Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me to participate in this debate. I am not going to quote the third report of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, which we are debating today, because many of the members who spoke before me have read it word for word.
I am a woman and a lawyer, and I tend to try to find solutions when problems arise. I listened to the parliamentary secretary to the minister ask if our way of seeing things should change depending on whether the person is a volunteer who enlisted in a country's armed forces or someone carrying out mandatory military service.
Should we consider the report's recommendation to set up a special program that would offer special treatment, compared to other people who come here and apply for refugee status or those who submit normal immigration applications?
Would that give an unfair advantage to American soldiers who decide to come here rather than continue serving with the army in Iraq?
I see it as much larger than that, because a lot of the government members have really homed in on the fact that it is American war resisters who have come to Canada and who have made claims for refugee status. They are saying that for the government to somehow facilitate their staying in Canada and to regularize their legal status in Canada would confer upon them a privilege that we do not give to anyone else.
Therefore, I looked at the law, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. In looking at that law, I realized that there are different sections that the government can actually use if it so wishes.
Before I get to that, Mr. Speaker, I will note that I am pleased to split my time with the member for Kitchener—Waterloo. I forgot to say that.
I received an email yesterday from a Mr. Griffin Carpenter, who writes:
As you may be aware, Iraq war resister and AWOL soldier, Corey Glass, has been asked by Canadian officials to leave Canada by June 12, 2008. This decision goes against the recommendation made on December 6, 2007 by the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. Canadians are outraged with the failure of the government to act timely enough to stop this first deportation as the Iraqi war was unsanctioned by the UN and opposed by Canada. Do you support the [committee] recommendation and do you believe that an appropriate bill should come before the House?
I look forward to hearing your response.
In part what I am going to say today is in fact my response. First, I support the committee report and I will vote in favour of it. Second, I also support the government actually taking action. One of the ways the government can in fact take action is to recognize resolution 1998/77 of the United Nations Human Rights Commission, which recognized that military personnel, whether volunteers or conscripts, can develop a conscientious objection.
That specific resolution actually puts no limits as to whether the objection is to all war in general. We do have members of the House, and Canadians, who believe that all war is wrong. We have others who believe that there may and can be and have been just wars.
However, the United Nations Human Rights Commission resolution recognized that whether the objection is to all war or to a particular war, it is in fact most often in the actual experience of war that many basic human attributes, including conscience, are developed.
We also know that many states clearly recognize that members of voluntary armies can and do develop conscientious objection. The reason we know it is that in their military acts or national defence acts those states actually have provisions that in some cases allow that objector to seek a discharge. However, if we look at Iraq, the United States policy does not quite align with that.
How can the Canadian government, the Conservative government, actually help war resisters, whether they are from the United States or from another country, to regularize their situation in Canada and provide them with legal status to remain in Canada, recognizing that individual persons can develop conscientious objection to war in general or to a particular war precisely because they have themselves now experienced it?
Under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, there is section 25. Section 25 actually states that for various humanitarian reasons, including reasons of “public policy”, a person may establish humanitarian grounds.
Let me give an example of one such public policy that a previous government established and as a result allowed a whole class of people claiming refugee status, who were being consistently refused by the IRB, to be received and have their claims accepted. Those are victims of domestic violence.
There are countries and states where women, as victims of domestic violence, receive absolutely no assistance from the state or from the law enforcement within that country, in some cases because the country and state itself does not recognize domestic violence. In other cases, the state may under its law recognize it but is unwilling to actually apply the law.
There were cases back in the early 1990s and the mid-1990s of women coming from, for instance, Guyana and other Caribbean countries, and from some African countries and South American countries who fled their country because they were subject to domestic violence. They had reasonable grounds to believe that their lives, health and safety was in danger and that they could not seek protection from the law enforcement there.
The IRB, with the initial claims, rejected them and said, no, there is a law against assault in that particular country, but the Canadian government at that time, in its wisdom, recognized that although here in Canada our law enforcement and judicial system do take the issue of domestic violence seriously, that is not the case in all countries.
Canada issued a public policy that if individuals were making a claim for refugee status and these individuals were able to establish that they had a well-founded belief of persecution as victims and were victims of domestic violence, and were unable to receive protection from their government, either because the government was unwilling or unable to provide that protection, that it was grounds for humanitarian acceptance of their claim. Since that time women who have been able to make the case have had their claims accepted.
We know that the United Nations, in its refugee handbook at paragraph 170 states:
There are, however, also cases where the necessity to perform military service may be the sole ground for a claim to refugee status, i.e. when a person can show that the performance of military service would have required his participation in military action contrary to his genuine political, religious or moral convictions, or to valid reasons of conscience.
The Conservative government simply has to issue a directive stating that it is now public policy that any person making a claim for refugee status who is able to show that they have a conscientious objection to a war or a war in general may have their claim accepted. That is really simple. That is section 25 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. I offer it--