Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 13th, 2010

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Mr. Kurland, should people who apply for refugee status, after they've failed a refugee case and all that stuff, and if they apply for an H and C--humanitarian and compassionate--be allowed to use part of the testimony they gave as a refugee or part of what they submitted as a refugee case, to be used in their humanitarian and compassionate case application? Should they be allowed to do that?

[Richard Kurland]

I do believe in a time delay that commences on termination of the refugee claim and initiation of the H and C, for practical reasons. In terms of what an officer can consider and not consider, it's going to be a tough call. I'm hard pressed to completely exclude all information obtained in the course of a refugee determination hearing from an H and C application. If there's something relevant that connects to post-facto evidence, it's got to have a context. If that context is anchored in the refugee work, so be it.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

In layman's terms, then, you agree with me when I say that a person should be allowed to use part or all of the testimony at their refugee application in their H and C application. Is that correct?

[Richard Kurland]

By instinct, I have to say correct. I'm nervous about excluding evidence.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Thank you very much. I think I'm out of time.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You are, sir. Thank you.

Monsieur St-Cyr.

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

Thank you to all of you, and especially to the representatives of the Centre des femmes de Verdun. I am one of the opposition members that had the privilege of hearing your excellent presentation.

I would like to talk a little bit more about the timeframe issue you brought up. Your centre must deal often with immigrant women in difficulty and who may have experienced very traumatizing events in their country. You get to know them and you are there to advise and accompany them. Does it take them a while before telling their story, even to you?

[Annie Kouamy]

It takes a long time. Each person is different. When a person, especially a woman, leaves a very traumatizing situation and comes to Canada, it takes time before she is ready to confide in someone else and let her guard down. The person in front of her does not know her. Establishing a trust relationship with the individual takes time. It can take weeks, months and even years. The gentleman stated that eight days is a sufficient period of time, but I have doubts about that, because most of the women that we meet with do not easily tell their secrets.

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

These are women who decide to seek advice from a women's health centre, where the environment is exclusively female. They are somewhat reassured by your presence. When these women are required to meet with an official — man or woman — who may represent the authority that they fled, it can be even more intimidating and problematic for them to confide in that person than in you, is that not so?

[Annie Kouamy]

Absolutely. Let us suppose that the woman was abused by a figure of authority and she now finds herself in front of an official. She will systematically project onto the person. All of a sudden, the official brings her back to the situation that she fled because, in the circumstances at hand, she will not necessarily make the link between the past and the fact that this could be a friendly figure of authority. She therefore is intimidated from the very moment she finds herself face to face with an official. Even if one has not been a victim of violence, one is intimidated when faced with a person representing authority, especially if it is a representative of Immigration Canada from whom one is hoping to obtain permission to stay in Canada.

I therefore say that when a woman has been the victim of violence, or the victim of prejudice because her sexual orientation is different from the so-called “norm“, it is difficult for her to confide in me, and even more so to confide in an official. I am very doubtful that after eight days a woman would be ready to confide in an official. The intimidation factor is clearly there. She is in a terrible psychological state, as I mentioned earlier. It would be unrealistic to think that such a woman would open up like a flower and start telling us anything about herself.

[Alein Ortégon]

There is also a technical aspect. Within an eight-day timeframe, it is impossible to tell someone's story. The lawyer must understand the context at play here. Sometimes, for us, it is easy to talk about our country of origin, but not everyone is familiar with the situation, the culture or the context in the case, for example, of lesbians. Let us take the example of someone who lives in a Catholic society. It sometimes seems ludicrous to talk about that because here, Catholicism is not really that present. But because of all the prejudice surrounding countries where religion continues to exert great pressure, it is sometimes difficult for the lawyer to understand the context.

Therefore, as Ms. Kouamy stated earlier, eight days is truly an impossible timeframe for one to confide in another and to go through the whole process of choosing a lawyer, establishing a trust relationship, writing and translating the story and then verifying if it is really what the woman wanted to say, because there is always something lost in translation. There is also all of the stress of knowing that eight days to defend one's right to live is really a tall order.

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

Underlying this will, on the part of the government, to proceed rapidly via an interview rather than through written documents, within an eight day timeframe, is this presumption that some people will be lying. The theory is that if we give them too much time, they will be better able to invent a whole story.

