Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My name is Chantal Desloges. I am a lawyer who specializes exclusively in immigration and refugee matters. I have 14 years of experience in immigration and refugee work, and I'm a certified specialist by the Law Society of Upper Canada in both immigration and refugee law. I'm one of only 14 people to hold both designations.
For the majority of my 14 years in immigration work, I've been dealing with people who are persecuted for various reasons and with the application of international law instruments to people in those situations. A great deal of my practice in the past five years has been focused on persecuted religious minorities from every area of the world, including not only certain specific religious minorities, but also any religious minority, whether Jewish, Muslim, Christian, or Hindu, whatever the case may be.
In my practice I have seen the level of persecution of religious minorities increasing exponentially, and I believe—and this is just my personal opinion—that it's because religious polarization across the world is becoming a more serious problem, not only for those directly involved in the persecution, but for all of us as well. For this reason, this issue really should be more and more on the political radar, but I haven't seen this to be the case.
This subcommittee today has the privilege and the responsibility to make suggestions and recommendations to various areas of government on what can be done to address international human rights issues. I would suggest that by focusing on the issue of persecution of religious minorities, this committee has an opportunity to increase the security of Canadians, to maintain Canada's image as a forerunner in international human rights, and also to generally improve our image abroad.
My focus today will concentrate on some problematic areas in Canada's treatment of religious minority cases and to make some recommendations as to how that can be improved. The good news is that it can all be done without reinventing the wheel at all.
I point out that an integrated approach to dealing with religious persecution internationally is necessary. What I mean by that is that we not fight the war on only one front. First of all, Foreign Affairs' focus on international trade and things like that is important, as is a focus on our country's refugee policy and immigration policy. And while these things may not necessarily always fall under the same ministry, it is important that they be coordinated.
Why is it so important? First of all, persecution of religious minorities is the proverbial canary in the coal mine. When religious minorities are persecuted, it's almost always the case that in those same locations, women are persecuted, homosexuals are persecuted, and political minorities are persecuted as well. If we deal with religious minorities head on, we also protect other types of minorities and we promote democracy.
It's also important, I believe, from an international security perspective, since it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that the countries where religious minorities are persecuted are the very same countries where terrorism is also gaining a firm foothold.
One important focus—which I believe was in the brief filed by One Free World International—is the use of trade and aid provisions to encourage positive human rights behaviour and to discourage negative human rights behaviour. Cultures that have an atmosphere of impunity for religious persecution usually do not abandon that way of life just because it's the morally right thing to do. There has to be a system in place to enforce the positive behaviour. One of the most important ways, of course, to influence people's behaviour is to hit them in their wallet. I've been pleased to note that the current government has been more and more willing to make human rights statements on the international stage, and specifically I have in mind the issue of China. We need to have more of that.
Finally, coming to my area of expertise, another way to reinforce respect for human rights is to provide shelter to those who have not had their rights protected and to those who are in danger of persecution worldwide. Providing shelter to those people is not only a humanitarian thing, but it also sends a clear statement to other governments that their behaviour is unacceptable.
Let's start by having a quick look at the inland refugee system. I have a couple of suggestions for things that could happen to make that system a little bit more sensitive to the rights of religious minorities. Despite whatever you might hear in the press, despite the foibles of our refugee determination system, it is actually a good system and it does have appropriate checks and balances. I believe the problems religious minorities experience have more to do with a lack of understanding of people in the system and a lack of sensitivity toward people of faith, more so than a real flaw in our actual system.
What I found is that secularism, of course, is a very highly valued commodity in our public service—as it should be—but there is such a thing as secularism gone too far. I often find, particularly when dealing with immigration and refugee officials, that there is not only a gross misunderstanding of what people of faith are all about, but there is even, a lot of times, some hostility toward people who hold those beliefs. The understanding of how people of faith operate is actually crucial in refugee determination.
Instead of conceptualizing it for you, I'll give you a couple of real-life examples that I personally have witnessed. About a month or so ago, I was litigating a refugee claim of an Iranian national who had converted from Islam to Christianity. During that refugee claim, I encountered a board member who was not someone of an ethnic minority. She was a white woman of British background who had never heard of a non-denominational Christian church. When my client began testifying that he was a member of a non-denominational church, she was completely blown away; she had never even heard that was possible. When he also added that his church didn't actually meet in an official church building, but he belonged to what they call a home church, she was equally flabbergasted. Fortunately, on that day we had the good luck of having a tribunal officer of a Christian background, who was able to give the board member a little bit of guidance, that, yes, actually there are a lot of non-denominational Christians all over the world.
Another example is a claimant I had a couple of years ago who was asked by a board member to explain the reasons why he had converted from Islam to Christianity. He was describing his personal viewpoint, which was that he felt that Islam was violent and that he was attracted to the message of love that he perceived in the Christian faith. The member cut him off in the middle of his description and stated that the Old Testament was equally or more violent than Islam, so his explanation made absolutely no sense to him. In my view, that member clearly crossed the line in terms of impartiality and imparted a personal opinion into that hearing, which was not appropriate—not to mention that it was very intimidating for the client who was testifying.
In other cases I've noticed that refugee board members have a standard set of quiz questions for religious minorities, not only Christians, but also Shia Muslims, in order to determine whether they really are a member of that faith group. The problem is that the members seem to think that a claimant has to be a theologian in order to be a genuine member of that faith community before they'll accept that it's true. The questions are often really difficult, and there seems to be a lack of understanding that people convert between religions for a whole host of different reasons, many of which have nothing to do with knowledge of holy scripture and theology or doctrine. It also ignores the fact that if anybody had a set of those questions, a very clever liar could easily subvert the system by simply memorizing the answers to the questions.
Now, board members are not bad people. They're not stupid people either. What they need is a little bit more training in sensitivity on religious issues and specific faith groups.
I've seen plenty of examples of people who were refused—