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37th PARLIAMENT, 1st SESSION

Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration

COMMITTEE EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Thursday, January 31, 2002

0905

The Chair (Mr. Joe Fontana (London North Centre, Lib.))

Ms. Elizabeth McIsaac

0910

The Chair

Ms. Kemi Jacobs (President, Canadian Council for Refugees)

Ms. Janet Dench (Executive Director, Canadian Council for Refugees)

0915

The Chair

Mr. David Matas

The Chair

Mr. David Matas

0920

The Chair

0925

Ms. Lynne Yelich (Blackstrap, Canadian Alliance)

The Chair

Mr. David Matas

Ms. Janet Dench

Ms. Lynne Yelich

The Chair

Ms. Ratna Omidvar (Executive Director, Maytree Foundation)

0930

The Chair

Ms. Lynne Yelich

Ms. Janet Dench

Ms. Lynne Yelich

The Chair

Mr. Steve Mahoney (Mississauga West, Lib.)

Mr. David Matas

Mr. Steve Mahoney

Mr. David Matas

0935

Mr. Steve Mahoney

Mr. David Matas

Mr. Steve Mahoney

Mr. David Matas

The Chair

Mr. Steve Mahoney

Ms. Elizabeth McIsaac

Mr. Steve Mahoney

Ms. Elizabeth McIsaac

Mr. Steve Mahoney

Ms. Elizabeth McIsaac

Mr. Steve Mahoney

Ms. Elizabeth McIsaac

Mr. Steve Mahoney

Ms. Elizabeth McIsaac

The Chair

Mr. David Matas

0940

The Chair

Ms. Kemi Jacobs

Mr. David Matas

Ms. Ratna Omidvar

The Chair

Mr. Steve Mahoney

Ms. Kemi Jacobs

Ms. Janet Dench

The Chair

Mr. Inky Mark (Dauphin--Swan River, PC/DR)

0945

The Chair

Mr. Inky Mark

The Chair

Mr. David Matas

The Chair

Ms. Janet Dench

0950

Mr. Inky Mark

The Chair

Ms. Elizabeth McIsaac

The Chair

Ms. Ratna Omidvar

The Chair

Ms. Ratna Omidvar

The Chair

Mr. David Matas

The Chair

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis (Winnipeg North Centre, NDP)

Ms. Elizabeth McIsaac

Mr. David Matas

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis

0955

Mr. David Matas

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis

The Chair

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis

The Chair

Mr. David Matas

Ms. Kemi Jacobs

The Chair

Ms. Janet Dench

The Chair

Ms. Wasylycia-Leis

1000

Ms. Ratna Omidvar

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis

Ms. Janet Dench

The Chair

Mr. David Matas

The Chair

Mr. David Matas

The Chair

Mr. David Matas

The Chair

Mr. David Matas

The Chair

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral (Laval Centre, BQ)

1005

Mr. David Matas

Ms. Janet Dench

1010

The Chair

Ms. Elizabeth McIsaac

The Chair

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis

1015

Ms. Janet Dench

Mr. David Matas

The Chair

Mr. David Matas

The Chair

Ms. Wasylycia-Leis

The Chair

Ms. Anita Neville (Winnipeg South Centre, Lib.)

1020

Mr. David Matas

Ms. Neville

Mr. David Matas

1025

The Chair

Ms. Janet Dench

The Chair

Ms. Kemi Jacobs

The Chair

Ms. Kemi Jacobs

The Chair

Ms. Janet Dench

Ms. Ratna Omidvar

The Chair

Ms. Lynne Yelich

1030

Mr. David Matas

Ms. Lynne Yelich

Mr. David Matas

Ms. Lynne Yelich

The Chair

Ms. Ratna Omidvar

The Chair

Ms. Ratna Omidvar

The Chair

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis

The Chair

Ms. Wasylycia-Leis

The Chair

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis

Mr. David Matas

1035

The Chair

1040

The Chair

1045

Mr. Benjamin J. Trister (Chair, National Citizenship and Immigration Law Section, Canadian Bar Association)

Mr. Gordon H. Maynard (Treasurer, National Citizenship and Immigration Law Section, Canadian Bar Association)

1050

1055

The Chair

1100

Mr. Noël St-Pierre (Lawyer, Barreau du Québec)

1105

The Chair

Mr. Patrice Brunet (Association québécoise des avocats et avocates en droit de l'immigration)

1110

Mr. David Chalk (Lawyer, Association québécoise des avocats et avocates en droit de l'immigration)

1115

1120

The Chair

1157

The Chair

Mr. Paul Forseth (New Westminster--Coquitlam--Burnaby, Canadian Alliance)

1200

The Chair

Mr. Noël St-Pierre

The Chair

Mr. Patrice Brunet

The Chair

M. Benjamin Trister

1205

The Chair

Mr. Noël St-Pierre

The Chair

Mr. David Chalk

1210

The Chair

Mr. Gordon Maynard

The Chair

Mr. Gordon Maynard

The Chair

Mr. Yvon Charbonneau (Anjou--Rivière-des-Prairies, Lib.)

1215

Mr. Benjamin Trister

Mr. Gordon Maynard

The Chair

Mr. David Chalk

1220

The Chair

Mr. Noël St-Pierre

The Chair

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral

Mr. David Chalk

1225

Mr. Noël St-Pierre

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral

Mr. Noël St-Pierre

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral

Mr. Patrice Brunet

Mme Dalphond-Guiral

Mr. Patrice Brunet

1230

Mr. Noël St-Pierre

Mme Dalphond-Guiral

Mr. Noël St-Pierre

Mr. Patrice Brunet

The Chair

Mr. Patrice Brunet

The Chair

Mr. Patrice Brunet

The Chair

Mr. Mark Assad (Gatineau, Lib.)

1235

The Chair

Mr. Benjamin Trister

1240

The Chair

Mr. Patrice Brunet

1245

Mr. Benjamin Trister

Mr. David Chalk

The Chair

Mr. Noël St-Pierre

1250

The Chair

Mr. Noël St-Pierre

The Chair

CANADA

Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration

NUMBER 043

1st SESSION

37th PARLIAMENT

COMMITTEE EVIDENCE

Thursday, January 31, 2002

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

¿ (0905)

[English]

The Chair (Mr. Joe Fontana (London North Centre, Lib.)): Good morning, colleagues, guests. I want to welcome you to the committee that's going to study and review the regulations. I want to thank you from the outset for taking the time to be here and for doing the hard work of reading through those regulations.

The usual procedure is this. We've put three groups together in our first session, and you can take at least seven to ten minutes, not necessarily to read your briefs--either we've done that or we can do that--but I'd like very much for you to talk more about what your recommendations are and the rationale behind those recommendations, so that we are also given the opportunity to ask you some questions.

So I want to welcome the Maytree Foundation, with Elizabeth McIsaac and Ratna Omidvar; the Canadian Council for Refugees, with Kemi Jacobs and Janet Dench; and David Matas from B'nai Brith Canada. Thank you all. I believe we've met in a previous session on Bill C-11, and again, I want to thank you for your input on that.

Now comes the hard part. The devil is always in the detail. I think you told us right from the beginning that the regulations were important to review, and we appreciate the fact that the minister and the government have given us an opportunity to dialogue with you with regard to the regulations.

We'll start with the Maytree Foundation.

Elizabeth.

Ms. Elizabeth McIsaac (Manager, Maytree Foundation): Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable members.

The Maytree Foundation is a charitable foundation based in Toronto. The objectives of our refugee and immigrant program include, among other things, reducing or eliminating delays in the landing process for refugees in legal limbo and improving access to suitable employment for newcomers by promoting fair recognition of their skills, knowledge and experience.

As a private foundation, Maytree is committed to finding practical solutions to its objectives. My comments today will focus on those issues in the regulations that relate directly to these objectives.

Our proposals begin from the premise that Canada, as a signatory to the 1951 convention relating to the status of refugees, has an obligation to comply with both the spirit and the letter of international law. In fact, the act states at subsection 3(2) that compliance with international law is in fact an objective of the act. In this respect there are three specific articles in the 1951 convention that the act and these regulations have failed to fulfill. They are article 25, providing administrative assistance to refugees; article 27, providing identity documents to refugees who do not have a valid travel document; and article 28, providing travel documents to refugees, especially those who cannot obtain one from their own country.

The most simple means for fulfilling these obligations and, in turn, solving the problem of refugees in limbo in Canada is to provide permanent resident status to refugees immediately upon recognition by the Immigration and Refugee Board, the IRB. In fact, with the new act and regulations, concern about landing refugees because of security issues has been effectively dealt with. There is now a front-end security screening process so that individuals who may pose a threat to Canadian security will be identified before they're even recognized as a refugee.

As a minimum, all refugees should be granted both travel documents and identity documents upon determination by the IRB, as we are explicitly obligated to do by the 1951 convention. However, this change would not address the thousands of convention refugees who are in limbo today. These people face significant barriers to proceeding with their lives in Canada. Without landed status they are unable to travel outside of Canada, they cannot sponsor family members to come to Canada, they are denied access to loans for post-secondary education, and they often face difficulties in obtaining meaningful employment. Refugees in legal limbo are also denied a voice in our democratic processes.

The regulations do provide for the granting of permanent resident status to protected persons. However, for refugees without satisfactory identity documents, additional provisions have been applied--you can see section 171.

Again, though, as part of the refugee determination process, the IRB does conduct a thorough investigation into identity. This makes the identity document requirement burdensome and redundant. Furthermore, the normal practice under common law is to recognize affidavit evidence as true. Requiring further statutory declarations beyond the sworn statement of the applicant is therefore redundant.

In the event of a misrepresentation or an abuse of the system, we need to remember that the new act does provide the minister with the authority to strip an individual of their permanent resident status in a single-step process. So, in fact, it is not so permanent. Therefore I urge this committee to recommend that additional statutory declarations beyond that provided by the applicant, as required under subsection171(1), be eliminated.

The undocumented protected persons class in Canada, previously UCRCC, or the undocumented convention refugee in Canada class, is the second provision in the regulations that deals with landing for undocumented protected persons. However, this is only available to nationals of Somalia and Afghanistan. The program imposes a three-year waiting period on members of the class applying for landing.

An assessment of the UCRCC program submitted to the department this past summer concluded very clearly that the waiting period added no value. To quote the report: “It would appear that the waiting period does little more than impose additional bureaucratic obstacles on a small section of the convention refugee population.” This raises a question as to why regulations proposed subsequent to this evaluation would maintain the program. It is therefore our position that UPPICC, this new category, should be eliminated.

Again, if appropriate weight and presumption of truth is given to the statutory declaration provided by the applicant and recognition of the determination process at the IRB, it is not necessary. However, should the class continue, the waiting period should be eliminated. Likewise, any schedule of eligible countries should also be eliminated so that the program is available to all undocumented protected persons in recognition of the special situation of refugees who, by definition, do not have access to services of their own country. I would like to stress, though, that these amendments would not meet our obligations under the 1951 convention.

¿ (0910)

Finally, and requiring a very simple amendment to the regulations, we have recommended that, should the UPPICC continue, the program be amended to include the concurrent processing of family members overseas so that the period of family separation can be minimized as much as possible.

The second part of my comments have to do with the federal skilled immigrant class. Our primary concerns around the regulations for the class are at a fundamental level. The selection criteria have been developed based on certain assumptions about the economic performance of skilled immigrants--that is, that the reason immigrants have not done as well economically over the last 10 years is that we've selected the wrong people. We believe strongly that the problem has not been one of selection, but rather, one of settlement.

There are significant gaps in the information, assessment, bridging and integration of skilled immigrants on the part of all stakeholders involved. Neither the act nor the proposed regulations address this issue. It is time now for a coordinated systems-based approach to deal with this issue so that immigrants are able to settle more effectively and so that the Canadian public is better served.

Finally, the emphasis in the new point system on post-secondary education and the weight given to university education over applied skills training will discriminate against trades people. In this respect, we urge you to consider the breadth of labour market needs in Canada and consider the broader objectives of immigration, that is, who is going to make a good Canadian. We urge you to review the proposed point system in this light.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Elizabeth, for a very good brief with an awful lot of very good suggestions. Obviously, you've done your homework in the past and also now.

We'll go now to the Canadian Council for Refugees. Who's going to present? Kemi or Janet? Kemi.

Ms. Kemi Jacobs (President, Canadian Council for Refugees): Thank you for this opportunity to address you on the draft immigration and refugee protection regulations.

[Translation]

The Canadian Council for Refugees thanks you for giving us this opportunity to comment on these regulations.

[English]

By way of introduction, let me say that the Canadian Council for Refugees is an umbrella organization of over 170 member organizations from across Canada. Our mission is twofold: to protect the rights of refugees in Canada and around the world; and to promote the settlement of refugees and immigrants in Canada.

As you are aware, the proposed regulations cover an enormous range of issues. In its study last year of Bill C-11, this committee affirmed the importance of the regulations, which, given the framework nature of the statute, include many of the rules that will actually determine how people are treated in the immigration and refugee processes. We are therefore pleased to hear that the committee will have an extra month to study the regulations. It is important that in this critical time the impact on refugees is further explored, for while the point system is important, it is far from being the only contentious area in the regulations.

We note that the draft regulations inevitably also include a number of errors and measures that will have unintended consequences. Our member organizations that work on a day-to-day basis with people going through the system know only too well the painful implications of rules that have been adopted without a careful review of their implications. We therefore encourage the committee to call for the regulations to be thoroughly examined and all necessary changes made to ensure that people are not unintentionally penalized.

Ms. Janet Dench (Executive Director, Canadian Council for Refugees): We have submitted to you some written comments that highlight just a few of our many concerns with the regulations. In the interests of respecting the timeframe of this morning's session, we won't attempt to go over all of these points, but we would, however, like to underline three points.

One is successful establishment for resettled refugees. The refugee protection system is distinct from the immigration system. As such, refugees should not be evaluated on immigration criteria. We therefore call for the elimination of the successful establishment test for resettled refugees.

On detaining children, the draft regulations imply that children are to be detained in a range of situations. Over the past few years, we have seen an increased number of minors in immigration detention. The regulations codify this disturbing trend, suggesting that minors be detained where there are adequate detention facilities, where there are questions about a minor's identity, and where there are fears that minors might fall into the hands of traffickers.

The CCR rejects the use of detention as a form of protection. It is equivalent to detaining a woman because her partner has threatened to attack her. We urge that the regulations be redrafted so that minors are rarely, if ever, detained.

¿ (0915)

[Translation]

Violation of immigrants' privacy: According to the draft regulations, permanent residents who renew their permanent resident card will have to give the government a great deal of personal information that has nothing to do with proof of their status. Unlike citizens who apply for a passport, immigrants will have to inform the government of their past addresses, where they worked and studied, and countries they visited outside of Canada. They will also have to give the names and addresses of two people who know them.

What type of questions will the officials ask these individuals? What will the government do with all the information collected in this way? The CCR believes these regulations are an unwarranted and discriminatory intrusion into the private lives of permanent residents.

[English]

In closing, we would like to bring to your attention the gender-based analysis chart prepared by Citizenship and Immigration Canada. This analysis points our attention towards some of the potential gender impacts of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and regulations. We encourage the committee to look carefully at this analysis and consider ways in which the regulations could be amended in order to reduce negative differential consequences for women.

We also continue to encourage the government to apply an anti-racism analysis to this and other legislation.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Janet and Kemi, also for a very well-founded presentation and some recommendations for us.

Finally, we have David, from the B'nai Brith.

Mr. David Matas (Lead Counsel, B'nai Brith Canada): Thank you for inviting me.

