Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think it's a mistake to compare the two asylum systems. The situation in the United States is quite different from that in Canada. Canada is much more open and has much more flexible criteria for recognizing that a person is a refugee. Let me give you some examples. First, sex

Citizenship and Immigration committee  You will understand that I can't comment on what they do or do not know. However, having been an IRB Commissioner for 11 years, I can tell you what I know. Before the Safe Third Country Agreement came into effect, people from the United States who wanted to seek asylum went to a

Citizenship and Immigration committee  They were greeted by the Canada Border Services Agency and the Canadian government, and they didn't have to sleep in trailers on the side of a highway.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Personally, I'm not aware of any studies that show that suspending the agreement would result in 100,000, 200,000 or 300,000 new asylum seekers annually. You have to look at what was happening at the time, before the Safe Third Country Agreement went into effect. We were not ge

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's a tough question to answer. I've been working on the Roxham Road issue since 2017. It's important to reiterate the government's position on this issue. In the summer of 2020, following a challenge, the Federal Court struck down the Safe Third Country Agreement. The govern

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Okay, I understand.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  People will be able to go to an official checkpoint in Quebec or anywhere else on Canadian soil. Due to that agreement, asylum seekers have no choice but to go through Roxham Road, otherwise they become ineligible for refugee status and they are returned to the United States. Su

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Actually, the message going out to people right now is that they can come to Canada through Roxham Road. There's currently nothing preventing thousands of migrants, regardless of where they are, from coming to Canada using that route. The message we're sending is that they can co

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's not what I'm saying. We're going to spread asylum seekers across Canada, like we did before. As you know, Article 10 of the agreement allows the government to unilaterally suspend the agreement for up to three months, and the suspension can be extended for further periods

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Good afternoon. Thank you for the invitation. I've been a member of the Barreau du Québec since 1992. I was a member at the Immigration and Refugee Commission for 11 years. From 2012 to 2015, I was a lecturer at the Cégep de Saint-Laurent in the administrative techniques program

Official Languages committee  Mr. Beaulieu, in the case of Quebec, I think it would be ideal because the delays in certain cases are exponential. This is because some applications must be processed by both MIFI, the Ministère de l'Immigration, de la Francisation et de l'Intégration, and Immigration, Refugees

Official Languages committee  Your question is very pertinent, Mr. Gourde. I actually ask myself the same question. As I mentioned earlier, what could be done to ensure that these people have some recourse, apart from going to the Federal Court in certain cases, when the decision or the position comes from

Official Languages committee  It's the same for me, Mr. Chair.

Official Languages committee  No, there's no interpretation in French.

Official Languages committee  I cannot explain it, any more than I can explain that, in 2021 and 2022, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada advertised unilingual English positions for immigration officers in Montreal. The clear message seems to be that immigration files are processed in English, in Qu