Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 7th, 2008

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

I would like to welcome all of you here today as we continue our cross-country meetings.

First of all, I want to thank you, Madam Mayor, for the opportunity to be here and be hosted by your gracious city and for giving us the town hall to conduct our meetings in. Of course, I want to thank your MP, Mr. Telegdi, in whose riding we happen to be.

Thank you, Andrew, for the invitation to be here.

As you're aware, we are the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. We've been mandated to hold meetings on three very important matters that we know you're very concerned about and very interested in as well. These are temporary and undocumented workers, immigration consultants, and the Iraqi refugee problem, which we're all very much aware of.

We're going to meet in almost all of the ten provinces in Canada. We will be finishing up in mid-April in St. John's, Newfoundland. We already met in Vancouver last week, and in Edmonton, Saskatchewan, and Winnipeg. This week we're here in Kitchener, Waterloo, and we'll go to Toronto for a couple of days of meetings, and then from Toronto to Montreal. From there, we'll go into eastern Canada. It's going to be a very busy time for us. We'll be in Quebec City and Montreal and all over.

We're going to be meeting approximately 52 panels of people who want to talk about these very important issues. We are accompanied by officials from the department and from government, and these people, along with us, will be charged with the responsibility of compiling a report. At the end of it all, we will present that report to the House of Commons.

Again, I'm very pleased to be here. Our committee is very pleased to be here. I want to thank you, Madam Mayor, for your graciousness in hosting this.

I would invite the mayor to say a few words here today. Madam Mayor.

[Brenda Halloran, Mayor of Waterloo, As an Individual]

Thank you very much.

Good morning, everybody.

Chair Doyle, members of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, and of course, the participants in today's hearings, thank you so much for coming here today to our city. I welcome you on behalf of council and the citizens of Waterloo.

It is definitely our privilege to provide this location today for one of the two Ontario stops for the committee hearings on citizenship and immigration. I must specifically thank the Honourable Andrew Telegdi, our member of Parliament, who was instrumental in having the first-ever meeting of this committee held in Waterloo, and who also assisted in making Waterloo a location for the cross-country hearings again this year.

It is important that we, as representatives of the people, reach out whenever possible to engage our constituents and stakeholders in discussions on how to improve our policies and processes. This can be difficult for local government representatives, and I'm certain even more so for our federal government partners. That is why I applaud this initiative and wish you the most success today and throughout the remainder of your hearings. This is a very important day for all of us in Canada and I'm really pleased to see so many of you taking the time out of your very busy lives to sit here today and share your information and concerns with this committee. I'm really proud to be a part of it and that Waterloo is sharing a small part in something that's going to be very instrumental for our country.

Thank you, and thank you to all the committee members here today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

It's great to be here. We're looking forward today to having MP Telegdi take us around town later on this evening to show us some of the sights here in Kitchener, Waterloo. I'm looking forward to that.

Thank you. I appreciate it very much indeed.

Mr. Karygiannis.

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

I have a request, Mr. Chair.

I know the clerk has been trying to put a schedule together with last-minute requests and last-minute additions. We have more people here than we had requested to come. In some of the situations--for example, the Iraqi refugees--they will certainly continue tomorrow.

I'm just wondering, since some of the folks made a long trip to come here, if we can find it in our hearts to allow them a little bit of extra time. I know we're supposed to go from 11 until 12 o'clock. Maybe we can stretch that to between 11 and 12:30 or 12:45, and give them an opportunity to voice their concerns, versus giving everybody two minutes. By the time you say, “Hello, my name is...”, those two minutes are gone. So maybe we can come to some agreement that we give five minutes to everybody who is here to present.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Yes, whatever it takes. We're going to be totally flexible. We're not here to bring the hammer down if people are going over their time. We'll be totally, completely flexible, as informal as we can be. We're interested, at the end of the day, in cluing up when we have to, but I'm absolutely in agreement with that and I'm sure all members of the committee would be. So the people who are appearing before us today can feel very relaxed about the time and what have you.

I'm going to pass the chair over to Mr. Telegdi in a few minutes. He is vice-chair of our committee, and of course we're in his riding, so I think it would be a good thing to let him conduct these meetings this morning.

