Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 17th, 2006

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

Your concerns are justified. I recently travelled to Europe and met several ambassadors who expressed the very same concerns to us. I asked the department to provide a list of countries for which visas are required, as well as information on the most recent assessments relative to requiring visas.

Over this past year, most recently, Canada has added 11 countries to that list. If there is a process to add a country, I imagine that there is a process to remove countries from that list. If you had been present at this committee's last meeting, you would have heard me ask departmental officials to provide information to that effect. With that list in hand, the committee can do more work on that issue. The list may not come on Monday morning, but it is on the way.

On the other hand, there are additional forms that are required when people apply for a visa. Enquiries on war crimes are also made. For certain countries, the forms are outdated. For example, Croatia is expected to join the European Union. The form is supposed to be filled out by anyone 21 years old or older. Therefore, when the war took place, these people were only 7 or 8 years old. This makes absolutely no sense. In short, there have been several aberrations of this kind.

The department is supposed to get back to us very soon on this issue. If you monitor what is going on here in our committee, we can perhaps send you information to your office in Ottawa.

This issue is also of concern to our industries. Quebec has a special link with Europe, and many travellers now spend their summers and even winters in Quebec. Tourism is a growing industry, especially in regions such as the Gaspé, the far north, the Laurentians, and even Montreal. Reciprocity with respect to language is also of great concern to us. We travel to Europe more often than elsewhere; the same applies to you. Therefore, if there were to be a visa exemption, it would be beneficial for us as well. We have been waiting for this type of change for years. Therefore, I can assure you that you have our support.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you.

Mr. Siksay, please.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I just want to let folks know that it is something I've heard about in my constituency work--particularly from folks in my constituency who have relatives in the Czech Republic. They are the folks I've heard from most who are concerned about the requirement that Canada imposes.

You mentioned the abstract issue of a reciprocity policy. You mentioned the particular hardship for some folks in Estonia of having to travel to Warsaw to a Canadian visa post. Are there other particular individual hardships that people face because of this policy? Is this driven by the sort of policy objective of reciprocity, or is there a particular individual component in how it affects people?

[Jonathan Faull]

There are obviously a lot of Europeans with friends and family in Canada. It's true in Quebec and it's true elsewhere too. Europeans travel to Canada, Canadians travel to Europe, and we have many ties between us. Those who have to get a visa have to pay for it. It's not an enormous sum of money, but for some of our poorer countries and some of the poorer people in them, it's still a burden. While I understand that you can't have consulates and embassies absolutely everywhere, if you don't happen to have one in your country you're in real trouble, particularly if you're called to an interview. You just have to go there physically.

I mentioned Estonia and Poland, because just this morning somebody told us the anecdote about an Estonian who had to go all the way to Warsaw for a 30-second interview, essentially, to get the visa, and got the visa, but had to pay the trip to Warsaw and back, with the delay and so on.

Now, that's fine. If you require a visa, it's because you want to interview people; it's because you don't trust the citizens of that country as much as you trust the citizens of other countries. What we are saying is that we think the relations between the democratic nations of the European Union and democratic Canada are such today--in the new Europe, the new world in which we live--that we should have sufficient trust in each other.

One of the differences--and I've discussed this with the Americans down the road and with your administration here--is that in the United States there is an act of Congress that sets out a whole set of criteria, and they say that once you've met these you join. We've argued with them about whether they're applying them properly, whether the criteria are fair and so on. In this country there is not a legislative set of criteria.

We understand from the Canadian administration that there is a risk assessment applied to a country, and I respect that. Again, I'd like to have reciprocity overnight, but we're not going to get that; we haven't got it. We live in the real world. So the Canadian administration looks at each country and says, what risk am I taking if I allow the citizens of this country to enter Canada without a visa? Our submission is that for our countries the risk is a minimal one, just as we think the risk is a minimal one in allowing Canadians to visit our countries without visas.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Mr. Wilson, and then Ms. Guarnieri.

[Blair Wilson, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Honourable delegates, welcome. Bonjour. Dzien dobry.

I won't go into Polish since we've only got translators here in English and French.

I just wanted to say that I welcome the comments you have made here today. I echo some of the concerns of my colleagues and some of the points you made, specifically that the riding I represent, West Vancouver--Sunshine Coast--Sea to Sky Country, is a riding that's made up of many of the countries that are listed in your list of excluded countries: Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. I will take my five minutes here just to urge the Government of Canada to seriously work towards speeding up this process in recognizing these countries so that we have a better relationship with the European Commission and the European Union.

According to the documents my staff has provided to me, the last review was undertaken in 2004, if I'm correct, and I think between 2004 and 2006, Europe--and indeed the world--has changed very rapidly. The world is getting a lot smaller; we're getting a lot closer together. If Canada really, truly wants to have a voice on the world stage, we have to move together with organizations like this and cooperate a lot more fully in an open and transparent manner.

