Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Oct. 18th, 2018

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

Thanks.

We've heard that there has been some lack of communication in some areas on government-sponsored refugees. Can you offer us some solutions on that? The community options are great, but what can we do with some of the other areas?

[Jennifer Bond]

I think the government-assisted refugees program in Canada is also one of the best in the world. We do have a lot of investment in integration supports, which are available to all immigrants, including our government-assisted refugees.

One of the things that has happened in recent years since the surge in Syrian arrivals in 2015 is a lot of innovation at the community level and, subsequently, some government investment in that innovation, including figuring out how to take the best parts of sponsorship and then try to provide them to government-assisted refugees.

There are some interesting pilot programs now that try to match the sponsorship group types of communities around government-assisted refugees, because my own view is that there's no substitute for that very direct multiplicity of supports. We can invest in other kinds of supports, but nothing's going to change having a neighbour who wants to help you.

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

I'm going to give my colleague a question.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Edmonton Manning, CPC]

Thank you.

Good afternoon. I came back just last week from visiting a Syrian refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon. As well, I was in Amman and met with refugee families.

We met with families. One of the concerns was that some of the families have been approved to come to Canada and will be located in Ottawa, and one family doesn't want to come to Ottawa. They want to go to Winnipeg, where they have family members or community members who they know. The dilemma is that the decision has been made for that family to be located in Ottawa. What is the solution in cases like this, in your opinion?

[Jennifer Bond]

It's a great question. We refer to it as the problem of “destining”. Where is the destination for the refugee? There's a different approach in Canada for government-assisted refugees than there is for sponsored refugees. Government-assisted refugees are generally destined to whatever city where they have indicated there's a family tie or any other tie—a friend or some other connection.

Sponsorship is a little more challenging because you obviously need to be destined to the city where your sponsorship group is located. That does create a tension for some newcomers, who are desperate, of course, for a new opportunity to get out of a terrible situation. If the sponsorship group is not in the same location as their family member, that can create a tension.

In Canada, there is a policy not to destine, not to match the UNHCR-referred refugee to a sponsorship group away from the family members, recognizing that tension, but where it's a named case, it's really beyond the control of the policy-making branch. It sits with the sponsorship group and the newcomers to try to triangulate that tension.

[Ziad Aboultaif]

Should the policy change by any chance or be updated to...?

[Jennifer Bond]

The current Canadian policy for both the sponsored referred refugees and the government-assisted refugees is to take into account in destining decisions the location of any family or close personal links.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you.

Mr. Sarai.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Thank you, Ms. Bond.

It's quite enlightening to find out that we in Canada have a unique system and one of the best. It's great to know that more than 300,000 have come through that system.

One of the challenges we've seen in various studies here is that when we have a selection-based system—and I'm not critical of the system, but I'm worried—usually communities tend to...not all of them. A lot of them invite refugees from various cultures and different religions and groups, but a lot of times we culturally pick out ones that are more close to us, and what happens is that those with support networks in Canada get invited, but those who might be more vulnerable get left behind because they have maybe no connection in Canada. An example was the Yazidis. They had no roots here, so there was nobody really calling for them, except for one or two groups.

How do you balance that in comparison to government sponsorship of refugees, which turns a blind eye to that and only looks at vulnerability and those classes? This system is great. It's absolutely correct that they have a higher success at integration into Canada and resettlement; however, that is the one concern. Have there been any ways that you think we can address that concern?

[Jennifer Bond]

I'll point you to the question from Mr. Tilson around the blended visa officer referred, the BVOR model, which really tries to address that concern by saying we'll take UNHCR-referred refugees, drawing on the expertise in the field to identify the people who need resettlement on the basis of a series of internationally approved criteria, and then we will match them with the best integration tool we have, which is community sponsorship.

That BVOR program in Canada is reasonably modest beside our naming program, but that is the program that is being replicated in other parts of the world. It does speak to the tension that you've just mentioned. Again, I'll come back to the fact that all of these programs have different policy features around who is being protected, and that's a different conversation about how to balance those different policy drivers. None of those policy drivers prevent us from looking at this broad form of community-based welcome and integration.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

This is great.

I think you need both. I think you need people who want to help those they know. That's essential, but you also want to not forget about those who are left behind. There are a lot of groups who would like to sponsor anyone, obviously, based on vulnerability and that would be helpful.

