decisions of the Immigration and Refugee Board, the IRB, for preventing them from practising in French and serving their clients in French. A number of cases have arisen in the past. There are still some underway at present.

When those lawyers are dissatisfied with the decision of the IRB, because it goes against the use of French, your Department always attacks those arguments in the Federal Court of Canada. Your Department is quite simply involved in legalistic guerilla warfare against the use of French in Montreal.

I have myself had the opportunity, and I won't say it was the good luck, to attend one of those hearings in Federal Court, where there were lawyers who were plainly very well-known and very numerous defending the IRB's decision. In those cases, for example, the issue was that documents were not translated into French, although the language of the proceedings had been changed to French.

Because we are considering appropriations, I would like to know whether you can inform the committee of the cost of this legalistic guerilla war. How much have you spent, in the Department, on legal fees, to make sure that things essentially continue to work in English in Montreal?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

To clarify, are you talking about the cost of that trial in particular?

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

In general, in fact. There was that one; there was another one recently, where a Montreal lawyer said that his client had not even been able to have the right to an interpreter who did their work properly and spoke decent French. She had asked to have the right to the translation.

There are several of them. When a question concerning French at the IRB is brought before the Federal Court of Canada, your Department systematically takes the side of the IRB, to the detriment of the use of French at the board in Montreal.

So I would like to know how much that has cost the Department.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I don't have the figures, Mr. St-Cyr. I think that is more the purview of the Department of Justice, which represents all departments in trials. We can contact the Department of Justice to see whether they have the figures. If you want to give us a list of the particular trials, we can look into that for you.

However, I would like to point out that there are 36 members of the Refugee Protection Division of the IRB in Montreal, of whom 28 are bilingual, six speak only French and two speak only English. Of the 6,000 decisions given in 2009, 68% were in French and 32% were in English.

There are 36 members in Montreal, 34 of whom are bilingual or speak only French. Although a third of decisions are written in English, at the request of the claimants, because they are the ones who decide the language of the trial, of the proceeding.

We have discussed this several times with you, but I don't see where those figures present a problem.

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

There is a newspaper in Montreal, Rue Frontenac, that has shown that some years, at some levels of the IRB, more than a majority of decisions were written in English. You are not unaware that when there is systematic obstruction of claimants who ask that it proceed in French, lawyers are very reluctant when it comes to asking for changes in the language of the proceedings. Because they find hostile members in their path who do not want to listen to reason and they know that at the end of the day, in Federal Court, they are going to have to engage in another battle against the Immigration Department.

I have the factums that were filed and it seems to me that they do indeed say "The Minister of Immigration will...". So it is in fact you, the Minister, who gives instructions to your lawyers in these cases, or is it the Department of Justice?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I believe both departments are consulted when it comes to a decision like this about the procedure

Nevertheless, Mr. St-Cyr, it is the claimants who decided what language the hearing will be held in. Obviously, I have to say that we are not in favour of constant changes in the language of the proceeding. Lawyers often use this change of language to create a delay in the process, instead of considering the claimants' needs. That is clear.

If a claimant chooses English as the language of the proceeding, why does the language of that proceeding always have to be changed—unless the lawyer thinks it will prolong the proceeding?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Okay, Mr. St-Cyr--

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

But there are lawyers and interpreters who also have the right to work in French in Montreal.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Order.

Sorry I had to bang the gavel, but I had no way of interjecting.

Ms. Grewal.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Minister, there is funding in the estimates for the implementation of Bill C-11. Could you please just update us on the status of this legislation?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Thank you, Ms. Grewal.

As I mentioned in my opening statement, we are making enormous progress. Our deputy established back in the summer a working group of the relevant deputies and heads of agencies to work towards implementation. Obviously, a lot of this work has to be done on the side of the IRB, because they have to create an entirely new division, the refugee appeal division. They also have to begin the process of recruiting and hiring public servants to staff the new, if you will, refugee protection division.

My officials inform me that we are well on our way to implementation. I wish it were happening more quickly than it is, but there are certain practical realities. We're setting up an entirely new structure, a new system, and legally speaking it requires a whole new suite of regulations. It requires new information technology. This is a major multi-agency, multi-departmental project.

Perhaps the deputy would like to supplement my answer.

[Neil Yeates, Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

I can just add very briefly, Chair, that the IRB has begun a consultation process on a new set of rules. New job descriptions are being written for the new decision-makers at the refugee protection division. We in CIC are hiring additional staff to work our way through the backlog of PRRA cases and H and C cases.

As well, we're working with our security partners in the RCMP and CSIS on the security screening component of this. All of us are working together on sorting through some of the information technology issues so we can more effectively share information between us.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Can you please tell the committee about the cost savings that will result from Bill C-11?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Sure. We estimated at the time that we introduced the bill, based on actually a very conservative estimate of the impact on the number of claims to be filed....

Excuse me; we estimated there would be a slight reduction in the number of claims filed in Canada as a result of the new system because it will disincentivize some false claimants from coming to Canada, given the speed and the likelihood of a fairly rapid removal.

Secondly, because people will be spending less time in the system, that means less time on provincial social assistance. That means less time accessing legal aid or the interim federal health care program. So there are savings that accrue based on taking the lifetime of an average false claimant. From the moment they make a claim to the moment they're removed, it's about four-and-a-half years. That will be telescoped down to less than 12 months as a result of Bill C-11, thereby saving three-and-a-half to four years of costly time in Canada.

So we looked at the impacts, the various different programs, and what we grossed up was an estimate of a savings of about $1.8 billion, most of which will accrue to the provinces. Most of that will accrue, in particular, to Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia. I think about 96% of the savings would be realized by those three provinces.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Could you also tell us who will benefit from Bill C-11 when it comes into force?