Mr. Chairman, UNHCR considers an appeal procedure to be a fundamental, necessary part of any refugee status determination process. It allows errors to be corrected, and can also help to ensure consistency in decision-making. Canada, Italy, and Portugal are the only industrialized countries that do not allow rejected asylum seekers the possibility to have first-instance decisions reviewed on points of fact as well as points of law.
This was written in 2002. I find it quite shameful that after six years, Canada still has not implemented the refugee appeal division, even though Parliament several times has debated this issue, several times has approved it, and said yes, we should implement the division.
In fact, we are violating an international legal obligation. We signed onto the 1951 convention relating to the status of refugees to protect them. Yet we do not have any appeal. What is the consequence? Well, to a person being sent back, a wrong decision could mean torture, persecution, sometimes even death.
In 2002 Parliament reduced the number of board members. There used to be three board members and then it was reduced to two and in 2002 it became one board member. So one single person makes a decision on life or death for some of these refugee claimants. I find it inexcusable to say that the only process one can follow is to go to court.
The court is not set up to deal with failings of the refugee determination process, because it's really expensive to go to Federal Court. It's expensive for the taxpayers of Canada, and it's expensive for the refugee claimants. By and large, refugee claimants don't have a lot of money. I don't know why we would end up pushing all these people into Federal Court. I've seen an explosion in the number of cases that go in front of the Federal Court.
In many ways the appointment process is flawed, in that there are no appointment committees, no appointment commissioners. Even though the Conservative government said they would do that, it hasn't happened. So you have board members who have publicly declared that homosexuality is a sin, and this board member could easily be dealing with sexual orientation cases in front of the refugee board.
I see no reason why we do not implement the refugee appeal division. I hope our committee will quickly adopt this and bring it back to the House of Commons.
It looks as if I still have one minute left. I don't know if Monsieur St-Cyr would know how much it has cost the Federal Court, or whether there would be any reduction of cost if the refugee appeal division could be implemented so that the Federal Court would not be clogged up with refugee cases.