Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 10th, 2008

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

To Mr. Ngankoy, thank you for being here today. It's good that you're here directly, face-to-face with us, and talking about your situation.

Perhaps a lot of the members of Parliament do not know what is happening in Congo. I have some understanding, though not deep. I certainly know the violent history that has occurred in Congo.

If your application has been seen by three board members, and if it were to be reviewed again, based on law and fact--had it been that there was a refugee appeal division as supported by Parliament, if the implementation had actually taken place--what do you think you would say to the appeal board, or to a different panel of the Immigration and Refugee Board?

What would you say about what's happening in Congo, what's happened before? Why is it problematic to go back home? What would you say--putting aside the fact that you've been here for nine years, you've been working, you've been contributing, etc? Perhaps you could talk a little bit about that.

[Félicien Ngankoy]

Thank you for your question, Ms. Chow. It's true, I thought that if I had had an opportunity to be heard by two or three board members, the result would have been different.

My story is clear. I noticed that there were things in the board member's decision that I had never said at the hearing myself. Because the decision was made two years after the hearing, I wondered whether he still remembered what had actually happened. On appeal, I was going to have an opportunity to correct what was in the decision.

For those who may not know, Congo has been at war since 1994, since the Rwandan genocide. The war in Congo is a consequence of what happened in Rwanda, even though nobody talks much about Congo. Since 1998, since Kabila came to power, the war has gone on to this day. We are talking about more than 4.5 million people dead in Congo. That is several times the number of people who died in the Rwandan genocide, several times the number of people who died in the tsunami and several times the number of people who died in disasters people often talk about. Today, again, I read that practically every day there are more than 45,000 people die in Congo, for various reasons: disease or the war in the east. The war in the east is still going on today. It is recognized that there is no security in Congo today. In fact, it is documented.

I talked about training the officers who make decisions for immigration and border services. It would be important for them to be informed about what is going on in these countries before making decisions. In my case, on the decision, it said “Dominican Republic of Congo”. When I saw that, I said there was a problem right there. “Dominican Republic of Congo” was written on the first page.

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

Good God.

[Félicien Ngankoy]

When I saw that, I said that whoever had made that decision had a problem. The decision affected the future of an entire family and the people behind me, not just mine. You see me here, but as an African, I have a large family behind me. That decision does not affect just me. When that decision was made... Right there, on the first page, it said “Dominican Republic of Congo”. I said there was a problem.

I do not want to wear out your patience and use up your time, but I can send you a copy of the decision. You can read it and see the inconsistencies, even in terms of the evidence. In the evidence, it was said that people who went to Congo, who were refouled by the English government, were arrested and tortured. There was a decision of an English judge calling for a moratorium on deportations to Congo. That decision was submitted, but to them, that wasn't proof.

That is the situation, Ms. Chow.

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

I know of cases of hundreds of young boys, kids, children, who have to walk through the night in northern parts of Congo in order to find food, safety, etc. It's unbelievable that we would deport anyone to Congo.

I really don't have a lot of questions to ask you. I just want to say thank you for being here.

I have just one question, if I have any time, for the professor. Federal-provincial jurisdiction is always a problem. Of course labour guidelines are provincial. They are under the Quebec government. There have been suggestions in the past panels that there be some kind of coordination, that there be a joint effort, because right now federal says it's provincial, and provincial says it's federal, and then no one goes to the workplace to make sure the workers are not being exploited or abused.

What in your mind is the best solution, given the interjurisdictional problem, or gap?

[Sylvie Gravel]

I think that if the federal government is going to authorize and promote programs to admit temporary workers it should sign specific agreements with the occupational health and safety commissions in the provinces that are most affected by the admission of a large temporary workforce. Those agreements should deal with the enforcement of occupational health and safety standards in the workplace and monitoring the health of those workers, in terms of occupational injuries and illnesses.

At a conference I attended on March 12, representatives of some provinces said they wanted to see a majority of workers be temporary. We are talking about Alberta and Manitoba, for example. If those provinces take in 500,000 or 600,000 temporary workers, imagine the imbalance that may create in some industries. I think that from the public's perspective, there has to be some coordination between admitting these temporary workers and responsibility for occupational health and safety, which is under provincial jurisdiction.

There has to be coordination, to achieve some consistency between bringing in workers to make up for the scarcity of workers here and the aging of our workforce and making sure that we collectively uphold our occupational health and safety standards. The danger is that we will lower those standards, as has been done in some European countries.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Thierry St-Cyr]

Thank you, Ms. Gravel and Mr. Ngankoy. I would ask you to send your documents to the clerk so he can distribute them to all members of the committee.

Mr. Harvey, you have seven minutes.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

I would first like to thank you for being with us today.

