Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 2nd, 2012

[The Vice-Chair (Ms. Jinny Jogindera Sims (Newton—North Delta, NDP)), NDP, Jinny Sims]

We are going to get started. We have quorum.

My apologies to our witnesses that you were kept waiting. Just to explain, we did have caucus meetings this morning. I know my other colleagues are running as fast as they can to get here. They will join us as soon as they can.

Let's start with Mr. Grubel first.

[Herbert Grubel, Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute, As an Individual]

Thank you, Madam Chair, honourable members of the committee. Thank you for inviting me again to share with you my views on pending legislation aimed at improving Canada's immigration system.

Minister Jason Kenney, the government, and the members of this committee deserve much praise for taking on this difficult task.

By now, you will have heard much criticism from well-organized lawyers and human rights advocates about the shortcomings of Bill C-31. All of these criticisms deserve your attention, and some may help to improve some detailed provisions of the bill. I will stay away from discussing the issues raised by these critics, except to urge the committee to remember that the views of lawyers and rights advocates are not entirely driven by their unselfish desire to protect the rights of asylum seekers. These witnesses also have much at stake, professionally and personally.

I have no personal stake in the effects and operation of Canada's refugee legislation. My remarks are motivated by the desire to discuss how Bill C-31 will affect the well-being of Canadians, which is a topic often neglected in discussions that focus on the effects of the bill on the well-being of asylum seekers. However, before I do so, let me be clear that my analysis should never be interpreted as suggesting that Canada should withdraw from its commitment to help people escape from persecution abroad. The issue, as I see it, is that while our moral commitment is and should remain firm, it should not be without limits. Just as most of you and I gave less to charity when we were young and poor, struggling to take care of our families, we give more now when we can better afford it, and so should Canada during the present fiscal crisis.

Bill C-31 will reduce the cost of our commitment to help foreigners. It is therefore appropriate for our present fiscal conditions. In this spirit, let me remind you of the undisputed existence of Canada's serious fiscal problems due to stubborn deficits and the effects of an aging population on the unfunded liabilities of pensions and health care programs.

There's also no doubt about the fact that the administration of the existing refugee system is costly. As Martin Collacott told you earlier this week, and James Bissett will tell you in more detail tomorrow, the direct cost for every claimant has been estimated to be about $60,000, and the annual costs of dealing with all of the claimants in Canada are in the billions.

In addition, present refugee policies cause successful claimants to settle in Canada without having to pass the points or other tests. Studies have shown that most of them will have below average incomes and tax payments while they absorb benefits provided by our universal social programs. My estimates suggest that the annual fiscal burden of such immigrants is about $6,000, on average, and probably greater for admitted asylum seekers.

I believe that Bill C-31 will not only make the system fairer, but it will also reduce the number of asylum seekers and successful claimants. These reductions will give rise to savings, which will reduce the deficit, allow governments to provide more public services, or lower taxes.

These benefits of Bill C-31 going to Canadians are accompanied by costs to asylum seekers. You have heard much from lawyers and other witnesses about violations of due legal process and the way in which seekers suffer from a reduction in the standards of fairness in their treatment. We are faced here with an iron law of economics: government benefits to some impose costs on others. The trouble with Bill C-31 is that no estimates of the value of these benefits and costs exist. Yet in the end, your decision to vote should rationally be influenced by such calculations.

The value of feeling good about being generous to foreigners, and even of meeting to the fullest extent the commitments made through international agreements--the value of those benefits to you is not infinity. If the benefits were $1 billion for each less fairly treated applicant or wrongfully rejected claimant, the bill would be more desirable than if the benefits were $1 million or $100,000. In the absence of these numbers, you have the unenviable task of voting for a bill without full knowledge of the benefits and costs. My sympathies are with you.

In case you're interested in my personal views, let me tell you that I would vote in favour of Bill C-31 because, based on my knowledge gained in my study of economics, I believe that the likely benefits to Canadians are high enough to warrant the imposition of some costs on asylum seekers. But let me add, frankly, that I have a moral bias entering these views. I believe that charity should start at home, and that the well-being of foreigners should come second, and only after we have gotten our fiscal house in order.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Vice-Chair (Ms. Jinny Jogindera Sims), NDP, Jinny Sims]

Thank you very much.

