Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Nov. 22nd, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting 43 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. Today we will continue our study of the conditions faced by asylum seekers.

I confirm that all witnesses have conducted the required technical tests in preparation for the meeting.

For our first panel, I would like to welcome our witnesses today.

We are joined by Frantz André, spokesperson and coordinator for Comité d'action des personnes sans statut.

We are also joined by The Refugee Centre, represented by Abdulla Daoud, executive director, and Pierre-Luc Bouchard, refugee lawyer and head of the legal department.

Our third witness for today is Eva-Gazelle Rududura, vice-president of Unis pour une Intégration Consciente au Canada.

On behalf of all the members, I would like to welcome you all. You will have five minutes for your opening remarks, and then we will to go to our rounds of questioning.

We will start with Mr. André.

You have five minutes for your opening remarks. You can please begin.

[Frantz André, Spokesperson and Coordinator, Comité d’action des personnes sans statut]

Good afternoon.

It is a privilege to have the opportunity to talk about the crisis situation that migrants in general find themselves in when they arrive in Canada. I am going to take the situation of Haitian migrants, very specifically, as an example, but you should know that there are similarities with what other migrants of various origins experience. Nonetheless, it must be noted that at present, a large majority of the migrants who arrive at the border via Roxham Road are of Haitian origin, as was the case in 2017.

Their arrival via Roxham Road is described as "irregular". What must be described as not only irregular, but also tragic, is the fact that these Haitian migrants have had to transit numerous countries, travelling through forests or areas where they were targeted by robbers, when they were not being attacked by wild animals. Some migrant women in particular have suffered sexual violence along the way.

You will understand that these migratory journeys leave scars and trauma. Of course the migrants pass through the United States before arriving in Canada, but they very often decide not to stay there because of the mistreatment and racism they suffer in that country. We will recall the shocking images that circulated last year in the news showing American border agents on horseback chasing migrants toward a river, lassos in hand, as if it was a slave hunt.

Apart from those images, there are also the shocking facts: the United States has deported more than 28,000 Haitians without giving them an opportunity to have their asylum claim heard. In that situation, Haitian migrants, like migrants of other origins, prefer to come to Canada to claim refugee protection. However, the safe third country agreement requires that their claim be made in the United States. That, in a nutshell, explains why migrants come to enter Canada by irregular means.

Regarding how migrants are received, there is inconsistent processing of cases that is a result of a lack of resources. The other challenges relate to housing for migrants. In some cases, there are still quarantine situations that delay filing documents. In other cases, migrants who were housed in Quebec have been given short notice to find accommodation on their own, or else agree to be moved by bus from where they are being housed in Quebec to a facility in Ontario. I have heard reports that some of them did not understand they were being taken to another province.

With respect to the refugee protection claim document, the "brown paper", that allows the holder to obtain a work permit, it requires other preliminary documents to be completed and submitted electronically in order for the claim to be analyzed. However, since some migrants do not have the technical skills or the ability to write in one of the two official languages, some migrants send the documents in late, so there is a long waiting period before they obtain a work permit. This means that they have no choice but to continue receiving last resort assistance, which is insufficient to meet their basic needs and keeps them in a precarious situation.

Some choose to work under the table and are then at the mercy of employment agencies that do not abide by labour standards or employers who subject them to abusive working conditions. A major challenge relates to the difficulty of finding an immigration lawyer, whether through legal aid or privately. At the same time, the government portal, which should make it possible for people to find information or send documents, is very difficult to use.

There is much more to say, but five minutes is not enough to talk about the distress experienced by asylum claimants who have chosen to come to Canada in the hope that they will be able to work and integrate into a welcoming and safe society under the rule of law.

For some months, Haiti has been in the news because the situation is not secure and because the humanitarian crisis has recently been exacerbated in that country, which is my country of origin. What is not explained in the media is the connection between Canada's foreign policy in Haiti and the flight of Haitian migrants to Canada. Canada has to have a foreign policy that does not contribute to exacerbating conflicts abroad. Most importantly, Canada has a duty to receive migrants with the dignity and respect that they expect.

