Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 27th, 2010

[Joseph Jean-Gilles]

I said that Canada, the country of human rights, cannot simply operate piecemeal. We need immigrants and we know the contribution immigration makes here in Canada, and in Quebec in particular, where I live. It is important to have a real immigration policy. Yes, since i have been here, I have seen Canada take in numerous populations in distress. It is not reasonable for there to be no policy about admitting people in distress who are affected by natural disasters.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Mr. DuBois.

[Bernard DuBois]

I made two recommendations to this committee. My second recommendation was that a law be passed, if only temporarily. If it could be a permanent law, that would be good, but a temporary law should be passed to solve this problem, so the Hon. Jason KenneyHon. Jason Kenney does not constantly have to make agonizing decisions, to say no to dying people. So I think legal rules are needed. In fact, I made that recommendation here myself, to this committee.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

I will let my colleague have the rest of the time allotted to me.

[Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Good afternoon, gentlemen, thank you for being here with us.

When you learned about the tragedy in Haiti, Quebeckers have been enormously generous, as have the rest of Canadians. A lot of Quebeckers of Haitian origin went to lend a hand on the ground. The Haitian diaspora all over the world showed great solidarity with the people of its homeland. That is to your great honour.

You said earlier that you would like to see Canada grant automatic permanent residence on humanitarian grounds in the case of nationals who are here now. Could you tell us the number of Haitians in Canada that this represents?

And last, officials have told us that by the end of April all cases relating to Haiti will be settled. I am a little stupefied. This is April 27 today and the end of the month is approaching. There were 3,000 applications before the earthquake, and since then there have been 2,000 more. You say that in the first quarter, there is a difference of nine cases processed as compared to last year. Do you think the statement by the officials is strictly speaking realistic?

[Joseph Jean-Gilles]

We think it is unrealistic. At the outset, CONACOH estimated that the number of people who had entered Quebec illegally was in the neighbourhood of 5,000. That is what we thought. In the last three years, a lot of people who were living in the United States have entered Quebec.

When we met with other partners, including the TCRI, the Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes, they confirmed that there were about 8,000 people, and even nearly 9,000 people, with illegal status in Quebec, so this illegal status situation needs to be legalized in Quebec. We are talking here about people of Haitian origin.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Maurizio Bevilacqua]

Thank you.

Ms. Hughes.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

I would like my colleague to stick to a 45-second statement.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Merci. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to my colleague.

I have to rush--I have a cab waiting to get me to the airport--but I wanted to come by and thank all the delegates, but especially Monsieur Abrams and Monsieur DuBois from Hamilton.

I want to inform the committee members of the fantastic leadership they've been showing in Hamilton, not only among the Haitian community but in coordinating and bringing in the broader community.

We held a number of ongoing fundraisers. One of their key objectives was to make sure that we kept it at a high profile in Hamilton and across Canada, and they've simply done an outstanding job in Hamilton. I'm so pleased and appreciative of their taking the time and the expense to come here to the committee to share what they've done, their view of things and what more Canada can do.

With that, I thank you, Chair, and I thank my colleague.

To my two fellow Hamiltonians, thank you so much for caring enough to be here so that Canada can improve its response and we can do the job nationally, not just in Hamilton.

Again, merci beaucoup.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Thank you.

As you said, you have a lot of support in the NDP in Hamilton. The caucus is certainly sensitive to what is going on in Haiti. I would like to know whether you have suggestions to make so we can be sure of having the best way of using the financial investments the government has allocated for aid to Haiti.

How could that help to rebuild the foundations to enable Haitians to get through the crisis.

Mr. Sauveur?

[Jean-Baptiste Sauveur]

Personally, I would recommend that we show more clemency to these young Haitians who are living in misery. In fact, that is why I stressed just now that we could have the project to bring seasonal workers here, to Canada, so we could help the Haitian people and the Haitian government fight unemployment. Misery causes anger and a lot of people have lost their jobs. There are now a lot of epidemics in Haiti. In fact, I have received some news in that regard. We have to think about what we could do to help the Haitian people get out of this rut.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Any other comments.

[Joseph Jean-Gilles]

In terms of aid in Haiti, there are two ideas: accountability and transparency. I think that Canada, and ourselves as taxpayers, have to make sure the money is spent well in Haiti; and someone somewhere in Canada has to be responsible. Given that we are Canadian taxpayers, responsibility lies with the government of Canada. If it is giving our money, it is going to ask the Haitian government to account for it.

As well, when we talk about development in Haiti, it means making sure that Canadians of Haitian origin are involved in what is being done.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Listening to you, it seems clear that the process put in place, the special immigration measures the government has implemented seem to have encountered a lot of serious obstacles: a shortage of people doing the work, a lack of clarity and too narrow definitions, just to name a few.

Where do you think changes should be made? What should the priorities be? Would you have recommendations to make about the fact that adoptions have been expedited for children, but not for Haitian Canadian children?

[Bernard DuBois]

To begin with, the changes have to be made to the legislation. A lot of things are done by legislation.

First, we, Haitians, are here before the committee today to tell you what we think, what we feel, because we have no information. Our members are asking us what is happening, where they stand. We can't tell them because we have to refer to the minister, Mr. Kenney. When we do that, we do not get information.

