Good afternoon.
[The witness spoke in his language]
This is the diversity of our great country.
Good afternoon, members of the committee, and thank you for this opportunity to appear before you to speak on Bill C-24. My name is Bernie Farber, and beside me is my friend and colleague Mitchell Goldberg. We both bring varied experiences to this presentation, I as a human rights activist and now a semi-retired journalist, and Mitch as an immigration law expert, but we wish to speak to you today as members of the Jewish Refugee Action Network, JRAN.
For those who are not familiar with us, JRAN is a national organization and we bring individuals together from diverse backgrounds who are deeply concerned about the changes made in 2012 to Canada's refugee determination system and to refugee health care coverage. We are a Jewish initiative that invites multifaith, multicultural support, and we welcome the involvement of individuals throughout Canada.
The Jewish community, of course, has a deep connection to the refugee and immigration experience. From the Exodus and the experience of slavery in Egypt, to the shameful refusal by Canada to receive 900 Jewish refugees who managed to escape Germany in 1939 aboard the St. Louis, of which two-thirds were killed in Nazi concentration camps. But we also know from our experience and the experience of other communities that many refugees, when treated with fairness and compassion, go on to become contributing citizens. Both my parents were refugees, both of them fleeing anti-Semitism in countries of eastern Europe, and both of them coming here basically stateless, basically without a penny to their name, and making lives for themselves and for their children and for their grandchildren.
Citizenship must be something refugees aspire to as a reason for hope, many having overcome unimaginable trauma, as did my own parents. It is, therefore, only just for our federal government to ensure a reasonable path to citizenship for refugees.
That brings me to why we are here today. JRAN is deeply concerned that Bill C-24 will make citizenship not a rewarding end to their long and difficult journey, but an unreachable destination filled with roadblocks and diversions. Let me just give you a few examples.
Financial barriers—there are new and increased costs to becoming a citizen. The government is tripling the application fee, which will be added to the new cost imposed on applicants a year ago when the government privatized language testing. The price of applying for citizenship will now cost four times more than it did in 2006. The path to citizenship should not be a toll road. Tapping some of the most vulnerable among us for user fees is nothing more than a cash grab that is both unseemly and counterproductive.
Language barriers—Bill C-24 extends the difficult language testing process to include applicants aged 14 to 64, rather than 18 to 55 as it is presently. Consider this; children and grandparents will now be affected. This appears to be yet another barrier to citizenship made all the more difficult when you consider previous federal government cuts to language training programs for newcomers.
The bureaucratic barrier—under the proposed law, applicants for Canadian citizenship will now have to be permanent residents for four years, instead of three, before they can become citizens. In addition, accepted refugees to Canada will no longer receive credit for time spent in Canada as recognized refugees before they obtain permanent residence. These, my friends, we believe are arbitrary, unnecessary, and unjust wait times.
I will now invite my colleague Mitchell Goldberg to provide some more specific areas of concern.