Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Nov. 29th, 2018

[The Chair (Mr. Robert Oliphant (Don Valley West, Lib.)), Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I call to order this 136th meeting of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.

Good afternoon. Conforming to Standing Order 108(2), we will continue our study of migration challenges and opportunities for Canada in the 21st century, particularly today focusing again on the global compacts that are under discussion.

With apologies to the witnesses, just before you begin I'm going to take a few minutes with the committee to remind them of a few issues about the Standing Orders of the House that I just want to draw your attention to following our meeting on Tuesday. I'll be quoting some lengthy portions of the rules for the committee's consideration. I'm quoting:

The Chair is a key figure on any committee. Chairs are so important that, when a committee does not have one, it is not considered properly constituted. It can undertake no work or other activities, and cannot exercise any of its powers.

Committee Chairs have procedural, administrative and representative responsibilities. Chairs preside over committee meetings and oversee committee work. They recognize the Members, the witnesses and other people who wish to speak at these meetings; as in the House, all remarks are to be addressed to the Chair. They ensure that any rules established by the committee, including those on the apportioning of speaking time, are respected. They are responsible for maintaining order and decorum in committee proceedings, and rule on any procedural matter that arises that are subject to an appeal to the committee.

With respect to disorder and misconduct:

Disorder and misconduct in a committee may arise as a result of the failure to abide by the rules and practices of a committee or to respect the authority of the Chair. Disorder and misconduct also include the use of unparliamentary language, failure to yield the floor or persistent interruption of the proceedings in any manner. However, neither committees nor their Chairs have the authority to censure an act of disorder or misconduct. If a committee desires that specific sanctions be taken against those disrupting the proceedings, it must report the situation to the House. The House may then take such measures as it deems appropriate.

In the event of disorder, the Chair may suspend the meeting until order can be restored or, if the situation is considered to be so serious as to prevent the committee from continuing with its work, the meeting may be adjourned.

That's at the chair's discretion.

In addition, the Chair may, at his or her discretion, interrupt a member whose observations and questions are repetitive or are unrelated to the matter before the committee. If a member in question persists in making repetitive or off-topic comments, the Chair can give the floor to another member. If the member refuses to yield the floor and continues talking, the Chair may suspend or adjourn the meeting.

With respect to repetition and relevance in debate:

The rules of relevance and repetition are intertwined and mutually reinforcing. The requirement that speeches remain relevant to the question before the House

—and this is the committee as well—

flows from the latter's right to reach decisions without undue obstruction and to exclude from debate any discussion not conducive to that end. The rule against repetition helps to ensure the expeditious conduct of debate by prohibiting the repetition of arguments already made. To neglect either rule would seriously impair the ability of the House to manage its times efficiently.

Notwithstanding their importance, these rules remain difficult to define and enforce

and are subjective to the members and particularly to the chair at any give time.

I wanted to remind the committee of that. If, during these proceedings of our committee, I sense that decorum is failing, I am going to take the opportunity to read this statement again, and the clock will remain running while the member's time is on, and you can either use your time to question the witnesses or to listen to me and my discussion about decorum. That will be your choice. Thank you.

Now we're going to begin with our witnesses. Mr. Beuze from the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees of the United Nations, welcome. We're going to begin with testimony from you and then Mr. Damian Smith afterwards.

[Jean-Nicolas Beuze, Representative in Canada, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and honourable members. I'm very pleased to be here today for an important topic for my organization, the UN refugee agency, which is the global compact on refugees.

I had the pleasure to be here not so long ago when I gave an overview of the situation of refugees globally. The compact really tries to change the way we do business when we respond to those mass influxes of refugees, mainly in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and perhaps now in Latin America. Let me remind everyone that 60% of the refugees are hosted in just 10 countries. Turkey, Pakistan and Uganda are on the front line with six million refugees altogether.

The compact is really to see how we can use the good practices and lessons learned of more than 60 years of humanitarian and protection response to help those countries shoulder the weight of receiving, hosting, protecting and assisting those refugees.

We shared with the committee a brief last week that I'm sure is in front of everyone, so I will not go back to the explanation of what the compact is and how the compact is going to change the way we do our responses with our partners, but rather address directly issues that have been raised during the debate on those issues by this committee over the last three or four sessions.

Canada's obligation with respect to refugees derives from the 1951 convention, most of which is international customary law anyway, so whether Canada was party or not to the convention, all member states of the United Nations are bound by certain rules, certain obligations in terms of protecting refugees—in particular, the obligation not to return someone to a country where he or she may be at risk of torture or at risk for his or her life.

