Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 13th, 2007

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

We're proud of the work your organization does. We are benefiting immensely from your expertise here today and your statements in general. So I want to thank you on behalf of Canadians for all the work you're doing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you, Mr. Alghabra.

Mr. Telegdi.

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

Thank you very much, and thank you for being here.

I don't know if anybody explained, but we were having a debate over in the House on the detainees and the hunger strike. That's why some of us were missing; we were going back and forth.

I missed your presentation, so you might have dealt with this point. I have observed, over time, that it's very rare that a PRRA will stop the removal. Essentially, what the refugee board says seems to carry the day, and any risk assessment tends to be very rare.

I had a case in 1999, and it has really burned into my memory. It involved a state of the former Yugoslavia, Vojvodina. I had this young woman who lost at the refugee board. The thing I'll never forget is that the adjudicator said he did not believe there was collusion among the police, the media, and the government in the former Yugoslavia. This was before NATO took action to bomb. What was even more incredible was that they had this woman slated for deportation back to the former Yugoslavia. She was going to land at 10 o'clock and NATO was going to start bombing at 12 o'clock.

The PRRA said this wasn't a problem, even though this thing had been building up and we all knew what kind of state Milosevic ran. To have the system fail so dramatically on two counts.... One was to have an adjudicator who had no knowledge of the reality of the former Yugoslavia make the statement that there was no collusion among the media, the police, and the state; you essentially had a police state, a dictatorship, and for the PRRA not to pick that up, the dangers that were happening in that region, particularly to the Romanian minority living in the state of Vojvodina....

In terms of the board, I believe we have improved the qualifications of the people who sit on the board to make the initial determination, but we really failed on not having the appeal.

I always thought that whenever we hear refugee cases, we should probably first look at the PRRA, the pre-removal risk assessment, and look at humanitarian and compassionate grounds, because those are the easiest things to deal with. If that was not a consideration, then we could look at going to the refugee board to get their determination.

I think the way the process is set up right now is too long. We were led to believe in committee that if we put in place an appeals division, the process would actually speed up, and that if we made other adjustments as well, we'd have a much better refugee hearing process and it would be much more satisfactory for everybody involved.

Could you comment on that?

[Richard Goldman]

You seem to be in complete agreement with almost everything we said, so I want to congratulate you on your excellent analysis.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Richard Goldman]

That's exactly what we are saying. The refugee appeal division should streamline the process, because—we said it once or twice before—by eliminating afterwards the stay to the Federal Court, it would reduce the incentive to apply to Federal Court and streamline the Federal Court's caseload quite a bit.

As you mentioned, I think there has been a great deal of progress at the IRB. Again, going back to what we said to Mr. Alghabra, we have, in many senses, an excellent system, one to be proud of, and it's a question of building on those strengths and seeing where the gaps are now--as you mentioned, the appeal division, the PRRA.

By the way, this may be unnecessarily technical, but the PRRA didn't exist in 1999. It was something else called the PDRCCC, as you may remember. In fairness, one of the positive features of the PRRA was that with the so-called PDRCCC you had to apply for it within 15 days—I think it was 15, maybe it was 30—of your refugee determination, which made no sense at all. There was no check at the end of the process. It came immediately after your refugee claim. So the idea behind the PRRA of having a last check a year or two later, when the person is up for removal, in principle makes a lot of sense, but it all has to do with who carries it out, what their training is, what their independence is, and so on.

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

I see Mr. Ed Komarnicki is sending the message up to the department that we want to have the refugee appeal division instituted.

[Richard Goldman]

That's good.

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

And to concur, he shook his head.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Okay. That was the response required there.

I'll go to Ms. Grewal.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Thank you.

If a field applicant does not go the PRRA route, what is the average time of delay between the initial refugee determination proceeding and the claimant's eventual removal from Canada?

[Richard Goldman]

I don't have a statistical average. I can talk on the basis of real-world experience of seeing several dozen cases each year.

Again, to recap, if a person applies to Federal Court, that will buy them about three months. Once the Federal Court is finished, or if they don't bother with the Federal Court, then they are looking at anywhere from, I would say, three, four months, at a minimum, to a year, a year and a half, to be called for their PRRA.

