Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Nov. 20th, 2017

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Maguire has some questions, I believe.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Thank you.

Ms. Johnston, please continue.

[Meagan Johnston]

As you can imagine, my organization has been working on this issue for quite some time, we're very keen to see any cost savings estimates that the department can provide. We were very interested by this figure that was mentioned, which was the $135 million over five years, which, I guess, people narrowed down to about $27 million a year.

However, if you look through the transcript, it would appear that the cost savings estimates are coming from the procedural fairness letters themselves. How is the department estimating its cost savings? It is taking the cost estimate that's given to an applicant in that procedural fairness letter, and it is using that to estimate how much cost is actually saved.

The issue, of course, is that my colleagues here have spoken to the inaccuracies in the procedural fairness letters. For example, for clients who are living with HIV, they may have switched to a generic HIV medication, which is much cheaper than the medication that's set out in the procedural fairness letter, but also, for example, with my H and C clients, we request, and often receive, waivers of medical inadmissibility.

These cost estimates, from what we can tell from the transcripts, do not factor in any revisions to the cost estimates that applicants may submit or any cases where a waiver is granted. Our concern, based on the information that the department has provided to these proceedings, is that there is a significant overestimation of the actual cost savings.

Lastly, those cost savings do not take into account the cost of actually administering the excessive demand program. As my colleague, Mr. Battista pointed out, and as Mr. Waldman pointed out in the previous panel, there is an incredible amount of cost that goes into administering this program. From what we're seeing from this transcript, those costs are not taken into account either.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Mr. Battista, you hit a home run too when you were talking about the dollars that are involved and that they can't be based on cost alone. Can you tell me, if medical admissibility or rejections for medical purposes were dropped, do you think there would be an increase or an influx of people with disabilities wanting to come to Canada?

[Michael Battista]

No, I really don't think there would be. It's not my impression that there are a number of people who have health issues who are just waiting for Canada to drop its medical inadmissibility provision, so that they can enter. Most of my clients are actually quite shocked when I tell them on the telephone, or by Skype, that Canada does this. Their typical response to me is, “I thought Canada was a fair country. I thought Canada wouldn't discriminate.” They still pursue it because they're very interested in Canada, but I have nothing really to say to them when they make those comments of surprise that Canada would discriminate in this way.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Thanks.

Ms. Benitez, I am very glad for the outcome of your situation. The situation I was talking about earlier, in the previous panel, was one in the same area. Not everybody is fortunate enough to be picked or chosen, or whatever, on compassionate and humanitarian grounds. That is why I raised the humanitarian issue in the previous panel.

While I appreciate the fact that it's there, it's where I was going when I asked whether a province could have some say in the finality of this. Never mind the province wanting to pay for this—I have a community that would have paid for the extra costs of having that individual live in the community. The parents would have been making far more—just in the taxes they would have paid—than what the costs would have been. There would have been a net benefit to the community, but it can't be a net benefit if they are all rejected as a family, and of course they weren't going to stay if the youngest person in the family was rejected.

Do you have any comments on that, Ms. Schweitzer?

[Toni Schweitzer]

That's part of the problem with this. Those cases that get a certain public profile.... There is the ability for IRCC to resolve those cases on humanitarian grounds, but that simply can't be an acceptable answer to a problem with the law. It is entirely arbitrary whose case gets that kind of profile and who is able to get the kind of help to do that. We are not that country, and I would certainly hope that none of you would be prepared to say that this saves a law that's problematic.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Thank you. The arbitrary part was exactly what I was getting at. It's too arbitrary in that regard for individuals who just can't afford it.

[Toni Schweitzer]

For all the Mercedeses and the outcomes of their cases, there are however many other cases of people who don't yet have—or may never have—a solution. You've heard what the law does to people. You have to think about that in determining whether there is any way it can be said that continuing this situation is fair.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Ms. Kwan, go ahead.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all our witnesses.

First I want to say, congratulations to you, Mercedes. Your story.... You had the courage to speak up and bring this to the public realm; that's why we are here today. You won your case less than two weeks ago, and you still show up to make the pitch and say why this law needs to change. I can't tell you how much that demonstrates the value that you, and people like you, add to our society and to our country. That is what we are talking about. I don't know how to measure that—not in dollars, not in cents—but I'll tell you that it is worth its weight in gold in terms of what you stand for and the humanity that Mr. Rae talked about earlier, about who we are as Canadians. Thank you for that.

