Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 31st, 2006

[Richard Mahoney]

I don't know exactly, but it was very quickly.

I think there is no question that the ministerial discretion in subsection 25(1) would probably be the fastest because the minister can issue a minister's permit as quickly as he chooses. There may be processes and checks and so forth that have to be gone through, but a minister's permit--as honourable members well know--can be done very quickly.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you.

You can use your minute and a half or two minutes however you want to. If you want to go to Blair...or I can come back after I go--

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

After showing that cross-party goodwill, I'm more than happy to pass it on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Who would I go to now, Mr. Clerk?

Madam Faille.

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

I'd like to continue along the same lines as Borys. The will of the committee is that these persons be recognized as refugees. The committee had unanimously endorsed a motion to that effect. I don't see a problem with our drafting and tabling a motion that could be debated next week. We could hear from individuals like Rick Herringer and Charles Godfrey. I don't see in the material the letter from Rick Herringer who was the official in Manila at the time. However, there is no reason why the committee can't hear from these officials. As you pointed out, the minister can exercise his discretionary authority and issue a ministerial permit.

I don't think anyone here would hold it against the minister for issuing 188 permits to persons seeking refugee status. Mention was made of delays they encountered and of the overall time it took for them to make their way to this country. We know of two cases where the applications had already been processed and it still took at least a year.

Perhaps I could table a detailed motion reiterating the will of the committee to see ministerial permits issued to these individuals. This would give the minister, or a departmental official, an opportunity to come here and explain why the provisions of section 25 could not be invoked.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Also, tell me a little about the 200 people who are in the Philippines right now. Have they been integrated, both economically and socially into the Philippine community? Is that a problem for Canada if they have been integrated, in terms of resettlement?

[Hoi Trinh]

To answer your question, I ask you to please go to the very first page of part 2, page 4, from the Bureau of Immigration of the Philippines. Paragraph 2 very clearly says the following:

The consistent policy of the Philippine Government is to repatriate said RVNs (the returning Vietnamese) to Vietnam, or resettle them to a third country willing to accept them. The Philippines has never been, and is not, a resettlement country. It also has no intention of socially integrating persons whose applications for asylum/refugee status it denied in the first place.

They've always maintained that. And the following letters, signed in 2003-04 from the House of Representatives and the Philippines Senate, confirmed that they have no durable solution for these people.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

So has the UNHCR been asked to more or less determine again if these people should be moved because they've...? Has the UNHCR almost abandoned this particular issue right now?

[Hoi Trinh]

Yes, they have. They closed the camp down in 1996 at the end of the CPA. They closed all the camps down, and they left these people to fend for themselves. Since 1996, I have approached UNHCR in Manila many times asking them to at least confirm that at the time, 2,005 people were left without a durable solution. They would not do that until I went to Geneva in 2002 to get that confirmation. In fact, I presented the documentation last year.

UNHCR has consistently said that they are only looking after refugees. They don't look after any others. The letter I got from UNHCR simply said that if the resettlement countries can take them, that's great, but UNHCR cannot take them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you.

Ed and Mario, go ahead, please.

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

I'd like to go back to the question I posed earlier; it's twofold. The first part was specifically about the relaxing of the definition, including the financial part of it. The second concerned applications made to, say, the United States, and whether there was a decline in them for some reason. I've got a few more questions. If you can give me a brief answer to the first two, we'll come back for a couple more.

[Richard Mahoney]

On the first question of whether they could be further relaxed, the honest answer is yes. It may be cumbersome; it may not achieve what this committee has set out to achieve in its previous motions, but we could all, I think, think of an amendment right now that would, for example, allow Philip to sponsor his father in this particular case. That would be one change. It may not address many of the others. It may not allow us to take the 200 that we as a country originally asked to take. Not knowing all the facts and all the connections and all the potential sponsorees that are there and what connections they have to relatives here, I can't expound on, but that's just one example that comes to me today.

I am not aware of--and I don't know if anyone else is--whether any of these remaining 188 have applied to other countries.

[Hoi Trinh]

They have not applied because the other countries, just like Canada, have not been willing to take them.

Patrick's father has not applied to Canada because Canada has already said, “No, he won't be considered.”

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

Going back to the country of asylum class that you spoke of earlier, you said there was no possibility of a durable solution. My understanding was that there was some legislation in the Philippines to regularize the 188 who are there in that class. Is that a fact? Is there legislation under way to integrate them? I understand many have married Philippine people and have had children with them. They've been there for a long time. They've almost integrated already, but haven't been regularized, or there's been no provision for them. Is there legislation in the offing as we speak, to deal with that number?