I want to say, particularly to my Manitoba colleagues who are here, that I notice, of the eight members of Parliament who were here at the beginning, three were from Manitoba. If redistribution of the next Parliament were based on effort, Manitoba would have 105 seats instead of 14.

The Chair: That's because you're still on Manitoba time.

Mr. David Matas: We have in this brief some 21 recommendations. What I propose to do is just list them briefly, and if there's interest in any of them, perhaps there can be questions afterwards. I've broken them up into different groups.

The first group has to do with the overseas post and the procedures at the post, and there are two recommendations there. One is that any refugee applicant who has either been referred by a referral organization or sponsored should have a right of interview. The second is that when there is an interview for a refugee claim, there should be a right to counsel. This is tied up with the recommendation the minister made about a code of ethics for counsel. Obviously part of the problem now is that some of the counsel are uncontrolled and unethical, and once there is a code of ethics, the right of counsel would obviously make sense.

The second group deals with the memorandum of understanding or agreements with referral organizations. We're proposing, first of all, that the memorandum allow for reconsideration if the visa post requests it; a notice of concerns by the referral organization to the applicant, with an opportunity to respond; a right to interview and a right to counsel, as with the visa post itself; and access to the files in case there's a Federal Court application to review a visa office refusal based on a failure to refer.

The third group deals with the substance of the overseas determination, because there are a number of variations with overseas and inland determination. One is what the CCR mentioned, the problem of the requirement of the ability to successfully establish. But of course, the way it's worded now, it's even worse, because it says “ability to become economically established”. So it seems to be retrogressive compared to the current regulations.

Secondly, there is the requirement of a durable solution, which doesn't exist inland, that there be no reasonable prospect of durable solution. One problem is, the way it's defined, it seems to allow involuntary repatriation as a durable solution, and secondly, the standard of proof is the complete opposite of what it is inland. It's in effect no reasonable possibility of a durable solution rather than the other way around. Inland, it's no reasonable possibility that you're in danger.

Thirdly, there are these non-refugee classes, a source country class and the country of asylum class. The source country class has listed countries. We believe it should be all countries. The source country class excludes massive violations of human rights, which the country of asylum class does not. There's no explanation for that variation. It doesn't make much sense.

The next group of recommendations deals with the port of entry. The port of entry system in the regulation collapses two steps that exist now: the secondary examination and the senior immigration officer interview. One of those has no right to counsel, and one of them does allow for counsel right now. It's not clear. The regulations say nothing about the right to counsel, and there should be right to counsel in the combination of steps, as well as a notice of right to counsel, and a notice of right to make a refugee claim, because if you're ordered removed at that port of entry, you cannot make a refugee claim afterwards. There are recommendations about documentation, a couple of which the Maytree Foundation has made and which we endorse, about removing the class restrictions. Thirdly, we would recommend that if somebody is a member of the class, they should be able to include their family members in their application for landing rather than wait for landing or permanent residence to sponsor their family members, which is, of course, what refugee claimants or refugees are allowed to do, to include family members in their application.

For the pre-removal risk assessment, we recommend that the time for submissions be what it is now for post-determination, 30 days, and also that the regulations be a lot clearer, because they say 15 days for application and 15 days for the minister to make the decision, but it's not clear why the minister needs 15 days; presumably it's for submissions, but it doesn't say so.

We have some recommendations about international crimes. First of all, terrorism should be defined. It's already defined in Bill C-36; there's no reason why it shouldn't be defined here. Secondly, there should be a regulatory stay of execution of removal orders for investigation for the purpose of prosecution of people who there's reasonable ground to believe have committed these international crimes, like war crimes and crimes against humanity and terrorism. There should also be an automatic referral for criminal investigation. Right now the act says “Removal as soon as reasonably practicable”, and unless there is this regulatory stay, the minister will actually have to remove these people before they can be investigated or prosecuted.

¿ (0920)

Finally, for removal itself, there should be a stay of execution of a removal order whenever there's a Federal Court application for a stay so the Federal Court can actually hear the stay, rather than, now, this mad rush to get to court.

If people are not removable for a period of years--and we suggest three years--because of danger back home, then they should be allowed to apply for permanent residence. There's something like that in the immigration manual, and we suggest it should be a regulation.

Those are our recommendations. Thank you very much.

The Chair: Thank you. That was very thorough, as usual, and those were very good recommendations for us to think about.

As you know, the minister, in his opening comments, had spoken to us and asked the committee--and I know this perhaps came up as an afterthought in terms of these meetings, but at some point in time before this session with you is over, you may want to comment on it--if in fact we are to undertake a code of ethics for immigration consultants and those who are there to help people. I know your organizations are on the front line. You might give us your ideas and thoughts around what should be in the code and whether or not you're in favour of such a code being adopted. I know in the past we've heard many witnesses talk a little bit about consultants and immigration consultants, and at the end of the day it's about protecting people, and that's what we want to do.

So if you want to give us an additional piece of paper on the subject matter, we'd look forward to your positions. Perhaps you can just send it in to the committee as an addendum to your submissions.

We're going to go right to questions.

Lynne.

¿ (0925)

Ms. Lynne Yelich (Blackstrap, Canadian Alliance): Thank you very much for your presentations. They were indeed very good. I am very interested in immigration. I really think it is important. I myself have sponsored immigrants, and I'm very proud of the immigrants I have sponsored. I'm proud of the ones I've met, and most of this committee has a lot of background in it.

What I'm more concerned about--and all my questions are always going to come from this point of view-- is what about the ones who are waiting in the countries and are put on hold because of people who are trying to get to Canada undocumented? Therefore they are holding up and tying up our system, and there are immigrants waiting abroad who really are genuine, as opposed to queue-jumpers. We have too many queue-jumpers here showing up with no documents. I realize many of them are worried about their lives as well, but I do worry about the ones abroad. What can we tell them?

Many of these people come to our offices and say they're trying to get their spouse here and they can't, yet they see that we are taking in all sorts of immigrants because they've landed here or got here somehow--and I realize some of them didn't get here very easily.

I would like some comments on that.

The Chair: David.

Mr. David Matas: Obviously there are tie-ups at the visa offices, and we're dealing with them all the time. Part of the problem is under-resourcing. Resourcing has been worse rather than better over the last few years. It's also poorly distributed. The delivery and the access is not the same everywhere.

Janet Dench talked about looking at the system from an equality point of view and racial impact, and if you look at the distribution of resources, the impact is geographic and racial, and there has to be a look at that.

The system is also complex and, in our view, unnecessarily so. There are too many specific rules that take up too much time, and that's part of the problem.

There is also the whole problem of counsel, and it's tied up with the problem of ethics and the problem of access. We don't have counsel allowed into these interviews now. If their counsel know what they're doing, they could speed things up. They could more likely make things right. They could be an asset to the system. But because there's no way of sorting out competent counsel from unethical counsel, they don't allow anybody in. So one way of resolving the visa office backlog problem is to deal with this counsel problem.

Those are a couple of comments I had.

Ms. Janet Dench: Just to follow up on that, I think it's important to remember that if we're being responsible, we shouldn't be playing off one group's needs against another's. Obviously, there can be that temptation for individuals to look around and to think, some people are being better served than I am. In fact, as we know the system to work, there are a lot of problems in different parts of the system. It's not going to help one part of the system, such as the overseas part of the system, to penalize refugees, for example, who come to Canada and make a refugee claim here. Many of the refugee claimants who come to Canada do come without having got a visa to come to Canada because they're refugees. They can't get a visa. They need to flee from their situation of persecution. They make a claim in Canada, as they are entitled to do.

The refugee system is by definition a system that exists to deal with a failure in the world protection of human rights. Refugees are people who have had to flee their country because things were not working out. It's a situation that inevitably has its gaps and its problems because it comes out of a failure of the world system. We have to try to do what we can to address the needs of refugees who are fleeing persecution. We do them an injustice if we somehow suggest that they are queue-jumpers.

Ms. Lynne Yelich: I'm not suggesting that at all, but that is....

The Chair: Lynne, I wonder if we could have Ratna address that also.

Ms. Ratna Omidvar (Executive Director, Maytree Foundation): I agree with everything that's been said. It is an issue of resourcing. It is an issue of keeping our refugee objectives separate and apart from our immigration objectives. However, if you were to ease the bottlenecks, so to speak, in primary source countries by adding more visa officers and consulates overseas, you might in fact address very practically the flow of economic migrants to this country who then claim refugee status, as opposed to going through the more normal routes.

I think it makes perfect sense that there are refugee claimants who claim protection here, because they certainly are refugees, as Janet said. But if there is a concern about those who come and claim refugee protection because they are not able to access the system overseas as immigrants, then one of the things you can do is open up access.

¿ (0930)

The Chair: Lynne.

Ms. Lynne Yelich: I wasn't playing the system off. I'm trying to get the perception out there that if we do have a system that will indeed help the people who are sitting in visa offices trying to get to Canada to reunite with spouses or whatever, here it is happening. There are people who are getting in just because they've arrived. They're at least getting processed. I think the backup and the indicators are that we're having a growing number of people who are landing here and claiming refugee status. Therefore, the backlog is here.

Ms. Janet Dench: As a follow-up to that point, I wanted to make one comment about the provision in the regulations that will create an in-Canada class for spouses and common-law partners, which will allow people who come to Canada, for example on a visitor's visa, who have a spouse, to apply in Canada for landing in the regular way. That is a positive thing because it allows people to be reunited quickly, not to be separated for months while the overseas process is going on.

But there is a concern there for the people who come from countries from which visas are required in order to be a visitor. If you come from a European country for which you don't need a visa, you just get on a plane, you come here, and then you can apply from within Canada. But if you need a visitor's visa to come here, and of course that includes most of the countries of Africa and Asia, then you won't normally act according to the rules and the regulations. You might be refused the visa and therefore denied that opportunity to be reunited in a speedy sort of way.

Ms. Lynne Yelich: I'd just like to say, you won't hear one argument from this whole committee that we don't think you need more resources. I'm sure that's our goal, to make sure you have more resources.

The Chair: Steve.

Mr. Steve Mahoney (Mississauga West, Lib.): Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

I have questions for all three. I'd like to start with David Matas. I take your comment as support for a code of ethics, referring to the minister's somewhat of a challenge he threw out to the committee to deal with that issue.

But I wonder if I'm reading this correctly, where you say in the recommendation:

The regulations should entitle every Convention refugee and humanitarian protected applicant who is interviewed to be assisted by counsel at the interview, at the very least, when that counsel is a member of the bar of any Canadian province or territory.

You're not suggesting that we give lawyers exclusive domain over this, are you?

Mr. David Matas: No, it's just that if there is no regulation, if there is no code of ethics, and you cannot differentiate in any other way, that's a very simple and clear way. But it would be better if there was some sort of system of sorting out people who are not lawyers one from the other to sort out the ethical from the non-ethical.

But I point out that a code of ethics is only the dropping of one shoe. The purpose of a code of ethics is to be able to have counsel with whom you can work and whom you can trust. It doesn't serve much purpose to have a code of ethics for counsel and say we're not going to allow counsel into the room. If you're going to recommend one, you should also recommend the other.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: Do you support some kind of a regimen, or a training program, or a licensing option for people working in immigration?

Mr. David Matas: This issue has been around for decades. I was on a task force in 1980 that dealt with this issue, that Lloyd Axworthy appointed when he was Minister of Immigration. We produced a report on it and there's been a parliamentary committee report.

The recommendation that has been distilled after all these decades is I think pretty commonsensical; it's that there would be a self-regulating profession. They would set the exams, they would do the accreditation; it wouldn't cost the government anything. There are professional consultants right now who are prepared to do all this. The government would just have some sort of supervisory mechanism. It would be like the bar; the bar is self-regulating.

¿ (0935)

Mr. Steve Mahoney: The bar and the medical profession.

Mr. David Matas: Exactly. There is already a professional consultants' organization that has a code of ethics, and the bar has a code of ethics. There's no need to reinvent the wheel on this.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: Good.

Maybe you could expand or give me an example of your recommendation with regard to reconsideration of refusals to refer. You're saying under an MOU that on the request from the minister any refusal to recognize an applicant as a convention refugee should be reconsidered by the organization sponsoring. Can you flesh that out and tell me what you're talking about?

Mr. David Matas: Yes, of course, because I'm a lawyer in private practice doing refugee law, so I always meet people who say “I want to come” or “I want to stay”. The question is what can you do?

I think obviously one has to look at this from the point of view of the system, but one also has to look at this from the point of view of the individual refugee. A refugee comes to a visa post and says “I want to come to Canada”. They're going to say to him under these regulations, “You have to have a sponsor or a referral organization, and here are the approved referral organizations; you go to one of them, and if they approve you, then maybe you can come”.

So the person goes to the referral organization and the referral organization says “Sorry, you're refused, we're too busy, we're going away for Christmas”, for totally arbitrary reasons. The guy goes back to the visa office and says “Look, I was refused and there was no good reason for doing so”. The visa office, what are they going to say? They'll say “Sorry, there's nothing we can do”.

That's not appropriate. They should be able to go back to the referral organization and say “We think you didn't give this a fair chance, look at it again”.

The Chair: Do you want to follow up on that question, Janet or...?

Mr. Steve Mahoney: I have a question on the grid. I'm sorry, I forget. I think maybe it was Janet who mentioned concerns about the impact on trades.

I raise the issue that if you look under it, it requires in the first instance three years of full-time studies on top of a high school diploma. In full-time studies, I use the example, frankly, of my own son, who is currently taking an apprenticeship program for carpentry. And he's six months on the job, six months at school, six-six, six-six; it's not full-time studies. So even though he's a Canadian he wouldn't qualify under those conditions.

My sense is that most three-year apprentice programs, which is where you get most of the points under this system, would require that kind of arrangement, and the one-year ones might be full-time study but likely would have some kind of workplace component.

There seems to be sympathy, I want to tell you, not only from the minister but from the bureaucrats, because there were a lot of nodding heads. It was like the hockey player doll, they were all sitting out there going, yes. So I'm hopeful there are going to be some changes, but I don't know what they are.

Do you have any suggestions?

Ms. Elizabeth McIsaac: I don't have specific suggestions per se, but the way it's currently structured under that category is that a tradesperson, even if the three years were to count as full, can only max out at the 20 points, not the 25 points. So from the outset they're five points behind.

I think it wouldn't take a whole lot of ingenuity to rejig that one year to make it more equitable.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: Let me interrupt you there. Twenty-five points is for a doctorate or a master's degree.

Ms. Elizabeth McIsaac: That's right.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: And the 20 points is for a bachelor of arts, a BA, basically, bachelor's degree. So they are, which I'd requested in the past, equating a plumber's certificate with a bachelor of arts, but I don't know that you would equate it with a PhD.

Ms. Elizabeth McIsaac: I think the problem is--and what I tried to say in the brief is--it's ill conceived. The problem is I can come here with a PhD in medieval architecture from central Italy--

Mr. Steve Mahoney: A lot of jobs in that field!

Ms. Elizabeth McIsaac: --and I'm not qualified. That is not transferrable. The assumption here is that anything in university or post-graduate is going to be transferrable, and it's not. That's the problem; it's ill-conceived.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: Do you have any concrete suggestions in terms of how it could be structured? I'd appreciate receiving them, because I've looked at it and it's--

Ms. Elizabeth McIsaac: Okay.

The Chair: Steve, before you proceed, are there any other comments regarding the grid from B'nai Brith and the Council for Refugees?

