Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 12th, 2016

[Dawn Edlund]

I think it's just a handful of cases.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

What happens if a privately sponsored refugee wants to move to a different city during the sponsorship period?

[David Manicom]

It does happen. We can't prevent them if they wish to do so. If it's a pattern of activity, it could affect our future agreement with the sponsorship agreement holder if we feel that they are part of the problem, and that people are moving because they're not being given adequate support.

Refugees arrive as permanent residents of Canada. If they find employment or have a family connection in another part of Canada and make that choice to effectively not use the support that the private sponsorship group wishes to give them, we can't prevent them from doing that, sir.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

You have 30 seconds.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

I'll leave it at the 30-second mark. My question is much longer than 30 seconds.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you, Mr. Saroya.

Mr. Tabbara, please, for five minutes.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you very much for being with us today.

We first brought in the Syrian refugees back in October. I wanted to ask a question about what your department has experienced from October to December and from January to the present. What are some of the experiences you saw first in 2015, what are you seeing now, and how has that transitioned? Can you give examples of the challenges your department has encountered in tackling certain issues you've experienced prior to 2016?

[Dawn Edlund]

There are a lot of ways that I could answer that question, and there's so much information we could give. It will be part of the lessons learned report that will be provided later in the fall.

Certainly, there was a large challenge in the overseas environment and ramping up to be able to process that number of people that quickly, working with our partners in the UNHCR to find a new way of identifying refugees to come forward as government-assisted or blended, and also working with the International Organization for Migration to move that number of people that quickly. There were many challenges along the way in the overseas environment in terms of getting staff organized and trained. There were national defence officials on site to help do administrative work as well as the medical examinations. There's that piece.

We also learned, throughout the course of the operation, that there could never be enough communication with all the partners that we were working with, with municipalities, provinces, and territories, and with our services-led organizations. We communicated as much as we could, but there were certainly instances where, had we had more time and even less sleep than we actually had, we would have been communicating even more, because more information helped us all make better plans together.

I don't know, David, if you want to add to that.

[David Manicom]

I don't think I would want to speak in general terms of the experience of the department. I would just say, I think, that one of the reasons that the operation was successful was that it was the most intense interdepartmental coordination effort that, certainly, I'd ever witnessed. There was a daily call of a very large table of deputy ministers every morning at eight, for week after week after week. Although that was trying at times for all of us, I think that paid dividends in ensuring that our departments were working very closely together from the start of the process to the end, from arrivals at the airport, the welcome centres, and flowing on into social supports through the Public Health Agency of Canada, the Canada Border Services Agency, Foreign Affairs, the Department of National Defence, and so forth. I think that was a lesson which, if we're doing an operation like this again, we would replicate to some extent.

[Catrina Tapley]

If I may, Mr. Chair, just on settlement and integration challenges, we've spoken about a number of them, but one of the early lessons learned is also the importance of some pre-arrival services to appropriately set expectations about life in Canada—both the joys and the challenges—and the availability of integration services and other things that are there. It was an early lesson learned for us on the importance of those services as well.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you very much for being here today. We really appreciate it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Mr. Tilson, you have five minutes.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

I have two brief questions, Mr. Chair.

One is to finish off from a line of questioning I had with respect to refugee claimants being charged an outrageous amount by immigration consultants to process their claims. I think one of your answers, Ms. Edlund, was that the regulatory body was conducting an investigation.

I must confess, I don't understand that. That's like the law society investigating itself if something goes wrong. My question is, is the regulatory body being investigated for lack of enforcement of its own rules?

[Dawn Edlund]

Mr. Chair, if I could clarify, the regulatory body put out a press release saying that they would investigate these particular consultants, and that's a very similar structure to what we have with, for example, The Law Society of Upper Canada. If there are complaints about lawyers perhaps not fully respecting the rules of professional conduct, that's one of the things The Law Society of Upper Canada does.

It's the same thing with this regulatory body. If there are allegations that a consultant is not living up to his or her professional obligations, they investigate that.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

I understand that, although it's become clear, unless these are bogus claims, that they were outrageous claims. There are outrageous amounts being charged.

Therefore, one question is whether the regulatory body is indeed following its own rules. It would appear that it's not. If I'm correct in that assumption, is the ministry or the department, or someone, investigating the regulatory body?

[Dawn Edlund]

There are no hints or allegations at the moment that the regulatory body is not doing its job. They have moved to investigate this particular set of circumstances.

There's a difference between professional fees that consultants charge, and what's appropriate and reasonable in a set of circumstances. The allegations brought forward by the CBC were in terms of whether or not privately sponsored refugees were being asked to self-fund their income support and give that money off to a particular organization so that the organization didn't have to do the fundraising. That's another form of activity. If it turns out to be true, that would inappropriate.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

These are innocent people, and it is alleged that they are being charged outrageous amounts. I'm not familiar with the rules, but it would appear that the rules are being violated, that the rules aren't being followed by the regulatory body. However, we've probably exhausted that. I find it strange that they're investigating themselves.

I have one final question, Mr. Chairman.

At the public safety committee on February 18, a CBSA official stated that “most of the 21,000 refugees who have made it to our borders were not housed in camps. They had been living in theatre for a number of years, renting apartments, [so] I just wanted that for...precision. They were not housed in camps administered by the UNHCR.”

Ms. Edlund, as a lot of television viewers, my impression from what we saw is that refugees were coming from camps, but with this statement, it appears they were not. Would you comment on that?

[Dawn Edlund]

It depended very much on the country that the refugees were coming from. In a country like Turkey, for example, camps are set up by the Government of Turkey that house a certain number of people, but many millions more in Turkey are not in camps.

In Beirut, Lebanon, they have a policy of not creating camps, so under UNHCR's auspices people have been living in some informal places, but by and large, people are living in rental apartments.

In Jordan, there were folks that we brought to Canada out of the refugee camp—I can't remember the name of it at the moment—and others who were living in urban or rural environments and then resettled.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

The statement made in the public safety committee, perhaps they're mistaken. Is that what you're saying?

[Dawn Edlund]

No, I'm saying we took some from camps, but there were far more Syrian refugees living outside camp environments, and we brought them to Canada.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you, Mr. Tilson.

I'd like to thank the departmental officials for appearing before our committee hearing. For the committee members, the clerk is working to confirm the witness list for Tuesday. We expect we'll have those confirmations by the end of the day tomorrow.

Thank you.

The meeting is adjourned.