Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 5th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We have to move on.

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

—it cannot go down. There is a clause in the accord that means the number must remain stable or, if numbers justify, it goes up.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Daniel, you've got four and a half minutes.

[Joe Daniel, Conservative, Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

And thank you, Minister, for being here.

Let me first begin by congratulating your department for reducing the wait times on some of the citizenship issues and the continuing work that you're doing on that.

I can't help noticing how non-governmental organizations are preaching how important it is to strengthen the value of Canadian citizenship. I know when we debated Bill C-24 last week in the House of Commons, the members opposite said they would not support the bill. Can you tell me in light of us voting on giving these funds to the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, how exactly Bill C-24 will strengthen the value of Canadian citizenship?

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

I do think it's a very exciting time for Canadian citizenship, not just because of gold medals in hockey at Sochi and other achievements of which we are justifiably proud. We are making progress in delivering citizenship better. In just two months there were 41,000 citizenship awards. That puts us on a pace, if we kept it up, to do 240,000 this year, which would be well beyond what we have ever done in the past. I don't expect that, by the way. But it's a great way to begin the year. It certainly has us on a pace to beat last year, and the year before, even before the provisions of the new act come into play which will make us more efficient and more productive on the citizenship front.

I should mention, in talking about the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, there is one great initiative that I didn't mention which is their cultural access pass, which allows newcomers to Canada to go to this huge number of cultural attractions and national parks across the country that most of us have not visited. It's a great way to open their imaginations and minds to the scale of this country and its history.

But what are we doing in this bill to strengthen Canadian citizenship? I think it really comes down to two things.

One, taking a solemn commitment from every applicant to be a citizen, that they are going to reside here, that they are going to meet the terms required to become a citizen. We're going to do that in a way that is verifiable now. That's exciting because it's going to make the rules clearer, more understandable, and equal for everyone. There won't be ways of jumping the queue or getting around the rules.

Two, we are going to make sure there is this deeper connection, this sense of attachment and belonging to Canada. It used to be five years under successive Liberal governments, until the 1970s. Then it went down to three years, and we had a certain number of people who weren't even here for the three years and nevertheless became Canadian citizens. Now we're saying it's going to be four years out of six. That's flexibility that reflects the global lives that many people are leading, but it's going to emphasize to newcomers to Canada that there is no substitute for direct experience of our country. Four years of that experience, we think, is enough to create the connection that leads to strong citizenship.

I have to say we are very pleased by the reaction we've had, first and foremost from newcomers, from new Canadians themselves saying this is what they want to see. Canadian citizenship has value, and no one is going to protect the value of our citizenship if we don't do that ourselves, especially we as legislators in this committee and the Parliament of Canada.

[Joe Daniel, Conservative, Don Valley East, ON]

Obviously, being a citizen means getting passports, and we've noticed the transfer of the passport responsibility from Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development to Citizenship and Immigration. Can you speak to the success of the ePassport and the 10-year passport? How many have been issued since their creation?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You have 30 seconds, sir.

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

I think this is a very good news story and a great news story for the Government of Canada. The changes started when it was still part of Foreign Affairs. We are delivering them I think faster and better than ever. This new ePassport that was launched in July 2013 has beaten all the records for previous Canadian passports. More have been issued faster than ever before, and I think it was something like 3.5 million in five months of last year. Why? It's more secure. It's a 10-year passport so per annum it costs less, and people are proud of their passports and want to have them whether they travel to the United States or further afield.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Mr. Minister.

Ms. Blanchette-Lamothe, you have a very brief question time.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Minister, I would like you to answer my question with a simple yes or no.

Can you confirm that there is indeed a reduction of operational spending of more than $14 million, as indicated on page 2-19?

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

To which vote are you referring?

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

To vote 1c.

That was a brief question.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

It was brief. It's taking a long time to look it up.

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

These are transfers of appropriations. We have certain resources that we did not use this year, and we are transferring them to other needs under other appropriations.

I have explained where these funds were available and where we are transferring them. The details are there.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

All right, thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Minister and your colleagues, for coming and explaining some of the issues of immigration and citizenship. Until the next time.

We will now suspend.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, our time is a-wasting. Could I have some order, please? I'm going to start the second part of our meeting, which is a continuation of our study on strengthening the position of women in our immigration system.

We have three witnesses before us. We have Helen Neufeld, who is a representative of the Canadian Council for Refugees.

I don't see her tag, but I assume she's the one without the tag.

[Heather Neufeld, Representative, Canadian Council for Refugees]

It's being printed, because it's actually Heather Neufeld. There was a mistake.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I am sorry. I will correct that. Thank you very much.

We also have two lawyers.

We have Chantal Desloges, with Chantal Desloges Professional Corporation. Good afternoon.

We also have Julie Taub, who has been here before. She is an immigration and refugee lawyer and a former member of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. It's good to see you again and to have you here to help us with this report.

Heather Neufeld, you are first.

[Heather Neufeld]

All right. And I am an immigration and refugee lawyer here in Ottawa—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Everybody's a lawyer here. Good.

[Heather Neufeld]

—at South Ottawa Community Legal Services.

As I'm sure you probably know, in October 2012 Canada implemented a new conditional permanent residence regime for certain sponsored spouses and partners. That's for anyone whose sponsorship was submitted after October 25, 2012. The first two years of the person's sponsorship will be conditional if they have been married or lived common-law with their sponsor for less than two years before that sponsorship and they have no children in common.

