Thank you for inviting me to speak.
Some people have said that there is no point in spending our effort opposing these amendments. They say that these amendments are in a budget bill, so inevitably they will be passed into law.
I am here tonight on behalf of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers because these amendments are unfair, and they're ultimately bad for our refugee determination system. I want us to be in this room together as people who the community has entrusted to make laws that are fair and/or to speak out against ones that are not. I want you to think about whether you feel comfortable creating laws in this way—rushed through a budget bill—laws that directly affect the rights of some of the most vulnerable people in our community.
I'm going to spend my time on clause 306, the amendment that creates a new class of ineligibility. You have heard today from Minister Blair, officials and the Canadian representative for UNHCR. You've heard assurances that the changes in clause 306 are not significant, that they won't have a profound impact. Most of their faith seems to stem from promises that are nowhere to be found in the legislation. I don't understand their position. The creation of a new ground of ineligibility is a significant change to our refugee determination system that affects a broad category of people and takes away many important protections from these claimants.
This amendment does not only affect claimants who cross the border irregularly. It affects all claimants, no matter how they've travelled here, if they've ever made a claim in one of these countries that Canada happens to have an information-sharing agreement with. It's not limited only to claimants who are rejected by another country. They only have to have made a claim. It's not even limited to claims they made when they were adults. Even if they were children on their parents' claims in one of these countries, they are barred from a hearing before the Immigration and Refugee Board.
What do these claimants in this broad new category lose? They lose a lot. It's not about tinkering and a few procedural differences. These claimants are losing fundamental rights. They lose the full hearing before an independent tribunal. They lose access to an appeal on the merits. They can't go to the refugee appeal division. They have no protection from removal if they are reviewing a decision to the Federal Court. There's no automatic stay of removal. Now today you've heard Minister Blair and others say that there's no need to worry because these claimants will still be offered protection through PRRAs.
I would first like to deal with what is before us: the IRPA and the amendments in this budget bill. Then we can deal with the assurances that are nowhere in the law, the so-called enhanced PRRA that you heard about today. The PRRA is not the same as a hearing before the Immigration and Refugee Board. Any refugee lawyer will tell you that. The PRRA is a written process. You fill in forms. You provide arguments in writing to an employee at IRCC. The IRPA specifically provides that officers are not required to hold an interview, and indeed, they don't. It's extremely rare for them to hold an interview. Even in those rare circumstances, it's not a hearing, as Justin from Amnesty has already set out for you.
We heard assurances today from Minister Blair that there would be an enhanced PRRA. I listened carefully to the testimony, and I am lost. We were told that no one would be deported without an oral hearing. When asked whether by hearing he meant interview, we were told that, no, it will be a hearing with an official, not an interview. As far as I understand, the government doesn't have the power to establish a hearing process outside of the act.
It's also clear that the department has not thought out how this would operationally work if the department was now going to hold thousands of hearings. First, PRRA officers aren't trained to do this. An official today said that PRRA officer training to make refugee determinations is the same as that for members of the Immigration and Refugee Board. I found that answer astounding. It's not true. The PRRA was never meant to be a substitute for the RPD. It's a written process that's done after someone has already had a hearing before the Refugee Protection Division. The officers are not trained to do this work. They don't do full credibility assessments. They barely ever hold interviews. They haven't had training on how to appropriately examine a woman who has experienced violence. There are no guidelines on it. They don't have the tools.
Second, they don't have the infrastructure to do it. Are they going to create a registry and schedule hearings, interpretation and the disclosure of documents? Where are the hearing rooms? None of this has been thought through.
It's very easy to give assurances and not put them in law, and not even think them through as to how they would play out operationally.
Why wasn't this part of the BIA? If this is such a key protection and it's so fundamental, you should ask why it isn't in this legislation. All of this points to the need to separate this provision out of the budget bill and study it properly along with these promised protections. The government's assurances also beg this question: If you're going to give everyone a hearing, why create a parallel process? What is the logic in this? It will just create more backlogs and more delays.
There hasn't been a thorough review of the implications of these provisions, including the gender implications. These provisions disproportionately impact women. For example, the United States does not recognize asylum claims based on domestic violence even where the home state doesn't offer women protection from that violence. Canada has long recognized that domestic violence is a basis on which women may seek Canada's protection, yet with these amendments, we would punish a woman who was rejected in the United States or who abandoned her claim in the United States knowing that it would be dismissed. We would punish these women and their children with an inferior process and tell them they're not deserving of a full, independent hearing before the Immigration and Refugee Board.
I don't know how I would explain to a client, who after living through years of domestic violence managed to escape and make her way from Honduras to the United States, where she was detained and correctly advised that the United States would not recognize her claim, why, after all that, after making it to Canada, she doesn't have an opportunity to present her case to the Immigration and Refugee Board, she is relegated to a lesser process with a government official, and she has no opportunity for an appeal on the merits. Do I tell her our government believes she's asylum shopping? This is not about women shopping for better immigration deals. This is about seeking protection and safety. There's no justification at all for punishing these claimants. Offering claimants an inferior process is a punishment.
There are so many things wrong with these proposed amendments. It will not achieve any legitimate government objective. CARL urges the committee to reject the amendment.