Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for having me here today.
For the record, I'm an immigration and refugee lawyer with over 20 years of experience working with refugees, and for 19 of those years, I've been appearing before what's now known as the refugee protection division. I'm certified by the Law Society of Ontario as a specialist in both immigration and refugee law, and I'm the co-author of a legal textbook on this subject.
Imagine for a moment representing a refugee family with a teenage son who is gay. The hearing finally arrives after almost a year of waiting. You've prepared the family for questions about their credibility, and in particular you've prepared them for questions around the credibility or plausibility that their teenage son is really gay. You've assured them that questions around this subject will be respectful.
To your complete shock, the member embarks on a line of questioning of the teenage son that includes graphic questions about his sexual experiences, including sexual positions—all in front of his parents. You object several times, but you're worried about the increasing hostility in the room with the board member, who continues the line of questioning anyway.
This is something that happened to me a number of years ago, and it's a real experience. It's an extreme example, of course, but smaller kinds of this type of behaviour, unfortunately, still happen all too often. It's a topic of discussion that comes up frequently between refugee lawyers when we meet at conferences or have discussions on our email rings.
In listening to this morning's witnesses, I largely agree with what they've said. The issue not only is about the complaints system, but it's also about carefully selecting and training the right kinds of people to adjudicate refugee claims. Weeding out inappropriate personnel doesn't start at the complaints stage; it starts at the hiring and vetting stage.
The hiring process for board members has improved dramatically over the last few years since the selection process has moved from what was basically a patronage appointment system to a more merit-based system. I agree with my friend Asiya that the board should be commended for always trying to improve, and credit is certainly deserved for this move in the right direction. That said, it is still fraught with difficulties that allow people without the right knowledge and personality qualities to pass through that vetting system successfully.
With all due respect, I think my friend Bashir is confused about the appointments system. A civil service appointment doesn't mean that only civil servants can apply. Anybody can apply. It's the nature of the appointment system that is civil service, not Governor in Council.
Currently when people compete for board positions, they have to write a general civil service exam, which to my knowledge does not require any understanding of even the most basic refugee law or what it means to work with refugees. That, in my view, is unacceptable, especially when there are so many really well-qualified people out there who do have this knowledge and/or experience. Not only that, but it seems like a pretty routine thing for any job competition to ask for at least a passing knowledge of the subject matter the potential employee will be dealing with every day. Most people, in applying for any kind of job, even if they don't have that requisite knowledge, would prepare themselves by studying the basics before the interview.
Even more important than substantive knowledge, in my opinion, are the personal characteristics of the potential hire. I say this because I have met board members who at the end of the day were really excellent despite the fact that they didn't have prior exposure to the field, and what made them excellent was their personal qualities.
Keep in mind that this decision-maker is going to deal, day in and day out, with people who have been traumatized, often severely. They have trust issues, authority issues, memory issues, and flashbacks, just to name a few of the problems. They will have to be questioned thoroughly yet sensitively, and I cannot emphasize this enough: this is not a job for just anybody.
What qualities are the most important when hiring a board member? First is patience—and lots of it—to deal with people who are having a hard time telling their story. They might be uneducated and unable to express themselves in the way we like to hear, and they might not trust you initially.
Second is empathy, and by this I don't mean sympathy in terms of feeling pity for everyone. What I mean is the ability to really put yourself in someone else's shoes, to forget about your cultural bias, to feel what they must have felt, and to judge someone else not according to what you would have done in that situation, but according to what they did in that situation, taking into account their background and experiences.
Third is balanced personality—in other words, an even temperament. This one is hard to put your finger on, but when someone does or doesn't have it in a hearing room, it becomes pretty obvious pretty fast. We need someone who can keep an even keel in a hearing room when a claimant is having a meltdown or when there's a heated dispute with counsel.
Finally, we need someone who has the ability to learn and adapt quickly. Not every potentially good board member will be an expert in refugee law right away, but if they have excellent personal characteristics and at least a basic understanding of the law, do they have the kind of personality that will allow them to pick up the rest as they go?
By the way, everything that I've just told you about in the last few minutes are things that I as an employer demand in my own hiring process, even if I'm just hiring a receptionist, even if I'm just hiring an assistant. It's not a tall order; it's basic screening that any HR manager learns how to do on day one.
Many big companies nowadays screen for these qualities using personality or aptitude tests that are non-intrusive, fairly reliable, and widely available. To become a police officer in this country, every new recruit has to pass a psychological aptitude test. It's standard. Other employers do this. There's no reason why the board couldn't do it too.
The process for federal judicial appointments, I would say, is something that you should look to if you're looking for a model for an appointment process. It's not perfect, but it is pretty good, and it's better than what we have at the RPD. It's a rigorous process. It involves review by a diverse, independent panel. It changes occasionally, and one of the most important things that they do is, when they call people's references, they always ask that reference, “Who else should I be talking to about this person?” That's very key, because when you self-select your own references, you're only going to choose people who are going to say positive things about you, but you need to cast the net wider. If you really want to understand what this person is genuinely like, they need to be judged by their peers.
Again, none of this is rocket science. Other agencies are already employing these techniques for jobs that are much less sensitive with way lower stakes than life and death, which are the stakes at the refugee protection division.
Thank you.