Bill C-291 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (coming into force of sections 110, 111 and 171)

Immigration and Refugee Protection Act

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

moved that Bill C-291, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (coming into force of sections 110, 111 and 171) be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me to begin this debate today on Bill C-291, which I tabled in this House a little earlier in this session and which proposes to establish the refugee appeal division. It would be useful to start with a short history to indicate the need for and the pertinence of this bill.

In 2002, this Parliament adopted the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA). Before this act was adopted, two board members examined refugee claims. Approval by one of the two members was sufficient to grant refugee status. When the IRPA was adopted, this Parliament decided to reduce the number of members examining refugee claims from two to one. However, in their wisdom, parliamentarians decided to provide for an appeal section. Although included in the legislation, it has never been implemented because the successive Liberal and Conservative governments have never issued the cabinet orders required to bring it into force.

The purpose of the bill before us today is simply to respect the will of Parliament and begin that process. It is important that this appeal section be established for three basic reasons: first, it will prevent arbitrary decisions in refugee status cases; second, it will ensure that decisions made by members are consistent; third, it will prevent decisions from being too costly and ensure that the cost of the system for handling these applications is not too high, as I will explain later in my presentation.

Let us start at the beginning, with the issue of arbitrary decisions. There are quite a few board members at the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB), many of whom are undoubtedly competent. However, the problem is that many of these people are not well-suited to this work.

I will give a very topical example, one that I revealed in the House this week and for which the minister had a chance to defend himself—the case of Pharès Pierre. This board member, appointed by the current minister, has a very questionable past. He was the chief of staff to former Prime Minister of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. That controversial regime committed atrocities and was complicit in major crimes.

Some people were only underlings within this regime. Police officers and civil servants have been refused the right to ask for asylum in Canada because they worked for the regime. Yet we learn that this board member was at the top of the pyramid. And, from now on, he will be the one to receive and study refugee requests coming from everywhere, including Haiti. We would all agree that there is an obvious ethical issue there. Some of the people claiming refugee status, who say they were persecuted by the Aristide regime, will find themselves being judged by a person who was at the top of this regime. That makes no sense.

This candidate managed to slip through all the cracks in security.

The IRB selected him. Then he underwent Privy Council security checks—the Privy Council being the Prime Minister's Office, which looked into the matter and declared that there was no security problem. These are, of course, the same people who investigated the Couillard affair. Then the minister appointed him. When I asked the minister in the House why he appointed that individual, he candidly admitted that the man was obviously not the right guy for the job. Yes, he has a B.A. in mathematics, and I have a lot of respect for people who have a B.A. in mathematics, but that does not mean they have the skills it takes to be commissioners any more than if they have a minor in administration or are on the board of the Lions Club of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

This appointment is glaringly partisan, because Pharès Pierre was the vice-president of the Conservative riding association in Saint-Jean and vice-president of the Quebec wing of the Conservative Party. This is clearly unacceptable. He managed to slip through the net and become a commissioner. Now he is the one who will be making extremely important decisions that could have life-or-death consequences for people. This is the person who will be making these decisions. It makes no sense.

And then there is Laurier Thibault, who handled Abdelkader Belaouni's case. Mr. Belaouni, who lives in my riding, is an Algerian refugee who, despite being blind, wants to get involved in the community. At the time Mr. Belaouni appeared before him, this judge, this commissioner, Laurier Thibault, was rejecting 98% of the cases he dealt with. Imagine appearing before a judge who finds 98% of the people he tries guilty. Would anyone think that justice was being done? Surely not.

There is an obvious problem here: some commissioners do not have what it takes to do the job. We need an appeals division to overturn these decisions. Even if they were all very competent, we would still have a natural justice issue on our hands. Even though we have very competent judges in our other courts, we still have an appeals division. Why do citizens and permanent residents have access to appeals in the regular system, but refugees do not?

In the past, the Liberals have often told us that appeals to superior courts and judicial reviews were possible. However, these are not appeals on the merits; they are simply appeals based on technicalities or for procedural reasons. However, if the IRB member followed all procedures, but simply does not believe the refugee claimant's version, the claimant has no opportunity to appeal.

The second reason I gave was the lack of consistency in the decisions. When there is no appeal division, each IRB member can decide one way or the other. As all immigration lawyers will agree, this makes it impossible to tell someone whether they are eligible or not by simply looking at their file. In the end, the decision will depend on which member of the IRB gets assigned to the file. We sometimes refer to this as “the board member lottery” and it is inconceivable that people's lives are being decided on so arbitrarily. With a real appeal division in place, board members will have case law that they can refer to when deciding a case, in order to ensure greater consistency.

Lastly, I think we could even save money in our justice system, since the appeal division, as it is defined in the legislation, is an administrative tribunal. But since this administrative tribunal does not yet exist, claimants who have been refused by the board tend to avail themselves of all kinds of procedures before superior courts to try to obtain justice. In the end, this is more expensive for the system, since those proceedings tend to be much more costly.

In my opinion, it is important to move forward on this. In committee this week, the minister told me he was afraid that, among other things, the possibility of appeal would snowball and the appeals would drag on forever.

I invite the Conservatives to support the principle of my bill and to send it to a committee that will determine if measures can be implemented to prevent this from happening. We cannot wait for the entire system to be reformed before taking action. Critical decisions are being made about people. I therefore invite all members to support this bill.

It is a matter of respect for the Parliament that voted for a law. Although seven years have passed, this measure should be implemented. It is a matter of natural justice. It is the way things are done in all western democracies. Every judicial system provides for appeals in order to eliminate arbitrary decisions, which do occur at present, and also to preserve the honour of Quebeckers and Canadians by respecting the dignity of those human beings who seek refuge in our country.

I would like to close on a more poetic note in this House by quoting Gilles Vigneault, a great Quebec singer. I am sorry, but I will not be singing. I would just like to read his lyrics for all my colleagues:

About my solitary country
I cry out before I am silenced
To everyone on earth
My house is your house
Inside my four walls of ice
I take my time and my space
To prepare the fire, the place
For the people of the horizon
And the people are of my race

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for his speech and certainly the work that he is doing on the immigration and citizenship committee. Regardless of political stripe, we on occasion have been able to find some common ground and have been working quite well in the early days of this 40th Parliament.

I do want to thank the hon. member for not singing in the House of Commons. I certainly do not mind him speaking once in awhile, but the last thing I would really want is to hear him sing a tune here in the House of Commons.

Off the top, I want to state that our government's position on Bill C-291 has not changed from that in the 39th Parliament. In fact, we will be opposing the bill, because this bill seeks to establish the refugee appeal division.

There is no question that we strongly support an effective refugee status determination system, but as the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration said yesterday, he was delighted to hear the interest of the member who asked a question on this topic and was hopeful that we could all work together to create a more efficient and effective refugee determination system.

The government opposes this legislation because it is neither necessary in the current system nor is it efficient. It would add considerable delays and costs, both in the start-up and operating costs as well as the prolonged costs for services provided to failed refugees waiting for their fourth level of appeal, which would be this appeal division.

The cost of implementing the refugee appeal division would be in the range of $15 million to $25 million annually in new operating costs, about the same amount in social services costs paid by both the provincial and federal governments for refugees, not to mention start-up costs of approximately $10 million.

