Anyway, what the representative said was that to expand the convention would serve only to disadvantage those who are in most need by further diluting available funds. If the refugee division is drawn too broadly, we risk defining the problem into complete unmanageability. This issue comes up, for instance, in the case of the Roma people who have made claims, who came from Czechoslovakia. The argument was made that persecution, which is the definition for a convention refugee claimant, can be defined simply as when people are being discriminated against and the government isn't able to prevent it. If you use that kind of definition, we should take a hundred million untouchables from India, among others. None of the other 27 members of the European Union accept claims from Czechoslovakia, Roma or otherwise.
What we should do is have a list of safe countries of origin, countries that have good human rights records or are democratic and don't persecute their nationals. If we are to say, as one member did on October 8, that there is no safe country in the world—this was a witness—surely Canada isn't a safe country. Are we more perfect than New Zealand or Ireland or the Netherlands? Surely many of our native peoples could claim refugee status in other countries. We could then have all of them go to Czechoslovakia and have all the Roma come here, if you accept that kind of definition.
Last year we accepted people making claims from countries like the Czech Republic, Guyana, Hungary, Israel, Jordan, Peru, the Philippines, the Republic of Korea, Thailand, and the United States. No other nation in the world would consider a claim from those countries. Mr. David Anderson, who is the former Liberal minister--