Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 5th, 2015

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

This is the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration meeting number 46. We are studying Bill S-7, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Civil Marriage Act and the Criminal Code and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

We have before us three witnesses. Two have been here before several times. Raheel Raza is the president of the Council for Muslims Facing Tomorrow. Avvy Go is the clinic director of the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic. And from Copenhagen, by video conference, we have Susanne Willaume Fabricius, as an individual. Good morning to all.

I think we'll start with Ms. Willaume Fabricius. You have up to eight minutes to make a presentation.

[Susanne Willaume Fabricius, As an Individual]

First of all, thank you for inviting me.

I think it's very important that you as a nation take a clear stand against forced marriages and child marriages. We need to protect women and children against these offences.

Generally, there will always be a risk that a family will do it anyway, maybe in secret, or it will perform the marriage in another country per se. Because of extended families, it's very difficult to check if they are doing right or wrong. Are they making arrangements for marriages in or outside Canada? Many people will be eager to help in covering up if something is being planned.

When it comes to polygamy, we have to take into consideration that if they only divorce, the civil marriage will, in their own eyes, still be valid and the man can legally marry one more woman. This is difficult to know and will often take place in silence and without any paperwork being done.

There can be a risk of the first wife being dumped in the country of origin and left to a life of great danger, violence, or even death.

We have to take reprisals against the women or youngsters into consideration whenever we're dealing with these families. For example, you mentioned a family violence program. My concern about this would run the risk of reprisals against the women or the young girls, for example. The family will feel that it's because of the youngster, that the youngster is to blame for their having to take part in this program and because of her, the authorities will know about their private matter.

I don't think the law can do it by itself. Because of the tight family ties and the extended families, it's very difficult to control what is going on. There are so many people who would like to help someone to do this and, furthermore, is expected to assist in actions like these. Honour and promises within families or communities are so important and strong issues that some people will go far in order to protect this.

I'm sure some of the people assisting in these cases are not even that eager to do it themselves, but they feel they have no option because of the strong social control, as we also see here in Denmark.

As I said, the law can't do it by itself. You have to have a strong extended support system for the potential victims. You have to have counselling, hotlines, campaigns raising awareness, and educated professionals who can spot these problems and refer the youngster to the right place for help, to make it a topic in schools, and so on.

I would ask you to take three things into consideration. It would include having a very extended support system in addition to the laws. Mindsets are very difficult to change. The law can't do it alone. It has to be combined with raising awareness, teaching the youngsters empowerment, so some of them will be able to fight their own battle or ask you for help.

Family ties are very strong. The youngsters are very loyal to their parents or families and they are very aware of the consequences. This will make your aim difficult. That's why we in Denmark haven't had any cases go to court because, for example, when the youngster goes to the police, suddenly she will come back and will say no, that it was a lie, that she didn't mean it, that her family would never do this.

Therefore, in addition, you need to have this very strong support system I think.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you for your presentation, Ms. Fabricius.

We have two more guests who will make presentation to us and then I expect members of the committee will have some questions for you. .

Ms. Go, you are next.

[Avvy Go, Clinic Director, Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic]

Thank you.

I'm from the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic, a not-for-profit, community-based organization that provides free legal services to low-income members of the Chinese and Southeast Asian community. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today to talk about Bill S-7.

I want to thank the committee for studying this issue. The stated purpose of the bill is to protect women from violence and, as such, I think we need to examine the efficacy of the bill against its stated purpose.

At its core, violence against women is a Canadian problem. Domestic violence affects all women in Canada, whether they are Canadian born or foreign born. Many studies have talked about the extent to which this problem exists in Canada. For instance, one study shows that half of all women in Canada have experienced physical or sexual violence since the age of 16. Every six days a women in Canada is killed by her intimate partner, and on any given day more than 3,000 women and children are forced to sleep in shelters to escape domestic violence.

So without question, violence against women is a serious problem that warrants the attention of all levels of government, and urgent action is needed to stop it.

The only question we need to ask ourselves is what would be the most effective way to combat violence against women in Canada? It's from that perspective that we're commenting on Bill S-7 and from that viewpoint we respectfully submit that there are serious concerns.

To start, the bill seeks to deport individuals who are engaged in polygamy, including the women that the government says it is trying to protect. The denial of permanent and/or temporary resident status to people involved in polygamous relationships will not have the desired effect of protecting women. It will simply bar women in such relationships from coming to Canada in the first place.