That means that some things are being done, but it is doubtful that by the end of the month the immigration applications are going to be completed. I have been told it would be by the end of June. They can say yes or no, but they say they don't know because the information can't be passed on.

If there is a law, it will follow a certain procedure. The procedure would tell us that our application has to get from point A to point M, and it is now at point D. This is how we can help people. It reassures them. It is a question of legislation. Earlier, Mr. St-Cyr asked whether there should be rules for the process. If there are no rules for the process, there are always going to be questions. That being said, if there are rules, as I am now proposing be done as quickly as possible, if it is done badly, there are always ways of making amendments, but let's do it.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Maurizio Bevilacqua]

Thank you. We have to move on to the next questioner.

Go ahead, Mr. Young.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I want to say welcome to everyone here. Thank you for coming some distance to tell us today how we can make the situation better in Haiti.

Most Canadians were very proud that Canada responded very quickly to the emergency in Haiti in January. We had help on the ground within about 48 hours and helped to keep order, with initial amounts of fresh water and food, etc.

Parallel to that, Canadian immigration services worked quickly on a number of priorities to try to help. As you may know, there was consular assistance. The evacuation of Canadian citizens and permanent residents was first. The evacuation of adoptees from Haiti to Canada was facilitated. There was a temporary suspension on all removals to Haiti. Fee waivers and additional hardship factors were considered for temporary residence in Canada. Visa requirements were suspended for aid workers and evacuees transiting through Canada.

You've told us that priority processing measures were not working as well as we hoped they would. It was for persons directly and significantly affected by the earthquake, including family class sponsorship, citizenship certificates, and reunification of recognized refugees' families.

On the Canadian side, there were applications for spousal sponsorship and protected persons, extensions of temporary resident status, and work permits for Haitians unable to support themselves due to the earthquake.

I'm concerned, as I'm sure everyone here is concerned, with what Mr. Jean-Gilles said in regard to the total number of immigrants based on a fast-track process.

Mr. Jean-Gilles, could you shed some light on this? I don't know how badly the Canadian mission was damaged. I assumed it was a damaged building, as was almost every building in Haiti. They had to rebuild the operation and try to handle a huge volume at the same time. There's no indication of the total volume they handled. There were fairly chaotic conditions from the beginning. They had to do security checks, as they always have, and medical checks. In every case, they had to check that relationships were genuine in order for people to immigrate to Canada, while rebuilding the organization on the ground.

Do you recognize the complexity and the challenges of this requirement, of maintaining the integrity of the immigration process under all these conditions?

As well, you mentioned that having more resources was one solution, Mr. Jean-Gilles. Do you have any suggestions for other possible solutions to facilitate faster immigration?

[Joseph Jean-Gilles]

Yes, I referred to more resources, but I also talked about other processing methods. I clearly said there were cases that could be processed here, by agreeing for applications to be examined directly here, by bringing the persons concerned to Quebec, or Canada's officials could be brought in so the examination of applications could move ahead.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

That's helpful. Thank you.

Monsieur DuBois, you talked about passing an act of Parliament. I think long term, maybe, that might be a solution to give structure, but of course this situation was totally unique in our history and in the history of Haiti. I'm not sure an act can address such a unique situation, although it might give structure to future aid projects.

Do you have any suggestions on what such an act might say?

[Bernard DuBois]

As you say, what happened in Haiti is unique. But there have been cases in the past for which decisions were made. For example, in 2004, when the tsunami happened, Canada made decisions quickly. Those decisions were still case by case. Canada is a big country. It is not a country that can be content to make decisions piecemeal, particularly about immigration, because the country is big and needs people. Certainly in the years to come there will be a lot of immigration. So now is when we have to make the rules, which would be very strict at the same time, but very broad also.

When cases like this arise, certainly we will step in, we will give some dollars and even may dollars if called for, but that doesn't solve the problems.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Thank you.

Can you think of an example of a rule like that? You're talking about a rule that has some flexibility, I think.

[Bernard DuBois]

The H and C process.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

Do any of you gentlemen have any concern—and I'm thinking of the future of Haiti—that many of the people who are the most skilled and the highest educated, and many of the professionals, would be the ones who would qualify to immigrate to Canada or elsewhere, and that in the long term, those are the same people who would be the best qualified to help rebuild Haiti?

I wonder if you could comment on that, please.

[Bernard DuBois]

Definitely.

In my case, I'm talking about the family, uniting the family.

Let me say it in French. I came here to argue for expediting residence visas for people who have applied for them. However, I also have to tell you that I find it very hard to accept going to the country and taking our professionals, whose diplomas work very well there, and bringing them here, and once they're here, telling them they don't work. So the country suffers a loss and more problems are created here by admitting Haitians who were professionals there. That is a problem for me. But then there are people whose family,

loved ones, living in Haiti, sleeping in tents, sleeping on the streets. While here, we are doing everything; we are talking...but we're clearly not dragging them here to get those people the chance to have their family with them.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Maurizio Bevilacqua]

Thank you very much, Mr. Young.

On behalf of the committee, I'd like to thank you very much for giving us a lot to think about. As you know, we try to do our best, but there are always ways and means to improve our abilities to deal with situations like the Haitian situation. As you know, the country was seized by what happened in Haiti. I think the response that the people of Canada showed the people in Haiti illustrates the type of friendship and warmth that exists between our people.

Thank you so much.

We're going to suspend for two minutes.