Mr. David Matas: The comment I would make is I think one has to be wary of quick fixes in this area. It is both a sensitive and a complex area. The department has spent a lot of time and effort on it and, in our view, hasn't got it right. It needs to be sent back for reconsideration with criteria.

Just changing a couple of the points here and there is tinkering, which is going to potentially create other problems.

¿ (0940)

The Chair: What should the past...? Go ahead, we'll hear from Kemi also.

Ms. Kemi Jacobs: Sorry, I didn't hear your question, but in terms of continuing on that, I think the underlying problem with the system is there's an assumption that certain academic credentials are better, and systematically that isn't equitable.

Mr. David Matas: In answer to your question on what the pass mark should be, changing the pass mark isn't going to completely remove the problem. If we're not getting in enough people, we can lower the pass mark and get in more people. But you're not going to change the mix by changing the pass mark; you're not going to solve this PhD problem.

Ms. Ratna Omidvar: Clearly, as Elizabeth said, from a selection point of view, even rejigging the selection system only takes care of 25% of the problem, in our opinion.

The real problem is what happens when people come into the country. There's nothing in the act or in the regulations that addresses the process of settlement. It really cannot be in the act, because the way someone integrates into the labour market is outside the jurisdiction.

The Chair: The next thing the committee is going to do is look at things after someone gets here, after competing for immigration. Then we'll start to look at those very programs, Ratna, that have been brought to our attention. We need to spend some time on those. Thank you.

Steve.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: The high school issue in here should be taken right out, in my opinion. You couldn't possibly qualify there unless you were fully bilingual--and all of these other things. I can get the points, but that's another issue.

On the detention of children, maybe the word “detention” is the wrong word. What do we do with children who come here when there are concerns or problems in just releasing them? Obviously we can't release them on their own; they would have to be released into someone's care. So should they go to an NGO or some kind of group, or what do we do with this? Just saying don't detain them doesn't, in my mind, give me an alternative.

Ms. Kemi Jacobs: On child protection, I think kids who come need to be protected. One of the things we have suggested is safe houses, i.e., places where adults would be responsible for their care.

In the States they have a system that is quite well developed for taking care of unaccompanied minors.

Ms. Janet Dench: If I can just add to that, the distinction to be made is between enforcement of the Immigration Act and protection under the regimes of the child protection systems of the provinces. Our concern is that we not deal with minors who are in Canada, from other countries, simply as a matter of how to enforce the Immigration Act. We should instead be looking at the primary issue of the protection of the children. We are urging the governments to address the problem of a jurisdictional gap between the federal and the provincial governments. We have seen this very concretely in the case of children who are in detention.

The provinces say “They're in the federal immigration detention centre, therefore, we don't really have much to do with them”. The federal government's only intervention is from the immigration system, which sees the children as being in violation of the Immigration Act.

So no government instance is properly taking on the protection of the interests of those children.

The Chair: The same problem was raised in Bill C-11 on education. I think it's a matter of the Minister of Immigration working with provincial counterparts to make sure the welfare of the child is always taken into account, regardless of what jurisdiction they're in, or what maze they're in.

Inky.

Mr. Inky Mark (Dauphin--Swan River, PC/DR): First, thank you for coming here before the committee.

You've heard that Bill C-11 was described originally as draconian. I would hate to think of how we would describe the regulations. I've said the regulations are really bigger than the bill, and that's the unfortunate part about this. Again, from what I heard this morning, you have the same concerns we heard throughout the hearings on Bill C-11, on issues of definition and on access to counsel and to the courts.

My first observation is that the regulations—and these concerns were raised during the Bill C-11 hearings—penalize legitimate immigrants to this country, more so because the post-September 11 mental thought of the country is about terrorism. Unfortunately, we still tend to be too focused on putting barriers up against the legitimate people who want to come to this country to make this place a better place to live. We've said it over and over again, and there's agreement that immigration is about the future of this country, yet we continue to do this. I find that astounding.

Anyway, last Tuesday, we had a chance to talk to Peter Showler of the IRB, and he indicated that there's a huge backlog.

The first concern is convention refugees. Last year 44,000 applications were made for refugee status, and I hate to think what the 2002 figures will be. I'm sure they'll be similar to what we experienced in 2001, but the ideal intake, according to the government plan for 2002, is approximately 30,000.

My concern is how you juggle all this in light of the new regulations and the new bill. If you were to give the minister advice, what one or two things could the department do to relieve the backlog? The backlog, new applicants, and processing time are a huge problem.

That's my first question.

¿ (0945)

The Chair: Is it immigration that you're talking about, or is it the IRB?

Mr. Inky Mark: Convention refugees.

The Chair: Okay, thanks.

David.

Mr. David Matas: First of all, you started out by talking about the complexity of the regulations and their volume. Indeed, both of those observations are true, and I would like to respond to them by suggesting that the committee take its time, be careful, and recommend that these regulations not come into effect on June 28.

For the bill itself, we had Bill C-31 and then Bill C-11, and the bill was before Parliament in various forms for a long period of time. Bill C-11 was very different from Bill C-31, so I suggest that we need a similar process for the regulations. The government has already indicated that it will be making some changes after the committee makes its report, and that the new package with the changes will come out for comment again in part 1 of the Canada Gazette, rather than in part 2 of the Canada Gazette. June 28 is just too soon, because this is just too big and too complex.

In terms of the backlog, one of the frustrations I've had with the bill is the complexity of the system and the duplication of procedures. One of the ways in which we could adequately allocate resources to the board so that it can deal with its caseload appropriately is by removing a lot of the duplicate resources that are going into pre-removal risk assessment eligibility, and just put everybody into the one risk assessment that is fair and more efficient. That's one way of doing it, but obviously the government has rejected that option.

I think what we have is a very complex system with very many steps that are going to create backlogs and take time, but that's because the system has been designed in such an unnecessarily complex way. My own view is that the way to remove the backlog is to smooth out all these complexities.

The Chair: Janet, can you offer comments on the question that Inky asked on the difference between backlog and IRB, please?

Ms. Janet Dench: From the point of view of the Canadian Council for Refugees, I would support the remark that Dave made, but I would also add another concern that we have in terms of backlog. That concern is people who have been through the system but are not being removed and cannot be removed. Some of them come from countries where the situation is so bad that we don't remove to that country, generally speaking.

We have urged the government to look at some way of regularizing the situation of people who are contributing to this Canadian society and who don't represent any kind of security risk. That is a way of taking people who probably are not going to be removed and putting them into a situation in which they can participate more fully in Canadian society, to everybody's advantage.

¿ (0950)

Mr. Inky Mark: I have another question. One of the big topics of discussion over the last few weeks has been retroactivity. Again, according to the department, there are over 200,000 people, applications, sitting in the hopper waiting to be processed. In terms of transition, what would be your advice in dealing with that backlog of regular applicants?

The Chair: Didn't you take a position of giving a refund in one of your recommendations?

Ms. Elizabeth McIsaac: In the brief we submitted, we did indicate that the refund should be provided to people who are no longer eligible because of the substantive change in requirements. So people who applied in good faith under a certain set of criteria and paid the money should be refunded.

The Chair: I don't know if you had a chance to look at the minister's chart.

Ms. Elizabeth McIsaac: I did.

The Chair: At which point should the refund be kicked in? There are about 110,000 people who are still waiting for an interview, but have had paper process. At what point do you say the refund should be given? Should it be a mandatory refund or a voluntary refund for those who might want to get out of the system and then reapply?

Ms. Ratna Omidvar: We would take the high road, because Canada needs immigrants. You know this. Our demographics in the next five years are really going to define how well we do. Our lack of preparedness in this issue, outside of the labour market stuff, is really quite concerning. You're getting competition from other countries that are entering the fray.

I think it would be a sign of good faith to simply refund all the money to applicants who are not going to be considered, and do some good public relations on behalf of Canada.

The Chair: I'm still trying to find out what you mean by “won't be considered”. Are you talking about the people who have gone through the system already, have had a paper review, and are awaiting a decision on an interview, or do you mean everybody? There are 220,000--

Ms. Ratna Omidvar: I'm not going to pretend I know the details of that, but if someone has paid the $500 and is not going to be considered for landing, then the money should be refunded.

The Chair: Okay.

Mr. David Matas: As I understood the minister, he made a division at the point of interview. I would say that a refund up to the point of interview is optional. If you're interviewed, the system under which you're interviewed applies, so there's no retroactivity at all.

The Chair: Thank you, Inky.

We're off to Judy and then Madeleine.

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis (Winnipeg North Centre, NDP): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairperson.

On that point of retroactivity, is there any consideration of the option of simply applying the new rules once the act and the regulations come into force, as opposed to getting into where you cut it off and how it's going to work and who's affected? Would it not make sense to simply say--and I think that's a standard approach in many other areas--that when changes come into effect, that's when you apply the new criteria. Everybody else is considered under the old system. Is that not a constructive suggestion?

Ms. Elizabeth McIsaac: It's the simplest means. If you grandfather the previous set of criteria to those applicants, you get yourself out of the question of refund as well, because the applicants will be evaluated as per the criteria when their application went in.

Mr. David Matas: The problem with that, of course, is that it runs the old system until all those applications are exhausted, which could take years.

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis: Yes. You'd have a parallel system.

¿ (0955)

Mr. David Matas: Something I know from my legal studies is that they ran appeals to the Privy Council for all cases that had started when the appeals were abolished, and it took four years to exhaust those cases. The department, of course, is always stretched for resources and they're bringing in new people all the time. If they have to train people in an old system that isn't even on the books any more, it's complicated. That's the problem with running the two systems together.

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis: Yes, and I think that's probably the rationale for the department recommending this. They're trying to deal with the backlog with insufficient resources in the most expeditious way possible, but that doesn't account for the human factor and what people will feel in terms of having applied. Their hopes are up and they want to come, and then suddenly the rules change. Just from a human compassion point of view, it's a difficult one to rationalize.

I don't want to dwell on that entirely, because I know you've raised other points that have to be talked about. As Inky said, I think we all have a sense of déjà vu. Many of the concerns you've raised were raised during the bill itself. They were part of amendments we raised that weren't all addressed. In many cases the department said the concerns that were raised would be addressed in regulations. I don't have the ability to go through every bit of transcript, but my sense is that in fact the department didn't follow through with that promise and bring in regulations to address these concerns.

I just wondered if you could identify some of those areas we need to focus on, or whether or not it's worthwhile for us to go back, or to ask our researchers to go through every bit of transcript and see where we've been misled and where promises made haven't been forthcoming. So that's a question.

The second--

The Chair: Please let them answer. It's a pretty broad question you've asked them.

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis: That would be okay as long as I can get back to these other things.

The Chair: Maybe you can mention them, Judy, but that is a fairly large one. I know I can trust the research done by the people at the witness table, of course. In fact I take it that you have gone through the regulations and you have tested them against the concerns you raised during Bill C-11.

Let's face it, the broad principles of Bill C-11 are there. Now it's on to implement those things in Bill C-11, to make sure that the spirit is right. I'm not going to rehash the legislative arguments that we had. I would take it that Bill C-11 had moved forward progressively; there are always improvements. I would hope the regulations don't make Bill C-11 worse than it was supposed to be. That's my fear.

You've asked the question, so perhaps.... I take it the recommendations here, Judy, go a long way to addressing the very question you've just asked, though.

Are there any further comments?

Mr. David Matas: Let me try to address this very large question that asks us to try to think about what the government wanted to do with the bill and whether it has been done in the regulations. Has the government realized its intent in the regulations, rather than our intent?

To a certain extent, it has not realized its intent in the regulations. The regulation imposing the requirement of ability to establish economically is one I pointed to where this was true. The government has said that this was not its intent. In fact it wanted to move away from successful establishment and economic criteria. It realized that refugees are not coming for economic reasons and that Canada is criticized for taking the cream of the crop. The specific criteria under the umbrella criterion of establishing economically are not economic ones.

It looks as if, in this particular regulation at least, the government has misspoke itself or not realized its own intent. I expect we will in fact see a change, at least in part, in that regulation. This is one recommendation I can think of.

Ms. Kemi Jacobs: I can speak very quickly to the gender-based analysis. A report was done after the bill had been reviewed through a gender lens. Certain recommendations were made in certain areas where women were adversely affected.

The Chair: Okay. That's a good starting point.

Janet or Elizabeth--would either of you like to speak? Elizabeth, anything on....

Ms. Janet Dench: Yes. In our comments we made a distinction about two kinds of concerns we have with the regulations. One is policy areas where the government has made policy choices that, in our view, don't reflect Canadian values. Those are things where it was the government's intent and it followed through on its intent, but we would urge the committee to look carefully to see whether these are policies that we as Canadians want to adopt.

Our second cause for concern, which is sort of what David was talking about also, are those areas in which there are unintended consequences. The regulations are very, very complex. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out the implications; and in conversation with department officials we see that they haven't thought out all of the implications of these things.

So it's of concern to us that this pressure of the June 28 deadline is coming up so fast. There's an enormous amount the department knows it needs to get done by then. We're concerned that there may be things everyone agrees are wrong and not intended that will be allowed to go through simply because people figure they just have to get on with it--deal with the consequences later. Of course, the refugees and immigrants are the ones paying the price of those kinds of unintended consequences.

The Chair: Judy.

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis: There are really two parts to this broad question. Does the bill with these regulations now fulfill the promise from the then Minister of Immigration that this package would open the front door wider? Everything we've been hearing to date suggests that in fact it's not going to. Ratna touched on this with the whole question of Canada's need for immigrants, yet it would appear that this package makes it harder in most cases. We're not going to reach our measly target of 1% of population, let alone go beyond that, with this framework document and these regulations. That's the most important thing I'm trying to get at right now.

À (1000)

Ms. Ratna Omidvar: You're right. The bill as it stands really does not speak to this objective, beyond rejigging the selection criteria, which is just 25% of the battle.

I don't know what recommendations I can make without opening up the whole conversations to other...and we don't have the time. I would have to come back another time and talk about it.

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis: I think it would be useful to ask our witnesses--and this goes to the second part of my question--to give us any feedback pertaining to specific areas about which they had raised concerns and we had pushed for amendments at the committee level. The department promised the regulations would deal with those concerns, but they don't appear to. It's not something necessary to answer now, unless something leaps to mind, but it's certainly something that would help us as we try to deal with this. Even though we have an extra month, it's still going to be really hard.

Ms. Janet Dench: Well, we were pleased that the committee, last year, did pay a lot of attention to the fate of refugees in limbo--the group that Elizabeth talked about, refugees who have been recognized, but who can't get their permanent residence. The regulations are disappointing to us in that respect. We, like the Maytree Foundation, are proposing a very simple solution, which is that the regulation simply give convention refugees, on recognition by the IRB, automatic permanent residence. Subsequently, the government could proceed if there were people who were subsequently found to be lying, have some undesirable background, or be a security risk in some way. They could proceed against that tiny minority and take away their permanent residence.

The Chair: The committee agrees with you, and that's one of the tests, because the regulations were supposed to fulfill that sort of intent--we wanted to move refugees to permanent status right away. That's why this is a perfect example. Does that regulation do that? The answer is no. Can we fix it? Yes. So we can do what we wanted to do.

David.

Mr. David Matas: Another way you can look at the government intent since the regulations is by what's in the immigration manual, because some of the recommendations we've made are actually in the manual and they're government policy, but they're not in the regulations. It's much more preferable that they be in the regulations, because they represent a right, rather than a policy. Immigration officers are free to ignore the manual if they wish to do so; they are not bound by it. It creates a lot more certainty, and there's also a lot more visibility. In particular, if you're not removable to risk after three years under an unexecuted order of removal, the manual says you can apply for permanent residence. Why shouldn't that be in the regulations?