It would also add five months to the decision-making process. Provinces such as Ontario, British Columbia and even Quebec would be disproportionately affected by this.

Canadians have a right to be proud of our humanitarian tradition, no question, and as the member for Eglinton—Lawrence, a former Liberal minister of citizenship and immigration, said last June before the human rights committee in the other place:

--[T]he people that I consulted, those from the United Nations responsible for refugees, liked to think of Canada as the premier example of a system for refugee determination that underscored fairness and product.

The member concluded that the current system is fair, that there is no need for another appeal process, as four steps already exist in this decision-making process.

As the member for Eglinton—Lawrence put in his own words:

--I said I would not implement it. Of course, we got into an election so I could not change my mind. When Bill C-280 came forward, I did not see any compelling arguments to make me change my mind.

If a former Liberal citizenship and immigration minister is willing to publicly speak against the bill, which has not been substantively changed since its previous incarnation as Bill C-280, then I have to ask all of my Liberal colleagues across the floor why they would not listen to one of their colleagues and also oppose this bill.

There is a full range of recourses offered by the refugee determination system as a whole. Our refugee determination system is based on a strong, independent, first level decision-making process at the Immigration and Refugee Board.

Rejected applicants can then seek leave for a judicial review at the Federal Court, another form of appeal, if you will. If both the IRB and the Federal Court turn down the applicant's claim, he or she is still entitled to a pre-removal risk assessment before leaving and can also apply for permanent residence on humanitarian or compassionate grounds.

The addition of the refugee appeal division would only add a further level of review to an already comprehensive refugee determination system. Successful refugee applications can take an average of two and a half years to reach permanent residence status. Negative applications can take over five years, and in some cases much longer than that, before an individual has exhausted all avenues of appeal.

We changed the selection process to make it more open and more accountable. This is a great improvement over the years of Liberal patronage to their political friends, appointments such as Mr. Mouammar, who had an acceptance rate double that of the IRB average at that time, which rose to virtually 100% in some cases if one was from the Middle East.

Last year there were 40 Governor in Council appointments and 24 reappointments. With the minister's announcement on March 10, 2009, of two appointments and five reappointments, and his previous announcement of 25 appointments and 3 reappointments in 2009, the board now stands at close to 90% of its full complement. With fewer vacancies on the IRB, genuine refugee claims will be processed and finalized faster, while frivolous asylum applications will be dismissed much more quickly.

Canadians expect their refugee system to help and protect legitimate refugees. As the minister said yesterday in the House, “last year we received 38,000 inland refugee claimants, about 60% of whose applications were rejected by the IRB”.

There are individuals taking advantage of our compassionate nature and seeking refugee status on dishonest grounds. They know the significant length of time that this process affords them. We must fix this.

It is not an uncommon tactic to make a false refugee claim to allow the individual to attempt to make enough connections within the community so that they are able to bolster their humanitarian and compassionate grounds case. This is a fundamental problem that this bill simply does not address. In fact, it would legitimately add to the incentive to make fraudulent applications, as the time before deportation would be extended by at least five months.

In 2008, 34,800 refugee claims were referred to the Immigration and Refugee Board, as compared to 27,912 claims in 2007. This represents an almost 25% increase in refugee claims.

Last year, the former minister of citizenship and immigration, the member for Haldimand—Norfolk, shared her concerns at the Senate Standing Committee on Human Rights. She noted the number of refugee claims in Canada was increasing at a rate higher than in almost every other country. She reported that a majority of claimants were found not to be in need of protection. Only 43% of claims finalized by the Immigration and Refugee Board were accepted in 2007 and the acceptance rate dropped to 42% last year.

There are those who would like to take advantage of our generosity in this country and take a place away from those who are genuinely in need of our protection and their own. There are those who come to Canada from countries, such as Mexico, that are not typically seen to produce refugees. Mexico is the largest source country of refugees, with approximately 8,000 individual claims in 2008. Only 10% are successful in their application for status. Very valuable resources are being increasingly diverted from those who need our help to those who are found not to be genuine refugees.

If this bill is implemented, failed refugee claimants will be the ones filing for secondary appeals. It is impossible to predict the number of appeals that could be made every year because each refugee claim is assessed individually. On average, it takes three days to determine an eligibility claim but it takes about 17 months from the date a claim is referred to the IRB to an initial decision rendered by the IRB.

Leave applications for judicial review of the IRB decision can take about four months. If that leave is granted, it can take approximately a year or more to decide the appeal. A pre-removal risk assessment takes about nine months. An application made on humanitarian and compassionate grounds can take an additional 21 months.

A claimant has a right to seek judicial review of negative pre-removal risk assessment and decisions made on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. It adds up. It can take up to five years for almost all of these cases to be handled through the process and up to ten years in some cases. The hon. member's bill would extend that by at least another five months.

We need to consider that almost 35,000 refugee claims were made to the IRB last year. Adding another layer to the current refugee status determination process would not only further paralyze our system, it would erode its very integrity. The Refugee Appeal Division would conduct only a paper review of the evidence presented at the original hearing, it would not allow for the introduction of new evidence or an in-person hearing.

We have monitored the impact of delaying implementation of the Refugee Appeal Division. We have consistently found that even without this fourth layer of review, the current system already provides protection to those who need it.

The implementation of an appeal would be possibly only if the current system could be streamlined to avoid access to multiple and overlapping recourses. Therefore, I urge all hon. members to not support Bill C-291.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the bill today in the House.

As most of our attention has been focused on the budget implementation plan, as it should be, we must not lose sight of the one area in the legislation that will ensure the long term economic goals we all have for this country, and that is the area of immigration.

Our economic survival will be nothing without the one resource that can transform Canada into a knowledge-based economy, and that resource is its people, the brightest, the best and, in the case of refugees, perhaps some of the most courteous and resourceful new Canadians we could ever have.

Most truly modern economies around the world understand that countries can no longer be gatekeepers at their borders, presuming that those who come in are somehow at the whim or the mercy of a government that deals with applications at a painfully slow pace, such a our present government.

We know that we must aggressively market our county and compete for a booming supply of skilled labour and knowledge workers around the world. We know that those who come here as refugees are the main actors and the authors of some of the greatest success stories in this country.

From gatekeepers to competitors in an international market, this is the reality but it is a reality that the government has yet to understand. The facts are there for all to see. Immigration from China is down 36% since the Conservatives came to power. Immigration from India is down 22% since the Conservatives came to power. Those countries are the two biggest markets for highly skilled, highly educated knowledge workers. The government has botched the file and let us lag behind the world in building the economy for the 21st century.

While I view the bill as having some glaring problems, I also know that we cannot keep up this painfully slow pace of immigration reform. More to the point, we need to move faster on the Refugee Appeal Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board.

I welcome the fact that at least we have something to work with at last but we need to take a very close look at all the fine print, we need a substantial review and we will, no doubt, need to make significant changes in the committee.

For all the talk that has come from the government in the last three years about caring about progressive reform, the reality is a very different thing. The reality is that the backlog of refugee claims has more than doubled since the Conservatives took office. It has more than doubled in three short years. It makes one think that they have the same management experts working in immigration as the ones who have so disastrously managed our economy.

The reality also is that the number of finalized claims has decreased by 50% under the Conservatives. Therefore, they essentially worked half as hard while they let the workload doubled. If we were running a business so inefficiently, we would wonder how we let this happen.