I know that ordinarily when issues arise involving cultural communities they are sensitive and generate very emotional responses. I am aware of that situation, particularly because my wife is an immigrant herself. She was given to a Canadian family when she was 11 years old. I am therefore in a position to know what she may have gone through and how sensitive this kind of situation is, because it affects the family. I have been a member of Parliament for two years.

My question is for Mr. Ngankoy.

We are talking about political refugees, and I understand very well, from having visited your country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and personally met with Mr. Kabila, that things are not necessarily as they should be there. As you said, you have been here since 1999. Your claim has therefore been considered and reconsidered, and there have been challenges, and so on for nine years.

Recently, a young woman, 21 years old, from St. Lucia, in the Caribbean, came to my office. She said she was a political refugee. Well, she was anything but a political refugee, and she admitted it herself. She was pregnant by a Quebec man. She stated she was not living with that person. As of now, she has already had her child. She is now living in Quebec City and has a health insurance card and a social insurance card, among other things.

How do you think her case should be handled?

In fact, there have been abuses in relation to political refugee status. I know that this may not be true in your case, but there are many people claiming that status, in large numbers, because it is the easy way of applying for permanent residence in Canada.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Thierry St-Cyr]

Ms. Folco.

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Mr. Harvey, I am not questioning your intentions, but I find it really very insensitive to ask this kind of question of a person who himself has no papers, so who is living in Canada illegally and taking a major risk by appearing before us. I would hope you would withdraw that question. As someone else, but not this gentleman.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Thierry St-Cyr]

Just a minute. Ms. Folco, thank you for your comments, although I do not believe that is a point of order. Mr. Harvey can use his time as he likes.

Mr. Ngankoy, you are free to respond or not, as you like.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Ms. Gravel, what do you think?

[Sylvie Gravel]

I would prefer not to answer. My specialty is occupational health and safety, not immigration. I think it is very bad manners, particularly with regard to this gentleman, to ask a question relating to people who have come here in circumstances which may be unfortunate, but do not meet the legal concepts explained in the Geneva Convention. Given that I am a specialist in occupational health and safety, I can talk about the law and the laws that govern that area in Quebec and Canada.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Okay. Ms. Gravel, when you do studies of businesses that hire seasonal workers, are those businesses governed by a Canadian charter or a Quebec charter?

[Sylvie Gravel]

I have never worked on studies about seasonal workers. My work dealt with people who had made compensation claims, for example. We did very detailed studies of their progress from when they made a claim to the CSST. Our samples of workers came from medical clinics, lawyers' offices and the FATA, an organization that provides advocacy services for workers injured on the job. So we have not focused on a particular area of industry.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Do you know whether those people were covered by a Canadian charter or a Quebec charter? Whether we like it or not, there is a Labour Code.

[Sylvie Gravel]

Our ethics committee refused to allow us to ask the people any questions at all about their status.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

What about the businesses that hired them?

[Sylvie Gravel]

In doing research, ethics committees are very stringent. In this case, the committee believed that it was not relevant to collect that information for the purposes of the study, that it could be harmful to the individuals involved. I am bound by the ethics committee, which governs our work.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Do you agree with that decision?

[Sylvie Gravel]

Yes.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

You agree that you were not entitled to know the business or the type of business...

[Sylvie Gravel]

It wasn't relevant. The purpose of my research was to determine what happened over the 12 months after the occupational injury, from the point at which the people were injured. I did not have to look at what their status was before the injury occurred. We simply wanted to know whether people were born in Canada or outside Canada. In epidemiology, we use control groups. We asked the non-Canadian workers how long they had been in Canada, so we could determine the extent to which the fact that they knew their rights as a citizen and a worker since they arrived had an effect.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Ms. Gravel, you know that in Canada the federal government and the provinces each have their labour codes. If these are businesses covered by a provincial charter, it is really the province that is responsible for this. In the case of Quebec, it is the CSST that is responsible for these workers. So the type of charter that governs a business is a crucial factor when it comes to determining who is responsible for those workers.

[Sylvie Gravel]

That's true. For that reason, I think that the situation of temporary workers is going to become oddly complex. The federal government is going to admit the temporary workers, but each province is going to manage the aspect covered by its own occupational health and safety system. In Quebec, there is only one body that governs occupational health and safety, but in Ontario there are two.

I am not going to deny that if we decide to bring in large numbers of immigrant workers and, in ethical terms, we want to ensure that these people have the same rights and the same access to healthcare and services, it is going to call for some extremely complex organization.

To speak to your question, even though workers employed by a federal undertaking, be it the postal service or marine or air transportation, for example, don't receive occupational health and safety services from the province, there are still no immigrant workers working in those industries. I think that is not going to be an issue in terms of the difficulty of coordinating it all. The difficulty is going to lie much more in industries that are, for the majority of cases, under provincial jurisdiction when it comes to occupational health and safety.