Good afternoon.
I'll do my presentation in French, and my colleague will speak in English.
First, on behalf of the Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes, we thank you for inviting us to speak to you.
The Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes is an umbrella group of 142 community organizations assisting refugees and immigrants across Quebec. Founded in 1979, our organization's mission is that of defending the rights of newly arrived persons and families, regardless of their immigration status.
It is also important to tell you that our organizations help refugees across Quebec, under the agreement sponsored by the state, which the rest of Canada calls the Government-Assisted Refugee Program. These people are set up all over Quebec, with contracts from the Quebec ministère de l’Immigration et des Communautés culturelles.
Through our experience, we have developed considerable expertise on the question of recourses for refused refugees. We witness first-hand, day after day, the consequences of human errors in the refugee determination process and the extreme challenges of trying to have such errors corrected. We presented a brief on this matter to this committee in 2007.
Today, we are going to focus on this aspect of the provisions of Bill C-31.
My colleague, Richard Goldman, will continue the presentation.