Again, in terms of being undocumented, some of the problems with being undocumented should be solved by regulations. I mean, there are policies in the manual dealing with them, so why not put those policies in the regulations?

The Chair: Good.

With regard to the manual, as opposed to regulations, obviously, it makes more sense to put it in legislation. And if you can't do that, make sure it's in the regulations, because those regulations and rules have some effect in law, as opposed to a manual that an immigration officer, or somebody else, can use or ignore.

Mr. David Matas: Exactly.

The Chair: So what are you suggesting, that we now look at the manual?

I understand...I just asked the researcher if we could get hold of the manual--it's about that thick--and start to pore through all of those things to make sure they're not being left in the hands of the manual.

Mr. David Matas: No. The manual is not this thick; it's that thick.

The Chair: My eyesight is.... Okay. That's even worse, so what are you telling me?

Mr. David Matas: First of all, it's on the Internet, so it can be searched fairly easily. But secondly, I've tried through my own submissions to make some reference to the manual. Rather than just reading through the whole thing, start asking the department. There are other people who are familiar with the manual.

The Chair: Of course, and we intend to do that.

Madeleine.

[Translation]

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral (Laval Centre, BQ): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

At the time of the hearings on... [Editor's note: inaudible], we were all aware of the worries of groups like yours that are concerned about immigrants and refugees. Clearly, the events of September 11 had an impact, and the shadow cast by the US over Canada has also had an impact. I therefore have a number of questions to ask you.

With respect to detention, when individuals apply for refugee status in the United States and have no papers, they are sent to a facility where they can be controlled. Since September 11, 2001, do you think there has been an increase in the number of people detained in Canada?

Someone referred to the permanent resident card, which, in itself, is a good thing. It all depends on what information the card will contain. I would like to know from each of you what information should be included on the permanent resident card, because we will have to ask questions on this subject.

I think Mr. Matas referred to the elimination of source countries. I would like you to tell us how we can teach the public, which is so traumatized since September 11, that we should get rid of this idea of source countries. I quite agree on this point, but how can we sell that to the public? As you know, if people do not understand, we will get nowhere with legislation.

Finally, I would like to hear what you have to say about safe third countries. No one raised this issue, but we know that it is being discussed. We know that there are negotiations underway at the moment between the United States and Canada. What are your concerns? Negotiations were already underway at the time of Bill C-11. Have your concerns been confirmed? What are the main points that disturb you?

À (1005)

[English]

Mr. David Matas: The “source country” class means somebody can be admitted from their own country to Canada with a refugee-like risk; they don't have to go to a third country. The refugee definition says you have to be outside your country. “Source country” removes that restriction. But it's only for listed countries, designated countries.

Our recommendation was that it should be around the world, and not just listed countries. The reason for that is that the prescribing and the unprescribing of a country takes time, and it's not sensitive to country situations because of that time. We get countries on the list long after they should be, and other countries not on the list until long after they should be.

You asked, is it going to be difficult to sell to the Canadian population a global source country class? Frankly, I'm not sure most people in Canada know about the source country class and would notice any real difference. Indeed, part of the problem with the listing and delisting is that it publicizes things that really, even necessarily, shouldn't be publicized. Why should we say we think this country is a source of problems and that country isn't? Why don't we just look at the situation of the individual, as we do with the refugee decision, no matter what country?

With “safe third country”, there shouldn't be one. The old legislation allowed for it, but it never happened. We were pleased to see that, and we'd like to see that continue. If there is some sort of agreement negotiated, as indeed there was historically once with the U.S., we would like substantial consultation both before it's negotiated and after it's negotiated, before it's finalized.

In principle, there is an executive committee conclusion of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees that says refugees should be allowed to seek refuge in the country to which they want to go, because there are obvious reasons why they want to go there. There may be family reasons, there may be support reasons, and it doesn't make much sense for a refugee who has support, let's say, in Winnipeg to be forced to stay in Minot, North Dakota.

[Translation]

Ms. Janet Dench: On the issue of detention, unfortunately it is difficult, even for the department, to get figures that would show that they are on the increase. However, it seems quite clear—and the department acknowledges this—that there has been an increase in the number of detentions at the Montreal detention centre, for example in the number of refugee claimants who did not have enough identity papers, according to the immigration officer. Unfortunately, once again, this is particularly true of Africans, who apparently stay at the detention centre the longest, because it is harder for them to get the papers that could be sent from home.

As regards the permanent resident card, the issue of biometric data is a very important point in our view. We were disappointed to find that the agreements between Canada and the United States provided for permanent resident cards containing biometric data.

There may be some privacy issues involved, but what concerns us the most is the question of equality and not having discrimination. It is one thing to ask Canadian citizens and immigrants to have cards containing biometric data. However, if we require this of immigrants only, that suggests that immigrants are somehow more dangerous than Canadian citizens.

We are very concerned about the issue of safe third countries. We are discussing three areas of concerns with the government.

First of all, there is the protection of refugees. While there are some similarities between the Canadian and American systems, there are nevertheless some significant differences. It could still happen that some individuals may be accepted in Canada but rejected by the United States. For example, I'm thinking of women fleeing persecution based on their sex.

Second, there is a question of refugee selection, about which David spoke earlier. Refugees have lost almost everything in life: their home, their country, their job and probably their family. We should not be telling them where to go, if we can leave the choice to them, because that is the only thing they have left.

Third, we wonder about the basic objective of this agreement from Canada's point of view. Is the objective not to reduce the number of refugees who come to Canada? As a country that is supposed to be generous toward refugees, and which is quite far away from most refugee-producing countries, should we be trying to reduce the number of refugees that Canada could protect?

À (1010)

[English]

The Chair: Elizabeth.

Ms. Elizabeth McIsaac: I would agree with what Janet was saying with respect to the permanent resident card. In our brief we did make three recommendations with respect to harmonizing the requirements for the Canadian passport, making allowances for minors who don't have guardians, and the requirement of travel documents for undocumented protected persons.

The Chair: Do you have a short supplementary, Judy?

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis: On this question of safe third countries, we heard from the minister. It was raised with him, and he basically said that's separate from the act and the regulations; the government is negotiating an agreement with the United States. We aren't going to have much of a chance for this process to have any impact, so I'm wondering what we can do in Parliament to actually have a say, to influence or move this direction. One suggestion made to us was that perhaps we should at least convince the government to only do this on a pilot basis, because of the ramifications and the serious problems it might have for refugee policy. What would your advice be on how to tackle this concern, which I share? I think you've outlined the concerns very well, Janet.

À (1015)

Ms. Janet Dench: The government is going to be consulting on the agreement. There is, as we understand it at this stage, no draft text. But there will at some stage be a draft text and this committee could very well have hearings on the draft and discuss aspects of it. You mentioned the possibility of a pilot. Well, one possibility in an agreement would be to write in a first stage in which it would only be implemented in a partial way, if that was the direction to go in. That's some input you could give into the consultative phase.

Mr. David Matas: Yes, it's true, it is not right now part of the regulatory package. There's nothing in that package about the safe third country, but there could be. I mean, it's in the legislation and there is a regulatory power that allows for this committee or the government, as part of the regulations, to deal with safe third country. And one of the things the committee might wish to consider is criteria for any memorandum of understanding. One can draw an analogy with the memorandum of understanding, which the regulations now do provide for, for referral organizations. It has some provisions in the regulations about what should be in that memorandum of understanding.

The Chair: Thank you very much for volunteering to provide us with some criteria on safe third country that we might want to incorporate into our regulatory review. As you said, this is safe third country. While it's in the legislation, we're not talking about it now; it's essentially a bilateral agreement that's being consulted upon and we will have an opportunity. But you're absolutely right, there are places in the legislation and the regulations where in fact we could recommend. That's the purpose of this meeting, to recommend a number of things to the government and to the minister, and we may want to. We made the policy decision as a committee in our report that we want the government to pursue a safe third country agreement, but again, the devil is always in the detail.

So if you have some comments with regard to safe third, as part of the regulatory package, please submit it to us, David, and anyone else, for that matter. It would be helpful.

Mr. David Matas: Sure. Indeed, if you interpret my comments as volunteering to offer those guidelines, I'm happy to accept your interpretation.

The Chair: We can always call it the Matas safe third country.

Anita, did you have another one?

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis: I'd like to be on the list again.

The Chair: Yes, but you'll have to wait your turn.

Anita.

Ms. Anita Neville (Winnipeg South Centre, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I too have questions for David Matas, which could potentially result in homework.

À (1020)

Mr. David Matas: We know Manitobans work hard anyway.

Ms. Anita Neville: We work hard, we do indeed.

David, you made a number of comments in your remarks and I wanted to pick up on them. You made a comment very early on about geographic and racial discrimination and I would be interested in hearing a little more about that.

You spoke of the difficulties of maintaining a double system in terms of those who are currently in the system and the department's recommendation for retroactivity. I would be interested in knowing what your recommendations would be in terms of how we deal with the many numbers that are currently in process within the skilled workers class and how you do it.

The other item, and I don't know that you could answer it in the time we have here--well, two other items--is about the complexities of the refugee process and how it can be simplified. As a relative newcomer to this whole process, I've been overwhelmed with the complexities and tried to do my own little charts to see the progress of it. I would be interested--and I don't know whether there is time here--to hear, from your perspective, how the system could be effectively simplified.

My other question--and I'm throwing it all out--concerns my distress when I hear you say that the manual is inconsistent with the regulations. Albeit the regulations have not been implemented, I would be interested in knowing--I mean, I have to be honest, I'm not going to go through it--what the blatant irregularities are that affect the implementation of government policy. It's a handful, I'm sorry.

Mr. David Matas: First of all, in terms of the issue of geographic and racial discrimination, I believe one of the problems the immigration system faces is a lack of an adequate equality-seeking analysis. There is the priniciple of equality in the act right now--and it's carried forward--and of course in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But the way that's been interpreted is basically the standard "no overt discrimination", and equality means not just equality up front in principle and in statement, but also equality of effect, equality in impact. If you are discriminating in fact, you are discriminating even if you don't say you're discriminating, and whether you're discriminating in fact may not be a matter of intent, it may just be a matter of result. You can't exonerate yourself from a charge of inequality by saying, we didn't mean to or we didn't intend to.

From my perception there is that discrimination by impact, but I don't even see an analysis by the department internally of whether their programs are having discrimination by impact. There are lots of things that strike me up front as causing that discrimination by impact. One of them is the mal-distribution of visa offices or resources amongst visa offices. The second is the visa imposition requirement. It's for some countries and not for others. The third is the point system itself, which is going to discriminate against some countries and some population systems and not others. Where is the equality analysis from the department showing that it doesn't have an adverse discriminatory impact? There isn't one. That's the problem.

In terms of the double system--and this gets back to the question Judy Wasylycia-Leis was asking--I think we also have to be sensitive, as we are throughout the whole system, of resource use. It's a resource-star system, and part of the problem of the backlogs and delays is lack of resources. There are many things we might like to do if we had more resources, including running two systems for many years, but I don't think we have the resources to do that. If we do have the resources, those resources are better spent in other parts of the system.

I take the point Ms. Wasylycia-Leis said about people having expectations, but the economic program is not a humanitarian program. It is an economic program, so I don't think we can turn it into a humanitarian program on the basis that we're changing the system. We just have to be fair to people when we are changing. Fairness to me would mean, if you're changing it, you give people their money back if they don't want to continue on under the new system and if they've already been interviewed. At that point, you apply the old system because then you're not running a double system.

In terms of complexity and simplification, I gave a very long brief to this committee on that issue under the title “Snakes and Ladders”, which dealt with the problems of complexity and how it could be changed through the legislation. The room for manoeuvre in changing or reducing complexity is a lot less in the regulations because a lot of the complexity, the structure, is built into the bill.

In terms of the refugee system, I would say that we should as much as possible avoid--basically, what the problem is, we have a three-, four-, or five-step system. In fact, I counted it up that people could end up going through 21 different steps, where just one or two would do. We need to get as few people--insofar as possible, we should try to circumvent eligibility and make everybody eligible. We should try to circumvent this Pre-Removal Risk Assessment and instead get people into refugee determination and make that the risk assessment, with the appeal to the Refugee Appeal Division.

Then there's this whole business with the federal court, with the security people and the serious criminality. It's gone way beyond the security system now; it's going to put in many more people, and that is horrendously complex. I must confess...I looked at the act in an attempt to reduce this complexity. I'm not sure how much flexibility you have left with the regulations. I could, if I allocated myself a bit more homework time, try to look at what room for manoeuvre there's left with the regulations to see if that can be done.

À (1025)

As for the manual, I wouldn't say it is inconsistent with the regulations, but what I would say is that it answers questions the regulations leave unanswered, that it deals with issues the regulations don't deal with, which are just left hanging.

The example I gave was people who are not removable to countries of danger. They could, according to the regulations, be here for the rest of their lives. Somebody from Somalia who's under a removal order may not be removable for many years.

We have Afghanistan. It may eventually get off the list of countries to which we do not remove, but who knows? Yesterday Zimbabwe was put on the list of countries to which we do not remove. It could be on the list for ten years.

What happens to the people who are caught here? The regulations don't say anything. The manual does. Let's put that in the regulations.

The Chair: Do you have any other comments with regard to the four questions Anita posed? You don't have to answer, but if you want....

David has done such a good job on all your behalf? That's absolutely fantastic; I'm impressed. David, you see?

I have a supplementary question, because I think the Canadian Council for Refugees said the same thing. It's with regard to a gender analysis--David, you touched upon it, and so did Anita--and whether or not there's a systemic problem with racism or anti-racism bias in regulations or legislation. I think you touched upon some operational issues, David. To the Council for Refugees, how would we do that? I know there's been a gender analysis applied to the bill, but someone indicated--and I can't remember who it was--that maybe there needs to be another analysis in terms of racism or anti-racism.

Ms. Janet Dench: I think what we're talking about is using the same process as you use for the gender analysis, where you say, if you put this rule in place, will it affect all people in the same way--men and women, or people from different parts of the world?

I mentioned earlier the example of identity documents and the difficulty Africans have, or the longer time it can take to get the documents. This is where you take what seems, on the face of it, an impartial and neutral rule, but you see that for somebody who has to write off to Europe to get their travel documents it can be a very fast thing, while if you're from a small village somewhere in Africa it can take you months. The result is that the European gets out of detention quite quickly, whereas the African spends several months in detention.

The Chair: Do you think there's some place in the regulations right now that in fact imposes that, notwithstanding there are access problems in the whole system because of resources and visa requirements? All those things you've talked about have been very useful, but is there a particular regulation you think really cries out and says this is racist, in a sense?

I'm concerned about that. I think we as a government will be blind to gender and blind to wherever the refugees are coming from. It shouldn't matter; they should have equal access, if possible, when you design the system. Therefore, where in the regulation per se would you think this might be a big problem? Is it on the documentation issue, on the un-documentation issue? I want some examples as to where it might be.

Ms. Kemi Jacobs: Again, I don't think it's a quick fix; it's a systemic approach. Basically, as a general course, you couldn't look and say this is where it is. You need to look at the entire document from a length. It's the length from which you look.

David made a good point about impact versus intent. It's important to look at what the differential impact is. It isn't a matter of going in and saying it's here or there, but looking at the entire document and saying these are the things.

The Chair: Have you done such a thing?

Ms. Kemi Jacobs: We are interested in doing such a thing, but again, the resourcing is a challenge.

The Chair: But maybe give some thought to it.

Ms. Janet Dench: In our comments on Bill C-11 we did include an anti-racism analysis.

