Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 31st, 2006

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

No, I'm willing to defer to Blair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Okay.

You go ahead, Blair, for five minutes.

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

I'll split it with you, Borys, if I have time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

We'll make sure he gets on here.

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

Okay.

Thank you very much for coming to the committee and for your presentation.

I've looked through all the documents, and speaking as a Liberal, obviously multiculturalism, tolerance, community, and fairness are hallmarks of our party's tradition and I think of Canada's tradition. I also come at this from an economic point of view as well as from a social point of view.

If you take a look at Canada right now, we have an aging population that is set to retire in 2012. We have a great demand for workers of all varieties, especially in western Canada, where we can't find enough skilled workers at all. When you have a demand problem, with an increasing demand for Canadian citizens, and you have a supply problem, with a backlog of new Canadians, yourselves included, it seems like it's an easy fit to bring the two together, based on social values and based on economic values.

I have a few questions. First, in your view, with regard to the country of asylum class, as set out by the immigration and refugee protection regulations, if they clearly meet those objectives then why does the minister need to intervene? Can't the applications be made through that channel and be accepted?

[Richard Mahoney]

That's a very good point. The minister only needs to intervene under subsection 25(1) if he wants to make a humanitarian and compassionate finding and issue a minister's permit. He does not need to intervene. We need a finding by a delegated officer, under the act, that these people meet the definition of the class, that's what we need, and a private sponsorship. But that doesn't exist at this point, so somebody has to make that finding.

Now, it's not the Immigration and Refugee Board, as it would be in an individual case, but we need an officer, under the act, who has the authority to make that finding.

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

My humble question, through the chair, is who qualifies to be able to do that?

[Richard Mahoney]

Any officer could make that finding--for example, an officer at the embassy in Manila.

[Hoi Trinh]

The unfortunate thing is that since 2002 the community has made representation to CIC asking if they could be recognized, and CIC has said no. In fact, they've tried to not recognize people as refugees by saying that other countries have not recognized people as refugees. As you can see from the fourth paragraph, it's misleading, and I find it very disappointing. It's one thing to say that Canada won't recognize them as refugees, but it's another thing to mislead Mr. Bill Siksay in Parliament to say that other countries have not recognized people as refugees. Other countries have recognized people as refugees; you have the evidence right in front of you.

In fact, I just met up with the Canadian embassy last month, because I took exception to paragraph four, which says, “Our mission in Manila has confirmed that the Australians did not accept the Viet-Phi as refugees....” I asked Mr. Charles Godfrey, the head of mission there, about this refugee question. He told me that he'd never said it. I told him I wanted to know who did say it, then, because it's plainly wrong: check with the Australian government.

If you go to part 6, “Australia--Confirmation of Resettlement as Refugees”, the letter says clearly that there's a letter of approval from the Australian government embassy in Manila that says, with reference to the application for a refugee subclass, in 2003 a decision was taken to grant “you and your family” that visa.

All the evidence is there, but for some reason CIC is trying to say otherwise, that these people are not refugees. I don't understand why that's the case.

[Richard Mahoney]

If I might add to that, I believe it was CIC's reluctance to make that finding that led the minister to take the approach he did, which was to change the definition of the class. He was trying to find another way to get this done.

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

Okay.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

We will go to Barry.

[Barry Devolin, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank everyone who's here today for making this very emotional presentation, and for the obvious support of the community. I am new to this file and new to this committee, so I don't have a history with this.

To Mr. Mahoney, I understand that there are rules and procedures through which people can gain access to Canada, but I also understand that the minister has the discretion to grant access to anyone on a discretionary basis. If there was a desire to deal with this expeditiously, I don't understand why that wasn't used. I think we've had three immigration ministers in the last two years. Actually, I think Minister Solberg is the fourth.

I'm just curious, is there a reason why, to your knowledge, none of the other immigration ministers just used their authority to make a discretionary option that wouldn't set a precedent or require interpretation of policy?