I can remember not too long ago when the government tried to claim that it knew how a business worked and that it knew what it was doing with the economy. Last year, when the real GDP growth was negative for two quarters, the only area that showed promise was the government, because it shovelled more than $300 million into increased spending for services.

The Prime Minister was essentially trying to create a better economic picture by throwing money at government programs. However, that is not the worst of it. That money only maintained levels of resources and services at best from department to department. For all its talk of tax breaks for Canadians, as we know, the government played fast and loose with numbers and blew our reserve fund completely, with nothing to show for it but the mess we are in now.

In the case of the processing of refugee claims, the government has actually increased the processing times to an average of 14 months and the average cost per claim has increased to almost $2,000. That is good money being thrown after bad service, but this is all part of the fundamental disconnect the government has between talk and action.

The government can talk a good game. It can claim that it is letting more newcomers into this country than ever before but when we see the real numbers, they show that the government slashed the number of permanent residents coming to our country by more than 50,000 in just a short two years.

The government says that it will address backlogs but ,as I said, the backlog has doubled. The backlog remains at troubling levels for all applicants. Actually, nothing has been done in three years. Nothing except that the Prime Minister tried to use backlogs as an excuse to reject whole categories of immigration applications. This is like saying, “I know we have done nothing but if you give me power”, power that should never be centralized and used for political gain, “I can fix it”.

Would we let the guy who crashed our car look under the hood to fix it? I will not. Does the government actually expect Canadians to reward incompetence? I do not think so.

I am only compelled to move this dialogue forward because the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act must have a comprehensive review in order to modernize it for the new realities,economic, social and geopolitical, that Canada now faces. However, we must ensure that every word is held to account in committee and that the necessary changes must be a part of any legislation going forward. There is no other way. There is no blank cheque, no sweeping powers and no new authority that can be proposed under the radar, as the government so frequently attempts to do.

A responsible government would provide more resources for application processing. It would provide more resources for immigration settlement. It would address the backlog of refugee claims rather than let them increase 100%.

However, until Canadians can truly get a government they deserve and rightfully expect, we must take what we have by way of proposed legislation and demand accountability or reject it otherwise.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I stand to support this private member's bill. It is long overdue that Canada have a refugee appeal division. Parliament has debated this issue several times, as has the Senate. Parliament has approved and said several times that we must implement a refugee appeal division, yet no action has been taken.

Let me tell members why we should not have refugees' lives determined by one single person. A refugee board member could send someone back to face persecution, torture or even death. We used to have board members, and the panel would make decisions. In the 1980s, it was three members. Then it was narrowed down to two members. In 2002, it became one member.

When the decision was made in 2002 that it would be one member, there was a promise that there would be an appeal process, but the former Liberal government never actually made that a reality.

The problem with having one person decide the fate of refugees is that some people have biases. Even just recently the minister appointed people, it seems to me, based on their Conservative membership, whether they were active in the party or not. We had failed candidates known to have homophobic points of view appointed to the Immigration and Refugee Board. We had an appointee with a shady past in terms of that person's ties to a government that has been known to have human rights violations. Yet these are the group of people from whom one person would make the decision on the life and death of refugees.

The Canadian Council for Refugees has documented different examples of how decisions are made in a very inconsistent manner. In one case, there were two Palestinian brothers who had the same basis for their refugee claim, yet one was accepted and the other one was refused. The refused brother was deported. They were identical cases.

In another example, a person came from Iran. She had been arrested and detained for two months in Iran. Canada's refugee board concluded that this person, called Ms. Q, was not credible because of inconsistencies and gaps in her evidence.

Ms. Q told the board that she had scars on her body from the torture. Her testimony was rejected because she had not provided a medical report.

The psychologist who saw her said she was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, which is why her submission was not as consistent as it could be. The doctor discovered that she had a depression in her skull consistent with a blow from a blunt instrument, and the psychologist found that she had been tortured and that if she were deported to Iran she would be in serious trouble. Even though there is expert evidence that she was severely tortured, this woman is facing imminent risk of removal from Canada.

There are two other examples. One is a gay man from Nicaragua who was deemed not to be gay enough and was turned down. Another woman, a lesbian from Ghana, even though she was tied to a pole, humiliated and spat upon, was also denied.

A refugee from Mexico came here. His mother and sister had been raped. Soldiers then tortured his father. He himself had his hands tied behind his back and was hit in the stomach. A hood was put over his head. He was questioned about where his uncle was hiding. They stripped him and cut him near his genitals with a knife. They then tied his testicles and yanked them while they continued to torture and question him. Lastly, they dipped his head in a tub filled with excrement in an attempt to obtain information they wanted.

These are the kinds of people we deny, because some members turn down 80% of the refugee claimants in front of them. Another member would approve 80%. As has been reported recently in the news, 80% of refugee claims that came before one board member were approved. So where is the consistency in terms of this board?

Remember, this board is made up of political appointees, and people have personal biases. When there is no appeal process, what one sees is real inconsistency in decision-making, yet we are talking about people's life and death.

Canada is one of the very few countries in the world that fails to give refugee claimants an appeal on their merits. UNHCR, which is the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Amnesty International, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Canadian Bar Association have all said that Canada must have a refugee appeal division. Yet, over and over again, that has not taken place.

Ministers have repeatedly said that one could apply to a court to get leave. However, going to Federal Court is extremely expensive. It is expensive for the applicants and for the Canadian taxpayers. One must first receive leave or permission from the court. Nine out of 10 applications for leave are refused by the court and there is really no reason given. If we had an appeal division, most of these cases would not land in the Federal Court, which means that taxpayers would in fact save money. The Federal Court is really not set up to specialize in refugees cases anyway.

Refugee claimants may apply for a pre-removal risk assessment, but this is not a mechanism for correcting errors in the initial refugee determination. Pre-removal risk assessment applicants can only raise new evidence, not argue that the initial decision by the Immigration and Refugee Board was wrong. As a result, only 3% of those applications have been approved. Those who apply for humanitarian and compassionate grounds get deported anyway while their applications are being considered, so that is really not a route to go.

For all those reasons, it is quite unfortunate that Canada, even though condemned by many international organizations, continues to ignore the rights of refugees and continues to waste taxpayers' money with a lot of cases stuck in Federal Court. We continue to have a huge backlog and continue to make mistakes and occasionally send refugees back to their home countries where they face torture, persecution, much suffering, and sometimes even death. There is certainly documentation of that.

I urge this House to quickly approve this private member's bill, have it fast-tracked—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Resuming debate.

The hon. member for Oak Ridges—Markham.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to rise today to speak about this bill. I am new to this House, as you know, and new to the immigration committee. I have found many interjections in committee by the hon. member presenting this bill to be thoughtful.

In particular, on this motion that we are debating today, there is so much more that goes into an immigration system. Having had the opportunity to work for many years at the provincial level dealing with a whole range of issues and representing a riding, working for a member who represented a riding where a number of the hostels that housed refugee claimants were located, I can say there are a number of problems in the current system, not the least of which is the length of time it takes for us to actually deal with refugee claimants in the system.