The other aspect, which is almost what Mr. Aboultaif had stated, is actually the opposite of that. In some cases people want to go to regions like Vancouver or Toronto where they have community, but the need is actually in a lot of other places. Atlantic Canada has done a special study. Atlantic Canada needs immigrants. It has a receding population in many cities and provinces. How can we encourage residents in communities there to sponsor refugees like this and then help them settle and establish roots there?

Have there been successful models or organizations that have done this that we can emulate?

[Jennifer Bond]

Absolutely.

I'll point to the number I mentioned: 400 Canadian communities have engaged in sponsorship coast to coast just in the last two and a half years. By contrast, our government-assisted refugees have been resettled to about 32 cities across the country. They go to the major urban centres.

One of the things sponsorship lets us do is diversify the range of communities that can support refugees because they're not as dependent on professionalized services. You don't need a language school as long as your group comes up with some plan to teach language. You can be very creative in what that looks like. The government has to be satisfied that it's a responsible plan, but it's not contingent on a big language school in downtown Toronto, for example.

It addresses, also, that need—not only in Canada; Australia's very serious about this model for the same reasons—to try to deal with depopulation of rural communities, and there are lots of success stories in Canada.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Would it be a good idea to, perhaps, prioritize those communities that have an abundant need as opposed to others so we can...? Canada is lucky. We're one of the few countries in the world where we have more of a demand for sponsored refugees than we actually have the ability to bring in and settle, under our levels, which is unique to pretty much any country in the world.

Would it be better to perhaps prioritize those that need them the most in those vital areas?

[Jennifer Bond]

It's an interesting suggestion.

I think what it does is ask us to consider a different policy problem and see whether this would be a solution. The destining decisions now have not been based on meeting the economic needs of Canada from a population perspective. The policy drivers have been around family reunification, humanitarian stream and what we are trying to do in this global displacement crisis and how we can leverage communities to do it.

I think there could be some risks in terms of prioritizing particular areas or particular parts of the country. Right now there's a tremendous outpouring of interest in the program, so I'd hesitate to quash that by suggesting we're only going to engage communities in certain parts of the country, but it's interesting. I know the Atlantic immigration pilot is likewise trying to think about how we use a traditional immigration policy fix to deal with some other challenges too.

It's an interesting suggestion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I think that's the end. I want to thank you.

Yesterday I was reading a newsletter from a United Church in Toronto, not in my riding. I wish it were. They have had 12 in the last three years, 12 successful sponsorships with teams. They've had seven second sponsorships from the same 12, two in process and four new groups just forming to get ready to apply. One congregation of one church with 300 members has done over 20 sponsorships in three years.

Now they're concerned about everything else—employment, housing, transit, the poor, all of those things—because they've lived the experience. It's one church.

That's my sermon.

We're going to suspend for a moment and thank you for your time with us.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

We'll come back to order. Thank you, witnesses, for waiting. I know we had a bit of a slow start today.

We are continuing, as I said in the first part of the meeting, our study on migration challenges and opportunities for Canada in the 21st century. It's a large study to find out what in the world is going on with respect to migration. Is Canada responding to it in the best possible ways? We're a little all over the map. We're looking at economic migration, forced migration and everything in between. Gradually, I am hoping that what will emerge is a comprehensive report that we can submit to Parliament, and that the government will pay attention and make some changes to our overall response to migration.

We're going to begin with Professor Macklin in Toronto, because you're coming to us via teleconference and in case we lose you, it's good to have you go first.

Thank you for coming to our committee again. You're a regular witness for us and it's good to have you here.

[Professor Audrey Macklin, Director, Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies, University of Toronto, Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers]

Thank you for this opportunity to appear.

I have been asked to represent the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, and I will be making some submissions relevant to their position. I am open to discussing larger issues with immigration, as well, in response to questions.

It is my understanding that a significant issue before the community relates to the safe third country agreement, forced migration, irregular entrants and so on. I think that I will begin by reminding this committee that in 2002, this very Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration addressed two issues that are relevant to current concerns and proposals about the safe third country agreement. This was in anticipation of signing that agreement.

The first question that the committee addressed was this: Why not have the safe third country agreement apply inland, that is, at inland offices and so on? That issue was discussed at some length in the committee's proceedings. Here is what the committee said:

The fact that inland claims are not covered is due, in part, to lessons that have been learned from the European experience. In implementing safe third country regimes, some countries had to establish time-consuming and costly processes for inland claims. It is understandable that the government would like to avoid diverting resources to a procedure intended to establish the inland claimants’ route to Canada, rather than using that time and money to actually decide their refugee claims.

