Madam Speaker, I am going to deliver a well-prepared, well-thought-out speech on Bill C-291 to indicate that the Bloc Québécois is in favour, as you may have guessed, of a refugee appeal division.
We are in favour of this because we have to make sure that when someone is initially refused refugee status or if a ruling can put the refugee in danger, the refugee can have the right to further expand on the facts regarding why they need an appeal, a right that currently does not exist.
The bill is quite simple. The purpose of it is to implement a refugee appeal division. After Bill C-291 has been passed and has received royal assent, three sections of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, sections 110, 111 and 171, will come into force. They would come into force one year after royal assent.
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 is one of the significant changes required to ensure that asylum seekers are treated fairly and equitably.
Implementing a refugee appeal division is a matter of justice. By stubbornly refusing to do so, two successive governments have perpetrated injustice on asylum seekers.
For several years now, many voices have been calling for a refugee appeal division. The Bloc Québécois has called for it many times, of course, and it is not alone. I would like to list the organizations that support a refugee appeal division. They have many good reasons for their support, including humanitarian ones, of course.
Even before the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act came into force in February 2000, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights was calling for an appeal division. It said:
Where the facts of an individual situation are in dispute, the effective procedural framework should provide for their review. Given that even the best decision makers may err in passing judgment and given the potential risk to life which may result from such an error, an appeal on the merits of a negative determination constitutes a necessary element of international protection.
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees has always felt it was necessary to have a mechanism for appeal on the merits of a ruling. In a letter dated May 9, 2002, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees expressed its concerns to the former minister, who is now the member for Bourassa. It said:
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees considers an appeal procedure to be a fundamental, necessary part of any refugee status determination process. It allows errors to be corrected and can also help to ensure consistency in decision making. Canada, Italy and Portugal are the only industrialized countries which do not allow rejected asylum seekers the possibility to have first instance decisions reviewed on points of fact as well as points of law.
I would like to point out, and members will be pleased to hear this, that since 2002, Italy and Portugal have created procedures for appeals on merit. According to the letter from the UN High Commission for Refugees, Canada is the only remaining industrialized nation that has not yet accepted its responsibility in this regard.
The UNHCR representative appeared before the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. Although he initially acknowledged “Canada's procedure for the determination of refugee status to be of a very high quality”, he reiterated the need for an appeal mechanism.
I will quote him once again for those interested in refugee law, namely all Quebeckers and Canadians:
...implementation of an appeal on the merits to review negative first instance decisions would strengthen even further the Canadian refugee status determination system. For UNHCR, an appeal on the merits would correct first instance errors and help to ensure consistency and fairness in decision-making.
He also said, “The Federal Court judicial review is not an appeal on the merits.”
Also:
The pre-removal risk assessment, PRRA, is an important safety net, especially when there's a long passage of time between a negative decision and removal. Like the humanitarian and compassionate application, the PRRA is a circumscribed process that does not correct a first instance negative decision.
In December 2004, in its Falcon Ríos v. Canada ruling, the UN Committee Against Torture criticized the Canadian system as follows:
It [the committee] expressed particular concern at the apparent lack of independence of the civil servants deciding on such appeals, and at the possibility that a person could be expelled while an application for review was under way. It concluded that those considerations could detract from effective protection of the rights covered by article 3, paragraph 1, of the Convention [meaning a return to torture].
In its July 2005 report, the UN Committee Against Torture made several recommendations to Canada. Among the areas of concern, it mentioned the fact that unsuccessful applicants cannot benefit from a review on the merits of their application. In fact, the committee recommends that:
The State party should provide for judicial review of the merits, rather than merely of the reasonableness, of decisions to expel an individual where there are substantial grounds for believing that the person faces a risk of torture.
For all these reasons, we must ensure that a refugee appeal division exists.