This is the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, meeting number 16, Thursday, May 13, 2010. The orders of the day are pursuant to the order of reference of Thursday, April 29, 2010: Bill C-11, an act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the Federal Courts Act.
For the first hour today we have, from the Centre des femmes de Verdun, Annie Kouamy, community advocate, and Alein Ortégon, community advocate. All the way from Vancouver we have Richard Kurland, who is an attorney.
Good afternoon.
Centre des femmes de Verdun, you have up to ten minutes between the two of you. You may begin.
Welcome to the committee.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The bill concerns us for several reasons. First, the establishment of a list of safe third countries creates two categories of refugees. Such a list discriminates against women, because it does not take into account their status as women. Furthermore, this would impede access to a fair and independent hearing and would not take into account the enforcement of laws in these host third countries considered to be safe where attitudes do not change as quickly as legislation.
The short timeframe before the holding of a hearing would not allow women enough time to gather the evidence they need to have a fair hearing, especially since some of them speak neither French nor English. Furthermore, some women arrive here in an absolutely disastrous psychological state and require psychological follow-up in order to undertake a de-victimization process. This short timeframe would therefore exert additional pressure on them.
In our view, the bill would promote a dehuminization of the refugee protection process and would render Canada an accomplice of sorts of countries where unfair treatment is inflicted upon women, and lesbians in particular. These countries have adopted certain laws in order to please, to some extent, the international community.
I will now give the floor to my colleague, who will talk to you about the changes that the women's centre would like to see made.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Essentially, I have two issues today. First, I don't think this bill goes far enough. Allow me to explain. At its heart, our refugee system is designed to extend protection. State protection, if it's adequate, should include an examination of the question of whether the protection is readily available and truly accessible when the country of alleged persecution is a member of a group of states that provides quick and easy mobility to the person concerned.
Here is what I mean. A person within the European Community can travel freely to another member country of the European Community. The practice is that they land at an airport, like Heathrow, and complete a form allowing them to enter the country and work legally. The problem in our law is that for refugee protection, the test is based on citizenship. We need to move beyond that.
In World War II and afterwards, the essence of protection--convention refugee protection--at the time did not include, because it did not exist, the right to quick and easy mobility enjoyed today in parts of Europe.
The same principles that apply in international law for refugee protection, including safe third country and including internal flight alternative, should equally apply to members of European states. Citizens of Hungary or the Czech Republic need not come to Canada to claim fear of persecution when all they need to do is travel a few hundred kilometres down the road to a member county, such as the U.K., France, or Germany.
What we need to do in our laws is to recognize this fact and consider eligibility to the Canadian refugee determination system when there is such easy access to sanctuary and a zone free of persecution. That's the first issue.
Let me talk numbers and money. If implemented, this jigging of the design would stave off, at a minimum, 100 claims a month. When you start to do the math, that's $2.5 million a month based on $25,000 per case, or $25 million, give or take, in a year. So over the five-year period, that's close to $125 million.
If you look at the intake of claims from Hungary in 2010, you're looking at close to double that number. So you're talking close to $200 million a year to $250 million over that time period. These are savings that can be generated. There's no reason the Canadian taxpayer has to foot the bill when claimants from Hungary can travel to Germany, France, and the U.K., where they're allowed to legally and safely work.
This brings me to my second issue. You have heard testimony, I'm sure, about the operational concerns of delivering refugee kits or packages, and being ready to go to a hearing in 60 days. I've been a member of the Quebec Bar long enough that I was participating back in 1989 in the old credible-basis system. The success of a fast-track process lies in appropriate compensation for the invaluable cog, the lawyer.
I confess that I'm a former national chair of the immigration and citizenship section of the Canadian Bar Association, and I have a sword that cuts both ways. The problem I see in the existing framework, in which legal aid is provincially delivered and the money flows from the feds, is that there's, to put it not too mildly, a skimming off, at the provincial end, of federal funds once they enter the provincial legal aid system.
