Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Oct. 22nd, 2024

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Now I would like to invite Mr. Lake to take the floor for seven minutes, please.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think your organization is interesting for folks from Edmonton. I believe that one of your global goodwill ambassadors is Alphonso Davies, who made his way to Edmonton at five years old. He was born in Ghana to refugee Liberian parents, I believe.

[Michael Casasola]

He was originally destined to come through, I believe, the government-assisted refugees program. He originally went to Windsor, but his family quickly moved to Edmonton.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, AB]

That's a good choice, moving to Edmonton.

[Michael Casasola]

I'm from Windsor, so I'm—

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, AB]

Very importantly, he's a huge Oilers fan as well. When Alphonso Davies shows up at an Oilers game, it's a big event.

Anyway, he's a great Canadian success story. As he grew up, and the community embraced him and his family. He wound up having the opportunity to get involved in a soccer program for young kids who didn't have the same opportunities as everybody else in Edmonton. He's a huge success story. Hopefully we have more of those success stories as we work through some of these enormous challenges we're dealing with.

I have a couple of questions.

With the situations we're talking about, you talk about the massive numbers of people displaced. It's double what it was 10 years ago.

I just want a better understanding of how you make a determination that the situation is dire enough that you're going to move someone from the country they're from to another country. It has to be a complicated situation. Ultimately, you hope that someone can remain in their country and eventually contribute to their own country. As we take people from countries, particularly young people, when the country eventually overcomes whatever it's going through, it's going to miss those people.

How do you make the determination as to when the situation is dire enough that you're going to move somebody from the country they're in? You're probably not doing it immediately upon displacement.

[Michael Casasola]

Absolutely. Canada is a country of immigration. Quite often, we immediately think, “Okay, what's the immigration response to a particular crisis?” For us, it's often that we need life-saving assistance. We're not thinking immediately about resettlement.

We've been given a mandate by the UN General Assembly to be responsible for the protection of refugees and to work with countries to find a solution, either by returning them to the country they came from in safety and dignity or by finding them a home somewhere else. Resettlement is a precious and powerful tool. Canada's been a leader in that, as it's been more recently in other complementary pathways, as we call them, like private sponsorship and, even more recently, labour mobility.

We now estimate that among the 32 million people we define as refugees within the 122 million people who were forcibly displaced, about 2.9 million need resettlement. Those are the people with the most acute protection problems.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, AB]

I'm sorry. How many was that?

[Michael Casasola]

We estimate, crudely, 2.9 million.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, AB]

There are 2.9 million who need to move.

[Michael Casasola]

We'd be looking for resettlement.

That said, resettlement is a voluntary activity of states, just like the donations we rely on. It's up to Canada to decide how much it believes it can contribute to us.

It's the same thing with resettlement. We have to start from that and try to figure out what makes the most sense.

As you can imagine, we're looking for refugees with the most acute protection problems in the countries of asylum. It's not just that they're a refugee and that they had to flee their country of origin; in the country of asylum, they now have a serious protection problem. We use seven different categories, and I won't get into all the detail, but I'll just say that one of the categories where we look for refugees is in those with legal physical protection needs when they're facing detention or forced refoulement back to their country of origin or when they may be attacked by other refugee groups. For example, think of an LGBTQI refugee who's fled their country of origin; now, in another country, they're experiencing the same type of persecution.

There are also survivors of violence and torture. Because we don't have the psychosocial supports to respond to the needs of such refugees, we may pursue resettlement.

These could also be refugee women at risk. We talked earlier about some of those challenges. Dr. Clark-Kazak spoke about some of the gender gaps. Gender-based persecution is a problem. We sometimes use the women at risk program to respond to that. For example, about 20% of the refugees Canada resettled last year came through the women at risk program.

Those three categories make up the vast majority of refugees we refer. We select people with the most acute protection problems. There are obviously many more refugees who could benefit from resettlement and are in need of a solution.

Last year was a record for us. We referred people to all states, not just Canada, since we work with about 26 states to find and identify refugees for potential resettlement. That was about 150,000 people. I gave you the scale of 122 million people forcibly displaced, 32 million who are refugees under UNHCR's mandate and 2.9 million whom we estimate are in need of resettlement. With the reality that we'll have about 150,000 to 160,000 spaces—which is a record level—we have to make some very difficult choices, as you can imagine, in trying to respond to that.

You're right that it's very resource-intensive to move someone from one part of the world to another part of the world. The Canadian experience has turned out to be positive, in the sense that yes, it's a potential loss for the country of origin, but it's shown itself in reality to be a benefit for Canada. The statistics demonstrate that refugees make important contributions to Canada. Even though we selected them because of their vulnerability and the danger they were in or because we were responding to the various problems they had, the statistics show that Canada has done well by integrating them. Over time, we find that those first five or 10 years—depending on which academic you talk to—are hard, but to be fair, what Canada does well is that every year it gets better.

You mentioned that you're from Edmonton. There was a study done by Bronwyn Bragg and Dan Hiebert. A paper they wrote recently looked at housing in the six largest cities in Canada. What they found was that after 20-plus years, refugees had higher home ownership than Canadians in five of the six cities. The one exception was Edmonton; in every other city, refugees had higher home ownership.

