Citizenship and Immigration committee  I don't think we have a problem with preventing serious criminals from coming here. None of the examples, at least of those I've seen that the minister has given, involves somebody who got in who shouldn't have gotten in. They're all of people who have committed offences after th

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm going to leave some of that to the political realm, but I'll say that I don't think changing the legislation is going to solve the problem. There is still going to be a problem. With somebody who is ordered deported and doesn't have a right of appeal, we will still go through

Citizenship and Immigration committee  On the war criminal front, the thing I'd point out is that there are shades of grey. It's egregious, yes. If somebody has been blowing people up, there's no question: we don't want them and we should get them out fast, or keep them out in the first place. But—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Okay. I'll just say that Nelson Mandela would not have a right of appeal under this legislation, just to use an extreme example.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  By the way, these are not my personal views. I'm presenting the Canadian Bar Association's views. Quite an extensive consultation went into this among the members of the bar. In any event, we have been concerned about this in a number of pieces of legislation. Just so you know,

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Of course, it's reasonable. We should expect that. The only thing I'd say is that things aren't black and white. Our criminal justice system is a good example of that. We expect people to obey the law. If they don't obey the law, there are consequences. The consequences depend

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. It's probably not a charade, but it's a difficult exercise to try to fix it. I think it's fundamentally flawed, and we have recommended that it go back to the drawing board. We're prepared to work with the government. As we said at the outset, it's so important to keep publ

Citizenship and Immigration committee  When you go into the emergency room at a hospital, there's a sign on the wall that basically says that it's not first come, first served. There's a prioritization, a triage. I do a fair amount of appeal work in my own practice. What frustrates the heck out of me is that with th

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, yes and no. As we've said in our brief, and we really do invite you to read it, the problem with this is that with a lot of the other initiatives the minister has made, there were extensive consultations, so a lot of thought and discussion went into that. In this case, the

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would hope.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Let me think about that. I don't think the Canadian Bar Association, in fairness, has reached out to anybody on these things. We draw on the experience of all of our members is what happens.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'll just comment on your other comment about other countries. I'm not an expert on what happens in other countries. I can only say the one time I can recall the U.S. using this power is when they kept Farley Mowat out of the U.S. I don't know what his problem was, hate crime or

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We get calls from victims, too, saying that someone has defrauded them. We see it in the case of marriage fraud. We see it in criminality, too. They say that the person doesn't deserve to be here and ask what then can do to get them out. Sometimes we direct them to the CBSA to ma

Citizenship and Immigration committee  With the greatest respect, we believe the bill has enough flaws and shortcomings that it should be withdrawn or should not proceed unless substantial amendments are made. We recommend it go through a more thorough consultative process so that different alternatives can be found.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, they shouldn't and we have a criminal justice system to punish them. We also have a deportation system to get out the bad ones. I don't think we should abandon that. I think we should hold people accountable. The problem with this kind of a broad-brush bill is that it does