Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. On behalf of the Canadian Council for Refugees, I thank you for the invitation to appear before you as part of your study on Bill C-6. I will be sharing my speaking time with my colleague Jennifer Stone, member of CCR's executive committee. We ha

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Can you give us some more time?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As we said at the outset, we and our members have expressed real shock at the way in which the committee is proceeding at such a rushed pace. We're talking about really serious legislation that affects people's lives. We are talking about a process that is very difficult to get r

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think we said that there has not been broad external consultation. We repeatedly asked for a meeting with the minister, which he was not willing to give. We have also spoken to the department and said that we would like to have a consultation with the department.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  With the ministry? You mean the department?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, I have not met with the department.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, we've met with people in the ministry, of course. I have met with a member of the minister's staff. But as I said to him at the time, that would not count for us as a consultation with the CCR.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm at a bit of a disadvantage, because I'm not allowed to say what was said or not said at that meeting. But as I said to him before the meeting, the CCR is an umbrella agency. I'm a staff person of it, but I cannot speak on behalf of all of our members, and especially not when

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As I say, if I was allowed to speak about what was discussed in the meeting, I could have comments, but since I had to sign a non-disclosure, I cannot say what I would want to say in response to your--

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We have about 180 member organizations across Canada, and obviously there is enormous concern from our membership about the dramatic changes. But our organizations are also very busy with the daily demands of serving refugees and immigrants. One of the constraints that your ver

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We have been clear in the positions that the CCR has been taking, insofar as we see that there are some positive elements in this bill but there are also some very serious concerns. All the feedback that we have received from our members is that they endorse the position of the C

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We haven't proposed to them specifically to endorse the whole brief, but there is an open letter that the CCR has been circulating around. It has been signed by quite a number of organizations, some of them CCR members and others non-members who share the concerns. It identifies

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's right. I would add that the government could act more quickly by processing cases in this way. It could take a long time to designate a country using the proposed process. Our proposal would make it easy for the agency to determine overnight that it has a problem and must

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We understand that the current PRRA system does not work. Review requests cannot be processed again; that is not feasible. At the same time, there has to be a possibility... For example, if a person's refugee claim is denied and the next day his family is murdered in his country

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. We do not want the process to be too cumbersome. We envision a mechanism whereby the claimant can make a request. The IRB can consider the request quickly. If there is nothing to it—in most cases, there will likely be nothing to it—the IRB can say it does not want to hear an