Hello. My name is Dr. David Edward-Ooi Poon. Please call me David.
I am the founder of Faces of Advocacy, a grassroots Canadian organization that was responsible for federal immigration policy changes for the safe reunification of multinational families during the COVID-19 pandemic-related travel restrictions.
I have the sincerest gratitude for many parliamentarians, including many here today, who helped bring together Canadian families in a responsible way by listening to the experience and pain of so many first-hand. I hope we can do that again today.
I want to begin by telling you why I founded Faces of Advocacy.
Early in the pandemic, the government completely ignored multinational Canadian families, Canadian families who had partners, children or parents of different citizenships. The rules at the time were vague enough, however, that they could be interpreted to mean that the international family members of Canadian citizens could come into Canada, and there were multiple reports of CBSA agents allowing that.
My partner is an Irish national. She had contacted the CBSA, the IRCC and the embassy, even receiving a letter from the consulate in Europe attesting to our relationship status. She was told that she could come to Canada. Upon landing in Toronto, the CBSA agent did not allow her to enter, outright lying to her that there was no way to speak to a supervisor, denying her the time to read any forms before she was forced to sign them and intimidating her by calling her a liar.
That same agent admitted to her later that day that he knew she was not a liar, but still he used these aggressive intimidation tactics alongside outright falsehoods. We later submitted an ATIP on the interaction where the CBSA agent did not record his unprofessional behaviour nor the misinformation he presented to my partner. He faced no consequences.
Members of the committee, I am the face of a national organization of over 10,000 people who caused the government to change federal policy. Whenever I enter the country with my partner, I am still scared. Imagine that I was a person without a platform just wanting to be with their family.
John McCall is such a person. He is an American citizen who fell in love and married a Canadian woman, Donna, 40 years ago. While their children have a right to Canadian citizenship, they were Americans in the eyes of the CBSA. When Donna became ill early in the pandemic, the McCall children pleaded with the CBSA for a compassionate exemption to allow them to be with their mother before she passed. They were given a form letter response that a Canadian passport was needed. We know that different CBSA agents at the time interpreted the pandemic-related border restrictions to allow family reunification, but with unclear rules and CBSA agents unwilling to help the McCall family find a solution or even escalate them to someone who could, the McCall children said goodbye to their mother over FaceTime.
John and I connected. We worked with Faces of Advocacy. We changed federal policy with Public Safety's help much later. Despite these seeming victories, there were those who were still denied entry into Canada or treated like liars, despite well-documented compliance with entry exemption requirements, simply due to the whims or unwillingness to listen of individual CBSA agents. Immigrants quickly learned that they had no recourse to challenge the decisions made by CBSA agents under the authority or discretion afforded to them without oversight.
It is for those reasons that Faces of Advocacy is pleased to support Bill C-20, which seeks to level the imbalance of power between the complainants and the CBSA. We are in strong support of the proposed empowerment of the public complaints and review commission to impose disciplinary measures upon the CBSA and the requirement for the commission to produce an annual report that must include disaggregated race-based data.
There are three areas of Bill C-20 we wish for the committee to refine.
The first, in part 1, is about the joint time limit service standards established between the commission and the CBSA. The PCRC has been made necessary by the inability and, at times, outright obstruction of the CBSA to investigate good-faith complaints. Our organization has heard many complaints from immigrants to Canada who have been told that there's no access to a CBSA agent supervisor and that the agent's decision is final. These people have essentially been threatened if they dare to question the agent.
We fear a requirement to “jointly establish” service standards will be viewed by the CBSA as an opportunity to delay investigation and, therefore, delay justice. We ask that the committee replace the existing directives as they are written and develop reasonable service standards, particularly in urgent cases.
The second is in clause 9 of part 1, which speaks to education and information about the commission. We agree that the commission's existence and purpose need to be well known. It is our belief, though, that the mandate and processes of the PCRC must be specifically and clearly promoted at key points of individual contact with the CBSA and that the onus must be placed on the CBSA to satisfy this promotion requirement.