Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. I am Maurice Tomlinson, a senior policy analyst with the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, and I've helped to network with our Caribbean LGBT advocacy. In August 2011, I married my husband in Canada, then returned to Jamaica to await the usual filing process to emig

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Our experience has taught us that there are very tangible, concrete measures the Canadian government can adopt to support LGBTQI people in the Caribbean. These include reaching out to LGBTQI activists and human rights defenders in countries where such rights are violated and work

Citizenship and Immigration committee  —medical inadmissibility, which prevents people living with HIV from coming to Canada as permanent or temporary residents. My talk is in the package, which you were all presented with. Thank you.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As I explained, Jamaica is not a quiet society, so this music is played on buses and cars everywhere, Monday to Friday, and this is the reverberation that people hear. Then, they go to church, because everybody has to go to church in Jamaica—it's not an option—and the rhetoric is

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As I said, my situation is unique. I had resources. I have a security protocol when I return home to protect myself, so I can visit my mother.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Exactly. For those who don't have those resources and would like to reunite with their families or bring their families here, I would hope that it is easier for them to bring their families. The fact is that, if they go home and they are identified and they have no security bub

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm not sure how we can assist persons if their identity, which is the basis of their claim, is not known or is not made known. I know there's an attempt to be very sensitive. I don't know a lot about the UNHCR process, but I know there's an attempt to be sensitive. I've heard t

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The way to identify persons or to verify persons who are LGBTQ is to address the recommendation I made here. A lot of the time, working with and supporting the local groups on the ground, who know the reality, can provide the kind of supporting evidence that you need. Canada sho

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The short answer is yes. I believe in relation to the internally displaced we especially need to have in-country processing for LGBTQ persons. Requiring people to flee to Canada almost requires them to be rich before they can be refugees. They have to prove that they have assets

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I certainly would agree with that recommendation, yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm sure Erica has distributed the medical inadmissibility brief. I wasn't able to print it out for you, I'm sorry. The brief describes the challenges that the medical inadmissibility regime currently poses for persons who would, under normal circumstances, qualify as immigrants.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would say yes. The fact is, if advocates are able to address the human rights challenges in their home countries, this will stymie a lot of the ripple effect that we are in fact trying to cauterize. For example, if advocates in a country are able to campaign for equality, we wo

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There has been a lot of tracking done of the amounts of money that go from the global north, particularly religious groups, to support anti-gay efforts back home. The figure is staggering, and it's not surprising, because they have a captive audience every weekend. Every Saturday

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Everybody has good points and bad points. We are certainly very pleased with the constitutional framework that South Africa has, for example, but the challenge has been operationalizing that. There's a need for more domesticated sensitivity training. Canada has a very good progr

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's a very good question. The person who arrives as an HIV refugee is put into the system and is supported once they are granted refugee status. I would say that the current model works well. I am not aware of it being a particularly onerous process once the person has been g