Thanks. It's good to see you too.
Hello, honourable members of the committee. My name is Pouyan Tabasinejad. I'm the vice-president of the Iranian Canadian Congress. We're a Canadian advocacy organization whose goal is to advocate on behalf of Iranian Canadians, who number around 300,000 in Canada.
First of all, I wanted to thank you for inviting me here today as a representative of the Iranian Canadian Congress. While our community faces many issues that other immigrant communities also face, today I must unfortunately put these issues aside so that I can speak to you about something that I believe poses a grave threat not only to our community but to the integrity of Canadian values themselves, and the commensurability of those values with our policies as a government and as a country.
You have likely heard about the delayed Iranian applications campaign in the news. Iranian PR applicants were stuck waiting for years for their permanent residency applications to be accepted, usually with no justification whatsoever. Prevented from finding employment and undertaking studies, these applicants and their families suffered tremendously during these months and years of waiting.
The delayed PR campaign and the ICC discovered, upon investigation of this issue, that Iranian PR applicants were subject to systematic differential treatment by our immigration and security authorities. Mainly because their nationality is Iranian, these individuals were subject to lengthy and opaque comprehensive security processes, delaying their applications by months and even years. We have traced the existence of this de facto policy in its current form and intensity to at least 2016.
In addressing the issue, the Honourable Minister of Immigration and Refugees, Ahmed Hussen, recently announced that Iranian PR application times have been significantly reduced, although they are still significantly longer than the average by around 10 months.
Indeed we are appreciative that the government has reduced these delays, and here we must also thank all the representatives who championed this cause, specifically Jenny Kwan, who not only advocated passionately for this issue but also handled the individual casework of these applicants; Thomas Mulcair as well; Majid Jowhari; and Michelle Rempel, who sponsored a petition on this issue.
However, what I'm here to tell you today is that the fundamental problem of discrimination against Iranians because of their nationality in our immigration system persists, not only for PR applicants but also visa and citizenship applications.
According to data gathered by the delayed Iranian applications campaign, Iranian applicants are still being tagged en masse for comprehensive security examination. The reduction in delays showcased by the minister seems to be because Iranians are being fast-tracked through the comprehensive screening process and not because they are not actually being subject to them in the first place, which is the original root cause of the problem.
Here I must mention that we have indications that some government officials are referencing certain sections in IRPA, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, dealing with inadmissibility based on sanctions or human rights regulations, and rationalizing this treatment of Iranians. However, and I must state this point very clearly: in no way is any section in IRPA applicable to a blanket policy against individuals of a certain nationality. Indeed, any treatment of a nationality in this way effectively constitutes systematic discrimination on the basis of nationality in the Canadian immigration system. It not only runs counter to fundamental Canadian values of equality but may actually form a violation of the charter, specifically those sections prohibiting discrimination based on nationality.
Now that I've spoken about this a bit, I have the pleasure of also presenting with Mahdi Yousefi. He's a representative of the delayed PR applications campaign and a PR applicant himself. We're still waiting for his application to go through.
He will now speak about his first-hand experience with this issue.
Mahdi, please go ahead.