Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you all for coming today.
I notice that there are some of you who are immigration citizenship lawyers, so I wanted to focus on that. When you look at security certificates and their history, they first came into existence in about 1976, and from 1991 until today there have been 28 security certificates issued. Of those, 19 individuals have been removed from Canada as a result of a security certificate.
You know how the security certificates work. They're termed a three-walled detention centre because the people can leave Canada at any point in time.
Have you done any research into the people who have actually gone back to their home countries? Or it could be a third-party country. Have they peacefully settled back into those countries? And for the ones who haven't and who argue that if they head back to their home country they'd be subjected to torture or jail or capital punishment, have you researched what the basis of those arguments is?
I raise it because of course they are free to leave at any point in time, and in my riding I have a large number of constituents who are dealing with immigration matters. People have come to my office who have maybe claimed refugee status, been denied, appealed, etc., and they're about to be removed and they set in process this risk assessment and argue that if they return to their home country they'd be tortured or murdered or whatever. And in some cases, frankly, the arguments aren't that plausible, but there is a process they go through.
If their country, the country they came from, is not prepared to accept them back, or if they do they'd be tortured or imprisoned or subject to capital punishment, do you have any idea of the profile of those people and why these countries would not want to have them back? Have you done any research into that?