When we take a close look at this, is it not rather the opposite that risks happening, in other words that the people who have truly been traumatized will be penalized by the system? Whereas the person who invents a story, within two, eight or thirty-one days, will come out of the process just fine, despite it all.

[Annie Kouamy]

Obviously.

[Alein Ortégon]

Usually, post-traumatic stress leaves scars, and the person may, in the end, fail to mention some parts of his or her story, but it does not mean that the person is lying. It is just that he or she is very stressed.

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

In your presentation, you talked among other things, of the proposal of the Canadian Council for Refugees, which has been brought up by several organizations, which would be to abandon the concept of designated countries, to use the same process for everyone, with a right of appeal for everyone, without discriminating on the basis of the country of origin. However, there is acceptance of the idea that the Canada Border Services Agency establish priorities with regard to suspicious cases or those that might be fraudulent or that might be the result of organized fraud.

Therefore, if I understand correctly, you are not opposed to the idea of bureaucratic processes that provide for a response to problematic situations as long as the principle of individualized treatment and non-discrimination is respected. The same rights must be granted to everyone.

[Annie Kouamy]

We believe it would be difficult for an official to determine who is telling the truth and who is not. However, we do recognize that there are cases where people are used, by street gangs or criminal gangs, to cheat the Canadian system.

We believe that there should be means in place in order to react to such situations, but what is required is not a cumbersome bureaucratic process likely to penalize these individuals. Therefore, the purpose of my question is to determine which criteria should be put in place for the evaluation of these types of situations.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Merci.

Ms. Chow.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Kurland, this bill has the implementation of the regulations in different phases. The refugee appeal division comes later, others come faster. Do you think there is any reason for an uneven implementation time? If you were the minister, would you want to see the implementation straight across, all at the same time?

[Richard Kurland]

Naturally, a brilliant question.

I think implementation has to be done right. If you need to take baby steps, take the baby steps. Experience shows that rushing to the finish line results in an inadequate structure and expensive mistakes, including a potential loss of life and removal from Canada. It's not worth that price. Take baby steps to get it right and have very strong transitional measures between old inventory and new.

My concern is with the refugee appeal division. That's been delayed a little too long. Is it possible, given the limited resources, to bring up both towers simultaneously? I'm not sure, but I'm very sensitive to the point.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Which one should come first, or should they be at the same time, small pieces at a time? Should they be simultaneous?

[Richard Kurland]

I'd go for the most expensive component first. I'd do my best administratively to provide relief using the existing administrative structure to soften the H and C or the PRRA on that end until the refugee appeal division is fully functioning. So soften up the intake and perhaps increase a target for the output. But, absolutely, we have to get this refugee system up and running in order to prevent a hemorrhaging of tax dollars.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

I'll come back to you if I have time.

Is it five or seven minutes, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

It's seven.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Okay.

To our friends in Quebec, I'm going to give you a list of recommendations and amendments that I am going to be pushing for, that the New Democratic Party is going to be pushing for, and see if you would agree with most of them:

Make more time on the front-end--i.e., more than eight days.

Delete the safe countries designation.

Hire people who are qualified to make sure it's an open hiring process and not partisan.

Allow the humanitarian and compassionate application in some of the most serious cases, like domestic violence, etc.

Make sure the provinces have enough funding for legal aid, so that the claimants would be properly represented. Right now, sometimes it takes a long time to get legal aid because there's not enough funding.

Make sure the implementation wouldn't be so uneven that you shut down everything. The appeal division is not set up, so that's not fair. But if you just set up the appeal division and everything else is not ready, that doesn't work either. So it's an even implementation.

Do you disagree with any of those recommendations or the amendments that I would want to put in this bill?

[Annie Kouamy]

I am not talking about myself, but rather about the Centre des femmes de Verdun. The centre would like there to be fair and independent access and that the officials in charge of welcoming these women and holding the hearings for them be independent individuals under the influence of no one.

The second thing, as you say, would be to provide sufficient means to qualified persons, in other words individuals who have a good knowledge of the individual in front of them. One must begin by knowing what is really going on in the country and what the socio-political situation there is, in order to be in a position to provide effective help to the claimant. These people must have access to legal aid within a reasonable period of time if we want to allow these women and these men who are seeking asylum to be able, as my colleague was saying, to tell their story with complete peace of mind and without any psychological pressure, and to allow them to make a proper application for asylum in Canada.

I will let my colleague add something else.