Likewise, criminalizing forced marriage will not end this practice, as we have heard from the expert from Denmark. It would only drive it further underground and harm survivors of forced marriage, many of whom, while desiring to leave the relationship, don't want to see family members being prosecuted.

In cases where a women is involved in a forced marriage or a polygamous relationship and has come to Canada as a sponsored spouse, she's currently at risk by virtue of the conditional permanent resident requirement, which forces a sponsored spouse to cohabit with her sponsor for two years or lose her immigration status.

In addition, there's serious concern about the naming of this bill which invokes racist stereotypes and fuels xenophobia toward certain racialized communities. It mocks the practice of polygamy elsewhere as a sign of cultural inferiority, while ignoring the fact that polygamy is being practised in Canada by certain Canadians. In fact, too many relationships in Canada break down due to extramarital affairs involving one or both parties in the marriage. It detracts from Canadians having a real and honest discussion about domestic violence and from seeing domestic violence for what it really is, namely, an issue of gender inequality and not an issue of cultural identity.

At the end of the day there is simply no evidence to suggest that violence against women is more prevalent among certain immigrant populations, but there is ample evidence to suggest that violence against women commonly occurs outside of polygamous relationships or forced marriages. So attacking the issue of domestic violence through the lens of immigration law and through increasing criminalization is not necessarily the right way to go.

If we are serious about protecting women from violence, including women who are in forced marriages, we believe that the government should look for more effective solutions outside the law and outside the legal framework. For instance, we call on the standing committee to make the following recommendations to the government:

First, it should repeal conditional permanent residence for the sponsored spouse. Second, it should grant permanent resident status to non-status women victims of violence. Third, it should provide support to victims of forced marriage in the form of housing, counselling, and other kinds of social support. Fourth, it should increase funding for the immigrant settlement sector. And finally, it should enhance employment opportunities for immigrant women through employment equity measures, training, and other kinds of support programs.

In conclusion, the most effective way to protect immigrant women who are victims of domestic violence is by ensuring that these women have access to unconditional permanent resident status without fear of removal, and by providing them with all the support they need to fully integrate into Canadian society.

Thank you. Those are my comments. I'll speak to any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Ms. Go. I'm sure there will be in a few moments.

Ms. Raza, if you could make a few comments, we would appreciate it.

[Raheel Raza, President, Council for Muslims Facing Tomorrow]

Thank you. Good morning. I'm privileged to be here as an advocate for human rights, specifically the rights of women. So for us, this is an extremely important bill.

There's an important factor in discussing this bill. In my opinion, it applies not just to a particular segment of society but to all women because as we are well aware, violence against women takes many forms and exists in many cultures. According to Statistics Canada data in catalogue number 85-002, half of all Canadian women have experienced physical or sexual violence. If we consider women and girls from communities influenced by religion and submissive traditions, as Canadians do, then there is an expectation that they should be treated the same.

My focus in this very short presentation today is honour-based violence. This is the field in which I have been working most recently, and I might mention here that in our understanding, domestic violence is separate from honour-based violence. The fact that the bill uses the word “barbaric” is extremely important because the abuse that is perpetuated against women under the banner of honour-based violence is nothing less than barbaric. Therefore, my organization totally supports the bill in its intent to eradicate barbaric practices.

However, we must keep in mind that honour-based violence also finds men as its victims, specifically in the case of honour killings. Honour-based violence addresses three main issues: honour killings; forced and under-age marriage; and female genital mutilation, which I will refer to as FGM. There have been 24 recorded cases of honour killings in Canada since 2009, which is one too many. These are only the reported cases. How many remain underground, we don't know. So there needs to be an awareness in educational institutions, law enforcement agencies, and the judicial system about the background and triggers that lead to honour killings.

I also believe it's important to get more statistics on honour killings, FGM, and forced and under-age marriage because when we are passing a law, it's very important to have numbers. In particular, female genital mutilation has not been tracked fully in Canada. In terms of forced and under-age marriage, the red flag is the minimum age of marriage for young girls. I suggest that the age be raised to 18, which will give girls more time to be aware of their rights and fight back against forced marriage.