Now, if your question was what happens if they don't do the PRRA, they are called into the office, the removal officers says, “Would you like to do a PRRA?” and they say, “No, I don't want to”, the removal officer will set a date for their removal because there's nothing else left for them. And if they did happen to file a humanitarian application, that does not suspend, in itself, the removal.

So I guess the answer would be, if they're not going to do the Federal Court, if they're not going to do the PRRA, we're looking at anywhere from a minimum of three or four months to a year, a year and a half, in some cases.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Okay, thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you.

I want to thank the witnesses for coming today and making your presentations, your contributions. We'll be doing a report, of course, and your contributions will definitely be taken into consideration.

Thank you.

[Claudette Cardinal]

Can I just ask, do you have a sense, not in terms of necessarily our recommendations but in terms of the PRRA process, of how long you will be in analyzing it and seeing if there are some changes you could do, or if you're going to leave it as is, or recommend that it...?

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Our recommendations?

The last meeting we have on refugee issues will be March 1, so the draft report on refugee issues will come shortly thereafter, sometime around the middle of March, or March 20 maybe. We do have other witnesses, organizations, to come here, but the last one we have on our list would be for March 1. After that, of course, the analysts have to be given time to do the report, compile what we've heard, and make various recommendations at that time. It would probably be the latter part of March.

We'll just suspend for a moment and wait for our witnesses to move out before we get into a couple of motions we have to deal with.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Could we bring the members back to the table? We have two motions to deal with.

The first one is from Mr. Telegdi, “That the 10th report”--

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

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair. Certainly this is something we can discuss after we discuss the two motions. There were three motions. I submitted something in writing to the clerk, and unfortunately, that's not in front of us today. We should be discussing that at the end of discussing the motions. I'd like an opportunity to process that one.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Okay. First of all, we'll deal with Mr. Telegdi's motion, and then your motion.

Mr. Telegdi's motion is:

That the 10th report (Citizenship Revocation) and the 12th report (Updating Canada's Citizenship Laws) of this Committee in the 1st session of the 38th Parliament be adopted as reports in this session; and that the Chair present the reports to the House.

Any discussion?

[An hon. member]

He's going to have to move it.

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

I officially move it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Okay, sorry. So now we'll go to discussion.

Mr. Komarnicki.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

I'm making a point on this type of motion. I think you made it in the past and make it again.

The reports that Mr. Telegdi would like to put in as reports before the House have already been recognized as reports by the House. There are conclusions and recommendations made by the committee that are available to anyone.

However, to say that we should adopt those reports of that committee as reports of this committee and send it to the House as if we ratify and approve everything in the report, which is what he's asking, I think is unfair to this committee. It certainly is unfair to individual members like me who were not here at the time when the reports were put together. For instance, Mr. Rahim Jaffer was there, and certainly he can decide. If he decided then to support it, he may well now.

The point of the matter is there are only four members of that committee on this committee. Certainly I and others were not parties to that. When you hear witnesses, you certainly have the opportunity to cross-examine the witnesses, you have the opportunity to ask them questions, and you have the opportunity to have input into the process and the recommendations themselves.

I don't think it's fair to have those reports, which are legitimate reports, then become adopted by this committee as if the committee heard and actually had the opportunity to intervene. I know one of the issues in the tenth report was of course the burden of proof that was required for revocation of citizens, and there's a fair difference of opinion by some as to whether it should be on a balance of probabilities or beyond a reasonable doubt.

Certainly some witnesses suggested even a different burden that was specified during those hearings. I think the words they used were “clear and convincing evidence”, which is yet a different standard. Not to have input, in a fashion, I think, as appropriate, is just not something we should get in the habit of doing. Those reports are there; they speak for themselves. But to get this committee to adopt it I think is wrong in principle now and it would be wrong in the future. If we want to have further hearings, then let's do that.

For that reason, I would certainly oppose the motion, although there are many aspects of the reports--and I've looked through them--that I think are good recommendations and fair recommendations. They are not something one can argue against. Overall, it's not the way to do business, and I think this motion should be withdrawn.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Okay.

Mr. Telegdi.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I might point out that the citizenship and immigration committee in the last Parliament made a study of citizenship issues its number one priority. We did it all in the total expectation that we were going to be able to pass new legislation. Unfortunately, the untimeliness of the election interfered with that.