Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 30th, 2012

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

My final question deals with detention, especially the detention of children.

We know how important it is to respect the overarching rights of children. In your view, how can the specific application of the provisions of Bill C-31 preserve those rights? Is it possible?

[Debbie Douglas]

But it won't. Bill C-31 gives parents the option of no choice. They can have their children detained with them, or they can give up their children to the state. As someone who is seeking asylum, being faced with a Sophie's choice, not at all to belittle the Holocaust, is a presupposition of no choice in terms of their children being detained.

One of the things that we have been taking a look at is what the past practices have shown us in terms of the mental health of young people who have been detained and/or removed from their parents.

These are some of the concerns that I think this committee needs to take into account when looking at mandatory detention, particularly the detention of children under the age of 16. Often, in Canada, we think of the age of adulthood as 18. Bill C-31 talks about children as 16 and under. That, in itself, is a problem.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Lamoureux.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I did have a couple of questions I'd like to ask Mr. Skarica.

The Canada Border Services Agency made a presentation here earlier today. In essence, they gave a very clear indication that the current detention system seems to meet the needs. There's no problem in extending the detention of people who need to be kept in detention, who can be kept in detention. There's a certain protocol that has to be followed, but they definitely weren't complaining about it or saying that it needed to be changed.

I raise that issue because in your presentation you gave the impression that this is a good bill. I would recognize this bill as affecting many different policy aspects on refugees. Would you agree that if in fact the system isn't broken in regard to that detention component, we should be leaving that as is?

The current system appears to be working with regard to that. And given that whole concern regarding the charter and Constitution, is it constitutional to be making this change? In other words, do you think there is a need for some amendments to make the bill possibly better?

[Toni Skarica]

I think our system is totally broken.

This is organized crime. They were active over there, they came over here, and they have records and outstanding charges. They became landed immigrants, and so on and so forth. They continued with crime. To me, that's a system that's broken.

I don't know all the mechanics of the bill, but it seems to me that when people like Karadi, who's a vicious criminal—and you have the Hamilton Spectator report indicated that he's very feared in Hungary—came here, why shouldn't they be going into custody right away, and why shouldn't we know that he, in particular, was in fact about to serve a five-year sentence? Yet, he's coming here and then we're paying him welfare. So my impression from doing this prosecution is that our system is broken.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Yes, but I guess part of the issue of going through the committee process is to look at ways in which we can improve the bill. The minister, himself, is saying, “Look, we're open to amendments to this bill.” If the current system, and I'm just talking strictly of the detention component, seems to be working, would you be in favour of just changing that specific component?

[Toni Skarica]

I don't think it is working.

People who are fugitives from justice, like Karadi, who was in our country for four years and we were paying him, why shouldn't they go into detention?

I don't know all the mechanics of how it's going to work, but there's a prime candidate.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Right. You provided the committee this list here. Can you just expand, in a Coles Notes version, on exactly what this list is?

[Toni Skarica]

In our prosecution, how many people have we got charged? We now have 15 convicted, two more charged, and we're looking for two.

The people at the top of the list are all the accused.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

And they're currently living in Canada?

[Toni Skarica]

Not any more, because we deported some of them. But at the time we laid these charges, the majority were living in Canada. In fact, they were all living in Canada, except for the one at the very top, Ferenc Domotor, who is in Hungary. The rest are in Canada. Fifteen now have been convicted and we've deported some of them. But even that doesn't work.

Do you see that name of Viktoria Nemes? She's Karadi's wife. She was convicted of welfare fraud. We gave her a deal. She did two months in custody and I said “Okay, let's give you a suspended sentence. You go to Hungary and serve your sentence.” Well, you know what? Is she in Hungry right now? No, she got her suspended sentence. CBSA paid her ticket to Hungary, but it wasn't directly to Hungary. They sent her to Poland first, without an escort, so guess what happened when she got to Poland? She looked around, there was nobody there, and she walked off the plane. She not in Hungary. She's not serving her sentence.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Where are the victims? You have a lot of—

[Toni Skarica]

Some are in Hungary, most of them are in Canada. They're too afraid to go back.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Ms. Douglas, could you provide some comment on the detention component? Do you have any thoughts on its being mandatory?

