Debates of March 2nd, 2007

Immigration and Refugee Protection Act

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his comments, many of which I would echo, and for his intervention and work over the years.

We need to deal with this issue straight up. Canada has a record of being a beacon for those whose rights are oppressed and for those who are living under dictatorships. Those people see Canada as a place of freedom and a place where they will be treated fairly.

We need to have a process in place to ensure that the rights of those who come to our shores, those who have been oppressed and are seeking refuge, will be honoured. It is important to have a process that determines one's status based on merit and on arguments that are put forward in a reasonable fashion.

We know the games that have been played over the years with the appointments process. We know that people who were not qualified were appointed to determine whether someone stayed or was sent back to a place where the person's life or the lives of the person's family would be put in danger. The fact is that we were not able to put in a process that made sense. However, in the bill before us today, we now have a reasonable and sensible method of doing that.

Our appointments process is important because it is integral to this issue. The NDP had put forward the suggestion of a public appointments commission that would ensure all appointments were merit based and that they had oversight, not just of the government but of independent officers to ensure that what should be done was being done. My colleague from Winnipeg Centre fought tirelessly for that amendment to be put in the Federal Accountability Act. He wanted to ensure that we did not go back to the old partisanship of pork barrel politics, or rum bottle politics, as my friend says, but that we go forward and make appointments based on merit. We must remember that these appointments determine whether refugees are allowed to stay in this country and, if not, whether they will survive if they are sent back to a country where they may live in tyranny or worse, be killed.

What we were trying to do was to deal with the taint in our political culture and history of appointing people based on who they knew and what party card they had and not based on the merit and skills of the person being appointed.

When we deal with this issue, it is extremely important to acknowledge that this commission must be put in place. If we try to deal with this one off, try to deal with one appointment at a time, and say that this person is nice and this person is credible, it will not deal with the problem. We have a structural deficiency in our body politic. We are still waiting for the government to set up the public appointments commission. As I mentioned in the House earlier today, it has not acted on it and in fact has put in place a parallel process.

My colleague from Burnaby—Douglas has worked on this issue to deal with refugee protection and ensure we have what is known as RAD. We must not play with people's lives. We must ensure there is a fair and just process. What he has done consistently in committee is to push the government, be it the former government or the present government, and tell it that this is not something that we should be playing around with, that this is something we should enact immediately.

The member has consistently pointed out that this is not a cost issue, that it will not cost a lot of money. We have qualified people to do this. In fact, once we put out a fair call for people to apply for these positions, as we asked for in the public appointments process, I know many people will be able to serve because they are qualified for the job and they want to work on this important issue. In fact, I know people from coast to coast to coast who are qualified for this.

What the NDP has consistently called for is the implementation of RAD. It is not a theory. It is not something that needs to be studied. It is not something that we have to lecture other jurisdictions on. It is something that we have the know-how to do at present. We should do it immediately.

As I mentioned, it is not costly. In fact, we will save money. We know that every time people have to seek sanctuary or call for others to help them on their behalf, it becomes a very costly process. To think smartly on this issue, to make sure we have a process that is going to serve the justice that we all want, and to make sure we have a system that is fair, we should implement the RAD process.

I know that the previous government was not able to do that. Sadly, we saw the opportunity to put it in place missed time and time again. All of us in opposition, when the former government was dragging its feet on this issue, were unanimous in calling on the then Liberal government to get going on this. We know there was dissension in the ranks, and that some people, as was mentioned by the previous speaker, actually resigned their positions because the government was not taking action.

It was the present government when it was in opposition that joined the chorus of those who asked the government to get on with the job and get moving because it was not right to leave people behind. It was not right to not allow them to be heard and to force them into sanctuary. We will recall that there was even a discussion on whether sanctuary would be legal in this country under the former government. Can we imagine that?

Seeking sanctuary is a desperate measure, to be sure, but it is something that goes back to the middle ages. When people did not have the opportunity to seek safety with the justice system of the regime at the time, they at least had the ability to go into a safe, secure place in sanctuary, usually in churches and places of faith.