You actually did very well. You had three more minutes left.

[Herbert Grubel]

Can I just tell you, then, that this cost-benefit analysis is something we should think in terms of, rather than necessarily having the numbers. When I was in the House I approached Allan Rock, who had just introduced the bill on the long-gun registry, and I said to him, “I'm in a serious dilemma. I would like to vote for the bill, but I need to know rationally how many lives would be saved per million dollars, or how many millions of dollars it will cost to save one life as a result of this calculation.” He told me, “You will have this calculation”. It never came forward. I believe if we had honestly considered the cost that it turned out to be, we would have saved that very divisive legislation that we have gone through, the history of which you are all familiar with.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair (Ms. Jinny Jogindera Sims), NDP, Jinny Sims]

Thank you.

Now we'll move over to Janet and Cécile. Between you, you have ten minutes.

[Dr. Janet Cleveland, Psychologist and Researcher, Transcultural Research and Intervention Team, Division of Social and Cultural Psychiatry, McGill University]

Thank you very much.

My name is Janet Cleveland. I'm a psychologist, former lawyer, and now a researcher on refugee mental health. For the last three years I've worked essentially full-time on the impact of detention on refugee mental health, and I've many times visited the immigration holding centres in both Toronto and Montreal, so I can give you lots of details about what it's really like there, if you wish, later on.

My colleague Cécile Rousseau is a professor of psychiatry at McGill University and is a world-renowned scholar in the field of refugee mental health, with over 160 scholarly publications.

I'll say a few words about the study we recently finished. As I mentioned, it was conducted at the immigration holding centres in Toronto and Laval, close to Montreal. We interviewed 122 asylum seekers who were detained in those two institutions, and we also had a comparison group of non-detained asylum seekers with the purpose, of course, of seeing the impact of detention. You have two essentially identical groups except one is detained and the other is not. They did mental health questionnaires and interviews.

The immigration holding centre, as I mentioned earlier, is a prison, of course. That is to say, people are handcuffed when they travel between the prison and the downtown area for their hearings. There are uniformed guards everywhere, surveillance cameras, extreme limitation of movement, no liberty essentially, extremely rigid rules, and so on. People can be punished by being put in solitary confinement if they don't respect basic minimum rules like getting up in the morning on time. It's a prison environment, and therefore there is a serious impact in terms of mental health.

The first thing one has to look at is that it's a population that is already, generally speaking, very severely traumatized. It has had high exposure to trauma. To give you an idea, within the two groups, people had experienced, on average, nine major traumatic events during their lifetime. This is off the charts. This is extremely high. One or two major events is considered quite high, quite serious.

We're also talking about a very serious type of trauma. I also want to point out that it's essentially identical in the two groups. You have two groups with the same trauma exposure before arriving: typically physical assault, family members who have been assaulted or killed, etc. There are those types of major trauma. They get to Canada and one group is detained and the other is not.

If you look at the difference in terms of their mental health—these are symptoms that are above the clinical level, so we're talking about sufficiently serious to be considered clinically suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, or anxiety—after only 31 days on average in detention, the difference is absolutely huge. There was almost twice the level of post-traumatic stress disorder in the group that was detained, 32% in total. Depression was also over 50% higher in the detained than the non-detained group. As I say, this is after an average of 31 days in detention, a relatively short time, certainly considerably shorter than what is envisaged under Bill C-31.

Quickly, just to give you a sense of the people we're meeting with, on the screen is a quote from a young Somali man whose father was killed in front of him by warlords. He was defending his son from being recruited forcefully by the warlords. Luckily, his uncle was able to get him a false passport and a false visa to get to Canada. He was in prison for a couple of months at the immigration holding centre. He was very severely traumatized, as you can see from this quote, and was also in deep mourning, and yet he was held for two months, which of course considerably increased the level of post-traumatic stress disorder he was already suffering from.

There was a woman in a somewhat separate part of the study, for which I met 21 asylum seekers who had arrived on the Sun Sea. Of course this is exactly the type of group targeted by Bill C-31. This is a very typical example of what people have been through. Many members of her family had been killed in front of her by a shell falling on them, and she herself of course was also impacted and had very serious PTSD.