I want to talk about the international law issue, and the fact that Canada.... We say we're back, and it's so good to say we're back. Let's measure, on this policy, how we're back. Canada has made commitments to equality and human rights of people with disabilities in our Canadian Charter of Rights, and we have done so provincially and federally with our human rights legislation. We are also a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, yet we have this law, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, which states that an individual would be discriminated against based on their different abilities. To that end, for us to say we're back on this score, what does the government need to do?

I'm going to go down the line to everybody. Perhaps you could get your comments on the record for us by way of recommendations—in a short answer, because we have limited time.

We'll start with Mr. Tomlinson.

[Maurice Tomlinson]

Quite simply, we have to repeal this section. It is in complete violation of our international obligations, and any reasonable assessment would prove that. It is a violation.

What is ironic is that we ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities at the start of the Vancouver Paralympic Games, when we welcomed the world of disabled individuals to Canada. You could play here; you just couldn't stay here. That's the message that was sent.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you.

Ms. Johnston.

[Meagan Johnston]

We also recommend a full repeal of the provision. The discrimination is not in keeping with the idea, as you phrased it, that “Canada is back”. We also think that the resources that could be poured into tinkering and making the system more accurate and getting more information is not worth it. We oppose all discrimination and we recommend a full repeal.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you.

[Toni Schweitzer]

As I've already said, I think that the law discriminates when it acts to refuse somebody with a disability from being eligible to immigrate to Canada. I think there's a serious problem with discretionary waivers or exceptions to overcome that problem. Also, Mr. Battista made reference to the Global News piece about where the numbers come from, and I just wanted to add one quick thing to that.

The last time Mr. MacKinnon testified before you, when he talked about how the Global piece was wrong because they were taking into account too many things, and that, in his words, “we consider only a narrow basket of social services”. He said they don't consider social assistance and don't consider social housing. That's not entirely the case. We have seen cases where they have looked at housing and they've looked at social assistance.

I think the takeaway from that is that the way they came up with those numbers is arbitrary and that perhaps Mr. MacKinnon himself doesn't entirely know all the decisions that are being made by officials underneath him because he didn't seem to be aware of that. I think that arbitrariness is simply unacceptable.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you. It goes to highlight the point that the issue of assessment is entirely flawed, and there is just no way to fix the issue before us.

Could I get a quick answer from you, Mercedes, please?

[Mercedes Benitez]

Even though my case is already resolved, I think the excessive demands should be repealed. I still feel the pain when they say I'm good to work, but not good enough to stay because of my son. This morning I had a chance with the press conference, and there are still cases there. A Filipina colleague, Josarie Danieles, who has two young daughters in the same situation as me, and I cried with her. She is so devastated.

I still feel the pain in my heart. There was a time when I couldn't even write the word “Canada” in my letter, because I'm thinking that some day I cannot write Canada anymore as my address. I've lived here for almost a decade and some day in my mind they will just send me home because of my son's condition. I'm here to stand for them and in my heart it's still fresh. I can still feel what they're feeling right now. A lot of people from my village, from my country, and maybe other countries who are really impacted by this kind of discrimination through excessive demands.

Thank you.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you.

[Michael Battista]

With the exception of this provision, in every other aspect of Canadian society—business, government, our education system—we are encouraged to see people with health issues and disabilities for what they can contribute, not that they are a burden. This law is completely out of step with Canadian society. It's a relic of our past and I think it should be repealed.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you.

Ms. Smith.

[Adrienne Smith]

If we look at the practicalities of how many people the system is catching, it's 900 applicants per year, or 0.2% of all the people who are applying to Canada. We've heard about all the problems with the system, and the amount of resources the government is going to have to sink into making the system workable. If the goal is cost savings for the government, it just doesn't make sense to keep this program in place.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you. We need to end there.

Mr. Whalen, bring us home.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

I'm sharing my time with Mr. Anandasangaree. He will start and I will finish.