Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 7th, 2015

[Hannana Siddiqui]

Thank you very much.

I have given evidence before—I'm not sure whether it was to this committee or a different committee—about this bill, so I am going to repeat some of the things I said before.

I've been involved in work around forced marriage and honour-based violence and domestic violence and violence against black and minority women in the U.K. for about 30 years.

Southall Black Sisters, a women's organization that works with minority women in the U.K., has been established since 1979.

I was one of the original members of the Home Office working group on forced marriage, which was established in the late 1990s. It was the first time that the U.K. government addressed harmful practices in this country. I've also been involved in helping to form the Forced Marriage Unit, a government joint Home Office and Foreign Office unit, and also in developing the forced marriage guidelines in the country, as well as in introducing the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act. Furthermore, I've been involved in looking at immigration law and how it affects women who are experiencing domestic violence. I was also involved in reforming immigration laws so that women who were victims of domestic violence could not be deported and left without access to benefits and housing. And I've been involved in a number of high-profile honour-killing cases, and have been looking at battered women killed by men and at reforming the law on provocation.

As I have discussed many of these issues before, I'm going to limit this to some of the more difficult issues regarding the criminal offence of polygamy and around forced marriage.

In the U.K., polygamy is not an offence, although bigamy is an offence. Only one marriage is recognized by civil, criminal, or immigration law in this country. We at Southall Black Sisters do not support the practice of polygamy, but we are concerned about the way in which the Canadian bill is denying the right of access or admission into Canada, or may require permanent residents to leave the country if they practice polygamy.

The problem for us here is that it undermines some basic human rights to settlement, particularly if you're a permanent resident. But also, more importantly, it's because it undermines the rights of children and vulnerable women who may be caught up in these situations. Women who are, for example, in polygamous relationships may be afraid of coming forward if they're fearing criminalization or fearing deportation themselves. Children could be separated from parents, if somebody is deported.

We know that even when there are measures to exempt vulnerable people, such as the domestic violence rules or, if you are a victim of forced marriage, that you may not be removed from the country, we know that these laws don't work perfectly. We know from our own experience from this country that many women will not necessarily come forward to seek help because they are frightened of being criminalized themselves or being deported, or because they don't have enough faith or knowledge of the services available in this country, or because they're not available to them.

Also, we've found that in some of the exemption rules the standard of proof may be too high to prove that you're a victim of domestic violence or forced marriage or something. That can be problematic, if you are going to remove people from the country for being in polygamous marriages.

What I don't understand is, if you have a criminal law that outlaws or bans polygamy already, then why do you need to extend it to the immigration laws? I don't think there is enough evidence to allow for that, to justify extending it to immigration laws.

We have found from our own experiences that under the immigration rules, the standard of proof is much lower than in criminal law. It will be very much dependent on the interpretation of the law by immigration officials in trying to define a polygamous marriage.

Our experience in this country shows that immigration officials can stereotype particular cultures. For example, we had to abolish the primary purpose rule in this country some time ago because immigration officials were denying the right of access to men from the Indian sub-continent primarily because they had some very stereotypical views of Asian cultures and arranged marriages. As a result, they were basically classifying all these marriages as marriages of convenience rather than genuine marriages. That law was abolished because of the way it was being wrongly interpreted by immigration officials. There is a concern that the same thing could happen here.

We also think that immigration laws are not a solution to problems such as polygamy or forced marriage. The example that we have in this country is that the U.K. government introduced an age-related policy in relation to forced marriage that initially said that both parties had to be 18, and then later on they increased it to 21, before an overseas spouse could come to join their British spouse in the U.K. That was done on the grounds that it would prevent forced marriages, because it would prevent sponsorship of an overseas spouse under pressure and duress.

We supported a legal challenge to this, and the Supreme Court in 2001 overturned this rule, because it said it undermined the right to family life. There was no evidence to show...and in fact some of the research showed that the law wasn't actually working, that it wasn't really protecting victims of forced marriage. In fact, it was making the situation worse, because victims were being abandoned abroad, or they were subject to increased pressure to stay in a forced marriage until they could sponsor their spouse to the U.K. at the age of 21.

So I don't think that immigration laws necessarily work. We have argued that in fact the better measures are often around improved services, improved resources, and improved implementation of current criminal law or civil law.

In the U.K., there have been discussions around how to tackle the problem of forced marriage. I think there's a broad consensus that the introduction in civil law of such things as the forced marriage protection orders has been very effective. So there are much more effective ways of tackling such problems as forced marriage.

The issue of criminalization and immigration has been more controversial. Of course, we've opposed the use of certain immigrations laws, and the courts have agreed with us that they are not effective.

Around criminalization, which came into force in June 2014, there was a concern by many women's organizations working in minority communities that it would drive the problem underground, because it could prevent a lot of victims from coming forward for fear of criminalizing their parents.