I would urge the government to do whatever they can to process this as quickly as possible in order to facilitate the movement of people as easily as possible between our countries.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you.

Ms. Guarnieri.

[Albina Guarnieri, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome to our visiting delegation.

In terms of visa reciprocity, one of the challenges Canada faces is the prospect of people without visas coming to Canada from the European Union and filing refugee claims. We have tens of thousands of these people coming from the European Union. Given the mobility rights of European Union citizens to work and travel anywhere in the European Union, would you argue that it's impossible to have a valid refugee claim from anywhere in the EU?

[Jonathan Faull]

I don't know Canadian law, and I don't know what standards you set. Generally speaking, a claim for asylum or refugee status has to be accompanied by proof that one has a well-grounded fear of persecution. I think those are the terms of the Geneva Convention.

We don't persecute people in the European Union. We are not perfect, but our member states meet a very high standard of protection of fundamental rights, and that applies to all of our citizens whatever their race, colour, origin, ethnicity, etc. That's not a particularly bold claim. It is really the reality of today's modern European Union.

How that translates into the application of Canadian law, I have to leave to Canada and its courts, and so on. But the European Union is respectful and its member states are respectful of the rights of all people who live in Europe.

[Albina Guarnieri, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

I suppose if you want to leave the Czech state, for example, you could go to France and Germany to work. I guess you'd agree, though, that no one from the EU could actually meet the reasonable definition of a refugee. Would you agree with that?

[Jonathan Faull]

Well, I again have to be careful, because I can't comment on what a Canadian court might or might not do. I suppose it's ultimately the Canadian courts that would settle such a claim in Canada.

But I say without hesitation that no European today should have a well-founded fear of persecution in any of its member states, because of the very high standards that those states set themselves and that the common European institutions set for them.

[Albina Guarnieri, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Thank you. It's almost a stamp of approval that the EU produces no refugees.

[Jonathan Faull]

Those are your words, not mine.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

We have Mr. Jaffer, and then we have Ms. Deschamps.

Mr. Jaffer.

[Rahim Jaffer, Conservative, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our delegates here today, and thanks for the presentations.

I guess there's one thing that I'm failing to understand, and it might need some clarification.

Mr. Faull, you've clearly described that the standards are quite significant for any of these member countries in regard to passports and documentation, and in some cases may even be further ahead than some of the existing member states. They may even be further ahead than we are. I'm not sure.

It seems that some of the new members have in fact been recognized and do not require visas. When I was looking at the list my colleague has, some progress has been made. Obviously, our government's only been here for four months, and we hope to move on some of these things. But countries like the Czech Republic or others have been members of the EU, if I'm not mistaken, for some time.

[Jonathan Faull]

It's been a couple of years.

[Rahim Jaffer, Conservative, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Yes, a couple of years. It had not obviously been improved even in the previous government.

Why would there be this kind of dichotomy, where some of the new countries have been approved and yet some of the ones that would seem to me not to be a problem haven't been approved? Can you give us your impression?

You mentioned the issue of high risk as being one of those criteria. But if the security of their documentation is in fact as significant as you suggest, then over the previous years, and maybe even now, what do you think the holdback was for the department in allowing that to go ahead?

[Jonathan Faull]

Frankly, I'm not sure. The question should be put to the Canadian authorities rather than to me. But to be fair to them, a lot of work has been done on this, and there was a review.

But it's not the case that nothing has happened since. There are regular meetings between Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the CIC, and the authorities of all these countries that are pressing them, of course, at all sorts of levels, from presidents and prime ministers downwards. The risk assessment, as I understand it, is constantly carried on.

What are the factors that go into it? How is it determined that Malta is okay but the Czech Republic is not? I don't know. What I think is more worrying is I'm not sure that the countries concerned really know precisely to what standards they're being judged. But I can guess that some of the considerations legitimately are things like the refusal rate: How many applications for Canadian visas by citizens of county X are refused? If it's a very high number, then you may be justified in digging a little further to wonder why.

Countries are concerned—we are, you are—that people will come on a visa, or if a visa is not required will come anyway, for what is supposed to be a short period, and stay, and disappear into the economy in some way. People are reasonably concerned about that. We don't believe that as economic growth and prosperity spread throughout Europe to these new countries—and they have very high growth rates in recent years—that they are likely to take advantage of a visit to Canada to disappear. There are no convincing data, as far as I'm aware, that that occurs.

Now, I can anticipate an answer to that is that there are no data because there are no data. One doesn't know, and the so-called “overstay issue” is a complicated one, particularly as we don't, by the way—and I don't think you do yet either—record departures from our territories. We record people who arrive, but we don't know when people leave. Now maybe we are all moving in a direction where that will be done.

