Evidence of meeting #124 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was countries.
A video is available from Parliament.
Director, Nadia's Initiative
I know first-hand of some who were registered to be resettled in Canada but were not. Some were resettled as part of a family, but the rest of the family was never resettled and they were both survivors.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
On that notion, is it possible for you to send the committee a written submission with respect to that, the details of the situation you have outlined so that the committee can bring it in front of the government, to the minister's attention, for him to follow up?
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Thank you very much.
I just discovered through this initiative that we have in Vancouver nine Yazidi families and about 37 people. Of those numbers, though, not all are new arrivals. I believe there's only one family of new arrivals. That is to say, we have existing Yazidi families that have been in the Lower Mainland for some time, and they actually kicked right into action to support the one family that arrived in the Lower Mainland.
Some of the issues from a previous study were that we needed to help and ensure that there's a bit of a community for the Yazidi families that are here so that they are not so isolated. Even though that target of 1,200 has not been met, what's concerning to me is the suggestion that there are still some 3,000 Yazidis survivors who are identified and who could benefit from resettlement. Is that the information you have as well?
Director, Nadia's Initiative
I believe some of the families that are in Canada, some of whom arrived through sponsorships and some whom arrived through UNHCR from Turkey and Greece, are not all included in that program, the 1,200. That being said, yes, there are about 3,000 survivors in IDP camps and in Sinjar who are seeking asylum outside of Iraq. We have been able to resettle some in Australia, over 1,000. That program to Australia is ongoing, but as far as I know, the program to Canada has been stopped completely. No Yazidis are being resettled at this time at all.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
That's my understanding, too. You're right, many of them have been resettled as a result of the privately sponsored sponsorship program.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
I think the government counted those numbers of the privately sponsored into this 1,200, and it counted the 1,200 into the Syrian refugee initiative, so that is not an additional number. This is my understanding of how it made the calculation. It's double counting on many fronts, if you will.
I'm going to just park that for a minute. When you say that Australia is doing this as an ongoing program, can you elaborate on that? What else is it doing?
Director, Nadia's Initiative
With the Australian government, the first group that we did—I actually handed over the applications when I was in Iraq working there—were Yazidi refugees who came from Syria to camps in Kurdistan, north of Iraq. Then we started taking Yazidi survivors. We specifically took survivors, women and their families, and we continue to register these groups and take them to Australia. This is an ongoing program. Nadia visited Australia. I met with the Prime Minister of Australia at the time, and Australia agreed to resettle some survivors from Iraq.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant
Thank you very much. We need to end there.
Mr. Whalen, for the last round, you have about five minutes.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you to all of our witnesses for coming.
The government has a public response on this. In the 2017 commitment, there have been over 1,000 Yazidi women and girls among the 1,300 people who came under that program. Of them, 1,216 were GARs, 88 were privately sponsored, and it met the commitment within the timelines.
Budget 2018 has additional monies to bring some 1,000 other women and girls who are international victims of sexual violence and who are also refugees. There's a commitment there, but one of the reasons we're here is to figure out how Canada should best marshal its resources to respond to migration challenges in the 21st century.
I'll turn to you, Mr. Bach. In terms of best practices, if Canada were to spend $100 million on an initiative in a particular war zone, or in a particular disaster or crisis area, to assist the people both to return to their homes or come to Canada, or resettle in a neighbouring country, how should that large expenditure be broken down in terms of both providing hope to the victims but also addressing the problems?
Do you guys have any sense of what types of percentages you would like to see in terms of levels of effort? Your organization seems to have run the full gamut of effort.
Secretary General, Danish Refugee Council
Yes.
I think it's very difficult to say how you can split up $100 million, but I think it's very important to understand that these solutions are closely connected. The ability to convince a country like Uganda to provide durable solutions and give refugees a piece of land, to make sure that the kids can go to school and that they can go to a hospital, and that the parents can get some kind of a livelihood, is closely related to the financial support that countries like Canada will give. There's also the important gesture you will give in terms of engaging in resettlement of some of the most vulnerable refugees out of Uganda.
Those three solutions are heavily linked together. That's what you hear again and again. Just yesterday, I sat in Geneva with the Kenyan ambassador. They host hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia and from South Sudan. They emphasize again and again that resettlement and financing are key elements in a common package that would allow them to take greater responsibility and provide durable solutions to the Somalian and South Sudanese refugees in Kenya.
You can say that you can't split it up. That's often seen in Europe right now. People say that it's better to help in the area, rather than allow people to gain asylum and resettlement inside of Europe, but you cannot split it that easily. I believe that Canada is actually a model country in providing both a fairly large resettlement scheme and generous humanitarian aid, but in order to have better solutions, you need to work on the humanitarian-development nexus. Allow more of your support, the $100 million, or how much of it you would use in Uganda, say, or Lebanon, to come in and leverage durable solutions. I think that's critical.
We way too often asset the water trucking in northern Uganda, or food supply, instead of livelihoods and proper wells with solar cells that can provide water to both communities and refugees.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
This is very instructive.
This is a question that I've asked a previous witness earlier on in a parallel to this study, and perhaps you can answer it: How much should we be focusing, not only on the sustainable development goals of the migrant population that's on the move but also the host countries? Is it better to be focusing on making sure that the country is supported so that it is better able to make its own self-styled decisions on how to address migrants within its territory?
How closely does there have to be a quid pro quo dictated by us, and how much can we just make sure that they're well supported and they can make the right decisions?
Secretary General, Danish Refugee Council
We are a little bit concerned about making migration part of your strict allocation criteria for your development or humanitarian aid, thereby linking migration policies and humanitarian issues and, as you said it rightly, supporting sustainable development goals linked to migration. That is happening a lot. A lot of European development and humanitarian assistance is more closely linked to, basically, insisting on certain migration outcomes. This can have, in the short term, negative repercussions. A good example is how development aid is now conditional on increased border control on some of the routes in Africa, closing borders implicitly in western Africa, and breaking down some of the trade and development opportunities that the free trade areas of ECOWAS have already developed.
Here, you have a situation where you make short-term migration decisions that undermine some of the benefits of free trade and free movement in a region like west Africa, thereby having negative implications for both refugee migration outcomes in the longer run. So, yes, we need to support host communities and countries in reaching sustainable development goals as a long-term solution.
We need to understand, as it was said by the other panel as well, that in the short term, economic growth and opportunities will most likely lead to increased migration. Only when you narrow down the difference between a recipient and a sending country to around 1:6 will migration flows even off and migrants stay at home. Be very careful not to link development outcomes and migration decisions too closely, because the short-term nature of those decisions will then undermine long-term development endeavours.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant
To all our witnesses, thank you.
I will just remind you that if there is anything you come across or have written or that your organizations have written that you would like to submit to the committee, we are receiving briefs over the next several weeks. Please send anything you think could be helpful for us as we investigate the very large question of Canada's response to a changing set of circumstances vis-à-vis migration.
Again, thank you, to Cambridge and to Copenhagen, and I wish you a good evening.
The meeting is adjourned.