Thank you for inviting me.
I would like to address only one of the many changes proposed by Bill C-31—the provision that deals with designated foreign nationals, which you've heard about before.
I am a former chair of the immigration law section of the Canadian Bar Association, a former president of the Canadian Council for Refugees, and a former legal network coordinator of Amnesty International, and I endorse the positions of these organizations on the bill.
What I'd like to do is not just reiterate their concerns but approach the issue from a different perspective: the inconsistency with other government policies of the components of the bill relating to designated foreign nationals.
Because there is a majority government now in Parliament, Bill C-31 will pass in its present form unless at least some government members want it changed. So the admittedly daunting task I have tried to set myself here this afternoon is to attempt to achieve just that, to attempt to persuade government members that they should want to change Bill C-31, because the provisions in the bill relating to designated foreign nationals contradict and undermine government policies.
The designated foreign national provisions of Bill C-31, like the rest of the bill, are general in nature but their genesis was quite particular. The proposals began with Bill C-49, introduced in October 2010 into Parliament in response to the arrival of Tamil boat people aboard the MV Ocean Lady and the MV Sun Sea. The Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism justified the proposed legislation by reference to these arrivals. The proposed legislation is retroactive to before these arrivals, pointing to the relevance of these arrivals.
In May 2009, Sri Lanka ended a long civil war where there were 80,000 deaths. At its end, there was a frenzy of killing and mass detention of Tamil civilians. Tamils in Sri Lanka continue to be victimized by the victors in the war, and the systemic discrimination, harassment, and persecution of minority Tamils by elements of the majority continue with a vengeance.
The first policy I'd like to identify as clashing with Bill C-31 is the government policy on human rights in Sri Lanka, which I endorse. Prior to the October 2011 Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Perth, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said there should be a boycott of the next Commonwealth summit in Sri Lanka unless there is progress on human rights in Sri Lanka.
The Government of Sri Lanka appointed a commission of inquiry, which was a whitewash. The Government of Canada more or less said so, and maintained its position on the boycott after the Sri Lanka report. It rejected the report as failing to address the human rights concerns arising from the end of the civil war. Very good, but if we want to promote human rights, we have to protect refugees. That is obviously true for the individual claimant, but there is an overall aggregate linkage as well. Protecting refugees enhances respect for human rights in the country fled. Failure to protect refugees shows indifference to the plight of victims.
When resettlement states say no to refugees or gives a hard time to refugees, what violators hear is that what they do, they can do with impunity, without consequences. Bill C-31 is bad in principle, but it is even worse in context. It says to the Government of Sri Lanka, “Go ahead, mistreat the Tamil minority. We don't care.”
The second policy conflict is a statement of Minister Jason Kenney in Parliament in October 2010, again a statement with which I agree. He said:
...we have begun preliminary discussions with our international partners, including Australia, which obviously has a great stake in this issue, and with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to pursue the possibility of some form of regional protection framework in the Southeast Asian region.
In part that would entail encouraging the countries now being used as transit points for smuggling and trafficking to offer at least temporary protection to those deemed by the UN in need of protection and then for countries such as Canada to provide, to some extent, reasonable resettlement opportunities for those deemed to be bona fide refugees, which is something we are pursuing.
Again, very good, but this policy of encouraging the countries now being used as transit points for smuggling and trafficking, although it sounds fine, is basically not happening.
One reason for the mistreatment of asylum seekers in Asia is the pressure put on those countries by resettlement countries. Another reason is the poor example resettlement countries give.
The logic behind the designated foreign national provisions is to discourage new arrivals from coming, like those on the Ocean Lady and the Sun Sea. Aside from its cruelty, it is likely to have a perverse effect, leading countries of proximate refuge to mimic its cruelty and prompting asylum seekers in those countries to flee in much the same way the passengers on the Ocean Lady and the Sun Sea did.
To a certain extent, Minister Kenney recognized the problem, but he said we needed a short-term solution and a regional framework with a mid-term solution. Now we're 17 months from that statement about a regional framework, and as far as I can tell, nothing has happened.
In the meantime, what we have to look at in discouraging flight is not only creating disincentives to flight, but also creating incentives for people to stay. By setting a poor example to countries of intermediate refuge, we are removing the possibility, or discouraging the development, of these incentives.
The contrast among the various government policies dealing with Sri Lankan Tamil refugees and Sri Lankan human rights are so striking that we can legitimately ask what's going on. It seems disorganized, to say the least.
One answer is the manner of government policy development. The arms of government dealing with human rights and refugees are separated. International human rights promotion is the domain of the Department of Foreign Affairs. Refugee protection falls within the bailiwick of the Immigration or Public Safety departments. While there is an administrative logic to this sort of bureaucratic separation, it makes divergence between promotion of respect for human rights and refugee protection all too easy.
The designated foreign national provisions of Bill C-31 should be withdrawn from the bill for all the reasons my colleagues have given, but also because they're not consistent with overall government policy. They clash so directly with other policies that they need to be reconsidered.
The government should be presenting a coordinated approach to human rights, refugee protection, and refugee resettlement. My hope is that the government will abandon its present clash of policies and instead present to Parliament a policy where promotion of respect for human rights abroad and protection of refugees work together.
Thank you very much.