Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. Good morning. I will address the anti-smuggling provisions and designated foreign national regime as well. I intend to focus somewhat specifically on the case of the Sri Lankan Tamil refugee claimants who have arrived in Canada over the last few years. I want to say

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you for the question. As I touched on just at the end of my remarks, the problem is that there's no process for doing that. Neither India nor Thailand—nor Malaysia or Indonesia, for that matter—is a signatory to the refugee convention. None of those countries has implemen

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Smuggling rings, yes. Smuggling rings are often coordinated by very large criminal enterprises, and there's no question that the full force of the law should be engaged to deal with that form of transnational crime. Indeed, Canada is a signatory to the transnational protocols o

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would echo those comments. There's always an interest in new fixes for the asylum problem, but I think we need to remember that the best fix is a functioning, fair refugee determination system that processes claims in appropriate timeframes so that people have an answer, eithe

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Is it correct in the sense that it is legitimate to accelerate claims? I would certainly say that, yes, it can be correct. I don't dispute it. The question is to what extent and how, and what additional things are we doing? Keep in mind that we're proposing to eliminate the right

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There are a number of countries that have adopted similar provisions.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. Again, I focus on the package of provisions that Bill C-31 is attempting to address. You're talking about timelines. There's no issue from an international law perspective about acceleration, as long as the claimants have adequate time to prepare for their hearing. The ques

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Absolutely. We both share those concerns.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Actually our legislation currently imposes the possibility of life imprisonment and $1 million fines.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's my point. We already have very strong penalties in Canadian law.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, because they're already very strong. The issue this bill wants to deal with is the whole question of mandatory minimums, which I didn't address in my comments. I think there are problems with that. Are the sanctions for human smuggling serious? They absolutely are. They're

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We get some.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you for the question. My point is that our existing legal tools are more than adequate to deal with them. They've been detained, they've been subject to admissibility procedures, and they will be denied access to refugee hearings. That works. Ultimately, those who deserve

Citizenship and Immigration committee  And I agree with you that's a problem.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think Professor Dauvergne has ably outlined some of the problems, the serious cost to individual health and welfare, and the studies that have documented that. I want to emphasize that we already have the tools to detain where it's warranted. Where warranted, refugee claiman