:
Thank you, Chairman. I will try to stick to my 10 minutes this time.
Canada has a long and impressive record of providing protection to refugees. In per capita terms we're among the world leaders with respect to how many refugees we resettle from overseas, as well as the number and percentage of asylum seekers to whom we grant refugee status and the range of benefits we provide.
While there's strong public support for accepting reasonable numbers of genuine refugees, many Canadians also believe there are serious problems with the current system and that Canadian generosity is being widely abused.
I think it's important to recognize that when Canada signed on to the United Nations refugee convention, we had no expectation of becoming a country of first asylum for any significant number of refugee claimants.
After War World II, we resettled more than 180,000 displaced persons from Europe, and subsequently thousands who fled from Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, and Asians from Uganda in the early 1970s, and Indochinese boat people later in the decade, including, by the way, some of my wife's family.
Canada did not expect to be a country of first asylum largely because of our geographical location. To get here, the vast majority of refugee claimants have to travel through countries where, under generally accepted international rules, they could and, indeed, should have sought asylum if their real purpose was to reach a safe country.
I might mention in this regard that my own concerns over the shortcomings of our refugee system started in 1986, with the arrival off the coast of Newfoundland of a boatload of 150 people who said they had fled from Sri Lanka. It was later revealed that they had been living in Germany for several years where some of them already had been granted refugee status. They had decided to move on to Canada in the expectation of receiving more generous benefits here.
We had a chance to bring this sort of situation under control a few years later, when legislation to create the Immigration Refugee Board was drafted. It was our intention to establish a list of safe third countries, that is, safe countries where asylum seekers should have made their refugee claims before moving on to Canada to look for more generous benefits, which is a practice known as asylum shopping.
The establishment of a safe third country list would have prevented us from being deluged with claimants who were not entitled to make claims in Canada because they had opportunities to make them in the safe countries they'd passed through to get here. Unfortunately, an influential and persistent refugee lobby was able to convince the then minister of immigration that no country in the world was safe except Canada. As a result, our refugee determination system, which was designed to accommodate a fairly limited number of claims, has been largely overwhelmed since then. This has not only slowed down the processing of claims by applicants who genuinely deserve our protection but has also cost an immense amount of money.
John Manion, a former deputy minister of immigration and secretary of the Treasury Board, who was before a Senate committee in 2001, estimated that the cost of the refugee system in Canada amounts to billions of dollars a year. The costs associated with an individual claimant is estimated to be in the range of $50,000. In comparison, our annual contribution to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees amounts to only about two to three dollars a year for each refugee and internally displaced person the UN cares for in its camps around the world.
The reason we spend so much more money on the processing of asylum seekers in Canada than on refugees in UN camps is that over the years a highly organized lobby of refugee lawyers and advocacy groups has been very effective in influencing successive governments with regard to refugee policy. We can expect these groups to make an all-out effort to block the passage of this legislation, because if it becomes law it could have serious implications for the income of many of them. The committee will no doubt be presented with a wide range of sometimes very detailed arguments from refugee lawyers and advocacy groups as to why the various parts of the legislation are not fair or do not meet our international obligations.
I believe that the provisions in Bill C-31 will in fact make the system much fairer than in the past, by substantially reducing the time required to approve claims that have merit. The system won't be clogged up with people who have manifestly unfounded claims.
The system won't be perfect; it's quite possible there will be some genuine cases that fall between the cracks. But bear in mind in this regard that Canada is by no means the only country in the world where people seeking asylum can apply. They have many other options if Canada does not accept their claim.
As for our international obligations, I believe these will be met under Bill C-31. But I'd also point out in this regard that the UN convention on refugees was drafted 60 years ago and updated with its protocol in 1967. Many of the features that characterize the movement of asylum seekers today—large-scale people-smuggling by criminal organizations, passage through safe countries by asylum shoppers looking for greener pastures, and claims made by nationals from safe countries such as the United States and Britain—and many of the challenges were not envisaged by the drafters of the convention and the protocol.
While I believe the legislation does indeed meet our obligations under the convention, I think the latter needs updating and revision to bring it into line with conditions that exist in the world today.
More than one political leader and refugee-receiving state has suggested that their country withdraw from the convention in its present form. I'll just mention one comment. Tony Blair, the former British Labour PM, said in his 2009 memoirs that the convention was written in response to the horrors of World War II and helped create a system that is completely unrealistic in today's world, utterly incapable of dealing with the massive numbers of asylum claims now being made. And I can quote other leaders who have said other things.
If you receive lectures by those opposing Bill C-31 to the effect that it fails to meet our international obligations, I'd point out that it probably does meet our obligations. But second, in any event, it's questionable whether we should feel bound by a convention that's very much out of date in some respects.
With regard, Chairman, to the specific provisions of Bill C-31, I'd say they are well thought out. They address many of the problems that affect the current system. It makes sense, for example, to put in place an effective procedure for designating safe countries of origin and expediting the processing of nationals of such countries. It makes no sense to allow our system to be clogged up year after year with hundreds of American asylum seekers, along with some smaller numbers from such countries as Britain, Australia, France, or even Germany, etc. Virtually nobody else in the world gives serious consideration to nationals of countries that clearly do not persecute their citizens.
If I have any criticism of the bill, it's that it does not go far enough in some regards. In addition to designating safe countries of origin, for example, we should also establish a list of safe third countries. Until now we've only identified the United States as a safe third country, and there's no reason why others, such as the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, should not be given similar designations.
