Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 1st, 2012

[Dr. Catherine Dauvergne]

I totally agree with my colleague in Winnipeg about arranged marriage, but there is an issue of forced marriage, which is something that has received increasing attention in a number of European countries. The U.K. and Scandinavian countries have really taken quite stringent steps in their immigration law over the past decade to try to sort out the question of young women in particular being forced into marriages and how to distinguish those from arranged marriages. It's something that immigration law in Europe has really tackled, whereas the Canadian approach so far has been simply to say that's not a problem for Canada.

I don't know very much about Canadian research, but that seems unlikely. Given the great range of countries from which people come to Canada, this probably is an issue in Canadian family class migration as well, and it's something we haven't paid sufficient attention to yet. There's a lot of data in other countries that could be helpful to us on this point.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

I agree. Marriages of convenience are something we're looking at and we need to examine very closely, for all the reasons you outlined, because we certainly don't want a spouse of any gender falling into a situation that is harmful to them. I think we can all agree on that.

I want to shift to foreign workers and back to Mr. Petryshyn for a second.

You talked about truck drivers coming in.

How much time do I still have, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You have about two minutes.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Okay, wonderful.

When the sponsored truck driver comes into the country, why wouldn't the sponsoring employer be responsible for trying to find this individual? I'm a little confused as to why you would say that they can't find the guy and then they just give up on the guy after having gone through all that effort.

[John Petryshyn]

If an employer were here, I would ask the same question and so would you: “Look, you went through this whole process and took six months to get a truck driver here, and suddenly he was to appear and never showed up. What do you do to track him down?” And the employer would say, “How much time and money do I have? I don't know. If he was coming here, we interviewed him from Qatar, from Dubai, or wherever, and he was supposed to be here. He's not. Human Resources allowed me four truck drivers. He's not here. I have a list of 20 others. I'm going to contact the next person and get him here.”

The question then becomes that maybe that should also be an issue, not just an isolated one of immigration but one for Human Resources when they approve the employer. If these people do not attend or if someone is identified, here's what your recourse should be. And I think having notification of immigration, last known address, etc., would be incentives for the employer to get back and try to locate that person, because there might have been a miscommunication, as happens in Winnipeg sometimes, or maybe the person is genuinely not a truck driver but is here for some nefarious purpose. I think that should also be dealt with by our friends over at Human Resources.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

I'm sure I have only a minute left.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You have 30 seconds.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

What are your views—and I'll ask either of you to weigh in—on getting skills of those such as pipefitters, steam fitters, plumbers, bricklayers, and others into this country? Can you comment on the requirement for more immigration of skills-based individuals?

I'll start with John.

[John Petryshyn]

In Manitoba we have the skilled worker program, a great program that has been in effect with the federal government, contracted by the Province of Manitoba, through various different political parties that have formed the government. That has helped a place like Manitoba that is bereft of immigration, and yet we do require skilled persons. So that is something we have to take a look at.

But, my dear friend, one of the biggest problems is accreditation. A person can come here as a drafter or some other professional, or, let's say, they are not a journeyman, and the various provincial associations cause them problems. So what are the criteria in Manitoba? How do you write a journeyman's test from some other country?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Mr. Petryshyn. We have to move on. I'm sorry.

Mr. Davies, who's the critic for the official opposition, has some questions.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you to both witnesses for being here.

To you, Dr. Dauvergne, I understand you got your Ph.D. in Australia. As I'm sure you know, part of this study is to look at detention in a security context, particularly mandatory detention, as an issue. This government, through Bill C-4, which was introduced in this Parliament, and its reconfigured form as Bill C-31, proposes to introduce a mandatory detention regime in the context of regular arrivals designated by the minister.

I'm just wondering. I'm aware that Australia has had a mandatory detention scheme in place for some time. Could you comment on whether there are any lessons for us from Australia in that regard?

[Dr. Catherine Dauvergne]

Thank you very much for your question.

Australia has had a mandatory detention scheme in place since 1992 for anybody who arrives without a visa. It has been incredibly politically contentious, and exceptionally costly, but in terms of asylum seeker outcomes, I think probably the most significant thing is that mandatory detention has not really affected the number of arrivals in Australia or the security and criminality mix of the people who are actually arriving. Just knowing that people are going to be detained has not in itself seemed to act as a deterrent, nor has it acted to enhance security.

