Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 29th, 2026

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dzerowicz]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 30 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format. To ensure an orderly meeting, I would like to make a few comments for the benefit of witnesses and members.

For those who are joining us on Zoom, please click on the microphone to activate your mic, and please mute yourself when you're not speaking. As you all know, for those who are joining us virtually, you can select the appropriate channel for interpretation: English, French or floor. Of course, for those who are in the room, you can use the earpiece that is attached and select the desired channel.

For those who are speaking, as well as for the questioners, I will let everyone know when you have one minute left.

Kindly wait until I recognize you by name before speaking.

I want to remind everyone to kindly not speak over each other, as it will be hard for our interpreters to translate, and it makes their job difficult.

Of course, please ensure that all your comments are addressed through the chair.

Members, please don't forget to raise your hand if you wish to speak. The clerk and I will manage the speaking order as best we can.

Thank you for your co-operation.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on September 16, 2025, the committee is resuming its study of Canada's immigration system.

I would now like to welcome our witnesses for today.

As an individual, we have Dr. Kelly Sundberg, professor from Mount Royal University. Online, we have Mr. Joshua Eisen, who's in-house counsel of FCJ Refugee Centre, a wonderful centre in downtown Toronto. From the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, we have Tracey Maulfair, representative in Canada, and Azadeh Tamjeedi, senior legal officer.

I warmly welcome all of you.

Up to five minutes will be given for opening remarks, after which we'll proceed with rounds of questions.

Welcome, Professor Sundberg. I'm going to ask you to begin with your opening remarks for five minutes. You can begin right now.

[Dr. Kelly W. Sundberg, Professor, Mount Royal University, As an Individual]

Thank you, Madam Chair, vice-chairs and members of the committee, for the opportunity to appear before you today.

I'm Dr. Kelly Sundberg, a criminologist and professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary. Before entering academia, I served for more than 15 years with what is today the CBSA.

From the outset, I want to be clear that I firmly believe in lawful immigration and refugee protection, and that I take great pride in our nation's long-standing commitment to supporting those who generally seek refugee protection from Canada. Nevertheless, our immigration system cannot remain credible if it's not competent, enforceable and aimed at building public trust.

Over the past two years, our government has clearly recognized that our systems are under great strain. We've seen changes to international student permits, temporary resident volumes, visa requirements, refugee eligibility rules and border integrity measures. These changes echo what many practitioners have been saying for years: Capacity and enforcement matter.

Recognizing the problem is not the same as fixing it. Canada's immigration and refugee system remains under great pressure. We see this in refugee backlogs, limited screening and delayed removals. Moreover, we see this in strains being transferred to provincial and municipal governments, which are left to absorb downstream costs in housing, schooling, health care, policing and social services.

Most concerning is the widening gap between what federal immigration policy promises and what the system can actually deliver. Unfortunately, this gap is contributing to growing public frustration and a deeper erosion of confidence in our federal institutions.

The Immigration and Refugee Board's own numbers are alarming. In fiscal year 2024-25, the refugee protection division finalized more than 78,700 cases while receiving approximately 170,000 asylum claim referrals. As of March 31, 2025, more than 175,800 claims were ready to be heard, with another 105,500 claims incomplete because of pending security screening and other outstanding requirements. These numbers don't describe a timely or adequately resourced system. They describe an overwhelmed one. When these systems are overwhelmed, everyone suffers. Genuine refugees wait too long for protection. Weak or disingenuous claims remain unresolved. Enforcement actions are delayed. Provinces and municipalities carry the burden, and public confidence erodes.

To this point, I believe both sides of the current debate have part of the truth but not the whole truth. Our government is right in speaking about sustainability, integration and protecting Canada's humanitarian commitments. Those words mean something only if the system can competently screen, process, decide, support and, where necessary, remove people in a timely and fair manner. The opposition's critique is also valid in terms of identifying enforcement, removal, social service pressures and public confidence as serious issues.

These are not imaginary concerns. Nevertheless, we must not treat refugees or newcomers as the problem. Frankly, the problem is not refugees or immigrants. It's system failure.