I would like to welcome the witnesses here today—and I have indicated that after the welcome the cameras will be gone.

We have as witnesses, from the Iraqi Canadian Society of Ontario, Ghina Al-Sewaidi, who is its president, as well as Falah Hafed, Hessan Mashkour, and Yanar Mohammed; from the Iraqi Federation of Refugees, Jalal Saeed; from the Assyrian Aid Society of Canada, Mariam Georgis; and from the Mandaean Canadian Community Association, Salam Gatih.

Welcome to all of you. I will now vacate the chair and ask Mr. Telegdi to chair the meeting.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Andrew Telegdi]

Thank you very much.

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

Does that mean that Mr. Doyle has switched parties?

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Andrew Telegdi]

No, he is being non-partisan, as we are on this committee while we are on the road.

First of all, I want to welcome the committee into the council chambers where I spent eight years. I think the rule we had last time was that we were taking some photographs of members for members' use. That still applies from the last time. We want to make sure everybody gets some good pictures from their travels.

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

Do we have the cameras going?

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Andrew Telegdi]

I have no problem with it, but I don't think we want to argue about it, so....

Let me say to the delegation today on Iraqi refugees that I came here as a refugee in 1957. That was after the Hungarian revolution. Canada's refugee policies were drastically altered at that time to accommodate the influx. Things have changed for the better. Your stories, I know, are going to be very compelling, and we're going to extend the time to accommodate as much discussion as possible.

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

We can bring lunch in.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Andrew Telegdi]

Lunch is going to be right next door in the room named after one of the original founders of this Mennonite community.

I would ask the presenters to try to keep your comments to about five minutes so we can get engagement from the members. What will happen is that you make the presentations, and then members of the committee will be asking questions or for points of clarification and what have you.

[Norman Doyle, Conservative, St. John's East, NL]

If I can interject for a moment, already some of the committee have come and said that they will require a bit more than five minutes, so they're asking our indulgence to give them some extra time. I indicated that we would and that we'll go overtime, if necessary.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Andrew Telegdi]

A lot of the discussion will help clarify the points as well. We want to see interaction between the presenters and the committee. In case we have any questions, we don't want to be sitting there, when we're doing the report, asking what something meant.

The first presenter is going to be Ms. Ghina Al-Sewaidi, from the Iraqi Canadian Society of Ontario.

[Ghina Al-Sewaidi, President, Iraqi Canadian Society of Ontario]

I am from the Iraqi Canadian Society of Ontario. I am the president of the organization. I have here with me two individuals. We devised our time, actually, for each of us to speak for about two minutes, and we've divided the issues also. Falah Hafed will start and will speak about the general Iraqi refugee situation. Ms. Yanar Mohammed will be talking about women refugees in Iraq. And being a practising lawyer here in Canada, I will be talking about the legal issues facing refugees already.

So maybe Falah Hafed could start.

[Falah Hafed, Iraqi Canadian Society of Ontario]

I would like to thank the committee for inviting us here today to discuss a very important issue in Iraq: refugees.

On a personal level, I would like to thank Immigration Canada. Five years ago it did help me, was a tremendous help, when I tried to adopt this child. It did marvellously at that time, five years ago.

I don't feel we are happy at this time with Immigration Canada's dealing with the refugees in Iraq. As we all know, we are dealing with the tip of the iceberg when we talk about refugees and asylum seekers. All the western nations are dealing with 1% of the asylum seekers from Iraq. There have been 4.5 million Iraqi refugees uprooted since the conflict started, and 2.5 million of the Iraqis displaced are inside the country and 2 million are in neighbouring countries, Syria and Jordan.

When I was reviewing the statistics from the United Nations High Commissioner, I was puzzled with the numbers I saw when I compared Canada with Sweden. Sweden is not one of the eight great nations. They are only nine million in population. They took 36,000 in 2007, and that represented four people per each 1,000 people in the Swedish population. Canada, with a population of 33 million, is taking less than one person per 1,000 Canadians. We have a better economy and we have a bigger country, and we are still taking many fewer than Sweden. I feel we need a better answer for this conflicting number.