The government actually challenged that notion, but thankfully that was put aside. It was the present government that joined the chorus of those who were critical. What we are asking of the government now is that it simply do what it said it would do in opposition and put in a process that is fair, just and right.

I hope we see some movement on this. I hope the government decides to learn from experience, to go back and do the things it said it would do in opposition, and to look at the fact that RAD is a smart thing to do. It is cost efficient and the right thing to do. It is the Canadian thing to do.

If we do not do use this as a tool to deal with the refugee situation, what we are saying is that these people do not matter. We will not be surprised when we hear of more persons having to go into sanctuary. Probably in the next week we will see more people having to go into sanctuary, be it here in Ottawa, where we have seen cases, or across the country.

Then what will the government say when people are in sanctuary? It will say that it had no other choice. What will be its answer? Will the government say it is going to study it more or that it does not have the money? We know the answers are there. Studying it was done before. We know what the answer is.

At the end of the day, this should not be about political partisanship. It should not be about one-upmanship. This should be about getting this problem solved and solved immediately, because the problem with the appeals that are required of refugees is something we have to deal with today. I will not be surprised if next week we hear that someone else has sought refuge and sanctuary because we did not have a system to deal with it. That would be a sad thing.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Bloc Québécois supports Bill C-280, which seeks to create a refugee appeal division. The Bloc Québécois has asked repeatedly for such a body, and it is far from being the only one to have done so. Others include the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Committee against Torture, the Canadian Council for Refugees, the Canadian Bar Association, Amnesty international, the Civil Liberties Union, and the KAIROS group.

What is a refugee? The definition of a refugee or an asylum seeker has long been established in international conventions. For example, the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees was adopted by the United Nations in 1951. Under that convention, Canada cannot directly or indirectly return a person to a country where he will be persecuted. Article 1 of the convention defines the term “refugee” as follows:

—owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country;—

Furthermore, article 33 defines the responsibilities of governments with respect to the protection of refugees, and I quote:

No contracting state shall expel or return (“refouler”) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.

This definition is limited and applies only to political refugees, and not to those who have suffered a humanitarian crisis such as flooding or famine. Nevertheless, this constitutes a major legal obligation.

A proper appeal process for refugee claimants ought to have been put in place as soon as the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act took effect in June 2002.

This act includes three sections that create a refugee appeal division, to be administered by the Immigration and Refugee Board. Citizenship and Immigration briefly defines the refugee appeal division as follows:

The refugee appeal division will provide failed refugee claimants and the minister with the right to a paper appeal of a decision from the Immigration and Refugee Board.

Establishing the refugee appeal division is a matter of justice. The failure to do so allows a situation that is unfair to asylum seekers to continue. For four years now, the federal government has been stubbornly postponing the establishment of the refugee appeal division, as called for in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

The federal government claims that a safety net already exists, consisting of the opportunity to request a pre-removal risk assessment, a judicial review by the Federal Court, or permanent resident status on humanitarian grounds. Unlike a refugee appeals division, they do not offer any protection for refugees.

There are four reasons why the refugee appeal division should be established. These four reasons were presented by Mr. François Crépeau who teaches international law at the Université de Montréal. They were also cited in a report by the Canadian Council for Refugees.

The first reason is efficiency. A specialized appeal division for refugee matters can deal much more efficiently with unsuccessful claimants than the Federal Court, an application for pre-removal risk assessment or requests on humanitarian grounds. The refugee appeals division can do a better job of correcting errors of law and fact.

The second reason is consistency of the law. An appeal division deciding on the merits of the case is the only body able to ensure consistency of jurisprudence both in the analysis of facts and in the interpretations of legal concepts in the largest administrative tribunal in Canada.

In other words, an appeal mechanism helps the system to make decisions by establishing precedents that will be applied to lower court rulings when the facts are exactly the same.

The third reason has to do with justice. The decision to refuse refugee status has extremely serious consequences, including death, torture, detention, and so on. As in matters of criminal law, the right to appeal to a higher tribunal is essential for the proper administration of justice. Because human errors occur in any decision-making process, it should be normal to have an appeal process to offset the fact that decisions are made by a single person.

