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Ladies and gentlemen, we'll start. This is the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, meeting number 39, Thursday, May 2, 2012. As to the orders of the day, this meeting is televised pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 23, 2012, Bill , An Act to Amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and other acts.
You will note that because we have three witnesses on this panel, this meeting will be one hour and 15 minutes.
We have Sharalyn Jordan, a member of the board of the Rainbow Refugee Committee, good afternoon, and we have Christine Morrissey, who is the founder and a member of the board. Hello, you've been here before for the backlog studies, and thank you for coming again.
We have Michael Deakin-Macey, who is the past president of the board of directors of the Victoria Immigrant and Refugee Centre Society, good afternoon. We put you off from this morning because we had to vote, and I thank you for coming around this afternoon.
We have from London, England, by video conference, John Amble.
You gave evidence on our security study. So thank you, sir, for coming and helping us with this particular bill.
Each group will have up to 10 minutes to make a presentation. We will start with Ms. Jordan or Ms. Morrissey or both.
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On behalf of all my colleagues at the Rainbow Refugee Committee, I want to thank you for giving us the opportunity to share our point of view on Bill .
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Rainbow Refugee supports efforts to create a fair, efficient, effective, and affordable refugee system. We share goals of upholding the integrity of refugee determination. In 2010, we were grateful for the opportunity to discuss Bill with this standing committee and we took notice when parliamentarians worked together and listened to those of us who work closely with refugees to revise what is now the Balanced Refugee Reform Act.
Rainbow Refugee is disturbed to see that Bill C-31 resurrects measures that we identified as problematic, and includes new measures that disproportionately harm lesbian, gay, bi, trans, and queer refugees. These concerns are based on a decade of experience focused on this work.
Canada has been a global leader in refugee protection for those facing persecution due to sexual orientation or gender identity. We were the first country to recognize that transphobia and homophobia can result in persecution; 21 countries now do the same. This protection is vital in a world where 76 countries continue to criminalize lesbian, gay, bi, and trans people.
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We have grave concerns about the injustice and harm caused to LGBT refugees designated as irregular arrivals under Bill . Agents may be the only way LGBT asylum seekers can escape persecution, given that neighbouring countries are often unequally safe. In some regions of the world there is no safe haven for LGBT asylum seekers, so overseas refugee protection is not an option.
Consider the experience of one of our members, Adil, a gay man from an east African country that criminalizes homosexuality. If he fled to Kenya, a nearby country, he would face at least an eight-year wait for resettlement, while trying to survive in a country that has a 10-year prison sentence for homosexuality, and having to hide in camps or remain destitute in a city. UNHCR officials, typically locals, are not trusted and are often not trained in sexual orientation or gender identity decisions. We are working with overseas refugees from countries that publicly execute gay men. The UNHCR accepted that they were gay, and nonetheless denied their claims for protection.
Going back to Adil, an agent agreed to take him to Europe. Instead, Adil ended up in South America, where he was forced to work as a farm labourer. Over several months his work crew was moved north. They were eventually dropped off just over the Canadian border with $20 cash each. They went their separate ways. The mode of arrival says nothing about whether someone is a genuine refugee or not.
Adil found his way to a church, and the pastor helped him start a refugee claim. However, Adil was not able to disclose the reasons why he feared persecution. It was only after several meetings with his lawyer that he felt enough trust to say that he was gay.
Good morning to all members of the committee and all those who are witness to these proceedings.
I recently travelled to Europe with my sweetheart and visited the grave of one of her relatives who died at Passchendaele in Belgium. It's very emotional seeing the name of a relative on a tombstone, especially when so far from home. There are many others there too, and many among them are Chinese workers brought in to dig graves for the fallen. They dug well into 1919 to bury the dead.
I start with this because Canada at that time did not treat the Chinese particularly well, especially by today's standards. Yet despite this, the Chinese are buried in the same graveyard. Despite all of the things that generation did wrong by today's standards, when the time came, they did the most honourable thing possible: they all rest together.
I see myself as a quiet Canadian. By that I mean I work to take care of my family, I volunteer in my community, and run my small business with hopes of employing more people in the future. My volunteer activities have caused me to be here before you today, because I'm the past president of the board of directors of the Victoria Immigrant and Refugee Centre Society in the city of Victoria, British Columbia.
It's a small organization of approximately 30 full-time staff with a budget of $2 million a year. I was a very involved president. I know business and learned the somewhat arcane business of the Canadian immigration and refugee system at the street level. It works despite itself. Our funding came from more than a dozen sources and it consumed 20% to 30% of the staff's time applying for and administering all of these programs. Simply put, it needs a bit of improving.
I've been following the debate in my current role as a quiet Canadian in a quiet city. Canada is a generous country to the point that some see us as simple and often take advantage. Simple is a country that takes care of everybody, regardless of whether or not they're Canadian.
The Canada Health Act of 1984 guarantees access to emergency health care regardless of nationality. We get many visitors who are sick and show up in Canadian emergency rooms. We treat them, no questions asked. Then we try to get compensated for what it costs us to treat them. Being generous is not inexpensive.
Which brings us to today and the question of refugees, at least that's the reason I was asked to come. The Sun Sea was brought into my home town of Victoria. The first thing that Canada did was to ensure that they were physically safe and then to get them any medical attention that they needed, as well as food, clothing, and a clean place to sleep. Yes, they were detained, but they were not denied entry. Our country took care of them.
As reported in The Toronto Star on August 21, 2010 by Petti Fong, three in five Canadians believe that the ship should have been turned back. Yet the government did the honourable thing despite public opinion at the time.
Bill is partly a debate about the detail of our refugee system, partly a response to the public's desire to stop large groups of illegal refugees from taking advantage of our generosity. The devil, as always, is in the details. Let us remember that nobody is attempting here, in my opinion, to stop refugees from coming to Canada. Proportionately we take more than most countries.
We want to stop the organized trafficking of refugees using Canada as a target of their activities because of our international reputation as a simple country. This uses scarce Canadian resources that are better utilized getting the horrendous backlog of legitimate immigration applicants—800,000 and counting I believe—processed, letting those poor, quiet people waiting patiently in other countries know whether the answer is yes or no to being allowed to come to Canada.
Like our forefathers who ensured that the Chinese labourers rested with the fallen Canadian soldiers, I want to ensure that we continue our national generosity of taking care of all refugees who come to our shores, while placing reasonable restrictions on how quickly they become Canadians based on their method of arrival. We owe it to all Canadians, past and present, to continue quietly building this simple country we call home.
Thank you.
Mr. Chair, honourable members, I am privileged to speak to you today. Thank you for having me back and thank you for the opportunity to provide some comments on the bill at hand, Bill .
