Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. It's a pleasure to be with you this afternoon, and thank you very much for the opportunity to present in front of the committee today. I very much welcome your inquiry into these questions, and I am delighted on behalf of the International Organiz

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The compact is explicit that it is not legally binding and that one of the guiding principles throughout its operation—as was said by my colleague, Ida, from ACT Alliance—is that it takes full account of the sovereignty of states to determine their own national migration policies

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. Thank you very much. Technically, neither of the two global compacts would be ratified in the sense of requiring a legislative act, because they're not international treaties, but in terms of the degree to which Canada already lives up to the commitments, the aspirations an

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No problem.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Would you like me to address that?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There is no requirement for Canada to make any changes as a result of the global compact on migration—none. There is no requirement.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'll speak only to the global compact for migration, not to the global compact for refugees. In the migration context, the expectation is that there will be a review forum once every four years, but that the kind of review will be determined by the member states, so it would be—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, in fact—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, it's not a rapporteur process at all. There's no new special rapporteur that's foreseen with respect to this compact, and in fact right now there is not a rapporteur but a special representative for international migration appointed by the Secretary General and—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I was going to say to you that the review process is meant to be completely voluntary by states deciding what they would like to share with each other in terms of practices and learn from one another, and identifying what works and what doesn't work, and it's—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The decision that these compacts are non-binding were decisions taken by member states. In September 2016, in the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, which was taken by the General Assembly, all member states of the UN said that they wanted to create non-legally bindi

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That will be up to each country and the news media.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Do you mean about reporting standards, media standards? It's fair and accurate reporting.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It would be actual statistics, data, tracking of trends, tracking of labour market—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, every context is different. Each state has a different definition. Each state has a different set of reporting and statistical databases. There is an international definition of a refugee—