Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
My thanks to the committee for inviting us. I will start in French and then my colleague will continue in English.
The Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes is a group that has existed since 1979. It was established when the boat people were arriving. Everyone here of a certain age remembers that time, I think.
Our organizations operate all over Quebec, helping immigrants and refugees to integrate into Quebec life. The organizations outside Montreal principally provide help to refugees who are selected overseas and refugees sponsored by the government. Our organizations also work with refugee claimants. Normally, the work is done entirely on a volunteer basis because no government subsidizes it.
Today, we want to talk to you about what goes on in the trenches, beyond the labels, because sometimes things are a little nebulous.
Before I hand it over to my colleague, Rick Goldman, I would like to say that Rick Goldman is a lawyer. He works for the Committee to Aid Refugees, which is a not-for-profit organization. He does not do private practice cases, so everything we're saying is coming from a community point of view.
Some of the things we'll be discussing today I hope you will listen with the ears of members of Parliament with constituents. I'm sure everyone of you has had in the past, or recently, cases where people come to you with problems, where you say, that it isn't quite like what you thought a so-called security risk looks like, or what a so-called person with a criminal past looks like. These are human beings in front of you. When you meet them and when you talk to them, you realize that life, as people have lived it, is often not quite the way it looks like on paper.
I will now hand it over to my colleague. We will be mostly addressing the brief you have received.