Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 18th, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

All right.

Sorry. We'll let you continue, and I'll give you a bit of time.

[Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. St-Cyr will use the rest of my time.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Okay, thank you.

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

I wanted to continue on the matter of fast-track measures; many people in our ridings are concerned about this. When we hear that the department is taking measures to accelerate procedures, we have no concrete examples to offer. For example, there is an issue that often comes back.

For medical examinations, would it not be more efficient to do them in Canada rather than in Haiti, given that there is not much of a medical infrastructure in Haiti even in normal times? This is even more true at this time because physicians might have other things to do in Haiti than to do checkups for Immigration Canada. Have you considered this solution? Have you any concrete and specific examples of different ways of doing things as compared to what is normally done, and that would show that you really have the will to speed things up and that we could offer as examples to our fellow citizens to explain what you are doing?

[Claudette Deschênes]

I know that two months seems like a long period of time, but our efforts were initially focused on permanent residents, Canadian citizens and cases of adoption. At this time we are really beginning to get down to business. This is the first time that an office has been opened in Ottawa for this purpose. This is the first time that, together with the sponsors, we will really examine the possibility of moving files forward. We have already expressed the idea that our agents in Montreal will also help us with this.

Given the fact that police documents about criminal records are non-existent, we have a mechanism ready for treating such cases. The entire program is managed on the basis of the fact that we must comply with the criteria.

Were it not for the situation in Haiti, we could possibly do something on the medical front, but there is a big problem with tuberculosis. Now that the physicians are on the ground, we want to begin again to ensure at least a minimum, medically speaking. In that way we can make sure that we won't be grappling with a medical problem in Canada that we were not aware of and we can do better follow-up.

We have another problem. When people enter Canada rapidly, all the work has to be done over again afterward, this makes twice the amount of work for the military personnel and for the—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

[Claudette Deschênes]

Sorry.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Young.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

In looking at this action plan, it looks very innovative. I want to congratulate you. It looks like you changed the rules--with some level of caution--to facilitate a lot of humanitarian aid. I can tell you, the people in my riding are very proud of what you accomplished, and what actually Canadians accomplished in donating $240 million, which was doubled by the government as well.

I wanted to ask you, the people who request special measures to be facilitated, I assume they have to ascertain somehow that the earthquake affected them. Is that correct, and if so, how would they do that?

[Claudette Deschênes]

Right now they have to provide us with a story, and they also have to provide us with some facts to support that. So that's where these cases are going to be a little complex to deal with. We know where the earthquake occurred and where the majority of damage is, and that's part of the work that has been done at the mission in Port-au-Prince. So once we look at that, if it looks like it's an area that was affected, we'll be using that as a prima facie situation. But if we think there are doubts with that story, then there will be an interview and we'll be asking for more documentation.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Mr. Chair, I'd like to share my time with Madam Wong.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond, BC]

Thank you very much for coming.

I am very proud of the work the CIC has done for Haiti. We were the first to send our aid there. We were the first to send our troops there. And our forces have done a great job. So I wish to congratulate you on that.

You were also talking about international adoption and the fact that there are still a lot of people who want to adopt. Can you explain further the challenges for people, or for the government to approve the adoption? A lot of families would like to adopt. What are the proper procedures?

[Sandra Harder, Acting Director General, Immigration, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

Thank you.

Typically, the adoption process is a two-stage process. So there is work that's done at the provincial and territorial levels in order to ascertain if a family is in fact eligible to adopt. So there's that work that goes on. There is also, then, CIC's responsibility for the immigration piece of that, and obviously then later the citizenship status of the child who's adopted.

Right now, I would say probably the biggest challenge is around the readiness of the Haitian government to resume inter-country adoptions. Canada is signatory to two important conventions that define how we operate when it comes to adoptions—the Hague convention and the principle of the best interests of the child. Both of those govern how we move forward on adoptions, particularly in situations where a country's readiness to resume adoption is risky. So at this point, until the Haitian government declares that they're in a readiness state to resume, we are suggesting that no inter-country adoptions take place at this time.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond, BC]

Will the different territories and provinces in Canada play an important role in this as well?

[Sandra Harder]

They do play a very important role; they're the first part of the process, when it comes to adoptions. We've been working with provinces and territories very closely throughout the Operation Stork process in order to make sure that all the paperwork...as my colleague said, all the adoptions that were expedited were those in which a match had been made in advance of the earthquake and for which we could have secure understanding of the situation of the child and the adoptive parents. International best practice is typically that one tries to find a solution for a child, if there's a solution available, in their country of origin. But cases in which adoptions were already in process, matches had been made, and everything was in a state of readiness were the cases we moved on first.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond, BC]

What happened to the situations in which some of the documents were lost? How can we prove that those children are genuine orphans and who they claim to be?

[Sandra Harder]

That's precisely the challenge, I think, when we're facing the situation in Haiti. What we did was work directly with the Haitian government to get approval and authority to proceed with those adoptions. It was necessary to have that exchange of information and the authority to move forward on those cases, because the documentation for pending cases was destroyed.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond, BC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You still have four minutes.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond, BC]

Four minutes? We'll share the time.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Ladies, thank you very much for taking the time to appear before us. I know yours is a very difficult job, but keep up the good work you're doing.

Can you please explain the operational challenges that CIC faces in difficult environments such as post-earthquake Haiti?

[Claudette Deschênes]

Right now, one of the bigger challenges we have is.... For the first couple of weeks, for example, we had no access to our files; our files were in a place we couldn't get to. We presently have office space in what used to be the reception area of the mission. Some other offices are in what used to be the garage area of the mission.

All of the staff quarters where the officers lived have been affected one way or the other. We have some that are in better shape, but people are actually sharing accommodation because there is not enough accommodation. The Department of Foreign Affairs is presently working on sending 50 containers, which will be set up as accommodations. Some of our locally engaged staff lost their houses, so 13 of them are living in tents, for example, that have been provided by the Canadian government. All of those issues are difficult.

There are a lot of people who are trying to get to the different missions, so crowd control outside, so that we know who is coming in and who's going out, is also difficult right now. Obviously, the trauma of officers and local staff who have had to deal with their own situation is also there, which was why we sent quickly some temporary duty officers to support.

From a processing perspective, there's also the aspect of criminal records not being accessible. We've had to set up a mechanism, not to say that nobody could come to Canada, but to make sure that from a public safety perspective we were meeting our requirements. So we set up these processes to permit us to move forward.

Obviously, because more or less 40% of past applications have historically been refused, because of bona fides or people saying “this is my child”, but it's not, we've also had to make sure that, while being flexible, we don't forget that this is a movement that's difficult to deliver.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Can you talk about what was done to ensure the safety of Canadians and locally engaged CIC staff during the crisis?

[Claudette Deschênes]

Some of the things that were done, of course, were with the assistance of the Canadian military, who came down and supported us. One of the challenges in the first few weeks was, of course, identifying the adoptive kids, but also getting to where they were to ensure that they had the security they needed in the time we needed to bring them.

There were a number of cases in which people claimed to be related to Canadians or a permanent resident, so a lot of the department—in Sydney, for example—was involved in making sure that the people claiming to want to be evacuated were actually going to be permitted to be evacuated, because, as you can imagine, in a crisis some people try to take advantage of the situation.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Okay, that's it.

Ms. Jennings has up to five minutes.