Thank you for inviting me.
My name is Preevanda Sapru.
I have listened to the presentations made by Ms. Roushan, Ms. Hirji, Ms. Desloges, and Mr. Boulakia. I fully agree with the recommendations made by my colleagues.
First of all, it is essential to have a well-functioning, fair, and formal administrative tribunal that evaluates and determines refugee claims. We are not advocating for the dismantling of the IRB at all. It would be a denial of fundamental justice to deprive refugees of the right to have an oral hearing. Despite a serious critique of the RPD as an organization, it is paramount to have an administrative quasi-judicial body that determines refugee status. To dismantle this organization would be a waste of close to 30 years of rich legal jurisprudence that is the envy of the international human rights community, as Canada has been and continues to be one of the leaders in protecting the most vulnerable people who are fleeing persecution based on one of the convention grounds. To change the nature of the quasi-judicial or administrative tribunal to that of a paper review such as a pre-removal risk assessment or a humanitarian and compassionate consideration would take away the cornerstone of the right to a fair hearing.
I've been practising as an immigration and refugee lawyer for the last 20 years before the IRB and the Federal Court of Canada. More than 30% of my clients are victims of gender violence, while others faced persecution based on sexual orientation. I also represented a number of unaccompanied minors. I have seen the culture of the RPD change from being a more open, honest, compassionate administrative body to one that systemically creates trauma, stress, anxiety, and depression for the most vulnerable refugees. In doing so, the RPD ignores its own rules, procedures, and guidelines.
Besides the problems that have already been enunciated about the particular board members and the hiring process and the complaints process, IRB as an institution is systemically creating barriers to justice by routinely denying refugees their procedural rights, such as the right to interpretation. Even when there are apparent problems with interpretation, the members plough through the hearings, forcing people to go to the refugee appeal division and Federal Court. There are long delays in processing. In addition, there are problems with the cost.
The board has been creating policies that severely limit claimants' procedural rights, such as a limitation on timelines to file evidence and a limit on the disclosure. This is a huge issue for the claimants, as it impacts their right to procedural fairness.
The other thing the board has been doing routinely is violating rules of fundamental justice when they fail to designate vulnerable persons and they fail to provide adequate accommodation to the vulnerable people. Ms. Hirji and Ms. Roushan both talked about their clients and how the rules of fundamental justice in their particular cases were violated.
In addition, the board routinely violates its own rules and procedures by hiring inexperienced and sometimes incompetent board members who have no background in refugee law, which forces refugees to proceed with expensive and time-consuming appeals to the RAD and the Federal Court. They also fail to properly evaluate the performance of problematic board members and fail to create a transparent hiring policy.
There is much that needs to be done by the IRB to meet its own objectives. The most important is to meet its international commitment to the refugees that the RPD is mandated to protect.
Besides the recommendation of previous speakers, I would go a step further and ask this committee to look at the IRB as an institution, and not just at the decision-makers. Unless the culture of the organization changes, hiring a few decision-makers would not have any impact to make IRB a functional organization.
This committee needs to look at the organizational structure. I ask this committee to look at the makeup of the organization and who's running it in March 2018. All the major players and the administrators at the IRB are white, privileged men. In my opinion and the opinion of those who appear before them on a regular basis, these are people who are absolutely out of touch with the reality of what happens in a refugee hearing.
They are the ones who hire, create policies, and make major administrative decisions. This committee needs to ask the minister to tell them the last time a woman or a man of colour led this organization. I believe it was in 1999. Interestingly, some of the most progressive IRB policies were created at that time; since then it has become a stagnant organization.
The IRB deals with people fleeing hundreds of countries of different cultures, of different norms and ways of being and behaving. There needs to be an equal representation of different cultures—at the organizational level, not just among the board members—so that there is an understanding and empathy to deal with the people they are dealing with on an ongoing basis.
This committee needs to look at whether the administrators, not just the board members, have an expertise in international human rights and in administrative and refugee law, because they are the ones who eventually will create policies that individual members have to follow. Administrators' knowledge and skill would percolate to the RPD members, as administrators would be sure to hire decision-makers who fully reflect the value of the IRB. Their knowledge and understanding of such concepts will lead to policies that are beneficial to the claimants and make it easier and less traumatic for the refugees to testify.
Right now the board is in the process of creating new policies limiting the disclosure rights of refugee claimants and for providing disclosure. The IRB administrators need to understand where these people are coming from, whether they would have access to documents, and whether they would be able to get the documents in time. To put limits on the procedural rights of the claimants in such matters is a subject that needs to be looked at by this committee.