Evidence of meeting #82 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was resettlement.
A video is available from Parliament.
Representative in Canada, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
We are making maximum efforts to provide the support in the camp and in the host communities. Again, it's all a question of the amount of funding we are receiving.
Liberal
Marwan Tabbara Liberal Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON
Thank you, Mr. Whalen.
My question relates to identification and how you decide who the most vulnerable groups are.
Before I talk about that, I want to let members of the committee and you, through the chair, know that it's important not to confine people to certain boxes, whether by sex, religion, or ethnicity. Doing that causes a lot of problems, and I'll let you elaborate on that.
I understand that there have been complaints, maybe from a certain minority group, maybe from Yazidis or other minority groups, but it's important to understand that if a family identifies as Christian, Yazidi, or Muslim, maybe the children or extended family members may not identify as that. You mentioned, when you were asked, that you look at a complaint as a complaint, and it's not specific to a certain religion or ethnicity. I want you to elaborate on the importance of that.
Representative in Canada, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Thank you very much for this question, because it allows me to go back to the global resettlement criteria, which are at the core of our program.
We are looking at whether the person has the capacity and the ability and is receiving the services to survive in the first country of asylum, or in his or her own country when we're talking about internally displaced people. We have identified certain categories of people who are at greater risk of not being able to survive in exile. These are rape victims, torture survivors, people who are at risk of being detained and sent back to their country of origin where they may be at risk of persecution, children at risk, and women at risk. For example, there could be a widow with several children, who will have difficulty surviving economically and who may be forced to resort to survival sex as a way to feed her children.
The categories are very limited, and it's on this basis, and not on the basis of, as you rightly mentioned, sex, religion, ethnic origin, or being a linguistic minority that we look at vulnerabilities. It's the same when we are looking at complaints that we receive about our own staff or our partner staff discriminating against a certain person.
Liberal
Marwan Tabbara Liberal Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON
In terms of your own staff, how do you identify if there are people with complaints?
Some people say that the UN staff are mostly Muslim. How do you identify if they are mostly Muslim and whether they are discriminating against people? Is there a measure for that?
Representative in Canada, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
In all our operations, we disseminate information on where people can complain. They can complain online. We have a complaint box in the camps, in the health centre, community centre, registration centre. We have text messaging and video, which are disseminated throughout the refugee and displaced community, so that people are empowered.
Plus, the senior staff exercise oversight on our own staff. We have many partners and NGOs, including Canadian NGOs, who are also providing information when things are not carried out in line with our mandate.
November 7th, 2017 / 10:25 a.m.
Conservative
Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for your presentation today as well. It's a pleasure to meet you.
I want to go back a little to just see what you're relying on.
You talked about 1.2 million people, I believe it is. Is that up or down from what we've had in the past?
Representative in Canada, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
It's up. We have never seen so many refugees and displaced persons since World War II.
Conservative
Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
Obviously, the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic is part of that reason. They've identified it as genocide, so that means an awful lot more people trying to be resettled.
Representative in Canada, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Yes, but there's also the more than three million internally displaced people in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or the....
What I want to specify is that this is no more than any other victims from any other conflict or individualized persecution.
Conservative
Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
Yes.
You mentioned 66 million people as well, worldwide. I think one of your comments, or one of the comments I heard earlier, was that 1% are impacted persons. Is that 1% of the 66 million?
Representative in Canada, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
No. We are looking at the refugee population, which is 22 million. The 66 million is both refugees and internally displaced.
If you look at the refugees, we have identified 1.2 million more, because they are rape victims, torture survivors, women at risk, children, who need to be resettled. We will be able to resettle much less than 10%. It's going to be 8% actually.
Conservative
Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
I just wonder if you've received persons based on the receiving country's ability to supply certain supports. Having gone through the genocide that many of these women and children have, I would say they're in a situation of extreme trauma. I guess that might be cover words for being polite about rape and torture.