My research has found that approximately 12.5% of executed terrorist attacks and approximately 50% of publicly known thwarted plots involved individuals who entered Canada through asylum pathways or who were seeking asylum. Importantly, my research also shows that the overwhelming majority of asylum seekers are peaceful, law-abiding people who simply want safety and a better life. Nevertheless, the data clearly shows that asylum pathways are being exploited by a small but high-consequence cohort of bad actors. This distinction matters. Weak screening does not protect refugees. It harms them. When security failures occur, public anxiety rarely stays focused on the individual offender. Rather, it unfortunately spills into generalized resentment toward refugees, immigrants, international students and other newcomers. While this is clearly unfair, it is also sadly predictable.

For these reasons, I urge the committee to consider six practical areas.

First, Canada needs better, risk-informed, intelligence-led screening, especially of those seeking entry from failed states, hostile regimes or areas of civil war, terrorism and organized crime. Canada cannot rely on a system predicated mostly on self-declaration.

Second, Canada must recognize where and when refugee claims are made. As a general principle, refugee claims should be made abroad or immediately upon arrival at a port of entry. Inland claims must remain possible, of course, but they should be exceptions and require clear justification.

Third, Canada must improve immigrant supports, including an increased investment in language and skills training, foreign credential recognition, civic orientation and education on Canadian laws, rights, responsibilities and expectations.

Fourth, Canada must improve its intelligence, investigation and enforcement capacities so investigations are more comprehensive and removals more timely, with a greater foreign fugitive apprehension capacity and stronger inter-agency coordination, including better global information sharing.

Fifth, Canada must fix removals. Once due process is exhausted, removal must actually occur. If removal orders aren't enforced, the law loses credibility.

Finally, sixth, Canada should consider consolidating its immigration and border security, overseas liaison efforts, immigration and customs intelligence, exit tracking and maritime border integrity within a single integrated national security-focused agency. In essence, I suggest transforming the Canada Border Services Agency into a Canada border security agency.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dzerowicz]

Thank you, Professor Sundberg. You are way over time.

[Dr. Kelly W. Sundberg]

Oh, I'm sorry.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dzerowicz]

I've been very kind to you. I just wanted you to get through your recommendations.

Thank you very much.

Next, we go online to Mr. Eisen from the FCJ Refugee Centre.

Your five minutes start now.

[Joshua Eisen, In-house Counsel, FCJ Refugee Centre]

Good afternoon.

My name is Joshua Eisen. I'm in-house counsel at FCJ Refugee Centre in Toronto. We're a community-based organization that works with refugee claimants and other precarious migrants.

Today, I'm going to focus on two urgent concerns: first, the need for regulatory exceptions to the new ineligibility provisions introduced by Bill C-12, and second, the extraordinary and unjustifiable delay for humanitarian and compassionate applications, which, according to IRCC, now stands at more than 10 years.

I'll begin with Bill C-12.

Under Bill C-12, individuals who wait more than a year after arriving in Canada before making a refugee claim are ineligible for a refugee hearing. Instead, they are diverted to a pre-removal risk assessment, which offers fewer procedural protections. The one-year bar disproportionately harms some of the most vulnerable claimants: LGBTQ individuals, survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking, and people whose risk arises only after they have arrived in Canada due to changes in conditions in their country of origin.

Importantly, these cases are not exceptional. I regularly meet with clients who have been delayed in filing a claim because of trauma, structural barriers and other reasons beyond their control.

Under Bill C-12, these individuals lose their right to make a refugee claim, simply because more than one year has passed since their arrival in the country. That is not a fair or logical system. It punishes delay without examining the reasons for the delay. It ignores trauma, fear, coercion and changing global conditions.

For that reason, regulatory exceptions must be created for vulnerable groups, including LGBTQ claimants, survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking, and sur place claimants, so these individuals can benefit from a guaranteed oral hearing before the refugee protection division, along with the robust procedural protections that entails.

My second point concerns IRCC's disturbingly long processing times for applications for permanent residence on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, commonly known as H and C applications. Section 25(1) of the IRPA gives decision-makers discretion to grant permanent residence to individuals who do not qualify under other streams when there are sufficient humanitarian and compassionate considerations to justify relief. H and C applications are a critical safeguard. They exist to ensure that cases that would otherwise fall through the cracks still have a pathway to permanent residence. These applications are vital because they prevent some of the most complex and compelling cases from being lost in what can otherwise be a rigid and bureaucratic system.

The best way to understand the importance of H and C is through actual cases.

