Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Nov. 26th, 2018

[Salma Zahid]

I'll share my time with Mr. Whalen.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Often what we as elected officials are trying to do is to figure out who has responsibility so we can get information we're looking for. This global compact, at least on the migration side, has very much a whole-of-government approach to trying to solve problems. I think that might even be one of the stated principles.

Is your department or the other government department implicated in the global compact forming reporting structures so that you can work together on each aspect? Has it reached that phase? It's been four months now since the global compact was signed, so I'm wondering where the government is now in terms of what departments are leading on different aspects and whether those reporting structures are in place.

[Deirdre Kent]

Certainly Global Affairs Canada and IRCC worked hand in glove throughout the consultations and the negotiations of both compacts. Mr. Linder and I spent a lot of time together, and the implementation is multi-faceted in terms of the global aspect, through Global Affairs Canada, and the domestic aspects and some of the international aspects falling under IRCC.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

If I get a chance to ask for somebody else's time later, I'll get into some of the other 23 objectives that are in other departments.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Right.

Mr. Maguire.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have just a couple of questions. I want to ask first for a little bit of a follow-up to my colleague's question.

A number of countries were involved in developing these global compacts, and you've indicated that a number were not, on the migration side. Is everyone else still on the refugee side? How many countries were involved in putting this together?

[Stephen Salewicz]

That's if, indeed, all the countries remain engaged. There is no signing right now. It's going to the general assembly for approval. There will be a vote in December for that, but essentially the compact has been agreed to by all the countries that participated. The wording in the compacts has been negotiated over the last year and there's been agreement across the board.

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

As indicated earlier, someone on the panel—and thank you for your testimonies today—indicated that there were a number of countries that were not part of the global compact on migration.

Can you name those?

[Deirdre Kent]

The United States, from the outset, did not join in the negotiations. Since July, the end of negotiations, a number of countries have publicly said that they will not join in the GCM: Australia, Czech Republic, Poland, Austria, Estonia, Israel and Bulgaria.

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

Thank you.

Objective number six states, “Facilitate fair and ethical recruitment and safeguard conditions that ensure decent work”. I see a lot of ambiguity in that statement.

Paragraph 22 has a number of principles that would develop and strengthen the labour migration and fair, ethical recruitment processes. It would “allow migrants to change employers and modify the conditions or length of their stay with minimal administrative burden, while promoting greater opportunities for decent work and respect for international human rights and labour law”, which I'm in favour of.

We have a temporary foreign worker program in place right now. Do you think there are any parts of Canada's temporary foreign worker program that you feel would be incompatible with objective number six?

[Glen Linder]

This comes back to the fact that these are practices that states can take or leave as they wish.

In Canada, to a large extent, our temporary foreign workers are brought in to fill specific labour market shortages, and with specific employers. To the extent that the system works for us, we don't have any plans to change that.

This paragraph, I think, was developed with those countries in mind that really rely almost exclusively on temporary foreign workers as a source of migration. It's encouraging those countries to make sure that migrants can change jobs as they need to. In Canada, we have a requirement for labour market impact assessment.

That said, we also know that there are many temporary foreign workers who come in and are then able to apply for permanent residence and stay in Canada after that. That's a helpful pathway that we have in place.

Certainly it will not affect our ability and our commitment to ensuring that temporary foreign workers who require labour market impact assessment continue to go through that requirement.

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

Today in the news, the World Refugee Council has indicated that it thinks it would be a good idea to redirect some of its funds to the Magnitsky style of collecting funds around the world, and being able to put those into settlement and refugee systems.

I'm wondering how you see that fitting with the global compact.

[Stephen Salewicz]

My understanding is that's one of their proposals, to seize frozen assets and use them for responding to humanitarian crises. That's an issue that we'll have to explore closely. I'm not sure of all the details. It's a proposal that's on the table, and we'll have to look at it. There is the question of how that might improve accountability, address impunity, but it's something we're going to have to look at closely.

If I could maybe pick up on the last point, you asked about GCR and whether all the countries are still in. At the end of negotiations, all countries had signed on essentially. Subsequent to the negotiations closing, there was a vote at third committee at the UN, looking at the UNHCR omnibus...to which the GCR is annexed. The U.S. voted against it.

Now, what that means going forward is unclear. They did say in an explanation of their position that they supported the elements of the document, but they had some concerns about some of the language.

This is going to a vote at the General Assembly, and we'll see where that takes us. I wanted to clarify that.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

We have a couple of minutes for Mr. Whalen.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

To go back to my earlier line of questioning, I sort of understand the reporting structure between GAC and IRCC, but looking at the objectives, I see the first one is related to disaggregated data, the GBA+ type of stuff. Presumably that might be Stats Canada. Then there's one for sustainable development and climate change. I would think that would be Environment and Climate Change Canada, but maybe I'm wrong. There are some related to pension portability, which I'm assuming is a finance or CRA function. Border security is implicated.

I'm wondering more specifically what types of reporting structures are developing to make sure that the government knows what it's doing across government to live up to its commitments. From my perspective, they may be soft commitments to other countries, but they're things that the Government of Canada has committed to doing. Canadians are interested in whether they're actually living up to their end of the bargain, whatever that bargain happens to be.

Could you just describe what the reporting would be to ensure that all aspects of government are engaged on the migration crisis?

[Deirdre Kent]

Absolutely. I'll start off, and then perhaps IRCC might want to chime in.

Certainly, through the negotiations of the global compacts, we took a whole-of-government approach, so any of the text that related to statistics and data would have been checked with Statistics Canada, and the same with ECCC, Public Safety Canada and Canada Border Services. There is absolutely a comfort level across Government of Canada officials with the text here and the reflection of Canada's position.

The follow-up review mechanisms and approach are still to be determined at the global level, and that will inform Canada's approach.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Maybe to take note of our concern, the committee might put in a report how we let it live.

Is it normal for the United States not to engage in international compacts or agreements or treaties such as indigenous persons rights or those things? Do they normally sign?

[Deirdre Kent]

Certainly, we respect the sovereign right of all countries to join or not join any international—

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

But the U.S. typically doesn't sign, do they?

[Deirdre Kent]

There's a mix. They are party to many human rights treaties, for example, that are binding. I think there's absolutely a mix, yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Fine, thank you.

As it is 6:02, the meeting is now adjourned, with thanks to the officials for joining us.