Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Our asylum system is really in a mess. It doesn't serve the needs of genuine refugees, it's enormously expensive, it encourages and rewards human smuggling, it presents our country with a serious security risk, it undermines our immigration program, and it has damaged our bilateral relations with many friendly countries. It compromises our trade and tourist industry; it's the primary reason that our southern border has been, in effect, militarized and that Canadian goods and services and people can no longer pass quickly and freely across the border.
No other country in the world that I'm aware of would even dream of allowing anyone to enter the country simply because they claim to be persecuted. Yet in the past 25 years we have allowed over 700,000 people who claimed to be persecuted to enter the country. Last year, 37,000 claimants came to Canada, and we're getting about 3,000 every month.
Even now, these people who come in don't have to meet any of the immigration requirements. There's no medical screening before they come, no criminal screening before they come, no security checks conducted before they come. They simply walk in and claim that they're persecuted. We then invite them in, put them up in hotels, show them where they can go to the welfare office to get welfare. We permit them to work, we give them free medical care, and they're free to travel once they leave the airport. We haven't the slightest idea where they're going and what they're doing.
They come from large numbers of countries. In 2002, we had citizens of 152 different countries apply for refugee status in Canada. Among them were Germans, Swedes, Swiss people who were coming from democratic countries where the rule of law prevails, countries that have signed the UN Convention on Refugees and are obliged to look after asylum seekers as well as we do.
So our policy has been deeply flawed and has been flawed for many years—for 25 years, I would say. Every attempt to reform the system, even modest reforms to bring our policy on asylum seekers in line with most of the other western countries of the world, has been strenuously resisted by special interest groups.
In 1989 new asylum legislation was introduced in Parliament. It was designed to establish a system that was fair and equitable to refugee claimants but was realistic, in the knowledge that any quasi-judicial body, whether it's a court or the IRB—the Immigration and Refugee Board—cannot function if it allows universal access to itself. Without some form of front-end screening, any quasi-judicial body breaks down by sheer volume.
Professor Edward Ratushny—many of you may have heard of him, a distinguished professor at the University of Ottawa law faculty—was appointed by Lloyd Axworthy to study and recommend new legislation on asylum seekers. In his report, among other things Ratushny recommended as his first recommendation that access to any new system be limited by screening out clearly unfounded or incredible claims; otherwise the system would be overwhelmed by individuals using the asylum route to gain entry to Canada.
Ratushny pointed out how Germany's very generous asylum system was being exploited and abused. In 1980, Germany received 108,000 asylum claims and spent $250 million on welfare for those waiting for a decision to be made. That's an amount that, as Professor Ratushny pointed out, could have had tremendous value, had that kind of money been used by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in his efforts to look after real refugees in camps around the world. He added at that time in his report that Canada was fortunate in being able to deal with such potential problems before they materialized. However, Ratushny warned, there's no reason for any sense of complacency.
In 1980 Canada received 1,600 asylum claims.
What the Germans did was tighten up, but they didn't tighten it up well enough, because in 1993 they received 438,000 claims for asylum. It so alarmed the German government that they had to change their constitution, which allowed anyone from any country to come and claim in Germany. The Germans changed their constitution in 1993, and their legislation now is very tough. And it's tough because they keep out people who are coming from countries that are obliged, as signatories to the UN convention, to look after asylum seekers and that are democratic and follow the rule of law.
In 1989 the legislation that was passed in that year relied heavily on Ratushny's recommendations, and that allowed the drafters of the legislation to design an asylum system that was intended to be a model for the globe. It was going to be an independent board; the hearing was to be non-adversarial. And that's very important, because that means, in effect, that the story that the asylum seeker tells the board pretty well has to be accepted. They can't be cross-examined.
A two-member board was envisaged, and if a negative decision was handed down, both of the board members had to agree to it. There had to be a unanimous refusal, in other words. Second, a positive decision did not require written reasons by members of the board, but if they turned someone down they had to give written reasons. And a refused claim could be appealed with leave to the Federal Court.
However, to have such a generous system depended on restricting access to the board, and the instrument that was used at that time to achieve that was to give cabinet the power to list countries that were considered to be safe for refugees. Again, all of the European Community countries implemented this long ago. There is no possibility of someone coming from a democratic country with a rule of law, from countries that have signed the UN convention, to make a refugee claim in any of the European countries.
So that legislation was about to be passed. Three days before it was enacted, the Minister of Immigration at the time said it would pass into legislation but without enacting the “safe country” provisions. The result of that was, of course, that the whole system collapsed, and it's still collapsed today. So the failure to use the “safe country” is very serious.
On the issue you're looking at today, it doesn't make any sense at all to add another level of appeal to the system we now already have--not at this point, when the minister has recommended legislation in the House soon and when we have a backlog of 62,000. Bring this second level of appeal in and you're going to find that the backlog is going to be 80,000, 90,000, 100,000, and the waiting period, which is up to three to five years now, is going to be probably five, six, eight years. It just makes no sense.
I would have much to say about this, but I'll end by saying that anyone who suggests that this should be accepted by the committee would be.... As my grandchildren term it, it's a no-brainer.
Thank you.