I can give many examples, from the former riding of Scarborough East where I worked, of people who had claimed refugee status and who had been in front of the board and in the system for years, and of the difficulties that placed on the community I was from at the time, the difficulties placed on the schools, the difficulties placed on the social services.

We've all heard of instances. I received emails not long ago with respect to a case of an individual who had been in the country, whose refugee claim was refused by the IRB, and some 15 years later was still resident in Canada. We had not been able to deal with him.

There are number of things that we can do and that we must do as a government to ensure that our immigration system truly represents what it is meant to represent.

I am a child of immigrants. My parents came to this country, immigrating here from Italy in the 1960s. They were very hard-working people, as were many of the Italian immigrants at the time, as are many of the people who do come to this country.

What they want, what all immigrants want, what most Canadians want is an immigration system that is fair, that treats everybody equally, that does not reward people who seek to jump the queue, that does not reward people who take advantage of Canada's generosity, its kindness, and the types of services that we have here.

I would also like to point out that as a government we are coming through a time when the immigration system under the previous Liberal government was hurt badly by inaction. We had a waiting list that approached one million people.

We have taken action on that front to address that. We are moving people through the system faster. We are making sure that the right kind of people are coming to Canada. We are working with the provinces and with our municipal partners to make sure that the people who come to this country have access to the types of jobs for which we need workers, so that they can benefit from Canadian society the moment they come to Canada. These are the types of things that the people in my riding are asking of their government.

I am also blessed that Oak Ridges—Markham is an extraordinarily diverse riding made up of people from all over the world.

In the last number of years we have had a significant immigration from Sri Lanka. These are people who have come here with very little but in a very short period of time have contributed to our community in so many ways. They are successful business people, teachers, doctors and lawyers.

We have an enormous Chinese community, where 10 or 15 years ago that was not the case in my riding of Oak Ridges—Markham.

We are doing what we need to do as a government to make the immigration system responsible so that Canadians can again have the confidence that the government and the systems that support government, in particular the immigration system, are reflecting their values.

On this bill in particular I would like to reiterate the government's opposition to Bill C-291, which seeks to establish the refugee appeal division. We support strong and effective protection for genuine refugees, but this bill simply does not do that. I believe this bill, if passed, will increase the motivation for those who seek to defraud the system.

Again, I reiterate that we all know of instances of individuals who do not deserve to be in this country and who are still here five, six, seven, ten and even fifteen years later. We all know these people do not deserve to be here, but are taking advantage of Canada's generosity, thereby hurting all those who would seek to come to Canada legally and who do the right things. It hurts all of those who genuinely need Canada's protection.

Individuals whose claims now are rejected have access to judicial review in Federal Court. They may also have access to other means of regularizing their status in Canada, including pre-removal risk assessment and application for permanent residence on humanitarian and compassionate needs.

Canadians expect their refugee system to help protect legitimate refugees. Unfortunately, as experience has shown and as was mentioned earlier, many refugee claimants are found to not be legitimate refugees. Fewer than half of the refugee claimants, just 42%, are found by the IRB to be in need of Canada's protection.

As I mentioned, it can take a very long time to remove failed refugee claimants from Canada. I cannot stress this enough. These are individuals who are taking advantage of Canada's generosity and are thereby making it even more difficult for legitimate refugees to find their way into Canadian society more quickly.

As the Auditor General has noted, the longer failed refugee claimants remain in Canada, the more likely it will be that they will stay here permanently, often illegally. Our current system already has multiple recourses, including an application for leave to the Federal Court for judicial review of a decision. This proposal would add yet another unnecessary level of review to an existing system without providing significant additional safeguards for applicants.

I say “unnecessary” because of the weakness of a paper-based appeal that only considers existing evidence. In fact, under the proposed legislation, the refugee appeal division would provide only a paper review of decisions made by the refugee protection division of the IRB. A paper review would not provide the opportunity for a new in-person hearing. That means there would be no oral appeal.

Let us be clear. What would happen is the appeal division would simply take the information that was presented to it already, information that a decision was already made on. It would review that paperwork and make yet another decision, thereby delaying a decision for another four, five, six or seven months.

The review would also, as I said, be based on exactly the same information. No new evidence would be presented in assessing the individual refugee's case. In addition, the division would not provide failed claimants the chance to introduce new evidence on circumstances that have changed since the initial decision was made on the case. The current pre-removal risk assessment process does this. It provides claimants with a final opportunity before removal to present evidence and have it assessed.

Bill C-291 would not address the pressure related to raising asylum claims. It would also not address the ability of failed claimants, through a series of dilatory appeals, to rely on Canadian taxpayers for health care and social assistance.

Once established, it would result in tens of millions of dollars in additional annual cost to the federal, provincial, territorial and municipal governments. It would cost the federal government and our provincial and territorial partners additional resources, as asylum-seekers would continue to access a range of services, including interim health benefits and social assistance.

Canadians would be right to question whether yet another layer of process and another layer of cost would make the system better. The implementation of an appeal would only be possible in a streamlined and simplified system.

In conclusion, my colleagues opposite are very well aware of the government's opposition to Bill C-291, and our position has not changed.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for your generosity and for waiting until I got over my coughing spell.

It is obvious that I am pleased to rise in this House to again debate Bill C-291. But I feel a bit like I am acting in the film Groundhog Day. This is about the 300th time I have spoken about the same things in this House in connection with the same bill, even though its number was different last year.

This bill, which my colleague has totally reworked with the recommendations of the previous Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, responds to all the minister's requirements. I cannot understand why the government does not want to pass it, after it has been passed by the Senate. That is absolutely incomprehensible.

I am absolutely dumbfounded, so I do not see what more I could say to convince the hon. members.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened in the lobby and in the House to a lot of points that have been brought up for the bill.

It is an interesting bill. Yes, it has been around for a number of years, but really, I think there is a limited amount of good that the bill will actually do for refugees.

Canada has an extremely fair system already. Right now it potentially takes years and years for somebody to go through that process.

As has been pointed out, a very high percentage of refugee claimants in Canada are not legitimate. They arrive in Canada under false pretences and get off the airplane, having flushed their documents down the toilet in the airplane. It is obviously a shame when that happens, because those people do not deserve to come to Canada. As well, they get in the way of those who are using the system legitimately and honestly and who are coming to Canada for all the things Canada has to offer.

Clearly, a country like Canada will be a target for people who want to come here for legitimate reasons. The legal system we have, as it is designed, is probably one of the best immigration systems in the world in terms of the fairness of the process. For those using it, it takes a long time to get through that process. One of the biggest reasons is that people illegitimately abuse Canada's good nature, abuse the good nature of Canadians and abuse the open and very liberal system we have in this country.

The government strongly supports an effective refugee status determination system. There are a number of aspects to that. The immigration appeal board is one of them. The member who proposed the bill has concerns about the people on that board, about how they function and about their qualifications.

Clearly, we want to have people who are qualified on that board, but that does not mean that they necessarily have to have specific experience in the immigration system. It could be helpful, but on that board we really need people who have some common sense, people who have some life experience, people who know how to deal with people, people who have a sense of fairness and fair play, people who care about what is happening to Canada over their lifetime and the lifetime of their children.

They want the people who are ultimately here to become Canadian, to share in the Canadian dream and all that Canada has to offer, and to be the right kind of people. They do not want them to be people who cheat the system, people who jump the queue for whatever reason and by whatever method, but people who will be good Canadians, people who will obey our laws and take part in society and the economy.

