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.