Madam Speaker, I am glad to add our remarks to this set of amendments regarding Bill C-11. I understand that these amendments deal specifically with refugee issues.
I am happy to take part in this debate for the simple reason that my riding of Winnipeg Centre is the part of Winnipeg where most people who are deemed as refugees or most newcomers seem to settle. The core area or downtown area of Winnipeg seems to be the place where they can find affordable housing and access to reasonable settlement services that help them get their start in Canada.
I am proud Canada plays an active role around the world in providing safe refuge to those who seek sanctuary, whether they have to flee religious persecution, political persecution or whatever their reason may be. There is a certain spirit of generosity I believe that most Canadians share in reaching out to those who need the safe sanctuary of Canada. Other speakers have mentioned groups that are playing a particularly active role which enables these people to leave their troubled homelands and to come to Canada.
Certainly there are church groups within my riding that work day and night to try to sponsor refugees and refugee families. They do fundraising, but their activism does not stop in terms of financial contributions. They also do a lot of follow through. They actually stay with the refugee or refugee family to help them to break into mainstream Canadian culture, to get them over the hurdles and barriers which exist when newcomers come to Canada, to help them find work and get fully integrated. Some of the church groups in Winnipeg do a wonderful job.
I want to make special mention of an organization. It is the Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Council found on Edmonton Street in my riding. I work closely with this organization because it is charged with the responsibility of administering the settlement services that are offered to refugees in Winnipeg. I cannot say enough about the dedication of these individuals. The people there work in conditions that we would all find very taxing. It is an under-resourced organization. I believe it does an awful lot with very little. Its budget has been cut back in recent years in terms of stable core funding, of which we have been very critical.
We believe that we are getting incredibly good value for our dollar by adequate funding to organizations like this because they do so much to alleviate the load from the department officials who would otherwise have to deliver and administer these settlement services. I would speak very forcefully of the restoration of levels of funding to organizations like the Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Council.
They were very vocal and active through Bill C-31 and Bill C-11 in pointing out some of the shortcomings of those bills or putting forth very solid recommendations on how these bills could be improved, not just in the refugee area, but also in areas of family sponsorship.
Even though I know we are on the subject of refugees right now, I want to make a point that I did not get a chance to make under earlier motions. Using the low income cutoff for family sponsorship is fundamentally wrong. It is a flawed way of putting a line in the sand. It does not do the city of Winnipeg any service because large cities like it are lumped into the same category. In other words, if people want to sponsor one of their family members, they have to be at a certain level of family income to undertake that sponsorship.
The family income arrived at is the same in Winnipeg as it is in Toronto, Vancouver or other major cities. I could demonstrate quite easily that the cost of living is a great deal lower in the city of Winnipeg. The cost of housing is about one-quarter of what it is in the city of Toronto. We should not be held to the same standard when it comes to the reunification of families or the sponsorship of families.
Some might think that failed sponsorships put some sort of burden on municipalities in terms of social welfare costs. I can provide some figures from the Manitoba Immigration Interfaith Council. Out of 13,700 welfare claimants in the city of Winnipeg, only 11 of those were actually the result of failed family sponsorships in immigrations. Eleven out of 13,000 is not an undue burden on our city. Those who think that could come about are simply not working with the actual facts.
Another group that has been very active in the advocacy for refugees is of course the Canadian Council for Refugees. They came before the committee for Bill C-31 and again for Bill C-11 with some very thoughtful recommendations on how the bill could be more fair in its treatment of the refugee determination and admissibility of permanent residents. I would encourage government to revisit the brief from the Canadian Council for Refugees. I do not think there is a single organization in this country that is as authoritative on this issue or has worked as diligently to try and develop standards for managing the refugee influx into this country.
It was one of the council's recommendations that brought in the whole subject of gender analysis and how necessary it was that we use that screen for any legislation introduced by parliament. I am very glad the member for Winnipeg North Centre managed to convince the committee that we needed to undertake a comprehensive gender analysis in legislation of this type.
An example which was pointed out was the need to allow women a second hearing in terms of being turned down as a refugee. Sometimes the circumstances that qualify them as a refugee are not easy for them to make public. In the initial application some information may be held back for any number of cultural reasons or personal safety reasons. If this information needs to be heard or needs to be introduced, it would have to be introduced at a second refugee hearing. That is being contemplated now through the hard work of those of the committee.
I want to thank the Canadian Council for Refugees for being the one to really push that issue and the members of the committee for seeing fit to make that one of the priorities.
Another gender issue I would like to point out also has to do with the family reunification. As we do this comprehensive gender analysis I hope this comes forward. In terms of sponsoring other family members women are disadvantaged in that regard as well. Given that there is this income threshold by virtue of which a person is allowed to sponsor or not sponsor another family member, given that women earn only 66% of what men do on average across the country, women or households led by women are less able to sponsor family members than households where the male is the bread winner.
I would suggest this is another amendment that needs to be introduced in the interests of fairness. In the interest of people's chartered rights, this issue needs to be addressed. I would hope the gender analysis that is undertaken is sensitive to that issue now that we have put it on the record.
Another organization that has been influential in advocating on behalf of refugees is the Maytree Foundation in Toronto. The organization has put forward some of the best prepared material on the subject. It was satisfied that there was some recognition of the issues it raised.
The foundation advises that that Bill C-11 includes some positive, but also some negative measures relating to refugee protection in Canada. It speaks to the issue of identity documents. There are times when personal documentation is extremely difficult to access when people flee their homeland under persecution, often in the dead of night. There are places in the world that if refugees need the documents we demand they have to make application for those documents. Then they become flight suspects. When prospective refugees make application to get their marriage licence or birth certificate from the city hall or agency, the spotlight shines on them and they may in fact not be able to get them.
I am honoured to raise the names of the organizations of the Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Council in Winnipeg, the Maytree Foundation, the Canadian Council for Refugees, and the contributions they have made.