Thank you Chair. My presentation will be in French.
Thank you for inviting me to speak before you today. I was admitted to the Bar in 1990 and have been practising immigration law ever since. Moreover, I am President of the Quebec Immigration Lawyers Association.
If you’ve followed the debate surrounding what is known as the backlog, you’ll remember that in 2008, the former Minister of Immigration, Diane Finley, had already reported 900,000 pending applications. That was three years ago already. In 2008, critics accused the government of putting a cap on human resources in certain embassies and of making sure that the backlog was greater in certain regions than in others.
It would be interesting to know, concerning the backlog of millions of files, which embassies are responsible for dealing with these files. Delays are longer or shorter depending on where the immigration application is filed. We will probably realize that, in fact, there is a regional quota. And so, by limiting human resources in certain embassies, one limits the number of persons from the region who can immigrate to Canada.
Approximately three years ago, while working in the field, I could not help but notice an important shift in the philosophy related to a stricter application or enforcement of the Act, particularly with regards to spousal sponsorship, to alleged war criminals, to citizens, to refugees and also, even though there is no direct link to immigration issues, to passports. There were examples of this shift in the media, this summer.
I haven’t seen—and I don’t know that there are any—the merits of the punitive measures that the present government has imposed to immigrants. We don’t know if we are getting our money’s worth and if what immigrants are blamed for, that is for having supposedly forged documents or become citizens by fraudulent means, as the Minister claims, is so costly to Canadian society that it becomes necessary to launch an investigation in order to strip them of their Canadian citizenship by means of a lengthy and costly judicial process. We don’t know.
The Minister of Immigration’s words are alarming as are those of the Minister of Public Safety. He warns that according to certain surveys, most of the world’s population wants to immigrate to Canada. He believes that the situation will only get worse. We know, for example, that he refuses to accept that refugees come to Canada by illegal means. He says that these people should get in touch with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. He calls the refugees queue jumpers. According to him, refugees are involved with terrorist activities, with gunrunners and illegal alien smugglers. He instils fear in Canadian citizens when he talks about refugees in this manner and with those words.
I believe that the government has clearly decided to reallocate its resources in order to challenge and deny landed immigrant status and to prevent refugees from reaching Canada rather than to accelerate the immigration selection process.
Immigrants believe in Canadian values. They come to this country because they believe that Canada is committed to family reunification. This is a principle that is found in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. If Canada wants to attract the best immigrants in the world, we will have to let them decide whether or not to bring their families here, otherwise we won’t have the best immigrants but rather, the most desperate ones, particularly from a financial point of view. The present government’s stance jeopardizes Canada’s credibility on the international scene and more and more immigrants decide not to remain in Canada.
The minister cannot hide behind political choices that aim to restrict the number of employees in its embassies and to create an ever-increasing backlog in order to bring all of Canada to adopt its point of view and its solutions to deal with the backlog. In law, “no one can be heard to invoke his own turpitude” and this is exactly what the minister is attempting to do when he speaks of a million cases. It is clear that the minister wishes to have more discretion in this matter. He even says so when he mentions the minister’s directions and states that they should apply to sponsorship cases. By exercising his discretion, he places himself out of the reach of the Federal Court that he accuses of not being sufficiently accommodating. By doing so, he has challenged the principle of judicial independence, a pillar of our democracy.
Immigrants who have paid in order to have their immigration application examined by Canadian authorities have the right to a decision. This decision must be rendered in a fair, equitable and impartial manner in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice. In breaching this principle, our government stands to be challenged in a court of law and such challenges require even more money and resources. The only path that the government can follow is to respect human rights.
And so, I invite this committee to act with caution in its recommendations to the government. I invite you to require more information from the Minister of Immigration in order to understand what is really going on and to be aware of the issues involved.
I thank you.