I have studied extensively the phenomenon of homegrown terrorism in the West. During the course of my research, I have looked closely at the connection between the threat of terrorism, and asylum laws in refugee application-processing programs. I am not an expert on the intricacies of asylum laws in any given country, including Canada, but I am happy to speak to the security implications of the systems that I have encountered.
My comments will be limited to these security implications. I hope you understand, if I acknowledge areas in which I might be less than qualified to offer an assessment of aspects of the bill in question that extend beyond the realm of security, and particularly the dangers of terrorism. I want to strongly qualify my comments by stating that the risk of terrorism is not proportionate to the number of a country's immigrants, either legal or illegal; to the number of approved asylum requests; or to the number of people who remain, say, in a country despite being denied asylum.
However, the evidence does show that a risk arises when either asylum and refugee processing structures are not properly developed or the laws are inadequately enforced.
It is in the highest tradition of western democratic values to welcome immigrants of all origins. Nowhere have such values been put into practice more fully than in North America, particularly in Canada. However, equally important are our government's responsibilities of ensuring accountability and providing security.
As an American, I can say unequivocally that Canada's reputation as a nation that both welcomes and values its immigrants is well known in the U.S. Living in the U.K. and travelling across Europe and elsewhere in the world, I certainly have the sense that Canada is viewed as a beacon of hope and opportunity around the globe. However, paired with this welcoming reputation is a certain awareness, at times even a cynical appreciation, of Canada's very generous social welfare programs and their extensive availability to newly arrived immigrants.
This is something shared with other countries as well, mainly those in western Europe. Too often, this generosity is exploited, as it often is here in the U.K., and notably in Scandinavian countries as well, for example. As I understand it, ending the manipulative exploitation of such programs, which sometimes carries on for an extended period of time, is one of several objectives of the bill being discussed here today.
From my standpoint, I would argue that there is also a security component to this. Recent history from European countries certainly shows that Byzantine refugee legal structures are sometimes exploited by people who threaten the security of the host country. Thus, you have senior radicalizing preachers and a number of convicted terrorists who have claimed asylum and subsequently received surprisingly large sums of money through very generous social welfare programs. Many of these individuals are currently in prison.
To give an example that involves Canada, in the so-called millennium bomb plot, an individual named Ahmed Ressam planned to detonate a bomb at Los Angeles International Airport, which was thwarted at the Canada-U.S. border in December of 1999, as I'm sure you all know. Ressam had entered Canada in 1994 on a fake passport. He was arrested and he applied for refugee status. He was released pending a hearing and subsequently received several years' worth of social welfare benefits. When his application was denied, he appealed, and that too was denied in 1998. However, no removal order could be carried out, because at that time, he was at a training camp in Afghanistan. He would later return on a fraudulently obtained Canadian passport.
Incidentally, another millennium plot was disrupted just days later, halfway around the world in Frankfurt, Germany. Four men were arrested who were believed to be planning to blow up the Strasbourg Christmas market just across the border in France. Two of those arrested were failed asylum seekers living in Britain, whom the British government had failed to deport for several years.
Now, anecdotes are not a suitable substitute for the broader data that appropriately reflects the realities on which effective policy is based. But such incidents do illuminate the security implications of refugee and asylum policy, and are instructive in any discussion of such policy.
Practically speaking, I would like to highlight two factors of immigration laws that can weaken a country's ability to safeguard against the threat of terrorism. The first is when systems are overburdened and the asylum application process is delayed by backlogs, potentially allowing somebody entering the country under false pretenses and with a goal of conducting a terrorist attack a lengthy period of time in which to move freely within the country.
The second factor is a matter of inadequate enforcement of immigration laws, allowing failed asylum seekers to remain in the country. This is a problem that seems to impact the U.K. quite considerably.
To mitigate against such dangers, there should be some means of maintaining an awareness of where those asylum seekers are, so that removal orders can be implemented for those whose applications or appeals are denied.
In addition to addressing the challenge of knowing where asylum seekers are once they enter Canada, it is also important to know specifically who they are. For a variety of reasons, this task can be considerably more difficult than it sounds.
Insofar as it is prudent to know who exactly is entering the country, not just as a refugee but under any visa or permit program, biometric data provides a very valuable tool. I understand that expanding the use of such information is part of the legislation this committee is examining.
I'll conclude here with three recommendations based on my research that I believe can enhance the security of Canada's refugee laws.
First, every effort should be made to expedite the process to grant refugee or asylum status in the minimum period of time that continues to allow for a complete and secure investigation. In addition to making the process run more smoothly generally by removing backlogs, I think such an action can have a real impact on improving security by eliminating the sometimes very long window during which an asylum seeker who enters the country with any sort of nefarious intent might be free to, for instance, plan and execute an attack.
Second, a system should recognize that some countries of origin produce a disproportionate number of those involved with terrorism globally. To that end, identifying a list of so-called safe countries, as this bill would allow, can also have a very positive second-order effect. It will allow for greater emphasis on applications from individuals coming from those countries with known human rights abuse issues, some of which are also more likely to produce a worryingly large number of the world's terrorists. That being said, this should also be balanced with the very critical appreciation that terrorists may also, at any time, arrive from countries that don't fit the traditional profile.
Finally, refugee processes should embrace newly developed advances in technology, as I discussed earlier, such as those that allow agencies to collect, access, and store biometric information safely. Relationships with other governments that also make use of such tools should be leveraged. Ties with countries with whom Canada has enjoyed long-standing information-sharing relationships should be enhanced, but new agreements should also be formalized where prudent.
Like the U.S., Canada has historically benefited from a great degree of security by virtue of the vast oceans to its east and west. But as threats to national security have evolved to encompass many for which these natural barriers are less effective, and as global population movements have become simpler, faster, and cheaper, information-sharing relationships with a wider variety of partners can be expected to pay major dividends.
With that, Mr. Chair, I will end my remarks.
Thank you again for the invitation to appear today. I look forward to answering any questions you may have.
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Mr. Amble, thank you for being with us.
Many witnesses have come before our committee. You were here several months ago, and it's probably a testament to the rigour of your academic study and its important substance that I remember clearly your testimony from several months ago. I suspect several of my colleagues here do as well.
I recall that you talked about sleeper cells in the U.K. and about how people who were born and bred in that country were themselves being radicalized.
That's a bit of a backdrop, because we're also looking today at refugees in the context of an overall refugee policy. The kinds of stories that Sharalyn related to us this morning make any red-blooded Canadian quiver. We're all united in our desire to continue to be the country known for our compassion and as a safe haven for people from around the world.
I appreciate all of you being here.
Our Charter of Rights talks about balance, and you've used the word “balance” a couple of times in what you said today, Mr. Amble. It talks about certain undeniable rights that may be limited in ways that are explicable in a free and democratic society—I'm paraphrasing a little bit.