Once again, thank you for inviting me to speak on this subject.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you.

We will now proceed to Mr. Daoud, who is presenting for The Refugee Centre.

Mr. Daoud, you will have five minutes for your opening remarks.

Please go ahead.

[Abdulla Daoud, Executive Director, The Refugee Centre]

Thank you. I'll be joined by Pierre-Luc Bouchard as well.

Honourable Chair, vice-chairs and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to submit a brief and appear on behalf of The Refugee Centre today.

I'm joined by the head of our legal clinic, Maître Pierre-Luc Bouchard, to bring forth an issue that we believe needs to be addressed urgently by this committee and policy-makers at large regarding the asylum-seeking process in Canada.

Typically, as soon as an individual makes an asylum claim in Canada, whether it be an inland claim, a border claim or an irregular crossing claim, they are instantly given the refugee protection claimant document, famously known as the brown paper. As soon as they are granted this document, they are given 45 days to submit their paperwork and initialize their claim. The brown paper affords them certain rights within this country, including the interim federal health plan and the right to apply for a work permit for asylum seekers in Canada.

This committee is already aware that it can take up to two years to get a hearing with the IRB, also known as the Immigration and Refugee Board. The brown paper is the only form of Canadian photo identification given to the claimant, which is vital for their ability to reside in Canada while they wait for their hearing.

In early January 2022, Maître Pierre-Luc Bouchard and I started encountering two additional documents, depending on the point of entry for the refugee claimant, in temporary lieu of the brown paper. These are entitled “acknowledgement of claim” and “entry for further examination”. Both of these documents serve as a bureaucratic tool to delay granting the refugee claimant the brown paper, while stripping them of certain rights that the brown paper affords them.

At first, it provided an appointment dated three to six weeks from the refugee claimant's time of entry for them to acquire their brown paper and become eligible to apply for asylum in Canada. However, as time progressed, appointment times for both of these documents lengthened to 12 to 24 months. Furthermore, these dates seem to be arbitrarily set. In one instance, our legal clinic saw an appointment given 16 months from the time of entry and the appointment was on a Sunday, when the IRCC offices are closed. This practice is seemingly becoming the norm, as well. From our own internal statistics, from September 1 until today, over 90% of the 312 asylum seekers we have worked with have received an acknowledgement of claim with a date in the future for a brown paper.

With the existing delay in hearing times at the IRB, and now the additional delays created by the CBSA and the IRCC, we have witnessed an average time, from entry, that a refugee claimant spends waiting for their turn to prove that they will gain safety in Canada go from two years to four years. Most of these people do not have a Canadian photo ID, nor the ability to work, as work permits are processed separately and take an extra six to eight months to process. This is a recent policy that was passed.

If this practice of additional bureaucratic hurdles continues, we will witness devastatingly severe economic and social outcomes for the refugee claimant population. These delay tactics force refugee claimants to be dependent on social assistance without the ability to work, not only to provide for themselves, but for the Canadian economy as a whole.

Furthermore, without a Canadian photo ID, they are forced into housing with few to no rights, as the only landlords willing to rent out to individuals without an official photo ID depend on cash-only payments in buildings with extremely poor conditions. Access to health care is also severely impacted, as the majority of clinics that accept the IFHP are not aware of this new document, the acknowledgement of claim, and turn away many of our clients.

These unnecessary additional hurdles are forcing our clients into a cycle of systemic poverty.

Despite common beliefs, Canada has the means and the capability to provide for our future citizens with a better and more stable start to life in our country. The commendable Canadian response to previous world crises exemplifies how our nation can provide for vulnerable individuals. We witnessed government documentation being provided for vulnerable individuals and processed swiftly and hastily when it came to the Syrian and Afghan crises, and the Ukraine crisis more recently.