Under the new law, if the sponsored person does not remain cohabiting in that conjugal relationship for the first two years—the conditional period—then their permanent residence may be revoked and they may find themselves at risk of deportation.

Now the government has enacted two exceptions to that conditional permanent residence for people it would normally affect, and that is for people whose sponsor dies during the conditional period or for people who are subjected to domestic violence by their sponsor or someone related to their sponsor during that two-year period.

My emphasis today is going to be on the domestic violence exemption during the two-year conditional period. Although we applaud the government for creating the domestic violence exemption, there's more that needs to be done to make it practically and meaningfully accessible to women in the situation who need to access that domestic violence exemption.

First I'm going to mention a few of the vulnerabilities of the women who may find themselves in that situation of needing to access the exemption, and then I'm going to talk about a few of the practical examples of how implementation of the exemption needs to be improved, and some of the barriers that we're seeing already. This is a very new procedure. Given that it only applies to sponsorships that have been submitted after October 25, 2012, we haven't seen tons of cases yet, but we have seen some that are starting to give us a picture already of what's happening.

I'd like to note that 59% of sponsored spouses are women. Those are the most recent statistics that we were able to access from 2012. It's important to consider situations of domestic violence because in the conditional permanent resident system, the conditionality of the two-year period gives an abusive sponsor an extra tool, an extra type of power that he can hold over the woman. And I'm saying “he” and “woman” because in the majority of these situations, I'm talking about a male sponsor and a female sponsored person. Now it could be a same-sex relationship, or it could be reversed as well. The sponsor is able to hold over the woman that basically if she doesn't obey, if she doesn't put up with the domestic violence and she leaves before the two years are up, she can find herself without status. He can also split up with her and cause her to not have status, or he can give tips to Immigration saying that she entered into the marriage fraudulently, even if she didn't.

So what are some of the barriers that these women face who are experiencing domestic violence? I'm sure you've heard many of them before, everything from language barriers to isolation and not knowing about their options for help to not having financial resources, fear of homelessness, lack of a support network in Canada, being afraid of the police and the authorities here because in many countries the police are organs of repression themselves, and as well fear of leaving the abusive sponsor because that may also affect their children. If a mother arrives with conditional permanent residence and she has children from a previous relationship she has brought with her, if she doesn't stay in the conditional situation for two years, the children's status is also at risk.

Given this situation, given the vulnerability of women who are experiencing domestic violence, for women to be able to come forward to CIC and say, “I'm in a domestic violence situation, I need to be exempted from fulfilling the two-year conditional period”, it's important that the exemption is really functional for women.

And so I'm going to mention just four points of problems that we're seeing or things that we think can be improved. The first is having a designated CIC phone number that's actually staffed by a real person. And that may seem self-evident, but if you've ever tried to call the CIC call centre, as we have many, many times, usually you don't reach anyone or you stay on line for a very long time, and then the phone hangs up on you. Now if a women is in a domestic violence situation and she needs to call CIC, explain her situation, often she's not able to stay by a phone for hours to keep trying to call. Even if she does reach an agent at the CIC call centre, she then has to be transferred to another department, and an officer has to call her back.

This is a problem, because there isn't necessarily a number where the woman can be called back all the time. Women need to be able to access a phone number where they can reach a person who can actually initiate the process with them.

As well, it would be helpful for particularly non-government organizations and lawyers who are assisting these women to be able to submit an exemption request either electronically or by mail rather than having to do everything only by phone, which is currently the only permitted option. We're aware of cases, in one case, for example, a woman has been calling CIC since November. Even when her case gets transferred to the client relations department, there is no voice mail at that department. She doesn't reach anyone. Someone eventually calls her back but she's not there. They've just gone in circles since November. It's important that they can reach someone.

The second issue is the need for telephone interpretation. A lot of women do not have strong enough English or French, particularly if they've just recently arrived. CIC would be very helpful if they provided telephone interpretation in these kinds of circumstances, much as Legal Aid Ontario does with their 1-800 number for requesting legal aid certificates. It's a model that exists with other organizations. It would be extremely helpful for women to be able to speak directly to the CIC agent themselves.

The third issue is better training for CIC officers. Currently we're seeing issues like officers, despite there being an operational bulletin on the domestic violence exemption, not being aware of the correct information, and saying that they don't know the procedure; that a woman has to wait the two years of conditional permanent residence before she can apply; or that they can't talk to a woman who's using an interpreter because the interpreter is not an authorized representative. There are problems like that.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You have one minute, Ms. Neufeld.

[Heather Neufeld]

Finally, there is a need for information sessions for both sponsors and sponsors' spouses when they enter Canada to make them aware of their rights and responsibilities under Canadian law. Women who need to access the domestic violence exemption in the future need to be aware that this exemption exists.

I will also mention very quickly that another problem we're seeing is that when women are in the sponsorship process and the sponsorship is withdrawn while in process, the women who are experiencing domestic violence will find themselves without approved sponsorship and without a route to permanent residence. The humanitarian and compassionate process is ill-suited to deal with those cases.

I'd be happy to respond to that more in questions later, but for women whose sponsorship has broken down through no fault of their own, we need to have a process by which they can independently gain permanent residence.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Ms. Neufeld.

Ms. Desloges.