At the end of the day, you'll get a bigger bang for your buck by directly financing lawyers for the refugee determination system, along the same lines as occurred in 1989, than would be the case if the same amount of money were to be channelled in provincially through provincial legal aid systems.
If there's a true intent to deliver on a promise of 60 or 90 days from an oral hearing, omitting compensation to the refugee bar should be carefully considered. The $125 million savings generated by the design adjustment to make ineligible claims, for example, from Hungary is more than enough to offset the direct federal financing to Canada's refugee bar. Administration would be a combination of IRB operational administrators together with the regional interests of the refugee bar in determining a list of available and competent lawyers.
Those essentially were my two issues that I thought I could subsume in the time provided.
:
Naturally, a brilliant question.
I think implementation has to be done right. If you need to take baby steps, take the baby steps. Experience shows that rushing to the finish line results in an inadequate structure and expensive mistakes, including a potential loss of life and removal from Canada. It's not worth that price. Take baby steps to get it right and have very strong transitional measures between old inventory and new.
My concern is with the refugee appeal division. That's been delayed a little too long. Is it possible, given the limited resources, to bring up both towers simultaneously? I'm not sure, but I'm very sensitive to the point.
To our friends in Quebec, I'm going to give you a list of recommendations and amendments that I am going to be pushing for, that the New Democratic Party is going to be pushing for, and see if you would agree with most of them:
Make more time on the front-end--i.e., more than eight days.
Delete the safe countries designation.
Hire people who are qualified to make sure it's an open hiring process and not partisan.
Allow the humanitarian and compassionate application in some of the most serious cases, like domestic violence, etc.
Make sure the provinces have enough funding for legal aid, so that the claimants would be properly represented. Right now, sometimes it takes a long time to get legal aid because there's not enough funding.
Make sure the implementation wouldn't be so uneven that you shut down everything. The appeal division is not set up, so that's not fair. But if you just set up the appeal division and everything else is not ready, that doesn't work either. So it's an even implementation.
Do you disagree with any of those recommendations or the amendments that I would want to put in this bill?
:
I am not talking about myself, but rather about the Centre des femmes de Verdun. The centre would like there to be fair and independent access and that the officials in charge of welcoming these women and holding the hearings for them be independent individuals under the influence of no one.
The second thing, as you say, would be to provide sufficient means to qualified persons, in other words individuals who have a good knowledge of the individual in front of them. One must begin by knowing what is really going on in the country and what the socio-political situation there is, in order to be in a position to provide effective help to the claimant. These people must have access to legal aid within a reasonable period of time if we want to allow these women and these men who are seeking asylum to be able, as my colleague was saying, to tell their story with complete peace of mind and without any psychological pressure, and to allow them to make a proper application for asylum in Canada.
I will let my colleague add something else.
:
Ghana offers an example, where being gay or lesbian is illegal. Yet it's on England's list of being a safe country.
I want to come back to Mr. Kurland.
In October last year a report came out. It's actually an audit done by the Public Service Commission. They found that half of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada appointments were not made based on merit or guiding principles of fairness, transparency, access, and representativeness; that 61%, they discovered, were made based on partisan considerations, and that “preferential treatment” was given—these are not my words, but are from the audit—which is a serious problem.
If this bill passes, we are looking at hiring 100-plus officers. These are officers who will be hired, I assume, by the Public Service Commission through the chair of the Immigration and Refugee Board. I assume that would be the case; I'm not 100% sure. If it is the case, how do we make sure that hiring these people is done in a way that is fair, transparent, open, completely based on merit, and not on who you may know?
:
A distinction has to be drawn between a bogus claimant—someone who intends to abuse Canadian generosity—and someone who just misses the mark. You can have good-faith claimants who simply fail the test of persecution because of their personal circumstances. However, when there is a rather large influx of claims from certain countries in which the ground events tend not to establish the fundamentals of individualized persecution, the alarm bells ring, and when I see a couple of hundred claims a month flowing in from a member country of the EEC, I wonder.
