Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to live in a country that is seen around the world as being kind, compassionate and welcoming as a nation. Over the past few decades we have opened our hearts to tens of thousands of refugees. We have been a safe haven in a world of hunger, death and tribulation.
A key element of our refugee determination system is the Immigration and Refugee Board. The board was established in 1989 to allow refugee claimants the right to an oral hearing. These hearings are usually not open to the public. There are a number of very good reasons for this.
A number of applicants are worried that what they say during their hearing with a view to obtaining refugee status might reach the ears of groups involved in persecution in their country of origin. Even if they are safe here in Canada, they fear that relatives and friends may be exposed to reprisals for their statements.
We may have difficulty imagining that possibility from here in Canada. It is sometimes hard to imagine that there are regimes where you could be arrested, tortured, or killed for your beliefs or for the beliefs of your friends and associates. We must remember this. If we want the truth, and that is what the refugee hearings are all about, we need to make sure the claimant feels that he or she has the full opportunity to be heard.
We are also concerned with having a system that is open to the public. Accountability is a vital and cherished cornerstone of our governing system. That is why we have struck a balance between the right of the public to know and the right of the claimant to protection and security.
It is a principle of Canadian law that judicial and quasi-judicial decision making take place in an open and transparent environment. The hearings held by the immigration appeals division, for example, are held in public. But as I have said, sometimes there must be limits on that openness and transparency. That kind of limit is indeed even enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in section 1, which talks about reasonable limits prescribed by law that can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. The balance provided in the Immigration Act between the rights of the claimant and the rights of the Canadian public was intended to respect the competing charter concerns.
There are two ways in which an individual or the news media can gain access to the hearing: either the claimant can consent to the presence of the individual, or the hearing panel can, in response to an application, declare the hearing open to the public. In the latter case, the burden is on the claimant to establish that the life, liberty, or security of any person would be endangered by a public hearing.
It would be very worthwhile for members to let their constituents know what really goes on in these hearings. It would be very difficult to understand an applicant's objecting to the presence of a representative of the Canadian Parliament, except in very unusual circumstances.
Is an amendment needed to achieve this level of access to the hearing process? Are lawyers and other counsel advising their clients to resist access by parliamentarians to the hearings? Are members of Parliament being left only with the recourse of litigating the issue of access before the refugee division and the courts? No, they are not.
Accountability is a hallmark of good government. The Canadian government has always held the public's right to know to be sacrosanct. It is a principle we will never abandon. Liberty, justice, and freedom demand this. Sometimes the need for individual security demands privacy. An individual's right to safety and protection is another cornerstone of our society. It means we often have to strike a delicate balance. I believe our system does this.