Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 1st, 2007

[Ed Wiebe]

One of the issues with the government sponsorship is that there is a quota. They need to fill the 7,300. Visa posts need to deliver that number. If there are high numbers at posts or not enough resources, the private sponsorships wait behind, because they have to attend to the government-attested numbers first.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

We have to try to get four more people in here.

Mr. Siksay, please.

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

Thank you, Chair.

There's another class, the source country class. I wonder if you, as sponsorship agreement holders, have any particular experience with that class and how it functions in the refugee system that you could share with us.

[Martin Mark Ill]

Thank you for the question.

Actually, in IRPA there is this excellent category called the source country class, which means that Canada recognizes that in some countries, the refugees, even within their own country, qualify as refugees as internally displaced persons. Unfortunately, I have to tell you that the source country clause doesn't work.

Immigration Canada didn't change the list of the source countries. At my last visit in west Africa in October, I realized that, for instance, in Sierra Leone, which is a source country on the list, the average acceptance rate is 0% right now. That shows basically the Canadian average.

It's not only the sponsorship agreement holders. The “group of five” and the community sponsors also submit a big number of sponsorships. They read this public document that shows that Sierra Leone is on the source country list.

They are allowed to sponsor a refugee who is in a refugee-like situation within his own country—that is, Sierra Leone, the Sudan, Congo, Zaire, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Colombia. Unfortunately, while they haven't changed the schedule since 2002, in the last five years this category doesn't work. Why? It is important, number one, because these are the only countries where Parliament did allow the refugees still to access directly the Canadian visa post for protection. In other countries, since IRPA, the refugee is not allowed to ask for international protection and resettlement, only in these countries. In these countries, though, it doesn't work. That means the system doesn't work and it needs to change.

Finally, on the IDPs, the internally displaced persons, lately UNHCR, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, announced in October that they want to take it within their mandate. It's a similar mentality that not only international refugees should be protected but also IDPs. I think it would be excellent if Canada could follow that. Never mind where that country is. If a person is in a refugee-like situation within his or her own country, they should qualify for resettlement.

[Heather Macdonald]

May I just jump in quickly? We had two cases in the last year in a source country. Because of the death threats they were facing, it was an imminent risk and we tried to sponsor them to Canada. We were told by the post that it couldn't move fast enough so they had better leave, and that they could not exit from a source country. They were told to go to a neighbouring country and wait it out.

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

So there was no mechanism at that post to deal with the urgency of their circumstance.

[Heather Macdonald]

On paper, yes, but in reality, no.

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

Can you tell us which country that was?

[Heather Macdonald]

Colombia.

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

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Okay, thank you.

We have a couple more questioners: Mr. Sweet and Mr. Alghabra.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

This is the first opportunity I've had to be here on this committee. Thank you all for your good work. You know from the times we've met before that I really appreciate the work you do for Canada, as well as the global investment you make.

I just want to clarify a couple of things for the record. To be very firm, do you think that since the assisted relative category is long gone, the pendulum has really almost swung and that there's a prejudice toward the reuniting of families?

[Carolyn Vanderlip]

There is a perception that private sponsors are putting forward cases that are family members but not refugees. Therefore, those applications are looked at with suspicion, when in fact people can be refugees and be family members. UNHCR recognizes this, and it's absolutely natural that for private sponsors who have taken the visa-office-referred cases, for example, there is the echo effect that I mentioned.

I was speaking to a small private sponsor just recently. It was a small volunteer organization. Last year, they received 25 applications that they were looking at sponsoring. They accepted and processed two; they screened out 23. So it's not that sponsors are not screening out cases. It would have been much easier for them to just put through all 25 cases and not do the work of screening and having to be the bad news people telling the family members no, but sponsors are being very diligent.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Mr. Mark, you mentioned something I wasn't aware of. Just educate me. Are you saying the private sponsorships that happen do not contribute to our United Nations obligation?

[Martin Mark Ill]

No. What I'm saying is that Canada, as part of the international community, is obligated to make refugee status determinations in Canada. What we are doing now is an additional humanitarian commitment, because once you go outside your country and still give protection, that is something that is not obligated by international treaty. It's an extra.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

All right.

And you were talking about the review of cases. You feel that when you've asked for a case review, there has in fact been no legitimate case review whatsoever. Is this in most of the visa offices, or are there particular ones?

[Martin Mark Ill]

Actually, as a member of the NGO-government committee on refugee sponsorship, I have quite a good overview of several sponsors who submitted their applications to Ottawa, to the case review of CIC. They send the files from the visa post, and finally the case management here does the case review. Unfortunately, more than 99% of files are negative, which means they don't even go into detail to assess the cases. They don't even teach us by saying what the reason is for rejection. There is generally no positive outcome at all. It's really unfortunate that this is the only remedy or way we have, but it doesn't work.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you.

Mr. Alghabra.

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank you all for coming here this afternoon. This program is very important, and I want to commend you for all of your excellent work.

I'm trying to put my finger on the fundamental problem here. Is there an administrative problem? Is it political will, regardless of parties and colour? I'm not talking about who is in government.

We're talking about 15,000 cases of backlog. I'm trying to figure out first if there is an administrative problem. We have a broader quota for how many immigrants come into this country. Within that quota we have a quota for refugees, and within that quota for refugees we have a quota for private sponsorship. It appears that the number of private sponsorship applications tend to be, understandably, greater than the assigned quota. Every year we have a backlog, so of course the backlog continues to grow.

Is the issue here one of the actual quota itself? Should it be greater? Or is the issue one of application processing that is not going at the right pace that it should be going at?

[Ed Wiebe]

It's processing the applications that are volunteered by the private sector, which doesn't actually have a quota. It's always termed “targets”. It's a range.

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

I agree. That's a better term.

[Ed Wiebe]

CIC would say they match their resources to the targets that are out there. For government-assisted, as I said before, there is an actual quota that each mission has to meet. They have to get so many government-sponsored out of their region to Canada within that year. But private sponsorship has targets attached. We generally do between this and that. As was stated before, in terms of actual visas issued in the last number of years—and they can probably correct me—we often only meet the bottom end in terms of actual visas issued.

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

So the issue is not with the targets, then, although it would be nice if the targets were bigger. The main issue is the resources dedicated to processing.

[Ed Wiebe]

The resources have fallen behind. They have diminished to the extent that they have fallen behind, and that's created backlogs. Part of it is not just numbers of visa officers but the number of posts that do it.

Nairobi, for instance, has to attend to 16 or 17 countries, so the cases that come to the visa officers are so different and they have to make field visits to so many different places that it's a real burden.