Citizenship and Immigration Committee on June 19th, 2007

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

What I'm saying, Chair, is by the end of October if we need to go back to hear more people in Toronto, certainly this can stand as it is right now, and if we see that we need more, then we do cover that. I would suggest that we leave it, and at the end of October we can—

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Okay, that's fine. That seems to make sense to me, given what we've already talked about here with respect to extra time in Toronto.

Mr. Siksay, you had a comment.

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

Chair, at the planning committee we also looked at that long list of possible witnesses on the Iraqi refugee question. One of the concerns of the planning committee was that we wanted to hear about policy, not individual experiences of problems and individual casework kinds of suggestions. So I hope all members of the standing committee can be clear about that, that rather than hearing from—

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Yes, we want to hear about policy in that regard, not to bring in your individual cases—

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

Policy and organization are what we want to give priority to.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Okay, that is a suggestion.

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

Chair, for a lot of the people who will be coming to us and talking about this policy, there is some concern about the treatment they're getting at the posts when they apply. We might want to consider either inviting or hearing them over the phone, as we did with the situation from London, England. We can invite the heads of the posts to phone in, at a convenient time for them, to give us testimony on what they're seeing on the ground, and probably some folks from the UNHCR on this issue.

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

That's what the second part of the recommendation was meant to deal with, Chair, so maybe we should delete the travel to Toronto part of the recommendation on the back of the page and leave in “Invite organizational—”

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Okay. “Invite organizational representatives to appear before the Committee in Ottawa.” I think that's fine. People would go along with that.

All right? Okay.

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

Is the recommendation that we leave it in or delete it?

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

It is to delete the first part of it and leave the second part of it there.

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

Chair, I would recommend that we leave it until the end of October, and if we need to delete it, then we would delete it at that point in time. Let's see how it goes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Andrew.

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

Have you ever done something where we have a lot of people who want to come, say, on this particular issue, where we could get them to meet and do a round table among themselves before they come to the committee, and then they could give us representative samples as well as policy suggestions?

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

Okay, but you have an amendment on the table that says we leave this until after our meetings in October.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

The suggestion from Mr. Siksay was that the first part of this recommendation, to travel to Toronto, Ontario, on Monday, November 19, 2007, be deleted, and that we leave the part about inviting the organizational representatives to appear before the committee. I guess that's because of the extra time we're spending in Toronto talking about these issues.

Can I hear from those who would be in favour of deleting that first part, the travel to Toronto?

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

Mr. Chair, before you do that, I had a recommendation on the table that we leave this alone until after we—

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Yes, but I had Bill's first.

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

No, no. You had mine first.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Did I have yours first? No, I don't think so.

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

I suggested that we leave it alone until we finish in October and then we—

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Well, okay. We can do both, Jim.

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

You don't need a motion to leave it alone, Jim. The only motion on the table is to delete something that's already there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Okay.

First of all, let's go to Bill's motion here.

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

Do we have input on that before we vote?