Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I too wish to thank the members of the Committee.
I represent the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants. It is an umbrella organization, somewhat like the Canadian Council for Refugees. The latter operates at the national level, whereas our Council is the umbrella organization for Ontario. The Council is made up of approximately 200 organizations throughout the province serving immigrants and refugees. From the very beginning, we have been strongly opposed to part 6 of Bill C-50. We did an analysis that we are going to be sharing with you over the next few minutes. We mobilized our members. We asked the various organizations to contact their local MP in order to explain why we have concerns with regard to the process, the content and the possible repercussions.
I'll go very quickly, because many of the issues were already mentioned during the first panels this afternoon—I was able to listen to them—and I don't want to be repetitive. Of course, the first one, the existing backlog of over 900,000 applications, is not going to be resolved by this, contrary to what has been said in the media by government officials. The measures are now going to be in place, but only for those applications that have been filed on February 27 or after. So that huge backlog is not really what these proposals address.
Of course, we are concerned about the arbitrary power that is given to the minister. It's unchecked power. I'm going to go into detail on this in a bit. The applicants are also losing their legal right to have their application dealt with properly. We're concerned with the issue that if your application meets all the requirements of the law, if instructions issued by a minister say that you fall within a category that shouldn't be even treated, then you wouldn't even have a way to have reparation for such a wait to deal with your application.
As well, there has been a lot of discussion as to whether or not this applies to or affects family reunification. In our analysis it does in different ways. I'm going to be looking at that in detail as well. It also impacts on humanitarian and compassionate applications, which are filed overseas. Of course, these proposals shouldn't be within the budget legislation. They have nothing to do in there. They should have gone through a proper proposal submitted to Parliament and to the Canadian public, with proper consultation. So that was one of the things we have been asking directly from Prime Minister Harper and the department, that part 6 be removed from the bill project.
As a response to all the criticism and all the concerns that have been expressed publicly since the bill was announced on March 14, the Department of Citizenship and Immigration issued a news release from the minister on April 8 that was intended to respond to all the criticisms and all the issues. I think it addresses the issues, but it doesn't respond properly, and I'm going to go through it as well very carefully. One of the major problems is that even a news release or a public statement of that kind is not binding enough to prevent any misuses of power that may occur in the future by this minister or any other minister, by this government or any other government. It's just a problem with promises or statements of intent that are not equivalent to the law or that are not equivalent to properly checked and controlled proposals.
One of the concerns is an example that has happened very recently. When the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act was being discussed, the minister back then promised that the regulation on section 117 that deals with people-smuggling would not be applied to humanitarian workers supporting refugees. So those were ministerial promises back then, and everyone agreed, “Okay, your promise is enough. We believe in your good faith.” But what happened only a few months ago was that a humanitarian worker, who was only accompanying refugees within the U.S. to the Canadian border, was detained under this as if this person had been a smuggler. So ministerial promises and public statements of that nature are certainly not enough and we won't take them as seriously as the government would like us to believe in them.
So family reunification concerns.... If you look closely at proposed section 87.3 in the proposed changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act within Bill C-50, you look at the application of ministerial instructions. So the only subsection that is excluded from application of the instruction is subsection 99(2). But then sponsorship applications made by persons referred to in subsection 13(1) will be included for application of instructions. Maybe the minister doesn't have the intention to issue any instructions now, but under the project that is being submitted for a vote, it could happen and it's a reason for concern. The minister could issue categories or groups to be processed in order to be just not dealt with.
Another issue is that there's also a backlog and very long waiting times for family reunification sponsorship applications. This bill is not dealing with that.
We're also concerned that if, through the instructions, the minister would give priority to skilled workers or certain categories of skilled workers' applications, this might mean less in resources and less priority to family reunification. That's also a good reason that a government should go through proper consultation, through Parliament and through the public, to look at these kinds of impacts and not have to just deal later with statements and promises.
There are other misuses of power that should be prevented as well in terms of discrimination. There are many ways in which you could issue instructions that may be neutral or appear to be neutral at first reading but may have a differential impact on people from different countries or from different religions or cultures or races.
If I may have two more minutes like my predecessor—