[Hoi Trinh]

No, there isn't. In fact, a number of bills have been tabled, and the community has been asking the Philippines to please grant them permanent residency, but we have never been successful. If you go to page 5 of the submission, right after the letter from the Bureau of Immigration there is a letter from the House of Representatives to the U.S. in 2003. In paragraph 3 it says, among other things, “For those Vietnamese who have been stateless for 13 years...”.

The bill has never passed second reading in the House of Representatives. They need to pass a special law, and as you can understand, it takes a long time to pass a law. It usually takes about nine years, as the House of Representatives has indicated, in the Philippines because the political situation is always volatile. There was one time when we had the bill up to second reading of the House, but then President Estrada was kicked out of office. We had another bill in the House when President Arroyo was in office, and he was faced with a coup. Then we had an election and a new committee came in.

So right now there is no bill allowing for the Vietnamese to become permanent residents. In fact, that's why they have been stateless for 17 years. Had someone tried hard enough, the situation wouldn't have lasted until now. We have tried our best in the Philippines, but to the best of my knowledge, it's easier for the resettlement countries--Australia and the U.S.--to change their policies than for the Philippines to pass its laws.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

You have a minute left, or I can go to Mario.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm not a member of the committee, but I'm glad I'm here today, because this is certainly an incredible tragedy. We have heard so much about this over the years and have felt greatly for the people. They have gone through so much and been abandoned, in some ways, by UNHCR. The CIC based a lot of their decisions on information that came from the UN. That has unfortunately left a lot of people stateless. There's no question about that. They are in a very vulnerable situation and in need of international protection.

I gather from all the arguments that were made--and I believe there is also consensus between all parties--that we do want to have a resolution to deal with this terrible humanitarian situation. But maybe the best and fastest way, as was mentioned by Mr. Mahoney, is for the minister to use ministerial discretion and grant these people the right to come to Canada.

Would it be helpful if we had a resolution, endorsed unanimously by the committee, to ask the minister to expedite this as soon as possible?

[Maxwell Vo]

It would be great if you could do that.

[Hoi Trinh]

Right now our community is trying to ask the committee to think of the best way to help reunite families and find a doable solution. We come from Ottawa, Montreal, Vancouver--organizations and religious organizations. We met with you many times individually last year and at the committee. There's also a willingness in the community to offer private sponsorship under the country of asylum class.

Finally, could you please inform the minister of your willingness to agree with him or recommend to him that the people be recognized as refugees--whatever is the best way to reunite families, for Patrick to see his father, whatever you think is best? The power is in your hands.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Mario, if you're finished I can move to Bill for a question.

Go ahead, Bill.

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

Thanks, Chair.

Is there anything that characterizes these 118 people? Is there anything particularly problematic because they're the last of the 2,000 people? Is there anything that Canada needs to be concerned about, given their circumstances and the fact that they're the last remaining folks there?

[Hoi Trinh]

No, and that's the most unfortunate thing. They have never been considered, so they have never been denied. It's not as if they were interviewed by the U.S. or Australia or Norway and then rejected because of their medical condition or a criminal background. They've never been considered. They've never even been interviewed.

He was denied simply because his father was not eligible to apply under the expanded policy announced by the former minister. He couldn't go to Australia because Australia didn't want to consider his case. In fact, we didn't even make a submission for his father to go to Australia because we knew that Australia could only take a limited number of people.

So no. In fact, the community is asking Canada to consider this group in the same way as any other refugee group. They will have to undergo medical tests, like others, and they will have to undergo criminal tests, like others. If they're clear, then they're good to go; if they're not clear, then they're not good to go.

The community is also willing to raise funds to cover part of the transportation and resettlement costs. In fact, the community and I raised over $90,000 last year to help those refugees go to the U.S. Because they couldn't go to Canada, we helped them go to the U.S. Mai has also gone to the Philippines, as have others, to help in the processing of those cases.

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

Hoi, I wonder if you and Mai could describe the actual daily living conditions in a bit more detail. Mai, you alluded to it with a sort of list of general circumstances, but could you expand on that so people get a real sense of the difficulties they face in daily living in the Philippines?

[Mai Nguyen]

One story that really hits close to home, because I'm a student myself, is with a stateless Vietnamese man who was 22 years of age. I became friends with him. His name was Le Huy. He was admitted to university on compassionate grounds. His professor let him into university, but after his professor retired, the university found out that he did not have citizenship and was stateless. They kicked him out of school. They had posters of his face all over the school and he was not allowed on the grounds. He was treated almost like a criminal because he was trying to get an education. Through no fault of his own, being stateless, he was unable to do that. I've taken my education for granted and that's a story that has really hit hard.