Citizenship and Immigration committee  I am. I think if the government is going to spend money, it should spend money towards helping private sponsors do the wonderful work they're already doing.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As I said, I wouldn't say that you should totally eliminate government-assisted refugees. I think that possibly for smaller, targeted projects for specific groups of people maybe it would be a good idea. However, I wouldn't say that government-assisted refugees are necessarily mo

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, that's a huge problem. I think in terms of IDPs, that's our number one legal challenge in that department. I would really hesitate to tinker with the definition of “refugee”, which has stood in good stead for such a long time. I think rather than think about changing those

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm not aware of that.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you very much for the invitation to address you today, and thank you all for giving up your time in your constituencies this summer to look at this really important issue. I'm an immigration and refugee lawyer. I've been working in this field in one capacity or another si

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Do you mean balancing in terms of numbers or of finance?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As I said before, we definitely don't want to exclude people from the system who desperately need our help, but at the same time we have to be sensible and know that we cannot help everyone, so decisions have to be made. As I mentioned earlier, there could be a way to collapse

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I disagree with quotas. That's one thing on which I disagree with the speaker before me this morning. Let all the people who want to privately sponsor refugees do so.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  You've hit the nail on the head, because nobody knows. It's part of the problem. Very few people have ever heard of it. You have to be a lawyer nerd like me to have gone through and picked things apart and read about it. Awareness about the program is very low, and there aren't

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The IRCC website should have a section on it, but if you look through it, again there's really no information. If you go on there, you'll find a lot of information about how to sponsor refugees and how government-assisted refugees come, but there is no information about this cate

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'll certainly see what I can find. Again, I don't think there's much out there, but whatever there is, I will certainly be happy to provide.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  When a crisis blows up, I certainly think there's nothing wrong in saying that for a short period of time we're going to set things aside and look at this one group, but when you do it at the cost of everyone else, it becomes an issue. I have heard this many times before. I hear

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, I know that the government intends to put into place geographic regional quotas. That may not be the best way to approach the situation, especially if you're going to focus on private sponsorship of refugees. Let people sponsor the people they want to sponsor. Let the pub

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Exactly, and give the private sponsors their heads. They are excited. Let them go.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. I would target groups who are victims of genocide, although I know that word might not be popular in this room. There is a very serious situation happening with religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East. It's not only religious and ethnic minorities; it's also sexua