Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Dec. 9th, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Order, please.

This is the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development. Today, December 9, 2010, is our 38th meeting.

We are continuing our study into the treatment of sexual minorities in Uganda.

We are very happy today to have as our witnesses two officials from the Department of Citizenship and Immigration. They are Rénald Gilbert, who is the director general for the international region, and Debra Pressé, who is the acting director general for refugee affairs.

I'm sure our clerk has already briefed you about how these things work, and for all I know you are very experienced parliamentary committee attendees. I see one head shaking. Practice makes perfect, and you'll soon be able to do this sort of thing in your sleep.

At any rate, we are very interested to hear what you have to say. I invite you to begin your presentation.

Thank you.

[Debra Pressé, Acting Director General, Refugee Affairs, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As you've noted, my name is Debra Pressé and I am the acting director general for the refugee affairs branch at Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

Joining me today is Rénald Gilbert, Director General of CIC's International region.

Today I will focus my remarks on refugee criteria issues related to this subcommittee's study of the treatment of sexual minorities in Uganda.

Mr. Chair, Canada currently resettles between 10,000 and 12,000 refugees from abroad every year. As part of the reforms to our refugee system, this number will increase over the next two to three years to be in the range of 12,000 to 14,500 refugees per year.

The resettlement process begins with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. We call it the UNHCR. The UNHCR has the international mandate to identify and provide protection to refugees.

ln Canada, private sponsors may also identify refugees whom they are willing and able to support.

Canada' s definitions for who is eligible for protection through resettlement are found in our Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations. The legislation provides for three classes of refugees for the purposes of resettlement. One of the classes is the Convention refugee abroad class, which mirrors the 1951 convention definition.

As you know, a refugee by definition is someone who is outside the country of origin and who cannot return, or is unable to return, because of a well-founded fear that he or she will be persecuted upon return to the country of origin. This could be because of race, ethnicity, religion, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.

It should be noted, Mr. Chair, that the definition of a convention refugee does not include gender or sexual orientation as an independently enumerated ground for a well-founded fear of persecution. However, there is a growing body of international jurisprudence that recognizes that persecution based on gender or sexual orientation should be considered persecution based on membership in a particular social group, and the UNHCR does in fact refer persons in this group to Canada for resettlement.

The other two classes of refugees in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations are the country of asylum class and the source country class, and both provide for slightly broader definitions than the 1951 convention.

The country of asylum class is intended to allow protection to persons who have left the country of origin and cannot return because they were seriously impacted in their country and continue to be seriously impacted outside. That impact is because of civil war or armed conflict or because of ongoing suffering of gross violations of human rights.

The source country class is unique in that it addresses people who are still in their country of origin and who would meet the convention refugee definition if they were able to leave. It also addresses people who are either personally impacted by civil war or are suffering a serious deprivation of human rights and have been detained or imprisoned as a consequence of that. The source country class is open only to persons residing in their country of citizenship or habitual residence, and only when that country is listed in schedule 2 of the regulations. To be listed in the regulations, the country itself must be one where the general population is in a refugee-like situation because of civil war or armed conflict.

In all three refugee definitions, the person must have no possibility of another durable solution within a reasonable period of time.

The source country list as a tool, we will acknowledge, is not particularly flexible. It is based in regulation. It currently lists six countries, some of which are not even in a refugee-like situation anymore. The six countries today are Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, and Sierra Leone.

Mr. Chair, the committee has also asked that we explain the urgent protection and group resettlement programs.

Canada and the several other countries that engage in resettlement have formal arrangements in place with the UNHCR whereby we agree to accept a certain number of emergency referrals on an annual basis. These referrals are restricted to refugees who are facing a real and immediate threat to their life, liberty, or physical safety.

Group resettlement, or group processing, as we call it, is an administrative arrangement that we have developed with the UNHCR to allow us to more efficiently move large numbers of persons out of a specific refugee camp.

I want to turn now to the issue of sexual minorities. Currently, as far as we know, about 86 countries, or nearly one-third of all nations on earth, still have a total ban on male homosexuality. A smaller number also ban sex between women.