In the time I've been allotted, I won't attempt to comment on each of the major changes proposed in the legislation, but I regard all of them as essentially sound. I would point out that while we at the Centre for Immigration Policy Reform support these changes, this doesn't mean that we agree with the government on all policy areas of concern to us. In fact, we disagree quite strongly with the government on a number of key issues in the area of immigration policy.
As a general comment, I also wish to say that Canada should return as much as possible to its original intent of being a country of resettlement rather than first asylum. We resettle well over 10,000 refugees every year from overseas, most of whom have been screened by the United Nations and are determined to be genuine convention refugees. Most of the asylum seekers who come here to make claims could have applied abroad, but if they don't have a good case for such a claim, they know they are much better off coming here first, since it's common knowledge that they are likely to be able to stay here for years and receive generous public assistance even if their claims are found to be without merit.
In conclusion, Mr. Chair, I would point out that while critics of Bill C-31 will argue that its passage would be a step backwards by Canada as a compassionate and welcoming country, I do not believe this to be the case at all. We'll still be one of the most generous countries, if not the most generous country, in the world in welcoming refugees. I think we will have made major strides in reassuring Canadians that we can create an effective, fair, and efficient system that is not open to widespread abuse.
Thank you.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon to the members of the committee.
I have provided you with two written briefs. The first deals with the bill's changes to the refugee claim process. The second addresses the policies underlying the anti human-smuggling provisions of the bill. There is a detailed biography in the first package.
You will see that I have worked as a lawyer representing refugees. I was a member of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada for more than six years deciding refugee claims. I was then the chairperson of the Immigration and Refugee Board for three years, with a managerial perspective on managing the resources of the refugee claim system. Finally, I have been an academic studying refugee systems and the international protection of refugees.
In making a recommendation I want you to know that I view the refugee system from all four perspectives. Certainly, I do not view myself as a member of any lobby in any particular direction. My fundamental allegiance is to the Canadian refugee system, one that makes decisions that are correct, fair, fast, and efficient.
In the time allowed, I will address only three aspects of the bill—the short time limits of the refugee claim process, the lack of an appeal for some claimants, and the government's deterrent strategy for group arrivals. My first brief includes a summary analysis of Canada's refugee system. It provides a brief description of the current system, some of its flaws, some of the reforms recommended by Bill , and four recommendations that come out of that.
In regard to the refugee claim process itself, I must say candidly that the time limits are simply too short and will undermine its fairness and its efficiency. Refugees will not have a realistic opportunity to tell their story. A 15-day limit for claimants to file their basis-of-claim form is simply not enough time. In my brief at pages 4 and 5 I outline all of the steps that a refugee claimant has to take in order to file that form.
Please imagine a refugee claimant who arrives at Pearson Airport and makes a claim. They do not speak English. They know nothing of the city or Canadian culture. They don't know where to live. They don't know how to use public transport or how to use a cellphone, which they may have. They have very little money, and they don't understand the refugee system. Within 15 days they are expected to find a competent lawyer, see if they can get legal aid approval, instruct the lawyer appropriately for the lawyer to draft, through an interpreter, the information and deliver it to the Immigration and Refugee Board.
The result of a 15-day limit, in my view, will be more unrepresented claimants and more mistakes in the written form. Poorly drafted and incomplete statements make more work for a board member. Members depend on accurate information to prepare for the hearing. Poorly prepared hearings waste hearing room time and induce mistakes. I recommend that you grant 30 days to provide the written statement to the board. It is a modest gesture, with dramatic results.
For claims inside of Canada at the CIC office, there's a different procedure. I refer to it in my brief, and you can ask me questions about it if you wish. For an appeal to the refugee appeal division, there will be 15 working days to file and complete the appeal. Once again, it is simply not enough time. We cannot assume that it will be the same lawyer representing the claimant at the appeal. Some claimants are already unrepresented, and candidly, some claims are lost because of poor legal representation in the first place.
Under our current system, the time allowed for judicial review applications is 45 days. It has been the experience of counsel over many years that it is not enough time. By contrast, the refugee appeal division members will have 90 days to make their decision. I'm telling you that 15 days is far too short. I recommend 45 days in order to file and complete the appeal. Again, you can ask me questions about that.
For the designated country of origin claims, hearings are scheduled for 30 days after delivery of the claim form. This is an insufficient amount of time for claimant and counsel to obtain and deliver the evidence. The most important evidence is claim-specific. It's usually located in the country of origin, and it's often difficult to obtain. In addition to that, medical and psychological reports are often by far the most germane evidence for the board member to consider. I think you would all understand that it's not possible to obtain those, particularly psychological reports, within 30 days. If the evidence is not available, the results will either be adjournments of hearings—which is inefficient—or unfair decisions based upon incomplete evidence. I recommend that we return to the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, which allowed 60 days for the DCO hearings, and 90 days for regular hearings.
The minister has said that the faster process is necessary to deter fraudulent claimants. In our current system, to process a claim, it takes four to five years from date of claim to date of removal, and that is obviously far too fast. This is not a justification, though, for imposing unrealistically short timelines. Claims that are decided in six to nine months are more than adequate to deter manifestly unfounded claimants. For regular claims, 12 months would be adequate.
I can tell you, based on 25 years of experience in the field, that claimants, whether fraudulent or not, often invest everything in trying to get to Canada. They mortgage their homes. They borrow money. If those people return to their country in five to six or seven months, I assure you that you will not see a second wave of fraudulent claimants from that country. Superfast turnarounds of 45 days or 75 days are simply unnecessary and, in my view, they will be unfair in the sense that incorrect decisions will be made.
