Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 1st, 2012

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Could you repeat that, please?

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

I said if they are coming in as proper immigrants, they are medically pre-screened before they arrive in Canada, but if they come in as irregular arrivals, they are not pre-screened and they have to be pre-screened...[Technical difficulty—Editor]

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

The red light needs to be on. We seem to be having some problems with everybody, so just make sure that your red light is on when you're speaking.

[Dr. Meb Rashid]

It's my first time in committee.

Just to answer that more succinctly, everyone I see who's a refugee claimant must, when they arrive...[Technical difficulty—Editor]...that immigrant health exam...[Technical difficulty—Editor]...look at HIV, active tuberculosis, and that...[Technical difficulty—Editor]

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

It's a good thing we've come to the end of the meeting, because we seem to be having technical problems.

Dr. Rashid, Mr. Matas, thank you very much for your comments.

We will suspend, and hopefully these machines will be fixed.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I call the meeting to order.

To the Department of Labour in New Zealand, I guess it's good morning to you.

Can you hear me?

[Christine Hyndman, Manager, Immigration Policy, Policy and Research Group, Department of Labour, New Zealand]

Indeed.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You're tomorrow, we're yesterday; you're Wednesday, we're still Tuesday.

It's a pleasure to have you, and I thank you for taking the time to talk to us. I gather you have a piece of legislation that's either in the works or has been passed that's similar to the one our government's putting forward.

I'm going to ask you to identify yourselves as I call your names.

Christine Hyndman, you're the manager of immigration policy, from the policy and research group. I can tell who you are.

[Christine Hyndman]

Indeed. Bonjour.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Stephen Dunstan is the general manager of the settlement and attraction division of the immigration group.

[Stephen Dunstan, General Manager, Settlement and Attraction Division, Immigration Group, Department of Labour, New Zealand]

Yes, sir, that's me.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Finally, Fraser Richards is the acting director of legal business in the legal group.

On behalf of the immigration committee, I'd like to again thank you for coming to speak to us on this piece of legislation. Normally we ask one or all of you to speak for up to 10 minutes for the group. Then there will be rounds of questions. We have three caucuses here—Conservative, NDP, and Liberal—and questions will be asked of you.

To start, is someone prepared to make a presentation of up to 10 minutes?

[Christine Hyndman]

I am.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you. Please proceed, Ms. Hyndman.

[Christine Hyndman]

First, we're very honoured to be given the opportunity to present to the standing committee. You're correct that we have a piece of legislation ourselves that is shortly to have its first reading. It was tabled on Monday, the day before yesterday, and will have its first reading and be referred to select committee for examination by Parliament tomorrow, Thursday.

I would first like to say that New Zealand is in a different situation from Canada. Obviously we share many similarities: we have the same political system; we are signatories to the convention on the status of refugees. But New Zealand has the unusual situation of being the most isolated country in the world. We're 1,600 kilometres from our nearest neighbour, which is Australia, and we are separated by extremely dangerous waters; we therefore have nobody walking or driving across our borders and many fewer people arriving by boat, legitimately or otherwise. Almost everyone who comes to New Zealand comes here by air, and we have secure borders because we have at least a three-hour air flight from any port to any of our international airports, and often more like ten hours.

We share the same concerns around unauthorized movement of people. We have the same situation of being a country founded to a very large extent on immigration, and one that welcomes legal migrants, both permanent residents and our tourism and student and worker populations. We are concerned to ensure that the situation in sending countries as much as possible is ameliorated so that push factors do not impinge on people to the extent that they desperately try to seek refuge in another country.

Like Canada, New Zealand is very interested in working with other countries to help ameliorate the situation of people in the countries from which asylum claimants are most likely to be sourced. Nonetheless, there is another side as well, which is deterring the smugglers who want to make profits from exploiting the desperation of people looking for a better life who may not be able to access what they are seeking.

With regard to the bill, just briefly, it is specifically about deterring a mass arrival by sea. We have never had a mass arrival. We have had reports of people having set out to attempt to come to New Zealand. As far as we're aware, everyone who has tried to do that has either been shipwrecked on land or has drowned at sea. We do not consider this to be something that people should ever be driven to, so the bill is very focused upon deterring people through a combination of some measures that are really to ensure that we could manage a mass arrival as well as possible, but also to ensure that, while we remain within what the convention says we should do with regard to people who are found to need protection, they would not have all of the opportunities around family reunification that are given to other people who migrate through other means.