We do want an effective refugee status determination system, but we do oppose this legislation because it is not necessary and would add considerable cost and delays. Some of those points have already been addressed by speakers before me, on this side of the House at least.

The cost of implementing a refugee appeals division would be in the tens of millions of dollars in ongoing costs to the federal and provincial governments.

Right now we have people who are abusing the system to the point that they are staying in Canada for years and years, sometimes for three, five, ten years or longer. Once we get them here, we have a hard time getting rid of them, and that again goes against the sense of fairness we should have in Canada for dealing with people who legitimately want to come to this country for all the right reasons, because it holds those people back unfairly.

The whole appeal process would add at least five months to the determination process. From what we know about the way the system works, it would probably add a lot more than that.

I, like other members of Parliament, deal with a lot of constituents who come with problems. About 90% of the situations I deal with are immigration-related.

Am I out of time, Mr. Speaker?

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The hon. member still has six minutes left in his time slot, but the time provided for the consideration of private member's business has now expired. The next time this bill comes before the House, he will have six minutes left.

The order is now dropped to the bottom of the order of precedence on the order paper.

The House resumed from March 12 consideration of the motion that Bill C-291, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (coming into force of sections 110, 111 and 171), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Maurizio Bevilacqua, Liberal, Vaughan, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-291, moved by the hon. member for Jeanne-Le Ber. It is an act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, coming into force of sections 110, 111 and 171.

As I read the statements made by the hon. member, I just want to bring to the attention of the House the type of work that is required to address Canada's refugee system and the challenges it faces. What became very evident during the debate, here in this chamber and outside the chamber, was that there are many challenges faced by the refugee system in this country. I want to quickly read some sections from the speech delivered by the hon. member for Jeanne-Le Ber. He said:

Let us start at the beginning, with the issue of arbitrary decisions. There are quite a few board members at the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB), many of whom are undoubtedly competent. However, the problem is that many of these people are not well-suited to this work.

He went on to say:

There is an obvious problem here: some commissioners do not have what it takes to do the job. We need an appeals division to overturn these decisions. Even if they were all very competent, we would still have a natural justice issue on our hands. Even though we have very competent judges in our other courts, we still have an appeals division. Why do citizens and permanent residents have access to appeals in the regular system, but refugees do not?

The second reason he gave was the lack of consistency in the decisions:

When there is no appeal division, each IRB member can decide one way or the other. As all immigration lawyers will agree, this makes it impossible to tell someone whether they are eligible or not by simply looking at their file.

Lastly, I think we could even save money in our justice system, since the appeal division, as it is defined in the legislation, is an administrative tribunal. But since this administrative tribunal does not yet exist, claimants who have been refused by the board tend to avail themselves of all kinds of procedures before superior courts to try to obtain justice. In the end, this is more expensive for the system, since those proceedings tend to be much more costly.

The view on the other side, of course, is the government response through the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. He has a different view on this issue. He said:

The government opposes this legislation because it is neither necessary in the current system nor is it efficient. It would add considerable delays and costs, both in the start-up and operating costs as well as the prolonged costs for services provided to failed refugees waiting for their fourth level of appeal, which would be this appeal division.

The cost of implementing the refugee appeal division would be in the range of $15 million to $25 million annually in new operating costs, about the same amount in social services costs paid by both the provincial and federal governments for refugees, not to mention start-up costs of approximately $10 million.

He also said he believed there were individuals taking advantage of our compassionate nature in seeking refugee status on dishonest grounds, and on and on.

I thought it was my responsibility, when there are divergent opinions coming from both sides of the House, to promote debate in the House. I listed some of the supporting arguments to implement the refugee appeal division, which means passage of the bill would ensure that the entire design in IRPA would be realized.

Implementation of RAD would increase the efficiency of the system, while still ensuring the humane treatment of those in need of protection. The creation of RAD would allow for greater consistency when reviewing the facts of a decision. RAD would serve as a procedural safeguard to enhance the IRB's credibility and ensure justice is done so that no decision to deny refugee status leads to serious consequences, such as detention, torture or death.

A human decision-making process is subject to potential errors, especially when information is limited, and testimony is usually heard through an interpreter. Judicial review of an IRB decision is more limited in scope than the appeal contemplated in the RAD. The court cannot replace a decision by the IRB with its own judgment and the Federal Court does not specialize in refugee matters whereas advocates for the RAD would have an expertise in refugee determination. That is one side.

The other side says:

--implementing the Refugee Appeal Division (RAD) at this time would provide very limited benefit at a very high cost...the RAD would only provide a review on the record similar to a federal court review, without the calling of additional evidence or the provision of new or additional facts...an appeal to the RAD...would allow only a paper review of a RPD decision, and that no new evidence would be allowed to be presented at a proceeding before the RAD. To add another layer of appeals and process would simply make an already extremely lengthy refugee determination process even longer. Failed refugee claimants can apply for a Federal Court review of their decision. They can also apply for a pre-removal risk assessment and for permanent residence on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, including consideration of possible risk if returned to their home country. As things stand, it can take years to conclude the adjudication of a case. To add additional months and even possibly years to the delays is unfair to refugees and their families who expect a timely resolution and decision with respect to their application for refugee status...Resources would be better directed at seeking ways to improve and streamline the existing refugee determination process as a whole.

I do this research. I meet with people. I talk about the refugee system with those people affected. I speak to the people on the government side. I speak to the hon. member who proposed this private member's bill and I am left with a decision. I think this particular bill requires further study. I want to draw the member's attention to a question that I asked of the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism where I quoted the departmental performance report. Under the Conservatives, the backlog of refugee claims has more than doubled. The number of finalized claims has decreased by 50%. The average processing time has increased to 14 months. The average cost per claim has increased by almost $2,000 to nearly $5,000. My question was: Why has the government failed to provide a timely and efficient refugee system to people who desperately need it?

One may think I am being unnecessarily critical. However, in response to my question in question period, the minister basically came back to me and said:

I am really delighted to hear the interest of the member in hopefully working together to create a more efficient refugee determination system.

I do this with a great deal of sincerity. I see that there are divergent views that exist on this particular issue. When there is a minister who in many ways admits that there are problems in the refugee system and that we need to collectively work together to improve the system, I think it is time to provide this member and members of our immigration committee with further study. There has also been a very critical report by the Auditor General on this particular issue. We need to take the time to study this bill. While we are studying this bill in committee, we should also be looking at all the issues I have raised. Working together to improve Canada's refugee and immigration systems is a commitment that I have made to the House.

I think it would be wise of all members in the House to support the bill so that we can study this particular issue. There are divergent opinions that require time and reflection, so that we may have a more efficient and effective refugee system and protect those individuals who require protection.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in the debate on private member's Bill C-291, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (coming into force of sections 110, 111 and 171).

This is not the first time that I have discussed this type of legislation, and I want to thank the member for Jeanne-Le Ber for reintroducing the bill. This legislation was introduced in the last Parliament by another member and the House passed it in the last Parliament. It then went on to the Senate where, with a few amendments, it was also passed. Unfortunately, it did not have an opportunity before the last election to come back to the House to have those amendments approved, and therefore, the bill died without having completed the full parliamentary process. The fact is we are now debating that bill as amended by the Senate in the last Parliament. We are talking about it yet again.

