Evidence of meeting #32 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 countries.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Conservative
Ted Opitz Conservative Etobicoke Centre, ON
I'll start.
There are more than just a few bogus refugees that come out of this system. We have 25% coming from the EU. Not everybody who comes over here and claims refugee status is a victim, quite frankly. A lot of them are looking forward to taking advantage of our system. Some actually tell the CBSA officers that they're here because of the money—bold, direct, and out front.
Not only do we have a right to protect the safety of this country and the credibility of our immigration system, but we also have a responsibility to Canadian taxpayers to take a hard look at what a lot of this costs them as well, and when you have a lot of bogus refugee claims, then there are a lot of costs. I think you would have to concede that—that there are quite a number.
So there is a balance between what we need to have as the rights of the refugee.... I think we're all in agreement that this is a very generous country. My parents came here after the Second World War. They couldn't go back. If my dad had done so, he would have had a bullet from Mr. Stalin.
I get all that. That's ingrained in our family. But a lot of people do take advantage of this, and not everybody is a good guy. There are a lot of smugglers. A lot of the smuggling turns into trafficking. The trafficking turns into people who basically have invisible chains and are stuck in a system where they are put into hugely dangerous situations. We also have a responsibility as a country to make sure that this doesn't happen to those victims, so that's why we have to vet some of those processes.
What would your comments be—we could take all three of you in turn—on what the balance should be between accepting refugees and the safety of the Canadian public, keeping in mind bogus refugees, some people who are criminal refugees, and potentially, terrorist refugees?
Assistant Professor, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, and Representative, David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights - University of Toronto
I think it's clear that everyone agrees that finding a way to deal with unfounded claims is important. I think the Balanced Refugee Reform Act tried to deal with that concern by expediting the process to make sure that people wouldn't be here for a significant amount of time if their claims were unfounded. I think that balance worked reasonably well.
I think it's important when we have these conversations here in Parliament and in the public that we not use inflammatory language, and I think the term “bogus refugees” is in some ways problematic. The reason for that is that there are many people—
Assistant Professor, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, and Representative, David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights - University of Toronto
There are many people who make claims that are unfounded, who may face risks back home, but there's some question as to whether the degree of risk is sufficient. If you have a 1% chance of being killed back home, is that enough? If it's a 2% chance, if it's a 10% chance.... So the mere fact that a claim is not successful does not mean that it's bogus, and I don't think it should be referred to in those terms.
Conservative
Representative, Professor, Faculty of Law and School for Public Policy and Governance, University of Toronto, David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights - University of Toronto
Every system you devise will create false positives and false negatives; that is to say, no system will perfectly capture everybody you want included and everybody who you think should be excluded.
The discussion I think thus far has been focused almost entirely on those who are perceived to be those who ought to be excluded and how the system falsely includes them. Very little attention has been paid to those who the system currently excludes who ought to be included, and how many more people will be excluded under a new system who ought to be included. That leads us back to discussions about the necessity of appropriate appeals and other kinds of recourse.
But on this idea of the bogus refugee that looms so large, let me just pick everybody's, you know, the government's favourite bogus refugee: the Roma. There's all sorts of evidence that the Roma face extraordinary discrimination. Whether that discrimination amounts to persecution in every case, in some cases, or in many cases is open to question.
But for somebody who faces extreme discrimination, for example, to make a refugee claim and to have a decision made that says, you know, you face discrimination, but it's not severe enough to amount to persecution. That person may not be a refugee. But to put them in the same category of bogus as somebody who just wakes up in the morning and decides they're just going to come to Canada and make a refugee claim—
Conservative
Representative, Professor, Faculty of Law and School for Public Policy and Governance, University of Toronto, David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights - University of Toronto
Right, but—
Conservative
Representative, Professor, Faculty of Law and School for Public Policy and Governance, University of Toronto, David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights - University of Toronto
Okay. So now you have—
Conservative
Representative, Professor, Faculty of Law and School for Public Policy and Governance, University of Toronto, David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights - University of Toronto
You have—
Conservative
Representative, Professor, Faculty of Law and School for Public Policy and Governance, University of Toronto, David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights - University of Toronto
And there are a lot of—
Conservative
Ted Opitz Conservative Etobicoke Centre, ON
You can't dismiss it by saying, well, there are degrees of variation. The word “bogus”.... Bogus is bogus. There's no separation of the term. I'm sorry. It's false.
Representative, Professor, Faculty of Law and School for Public Policy and Governance, University of Toronto, David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights - University of Toronto
To say that our system.... Let me just give you an example from a different system.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Tilson
We're out of time. We're really getting excited here, and it's time to go, I think.
Ms. Jackman, Professor Rehaag, and Professor Macklin, your contributions have given the committee food for thought, and we thank you for taking the time to speak to us. Thank you very much.
This meeting is adjourned. We will reconvene at 3:30 this afternoon.