That is a quote from the committee's report in 2002.

I would suggest to you that there is nothing about the current state of affairs that warrants a different answer to the question of whether one should attempt to apply the safe third country agreement inland or, indeed, along the full length of the Canadian border, which I understand has also been a subject of discussion. It was not feasible then. The committee recognized it, and it's not feasible now.

Secondly, the committee also addressed a concern raised by some experts who testified before it in December 2002 that implementing the safe third country agreement at ports of entry along the land border would simply lead to more people trying to enter irregularly between designated border ports and possibly with the assistance of smugglers.

I should say that this fear didn't seem to come to be realized, at least not until the last couple of years, although there is no evidence that I know of that suggests that there is any significant involvement of smugglers. However, there certainly has been, in the last couple of years, a rise in irregular crossings. Here is what the committee had to say about the risk that the safe third country agreement might, in fact, generate irregular crossings between border posts:

The Committee recommends that, as part of the monitoring of the implementation of the Agreement, the issues of “irregular migration” and people-smuggling be closely watched. Should the Agreement fail to decrease the number of claims being referred to the Immigration and Refugee Board, and should an increase in the number of illegal—

It called it illegal. I'll call it irregular.

—entries to Canada be apparent, the government must be prepared to exercise its authority to suspend or terminate the Agreement.

That is what the committee had to say in 2002. If, in fact, there was an increase in the number of irregular entries because of the agreement, the committee should be prepared to recommend to the government that it suspend or terminate the agreement. Really, I would just encourage this committee to consider heeding the recommendations of its predecessors.

In the debates around this issue, I think it's important to think about what kind of problem one wants to solve here. Is the problem that one identifies irregular entries across the border, or is the problem the arrival of people seeking refugee protection? If the problem is irregular entry, then I think everybody knows that irregular entry would pretty much evaporate overnight if the agreement was suspended, and that the obstacles to doing that, as I understand it, are political, if I can put it that way, not principled.

If the objective is to stop refugee claimants from reaching Canada, I understand then that the fear is that suspending the safe third country agreement will not achieve that goal because more people will show up at designated ports of entry to enter Canada as refugee claimants than currently cross irregularly. I have two responses to that.

First, as an empirical matter, that's not obvious to me, given how well-known, in particular, the Roxham Road crossing has become. If people want to enter Canada to claim refugee status from the United States, I think the publicity around Roxham Road is pretty clear. It's not obvious that suspending the agreement so that people could enter through regular ports of entry would lead to a significant spike in the number of entries.

Second and more importantly, I think, deterring refugee claimants from claiming refugee status in Canada is not a valid policy objective. Canada signed on to the refugee convention in 1969, and it did so voluntarily. No one twisted Canada's arm. Nobody forced Canada to sign the refugee convention.

When it did sign, it promised the international community that, if people reached our borders and met the refugee definition, then they would be protected. When people ask for refugee protection, they're simply asking Canada to fulfill its promise, which is a promise that's not contained in a tweet by the Prime Minister or anything like that. It's a promise contained in an international convention: if you reach our borders and you meet the refugee definition, we won't return you to a place where you might fear persecution.

That's really what I'd like to start with with respect to this debate around irregular entries. There's more to say, and I'm happy to answer questions.

In respect of the difficulties processing refugee claims now and the additional resource demands that imposes, I acknowledge that there are increased resource demands. Not all of them are due to events in the last couple of years around irregular entries. Some of them are the result of prior policy changes under an earlier government that led to thousands of cases being in a backlog that could not be addressed because, effectively, the Immigration and Refugee Board was starved of resources. Those legacy cases are a problem, but not a problem because of irregular border crossings.

Perhaps in closing I'll just shift course a little, knowing that your mandate is broader than refugees, to just say this. A recent report indicated that refugees over time perform as well or better than native-born Canadians as economic actors. That is to say, after about 25 years, their income earnings actually surpass those of native-born Canadians.

Why do I mention this? I think it's important to consider in the way we talk about refugees and other immigrant classes that there's an implicit hierarchy, that people who are admitted because they have a well-founded fear of persecution are in some sense going to be inferior as immigrants to others, that people admitted as economic immigrants are the better immigrants, and that family class lies somewhere in between.

I only want to point out that the empirical evidence about economic attainment does not seem to sustain that, and frankly, even if there were a slight difference in the economic performance over time, what is remarkable is how little difference there is. That is to say, despite the extraordinary efforts that are put into our immigration system to sift through who we think will be the best economic actors and to admit refugees out of a sense of humanitarianism, if not a sense of rectifying injustice, they all do just fine.

