Public Safety committee  In that regard, I want the committee to be aware that a similar motion was put forward at the citizenship and immigration committee and passed, but it was significantly amended to give the investigator specific issues to address. I'm not asking for that in this committee. The real purpose behind this is that because security certificates are within the scope of this committee's responsibility, we should be putting forward what our position is with regard to the manner in which these three men are being detained and what should be done to address the crisis.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Again, this is something the Canadian Council for Refugees has raised in relation to their very serious concerns about the safe third country agreement. They point out that one of the key provisions of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act in Canada is that a safe third country has to comply with article III of the UN convention against torture, which prevents removal to torture. Then they go on to outline a number of cases where the United States hasn't been complying with that prohibition.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  This also means a loss of economic potential that these people bring with them. I find it very regrettable that the agreement allows fewer people to immigrate to our country. As for family reunification, it is also a challenge here in Canada. You mentioned earlier the difficulty stemming from the one-year deadline, but we need also to look at the difficulty in bringing the family together.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We have discussions about how the concept we have in law of family is very limited in Canada and doesn't reflect the cultural realities for the refugee communities and immigrant communities.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In critical cases now the United States government has been arguing against administrative bodies hearing the opinion even of UNHCR. We have a major case before the Board of Immigration Appeals for which the Department of Homeland Security has opposed UNHCR submitting a brief as to its opinion. So can you imagine a case in which the—

Public Safety committee  When we have armed border guards, they are obviously going to have to be in this enforcement culture all the time, yet right now a lot of their roles are not enforcement. They are enforcement in different manners, like revenue collection or immigration screening as a primary before sending over to secondary. They protect the border. They facilitate traveller flow and goods flow. A lot of it is commercial. There is enforcement of over seventy different pieces of legislation, but they're not all security-related.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Here in Canada, the hearing will be in two months, and it's clear that these persons may be accepted by the Immigration and Refugee Board, because our rate of acceptance is almost 80% in the case of Colombia. So the situation is very different between the two countries. Mandatory detention is also something we don't have here in Canada, and we don't have the one-year bar.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  If you are a child and you live in a conflict area and you give a glass of water to an individual in that conflict, you will have supported that terrorist organization. That is where U.S. law stands. A couple of weeks ago, authority was granted to immigration officials to exercise some discretion in allowing some refugees in under that authority. That discretion has been exercised for some Burmese refugees in overseas camps. It's not clear what it's going to result in, but discretion is completely unreviewable.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Everybody went to identify to the Canadian authorities. You had a procedure. The process went to the Immigration and Refugee Board, the person was determined to be a refugee or not, and it resulted in their removal or their staying in Canada. But the key thing here is that people were encouraged to go and present themselves to the authorities right at the border.

Public Safety committee  At the exact same time, at the other end of those bridges between New York and Canada, armed U.S. customs and immigration officers manned their posts, certainly with extremely heightened vigilance, but trained and armed as they always were, even prior to these tragic events. Once again, the same criminals crossed the Canada-U.S. border day after day, but were dealt with at one end of the bridge by armed U.S. authorities and at the other end by CBSA officers who were virtually unequipped.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I want to welcome, from Harvard Law School, Deborah Anker, clinical professor of law in the immigration and refugee program; Efrat Arbel, research assistant to Ms. Anker; and Francisco Rico-Martinez, co-director, FCJ Refugee Centre. Welcome to you. I would imagine you have an opening statement.

Committees of the House  Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 10th report of the standing committee, entitled “Issues raised by the use of security certificates under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act”.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The first one is: That, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the Committee recommends that the government establish an in-Canada regularization program that is accessible and affordable to allow non-status immigrants and their families living and working in Canada to apply for permanent residency. That the Committee adopt this recommendation as a report to the House and that the Chair present this report to the House.

Finance committee  You mentioned in your brief that your research shows that more products could be brought onstream that would assist first-time homebuyers, particularly those who are self-employed, and particularly new immigrants. I don't know if you know this, but I worked in the immigration portfolio for a while, and this is a problem for a lot of newcomers to Canada because they don't have the Canadian credit rating history that others might have.

Privilege  Speaker, my question of privilege relates to the question and answer period on May 18 where I posed a question to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration about immigration targets. The minister stated in the House that the Liberals missed their targets in each of the past 10 years. I asserted that the previous Liberal government in the past six years not only met the targets each year, but exceeded the targets four times.