Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 18th, 2010

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you so much, Madame Deschênes and Ms. Harder, for your presentations here.

I've been approached by a Canadian of Haitian origin who works for one of the departments of the federal government and who has a surviving niece and nephew, I believe it is, in Haiti and is attempting to bring them here and is encountering problems—I don't know what. Is it possible for you, after this meeting, to provide me with the name of somebody, perhaps in that team that you've put together here in Ottawa, whom she can communicate directly with to explain her story and what documents and what application she has filed to date, and perhaps have it sorted through?

[Claudette Deschênes]

What I would suggest is that if you have that information—the name of the person—I'll take it back, and we will get our case management group to give her a call.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

I'll give you that. Thank you so much.

Another question has to do with Haitians who are here on valid student visas, but who have lost everything—in some cases family as well—back in Haiti and therefore have no income. My understanding is that some universities have been providing them with emergency assistance, including emergency funds, but that's pretty much dying out, because the universities don't really have the resources for this.

I'm wondering whether there is anything the Canadian government is doing, either solely or in conjunction with provincial governments, to respond to that. Are you aware of it?

The second question comes to the question of my colleague Mr. Karygiannis about 160 visas in the last two months. If that's the pace—and my understanding is that it's double what normally is issued—if you don't foresee a picking up of the capacity to pick up the pace, then we would be talking about more than 60 months. That's over five years.

Am I correct?

[Claudette Deschênes]

I don't think the last two months are a predictor of how quickly we're going to be able to move. Certainly in the first couple of weeks we told Mississauga not to send any applications anywhere until we decide where we're going to deal with them. I don't think it's an indication. You will, however, understand that the number of people who can come is dependent on a levels exercise more generally.

We will continue to work very hard to move as many of those as we can, but both Quebec and we have the same issue: are you going to let all the Haitians we can process in as quickly as possible while some other country has to wait longer?

We don't expect it will be 60 months. We want to move them much faster than we would normally move them. We understand what the situation is.

Will all of them come? Will all of them be found to be affected by the situation—

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

No, I did not ask that question—

[Claudette Deschênes]

No, but I'm just saying—

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

—because we all know that not all of them, under the current law, will be eligible. That doesn't preclude your having to process the file until you come to that determination. You may in fact deal with a number of cases in which—in the next couple of months, there's a whole series—you make the determination, so those files are closed.

To come back to the students...?

[Claudette Deschênes]

Right. We're just looking at each other. We want to make sure we don't give you the wrong information.

[Sandra Harder]

It would depend on the individual situation of the student. Some of them may in fact have off-campus work permits, which would allow them to work while they're in Canada.

With respect to—

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Okay, I'm going to stop you right there.

We already know from Stats Canada that the unemployment rate among youth is double that of the general population in Canada, and when we talk about visible minority students, it's even higher. And within the visible minority category, when we talk about students, young people of black or African ancestry, theirs are the highest unemployment rates. So my sense is that they may have a visa to work, but unless it's the university that's hiring them, their chances of finding work will be very limited.

But put that aside. I'm talking about students of Haitian origin and citizenship who are here legally on student visas and who have no income. Is there anything the Government of Canada can do and is doing, and is there anything, if you can do something, that you're doing in conjunction with the provincial governments? That's my question.

[Sandra Harder]

I would say two things. One is that it wouldn't necessarily fall in CIC's ambit--

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

I understand that. That's why I said Government of Canada.

[Sandra Harder]

Yes, indeed, I understand. I am not aware of a specific program or initiative that is under way at this point. That does not mean there isn't work going on, or at least some exploratory work.

I am aware that there have been several groups and organizations of a non-governmental nature who have been working together to seek to support students in particular, but I can't speak to the knowledge of a government-wide program.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Ms. Harder.

Mr. Calandra, it's your turn.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Thank you for attending. I'm going to ask you advice and opinion questions, and I understand if you can't answer them.

From your perspective, what was the level of cooperation between departments responding to this? Who took the lead? How was your ability to answer this huge humanitarian crisis in the quickest timeframe? And what lessons can we take from what you've learned?

[Claudette Deschênes]

As I said before, the first priority was definitely for us to deal with the Canadian citizens and permanent residents. The lead on that would be the Department of Foreign Affairs. Certainly the agreement we have, even with our officers overseas, is when there's a crisis, that's where they go first. That's the first priority.