Finally, I'll just point out that if we look at the Sun Sea asylum seekers, for example, they were detained for long periods, and yet—at least under existing legislation—had access to detention review. People were freed within the first couple of months who would not be freed under Bill C-31--for example, a couple with a child who was very severely handicapped with cerebral palsy. There are other examples I have given here.

I'll turn this over to my colleague.

[Dr. Cécile Rousseau, Professor of Psychiatry and Researcher, Transcultural Research and Intervention Team, Division of Social and Cultural Psychiatry, McGill University]

I am Cécile Rousseau, professor of psychiatry at McGill.

There is strong evidence in the scientific literature in our research on children—which is a separate research area—and also in our clinical practice in the last 20 years that detention has strong and pervasive effects on children's mental health. It has effects. We have hundreds of terrible stories. I won't have time to explain them to you, but it has effects on attachments and on what we call internalized problems, such as depression, anxiety, school phobia, and learning problems. It provokes traumatic symptoms, such as nightmares and withdrawal, and it is also a source of behaviour problems for children who were well adjusted before that.

There was a move and a change from Bill C-4 to Bill C-31, which indicates—and I really want to congratulate the government on this—that the government was sensitive to the Canadian association of pediatricians, the Canadian association of child psychiatrists, and the association of public health directors. These three associations asked you and the minister not to detain children. We welcome the fact that children under 16 are now excluded from detention. We think this a recognition that the government knows this is harmful for children.

This will not, however, protect children, because children still will be in detention with their parents. For an eight-year-old child, being “detained” or “in detention with mom” is a semantic difference, and they don't know about semantics. Otherwise, they will be separated from their parents and placed in foster care. This has even worse mental health consequences, so we certainly do not wish to go there.

Finally, there will be no protection for pregnant women or for 16- and 17-year-olds, whose brains are still not totally developed.

Why is detention of children a public health hazard? Well, this is what we call toxic stress, because helplessness strongly decreases resiliency. It would take a very long time to explain to you that this is the kind of stress where there's no escape, but we know that this directly affects the developing brain of the child.

The separation from parents damages attachment and shatters basic trust. It provokes a whole range of consequences. In the short term, we see acute traumatic stress disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, adjustment disorders with different symptoms, and also adolescent risk-taking and suicidality, which are very common too. In the medium term, it is costly because those kids, who very often will stay in Canada, develop learning problems and relational difficulties.

As for the long term, we need to study it. We're calculating the cost with the social work department at McGill. This is likely to be very costly. A pregnant woman who has a damaged baby because of prenatal stress or insufficient prenatal care...this is hundreds of thousands of dollars. A kid who drops out because he has developed learning problems is a huge cost for Canadian society. We have to consider these public health costs beyond the humanitarian consequences.

Finally, there's this quote from a mom: “Canada is supposed to be a civilized country—to detain a mother and a baby is not civilized.”

I plead with you.... I think Canada.... I have been and I am still very proud to be Canadian. This would preserve our values and our capacity to protect the children—

[The Vice-Chair (Ms. Jinny Jogindera Sims), NDP, Jinny Sims]

Can you round off now, please?

[Dr. Cécile Rousseau]

--to preserve the best interests of children, and to protect them.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair (Ms. Jinny Jogindera Sims), NDP, Jinny Sims]

Thank you very much.

Now I'll go over to Mr. Menegakis.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I want to welcome you back, Mr. Grubel. It's always nice to have a former parliamentarian come back to see us.

I want to also welcome our renowned researchers and members of academia who are presenting before us today. Thank you for joining us.

I have a number of questions. Hopefully I'll be able to get them out in the seven minutes, or the six and a half that I have left.

Specifically addressing Bill C-31, particularly in light of the testimony that we heard this morning, the new measures in Bill C-31 would see us finalize a refugee claim in about 45 days, from the current 1,038 days, for claimants from designated countries of origin, or 216 days for all other claimants.

Taking into consideration the compassionate and humanitarian aspect, for somebody who is a legitimate bona fide refugee seeking refuge from persecution, torture, or possible death in the country they're coming from, surely it is advantageous to them to be processed into the country in 20% of the time that it currently takes.

