Just so you know, we've had a number of witnesses appear before us who have really been concerned about the psychological impact of incarceration of would-be Canadians, because many of these people who arrive as asylum seekers are doing exactly what the United Nations accepts. We are signatories to that. We will take asylum seekers. Until the refugee claim is rejected, they are here to seek refuge, be they called asylum seekers or not. Yet, under the new regime that could be implemented—the two-tiered refugees from so-called safe countries—we're looking at increasing incarceration.
A comment was made by Janet Cleveland, who is a psychologist at McGill University in Montreal and studies the effects of detention on asylum seekers. She said:
We have a very strong position saying people should not be incarcerated when they’re not criminals. Incarceration is absolutely unjustified because there’s essentially no flight risk.
These people aren't going to go anywhere.
Many countries have looked for other ways—people having to report in, all kinds of ways to tackle this—and yet we're sort of moving toward a system whereby a growing number of people are going to be incarcerated.
At the same time as that is happening, we're also hearing from different groups about the lack of resources that our border security people currently have in order to do due diligence, in order to do the kind of homework that needs to be done.
My question goes back to you. Specifically, what other means could we use that would be an alternative to incarceration?