One of the things that mandatory detention in Australia has achieved is that it has really driven the processing priorities. People who are detained have hearings because of all the liberty rights infringements with detention. That mandatory program has taken over all other types of processing. People who get in detention have their claims settled more quickly.

That is, of course, the correct legal outcome, but it does mean that detention is controlling who is in what queue rather than other government objectives that might reasonably be expected to control processing times.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

Is there any difference in law, Dr. Dauvergne, between a refugee who arrives at a country's shores through an irregular means versus a refugee who is settled through the UNHCR process?

[Dr. Catherine Dauvergne]

There's no difference at international law between the entitlements that are available for both those categories of refugees. Indeed, the international refugee convention quite explicitly, of course, understood that there was not going to be a way for refugees fleeing persecution to necessarily obtain a visa to travel somewhere. So that international law commits all countries—147 countries around the world—to ensuring that people do not face any penalties for their mode of arrival in a country. Indeed, it's a breach of international law to attempt to charge people with illegal entry or to otherwise punish them.

So the proposals that were in Bill C-4 and that are now reproduced in some part in Bill C-31 are a direct contravention of the international refugee convention on this point.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

You mentioned in your testimony, Dr. Dauvergne, that we don't really know who is in detention, although you gave us some figures that about 94% of them are not in detention for security concerns but, you indicated, for the reasons of not having proper identification, or being thought to be a flight risk perhaps.

Are there any numbers or statistics, in terms of flight risk, on people who actually have been incarcerated for that reason and who actually end up engaging in flight?

I don't know if I'm being very clear on that. Do you understand my question?

[Dr. Catherine Dauvergne]

I think I understand what you mean. You're asking how many people actually disappear and go underground.

You know, that's really an area in which it would be great to encourage CBSA to collect that kind of data for. You can, of course, get data from the IRB about the number of people who are no-shows for IRB hearings, but they wouldn't all be people who had been in detention.

For those questions, we have not instructed these agencies to collect data in such a way that we can provide a good answer.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Okay.

I also want to give you a chance to talk about human rights protections in the security context. The flip side of security, of course, is that it engages, in a democratic country like Canada, questions of concerns for people's rights.

Do you have any comments to make to the committee about the human rights protections in that context?

[Dr. Catherine Dauvergne]

I think the most important concern for parliamentarians here, at this juncture, is that it's really important to incorporate human rights considerations into up-front planning of security regulation. The main reason for this is that by incorporating human rights concerns at the front end of designing security directive legislation, that will leave Parliament in control of those provisions.

If Parliament passes legislation that isn't attuned to what its human rights obligations possibly are, then there will almost certainly be legal challenges. Those matters will go to the courts, and then the courts will be in a position of deciding what the law is going to look like. So in issues such as the detention provisions in Bill C-4 and now Bill C-31, by taking the initiative and making human rights-attuned adjustments at this stage, Parliament has a better chance of being in control of what the outcome is.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Do you have any advice to give us in terms of any particular human rights considerations we should be paying attention to as we consider this issue and this legislation?

[Dr. Catherine Dauvergne]

Both international law and the Supreme Court of Canada have made it very clear that if people are going to be detained in an administrative context, that is, if we're detaining people who have not been tried or convicted of anything at all, that detention needs to be narrowly targeted and needs to have close time limits.

Also, it needs to be regularly supervised by the courts. The current supervision schedule is a review at 48 hours, at 7 days, and at 30 days. The Supreme Court of Canada has intimated that if you adjust that review schedule so that you aren't reviewing detention regularly, you will probably run afoul of Canadian constitutional protections.

Another key thing to keep in mind at the front end is that Canada already has more stringent security detention provisions than many other countries, so we are already quite close to the line in terms of international legal breaches in this area.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Dr. Dauvergne.

[John Petryshyn]

I would—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I'm sorry, but we have to move on, Mr. Petryshyn. Unless someone else asks you a question....

[John Petryshyn]

All right.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Lamoureux, who is a critic for the Liberal Party, is next.