In regard to section 36, which defines the six categories of claimants who will not have a right of appeal, firstly, I applaud the government for implementing the refugee appeal division, which has been in the law since 2002 but was never implemented. The lack of an appeal has been one of the critical flaws in Canada's refugee system. This will certainly help to ensure that the board's decisions are well reasoned and reliable.
Refugee claims are not easy to decide. The evidence is inaccessible. Claimants are fragile witnesses. Mistakes are made, inevitably, by the best of board members—and candidly, I must say that some members fall below that standard.
I think you heard Professor Rehaag this morning refer to some of his reports. They are definitive reports, showing that for the individual acceptance rates of IRB members, the variance between the individual rates is unacceptably broad. The unavoidable fact is that for some of the decisions, they are simply not reliable. The solution to that is to have a refugee appeal division appeal for each one of those decisions.
In my brief, I refer to why, for some categories of claimants, it is even more important that they have an appeal. You can ask me questions about that if you wish.
In conclusion, on the issue of fast process, I'll just simply make three points: allow for modestly longer time limits, to give claimants a fair and reasonable opportunity to prove their claims; allow an appeal to every claimant to catch the mistakes that are inevitable, especially with a faster claim process; and have prompt removals of failed claimants. Those timelines are more than adequate to eliminate fraudulent claims while ensuring fair and reliable decisions.
My second brief deals with the attempt to deter group arrivals by way of one-year mandatory detention—or up to one year—and long-term separation of families. I've left the arguments on legality and constitutionality for others.
Mr. Kenney has stated that the purpose of these provisions is to deter asylum seekers from using irregular means to seek protection in Canada. The assumption that mandatory detention will deter asylum seekers from coming to Canada in groups unfortunately has no basis in fact. Australia imposed mandatory detention on all boat arrivals in 1994. Over the following several years, the number of arrivals increased, not decreased.
As well, my brief provides you with the statistics on the number of claims in a chart. It also shows the work of UNHCR researchers, which shows that mandatory detention does not deter asylum seekers.
There are reasons why mandatory detention does not work. There are four principal reasons. First, there were studies done of the detainees in Australia. The majority of the detainees did not even know about the detention policies, the reason being that their primary source of information was the smugglers. Even the minority who did know about the detention policies did not believe them. They thought, “Australia, this is a country where there is the rule of law and democracy.” They did not think it could be that bad—
There's also the problem of human smugglers, in that this is not a safe way of passage. These are guys who are often tied to organized crime, who often intend to traffic people or make money from smuggling. Oftentimes, smuggling and trafficking become one and the same thing, and that puts people in dire circumstances. There are incidents where these smugglers out at sea, if they get caught, oftentimes throw people overboard. It's a very dangerous pursuit if they do that. I think everybody's in agreement on that. It's oftentimes not the safest way for people to try to come to Canada.
Also, in response to my friend, not everybody trying to come to Canada is a terrorist, but there surely are a few. It only takes one determined guy to get here by using the refugee system to cause a tremendous amount of harm to this country. There have been examples of that. So we have to be very careful in that instance.
As well, some people do queue jump by using the refugee system, and they are bogus or fraudulent refugees, and that clogs up our system.
Mr. Collacott, you used a term I thought was very interesting. You used the term “asylum shoppers”. Could you expand on that term, sir?
:
I don't want to dwell on that. Suffice it to say that I am a former member of the Immigration and Refugee Board, and an immigration and refugee lawyer in Ottawa exclusively since 2001. Previous to that, I was on the refugee board.
I think it's important to refer very briefly to my personal background, so you'll have a thorough understanding that I have not only professional but also personal, in-depth knowledge of what a refugee is. I am a sister of a child Holocaust survivor, and I am a child of my late parents who were Holocaust survivors, so I know what it is to be a refugee.
My late mother and my sister, who is much older than me and still alive, survived Ravensbrück concentration camp. My late father escaped a labour camp in Germany and got back into Czechoslovakia, and hid out in the Tatra Mountains during the war. He managed to save his elderly parents and for some time he hid with the partisans, that is, with the resistance groups, and finally he hid in a bomb crater and was rescued by the Soviet army.
From that experience, I wish to address the committee today.
I'm here to support . I might also add that I have represented hundreds of refugee claimants. Since 2001, I have had claimants from Sudan, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Ethiopia, Uganda, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Colombia, Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, and even Mexico. That list may not be exhaustive. I certainly didn't have a chance to review all of the clients I've had in the last 11 years.
Recently, I've had some hearings for Eritrean clients in January and February, which were outstanding from late 2009 and 2010. I have at least a dozen outstanding refugee claims from 2010 that still haven't even been scheduled for hearings.
I support the accelerated process that the minister has brought forth, because waiting two or three years to have a hearing is completely ridiculous.
As we all know, and I'm sure you all know, the Holocaust was the basis of the 1951 international convention, and its updated protocols in 1967. This convention was not drafted to serve an industry of criminal smugglers, the people who may or may not be genuine refugees, or to facilitate asylum shopping, that is, asking which country one can get into to get the most generous benefits and highest acceptance rate.
It was not drafted to even consider claims from citizens who come from established democracies. I'm not talking about those where the qualitative and quantitative criteria set by the minister can vary from year to year. I'm talking about established democracies that have evolved over the centuries, such as the United States, New Zealand, Australia, the European Union countries, and even Japan since World War II.