One of my clients was born in the United States while his mother was in transit to Canada from Haiti. He arrived in Canada as an infant, and his mother made a refugee claim. Her claim was accepted, but his was refused because he held U.S. citizenship. When his mother lost her refugee status after briefly returning to Haiti to attend her own mother's funeral, my client was left without any clear pathway to permanent residence in the only country he has ever really known. Now 20 years old, he faces removal to the United States, a country he has not been to since he was a baby, where he knows no one and to which he has no meaningful connection.

Another case involves a young couple who fled violence in their home country and sought refugee protection in Canada. They were represented by a fraudulent ghost consultant who mishandled their claim and disappeared with their money, causing their refugee claim to be abandoned. During that time, they had a daughter. For nine years they lived underground, without status, trying to build a life and protect their family. Recently, they were located by CBSA, which initiated removal proceedings. Deportation would mean forcing their nine-year-old daughter, a Canadian citizen, to leave the only home she's ever known and relocate to a country she has never seen and where she does not even speak the language.

In both of these cases, the only realistic pathway to stability and permanent residence is an H and C application. Unfortunately, that safeguard is now effectively dead. IRCC's current processing time for H and C applications exceeds 10 years. During that time, applicants often remain without status or the right to work, and they live under the constant threat of removal. In many cases, removal defeats the purpose of the application; by the time the decision is made, the harm the H and C process was meant to prevent has already happened.

If H and C is to remain a meaningful tool, there must be revisions to the government's immigration levels plan, at least as it applies to these applications. Under the current plan, more than 50,000 H and C applicants are competing for 1,100 spaces this year. The number of applicants will only continue to rise, while the number of spaces is actually set to decrease in the coming years.

H and C applications cannot function as a meaningful safeguard if applicants are expected to spend a decade in limbo before receiving a decision. If we are serious about fairness, compassion and the integrity of our immigration system, this must change. Otherwise, H and C is little more than window dressing, allowing Canada to maintain the illusion that there is an exceptional pathway for hardship cases, when in reality that pathway has been blocked.

Thanks for your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dzerowicz]

Thank you, Mr. Eisen.

We'll now go to Ms. Maulfair, from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Ms. Maulfair, you have the floor for five minutes, starting now.

[Tracey Maulfair, Representative in Canada, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees]

Madam Chair and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear today on this study of Canada's immigration system.

Today I'm going to focus my comments on two areas: asylum and asylum systems.

It's noteworthy that I am speaking in a year when we marked the 75th anniversary of the 1951 refugee convention. In the aftermath of World War II, the convention was a landmark commitment by states to ensure that people fleeing persecution would never again be left without protection. Marking this anniversary is not simply an occasion for reflection. It's also an occasion for states to reaffirm their promise to uphold its principles at a time of increasing forced displacement due to war, conflict and persecution.

At its heart, the refugee convention affirms a simple but powerful idea: that those forced to flee have the right to seek asylum and that protecting them is a shared responsibility.

In today's world, defined by conflict and fragmentation, this commitment is being tested. As of mid-2025, 117.3 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide, 8.4 million of whom were asylum seekers.

Behind every statistic is an individual forced to flee in order to survive, carrying with them the hope for safety and dignity. It's important to note that asylum has never been an act of generosity. Rather, it's an expression of courage—the courage of those who flee and the courage of societies that welcome them, even when it demands effort, resources and political will.

Today, the global asylum system is under strain. Responsibility for hosting refugees continues to fall disproportionately on countries closest to the conflict: 71% of refugees are hosted in the countries neighbouring their own, most of them low- and middle-income countries. This imbalance erodes protection, fuels irregular and dangerous journeys, and leaves far too many people in prolonged uncertainty.

Canada has a vital role to play in this through its asylum system and by maintaining an example to the world of how to properly assess asylum applications. This means ensuring fair and efficient asylum procedures and access to due process. Timely decision-making is essential, not only for public confidence but for the people whose lives remain on hold while they wait. Fairness and efficiency are not competing goals; they are mutually reinforcing pillars of a credible system.

Right now, Canada receives less than 2% of the world's asylum applications, and that number continues to decline. Now is the perfect time to look at ways to increase efficiency, innovate and improve on the tools already at its disposal, such as the Immigration and Refugee Board, whose expertise is well recognized internationally. The best way to address system backlogs and integrity concerns is by processing cases in a timely manner, not by deterrence measures.

