Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Oct. 24th, 2012

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

I hope I will get all my speaking time, Mr. Chair.

My thanks to the minister and his officials for being with us.

Certainly, this bill raises concerns. One of the things I would like to know is how, in a constitutional state, the faster removal of foreign criminals can be achieved without the denial of the right to a defence for those concerned. In other words, how do you intend to reconcile faster removals with the guarantees provided by the Charter to people on Canadian territory?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I would just remind you that a citizen of another country who—

I'll do this in English. I'm sorry, there are some technical and legal terms.

A foreign national who is subject to the inadmissibility provisions of IRPA will have their day in a criminal court. They will benefit from all of the normal due process and natural justice of our criminal courts before they receive a sentence of, say, six months or more. They can even appeal that decision, so they have natural justice.

Furthermore, even after the streamlining of the appeals process that is proposed in this bill, they would have access to a pre-removal risk assessment to ensure they would not face a risk to their life or safety if returned to their country of origin. They could appeal a negative pre-removal risk assessment to the Federal Court as well.

I guess my answer would be that there are all the normal legal safeguards that currently exist to respect their rights.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

My second question is about the principle of non-refoulement to torture, a standard that no national legislation must contravene.

Do the provisions of Bill C-43 comply with that principle and the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment? If so, how?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

As I have already said, all foreign criminals who are declared inadmissible to Canada on serious grounds have the right to a pre-removal risk assessment. This process is separate from the process used to decide criminal matters. So if a criminal court in Canada imposes a sentence of more than six months, the Canada Border Services Agency issues a removal order against those individuals. But they have the right to a pre-removal risk assessment. That is an analysis is conducted to determine whether they are liable to face torture or whether their lives may be in danger if they are returned to their countries of origin.

If the pre-removal risk assessment is rejected by an independent and well-trained officer of our department, affected individuals may apply to the Federal Court for a review of the pre-removal risk assessment. That is how things will work, even after these amendments.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

How can this bill make a clear distinction between political imperatives, in terms of the decisions you will be making with this increased discretionary power, and the principles of the rule of law? How are we going to guarantee those considerations?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Well, all discretionary decisions made by the minister are based on legislation approved by Parliament. In addition, the minister is responsible to Parliament and to Canadians when he exercises that power.

I would remind you that most MPs approach me to use my discretionary power to allow certain foreign nationals into Canada. MPs ask me, for example, to issue temporary residence permits to foreigners who have applied for visas. So MPs want the minister to have some discretionary power. Our proposal is to give the minister the equivalent power to deny entry to Canada to some people under certain circumstances.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

It really deals with the notion of admissibility.

Could you clarify the question of extradition and deportation? Extradition is a tool that can be used in some cases, for example, when people who have committed crimes against humanity are detected on our territory.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You're way over. Can you wind up?

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

That's it? So clarify the matter for us.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

The bill does not deal with extradition. That is the Minister of Justice's responsibility. Under agreements we have with some foreign countries, we extradite people only following a request from a country with which we have an agreement.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Weston.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome once again, Mr. Minister.

It seems to me that you're standing in the centre between two opposite and competing forces. On the one hand, people in the riding I represent, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, want you to usher in people to work at the pulp and paper mills, Catalyst Paper and Howe Sound Pulp and Paper, and you're aware of that and you've been changing our rules to foster the immigration of people to take those roles.

In terms of the hospitality industry, you've heard the cry for relaxed rules to enable people to come and work in the Sea to Sky Country, Whistler, and west Vancouver, and then we want tourists to come.

Whatever the type of foreign person, you've been asked to usher them in, and you've responded to the call and have made changes. But at the same time, we expect our department to select immigrants. To select means to make a distinction between those we want in and those we must exclude, so it seems only natural that we come to this point.

I have two questions, Minister, in that context.

First, I've practised law overseas for a decade and seen how people felt perplexed that we were so relaxed in how we dealt with people who lied on their applications. One of the changes you propose in this bill is to finally impose consequences, that those who make misrepresentations must wait two to five years before they can apply again. My first question is, would you please explain how that would work?

