Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 17th, 2018

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I am happy to clarify for you, Mr. Chair. I will tell you that from time to time the chair, yourself, would like to interpret things in the way that is most convenient to you. As we engage in this debate, I was advised that a ruling was made that I could not move a notice of motion on the record. Then I went on to describe the issue I would like to discuss. You're now telling me that maybe I should move a notice of motion.

My point is that you can interpret it the way it fits your argument, the way you want, but I am going to present the issues the way I would like the public to understand the situations as they are.

As to committee business, you are absolutely right that when we deal with committee business, it often goes in camera. Committee members have an opportunity to present a notice of motion. When they present it in the bilingual format, which I have done and other committee members have done, it is dealt with in camera to discuss the business of what will be studied. That's the process.

There are times when committee members would actually put a notice of motion on the public record when committee meetings are taking place. I have done it before. Other committee members have done that before. I attempted to do that today, and I was shut down. I was disallowed. I was told that I cannot do it today. In fact, I was asked why I didn't do it like everyone else in the past. Well, everyone else in the past has actually exercised both options.

My point is this: there are studies that I think are important to this committee, studies that should be part of our committee meeting. We should engage in this discussion in the public realm. I raised one issue previously. Here's another one. I don't know whether other committee members have had this experience, but I have had tons of constituents who have come to me to say that the processing time for the permanent residence applications has been so delayed that it has significantly impacted their lives and the lives of their families.

This includes the significant processing delays of applications for permanent residency submitted by Iranian nationals, many of whom are current and former international students. They cannot move forward. Their lives are held in limbo. Their processing time is far beyond the typical processing time. Some of them have been waiting for their permanent residence applications to be processed for a couple of years. I don't know how that is normal, how it is acceptable. Perhaps the committee should turn their minds to this issue as a matter of committee business.

For example, just this week constituents came to me to say they had a major situation with what is known as “lost Canadians”, an issue where people somehow cannot have their Canadian status, some of whom are affected by what's called the 28-year rule. People all of a sudden when they turn 28 are no longer Canadian citizens. They have no Canadian status. This impacts their lives in a significant way.

Second-generation individuals born outside of the country to first-generation Canadians also don't have status. This, too, impacts their lives in a significant way. This is something that was brought up to the previous minister, and the previous minister prior to departure—

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON]

I'm going to make a point of order, Mr. Chair, because I think we are delving into issues that are completely outside the scope of this debate. I have brought this up a number of times. The substantive question at hand is whether we move to the agenda or not. I think this is absolute filibustering.

We have an agenda that was agreed to and that was published. We need to follow this. All I'm asking is that we have some constructive discussion on committee business going forward. If not, we will potentially lose the effectiveness of the next two meetings.

At this point, I'm going to leave it to you. I have brought this up a number of times. The discussion Ms. Kwan is talking about is quite outside the scope of what the issue is right now, which is to go on with the agenda.

I would urge you to rule on this, and to tell us if we are actually going to have a discussion on the agenda at hand.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I'm going to tell you that the rules limit what I can do at this stage. We have an odd situation. We would be able to entertain these motions quite easily if you withdrew your motion and we continued the IRB study, which is what we are on right now. Right now, technically, we are still in part one of the meeting, which is the IRB study.

When someone duly has the floor, because we have a speakers order, Mr. Tabbara would continue and others could present notices of motion.

If you withdrew your motion, we would continue with the IRB study. We still have one of our witnesses here. We would continue that study. Mr. Tabbara has the floor. Following that, the Conservatives would have the floor, then Ms. Alleslev would have the floor, and then Ms. Kwan would have the floor, at which time it would be appropriate for her to bring notices of motion or discussion.

That is a possibility. We could continue the IRB study. If you withdrew your motion, we could do that.

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON]

Mr. Chair, at this point it's redundant. We have less than 10 minutes, so I withdraw my motion at this point.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Your motion is withdrawn.

We will continue then on the IRB study.

Mr. Tabbara, Mr. Maguire gave up his last minute and a half. You had his minute and a half, but you now have five minutes.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witness for patiently waiting. I'm sorry that you had to go through all that.

I want to continue on with some of the questioning that my colleague Mr. Whalen has talked about.

We had a submission from Mr. Ellis here. He said that replacing the IRB's new complaints process with an external complaints process would be “ill-advised.” We heard a lot of testimony from a lot of witnesses that they wanted to have an external review. Mr. Ellis, in his submission, is countering that, saying that it would be better to have a different appointment process.

I want to hear your take on that. I want to bring the two different views this committee has heard and I want to get your opinion on those two different views.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Ms. finlay, you may be delayed, but you're welcome to comment on that.

