I'm sorry. I thought you were signalling something to me.
In any event, we were gathered there to talk about that with Mr. Seidu Mohammed, who shared his experience with us to highlight the dangerous, perilous journey he had to take and what it means, when Canada takes these actions, for the lives of people who are being persecuted.
By way of background, Mr. Mohammed was born in Ghana. He fled, hoping to rebuild his life in the United States out of fear for his life due to his sexual orientation. I know that the committee members would be aware of this. This was major news in the community. The media did cover this story extensively.
Mr. Mohammed is gay. We know that homosexuality is illegal in Ghana. It is punished under a section of their criminal code entitled “Unnatural Carnal Knowledge”. A 2012 U.S. State Department human rights report also pointed to widespread discrimination, police harassment and extortion attempts, citing several instances of violent mob-style assaults being carried out against suspected homosexuals.
Seidu Mohammed made an asylum claim in the United States after arriving in San Diego in 2015. He then spent a year in a detention centre. While in detention, he did not have access to legal counsel. He lacked the freedom to gather materials to support his case. As a Harvard report stated, which I'll speak to later today, this is all too common.
Ultimately, his claim was rejected. He felt that he had no choice: He headed north. He met another man from Ghana in the Minneapolis, Minnesota, area. The men took a bus from there to Grand Forks, North Dakota, and then took a $400 cab ride to the spot near the border.
The men then embarked on the most dangerous part of their journey. They walked for at least seven hours, at times through waist-deep snow, in -18°C weather, trying to cross into Canada. Of course, they were poorly equipped for the conditions. They tried to hitchhike for hours to see if they could get some assistance. This failed. They were stuck in the snow, you see. It was so cold that their pants were frozen, stuck in the snow. In fact, part of his pants were pulled off. He tried to actually take off his pants to see if he could move forward. He couldn't. He was frozen. He was stuck in the snow. Can you imagine?
He told me that at that point, he thought he was going to die. He thought he was going to die. They tried to get attention from people, but to no avail. Luckily, a truck drove along that way. The driver saw the two men stuck in the snow and stopped. He called 911 and help did come.
Mr. Mohammed did not lose his life that day, but he ended up losing all the digits of both hands. His fingers and his thumb had to be amputated as a result of the extreme frostbite he suffered trying to cross the border. Despite that, he said the journey was worth it.
We should also put this into context. Mr. Mohammed is an athlete. He's a soccer player. We can imagine how important his physicality is for him in terms of that sport.
That said, to save his life, he lost the digits of his fingers on both hands, and he said that the journey was worth it. He also said that he was happy to be here—here meaning Canada—because he knew that to go back to his country, to Ghana, would mean that he would lose his life.
That was one story, but that's not the only story about people fleeing persecution because the United States is not a safe country for them. I don't know if we can understand that. I have never experienced it myself, to be persecuted in that way. I don't know what it is like to fear for your life, for being who you are, for loving the people you love. To be so desperate as to take on such a dangerous journey, that's the state people were in. That's the state Mr. Mohammed was in.
By the way, Mr. Chair, I invited Mr. Mohammed to this committee when we studied the Safe Third Country Agreement, and he offered his perspective. Afterwards, I was outside, and I recorded his story, if nothing else, just to remind myself how important this work is and what it really means to hear from someone who directly experienced that. Although he gave me permission, I never put that video on the public record.