The obligation of Canada derives also from the UN charter, which calls upon member states to co-operate with one another in solving issues that affect peace and security, in development, but also in humanitarian response. It's in this respect that we have to put the context of the global compact on migration when it calls for responsibility-sharing with those front-line countries that I mentioned. Those front-line countries will rather qualify as burden-sharing because they feel the weight of receiving and having to deliver services for all those refugees.

Obligations exist for Canada, like any other member state, under international instruments such as the 1951 convention or the UN charter.

With respect to the issue of internally displaced persons, IDPs, those persons are governed by human rights instruments and international humanitarian law when they are in a conflict situation. You know that this year we are celebrating the twentieth year of the guiding principles on international displacement, which combine all the rules and rights and obligations of states vis-à-vis those persons who are displaced within their own country. Those are not included in the global compact on refugees because there was a decision by member states at this time of the discussion to focus on the situation of refugees.

In terms of obligations of Canada or any other of the 35 countries that have resettlement programs in terms of the commitment to resettlement and offering durable solutions, this remains a sovereign decision of any of those 35 countries, including Canada. However, the criteria by which the UNHCR in particular, with the support of NGOs and UN partners, identifies the most vulnerable for resettlement have been agreed upon by those 35 countries, including Canada, and those are the global resettlement criteria.

It's not because we are calling upon other actors such as the World Bank, the regional development banks, to come to the fore of the response as well as the private sector, faith-based organizations, cities, that we will not need significant funding for our operation. Again, it's a sovereign decision of Canada and other countries to decide the level of funding that they will dedicate to our response globally.

Let me mention that 87% of our budget is drawn from voluntary contributions from states, and 60% of our budget comes from three countries: the United States of America, Germany and—not a country—the European Union.

Finally, I want to clarify before the committee the situation vis-à-vis the U.S. and its position vis-à-vis the global compact on refugees.

At the Third Committee a few weeks ago, the U.S. delegation expressed full support for most of what is included in the global compact on refugees. It reaffirmed the commitment of the United States to the objective of the compact. It actually asked other countries—I would imagine that this included Canada—to help in supporting financially and through durable solutions those front-line countries that are addressed in the global compact on refugees, and to increase the space for resettlement because, as you know, the U.S. is number one in terms of free settlement space, as well as in financial contribution to the response to the refugee crisis. It also expressed strong support to UNHCR, but had some reservations, for example, on the issue of detention of asylum seekers, which is not any more an issue in Canada since Minister Goodale enacted the alternative to detention as part of the immigration-related processes.

The participation of Canada in holding those discussions has been really at the forefront through representation in Geneva, but also very much through consultation from the NGOs. I know that you received in front of this committee a number of NGOs that were able to testify to their having been fully consulted on the way that, collectively, we can see how to do better in helping those front-line countries in sub-Saharan Africa, in the Middle East, in Asia and, these days, in Central America to help them address the protection needs and the services that those refugees require.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you very much.

Go ahead, Mr. Smith.

[Craig Damian Smith, Associate Director, Global Migration Lab, As an Individual]

My name is Craig Damian Smith. I'm the associate director of the Global Migration Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto.

I just want to thank you and say it's a privilege to be part of this discussion.

I want to open by stating that the conversation comes at a pivotal moment for what we call “global migration governance”. It's a time when the international humanitarian system, multilateral institutions and the rules-based international order are increasingly under strain and even under threat by some member states. The global compact on refugees can help reinvigorate the norms, laws and institutions that make up the international refugee regime.

Canada can play a strong leadership role, but unfortunately, at the moment it seems that our role is mostly rhetorical. It's time to stop resting on our laurels. Concretely, this means a serious and sustained effort to increase our official development assistance and dismantle some of the silos between and within the federal government in order to deliberate effectively. I'll return to that point in a moment.

The committee has heard from leading experts and practitioners. I'm assuming that you know the state of affairs. You know that the New York declaration of 2016 was endorsed by all UN member states, that Canada played a leading role in developing both of the compacts, and that they reflect the balance of interests between hosts and donor states. Now it's time to do the actual work.

I want to reiterate a few basic facts about why we need the global compact on refugees and what Canada can do.

First, the international humanitarian system is failing. The current financial and political commitments cannot meet the needs of displaced people or of the states that host them. Second, the burden for dealing with displaced people disproportionately falls on poorer, more fragile states.

To date, the international community has focused on what we call a “care and maintenance” approach for dealing with displaced people. That entails short-term humanitarian funding to try to meet people's basic needs while they look for a durable solution to their displacement. We know that the international community recognizes three durable solutions to people's refugee status: return to countries of origin, naturalization in their host states, or third country resettlement internationally.

