Thank you.
I'm an expert in international human rights law and immigration law. For that reason I'm going to focus my remarks on the aspects of Bill S-7 that relate to my expertise. I'm going to depend upon my colleagues from METRAC to underscore many of the points that I support and want to underscore as well, but are not within my primary area of expertise. I urge you, if you haven't done so already, to read their carefully constructed brief.
The three points I'm going to address relate to first of all the inclusion of a new category of inadmissibility in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act—which I'm going to refer to as IRPA for the sake of brevity—the decision to set 16 as the minimum age of marriage and, time permitting, a few remarks on the short title of the act.
At the outset I want to state very clearly that I am strongly opposed to the bill. It's not because I don't share my colleague Ms. Papp's concerns about the problems that the bill purports to address. It is rather that the bill is the wrong way to address those problems. Most specifically, this is yet another example of the government attempting to govern through law, and legislating in the absence of empirical evidence with respect to how best to address a problem.
More often than not during this government's tenure, we have seen bill after bill and legal tool kits being thrown at problems that don't need new laws. What they need are policies, programs and, in many cases, resources, but not new law. I think Bill S-7 is a prime example of this tendency to govern through law when we don't need law, because most of the act, if not all of it, consists of measures that already exist in federal laws. We don't need new words because we already have the tools in existing legislation.
From my point of view, we would be much farther ahead if we threw out Bill S-7 and instead dedicated ourselves to coming up with programs and, more critically the resources to address the underlying problems, the very genuine problems that my colleague spoke of.
That's the road map for what I want to say. Let me be more specific first of all about the inadmissibility provisions.
As you know, they apply broadly to all non-citizens. That means they apply to foreign nationals seeking admission to Canada from overseas, whether they're seeking admission on a temporary basis or a permanent basis. They also apply to long-term permanent residents, people who have been in Canada for years and who've established themselves in Canada. For those people, people who are in essence already part of the fabric of their community, it means that the mere charge that somebody will be engaging in polygamy opens them up to the prospect of deportation. And, by the way, that would be via a procedure that has none of the hallmarks of due process, which Canadian citizens come to expect when they're threatened with such a serious sanction. What do I mean by that? It means that an immigration officer makes a decision and it means that there's no appeal to that decision, but rather a narrow, technical judicial review application by way of leave to the Federal Court, which more often than not is denied. What we're looking at here is expanding the scope for deportation of long-term permanent residents based on a speculative link to some future-oriented conduct.
I would assert that if we have a basis in fact for a charge of polygamy, that's exactly what should happen with a criminal charge in a criminal trial, where long-term permanent residents, just like other Canadian citizens, face a criminal trial with due process and a right of appeal. I want to be very clear that expanding the scope of inadmissibility to deal with polygamy is in essence supporting a two-tiered system of justice. The people on the receiving end of that two-tiered system will be permanent residents and women as well. As much as this bill purports to protect women, it will actually lead to serious harm and the potential to disrupt families and to affect children. There's absolutely no provision in the bill to deal with any of the fallout from this expanded scope of inadmissibility.
I also want to underscore the fact that this is the first time that we're seeking to prevent even temporary visits to Canada by polygamous families. I would point out to the committee that in contrast, the U.S. uniform model penal code provision in relation to polygamy specifically exempts from its application parties to a polygamous marriage that is lawful in the country of which they're residents or nationals, while they are in transit through or temporarily visiting the state.
Regardless of your views about polygamy, we can question the wisdom of not only criminalizing but also now ejecting from Canada those temporary visitors who have legally entered into polygamous marriages in their home countries. My colleague, Martha Bailey, from my faculty at Queen's has pointed out that Canada's monogamous character probably is hardy enough to survive the temporary presence of polygamists on our soil. I leave the committee to think about that.
Moving on to address the issue of underage marriage, the one substantive change that the bill does propose that does not exist already is to set the minimum age of marriage at 16. Because there's no demand for marriage by those under 16, this will have little or no practical effect. However, marriage below the age of 18 is considered underage marriage and prohibited in several countries, including Russia, China, Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, and Pakistan. That list is not necessarily exhaustive, because it was all I was able to find in the time permitting me to prepare for this.
Canada is an advocate internationally for a minimum age of marriage of 18. We're actually taking a contradictory position in the international sphere versus our domestic sphere. As you know, because you've heard the testimony, UNICEF asserts that marriage below the age of 18 is a fundamental violation of human rights. The government has not explained why it chose the age of 16 as the appropriate age of marriage. Nor, as my colleague Martha Bailey points out, has it referred to the calls of international bodies, such as UNICEF, to raise the minimum age of marriage to 18.
After refraining for so long from exercising its power to set the age of marriage, it would seem advisable to take international norms into account. I would emphasize that research firmly establishes that those countries that have set the minimum age at 18 have had far more success in reducing rates of adolescent fertility over time and more successful records of promoting women's health.
I haven't had time to deal with the short title of the act. Perhaps we can deal with it during the questions, but on the substance, Canada's resources need to be dedicated to prevention not legal sanction.