We were talking in Washington to the people responsible for the U.S. visit system, which has a whole paraphernalia, as you're all no doubt aware, of recording people arriving in the United States, but does not provide for any recording of departure. We are thinking in the European Union of recording entries and exits as well. That will give us some reliable data to go on. At the moment, there are no such reliable data, so one falls back on risk assessment--risk assessment based on the economic status of the country concerned, its prospects, and so on.

Our submission is that the countries of the European Union today, particularly the newer ones, by the way, are growing fast, have very good prospects. Some of them have seen their young workers go to other countries, but the idea that they would come to Canada and then disappear into some black hole in your economy strikes us as unlikely.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you.

Ms. Deschamps.

[Johanne Deschamps, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I agree with you completely with respect to your request and I believe that we should be able to answer favourably, given the will of the new government that was elected in January and its desire to show more openness on this issue.

Even if a motion is tabled, the government still has the freedom and discretion to do what it wishes. I believe that our minister, our elected minister, the head of Citizenship and Immigration, could be very receptive to your request.

I would like to make a comment that ties into what Ms. Faille said earlier. I come from the Laurentians, a region north of Montreal. It is a beautiful region that attracts many business people from abroad. We therefore welcome people from countries whose citizens must obtain a visa in order to come to Canada.

Once settled in Canada, these people want their families, located in their home countries, to visit them here. However, according to what you were saying with respect to a certain country, family members often face hurdles due to the fact that there are no embassies in their vicinity. These hurdles make planning to go and visit a son and daughter-in-law who already have grandchildren that they cannot see grow up, very cumbersome. The human face of the issue affects me greatly.

I said what I wanted to say on this subject. I do not know if anyone else would like to add their comments.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you.

I think we have two more questions. Mr. Telegdi and now I find Madam Faille has a short question she wishes to ask.

Mr. Telegdi.

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

What's really important to note is that the economic conditions have changed a great deal. People from Poland can go to England and make a lot more money than they're ever going to make coming to Canada. So that applies to the risk.

It was really unfortunate, because when the problem started there was some promotion by some groups over in Europe trying to get the Roma out of there, and they saw this as a solution.

The one question I have is, how does Hungary handle the borders now, given that they've got a sizeable minority in Romania? If anybody was at risk from over there, it would be people going from Romania to Hungary, coming from there.

[Jonathan Faull]

Thank you.

First of all, border management is obviously an extremely important issue. The first thing to be said--and I think this is extremely important--is that we have a common set of rules and procedures on how our common external borders are managed. So every land border, every airport, every seaport of the European Union is managed in accordance with rules set in Brussels, and the procedures are identical. A huge investment in training and equipment has been made over the last 10 to 15 years since the Iron Curtain fell. Since these countries showed an interest in joining the European Union, there has been a long, sustained effort on our part, on the part of the existing member states, through twinning mechanisms and indeed a lot of assistance from Canada and other friends around the world as well.

The situation today is that when they join the European Union, they must meet the standards for policing our external borders, and therefore the Hungarian-Romanian border, to take your example, is treated in exactly the same way as Amsterdam airport, the Finnish-Russian border, or any land, sea, or air border in the European Union. Does that pose problems for countries where, in border areas, people speaking the same language and sharing the same culture find themselves, because of the way European empires were assembled and then broken up...does it make their lives difficult? Of course it does. And we have a number of answers to that.

First of all, there are a number of local border arrangements, such as special visa regimes, special border crossing regimes, or keeping borders open at all times of day and night--sometimes villages are cut in half--so that people can carry on their local lives. Ultimately, this problem will be solved very soon because Romania will be a member of the European Union, either on January 1, 2007, or January 1, 2008. Then that border will be a European border and life will be a lot simpler for people living on either side.

That won't solve the problem of the Ukrainian border. There will always be difficulties--Europe's a funny place--but we will always try to find solutions that are sensitive to the needs of local people while providing the security we all need, because once you're inside the European Union, you have various rights to move around within it. So it matters to the people in London, Brussels, or Madrid what happens all the way over there on the Finnish-Russian border, or at an airport in the south of Italy, or on the Hungarian-Romanian border. We know that. It's a common endeavour.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Our last question will go to Madame Faille.

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

It is not necessarily a question.

Many business people have trouble obtaining a visa to travel to Canada. Processing of their applications, security checks, medical exams, take up an enormous amount of time and we are slowly eroding our advantage, compared to the European Union.

I am told that cases that are backlogged in Canada are ones that pose a security problem. However, the same applications are accepted in other countries, such as Australia and countries of the European Union. Often, these people have a lot of money, some are millionaires. They automatically obtain a European passport. That is one facet of immigration.

However, does this type of procedure exist for other categories of immigrants, such as workers? Are there other reasons why Canada does not want to eliminate obligatory visas? I believe that some of these reasons may be security reasons. Some people try their luck in different countries and find a way to enter them. I don't want to belabour the point, but security considerations could cause the United States to put pressure on Canada to keep the mandatory visa policies in place.