Thank you.
We welcome the opportunity to address you on this important bill that will profoundly affect refugees seeking Canada's protection. We have submitted a detailed brief of our comments on Bill C-11 and recommendations for changes.
Unfortunately, we will not have time today to discuss our concerns more than superficially. The speed with which the committee is rushing through the study of this bill undermines any capacity to have the thoughtful review that is merited. We remind you that you are dealing with a complex process that, if done wrong, can and quite likely will result in people being sent back to persecution and even death.
Unlike most proposed reforms to the immigration legislation, the government in this case chose not to consult externally. Our expectation was that members of Parliament would therefore recognize the particular need for a thorough study. We have been hearing strong expressions of shock and disillusionment from our members when they realize how rushed your hearings are.
Turning to the objectives of refugee reform, we believe they are clear and widely shared. We need a system that recognizes refugees quickly and discourages people who don't need protection from entering the system, or deals with their claims efficiently if they do enter it. Bill C-11 contains some positive elements, but also several serious faults that would put refugees, particularly the most vulnerable, at risk of being deported to persecution. Some provisions would also make the system more inefficient. A number of provisions would likely lead to a great deal of litigation.
On the positive side, Bill C-11 offers most claimants access to the refugee appeal division. An appeal on the merits is long overdue and absolutely necessary to ensure that mistakes are not made. We are also painfully conscious of the very long delays currently faced by refugee claimants waiting for determination, and we support the goal of speeding up access to a hearing.
On the negative side, the introduction of the safe or designated countries of origin is, in our view, a serious mistake. We sympathize with the objective of addressing patterns of unfounded claims, but we believe this is the wrong solution. If adopted, it will lead to injustice for refugees in need of protection. It may also cause unintended practical problems that will undermine the goal of efficiency.
Treating claimants differently based on nationality is wrong because it is discriminatory. Refugee determination requires individual assessment of each case, not judgments on countries.
The idea of safe countries of origin is drawn from Europe, where it has been extremely controversial. Many serious problems with refugee determination in Europe recently led to the adoption of the Council of Europe's resolution on improving the quality and consistency of asylum decisions, in which the parliamentary assembly, in Resolution 1695, called on member states to refrain from using lists of safe countries of origin
to ensure that each asylum case is examined individually with rigorous scrutiny of the particular situation of each applicant with respect to the country in question.
Under the proposed bill, nationals of designated countries would be denied access to an appeal on merits. They would also face a bias against them even at the first level, since decision-makers would be aware of the government's judgment on the country. None of this would matter if we could be sure that no individuals of designated countries would be refugees in need of protection. However, experience teaches us that, on the contrary, there are likely to be refugees among those affected.
There are few, if any, countries in the world that are completely safe. In countries that generally appear to be safe, women often nevertheless suffer serious gender-based persecution, and there are grave abuses against gays and lesbians.
The minister has said that his intention is to use these provisions to target claimant groups where there are concerns about abuse of the system. Yet if we look at the experience of recent years, we generally find that there are individuals within the groups who do very much need protection, even if most do not.
Take the Mexican claimants. They have come to Canada for economic reasons, but a significant number have fled for their lives. There are serious and widespread human rights abuses occurring in Mexico. In 2009, 516 Mexicans were accepted as refugees by the Immigration and Refugee Board. Denial of a fair process to these claimants may lead to their forced return to persecution, in violation of human rights law.
Depriving these claimants of an appeal is shortsighted if the goal is to have a smooth-running system. Often these claimants are among those who most need an appeal due to difficult issues of fact and law, such as the availability of state protection. This is the case, for example, with claims from Mexico where the Federal Court has repeatedly overturned decisions of the Immigration and Refugee Board because of a failure to apply appropriately the test of state protection.
The advantage of an appeal-level decision is that it could set a precedent for future decisions, allowing better and more consistent decision-making. It is possible that excluding claimants from the appeal may in fact be more expensive and time-consuming than granting them access to an appeal, since the Federal Court is likely to feel the need to scrutinize more closely the cases of claimants denied an appeal.
We note that there have been suggestions here that the legislation include criteria for designated countries. In our view, this would be more window dressing that would in no way redeem a fundamental flaw in the proposal.
I will pass it on to Janet now.