I also would like to mention some problems I have been hearing about from the refugees in Jordan and Syria. As all of you know, the refugees, when they leave their homes, have not prepared by learning English—they're just trying to save their skins. The requirement by Immigration Canada to have somebody speak English to come here as a refugee is a problem. The other problem they are facing there is that they don't have jobs and they live on their savings. Most of the people drain their savings while waiting for somebody to look after their application. Some of them risk their lives and go back to Iraq to do some work to put food on the table in Syria or Jordan, where their kids are.

The Canadian embassy and the people who are dealing with the refugees overseas, in Syria and Jordan, are asking for documentation--certified documentation, like a marriage certificate or an education certificate--and this kind of thing is impossible for a refugee to grab at the last minute, when some of them or most of them are leaving at gunpoint.

There are a lot of health issues for the Iraqi refugees. I get a lot of letters from my friends and family members. They can't afford to buy medicine for their kids. The economies in Syria and Jordan are very slow, and they have difficulty in finding jobs. They're appealing for help, and we are trying here to help them.

I would like also to mention that Immigration Canada is underusing our community here in Canada. They should do better. If they contact us, we can help. Please pay attention to this point.

We are working on our own. We go looking for the people coming from Iraq to help them, and we can mobilize our community. Last winter, I was driving close to downtown Kitchener when I saw a woman walking on the street wearing traditional Iraqi clothes. It was minus 8 to minus 10, and she's wearing very light clothes. I sent my wife to talk to her and ask her what was going on and why she was walking in an almost deserted area. We found out that she was a newcomer of three days ago. She was looking for a grocery store or something. We convinced her to come with us and we brought her back.

When you bring refugees here, you need somebody else to tell them when they should call 911, when they should go to the OHIP office, and who is going to help them. So please, pay attention to our community so we can help you.

Thank you very much. I think my time is up.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Andrew Telegdi]

Thank you very much.

The next speaker is Ms. Yanar Mohammed.

[Yanar Mohammed, President, Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq, Iraqi Canadian Society of Ontario]

Thank you for having us here.

My name is Yanar Mohammed, and I'm president of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq. It so happens that I am in Canada right now, which gives me an opportunity to convey to you what happens to the women of Iraq at this point and why there is a need for this part of the world to lend a helping hand.

At this point, what we do in Iraq is try to save women from honour killings. We have opened shelters for women. I don't know whether it's clear on this side of the world, but current laws in Iraq still support the honour killing of women. In the south, in one city only, 133 women were killed in this current year. And these are the official announcements. The real numbers of women killed in Iraq every year are somewhere between 500 to 1,000, all under laws that legalize these killings. They abide by what is called the honour issue.

These women have nowhere to go. In our shelters we are able to take a few, and now we are being pressured by the government. They are trying to make our shelters illegal. These women are leaving Iraq and going to Syria and Jordan. They are part of that population of two million who are starving, humiliated, not being accepted anywhere in the world. There is a population of somewhere between 10,000 and 50,000 women who are forced to sell themselves on a daily basis in order to make ends meet, in order to keep their children alive.

These women need to hear from this country's policies. These women do not deserve this much humiliation from Iraq's policies, which happened because of political issues.

Our organization has gone into the prisons in Iraq, into the prisons for women. What we have found out is that women, while in the detainment centres, are being raped. We have found seven cases of women who were raped by Iraqi police. We raised the issue with the Ministry of Interior and have not heard any answers from them. It has been one year since we raised this issue.

In terms of the trafficking issue, somewhere between 5,000 and 50,000 women have been trafficked to the surrounding countries and are being exploited. Why do I say between 5,000 and 50,000? It depends on the way you identify trafficking. At this moment, the women of Iraq are living in a big prison. They are not being welcomed in many places in the world.

I would also like to mention a few things about youth. If you are a young person, usually a male, trying to move in Baghdad or in another city from one area to the other, you have to have a false ID in your pocket. Otherwise, if you hold the wrong ID, you are detained. You disappear. You do not go back to your parents. If are a Sunni, you do not go back to your parents.

