Evidence of meeting #12 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was irb.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Bloc
Thierry St-Cyr Bloc Jeanne-Le Ber, QC
There you have it. There is no way to appeal the case of a person from a designated country. Therefore, according to this bill, the minister cannot appeal a decision to allow a person from a designated country to remain in Canada.
That is rather paradoxical, since the minister claims that legitimate refugees are unlikely to come from those countries. Is that not an obvious contradiction?
Conservative
Jason Kenney Conservative Calgary Southeast, AB
In a hypothetical case like that, the minister can file an appeal or a request for authorization with the Federal Court of Canada, but not with the Refugee Appeal Division.
NDP
Olivia Chow NDP Trinity—Spadina, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Just to you, I want to formally say that I now have the fourth report in front of me, saying that the committee accord priority in its work to consider that Bill C-11--
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Tilson
Ms. Chow, you are talking about something that was dealt with in camera, and it's most inappropriate for you to deal with something that was in camera. I suggest you wait until that comes up for the agenda.
NDP
Olivia Chow NDP Trinity—Spadina, ON
Okay. We are now dealing with Bill C-11 without having an approval for dealing with Bill C-11. I just want to say that very clearly.
Conservative
NDP
Olivia Chow NDP Trinity—Spadina, ON
It's a bit bizarre that you are basically violating the rights and privileges of a member of Parliament, because that was the process.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Tilson
Ms. Chow, I am not, and you are free to ask questions of the minister.
NDP
Olivia Chow NDP Trinity—Spadina, ON
We've done that one. I will go to the minister and ask him a question as to what is in front of us, assuming we are now obviously dealing with Bill C-11.
If this committee chooses to delete “safe countries of origin” and send the bill back to the House, would you accept that, if that was what the committee chose to do? If that happens, there would still be the fast-tracking. There would still be the establishment of the immigration appeal division. You would have all of the various items still in front of the House, minus the safe countries of origin.
Conservative
Jason Kenney Conservative Calgary Southeast, AB
I would be inclined at this point to answer in the negative, Ms. Chow.
This package is very delicately balanced. There are many different parts, all intricately connected. One of the principal dysfunctionalities in the current system is the openness to abuse from these waves of unfounded claims from democratic countries that respect rights. We need a tool to deal with that problem. If we don't deal with it, we will see these waves repeated in the future, leading to backlogs and longer processing times, which will undermine the entire architecture of the new system.
We see this as integral to the overall balance of the package, as do the western Europeans.
Olivia Chow NDP Trinity—Spadina, ON
You mentioned that 97% of the Hungarian refugees' claims have been withdrawn or abandoned. I actually looked it up, and you said it several times in different places.
I noticed that in 2009, 259 Hungarians withdrew or abandoned their claims, and 2,440 Hungarians made claims in 2009. It is clearly not 97%, so where could you possibly get this 97%? We see right now, since there's a long backlog on the hearings, that 2,434 claims are pending. Of the 259 withdrawn...about 204 withdrew their claims, so it's not 90%.
Conservative
Jason Kenney Conservative Calgary Southeast, AB
Ms. Chow, a finalized claim is defined as one that is either withdrawn or abandoned, or else one on which a decision is made by the IRB. Of the finalized Hungarian claims last year, 97% were either abandoned or withdrawn. Of the 267 that went to decisions at the IRB, three were accepted as having a well-founded fear of persecution.
Your point that the inventory moves slowly is well taken, but the ratios are staying the same; for January and February of this year, we continue to see a massively high withdrawal and abandonment rate and an extraordinarily low acceptance rate.
NDP
Olivia Chow NDP Trinity—Spadina, ON
The first hearing is eight days. It's the interview and then the hearings. But you can't get legal aid within eight days--in Ontario anyway.
So even though you have said that you would crack down and legislate on the whole issue of unscrupulous consultants--we all agree that we have to crack down on these folks--if a claimant can't get a legal aid lawyer because he can't get legal aid that quickly...these folks are going to turn to the unscrupulous consultants, some of them, because of the speed on the front end.
Have you considered saying that everyone who is going to be represented in this matter must be either a lawyer or legislated...by somebody? That's so your staff would not be considering people who are being represented by folks who may have no credibility--
Conservative
Jason Kenney Conservative Calgary Southeast, AB
With respect to the eight-day proposed timeline for triage interviews, I need to emphasize that this is not a confrontational, adversarial context, nor is it a context where somebody is sitting down in front of an agent of the CBSA where they might feel some degree of hostility. This is in front of a highly trained public servant at the IRB. The idea is to allow the claimant to have an opportunity to combine the key high-level elements of the claim in a friendly environment. If there are signs of trauma, if there are indications that critical evidence won't be available, the decision-maker would have the capacity to recommend a hearing at a later date than 60 days. If the claimant wants, counsel would be able to be present.
NDP
Olivia Chow NDP Trinity—Spadina, ON
They could challenge it in court, saying “I'm not being represented by counsel and therefore my information that's given to the staff is not admissible because I have not given the right to counsel.” Could they not say that? If they say that, it will end up wasting a lot more time--
Conservative
Jason Kenney Conservative Calgary Southeast, AB
No one is required to have counsel. I should remind you we are talking about administrative proceedings; it is not a criminal proceeding. Moreover, we're talking about an interview that is simply a more efficient and wholesome way of allowing the person to provide the information they otherwise do over the course of a month in a personal information form.
Right now, Ms. Chow, I should tell you that many claimants arrive at a port of entry--I've seen this myself--and they're taken into a holding room. A CBSA agent sits down and starts asking them about the nature of their claim. There's no opportunity for counsel or anyone there. I should also say that the nature of the information provided to the triage officer will not be used prejudicially against the client when they get to their hearing.
But in terms of these timelines, actually the timelines we're proposing are generally slower than those among our comparable peer democracies. In Ireland, it's 17 to 20 days for the final decision. In the Netherlands, it's 48 days for safe country claimants and six months maximum for non-safe country claimants. In New Zealand, it's 13 weeks. The United States has a target of 60 days. It's 90 days in Australia from the time of application to the hearing and the decision on the actual claim.
So we have to be mindful, when we're dealing with a market of people who facilitate false claims, that they're going to choose countries that move more slowly to advise their clients to go to. We must be mindful of the international precedence when we are selecting our timelines here.