The point is that we need to achieve balance. The detention provisions that are being looked at here would apply to a very small percentage of refugees—fewer than 1%, in fact—who come by way of what's known as “irregular arrival”.
My first question is this, then. Can you focus us on balance? If we desire to be a safe haven, if we desire to keep our gates open for those who would come to our country, persecuted either because of their sexual orientation or their political belief or anything else, how do we achieve that balance while keeping out the kinds of people who threaten our democracy and the safety and security of our children and our families?
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There are several things I'd like to highlight. One is that a number of principles need to be embodied in whatever effective asylum laws are put in place. Chief amongst those principles is the balance between security, accountability, openness, and fairness. Certainly, the stories of those who see Canada as a refuge, who have faced persecution for a variety of reasons, are heartbreaking at times.
In the interest of balance, I think it's also important to recognize the large number of stories of people who have abused those sorts of systems. This happens frequently. It tends to be a bigger problem, I think, in the U.K. and a few other European countries than maybe it has been in Canada. However, there's the example I gave you of Ahmed Ressam, the millennium bomb plotter who blatantly abused the Canadian refugee process. It happens elsewhere as well, and it's part of the trend in terms of liberalizing immigration laws.
In 1983, for instance, there were 80,000 asylum applications across the entire continent of Europe. Nine years later, in 1992, there were 700,000. It rose by almost a factor of 10. Islamists took advantage of the opportunity to hide in these massive crowds, and many of them became part of what would later be described as the first wave of Europe-based jihadists, and would become key figures in a number of terror cases. Abu Hamza, the notorious firebrand preacher who's currently serving a seven-year prison sentence and facing extradition from the U.K. to the U.S. when he's released, was among them. Ramzi bin al-Shibh eventually served as a Europe-based coordinator for the 9/11 attacks, after having been given asylum status in Germany.
I would say that an awareness of those stories and many others should inform effective policy.
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Thank you so much. It's a wonderful opportunity.
I come from the agriculture committee, so you'll forgive any misunderstandings of this legislation. I have looked at it for quite some time, mind you, and I know that immigration issues, and particularly refugee issues, are very complex, especially in our global society, and will only grow more complex with populations that will be displaced because of global warming and the many more claims that will arise.
When I look at this legislation, I have to say from my perspective that it's a rather simplistic approach to rather complex issues, particularly when it comes to naming countries as safe countries and just making certain assumptions that will arise from that, and declaring certain arrivals as irregular and all the consequences that arise from that. My questions really arise from those two issues.
From my experience travelling in other countries, I'm very aware that there are a lot of people—most refugees I would think—who would rather spend a year in a detention centre in Canada than in a refugee camp, or subjecting their lives to a certain threat in the country from which they come. It makes me question the sincerity that's found in the notion of detention.
In your opinion, will it really be a deterrent, or is it really there to satisfy some people in Canada to give the appearance that we're going to try to hold people back, especially when it is associated with a five-year penalty of not being able to claim landed immigrant status?
There are a few things that aren't perceived properly. Bill is proposing changes that will build on reforms that the asylum system passed as part of the Balanced Refugee Reform Act. This bill will not change any of the protections that the LGBT community has. In fact, it's going to help people from this community seeking status in Canada to get it faster and protect those refugees because that's what we do.
We are a compassionate country, and we are going to make sure that people that are needing our protection do get it. We are a signatory to the Geneva Convention and many other international agreements that we dutifully follow.
Also, I want to point out that has been a great defender of the gay and lesbian community, and has encouraged the gay and lesbian community here in Canada to privately sponsor LGBT refugees. That option exists. In fact, they should listen to the minister, take him at his word, and apply to do that.
The other one, because I do want to talk to Mr. Amble about some security issues, is that 99% of people that do arrive here are out in the community, are working, and are contributing, while their claims are being processed. Only 1% are detained, and that's where the problem comes in for some of our security issues and why detention can be important until we understand who these people are.
Mr. Amble, over to you quickly on the detention side first, let's begin with that because I only have a few minutes.
A lot of these folks, especially smuggled, trafficked folks, come from places that are rife with terrorist groups and other criminal organizations.
If you were one of these people, for example, would a mass smuggling event be something you would conceal your identity under when you arrive?
Do you follow me?
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Really it boils down to two kinds of profit motives.
First of all, yes, there is the monetary, but it may not be direct monetary. There's a simplistic one, where they have some kind of cash or money or a tradeable something, such as gold or whatever, and they pay for passage. That's very overt and above board.
The second issue that causes a lot of people a lot of concern is the fact that they put themselves in what amounts to indentured slavery when they get here in order to pay off the transit. For example, if they come from an area where English isn't a language that shows up on the language radar of the region, then in Canada they pretty much have to go to that ethnic community. This means that automatically, even if the Canadian government has intervened at some point in time, it puts them back on the radar to be tracked by the smugglers and told, “You have a debt to pay; you have to work it off.”
This amounts to years, potentially, of.... We've heard reports of $50,000 in transit fees that they would have to work off over years. If they refused or they didn't pay, there would either be a threat to them personally here in Canada or there would be a threat to family members remaining in their country of origin.
I think that's a big part of the challenge. I would say that the majority of them don't have the cash, and the majority of them, in my opinion, come into some form of “working it off”, if I can word it that way.
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I don't have much time. My purpose wasn't to get into an argument with you. It was to clarify that your issue has little or nothing to do with this legislation and more to do with the process that's in place now—a process that we need to repair.
The second point that you made is that the process takes far too long, and the only solution to that process is to hire more IRB representatives to solve these, because you call it a process.
That is, in fact, not the case. The problem we have is that the number of applications that have come into the country that are actually false, and not true. That's part of the reason we're trying to address it through this legislation. Hungary, Mexico, before we had the visa implemented in that country—those are the issues we face.
There's a volume issue, based on how broken our system is now, that has an impact. So that will change with this legislation.
The second point is that we're going to eliminate all the barriers in the appeal process so that people whose claims are truly denied, and should be truly denied, do not clog up an appeal system that doesn't allow those who are true refugees to be able to use that system.
While I don't doubt that you have some issues to deal with, the point is that this legislation is actually going to help you a great deal more than the current system we have. I think, taking another look at this, you'll understand that it's extremely good legislation from the perspective that you're bringing forward to the table.
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Thank you for this time.
It's important to recognize the complexity of homophobic and transphobic persecution that exists in the world today. There is a myriad of countries—right now, 76 hold official criminal sanctions, even when criminal sanctions don't exist. Things such as public health laws, morality laws, and religious laws disproportionately affect transgendered, lesbian, gay, bi, and trans people.