We cannot entertain the possibility of allowing everybody who shows up through what would otherwise be deemed illegal means automatically into the country without doing the proper checks and balances to ensure the security and safety of Canadians. We heard the Sun Sea reference this morning. From the Sun Sea and the Ocean Lady, 23 people were deemed security risks, and 18 were found to have perpetrated war crimes in their country, for a total of about 41 people that were questionable.

[Dr. Janet Cleveland]

That's actually incorrect.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

I'm not finished my questions yet, so we'll get to that.

The question comes up as to what we would say to a family who is victimized if we let a terrorist or a violent criminal onto our streets if we could have prevented it. Surely the government has a responsibility to ensure the safety and security of Canadians before allowing people in.

So my first question to you, Mr. Grubel, is what impact do you think bogus refugees have on genuine refugees, who have to wait longer? What would you say about that?

[Herbert Grubel]

If you take the trouble to come here and have some problems that you believe are legitimate, then of course by having less of an opportunity to be heard in all the details imposed is a cost to you. But the perspective I can bring to your deliberations is to say yes, in an ideal world we would give everyone who comes here years and years to explain to us why their claims are legitimate and should be settled, but we decide arbitrarily that there is a certain limit that should be set. The consequences of this are a cost on those who believe that they are treated unfairly, but the benefit is lower cost to the Canadian taxpayers. That is a trade-off, which I tried to point out is never discussed but should enter into the deliberations.

[The Vice-Chair (Ms. Jinny Jogindera Sims), NDP, Jinny Sims]

Thank you very much.

I'm going to give Ms. Cleveland a chance to respond to the questions you raised earlier.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

I still have questions for Mr. Grubel.

[The Vice-Chair (Ms. Jinny Jogindera Sims), NDP, Jinny Sims]

Okay, carry on then.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

My questions are directed to Mr. Grubel right now, because I want to get to the bottom of a few things.

Mr. Grubel, currently we get about 25% more refugee claims from democratically elected European Union countries than refugee claims from Africa or Asia. Does that make sense to you?

I might add that the European Union, as you may very well know, is comprised of 27 countries. The first choice, one would think, is that the folks would have 26 other countries they could readily go to. What would you have to add to that comment?

[Herbert Grubel]

Sir, I have nothing to add. I think the move is in the right direction and I support it fully.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

I also want to broach the subject of biometrics, which is a key element of Bill C-31. I'd like to hear your comments based on your experience. Do you think that biometrics will help us identify potential risks, even before people consider coming to Canada?

[Herbert Grubel]

I do not know the technical details on how this would be done, but I expect that it will help in the direction you have indicated. Therefore, I support it.

I sympathize with people who believe this is a potential infringement on freedom and privacy, but we do all kinds of infringements on freedom and privacy for the better good. I think this would be for the better good.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

I should point out that the RCMP, CSIS, and CBSA officials who have testified before us have identified biometrics as a 21st-century identification tool that is used in many other countries. Certainly the sharing of information with friendly countries would help identify potential risks from those coming here.

What we want to do with the bill, and this is the minister's intention, the ministry's intention, and the government's intention, quite frankly, is try to weed out those people who are clogging up the system, so that the very people who need that assistance that was referred to by Madame Cleveland and Madame Rousseau in their presentations can have easier and faster access into Canada. That's the intent of this bill, to declog it from those who are using illicit means.

Mr. Grubel, we get many refugee claims that are abandoned or stopped by the person who wants to come here. They are, in large number, from the European Union, at an annual cost to the taxpayer of about $170 million to process by the time they decide—

[The Vice-Chair (Ms. Jinny Jogindera Sims), NDP, Jinny Sims]

Mr. Menegakis, you are out of time.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

I'm sorry. Thank you so much, Madam Chair.

[The Vice-Chair (Ms. Jinny Jogindera Sims), NDP, Jinny Sims]

There you go. We will leave that question sitting there for now. Thank you very much.

I'm going to take some questions, and I do have agreement from the chair, because as vice-chair I stepped in as chair for today.

My first question is to Ms. Cleveland. Please feel free to add as well, Cécile.

We know that under Bill C-31 children 16 or older will be incarcerated as if they were adults, while children under 16 will either be separated from their parents and put into provincial care, or unofficially held with their parents.

What are the probable mental health consequences if children are separated from their parents and handed over to child protection agencies while their parents are detained, and what are the probable mental health consequences of children being denied, officially or unofficially?