The fourth reason is political. By not establishing the refugee appeal division, the federal government is going against the will of Parliament and the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, which have called for such an appeal division.

We must never forget that when a person applies for refugee status, they are in a state of vulnerability and helplessness. They have left a situation where their life was in danger because of persecution. They arrive in a country where, in many cases, they do not understand the language, neither French nor English, and they are in a precarious economic situation, sometimes with only the shirt on their back.

Canada has a moral duty to make sure these people are treated with the utmost compassion.

Even though the refugee appeal division is included in the legislation, neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives have wanted to implement it.

Yet in April 2005, the Conservative Party released a report entitled “National Consultations on Canada's Immigration System”, containing the following recommendation:

The appeal process must be reviewed. There is no real appeal process. The refugee appeal division has to be set up. Decisions have to be made by more than one person.

The Conservatives were in favour of a refugee appeal division when they were in opposition. Now, they must keep their promise.

The refugee appeal division has no equivalent. A pre-removal risk assessment does not provide for a substantive review of the application. The Federal Court can conduct reviews of technical legal issues only; it cannot review the facts of a case.

Applying for permanent resident status on humanitarian grounds can be extremely complicated for someone from another country who has no representation in Canada, and it is therefore difficult to claim that this is a substitute for the refugee appeal division.

For all these reasons, and many more besides, Bill C-280 on implementing a refugee appeal division must be adopted.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

Resuming debate.

I am now giving the floor to the hon. member for Laval. I would also inform the House that following her intervention, we will end the debate because this is her right of reply.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as I close out the debate, I will not talk about Bill C-280. Nor will I talk about the hundreds and thousands of refugees who, in the absence of a refugee appeal division, will be denied full Canadian citizenship and will be sent back where they came from.

I will not talk about them because today, after listening to the debate all day, I realized that this government is so mean-spirited that it is using all kinds of people to deny other people their rights. It is using women to deny women their rights; farmers to deny farmers their rights; people born elsewhere to deny the rights of refugees; and francophones to deny the rights of francophones.

It has been going on about the previous government ad nauseam, saying it was they who did nothing. Now this government has been in power for over a year. It made its promises over a year ago. When the Conservatives were in opposition, they said that there would be a refugee appeal division, but now they want nothing to do with it.

This is not right. The Conservative members from Quebec, who spend their time denying people their rights and denigrating other members from Quebec, have done nothing as part of the government. They have done nothing for their ridings, nothing for their citizens, nothing for Quebec and nothing for Quebeckers.

Next week, when we vote on this, will they decide to do nothing for refugees? I hope that all Canadians and all Quebeckers with immigrant ancestors will remember this.

We have been asking for this appeal division for years. The UN has even said a number of times that it is incredible that it still has not been implemented.

This is not just a whim or a passing fancy the Bloc Québécois came up with for political gain; we are talking about lives, people, women and children who are living in churches today, who do not even have the opportunity to go out in the storm because they cannot even leave their home in a church, where they have been shut in for more than a year in some cases.

This is not right. I wonder what the government is doing. We are still waiting for rights to be reinstated and for fairness and justice to be restored. We are not talking about billions of dollars, we are not even talking about hundreds of millions of dollars.

The hon. member from the government side spoke earlier. The government interferes in every provincial jurisdiction when it suits its own interests. However, when it does not suit the government, it talks about the millions of dollars. But it wants to invest those millions of dollars in fighting cancer or Alzheimer's, wherever its own interests are served.

It is a matter of political will to restore fairness and justice for people who have the right to be heard, listened to and validated in their quest for freedom.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And five or more members having risen:

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

Pursuant to Standing Order 93, the recorded division stands deferred until Wednesday, March 21, 2007, immediately before the time provided for private members' business.

It being 2:15 p.m., the House stands adjourned until Monday, March 19, at 11 a.m., pursuant to Standing Orders 28(2) and 24(1).

(The House adjourned at 2:15 p.m.)