Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am very grateful for the committee's invitation and for this opportunity to appear before you today.
While Bill C-31 would affect Canada's domestic refugee system, my presentation today considers the implications of Bill C-31 for Canada's international refugee policy.
The current strategic outcomes and program activity architecture for Citizenship and Immigration Canada specifies that CIC, along with its partners within the Canadian government, aims to influence the international refugee policy agenda by participating in a range of multilateral, regional, and bilateral forums. In fact, CIC, working with CIDA and DFAIT, has had considerable success in pursuing this objective and especially in demonstrating international leadership and influencing the international approach to the issue of protracted refugee situations, which is a topic I will speak about in just a moment.
My concern with Bill C-31 is that it contains three elements that would likely undermine Canada's ability to pursue this objective, as they could have a negative effect on Canada's ability to influence its position within the global refugee regime. These three elements are ministerial authority and the designation of safe countries of origin, the use of detention in response to irregular arrivals, and provisions for the revocation of permanent residence status, especially for refugees who have been resettled to Canada.
My commentary on Bill C-31 today is informed by the findings of a research project I have co-directed at the University of Oxford for more than 10 years. The project has examined the politics of the global refugee regime and how certain states, like Canada, are able to promote an agenda that is focused on solutions for refugees. This research has found that Canada has been quite successful in influencing refugee policy at both an international and a regional level. I would be happy to provide some examples of these successes in the question time. I won't get into them now, in the interest of time.
Our research has indicated that Canada's ability to play this leadership role is primarily a result of its moral authority, its demonstrated commitment to multilateral cooperation, and the reputation it has for a fair and impartial domestic asylum process. In contrast, we have found that countries that adopt restrictive legislation, especially legislation that includes provisions for mandatory detention and measures explicitly intended to deter the arrival of asylum seekers, lose their ability to influence the global refugee regime, especially when it comes to negotiating with refugee-hosting states in the global south.
In the interest of time, I would like to provide some background on the global context before I focus my comments on these three elements of concern and suggest amendments for the committee's consideration.
The past 20 years have witnessed an important shift in the global refugee system. One of the manifestations of this shift is the rise in so-called protracted refugee situations. These are situations were refugees spend a minimum of five years in exile without a durable solution to their plight. Some two-thirds of refugees in the world today—that's 7.2 million refugees—are in a situation of prolonged exile, and 80% of these refugees remain in their region of origin. In fact, some of the largest refugee hosting states in the world today are countries such as Pakistan and Kenya. These are countries that face many of their own challenges with stability and development.
Many of these hosting countries respond to the mass arrival and prolonged presence of refugees by requiring refugees to remain in refugee camps. These camps are frequently very isolated and very insecure places, where refugees do not enjoy the freedoms and rights afforded to them under the 1951 convention, such as freedom of movement and the right to seek employment.
While the precarious condition of refugees in these camps is problematic, perhaps more alarming is our demonstrated inability to find solutions to protracted refugee situations. In 1993 it took an average of nine years to resolve a refugee situation. Today it takes closer to 20 years to resolve a refugee situation.
Canada has identified the resolution of protracted refugee situations as an international priority. Through its statements to the UNHCR's executive committee and to the UN General Assembly, Canada has called for international action to address these situations and make solutions for refugees more predictable. This priority has been echoed in CIC's own strategic outcomes and program activity architecture, specifically, strategic outcome 2, program activity 4.
Canada has primarily used mechanisms to advance this priority of helping to resolve refugee situations.
The first is refugee resettlement. The government should be congratulated for announcing that Canada will resettle as many as 14,500 refugees a year. This would confirm Canada as the second largest refugee resettlement country in the world.
It would, however, be problematic to conclude that protracted refugee situations can be resolved through resettlement alone. The current global total of resettlement opportunities is about 80,000 opportunities a year. With 7.2 million refugees eligible for resettlement, it would take 98 years to resolve protracted refugee situations through resettlement alone. This is why Canada uses diplomatic engagement in combination with resettlement to play a leading role in resolving protracted refugee situations.
Based on Canada's moral authority in the global refugee regime, it has been able to lead negotiations internationally and at a regional level to move protracted refugee situations towards their resolution through a combination of resettlement, repatriation, and local integration. I would argue that this is a very cost-effective way to strengthen the global institution of asylum and to seek solutions for specific refugee situations.
As I have mentioned, Canada has been able to play this role because it has moral authority in the global refugee regime. It has a demonstrated commitment to multilateral cooperation, and it has a reputation for a fair and impartial domestic asylum process. In stark contrast, other states in the industrialized global north, especially some European states and Australia, have been seen to lose influence and moral authority in the global refugee regime as a result of the adoption of more restrictive asylum policies at home. Again, in the interests of time, I won't go into these examples of how this happens, but I'd be happy to talk about that during the question time.
Given the importance of Canada's moral authority in pursuing its interests within the global refugee regime, and given the role that changes in domestic policy and practice have had on the moral authority of other states within the regime, I submit that it is important to consider the international implications of Bill C-31. There are three elements of Bill C-31 that would likely undermine Canada's moral authority within the global refugee regime.
My first concern relates to ministerial authority and the designation of safe countries of origin. Negotiations with host states in the global south on refugee policy frequently include considerations of the importance of depoliticizing refugee issues and the value of transparent and bureaucratic decision-making mechanisms when responding to the arrival of asylum seekers, either through individual or mass arrivals. Canada's ability to make this argument with host states in the global south would be undermined by the provisions of the bill that give the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration discretionary power to designate certain countries of origin as safe.
I therefore recommend that the bill be amended to mandate an independent advisory panel of experts the task of compiling and maintaining this list of safe countries of origin.
My second concern relates to the use of detention in response to irregular arrivals and designated foreign nationals. The use of mandatory detention as a deterrent against the arrival of future asylum seekers has not only been demonstrated to be ineffective and extraordinarily expensive, especially in the case of Australia, this provision has been a central feature of the restrictive asylum policies in the global north that states in the global south have identified as a justification for limiting the range of rights they afford to asylum seekers and refugees on their territory. Canada's ability to encourage host states in the global south to move away from the encampment of asylum seekers and refugees and the provision of greater freedom of movement would be undermined by the detention provisions detailed in the bill.
I would therefore recommend that Bill C-31 should be amended to remove reference to the mandatory detention of irregular arrivals and designated foreign nations.
My third and final concern, and I'm moving to my conclusion here, relates to the provision of the revocation of permanent resident status. A central priority for Canada's engagement with the global refugee regime has been to encourage every opportunity for refugees to secure a permanent and durable solution to their plight. Canada's ability to make this argument internationally would be significantly limited if Bill C-31 contained provisions through which refugees who have been resettled to Canada and granted permanent residence could have this legal status revoked, except in cases where it is demonstrated that the application for resettlement was obtained through a fraudulent claim, and here I would refer to Professor Audrey Macklin's testimony earlier on, vacation versus cessation—