Thank you very much.
I'm sorry I don't speak French.
Faces of Advocacy at the time acted as the intermediary when complaints were coming in. When we won our exemptions—we very clearly and publicly won our exemptions—it was on the website, right next to the order in council where extended family compassionate exemptions came in. The day of, I wrote a letter for every single member. It said, “Bring this with you, because we don't trust the CBSA to believe you.” The fact is, they didn't. They could look up who I was and they could look up our exemptions, but our members were told the day of, “Oh, there's no such exemption. You can't bring in your family. You guys are liars.”
If there was a sticker that said, “Hey, if you're being mistreated by the CBSA” in both English and French, they would be empowered to say, “Okay, buddy, give me your badge number. I'm going to go to this complaints office. They have a two-week turnaround, and this is what we're going to do.”
We, a group of nobodies, were hearing these complaints and doing the best we could, and thank goodness a number of agents read the rules. However, for those who didn't and for those who were outside the scope of where they should be practising, that really harmed a number of people.
Now add that to the fact that a CBSA agent can arbitrarily deny someone at the border for the future as well. How scared are we? How terrified are we that we have to enter and risk never seeing our loved ones again?
We need Bill C-20 to be effective.
Thank you.