Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 1st, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Okay. Thank you, sir.

We'll now go to our five-minute round.

Mr. Telegdi, please.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Thank you very much, all of you.

Mr. Wiebe, when you mentioned the boat people, I thought of Dr. Frank Epp, who was a journalist and author, and I believe he was secretary of the Mennonite Central Committee Canada at the time, if my recollection is correct, and he made the motion to start sponsoring refugees. All of you do wonderful work.

I was thinking about what you said, that we're good at resettling whole groups but not quite as good at resettling small numbers from here and there. I all of a sudden thought of what happened with the Hungarian refugees. It's the 50th anniversary of my coming to this country. It was an excellent project, and Canada did well by it.

I think of Rahim, from the Ugandan refugees. That was one of those mass movements, if you will, that was very well-handled with minimal damage.

I think of what happened to the boat people. They had a much tougher time, and it took a much longer time. I know that during the Kosovo wars, we just bent over backwards, we went over, we were very proactive. We could hardly work fast enough to get them over to this country. There was really a political will.

Committee members should think about—I spent three months in a refugee camp, actually three refugee camps, and they were a lot better than the conditions I have seen in a lot of the refugee camps now, some horrific conditions. What we have to get our heads around is the longer people spend in refugee camps, the more psychological damage they will suffer. Many of the camps are very unsafe. Security, nutrition, boredom, crime—it's a very unnatural setting.

If we're going to take refugees, which we should, then we should think about, even from our selfish perspective, that we want to get them here as quickly as possible. If it's a question of family reunification, if we get somebody over here to Canada and they're employed and everything else but they have a very close relative overseas, it's really debilitating to them. I'm sure many of us have had people come into our office virtually crying, trying to get their mother or their daughter into this country. I always found it incredibly heartbreaking listening to these stories and, quite frankly, feeling their pain.

You mentioned Yes Minister. I have been on this committee for eight years and we have had seven ministers. This year we've had two ministers in less than a year. In Yes Minister, the characters change, but the storyline is much the same.

I think we have to embrace particularly what you are offering, because it hardly costs the government any money and it involves a huge voluntary sector in the settlement. If you want to spread out people across the country, it's a great way of doing it. Do it with families.

I wonder if you could comment on maybe the last number of years, things being...because I hear the same story every time we get into this situation, and I keep hearing it over again. I wonder if it would be helpful if you as an association could, and not individually but as an association, make rankings of the various visa posts. I know it's difficult coming in here and saying this one is good, that one is bad--a course evaluation, if you will. For those posts that have good experiences, and you mentioned Kenya as being one of them—maybe practices there should be passed on to some of the other posts.

I wonder if you have a comment on that, if you could possibly do that, and communicate with the committee, because I think the committee will have to set some—

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

The witness will hardly have much time, Mr. Telegdi. We're over four minutes; however, go ahead.

We're flexible and we want you to have time to answer.

Are you finished, Mr. Telegdi?

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

That was it. That's my question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Okay.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

I wondered if they would rank the post, as an association, and make notes that the committee members can refer to.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Anyone at all?

[Heather Macdonald]

That's the question?

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

That was kind of a general preamble, Mr. Telegdi. They're trying to figure out specifically what the question is.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

The question is, do you, together—so you don't identify Mennonites or United Church members or Catholics, or whatever else—have some kind of association where you actually rank the post, share experiences, and make that available, like a course evaluation, as to what the problems are and how it can be improved and which are the examples that you want others to emulate?

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Okay.

[Heather Macdonald]

I think we could consider doing that, but I would say again that visa posts, visa officers, like refugees, are human beings. There are personal idiosyncrasies. Some of it has to do with the rotation of staff. Some of the staff are wonderful, and the post seems wonderful while they're there. And maybe to pull back even from that, I think it's perception. Somehow, for people in the department, they do not understand how or why we work. They don't understand the voluntary nature of the program. If they could somehow see us as allies, that we can work with them, rather than people who are always doing the wrong things and the convenient scapegoat, I think that would go a long way.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Right. Thank you.

Madame Faille.

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

Do you have anything further to add?

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Just one moment. We're making a mistake here. I'm sorry about that. I thought we were still on the seven-minute round.

I'm supposed to go to you, Mr. Jaffer.

[Rahim Jaffer, Conservative, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I know I'm not as good looking as Madame Faille, so I can see why you overlooked me, but thank you anyway.