The militia are in control of the checkpoints and also in control of the government. It is very clear over the television now that militia warfare has taken millions of people in Iraq hostage. The youth are being held hostage.

Selwan, for example, applied to become a policeman. He worked there for many months until his conscience could not take any more torture issues. He was seeing Sunnis being tortured in the police centres. Selwan left the police. Now in his area and in the further cities, the Jaysh al-Mahdi is recruiting. This militia, which is recruiting young people, is against the government. Full-scale warfare has taken hold, and Iraqis are being held as refugees in their own cities, in their own houses.

At this moment, because of the time, I would like to speak on behalf of some of the other people in my group.

I would like to mention the issue of the Christians and how they are being sabotaged inside Iraq: the Archbishop who was kidnapped and then killed, the priest who was walking in a funeral procession and was killed by a runaway car, the mass immigration from Basra in the south of Iraq just because the Islamic parties are in control of that city. It's even an exaggeration to call them parties. These are militias who are in control of our cities and they have turned them into a very unfriendly zone for other religions, for the other gender, because women are not really very much supported under their agenda. Other religions are also to be considered in this issue.

I would like to focus here on the acceptance of women being discriminated against in this new era in Iraq. Honour killing articles in the criminal code are still valid, and they still provide the cover-up for the killing of women. Somewhere between 500 and 1,000 women are killed every month.

I would like to tell you this small story. It is a real story that happened two days ago in Sadr City, the same place where the fighting took place two days ago. Nobody mentions the warfare against women.

Zainab was found by herself with a male who is not her husband. She was taken out of the car by the Jaysh al-Mahdi militia. She was stripped naked and forced to walk naked all over the city. She was humiliated just because she is a woman who was found in what was thought of as an immoral situation. They took her back to her house and they told all the family they had to leave the city. Zainab was very lucky she was not killed. This is a big prison for women, for other religions, a big prison for anybody who is not from the sectarian group of the government, which is Islamic Shia.

I usually do not disclose this information. I speak about this as a Muslim Shia, and this should not happen anywhere in the world. But what do I say to these youths, to these women around me, when they ask me about Canada? How it is one of the most developed countries in the world? How it has the highest standards and how they are not accepting immigrants at this point, or they are making it more difficult? What do I say to Eman, who had to live while very exploited as a prostitute, who saw the woman next to her brought back as a bloody body drilled from head to toe by electric drills?

This is the situation when you live like a minority in a country like Iraq at this time. The occupation has brought us very inhumane situations, and unfortunately Canada finds itself in the position where it has to do the cleanup or help people who are unfortunate on the other side of the world. This is the reason I come here to speak, and I'm very fortunate to be able to be in Canada at this point.

Thank you very much for giving us the time. We would like to hear more from you later.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Andrew Telegdi]

Thank you.

Next we'll have Ghina Al-Sewaidi.

[Ghina Al-Sewaidi]

I will be speaking because of the time constraints.

I am a practising lawyer here and I will keep my comments short and to the legal side of the immigration system. I'm happy I'm here today because I have always wanted to share this opinion of mine with respect to the frustration I have when there are immigration applications being processed from overseas.

Because of this frustration I have, I have reduced my intake of immigration applications on behalf of clients. Applications take years. I can specifically mention that I know of a couple of family-class sponsorship applications that have taken over eight years to be processed, even though an appeal was allowed and an error in the application was rejected again. We had to correspond and correspond, and it took months for the embassy--that's in Syria, because most of my applications are being processed through Syria--to eventually respond when I sent them a letter, for example, saying, if you do not respond I'm going to Federal Court, and the Federal Court will be asking for cause and damages. That's basically when they responded.

It's very frustrating for us as lawyers. The same information keeps being asked by the embassy staff over and over--same documents, same photocopies. There is delay by them in answering questions or queries by us lawyers from here. They send correspondence to us with files without names--just file numbers--and we have to write back to them asking them for the name of the client. That's another two months for them to answer back. They send letters dated one date and the envelope dated a month and a half later, and they give the client a deadline of one month from the date of that letter. So again we have to write to them, send them copies of the envelope, send them copies of the letter, and ask for an extension of time. That's a further delay.

