Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 1st, 2007

[Heather Macdonald]

No, I haven't been there personally.

[Jim Karygiannis]

New Delhi.

No.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

We're going to try to keep it as informal as possible, so just feel free if you have comments to make on anything you hear one of our committee members bring up.

[Martin Mark Ill]

Thank you.

Very briefly, to address this issue about the visa post approach, without evaluating data, Iraqi refugees are going mostly to countries covered by the Canadian visa post in Damascus, and the other visa post is in Ankara. The acceptance rate in Ankara is around 70%, while in Damascus it's around 30%. That shows that if we get Iraqi refugees in big numbers from Damascus, the impression is that the assessment is not fair.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

What would you like to see done in Damascus to achieve a fair assessment?

[Martin Mark Ill]

I believe that if we had open communication with CIC to make sure we assess the cases in the same way—or the case management, case review—we'd be ready to take into consideration the submitted information and go through cases, at least on par. We could have a fair procedure at every visa post, regardless of the attitude of the visa officer.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Mr. Mark, what I'm getting is that it's piecemeal between posts. One post assesses one way and another assesses another way. There is no overall structure or guidance from the minister's office in how to deal with refugees and how to deal with you. Am I correct in that?

[Martin Mark Ill]

That's right. I think the status determination of the refugees and those who need an assessment for resettlement has a lot of subjective elements. So it's definitely very difficult to assess in the same way in different visa posts.

In big numbers, however, we must say that there is definitely a significant difference, and the Damascus and Ankara examples show what I mean. I'm not claiming that everybody who is in the process should be approved. What I'm saying is in fair procedure, transparency and accountability have to be issues we address, and then we will be satisfied even with refusals. That's not the problem.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Should the minister's office, through the particular ADM who is looking at this, set out goals and guidelines and give procedures that all the visa posts should follow? Should they consult with groups such as yours, because there are other groups out there—be it other private churches or stakeholders—that have been doing this for a number of years?

In view of the inconsistency you are talking about, should there be a guideline that all visa posts should be following? There's a book that says this is the person who qualifies to emigrate to Canada and there's a guideline on how to go about doing this. What I'm hearing from you and what I've witnessed—and I'm sure members of this committee certainly will vouch for this—is that every post deals differently.

Should there be a guideline where it says that this is what you've got to do—with no ifs, ands, or buts—and this is how you must deal with groups that are interested in this?

[Martin Mark Ill]

I think that would be an excellent approach. The last NGO-government committee even started to talk about how the NGOs could share information about country of origin and its human rights and refugee situations with CIC and then we would be on the same page.

I definitely believe that more communication should open up, and if guidelines and accountability and transparency issues were put in place, it would definitely help.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

You talked about a meeting. Was that a meeting with government officials?

[Martin Mark Ill]

Yes, we are on the NGO-government committee on refugee sponsorship.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

When was that meeting, sir?

[Martin Mark Ill]

The last conference call was a week ago.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

And a year, two years or three years ago, was there any movement toward more communication, and has it changed now with communication building up and things getting better?

[Carolyn Vanderlip]

I think as far as the committee goes, it's been in existence about 13 years, or something like that, so it's a longstanding thing. Communication over the years has been good. The committee together has achieved a lot of good things.

I think recently we have been working on developing a stronger relationship, and there has been, as I mentioned in my presentation, more information coming from CIC to sponsors about what the country conditions are and what CIC's view is of certain refugee populations, which helps us when we're trying to determine eligibility.

What Martin is saying is that we should also be feeding—

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

One quick question: has your communication with the department over the years been better, or has it hit a stumbling block somewhere along the line in the last year or two or three years?

[Carolyn Vanderlip]

Well, I've only been on the committee for three years. We probably hit stumbling blocks from time to time. Overall, I'd say our communication is not bad, but I would certainly like to see it better. We do work a lot on operational issues day to day, but I would certainly like to see us working on some of these higher levels we talked to you about today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you. That was eight minutes, but that's fine.

Who do we have next?

Madame Faille.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Welcome to our committee. Many of you have been here before.

I have been a member of this committee since 2004. I've had an opportunity to discuss the refugee problem with several of you. I have with me some departmental figures from July 28 last. It appears that world wide, there is a backlog of approximately 14,500 cases, with many of the applicants from Africa. Out of a total of 8,454 cases, nearly half are from Nairobi and the other half from Damascus. Asia is the second most important region in terms of the number of sponsorship applications received, specifically the Islamabad office, as my colleague mentioned.

Ms. Vanderlip, you mentioned earlier that you had met with departmental representatives who expressed views on certain regions. Would you care to share with the committee the directives issued or the concerns of the department with respect to Africa and Asia?

[Carolyn Vanderlip]

I'm sorry, but I need you to clarify that question because I don't remember speaking about directives for specific regions.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Okay. You mentioned that the department has explained their views to you and that it's helping you to apply for sponsorships. So what are their views of Africa and Asia?

[Carolyn Vanderlip]

Oh, okay.

My colleagues might have to help my memory a little bit. Let's see. We had a communication about the southern Sudanese about a year ago from the department, basically telling us that in the future they didn't see a need for resettlement because of the repatriation that would be going on in that region, and also because of the backlog. So if we were to submit a case, even a year ago, when they sent that directive to us, it wouldn't be seen for quite some time, and probably by the time the department looked at the application, the repatriation would be well under way. And even had the case been eligible when submitted, it would not be eligible by the time they got to it. That, of course, is one of our concerns; because of the long processing times, country conditions change and applications that were eligible at the time they were submitted are no longer eligible three, four, or five years later when circumstances have changed.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Therefore, in view of the delays, there is a greater likelihood that because of ongoing repatriation programs, applications for resettlement will be refused or groups will simply abandon their efforts. That is the main reason, is it not?