Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 17th, 2006

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

I found your explanation of how refugee status is granted in Canada to be very interesting. However, you seem to have disregarded any possibility of an appeal section. From what I've gathered, the whole issue of an appeals section has simply been delayed.

I'm trying to understand what effect the change in government... The last time you made a presentation to this committee, you told us about 22 possible recourses in relation to appeals, and all of a sudden, they have vanished. There is no longer any mention of recourse or appeal. There seems to have been a change in vocabulary.

[Daniel Jean]

I heard two questions.

To answer your first question, I believe that it is a reflection of the process that is currently in place. That explains why you do not see any appeals section.

With respect to your second question, you refer to a former minister who said that in one case, there could be up to 22 appeals. There is something that I perhaps failed to mention. With respect to admissibility, our system allows for an appeal to the Federal Court, at any stage, when an applicant is refused. This can be done at each step of the process.

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

Yes, that is how the Federal Court works, given the fact that it is a tribunal. We cannot change that. People have the right to appeal to the Federal Court.

We requested statistics on the number of processed files and the acceptance rate at each one of these steps. We wanted to know the approval rates at the PRRA stage, the pre-removal risk assessment, as well as the acceptance rate of humanitarian applications. We have still yet to receive these statistics.

We also requested information on costs. How much does a system that forces people to appeal to the Federal Court cost? The number of cases heard by the Federal Court is enormous. It is 80% of the cases.

We also asked you to tell us the number of people who have made multiple applications.

[Daniel Jean]

I counted at least five questions. I will try to answer each one of them.

Firstly, in the presentation, we have provided the acceptance rates. These are acceptance rates that are published by the IRBC. Out of 100 people who enter the system and are then referred to the IRBC, approximately 15 do not appear before the board. That figure is from last year. Those are people who make claims, but who probably did not need protection.

Approximately 50% of these people were interviewed by the IRBC. We are talking about 44%, because that includes abandoned and withdrawn cases. We gave you the acceptance rate at the PRRA stage, which was 2% last year. As I said earlier, that number covers agents working in all countries, including the United States and Western Europe.

As I was saying, out of 100 refugees who entered the system last year, 15 did not follow up on their application. Approximately half of those who did follow up were accepted at the IRBC stage. At the PRRA stage that follows, approximately 2 or 3% were accepted. After that, a good number of applications were accepted on humanitarian grounds. As well, 7 out of 10 who followed up on their application were granted refugee status.

I must also point out that 80% of the case load of the Federal Court concerns immigration. The cases do not only deal with refugee matters, but immigration generally. That is what is referred to as the case load. The figure does not necessarily reflect the judges' time.

To answer your last question, I would say that even if an appeal based on merit existed, people would still have recourse to the Federal Court at each one of the stages at which they are refused, except for the IRBC stage, and the appeal based on merit stage. Some say that if an appeal based on merit existed, fewer people would be turning to the Federal Court. Most cases are dismissed by the Federal Court of Canada. Only some 10% of the cases are heard on appeal. Those who go to the Federal Court are often trying to buy time.

I have one last point on the subject of the Federal Court. It is true that it is not an appeal that is based on merit, but the reasonable nature of the decision is also assessed. Judges not only make sure that the decision is lawful, but also reasonable.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

You have one more minute, Madame Faille. Or shall I go to Mr. Siksay?

Thank you.

Mr. Siksay.

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

Do I get the extra minute, Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

No.

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

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for your presentations this afternoon.

Madame Deschênes, the written statement that was distributed addresses the situation that happened in Toronto recently about removals of minors from schools. I want to understand what's being written there.

Are you saying that the two incidents fell within established CBSA policies? Is that what I am to understand from reading, that there's been a review and it was determined that these two incidents were in fact in line with the policies of the department?

[Claudette Deschênes]

What I would like to say is that there was never any written policy about it. The practice was that we would never go systematically into schools.

There were exceptional cases. We would normally go when a parent or a guardian asked us, in cases where they had been detained and asked us to stop by the school to pick up the children. The other was when we had used up all the possible options for trying to identify where the family were staying—the parents, the adults, because our concern is always the adults. Sometimes in exceptional cases we would go into the school to try to find an address for the parents.

The two cases in Toronto each fell into that category. In one of the cases we picked up the mother, and the mother asked that we stop by to pick up her children. In the other case we had been looking for the family and had not been able to find them. Then we found out that the kids might be at a school, so the officers went into the school.

That is what that statement means. We reviewed the issue and have sent out clear written instructions about the situation. Basically the written instructions are clear: officers are to avoid as much as possible ever going to schools at all. However, there are two situations where they may go to schools: one, if a parent or guardian asks that they go to the school to pick up the children. Again, we try to minimize. We wouldn't go into the classroom; we would go to the principal's office. The other issue would be if there were a national security or serious criminality case and an officer in a region felt there was a reason we had to do this. They need to come to headquarters to seek concurrence and permission to do that.

I appeared a couple of days ago before the Senate committee on human rights and indicated that we believed we would use that option very rarely but felt that as a matter of policy we had to leave it as an option to be considered. It would come either to me or the DG of enforcement to be looked at. At this moment in time I can't really think of a reason for us to use it, but we felt that policy-wise we had to have that option.

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

I wanted to ask you some questions around detention as well.

You mentioned the opening of the new facility in Kingston. You mentioned three facilities previously--at Vancouver airport, Laval, and Toronto. How does the facility at Kingston differ from what existed previously?

[Claudette Deschênes]

In the past we would really detain only very low-risk people, normally for short periods of time. Either we would be looking for when they arrived in Canada--to be able to really determine their identity--or they'd be on their way out, and we'd had trouble in the past, such as flight risk or danger to the security and safety of Canada.

In the case of Kingston, the facility has been built to detain security certificate cases, to ensure they have the best detention facilities possible. They were being detained--

Most of our criminal cases--people who have criminal records and so on--are detained in provincial facilities, but what was happening in these cases is that they didn't have as good a detention environment as we felt they should have, so in Kingston we opened a centre where they can have exercise outside, where they are not commingled with any criminals, where they have access to private rooms for their lawyers and visits, and so on.

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

What's the capacity of the facility in Kingston?

[Claudette Deschênes]

Six people.

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

So it's almost at capacity at this moment.

[Claudette Deschênes]

There are four. I guess it depends on your definition of “almost”.

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

Right.

[Claudette Deschênes]

Again, certificate cases are not used very widely.

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

Do CBSA employees operate the facility?

[Claudette Deschênes]

It is under the responsibility of CBSA, but again, we are not experts in detention, so it is Correctional Service officers who have been seconded to CBSA.

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

Are they still responsible to Correctional Service, or are they responsible to--

[Claudette Deschênes]

They are responsible to CBSA, so in the case of problems, CBSA is held accountable.

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

Are children still detained by CBSA in Canada?

[Claudette Deschênes]

We detain children very rarely. For example, in April 2006, I know there were 10 detentions of children for short periods of time.

The problem with our statistical system is that we're not able to say that this child was detained for two days or this child was detained for four days. The great majority of detentions of children have to do with parents who are being removed from Canada, and the entire family unit is being detained. The number of detentions is very minimal, and the large majority would be for very short periods of time, because our policy is not to detain minors unless we really have to.

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

You mentioned the question of moratoria countries, although I don't think you used that word. I think that may be the popular term.

[Claudette Deschênes]

It is temporary suspension of removals.