The penalties in these countries range from a few years in jail to life imprisonment. In a small number of places, the sentence is death.

The Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism has been vocal in expressing his concern about the treatment of and precarious situation for sexual minorities.

This summer, when he toured the country to promote the private sponsorship of refugees program, he encouraged organizations and individuals to sponsor persons, including Iranians, who have been forced to flee persecution based on their sexual orientation.

This program, the private sponsorship of refugees program, is a key component of Canada's refugee resettlement program whereby Canadian citizens and permanent residents can come together to sponsor refugees living abroad and help them find protection and build a new life in Canada.

In closing, I would mention that our visa office in Nairobi has a total of 10 applications for resettlement, in both our government and private sponsorship programs, in process from nationals of Uganda. None of the 10 persons has claimed to be persecuted on the basis of sexual orientation.

I would also mention that Canada' s resettlement program is global. Our officers go into more than 40 countries a year to interview refugees from over 60 nationalities.

There is no limit to the number of immigration applications people can submit to Canada. This means that today in our Nairobi mission, which serves over a dozen countries in Africa, we have over 7,000 person applications from private sponsors alone waiting for their turn.

Thank you.

We are ready now to answer any questions the committee may have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Gilbert, are you going to make a separate presentation?

[Rénald Gilbert, Director General, International Region, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

No, I don't have a presentation per se. I'm mostly here to answer questions that relate to the operation on the ground. If there are some, I'll be pleased to do so.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you very much.

I want to wrap things up earlier then usual because of a couple of items we have to discuss under the heading of committee business.

I'm suggesting we wrap this up at about 10 minutes to the hour. That means we have 40 minutes, which means we have, given that this is a very concise presentation—not all of our presenters are concise, trust me—10 minutes per round.

We will begin with the Liberals.

Mr. Silva, please go ahead.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for your presentation. First of all, I want to get on the record whether you have read the pertinent testimony from an earlier meeting.

[Debra Pressé]

Yes, I have, if you're referring to the testimony from November 4, I believe it was.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Several recommendations were made in terms of the processing and the problems of red tape, the bureaucracy, the difficulty of getting that information to the membership, and even managing to go into Kenya. Is there anything you could do so that we can help them and their organization with the process of facilitating?

[Rénald Gilbert]

First of all, we'd have to see whether they qualify to submit an application. As mentioned earlier by my colleagues, we don't have any application from that group currently.

We're essentially waiting to see how they could submit an application. In order to qualify as refugees, they have to be outside of Uganda, and we don't have a system to help people move outside of the country. That's not our mandate, either.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

I understand that you may have your mandate, but given that we know from witnesses on the ground and from media reports that gays and lesbians in Uganda are being targeted.... There is also a punitive law in the works that has generally wide support as well. It is a law that, if it were to go through, would provide the death penalty for anybody who has been caught doing any type of gay act. This is a life-and-death situation.

To get to the nearest place, which would be Nairobi, has its challenges as well. Also, as you will have been aware, the comments lately coming out of Kenya have not been very favourable to gays and lesbians. You're going from one country that has a serious problem--possibly arresting, charging, and hanging people and putting the death penalty on them—to another country that doesn't have a very stellar record.

What is it that you can do in maybe working with UNHCR or some NGOs?

You're obviously aware of the issue. You can't not be aware of what's happening on the ground. What are we prepared to do to facilitate and help out? Are the forms that complicated? Is it access to get them, to get to people, to know what's happening?

I don't know. It seems like a very frustrating situation, and for us to say there's nothing we can do about it is even more depressing.

[Debra Pressé]

We'll acknowledge that the forms are quite lengthy and complicated. Most persons do, in fact, require some assistance to complete the forms. We don't know the identity of the person who testified, but certainly we could put people into contact. We do have an organization that does assist people in Canada. It's called the refugee sponsorship training program, and certainly we could put persons in touch with that organization. It's a non-governmental organization that assists persons in understanding the forms and getting them filled out, etc. They also assist persons in finding or understanding the private sponsorship program.