[Debbie Douglas]

As you heard from one of our earlier witnesses, the current law allows for detention so that we can determine folks' identity. We believe that mandatory detention of up to 12 months is excessive, given that it's applied to particular groups of folk deemed to be irregular arrivals. That the time period has been lessened doesn’t minimize the fact that we have introduced something called mandatory detention without judicial review into our system, when existing policy allows us to detain folks whose identities we can't prove and whom we have concerns about.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Dykstra, go ahead.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Most of my questions are for Mr. Skarica, but I also have a question for Mr. Rico-Martinez. He indicated that he agreed with Mr. Skarica that our laws weren't tough enough. And on the issue of going after the folks Mr. Skarica has pursued and achieved 15 convictions of, this bill doesn't go far enough.

Ms. Douglas, at the outset you said that the bill should just be withdrawn, and here I'm assuming that you just don't like the bill. To go through this bill, and listen to the person sitting beside you…. You talked about the need to identify these people when they come into the country, and biometrics is the one method we can do that with; it’s almost foolproof. You've both said that you don't agree with the bill, but biometrics is right in here as a way to get to the issues that Mr. Skarica is speaking about.

We're talking about tougher penalties on ship owners, we're talking about deterring the abuse of the refugee system, the whole aspect of cracking down on human smugglers, using better tools to successfully prosecute and impose mandatory prison sentences on human smugglers.

Are you're saying, Mr. Rico-Martinez, that everything in this bill is not worth looking at?

[Francisco Rico-Martinez]

What I am saying is that we have Bill C-11, which addresses very similar issues in a more holistic way, and was approved by Parliament. We don't understand why we have to review this issue when there was an agreement among political parties. It was approved and it was a decent agreement.

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

Let me answer that question for you, because the man sitting next to you is the exact reason, and the purposes he has mentioned are the exact reasons we had to bring this issue forward. For Bill C-11, I was parliamentary secretary. I sat in every single one of those meetings, and went through the whole process and the negotiations.

I was proud of what happened with respect to Bill C-11, and a lot of the aspects of Bill C-11 are going to move forward because of Bill C-31. So you don't like Bill C-31 and you like Bill C-11, but a lot of what's in Bill C-31 is Bill C-11. So there have to be things in here that you actually appreciate.

My point is that you've listened to what Mr. Skarica has had to say.You've heard about the 15 convictions he has achieved. You've heard from him—it's what he does for a living—that we have not been successful and that our system is broken.

We will not solve the problem of what we have in front of us —this problem right here—with Bill C-11. Bill C-11 will not solve this problem. You know what we'll end up doing if we only do Bill C-11? We'll just simply slap down visas on Hungary and hope that gets us around the issue, as we've had to do with Mexico and the Czech Republic.

That's not the process we want to use. If we're going to enter into agreements with the EU, if we're going to make sure that our economies are like-minded and that we become free-trading partners, we must have a system that the rest of the world believes is foolproof—at least in the efforts that it makes.

The system that we have now in this country, as Mr. Skarica has said, is broken. Simply disregarding Bill C-31 and accepting the fact that a majority of what's in Bill C-11 is good but doesn't go all the way to solving our issue.... I just have to state for the record that I obviously disagree with your position. I respect that you are here. I just wish you wouldn't have stated at the very outset that all of Bill C-31 wasn't good and should be removed.

Second, we need to get tougher to be able to identify the people Mr. Skarica was referring to, and biometrics is in this bill, and you've indicated that it's not worth pursuing—

[Debbie Douglas]

With all due respect, I think what we said was that we have Bill C-11, that Bill C-11 was a negotiated bill and that it addresses many of the concerns you have raised. To what—

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

It doesn't address all of them, though—

[Debbie Douglas]

I'm sorry, but to what Mr. Skarica—

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

It doesn't address all of them.

[Debbie Douglas]

—was speaking—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We have a point of order.

Stop the clock, please.