The bill calls for the implementation of legislation that in fact was passed by Parliament back in 2001. It calls for the implementation of the refugee appeal division, which is a feature of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that was passed here in the House after a lengthy process back in 2001. When the Liberal government of the day implemented that legislation, it refused to implement the provisions dealing with the refugee appeal division. Those sections that are named in the current bill we are discussing today were never implemented. The Conservative government has also refused to implement the provisions regarding the refugee appeal division.

We are now in this bizarre situation where we are debating a bill to implement legislation that has already been passed by the House of Commons and the Senate. The bill has been largely implemented, except for one part. One of the strange features of my time here in Parliament is that we actually would need to debate legislation to implement legislation that we had already fully debated and passed in this place a number of years ago, but that, in fact, is what this is about, because of the government's refusal to abide by the will of Parliament, by the decisions of parliamentarians, on the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act back in 2001. This is disturbing because the refugee appeal division emerged out of the debate and discourse and the committee hearings in 2001 on the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

It emerged as a compromise because the government of the day wanted to reduce Immigration and Refugee Board panels from two members to one member. It was thought that to serve the needs of fairness and justice, a one member panel only represented the interpretation of one person and that increased the likelihood of mistakes, errors and inconsistencies. It was thought that some other appeal process was necessary to balance that reduction in the panel from two members to one member. A compromise was struck. Members of Parliament agreed to the reduction of the panels from two members to one but also insisted that the refugee appeal division, the RAD, be a part of the legislation in order to give people a recourse to appeal a decision made by a panel in a refugee determination case.

That was a very important piece of the process. It showed Parliament perhaps at its best by reviewing legislation, finding the problems, responding to the needs that the government of the day addressed, and finding a compromise and implementing that compromise. Yet after the fact, the government went ahead and reduced the panels from two members to one, but refused to implement the other procedure that would have ensured some fairness and some justice. The government refused to implement the refugee appeal division. That speaks rather badly of the government of the day and its respect for the parliamentary process that we engage in here daily.

If the Conservative government had respect for the kind of process we go through in this place, it would move immediately to implement the refugee appeal division. New Democrats would certainly proceed that way. We have been strong supporters of the implementation of the RAD.

I remember speaking to people at the Canadian Council for Refugees a number of years ago when I was acting as citizenship and immigration critic for the NDP and indulging a fantasy that some day I would be the minister of citizenship and immigration. I gave notice then, and I will do it again, that should I ever become minister of citizenship and immigration, I would expect the folks working in that department and the minister's office to blow the dust off the pile of paper in the corner of the office that is the refugee appeal division file and put it on my desk. One of the first things I would do would be to implement the provisions of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act without delay because it would bring a measure of fairness that is required. It would also respect the parliamentary process.

This is not an extra piece of process; it is an essential piece of the refugee determination process. There are many concerns about that process. I have mentioned already that in Canada when a person goes before the IRB, that person goes before a one member panel, which means that his or her future is in the hands of a single person.

Many of the folks who serve on the IRB do great diligence in that job and are very concerned about the process and the work they do. However, the reality is that one person can make mistakes. One person can have a blind spot. When there were two members on the panel, through the discourse they engaged in at a hearing, those blind spots could be exposed and could see the light of day, but with a one member panel that is not as possible.

When a single person determines the fate of a refugee claimant, a bad decision can mean that the person is removed from Canada ultimately and sent back to a situation where the person faces danger and threats to his or her life. The basis of the whole refugee process is to protect people from that kind of threat. Therefore, a one person panel is a very serious problem with our current refugee determination process.

We have seen over the years that the IRB process can be very inconsistent. Different panel members make different decisions based on the same facts. There is a huge inconsistency in IRB decisions. This is another reason that a separate refugee appeal division is so important to that process. It would strive for more consistency in the process.

Everyone knows that mistakes are made in any decision-making process. That is why appeals in the refugee appeal division are very important. We also know there are often difficulties finding, and being able to afford, appropriate representation. There are difficulties dealing with a legal process that people may not be familiar with because of cultural and language differences and their newness in Canada. There are often difficulties with the hearing process itself. There are times when not every bit of information is examined and due process does not take place in the course of hearings. That is another reason that a separate appeal in the refugee appeal division is very necessary.

There have been calls from international organizations for Canada to implement an appeal. While Canada is known around the world for having a positive refugee policy, it is also known that the lack of an appeal is one of the significant shortcomings in the refugee process in Canada. We have been criticized by a number of international organizations for the lack of an appeal on the merits of a case.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights commented:

Given that even the best decision-makers may err in passing judgment, and given the potential risk to life which may result from such an error, an appeal on the merits of a negative determination constitutes a necessary element of international protection.

That was its reflection on the lack of an appeal before a refugee appeal division in Canada.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees wrote to the Canadian government to express concern about the non-implementation of the RAD. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees considers an appeal procedure to be a fundamental, necessary part of any refugee status determination process.

This is not frivolous. It is not an expensive proposition. The previous government and the current government have indicated the expenses related to it. It is a necessary provision. I hope that I never have to stand in this House again to call upon the government to implement legislation that was in fact passed here in 2001 and is already part of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. We need the refugee appeal division and we need it to be implemented now.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, today I would like to talk about Bill C-291, which seeks to implement an appeal division for refugee claims, introduced by my Bloc Québécois colleague, the member for Jeanne-Le Ber.

It goes without saying that I wholeheartedly support this Bloc Québécois bill. It is a fairly simple bill, but it is important because it would implement the refugee appeal division. Once Bill C-291 has been passed and has received royal assent, three sections of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, sections 110, 111 and 171, will come into force. These three sections would come into force one year after this bill receives royal assent.

The Bloc Québécois has decided to introduce a bill to ensure full enforcement of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

A proper appeal process for refugee claimants ought to have been put in place as soon as the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act 2002 took effect in 2002. This is one of the significant changes required to ensure that asylum seekers are treated fairly and equitably.

The creation of the refugee appeal division is a matter of justice. To persist in not making this change, as the two most recent governments have done, is to allow a situation that is unfair to asylum seekers to continue.

When the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act was drafted, the refugee appeal division was seen as a fair compromise to satisfy the desire to move from two board members responsible for examining asylum claims to just one. Yet now we have the worst of both worlds. There is only one board member, not two, to examine the files, and there is no refugee appeal division.

The arbitrary aspect of the system is being magnified by the government's inaction and the piecemeal approach to implementing the new legislation. For four years now, the federal government has been stubbornly postponing the establishment of the refugee appeal division, as called for in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. It is time for the Conservative government to comply with the legislation and implement the refugee appeal division.

The federal government claims that a safety net already exists, consisting of the opportunity to request a pre-removal risk assessment—also known as a PRRA—a judicial review by the Federal Court, or permanent resident status on humanitarian grounds. However, unlike a refugee appeal division, they do not offer any protection for refugees. The Federal Court provides only for a judicial review and does not provide for a review of the facts of a case.

There is also a flagrant lack of political will to establish the refugee appeal division, or RAD, which, I would remind the House, is already enshrined in the legislation. After their own legislation came into effect, the Liberals avoided establishing the RAD. Now that the Conservatives are in power, the former immigration minister still has not established the RAD, despite the positions his party took in the past.

