Citizenship and Immigration committee  It is very serious, but it's not surprising when you have a population that is, on average, highly traumatized, has been exposed to war zones, to all kinds of situations like that, and then is placed in a situation of helplessness and feels branded as criminals when they are not.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  What I would urge you to do, actually, is to look at the report of the senatorial inquiry in Australia that just came out in March 2012, after a very in-depth study of their system, the umpteenth study, because they've had problems again and again and again over the years, and th

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's not quite, because we get detention and incarceration mixed up. I have absolutely no problem saying, and I fully agree, that we need to check people's identities when they arrive in Canada with false documents or otherwise. The people we interviewed said themselves that they

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There are other ways to simply have people in supervised accommodation while you're checking them, and it's done in many countries.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I said detention as supervised accommodation—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  —but not incarceration.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Sweden is an interesting model in that regard. It's a supervised accommodation, but it's run by social workers and it's very family-friendly.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Exactly.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I just want to say that if you look at the experiences in Australia, for example, where you have extremely high rates of suicide and self-harm among asylum seekers who are detained under a regime that is very comparable to Bill C-31, I think that gives you a sense of how serious

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As I alluded to earlier, when an asylum seeker is detained, the first thing done to them is they are handcuffed. Although they are not handcuffed during the time in the detention centre, if they ever have to go outside, for example to a hospital for medical care, they're not on

Citizenship and Immigration committee  About 30% of asylum seekers are held in provincial prisons. In British Columbia, Halifax, or anywhere except Toronto and Montreal, they're automatically held in provincial prisons.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The first system is the current system. I have many criticisms of our current detention system, but it does have a regular detention review, which is an absolutely basic judicial oversight. People are detained for reasons that are at least relevant, either for identity, security

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's actually incorrect.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you very much. My name is Janet Cleveland. I'm a psychologist, former lawyer, and now a researcher on refugee mental health. For the last three years I've worked essentially full-time on the impact of detention on refugee mental health, and I've many times visited the immi