Okay.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. By highlighting the barriers to citizenship that I have seen as a caseworker, I hope to show you how the proposed changes to the Citizenship Act disregard the needs of permanent residents with disabilities, impairing psychological conditions, and social hardships.
Subsection 5(3) of the Citizenship Act empowers the minister to waive the knowledge and language requirements on compassionate grounds. While this discretionary exemption provision is maintained in the proposed changes, if the age groups for those who must meet the requirements are expanded, the volume of exemption requests will increase. The process can be made much more accessible. We recommend that efforts be made to facilitate exemption requests by making people aware of the possibility and by assisting people where necessary.
I would also like to note that in my experience, obtaining sufficient medical evidence in order to get an exemption from these requirements is daunting. To illustrate, last summer I called 15 different agencies in Toronto before I was able to find an organization willing to attempt an assessment of my Tibetan-speaking client who had no formal education and who had a learning disability. Similarly, at PCLS, we frequently encounter refugees whose trauma has manifested in conditions that prevent learning, including grief, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Realistically, permanent residents who face barriers to learning and who have wealthy, privileged support networks are more likely to obtain an exemption. Citizenship should not be for sale. We need clear guidelines directing citizenship judges to be reasonable in the evidence they require, and to give consideration to the barriers to obtaining medical documentation in order to confirm disabilities.
I would also like to note that having a right of appeal is essential to protecting permanent residents whose request for an exemption has been denied by a citizenship judge. When my Tibetan-speaking client was finally able to find a specialist to work with him, we obtained a strong report that said he will never be able to learn English to any level of proficiency due to his disability. However, when he went to a citizenship hearing with letters of support from his employer, his ESL teachers, and his family physician, he was still denied a recommendation for an exemption. This was devastating for him. He is deeply ashamed of his inability to learn English despite years of ESL classes over his 11 years in Canada. Currently my client has the right to pursue an appeal to the Federal Court, which he is doing on the basis that the medical evidence has been disregarded.
We urge you not to revoke the right of appeal for people whose citizenship application has been rejected. An application for leave to seek judicial review is discretionary, and it is also an expensive and inaccessible remedy for low-income applicants.
These examples are unique because our clients were able to access a legal aid clinic with the translation services and capacity to assist them. But the committee members should remember that in many parts of Canada, these legal services are not available. There are many permanent residents in Canada who are members of the refugee and family classes who face these barriers to citizenship—