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.