Thank you, members of the committee.
I now have the pleasure to present to you our submissions on the polygamy provisions of Bill S-7.
We do not believe that the creation of a new ground of inadmissibility based on polygamy will help restrict polygamy in Canada or protect women from violence or abuse. To the contrary, we are concerned that it will actually do the opposite.
Bill S-7 states that polygamy will be interpreted in a manner consistent with paragraph 293(1)(a) of the Criminal Code, under which polygamy is now a criminal offence. Since the Criminal Code provisions have been interpreted to include both the husband and the wives involved in such relationships, the IRPA provisions will unfairly penalize women in these relationships, without regard to situations in which a woman may have been forced into such a marriage, have had no knowledge of such marriage, or have been abused.
Under current immigration law, applicants for permanent residency who are polygamous are already barred from entering Canada unless they convert their marriage to a monogamous one. They can aIso found inadmissible for criminality under the IRPA if an officer has reasonable grounds to believe that they will practice polygamy in Canada contrary to section 293 of the Criminal Code. Therefore, there are already protections under current immigration law that restrict the entry of polygamous families, and Bill S-7 provides no additional gate-keeping in that regard.
What the bill will do, however, is take away existing protections from permanent residents in Canada, and particularly put women and children at risk by creating a two-tiered system for citizens and non-citizens. Currently, once in Canada a permanent resident can be found inadmissible and be deported if he or she is convicted of polygamy under section 293 and has received a jail term of six months. Permanent residents can be aIso be found inadmissible if they had misrepresented their polygamous status in their PR application.
The creation of a separate ground of inadmissibility based on polygamy will take away from women the opportunity of a criminal trial and the requirement of a criminal conviction. Women will be further jeopardized, as they can be found inadmissible and deported more easily because of the lower standard of proof used in determining inadmissibility compared with the criminal standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
lt will aIso expose women to the loss of status in Canada, if their sponsoring spouse is deported on the basis of practising polygamy. The high risk of deportation will therefore make women in abusive situations more reluctant to seek help to leave their relationships and will trap them in those violent relationships.
A woman who comes forward to report abuse may, and also her children may, be deported along with the very husband who is being abusive to her, because of subsection 42(1) of the current IRPA. Under this section, a foreign national is inadmissible if their accompanying or, in some circumstances, their non-accompanying family member is inadmissible, or if they are an accompanying family member of an inadmissible person.
Consider the scenario, for example, in which a woman and her children have arrived in Canada with the husband on a student or work visa and now are awaiting permanent residency from within Canada as dependants in the application. If the husband engages in polygamy and is abusive towards the first wife, reporting the abuse can lead to a finding of the husband's polygamous status and can render the entire family inadmissible.