I want to start out by saying that I've been a member of Parliament now almost 10 years. It's hard to imagine, the time has gone so quickly. I think I have the scars to prove it, although I might not look like I've been here for 10 years. But I've continuously seen the problems get worse in immigration, from the time I came here to now. I think everyone around the table here wants to see improvements, but I think we've hit it on the head, and I think about what Jim said when it came to coming up with criteria, maybe, for immigration officers—and, Heather, you just spoke about the sensitivity when it comes to CIC officials abroad.

When we are dealing with refusals that come to our offices—often when you have tight criteria in place for officers, it seems that they can use those almost as an excuse to check and say no, for whatever reason. I almost think we need to deal with the sensitivity training side that you're talking about, to try to deal with opening up the attitudes or the changing of attitudes of some of the CIC officers. I think you've hit it on the head when you say we need to take a leadership role in working with settlement groups and others to be able to deal directly with some of these groups. That's something we've started to do a little bit with some of the new funding that came out for settlement agencies in the last budget, but there needs to be, obviously, more done on that basis.

Specifically, when it comes to these high refusal rates of private sponsorships from sponsorship agreement holders versus a government-assisted refugee program, I would like to hear from you why you think that is. It might be an issue of resources. It might be an issue that—I think, Sarah, you mentioned it when you mentioned the issue of non-skilled workers and how they've helped to build this country—there almost seems to be a barrier for those particular types of people. That also may be something tied into the refusal rates.

Can you clarify that particular issue, of how you see the refusal rates between those two areas?

[Sarah Angus]

To give you all a bit of background on where I'm coming from, I'm part of the United Church, but also, as a result of going on a refugee exposure trip with Heather, which Heather facilitated, to Kenya in the summer of 2005—Prior to that, I was involved in the sponsorship of refugees at McMaster University through an organization called WUSC, World University Service of Canada. I'm now, essentially, a junior program officer at that organization and helping to support local committees raise the funds and overall make the sponsorships a success. WUSC sponsors about 50 refugee students between the ages of 18 and 25, per year, to universities and colleges across the country, as a way of reaching out to the Canadian public, to Canadian youth, as a way of mobilizing them around refugee issues and really getting them involved. I'm a product of both WUSC and the United Church's interest in that.

I'm on a very steep learning curve, I have to admit, because I'm constantly learning about this, and I don't know all the background. I haven't been on committees for 10 years. I was just—

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

So are we. We're learning every day.

[Sarah Angus]

I was astounded to learn that the rate of acceptance is only about 50%. In comparison, where I work, the rate of acceptance is 100%, but that's because we have extremely strict criteria as to who we allow into our program.

We deal, to a large extent, with two refugee camps in Kenya: Kakuma and Dadaab. Most of them arrive in the camp at the age of eight. The people we accept have to be between 18 and 25. They have to have graduated from high school, and they have to have strong English skills. We have very rigid criteria. Because of that, we have a really high acceptance rate.

As a sponsorship agreement holder, which WUSC is, I've seen what a positive impact this program can have in terms of mobilizing and engaging Canadians. I find it extremely frustrating that it's stalled so significantly across the country for most of the other sponsorship agreement holders, because I've seen how it works. Now I'm seeing how it doesn't work.

I don't know if I've answered your question, but hopefully I've given some perspective.

[Carolyn Vanderlip]

Maybe I can add a little to that. I think you're looking at--

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

That's it—

[Rahim Jaffer, Conservative, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

She can answer. I think it's—

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Oh, yes. I mean, sure, no problem. I thought that was it.

Go ahead.

[Carolyn Vanderlip]

Okay. I attribute the difference between the 80% that was cited for UNHCR-referred cases and the 50% for private sponsored cases to a few things. One that we've already mentioned is the length of time it takes to process our cases. UNHCR cases are processed quite quickly; ours can take three or four years, and things change. Quite frankly, sponsors also have a better awareness now of the need to screen, and they have a better ability to screen because they have been given the tools to do so. A lot of us have been through the eligibility training that CIC sponsored. I mentioned the better communication we're getting.

We are doing a better job now. But we're not seeing that because they're still looking at cases that are three to five years old—before we had those tools. That is having a big impact. We're saying we really need to get out of the past, but the program is still haunted by what has happened before. This is why we need to clear the backlog, so that we can truly move forward.

[Sarah Angus]

Can I add one other point?