They do not review files, it seems. Each time we ask for an update they ask for the same thing, the same standard letter they have. If clients go and ask them at the embassy, at the visa section, what is happening with their application, first of all, the clients say they are not treated as human beings there. They are treated differently from people with other nationalities, and at the same time they tell them, “Go and ask your lawyer in Canada. Your lawyer did not send us what we had asked your lawyer to send.” They come to us. We show them proof that we had sent to the embassy what they needed us to send to them.

So really all this is very frustrating. To clean up the situation, that would help immensely with the backlog they have at the embassy, especially with the situation of refugees, because a lot of them do have family here who are willing to sponsor them. They do have family here who are willing to support them, and if the mind was put actually to the application and to the paperwork, we would not have the backlog we have now here in the system.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Andrew Telegdi]

Thank you very much.

We're now going to go to Jalal Saeed. I want to make sure we have that right.

[Jalal Saeed, Iraqi Federation of Refugee]

My name is Jalal Saeed. I am working with the Iraqi Federation of Refugees. Also I am a member of the Canadian Council for Refugees. I am working with the Iraqi Canadian Society too.

Actually, I just came back last week from Iraq.

By the way, I get the shakes. I haven't presented too much stuff. There was supposed to be somebody coming to take my place. He was to come today, but he didn't come. Finally, I came just to listen and to say something at our meeting.

Our organization was established in 1991 during the time of Saddam Hussein, when the first war happened. All the Iraqi Kurds escaped to the mountains. There were almost three million people. At that time our organization was started in order to help people. When the Iraqis were starting to escape to Europe or to Canada, our organization was started in order to help the Iraqi refugees in those countries.

I came to Canada as a refugee in 1998. At that time I established this organization and started to sponsor under private sponsorship in Canada. We brought over 100 people to Canada under private sponsorship, by groups of five or by those organizations that were helping under private sponsorship, like the Canadian Lutheran Church and the Canadian Reform Church and the other organizations.

This is my question. Until 2003 the application process was very fast. During one year everybody got the right answer or they couldn't come to Canada during the right time. But after 2003 when there were the big happenings in Iraq with the United States, the applications have taken so long. Even in Canada, the application process, which before was four weeks, now has gone up to eight months or even one year or more. It takes one year just to get the B number from the CIC local. Because this has happened, we stopped this process. This is what has happened.

I'm sorry my voice is not very good, but I just want to say what is happening in Iraq, as I came back last week.

If you ask anybody in Iraq--I'm not talking about the refugees outside of Iraq in Syria, Jordan, and Turkey, but inside Iraq--everybody wants to get out, but they don't know how. Everybody asks me to please help, but how? From children to seniors, everybody asks for help, but how? We don't know where to start. In Kurdistan at that time, we got help from the Government of England. They deported 60 Kurds from England to Kurdistan. We met the president of the Parliament in Kurdistan about the stuff that happened to the Iraqi Kurd refugees in England, but they didn't have a right answer for us. They said, “They are our people, and we cannot tell them not to come back”. We found out later that everybody got help from the airport by the Kurdish government. This happened in Kurdistan, in Iraq.

I met people from Basra and Kirkuk and so on. Everybody wants to get out. This is happening in Iraq.

I'm sorry, I can't talk too much.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Andrew Telegdi]

Okay, thank you.

Then we'll go to Mariam Georgis.

[Mariam Georgis, Member, Assyrian Aid Society of Canada]

Good morning.

I'd first like to thank the committee--and also Canada, I guess--for giving me the opportunity to come here today and speak on behalf of the Assyrian Aid Society of Iraq.

The Assyrian Aid Society of Iraq was created in the spring of 1991 to alleviate the hardships our people were facing due to the Gulf War. Thereafter, branches were opened in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia to raise funds for the programs implemented by the society.

