CIMM Committee Report

Since the mid-1980s, Quebec has received more than 160,000 asylum seekers. The slow pace of the administrative process in dealing with refugee claims leads to unacceptable human dramas and puts the claimants and their families in very difficult situations.

For example, in just one office, the Immigration and Refugee Board's only office in Montreal, the average time it takes to process requests is 10 months. Moreover, at the end of December in Montreal, there were over 7,000 asylum seekers waiting for a hearing; that is one third of all such cases in Canada.

Although the Bloc Québécois agrees with most of the recommendations proposed in the Report, we believe that the federal government should devote whatever resources are required to handle all decisions and steps leading to the granting of refugee status or the removal of persons whose claim has been denied within a maximum period of six months.

We also unreservedly support the request made by three provinces in Canada, i.e., Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia, concerning the costs incurred as a result of the services provided to asylum seekers while they await a decision on their cases. We are asking the federal government to assume all costs associated with the various services provided to refugee claimants up to such time as they are found to be refugees, or been repatriated.

We should also note that it currently costs Quebec more than $80 million annually to take care of the people waiting for a federal decision from the Immigration and Refugee Board.

Another element of serious concern is the arrival of increasingly younger illegal immigrants. The recent arrival of Romanian teenagers in the Port of Montreal and the unpleasant situation experienced by 10 young Chinese under eighteen, who were incarcerated for more than 7 months in an Immigration Canada detention centre in Laval, has caught our attention. Yet, in the Detention section of the Report, no particular status is given to refugee claimant minors, despite the fact that the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees recently told Immigration Canada that it was against international rules to imprison young refugees and then only exceptionally and for a very short time.

Accordingly, we believe that when minors claim refugee status, they should be exempted from the detention process. In this regard, Article 37(b) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child should be applied. According to this Article,

Moreover, when a claim for refugee status is made by a minor person, we believe it should be considered in the light of Article 22 of the above-mentioned Convention, which reads as follows:

The principles stated in the 1951 Convention regarding refugee status must be preserved. The lives of thousands of people are at stake.

In addition, the Standing Committee's recommendation to create an internal appeal structure would not, in the Bloc Québécois' opinion, be a genuine mechanism of appeal for refugee claim decisions. This is because it would seem to be difficult to guarantee the impartiality, or the appearance of impartiality, of the process when members of the review board have to reach a verdict on the decisions of their own colleagues in the Convention Refugee Determination Division. A structure like this, whereby members of the Division are called on to review themselves, does not imply a critical scrutiny and, therefore, cannot, in our opinion, present guarantees of independence. The creation of a review board, as proposed by the Standing Committee, will not achieve the effect that is hoped for and will not still the fears expressed by refugee advocates, who are demanding a genuine appeal mechanism.

Bernard Bigras

M.P. for Rosemont,