In those conditions—
Evidence of meeting #57 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cases.
A video is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #57 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cases.
A video is available from Parliament.
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A voice
But some do.
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A voice
That's what's wrong. That's why we're trying to fix it.
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Immigration Lawyer, As an Individual
Only the ones who have less than a two-year—
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Conservative
Ted Opitz Conservative Etobicoke Centre, ON
Again, why should they be allowed into Canada to commit crimes in the first place?
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Immigration Lawyer, As an Individual
We're not talking about people who come in as adults and commit crimes.
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Conservative
Ted Opitz Conservative Etobicoke Centre, ON
We're not all talking about everybody as a two-year-old.
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Immigration Lawyer, As an Individual
If this captures those two-year-olds—
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Conservative
Ted Opitz Conservative Etobicoke Centre, ON
—because you have to let me finish asking my question now.
Forget the two-year-olds for a minute. The fact of the matter is, if you come here as an adult, and there are a lot of examples of this, why should you be able to come into this country and commit a crime in the first place? We are compassionate—
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Immigration Lawyer, As an Individual
Then pass a law blocking adult offenders—
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Immigration Lawyer, As an Individual
—people who come as adults and offend as adults, not the ones who came as kids or who are mentally ill.
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Immigration Lawyer, As an Individual
In a lot of the cases that you'll see, they have come when they are children, so don't think those are just the one-offs.
We're not disagreeing with you. We're actually agreeing with you that some of these people should be removed from Canada. Barb has suggested detaining them. We're not saying to let them out on the streets. We're Canadians too. We have children too. We don't want to be victims of bad people, but everybody has a story. We're just saying to listen to the story.
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Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Tilson
We have to move on.
Thank you, Ms. Seligman.
Now, representing the official opposition, Ms. Sims.
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NDP
Jinny Sims NDP Newton—North Delta, BC
Thank you very much.
I want to thank our three presenters for putting a very human face on this piece of legislation, and for painting a picture of the impact of the human element for Canadians.
My colleagues across the table and I disagree on many things, but there are some things we do agree on. We all want to make sure that non-citizens who commit serious and often violent crimes are removed from Canada as quickly as possible. I don't think we have any disagreement on that.
That being said, New Democrats are very concerned that this bill concentrates even more arbitrary power into the hands of the minister. Even more so, we worry this legislation doesn't get to the heart of the problem of violent offenders who are able to remain in Canada for years, despite deportation orders.
For example, we've heard over and over again from witnesses, as well as Conservative members, about the case of Clinton Gayle, who brutally murdered Constable Todd Baylis of the Toronto Police Service. We now know that serious administrative errors led to the delay in removing this serious criminal. In fact, an appeal of his deportation order failed, but he was not removed because the immigration department lost his files. The immigration department even settled a multi-million dollar lawsuit with the Toronto Police Service because of the errors it made.
Let me be clear. It was not because the legislative tools weren't available to deport Mr. Gayle, but because the system failed. We can't keep using that case as an excuse to bring these overwhelming powers into the hands of the state.
Don't just take my word for it. During a federal inquiry into the Clinton Gayle case, an associate deputy minister was quoted as saying, “Quite simply, the system failed.” He then explained that the department's priority at the time was to target unsuccessful refugee claimants who were on the run rather than criminals, because that way the deportation numbers were higher. It's games.
The question is fairly straightforward. Can the three of you talk about how the current system could be improved without eliminating the right to due process that is being proposed in this bill?
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Immigration Lawyer, As an Individual
I think one way of doing it is by fast-tracking for appeals people who are considered to be dangerous.
The other thing is that the really serious criminals don't get appeals. They're already cut out if they have more than two years....
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NDP
Jinny Sims NDP Newton—North Delta, BC
Okay. Thank you very much.
Do either of you want to add to this?
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Immigration Lawyer, As an Individual
I agree. The system would work. In a lot of the situations where there was delay.... I'd like to clarify that delay by having a right of appeal is not a delay. People are entitled to due process. That's it; they only have one right of appeal to the immigration appeal division, and they're quite speedy on permanent residents with criminality.
If the board has the proper number of board members, they're heard quite quickly and expeditiously, and then the person is out. They go from jail to the board within several months, and that's it. Really, the system works. It's very unfortunate there is the odd one-off case, and there are not that many of them, that make the media. You shouldn't paint everybody with the same brush because, again, everybody has a story.
You're all members of Parliament and when you meet with your constituents, every one of you is going to have immigration concerns. A constituent may come to you and say, “I can't sponsor my spouse because when they were 19 they used false identification to get into a bar when the drinking age in the United States was 20.” Maybe a constituent's son is being deported. He never had a problem before but had trouble in school, or whatever, and hung out with the wrong kids temporarily and was drinking and driving and had a problem, or committed a theft. I'm not saying somebody wasn't victimized, but you have to look at the circumstances. Who was impacted?
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As an Individual
Well, like Barbara and Robin, I've been around this system for a long time and I've seen a lot of changes. My experience is that the changes never quite work out exactly the way that Parliament intended. There is a lot of litigation where you get individual hardship cases. The system tries to adapt to them, but in generating the adaptation you end up with unintended consequences.
It takes a while for each new change to work itself out so it can cover the broad range of circumstances. As a result, new legislation often has a perverse effect, delaying removals rather than accelerating them, until the system generates a sensible result.
I saw that with the public danger opinion and many other changes, and—