Thank you for inviting me. It's an honour to appear before this committee, studying this extremely important topic.
I see far too frequently in my practice women who have suffered abuse. Unfortunately, our experience has been that in many cases the immigration system compels them to remain in abusive relationships. It doesn't assist them to escape abuse and doesn't provide them protection in Canada.
In the limited time I have, I'd like to give you three examples.
Recently we were dealing with a woman who came to see us who had been victimized by an abusive relationship. She was being sponsored by her husband in Canada. She left the relationship and went into a shelter because she and her children had been physically abused by her spouse, who was charged. The spouse notified immigration that the sponsorship he had submitted on her behalf was being withdrawn. She presented herself at immigration, where she was met by two CBSA officers, who detained her because they said she was in Canada illegally.
There was no consideration of the fact that she was a victim of domestic abuse. She was put into detention and was scheduled for deportation. It was only because we were able to get a stay because the two Canadian children's interests hadn't been considered that we were able to prevent the deportation. We submitted a humanitarian application, which was ultimately successful. She ended up spending several months in detention before she was released, but ultimately she was approved.
But the system didn't work for her. It didn't work for her because there was no reason that she should have been detained. There was no reason that she should have been threatened with deportation before any determination was made with respect to whether or not she was a victim of abuse. The system broke down.
What we need are clear guidelines presented to immigration officers whereby, in the case of a sponsorship breakdown and when there are allegations of abuse, before any enforcement action is taken and before there is any consideration of detention or any consideration of deportation, the humanitarian and compassionate factors should be considered.
I'll give you a second example.
A woman came into my office. She was victimized by spousal abuse. She had been sponsored and had come to Canada on a conditional visa. She didn't know what to do. If she were to leave her husband, she was afraid she would be deported; if she were to remain in the relationship, she was going to be victimized by abuse.
I understand the reasoning behind the two-year requirement, but I would urge you to reconsider it. When you balance all the different, competing factors, the presence of this two-year conditional visa often forces women to remain in abusive relationships, in circumstances that put their lives at risk.
The third example I want to give you has to do with victims of human trafficking.
I've seen in my office over the years several women who were victims of human trafficking and who were forced into the sex trade, mostly by the triads—at least, those were the women I saw. When they managed to escape, obviously they were at risk, if they were deported, because they would owe this huge debt to the triad.
Their claims for refugee status, however, were rejected. They didn't fit within the neat, conventional refugee definition because they were victims of crime and they weren't victims who fell within political opinion, or whatever.
We see these situations in which people are being deported even though they are victims of human trafficking. There doesn't seem to be any provision in the humanitarian and compassionate stream for consideration of the exceptional circumstances that might apply to victims of human trafficking, in circumstances in which their refugee claims are not accepted or they don't make refugee claims.
I would suggest to you that these are things that can be dealt with through policies by making changes to the immigration manual instructions and guidelines on processing humanitarian and compassionate applications that would require careful consideration be given to victims of human trafficking, on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.
What we need to do is to ensure two things. We need to ensure that there are proper guidelines for consideration of the exceptional circumstances that are faced by women who are either victims of human trafficking and/or victims of domestic abuse. As well, we need to ensure that before any enforcement action is taken to deport or remove these women and/or their children, the enforcement action be delayed until the special circumstances of the abuse are considered, because in the current system, that isn't happening.
Those are my opening comments.