Thank you, Chairman.
Canada has a strong tradition of providing assistance to refugees and we should continue to do so. By the same token, we have to look carefully at the scope and the cost of the assistance we are providing and determine how we can apply our resources in the most effective manner.
Therefore, before I make specific recommendations on how we might assist Iraqi refugees, I want to have a brief look at the overall picture of what we do for refugees. A significant part of what we spend in this area goes to resettling in Canada about 10,000 people a year from overseas, in most cases with the assistance of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, particularly in the selection process. Far more resources, however, are used in the processing and support of people who arrive in Canada and make refugee claims.
John Manion, a senior and distinguished public servant, who held the post of deputy minister of immigration, secretary of the Treasury Board, and associate clerk of the Privy Council, and should therefore know what he's talking about, testified before a Senate committee in 2001 that he thought the refugee system was using up a major part of the $4 billion he estimated the Canadian government was spending annually on immigration and refugee programs. All together on those we resettle from abroad and those who are successful in making refugee claims in Canada—and there were about 32,000 in 2006, and that's not counting another 10,000 let in under humanitarian or compassionate grounds—we probably spend about 98% or 99% of all the money we spend on refugees around the world.
There are, however, hundreds of times as many refugees, internally displaced persons, and other persons of concern to the UNHCR who are overseas. In 2006 these numbered over 30 million, including 9.9 million refugees and 12.8 million internally displaced persons. Yet Canada contributed, I believe, less than $40 million a year in 2006 to take care of them. That comes to less than $2 a person. You may ask why there is such an imbalance. Why do we spend so much on the relatively small proportion we bring to Canada or who make successful refugee claims here, and why do we contribute so little to the many millions in refugee camps overseas? There are probably a number of factors; I'll mention two.
One is that as refugee support groups develop and evolve, many of them shape their existence around helping refugees to settle in Canada. Quite a bit of research has been done on this in the United States but not in Canada. There was an interesting paper in 1999 called “Show Me the Money”, put out by the Centre for Immigration Studies. It describes how non-governmental organizations in the United States begin by providing services on a voluntary basis to help in the resettlement of relative refugees. Then, particularly after the passage of the 1980 Refugee Act in the U.S., the government there began providing funding to these organizations, and they in turn began lobbying the government to bring in larger numbers of refugees from overseas to ensure a steady intake of such refugees in order to justify the money the non-governmental organizations were receiving and to be able to retain the staff they'd hire. The situation in the U.S. is probably roughly comparable to that in Canada.
Originally, when we began taking refugees in large numbers after World War II, we basically responded to specific crises. An example was the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, and there were also the South Asians who had to leave Uganda in the early 1970s. But then we eventually established annual targets for refugees settled in Canada, whether or not there were any particular crises taking place. This was no doubt welcomed by refugee agencies that wanted to be assured of continuity and predictability in government funding. This explains why many organizations that are by no means opposed to helping refugees overseas have an obvious interest in saying that significant numbers are resettled in Canada.
Another consideration that probably plays a role in the disproportionate amount of money we spend on refugees in Canada is that it is always satisfying to see and get to know first-hand those we are helping. This is an understandable reason from a humanitarian point of view, but it is nevertheless neither reasonable nor fair that we spend such very large amounts on a relatively small proportion of those who need help and so little in relative terms to the vast numbers overseas.
I'd like to make a number of proposals. One is that we provide most of our assistance to Iraqi refugees, to those in bordering countries such as Jordan and Syria as well as to IDP, internally displaced persons, in Iraq deemed by the UNHCR to need assistance. Dollar for dollar, our money will be much better spent among the many than among a relatively small proportion who might be resettled in Canada.
Second, those we bring here--I believe we've already agreed to take 1,400--should be included within the government's annual targeted ranges, which for 2008 are 7,300 to 7,500 government-assisted and 3,300 to 4,500 privately sponsored refugees to be settled from abroad. As I mentioned, the annual targets were instituted to provide a degree of continuity and predictability for planning purposes.
There is no reason, however, that the number of refugees we do resettle from Iraq should be over and above the announced target ranges. I recommend they be included within them. Those we do bring in here should have a strong case for being resettled as convention refugees, as well as for having a reasonably good chance for succeeding in Canada. If they have relatives here, they're obviously going to get more help in resettling, but we shouldn't bring them here simply as a means of circumventing normal immigration requirements; they should have a well-founded case for being seriously at risk on convention refugee grounds.
Our final recommendation is in terms of whom we select. We should exercise particular care when it comes to choosing those considered to be among the most vulnerable. It's very appealing from the humanitarian point of view to give priority to the most vulnerable, but if we bring them here, it's important that they have a reasonable chance of success. Unfortunately, many of the most vulnerable who are brought to western countries have major problems. I think if we want to put priority on them, we should find ways of helping them where we are, not putting them into a very difficult situation in Canada.
In summarizing these points, I recommend, first, that we contribute a significant amount of money to the UNHCR specifically for the care of Iraqi refugees and other persons of concern in the area, and that we not consider resettling in Canada a number significantly above our targeted ranges.
I have some final points.
I think it's necessary to point out that Canada has nothing to apologize for when it comes to the level of assistance we provide to refugees and refugee claimants. Sometimes we're told by refugee advocates we're not doing enough to help refugees, but the facts suggest otherwise: in terms of bringing refugees in from abroad in 2006, we took 10,700 out of the 71,700 resettled from overseas by 16 western countries, which on a per capita basis is three times our share.
With regard to granting refugee status to asylum-seekers in Canada, Canada has not only by far the highest acceptance rates in the world, but in terms of numbers, on a per capita basis we take in four to five times the average of other western countries for permanent resettlement. We also have arguably more generous resettlement terms than any refugee-receiving country for permanent resettlement. If we're not giving enough to the UNHCR to help refugees in camps overseas, we are certainly spending far too much on a dysfunctional refugee system for dealing with asylum-seekers here.
Regrettably, though, instead of trying to reform that system, very often refugee activists are lobbying to make it even more porous. If they're successful, for example, in having the Canada-U.S safe third country agreement with the United States declared null and void, we can expect an even greater influx of refugee claimants into Canada, accompanied by major increases in expenditures by various levels of government. While we're told that the safe third country agreement has severely restricted access of asylum-seekers to the refugee determination system, the number of such applicants actually increased from 19,737 in 2005 to 22,868 in 2006. The total number of refugees admitted from overseas, as well as those who made successful asylum claims in Canada in 2006, was one of the highest in the past decade. The safe third country agreement needs to be strengthened, not done away with.
There is just one final point. Recently we had a major influx of refugee claimants from Mexico. It's a clear indication that we don't have control over who comes in here. In the first half of this year, we had over 3,000 refugee claimants from Mexico; that's four times the number of nationals of any other countries who made such claims, and it constituted more than two-thirds of all the claims made by Mexicans around the world. The only country, in fact, where Mexicans were even considered as refugee claimants was the United States, and they only made half as many claims there.
There's no reason why our refugee system should be flooded and clogged by claimants from Mexico. We should have safe country of origin and safe third country provisions, as other countries do.
If we spent only a small fraction of the hundreds of millions, probably billions, we expend on processing and supporting refugee claimants, many if not most of whom would not even be allowed to make claims in other countries, we'd have more than enough money available for a very generous increase in our contribution through the UNHCR to assist Iraqi refugees.
In the circumstances, what we should be doing, therefore, is not only looking at how we can best help Iraqi refugees, but how the money we spend on refugees is being used.