In discussing these complex realities, which are often of a technical nature, we have a shared responsibility to work together to ensure that the conversation about asylum and refugees remains objective and balanced. It should be based on sound legal analysis and facts rather than populist rhetoric. Asylum systems must be flexible to address changes in the patterns and profiles of asylum seekers. This ensures public confidence in the integrity of the system while safeguarding against returning people to persecution.

Internationally, Canada's responsibility extends beyond emergency humanitarian assistance. Durable solutions require supporting host countries. Resettlement remains a powerful expression of international solidarity. Canada's leadership in this area sends an important signal at a time when safe pathways are narrowing globally, forcing people to make perilous journeys along irregular routes. However, resettlement cannot replace asylum. Both are essential, complementary components of a robust international system and fully aligned with the spirit and letter of the refugee convention.

As we mark its 75th anniversary, we are reminded that the convention is not a relic of the past. It's a living commitment, and Canada has both the credibility and the capacity to lead where we're going at this critical moment.

UNHCR stands ready to work with the government to advance a critical and principled response to the displacement.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dzerowicz]

Thank you.

Thanks to all of you for your remarks.

We're now going to begin our rounds of questions.

Our first round will be for six minutes, and we begin with Mr. Redekopp.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here today. I appreciate it.

Mr. Sundberg, Bill C-12 was recently passed, and it's being implemented as we speak. One of the provisions, of course, prevents asylum claims that are longer than a year. I've heard that might create as many as 30,000 new removal orders for CBSA.

Can the current CBSA staff handle 30,000 new removal orders?

[Dr. Kelly W. Sundberg]

No, it can't. It's very difficult to get data, but CBSA has roughly 420 officers nationally. When we think of the officers who would be tasked with a lot of this work, they're doing many other things. Frankly, with the volumes we're seeing, we need to have comparable staffing to process this in all components, from processing the applicants to enforcing this.

A lot of individuals came here as students over the last few years, and tens of thousands have made refugee claims and are going to add to that backlog. When you only have a handful of officers.... If we trust the government's own analysis of the officers' happiness or job satisfaction, the CBSA is on the lower end of that spectrum. It's—

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

I'm sorry to interrupt, but I have very limited time.

You talked to CBSA officers. What's the government telling them, then, if there are all these people to process and they don't have the capacity? What is the government telling them to do?

[Dr. Kelly W. Sundberg]

I do speak with the union and with officers. The question they have is, “If we have this cancellation of a lot of the status, why are we not seeing them going to PRRA, the pre-removal risk assessment process?”

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Why aren't they going to PRRA?

[Dr. Kelly W. Sundberg]

I don't know, maybe resourcing. It's a—

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

You brought up the pre-removal risk assessment, or PRRA. It's one of the ways an asylum claimant can delay their removal from Canada.

Does PRRA effectively bar CBSA from removing someone?

[Dr. Kelly W. Sundberg]

Yes.

In addition to speaking to CBSA officers—of course, I'm coming to this from a criminological perspective—I speak with members of various police departments across the country. They are becoming more and more frustrated with the fact that when they apprehend somebody for an alleged breach of the law, the refugee claim is then used as a means of delaying both the criminal process and the removal. It is a system that is definitely not efficient or effective, and it is also very disjointed.

This is unfair to everybody, but it's coming from a part of the country where this is increasingly a growing concern.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

When someone gets a removal order and they know they can do a PRRA, they don't have to do that. Is that correct? They can self-deport. Does that happen very often?

[Dr. Kelly W. Sundberg]

Self-deportation is increasing, for those allowed to leave.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Is it a large or a small percentage of people? What's your guess?

[Dr. Kelly W. Sundberg]

It would be a guess, because, again, the data is very difficult to nail down.

The delay is so incredible for these that we see some who are leaving on their own. It also depends on whether they're in custody or not.

The PRRA has become a bottleneck in the system, as has the H and C actually, as the other witness mentioned. The time delay is just—

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

You spoke about the integration of different departments. We have IRCC, CBSA and the IRB, and then we have local law enforcement. When IRCC has information about admissibility or fraud concerns, is that information consistently or quickly shared with CBSA?

[Dr. Kelly W. Sundberg]

No.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

When the IRB hears a refugee claim, does it always have the security information it needs from the CBSA or the IRCC?

[Dr. Kelly W. Sundberg]

No.