I did some research in the last few months with about 25 minority women's NGOs in this country, and asked them about the effect of criminalization. Most of them said they don't really know, because the situation doesn't seem to have changed either way. It hasn't really seemed to encourage more to come forward or not to do so. But some of them did say that they had seen a drop in their numbers, and their concern was that criminalization could have been the reason there's been a drop in those numbers.

So we don't know whether criminalization is going to work or not, but I think most NGOs agreed that the far more effective way was through the civil laws and the forced marriage guidelines. Even though they are not always effectively implemented, there needs to be many more resources put into those kinds of measures to address the problem, as well as to address issues such as funding of women's organizations' services or providing direct services to victims.

There's no point in criminalizing forced marriage if you're not going to fund the front line organizations that are operating in the community and helping victims through the civil and criminal justice systems to access safe housing and support and ultimately to obtain some kind of justice. Unless you fund those organizations to support them through the process, the measures on their own will not be effective.

Other areas of concern I have under the bill—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Ms. Siddiqui, I'm afraid we're going to have to—

[Hannana Siddiqui]

Okay, I'll leave it at that.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We have a choice: we could let you go on, or we could ask some questions. We're at a bit of a difficult time here; we may have some votes to go to. So I'm going to restrict the questions for a while, to see what's going on, to three minutes each. If we're still here, we'll go back to something else.

Mr. Menegakis.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Ms. Siddiqui, for appearing before us today from as far away as the U.K.

I know that the issue of honour-based violence is quite a substantive one in England. We certainly appreciate your taking the time to tell us what England has done on the issue.

Can you tell our committee a little more about the Forced Marriage Unit in the U.K.? What is its mandate specifically? How does it work within the immigrant communities?

[Hannana Siddiqui]

I think the Forced Marriage Unit is one of the success stories. It's a government body. It's a joint Home Office and Foreign Office unit, so it is supported by the government. It has a mandate to help British nationals or dual nationals who are taken abroad and threatened with a forced marriage or forced into marriage come back into the U.K.

Also, they look at policies and cases within the U.K., either to prevent or to improve the response to forced marriage and to help victims in this country. A lot of NGOs and other organizations, statutory and voluntary, use the Forced Marriage Unit. They dealt with about 1,300 cases last year, and generally their response is very good. I would recommend setting up a similar unit in Canada.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

You spoke about services. Certainly, that is a very important component of our immigration system here in Canada. In fact, our government, since we took over, has tripled settlement services funding to $600 million here, plus an additional $55 million, I believe, for refugees.

Can you share with us what England does with respect to settlement funding?

[Hannana Siddiqui]

Do you mean for women's organizations?

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Yes. Or in general....

[Hannana Siddiqui]

There is funding for services around domestic and sexual violence in the U.K. I think the problem is that, because of austerity, there have been cuts from local authorities and central government generally to services and to legal aid.

The brunt of those cuts to services for minority women, or for women who are facing gender-based violence, has been to minority women's organizations. They have been forced to either close down or merge with a larger, more generic organization and therefore lose their specialism and lose the specific targeted work they do with minority communities, which means those communities are not getting access to the help.

The refugee communities, the immigrant communities, and victims who are facing harmful practices within minority groups are not getting access to the level of services that they should be getting, considering, for example, that there is a very high rate of suicide among Asian women driven by domestic violence. There is a disproportionality issue here, which is not being addressed by the government.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Madam Blanchette-Lamothe, go ahead.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Siddiqui, for being with us today.

I found it interesting that you talked about measures that had been recently adopted. Their effectiveness hasn't been proven. Instead of helping victims find support, they may be reducing the number of victims looking for help. Could you tell us, in your view, the best practices for helping victims find support?

Could you also tell us the best practices for preventing forced marriage? For example, when a young woman is concerned that she may be forced into a marriage, what tools are available to her? What measures are in place to help these people before crimes are committed?

[Hannana Siddiqui]

I think awareness raising and information, and working in schools and colleges, raising these issues at a very early age and changing attitudes and behaviour, as well as making victims aware and having professionals give them training to prevent issues escalating before it becomes a case of forced marriage, are measures that are important. There hasn't been a lot of investment in those measures, generally speaking, in this country. For example, violence against women or harmful practices is not part of the national curriculum.

In the first area of safety and support, a lot of the best measures that have come in concern early intervention. You could prevent forced marriage if you have services that intervene early enough before the situation escalates. Those measures are from minority women's organizations providing direct services within communities. Those, I would say, are the most effective and historically have raised the issue and made the country aware of these problems.

The second area, I think, is around civil law. The forced marriage protection orders, for example, allow victims or third parties to get a court order or injunction to prevent a forced marriage from happening. That's been used quite heavily—far more than people expected—and has been quite effective. I think the shortfall there has been that there aren't enough resources or monitoring of the situation if a victim, for example, goes back and lives at the family home with an injunction. There's no one to monitor them, unless they're under a protection order from social services on the protection register. Otherwise, there is no monitoring.

