Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 31st, 2010

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

But that hasn't been eliminated from this bill?

[Jennifer Irish]

No, that's correct.

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

Okay. I just wanted to clarify that.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I think we've come to the end, Ms. Chow. I'm very sorry.

Dr. Wong is next. Thank you.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Minister.

I definitely have had a lot of positive feedback from my communities regarding this reform.

You've just indicated your willingness to compromise in a number of areas. I have two questions, so maybe you'd like to answer them together.

Would the government still be able to deliver balanced and fair refugee reform as a result of the kind of compromise you're making? Secondly, why have you changed your recommendations on the timelines? Does this compromise the speed of the system?

I would like to hear your comments.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Thank you.

Dr. Wong, I would not be recommending the changes if I thought they compromised the basic objective of something that's balanced and something that's both fast and fair. To be absolutely honest with you, I've had concerns from the beginning that the eight-day and 60-day timeframes were possibly too slow to disincentivize false claimants from getting into the system. Let's not forget, that eight days has been changed to 15 days now for the first step, and 60 days has been changed to 90 days now for the second step. If they fail at that RPD, most claimants will then have four months, we estimate, to go to the refugee appeal division. If they lose there, they'll have another four months to go to the Federal Court. So right now we are talking about 11 to 12 months, under the 90 days that we've recommended.

When I look at the European systems, for fast-tracked claimants France has 15 days. It's 10 to 14 days for fast-tracked claimants in the United Kingdom. In Portugal, a country where the current UN High Commissioner for Refugees was Prime Minister, claims from safe countries of origin are considered to be groundless, and people are basically removed in a matter of days if they're found not to have a bona fide claim.

I know this will shock some people, but I'm going to say something that is absolutely a recognized reality: there are some people out there, some false claimants, who are effectively asylum shoppers. There are networks in the migration industry that are aware of the fact that Canada has the slowest-moving system by far now, and I fear that even after these reforms, we'll still have a relatively slow-moving system. So to go beyond what we are recommending I think would be irresponsible, but we've made compromises on this issue in order to try to find a consensus on this bill. As I said, I think the price of no reform would be too high.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond, BC]

How much time do I have, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Oh, you have lots of time.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond, BC]

You have also limited your power in relation to the designated safe country of origin. Also, you are proposing advisory panels, to include at least two independent human rights experts. What does this bring to the whole reform?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Under IRPA, as I have just said, there are powers for the minister to designate certain countries for specific purposes: countries for which there's a moratorium on removals; countries concerning which we will accept refugee claims in country; countries that have visa requirements or that don't. All of those powers are given to the minister carte blanche in the legislation—by the way, legislation adopted by the previous government, without any kinds of parameters, any safeguards. It's full ministerial discretion.

It's funny, a Conservative government is in place, and all of a sudden people from the previous government say there's too much power for the minister, so we need to limit it. In the spirit of compromise, we say fine. We're not seeking to do anything we think is unreasonable here. What we're seeking to do is provide a limited, discrete ability to address large waves of unfounded claims from demonstratively safe countries that provide protection to their people. In the amendments we're proposing, the process, the committee, which will include outside external membership from human rights NGOs, which will make reference to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which will only look at countries, based on the regulations that we've suggested—and this was an opposition idea—from which have arisen 1% of asylum claims in one of the previous three years.... Only those countries will be considered, and the minister will be bound to accept the committee recommendations. He won't be able to go outside them.

I think this addresses the concerns that we heard from some stakeholders and some parliamentarians about “too much ministerial discretion in the designation process”. It certainly goes a lot further than any other country designations that had been proposed in IRPA by the previous government.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond, BC]

My other question is about introducing amendments that would allow people to withdraw their refugee claim prior to hearings before the Immigration and Refugee Board to make an application for humanitarian and compassionate consideration, provided they do so before the hearing at the refugee protection division. I think this is another big amendment to your proposal. Can you explain this to us further?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

What we proposed in the original Bill C-11 is what's called a bar on concurrent claims. Sometimes people come in on a manifestly false asylum claim and will double their chances: on advice of counsel, they'll file an asylum claim and will file a humanitarian and compassionate claim concurrently. What we've been saying in Bill C-11 is that you have to choose whether you're a refugee or whether you fall outside the definition of a refugee but still believe you have extenuating circumstances that should be considered by an immigration officer through an H and C application. So we said, you choose.

