Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 5th, 2008

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Okay, we'll suspend for a few minutes—and of course we will go in camera in a few minutes.

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

We could deal with Olivia Chow's motion and defeat it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

I don't think that would be fair.

We're suspended.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Ms. Chow, do you want to deal with your motion?

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Sure. I can be fast.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

So we're back on motions again, and we have a motion before us from Ms. Chow:

That, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the Committee recommend the government immediately serve notice and then proceed to abrogate the Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States of America.

Ms. Chow.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Chair, thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about this issue.

First, I want to amend the motion briefly by adding that it be reported to the House of Commons, if it passes—standard.

The safe third country agreement was signed by the former Liberal government. What it means is that if a refugee claimant goes to a visa office in the U.S. and says, for example, “I'm from Haiti, and I travel through the U.S., but I want to declare refugee status in order to get into Canada”, they would not be given the right to have a hearing. They in fact are not able to apply in the U.S.

As a result, what is happening now is that many refugee claimants are flooding across the border, because in Canada we do not deport people to Haiti, for example, whereas in the U.S. they do.

The reason this is not a good agreement in the first place is that Canada has an independent foreign policy. We should not have a policy that is directed by the United States. We are a sovereign country. We really should have independent foreign policy. If we have an independent foreign policy, there is no reason to say to refugees, “You cannot apply—you travelled through the U.S., you are physically in the U.S., you therefore are not entitled to a hearing.”

It's my belief—the same belief as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees—that every refugee claimant should have the right to apply as a refugee no matter where that person has travelled through. There's no such thing as safe third country.

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

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, are we public?

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Yes, we are.

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

That's definite?

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Yes.

Continue, Ms. Chow.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

All right.

So why is this really important? Because if you think back to the eighties, at that time there were refugee claimants coming via the U.S. to Canada from El Salvador, from Chile. At that time the U.S. said, “No, we do not believe there are any refugees who can possibly be generated from Chile or El Salvador or Guatemala or Honduras, because the governments there are fine. So what if there are death squads...?”

At that time, there was discussion on whether there should be a safe third country agreement. Canada decided not to sign such an agreement, and in fact decided not to deport anyone back to Chile, for example. Had we followed U.S. foreign policy, we would have been deporting people back to Chile. They sometimes travelled through the U.S., so we wouldn't have taken their applications as refugee claimants and many of them would have been sent back to the death squads. Many of them would have died.

This agreement was roundly condemned by the UNHCR. It was challenged in the courts. It was lost in the Federal Court. The federal government decided to appeal that decision. I have no doubt that it will be in front of the Supreme Court eventually. It will take a long time for the appeal to take place.

In the meantime, at the border, whether it's in Quebec or in Windsor, or in many other border countries, you have people coming in, flooding across the border--illegally, mind you, because they just have no opportunity to apply for refugee status outside Canada.

So my motion is in front of you. I hope committee members vote in favour of it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you, Ms. Chow.

Mr. Komarnicki.

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

I would urge the members of this committee to not support this motion and in fact defeat it. I think the motion itself is premature, particularly given the fact that the matter is before the courts.

The Federal Court did indeed apply to appeal the decision, and the appeal posed some significant questions, including whether the agreement is charter-compliant, along with a number of other issues. More importantly, the Federal Court granted a stay of proceedings of the first court decision to allow the safe third country agreement to continue to be in effect until the matter is ultimately disposed of.

In light of that, to proceed with a motion that would be contrary to these questions happening at a judicial level would be inappropriate and premature. In fairness to the UNHCR, I would disagree with Olivia Chow's remark that they somehow take exception to the safe third country agreement, because the representative, Mr. Assadi, said--

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

I need to interrupt you again for a moment.

Are we indeed public? How do we determine, for sure, that we're public?

[An hon. member]

We're not public.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Some people are saying we're not public. You're saying we're public.

So you're absolutely sure we're public? Okay, let's continue.

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

I'll continue where I left off.

Mr. Assadi said, and I quote:

We consider the United States to be a safe country. Otherwise, we would not have agreed to do this monitoring, and we would have said so at the very outset.