The legislative framework right now is such that persons who want to knock on the door need to have someone knock on the door on their behalf, either a private sponsor or the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. I know that when I read the text, he was talking about the application itself being difficult to go through, so we could certainly put the group in touch with the refugee sponsorship training program.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Would you be prepared to maybe cooperate with our office? If we were to have a workshop session at the 519 Church Street community centre in Toronto, would you be prepared to lend some of your officials to come there and speak to some of the individuals about what they could do to assist the Ugandan pride committee?

[Debra Pressé]

Certainly. That's part of our day-to-day business. Our staff in the Ontario region--

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

You would be prepared to do that. Okay. I will contact them and let them know that you were friendly towards doing that, and then I will see if we can maybe set up a meeting in the new year.

I think all of us are very concerned. It's one of the reasons we're discussing this issue here at our committee. I think we're trying to figure out what avenues we could take and what processes we could put in place to help out.

I think you're also doing some work in relation to gays and lesbians fleeing from Iran. They're going to Turkey. That's also a community that is very much being persecuted by the Iranian government. They are going to Turkey, and I hear that UNHCR there has been very helpful in working with the Canadian officials to expedite their coming to Canada.

Could a similar model be followed in Nairobi?

[Rénald Gilbert]

That model could be adopted, because someone can actually apply and be accepted as a refugee if they meet the criteria for refugees. That would be a situation like that. The difference between the two has to do with where the person is physically located. In the case of an Iranian, there is a sponsoring group that has approached us. It is a bit similar to the group that we were discussing a little earlier.

In terms of helping a number of people, once they identify individuals, if the individuals are outside of their country, the current legislation allows us to then process the applications of those individuals.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

This is the final thing. I don't know what type of auditing you do involving your staff on the ground. I ask that question because we have done this for a very long time to save on costs. Unlike the U.S. or other countries, we tend to contract a lot of local people, and these people deal first-hand with the issue. It may not be the visa official, but it might be the person who takes the notes or the person at reception.

I want to make sure that the people we're hiring on the ground are fully aware of the Canadian laws with respect to gender equality and issues of sexual orientation. Do we have proper auditing of these individuals to make sure there is no cultural bias towards those particular groups and to make sure people have proper training?

[Rénald Gilbert]

First of all, I should clarify that currently the officers who interview refugees in Nairobi--there are three of them--are all Canadian-based. We do have locally engaged staff who do a lot of the administrative work. That's true. They are trained and know they are working for the Government of Canada, as I am. They've been trained. Many of them have worked in a Canadian work environment for an extended period of time, so they are familiar.

It's hard for me to comment on what they could do if they didn't like one particular kind of applicant versus another. That would be highly unusual. We have staff who are themselves members of that same sexual-orientation group who are working there. It's not the first time. It's not unusual, either. There is not much I can add.

I read the comments from a previous witness who commented differently, but I can only firmly disagree with that view.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you. That's what I wanted to know.

We were quite prepared to have your staff meet with the group, and I'll speak to them about setting something up. I think that the testimony we've heard is of concern. We've been instructed to do whatever we can and make sure we work with the different departments to see what we can do to help them out. I don't know if you have any concrete suggestions.

I know that in Turkey there is a UN agency on the ground to help with the Iranians, but there's nothing like that in Nairobi, is there?

[Rénald Gilbert]

The UN has a strong presence in Kenya and in all the neighbouring countries. We accept over 2,000 refugees in the office in Nairobi, and the majority of them have--

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Are we working together?

[Rénald Gilbert]

Yes, we see them on a daily basis.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Is there a number we accept every year from the UNHCR-designated refugees?

[Rénald Gilbert]

The government-sponsored refugees form a separate category, sponsored by the Government of Canada. Each year there are over 7,000, and the vast majority are referred by the UNHCR.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

I suppose the government could decide, given what's taken place in Uganda, that we need a priority for those refugees in Nairobi.

[Debra Pressé]

That would be a policy choice.