Citizenship and Immigration committee  It is a complicated legal question. If one province did deny welfare to refugee claimants and the kind of scenario I described ensued—where someone who's here has no resources, they're destitute, they're trying to prove the refugee claim—clearly that application in court would ha

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's right.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's the more likely one and that may be the conclusion. We may wait. Lawyers always like facts and evidence, and that's what we had in the refugee health cuts case. Remember in that case we had 25 affidavits of horrible medical circumstances happening. We may have to wait, bu

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, it's a disconnect. There is no evidence. There's no evidence in refugee law and international refugee law that it will deter claimants. That's not why they fail to come. You really must remember that when most refugees come to Canada, first of all, we all know it's very h

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, here's what bothers me. First, to Mr. Wudrick's comments, I am not an expert on Canadian provincial versus federal fiscal policy, etc. But if there is a sincere belief that the power should lie with the provincial government, then why are they not transferring the entire p

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, as you said, there are no policy justifications for any of this. We have rumours. We have notions. What we do know, primarily from the government's policies around health cuts for refugees—and there has been reference to the Federal Court decision that struck down that pro

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Under the convention itself there is an obligation for host countries to provide public assistance or public service at an amount equal to what they provide for their own nationals. What that means is that underdeveloped countries that really do not have a lot of money and don't

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Okay. This is my final issue. This is important, because the argument has been raised that these amendments do not deny refugees anything. They only alter the national standards for social transfer payments. Denying refugees will be done by individual provinces, and not through

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Mr. McCallum, and good afternoon to everyone. I'm the former chairperson of the Immigration and Refugee Board and for the past 10 years I've been teaching refugee law at the University of Ottawa, but today I'm here as a spokesperson for the Canadian Association of Ref