Thank you very much, the three of you, for coming to spend some quality time with us.
I think all of you will be aware that just a year ago we adopted Bill C-11 and the components of Bill C-11. Also, I think it has been very clear as we have questioned both staff and others that the key elements from Bill C-11 have not been implemented yet, so we actually don't even know whether we really have a problem.
Bill C-11 is called the great compromise. The minister and our critic of the day, Olivia Chow—and I'm sure Mr. Dykstra was involved in it as well—all talked about it being a great piece of legislation, because it brought all the elements together and there was a lot of agreement. It seemed to address the key issues arising from boatloads of people coming to B.C.'s shore, the two boats.
I have to say that most of those people—as we know, even before Bill C-11—have been accepted as refugees. Refugees very rarely stop to think, especially if their lives are in danger and they've had the kinds of persecution they've had, about the dangers of the seas, because they're in a corner and they have to escape. They're worried about their lives, limbs, and their families, and all of that. They came to our shores, and as we know, a vast majority of them have been accepted as legitimate refugees.
In Bill C-11 Canada also has, I would say, some of the strongest sentencing for human smugglers. Really, in Canada we can't go greater than life imprisonment, because we don't have the death penalty in Canada, and I'm not hearing anybody from either side say that it is where we want to go. So we already have the strongest deterrent possible for smugglers, a life sentence and also $1 million in fines.
But as you know, smugglers are very sophisticated operatives. I often say that while we're chasing the victims, they're probably sitting—and I don't mean to malign New York—in a New York side street café drinking lattes and wearing their Armani suits, for all we know.
Yet it's the victims I want to focus on here, because I believe Bill C-11 already has very strong punitive measures towards smugglers. I also recognize the fact, and I would say many experts do, that smuggling is an international problem—it's a curse across the world—and it needs to have governments working together to address it in a way that targets the smugglers, not the victims again.
The other aspect of Bill C-11 is the detention part. Bill C-11 allows detention of people, but not just for a year; they can even be detained longer, for identification and for security checks. But what's different about Bill C-11 is that periodically you have to go back and justify why you want that extension.
So as far as detention goes, I think it's already covered, because the minister, even under the current system, has been able to keep some people in detention for far longer than this; whereas with this new piece of legislation, all the irregular arrivals would end up in detention. Notice a marked difference from where Germany is, as we heard in earlier testimony as well.
The other concern, when I look at all of this, is over the detention. My colleagues across the aisle have sort of said, “Yes, but the minister....” That's another concern we have: there is too much power in the hands of a minister.
It's not because it's this minister; I would have concerns about a minister of any stripe having that much power in individual hands. What we're seeing is more and more of that power being centralized and therefore losing some of the objectivity that you count on when you have a panel of experts, say, or others.
One of the other things we're hearing a lot about is cost. Well, I can tell you that the cost of detention is very, very high. I have often said that if we were willing to spend even one-tenth of what we're prepared to spend on detention for youth...in my previous life. We would not have the need to have that many detention places if we were willing to spend one-tenth on education, on prevention programs, and a lot of those things.
But in this case, the cost for detention for a year...? This is for everybody who comes here in an irregular way in a group of more than two—except for families, and I appreciated that clarification this morning. We really have to take a look at that as well. Surely this can't be another prison-building agenda when we look at where we want to go with our refugee policy.
One of the other concerns we've had raised by quite a few witnesses of all stripes is the timelines and the kind of charter challenges that could be opened because people are not being given due process.
Other countries that have taken these kinds of measures of mandatory detention are actually moving away from them. Here we are in Canada, a progressive country; instead of learning from the mistakes of others, we have a tendency in the last little while to want to copy the mistakes of detention.
Thank you.