Citizenship and Immigration Committee on July 24th, 2018

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I'm afraid I need to—

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

I think what we've demonstrated is that we are watching those needs very carefully and that they are taken into account year by year in the budgeting process.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you, Minister.

We need to move to Ms. Damoff now.

Welcome to the committee.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Congratulations, Minister Blair, and welcome, Minister Goodale. It's great to have you both here.

You've talked about how the government has a plan and how our plan is working. One of the things my Conservative colleagues have called for is to make the entire Canada-U.S. border an official point of entry. Is this feasible? Would it enhance public safety? Is it a good idea?

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Ms. Damoff, the concept, as I understand it, is that you would have every inch of the Canadian border declared to be a port of entry. That means a port of entry that is 9,000 kilometres long. There are several problems with that.

First of all, if you are declaring it a port of entry, it would need to be populated with the necessary border officers to administer all of the responsibilities of the CBSA across a 9,000-kilometre stretch of space, which would involve the hiring of literally thousands of border officers to provide any credible administration of a port of entry that ran for 9,000 kilometres. That's a practical problem.

Second, you would need to have American counterparts on the other side of the border for that full expanse. If, for example, your purpose is to turn back people at the border, you would need someone to turn them back to. If the Americans don't follow the same practice, then you have a one-way port of entry, which obviously doesn't solve the problem.

The third issue is that if you're going to spread the venue like that, you are, quite frankly, spreading the risk. The issues being dealt with at Roxham Road are indeed challenging, and all credit to CBSA, RCMP, IRCC, and the others who are called upon to handle that physical situation. They are managing the situation in a way that is safe and secure for Canadians as well as for the people they are dealing with. If you have an expanse of 9,000 kilometres, you are going to have an enormous enforcement problem that is a practical impossibility. In fact, you would make the border less safe, not more safe, by the concept that has been proposed.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you, Minister.

I have a chart that one of my colleagues put together showing the asylum claimants from the year 2000. We talked about 2001. We see that when there is turmoil in the world, when people are feeling that the world is in crisis, they are looking to Canada as a place to come to. We saw it in 2001, and we also saw it when the world financial crisis happened between 2007 and 2009. We are seeing it again. There have been these ebbs and flows for many years, in terms of the number of asylum claimants coming here. My question is a simple one: Is there a crisis in Canada right now with asylum claimants?

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

There is a challenge, but it is not a crisis. In fact, the government departments that have been charged with responsibility for dealing with this—from the senior management in those departments and the ministerial level right down to the officers in the field who carry the practical day-to-day responsibility for administering the law—have done a very strong job in making sure that every Canadian law is fully enforced, and it is, and that every Canadian obligation in the international arena under the United Nations is fully honoured, and that is being done. We have accomplished those imperatives in each and every case, and we have received a very strong commendation for how we are handling this from the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which has been very clear and strong in its praise for the CBSA officers, the RCMP officers, and the employees of IRCC who have dealt with the human reality of the flow across the border and have done so in a way that is safe and secure, and at the same time humane.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

We hear the term “illegal”, that these asylum seekers are illegal. You talked about our obligations under international law. Are these asylum seekers illegal when they are coming into Canada and when we are accepting them into our asylum system?

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

The law says that if you cross into Canada, you are to cross at a port of entry. If a person is trying to cross into the country beyond a port of entry, outside of a port of entry, they are not following the law. But in section 133 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, it is very clear that however a person crosses the border, once they are on Canadian soil, due process has to be applied and you have to hear whether they have a legitimate claim or not. If they do not have a legitimate claim, then they are to be removed from the country. If they do have a legitimate claim—in other words, they convince the IRB or the Federal Court that they are a refugee in need of Canada's protection—then the law clearly, in section 133, says that the manner by which they entered the country is no longer relevant or actionable.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Is our plan working, Minister, in dealing with the asylum claimants who are coming across the border? Is the government's plan working?

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

In my judgment it is, Ms. Damoff. It's working in the sense that every law is being enforced and all of our international obligations are being respected. The treatment of people at the border is in humane and compassionate terms. The level of collaboration with provinces and municipalities has been very strong in terms of how people are managed and dealt with after they have, in fact, crossed the border, and cleared those stages of security clearance and in terms of the other investigations that are done.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you, Minister.

Mr. Poilievre.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Thank you.

Minister Goodale, we have literally thousands of kilometres of highway that are enforced by the RCMP, which reports to you. Do we have RCMP eyes on every hundred metres of that highway in order to enforce those laws?

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Not all the time.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Thank you. That does answer my question.

You've mentioned that we cannot enforce the safe third party agreement across the entire Canadian border because we cannot have eyes on the entire Canadian border at all times. In other words, you've said that because we could not afford—and you're right—to put officials on every square inch of the Canadian border, we could not possibly enforce the safe third country agreement across that space.

You rightly acknowledged, though, that the RCMP is able to enforce traffic laws and traffic rules, right across the thousands and thousands of kilometres of highway that we already have in existence. What would stop the government, then, from simply applying the safe third party agreement to the entire border for the purposes of illegal border crossings?

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Mr. Poilievre, I mentioned at least three difficulties with that particular proposal.

One is the requirement for officers, which you in your question have acknowledged, and, I gather, agreed with, that makes that type of border enforcement rather impractical.

The second part of it is that if you have a border port of entry that is 9,000 kilometres long, you need to have, correspondingly, cooperation from the United States on the other side of the border—which they are, I think it's fair to say, not likely to do. You have no counterpart.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Have you asked?

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

It is an international boundary.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Have you asked?

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

I have not asked that specific question.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Wait a second here. You have not—

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Mr. Poilievre, I would be delighted to—

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Excuse me, you just answered my question.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

—and I'll be very quick to report their answer to you.