I do not believe that the convention and those who drafted it had this in mind, that people such as U.S. citizens would be considered for refugee claims.
The current system that we have, as far as I am concerned, besmirches the memory of Holocaust survivors. The very thought of treating on equal footing somebody from the United States or Britain or Sweden with refugees from Darfur or Rwanda, or women fleeing Sharia law or genital mutilation—and I have represented them all—is just outrageous as far as my personal opinion goes. Then there's also the issue of Christians who are now fleeing massacres in certain Islamic theocracies. Those are the real refugees.
The over 100,000 Karen people sitting in Mae Sot district of Thailand in UNHCR refugee camps are also the real refugees. I have personal knowledge of the Mae La refugee camp, because my daughter, now a physician, volunteered as a fourth-year medical student in Mae Sot medical clinic in northern Thailand. That Mae Sot medical clinic services that sprawling, horrible refugee camp of over 100,000 Karen people. Through her intervention and my intervention we were able to bring to Canada one Karen person who had originally been turned down, Eh Hso Gay, whose aunt and uncle lived in Ottawa. The only way someone could leave the refugee camp was to have an appointment at the clinic. She brought Eh Hso Gay into the clinic twice. I sent her the questions and told her to interview her, and then she was interviewed by the CBC and, of course, Immigration Canada heard that and they reversed the decision and Eh Hso Gay was brought to Canada.
Now, when there is criticism that there are designated countries of origin, I have no issue with that. And I have no issue with safe third-country agreements, because believe you me, Jewish refugees who were trying to flee Europe would not have shopped around. They would have gladly taken any country, any first country they could have stepped foot in, and made their asylum claim there. They wouldn't have traipsed around the world to find a country with more generous benefits.
As I speak now, anti-semitism is on the rise in Hungary. And since I was an infant born on the Hungarian side of the Czech-Hungarian border at that time, I have friends in Hungary, one of them being Peter Feldmajer, the head of the Jewish community in Hungary. Anti-semitism is what the new right wing government has almost state sanctioned. He said to me that the young Jewish people, his children included, are leaving. But they're not making refugee claims; they're going to one of 26 other European Union countries, and they're not coming to Canada. They're going to one of the other countries or to Israel. You don't have masses of Jews coming from France, where they're being attacked daily, and making refugee claims. They're going to other EU countries.
It's said that there's not enough time to make a refugee claim in the 45 or 90 days, etc., the minister is trying to set to accelerate the claims. But under the current system claimants have 28 days to submit a personal information form. And all the hundreds of claimants I have represented never had an issue getting that personal information form, which is the basis of the claim, to the Immigration and Refugee Board. The issue has been having to wait two years to get a hearing. That's where the issue is.
Moreover, having an accelerated process for claimants from designated countries of origin is not an issue, because we're simply implementing measures similar to those in many EU countries. For example, some countries in Europe do the following—and I have a whole list of these countries. In the United Kingdom, for those coming from what are considered to be safe countries of origin, they fast-track the claims in 10 to 14 days. In France, it's 15 days. In Germany, it's two days if they come from countries such as Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. They don't even accept refugee claims from other EU countries, because as you are fully aware, a citizen of one EU country has the absolute right to go and live and work in another EU country. You might say that if we're going to refer to the Roma, there might be an impediment because of language. Well, when they come to Canada there is the same impediment. They speak Hungarian or Slovak, depending on where they're coming from.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Union has been in existence since 1964 and continues to work to protect civil liberties in Canada. It is in that context that the association comes before you today. We certainly appreciate the opportunity to share our concerns with the committee.
My presentation comes in two parts. First, I want to point out some constitutional problems with the bill and I will speak to three points in that regard. Clearly, the association supports the idea of improving the refugee definition process. We really support that approach, as well as putting human smugglers into the criminal justice system. But, in our opinion, if we try to do that with this bill, we will be going too far and we will cause major constitutional problems for Canada. From that point of view, therefore, the bill must be revised.
In the second part of my presentation, I am going to invite you to reflect on your role as parliamentarians as you study this bill.
[English]
First, there are three things that I want to suggest, and here I obviously speak from a civil libertarian position. There are three things in this bill that transform some constitutional law concepts. I will invite you to worry a little bit about this, because in doing so and achieving some good objectives, there may be some drawbacks that will affect all Canadians.
The first one is what I describe as the mandatory detention of group-designated people. The three things that I want to say here are these. First, this is a group detention; it's a group assessment. In Canada, we tend not to agree with group assessment. Mass arrests are wrong. Mass detention are wrong. I think it's important to view this as going goes against some of the fundamental issues that we have in Canada, which is that when you are going to make a decision that is going to deprive someone of his or her liberty—and here I will go back to Mr. Collacott's argument—you must have an individual assessment as to whether there is a good reason to do so and whether indeed the person poses a risk. If you read in our brief the description of what the law is on arbitrary detention, you will see that it requires an individual assessment of whether the person has committed or is connected to crime. This bill doesn't do that.
The reasons the minister will be able to designate a group have to do with administrative convenience or administrative demands, or because he or she suspects that maybe there will be some smuggling. But it's never connected to the individual members of the group. That will be a flaw in constitutional terms, in terms of arbitrary detention. There is group detention and group assessment of blame that is inappropriate.