In 2004, the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration adopted a motion calling on the then Liberal government to establish the refugee appeal division or rapidly come up with a solution. Yet the government has consistently refused to comply with the committee's motion.

The Bloc Québécois tabled an almost identical bill in the 39th Parliament. Our bill was passed by the House on October 16, 2007 and sent to the Senate to be studied. The bill passed third reading stage in the other chamber. However, because of the elections in the fall of 2008, our bill did not receive royal assent and died on the order paper.

Many groups in civil society in Quebec, Canada and the international community are demanding that a refugee appeal division be established. These include the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Committee against Torture, the Canadian Council for Refugees, the Canadian Bar Association, Amnesty international, the Civil Liberties Union, and the KAIROS group.

There are four reasons why the refugee appeal division should be established: efficiency, consistency of the law, justice, and political reasons that I will explain.

A specialized refugee appeal division is a much more efficient means of dealing with unsuccessful claimants than the Federal Court, an application for pre-removal risk assessment or requests on humanitarian grounds. The refugee appeals division can do a better job of correcting errors of law or fact.

The second reason is consistency of the law. An appeal division deciding on the merits of the case is the only body able to ensure consistency of jurisprudence both in the analysis of facts and in the interpretations of legal concepts in the largest administrative tribunal in Canada.

In other words, an appeal mechanism helps the system to make decisions by establishing precedents that will be applied to lower court rulings when the facts are exactly the same.

The third reason has to do with justice. The decision to refuse refugee status has extremely serious consequences, including death, torture and detention. As in matters of criminal law, the right to appeal to a higher court is essential for the proper administration of justice. Because human error occurs in any decision-making process, it should be standard practice to have an appeal process, especially to offset the fact that decisions are now made by a single board member.

As I said earlier, the fourth reason is political. By not establishing the refugee appeal division, the federal government is going against the will of Parliament—which is a serious matter—and of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, which has called for such an appeal division. As I said, this is a serious matter.

The Bloc Québécois is dismayed by the lack of justice shown by the Department of Citizenship and Immigration when dealing with refugees since the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act came into force in 2001.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to place this bill in context.

In 2001, during the first session of the 37th Parliament, the Minister of Immigration introduced Bill C-11 in this House, concerning persons who are displaced, persecuted or in danger who apply to enter Canada and receive refugee protection.

Bill C-11 was designed to update the former Immigration Act, which had been passed in 1976 and amended more than 30 times.

Unlike Bill C-11, which was passed in 2002, the Immigration Act, 1976, did not provide for a refugee appeal division. To make up for the fact that there was no refugee appeal division, two board members examined refugee claims.

Claims were granted if one of the two board members ruled in favour of the claimant. However, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act cut the number of board members from two to one.

The refugee appeal division makes up for the absence of one board member and offsets the arbitrary power the remaining board member has in ruling on refugee claims. The Bloc Québécois considered this an acceptable compromise under the new act.

Why was the number of board members reduced from two to one? It would seem it was for the sake of efficiency.

On March 20, 2001, the former chair of the IRB, the Immigration and Refugee Board, Peter Showler, told the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration that:

In contrast to the present model, where claims are normally heard by two-member panels, the vast majority of protection decisions will be made by a single member. Single-member panels are a far more efficient means of determining claims. It is true that claimants will no longer enjoy the benefit of the doubt currently accorded them with two-member panels, and I think that should be noted. However, any perceived disadvantage is more than offset by the creation of the refugee appeal division, the RAD, where all refused claimants and the minister have a right of appeal on RPD decisions.

According to the former chair of the IRB, the presence of the refugee appeal division justified moving from two members to one for asylum claims. However, we still do not have an appeal division.

The act contains three sections to create an IRB-administered refugee appeal division. Citizenship and Immigration Canada briefly defines the refugee appeal division as follows:

The refugee appeal division will provide failed refugee claimants and the minister with the right to a paper appeal of a decision from the Immigration and Refugee Board. Unsuccessful refugee claimants have the right to apply for judicial review in the Federal Court.

More specifically, the three sections that create the refugee appeal division are as follows:

110. (1) A person or the Minister may appeal, in accordance with the rules of the Board, on a question of law, of fact or of mixed law and fact, to the Refugee Appeal Division against a decision of the Refugee Protection Division to allow or reject the person’s claim for refugee protection, or a decision of the Refugee Protection Division rejecting an application by the Minister for a determination that refugee protection has ceased or an application by the Minister to vacate a decision to allow a claim for refugee protection.

Mr. Speaker, I hope that these arguments have persuaded members of other parties, particularly the governing party, to vote in favour of Bill C-291.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary for Multiculturalism]

Mr. Speaker, once again, I would like to state the government's opposition to Bill C-291, the bill that seeks to establish the refugee appeal division.

Hon. members of the House know very well that this government is a strong advocate and supporter of the humanitarian division of our immigration program. Every year we welcome almost a quarter of a million new permanent residents who embrace our values of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law. As an immigrant myself, I was one of them. Among these newcomers are thousands of refugees attracted by our values and the chance to start a new life.

Since the government came to office in 2006, we have accepted more than 51,000 refugees from around the world. In fact, Canada is one of the top three countries in the western world in terms of the numbers of refugees we accept for resettlement. The welcome we extend has given us an international reputation as a champion of human dignity. For example, we have made major commitments for the protection of Karen and Bhutanese refugees in Asia. We have also offered protection to refugees from Africa and Latin America.

We have a very generous asylum program as well. Asylum seekers from all over the world have found a durable solution to their refugee plight in Canada. Canada's asylum system has one of the highest acceptance rates among western countries, accepting 42% of claimants last year. No less than the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has called us a model for other nations.

Those are facts in which we can take great pride. I think we can all agree that Canada's refugee system is acknowledged as one of the strongest and fairest in the world today.

However, as everyone in this House knows, we also face significant challenges. It has long been the view of this government that the implementation of a refugee appeal division is not the way to address these challenges.

I would like to talk about the large and growing number of unfounded claims that are putting an incredible strain on our system. These unfounded claims are using up resources that should be used to help people with legitimate refugee claims. As a result, the wait times are getting longer. The most straightforward, successful refugee applications can take an average of two and a half years to reach permanent residency because of a backlog that has continued to grow, despite the current 90% occupancy of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada.

As the Prime Minister and others in this government have said many times before, Canadians expect our refugee system to help and protect legitimate refugees. The refugee appeal division proposed in Bill C-291 would not help us meet these objectives. It would provide only a paper-based review on issues of fact and law. It would not provide an opportunity to introduce evidence, nor would it provide for an in-person hearing. It would, however, add unnecessary delays and costs to an overburdened system. It is not just the cost of the appeal division which, as my colleagues previously have pointed out, would be in the tens of millions of dollars, but there would also be other costs to the provinces and the federal government for health care and social assistance. This is why it is surprising that the Bloc would be pushing the bill at a time of economic uncertainty that would increase the costs of services to the province of Quebec.

Moving to another point, I want to acknowledge the steps this government has taken to assure the quality of decisions at the Immigration and Refugee Board.