We have also seen an increase in what I would call “scapegoating” of our people who are tied to nationalist movements in countries. The situation in Uganda is a very good example. It is essentially a witch hunt. People are not able to leave their homes. Your example, Monsieur, of the honour crimes is another excellent example.
Transphobic and homophobic persecution is often perpetrated by family members, with the complicity of the state. The state allows this to go on and does not implement the safety measures needed, or people cannot access the safety measures needed in order to be safe in their own countries, and because of that, are forced to leave.
I can think of an example of a woman from one of the Middle Eastern countries. I won't name it in order to protect her confidentiality, but she was seen with a girlfriend. It was her classmates who turned her in to the religious police. The religious police then imprisoned her. She was kept in prison, tortured and sexually assaulted, and prepared for her execution once a month for a period of six months until she could be released, because her parents were able to pay a bribe. She was able to exit her country only because her parents had the resources to help her leave. Canada has become a place of refuge for her.
I'm going to give the floor to you.
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Good afternoon. My name is Glynis Williams. I am the director of Action Réfugiés Montréal, and on behalf of that organization, I would like to thank you for allowing us to present our concerns about Bill .
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Action Réfugiés Montréal was founded in 1994 by the Anglican and Presbyterian churches in Montreal. Our mandate includes assisting refugee claimants who are detained in the Canada Border Services Agency holding centre in Laval, which my colleague Jenny will soon describe. In addition, we match women refugee claimants with volunteers, and our third program is sponsoring refugees from overseas. We believe that one of our strengths is that we work with both inland refugee claimants and refugees who are overseas. This is a somewhat unique situation in Canada.
Twenty-four years ago I started working with refugee claimants who were being detained in Montreal. As the founding director of this organization, we chose to make the detention program a priority. As mentioned in our brief, though, we are also concerned with clause 19, which allows the minister to initiate a process that would declare cessation of refugee protection resulting in a former refugee's removal from Canada. Furthermore, there is no remedy available to the individual or family once the decision has been made. This clause renders permanent residence an oxymoron for most resettled and accepted refugees.
A story illustrates this point. Sixteen years ago the Presbyterian Church in Montreal agreed to sponsor a young Iraqi woman, a victim of Saddam Hussein's regime. She had been interviewed in a Jordanian prison by a Canadian visa officer at the request of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, a rare situation that reveals the persecution refugees can face even in countries of first asylum. She lived with me for a short while using lots of sign language—I do not speak Arabic—and several volunteers became her good friends. We raised the required $8,000 to care for her in that first year. I just discovered recently that she's still only a permanent resident, not a citizen, even though she has three Canadian-born children, she owns a house, drives a car, and works in a day care. She speaks French very well.
This clause could definitely apply to her, and for what purpose? She and her husband both work, pay taxes, and their daughters are Canadians and they have very little knowledge of Iraq. In the language of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, refugees seek a durable solution, something which too few manage to obtain. The humanitarian basis of Canada's refugee programs, whether it is government-assisted, privately sponsored refugees, or accepted refugee claimants within Canada is mocked by this proposed clause and must be withdrawn.
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Hello. My name is Jenny Jeanes and I am responsible for Action Réfugiés Montréal's detention program. Since joining Action Réfugiés Montréal in 2005, I have visited the Canada Border Services Agency holding centre in Laval, Quebec, on a weekly basis.
As our only staff person who visits the detention facility, I rely on the assistance of law student interns, who accompany me to the centre. Each week we meet newly arrived refugee claimants who, for the most part, have been detained in order to verify their identity. We try to help them understand complex immigration procedures, especially the requirements for their refugee claim.
We assist them in finding counsel. We supply phone cards to those who need to call their families and ask for their identity documents to be sent. We also identify the more vulnerable detainees, including pregnant women and families with young children, in order to provide them extra support.
Before leaving the office yesterday, I spoke to two young detainees who needed phone cards to call their families back home. These young men, one 17 years old and one 18 years old, are from Sierra Leone, a West African country that not long ago was torn apart by a decade-long civil war, and with upcoming elections, faces new unrest.
They travelled to Canada by boat and were detained upon arrival. Tomorrow they will have spent one month in detention. They have already made contact with their families, but a single phone card provides only nine minutes to call their country. They are still waiting for their documents to arrive, hoping family members will be able to help them.
One has already obtained from his family a faxed copy of the only official document he possesses, but his family has not been able to gather the funds to post the original. They know no one in Canada, so when they need help with cards, they phone our office and ask for “Auntie Jenny”.
They are just two of the hundreds of detainees we assist each year, but their situation brings to mind two of our main concerns with Bill : the 12-month mandatory detention for designated irregular arrivals and the very fast processing times for refugee claims.
These two young men meet the criteria of claimants who could be designated as irregular arrivals and detained for one year without review. Although one is 17 and legally a child, he would not be exempt from mandatory detention.
Even if they were not designated as irregular arrivals, they are already halfway along the 60-day delay for a refugee hearing, as proposed by Bill . They have yet to obtain identity documents, let alone meet the requirements for preparing a refugee claim. With the assistance of a lawyer, they have just begun to tell their stories. They speak limited English, relying on an interpreter to assist them. Their lawyer will have to tease out the complexities of their country's situation, distinguishing their personal fears from generalized violence and instability and examining the impact of regime change on their individual lives.
Over the years, I have met refugee claimants detained at late stages of pregnancy, and even some who have given birth while detained, returning to the detention centre with a newborn baby. I have met elderly claimants in detention and those sick with diabetes or other illnesses. I have met claimants who have been raped or tortured or who have seen family members killed and have ongoing nightmares.
I have met many young children under the age of five who accompanied their parents in detention, sometimes for over a month. One very young woman, herself an unaccompanied minor, spent almost a month in detention with her own baby until she was able to satisfy authorities as to her identity. She spoke no English or French, and was separated from her own family members in Canada, who were released before her due to their identity documents.
I have learned that refugee stories are often complicated and that it takes time for a claimant to be able to share their experiences. In our brief, I mention the case of a young gay man from Algeria who spent three months in detention until his identity was verified. He was scared and ashamed of disclosing his sexual orientation and was uncomfortable around other detainees during his three months in the centre. He was so psychologically fragile that he was unable to testify at his eventual refugee hearing, even after several months in Canada. Only with the help of a therapist was he finally able to clearly explain his need for protection, and he was accepted as a refugee. I would just like to add that this therapy was not available while he was in the centre.
I'd also like to tell you about a woman from Nigeria who we first met in detention in 2008. She has since been accepted as a refugee and is now a permanent resident in Canada, but it was a difficult road to where she is now. She arrived in Canada eight months pregnant and spent most of the last of her pregnancy locked up in the holding centre, where rules dictate when and what to eat, when to sleep, and whether one can go outside for some air. It took her 40 days to obtain identity documents and be released, and she gave birth less than two weeks after leaving detention.
