Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 27th, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you very much, sir, for an excellent presentation.

Our final witness is Mr. Andrew Telegdi, a former chair of this committee.

It must be strange coming back, sir, to address the committee in this way. I hope I am meeting the high standards you have set...? That's a terrible question to ask and you don't have to answer it.

Welcome to the committee, sir.

[Andrew Telegdi, Former Parliamentary Secretary, Former Chair and Vice-Chair of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'm very pleased to be here.

Let me say that some things don't change. I used to have all sorts of problems with the parliamentary secretary when I chaired the committee, but we worked it out.

First and foremost, I think it's important for committee members to know that I'm a refugee from the class of '57 following the Hungarian revolution and was one of approximately 40,000 people who got asylum in Canada after the uprising. So this is an issue that is close to my heart.

When I dealt with issues related to immigration and citizenship, I always operated in a pretty non-partisan fashion. I disagreed with my government at one point and I resigned as parliamentary secretary. I served as an associate member of the committee for a number of years because I would not be put back on as a member. Then, when the situation changed, I got elected as chair and, subsequently, vice-chair.

It is an issue that I'm very much interested in. As I said, when I was chair of the committee, I challenged the committee members to operate in a non-partisan fashion and I defended the committee decisions to government and advocated for them.

Looking at the changes, I'm really glad that Mr. Girard is here because he talks about coming back 25 years after he helped draft the original IRB system and about identifying many problems.

Mr. Chair and members of committee, I hope you are not going to be coming back after 25 years have gone by and having somebody else come back and say that the problems haven't been solved.

One of the things that concerns me most about Bill C-11 is the proposed timeline. I hear you talking about going to clause-by-clause and that causes me a great deal of concern, because I think issues such as Bill C-11 and its implications should be very transparent, and input should be sought. I can't understand why you as a committee would not want to take your time to make sure you get it right, because we don't want to have Mr. Girard's experience repeated.

In terms of the bill itself, I just want to give you one example of a case I dealt with when I was parliamentary secretary. It was the case of a young woman from the former state of Yugoslavia who felt that her refugee claim was turned down because the board member of the IRB did not believe there was collusion among the government, the media, and the police in the former state of Yugoslavia.

She was set for deportation and was going to be sent out of the country—this was back in 2000—on a Monday afternoon. She was going to arrive in Belgrade at 10 the next morning and NATO was scheduled to start bombing at noon. How ridiculous a situation can you have? Certainly, incompetence of board members existed at the time, and changes have been made to ensure greater competence.

Another issue I'm very cognizant of is the fact that we fought to get the board appointment process right. Back in 2006, we had a backlog of 20,000 claimants, and now the backlog is over 60,000 claimants. What happened was that the vacancies on the board were not filled up in a timely fashion, which resulted in growth in the backlog. In a lot of ways, we had solved much of the problem by getting the backlog down to 20,000, and it was going to go down further.

Also, the changes to the system mandated that we have a refugee appeal division, and that was not put in place. But it was on the verge of being put in place once the backlog got down to 20,000.

My recommendation to those of you on the committee--and I make this as an individual and I make it in a very non-partisan fashion--is to take the time to get this right. Make sure that the stakeholders and Canadians have a genuine opportunity to have input into this legislation, because I think it's legislation that Canada, in its past history, can be very proud of.

We want to make sure of that going forward. The fine aims of the legislation, such as speeding up the system, are laudable, because the quicker we can bring certainty to an individual, the better off we all are, including the individual.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Sir, you have less than one minute.

Thank you.

[Andrew Telegdi]

Also, increasing the number of refugees from overseas is a very positive step.

Mr. Chair, I urge you, with all my experience in terms of the committee itself, to take the time to make sure the legislation you come up with is going to stand the test of time so that we don't have somebody coming back 25 years from now and saying it's as bad now as it was then. Mind you, I think there have been great improvements made over the years.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, sir, for your presentation.

I'm going to suggest that each caucus have up to five minutes.

Mr. Karygiannis.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Mr. Kafieh, can you tell us in a few words if your organization is supporting safe third countries of origin, and if not, why not, vis-à-vis the Middle East, the Arab countries?

[James Kafieh]

Well, quite frankly, we believe that the designation will be politicized. We've seen examples of that with the present government, where the preferences or the prejudices of the government of the day have a profound impact on such designations.

So ultimately, people will fall victim to the prejudices of the country of origin. One example, certainly, is the State of Israel itself, which the government has a very close relationship with and views in high regard, in spite of the overwhelming evidence that there are profound human rights issues relating to that particular state and its treatment of its own citizens who are not Jewish or certainly those who are living in the occupied territories.

So that's one example, but it's a profound one, and it shouldn't be just limited... This isn't simply about the Arab-Canadian community. This is something that we expect and suspect, based on past experience, will be propagated to other areas of the world, where there will be some special relationship between the government of the day in Canada and that country and as a result there will be political consideration in terms of that kind of a designation as to who will get that kind of a pass and who will not get that pass.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Girard, it's a pleasure to see you after so many years. In 1991-92, or perhaps a little before that--I believe it was 1989-90--you had the first crack at the time at trying to put this thing into its proper place. What did you do wrong then, sir, that we're trying to right now?

[Raphael Girard]

Well, we gave the government a combination of restraints and sweeteners. They took the sweeteners and discarded the constraints.

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

Was a constraint a--

[Raphael Girard]

They were safe third and the first level of the system that sorted out the “manifestly unfounded”. They set the definition of “manifestly unfounded” so low that it became inoperative.

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

Sorry, but did you say that was an option that you gave the government--a Conservative government--at the time?

[Raphael Girard]

Yes, and they enacted it in law, but they put in place the first level to sort out the manifestly unfounded claims before they proceeded to the board. Then they did not enact the safe third country list. It took 10 years for them to start that with the United States. We gave it to them in 1989; they did it in 1999.

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

So this was a wish of the bureaucrats at the time?

[Raphael Girard]

It was the recommendation of the professionals, yes.

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

Okay, and certainly the governments of the day have not adhered to it for the last 20 years. So I guess it's the second time around that the “professionals”--quote, unquote--are coming back at it.

[Raphael Girard]

I don't hear them recommending it at this time. They're recommending a variation, which is safe country, which we did not. The safe country issue, when we discussed it in 1989, five years after the charter came into effect, was an issue that the Department of Justice preferred we did not address. They didn't think it was charter-proof. Now, we've had more experience since then, but—

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

Do you think it will be charter-proof now?

[Raphael Girard]

Well, I'm not a lawyer, but as I say, things have evolved over 20 years.

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

But you are, sir, an individual who has spent a lot of time on immigration. Do you feel now that this is charter-proof?

[Raphael Girard]

Probably not, unless we're very careful about the way we do it. The easier and legally tested way to do it is simply to exclude a group of countries like the EU from making claims based on the fact there are other remedies available to every EU citizen. They don't have to come here to get protection.

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

Are all countries in the EU countries of safe origin?

[Raphael Girard]

Well, everybody within the EU has a totally unfettered right of mobility within the EU, and they all have individual access to the European Court of Human Rights. The issue of the convention is about protecting people. The Europeans are protected in Europe; they don't have to come here.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Monsieur St-Cyr.

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

Ms. Pierre, Ms. Ricard, you work with women who come from overseas and claim refugee status in Canada. You've told us a true story. You are here to support and help these women. You fight for them and you defend them. They can trust in you.

Despite that trust, can some women take more than a week or eight days to tell you their story, to tell what really happened in their country of origin?