Mr. Chair and members of the committee, I'm grateful for the opportunity to appear before the committee this morning on behalf of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, a national voice for refugees and migrants across Canada.
I'd like to acknowledge that we meet here on the historic unceded territory of the Anishinabe people, something we must hold in mind as we discuss the distribution of asylum seekers throughout this country.
At the outset, I want to emphasize that we have no opposition to equitably redistributing refugee claimants across Canada. However, as many speakers have already pointed out over the course of the study, this must be done first with consent and in a way that ensures that claimants remain supported and have access to the pillars of support that help them settle and thrive in their new communities.
One of those pillars is access to legal services in terms of availability of lawyers and legal aid funding for refugee law services. Despite refugee determination taking place in a federal tribunal and being a constitutionally federal responsibility, access to refugee legal aid services is a patchwork across the country. Two provinces, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, have no funding for legal aid for refugees at all. Others do not fund key aspects of the refugee process, while others have such limited funding that many lawyers cannot afford to take on legal aid files.
The foundational document in every refugee claim is the basis of claim form. This is a claimant's first opportunity to tell their story and set out the persecution they would face back home. For context, a basis of claim form generally takes me about nine hours of work with the client. Alberta does not provide legal aid funding for the completion of this critical form. In Quebec, lawyers are paid a total of $300. In New Brunswick, there is currently a single articling student to represent refugee claimants who cannot otherwise afford a lawyer.
In 2023, the federal government transferred hundreds of refugee claimants from Roxham Road to New Brunswick with very little notice, sending service providers and the IRB scrambling. In New Brunswick, there were nearly no refugee lawyers and there was no legal aid funding, aside from that very small clinic. Legal service providers across the Maritimes struggled to accommodate the demand, and many claimants had to file their claims without counsel. Many eventually left for urban centres.
Access to legal services is a right. It also raises all boats. Claimants with counsel submit proper claims within required time periods, moving through the system smoothly and integrating more easily. A dollar amount can even be put on this. A Canadian Bar Association report cites studies from the U.K., Australia and the United States, saying that for every dollar spent on legal aid, the average social return on investment is six dollars. On the other hand, insufficient funding or insufficient access to services leads to higher numbers of appeals, creating backlogs and delay and ultimately costing taxpayers more money.
This is even more important now that Bill C-12 has become law, rendering tens of thousands of claimants ineligible to be referred to the IRB and shifting them to the PRRA, the pre-removal risk assessment process. PRRAs are decided almost entirely on paper. Imagine being a traumatized, newly ineligible refugee claimant speaking no English or French and being asked to put forward your entire claim for refugee protection and evidence within 30 days without the assistance of a professional who understands the process and the complex legal questions you're expected to address. If an officer makes a mistake—and they're human, after all, and they do—and you have to challenge that decision in court, having a lawyer for that is essential.
What's needed is a coordinated national legal aid strategy that makes it not matter where you live in the determination of the kinds of services you receive. Whether that's increased per capita funding from the federal government tied to national standards or coordination agreements allowing lawyers from one province to represent clients in another, such a strategy must be front and centre in a discussion of where to distribute claimants, and how.
Thank you for your questions.