Housing is an issue for us in Canada right now. I understand that, but I'm just saying that over time, we see these improvements. The access to opportunities pays off for everybody.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Fayçal El-Khoury]

Thank you, Mr. Lake.

Mr. Brunelle‑Duceppe, you have the floor for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank the witnesses for being with us for this extremely important study.

Ms. Tamjeedi, you spoke to us earlier about smugglers. I think this may be an angle we haven't yet touched on.

The issue of smugglers has been the subject of a lot of television coverage, but I think you're still among the people with the most expertise to talk to us about it.

Right now, criminal groups are taking advantage of migrants.

Can you provide the committee with more details on this issue?

[Azadeh Tamjeedi]

Thank you for your question.

If you don't mind, I'll answer in English.

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

That is perfectly fine.

[Azadeh Tamjeedi]

Smugglers and traffickers are often used by refugees and asylum seekers on the move. At times, in order to try to find safety, they definitely use them to circumvent restrictions that are often put in place.

According to the refugee convention, individuals, no matter which mode they use to enter a country, have the right to seek asylum and to seek safety. What we often look at and worry about is the exploitation and abuse of those vulnerable populations by traffickers, which is a much more serious definition.

In trafficking, you're looking at the exploitation of the individual for some kind of personal gain, whereas smuggling is lower on the danger scale and looks more at moving the individual or assisting the person to move, either for a small amount of money, for instance, or for some kind of return. Trafficking, however, is exploitation of the individual, which is much more serious in our Criminal Code and internationally than the smuggling definition.

It is definitely something that we see often, and we're seeing it on the rise as countries are looking at more restrictive measures to keep people out. As you may know, people who are desperate and who want to find safety will increasingly resort to more dangerous routes and the use of smugglers and traffickers in order to find safety.

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

This is indeed a very worrying phenomenon.

What we're hearing—perhaps you can give us more details on this—is that more and more violent groups, particularly Mexican cartels, are associated with the phenomenon.

We know that these cartels use excessive violence to traffic drugs, weapons and human beings. Now, this violence is coming into play because of the migration routes that pass through their territory. As we understand it, these cartels find themselves gaining more power, and more and more people are falling into their clutches.

Can you confirm this to the committee?

[Azadeh Tamjeedi]

That would really depend on the situation. The different smuggling routes and the traffickers that are used really depend on which region of the world you look at. It's hard to make a blanket statement to confirm your question. Definitely, it is something that—

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

I'll take the liberty of interrupting you.

I'm trying to focus on Latin America. I'm thinking of the famous migratory route in this region, where, according to what we hear, Haitians are passing through Brazil to go up through Colombia and Venezuela.

[Michael Casasola]

This is why one of the strategies we've been employing, which is being led by the United States—and Canada has been supporting it, and Spain and other countries have been working on it —is what we're calling “safe mobility offices”. It's an initiative to try to provide access to legal immigration routes earlier in the process so that instead of travelling all the way through, there are operations set up in Colombia, Ecuador, Costa Rica and Guatemala. The idea is to try to assess if someone has a protection problem and can articulate it now. There may be a migrant with a non-protection-driven reason, something that's not being driven by persecution but some other need. We then try to determine if they access available programs in the United States, Canada and such.

This is a measure we're already taking. We're already into the hundreds of thousands of people who are accessing it. This is one way we're trying to, as I said, avoid the dangers that are so evident in the Darien Gap and other parts of the Americas.

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

Earlier, you said that countries don't all react in the same way.

It's perfectly logical for countries to react differently to problems.

However, when these problems affect so many countries over such a vast territory, couldn't Canada then play a role by trying, for example, to convince other countries to participate in programs and establish bilateral agreements for the reception of migrants, like the ones we've just talked about, which have been concluded with Colombia, Guatemala and Costa Rica, among others?

[Azadeh Tamjeedi]

I think a regional approach is a good way to respond and to look at it for the Americas.

As my colleague indicated, the safe mobility offices are one response. However, it should be a multi-faceted response, and you should study the routes that people are taking and look at an approach that's done along the routes.

The safe mobility offices are one way to respond, and Canada could definitely encourage more countries to participate and could look at programs that are similar.

Another way to respond is by strengthening asylum systems in the region and stopping people from moving forward. If they could access protection earlier through the asylum system of a country, that would be another way to respond and to ensure that they're not using smugglers to move further north. Another way would be having more programming and supports specifically for vulnerable populations like women on the move and unaccompanied children on the move, with programming along the route that goes from the south of Latin America up north.

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

I've personally met people who've made the entire trip, including one woman, whose name we won't mention.

She told me her story, which is terrible, especially for the part of the journey where you have to cross Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela. What we're hearing is that the criminal groups are getting bigger and bigger. Mexican cartels, Colombian cartels or organized crime necessarily mean corruption on the part of local authorities, and even, to a certain extent in some countries, corruption at government and national levels.

Is your organization aware of this problem? Do you make it a priority? What I hear from migrants is that their biggest fear is facing these groups and the authorities that these groups corrupt.