Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm glad you asked the question in that way. Through the refugee compact we have the means and the mechanisms to support what we call these livelihoods approaches, implementing at the outset of displacement crises development programming, instead of care and maintenance approach

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think that in the way it does its work and goes about its work, the IRB is successful and largely fair. From what I understand about the IRB, the investigation processes are fair and comprehensive. It's a fact that other states look to Canada's IRB model to increase their capa

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I said it last week in the committee, and I said it again today. The best thing that Canada can do right now, in my opinion, if I were in charge, is to deal with the issues at Global Affairs Canada that prevent us from successfully implementing projects under the comprehensive re

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There are two things. First, Canada should support the emergency appeal from UNHCR, which I think is around $700 million, maybe closer to $800 million for the Venezuelan crisis. Generally these funding appeals are not met. The second one is that Canada should seriously conside

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think that's a really important question. There are two points that I think need addressing here. One, if the Conservative Party of Canada is most interested in cost overruns.... To extend the safe third country agreement to the entirety of the border, we should look to the E

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Can I make one quick comment there? I'm sorry to interrupt you. In the 1951 refugee convention, article 31 states that it's not illegal to claim asylum between ports of entry. It's enshrined in international law and, therefore, it's part of Canadian law. The word “illegal” is a

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm going to refrain from commenting specifically on what the Liberal government ought to do in that regard. I'm not privy to all of the negotiations with the U.S. I'll just say, as a fact, if the safety of individuals, the safety of Canada's security services and costs are the

Citizenship and Immigration committee  This is precisely the purpose of the global compacts. We really need to understand, and I said this last week, that the compacts came about after two years of negotiation and consultation and, therefore, reflect a balance of interest between host states and donor states. Not to

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Sure. One of the things that we need to think about with the migrant caravan is people's decision-making in the face of the fact that they know they're going to face violence from Mexican authorities at the border with Guatemala, and it was well-publicized that they knew it was g

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In terms of how that might affect Canada, right now, there are very few people from NTCA countries arriving in Canada, and that's because it's difficult to make it into the U.S., and difficult to make it through the U.S. Where it might start impacting Canada—and that's something

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm only now starting to have proper conversations with people at international financial institutions about using leveraged funding to unlock other development financing. What Canada has done with the special trust fund for Bangladesh through the World Bank's IDA18 refugee sub-w

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think I'll give most of my time to Mr. Stewart, as he's the expert on the region. I just want to say it's never that clear-cut and very unfortunately I think what we're seeing in a lot of these regions is the beginnings or some of the indicators of failing or weak states. One

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I have one more sentence. Again, as I argued last week, focusing on whether or not we should sign the compacts not only misconstrues how they work, but it misses the whole point. We should be focusing on leveraging this unique moment in international migration governance to sta

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Okay. As we discussed last week, the content of the global compacts reflects the various elements of the 2030 sustainable development goals around inclusive and sustainable development. The kind of burden sharing that we need to address root causes in the region is encapsulated