Now, some people have come to us and said, well, people might make the wrong choice. Somebody might end up in the asylum stream, even though the nature of their problem isn't really about persecution, doesn't really meet the statutory definition of a refugee, in which case we shouldn't penalize them but should allow them to move over to the stream in which their claim would be better considered. That would be before an independent, unfettered decision-maker in CIC, on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.

I call it a bridging amendment. It allows people who get into the asylum queue to, before their hearing, move over to the humanitarian and compassionate queue. It allows more flexibility to make sure that people, once they have counsel, get into the right stream for their case.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Ms. Wong.

Mr. Karygiannis, you have five minutes, sir.

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

Thank you.

Minister, in looking at the figures and the number of refugees who were applying and the number of people you were processing, one sees that in 2006 there were 22,000 refugees, in 2007 there were 28,523, and in 2008 there were 36,300. Yet the processing of the refugees went down. One comes to the conclusion that the system was starved of IRB members to work with the people applying for refugee status and that this is why we grew this big backlog.

Am I correct?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

No, you're not, Mr. Karygiannis.

I've addressed this many times. When our government came into office, we inherited a backlog of 20,000 cases. The average size of the backlog in the past decade is 40,000 cases. Since we came into office, between 2006 and 2009 there was more than a 70% increase in the number of asylum claims—you've just gone through those—from 22,000 to 36,000 cases by 2008. So a large portion of the backlog is attributable to the increase in the number of claims above and beyond the fully funded and staffed capacity of the IRB to finalize 25,000 claims a year.

You are right in one respect. There was a short-term—about an 18-month—shortfall in IRB decision-makers as a result of the transition to the current, more rigorous pre-screening process for GIC appointees to the RPD, which left a shortfall in decision-makers.

Since I became minister, I have either appointed or re-appointed 101 members to the IRB, all of whom have gone through the rigorous pre-screening process. I can tell you that these are people who have met a very high standard. Over 90% of the applicants through the pre-screening process are screened out and are not even recommended to me.

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

Minister, I'd like to share other numbers with you, if I may—

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

So we have better-quality appointments, but it's true, about a third of the current backlog is attributable to that factor.

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

Minister, there are a couple of other numbers that I'd like to share with you. In 2001 there were 44,734 people who applied; in 2002 there were 33,458; in 2003, 31,000; and in 2004, 25,000. The cases that were finalized were 27,000, 35,000, 45,000, and 35,000. Under your stewardship, sir, there were 17,000, 14,000, and 20,000 that were finalized. This is under the Conservative stewardship.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Again, Mr. Chairman, we can have fun with numbers. The reality is that—

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

No, Minister, could you answer the question—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Karygiannis, you've asked a question. The minister is entitled to answer it. Please let him do that.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

The reality is that there is a systemic problem, and anyone who is denying that is not familiar with the issue. There's an average size of backlog of 40,000 cases. The average wait time over the past decade has been a year or more to get to the RPD, under Liberal governments, under Conservative governments.

There are sometimes huge spikes in claims. When Mr. Coderre was minister, they were coming from the United States. He responded through the safe third country agreement. There were spikes under our government from Mexico. We responded with visa impositions.

Sometimes governments have addressed this through an increase in resources; you're absolutely right. The previous government, for a two-year period, had a short-term injection of resources that increased the number of finalizations. And guess what happened? As soon as that was over, the backlog went back up, the processing times went back up, and there was another wave of claims.

So we can do what Bill Clinton defined as insanity—repeating the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result—or maybe we can take a step back and say that maybe the system needs to be reformed.

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

Minister, is the problem resources that we need versus a list? We have had people come in here, witness after witness, and they all said that as far as the designated countries were concerned, they were in doubt that it worked. You're saying—

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Thank you. We're—

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

No, Minister, I haven't finished. Allow me my time.

You're saying that if we're going to propose some changes based on what we heard, or if we're going to propose any amendments, you're going to pull the bill. I'm wondering why we brought all these people in and why we spent all this time to listen to them, if the minister steps in front of the committee and says, if you're not going to play my game, I'm going to take my ball and go home. This is what you're saying, Minister.