Thank you, Madam Chair. I too will abbreviate my remarks for the sake of time.
I'm very happy to be here to answer any questions regarding CIC's contribution to what is a government-wide response to the issue of trafficking in persons.
The first point I'd like to make is that under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, which came into force in 2002, we introduced the first in Canada offence for trafficking. The penalty for conviction is up to life imprisonment or a $1 million fine, which is the highest penalty under the Immigration Act. By comparison, the penalty for people convicted of smuggling people into the country is half that.
The second is that we have participated in a number of initiatives, including a poster campaign and a brochure. I think Department of Justice officials showed you some of the stuff that has been produced. We continue to distribute those posters through our visa offices abroad and through international conferences that we attend.
In the working group, a priority for CIC has been to find ways to assist victims of trafficking within our mandate. As you know, in May 2006, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration released new guidelines for immigration officers that addressed the unique need for immigration status for victims of trafficking.
Under the guidelines, trafficking victims are eligible to receive a temporary resident permit that allows them to stay in Canada for up to 120 days in the first instance. This new measure is designed to help victims escape the influence of their traffickers, identify their need for protection at that point, and help them begin to recover from their ordeal.
Adjusting the immigration status, of course, is not a complete response to trafficking and to trafficking victims, but it is a very important step. We remove one source of anxiety from the victims and we remove one source of potential continuing victimization. They will not be removed from the country and they cannot be threatened with removal from the country.
The temporary resident permit provides victims with a period of reflection so that they can decide on their future course of action. It enables them to stay in Canada while they recover from any physical or mental trauma. It also allows them to consider their options for returning home or the time to decide if they wish to assist in the investigation of the trafficker or in criminal proceedings against the trafficker.
However, it should be noted that, in Canada, victims of trafficking are not required to testify against their traffickers to gain immigration status. The procedures are very different from those of some of the other countries that have brought in provisions.
The temporary resident permit also gives a person access to the interim federal health program, which pays for emergency medical care and for trauma counselling as well, if required.
CIC immigration officers can issue a longer-term temporary resident permit or they can issue a subsequent resident permit in cases where it has been determined that it is in the best interests of the victim and Canada for the victim to remain in Canada for a longer period of time.
The guidelines provide for consultation between immigration officers and law enforcement officers. The nature of this consultation has been misunderstood, I think, by some commentators, so I'd like to clarify the purpose of this. The purpose of this is to assist the immigration officer in making the determination to issue the permit.
The instruction we have given to immigration officers is that they don't have to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt. If there is any question that the person is a victim, we're instructing them to issue the permit, but any information they can get at this point will help them to understand the case they're dealing with.
CIC is pleased to say that the initial reactions to the new trafficking guidelines from the NGO community have been positive, including the Canadian Council for Refugees, the Future Group, and the Stop the Trafficking Coalition. We shared the guidelines when they were released, and we're awaiting comments from the NGO community. We're quite happy to work with them to see if we can improve those guidelines in the future. We'd be quite happy to sit down and do that.
We believe that measures such as the temporary resident permit are important because they ensure that protection is more promptly available. The guidelines are intended, however, as a complementary aspect of an overall federal response. That response opens the door to other services that would not be available if the victim did not have immigration status in Canada.
In the first five months since the guidelines were introduced, one temporary resident permit has been issued. There are four other cases of persons who were identified as victims where a permit was offered and the individuals chose to return home. We have no information that anyone has been refused a permit when they applied for a permit.
We're watching the implementation of this very closely and have asked all immigration offices to refer every case of a potential victim to headquarters so that we can track anyone who's coming through.
In closing, I would like to join others to say that it's extremely difficult to know the true extent of the problem. We're doing what we can to put into place systems that will start to track data, so that we can get a better sense of how large this problem is.
Thank you.