In my case, I went downstairs. Our office is on the ninth floor in a certain building in Vancouver. On the eighth floor is the British Consulate. I asked them what their statistics of refusal were for people from Hungary or the Czech Republic who come to England and who fill out a form that enables them to work freely in the United Kingdom. What, I asked, is your refusal rate? She said they have to fill out those forms to pay taxes, and yes, they can remain in the U.K. That's the group I'm focusing on. Overall, no matter what system we have—medicare, refugee—you are going to have a certain level of abuse, but when do you throw out the entire barrel of apples? We're not at that point generally, but I think, looking at the Hungarian situation, that we have a problem.
I'm going to ask a couple of questions of the folks who are here with us, if I may.
Thank you again for coming.
I want to go back to the original eight days that are in place. Do you believe that eight days is enough for somebody who comes over, fleeing from whatever situation? Do they have enough time to put their facts together? Should they be given something like 30 days for the original application? If they don't have their paperwork, should they be given additional time to get that paperwork? Do you think that 60 days is enough for a second hearing, or should they be given four months? What is your feeling on this?
:
The eight days is a good tool. With due respect, I don't buy into the vulnerable, ignorant, scared claimant who needs to be hand-held. I agree, what we need to do is to provide training on the intake side. We need eight and sixty. If, for operational reasons, the financial consideration to make eight and sixty happen is not there, we have to then push back in time the eight and sixty.
The other design is to make the information the tribunal will be using as transparent as possible. One of the defects in the early days of Canada's refugee determination system was the opaqueness. Behind the scenes, the refugee judges—board members—were using information not available to counsel. Parliamentary inquiry led by Professor Hathaway back in 1993 exposed this. That is a guard.
At the back end, we need consistent application of transparent guidelines for what will happen to the individual post-refusal. We also are missing something very important. Deny access to the provincial immigration intake system. What's missing is wording to the effect that you are not eligible to be a provincial nominee when you are a refused refugee. It has to be done in the statute; otherwise, you're still baiting the path with state candy, as I call it.
Those are the fundamentals, and overall you have to resource CBSA properly to provide a fast removal system at the back end of the process. All else fails if you continue to reward overstays when the failed refugee is lingering.
I am going to follow up with you, Mr. Kurland.
During your presentation, you talked about the concept of the European Union. Indeed, we know that people can move about from one region to another. You rightly said that the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees was drafted at a time when this union did not even exist and that the territorial principle contained in the Convention is that of the borders of a country. You would like to see that changed. I am all for it, but Canada is a signatory to that Convention. If I understand your proposals correctly, Canada should go ahead even before any amendments are made to the Convention. Should we not, in the end, respect the Convention?
:
Well, I looked at the proposed pay grade for these new board members or civil servants, and it's up there. The quality of decision-maker is up there. The eight-day tape would disclose, unlike a transcript, the sense of whether that claimant understood the nature and quality of the questions.
So it's not a hearing on day eight; it's simple questions. The trade-off is, if you finance the preparation early on in the process, you'll save big in terms of time and resources as the system rolls out. You have to invest in the lawyers.
My comments are that whether it's eight days, six months, or six years, we're talking about feelings. They want to feel good before sharing with the lawyer...? My experience is that the women from Africa and China who I dealt with were...I wouldn't say hardened veterans, but they put some of my family members to shame in terms of what they came away from and in terms of their self-confidence and esteem in being able to get around all of the international security safeguards to reach Canadian soil.
These are not marshmallows landing in Canada; these are unbelievable human beings who are brave. When I spoke with them, they knew what happened to them. They don't need a lawyer to tell them what the refugee law is in order to get accepted; they relayed their story plainly.
Sorry, Mr. Chairman, I got carried away.
:
Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to start our second hour. We have two guests today, two witnesses directly from Niagara-on-the-Lake.
From the City of Niagara Falls, we have Mr. Ted Salci, who is the mayor, and Mr. Peter Partington, who is the chairman of the Niagara Region.