[barbara findlay]

Okay, sorry.

Was Mr. Ellis addressing the different appointment processes for the board or for the committee that would consider complaints?

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Just in terms of appointing judges.... He mentioned in his submission there should be a different system for appointing judges.

[barbara findlay]

I'm not sure he would agree with what I think the system ought to include, but I certainly think that potential appointees should be evaluated on the question of whether or not they understand the social context approach to decision-making. In particular, since we're talking about queer claimants, they should have an understanding of the ways in which being queer has two significant differences other than potential persecution grounds: one being that they may be severed from their families, and the second being that they may feel they have to continue to keep a secret, so that will impact on their decision-making about queer claims.

I continue to believe that an independent body to assess complaints is not only desirable but in everybody's interest, including the board's.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

That would be a different point of view from Mr. Ellis', and I just wanted to get that on the record.

In terms of an internal review—external review, sorry—can you give us your thoughts on how that would look, how that would play out, what you've experienced, and how this external review would help a lot of these claimants?

[barbara findlay]

I have not had experience with the internal review process. Frankly, I am of the opinion that it is mostly a window-dressing process at the moment. Were there an independent process, I think the model for the process could be adopted either from judicial complaints or from, for example, university complaints, There ought to be someone trauma informed and knowledgeable in medicine—they call them patient navigators—at the intake point who understands the context and the situation of a queer claimant wanting to make a complaint who could then assist them with the process. It wouldn't necessarily have to be lawyer driven.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

And then, finally, here is one of my last questions. Mr. Ellis mentioned that the strength of the IRB was on the “independence of the individual adjudicator”. Would you agree with that, that's where the strength lies?

[barbara findlay]

The strength of the IRB depends upon the judicial independence—

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

The “independence of the individual adjudicator”.

[barbara findlay]

Yes, provided that those individuals have had adequate context–specific training about the situation, in particular of queers. There's a tension, sometimes artificial tension, posed between the right of decision-makers to make their decision untrammelled by any contextual information, and the claims that people should be trained and educated. In my view, there is not a conflict between those two things.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I'm afraid that I need to cut you off there.

I'm going to check with the Conservatives.

You have a five-minute round. Does anybody want time?

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

No. I thought we would let the witnesses go home at one point, Mr. Chair, so no.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

All right.

Ms. Alleslev, for five minutes.

[Leona Alleslev, Liberal, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Well this is my absolute privilege, because I wasn't supposed to have any time to ask you questions and I wanted to. Thank you for still being here and giving me the opportunity.

Earlier in your testimony, you spoke around standards and how important it would be to have the standards or code of conduct, and then consequently to understand what the consequences or the repercussions might be in terms of not meeting those standards.

I wonder if you could expand a bit on that and give us some idea of whether or not the training process is impacted by lack of clarity around standards, and therefore you don't know what you're training to. How, in a quasi-judicial body, would we be able to incorporate those standards and the consequences into the training and appointment process, from your perspective?

[barbara findlay]

I think Ms. Robinson had an excellent suggestion earlier in terms of the training, that it include training from the perspective of potential claimants. Whether you have that by way of an advisory committee or video vignettes or whatever, that's number one.

Number two, the content of the training would include how to ask questions. I have real sympathy for the job of the IRB, because you have to ask extremely sensitive questions and evaluate the answers for credibility when you know that the person may have had to lie to keep alive for all of their lives. It's not an easy thing, so it's training in that particular area of how to ask those questions.

I think that the standards are possible to articulate. For example, misgendering a transperson, using derogatory or dated language like “homosexual” or “transsexual”, which is likely to create the impression in the claimant that the board either doesn't know or doesn't care about their individual situation. There are specific kinds of things, such as any kinds of comments that are likely to have a derisive impact or suggest that the claimant is somehow morally or religiously bad.

It's not difficult. You think about standards that will, quite apart from the substance of the complaint, count as whether or not the member is delivering a competent service as an adjudicator.

[Leona Alleslev, Liberal, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

How would we go about defining those standards? Should the complaints process or the review of individual's performance be limited to when we get complaints, or should the review of performance against the standard and then that follow-on training be ongoing, independent of the complaints process?

[barbara findlay]

I think both things should happen. There should be ongoing training, and there should be responsiveness to specific kinds of complaints. Formulating the standards of which I speak, I think can only be done with the assistance of either refugee claimants or their representatives, as an advisory committee, because you can't necessarily know what counts as offensive or demeaning or shutting down stuff.

[Leona Alleslev, Liberal, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

So you're saying a critical component to defining the standards would be from past refugee board appellants, not only from the refugee board institution itself.

[barbara findlay]

That's absolutely crucial.