The refugee regime wasn't designed for the current displacement dynamics. Most people can't return home, and only a tiny fraction are resettled internationally every year. The effect of that is increasingly protracted refugee situations.

Protracted refugee populations and protracted humanitarian aid can distort host state labour and housing markets, strain resources, upset political and ethnic balances, and foster animosity with host communities. Host states are understandably reluctant to use international development assistance for refugees. Weak solidarity from donor states means that they have little incentive to naturalize or integrate refugees.

These protracted refugee situations and funding shortfalls have given rise to a growing phenomenon of what we call “irregular secondary movement”. That's when, rather than stagnating in host countries and waiting for a chance at international resettlement that's very likely not going to come, refugees decide to pay human smugglers to try to make it to a safe country where they and their families might have some kind of future.

The fact that migrants and refugees share the same irregular migration system—so they are what we call “complex mixed flows”—is one of the sources of anti-refugee sentiment in liberal democracies, where everyone claiming asylum is immediately suspected of being a mere economic migrant or a queue-jumper. It seems to not matter that no queue actually exists, that the migrant-refugee distinctions are often blurry at best, that global north states see an infinitesimal proportion of refugees globally, and that we have the resources to properly scale our asylum systems. Unfortunately, scapegoating refugees and whipping up fear about public safety is a well-worn tactic for electoral gain.

At the same time, the states that built the refugee regime are abandoning the pretense of rights and due process by offshoring migration controls to authoritarian states, militarizing borders and cutting social assistance to make their countries less favourable destinations.

Effective international burden-sharing can help forestall this race to the bottom. Not coincidentally, that's the basic premise of the global compact on refugees.

The main mechanism for this burden-sharing, the one I want to talk about, is the comprehensive refugee response framework, or the CRRF. The CRRF calls for new and additional international contributions at the nexus of humanitarian and development aid, or as they called it at the World Humanitarian Summit, the new way of working.

The main goal of linking humanitarian and development programming through the CRRF is to foster the inclusion and self-reliance of displaced people and to concurrently relieve the burden on host states. It's as much a forward-looking way of dealing with displaced people as it is a political recognition that most of them are not going to go home or be resettled.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I'll just ask the witness to slow down one notch for the interpreter. I'll give you a little extra time for their benefit, not yours.

[Craig Damian Smith]

Sure. Thank you. I'm used to just talking as much as I want and forcing students to listen.

While Canada helped draft the global compact on refugees, our support for the CRRF seems remarkably less clear. The fact is that if you look at where our programming is right now, we're simply rebranding existing development and humanitarian programming and calling it a root-causes approach to irregular migration and refugee situations. It's just old money with new labels.

I had the chance to conduct a study this year on the CRRF for Global Affairs Canada, specifically looking at it in the Central American context, where it's a regional mechanism called MIRPS. That study found three main impediments to real solidarity and burden-sharing for the CRRF from Canada.

The first is that the timelines for humanitarian and development programming and the funding cycles are very different.

Second, despite the amalgamation of CIDA and DFAIT, programming at GAC remains functionally siloed between humanitarian and development work.

Last and maybe most important, we're not spending enough money. Canada's ODA is quite paltry, to be honest. The recent budget called for 0.26% of the gross national income over the next years. Against inflation, that's actually a real decline. It's also a decrease from the 0.31% since the last 2012 OECD review. This current government is spending less money on ODA than the previous government.

I've had several conversations with people at Global Affairs and IRCC about the situation. The situation is basically that the old CIDA people and the humanitarian people don't work together on programming. Regional offices within GAC don't communicate thematically. Global Affairs and IRCC work in parallel on the same issues when they should be complementary. That's also the issue with the CRRF.

The public service is waiting for a champion with the political capital to provide direction on work at the humanitarian development nexus, to support the CRRF. Of course the situation is complicated—bureaucratic path dependency and financing constraints are real—but it's far from impossible.

Canada's civil service, academic institutions and civil society organizations have a wealth of expertise in all of these areas. Together we can readily identify pilot projects with clear outcome metrics for displaced people in CRRF countries, leverage international development financing, mobilize existing resources to incentivize host state co-operation, and offer complementary pathways for resettlement and labour migration to relieve the most pressing burdens on host states.

Just to close, in my opinion the discussion about whether we should sign onto the compacts or how they affect our sovereignty misses the point entirely: It's not whether we should do this stuff, but how we equitably share the burden moving forward.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you very much.

We'll begin with Ms. Zahid.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thanks to both the witnesses for coming and, Mr. Beuze, for coming back again.

I want to spend some time with you to address some of the charges and fears about the compacts that we hear levelled by opponents.

First, these compacts on non-binding, correct?