Secondly, and this goes right to some of the comments we've heard from my colleagues from the other parties this afternoon. I'm astonished, and many Canadians are astonished, that CSIS could not compel an interview of someone who was identified as a possible security threat in Canada under the current legislation, and your bill proposes to change that.

Can you discuss the changes in those two areas?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Thank you for raising two other aspects of the bill, Mr. Weston.

First of all, under the current provisions of IRPA, someone who is found to have engaged in misrepresentation, in, for example, making an application to visit or immigrate to Canada, can be barred from applying for two years. We are proposing to raise that benchmark to five years because, as you likely know, fraud in the immigration program is a very serious problem.

One of the reasons in some parts of the world we have a fairly high rejection rate for temporary resident visas, for example, is because of the number of fraudulent applications that are often submitted by unscrupulous or crooked immigration agents operating abroad. There is an entire industry, as we know, that will produce, as I pointed out before, everything from fake bank transcripts to fake flight itineraries to fake death certificates or wedding certificates—fake just about everything. It's that industry that really creates serious problems for the efficient administration of our immigration laws and for legitimate, bona fide visitors who want to come here.

We need to send a clear message to people here and abroad that if you are going to commit fraud in an application, there will be serious consequences. You won't be able to apply to come back for five years. This is not going to apply to people who just make a mistake, a good faith error, who forget to enclose a document or make a minor error. It's for those who clearly have the intent to misrepresent. This is why we've increased the penalty.

With respect to compelling people to attend a CSIS interview, I'd like to invite Public Safety perhaps to supplement that.

[Emmanuelle Deault-Bonin, Acting Senior Director, National Security Policy Directorate, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Thank you, Mr. Minister.

As you pointed out, what the bill seeks to do here is to establish a clear statutory obligation on foreign nationals who make an application on their IRPA to appear for an immigration security screening interview with CSIS when that is requested by CBSA or CIC.

The purpose of this amendment is to enhance the security and safety of Canadians by ensuring that CBSA and CIC continue to benefit from CSIS's advice.

In terms of your question, CBSA and CIC officials already benefit from CSIS's advice on security screening. We're simply making sure that the obligation to appear for those interviews is clearly set in law.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Menegakis.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Minister, for appearing before us again today. My thanks as well to the officials who are here with you.

Minister, we've heard a lot of comments leading up to today's meeting. We heard some comments today about sweeping changes based on a few anomalies, comments about an anti-immigration bill. I want to hone in on those comments, because I take quite a bit of offence to these comments.

I am a proud Canadian of immigrants to this country. The great constituents of Richmond Hill elected me to be here. I represent a party that is represented in the House. Among the members of the Conservative Party, there are 28 languages that are spoken fluently.

The notion of being anti-immigrant, or that we don't want immigrants, combined with the fact that our government has accepted 1.8 million new Canadians into our country, contributing every day to society, in a very positive way, I might add...it certainly does not lend any credibility to some of the comments that we've heard here today.

I want to hone in on the notion, which some would have us believe, that someone who is convicted of six months in jail or more is not a serious criminal. The claim is that if a teenager is found with a bit of marijuana he will be severely impacted by this bill, which, by the way, I think is very appropriately named the Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act. I heard a lot about this bill from my constituents after your announcement, Minister, and I can tell you every single person who has spoken to me has been very favourable, and I represent one of the most diverse constituencies in this country.

Minister, could you clarify, please, if in fact it is true that people who are not serious criminals are going to be severely impacted, and that the bill does address those who have committed sexual offences against children, weapons charges, assault, fraud, and theft, among many other serious crimes?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Yes, you're quite right.

I'll once again reinforce for the committee, Mr. Menegakis, that Bill C-43 does not propose to change the definition of what constitutes a serious crime under the Immigration Refugee Protection Act. It keeps the same definition.

