Citizenship and Immigration committee  If I may, on the question of detention, when there was the 50th anniversary of the 1951 convention, there was quite a process whereby states brought forward concerns they had about gaps they identified in international refugee law. One of them was on the question of the applicati

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As an Ontario taxpayer, I think it's responsible government to have a credible and independent process to determine the claims of individuals on their merit.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would actually defer. As I'm not a lawyer familiar with the Canadian process, I wouldn't claim to have credibility on that or a position.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  My understanding is that it's a constitutional right that we have in Canada, so yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, absolutely.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I agree with my colleague that the definition of refugee, according to the 1951 convention, is someone outside of their country of origin due to a well-founded fear of persecution for one of five reasons. How we interpret those five reasons is something that has evolved over time

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think this plays very much into a lot of rhetoric that we've heard about an asylum queue and bogus refugees and queue jumpers. The fundamental principle is that an individual is a refugee once they have gone.... We cannot know an individual's refugee status until that status ha

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's right.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, sir. I think that is a very fair assessment. If we were to consider the diplomatic cost of introducing such restrictive legislation in response to the arrival of less than a thousand individuals by boat and the panic that is created by that, how that prevents us from

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Very quickly, on the question of the country of origin list, as the UNHCR found in 2000–01 in the global consultations, in certain instances, the safe countries of origin list can be an effective decision-making tool. It can make a contribution, but it concludes that the best sta

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Specifically on the question of the safe country of origin list, UNHCR, in its global consultations process 10 years ago, concluded that best state practice...that there are procedural reasons why a safe country of origin list might exist. The concern I have with the safe country

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's the discretionary power in the hands of the minister, as opposed to an independent panel of experts.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The independent panel of experts—absolutely.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  If you consider again, as in my response to Mr. Weston, applying the case of Australia, where we see the most documented example of mandatory detention and the human cost associated with it—and this was laid out by a group of Australian NGOs in a letter to Prime Minister Harper i

Citizenship and Immigration committee  From a very practical point of view, it doesn't seem to work.