Justice Committee on April 17th, 2023

[Marco Mendicino, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

The final decision is made by the Department of Public Safety, which is notified of applications by Global Affairs Canada or IRCC.

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

You see, it was a simple question and we are having trouble understanding the answer. Imagine how reassured NGOs are when hearing you right now. It was not a complicated question, yet it was difficult to answer. NGOs have seen different departments talking, and you took 15 months to draft an 82‑page legislative document, when everyone knew how urgent it was to act.

Do you think NGOs feel safe in your hands? They must be wondering how long it will take for their requests to be processed.

There are crisis situations, Minister, where humanitarian aid has to get on the ground within hours. That is what is happening. Yet it is difficult to answer a simple question. There may be a problem there.

[Marco Mendicino, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

I'm a little more optimistic than you are, as an efficient process will follow the passage of the bill, which I hope will be as soon as possible. We're going to continue.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you.

Next, we'll go to Ms. McPherson for two and a half minutes.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

One of the things that we're losing track of with this conversation is that we're looking at this within the context of Afghanistan. Of course, Afghanistan was where this became very apparent, but this legislation that you've put forward will have implications as far-reaching as Gaza, Nigeria, Mali, the CAR, Syria, all of these different countries. This is a massive legislation change for the international development sector, for the humanitarian sector.

I'm not certain, listening to some of the questions I've heard from your colleagues, that they understand that this is not about the aid that you've provided to Afghanistan. This is about changing the way that international and humanitarian organizations are allowed to work in this space.

I have to follow up on what my colleague, Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe, has said.

At this point, this government—Global Affairs Canada—is unable, most often, to meet its obligations in terms of decision-making on funding announcements and refugee status. This government is not good at making timely decisions. Humanitarian crises happen in places where timely decisions are vitally important.

I would also point out that failing to recognize the urgency of that means that Canadian organizations can't be there; they can't be on the ground doing the work we need them to do.

How can we trust that if this is going through.... With all due respect, Minister, I spoke to you. I spoke to Minister Lametti. I spoke to Minister Sajjan. Nobody took ownership of this for 18 months.

How on earth can I go to the sector, go to representatives from MSF, from World Vision, from so many of the amazing organizations working in this space, and say, “Don't worry. They've never gotten it right, but they're going to get it right this time”?

[Marco Mendicino, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

We've been engaging with many of those organizations, including the Canadian Red Cross, World Vision and many others.

I assure you that everybody at this table and the ministries that are represented here completely share the concerns you have expressed around urgency—

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I don't want you to share my concerns. I want you to make the law better.

[Marco Mendicino, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Chair, through you to my colleague, Ms. McPherson, we are going to get this law passed. We want to make sure we are responding to the questions you have raised. Once we do that, our commitment is to provide clear guidelines and to support the organizations so that we have in place a system that will get aid to the people who need it as quickly as possible.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Do you worry that this will disproportionately hurt small and medium diaspora organizations that won't have the capacity to go through the hoops that you've now set up?

[Marco Mendicino, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

No, because we will work with them as well. We will do so in a way that is impartial and neutral.

Ms. McPherson, you know me. I have an open-door policy. If there are organizations we need to reach out to, we will roll up our sleeves; we will do the work, and we will get this aid to them as quickly as possible.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

With all due respect, you're not always going to be the minister.

[Marco Mendicino, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Let's hope for some time yet.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you, Ms. McPherson.

I want to thank Minister Mendicino for taking the time to explain and answer questions on Bill C-41.

I'm going to ask the representatives from the department to stay back.

We'll suspend for a few minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

In the interests of time, we'll begin again, and we'll continue from where we left off with our very able and capable representatives from several ministries, from Public Safety, the Department of Justice and IRCC.

We'll begin with our first round of questions, with Mr. Genuis for six minutes.

Mr. Genuis, the floor is yours.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to follow up on some of the same questions I asked the minister, and I hope we can get some answers—some more technical information, I guess.

On the timeline of an application, let's pick a hypothetical application. Let's say it comes from an organization that is an established partner of the Government of Canada that you've worked with in the past, which is applying to run an agricultural project in Afghanistan. What's a ballpark reasonable amount of time for that application to be turned around?

[Sébastien Aubertin-Giguère]

Well, that's a hypothetical question, but we're not in a position at this point to establish service standards, because the time it would take to process the application will be relative to the nature of the activities they're going to be performing, the complexity—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Sorry, I'm going to jump in.

Come on. I mean, of course it's a hypothetical question, but we're being asked to pass legislation that would create a regime that would involve timelines, and the effectiveness of that regime is dependent on what those timelines would be and whether they are reasonable, so I'd like you to do a bit better than that.

[Jennifer Loten, Director General, Bureau for International Crime and Terrorism, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development]

Let me say we share the interest in getting these things done quickly. Speaking from a Global Affairs perspective, our goal is to get as much assistance on the ground as quickly as possible, so—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Yes, but I want you to quantify “quickly”. What would “quickly” look like, and what would “not quickly” look like?

[Jennifer Loten]

“Not quickly” would be six months; that's not quick.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

What would “quick” look like?

[Jennifer Loten]

“Quickly” is hard to say, because—again, I appreciate your indulgence, and I'm not trying to be evasive here—the legislation is not complete, and things may change.

Where we have low-hanging fruit—so the big organizations you refer to—I'd like to think that to a large degree, from a Global Affairs perspective, the work is already in the bag. We know these are organizations that can control their funds, and we know a lot about how they operate, so passing it along from Global Affairs will be a relatively easy thing.

I will also say that as we watch this move through the department—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Again, though, you say “relatively easy”, so we're hoping that from the time this legislation comes into force, you could get a bunch of exemptions passed within a month.

[Jennifer Loten]

In order to do that, we're working on preapprovals—preapproval packages—so that when it does get passed, we're able to move very quickly to rubber-stamping them and saying, “Yes, move on to the next phase.” That happens at Public Safety.