Maybe that's an important message to take forward in thinking about how to improve our immigration and refugee policies going forward, to recognize that the categories that we put people into do not fully comprehend who they are. Refugees are also people who work hard, family class members might have also been fleeing persecution, and economic actors might also have relatives here. The categories into which we put them don't comprehend who they are and certainly don't exhaust or predict the contributions that they make.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you very much.

We'll go to Professor Purkey first, because you came the farthest.

[Professor Anna Purkey, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Legal Studies, St. Jerome's University, As an Individual]

Thank you very much. I'd first like to thank you for the invitation to appear here. It is a privilege.

I am a lawyer by training. In fact, Professor Macklin was my master's adviser years ago. Many years ago I also worked here at the Department of Justice. I am also a professor of legal studies at St. Jerome's University in Waterloo, where my research focuses on protracted refugee situations and forced migration in an international context. It's moving a little bit away from what you have seen this afternoon.

I think perhaps the starting point for my comments is a recognition that human migration is necessary to both individuals and states and that it is inevitable. The drive to seek out a place where one can live and work in dignity, and where one can create a secure future for one's family is stronger than any restrictionist policy. Indeed, the only truly effective way to manage these movements is to increase the number and variety of legal pathways to migration and to focus on facilitation rather than restriction.

Every individual has the right to live a dignified, secure life. Canada, as a member of the international community, has a role to play and, one might even say, an obligation to assist in this.

Between Canada's refugee determination system and our private sponsorship program, as you've heard, Canada is clearly a leader in terms of domestic refugee processing. But Canada also has an opportunity today to be a leader in terms of international refugee governance. If we are to do so, then there are a few points that I think we need to pay attention to.

My first comment pertains to the issue of responsibility sharing. However exemplary our system, the number of refugees resettled to Canada is insignificant compared to both the absolute number of refugees seeking protection and, perhaps more importantly, the number of refugees who find some form of protection in developing countries.

At our peak, we resettled 47,000 refugees, but this pales in comparison to the millions of refugees we find in Lebanon, in Bangladesh, in Kenya and in Turkey. We benefit from the generosity of these states and from the reality that most refugees will seek and obtain some form of protection within their region of origin.

The system, however, is not sustainable without substantial ongoing assistance. This assistance can take many different forms. It can be financial aid. It can be development grants, support to UNHCR and increased numbers for resettlement. But whatever its form, as part of the global system of responsibility sharing, Canada and other states of the global north need to increase our assistance and ensure that our assistance is effective.

Some of the strategies that could be used in order to achieve this goal include, for instance, guaranteeing aid over a longer funding cycle so that host states and international organizations are able to plan, invest and strategize over more than a two-, three- or four-year period. Similarly, support obviously needs to be provided not only to refugees but also to the communities that host and support them, and perhaps most critically, the absolute level of assistance needs to be increased to address the consistent UNHCR budget shortfalls, which mean that many refugees end up not receiving the aid they need and to which they are entitled.

An Oxfam report, by timely coincidence, was released earlier this week. It noted that Canada's international assistance spending is at a near historic low—only 0.26% of gross national income as opposed to the UN's aid target of 0.7%.

Through the fortunate accident of geography—the fact that we live on a very big island—and through the effective use of deliberate policies of deterrence, the global north, and North America in particular, has managed to largely outsource its refugee protection obligations. This isn't sustainable over the long term.

This leads me to my second point, which, since I am a lawyer, is perhaps my pet project. It has to do with law and rights. If Canada is to be a leader in global refugee governance, it must espouse and promote a law- and rights-based approach. In recent years, we've seen what is often referred to as a thinning of international refugee law. Perhaps the best example of this is indeed the global compact on refugees. The compact has its benefits, but ultimately it is a voluntary agreement that imposes no legal obligations on states.

Consequently, there is a risk that the non-binding compact will undermine the existing legal framework under the 1951 refugee convention by prioritizing the charity and humanitarian-based understanding of refugee protection and assistance as opposed to the existing law-based understanding. States cannot be allowed to use the global compact to pay lip service to the principles of international co-operation and responsibility sharing, while ultimately offering little in the way of defined commitments or concrete results, and at the same time failing to meet their existing human rights obligations.