[Richard Mahoney]

Just to be clear, you're referring to subsection 25(1), under which the minister has the authority to do that.

[Barry Devolin, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Right.

[Richard Mahoney]

Much as I would love to speak for the former government....

First, let me be cautious. There's a different fact situation now, and that's the argument I really want to make to you. For any of you who may have the view that we should proceed cautiously in these matters in terms of dealing with immigration, when....

Number one, I think CIC has the view, rightly or wrongly--in my view wrongly, but my view is not that important, frankly--that these people don't qualify for country of asylum class. You ask why they don't use subsection 25(1). At the time when this committee had its last deliberations, and at the time when the last minister changed the regulations, there weren't 188 people left, there were thousands of people left. Perhaps the advice at the time was to say that the most intelligent way to proceed was to set up a class where Canadians could sponsor relatives, and just widen the class.

In my humble submission, it's a reasonable proposition, and it probably would have resulted in, it's fair to say, more people coming to our country in this class, except for the fact that other countries, the United States in particular, also stepped up, and we find ourselves where we are right now.

So I can't speak to why previous ministers did what they did, but knowing the advice they got, and knowing the reality of the situation, that's probably why it was.

Finally, I wouldn't worry about, as you say, the precedent, or the floodgates opening up now. There are 188 people left. We're not talking about, as you say, a massive precedent, or opening the door perhaps more widely than some Canadians would be prepared to do.

[Barry Devolin, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Just to be clear, I wasn't suggesting that we ought to proceed cautiously. Quite frankly, I presume that every time a new minister takes office, when they're presented with a decision that one of their predecessors has taken, they would ask their deputy or senior officials why he or she ruled in this way so that they can better understand it. I suspect you probably do have a good insight into how those decisions were made.

Thanks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

You have one minute and 10 seconds, if you want to use it.

Ed.

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

I'll speak to a very narrow issue, although there are some other ones I want to deal with. It was certainly a compelling presentation, and well put together.

The former minister tended to deal with the situation by relaxing, essentially, the family class criteria in attempting to get the people in. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, very few took benefit of that, even though there was a window of time for that to happen.

Going down that particular road--without arguing the refugee matter for now, or the statelessness issue that you mentioned--is there a further relaxation that you could see as being useful for some or all of these? With regard to the 188 who are left, have they applied to, say, the United States or other countries and been refused for one reason or other, and what might that have been?

[Richard Mahoney]

I think it's fair to say that the member is asking whether or not, putting aside the country of asylum argument, there's another option that might work in terms of changing the definition of class, another option for the committee to look after these remaining 188.

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

Yes, there is some mention of the economic burden, but if that were shifted, perhaps--

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Okay, you've gone over by 15 seconds, so we'll get you on the next round.

Borys for the Liberals, and then we'll go to Madam Faille.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you.

I'd like to thank all the witnesses for coming forward today.

I think it's quite apparent from the questioning that we have all-party goodwill. The question is how we do this expeditiously. These people have waited a very long time.

You outlined three potential methods that the government could use. You've probably thought them through, so assuming that in this coming week there was the political will to move on this issue, what kinds of timelines would each of those entail?

[Hoi Trinh]

If CIC designates these people as refugees in need of Canada's protection under the country of asylum class, then it's just a matter of us making the applications in Manilla. It takes six months to a year to process the cases. If that were to happen, I would hope this kid will get to see his father in a year's time. It takes a whole year to process.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Looking at the circumstances and going into your index...although it's quite brief, it lists off the people and their life experiences. These are people who have had horrendous life experiences and are living in conditions where we can make a difference. We can do the right thing.

In terms of political will and ministerial discretion, if under the other options it's a year before children can see parents, political will can be a scalpel that cuts through this bureaucracy. There is a compelling case. We all understand it. Fundamentally, what we're talking about here is the political will to get it done. It appears that we do have all-party consensus.

How quickly do you think this could be moved on? We had the case in 1956 of the Hungarian revolution. How long did it take for Canada to move in that case and bring those people here?