Furthermore, the brown papers were being issued with fewer staff and fewer resources before COVID-19 and prior to our borders reopening. Now we are experiencing a similar or lesser number of claims, with more funding and more staff, making the reasoning for such forms puzzling at best.

Go ahead, Pierre.

[Pierre-Luc Bouchard, Refugee Lawyer and Head of Legal Department, The Refugee Centre]

I am going to continue on the subject my colleague has spoken about. Based on our conclusions and the results we have witnessed directly, we strongly recommend a list of suggestions to the committee that you will find in the brief we have submitted.

Two main recommendations are the most urgent in our minds.

The first is to standardize the issuance of the refugee protection claimant document, the "brown paper". When refugee claimants arrive, they have to be given an open work permit, or at least a temporary federal identity document that allows them to apply for a work permit or guarantees additional rights, given that it takes a lot of time to get a refugee protection claimant document.

The second recommendation we consider to be important and urgent is to extend the validity period of the documents.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Your time is up. You can go into your recommendations when we go into our round of questioning.

We will now proceed to Madame Rududura.

You will have five minutes. You can please begin.

[Eva-Gazelle Rududura, Vice-President, Unis pour une Intégration Consciente au Canada]

Good afternoon, parliamentary committee members and guests.

My name is Eva-Gazelle Rududura and I am the vice-president of UNICC, Unis pour une intégration consciente au Canada, a not-for-profit organization whose objective is to promote the harmonious integration of newcomers from the Burundian diaspora into society and the workforce, and enable them to contribute to the social and cultural development of their new country, Canada.

In response to the invitation the organization received to testify regarding the conditions faced by asylum seekers in the Burundian community who arrive via Roxham Road, we did some information-gathering in order to collect their testimony. In addition to the information we regularly receive from the members of the community we meet with and help to integrate, we held individual discussions with more than a dozen people who had come via Roxham Road. When they were assured that their anonymity would be protected, they spoke openly. We are going to provide you with a condensed version of what they said.

Everyone who spoke regarding entry to Canada via Roxham Road talked about the warm, humane and very respectful reception they got from the border services and police officers. In general, the people who spoke said they had received good guidance regarding how the administrative formalities would proceed, as well as help in navigating to obtain the support services they needed.

One woman who had come via Roxham Road when she was pregnant told us that when she arrived she was greeted in French and she felt better, not just because of the language, but also because of the human warmth of the Canadian officers. After helping her complete the administrative process, they showed her a place where she could buy something to eat and guided her to the station where she was able to get the bus to go to the downtown Montreal YMCA, where she spent the night. At the YMCA, she met another woman who directed her to the immigration office so she could report that she preferred to join her uncle who lived in Ottawa. Her case was then transferred to Ottawa, where she is living today with her husband and two sons. That woman is the wife of the current president of UNICC, Corneille Nibaruta, who joined her several years later. Today, they both work for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

In the course of our interviews, which were relatively similar in terms of the positive responses, we also heard the experience of a young man who arrived several months ago via Roxham Road, who knew no one in Canada. He told us that all he knew about this country was that he could build a life here that was worth living. Today, he has found a shared apartment and is impatiently awaiting a work permit so he can enter the workforce.

This enthusiasm for work is a hallmark of the Burundian community living in Canada. A majority of that community is composed of people who were first granted protected person status. Today, they have integrated into society and have become permanent residents or Canadian citizens and are contributing to the richness of Canada. They are also proud of this.

The members of the Burundian community in Canada include public servants in the federal and provincial governments, healthcare workers who are saving lives and helping to keep Canadian healthcare systems thriving from coast to coast, successful entrepreneurs who are creating jobs and helping to strengthen the Canadian economy, and experienced engineers like the Burundi-Canadian woman who is working on projects like the Canadarm or bringing the Internet to the North Pole.

Another not insignificant characteristic of the Burundian community is its considerable contribution to Canadian francophonie, as shown by these figures: between 2016 and 2020, five per cent of the francophone immigrant population in Canada outside Quebec originated from Burundi. Between 2006 and 2016, Burundi ranked second, after France, among the countries of origin of francophone newcomers in Ontario.

