Public Safety committee  Until a refugee is recognized as a refugee, they're a refugee presumptively. Someone has to make a decision. But we're supposed to comply with the convention on the status of refugees, and that means you don't penalize people for having sought protection in Canada. Maybe you cann

Public Safety committee  I completely see this. Do you know what we have with the security certificate cases? You should ask the CBSA about how many staff they have to do the GPS monitoring. They had two officers at a time, on rotation, on duty all the time to monitor three cases—three cases. I don't kn

Public Safety committee  I can accept that when you're talking especially about young people—it's the same in the criminal concern—who are going around robbing buildings and you want them to stay at home, it might be useful if there's a curfew on them, to have a GPS, but again, for a very fixed period of

Public Safety committee  As I said, it was coupled with the rest of it. The GPS is on; officers are showing up at the house. In one case, the officers came to the house. They found a toy gun that one of the young boys had, and that became a whole issue in the hearing. The kid was feeling guilty that he

Public Safety committee  Detention, once you're out, is not an answer either. I'm not saying that release on conditions is better than detention—it's worse than detention. They're both bad in the long term when you're not alleged to have engaged in criminality. There may be concerns about these people, b

Public Safety committee  No, but I do know that GPS is used for five or six people in total across the country. It's not been used. It's only recently started being used.

Public Safety committee  I have no idea, sorry. I don't know the statistics. You'd have to find out. I do know that they've gone to voice reporting, where they take the person's voice. I think if you were to investigate that, that's worked out quite successfully in terms of keeping track of people.

Public Safety committee  Except what they've been doing lately is actually detaining people for removal before removal is arranged.

Public Safety committee  In individual cases, we had psychiatric assessments done on the clients at various stages, both when they were detained and when they were out of detention. What I'm saying is not that jail is better than release; I'm just saying that when you get the package of restrictive condi

Public Safety committee  In a different way I do think it is cruel on a long-term basis. I'm not saying if you put it on someone for six months and you don't have it coupled with house arrest, but you want to just make sure they keep a curfew or something. It wouldn't be the same thing. It's when it's co

Public Safety committee  I think that's exactly what's happened in our cases. Once it's on, they're afraid to let it go because of the optics of it. So whether or not it's needed is something different. I have only one of those security clients in the criminality cases. He left Canada and is being sponso

Public Safety committee  In all three cases, when the GPS was originally imposed on them, they consented to it. In the two security cases, it was a Federal Court judge who imposed it. In the criminality immigration case, it was an immigration division member who imposed it, along with house arrest and ot

Public Safety committee  Yes. It would be good if someone did study them. They all suffered from serious psychiatric issues as a result of long-term use of the GPS.

Public Safety committee  No, I don't think so. My experience has been that.... Sorry, go ahead.

Public Safety committee  I think it would be the same. They were clearly depressed in jail. But it didn't get better when they got out, because of all the problems that went along with the conditions of release. You can't make your wife and your kids your jailer. You need to go pick up something at Home