Can you indicate why, with the expertise you have, more of those people—particularly, as you say, this is a special case with the Yazidis—haven't been identified and sent to particular areas? I mean, they're all going worldwide. You mentioned Canada, U.S., and Australia particularly.
Are they being sent there on the ability of these countries to provide the mental stability, mental training, or mental work they need to do with the people who have been struck by this genocide?
Representative in Canada, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Do you mean specifically to Canada rather than another country?
Conservative
Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
I'm just saying with those three countries versus others. What's the criteria?
Representative in Canada, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
The countries that have resettlement programs are very few. I think there are less than 20 countries in the world that are doing resettlement. They have similar capabilities and capacities in terms of the services they can provide, from psychosocial support to education and economic integration.
We are speaking of a handful of countries, which are mainly in the developed and western world.
Conservative
Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
You have a report on the genocide survivors and that sort of thing, through the UN.
One of the things I'm looking at is that you say you don't look at the ethnic backgrounds of the individuals when you send them to other areas of the world, or try to help. Yet IRCC just indicated that they rely on the UNHCR's ability to identify vulnerable Yazidi women and children to have them come here.
How can you do that if you don't identify them?
Representative in Canada, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
We identify survivors of ISIS. I understand that was the motion of this Parliament, and that was the co-operation we had with both the Canadian government and the Iraqi authorities, to identify survivors of ISIS—of Daesh—that needed to be relocated to a third country such as Germany or Canada because of their extreme vulnerability.
Conservative
Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
Canada relied on your ability to identify those people to get them out.
Representative in Canada, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
The survivors of Daesh. Yes.
Conservative
Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
I would like you to elaborate on whether or not countries receive these particular individuals that have been through genocide based on their ability to supply them with mental health support, because they are extremely traumatized. You're saying it's sometimes weeks before this help is sought.
Do they receive that kind of mental support the minute they land in Canada?
Representative in Canada, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
That's not for UNHCR to respond to, because we are not involved in the settlement services upon arrival.
Liberal
Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London North Centre, ON
Thank you very much, Chair.
I'm not a regular member of this committee, but in a previous life I did a great deal of research on the Yazidi and Kurdish issues. I taught on those subjects as well, so I've been following this question closely.
I want to ask you a general question at the outset. As you well know, the High Commissioner for Refugees was here yesterday. I watched a few interviews with him, and the issue of asylum seekers came up in the following way.
The questions posed to him by journalists made the point that because Canada has been dealing with asylum seekers, particularly in the summer months, perhaps this would dampen the interest that Canadians have in continuing to welcome refugees. He made the point that Canada remains a welcoming country.
For your purposes, and for his purposes, and for the purposes of the work we're doing here today, it's important to put the numbers into context. Yes, we dealt with some asylum issues in the summer months and continue to face that, but the University of Calgary's school of public policy, based on analysis it has carried out looking at IRCC numbers, has come up with the following.
In 2017, Canada will have 36,000 people here seeking asylum, which is a sizable number to be sure, but in 2008 that number was 37,000. In the year 2000, that number was 38,000. In 2001, that number was 45,000, so I want both you and Mr. Grandi to know that Canada has dealt with these challenges before—weathered the storm, so to speak—and we will do so again.
More to the point with respect to the question of the Yazidis and what's taking place in northern Iraq, we heard this morning testimony that Canada is actively involved in situations on the ground in terms of transitional justice in particular, as well as other approaches to conflict resolution.
Mr. Grandi has made the point—and you have made the point in other committees where you've testified—that resettlement is actually a very small part of the approach we take when it comes to dealing with the displacement crisis the world is facing, which, as you correctly said, is the worst the world has seen since World War II.
Could you speak specifically about transitional justice, and the importance of that in helping societies repair? Canada is making it a focus in terms of our global efforts. I refer here to northern Iraq specifically, but it is the case in other areas as well. This is tremendously important in helping societies to heal, so that those who have been displaced can perhaps return one day.