Being in detention is a difficult experience for most of the claimants we meet. We hear repeatedly about the shame of being handcuffed and under constant surveillance; the fear of deportation exacerbated by the regular removals of other detainees; and chronic physical discomfort, such as constipation and fatigue. We regularly meet detainees who speak no English or French, and are extremely isolated by language barriers. Claimants express distress at having to prepare written documents to start their claims while detained, where they have no privacy, there are obstacles to communicating with their families, and there is little contact with their legal counsel. As mentioned in our brief, there is no privacy for phone calls, and even when lawyers can visit the centre there's limited time and space for consultation.
We have a unique perspective, being able to meet individual detainees week after week and hear their experiences. Detained refugee claimants tell us of the significant challenges they face during days, weeks, or months of detention. It is hard to imagine 12 months of mandatory detention. Having seen how many obstacles refugee claimants face when detained at the beginning of the refugee process, we worry that the short delay of only 60 days or less will result in refusals for people genuinely in need of protection. Many of these individuals would not even have access to appeal under Bill provisions, eliminating the chance of having errors corrected.
Thank you.
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Good day, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
I'm Dr. Richard Stanwick, a pediatrician and public health specialist. I also probably have a unique qualification in that I was dockside on August 13, 2010 with the RCMP and the Canada Border Services Agency for the arrival and processing of 492 refugees from the Sun Sea. I participated in the organization of the health response as well as the provision of on-site public health and pediatric advice.
I am here this afternoon representing the Canadian Paediatric Society, a professional organization representing over 3,000 health professionals dedicated to child and youth health.
My opening remarks today are going to be focused specifically on the health of children and youth, and what we can all do through public policy to ensure they have the potential to become active contributing members of Canadian society.
As pediatricians, we are committed to working with all levels of government to make decisions and develop programs, programs—and I want to emphasize this—that are based on emerging science that clearly shows how young people develop and what should be in place within their communities to ensure their optimal long-term health and development.
Child health experts now have a truer understanding of the importance of family in ensuring and supporting the development of children than was previously the case. We know that good preventive health care, early education, physical activity, and a balanced diet set the foundation for a productive and healthier adulthood, and that protective aspects of a good childhood experience inoculate individuals for improvements in all aspects of their life, be that mental health, physical health, high school completion, and even employability. Conversely, we know that higher than normal levels of stress contribute to ill health.
Former Japanese internees in World War II experienced a twofold increase in cardiovascular disease and premature mortality than did individuals who were not interned. One epidemiologic study suggested that internees die 1.6 years earlier than a comparison non-interned group. So-called “toxic stress” is particularly harmful when it occurs during childhood and when it's not mitigated by nurturing relationships with significant adults.
On the basis of this evidence—the importance of family and a positive childhood experience—we respectfully ask the government to reconsider and withdraw Bill . If the bill is not withdrawn, then we strongly advocate that it be amended in specifically those sections that could lead to refugee children under the age of 16 being either detained with their parents or separated from them for a period of a year. If the legislation must be passed into law, we would ask and encourage you to ensure that it has provisions to keep families together. These provisions should really integrate them into communities as quickly as possible, and ensure immediate and ongoing access to health services and care, including preventive care such as with immunizations and—I think we would want to emphasize as almost equally important—ongoing access to education and other social and community values and associations.
Both options in the current version of cause great concerns to pediatricians because essentially we're forcing a Sophie's Choice on the parents. Should children under 16 go into detention with their parents, there is no assurance that they will have access to the education or health services they need. It's also vital that children have the benefit of safe recreation and we have concerns that detention facilities will not have age-appropriate facilities that will allow them to play and exercise—all critical in normal development.
A peer-reviewed article by Rachel Kronick and Cécile Rousseau, published last October in Paediatrics & Child Health clearly documented the serious effects of detention on claimant refugee children in both Australia and England. Here's what they found. Almost all the children suffered a mental health problem. Some of them had sleep disturbances and separation anxiety. The range of problems went to even more serious post-traumatic stress disorders, self-harm, and suicidal ideation. Developmental delays were common. There were reports of mutism and behavioural issues. Infants wouldn't breastfeed properly and older children were engaged in food refusal. Many children lost previously attained developmental milestones, which shows that detention itself had negative effects on their development, and the problems could not be solely attributed to the experiences before arriving in this country or their country of refuge.
The other choice that parents have would be to give up their children to a child welfare system that is already overtaxed and struggling to meet the needs of children and youth currently living in Canada.
Consider what it would be like to be separated from family just after arriving in a new country, perhaps after experiencing conflict or separation, war or starvation. You'd consider that traumatic for an adult. For a child, it's unimaginable. This kind of separation would create the type of stress and trauma for both the child and adult, making future integration into Canada far more difficult—and this is the concern.
Apart from separation from the family, in many cases the child welfare system would be hard pressed to find a foster family that understands the culture from which the child comes, or perhaps even to find one where the adults speak the same language. It is likely the demands on the health care system will be more taxed if refugee children are put into detention or in foster care while awaiting their parents' release from detention, as opposed to the family being settled into Canadian life with access to health care, community services, and schools.
In British Columbia, our representative for children and youth, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, and our provincial health officer, Dr. Perry Kendall, studied over 50,000 children born in 1986 who were attending school in our province 10 years later. In the largest study—to the best of our knowledge—or at least one of the largest studies in Canada, they found of the children living under ministry supervision in foster homes or with relatives, 41% were involved with the criminal justice system by age 21. The rate of legal problems was much lower, only 6.6%, among children living with parents.
The Canadian Paediatric Society urges that Bill be amended specifically to ensure families with children, and families that are expecting children, be kept together on arrival in Canada, and that they are not placed in detention centres. We ask that families have immediate and ongoing access to needed health, community, and education services. This will help children integrate smoothly into Canadian life and support them in achieving good health quickly.
In recent years this government has recognized and apologized to groups of individuals who were detained or separated from families simply because of who they were—most notably, aboriginal Canadians who were forced into residential schools. There was an understanding and recognition in Prime Minister Harper's apologies to generations of first nation and Inuit people that great harm had been done to individuals, especially children, by separating them from their families and cultures. Sadly, in many cases, this harm proved insurmountable for the victims. Even now, many years after the residential school system has been dismantled, the negative results persist, in some cases, generations later.
I think there is a little irony in that at this time the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada is crossing Canada as these hearings are held in this committee room.
During World War II, Canada undertook forced removal and detention of the Japanese population on the west coast, separating Japanese men from their families, and relocating them to war camps. Women and children were sent to inland towns. Prime Minister Brian Mulroney formally apologized to Japanese Canadians in 1988 and provided compensation to survivors of wartime detention. Ottawa marked the 20th anniversary of this recognition under the leadership of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. If we, as a country, have recognized the ill effects on health of such schemes, then why would we consider instituting detention again?