Similarly, the increased use by states of bilateral arrangements, such as safe third country agreements, has the potential to undermine the existing multilateral legal framework, which is critical to an effective response to forced migration, being as it is a challenge that is international in both scope and nature. As a leader, Canada should reaffirm its commitment to the international legal regime that not only ensures and protects the rights of refugees, but ensures and protects the right of all human beings. This includes, for instance, continuing to advocate for the ratification of international refugee and human rights agreements and ensuring that we lead by example, for instance, by ratifying the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, to which we are not a party, and by rethinking the safe third country agreement between Canada and the United States.

My third point pertains to the connected issues of pathways to migration and durable solutions.

In perhaps the greatest tragedy of the current international system, millions of lives are being spent in protracted limbo, where refugees and other forced migrants survive in temporary, insecure situations without legal status or the full benefits of the rights to which they are entitled. The loss and the waste of human potential is staggering. To this end, states must be called upon to think creatively about offering alternative pathways for migration, and complementary protection, for instance, through educational opportunities and alternative work programs, and this in addition to the three durable solutions of resettlement, repatriation and local integration.

If we are to do this, it is also critical that these approaches do not render the status of migrants and refugees even more insecure than they are today and do not undermine the strength and certainty of citizenship. Thus we must ensure that state policies and practices respect the inherent rights and dignity of refugees and migrants despite their status as non-citizens. We must continue to recognize the essential role that legal status and citizenship plays, as well as individual agency and legal, economic and physical integration in the search for durable solutions.

In closing, we are facing an increasing challenge on the international front. The increasing number of nationalist, populist political movements in the world today poses a huge challenge to those of us who seek an international system of migration governance, but it is my hope as an advocate, as a lawyer, and particularly as a Canadian citizen, that the Canadian government will take the opportunity that is presented to it and use this time, use this chance, to lead in this way in terms of the international community, not only in the domestic context.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you very much.

Professor Liew.

[Professor Jamie Liew, Associate Professor and Refugee Lawyer, Faculty of Law, Common Law Section, University of Ottawa, As an Individual]

Thank you.

I want to applaud the committee for undertaking this study. Thank you for your invitation.

My name is Jamie Liew. I am a refugee lawyer and an associate professor from the faculty of law at the University of Ottawa. In my limited time today, I am submitting three recommendations for your consideration.

The first is to repeal section 117(9)(d) of the regulations. I am providing to the committee a written copy of research co-authored with two other lawyers that calls for this repeal. It is a regulation that excludes a member of the family class—a family member—who was not disclosed or examined before the sponsor came to Canada. The regulation imposes a lifetime bar to refugees and other migrants from sponsoring their family due to non-disclosure of a family member. That has nothing to do with fraud in 90% of the cases that we examined. Tragic reasons like an assumed death of a child leads to permanent family separation.

This regulation is overly broad and unnecessary given other tools in the immigration legislation. I invite the members to review this paper and consider this impact on refugees and Canada's long-standing commitment to family reunification.

My second recommendation deals with the refugee protection framework and what it should look like. It should not look at its overseas activities as separate from the inland protection scheme. Canada's focus should not be so much on how the requests for refugee protection come to Canada. Much of the public discussion surrounding the issue of managing our border has been to cast resettled refugees as good, law-abiding people waiting in line, while those coming to our borders are queue jumpers, law breakers and less deserving. The government has a role in shaping the way that migrants are seen in public, through policy and laws. Rather, talking about refugee protection in the resettlement context as the legitimate way and those coming inland as a means to discourage, we are sending a damaging message that is not aligned with our international legal obligations, as Professor Macklin outlined.

I encourage the committee to think about refugee protection, and the effects and links that the resettlement process has with the inland protection system. I am therefore recommending that reforms would allow migrants to go to official ports of entry, putting trust in our well-oiled system rather than crafting makeshift border posts. I have recommended this to the committee in the past, and I have again provided the written submissions to the committee that I provided in July.

My third recommendation is around the issue of statelessness. I want to draw the committee's attention to the fact that the UNHCR states that there are over 10 million stateless people all over the world. Recognizing this as a global problem, the UNHCR commenced a 10-year campaign in 2014 called #IBELONG, to end statelessness by 2024.

Stateless persons have difficulty accessing health care, education and social services. Without status, stateless persons cannot work. They are at risk of being detained, and because there are sometimes no prospects of removing the person to another country, they can be indefinitely held in immigration detention. In other cases, they are removed to a place where they suffer further hardship because they are stateless.

