Citizenship and Immigration committee  The STCA's original purpose was really to reduce the pressures faced by the IRB in terms of the number of claims being made at the time. If you think about that policy reason, why the STCA was put in place, it is obviously failing. As acknowledged by a member of the committee ea

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There should be a provision of legal mechanisms to provide pathways for permanent status; ie., citizenship for stateless persons. We should be looking in detail about who is stateless and how we can provide some pathways for them and become a leader in this area of protection.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Certainly, it's difficult to prioritize. I'm not going to judge the government in terms of how it comes to that decision. The people who are living in the most precarious of situations.... I identified the Rohingya as a population, because they're stateless. There is completely

Citizenship and Immigration committee  My understanding is that, in the 2016 census, there were almost 4,000 people who had self-identified as stateless, but this refers only to people who have self-identified. Without a full, broad study, it's unclear how many stateless persons there are in Canada. Obviously, people

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Certainly, Canada could think about resettling a number of Rohingya from refugee camps, for example, in Bangladesh. Canada has obviously had a record of doing that. That is one big step to support the weight of the burden that some countries in the region are feeling. Secondly,

Citizenship and Immigration committee  My understanding is that the difference between the 1961 and the 1954 conventions is that the one we haven't ratified imposes positive obligations, so it really means that Canada has to take positive steps to create a pathway to citizenship for stateless persons. Canada needs to

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No I don't, but I teach her material in class quite a bit.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. I want to applaud the committee for undertaking this study. Thank you for your invitation. My name is Jamie Liew. I am a refugee lawyer and an associate professor from the faculty of law at the University of Ottawa. In my limited time today, I am submitting three rec

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. Essentially yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think it's a great point to make that there is a difference between selecting people to be resettled into a country to find safe haven there, i.e., in the United States, versus people who have come to the United States to make an asylum claim within the United States. For those

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think the IRB has a pretty high standard in the world with regard to refugee determinations. There is always going to be room for improvement. I think the biggest barrier with regard to what this committee is concerned about today is the fact that the IRB needs more resources t

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Good morning, and thank you. I am a refugee lawyer and an associate professor of law at the University of Ottawa. I first want to talk about the idea that assessing refugee claims should be done within the framework of a process related to the selection of humanitarian immigran