Last, the refugee claimants of today are also the potential Canadian residents and citizens of tomorrow whom Canada can count on. By giving thousands of refugee claimants a fresh start, Canada in return receives the finest they have to offer, whether that be their knowledge, their skills, their labour, or, in many cases, their youth.

I have attached to my presentation an article that the president of UNICC, Corneille Nibaruta, wrote in celebration of the welcome that people find in Canada. The article was published in Le Droit on June 28, 2019, and is entitled "La reconnaissance d'un citoyen envers le Canada". Today, Mr. Nibaruta is a proud and committed Canadian citizen, whose story resembles that of many others in our community. It is a story that, like so many others, began with entry via Roxham Road and continues today with the gratitude of a proud and committed citizen.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you.

We will now proceed to our round of questioning. We will begin with Ms. Rempel Garner.

You will have six minutes for your round of questioning. You can please begin.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I'll start with Mr. André.

I believe the United States has extended temporary protected status this month for Haitian nationals who are making asylum claims. Is that correct?

[Frantz André]

Yes, that's right.

That program was extended several weeks ago now. However, there is still a lot of uncertainty and anxiety about the possibility that it will be suspended, and when. Under the Trump administration, the program was suspended and then restored.

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

Thank you.

I'm just going to try to elicit yes-or-no answers to a certain extent, because I want to get through a line of questioning in a short period of time.

Temporary protection status has been afforded to Haitian nationals. Do you think this suggests that the American legislative framework for being able to evaluate ongoing or emergent issues in a country allows for flexibility in extending additional protection to asylum claimants?

[Frantz André]

No.

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

Okay.

You said in your testimony that Haitian nationals prefer to file their claims in Canada as opposed to the U.S. With the United States having designated temporary protection status to Haitian nationals, is there another reason for preference in claiming asylum in Canada?

[Frantz André]

In many cases, when people went to their hearing to have their case determined, many of them were detained and deported. Arbitrary actions were carried out and there is this uncertainty, and the rumour circulating about deportation, that motivates people to come here.

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

Thank you, and thank you for your brevity.

Do you have evidence of the arbitrary nature that you just referred to?

[Frantz André]

I can certainly provide you with evidence.

Some people with whom I have been in contact went to their hearing in the United States, from which they were detained and deported. There are also people who came here and returned to the United States, where they were picked up by the authorities and also were deported.

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

Did they not have pending refugee claims, or had they not gone through any process whatsoever?

[Frantz André]

You mean here, in Canada?

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

I mean in the U.S. primarily.

[Frantz André]

In most cases, people do not claim asylum. They are summoned to a hearing. Because of what happened last year, when more than 28,000 people were deported, people are afraid of being detained and deported, and so they leave the United States.

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

Do you think there is a difference between a perception of fear and perhaps a ruling that was established through a hearing process?

[Frantz André]

I believe that fear prompts many people to leave their country, which they would not choose to do if there were no conflict.

The United States does not demonstrate that it is a safe country since certain people are more favoured than others. In my and other communities, such as the Nigerian community, primarily, I have observed that a large number of people are coming here. It even seems that during the period when Canada was not granting a moratorium for Haitians, it deported more people in those two groups, Haitians and Nigerians.

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

In terms of recommendation, then, perhaps to decrease the pull factor in preference to one country over another, a recommendation could be that the government seek to strengthen review processes to ensure that there isn't discrimination against persons from any country when making asylum claims so that they aren't subject to arbitrary or subjective measurements of discrimination.

Would you agree?

[Frantz André]

I agree that the safe third country agreement, which causes exactly the problems we are having here, should be revisited. I also think the discretionary power that border services officers have to turn certain people back has to be revised somewhat.

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

Just on that, with the time remaining, I just want to clarify, because I think I've heard contradictory testimony. You just recently said that you believe the United States is a safe country, but that the safe third country agreement shouldn't apply. How do you reconcile that? Perhaps it's translation.