I think the cooperation between all departments was excellent. In terms of Operation Stork, we got significant assistance from the Department of National Defence to ensure that the children who were coming were in good health. We had consular officers from DFAIT, we had CIC officers, we had the military police in Haiti going out to look for the children. Certainly the Ontario government helped in terms of their arrival in Canada and support. The Quebec government and all of the provincial governments helped in terms of adoptions. Certainly CHEO and PCO played a lead in terms of making sure the government had the resources it needed.

I personally think it was a success, even having to stay up a couple of nights without sleep to make it happen. I think it was a success. Certainly I would not argue that everybody can feel we should do more, but I think we tried to do as much as we could.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

I'm fortunate in my riding to have a large number of NGOs who actually were on the ground pretty quickly. I have Emmanuel International and the Christian Blind Mission International. A gentleman in my riding sponsors a couple of orphanages there, which are supported by the Springfield Baptist Church.

One of the things they mentioned to me was that the scope was something they had never seen before, that level of destruction. They were on the ground pretty quickly, and because of the work they had done there and had been doing there for so many years, they also had a bit of institutional knowledge of Haiti.

In the future, is there a way that we can utilize their skills faster, if we haven't already done that? We may have done that. Did we do that? Is there a way of utilizing these people? Some of them did extraordinary work. Two of the ones I was talking to were on the ground within 24 hours. So they managed to get their way there and have food going through the Dominican Republic. I will say that they had nothing but good things to say about how the government reacted and how much more comfortable they were because the Canadian military was on the ground to protect them. That made a big difference in comparison to previous disasters.

[Claudette Deschênes]

I really can't respond on how to use them better or more quickly or if it was done. That is really humanitarian aid and that would be under CIDA.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond, BC]

How much time do I have. Can I jump in?

You were in the middle of completing what you described as some challenges regarding medical requirements. Can you explain that to us further and what precautions we have taken in order to protect the health of the Canadians as well?

[Claudette Deschênes]

Certainly, initially, we had minimal facilities to support medical. So what we did is we let people come to Canada, and then they were given instructions, and that includes some of the children, to get their medicals as quickly as possible. We wanted to make sure that if there was a public health issue we were aware and could work.

Some of the children who were evacuated in Operation Stork had a few medical issues, and right away we had DND doctors on the flight, the air companies also had doctors, and CHEO was here right away in Ottawa to help. And then, if they were transferred to a province, we worked with the province to make sure their health was taken care of.

Our designated medical practitioners, the doctors who do our medicals pre-immigration, are now up and running, so we plan to use them to start doing medicals, in part because of issues like tuberculosis in Haiti, to ensure that we've at least done tests so that we know, if there's a health problem, to support them when they arrive in Canada.

So those are the major things we're doing right now.

One of the other aspects that we think might happen, because documents will be harder to get with all the destruction and because of the nature of the case, is we may do a little bit more DNA testing so that we can establish a relationship.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Dykstra.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I did want to pursue this a little bit. It has certainly arisen as an issue, and I wanted to get your thoughts on it and on how the ministry has worked through this issue, and that is subsection 230(3), which provides that persons inadmissible to Canada for reasons of security, for violating human or international rights, serious criminality, organized criminality and war crimes, or crimes against humanity, normally continue to be removed to countries despite a temporary suspension of removals.

Could you just clarify how specific we have been to that piece of the code, and in fact how wide the net actually is for us to ensure that we are certainly working as quickly and expeditiously and as fairly as we can with those who in fact have made their request?

[Claudette Deschênes]

Are you talking about removals?

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

Yes. Sorry, I'm speaking specifically to removals in section 230.

[Claudette Deschênes]

To removals.

Certainly there's TSR, temporary suspension of removals, on Haiti. Normally, exceptions are made for what I call real bad guys, so war crimes, organized crime, security risk.

In this case, the government made a decision not to even return those people immediately to Haiti, to have a suspension on even that. So we're looking at it case by case, and of course if there are such cases, we're not removing at the moment, but we're trying to work with the authorities, the IRB, to keep them detained in the meantime, so that we can ensure the security of Canadians while not putting them in a situation that is difficult.