I am happy to be able to appear before your committee. Allow me first to talk to you briefly about the group of volunteers that I have the honour of representing.
For more than 16 years, the Refugee Outreach Committee of St. Joseph's Parish on Laurier Avenue in Ottawa has befriended the newly arrived refugees in Canada's capital area. The usual role of the committee is to carry out simple acts of everyday kindness. For refugees in need, we help find living quarters, furniture, warm clothes, and jobs.
In 2005, for our first time ever, we took the extraordinary step of providing sanctuary for a most worthy case. We felt duty-bound in conscience to help a refugee claimant who was ordered deported without a complete, fair, and just hearing.
After spending a year in a sanctuary with our help, Maoua Diomande was authorized to remain in Canada. We are grateful to the Minister, who, once all the facts had been uncovered, decided to issue the permit on compassionate grounds.
However, and this is an important point for you to consider, a church congregation should not be put in a position in which its only recourse is to provide sanctuary for refugee claimants. Churches have been put in the invidious position of offering sanctuary only because the refugee determination system is not working properly. Clearly, when a valid refugee claimant has to turn to a church for help, there is a problem with the system.
Of course, everyone here wants a fair and equitable system that is more effective. Based on our experience, the absence of an appeal process poses a serious problem. Our refugee status claimant lived in fear of being removed from Canada without having had the opportunity to appeal. Although we brought her case to the attention of the public, we had no other choice than to let her take sanctuary in our place of worship. Countless other refugee status claimants—hundreds and maybe even thousands—have been turned down by Canada because they did not have the opportunity to fully present their case.
I will give you our recommendations.
Our first recommendation to you, members of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, is to again ask the government to implement the refugee appeal division, as called for in an act of Parliament legislated in 2002. We ask that you call for this implementation as a matter of fairness and justice. We ask on behalf of refugee claimants whose cases, owing to the lack of an appeal process, have not been properly heard or have been ignored.
We recommend that your committee demand that the government rapidly set about reorganizing and staffing the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. Pressing changes should be made immediately.
The recent IRB report to your committee stated the insufficient number of members at hearings. The report also noted that the recruitment of competent members was progressing slowly. We encourage your committee to demand that the IRB immediately set about eliminating the chaos created by the congestion in its activities. It is clear that the number of members must be increased in order to solve the immigration backlog. In addition, the process of selecting and appointing members must be depoliticized to ensure greater fairness and justice.
Further to the IRB reorganization, we recommend that your committee urge the government to question the fairness of a system that allows the plight of a refugee claimant to be decided by a single member.
From our experience, we note that the person or member ruled against the three refugee claimants represented by the church groups here. Following their rejection and with no access to appeal, the three claimants sought sanctuary.
We recommend that your committee ask the government to provide the IRB and Citizenship and Immigration Canada with instructions concerning the language rights of refugee status claimants. At Board hearings, claimants should have the right to be heard in either of Canada's two official languages. However, we have noticed that the fundamental language rights of refugee status claimants were not always respected. Your committee should insist that the IRB apply the refugee status claim process in accordance with the spirit and the letter of the Official Languages Act. In addition, based on our experience, the quality of the translation of all the languages used at hearings needs improvement.
We recommend that your committee urge the government to take steps to make sure that the IRB and the CIC are accountable to the public they serve. This has not been the case. For instance, for the entire year we cared for a refugee claimant in sanctuary, the bureaucracy avoided talking to us. In the meantime, the government states, on the CIC website and elsewhere, that the current system is fair and generous. Our experience indicates otherwise.
Thank you for listening to me and giving me the opportunity to speak to you about these issues.