The second one is that this detention is without judicial supervision. There is no possibility of judicial validating or vetting of the detention for 12 months. This is a denial of the right to habeas corpus. You cannot do this. This is dangerous. It's dangerous because if we start doing this and saying, this group does not have the right to habeas corpus and this group is denied the possibility of having the legality of their detention vetted by a judge, I think we run the risk—not that this government will do it—that other governments may decide to designate a group and deny them the right to habeas corpus and the right to have their detentions validated.
In its Charkaoui decision, as you will read in our brief, the court said that 120 days of detention for people suspected of terrorism without judicial review is wrong and unconstitutional. There is no doubt that for asylum seekers where there is no evidence of a link to criminal activity, this will be viewed as unconstitutional.
I also want to provide the committee with the following reflection. If there are administrative problems, and there will be, the following is what the act currently says. I think it's important to say that it is possible now. Our current immigration law doesn't have mandatory detention, but a person must be seen by an independent decision-maker within 48 hours of being detained to determine whether there is a need to keep them locked up. And in a way, I think we are certainly ensuring that people will show up for their hearing, because they can be detained if there's a risk that they will not show up, or if they present a risk to national security and if their identity cannot be ascertained. So the current provisions provide for the administrative necessities that are now in fashion.
Mon deuxième point, my second point, is to urge you as parliamentarians to reflect on this bill. Just to complete the idea, there's also a discriminatory aspect to this. Not only will people who are in the designated group be detained for 12 months without judicial review, but thereafter their ability to seek permanent residence will also be delayed, even after they have been found to be legitimate refugees.
In my view, there's no reason in Canada to make distinctions between some refugees and others. Once they have received refugee status, they should be treated the same; they should have the same ability to become permanent residents. The reason is that demanding permanent residency is part of integration into Canada. Once they are recognized as refugees, they should be treated equally.
In my view, this will raise some issues concerning a violation of section 15 of the charter, and I think we should be worried about that as well.
I'm speaking to you as parliamentarians. Why do we think that you as parliamentarians should worry about this bill? This is a bill in which I think there is a large expansion of executive powers.
I think it's incumbent upon parliamentarians to recognize what their role is here. It's to ensure that this is not going too far in preventing the executive from being sufficiently bound. In a way, the executive now decides that there will not be judicial review, and then under this bill has very little parliamentary oversight as well. I urge you to reflect on what your role is as parliamentarians in evaluating this.
Le deuxième point that I want to make on the role of parliamentarians here is that we all know that at times it is easy for xenophobic feelings to arise. I am pretty sure that there is no minister in this government who would order mandatory detention of poor souls arriving from desperate countries, but this projet de loi, this bill, is not here only for now; it will be here forever. Indeed, once you create the ability.... What the minister says is “I may not use this bill, but I want it in my back pocket just in case”. But this possibility of designating a group could be done wrongly in the future.
I was going to mention that at times Canada has done some nasty things, some things that we're not proud of. I want to conclude on this and say that when we imposed the head tax on Chinese immigrants; when we turned away the ship the Komagata Maru in 1914 and 376 Indians died; when we refused access to the Afro-American farmers during the recession; when we incarcerated the Japanese and the Ukrainians; when we denied entry to the St. Louis in 1939 and 900 Jewish people were returned to Europe, these decisions were popular. My fear is that decades later we unveil commemorative plaques, we offer apologies, and sometimes we pay damages and try to alleviate the pain, but it's too late: people have died.
I urge you to think about the possibility that there may be decisions taken in the future to incarcerate people for 12 months and to deport them in a context in which, later on, we will feel very ashamed of what we have done.
It's not appropriate to leave all of these decisions to a minister. It creates too much danger of this power being abused. I urge you to consider this possibility.
Merci.
:
Certainly I think the current statute, the current way in which we deal with group arrivals, is not inappropriate. In the statute it does say, to the extent there's some difficulty in doing identity checks and so on, people can be detained for short periods of time, but at least there's a guarantee that indeed a judge is there to make sure the process works well.
We should value this, and we should value this profoundly, because that's what constitutional law is all about. That's the protection we all have, that if indeed we are found to be detained, we're not at the mercy, like this bill presents, or completely at the mercy of the minister deciding, “Oh, yes, these are exceptional circumstances and I decide that you can leave”, even if he or she does the right thing.
I think there is a symbolic flaw here. There's a symbolic flaw because it does say to people that in Canada you're completely at the mercy of the minister deciding what happens to you. That's not what we're all about. We're a society based on the rule of law, not on discretionary exercises at the whim of a minister.
So to me, I react by looking at this and saying, “Will I want this to be part of Canadian law books?”. No. I think there are some dangers in terms of the way it transforms our constitutional law, let alone all the problems it may pose for the individuals who are affected. That's serious enough, but there certainly are some problems in the way in which our constitutional law will be transformed.
:
Regarding the mandatory detentions and designated groups, I think there was confusion created, because people coming from designated countries are not the same as people coming through irregular arrival, that is, through smuggling. So if someone didn't know the bill in detail they'd be confused and think that if somebody came from the United States, they would be subject to detention. That is not the case.
Mandatory detention has absolutely nothing to do with people coming from designated countries of origin. Mandatory detention refers to people who have been smuggled in. It's completely different. I just want to clarify that so there's no confusion that if somebody comes from Hungary, France, New Zealand, Australia, or Norway, they will be subject to mandatory detention. Those are designated safe countries or designated countries of origin.