Ms. Ratna Omidvar: If you have any suggestions, you can speak to the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, for their work.

The Chair: Yes, we might do that. Thank you very much, Ratna, for that suggestion.

Okay. Judy? Lynne.

Ms. Lynne Yelich: I wouldn't mind asking you about the point system, because that's very important. What did you like about the last point system, and what improvements would you have made, given that we're looking at the economic class and the skilled class? I know it's education, but comparing, what was the thing that had to be changed?

À (1030)

Mr. David Matas: The problem with the old point system was it was based on categories of occupational demand.

Ms. Lynne Yelich: Yes, we know that. This is how we got rid of it, by putting emphasis on education. So then...?

Mr. David Matas: The idea with the new point system is to focus on flexibility rather than occupations and demand--flexibility in the context of the Canadian economic marketplace. As a principle, that makes sense. It's just that when you get to the individual criteria, the criteria for flexibility don't seem all that relevant to what we in fact see in Canada. You're giving heavy weighting to PhDs, and lesser weighting to trades, and so on.

Ms. Lynne Yelich: I thought that was a good point that Elizabeth had made. I'm just curious, because that's the part of immigration that they're going to have to rely on. It's some sort of grid, and it's the one that doesn't have much give. There's not much flexibility when you're looking for economic and skilled workers.

The Chair: I'll just point out that, in your package, on both pages 7 and 8, there is a current points system and a new point system. I'm sure the points systems, their background, and their intent will make good bedtime reading over the weekend.

Ms. Ratna Omidvar: If I may add something to that, this comes at the question from a different angle.

I hope you agree with me that immigration is about nation-building and not headhunting. When we engage as headhunters without the expertise and the resources to really back up that process, we tend to get into trouble. The proposal to assign a high value to higher education, with no capacity to actually use that education, is creaming the best from source countries—which I don't think we should be doing—and worse.

A voice: I like that phrase.

Ms. Ratna Omidvar: It's putting these people into a permanent underclass in Canada, because we're not able to use or absorb their education.

One of the solutions could be to rejig the points system according to potential adaptability in Canada based on current barriers, which in time should be worked on. I look forward to your suggestion that you will take this up, and would be happy to present further opinions.

The Chair: Thank you.

I liked what you said about nation-building as opposed to headhunting. We may use that in our document.

Ms. Ratna Omidvar: Thank you. You don't even have to quote us on it.

The Chair: No, no, I'll give you credit. You came up with it, and that's fine.

This will have to be the final question, Judy, and then we'll have to thank our guests and move on.

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis: First, as a quick point, I think we should thank Janet for raising the fact that the department did do a gender-based analysis, which was not sent to us, as far as I know. I got a copy through Janet, but we should ask the department for—

The Chair: You can get anything if you ask for it, and if you can't get it, just call me. I'll make sure you get it.

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis: Well, it would be nice if, when things are done, they automatically get sent to the committee.

The Chair: Your wish is our command or demand. All you have to do is ask for it.

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis: I had two quick questions, and one is on this issue of the points system. It seems to me that whether we're looking at the occupational grid system or at the educational-flexible approach, unless you deal with the root problems of settlement and of recognition of credentials, you're not going to be much further ahead. You're just going to actually do what Ratna said, which is cream the best of the best from third world countries that can't afford to lose such people. That's the first question, sort of.

The second thing is for you, David Matas. When you appeared before the committee, you said that if there was one thing you wanted to see Bill C-11 and its regulations do, it would be to ensure that no one was ever returned to torture. Does this package do it?

Mr. David Matas: Of course, this whole thing was being litigated at the time, through the Suresh case. I actually appeared as an intervener for the Canadian Bar Association in the Suresh case, and we argued the position that international law did not allow return to torture under any situation. The court accepted that at international law. It said that in terms of domestic law, in terms of section 7 of the charter, about fundamental justice, it would be permissible only in exceptional circumstances, which the court didn't define. It's also the same phrase the court used in Burns and Rafay, the death penalty extradition case that I also argued. Of course, in Burns and Rafay, it was a case of two people being accused of murdering the parents of one of them for the inheritance. It was an awful factual situation, but not one of exceptional circumstances.

My own view is that, in the way I read the Supreme Court of Canada decision in Suresh, exceptional circumstances are so rare that we're never likely to see them. So we don't have an absolute prohibition against torture, but it's pretty close. And it's regrettable that we had to go all the way to the Supreme Court to get it, and that the government fought every inch of the way.

A voice: Yes.

Mr. David Matas: It's regrettable that the government wouldn't just do that off its own back.

À (1035)

The Chair: [Inaudible—Editor]...issues. That's the next step we're doing, Judy, after we get done with this stuff.

Thank you all so very much for your input, for answering our questions, for providing us with some great insight, and for volunteering to do a little bit more work for us.

We'll move on as quickly as we possibly can to our next witnesses, after we break for five minutes.

À (1040)

The Chair: Colleagues, we resume hearings this morning, and we're pleased to welcome, from the Canadian Bar Association, Benjamin Trister--welcome back, Ben--and Gordon Maynard. Then we've got the Barreau du Québec, Noël St-Pierre and Julie Delaney. And from the Association québécoise des avocats et avocates en droit de l'immigration, we have David Chalk and Patrice Brunet. Welcome, and thank you very much.

We would have you summarize your briefs and your recommendations, which are obviously more important, and take about seven to ten minutes each, so that we're given ample opportunity to ask some questions. Let me start by thanking you very much for taking the time to go through these regulations. I know you had a lot to say on Bill C-11, and I want to thank you for your input on that also. We look forward to your comments.

We can start with the Canadian Bar Association, Ben and Gord.

À (1045)

Mr. Benjamin J. Trister (Chair, National Citizenship and Immigration Law Section, Canadian Bar Association): Mr. Chair, honourable members, Mr. Maynard and I are grateful for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the proposed immigration regulations.

The Canadian Bar Association is a national voluntary association representing over 37,000 jurists across Canada. The members of the National Citizenship and Immigration Law Section, on whose behalf we appear today, are experts in all aspects of immigration law. Our analysis of the proposed regulations is, as always, in keeping with the CBA's mandate to promote the rule of law and improvement in the administration of justice.

Canadians recognize the historically important contribution of immigrants to the development of our country. As witnessed by the debates on the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act in this committee, all parties support a healthy, effective immigration system. As Minister Coderre observed two days ago, immigration is a non-partisan issue. We all want what's best for Canada.

The issues of retroactivity in the proposed selection criteria for skilled workers have attracted much attention. In our view, many other aspects of the proposed regulations require scrutiny. We hope to call your attention to the most important issues raised in the regulatory package.

On retroactivity, the CBA is concerned about the unprecedented retroactive application of new selection criteria to pre-existing applications, but what is even more troubling, the proposed regulations would permit the government to use retroactivity on an ongoing basis as a key mechanism to control the volume of applications. Retroactivity, both now and in the future, makes it impossible for applicants to know what selection criteria will be applied to their application, essentially making Canada's economic immigration system a lottery. This uncertainty will discourage people from immigrating to Canada. We must remember that we're in a global competition for skilled workers. What makes this particularly perverse is that retroactive application will not have the effect the government wishes to achieve, namely controlling the inventory of applications at a manageable number.

We note the comments of Minister Coderre and several members of this committee concerning the proposed selection criteria. There's concern that the new criteria do not reflect Canada's open approach to economic immigration. We share this concern. We argue that in fact, the proposed system will make it harder for Canada to attract the workers we need to enable our workforce to continue to grow. We must keep in mind that in ten years 100% of Canada's labour market growth will have to come from immigration. Our ability to have a growing economy depends on immigration.

To summarize, the CBA believes that the proposed selection criteria require significant amendments and should not be implemented until these problems are corrected and Canada changes the way in which it takes in and processes such applications.

This brings us to the implementation date, which has been set at June 28, 2002. We're pleased that Minister Coderre is prepared to reconsider key aspects of the proposed regulations, and we are pleased that your committee will have more time to report on these critically important matters. That said, until the minister indicates a willingness to postpone implementation, the department must continue to work frantically towards the June date. The sooner the minister grants a reprieve, the better.

We also noted with interest Minister Coderre's request that your committee study the creation of a code of ethics for immigration consultants. While we welcome any initiative to assure high standards of service provided by consultants, we respectfully suggest that a voluntary code of conduct will not be worth much. It's simply not reasonable to assume that those consultants with unscrupulous business practices will change their code of conduct on a voluntary basis. As a bare minimum, immigration practice should be limited to Canadian citizens and permanent residents. Regulation of consultants should become a priority, to better protect Canadian society and individual applicants.

We've provided you with a resolution outlining our position on licensing standards for consultants. We've also provided the clerk with the CBA's model code of professional conduct, and we hope these documents will assist you in your work for the Minister.

Mr. Maynard will now make a brief statement outlining other areas of major concern.

Mr. Gordon H. Maynard (Treasurer, National Citizenship and Immigration Law Section, Canadian Bar Association): Good morning, committee members and Mr. Chair.

I am going to identify five areas of concern with the regulations. There is not enough time in this presentation to do more than simply identify these areas of concern with very brief comments, and to ask the committee to visit these areas during question-and-answer discussion, and when you have the department and the minister before you again.

The first is regulations concerning conduct of examinations. You will recall from your review of Bill C-11 that section 15 of the act is a new authority for immigration officers to conduct compelled examinations of any persons making applications under the act. It is a powerful authority that is not found in the present act, and it applies to anyone making any manner of application under the act. That could be an application for sponsorship, an application for extension of status within Canada, or an application for a permanent resident card.

There are, in the regulatory package, no regulations covering the conduct of these examinations, with respect to applicants. The examination authority officers have carries with it powers of arrest, the authority under the law to impose significant penalties for non-compliance--up to a $100,000 fine, five years in jail. Most importantly, individuals being subjected to these examinations are at risk, not just of the examination failing, but of their own loss of status. If they make a misrepresentation in an examination, if they fail to appear in examination, if they refuse to comply, these can be grounds for loss of status and removal from Canada, with the authority to determine that given to an officer.

The examination power places applicants in an administrative process that carries great risk, yet there are no regulations regarding the conduct of these examinations. There should be regulations providing for notice to the individual of a time and place when an examination is to take place. There should be a regulation that says that the purpose of examinations is for the determination of the application. There should be a regulation providing that there is a right to counsel to the individual who is being examined. All of these are absent from the regulatory package.

Secondly, I want to refer to the circumstances of section 64, permanent residents. You will recall that in Bill C-11, section 64 was a very contentious provision. Section 64 allows for deportation of certain permanent residents, without any review of their circumstances, by the independent appeal division tribunal. The CBA opposed this provision. We opposed the loss of review by the independent tribunal, particularly for permanent residents, as deportation is based on criminal conviction alone.

The CBA asked that the act provide for a five-year domicile provision that would guarantee access to review by the appeal division--not a guarantee against deportation, just a guarantee of review. On May 16, the department came before this committee and provided assurances to this committee that in fact the department would take consideration of circumstances of permanent residents very seriously, there would be oversight, and there would be review of the circumstances.

There are no regulations in this package governing section 64, permanent residents. There's no regulation that requires officers to consider the circumstances of their case, either before commencing enforcement or after issuing the removal order. Indeed, all of the regulations and enforcement are geared toward expedited removal. There's no stay of removal pending judicial review; there's no stay of removal pending humanitarian and compassionate application; and there's no obligation for an officer to consider the circumstances of a permanent resident who is without appeal. That is a great failing in these regulations.

It's not enough to rely on department assurances. It's not enough to rely on guidelines. If a permanent resident cannot point to the law and ask for a review of their circumstances, then they have no right to ask for it under the law.

Third, I want to refer you to the regulations concerning the minister's humanitarian and compassionate jurisdiction. Section 25 of the act states that the minister can consider--must consider--the humanitarian and compassionate circumstances of an inadmissible person on application and may grant them permanent resident status. This is an authority that preserves the minister's broad discretion to allow people to remain in Canada when there are compelling humanitarian and compassionate circumstances, regardless of whether they meet the requirements of the act and regardless of whether they're inadmissible.

À (1050)

The regulations pertaining to this authority are regulations 107 to 112. What those regulations say is that somebody who wants to access that discretion must make an application to the minister under section 25 and that the application must be refused if they are inadmissible. On plain reading, the regulations simply contradict the act. There is no coherent process for dealing with persons who are inadmissible but with compelling humanitarian and compassionate circumstances. We are perplexed and are very wary of the language of these regulations. We are wary of the intent of the department in this regard.

Fourth, I want to refer you to the regulations concerning how officers shall deal with visitors, students, and workers who are within Canada. This is an issue of officers having discretion removed. Under the current law, if someone--a worker in Canada, a student in Canada, a visitor in Canada--breaches the conditions of their stay in Canada or the conditions of their permit, an officer can penalize them by refusing to issue a new employment or student authorization for a one-year period. But the officer has the discretion to excuse their breach.

Under the new regulations, sections 202 and 217, there is no discretion. All breaches are penalized. Officers are not allowed to give new employment or student authorization to anybody who breaches a prior employment or student authorization.

Similarly, regulation 19 limits the officer's ability to reinstate visitor status where it's expired through inadvertence. Currently, they have broad discretion to do that. Under regulation 19, they can only do it within the 30-day window.

Now, these losses of discretion are simply not sensible. They will corner officers, with unnecessary and harsh results. They will create more problems than they solve.

Fifth, I wish to speak of officer and tribunal issuance of removal orders. Under the new act and regulations, it is the regulations that decide how much authority officers have to issue removal orders, as opposed to an independent tribunal. The appropriate regulations are 234 and 235. It is officers and not a tribunal who will issue removal orders against visitors, workers, and students in Canada in most cases. Furthermore, the officers will only have the authority to issue what's called an exclusion order with a one-year penalty. There's no option to issue a departure order, as they do under the current law, which is the lesser removal order.

There are two problems with these regulations. First, there are no regulations about how officers undergo this process. There's no requirement for a hearing. There's no requirement that the individual be given an opportunity to respond to the allegation against them. There's no right to counsel. It's purely an administrative process. So there's a failure of fair process here.

Second, there's too little discretion for the officer with respect to the type of order for a person to be removed. Officers should have the option to give out a departure order in appropriate cases as a lesser removal order.

These are the key areas of concern. They are by no means the limits of our concerns with this regulatory package. You can imagine that with more than 250 regulations, there's a lengthy list of concerns, many of which have consequences every bit as serious as those I've discussed with you.

This committee did good work with Bill C-11. There were constructive changes made. The challenge is now carried with respect to this regulatory package. I think it's fair to say that CBA finds that these regulations are in need of repair. They will not do as they stand. We are operating against a very impossible timetable of June 28 for implementation. Everyone, including the department, would benefit from an opportunity to revisit these regulations and rebuild the errors.

À (1055)

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Ben and Gord, for highlighting the more serious ones and providing some recommendations in, I think, sections 15 and 64, which were very much the preoccupation of the committee during Bill C-11. You've provided us with, and I think we've made, some positive amendments. The fact that there are no regulations troubles us also. Thank you very much for highlighting those specifics, too, as they relate to permanent residence and the examination procedures.

We go now to Noël and Julie. Welcome.

Á (1100)

[Translation]

Mr. Noël St-Pierre (Lawyer, Barreau du Québec): Good morning. I'm here to represent the Barreau du Québec, the professional group mandated to represent all lawyers practicing in Quebec. It has some 20,000 members.

The Quebec bar association is increasingly involved in areas related to immigration, and I would like to emphasize that its first mandate is to protect the public, individuals who are subject to court or administrative proceedings.