They did agree to the monitoring, and they said that, in general, the agreement is being implemented in keeping with its own terms and with international refugee law.

What the agreement attempts to do is say that any refugee must make their claim in the first country they arrive in. If it's the United States, they must claim it there. If it's in Canada, they must claim it here. Both countries have internationally recognized fair refugee systems and processes, albeit somewhat different. The processes are different, but when you look in terms of the big picture overall, both countries protect refugees.

But the main point is this motion is premature, given the fact that this matter is before the court. The court will determine some very important things, like whether the United States was properly designated as a safe third country and whether it's charter-compliant. If they decide that all of those answers are yes, then this motion asking the government to abrogate would be totally inappropriate. It wouldn't make sense.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you.

Mr. Karygiannis is next.

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

Have you got me down here?

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Yes, I have Mr. Komarnicki, Mr. Karygiannis, Mr. Telegdi, and Madam Beaumier.

The chair is very sensitive about the lineup. He treats everyone with the utmost respect.

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

I'm sure we'll all get a chance to speak, Mr. Chair.

Although I have difficulty with the safe third country agreement, because this thing is in front of the courts and because we need to take a more careful look at it, I would say that we will probably want to put it aside and--as a friendly suggestion to the mover of the motion--allow it to stand.

In Europe, there is the European Union. They've got safe third country agreements and they're going through processes where one country certainly can look upon.... And they're looking at what we're doing. The fact that the United States has a little bit of a harder and harsher avenue than we do, maybe what we need to do is instruct the minister--as I had pointed out last year--to go back to the UN and try to iron out that we all have the same standards when they're applied. I think that should be our challenge and our work, versus a knee-jerk reaction saying the United States is bad and we're better. I don't think that's the avenue we want to take.

If the United States has a different approach, maybe what we'll need to do is come to an agreement with the United States where we equalize the way we do things. And if we find out that's not the case, then we abrogate. But we haven't taken that challenge. We have not taken that avenue to address that with our partners to the south.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Okay, thank you, Mr. Karygiannis.

Mr. Telegdi, then Madam Beaumier.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will be supporting the motion. I think the European Union is a good place to start. Mr. Karygiannis mentioned the European Union. They have a common standard throughout the European Union and they also have the Schengen Agreement. So you protect the perimeter, and any European Union country gains entry to a European Union country and they get to travel throughout Europe.

All you have to do, when you watch CNN, is look at the various U.S. policies. I don't know if any of you saw the show where they came on the news and had some Cubans trying to swim to shore in the United States. If the United States can get them before they touch shore, then they get rounded up and shipped off to Guantanamo and eventually repatriated to Cuba. If you happen to be a Haitian who would clearly get status if you were applying for refugee status in Canada, you get none of that; you get shipped back. Even if you're a Haitian and you managed to get to shore, it doesn't matter, you get shipped back.

If the safe third country agreement existed at the time of the Chileans, then those folks would have been sent back to Pinochet, a government dictatorship to which human rights abuses have been attributed. As a matter of fact, Pinochet was going to be tried for his crimes. Anyway, then the people would disappear because of the death squads. And it's the same with El Salvador and Nicaragua.

The other thing is, if somebody manages to go through the United States, it's almost like the underground railroad. If you get through the United States and then you get to Canada, you get into Canada illegally. If you try a hazardous way of getting into the country, in many cases when people come to a new land they can very easily get killed trying to gain entry into Canada because they can apply inland. Now it becomes the game: how do we get into Canada illegally from the United States?

We've seen situations where people tried to smuggle themselves into Canada by doing such things as getting into the wheel wells of jets. When the jet plane lands, you'll have bodies fall out because they will have frozen to death. We have had similar situations happening in containers, with people trying to gain entry into the country.

Particularly now we had the court case. We have a judgment from one court. It reminds me of the time that it took for the court case to proceed on security certificates, because it got up to the Supreme Court and took many years. In the meantime, we essentially were operating, it was ultimately judged, outside of the charter, and the courts judged security certificates to be unconstitutional.

So for all those reasons and all the previous representations I heard in front of this committee, from many groups, I will be supporting the motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

I have Madam Beaumier.