Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Dec. 3rd, 2020

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

We are talking about paramilitary groups.

Are drug traffickers also involved in those types of processes?

[Jimmy Graham]

I can't speak too much to the details of this aspect. I've heard reports from other organizations working on these issues that the drug traffickers and the paramilitary groups are co-opting these vulnerable people who are coming in. Perhaps Ms. Imseis has more details on that.

[Rema Jamous Imseis]

I'm afraid I don't know the nature of their business model, whether for paramilitary groups or for drug traffickers. Everywhere in the world where this is an issue, I can tell you from my experience in other parts of the world, we generally see that weapons, drugs and crime are the common threads, and the extortion and abuse that they exact on people are to finance these types of business interests, if you like.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Okay.

I am very familiar with Colombia, as I made a documentary there. I will send you the link one of these days.

I don't have much time, but what do you think the most urgent problems are right now when it comes to human rights for displaced Venezuelans?

How has the pandemic contributed to those issues?

[Rema Jamous Imseis]

The pandemic has, as I said, exacerbated an existing humanitarian crisis. We already had a crisis before the pandemic, and now it has been made worse by it.

Basic access to essential necessities of life, health care, education, water, shelter, sanitation, and food—the entire spectrum of basic humanitarian response—was all part of our humanitarian operation in that region prior to COVID, and that need is now only being exacerbated by it.

One of the ways in which we're addressing that issue of the economic impact is by increasing our use of cash-based assistance to people, because as we have both seen, their livelihoods have been completely wiped out overnight because of COVID.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe.

Thank you, witnesses.

We will now move to Ms. McPherson from the NDP for seven minutes.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, and I want to thank both of our witnesses for joining us this evening.

We've heard so much this evening about what the impacts have been. There was a crisis for refugees coming from Venezuela prior to COVID-19, and of course COVID-19 has made everything so much harder and so much more challenging.

What I'm a little bit interested in learning about is what Canada can do, what our role as parliamentarians should be, what we can actually do at this point. We heard in the last panel that there was a request for $762 million, and that only $141 million of that humanitarian aid was given. There was this $621-million gap in available funding.

I think what you are looking for from Canada is an increase in support for humanitarian aid and more advocacy work by Canada to make sure that we are supporting the refugees and perhaps even some work around the ability of refugees to come to Canada. I would really like both of you, if you wouldn't mind, to take a few moments to tell us very clearly and in quite good detail what Canada could do to help the Venezuelan refugees right now.

Maybe I would start with you, Ms. Imseis.

[Rema Jamous Imseis]

Thank you.

I have a very detailed answer, in fact, to give you on this one. It's been in my talking points whenever I meet with the government.

In fact, I have to say that I wouldn't be a good humanitarian if I didn't say that funding our humanitarian response plans would be the first order of business. Canada has been a generous supporter and contributed to our organization and to our emergency appeals globally and continues to do so, but of course any additional support would be welcome and would be put to very good use. That is the first bit: additional humanitarian support.

The second part would be to use Canada's influence and standing in international financial institutions to support additional development financing and development aid packages to the countries in the region. That's something that Canada's already been doing, and we would welcome stepping up that effort in order to ensure that these countries are bolstered and provided with support so that they can do the kinds of things they need to do, including the applying the various solutions we're asking for, like ensuring people are included in social protection schemes.

Canada has agreed to host the next international pledging conference for Venezuela, which should be taking place in the first part of next year, I think in the second quarter. The date has yet to be determined. We are working with Canada and with the International Organization for Migration to ensure that it's a successful event. The last one raised quite a bit of money, both in terms of humanitarian aid and also in loans and grants to countries in the region, and we'd like to see the same outcome, if possible, at this next pledging conference. That's a huge support.

If you asked me, the last thing I would say before turning it over to Mr. Graham is that I think Canada's resettlement program has been tremendously generous. Canada now stands as the largest resettlement country in the world for two years running, but any more we can do to increase the spaces available, particularly to skilled Venezuelans, many of whom have English and experience that is relevant and can address some of the persistent labour market shortages here in Canada.... Canada has already announced its intention to bring people here on a special innovative labour mobility scheme, but if we can help that succeed and grow, we'll have gone a long way towards supporting these people.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you so much.

Mr. Graham, would you comment?

[Jimmy Graham]

I completely agree with all those points about funding and resettlement, so I won't rehash that aspect.

I'll add by speaking a little bit about advocacy. I think there is a need to potentially create funding mechanisms that can be a vehicle for advocacy and policy change. I'll give an example of what I mean from cases from other countries.

