Evidence of meeting #25 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was muslim.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
John Weston Conservative West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC
I want to thank our witnesses today.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Amble, you have touched on the sensitive nerve we call our immigration policy, and in a way you have touched on everything that is magnificent about Canada and everything we would like to preserve.
Here we sit on a committee where we're proud of a Canada that is blind to colour and religion in how we administer our laws and immigration policies. One of the proudest things we can say is that if you ask a ten-year-old in one of our schools, they probably wouldn't be able to tell you too much about whether they like a person of one category or another. I think the younger you get in our country the more wonderful is the tolerance that you see.
By your studies you have exposed yourself to the question that some would call racial profiling. My question is, given what you do for a living, how do you manage to objectively pursue what you're doing and yet avoid the allegation that you're doing racial profiling in some of your studies?
4:25 p.m.
As an Individual
Thank you.
Racial profiling is obviously a touchy subject in a variety of areas and for a variety of reasons, and to some extent it's problematic. A policy that embraces racial profiling too closely, or hews too closely to a strict racial profiling line, runs the risk of blinding you, say, to dangers that don't fit that mould.
That being said, I think it's foolish not to pay attention to particular patterns, not to learn from the lessons others have experienced, and not to at least be aware of some of those patterns in terms of predicting where threats are mostly likely to originate.
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
John Weston Conservative West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC
You mentioned that there were three major themes. You said one of them is who is travelling, and another is who is leaving and when they're coming back, and I missed the third one.
4:25 p.m.
As an Individual
Again, I'm not an immigration law expert or a border control technical expert, but in terms of principles, I think it should inform effective and secure immigration policy.
The third one is enacting immigration and border control policies that form a mutually supportive relationship with the work of law enforcement agencies at all levels and across the government to provide a maximum degree of security against the threat of terrorism.
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
John Weston Conservative West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC
In our case we have Canada Border Services Agency, which is in charge of removing people. It sometimes has problems doing so. The problems relate to delays in appeals, in securing cooperation of countries of origin for travel documents, and making arrangements with airlines for safe removal of individuals, among other things.
Do you have any suggestions on how those difficulties can be surmounted?
4:25 p.m.
As an Individual
Well, they are considerable difficulties. The point I would make, as I mentioned, is it wasn't until after the 2003 plot in which a number of individuals.... The convicted ring leader was an Algerian who was found to be living in the country illegally. He had an asylum application rejected and then they lost track of him.
A subsequent investigation that was prompted by that case, as I said, revealed that for every ten Algerians specifically who were rejected asylum, nine of them stayed in the country and never left. The fact that it took that plot being uncovered, investigated, and prosecuted before that fact was acknowledged I think is dangerous. I don't think you can afford to wait.
In the process, I understand that the structural impediments to effectively deporting people who are due to be deported are serious. That being said, throughout that process there has to be a level of accountability for those individuals.
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
John Weston Conservative West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC
That's very useful.
One of our witnesses talked about pre-screening as a key element. I know your studies have focused on the United States, but do you have any opinion on Canada's pre-screening? If not, how has the United States performed in keeping out security risks through its pre-screening processes?
4:30 p.m.
As an Individual
You mean pre-screening in the sense of applying for visas at a consulate abroad?
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
John Weston Conservative West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC
I mean whatever you have to do to prevent undesirables from getting on a ship or a plane destined for your country.
4:30 p.m.
As an Individual
I think it probably has to be a systematic process. To be frank, there are going to be exceptions. There are going to be people who aren't allowed entry, say, on their first look. There's an important role for an appeals process because of that. There unfortunately has to be a balance between not letting in everybody who ought to be let in and keeping out those people who truly would do Canada harm.
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Tilson
Thank you.
Ms. Rajaratnam and Mr. Amble, thank you very much for spending time with the committee today. I especially want to thank Mr. Amble for staying so late.
We are going to suspend.
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Tilson
Thank you. We are going to reconvene the meeting.
We have two witnesses before us. Speaking to us by video conference from Toronto is Andrew Brouwer, a lawyer. He has appeared before this committee in the past with regard to the former Bill C-11 Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the Federal Courts Act. That was some time ago, sir. Thank you for coming.
We also have James Bissett. He has wide-ranging international experience, including being a former ambassador to Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Albania, and a chief of mission to Moscow for the International Organization for Migration. He has also served as a member of the Prime Minister's intelligence advisory committee.
Mr. Bisset, did I describe you correctly?
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
4:35 p.m.
Andrew Brouwer Barrister and Solicitor, As an Individual
Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to address the committee on this important topic.
I'm a refugee lawyer with the Refugee Law Office, which is a Legal Aid Ontario staff office in Toronto. Before coming to Legal Aid I was in private practice for about seven years with Jackman and Associates. My pre-law background was in public policy research and advocacy with the Maytree Foundation and with Citizens for Public Justice. It's a pleasure to be back before the committee.
I'd like to comment on a few of the issues. You have a wide-ranging study going on right now, but I'd like to comment specifically on security and admissibility, the advanced passenger screening program and interdiction, detention, and overseas decision-making. I will be brief; I know I have ten minutes.
As a Canadian citizen with a family and loved ones here, I am as committed to the safety and security of this country as any of the honourable members of this committee. But as someone who has represented quite a few people who have been suspected or been found to be inadmissible to Canada on security grounds, I believe that I have some insights that few policy-makers share.
