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.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Dawn Edlund  Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Sean Boyd  Executive Director, Middle East Relations, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development
Jean-Marc Gionet  Acting Senior Director, Resettlement Operations, International Network, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Corinne Prince  Director General, Settlement and Integration Policy Branch, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Jean-Nicolas Beuze  Representative in Canada, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

10:35 a.m.

Representative in Canada, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

Jean-Nicolas Beuze

Thank you very much, and thank you for the reminder that indeed Canada had received in previous years a similar number asylum seekers. I will go one step further to remind all honourable members of this committee that we've done an analysis to see whether the increase in asylum seekers had a correlation with the number of resettled refugees. Thankfully, Canada has not had that approach and remains a valued partner on both fronts. There is no correlation of an increase in asylum seekers meaning a decrease in resettled refugees, and we very much hope that in the years to come, as announced by Minister Hussen, in its resettlement level, Canada will maintain the protection of asylum seekers and a larger program, hopefully, of resettled refugees.

Transitional justice is an extremely important point in the case of communities that have been divided by the conflict, especially when minorities feel that they have been particularly targeted by the conflict. Transitional justice is usually over a much longer time frame than the humanitarian operation, because it requires a process of historical clarification, getting communities together to analyze what happened. There's always an element of criminal responsibility in addition to traditional justice mechanisms, which will be very important in the case of Iraq and northern Iraq, especially for the Yazidi community, so that justice is carried out in a very culturally appropriate manner. It's only when all those elements have been put in place that we think refugees in that place will feel comfortable returning home and resuming their regular lives.

10:40 a.m.

Liberal

Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London North Centre, ON

Thank you very much.

Chair, do I have time for one more question?

10:40 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant

You don't.

10:40 a.m.

Liberal

Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London North Centre, ON

Okay. We'll leave it there.

10:40 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant

Mr. Maguire, I could give you two more minutes, if you would like, or Mr. Schmale.

10:40 a.m.

Conservative

Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB

Mr. Chair, thank you.

That was the concern I had. I want to follow up again on the numbers that you talked about.

You're talking about fewer than 90,000 resettlements this year. Is that a consistent number, or has it been higher or lower in the past?

10:40 a.m.

Representative in Canada, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

Jean-Nicolas Beuze

Compared with last year, it's a decrease of 43%. We have lost almost half of the space.

10:40 a.m.

Conservative

Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB

You had a number last year that was much higher. How has that compared to other years?

10:40 a.m.

Representative in Canada, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

Jean-Nicolas Beuze

Under the Obama administration, there was a target of 110,000 resettlements. Last year, the actual number of arrivals was around 85,000 to 90,000. This year, under the Trump administration, the target is 45,000 or 50,000 resettlements. We have lost already 45,000 just from the U.S. allocated space. A number of countries, in particular in Europe, because they had a massive increase in asylum seekers since 2015, have also reduced their resettlement programs.

10:40 a.m.

Conservative

Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB

Are there other areas of the world that you're looking at, then, to help make up that shortfall? I know it might be a limited number of countries, but can you help us with that?

10:40 a.m.

Representative in Canada, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

Jean-Nicolas Beuze

Do you mean in terms of resettlement countries?

10:40 a.m.

Conservative

Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB

Yes.

10:40 a.m.

Representative in Canada, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

Jean-Nicolas Beuze

We are exploring, and Canada is helping us a lot in promoting the model of both the GAR and the privately sponsored refugees, to see which other countries will be able to join. We have some prospects in Latin America, especially in the southern part. We have interest from countries such as Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile. We are also working a bit on countries such as Japan, but our main countries for resettlement remain the United States; Canada, which has the second-largest program; and a few European countries.

10:40 a.m.

Conservative

Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB

That's the end of my questions. Thank you.

10:40 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant

Very good.

That ends this part of the meeting. Again, thank you, Mr. Beuze, for being with us today.

One issue that has come up in the questioning today that I just want to bring to the committee's attention for maybe a future meeting is the issue around translation and interpretation, community interpretation and those issues, and whether we need more information on that as a topic. We don't have that at our second meeting. There is the Canadian Translators, Terminologists and Interpreters Council, CTTIC. There are other organizations that do, particularly, interpretation in non-widely disseminated languages.

Whether this committee has done that work before, it seemed to me there were some questions around that and that we don't really know very much about availability and those things. Do you want us to do some looking into that?

I'm looking particularly at the opposition, because both parties raised the issue, yet we don't have that.

Mr. Whalen.

10:40 a.m.

Liberal

Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL

I didn't get a chance to ask, but I'm also interested in, within the medical profession itself, what level of language proficiency we have from—

10:40 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant

There are specialized interpreters, too, both trained, as well as community, and there's a difference.

10:40 a.m.

Liberal

Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL

Yes.

10:40 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant

Those in the booth know it well.

Go ahead, Ms. Kwan.

10:40 a.m.

NDP

Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Particularly within the medical profession, in the provinces, it's up to the province to determine whether they will provide for that translation. Often they don't because there's a cost to the provincial government. Certainly, my province of British Columbia does not provide for that, although I think it should. Very often people are asked to bring family members. Frankly, from the immigrant community, they often let them bring children. They are sometimes required to tell their parents that they have some illness that could be fatal.

From that perspective, it will be an issue of determining a policy, if you will, both federal and provincial, in terms of where the contributions would come from.

10:45 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant

I don't want to get into the debate about the issue. I just wanted to get a survey of whether it's of interest to the committee.

Go ahead, Ms. Rempel.

10:45 a.m.

Conservative

Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB

It is of interest to us, Mr. Chair.

I would also say that, if we are going to continue the study on this, it might be useful to have end users of these services to actually give their experience. I'm not sure that we've had enough time in this committee to allow that.

That would be my suggestion.

10:45 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant

I'm getting a general nodding that we could look into it. We'll come back with a proposal on whether we need to do a third meeting on this particular topic around some of those issues.

We're not making a decision today. It's just for your information.

10:45 a.m.

NDP

Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC

I'm fine with that, but my point is this. It's not just about whether the service is available. You need to actually incorporate into that the issue of how it's going to be resourced. Otherwise, it's not really going to do us much good.

10:45 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant

Good. Okay.

The meeting is adjourned.