I want to discuss how the lack of citizenship may be the cause of displacement and forced migration. Indeed, the denial or stripping of citizenship is a political tool that encourages discrimination, oppression, and in the case of the Rohingya in Myanmar, genocide.

While it may be clear that some stateless persons may be refugees—the Rohingya, for example—in many situations stateless persons do not meet the requirements in law to qualify for refugee protection.

Canada has provided some relief in the form of policy guidelines for permanent resident applications on humanitarian grounds and the ability to apply to the minister to grant citizenship to a stateless person in the Citizenship Act. These two legal mechanisms, however, are an exercise of discretionary power that is seen as an exception to the rule and are avenues that should not be used as a means of circumventing the normal immigration or citizenship process.

While there are potential avenues existing within the citizenship and immigration framework by which some stateless persons may gain status, many simply do not qualify, or are at the whim of pure discretion. As a leader in refugee protection, Canada can also become a leader in providing protection for stateless persons by creating a holistic legal framework by which stateless persons can have a true chance at accessing not only permanent status, but citizenship, as a durable solution.

Canada can begin by legally defining and investigating the depth of statelessness in Canada. My recommendation is to identify and track stateless persons while creating legal mechanisms geared toward providing a pathway for citizenship dedicated to stateless persons.

Second, it is important to understand that Canada is a signatory to the 1961 statelessness convention, but as Professor Purkey mentioned, not a party to the 1954 statelessness convention. The 1961 convention guides us in preventing statelessness, but the 1954 convention establishes positive obligations. Arguably, aspects of both conventions are becoming customary international law.

Canada has a stateless population of its own that it should address. More research needs to be conducted on how indigenous persons who don't have citizenship want to be recognized as citizens. As well, stateless persons who have a dominant and effective link to Canada, for example by being resident in Canada for a significant portion of time, should be given a pathway to citizenship.

I point out Canada's international obligations here because there has been recent talk about eliminating birthright citizenship. I have conducted research in other countries where birthright citizenship is not present and can attest that there are several reasons this policy should not see the light of day. This discussion is fuelled by the fear that migrants may be engaging in birth tourism. Existing data, however, shows that only 0.1% of total births can be characterized as such. This is not a problem worth eliminating birthright citizenship for.

Second, if we're going to talk about efficient management of the administrative processing of citizenship applications, such a policy would demand more tax dollars toward a complicated process, because everybody would have to apply for citizenship. Proving citizenship will be more difficult, and this policy will create greater numbers of stateless persons within our borders.

I leave you with this. My father was stateless before he immigrated to Canada. He was lucky because at the time he qualified as a low-skilled worker. He would not qualify under today's system. I was born on the heels of his obtaining citizenship in Canada. Had the government of the time not changed the residency requirements from five to three years, I would have been born in Canada while my father was stateless. If birthright citizenship did not exist, I might not have been a Canadian. I am living proof that welcoming stateless persons to Canada with the conferral of citizenship is the best way to build a nation.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you very much.

Did you have Professor Macklin, as well? She has tentacles everywhere.

[Prof. Jamie Liew]

No I don't, but I teach her material in class quite a bit.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

There's this brand that kind of goes across the country.

We're going to begin with Mr. Sarai.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Thank you to all three of you. It's always insightful to hear from Professor Macklin as well as from you.

Ms. Purkey, you talked about the safe third country agreement, that perhaps it's time for it to go. Being Liberals, and being liberal-minded people, we are all very liberal in terms of refugee settlement. But once you get in this job, you also learn that there are levels and that there are certain amounts you can absorb. If you take too many, then people have a queue of years and years—and that becomes a challenge.

There's also the argument that you brought up of a rising level of populism. Anti-refugee sentiments arise, and that usually happens when you have an abundance coming in really quickly and they're not able to integrate or settle. Certain groups will rise and use that as an excuse for unemployment or other small issues and pick them out. Usually the best way—and Canada has been very successful at this—is to absorb the amount we take in.

What's your alternative if the safe third country agreement is removed? I fear the floodgates might open due to policies that are prevalent in the U.S. right now, and we wouldn't be able to control much, even though now we have a challenge as well. What would be the alternative to that? Would we just allow everyone to cross over, process everyone and then do it?

It would be a huge burden and you'd be taking over 25, 30 or 40 months to process their refugee claims. In that time, they're starting to have families, lose their roots and establish roots here. Then de facto it becomes almost impossible to remove them if they're not, in fact, genuine refugees. What are your suggestions for how to...? What mechanism could be better?