Evidence of meeting #35 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 detention.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Tilson
No, he can't. I'm sorry. You can't talk for seven minutes and then ask a question.
Liberal
Justin Trudeau Liberal Papineau, QC
I'd like to go back to the exchange you had, Mr. Matas, with a member of the government side. You made a very strong statement that with this piece of legislation Canada is not—or potentially not—respecting the human rights of Sri Lankan refugees arriving on our shores. The response by the government side was understandably that the human rights violations they're experiencing in Sri Lanka are far worse than the human rights violations we will be submitting them to with unlawful detention.
Can you talk a little about what happens when a country like Canada, which is supposed to be one of the good guys around the world and a safe haven, demonstrates by arbitrarily detaining 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds that it is not willing to follow the UN Conventions on the Rights of the Child? By adopting this legislation, Canada would be rejecting the decisions of its own Supreme Court. We saw in the Charkaoui case that you cannot hold someone for more than 120 days without due process and without legal recourse. Canada would be violating a UN Convention to which we are signatories that says asylum seekers should be given a rapid path towards citizenship, which with this five-year delay on their permanent residency we are impeding.
What happens when a country that's supposed to be defending human rights around the world is no longer defending human rights for people because it doesn't like the fact that they had to use irregular means to get here?
Lawyer, As an Individual
I'm happy to answer your question. I'm going to try to answer the previous question because to a certain extent they're similar questions. What message do we convey, and what happens when we do these things?
The message we convey is that it's okay to violate human rights. We're not protecting, we're doing it ourselves, we're setting a poor example rather than a good example. When we do something right, we get people who imitate us, and we improve the respect for human rights. When we do something wrong, we also get people who imitate us, and we lessen the respect for human rights.
The designated foreign nationals provisions of Bill C-31 address a real problem. Human smuggling is a scourge, and we have to think about ways of dealing with it. The word the minister uses is “disincentivization”. Disincentivization, which is kind of a clumsy word, is not the best way of dealing with it. We have to think about incentives to prevent people from coming in addition to, or even in preference to, disincentives to their coming in. The incentives for their not coming are improved human rights in their country of origin and improved protection in the intermediate countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, or Bangkok. The problem with this bill is it works against these incentives. It sets a poor example that erodes the incentives to improve respect for human rights.
Liberal
Justin Trudeau Liberal Papineau, QC
Thank you very much.
One of the big justifications we have on the government side for many of the measures is that it costs a lot to be constantly going before the tribunal every 30 days to justify the continued detention, that the health care costs of arriving refugees are prohibitively expensive, and that there are all sorts of things that make it very expensive to be absorbing people. But what we are hearing, particularly from the medical community.... I know that on Wednesday or Thursday there are going to be presentations from the medical community in Montreal, talking about the tremendous costs of the kinds of decisions we're heading to right now.
Doctor, can you talk a little bit about how much more expensive it's going to be to bring this in?
Medical Doctor, Crossroads Clinic, Women's College Hospital
Yes. I'm a family physician, so I speak very strongly about prevention. One of my obsessions in the last few years, after working with new immigrants and refugees, is to try to capture them early. So obviously you want to treat tuberculosis before it becomes active, and you want to immunize people before disease manifests itself.
With the direction that I think Bill C-31 takes, certainly there is an implication in terms of mandatory detention and the aggravation of existing mental health issues. I think there is literature on that.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Tilson
Dr. Rashid, thank you.
I'm sorry, we're out of time, sir. We'll have to wait for another round.
Mr. Weston.
Conservative
John Weston Conservative West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC
Thank you, gentlemen, both for being here and for what you do. As somebody who has stood on the ground in Burundi and in the Congo and Rwanda, with Food for the Hungry, and who has recently been in Iraq and travelled to Pakistan on human rights missions, I love meeting people who dedicate themselves to working with people who have no voice and who have been subjected to the kind of things you talk about.
But I also want to refute the notion that there is some sort of division within our government, as you were suggesting, Mr. Matas. I'm proud of a minister, and many Canadians of all political stripes are proud of a minister, who is renowned the world over, as Minister Kenney is, for defending human rights, for going to China, and for going to Burma—at least we had our Minister of Foreign Affairs in Burma recently—and for knowing the situation of the refugees in Syria and Jordan who have tumbled over the border from Iraq. This is a minister who is a renowned human rights advocate.
So while you may disagree with aspects of the policy, I fear we may be getting the wrong answers by asking the wrong questions. I suspect that you are in favour of expediting the process for people who are legitimate refugees. So when you point out individual cases that may go the wrong way as a consequence of Bill C-31, it doesn't mean we should throw out the baby with the bathwater.
What I'm saying to you is, let's not suggest this is a dichotomy, an either/or situation.
Maybe, Dr. Rashid, you can comment on the importance of our expediting the process. We now look at over 1,000 days, on average, for a refugee claimant who is clearly a refugee, and all Canadians want that person to receive status as quickly as possible. That timeframe is going to be reduced to a small percentage of that. How do you feel about that improvement in the compassionate treatment of such an individual?
Medical Doctor, Crossroads Clinic, Women's College Hospital
As I mentioned in my statement, I certainly laud the notion of trying to expedite the process. It's a very difficult process for people to struggle through, and certainly a delay can be very traumatic.
