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.