Based on the recommendations of the Public Appointments Commission Secretariat, we implemented a new process for the appointment of members of the IRB in July 2007. This new process strengthens the merit-based focus of governor in council appointments to the board and increases transparency and fairness at the same time. This was an important step forward that was endorsed by the Auditor General when she released her latest report this spring.

It is essential that refugee claimants and Canadians have the utmost confidence in the decisions of the Immigration and Refugee Board. This selection process helps to ensure that confidence. Since this government took office, there have been 111 appointments and 59 re-appointments to the Immigration and Refugee Board. The board now stands at 90% of its full complement. As a result, more genuine refugee claims can be process and finalized, while more frivolous asylum applications are dismissed more quickly.

However, even with a full complement, the rate of applications has increased beyond the capacity of the board, increasing the backlog. This is why the refugee system needs to be reformed instead of creating another useless appeal process that will only make the problem worse.

We have repeatedly urged the opposition to consider the comments already made by the government during this debate. We have a system where even the most straightforward successful refugee claims are currently taking too long to reach a decision. Unsuccessful refugee claimants regularly take over five years before they finish the various levels of appeals available to them. This is five years of federally funded health care and provincially funded social programs, on top of court costs and IRB costs.

Our goal should be to focus more of our time and resources on the people who genuinely need our help and protection, and deal more quickly with those who are trying to take advantage of our generosity.

While Canadians are proud of our support for refugees, less than one in four think we do a good job of removing people who not legitimate refugees. Not only do they read stories about how long people are here before we can deport them, they also notice increases in the number of asylum seekers from countries they do not consider unsafe. Hon. members know, for example, that there has been a sharp increase in the number of asylum seekers from Mexico and only 11% of those claims are accepted.

These failed refugee claimants now have assets to seek leave for judicial review of the IRB decision. After that, they may apply for pre-removal assessment and, if they are still unsuccessful, they may apply for permanent residence status via a humanitarian and compassionate application. This process will take years and all the while these failed refugee claimants have access to social benefits paid for by taxpayers.

Canada will continue to show strong leadership in providing protection to those in need. We will continue to work closely with the United Nations and our partners to do this. However, to do this we require some changes to ensure that people who are not legitimate refugees cannot take advantage of the system through a multi-year system of appeals that will only be increased by this bill.

We support strong and effective protection for genuine refugees but the implementation of the refugee appeal division, as described in Bill C-291, is not the answer. Again, I urge all hon. members not to support Bill C-291.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I must admit I am somewhat disappointed and saddened, because in the speech just given by the member from the Conservative Party on Bill C-291 some of the language was offensive to me. She talked about refugees having useless appeals and about the additional health and social services costs, as well as court and IRB costs.

What I did not hear and what I think is the reason people want this bill to go to committee is that the system does something very important to Canadians: it is our duty and our social responsibility. The member is familiar with the system and she gave some statistics. However, when we consider that the Parliament of Canada passed an act, we have been through this before. We understood what the role of the amendment to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act would be and the issue of the implementation of the refugee appeal division. The bill is very straightforward. It is just three paragraphs long, and it asks for enforcement on a bill that has already been passed by Parliament.

It puzzles me from the standpoint that it reminds me of an attitudinal issue about how people address newcomers to Canada. Obviously we have two forms: one is the application from abroad for immigration; and the other is the refugee system.

Legitimate refugees are determined in a number of ways. Primarily the UN designates which countries have legitimate refugees, but the member will also know that at one point in time almost half of the people applying for refugee status in Canada came here from across the Canada-U.S. border. They landed in the U.S., found out that they could not get the court assistance, could not get welfare, could not get social services or health care, so they came to Canada. The arrangement took a very long time to negotiate with the United States, that when a legitimate refugee lands in safe haven, it is that place of first safe haven that is the jurisdiction in which it has to be dealt with.

Those are the kinds of things that we have to be vigilant to fix. The member seems to be preoccupied by costs. The member seems to be preoccupied that we do not need more refugees. We have a responsibility. That value is what we have to deal with.

I want to reassert that I have been a member of Parliament for almost 16 years now. We have had many, many cases through our office. It is a very busy office near the Pearson airport. The Peel members deal with a very large number of refugees. As to the idea that somehow it already takes five years to go through all the various levels of appeals and this is going to make it worse, if a situation is taking five years, let us understand why. Maybe when the member's office gets more involved in these over a period of time she will understand that there are many cases where it is not the refugees themselves who are the reason for the delay.

Before I became a member of Parliament, I had a practice as a chartered accountant and did work for multicultural assistance services in Peel and also for the Peel Multicultural Council, which assisted refugees coming to Canada. People would get off airplanes in the middle of winter wearing sandals, shorts and a T-shirt, and that is all they had to their name. It has been a long time since I looked at the statistics, but there are millions and millions of human beings around the world who have no country, who have no future, who have no life. They are just like every other Canadian in that they are looking for better lives for themselves. A better life for them is where they can have the dignity of a roof over their head, proper nutrition, and an opportunity to be as good as they can be.

It bothers me, it concerns me, and it troubles me, because I remember hearing many times from members—and I am not going to be too partisan on this—the question, why are we letting all those criminals into the country? That was applied to all immigrants and it was applied specifically, for those who perhaps knew the system, to refugees. Somehow they said that immigrants and refugees were all the problem, because those happened to be the ones who were in the newspapers.

When I was a member of the finance committee, StatsCan reported to us the statistics related to new Canadians. Immigrants are actually better educated than born Canadians, because they cannot get into Canada otherwise. They are healthier than born Canadians. They are least likely to fun afoul of the laws, because to get into this country is very difficult.

Unfortunately, we tend to have arguments coming forward to us where the refugee issue is mixed in with the immigration issue. It is different. I know many Canadians do not understand it, but on the refugee side, it is not a great number, but the system is difficult because we have people who got bad information from people who got them into Canada, where they had destroyed their papers, if they had any, or they came from places where there were no papers and it was going to take a long time for them to get papers and they had to go through all the various checks.

We are dealing with people who come from countries that do not have the same government administration that Canada does. There is no support or very little support for the people, especially when they are trying to find a better life.

Therefore, I am pretty sure Bill C-291 will pass, because I think the opposition members are not going to take the rhetoric of the department that says it is going to cost a little more and is going to delay the process a little more. These are frivolous reasons in the context of the whole reason that Canada accepts refugees. It is a relatively small number compared to the number of people we bring in as immigrants.

The bill should pass. It should go to committee. We should look at this. During private members' business at second reading there are only two hours of debate. I think only about 12 people will get a chance to speak, and we do not get a chance for questions and comments other than with the mover of the bill. That is a problem.

I think the refugee issue is important to everyone in the House. The member may have raised some issues: is it a fact that it is taking too long; is it a needless or useless appeal? It has nothing to do with determining who is a legitimate refugee. We know who the legitimate refugees are. The question is whether they meet the criteria of being able to be here, because many refugees ultimately get turned away and sent back and it is a very serious proposition for that to happen.

We will take the allegations of the Conservative Party that it is going to cost money and the various problems that the member articulated, that we have to pay for their health care, and so on. These people have nothing. If we gave them nothing, as they do in the U.S., the only thing they could do possibly would be to rely on illegal activity to try to survive.

That is a problem. We do not want that. That is why we support refugees while they are here going through a legal process. We want to look at it more carefully. We want to make sure we dispel some of the myths that the member has raised.