One of those insights is that the security provisions of the current act—specifically sections 34 and 35 of IRPA—are far too broad and are applied in a manner that arbitrarily destroys the lives of innocent immigrants and refugees and their children with no benefit to Canada or to our national security.
I would like to give you a couple of examples from my own practice.
John—which is not his real name—grew up in South Sudan in the 1960s and 1970s. As an African Christian, he suffered brutal repression and violent sexual, physical, and emotional abuse throughout his youth, at the hands of soldiers from the local Sudanese army detachment who were Arab Muslims from the north.
In 1984, when he was about 21 years old, John became intrigued by a fledgling movement called the Sudan People's Liberation Movement or Army—the SPLA—which had sprung up to push for autonomy for South Sudan. John spent his summer vacation after the first year of university back home near Juba helping his older brothers to distribute leaflets about this new movement and guiding new recruits to the SPLA from the centre of town in Juba to the riverbank on his family's farm, where the new recruits would be picked up by boats and ferried to training camps for the SPLA, the newly formed organization.
John himself did not go to the camp or get any kind of military training. After that summer, he returned to university and then traveled to the U.S. and Canada, where he sought refugee protection. He has now been in Canada for 25 years and he is still not a permanent resident. The reason for this is his brief participation in the SPLA in that summer of 1984. There are no allegations that he ever carried a gun or received training as a fighter or participated in any act of violence.
There is no allegation that the SPLA itself engaged in human rights violations until several years after John had left the country, came to Canada, and ceased any connection to the group. Yet under the current interpretation of paragraph 34(1)(f) of IRPA, he is a terrorist, he is a member of a terrorist organization.
Then there is Salaam. She is Eritrean. She and her husband were farmers in Eritrea during the bloody 30-year war of independence from Ethiopia and the Red Terror. Her farm, like many in the region, was regularly bombed by the Ethiopian air force, her fields destroyed time and again, her neighbours and her cattle killed.
When fighters with the Eritrean Liberation Front, the ELF, came through her village and demanded food from her farm, she provided it. She did so willingly, although of course she would have been killed if she had refused. She came to be known in the village as “Mama ELF”.
Eventually she came to Canada and was recognized as a refugee here. Today, at the age of 65, she's considered by CIC to be a terrorist; she's inadmissible to Canada. There is no allegation—let's be clear—that Salaam ever engaged in terrorism or war crimes or crimes against humanity or any act of violence. She held no formal position within the ELF and had no involvement in their activities.
Moreover, there is no reliable evidence that the ELF ever engaged in terrorism or international crimes during the liberation war. The ELF is not a designated entity under the Anti-terrorism Act or the Criminal Code.
The problem is that membership is undefined. There is no temporality requirement. There is no danger assessment and no transparency or accountability in the assessment of whether groups are terrorist groups under the act. The result is completely arbitrary and irrational.
I gather there is a technical problem.
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
4:40 p.m.
Barrister and Solicitor, As an Individual
Sure, I will.
I can now hear you, but my phone is ringing from your technician. Should I answer it or not?
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
4:40 p.m.
Barrister and Solicitor, As an Individual
I'll just be a second. I apologize.
I'm told by the chair of the committee that there is no problem.
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Tilson
We'd better stop the clock. He's on a call.
Maybe it's someone who wants him from his office.
4:40 p.m.
Barrister and Solicitor, As an Individual
Oh, zoom out, thank you.
I am told you are seeing too much of me. I'm zoomed in too close. I am going to zoom out.
4:40 p.m.
Barrister and Solicitor, As an Individual
I apologize for that. I will.
The result of this lack of temporality, the lack of a danger assessment, the lack of any transparency or accountability in the assessment of whether groups are terrorist groups under the act results in a completely arbitrary and irrational designation of people as terrorists.
There is, of course, the provision that was designed specifically for the correction of mistakes stemming from this overbreadth of subsection 34(1), and that is subsection 34(2), the ministerial relief provision. However, in practice over the past seven or eight years that provision has been gutted; in my submission, in the hands of the current minister it has been turned into a completely illusory remedy.
Unlike the groups formally designated under section 83.05 of the Criminal Code, where there is a specific procedure and the groups are gazetted, the list that's used by immigration authorities for refugees and immigrants is created behind closed doors with no public input and no transparency. This is a serious problem, in my submission, and does untold damage to the security of refugees without having any discernible positive impact on the security of Canada.
The next topic I'd like to touch on is the advanced passenger information program and interdiction, two topics covered by previous witnesses. The attraction of this kind of technology is obvious. Who wouldn't support checking people to make sure they aren't terrorists or criminals before they come to Canada?
The problem, however, is that it's not the terrorists who are being interdicted overseas. It's the asylum seekers. Interdiction measures targeting improperly documented travellers seeking to travel to Canada are not about national security. They are about preventing asylum seekers from getting to Canada.
Your CIC and CBSA witnesses from February 14 and 16 responded to questions from Mr. Davies, a member of the committee, and were quite clear that the real goal of the interdiction program is specifically to prevent or reduce the arrival of refugees seeking refugee protection.
When we contemplate this, however, we need to remember a crucial point. Of those who make refugee claims in Canada, about 48% are accepted by the IRB as having a well-founded fear of persecution or as being at substantial risk of torture.
What then of the 4,000 improperly documented people interdicted each year? Even if only half of those interdicted people were still planning to make a refugee claim, we are still looking at a 48% acceptance rate at almost 1,000 bona fide refugees being turned back before coming to Canada and being denied access to protection in Canada as a direct result of our interdiction activities.
What happens to these people when they're turned away?