The two of you could make an introductory presentation, if you wish, or we could jump right into questions. Each of you could speak up to ten minutes if you wish. It's a long time, but you have that time.
:
Mr. Chairman, perhaps I'll just take two to three minutes initially to talk about, first, the current process, which of course takes up to two years to complete and certainly has an impact on the ability of individual refugee claimants and families to establish their long-term goals and plans, six months to receive a work permit, and certainly an increased reliance on Ontario Works.
Ontario Works is delivered by the Region of Niagara, and it creates a negative stereotype for immigrants, being seen as placing stress on the taxpayer.
In the region, we support Bill . We see it's intended to provide a smoother, faster process. Certainly the initial screening by the Immigration and Refugee Board will be held in Toronto within eight days of arriving and the whole process is to be completed within six months. So we see that as positive steps forward in the process.
We appreciate the contribution that immigrants make to the Region of Niagara. We process through the Peace Bridge entry in the region 600 refugee claimants a month. About 13% of them stay in Niagara, and the rest move on to other municipalities.
We believe the proposed bill will certainly make it much better for refugee claimants, the legitimate refugee claimants, in terms of settling; and of course it will help the Region of Niagara because it will reduce, to some extent, our hostel bed capacity. Currently, 15% of our beds are taken up by refugee claimants. As well, it will go some way to removing the burden on our taxpayers through the Ontario Works social assistance requirements. But above all, I think it is helpful to the refugee claimants.
Those are my comments.
:
Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.
I'd like to begin by saying that aggressive refugee reforms are certainly needed, and we see this need in our community every day. I can tell you that we certainly get people contacting our office and the local offices of our federal members for assistance with the immigration process, because it is lengthy and it is cumbersome. And some applicants are blatantly abusing the system.
Being a border community, we see people trying to enter our country to work, to live under our democratic laws, and for the most part to become Canadian citizens living in our cities. We also see first-hand the great efforts made by the Canada Border Services Agency to protect and patrol our borders, as many abuse the opportunity to come to Canada and attempt to take advantage of the social systems we have in place here.
Speaking from the perspective of a border community, as the mayor I can tell you that we rely on the free and easy travel of people into and out of our country. We recognize the great importance of allowing people into our country to grow our communities, to attract business and tourism, and to support our population.
We certainly appreciate the sensitivity of this subject. We know the crucial role immigrants play in building our communities.
I see the proposed amendments to Bill as a step in the right direction. To support those coming in and to tighten up the rules for those who currently aim to take advantage, we need to speed up the process for successful claimants so that people can get on with their lives in Canada. We need to weed out those who have untoward intentions and get them back to their countries swiftly and effectively. This legislative reform is certainly imperative. It's an opportunity to improve the system. The result will be that it will quickly become fairer for those who are negotiating their claims, as they will be taken care of in an expeditious way. And it will be fairer to the rest of Canadians, who pay for the social support systems that refugees without income rely upon.
The bill proposes to reduce the length of time a claim takes from start to finish. This will translate into a huge relief of the burden on our taxpayers. Instead of it taking an average of four and a half years for an unsuccessful claimant to go through our system and be removed from our country, under the revised law a claim would be processed in under a year. This translates, of course, into substantial savings.
The quick removal of failed claimants from the country would help discourage individuals from using the asylum system to try to jump the immigration queue to enter Canada. It would mean that unsuccessful candidates would not be supported by our social systems any longer than necessary. In turn, this would deter bogus claimants.
It's important to look at the savings that would result. It's estimated that each failed asylum case currently costs taxpayers approximately $50,000 in social service and health costs. With a faster timeframe for cases, this cost would be reduced to approximately $29,000. The savings for our taxpayers would certainly be substantial.
It will also ensure that valid claims will be processed in a timely manner so that successful refugees can get on with starting their lives in our country. They can get established, get gainful long-term employment, and start contributing to society in a meaningful way much sooner.