These are examples of repeated failure to deal with other cultures. We, as Canadians, should be recognized as a nation by our ability to do things right, not for being ready to apologize for getting it wrong again and again.
Thank you.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to all of you for appearing before us today and for sharing your views and for, quite frankly, the very passionate way in which you explained some cases you're familiar with.
I want to go through a couple of points first. I really think we're all trying to accomplish the same thing here. Our goal is to try to get legitimate refugees, people who need our assistance, into the country as fast as possible. We need a mechanism in order to accomplish that in the fastest possible way. Clearly the system today is broken. It is not working.
I think Canadians take pride in the generosity and compassion of our immigration and refugee programs. They have no tolerance for those who abuse our generosity and seek to take unfair advantage of our country. Canada remains one of the top countries in the world to welcome refugees. In fact, we welcome more refugees per capita than any other G-20 country. Canada welcomes one in 10 of the world's resettled refugees. That is more per capita than almost any other country. In fact our Conservative government has increased the number of refugees resettling each year by 2,500 people.
Bill proposes changes that build on reforms to the asylum system passed in June 2010 as part of the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, as you well know. The proposed measures would provide faster protection to those who genuinely need refuge and faster removal of those who don't. Currently the time to finalize a refugee decision, if you will, takes 1,038 days, on average. With these new measures in Bill C-31, that could be as low as 45 days for people coming from designated countries and certainly 216 days for all other claimants, surely the very people who need that assistance.
Let's talk about family reunification. People are coming here from countries where they were facing persecution, torture, death in many cases. Surely the amount of time they have to be in a holding pattern when they come to our shores so they can be properly identified and processed.... That's the key. We want to identify people before we allow them into Canadian society for obvious reasons.
Forty-one people who came on the Sun Sea and Ocean Lady were found to be security risks or had perpetrated war crimes in their country. We can't allow just everybody. I know we want to be compassionate, but we have a responsibility to the Canadian people and I'm sure you understand that. You wouldn't want them in your neighbourhood. You wouldn't want them going to school with your children. You wouldn't want them around your families. Nobody would.
Would you agree that this is a problem that needs to be fixed? That's my question to you. Please, any and all....
:
Thank you very much for your comments. They raise a few things to my mind.
Yes, we agree that many people need to be processed faster. As my colleague mentioned, one of our programs matches women refugee claimants with women volunteers to facilitate integration. Some of the women in our program have waited two-and-a-half to three years before having their claims heard and have suffered as a result.
I recently told one woman who waited two-and-a-half years about some of the proposed changes and she felt that had she had her hearing in 60 days, there is no way she would have been ready psychologically or physically. She had a lot of pain from previous torture while imprisoned in her country. She had to see a physical therapist to help her deal with that psychologically.
Then in terms of the complicated evidence one has to acquire, it's.... Refugee claims, as I'm sure you know, are not simple. People do have to sometimes get very specific documents, death certificates, proof of membership in political parties, and things from home. They rely on people back home to get those documents. It takes time.
In many ways 60 days would be too short for many of the people we see.
In terms of your concerns you raise about identifying security risks, identifying who people are, I'm not a lawyer, but one of the regular activities in our program is to accompany people to detention review hearings. In the existing law, the review is on detention—for example for identity grounds or for security grounds. Some of the cases I've illustrated, these are people who had their detention reviewed and were held because their identity wasn't yet established and the current law does provide for that.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Welcome to our guests.
I'm just going to clarify and just give a little bit of a background. There has been some discussion here. All guests or witnesses have talked about detention and how it's unfair and whatever the other cases are. I just want to specify that under this particular bill there is no mandatory detention of all persons for one year. I just want to clarify that. That has come up multiple times, not just in this hour.
Additionally, once someone receives a positive claim with the IRB, bona fide, legitimate refugees who have come here to seek a better way of life will be released from detention. Also, I want to just throw this number out. All three of you here are talking about the same issue, but it's really less than 1% of the people who come to Canada as refugees. I just want to put that on the table as well. Again, until their claim is heard and they are classified as a refugee, they are only asylum claimants. They are not bona fide, legitimate refugees in Canada.
Additionally to that, only asylum claimants whose identifies cannot be established, who are a security risk to Canada—you can recognize the importance as a government to make sure we are detaining people who may be a security risk to Canadians—or are suspected architects of a criminal activity can be held longer under this particular bill.
Having said that, I want to direct my first question to Dr. Stanwick. I commend you for what you do. It's interesting to speak to someone directly who was at the Sun Sea, who processed claimants, who dealt with some of the children there.
I have something here. There were 46 persons under the age of 16, and six were unaccompanied minors, so without parents whatsoever.
I don't want to sound harsh, but in your statement you mentioned that 10% of the people who may come in by irregular arrivals could have security issues. Then, you said the other 90% are probably okay. Can I just ask this question before you answer that question? You suggested two options. One, the child should not be in detention. Under this bill, they will not be in detention. The second option was, instead of sending them into child care or with a guardian, that the parent should be able to be with that child out in a community, integrated, and so forth.
But let me ask you a question. If there's a possibility that 10% of the people who are on that ship or come in by irregular means are one of the people who we can't identify, and they also claim to be the parent of a child, or are the legitimate parents of a child, should they be released into the general population without proper identification? Although you may say it's not a likely situation, without knowing who these people are, without knowing the risks that they may or may not pose to Canadians, in general, or as our nation, as a responsible government, we need to identify who these people are.
:
Perhaps I'll start, again highlighting the paper that did appear in
Paediatrics & Child Health. Probably some of the most severe is the future suicidal ideation because of the consequences associated with sleep disturbances. Children experienced mutism—in other words, they lost their voices.
I think we've emphasized again, these children lost some of their milestones. Child development is a one-way process, and if you lose those steps you can't go back and fix them. B.C. has probably a world expert, Clyde Hertzman, who speaks to the importance of making sure that children fulfill the normal steps in childhood development.
That is why we're expressing such great concern that if this bill does go forward, respect must be given to the fact that children only get one chance at being children, so the exercise piece has to be there, the play piece, and the education.
Again, in terms of dealing with the criminality aspect, what we're trying to suggest, particularly in avoiding foster care, is that future criminality can, in fact, be avoided by the appropriate steps, should this bill go forward. That is the plea that we're making. We know there are going to be health consequences and if we don't do it properly, basically we'll be jeopardizing this whole population of individuals coming in.
First of all, I applaud everything you do. You're very compassionate people. You're clearly intelligent. You've thought this out. You're looking towards the safety of children, as we all are, and I think it's very important that we do that. This country is compassionate. It's built upon immigration, on many generation of immigrants coming from all over the place.
