Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 20th, 2017

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

First of all, our department, under the safe third country agreement, is always and regularly obligated to conduct a review of the United States compliance with that agreement. That work is ongoing. UNHCR has looked at this agreement and says it still applies. The U.S. domestic asylum system remains in place. The executive order that you referred to is currently under immigration—

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I'm sorry. I'm just going to interrupt you for one minute. I don't mean to be rude, Minister. I have one minute left.

My question is very specific. Has your department undertaken a legal opinion on the safe third country agreement in light of the Trump situation, and if so, will you make that legal opinion public?

[Dawn Edlund, Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

What I can say is that the constitutionality of the safe third country agreement is actually under a litigation challenge at the moment. We have litigation cases before the federal court, so we are working with our lawyers and our legal teams, but that would be covered by litigation privilege and solicitor-client privilege.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

You are saved by the courts, so you don't have an answer to the question—

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

You have fifteen seconds, please.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I think it's really important, then, for the minister to undertake this work.

Let me ask the minister these quick questions.

Has the minister read the Harvard report as well as the report from the students?

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Unfortunately, the time is up.

Mr. Tabbara, you have seven minutes, please.

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

I'm just wondering if we can split our time three ways.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Absolutely.

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

That's okay?

I'll let Gary go ahead.

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Tabbara.

Minister, I just want to be very clear. How many people have come to our border and been turned away because of the safe third country rule?

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

We can get you that. We don't have the numbers to calculate that but we can certainly get that information to you.

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON]

Do we have...?

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

I do have the numbers of claimants through Manitoba, for example, or the overall inland claims, and so on.

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON]

Sure. What are those numbers?

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

In Manitoba, for example, we looked at 143 claims made by people who irregularly crossed the border in February 2017. Of those, 65 are from Somalia; 60 are from Djibouti; and five are from Ghana. The remainder are from other countries.

Of the 60, 49 are U.S. visa holders. These are not people who lived in the United States for a long time. They came to the U.S. with the understanding that Canada would be their destination, and 97% of them spent less than two months in the United States. They are mainly males and most have not filed a U.S. asylum claim.

Again, it puts into context the claim made by many that this is a result of the U.S. administration. In fact, there has been a small and steady increase in asylum claims through the border since 2015 and for most of 2016, so this is definitely not specific to the incoming U.S. administration.

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON]

Do we have a sense if any of those people were detained prior to their release?

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

I don't have those numbers. What I can tell you is that they are processed by CBSA. They undergo background, criminal, and other checks, and if they are not a threat to Canadian society, they are released pending their hearing date. If they are considered a threat, then they are detained.

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Mr. Tabbara.

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

Thank you, Gary, and thank you, Mr. Chair.

Again, continuing with jobs and investment in the high-tech sector—and I know I'm pushing this a lot—I really want to focus on attracting investment. Just to give you a number here, Communitech has hired, in the high-tech sector, 2,782 new employees.

I understand that we are developing a service channel to help attract investment to meet the needs of companies seeking to develop significant job-creating ventures in Canada. Can you just elaborate on that for me?

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

David Manicom will take that.

[David Manicom]

Sure. We're working closely with the new “invest in Canada” office that's planned at Global Affairs, with provinces and territories, and with sector councils such as Communitech and others, to develop a dedicated cadre of staff whose job it will be to work with companies that are planning to invest in Canada or to upscale their operations in Canada. We will sit down with them at the front end of the process to make sure that they have the staff they need to establish, ramp up, and make their operations in Canada flourish. That's the concept.

We'll work with objective criteria such as the amount of investment, but also with referral partners to make sure that exciting companies that look small now but will become big later can also have the dedicated handling by our staff.

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

Thank you. I'll be sharing the rest of the time with Randeep.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Mr. Sarai.