As for mandatory detention for one year, I don't see how that could even happen. He says he's going to accelerate the cases and they're supposed to be finished within a maximum of 216 days. So there won't even be a mandatory detention of 365 days. Unless I'm completely wrong, I don't believe what's in the bill means that every single person is going to be stuck in jail for one year. I think they'll probably be looking mostly at the smugglers themselves. If people do not destroy their documents upon arriving or en route, it will be easy for the board to determine whom the smugglers are and who are genuinely seeking claims. It doesn't help when everybody destroys their documents. I think that detention is perhaps necessary at that point, when you come without documents. How else are you going to find out who has arrived at your borders?
What is constitutional and what is not constitutional? I'm not a constitutional lawyer. However, at some point Canada has to determine who's running the country: appointed judges who are not elected and not responsible to people, or Parliament? I'm afraid that we have shifted away from a true democracy, where our laws are created by Parliament but determined by the a supreme court or federal court whether these should work or not. Those people are not elected. They're appointed and can remain in their judicial capacity until the age of 75, and are answerable and responsible to no one.
Sorry, did you ask me another question that I missed?
Thank you for having us.
The Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, better known as OCASI, is the provincial umbrella group for agencies that work with immigrant and refugee communities here in Ontario.
OCASI and our member agencies are very concerned about Bill . Let me start off by saying that we're actually asking this committee to recommend that the bill be withdrawn and that we move forward with Bill , which is scheduled for implementation at the end of June of this year.
Very quickly, we are concerned that the bill would create a multiple-tier system of refugee protection in Canada, which we believe could result in some claimants being denied the right to appeal. It makes refugee protection in Canada dangerously vulnerable to political whims, rather than ensuring a fair and independent decision about who is a refugee. It subjects some refugees to different and harsh treatment based on the country of origin, mode of arrival, and whether or not the person has citizenship in Canada, as it has to do with the revocation of permanent residency.
I just want to set the stage a bit in terms of how we have been addressing issues of refugees and asylum seekers before I pass it on to Francisco.
In 2010, Canada accepted about 24,000 refugees in all classes. This was about 11,000 fewer than the 35,000 who were accepted in 2005. In 2005, refugees in all classes accepted in Canada were about 13% of all permanent resident arrivals. In 2010, they were down to 8% of those arrivals, a drop of almost 5%.
In 2005, the number of refugee claimants present in the country constituted approximately 0.3% of the Canadian population. Five years later, in 2010, the percentage of refugees compared to the Canadian population was slightly lower at 0.28%. In 2010, we accepted 3,400 fewer claimants than five years earlier, in 2005. At the same time, the number of people forcibly displaced in countries around the world has been growing.
We believe, and we are deeply concerned, that Bill will reduce even further the number of individuals who seek to enter Canada in search of asylum.
The has said that Canada welcomes more resettled refugees per capita than any other country. Meanwhile, according to the UNHCR “Global Trends” report of 2010 that was released last year, 80% of the world’s refugees are in the global south, in the world’s poorest countries such as Pakistan and the Congo. The report found that roughly 43.7 million people are displaced worldwide. Of that number, 27.5 million people are displaced within their own country due to conflict.
In this global context, Canada’s involvement in resettling refugees, while admirable—and I don't think any of us around this table are arguing about that—doesn't quite measure up to the commitment of other countries in the world. According to the same UNHCR report, in 2010 Canada had 4.2 refugees per U.S. dollar of its per capita GDP compared to Pakistan at 709, Congo at 475, Kenya at 247, and Chad at 224. The comparison becomes more stark when one considers the fact that Canada’s GDP per capita is considerably higher than that in the countries named.
We're also deeply concerned about the growing anti-refugee sentiment in Canada and the extent to which this could be exacerbated by government messaging about the bill. I heard some of the language used earlier today while I was listening to some of the other witnesses makes their presentations and to the question and answer period. Messages that characterize asylum seekers in stereotypically hurtful ways, suggesting that they are bogus and are a drain on Canadian society, can have a harmful effect. We are also deeply troubled by the misperception that these measures are necessary because Canada is facing supposed floods of refugees. This messaging contributes to increased intolerance towards refugees and has a harmful impact on their resettlement opportunities in Canada.
While we believe that most of the measures are quite problematic, let me just concentrate on two pieces and then I promise I'll shut up.
First is shorter time limits. I know that the previous witnesses spent some time on this topic, but we are particularly concerned that the shorter time limits will pose additional difficulties for particular claimants. We are particularly concerned, as a council, with lesbians, gays, and trans folk, as well as women fleeing domestic violence, who often need to develop some sort of trust before they will disclose or “come out”, as we say here in North America, about their sexual orientation or their search around gender identity issues. We believe this will present increasing difficulties for them in having their claim together within the 15 days proposed in this bill.
For me, this is also tied to the safe countries list. I won't go on and on about the safe countries list. You've heard many arguments about the ongoing concerns. But we absolutely know that in countries that Canada has deemed to be democratic, and countries with whom we may have trade agreements, and countries with whom we work closely outside the EU—and you've all heard how safe the EU is for particular groups of people—particular groups still face severe discrimination. This discrimination at times not only leads to severe physical abuse, but also at times to death. Even here in the Americas we have examples of this.