To give you some context, since you brought up World War II, my father was in a gulag, and my mother was taken to Nazi Germany as forced labour. They came back certainly with their scars from those endeavours. Of course they came to this country and relocated essentially as refugees, because they couldn't go back to their home country. They had to build a new life, so I understand that. As a soldier I've served in a war zone and I've seen the psychological impacts on people, not only on the people we were trying to protect, but on my own soldiers who right now are dealing with a myriad of difficulties and psychological traumas from all sorts of incidents, not just Afghanistan or Bosnia or other places. So I understand all that.
I will tell you I think that when you're talking about psychological trauma of children in detention, the root cause is not necessarily that detention. I acknowledge the factors you've discussed, but a lot of these things are from the places they come from, and from the trauma, the tyranny, the oppression, and possibly the mass killings and other horrific things they've witnessed.
I would suggest to you that's probably a greater source of that trauma than being here in detention. A comment was made that we would try to appease “these conditions”. Well, these conditions are some of the best in the world. We have a right as this country to defend the security of our country. I understand sometimes it's only—
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, distinguished committee on the Standing Committee for Citizenship and Immigration. My name is Gina Csanyi-Robah. I'm the current executive director at the Toronto Roma Community Centre, the only organization existing in Canada representing the needs of and helping the Roma community specifically. The Roma Community Centre is a 100% volunteer-based organization, which opened in 1997, and became a non-profit in 1998. It was housed inside a very large immigration settlement organization called CultureLink up until October 2011. This past October 2011, we were finally able to build enough capacity to open our own independent office. At our office we now help with daily settlement service needs, with education, and also with building pride in Roma culture.
I come to you today, and I'm immensely appreciative of this important opportunity. As far as I know, I'm the first Roma person in Canada to have this privilege of coming and presenting in front of our Canadian government. I was born in Canada. My family came here in 1956 as Roma refugees from Hungary during that revolution. I've been in Canada ever since. I'm a teacher by profession for the Toronto District School Board, and I use my other time to be the executive director of this organization, so I'm currently working 80 to 90 hours a week to be able to help this community.
I come to you today with my testimony, and to do my best to encourage this committee to not create a designated safe country list, whereby citizens that are Roma from EU countries will not be given fair opportunities to seek safety in Canada, while inadvertently condoning the lack of implementation of human rights legislation for Roma minorities in many central and eastern European countries.
I want to open with a small passage from a February 2012 publication from the Council of Europe. This is the Council of Europe commissioner for human rights, Mr. Thomas Hammarberg. He says to be able to understand the Roma people, you must have some understanding of their history.
The history of European repression against the Roma precedes the Nazi and fascist era—
—where Roma lost two million of their own during the Holocaust.
In fact, it goes back several hundred years – following the Roma migration from the Indian subcontinent—
—from the Rajasthan area in the 10th century.
The Roma were the outsiders used as scapegoats when things went wrong and the locals did not want to take responsibility. The methods of repression have varied over time and have included enslavement, enforced assimilation, expulsion, internment and mass killings.
This is the history of the Roma people in Europe. Nothing has changed since the 13th century when we arrived on the European continent. It's not a pretty history.
Roma are coming, leaving apartheid-like conditions in education, housing, health care, and every segment and sector of society you can imagine. Hate is organized, it's endemic, and it's been ongoing for a long time. It's nothing new. When I meet with members of the Hungarian government who have come to the Roma Community Centre, they sit there and think I'm speaking some alien language when I tell them about the hate that is crippling our community. The only answer I've ever been given by Zoltan Balog, the Minister of Social Inclusion, Zsuzsanna Repas, Attila Kocsis, and the Hungarian Ambassador to Canada is that there's an economic problem taking place. This is a lie.
What's also a lie is that Roma are bogus refugees. In 2011, there were 167 accepted applications at the Immigration and Refugee Board. That means that, if Roma are bogus, those Immigration and Refugee Board adjudicators are liars, and I don't think that they are. I don't think they should be fired. It makes absolutely no sense to call Roma refugee claimants “bogus” if even one refugee claim is accepted.
Roma are not living off the welfare system. They're coming to the Roma Community Centre every single day begging us to help them find jobs. We've created a Friday resumé-writing clinic. We have Roma who have come here who are now in school, they're going to college, they're working, and they're trying their best to be as empowered and have as much a voice as possible. They have a large number of withdrawn refugee claims because it's been an incredibly unwelcoming climate for Roma people in Canada.
In 2009 there was an 85% acceptance rate for Czech-Roma refugees before the visa was reimposed and public discourse started talking about bogus refugee claims.
Am I at my five minutes?
:
Thank you for the opportunity to address the committee today. I am speaking as a representative of the Roma Community Centre, but I've been a lawyer in private practice since 1988. I'm also a former member of the Immigration and Refugee Board, where I sat as a member for five years. I currently represent many Roma refugees.
I'll focus on Roma refugees from Hungary because these refugees seem to be of particular concern. I would like to begin by addressing a question. Hungary is an EU country, so why don't the Roma relocate to another EU country? There are misconceptions about this issue, and there are serious barriers to relocation.
The first barrier is that EU citizens cannot make asylum claims in EU countries, therefore Roma from Hungary cannot, for example, file refugee claims in Italy.
The second barrier is that there is a limitation on the right to relocate within the EU. A person can stay in a country for up to three months and then must either find a job or show enough money to support themselves. Owing to the high level of prejudice against Roma in the EU, finding a job is extremely difficult. When France deported Roma en masse in the summer of 2010, this sent a clear message that Roma cannot simply relocate within Europe.
What is the refugee board doing with these claims? The United Nations stated that the Roma community faces discrimination in all fields of life, and further, they face violence by extremists and prejudice by the police. They arrive in Canada missing teeth because neo-Nazis have kicked them out and with visible scars from being attacked by fascists. They are no different from refugees who come from Africa or Asia.
The board knows this. It accepts that hate crimes exist but refuses the claims on a technical point of law. The Federal Court has begun setting aside some of these decisions saying that the board has made mistakes.
Turning to the DCO list, there are concerns. The criteria for the DCO operates regardless of whether the country is safe. They use statistics of rejected, withdrawn, and abandoned cases to determine whether a country is designated instead of human rights records. This statistical analysis appears to be directed at Roma claims.
We hear a lot about the high number of refused Hungarian Roma cases. Of the cases that came before the refugee board in 2011, just under one in five were accepted as refugees. In other words, of the claimants who appeared before a board member, just under one in five were determined to be refugees. The overall acceptance rate of the board is about 39%. This is very important to consider.
We've also been hearing a lot about Roma criminals. This is a tiny drop in the bucket. In Canada we are surely above racial stereotyping.