In 2016, the Jordan Compact was created, which was basically an agreement between various donors, including the World Bank and some other bilateral donors, to essentially provide funding to support the refugee response in Jordan and provide other types of support to the government in exchange for basically opening up the labour market to refugees, allowing refugees more rights to work and to participate in the economy. That was not perfect, but it had a lot of success in moving those policies forward and supporting Jordan at the same time in hosting refugees. More recently, something similar has been done in Ethiopia to similar effect.

There's scope for donors working together to move the policy agenda forward. I know this isn't an immediate fix to the problem of COVID, but I think it's clear that the refugee crisis in Latin America is going to continue for who knows how long. I think it's important to think not just about what we can do now with this humanitarian support, which is of course crucial, but also to start thinking about what can be done to create an environment that allows refugees to work towards self-reliance and also contribute to the host countries' economies.

Advocating those kinds of funding mechanisms for Canadian foreign aid to push for these kinds of things, to create these vehicles for policy changes, would be a powerful way to move forward with the advocacy agenda.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I know the chair is going to get mad at me in a moment, but I will quickly ask, in terms of when you talk about Canada using its role, its advocacy, its ability to influence for things like financing, are you looking more in terms of the bilateral or the multilateral financing mechanisms? Which of those would be most appropriate in this case?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Ms. McPherson, the witnesses might be able to do that in your second round.

We're going to move to the second round. I'm just looking at the time. Be mindful that you'll have about three and a half minutes to four minutes to ask questions of the witnesses.

We're going to move over now to the Liberals for three and a half to four minutes.

Mr. Zuberi will start.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

I thank both of you for being here and for taking the time to inform us on this very important issue.

I want to also highlight what Ms. Jamous Imseis mentioned, which was that the displacement is on the level of what we saw recently in Syria. That's a really important marker for us, an important reference point.

I'm curious about the impact of sanctions on the situation in Venezuela and how that also spills over into the displacement of Venezuelans.

Does either of you want to touch on that, please? We have about three minutes, or less.

[Rema Jamous Imseis]

Mr. Graham, would you like to kick that off?

[Jimmy Graham]

Sure.

Unfortunately, that is not an area where I have a lot of expertise. We have really focused our research on the impacts within the hosting country. It's a great question, but I do not have a lot to offer on that topic.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thanks.

[Rema Jamous Imseis]

Similarly, I am not an expert on sanctions, but I can tell you that the situation in the country is dire and it was largely precipitated by, in addition to political factors, serious economic contraction and episodes of hyperinflation, shortages of basic commodities and access to services that one would expect of a functioning government. All those things are going to be impacted by sanctions whenever you apply them to a country.

We've seen the impact of those kinds of sanctions in other places in the world. It's not for me to determine whether that's an effective tool, but just to say that perhaps it certainly isn't going to make the economic situation any better.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you.

Picking up on the idea of displacements, what types of people actually are leaving Venezuela? Can you shed some light on that?

[Jimmy Graham]

I haven't seen the latest information, but just from the data that has been collected, it seems that it's all kinds of people. We have a really broad spread of demographics.

One thing I would add, for the benefit of host countries, is that there have been a lot of highly educated populations leaving the country, which is why the credentialling issue is such an important one. Aside from that, we've seen really widespread demographics.

Maybe you'd like to add more.

[Rema Jamous Imseis]

It's true that the profile varies. Usually it's those who have access to an exit who are the first ones who can take it, and those people generally have access to more resources. However, as time has carried on, this is impacting every socio-economic stratum, every profile, every type of person you can imagine. We're talking about over five million people, so it's a significant part of the population.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Mr. Zuberi, your time is pretty much up.

We're going to move over to the Conservatives and Mr. Van Popta for about three and a half to four minutes.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

To our witnesses, Ms. Jamous Imseis of UNHCR and Mr. Graham of the Center for Global Development, thank you for spending time with us.

Ms. Jamous Imseis, you downplayed very modestly your successes in your previous role, working in the Middle East and in North Africa, I think you had said. Listening to the evidence from these witnesses and the earlier panel as well, I understand that. It's such a daunting task.

How do you measure success in the work you do? I ask it in light of the comment you made in your testimony, thanking Canada for its contribution. Perhaps you can expand on that a bit and how you measure success.

[Rema Jamous Imseis]

As a humanitarian, success means that I am out of a job. It means that my operation has been folded up and we've left the country because those emergency support services are no longer required.

I wish I could say that is the case, but what we're finding around the world is a proliferation of conflict, and situations of displacement are protracted. Once upon a time, you would have a crisis and then people would be back within their borders within a year, or perhaps two. Now the average length of displacement is between 17 and 20 years.

The world is seeing increased insecurity. I fear that climate change and the impact of it will also drive further displacement. It seems that we're up against quite a number of things and that the generation after me will still have some work to do on this.

Success would mean that you don't need us anymore.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

You must measure small successes along the way.