Your question about expediting it for legitimate refugees is fantastic. My question always is, how do we really know who is legitimate? I've met people who come from Somalia who perhaps don't have the evidence of their refugee claim the same way as someone from Mexico would. So my concern is really that relying on country of origin sometimes can lead us down the wrong path.
I completely agree. I think the process is much too long, and that adds a tremendous burden on people. Last year, with the original bill that was supported by all three political parties, when they spoke about expediting the process I think most people agreed that this surely was a step forward.
Conservative
John Weston Conservative West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC
Let me ask a similar question. On the question of detention—and both of you are concerned about that, I can tell—we have been told by Mr. Linklater, the ADM in the department, that the mandatory detention is there to investigate safety, security, and identification aspects. Even though Mr. Linklater, I'm sure, cares with compassion about the plight of refugees, he also cares about the security of Canadians in a world where terrorists have evil designs on the safety, the peace, order, and good government of Canada.
What would you say about that, the weighing of these competing considerations that we have to consider as we formulate policy?
Medical Doctor, Crossroads Clinic, Women's College Hospital
I'm not a lawyer, but I certainly agree. That's always been a part of Canadian immigration policy. We want to know who comes in.
My concern about what's in the bill itself is tying it to the use of smugglers. As I mentioned in my statement, undeniably, smugglers are some of the worst criminals out there in the world. The consequence of using a smuggler has been.... The optics around that are such that it sometimes minimizes the need for people to actually have to use these agents. It sometimes is an act of desperation.
Putting people in this basket—they arrive, they have used smugglers to get here, and that becomes the ticket to put them in detention—concerns me.
Conservative
John Weston Conservative West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC
We may get it wrong as a consequence—
Conservative
John Weston Conservative West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC
—but we may also get it right and exclude people who really are the kind of evil individuals who would put people at risk for their own profit in order to get them into our country. We're weighing, aren't we? We have competing considerations. And we're clearly concerned about the arrival of the Sun Sea and the Ocean Lady.
Lawyer, As an Individual
If I may react to your various comments, first of all, in terms of the minister, I do not mean my comments to be a personal attack on the minister. There are many things he has done and said that I admire and endorse completely. It's just that I don't agree with everything he does.
Similarly, there are many good provisions in Bill C-31—for instance, the fact of the appeal, which has been sitting around as unproclaimed provisions in the legislation for many years now. I'm glad to see we're finally doing it. But with the specifics of this, the designated foreign nationals, that's the only thing I'm focusing on because I find that particularly problematic.
The trouble in terms of the detention is that it's not flexible. We could find people safe. We could know who they are. We could know they're not a flight risk, but they still have to be in detention.
Somebody suggested there's a cost to these periodic detention reviews. But it's far more costly to keep people in detention when they don't need to be there, simply as a disincentive to prevent the next person from coming.
Conservative
John Weston Conservative West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC
You're saying there should be a mechanism to exempt out of the one-year mandatory minimum.
Conservative
John Weston Conservative West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC
Could I ask about the biometric side? Are you familiar with that? We haven't heard either of you speak—
Conservative
Conservative
John Weston Conservative West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC
All right.
The biometric uses the NEXUS kind of technology to distinguish between identified and unidentifiable people. Do you have any comment on that?
Medical Doctor, Crossroads Clinic, Women's College Hospital
It's certainly not an area of my expertise, but anything that would expedite getting people out of things like detention—
Lawyer, As an Individual
I think the issue is just around privacy concerns. But as long as they are protected, the actual identification shouldn't be an issue.
Conservative
John Weston Conservative West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC
You're right to expedite legitimate travellers and people coming to Canada.
NDP
Rathika Sitsabaiesan NDP Scarborough—Rouge River, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I only have five minutes, so I'm going to try to be quick, and I'll ask you to be brief as well.
I'm going to talk about the theme of actions versus words. Words we're hearing from the government side are that human rights are important, protecting human rights is important, but that actions really show punishment.
It's been suggested here that people from Sri Lanka or asylum seekers should be thankful to spend a year being detained here in Canada for possibly a year, and possibly in the general population in a jail. We've heard from CBSA officials that immigration detainees are sometimes kept in provincial jails, clearly allowing for re-traumatization of people who have already spent years—some people possibly 30 years—of their lives in a conflict zone. Perhaps you could talk about the health impacts, and also the overall impacts for these people.
I want to get my two questions in and then allow both of you to answer them.
Mr. Matas, you spoke a lot about the Sri Lanka situation. I am Canada's only member of Parliament who was born in Sri Lanka, so it's a very personal issue for me.
This bill, Bill C-31, is to apply retroactively to events that took place in 2009, up to 2009. We all know that 2009 was when the migrant vessel Ocean Lady came to Canada, and of course we know that the MV Sun Sea came to Canada in 2010.
I agree with you that it seems as though it's a very targeted attack towards Sri Lankan migrants who came here as asylum seekers. We know from the minister's opening remarks in the last Parliament that the bill was designed because of the Sri Lankan migrants.
Perhaps I could have you talk about whether this is consistent with the Constitution, and Dr. Rashid could talk about the health impacts and re-traumatization.
How much time do we have, so they can know how to split it?