Thank you.
My name is Jordan Pachciarz Cohen and I am a settlement counsellor at the Mennonite New Life Centre. I'm also a law clerk. I work with a lawyer in Toronto preparing personal information forms for people's refugee claims.
First, thank you, Chairman. The Mennonite New Life Centre would like to thank the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration for taking the time for community consultations on refugee reform. We trust that the following recommendations will help inform your decision-making and amendments to this important piece of legislation in order to ensure that protection continues to be the priority in a fair and efficient refugee determination system.
I think we all share a common concern to have a fast, efficient, and fair system. However, there are several concerns that we do have with Bill C-11, and because of our limited time, this restricts us to only speak to a few of them.
Our first concern is with the designation of “safe” countries and the lack of access to an appeal for the designated safe countries. We believe this threatens to politicize the refugee system and compromise the independence of the Immigration and Refugee Board. We believe that individual assessment on the merits of each case is required without government intervention and without influence from authorities making designation of safe countries based on any political system. Also, it's important to note that claims from countries that are commonly thought of as safe are those that would most require an appeal process. This is because there are complicated issues of fact and law, such as the availability of state protection in countries that are generally thought of as safe.
One of the other concerns is the access to humanitarian and compassionate applications, and people having only 12 months after a negative decision to present a humanitarian and compassionate application on these humanitarian considerations. First, I would like to mention that many claims are not refused because of lack of credibility or people who are trying to abuse the system, but very many claims are refused because of the narrow refugee definition and are refused based on state protection, access to state protection or internal flight alternatives. The actual immigration refugee division or the refugee division is making a determination that people do face risk but not actually persecution, so risk should be able to be assessed at the humanitarian and compassionate level.
I want to give you some examples of certain situations that may be encountered by people who wouldn't have access to H and C considerations but who should. One is if a family arrives in Canada and makes a refugee claim, there's one member of the family who has dual citizenship because he was born in a different country from the country of persecution, but has never actually lived in that country. Another is if the entire family arrives in Canada, makes a refugee claim, are accepted, but there's one family member who is over 21 who is not able to be included in the permanent residence application as a protected person, and this person has no other family in their country of dual citizenship; they have no connection to that country whatsoever, and they would be sent to a place where they have nobody and have no idea of what the situation is there and they would be separated from their family.
Another situation could be a person who has a child with a permanent resident or Canadian citizen, and if that person is deported from Canada there should be humanitarian concerns for the best interests of the child to have both parents remain in Canada to raise that child.
There are many other different circumstances that could arise; those are just two examples.
I'm going to move on to the timelines of Bill C-11 and the eight-day interview. We fear that an interview with a public servant after eight days of making a claim will lead to poor decisions. How can one expect to gather accurate information when questions asked are not in a calming and trusting environment?
Refugee claimants require good advice in order to present their claim, and they're unaware of the laws and procedures and what information is actually necessary to mention and what is important to their claim. Very often they're given advice prior to arriving in Canada by unscrupulous individuals, and without receiving legal advice, they may present information that is incorrect and inaccurate.
In my work in meeting with people to present their claims and to put their personal information form into narrative form, often claimants believe they cannot mention events that occurred if they don't have the physical evidence to back them up. So they leave that information out because they're unaware that their oral testimony is of evidence and that's why their credibility is being evaluated at their IRB hearing.
There's fear of public officials. Often the agents of persecution in their home country are public officials, and to present in an environment where there's a public servant who's interviewing them, there's no building of trust, no time, and not a safe environment in which to present their case. It's not enough time to get psychological reports in place and put together accurate information regarding their claim.
I think Maria Eva is an example of someone who I feel would probably have had a lot of difficulty being accepted as a refugee with the proposed Bill C-11, the current refugee reform, and would probably not have been accepted without being given the necessary time to prepare her case. I'm going to let her present briefly on her situation.