One of the stories that I want to share just briefly, which is about four years old, is about a young Mexican woman whose claim was refused. She was sent back and was killed. Unfortunately, there is a more recent case that came up, the case of Veronica Castro, also from Mexico. Her claim was denied. A year before she was deported she was saying to friends that the decision was a life and death one for her if she were to be sent back , and she was hoping for their prayers. She wrote to one of her friends that her deportation was a matter of life or death, and said: “I'm shaking and terrified every time I think about my deportation. I am really scared”. Thirty-three days later, after being deported back to Mexico, on January 12, 2012, she was murdered.
So those are the kinds of stories that we know and that we are concerned about if we were to move forward, as a country, to adopt this bill.
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The chart shows you that there are five people whose names are highlighted in yellow. It's the first wave. Back when they came here in 1998, there was no visa required for Hungarian refugees. These people claimed refugee status. They had been indicted, nine months before they came, for extortion and fraud. If you want to talk about human trafficking, what is it? It's extortion and fraud. They came over here and nine months later warrants for their arrests were issued.
They made refugee claims. In a refugee claim, you have to say, “I have no outstanding charges”. Well, for some reason, nobody ever found out about that. They made their refugee claims. CBSA is supposed to check for outstanding charges—you click on their outstanding charges, criminal records. None of those ever came up.
They became convention refugees; they became landed immigrants; one of them became a Canadian citizen. In fact, in this other document that you have, tab 10, 2005—I don't have time to go into it, but you can look at it later—you'll see that the Canadian and Hungarian authorities knew that Ferenc Domotor, the ringleader, had those outstanding charges and nothing was done about it. A year later, those charges were dropped in Hungary because of limitation problems.
So we had two serious criminals in our country who were landed immigrants, and one a Canadian citizen. Throughout this entire process, they were hiding in the open. Nobody ever seemed to find out that they were in fact wanted criminals from Hungary.
After they got their status, the next wave came over—and they're everybody else at the top part of the chart I am showing. Everybody else at the top part of this chart is one of their relatives, and every one of them, except one, when they came into the country or very shortly afterward, had outstanding charges. Some of them had criminal records, some of them had outstanding charges at the time, some of them had outstanding charges shortly thereafter. They clicked on the little form to say, we have no charges. All of them came here; nobody ever seemed to find out that they had these outstanding charges.
Once they were all here, they rented homes, and then they started recruiting victims from Hungary. They are all here, 19 of them—and there are lots more, but we know of 19 for sure—and they started making a lot of money. If you look at these photographs, in about 2009 they had $600,000 homes in Ancaster. Here is a photograph of the ring leader. They lived a most lavish lifestyle. Meanwhile, their slaves were living downstairs in the beds shown in the photograph. Here is a photograph of the number two guy, and a picture of his $600,000 house. Those are the two people who came originally.
How could all this happen? The lieutenant—a guy, to give you an example, called Ferenc Karadi—pleaded guilty for six years minus credits.
How much time do I have left? Five minutes?
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Ferenc Karadi pleaded guilty, for six years minus credits.
He came over just like those other two. He said that he hadn't been charged with anything. He came into the country. CBSA did a check on him, and he came across as having no record.
After he was charged, I wanted to know what his background was in Hungary. If you go to this white document, the affidavit of Leap Jankovic, Exhibit “37”, there was an international arrest warrant for him, and for his wife as well. But when we checked for his criminal record—there's no time to go into it now, but just trust me on this—it said that Ferenc Karadi had no criminal record.
A month later, the Hamilton Spectator went to Hungary and said, “What do you mean this guy has no criminal record? Not only has he been charged, he's been convicted. He's supposed to serve five years”.
Hungary has this neat little procedure whereby they don't put you in jail right away. They tell you to come back a month later to go to jail. And guess what? They came here. And then when they came here, they said they had no criminal record. They checked it off. And somehow, when we check, there's no criminal record.
Three and a half years later, when he pleaded guilty—three and a half years—I still didn't know what his criminal status was. This document outlines his history. On November 6, 2008, he came to Pearson. He was a non-genuine visitor and was told to go away. He came back two weeks later, to Trudeau international airport, and got into the country. Then he said that he was a refugee. Ferenc Domotor, the leader, said that he would be responsible. The criminal history check, from March 18, 2009, said that here was no foreign criminal record. Ah, but on September 10, 2009, CBSA said that he was wanted in Hungary. What for? Well, they didn't know. On September 24, 2009, they said that he was wanted on a European arrest warrant. Then two years later, I'm told that he has no criminal record.
Well what is this criminal record? His criminal record is there. It is the document under tab G. In 1996, for receiving stolen goods, he was sentenced to one year imprisonment. In 2003, for bodily injury, he was sentenced to nine months imprisonment. For fraud, there was a fine. In 2009, it was blackmail and fraud. That's what human trafficking is. What did he get? He got almost five years. But he came here, and he was getting welfare. His wife's in the same boat.
How much time do I have?
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As for his wife, she's wanted too. She did the same thing as he did. She took off, and when she got here, there were international arrest warrants and so on and so forth. You can go through the documents. The Canadian authorities finally were told by Hungary in May 2010 and August 2010 and October 2010 that there were international arrest warrants for her. What was done? Nothing.
Finally, in 2011, we're doing a bail review on her husband, and I saw her walking around the court as a spectator. I went to the officer and say, “What is that? I thought there was an international arrest warrant for that person”. He said that well, there was. I asked why we didn't arrest her? He said, “ We can't. We need an extradition request from Hungary”. We've never had one for any of these people.