I find there's a certain cognitive dissonance here. Some of the critics have been suggesting that a penal sentence of six months is insufficient to define a serious crime, but that has always been the law under IRPA. An op-ed written by our colleague Mr. Cotler from Mount Royal published a couple of days ago suggested that it was outrageous that we should lower the bar for serious criminality in IRPA to six months. We're not lowering the bar. We're maintaining the bar that Mr. Cotler himself voted for in 2002.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Two years.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

No, Mr. Lamoureux is not correct. It is not two years. There is a fundamental misunderstanding. I invite members to actually read the act, which defines in section 36(1):

A permanent resident or a foreign national is inadmissible on grounds of serious criminality for

(a) having been convicted in Canada of an offence under an Act of Parliament punishable by a maximum term of imprisonment of at least 10 years, or of an offence under an Act of Parliament for which a term of imprisonment of more than six months has been imposed;

This is the law that was adopted in 2002, defining a six-month sentence as constituting a serious crime. We are not changing that.

As for the crimes that are affected, they include indictable offences that carry a punishment of at least 10 years, including homicide, aggravated assault, drug trafficking, fraud, or theft over $5,000. All offences involving firearms or other weapons carry at least one year of imprisonment, and thus would be captured by the new six-month bar. Sexual offences against children that are prosecuted by indictment will receive six months or one year as a minimum sentence; therefore, these offenders would also be captured by the six-month bar.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

You referred to two cases: that of Constable Todd Baylis, and that of the Just Desserts massacre in Toronto. In the case of Just Desserts, I should tell you that Georgina “Vivi” Leimonis was the one person who was murdered in that event. It was tragic, and 3,000 people were at her funeral, one of which was me.

She was a very vibrant young lady from the Greek community in Toronto, 23 years old, with a very bright future.

Can you tell us what you've heard from victims—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Mr. Menegakis. I'm afraid we're over, but thank you for your comments. We have to move on.

Ms. Freeman.

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for appearing before our committee, Mr. Minister.

I would like to talk to you about the five main reasons that justify the introduction of this bill. According to a document I found on the Department of Citizenship and Immigration's website, this is actually about five individual cases. I understand that those are five cases too many. But I am curious to know how widespread the situation is.

If this legislation is changed, will it affect more people than those involved in cases like this? I would like solid, factual information to be sent to the committee.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Thank you, Ms. Freeman.

I would like to take this opportunity to say how sorry I am about what happened to Ms. Sitsabaiesan. When I said that concerns for the victims had not been raised, I was talking about the debate on the bill in the House. Frankly, I congratulate the New Democratic Party for voting for the bill. I hope that we will be able to work to improve it, if there are good suggestions.

To answer your question, madam, I have to point out that, in recent years, an average of 850 applications for appeal have been made to the Immigration Appeal Division of the IRB by foreign nationals who are inadmissible on grounds of criminality. That is a little under 1,000 people per year. Yes, we published a list of five cases, but I can give you a list of dozens, hundreds, of similar cases.

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

What worries me—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I'm going to stop the clock for a moment.

I want to apologize to the committee. Ms. Sitsabaiesan raised a question of privilege and I may have advised the committee something that was incorrect. I do have the right to rule on a question of privilege. The committee has to agree with me or not agree with me. If the committee agrees with me, then it goes as a motion to the House.

On her particular question of privilege, I wouldn't have ruled in her favour. But I did slightly mislead the committee, and I just want to be clear on that. I have the capability of ruling on a question of privilege, but it does have to go to the Speaker.

According to O'Brien and Bosc:

The Chair of a committee does not have the power to rule on questions of privilege; only the Speaker has that power. If a Member wishes to raise a question of privilege during a committee meeting or an incident arises in connection with the committee’s proceedings that may constitute a breach of privilege, the committee Chair allows the Member to explain the situation. The Chair then determines whether the question raised in fact relates to parliamentary privilege. If the Chair determines that the question does relate to parliamentary privilege, the committee may then consider presenting a report on the question to the House.

I apologize. I wasn't quite accurate in saying I didn't have the right to rule on it. Well, I was right and wrong.

You still have about a minute and a half.

Mr. Dykstra has a point of order.