Citizenship and Immigration Committee on June 9th, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Is there further debate?

(Amendment agreed to) [See Minutes of Proceedings]

(Clause 11 as amended agreed to)

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

Isn't there another...? I have not voted against--

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Excuse me, Ms. Chow. I thought I said “as amended”. I hope I did.

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

No, no.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Yes, you did.

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

We're not ready for clause 11 yet.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Well, okay, you can help me with that, because I have a note here that says “new clause”. Who's going to do that?

The Bloc is. Go ahead, Monsieur St-Cyr.

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

That's what I wanted to ensure. We have to add clause 11.1 to the bill. The purpose of this new clause is to add a title after section 107 of the act and to enable the Refugee Protection Division to state that, in its view, the application is clearly unfounded if it is clearly fraudulent.

This amendment obviously goes together with the following amendment, the other Bloc Québécois amendment. The idea is to give the first decision-making level the ability to rule an application unfounded. In that case, that application would be handled at the appeal level in the same way as an application that does not have that status, but it would be handled on an expedited basis. The purpose of this provision is to include this concept in the act.

We have to deal with them in the order in which they are presented.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Are the bells ringing again? No. Go away.

Ms. Chow, you have the floor.

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

Do we have to vote?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

No, it was a false alarm.

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

Mr. Chair, could there be some explanation as to how this would work in terms of the timing? We're debating, I guess, Bloc amendments 5.01 and 5.1. Are we doing both at one time, or is it just...?

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

I think they go together.

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

They go together. If that's the case, could there be some kind of explanation of how the process would work if a claimant were found to be not telling the truth, for example, and that person's claim was “manifestly unfounded”? Could there be some description of it?

[Peter MacDougall, Director General, Refugees, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

Are we also talking about BQ-5.1, to get it together?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I don't think we're there yet. We're at 5.01 at this stage.

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

Mr. Chairman, I understand why we're discussing clause 5.01, but to really understand what we're going to vote on, I would like the officials to explain to us what the consequences would be if we adopted both. In my opinion, the two go together. Consequently, I would like them to tell me what the result would be if the committee adopted both clauses, while understanding that we will have to adopt them separately, for course.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I agree. One of the questions is whether there will be someone who won't have the right to appeal. Is that a fair question?

[Peter MacDougall]

So the two clauses—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You can talk about both of them. It appears we're in agreement on that.

[Peter MacDougall]

All right.

The essence of BQ-5.1 is that it restores the right of appeal to someone from a safe country of origin. If this is adopted, that will be restored.

A manifestly unfounded claim, as Mr. St-Cyr mentioned, is an additional tool to a safe-country-of-origin concept. It's recognized by the UNHCR. It's used by several other countries, including Norway and Sweden, so it's well known. Essentially, it provides the opportunity for a consequence. With respect to the safe country of origin, if there's an appeal adopted, we would also look at providing some kind of consequence.

The original reason we did not have an appeal for safe-country-of-origin claimants has to do with the accelerated process, essentially a consequence of being from a presumptively safe country. If these are adopted, and you have a manifestly unfounded claim, and you've restored an appeal, then we would look at ways to priority-process people who have either been found to be manifestly unfounded at the Refugee Protection Division, or have been determined to be safe-country-of-origin nationals. Following the Refugee Protection Division decision, we would seek to accelerate the Refugee Appeal Division hearing for those two groups of people. Obviously, this would be set out in the regulations subject to Governor-in-Council approval and pre-publication.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Monsieur St-Cyr still has the floor.

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

Obviously, if we adopt these two recommendations, we're giving the government the opportunity to prescribe by regulation the time limits for the regular process and for the expedited process. If the committee had to proceed in that manner, what timeframes would the government set by regulation for both processes?

[Peter MacDougall]

For the regular non-safe-country-of-origin legitimate founded claim, you would have the 15-day information interview. You would have 90 days at the first level of the Refugee Protection Division. You would then have another 15 days to file a notice of appeal to the Refugee Appeal Division. Finally, you would have 120 days after that for your Refugee Appeal Division decision. That's for the regular stream.

For safe-country-of-origin claimants, the 15-day interview would be for everybody. However, for that group we would propose 60 days for the first level, the Refugee Protection Division hearing, rather than 90. Similarly, they would get 15 days to file an appeal to the Refugee Appeal Division, but their hearing would be completed in 30 days, as opposed to 120.

With respect to manifestly unfounded claimants, this determination would not happen until the Refugee Protection Division hearing. So they would, like the regular claimant, have 15 days for the information interview and 90 days for the refugee protection hearing. If the claim is subsequently found to be manifestly unfounded, they would then move over to the fast track for the Refugee Appeal Division. So there would be 15 days to file notice of appeal and 30 days for a Refugee Appeal Division hearing.

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

Under the current regulations, when someone appeals to the Federal Court, there is an automatic stay of removal for that person. Now there would be two classes. What are your intentions with regard to the regulations concerning stays of removal for those individuals?