Because of the short time we had, you do not have a proper brief, but a text in French. Unfortunately, the English version...

[English]

The English version is not quite as pretty as the French one, but it is, I hope, an accurate translation without too many Gallicisms.

[Translation]

We start by presenting the regulatory powers under the act, because there are a great many of them. I will not repeat the opening remarks Mr. Maynard just made. I would like to mention that we agree with most of what was said.

It is interesting to look at all the regulatory powers and then to see what is included in the proposed text and what its weaknesses are, and then to look at what has been omitted. With your permission, I will start by talking about what has been omitted.

One of the most important objectives of the act is transparency and accountability; the English term for this concept is easier to use. There is almost nothing in the proposed regulations that matches this objective, at least from the point of view of the individual or counsel that has to work with the immigration structure, whether in Canada or abroad.

There are a number of parts of the text... For example, even as regards getting reasons and decisions, there is an obligation, particularly as regards humanitarian requests, to provide the reasons for decisions. But people must also apply to get the reasons, which means that they would normally get them about 30 days later if they are lucky.

These are relatively useless provisions, because the reasons already exist in the file. When I look at current procedures, nothing in the proposed regulations will change them, at least not in what we have before us today.

As regards concrete information about what is going on in a particular file, the obligation for Canadian visa or immigration officers abroad to provide information is, in my view, one of the most fundamental aspects for any individual wishing to immigrate to this country. The proposed regulations do not contain anything about this. This is important, because at the moment it is virtually impossible, even for a lawyer, to get information about a file abroad. I will not go into the number of letters I receive, and I should point out that many members of Parliament and their staff have the same problem. It is often very difficult just to find out what is in an individual's file.

There is another point that would require all of the regulations to be reviewed, in my opinion. I am referring to one of the commitments made by the former Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Ms. Robillard, at one of the consultations that led to Bill C-11, at the time the Fédération des femmes du Québec presented its brief. Ms. Robillard made an official commitment that any amendment to the act or regulations would be preceded by a study of its impact on women. Clearly, this has not been done in this case.

We make a number of points in our paper, for example, with respect to humanitarian applications. One of the factors will be the economic integration of the individual in question. The fact is that this is often virtually impossible for a number of individuals because they are not entitled to a work permit, facing a difficult situation as women who head single-parent families or are not receiving family allowances or day care services. In most cases, the regulations would make it impossible to take such factors into account.

The same is true with respect to getting a work permit. If I read the regulations correctly, they provide that it is the husband, in particular, who would get the work permit in order to offset the requirement for welfare.

A number of other points in the regulations required relatively significant revision, in my view. The entire text must be reviewed to ensure it is in keeping with Quebec law. For example, there is the issue of the conditions imposed on immigrant workers. We do not impose any such conditions; we do not transfer similar conditions to entrepreneurs and investors.

On the issue of same-sex spouses, Quebec is currently studying an institution that will be called a “civil union” which, according to the Quebec Minister of Justice, Mr. Bégin, will be the virtual equivalent of marriage for same-sex couples.

Á (1105)

This aspect should be taken into account, particularly in the definitions of “common-law partner” and “fiancé”.

However, in our view, your definition of “common-law partner” is discriminatory, and must be reviewed with respect to the requirement for 12-month cohabitation, which is practically impossible for many people, particularly when the homosexuals in question are discriminated against or persecuted in their country of origin.

I will submit one last aspect for your consideration before giving my colleagues the floor. One recurring problem we have is related to the status of persons who cannot be removed from Canada. Often at issue are administrative orders that are not official. For example, a family has a child who has a serious disease. The family is not removed from Canada, but the removal order is not officially stayed.

Like the current regulations, the new ones provide for the right to hold a work permit sole when the removal order is not enforceable. In practical terms, this means that these people are being refused work permits because the removal order is enforceable, but a discretionary choice has been made not to enforce it. Those people are condemned either to work without a permit—in other words, to work illegally—or to go on welfare. In my opinion, some parts of these regulations should be reviewed from the standpoint of the people who are going to be subject to them and live with them.

I will now let another of my colleagues comment. I will not repeat the points put forward by Mr. Ménard. Thank you.

[English]

The Chair: Merci, Noël.

Colleagues, there's a half-hour vote, a procedural vote. We could carry on. Obviously I want to finish off listening to our witness and come back. We could agree amongst ourselves that if nobody decides to leave the room, we don't necessarily have to get to the House of Commons. The numbers work out just right. That's something you might want to think about.

Meanwhile, we'll just carry on with David Chalk and Patrice with regard to their submission. Thank you.

[Translation]

Mr. Patrice Brunet (Association québécoise des avocats et avocates en droit de l'immigration): Ladies and gentlemen, committee members, Mr. Chairman, I thank you for this opportunity to appear before you today.

Our association represents 160 lawyers who are members of the Quebec Bar, and who specialize in immigration law. We have heard the comments of our colleagues from the Canadian Bar Association and Quebec Bar, and are in agreement with them. We will be focusing on the selection criteria put forward in the regulations, and on the issue of retroactivity. In a few moments, my colleague David Chalk will be commenting on retroactivity.

As you know, our association has already commented on the proposed criteria. At the time, however, points had not been incorporated into the grid, and today is our first opportunity to make the comments we consider important.

With respect to the employment criterion, we find it unfortunate that there is no flexibility making it possible to take into account the general employability of an applicant. This means that a candidate, who may be qualified but does not make the score, cannot use his age, education or professional experience to compensate for other deficiencies in his file. Moreover, for professions, we believe that level C should be taken into consideration, rather than only levels O, A and B. With respect to education, we do not believe that formal education is the only type of knowledge that should be recognized. Some points should also be awarded for uncompleted diplomas. For example, when an applicant has completed only three years of a four-year degree program, he should be awarded some points to reflect the number of courses he has taken.

The elimination criterion for professional experience has remained set at 12 months. We believe it should be lowered to 6 months, making it compatible with our current policy on work permit E-O8. Foreign students come to work in Canada, and are authorized to work in this country for a maximum of 12 months after completing their studies. Under the current conditions, those students cannot apply for landed immigrant status before having studied here for 12 months. We therefore recommend that this threshold be lowered to six months.

We also believe that applicants should not be penalized for not knowing one of Canada's official languages. The maximum number of points should be awarded for knowing French or knowing English. With respect to adaptability, the 10-point maximum is too low, and fails to take into consideration one issue fundamentally in applying the selection grid. Adaptability is obviously a cornerstone of the philosophy underpinning immigrant selection, and should carry far greater weight than this 10-point maximum. We would consider 20 points more appropriate.

Representatives of CIC should also be encouraged to use some discretionary power in favour of applicants. For example, in places where applicants fail to meet the regulared-grid criteria, officers should be able to exercise some discretionary authority under the regulations to take a more encouraging approach, or to be more open-minded.

Lastly—these comments have been highlighted, but I believe this should be reiterated—participation by counsel in immigrant selection process should be officially recognized in the regulations. Quebec recognizes such participation, and our experience in recent years has been very positive, both from the standpoint of the public, and from the standpoint of governments and lawyers. Legal counsel are partners in the judicial system, and that fact should be recognized.

Á (1110)

[English]

Mr. David Chalk (Lawyer, Association québécoise des avocats et avocates en droit de l'immigration): Thank you.

Honourable members of the committee, Mr. Chairman, I am going to speak on a very specific topic. We have outlined a fairly involved legal argument in our second memorandum--yes, we have two--relating to retroactivity and how an administrative law challenge to retroactivity would play out in the courts under Canadian law, particularly with respect to Canadian law as it's now established pursuant to the Mount Sinai decision issued by the Supreme Court a little over a month ago.

I am not here to talk to you about that legal argument so much as I am to talk to you about the analysis that the Supreme Court or another court in Canada would apply to that situation and why it's relevant to a reconsideration of the selection regulations. I think that points to some defects both in the process we have undertaken until now and in the information that's been placed before this committee and Parliament.

In order for the doctrine of legitimate expectation, as it's called sometimes, or reasonableness, as it's referred to in Baker, or abuse of discretion, to apply, you not only have to show the violation of a promise by an appropriate government authority. You would also have to show that the decision was arrived at without taking into consideration the negative consequences of that decision on those who are affected by it.

I believe one of the things that jumps out at us in AQADI and at others who have looked at the retroactive application of the selection criteria is that there is apparently no consideration done of the effects on those who are already in the application pool. If you look through the regulatory impact analysis statement, there is not one line of it that is given over to considering what will happen if we change the criteria now for people who have made good faith applications and, possibly based on informed opinions, believe they have very good chances of immigrating to Canada. If we now pull the carpet out from underneath them, what happens to them?

Those consequences--and we've listed just a cursory set of them on page 3 of our memorandum--go from the obvious one of loss of the application fee and the interest that would have accrued since the time of application, up to employment opportunities lost because of plans to move to Canada, promotions passed over, investment opportunities lost, the cost of exploratory visits to Canada with regard to immigration, the inability of families that were going to be reunited through the assisted relative program to effectively reunite because of the change in criteria, of course the loss of fees paid to consultants and lawyers--this is of course something that touches us very closely at AQADI--and the cost of doing credentialing in front of some of the professional organizations, which is required under the current system.

In order to trump those very serious negative consequences in the analysis I had mentioned before, one would have to show the existence of an overriding benefit. The only overriding benefits that have been seriously placed before the House and before this committee are, first of all, an administrative argument that it would allow us to more effectively deal with the backlog of applications we are currently experiencing and process future applications with fewer resources in a more transparent and understandable manner, and also that Canada otherwise would be deprived of the economic benefits of the new selection criteria if we were to delay the implementation.

Administrative arguments of course generally don't hold much water with the judiciary, so I'm going to concentrate on the benefits of the new program.

I don't think there are any people in the legal community working with immigration who disagree with the basic principle of the human capital model that is proposed. In Quebec we are using a similar model, although I would be careful to point out that it's a much more nuanced model than what has been proposed federally. I believe it works well for Quebec, for the most part.

Á (1115)

The crying need for these new regulations is based on only one set of economic data, really, that's been put before you: an alleged decrease in average income after the first year of immigration for immigrants to Canada between 1980 and 1996. I think that anyone who has a background in the social sciences will find that the conclusions drawn from that decrease are very suspect in that the conclusion we are asked to draw is that the quality of immigrants we are receiving under our current selection model is not good. There are a slew of alternate hypotheses that plausibly explain this decrease in average income one year after immigration we have experienced.

The fourth and most obvious reason, for those of us who were in Canada between 1980 and 1996--and the particular crunch comes in 1989 to 1996--is that this was the period of time we were all introduced to the term “downsizing”. It was a very tight labour market at that time. Studies show that in a tight labour market, immigrants are affected negatively in terms of professional mobility. Also, in that period we experienced an increase in the percentage of visible minorities. We know that unfortunately visible minorities statistically earn less than non-visible minority workers in the workforce.

Finally, Canada as an immigration destination became less attractive in that period in some ways. The Canadian dollar was devalued, tax rates went up, public funding for research and development and education and health--all those important things--went down.

Our conclusion based on this is that Canada has made a very important promise to all those who have applied to its system up until now and that it would potentially violate our principles of fairness not to allow them to be processed under those criteria.

Finally, there are other options aside from simply imposing a new system in order to control, in the interim at least, the flow of applications. The most obvious of those is a tool the government has never used, and that's the demographic criteria, expressly created for that purpose. Lowering the demographic criteria by only two points would have a dramatic effect on the number of applications that would be received. Certainly, that is an option we think should be given greater consideration as an interim option if we are to feel we have a really good, human capital-based system.

Á (1120)

The Chair: Thank you very much, all of you, for some very good work and suggestions and recommendations.

We're going to ask you to have a coffee on us because, unfortunately, we all have to go to vote. We'll be back in the next 15 or 20 minutes. The vote is at about 11:30, we'll be back here by 11:50, and we'll resume with our questions if we could. We've already indicated that we want to be here until one o'clock.

Thank you very much.

We're adjourned until after the vote.

Á (1121)

Á (1157)

The Chair: Colleagues, if we could, we'll resume with our witnesses. Our apologies to the witnesses for the time we had to go down for a vote.

All of you have made your presentations and have given us some very good food for thought as well as some recommendations. I'll go immediately to questions.

Paul.

Mr. Paul Forseth (New Westminster--Coquitlam--Burnaby, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would ask any of the presenters today to comment generally about the recommendation that really only lawyers should be involved in representing applicants throughout the multitude of processes. It basically sets aside the so-called immigration consultant, if indeed that is the recommendation. So comment on that versus the task the minister gave to our committee to come up with some recommendations to “regulate” the industry, for want of a better term. So comment about that.

The other is, the presentation talks about the five areas of concern. It appears that there are many points where there is a discretionary or decision-making position to be made throughout the system. The same kind of criticisms kept coming up about principles of fundamental justice or due process. I'm wondering if perhaps some recommendation could be made to have one standard clause or standards of operation that could be then applied across the board to all these demarcation decision points about receiving proper notice or about some question as to understanding the nature of the decision-making inquiry or the tribunal and the right to perhaps actually have a hearing. It almost goes back to the principles that were outlined in Singh--here we go again. Perhaps that whole comment about due process...maybe we can get away from having all these pressure points litigated all over again.

Those are the two areas I would like comments on, and I would love to have a variety of opinion.

Â (1200)

The Chair: Noël.

Mr. Noël St-Pierre: Yes, I'll start my answer in English, actually.

The Quebec bar, of course, has a disciplinary function, as do all bar associations, so we're rather used to this type of problem. Our position is that people have to be protected; that's the first thing. And what we see more and more is that many people in fact are acting as quasi lawyers before tribunals, and not just in meetings with immigration officers or filling out forms and things like that. It's quite clear there has to be some form of control, and the situation right now is that there is no control, and we see cases where in fact it's not just abuse but we have falsification of stories, falsification of documents, all things that would get someone disbarred very quickly.

So if we look at the question of protection, it's quite clear that people should be able to be helped in certain administrative meetings, for example, interviews by someone from the family, or, if necessary, by a non-profit organization perhaps. And in Quebec there are certain ones that are funded directly by the provincial government, and they are controlled as to what they do. Or they could be helped by someone who is part of a professional order with disciplinary mechanisms, and there is no professional order of immigration consultants that is submitted to any jurisdiction in this country. That would be the first suggestion as an answer.

So I think it's quite clear that if we're looking at something, bar associations are the present vehicle to do that. This is not a question of corporatism here, and if you look at what immigration lawyers generally receive, they are probably below minimum wage in certain cases for the amount of what actually is done.

[Translation]

As for the second question, very quickly...

[English]

The Chair: Does somebody have a different view of that, or is everybody in concurrence with what Noël said, that there are essentially three groups, or whatever. Does anyone have anything to add?

Yes, Patrice.

Mr. Patrice Brunet: I want to add on to what Noël has stated.

As I mentioned in my presentation, the lawyers are partners of the administrative and judicial system, and there's no reason why the immigration section of the administrative system should be excluded, or should be differentiated from the others. It's pretty much a symptom of putting the head in the sand, because the immigration department over the past years has refused to take action on this because presumably it was too complicated to have agreement from all the provinces. That's not an argument.

The United States have what we call the form G-28, which involves the appearance of an attorney in immigration procedures. You can't appear at immigration procedures in the U.S. if you're simply a consultant; you need to have some sort of professional body that regulates your actions. You need to put your moneys in trusts. If the client is in Saudi Arabia and leaves 10 telephone messages, he can call up the bar association and they'll act. If I'm simply a consultant, who do they call?