The programs implemented before 2003 were resettlement of Assyrians, also known as Chaldeans and Syriacs and hereafter referred to as ChaldoAssyrians, refugees from Turkey and Syria, back to their villages that were destroyed by the previous regime. They provided them with the basic necessities of life, such as shelter, food, and water. They installed irrigation systems and provided farming equipment. They supported the ChaldoAssyrians' education initiatives by building schools, printing curriculums, and establishing dormitories and transportation for students and teachers. They also established health clinics and pharmacies. Through these programs, the Assyrian Aid Society was successful in preventing a mass exodus of the ChaldoAssyrian community and maintaining the diversity of the Dohuk and Arbil governments.

Since the fall of the previous government, the responsibilities of our society have increased as more ChaldoAssyrians were displaced from the conflict regions and took refuge in the Nineveh Plains as well as neighbouring countries due to imminent threat to their personal safety. They have often suffered from some form of attack or loss of life. They represent a wave of dislocation that is part of an ethno-religious cleansing campaign in Iraq. Presently one in three ChaldoAssyrians is a refugee, and figures for internally displaced people in all of Iraq reflect even greater internal dislocation.

Sadly, this tragic picture is overlooked by many, and it is reinforcing the communities' feelings of hopelessness and despair. This in turn is prompting even more flights to neighbouring countries, with the goal of leaving Iraq and the Middle East.

Since early 2007, the targeting that resulted in the massive influx of internally displaced persons in 2006 has only increased. At a minimum, using conservative United States government figures, one in three ChaldoAssyrians is a refugee. UNHCR's 2007 rapid needs assessment indicates they represent 85% of internally displaced persons arriving in governments such as Dohuk. They are classifying them as a returning diaspora.

However, the largely successful ethno-religious cleansing of such areas is part of a massive, deliberate, and focused effort at targeting Iraq's vulnerable Christian population. Over the years the Nineveh Plains has gone through a situation of underdevelopment due to the previous regime's discrimination and Arabization campaign. Thus it lacks the basic infrastructure to sustain its existing population base, let alone take on waves of thousands of internally displaced families. For ChaldoAssyrian Christians, these high-profile attacks only serve to exemplify what they're all facing: murders, kidnappings, rapes, and forced conversions that lead to large-scale dislocation and displacement.

The Department of State was required to produce a report on the situation in the Nineveh Plains. The report effectively summarizes the situation these people are facing and confirms that a great proportion are arriving in the Nineveh Plains. Their security and economic status have suffered dramatically in recent years. Many have sought to escape from central Iraq out of genuine fear of attack, kidnappings, and assassinations.

Currently there are over two million Iraqi refugees, over 350,000 of which are Christians. Moreover, approximately two million of the Iraqi population are classified as internally displaced persons. The Assyrian Aid Society of Canada is concerned most for the situation of the ChaldoAssyrians Christians, not only because we feel they are the most vulnerable, but because their preservation is to the benefit of Iraq as a whole, through the maintenance of the diversity of Iraq as well as preventing the eradication of its indigenous people.

The Assyrian Aid Society greatly appreciates and commends Canada's efforts to aid the Iraqi refugees. While we support the acceptance of Iraqi refugees into Canada, we believe the most efficient and feasible way of aiding these refugees is through preventing another mass exodus from occurring, as well as providing those already classified as refugees with the means to return.

With excessive inflation and poor infrastructure for the existing population base in 2003, escalated targeting, and greater flight to the Nineveh Plains, the area is on the brink of collapse. Supporting the Assyrian Aid Society of Iraq in its endeavours to begin rebuilding this region will not only prevent the flight of the ChaldoAssyrians community, it will also allow those who are currently taking refuge in neighbouring countries to return to their ancestral homeland if they wish.

Our organization's previous experience and Canada's support can help to end this humanitarian disaster and bring hope for a better tomorrow.

Elevating the basic food and non-food item requirements for internally displaced persons can elevate an acute pressure on the local economy and the local population. This will ensure that daily nutritional requirements are met and will reduce the competition for limited supplies that are presently making it impossible to provide for the basic needs of people.

In addition, the provision of basic housing to internally displaced persons can elevate a substantial amount of the pressure faced by the communities of the Nineveh Plains. Members of the ChaldoAssyrian community desire to and are willing to return to their original homeland, but they need something to come back to.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Andrew Telegdi]

Thank you very much.

Now we have Salam Gatih.