This bill does not ban or put any restriction on bride price, which is a price paid by the groom to the bride, and dowry, the property goals or goods given to the groom by the bride's family. Both these traditional acts have already claimed the life of several women in several communities in Canada. By not mentioning bride price and dowry, it means that it's not a harmful practice, even though people in Canada and elsewhere are witnessing bride burnings or bride suicide rates rising.

Bill S-7does not place any supportive bodies for women and young girls who have been victims of arranged and forced marriage outside of Canadian borders and within. So it's extremely important to have some form of a distress line for issues related specifically to honour-based violence. We know from the experience in Britain of young girls born in Britain and taken to South Asia. It is unknown to them why they are going to their ancestral homes. Once they arrive, they're forcefully contracted out in marriages without their permission.

But Britain has set up special cells in their foreign ministry and their embassies in countries where such incidents are high to intercept such forced marriages, and in many cases bring back the abused girls and prosecute their parents or those responsible in this trafficking. They also have a forced marriage unit that works in conjunction with the immigration department and law enforcement agencies to track girls who have been forced to go to other countries.

One of the most interesting ways that they are able to intercept some of these forced cases is that the social agencies in England have advised girls who have been forceably taken against their will to put some metal object inside their clothes so that when they go through the security barrier, it will ding, and they will be taken aside. But that's only because there is an awareness that this problem exists.

We need to know why Britain's experience was not taken into account in Bill S-7, and how we must address the real concern when we know this is happening in our communities. Bill S-7 also fails to recognize that girls over the age of 18 need protection as well from forced and arranged marriages. According to a survey, about 31% of forced marriages were girls and women aged 19 to 24, and 25% of them were aged 25 to 34. Putting an age limit on the abused women who are supported leaves about 56% of women totally without protection.

finally, I want to speak about FGM, the most barbaric act. Recently the United Nations published a report showing a rise in the practice of female genital mutilation. I was at a Civitas conference this Sunday where there was a panel of two medical doctors. I asked them about FGM and how they would deal with it if a family brought in a young girl who had had female genital cutting. They both looked at me and said, “Isn't that just like having a tattoo, or isn't that like male circumcision”?

I'm offering a copy of Honor Diaries to all of you, if I may, for your awareness, because our mandate is to expose, educate, and eradicate barbaric practices. Along with Bill S-7 there needs to be much greater awareness of what we are facing.

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Ms. Raza.

Thank you all for your presentations.

Now members of the committee will have some questions of clarification for you.

Mr. Menegakis.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you to all three of our witnesses for appearing before us today.

I'd like to start my questions with you, Ms. Raza, if I may. I see and heard that you're involved with Honor Diaries. First of all, thank you very much. I look forward to watching this. I've also read on the website that it's the first film to break the silence on honour violence against women and girls. Can you give the committee a little bit of information on this movie?

[Raheel Raza]

Absolutely.

Two and a half years ago, a human rights lawyer had been watching the Arab Spring and she realized that this issue of honour-based violence is something that had not been spoken about openly, especially by Muslim women themselves. I say this of course because I am a Muslim woman, and the incidence of honour-based violence is statistically the highest in Muslim-majority societies. I personally come from Pakistan where there are about 800 recorded cases of honour killings in one year. These, as I said, are just the reported cases.

There is very little prosecution. The penal code in Jordan, for example, contains a part that says that if a man kills a family member for honour, he will not be prosecuted. So we brought this film together to break those barriers of silence. There are nine women activists in the film, and these are the three issues they have talked about very openly without political correctness. Of course all of this is supported by United Nations and World Economic Forum statistics. It's not just to expose the problem but is also a call to action. Since this film was made, the laws in England have been changed. I believe that Bill S-7 actually addresses some of these issues, but there needs to be more awareness. The film has been used as a tool. It has been shown at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva and all across campuses in the United States and right here in Canada. We have had screenings with questions and answers, primarily to educate ordinary people to know that these problems exist not just out there but right here.

Just to give you one example, there have been 120,000 reported cases of female genital mutilation in the United States alone.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

Obviously there's some parallel, some correlation, between the movie and this bill, as it happens. Have you met young victims whom this bill would protect?

[Raheel Raza]

Yes.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

You have?