Do you know who they call? The embassy, that's what they do. Talk to them in the field and they'll tell you they're getting a lot of calls from consultants who are not returning calls, and those are just the minor problems, we're not talking about moneys that they have cashed in and have not provided services for.

So that's the main point I wanted to add on to Noël's point.

I have a second point, as well. Currently, you don't even have to be a consultant in Canada to practise immigration. You can be a consultant in Colombia, and simply state that you are a professional in the immigration law of Canada, and you can rake in a lot of fees. That is a serious problem for Canada, because, again, when the clients have problems, they will call the Canadian embassy and they will even, as you may have seen, write to the Minister of Citzenship and Immigration of Canada, and that affects the credibility of the immigration delivery system.

The Chair: Ben.

M. Benjamin Trister: In the context of the proposed selection criteria, which are designed to be more effective and efficient to administer and oversee, officers are going to be relying a lot on just letters from employers attesting to their experience, or statements from applicants about the quality of their English and so on. In this system it is really important, it's more important than it is today in fact, to have anybody who's advising people on their matters to do it truthfully and have a reason to do it truthfully, because otherwise they can say, get a letter from this company, you can make up letterhead, who knows?

We already know that after the criteria were published on December 15 or 17, some consultants in the Middle East started advertising about how they could secure informal job offers to help with the five points required, for a fee of course--for $1,500 is what we saw. So what they're going to do is create a Canadian company, print up some letterhead, and then throw a job offer out there and hope it works. So in this environment, in particular, regulation is critical.

Â (1205)

The Chair: Second point, Noël.

Mr. Noël St-Pierre: There is a union at the RCMP investigating fraudulent consultants. They have been much more active and efficient than immigration.

In our experience, immigration has basically not even allowed people to stay in this country, where they could testify. They have deported them systematically. The RCMP is extremely frustrated because they basically haven't been able to bring anyone to trial on this issue. They've found use of the criminal system to be very inefficient, as you can imagine. Disciplinary mechanisms and professional orders, of course, are much better.

[Translation]

As for the second question, I do not know if we can establish some specific criteria covering the issue of administrative justice in the act and in the regulations. In matters pertaining to decision-making, we could very clearly base ourselves, to a large extent, on the Supreme Court Baker decision. Certain aspects must be stipulated in the regulations: information provided to the individual concerned to determine what is involved before, for example, this person gave information to a person in a position of authority; access to a person to advise the individual; decisions that are supported by reasons, even if they are described in summary fashion, and not just a simple word stating that the application has been rejected, as we often see today; and a mechanism enabling the individual to explain, under reasonable circumstances, his or her point of view.

According to our experience, interviews are usually much more effective in doing this than a paper file. I would say that a large number of the poor immigration decisions made are due to the fact that the officer, whether it be an officer here in Canada or abroad, has not understood what the person is trying to present.

I have a reason for saying this. In Quebec, we have relatively easy access to Quebec immigration advisors that are working abroad. These people are very approachable. When we receive a negative decision concerning a selection application for Quebec, we can call the Quebec delegation. We can send an e-mail message and we receive an answer explaining why the applicant was turned down. In many cases, we find out that the advisor did not understand, for example, what the real occupation was. We have some mechanisms that make it very easy for us to reassess the file from another angle that we have suggested, and very often they get back to us to set an appointment to say that, everything is all right.

The problem that we have with federal immigration, is that there are no mechanisms enabling us to correct errors of comprehension other than by going to the federal court. However, federal court proceedings are extremely time-consuming and, of course, there is always the possibility that the person, if the person is here, will be expelled. In addition, federal court proceedings do not enable us to deal with errors and fact. As a minimum, it is therefore essential that we have access to an individual so that we can just explain, in terms of what is triable, what we mean, what is the central premise of the application, whatever that may be.

[English]

The Chair: Okay, David.

Mr. David Chalk: I just want to echo what Mr. St-Pierre just said, in terms of the different experiences we have had with the different administrations we in Quebec have worked with in immigration.

I also want to underline the economies that are realized in that system by the de-judicialization of the system. The number of judicial reviews in Quebec in one year can be counted, if not on both hands, then on both hands and both feet. Here in immigration, on the federal side, they are in the thousands, and on the permanent resident side, in the high hundreds.

I know the last minister was in favour of this, but there was nothing specific to open up access to the visa post. That was probably the most relevant element, and the best thing that could have happened.

Â (1210)

The Chair: Gordon.

Mr. Gordon Maynard: The circumstance, I think, to which you're referring is the conduct of examinations, on one hand, and the decision by an officer to determine loss of status and issue a removal order against a foreign national, where they have the authority to do it instead of a tribunal.

If you have the regulations in front of you now, you should take a look at sections 160, 164, and 166. Those regulations concern the process of pre-removal risk assessment, where the minister is doing a risk review of persons who have failed a refugee claim, failed their appeal, and lost in Federal Court, and this is the last review of risk. What struck me about those provisions is that whoever drafted them certainly had an eye toward what good process was.

If you look at section like 160, it says to make that decision, a notice has to be provided to the individual, first of all, of the time and place of hearing and the issues that will be raised at the hearing. The hearing is restricted to matters relating to issues of fact stated in the notice. The applicant shall respond to questions and may be assisted by a lawyer--barrister and solicitor.

If you look down at sections 164 and 166, it says the minister shall, on request, give a copy of the file notes regarding the decision that is made.

These are all really fundamental processes that ensure a good decision is being made. The person is being told, here is where the examination or the hearing is going to be. You're entitled to counsel. We're restricted to asking questions, and you give answers on the issues concerned. And we'll give you reasons for the decision.

Yet there are no provisions in the regulations giving that kind of structure to examinations by officers under section 15, or on the issue of officers issuing removal orders against individuals where they have that authority, and those are the kinds of provisions that need to be put into place.

The Chair: Just to follow up, I need a clarification here.

Usually when lawyers appear before us, it's to put more judicial stuff into regulations and everything else. I heard David talk about how in Quebec maybe it's to de-judicialize the whole system. Well, which is it? Obviously we're trying to get to a good balance, but the fact is that it is a judicial system. Especially if you want all those fundamental rights protected, you have to have a judicial vehicle by which to do that.

I would agree that in order to get to an efficient system and not create so many bureaucratic barriers or a maze--21 or so.... But I'm trying to get a feeling for where Paul was coming from. A very good question is, where is that proper balance?

Mr. Gordon Maynard: David can correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think the point he's making is that if you have a good process at the front end to come to a decision, then there's going to be less judicial review of that decision, because the front-end decision is defendable. It was made in a proper process, with proper considerations. If you don't have that process, if you have what appears to be on the surface an arbitrary decision, where the person was not given an opportunity to make their response and have that evidence considered, then you're opening the door to judicial review, and it will become more judicious.

One of the values of having the appeal division over the years was that it was a formal process in which both sides put their cards on the table and had an open hearing and a written reason for the decision by an independent decision-maker.

Do you know what percentage of decisions by the appeal division are successfully judicially reviewed? It's less than 1%, because it's a good process.

What we have here in the regulations is bad process--no process.

The Chair: Okay.

Yvon.

[Translation]

Mr. Yvon Charbonneau (Anjou--Rivière-des-Prairies, Lib.): Mr. Chairman, I would ask our witnesses to talk about the consultations that preceded the issue of these draft regulations. The department told us that it held broad consultations across Canada, that all the experts had been heard and that the draft regulations were a distillation of a consensus among all those consulted. Obviously, the people who are saying this claim that the draft regulations genuinely fulfill the task they were intended for, which is to put the spirit of C-11 into practice.

However, what we hear from the public, the media and experts is that substantial corrections to the regulations are required, and that they may even have to be redone because they are not consistent with Bill C-11.

Could you please tell us about these consultations, and indicate whether they did indeed take place, to your knowledge. Were you involved in them? Did you have that opportunity to express different viewpoints than those we see in the draft regulations, or do you believe that a substantial portion of the regulations should be reformulated to reflect Bill C-11? In general, Canadian ministers and the Canadian government tend to say that Canada has an open-door immigration policy. Bill C-11 was sold to Canadians on the basis that it would facilitate immigration. But when we look at these draft regulations, we see that it would in fact do the opposite. Immigration will become more difficult, more complicated and more cumbersome. What is your view on this?

Â (1215)

[English]

Mr. Benjamin Trister: We all have to keep in mind that changes happen in the world and policy has to adapt to those changes. We were consulted, certainly. The department has put an extraordinary amount of effort, for example, into consideration of the selection criteria. But we didn't know what the pass mark was going to be. The pass mark, in fact, being set at 80 is what we think frustrates the notion parliamentarians had about what Bill C-11 would do.

There are other things where we were consulted and we were in favour, like in-Canada landing of skilled workers, but that is gone from these regulations. Minister Caplan said one of the reasons we need Bill C-11 was so that we could land people from inside Canada. It's gone, inexplicably.

Retroactivity is not an issue that was discussed. If you look at the transcripts of the remarks that were made by the minister and the officials on that issue, on Bill C-11, the impression was left that we want retroactivity because the new system's going to be more open, and so there's no problem applying it to.... You would deny the existing applicants the benefit of the new system. In fact, we know that a majority of people are now going to be eliminated from the system because of retroactivity. That's a recent development, because of the recent development of a backlog of such staggering numbers.

So I think that regardless of the levels of consultation that have taken place, things have changed in the process. The government has thrown a few things in there that we didn't know were coming. The imposition of a low-income figure is another one, as is the imposition of a 15-year education requirement, effectively, to get 20 points, which affects the skilled trades. So I think the department consulted and came up with what they thought was best for the country. We have different views about what we think is best. Hopefully we can share them and all agree on what's best.

Mr. Gordon Maynard: I think I'd like to add to that.

There are areas of regulations in the act the government did consult on, there are areas they did not consult on. In consultations on the regulations, we're never given a draft of the regulations. We don't see what's written until it's publicly gazetted. What we see are narrative statements that talk about the big picture, maybe with some detail to them. Then we have discussions about it. We still don't know what it's going to look like until we see the regulations. So in that light, has there been full consultation, and does this represent a consensus? No, there was never any consensus. In fact, I think there are some things in the regulatory impact analysis statement that suggest there was agreement or no concern about some provisions, when there was.

The Chair: David, do you have any comments?

Mr. David Chalk: Yes, I have one or two things.

First of all, I would agree with what was just said by some of my colleagues. What we were consulted on consistently was discussion documents, which have a good deal of detail on some issues but absolutely none on others.

On issues such as retroactivity, we certainly wanted to be consulted. We raised repeatedly the whole question of what the transitional measures would be, but we never got an answer. The first time we or anyone else knew what was going to happen was December 15, when we saw what was in the pre-publication of the regulations. And as I said, it wasn't for want of asking. It was certainly an issue that was raised and re-raised.

Another thing we don't have precludes really meaningful discussions on this, I think. What we have is a more or less convenient way to choose immigrants, and unless we know what we want to get, what the objective of the system is, our system is really not that much better than the American lottery system. We just have, without ever having discussed it—and it's true that this is going too far in some senses, because CIC has lots of studies—a set of criteria saying that what interests us is how much the immigrant makes in his first year in Canada.

That system also has criteria about the ethnic makeup of our immigration. The one-year LICO requirement also has serious consequences in terms of the ethnic makeup of our immigration. They may not be expressed consequences, but they are definitely real.

I think those are debates that are very important to what we are doing in this exercise, and ones we ought to have.

Â (1220)

The Chair: Noël.

[Translation]

Mr. Noël St-Pierre: Indeed, there was some consultation. I will not repeat what has already been said, namely, that there was a general document indicating that certain issues would be dealt with in the regulations. This is what we received.

However, the Quebec Bar Association really focused on the issues of administrative law, on the transparency of the procedures, on the importance of providing people with complete information, on the access that the application should have to the people who will be making the decisions, etc. Consequently, I don't think that we can talk about consensus with the remarks we have heard this morning.

[English]

The Chair: Madeleine.

[Translation]

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral: I would like to thank you all for making such clear presentations. Since there are four witnesses from Quebec, you will understand that I would like to first of all direct my questions to them.

You talked about the grid used in Quebec as part of the selection certificate process. What I understood from your comments, was that this was in fact a grid that worked quite well, however—and I think that everyone agrees with this, the grid that is proposed in the regulations is an elitist grid, one which will not make it easy for people to be accepted. That much is very clear. In the final analysis, this grid will be very unfair to people who in good faith, could contribute to the progress of this country.

I would like, if possible, for you to specify the major differences that exist between the grid that has been used in Quebec for quite a few years now and the grid before us.

Mr. David Chalk: In my opinion, the major difference between the system that we have in Quebec and the proposed federal system is that the Quebec system takes a lot more factors into account. A lot more factors are taken into consideration. Let me explain.

For instance, with respect to the education criterion, according to the federal system, so many points are given for someone with a masters and a Ph.D., but someone with a bachelors degree is docked five points, which is quite a significant number of points. You lose five points every time. What often happens in Quebec is that someone with a secondary school diploma plus two years is awarded seven points. If the person has one more year, he or she gets one more point. These variations are much more flexible.

The AQAADI suggested that the federal government adopt, using the education criteria as an example, a more nuanced grid. The answer we got was that this would be too complicated for the visa officers to administer. We are not convinced that this is so. We have not observed this type of confusion amongst the advisors in Quebec. What I'm trying to say, for example, is that in Quebec we adopted something which is similar to what we have at the federal level. These are types of equivalency grids that enable the advisors to accurately match the diploma that the applicant has with the corresponding number of points.

Quebec also considers more factors. For example, it considers the spouse's years of professional activity not only in terms of educational level but also in terms of language skills, knowledge of Quebec, visits to Quebec and even prospecting, etc.

Now, at the federal level, you have before you a system whereby the person has to obtain 80 points out of a 100, which is really a very strict requirement, whereas in Quebec, the pass mark for a married person is 68 points out of little more than a 100 and, for a single person, 60 points out of a few points less. However, it is easier for the person to compensate for any shortcomings than it is under the federal grid system.

Â (1225)

Mr. Noël St-Pierre: Very briefly, I would also say that one of the aspects that may make a difference, is that Quebec established, a few years ago, some preselection forms, which somewhat resemble the grid that has been proposed here. These are preliminary applications. The experience was not very good because the information that the person could submit was significantly reduced. What happened was that the persons concerned more or less sent in a selection certificate application, even if there were costs involved, which is not the case with other types of summary applications.

Another difference that exists pertains to the fact that the Quebec advisors seem to want or encourage, in case of doubt, an interview with a person. And a great deal of discretion is left to the interviewer to determine whether or not the initiative demonstrated by the person, during the interview, is enough to overcome certain problems or shortcomings in the area of, for example, education. Indeed, we have observed that there seems to be an attitude that appears to encourage obtaining the best possible information and, at the same time, the immigration of people who appear to be resourceful and relatively competent.

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral: The Quebec Bar Association's presentation refers to the inequality that exists between skilled workers and entrepreneurs. This struck me too. As regards skilled workers, we favour training that is very different from the average training of Canadians. As regards entrepreneurs, we require a passing grade of 35 out of 100. Consequently, on the one hand, we give preference to money and, on the other hand, we give greater importance to the degree of training.

You stated that it would be important to establish some correlation with the Quebec law. Could you elaborate a little bit on what you meant?

Mr. Noël St-Pierre: Yes, very briefly. Earlier, when I talked about some correlation with the Quebec regulation, I was referring to the conditions pertaining to the people who are accepted. For example, the draft regulations more or less transfer the conditions that Quebec has set for workers, however, the conditions for business people and investors are significantly less demanding.