I went to Deb Kerr, from CBSA. I asked, how could his wife be walking around in our country with international arrest warrants? She had been convicted of crimes—we think, but we don't know. So Deb Kerr did the check, and if you go to that same document, there it is. Yes, she had been convicted. She was supposed to serve two and a half years. It was the same procedure: Come back in a month to go to jail. Well, she came here.
What is the date of this document? It is November 21, 2011. She was in our country for three years, and we didn't know what her criminal record was.
This is not cheap. We also charged them with welfare fraud.
By the way, she was arrested shortly afterwards. I told Deb Kerr that we had to do something, and she finally found that the wife had, in fact, been convicted. She had made a little tick to say that she had never been convicted of anything, but then she was arrested on an immigration warrant. In addition, she and he were convicted of welfare fraud. He had to pay back $12,000. We'll never see that again. She had to pay back $36,000. We'll never see that again.
That's in fact cheap. More recently, we convicted these other two people. These people are criminals, and they've been on welfare since they got here, and they have been paid $100,000. I had heard all this anecdotal evidence that these people had all kinds of money. They had cash and so on and so forth. So when this guy was fleeing the country the other way, a guy, and his mum, we had paid $100,000 in welfare payments—I don't know how they do it, but these people are in Canada and they get genuine Hungarian passports—he had in his suitcase all these designer clothes. The labels were still on them. There's $100 here and $100 there. They cost us $100,000.
We called evidence. Basically, these Hungarian refugees have a 98% failure rate. When it's all said and done, at that same rate, it costs $500 million for just them. That's $500 million at a time when there's no money for doctors in the hospitals and nurses and what have you.
Most of my questions are for Mr. Skarica, but I also have a question for Mr. Rico-Martinez. He indicated that he agreed with Mr. Skarica that our laws weren't tough enough. And on the issue of going after the folks Mr. Skarica has pursued and achieved 15 convictions of, this bill doesn't go far enough.
Ms. Douglas, at the outset you said that the bill should just be withdrawn, and here I'm assuming that you just don't like the bill. To go through this bill, and listen to the person sitting beside you…. You talked about the need to identify these people when they come into the country, and biometrics is the one method we can do that with; it’s almost foolproof. You've both said that you don't agree with the bill, but biometrics is right in here as a way to get to the issues that Mr. Skarica is speaking about.
We're talking about tougher penalties on ship owners, we're talking about deterring the abuse of the refugee system, the whole aspect of cracking down on human smugglers, using better tools to successfully prosecute and impose mandatory prison sentences on human smugglers.
Are you're saying, Mr. Rico-Martinez, that everything in this bill is not worth looking at?
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Let me answer that question for you, because the man sitting next to you is the exact reason, and the purposes he has mentioned are the exact reasons we had to bring this issue forward. For Bill , I was parliamentary secretary. I sat in every single one of those meetings, and went through the whole process and the negotiations.
I was proud of what happened with respect to Bill , and a lot of the aspects of Bill C-11 are going to move forward because of Bill . So you don't like Bill C-31 and you like Bill C-11, but a lot of what's in Bill C-31 is Bill C-11. So there have to be things in here that you actually appreciate.
My point is that you've listened to what Mr. Skarica has had to say.You've heard about the 15 convictions he has achieved. You've heard from him—it's what he does for a living—that we have not been successful and that our system is broken.
We will not solve the problem of what we have in front of us —this problem right here—with Bill . Bill C-11 will not solve this problem. You know what we'll end up doing if we only do Bill C-11? We'll just simply slap down visas on Hungary and hope that gets us around the issue, as we've had to do with Mexico and the Czech Republic.
That's not the process we want to use. If we're going to enter into agreements with the EU, if we're going to make sure that our economies are like-minded and that we become free-trading partners, we must have a system that the rest of the world believes is foolproof—at least in the efforts that it makes.
The system that we have now in this country, as Mr. Skarica has said, is broken. Simply disregarding Bill and accepting the fact that a majority of what's in Bill is good but doesn't go all the way to solving our issue.... I just have to state for the record that I obviously disagree with your position. I respect that you are here. I just wish you wouldn't have stated at the very outset that all of Bill C-31 wasn't good and should be removed.
Second, we need to get tougher to be able to identify the people Mr. Skarica was referring to, and biometrics is in this bill, and you've indicated that it's not worth pursuing—
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First of all, I don't see anything in this legislation that is going to fix the problems in Hungary and its penal system. We need to get that very clear.
The other thing that I want to get out there is this term of “bona fide refugees”. We have refugees and we have asylum seekers. When they come to our shore, whether or not they come with fraudulent documents via plane or ship, we don't actually have that determination until one has been made. So I don't want to use the language that everyone who comes is fraudulent or bogus.
Bill was praised by the then-minister and the current minister of immigration as a work of art, I will say—albeit those weren't the exact words—and yet it has not been implemented. So for me to go on to say that it's broken and, therefore, we have to fix it, when we haven't implemented a solution through the legal system, from a bill that went through our Parliament, is very hard for me to sit here and do.
I think that some of the rhetoric—and I'm going to use the word “rhetoric”—I have heard today is fearmongering. It leads people, if they were to listen to certain testimony, to think that everybody who comes on our shore, including the grandparents of many of us sitting here or relatives of many of us sitting here, has come here because they want to defraud the system, that all they've come here for is to bypass and use and abuse the system. I can tell you that I've worked with refugees over the last number of years who don't like getting money from the state, who get out and work. They work very hard and they get on; they get their education, and they become contributing members in this society. That's what Canada is.