Thank you.
First of all, I did hand out a three-page paper. Unfortunately, it's only in English. I hope it is at your place.
I'd like to make four points in these opening remarks. The first three are very brief.
The first point is simply that our organization represents a majority of the Mennonite churches of Canada, and the reason we feel compelled to speak on this issue is that over the last two centuries, or a little more, Mennonites in Canada have benefited from the conscientious objector provisions in Canada. Out of gratitude for that, we feel we must advocate so that those benefits can be extended to others.
The second is just a very brief word. Something was demonstrated in World War II. There was a conscription law in force for over four years, but it wasn't only a conscription law. The conscription law carried with it exemption provisions, so that there wasn't only an exemption, there was also an alternative service program. Approximately 11,000 young men--two-thirds of the Mennonites who got conscientious objector status--were assigned to this alternative service program and rendered a service over the years, which, by the end, was recognized as being of very considerable national value. The point is that conscientious objection is not only a matter of being exempted from something. It can be--indeed, I would say it should be--accompanied by a willingness to serve in a different capacity.
My third point is that the conscientious objector concept has evolved over the years, and one key development in that evolution is that there are now provisions in the military departments, the defence departments, in Canada, the United States, and Britain, whereby people who are in the military and who develop conscientious objector convictions can apply to be discharged on those grounds. A very key question is whether those provisions and those mechanisms are accessible and whether they are impartial. There are very major questions about whether that was the case in relation to these people from the United States, but I will let other people speak to that more directly.
My last point--and here I would like to read a few paragraphs from the submission I made--deals not so much with American draft dodgers as simply with conscientious objection.
The case of a young Ottawa man we are trying to assist illustrates even more strongly the need for Canada's immigration structures to deal with conscientious objectors in a better way.
This person, a Muslim, came to Canada in 2001 and applied for refugee status. However, the IRB, in a December 2003 decision, rejected his claim, as did the Federal Court some time later. These bodies agreed that this man's conscientious objector convictions were genuine, but they held that the conscription laws in his home country could not be described as persecutory or discriminatory since they were of general application. One judge dismissed his claim by comparing conscientious objector beliefs to a belief that the state does not have a right to levy taxes; since the latter cannot be honoured, neither should the former.
This man's home country has universal military service requirements without any provisions for conscientious objectors or alternative service, and the evidence shows that it has dealt with people who claimed to be conscientious objectors by sentencing them to repeated two-year prison terms, even up to a total of twenty years. To force him home to that situation cannot be reconciled with Canada's very positive history regarding conscientious objection and with the current requirements of international law.
At present this man is being helped by several legal aid lawyers and us. The lawyers have presented well-documented appeals under the pre-removal risk assessment and the humanitarian and compassionate provisions. We hope these will yield a positive result, but we also ask for the creation of better conscientious objector safeguards in the law itself. Protection of this long and well-established right should not have to depend on such limited appeals at the very end of the legal process.
Thank you for your consideration.