I support the faster process that will see claimants get their first interview within eight days of arriving in our country. Under the amended legislation, the first hearing will be 60 days after the interview. This is certainly a positive move. It is a distinct improvement over the current average of 19 months for claims to be heard by the IRB. Most importantly, the people who need help and protection will get it more quickly.
Currently, the U.K., Ireland, France, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, and other countries have a “safe country of origin” policy. By engaging in a similar system, we will be saving our taxpayers money and time. We will also be allowing those from unsafe countries an appeal process. Implementing an appeal process will allow new information to be brought forward by claimants from unsafe countries. All eligible asylum claimants, including those from safe countries, of course, will continue to have a hearing by the Refugee Protection Division.
With its commitment to increase the annual refugee target by 2,500 people, the new legislation will allow the government to help more refugees resettle in Canada.
Another benefit is that the government will be able to increase resettlement assistance program funding to $54 million, which will be the first increase we've seen in more than ten years.
Ultimately, I see the bill as addressing a need. It will help the people who are going through the system now. It will help those who need our protection to get it quickly and efficiently. And it will weed out those who are abusing the system and get them back to their countries without the extensive burden on our taxpayers that exists now.
Thank you very much.
I know the Federation of Canadian Municipalities is meeting soon, some time in June, I believe. I know that city councils and municipalities all across Canada have been asking the federal government to assist in programs for English as a second language, settlement adaptation programs for immigrants, whether or not they're refugees, and some kinds of housing support, for example, because new immigrants, in the first half-year or year, need to settle, and they need services and support. I have found that a lot of municipalities are saying that this is good for our towns or cities, but the property tax base is not enough to assist these folks to settle in, be they refugees, not refugees, or landed immigrants. Are you finding the same thing that I'm describing in other cities, big or small, across Canada?
To our two witnesses, thank you for attending. I know you are both busy, and the fact that we have some participation from both the regional and municipal level in this process is a good indication that we're trying to get witnesses from across a swath of different areas with respect to the bill. So I thank both of you for taking time out today.
Mr. Partington, one of the things you commented on was the issue of the approximate cost of at least $1 million to regional taxpayers to fund the programs that assist those who are at the Buffalo border, at the Niagara Falls border, or the Lewiston border and come over. We find a way to help them, and through municipal and regional property taxes we are actually taking on that responsibility.
One of the things I found interesting in your comments was that it isn't just the federal and provincial governments that are under significant financial pressure with respect to our refugee system. Costs are also incurred by municipalities--especially border municipalities and regions--across our country. So I would just like to get your thoughts or comments on that financial responsibility that you've taken. Is that a responsibility that is given to you by the provincial or federal government, or is that just something that Niagara assumes, based on its location to the border?
:
Well, in some cases, as I mentioned, Mr. Dykstra, such as the crisis we had a few years ago, we have reacted instinctively. We felt it was our obligation to do it. We spent the money that was necessary first, way above and beyond what the normal costs would be. And we went to the provincial and federal governments after the fact. But our taxpayers were there first, and we're pleased that we did that.
When we talk about the cost, as I indicated, we bear the cost proudly. We see the value of having immigrants, whether they come in as landed immigrants or refugee claimants, who settle in Niagara. And it seems to me, under this Bill --we've done a quick estimate--to the extent that the number of days before the first interview would be reduced from the average of 14 or 15 down to eight, there would probably be a very modest cost savings, about $22,000, to the region. With respect to savings for social service costs through Ontario Works, they would probably be in the neighbourhood of $125,000 to $150,000.
But I want to underline that it's not the cost that matters but rather the importance to the people who are coming here to claim permanent status as residents of Canada. That says everything about their ability to start fresh in a new land quickly, to move ahead, to maintain their self-esteem, and to look after themselves the way they should. So even though I talk about the savings there could be, this goes directly to assisting immigrants, in this case refugees, in a much better way than what currently exists.
:
I want to steer the next part of the conversation to one of the issues we struggle with here and why the bill is before us. From a federal perspective, we want to do what you're doing in Niagara, and that is help more refugees.