The third area that I also think is important is the forced marriage guidelines for professional agencies: the police, social services, health, and education. That gives guidance and statutory responsibilities to those bodies on how to tackle forced marriage and outlines their responsibilities. The shortfall there is that these are not being effectively implemented and there aren't proper enforcement procedures in place. If you do have guidelines in place, you should have enforcement mechanisms and monitoring that they're being effective.

The police inspector at the moment is looking at honour-based violence. That's the first inspection I've known around these issues, and there is a need to make sure those things are in place.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. McCallum.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you, Ms. Siddiqui, for being with us.

I'd like to raise an issue that you, and also another one of our witnesses here today, raised, which is the use of immigration law in addition to criminal law. As I think you raised, that creates two problems at least. One is that immigration law has a much lower standard of proof and also double jeopardy, in that everybody's subject to the sanctions of criminal law, but only a subset is also subject to the sanctions of immigration law. Sometimes that subset can even include citizens, when certain kinds of citizens can have their citizenship removed and be deported and others cannot.

I know there's not much time, but I'd like to ask you, is this an issue for debate in the U.K.? To what extent does the immigration law replace or add to the criminal law? What's the state of debate on that issue?

[Hannana Siddiqui]

The debate has been around both of those issues: criminalization of forced marriage, as well as use of immigration laws to control forced marriage. As I said, both are controversial. There is obviously no prosecution with the criminal law yet. We don't know if it's going to work, and there's a concern that it may make the situation worse. Immigration law, yes, but it only affects certain groups, migrant groups, within the country, and not generally everybody who's forcing someone into marriage. We have concerns. In fact, there's research evidence, as well as our experience, showing that immigration laws have not worked. The age-related policy, for example, did not work to protect victims of forced marriage. The Supreme Court agreed with us because it undermined the right to family life. There is absolutely no evidence to show that it can be effective. In fact, it can make it worse.

For us, immigration law is not going to resolve this problem. Forced marriage is about the control of female sexuality and autonomy. Families are going to go ahead and force victims into marriage regardless of the immigration law and even regardless of criminal law. At least we can look at other ways of trying to create cultural changes, as well as looking at measures around the response of state agencies, police, and social services, and strengthening the hands of the victims through civil law as far as we can.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Leung.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to our witness.

I'd like to address my question regarding the multicultural aspect of this legislation. Both Britain and Canada are multicultural societies and both of us admit immigrants from all around the world. There are certain cultural practices that are barbaric. In this case, would you consider acts like genital mutilation and forced marriage as barbaric cultural practices that should not be allowed in civil society?

[Hannana Siddiqui]

I hesitate to use the word “barbaric” because I also think domestic violence is barbaric. I think a lot of practices where people are being abused, and as a cultural basis, often are barbaric practices. It's not just those that exist within minority communities. Of course, I do not accept any of these practices. They all have to be eradicated and challenged, and the hands of victims need to be strengthened as far as possible to address these practices. That means strengthening the women's organizations and communities in which.... Communities are not homogenous. There are those people with very conservative views and those with very liberal views, but not necessarily always western.

Somehow it's assumed that only western countries have liberal views. People within minority communities in the global south can also have very liberal views. They do not want women to be abused. They don't want children to be abused. They want to uphold the human rights of people within their communities more generally. That's the alliance. I think you need to shift your focus not necessarily to barbaric cultural practices, but to gender equality and to addressing violence against all women.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

But many of these practices are not our shared values. Can you comment on that?

[Hannana Siddiqui]

They're not shared values for many people within or outside of those communities. We would all be equally critical of those values. Communities and cultures are quite quite complex. There are those with conservative cultural value systems and those with progressive cultural value systems. The alliances that have to be made are with those who want to uphold the human rights of vulnerable and discriminated groups within all communities. That's where we have a common ground. That's where I think the emphasis should be shifted to promoting gender equality, because that's within the framework of human rights and liberal value systems, as well as addressing things like violence against all women and girls.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Sullivan.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

What I've noticed about the changes to the immigration law in this country is that they give a new form of penalty to the criminal justice system, that of deportation. A judge looking at a case in front of him now has to realize that his or her action may not just put a person in jail, but may result in their deportation. They may not choose to find that person guilty as a result of the cruel and unusual punishment that may come from that person being deported.

Is that part of what's going on in Britain as well?

[Hannana Siddiqui]

Not in the same way. First of all, there's been no criminal prosecutions of forced marriage cases so far. I think it has happened in some cases around domestic violence, where there may be a court order against someone who doesn't have a status in the country and is being convicted of a specific crime that may be against certain immigration laws. They may then face removal from the U.K. It hasn't necessarily happened in relation to forced marriage, but in can. It's an option that the courts do have if someone doesn't have secure immigration status in the country.