We have many fewer asylum seekers than Canada, as I think you could probably have inferred from what I've already said. Last year we had around 300 people claim protection. That was mostly on shore; it was mostly people who had been granted visas or who had entered visa-free and who claimed after arrival. About a third to a quarter came at our borders. Wherever we are not able to ascertain people's identity, then they are detained, generally in a very low-security institution, until we can ascertain their identity.

People who are determined to be a risk, of course, will be detained in a higher-security institution. We don't have any immigration-specific facilities because the numbers are so small, so it does mean that people would generally be detained in a prison.

We approve around one-quarter to one-third of people, as it is found that around one-quarter to one-third of people to have justified claims. The vast majority of them will proceed to permanent residence after that.

With our bill the difference will be that they will have a three-year period of being on a work visa, during which time they will be entitled to social security assistance if they cannot find employment. At the end of that three-year period their circumstances will be reassessed against the convention's grounds, and if they're found to still require protection, then at that point they will be granted permanent residence and immediate family will be able to join them.

I'm trying to think what else would be of interest.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You don't have to talk for the full 10 minutes.

[Christine Hyndman]

It's fine. Okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Each of my colleagues in the first round will have up to seven minutes to speak.

Mr. Menegakis, who is with the Conservative government, will be asking you some questions.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

Good morning to you all. Thank you so much for joining us today. It is certainly a pleasure for us to hear from our friends in New Zealand, albeit a little bit far from where we are, but I'm sure with these telecommunications we'll be able to communicate properly.

I have a few questions for you. We're, of course, experiencing some difficulties in dealing with wait times and backlogs of people, processing them through our system. We're trying to make some changes with our proposed Bill C-31.

When the power to designate countries of origin was introduced through the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, the minister could designate countries, regions of countries, and classes of nationals. This nuance was in recognition of the fact that safe countries may not be safe for everyone. Bill C-31 amends the power to designate, limiting it to whole countries only.

If your government uses a list of designated countries of origin, must countries be designated as a whole, or do you have distinctions for regions and classes of nationals?

[Christine Hyndman]

Thank you for your question.

Our numbers are really too low for us to have needed to move in that direction, so we do not classify countries. Our immigration act is relatively new; it's 2009. That does give us the power to designate safe third countries, which is obviously a separate point where people have transited a country that is signatory to the convention and where they could have claimed. That would be subject to an agreement with the country, and we have not made amendments to actually implement it.

With regard to your main question, therefore, no, we do not have the legal power to do that, and we're not envisaging it at this point.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

One of the phenomena we're experiencing, which we were not, quite frankly, expecting, is that we are seeing an unusual number of refugee claims from people coming from the European Union. In fact, it's a much bigger percentage than people we have coming from Asia and Africa. It's a little bit unusual for us, given the fact that the European Union is comprised of 27 democratically elected countries, and certainly someone who feels a need or has a need to leave their country for some protection or safety somewhere else has an immediate choice, if you will, of another 26 counties in the union that they can go to.

I wonder if you're experiencing the same phenomenon there in New Zealand, or if you could comment on this.

[Christine Hyndman]

We are not. We have had claims in the past from people from generally central and eastern Europe, but at very low levels. The country at present we are experiencing a spike from is Fiji, which obviously is much closer in our vicinity, only three or four hours away by air. So the answer is no.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thanks.

If this bill were to be implemented here in Canada and become law, the time to finalize a refugee claim would drop from the current average of 1,038 days to 45 days for claimants from our designated countries of origin, or 216 days for all other claimants.

I wonder how that compares to your system. Could you give us a little bit of statistical information on how long it takes to process someone in New Zealand?

[Stephen Dunstan]

We do it quite quickly. We set a benchmark of 140 days, and we try to process them within the 140 days. If the people are turned down at the first refugee determination, they can go to appeal. It can take up to a year at appeal.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Well, 140 days would roughly be about 15% of the time it currently takes us to process a refugee here in Canada, so it certainly is very admirable.

How am I doing for time, Mr. Chair?