We need to help more true refugees than just those who apply because we have a system that allows them to do so, as we can see in terms of some of the issues we have faced with some of the countries that have individuals who have come here.
It would seem to me that in the region of Niagara, the region of Peel, and the region of Windsor, from your perspective on the funds that you are spending, you want to spend them and you want, from a responsible perspective, to make sure you are helping those who are really in need.
:
Mr. Dykstra, I'd like to weigh in, if I may.
As the mayor, many times I have refugees coming to my office. In their country, of course, the mayor has different powers. They come to my office and they are anxious to have their matters dealt with. They're living at very loose ends. They're usually employed and want to be able to get on with their lives.
I believe if we could expedite the process to get these people settled and accommodated and productive, it's going to help everybody. It gets them off our social welfare costs, and it certainly helps them become productive Canadian residents and citizens.
During my first intervention, I tried to demonstrate that in wanting to speed things up, we sometimes risk obtaining the opposite effect. I subscribe to the government's aim of processing the files more quickly. I believe this is what you wish as well. However, in wanting to skip over a few steps, the risk to my mind is that things could take even longer. This is why I was saying that if we impose the holding of a hearing and if people are not prepared, we will simply be forced to postpone the hearing and very little time will be saved.
I wanted to bring to your attention another example and hear your opinions. The bill establishes two very distinct channels, that of the refugee status claim and that of the temporary resident permit for humanitarian and compassionate considerations. We do not allow people to move from one stream to the other. We understand the intention behind this is to force people to make a choice and to not multiply the number of appeals.
That being said, it seems that this might have perverse effects. For example, a person who applies for refugee status, and who along the way realizes that it is perhaps not the appropriate stream, is not allowed to change his or her application to one for temporary residency on humanitarian grounds. Indeed, this is prohibited by the bill. The bill provides that, if a person has applied for refugee status, that person may under no circumstances make an application invoking humanitarian and compassionate considerations and must remain in the same stream until the end.
Do you not believe that this very restrictive situation might have harmful effects? These people, after having consulted, will perhaps realize before the hearing that a dishonest consultant suggested to them that they claim refugee status, but that that was not the right route to follow. We will be pushing these people to continue on the wrong path, because the system simply has no flexibility.
Mayor Salci, one of the things you mentioned, which I found interesting, is that a lot of the witnesses who come to speak to us about the bill—whether they are in favour, and some obviously are opposed, but some who want some changes made to it in terms of moving it forward—speak about their relative experience in terms of dealing and working with refugees within their responsibilities.
You mentioned that you have a number of them come to your office to sit down with you. Could you just speak to that a little bit further in terms of what they ask you, and further, what you're able to do in getting them some assistance on a very practical basis through the region?
:
Thank you very much for the question, Mr. Dykstra.
Primarily, most of the cases are dealing with the time that it's taking these people to have their cases heard. In my case, they're asking me to facilitate or to help them facilitate the acceleration of the time taken to have their matters dealt with. That's what I hear mostly.
I have people come to my office who are engaged in jobs, who have relationships established, who want to be able to get on with their lives in this new country and to proceed onward. All I can do, usually, is to pass them on to the federal member's office. Many times, they ask for letters of reference. I see them in a very positive way. They are contributing to our society. Most of the time they're working as volunteers. I can recall a number of situations where we had people being involved with their church groups or as volunteers on our various committees in the city. They've integrated well and they're very positive people. Usually they're well-educated. I think their intentions are certainly well-intended. They want to get settled in our country and be dealt with in a very timely manner.
The way I see it, you said these families who come as refugees are very productive. But certain families have participated in an immigration loans program that provides government assistance to pay for transportation, medical exams, and other costs associated with the initial settlement. Recent studies have shown that these families are at a high risk of being homeless or going through family instability.
I have talked to my city councillors, and they're in support of not having this burden on these refugee families because Canada is the only country that participates in such a program. Would you have suggestions for the federal government to eliminate or rethink programs like that?