Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 10th, 2012

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

It's a technical amendment to the bill to ensure that the French and English versions of the sections are consistent. Upon review, it was felt that this language would be more consistent.

(Amendment agreed to on division)

(Clause 45 as amended agreed to on division)

(Clauses 46 to 57 inclusive agreed to on division)

(On clause 58)

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We are at clause 58 and amendment NDP-18.

Ms. Sims.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

This amendment would permit the minister the power to designate parts of a country or classes of nationals in a country. It's not that we would want any designations to occur, but this would permit it. Once again it's a mitigating amendment.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Lamoureux.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

I didn't quite catch the essence of the amendment.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

The amendment would permit the power to designate parts of a country or classes of nationals in a country. Currently the minister can only designate a country, the way the language is written. This amendment would allow something further than that.

Once again we have very serious concerns about the power resting with the minster to designate countries. There are groups within those countries that feel persecution. There are very few countries in the world that we can say are absolutely free of the kind of persecution that makes people escape and look for asylum.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Dykstra.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

I just want to make the point that whether agreed to or not by the opposition, every eligible refugee claimant, whether or not they're from a designated country of origin, will have access to a fair hearing on the merits of their case before the independent Immigration and Refugee Board. So that should not be lost. These allusions to the idea that that doesn't exist I just felt needed to be clarified.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Monsieur Giguère.

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

The principle in this amendment is simply to recognize a geographic and a demographic situation. In terms of geography, some countries are constellations of small islands. Others go from the Sahara to luxuriant plains of vegetation. Some countries have Muslims and Catholics. Other countries are so vast that we cannot talk about a specific people. For example, Russia has almost 45 languages. There are even more in India and China. People who live near the Gobi desert don't have much to do with those who live in Hong Kong.

The geographic and human situations of those countries imply that, when we are faced with a country's request to be recognized as safe, we give ourselves the flexibility—not the obligation, Mr. Chair—to restrict the designation of a country to some geographical areas that we know are safe. That does not mean that anarchy reigns in the country, but rather that some of the areas are dealing with specific challenges related to minorities, internal political issues, and so on.

At one point, Panama belonged to Colombia. They obviously separated. Did that mean that civil war broke out across Colombia? No. It was a political problem that strictly had to do with Panama. So no civil war broke out, because the two geographical areas separated at the insistence of the Americans.

Furthermore, other countries are dealing with the same problems. I just feel that the minister should have some leeway to be able to recognize a country as being safe, but to note that there are some problems. In other words, there would be no assumptions that everything is fine, which is what the problem is with the concept of safe countries. At the outset, we assume that those countries are fine. The process is too fast.

Mr. Chair, we are just asking the government party to agree to this sensible amendment.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Ms. Sims.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to stress here that even within a country that we or the minister may consider to be designated safe.... We know of democratic countries where it is very difficult for the LGBTQ community, and we've heard testimony to that effect.

So it is very critical that even though we may think the whole country.... I find it hard that any country could ever be considered totally safe and nobody is ever going to be persecuted. Secondly, we have to allow the minister, now that he is going to have this power, to be able to look within the country and say, “Okay, this whole country is not being designated, but within it there is this group that we really want to protect.”

We have signed on to the UN convention for this area, and I'm hoping you will agree to this amendment.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Dykstra.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Chair, there's a lot of discussion or mention about what Bill C-11 included, or which part of Bill C-11 is included in this bill. I've heard the opposition say they wish all of Bill C-11 was moving forward. This was part of Bill C-11, this whole issue around transgender issues. We looked hard and studied on a very detailed basis the fact that there would be countries where, regardless of their designation, individuals would be able to seek refugee status in Canada based on the persecution they faced for being gay, lesbian, or transgendered. That hasn't changed from Bill C-11, and I'm surprised to hear the opposition not wanting to support it, first, or to amend it.

Second, I would like to clarify that the witnesses we had who spoke to this issue were very much focused on the current process with which they were unhappy. They actually didn't provide proposals or options on how to improve Bill C-31. Their focus was on the issues they felt were unresolved and hadn't been dealt with through the current process. I do think this is what I believe to be part of, as you said, the great Canadian compromise, and part of that compromise is embedded in Bill C-31 based on what we learned from Bill C-11 on this issue. The witnesses who did provide the information on this issue very much emphasized the current problems they have with the current system, versus how they felt. While they indicated they didn't support Bill C-31, they didn't provide us with a detailed recommendation as to how to improve it.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

I want to thank my colleague for the history lesson. It's always good.

The reason for moving this amendment is that the landscape has changed. In Bill C-11, it was a panel of experts, an advisory committee that would look at criteria and would be doing the designation. Our concern is that now it's going to be the minister doing the designations. A lot of that may be there in the regulations when they come down the road later, but right now we do not have them and they're not part of this legislation. Because of that, we want to clarify in the legislation and send the message out that this is not the unintended consequence that could result.

Just as we saw the unintended consequence that was realized when we looked at the deletion of (e) in an earlier motion...that's all we're trying to address here. It's not a clever move to sidestep or to get any further rights. It's basically looking for something explicit that would give the kind of protection that used to exist there, which was much more transparent than the future is going to be.

It's very hard, quite honestly, for me as a parliamentarian, to sit here passing a law, going through a law, where so much of the stuff is going to be in regulations and we don't know what's going to be in those regulations yet. I don't know what's going to be written in there. This is why, if the regulations were written and were brought here and we could vote on them...then I can just imagine that we might see all of this spelled out and we may not have had a need to move this amendment.

Mr. Dykstra, with that motivation, I hope you will see why it is so important for you to support this and to give us that unanimous support, so we get an amendment passed. This one, actually, absolutely is needed to give many communities out there that sense of assurance they are looking for.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We are dealing with New Democratic Party amendment number 18.

(Amendment negatived)

Mr. Lamoureux.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thank you—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You have LIB-27.4. You don't need to read it, since you're moving it.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Yes, I would move, as written in front of us—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Okay, Mr. Lamoureux, now that you've moved it—

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Having said that, I would like to give a very brief explanation.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Lamoureux, now that you've moved it, I'm going to rule NDP-20 out of order and inadmissible on the same grounds.

Would you like me to tell you why?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

No, but if I did provide—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You don't want me to tell you?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Well, if I can get you to indulge us for a few seconds, Mr. Chair, I was going to ask, if there might be the will of the committee to just discuss it for—