Citizenship and Immigration committee  At the CCR, we don't have a position on biometrics. I cannot speak to that. One of the things I can say is that as soon as possible the person can be identified, the more easily they can be released. That's not the problem.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  One of the things that I'm thinking about your comments is that if you see what we are recommending, we are not saying to give freedom to the bad guys you are talking about. We are trying to be just and fair with refugees. Sometimes we have people in detention who shouldn't be th

Citizenship and Immigration committee  My comment will be that sometimes our way of protecting ourselves is leaving out some people who need to be protected here in Canada. I can bring it up because I also work with victims of human trafficking. Sometimes if you stop them when they are in a country, like in a South As

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you very much. One of the alternatives that we were talking about as an example was what's happening in Toronto with the immigration holding centre, whereby what we call the vulnerable communities—women and children—can be released in the community, in the refugee houses o

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, I'm not aware but I know that there is a pilot project. There is a project that is working with the immigration holding centre and the Toronto bail program, so that they release the person who has to present themselves and report. That's one way that they don't need to be in

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, I understand that. I'm not coming to say that whoever comes here doesn't have a criminal background. One of the things right now in the bill, in the law, is that the minute anyone comes to Canada and claims refugee status, they immediately start doing a fingerprinting proces

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Most of them are in detention because they don't have ID documents. Some of them are there because they are going to be removed.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  One experience I have had in my 21 years of working is that I haven't seen any woman who has been involved in criminal acts. Second is that what we know is that most of the refugees, you see, are victims of war crimes. They come— Let me finish.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Good afternoon, and thank you for inviting me again to come before the standing committee. I'm coming just to talk a little bit about what I'm doing every day. I work with the FCJ Refugee Centre. We work with women and children, and we accommodate them. One of the things I'll d

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm sorry, because we received the invitation to talk about the alternatives to detention.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I received it from the committee.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. I came here to talk to you very briefly about the experience with the immigration holding centre and about alternatives to detention. For 21 years I've worked with women who've come out of detention. When we see them coming out of detention, they're in trauma, in pa

Citizenship and Immigration committee  One of the things we believe is that the timelines will affect the most vulnerable communities. That's why I'm inviting the committee to see Bill C-31 with a gender analysis. If we see it with that, we will see that the timelines are affecting women, as it doesn't have that gende

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The way that we came here 22 years ago was by what's called early admission, because my husband had moved from El Salvador, where there was a civil war, to Guatemala. We were lucky that the consul from the Canadian embassy was in El Salvador and took him to Guatemala. Then they m

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Also, I would say that in Toronto there is the Toronto bail program, and that's an alternative to detention. The person has to go and report to the bail program. This has been successful because in our refugee centre we have been accommodating women with their children, especiall