[Raheel Raza]

I have. In fact the screenings of this film have actually brought out some victims. I can give you a specific example. We had a screening at the Washington Press Association, and this young woman from Gambia just walked in. She flew in from Atlanta. She said she was a victim of female genital mutilation in a forced marriage. She had taken refuge in Atlanta, and when she heard about this film, she felt empowered enough to come and speak out. She started an online campaign and garnered over a million signatures against FGM, which then sort of encouraged President Obama and his wife to have a special study done in the United States on FGM. I have personally encountered a young girl from Afghanistan who came to me in Vancouver and said she saw her mother being killed by her father in front of her own eyes, because the mother was educated and the father wasn't. Many victims don't necessarily want to come out in the open because they're afraid, but I hear from them on a regular basis.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

I understand.

You mentioned the United Nations. In fact, in December, we heard that António Guterres, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, put out a release marking 16 days of activism against sexual and child-based violence. These 16 days of activism led to International Human Rights Day, on December 10th. This year, the UNCHR's theme is called “Protecting Rights and Preserving Childhoods: Working Together to Address Child Marriage”.

Mr. Guterres urged governments to take action. In fact, he said that, “We must advocate with governments for child marriage to be prohibited by law”—a little different from some of the commentary we heard already this morning—“and for this to be effectively enforced”.

On the government side, we're very pleased that we've taken the lead on this issue.

Can you comment on this?

[Raheel Raza]

Absolutely.

I have always said that forced and underage marriage is nothing less than child abuse. We have laws against child abuse. Therefore, this should be considered child abuse. It's the first form of child abuse.

I am very glad that our government is taking such a keen interest in this. There are thousands of young women and children out there who would otherwise not be protected. This law will give them....

Needless to say, a law doesn't eradicate such practices totally, but it definitely becomes a deterrent to those who think they can get away with it.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

I will ask the same question to Ms. Susanne Willaume Fabricius. I hope that I pronounced that right.

With respect to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, Mr. Guterres is advocating that governments work toward putting in legislation that would prohibit child marriage.

Could you comment on that, please? Could you also comment on the UNCHR initiative and how you see our government responding to that with this piece of legislation?

[Susanne Willaume Fabricius]

I don't think that you have a choice actually. You have to have laws like this. In societies like yours and mine, you can't accept that people think they can get away with these child abuse issues. This is not okay. You have to send a strong signal that it's not okay: you can't do this.

Then, you have to help the youngsters. They can't press charges by themselves. We have to help them, as a society. You have to demand from professionals who are around the youngster that they have to go to the police or whatever, to do something about these cases.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

[Susanne Willaume Fabricius]

If I could say, I very much agree with Ms. Raza on a lot of things.

Also, I think this 16 years of age to marry is not a lot. They would be very much more independent and more knowledge to say that they don't want to perhaps, if....

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Madame Blanchette-Lamothe.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Many thanks to the three of you for being here with us today for the study of this important bill. I must point out, especially to Ms. Willaume Fabricius, that the debate on Bill S-7 is not on the existence of barbaric and cruel practices of violence against women. All the parties in the House recognize that this is a problem, that we need to get serious about it and set up the necessary resources. The debate is actually on how to do so. Some aspects of Bill S-7 raise concerns and could make the problem worse instead of solving it. Not all the measures are problematic, but some of them raise concerns. That is what I would like to talk to you about.

Ms. Willaume Fabricius, can you hear the interpretation?

[Susanne Willaume Fabricius]

Yes.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

This technology that allows us to speak in any language to people from all over the world is amazing.

Six years ago, Denmark passed legislation to criminalize forced marriages. Ms. Willaume Fabricius, can you tell us more about that legislation and the impact it has had? I think your expertise is in working with the victims and people on the ground. Have those measures been effective? Have they helped the victims?

[Susanne Willaume Fabricius]

Thank you.

I didn't know at the start how much you knew about me, but I work entirely with honour-based violence and honour-based crimes. That said, the law is an important signal to send to these families who are considering things like this—but no case has been before the court. I don't think that deserves [Technical difficulty—Editor] because, as you said, I have hands on and I meet the youngsters every day, and what they say to me is, “I don't want to make my family sad”. They're very loyal to their families. At the same time, they are so afraid of this marriage. For example, they tell me that it is like being raped every time you're going to have sex with this person because you didn't choose him yourself. Somebody said, “You have to have sex with this person whether you like him or not.” Still, the family ties are so strong, and because of the way they have been brought up, it's not acceptable to say that you want to do something different than what the family has decided.

It's heavy on their shoulders that they could make the families sad or angry. Of course, not least are the consequences if they say, “I don't want to do this” or they escape to one of our shelters, for example.