And that creates a little bit of difficulty because, in the current situation, somebody who creates a business in order to obtain his immigrant visa must also create a certain number of jobs after establishing this business. Immigration Canada is responsible for checking, later on, once this immigrant has settled in Canada, whether he has fulfilled his obligations.

At the very least, we need to simply transfer the conditions. This is what I was talking about earlier; I made no mention of the other point you raised.

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral: Mr. Chairman, may I ask a third question?

Mr. Patrice Brunet: I would like to add something, Ms. Dalphond-Guiral.

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral: Yes, go ahead.

Mr. Patrice Brunet: You asked what was so revolutionary about the Quebec selection grid, which was established or revised in 1996, if I remember correctly. It's the EPM factor, employability and professional mobility.

Up until then, the federal grid and the Quebec grid were inflexible. The new grid that is proposed here is even more inflexible. Quebec responded to the situation by being proactive, in a very positive way, by trying to establish objective factors leading to a subjective assessment. This is what is fundamental: they found a solution that works. The situation has been in use for six years and works very well.

The EPM factor considers, by means of a sub-criterion, certain factors such as age, education and language so that we can determine objectively whether or not the person is young, educated and speaks French or English. If that's the case, this person should by rights be able to quickly enter the labour market. We were successful in meeting the challenge of making the subjective factors more objective. We suggested the model to the federal government, it did not adopt it, but we still maintained that it is important.

When I said that this did not result in any opposition, either from the lawyers or the applicants, that has enabled us to explain, with a great deal of transparency, why someone who is 45 years of age, has little education and does not speak French is not eligible, whereas his 28-year old cousin, who speaks French and has high-school education qualifies. We can explain our decision with supporting points.

Going back to what Mr. St-Pierre was saying, recourse under section 40 is fundamental. I will take a minute to explain this to you.

Â (1230)

Mr. Noël St-Pierre: I had planned to explain that in English. This would be helpful given...

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral: There is an excellent translation system.

Mr. Noël St-Pierre: I agree, Ms. Dalphond-Guiral.

[English]

The application we have in Quebec is a very nuanced system and it seems to work fairly well partly because we collaborate very closely with the representatives who actually apply it outside Canada.

There are a number of factors taken into account that, as my colleague was just saying, are subjective factors in effect. It would be interesting to look at the use of discretionary power--how it is given--because what we seem to see in the proposed regulations is that people are going overboard with what they think to be objective factors. Basically they lose the human being in the process.

The Chair: Thank you.

Madeleine.

[Translation]

Mr. Patrice Brunet: I would simply like to conclude, Mr. St-Pierre, by briefing relating an example that worked under the Quebec system, but which would never work under the federal system. This pertains to the application of section 40, which deals with the discretionary factor.

A few months ago, a 42-year old applicant, energetic beyond belief, who didn't have the points he needed in Quebec, met with me. I nevertheless filed his application, availing myself of section 40, and the applicant was selected. He managed to overturn the immigration advisor's decision.

If this type of application had been filed under the federal grid system, the application would have been turned down without the person ever having been given an interview. This is where fundamental Canadian values come into play. We are a nation based on traditions of immigration, commitments to help build this country. If we close the door on dynamic people who want to contribute to the development of our country, we are making a serious mistake.

Thank you.

[English]

The Chair: Bravo. Now, section 40, just so that we understand it, obviously must relate to Quebec lines.

Mr. Patrice Brunet: Section 40 is Quebec regulations.

The Chair: It's just that we wanted to look at it. To see for Canada the inspiration for immigration that's in the Quebec statute would be absolutely fantastic.

Okay, thank you.

Mr. Patrice Brunet: It's equivalent to subsection 114(2) in the discretionary powers it gives--the old subsection 114(2).

The Chair: In the present act? Okay.

Mark.

[Translation]

Mr. Mark Assad (Gatineau, Lib.): Thank you very much, gentlemen. It was very clear and informative.

I do not want to repeat what my colleague Mr. Charbonneau said, but I want to stress the point that here, in this committee, when we discussed Bill C-11, what we had in mind did not show up in the regulations. There is no doubt about that. The way that many different organizations in the country adapted to it clearly showed... Many of them came here. They heard the committee members, and I am sure that they, also, clearly understood that the regulations did not reflect it at all.

Mr. Maynard raised a very good point, namely that despite all the new regulations, there was nothing to cover the behaviour of officers abroad. It is an excellent point. I am sure that the committee will pay attention to this point because, just like you, when we receive people's submissions, it is very difficult for us to get the information we need in order to be able to get a general idea of an issue, if not an in-depth analysis. Very often, decisions are made by officers abroad. We want to find out why an officer would have made that particular decision.

You raised points that we will certainly take into consideration. There are many things to review. I am convinced that our committee's chairman will be able to pass this message very clearly.

Â (1235)

[English]

The Chair: It's just as well as the parliamentary secretary transmits the message. But we're going to do it all cooperatively, I'm sure.

I want to ask, because obviously we're going to be dealing with a number of issues, and you as well as the people before you have pointed out certain regulations that need improvements and others that are not even there.... The biggest hurdle we'll have in terms of making recommendations to the government and the minister is how to deal with the 225,000 or 250,000 people already in the system who are now wondering where their lives are.

We have some new people who in fact started to apply as of December 15. They were told they would have to apply under the new rules, yet the new rules haven't even been adopted. I don't understand how these people can even be told this when Parliament hasn't even approved these regulations. We're making the situation worse.

I know some of you have some good ideas. Maybe it can be addressed in three ways: retroactivity, the grid, and how June 28 factors into dealing with the retroactivity equation. We all know the grid needs improvements. It ought to be positive, about how we can invite people into this country, as opposed to how we can make sure they never get here. The bar could be either be high or low, depending on what attitude...how positive we want to become about immigration. It's a combination of all three.

Maybe, Ben, you could tell me what the correlation is between the grid and retroactivity, as an example. We have to solve that problem in the first instance, in my opinion, or we're going to have one huge mess that's going to get even bigger.

Mr. Benjamin Trister: Thank you very much for the question.

On retroactivity, there are two aspects. How are we going to treat the people who have already applied, and how are we going to treat people in the future? Since under the new regulations you have to meet the selection criteria the day that you apply, the day that your visa is issued, and the day that you land, this means you can be retroactively failed under the proposed regulations even if you've already got your visa in your hand, if your circumstances change. If Argentina's currency got devalued and you no longer meet the low-income cutoff, you could fail.

The result is that when a company is trying to recruit somebody to Canada and the prospective employee says they're happy to come on a temporary work permit but wants some assurance that they're going to be able to transition into immigration, companies cannot do that. We cannot say to people, “These are the criteria that are going to apply”, because even if we put a selection grid on the web that says that these are the points we're dealing with on applications today, that would only be misleading because we can change the rules at any time.

It is not constructive to have a system that is anything other than one where the points that exist on the day you apply are the points under which your application is assessed. We're competing with other countries. That's what they do. That's what we need to do. So that's the issue of future retroactivity.

On past retroactivity, it's clear from the government's own regulatory impact analysis statement that it acknowledged that the reason they adopted the 75-point pass mark instead of the 80-point pass mark is that people didn't know that the system was going to retroactively change--because the website said the contrary. For years, including until several days after December 15, the website said that if you apply, your points are locked in, and if we make a change, we'll only apply the change if it's to your benefit.

It's bad for Canada to say, “We can change the rules on you; we can back away from our promises to you”. Giving back the money is not the solution, because it doesn't solve the problem of the uncertainty that retroactivity creates.

So why does the government want retroactivity? The reason is that, for them, it's the simplest way to deal with a backlog that they themselves permitted to grow. After all, we have levels control under our current selection grid. We continued to give them eight. We could have reduced it to zero and reduced the influx of applications. To be fair to them, I'm sure they were very busy with September 11 and Bill C-11 and had too many issues on their plate, but the reality is we've got what I've been told are 590,000 individuals in the backlog and you have to calculate down to see how many people would be affected.

What they've said is they'd rather get rid of those cases because they think this new system is going to be better for Canada and produce better economic immigrants. The trouble is that it obviously won't, because the pass mark is set at 80. I'll give you an example--I can give you a couple.

One guy I know is a director of photography for Billy Joel concerts and Sting, and the guy has a resumé that's pages and pages long. He would fail, because he gets 69 points under the new grid because he's 45 years of age instead of 44. Even if he had an informal job offer and an educated spouse--which he doesn't because he's single--he's not going to make it.

Similarly, I have another client with a master's degree in computer science from MIT, fluent in English, got the maximum points for age and experience, and he's not going to get in because this system of a pass mark of 80 requires you to have points for adaptability.

The question is that if you set a pass mark at 80 and you apply the pass mark retroactively, you know you're going to lose the vast majority of applicants--probably anywhere from 80% to 90% of those people are going to fail. All those people are going to speak badly about our immigration system because the rules were changed on them.

What do we need to do? Retroactivity is not going to work the way the government wants it to, because the government says it can just post something on the website and that's it, that's the end of it. We say that the courts are going to tell you that procedural fairness says you have to write to each applicant and you have to say that they have 60 days to tell us how they meet the new criteria. If you do that, you're going to be spending time assessing the cases, and retroactivity was designed so that you wouldn't have to spend that time.

So retroactivity is not going to work for you. And if that's not going to work for you, what the CBA thinks you should do is keep the integrity of the system, lose retroactivity as a concept, review the applications that you have now under the criteria that we promised to review them under, but immediately change levels control down to zero and maybe address personal suitability and discretion in some way, if you need to, to further cull the backlog, if you will. And use the time to instead come up with a new system that will work. If you need a pass mark, if you need retroactivity as the only tool...the minister, I believe, said maybe what we'll do is solve this problem by lowering the pass mark. If we lower the pass mark, then retroactivity shouldn't be so much of an issue because people will qualify.

Â (1240)

The trouble with that is that this system doesn't have an occupation list. It's virtually open to everybody who is a skilled worker. So if you don't have a pass mark of 80 and you don't have retroactivity, you're going to have too many applicants, and you'll undermine the system because it will take too many years to get here. So you have to change the intake model. You have to say we're going to fix the problems in the selection criteria, which we can do by tweaking. It's not as if these are without merit. They have merit, but there are some problems. We should get to a pass mark of 70, but if we're going to do that, we have to change how we...we shouldn't have to accept every application that comes in, and make the lineup long. We can use different intake models that other countries use, like the United States, where you don't need retroactivity to stem the flow.

So I hope this helps you, because the idea is no retroactivity, no urgency to have the new rules. Fix the new rules. At the same time as you apply the new rules, apply a new intake model, and everything will work out just fine.

The Chair: Okay.

Patrice.

Mr. Patrice Brunet: I think we've always taken great pride in the fairness of our immigration system, and this arbitrary date of June 28 is completely unfair. Where does it come from?

As you all know, the applications are processed according to different speeds, depending on where we file them. The Paris processing centre is extremely fast. I won't get into the delays of the Beijing processing centre--

The Chair: Four years.

Mr. Patrice Brunet:Four to eight years, right.

So if someone has filed an application before December 15, they're likely to be called in for an interview before June 28.

The Chair: Or you'll be so old you won't be able to qualify by the time that happens.

Mr. Patrice Brunet:That's right.

So it's all about having a fair system, and these regulations certainly don't reflect that.

The big question is, we're talking about a new set of rules of the game, and the answer we're getting from CIC is that they don't want to play with two rules--a rule before and a rule after. They just want to clear the board and have new rules, right now.

The question from us has never been answered. Why don't you play with two rules--what has been filed before a date and what has been filed after a date? And after a few years it will just clear everything out. It's a very simple solution and it reflects what's been said before.

Â (1245)

Mr. Benjamin Trister: It also reflects past history. That's exactly what we do now. We run two systems.

Mr. David Chalk: I have a couple of brief remarks.

Canada can afford to process the applications already in the inventory under the old criteria. It cannot afford to apply retroactivity, because of the damage that it would do to our immigration program. That's the first thing.

The other thing is that there are ways--working with, as Patrice was saying, two systems. Once we've decided where we want to go with this, CIC may be able to go through inventory and eliminate from inventory by selection a certain number of good applications that are obviously going to pass under the new criteria, and they may have efficiencies. They've been actually very good at looking at centralized processing in Canada, and at language testing and other criteria that will allow more efficient and fair decision-making. We have thoroughly approved those efforts and we continue to do so.

As I said, if they had a workable model, we would still be here saying that Canada made a promise to the people who made an application, and that promise has to be kept. However, if those same people happen to qualify under new criteria, they're not going to complain.

The Chair: Give the benefit of the doubt to the applicant, depending on what that final grid looks like.

Noël.

Mr. Noël St-Pierre: No, I wanted to talk about another issue that has not been raised, but if there are no immediate questions...okay.

We mentioned at the end of the document that it's a situation...and this gets back to the whole question of Immigration Canada seeming to try to find objective criteria that are very easy to apply rather than training people to actually take into account the real situation of the human beings they're dealing with. It's a situation where permanent residents lose their residence status because they're out of Canada. The act allows other factors and the physical presence of the people here to be taken into account, but there's nothing in the regulations.

Â (1250)

The Chair: Well, there is, but it's wishy-washy. That was one of the things I raised--

Mr. Noël St-Pierre: If you work for a Canadian corporation, fine, but what happens if you work for a development program that is in fact funded by CIDA but where the direct employer is a local agency in the country where you're working. You either don't go or you lose your permanent resident status.

What happens if you go and take care of your dying mother or your sick mother? All of you, if you're from multi-ethnic ridings, have probably seen how difficult it is to bring parents into this country even if they can be sponsored. They won't get the visa, okay? They will not.

What we've gone through is that I've had people, some of them actually members of the Immigration and Refugee Board, who have tried to bring their mother into this country from Morocco. They had the money to pay for health care here, yet the officials said, no, your real goal is to sponsor her and to have her stay. That was not the goal; it was to have the mother die here.

Now, the problem with cases like that is that if you go and take care of your mother, you will lose your permanent resident status. That type of incredible hardship, we deal with that. Immigration Canada seems to be saying, we don't want to deal with those human beings anymore. On top of that, it's an officer who will take care of them, not an adjudicator who'll look at the real objective or intention of the people concerned.

The extreme example, if you wish, is that if I go back to a country where there may be civil war and I can't come back here, if I'm imprisoned in my country of origin, for example, or forced into military service, I will lose my permanent resident status in Canada. My intention was to go there for a vacation and just perhaps see relatives. There are questions like that. And now just imagine how that's going to impact on the people living in your ridings who will be contacting you and saying, my God, Canadians could not imagine something that horrible.

It was because of issues like this that I said at the very outset, we have to look at drafting regulations from both sides: the situation of the person going through the procedures and living with them and of course the viewpoint of the administration applying them. There has to be a balance.

What I see here is that the balance, unfortunately, does not seem to exist in most of the parts. There are some very good things; for example, that we now can change status to become a temporary worker or student, which was not the case before. That's a very great improvement, one that will make lives easier, but that thinking does not seem to have gone through the draft stage.

Thank you very much.

The Chair: Well, thank you all very much. I think we've had a very constructive hour and a half with some of the suggestions and some of the insight you have.

Listen, most of the members of Parliament are immigration consultants too, I can tell you. Our case load is 70% to 80% of our time, depending where you are, on immigration cases. We know what you're going through, because we have exactly the same kind of frustrations.

All your input has been very useful and constructive, not only on Bill C-11 but on these regulations. We want to continue to work with you, and you can give us some insight, who knows? We've got a little more time to look at them a lot more carefully, but thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us.

We're adjourned until Monday at 3:30 p.m.