Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 29th, 2007

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

There are transitional provisions in IRPA to allow for the production of regulations and those other issues that may be necessary to effectively implement the legislation.

[Malcolm Brown]

Yes.

Eric may want to add something, as he is the lawyer.

[Eric Stevens, Legal Counsel, Legal Services, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

There is just one qualification on that. The transitional provisions in IRPA are now out of date because they were written at a time when it was contemplated that RAD would happen at the same time as the rest of the legislation.

[Malcolm Brown]

Yes, those provisions exist. If someone said...and maybe this is where you're going; it's always dangerous to speculate. If your question is, to implement RAD tomorrow, would we just snap our fingers and move, the answer is no, because frankly the transition provisions would have to be examined. There have been changes, and we will let the IRB talk about those, but they would in a sense need to be updated. There isn't a switch to throw and have everything go back to a state that it wasn't even at when IRPA was passed.

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

Surely it was worked on and regulations were associated to the RAD. There are probably draft regulations that exist in the department, and all of those things could be dusted off. And maybe even somebody has looked at them in light of the current bill that we're discussing this morning.

[Malcolm Brown]

The reality is that with the provisions there was a sequencing, and frankly, work on other parts of the legislation was more advanced. I can tell you I have not personally examined the state of those regs, because there's a lot of current regulatory business that's going on.

My experience with the regulatory business in this department is that it would take some significant amount of time if you were to simply snap your fingers and make a decision about the RAD a priori, based on the current legislation. It's not simply a case of blowing the dust off some things on the shelf.

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

Is that work that would normally land on your desk?

[Malcolm Brown]

Yes, I would be coming to talk to you about that work.

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

You mentioned your concern about section 73 not being included in this, but the passage of Bill C-280 doesn't preclude the government from taking action on section 73 if it chose to do so. Is that correct?

[Malcolm Brown]

Before I answer that question, Micheline has also emphasized that there's a whole series...and you can ask the IRB, when they testify later this morning, about their own set of rules. They have a regulatory process, but also they rule through the IRB, and that would take time.

I'm sorry, I've forgotten the question.

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

You mentioned a concern about section 73 not being included, but there's nothing to prevent the government from implementing that immediately, should Bill C-280 pass, if the government was concerned about the absence of that.

[Malcolm Brown]

I think it's the interplay of ensuring that you have.... It's a series of apples and oranges, and theoretically, yes, but the practice is that you match the appeal mechanisms to.... You'd want a coherent package, a comprehensive package.

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

If we contend that the coherent package is already in IRPA...you're not answering my question. Even though section 73 might not be mentioned in Bill C-280, if Bill C-280 were passed and went ahead, the government could also go ahead on section 73 at any time, because it's already been passed by Parliament and the mechanism to do that is there.

[Malcolm Brown]

It could, but I'm not sure it would apply to the provisions that are contained in the current Bill C-280. There's an assumption that there's a perfect match and the provisions of section 73, as they apply to IRPA, can be applied to Bill C-280. The advice I'm getting is that they can't be.

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

You'll have to explain that to me. I understood that all Bill C-280 does is set a deadline for implementing existing sections of IRPA.

[Malcolm Brown]

Only certain parts of the act.

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

Pertaining to the RAD. I think it's everything except section 73. I still contend that if the government wanted to implement section 73, it could do it immediately.

[Malcolm Brown]

As I understand it, there is no question that the better way of doing it, the cleaner.... The objective of officials, the question we were asked, is, what are the technical implications of Bill C-280? Just as we officials in 2000-01 were drafting the bill to make it comprehensive in its entirety, that is still a problem, still a challenge for us. And so the question is, would it be better to have the provision for section 73 included? If you were asking about what the implications are, yes, it would be.

I personally think there are questions. That section can be implemented, you're absolutely right, because it hasn't been proclaimed yet. The questions are in the context of the interplay of that with the way Bill C-280 rolls out in the short term. From a drafting perspective, it's better to tie the two together.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you, Mr. Brown.

We will now move to Mr. Komarnicki.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Brown, for your various comments.

I'm gathering from what you're saying just now that this Bill C-280, if it were going to include sections 110, 111, and 171, probably should also have included section 73 to bring that line of sections together in one place and one bill, and that there isn't any good reason why it was not included.

[Malcolm Brown]

That's right.

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

Do you see any reason why it couldn't be included in Bill C-280?

[Malcolm Brown]

No.

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

All right. Then the other aspect of it is the transitional provision. Bill C-280 doesn't appear to address the issue of transitional provisions, as I see it. Do I take it from what you're saying that someone ought to address when this bill would take effect and whether it would apply back to the date of section 215 or whether it would be on a go-forward basis or something between that or at a future date?