[Jean-Nicolas Beuze]

You're correct, but it's a political commitment. Therefore, we expect all the member states to deliver results against the commitment, which has been agreed upon between the host countries and countries like Canada, which are more in the funding seat.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

We'll go from there. I would like to quote one of the concerns that have been raised: “The United Nations could ask Canada to change its policy because of the global compact on refugees”.

Does the UN not already lobby Canada on its refugee policy in the absence of any non-binding compacts?

[Jean-Nicolas Beuze]

The UN is a collection of 193 members states, one of them being Canada, so we are at the service of the 193 member states, but obviously we do advocate for the policies to be aligned to the international agreement, whether they are legally binding or a political commitment.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Does that mean, then, that signing these compacts will not change the situation in that case?

[Jean-Nicolas Beuze]

Let me repeat that there is no signing of the compact. It's going to be as part of the omnibus resolution of the High Commissioner for Refugees' resolution to the General Assembly, which will affirm the 193 members states are affirming the valued added of the compact as a vision, a tool, a road map, to help those countries in the front line of the refugee response and to better share the responsibility, financially and otherwise.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Will the non-binding compact change the UN's ability to lobby Canada on the refugee policy, and also Canada's ability to make its sovereign policy decisions?

[Jean-Nicolas Beuze]

Every member state remains a sovereign decision-maker as far as those matters are concerned, but there is an expectation of co-operation among member states.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Does the UN or the UNHCR have any plans to assign rapporteurs to “disparage” Canada or question its sovereign policies if we are not in line with the compact?

[Jean-Nicolas Beuze]

No. A mechanism in the global compact is called the global forum. It is held every four years at the ministerial level, when all countries come together to renew their political commitment in funding, resettlement levels, helping, getting more active, whether it's the private sector or development institutions or international financial institutions. It's a peer mechanism among member states.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you for clarifying that.

I think we all agree that we should or want to reduce migration, whether it is forced or driven by economic necessity. I think we can all agree that irregular, unplanned migration across national borders is not desirable. With these assumptions, does it make sense to you that some would choose to abandon working multilaterally with the global community to address irregular migration and its root causes in a coordinated way, and instead try to do it alone or all by yourself from the world? German Chancellor Angela Merkel, addressing their parliament last week, called it “nationalism in its purest form”.

[Jean-Nicolas Beuze]

Professor Smith has already alluded to this response, and I'm happy to offer him the floor.

[Craig Damian Smith]

Thank you.

It's a fact that when states make unilateral decisions about irregular migration and how they're going to react to irregular migration, it necessarily affects other states and their neighbours, and there are cascading effects. The best and the only real way to deal with it proactively in a way that conforms to what states have agreed to for protecting the human rights and rights of all people as refugees and migrants is a system of collective action to address root causes of irregular migration. Unilateral policies have very pernicious effects on neighbours and migrants alike.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Mr. Beuze, what sort of input has Canada given the UNHCR regarding the kind of cases it would like to see referred regarding the vulnerable populations?

[Jean-Nicolas Beuze]

We are in close dialogue with IRCC—Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada—which is our partner in the resettlement, especially when it comes to government-assisted resettlement or the blended visa program for refugees who are resettled in Canada. As I briefly mentioned, the global criteria of resettlement have been agreed upon by 35 members states, including Canada, and there is an objective assessment of the most vulnerable refugees whose survival is at risk in the first country where they found asylum.

Let me clarify that Canada decides the level of resettlement. Every year the minister of IRCC comes before Parliament to submit the immigration levels, and as part of the immigration levels they say those who will be admitted to the country on humanitarian grounds. Then there's a discussion between the IRCC and the UNHCR on where those refugees should be coming from. We provide IRCC with a map of where the most vulnerable refugees are. As we speak, we have identified 1.4 million out of the 25 million refugees who need resettlement as survivors—not for a better life, but as survivors—and Canada will resettle 10,000 this year through the government and UNHCR.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Do I have time, Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

You are done. Thank you.

Mr. Tilson is next.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I will continue on the line of questioning of Mrs. Zahid, on the issue of the compacts being non-binding.

I'd like to make a comparison to see if you agree whether or not there is a comparison to the Paris Agreement on climate change. My view is that there was an agreement on how to deal with climate change, and terms were set out, proposals for each member state to agree to do certain things. The agreement is non-binding. I expect that if a member state changed its mind, there would be some difficulty with the other member states, or the organization of them.

You have answered Mrs. Zahid's questions by saying that it is non-binding and that it's not going to affect the sovereignty, and other things, of Canada. My question is this: What if Canada decides not to follow the recommendations that are being made under the compact? What might happen?