The minister expressed concerns that claimants from EU countries don't need Canada's protection because they are bogus. People who work with Roma refugees are at a loss to figure out why this group is called bogus. Why has the minister not expressed concern about growing fascism and racism, instead of condemning Roma refugees?
The Prime Minister recently expressed support to fight anti-Semitism and racism on Holocaust Remembrance Day. We support this. The extremist party in Hungary with 20% of the vote is anti-Roma and also blatantly anti-Semitic and has even forged an alliance with Iran. Anti-Semitism in Hungary is rampant. We should condemn the human rights abuses in Hungary of both the Jews and the Roma.
The situation is Hungary is worsening. A new constitution took effect in January. The changes in the constitution reflect a move away from democratic principles, and the EU has begun legal action against Hungary because it is no longer a true democracy.
So how can we call the Roma claims bogus? Why was the DCO list created to discourage Roma claims? Are the Roma claims proving to be a problem in light of free trade negotiations with Europe? I urge you to consider the fact that refugee determination is a human rights issue and that we have an obligation to protect persecuted people and that this must not be trumped by political factors.
I do want to express my empathy for the passion with which you make your presentation and the work that you do on behalf of your community. I think we all come from backgrounds that suggest that we have cultures within Canada and those that we support. My parents both came here from the Netherlands and certainly I do find myself at times overly protective of the Dutch and want to stand up for them at every opportunity. So I want to emphasize that we understand what you're saying and appreciate what you've brought to the table both in terms of your suggestions and your passion.
I do want to ask a few questions about the issues that we face as a government. While we try to use as much empathy as we can when making decisions, we do have to make legislation and move that legislation forward, and that's done through words, not necessarily through emotion.
One of the issues we face with Hungary is that back prior to the year of 2008 when there were visa restrictions within Hungary, the applications we received for asylum seekers were in the neighbourhood of 20 to 30 people a year. In 2009 there were 2,500 and in 2010 there were 2,300. These numbers just went through the roof. When we see that 95% to 98% of those individuals come to Canada for a period of up to 10 to 12 months, and just prior to their hearings taking place at the IRB, they do not show up for those hearings—or we find they have returned to Hungary—that is an issue. I think you would agree with me that a number of those individuals didn't come here to seek refugee status. They came here for different reasons. I won't label what those reasons are but they weren't for reasons of seeking asylum.
How would you deal with that issue other than how we're dealing with it through Bill ? This isn't specific to Hungary. We face similar types of issues with all countries. Before we implemented the restriction with respect to the visa for Mexico, the numbers were just going through the roof. They were astronomical. We had over 10,000 applications in 2008, of which 400 were deemed to be successful refugee applications. All the rest were not.
So we need a fix. We need to solve this problem because it's clear that there is an opportunity for people to take advantage of the system here in Canada.
:
Yes, absolutely. The question is not about seeking a better place to live or finding a more comfortable place to live. The question is about human rights and persecution. The question is about people—the state protecting the citizens. That's what it's about.
It's not about Roma coming to Canada because there's better scenery, or it's a nicer place, or there's an immigration lineup.... They're coming as refugees. There's no lineup for refugees; it's not an immigration queue. The people are coming here believing that Canada is a country of human rights.
We just had a rally over the weekend, It was called “Rally for Roma, not Bill C-31”. We had people feeling empowered for the first time. They were coming out with signs saying, “Please, Canada, don't abandon us Roma”.
Don't believe the stereotypes about us that we're criminals. This is not a community of collective criminals. There was one case in Hamilton with 20 people involved. You've just heard that there are thousands of refugee applications each year. I've done my own research for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights for a report I did on forced migration. There were easily 9,000 refugee applications in the last few years. That was 20 people, while 9,000 applications can each represent a family of four. That's thousands of people—refugees who are coming here right now.
There have been Roma living in Canada for over 100 years. There are over 80,000 of us. You don't hear about us engaging in organized crime and criminal activity. One case cannot represent an entire family or an entire community of people. It's racism. It's prejudice. It's unacceptable in Canada.
People believe this country is a mecca for human rights. We need to uphold these values. As a teacher, I'm always talking to my students about human rights, the Canadian values of pluralism, and setting an example for the rest of the world.
Today, in Washington, D.C., they're holding a meeting with the U.S. Helsinki Commission and Hillary Clinton and trying to decide how they're going to be able to support the Roma in Europe. In Canada, we're still talking about bogus refugees, criminals, and people living off the welfare system.
When people legitimately need help in Canada, they are being doubly victimized. They're being told to get out of Hungary. They're being told that Hungary is for Hungarians—ethnic Magyars. After longer than Canada has been a country, they are told to get out.... They come here and people are, like, “You're criminals”. It's the same rhetoric, the same discourse, that's happening in these European societies, and we're allowing it to come here.
I teach that we don't allow hate to be imported into this country. People came here for a reason. We're all immigrants at one point or another. Often we came here because we didn't like what was happening in our own countries. We came here for a better life. That's why Roma are coming here, too. They want a better life. They have families. They want to integrate. They're going to school.
I have letters from the York Regional Police chief telling you about how Roma are coming to the police station in this project we did. I gave you these posters. It's called the Hate Can Kill project. It's a hate crime prevention project in partnership with the Toronto Police Service and the York Regional Police.
On March 31, 2012, for the first time in our Canadian history, we had over 40 Roma families go to the police headquarters at 40 College Street in Toronto. They were interacting with police officers and trying to rebuild trust. Even Chief Jolliffe from the York Regional Police said:
[While] our initiatives thus far have focused on addressing risk factors associated with intolerance, discrimination, hate crime and violence, while also attempting to deconstruct historical barriers, the community police engagement, while restoring community trust and confidence in policing.
We're trying to make sure that our Roma who are getting an opportunity to stay here know that this is a different society. We have police that will protect them. We have politicians who won't allow hate speech to continue or to affect them anymore. It's a different country they are in, and they believe that with all their heart. When they withdraw their refugee applications and go home believing they are not wanted over here, because they don't have the language skills and they don't have the navigational skills, they've been marginalized—not for decades but for centuries. They don't have the skills—
Sorry.
:
Okay. I'll give you one example.
In the European Union in general, we have anti-Roma riots, homes being burned to the ground. Just in Italy a few months ago, 200 homes were burned to the ground. In Bulgaria there are non-stop Roma riots, homes being burned to the ground, people being killed. There are mass expulsions in Italy, in France. There are internment camps.
Ujjal Dosanjh, who was a member of the Liberal government and a former premier of British Columbia, came to a public education event that I organized at the University of Toronto in November 2010. He saw these integration camps and said they were more like internment camps. He even brought back pictures.
I'll give you an example that took place in Hungary last Easter—not this past one, but the one in 2011—in Gyöngyöspata, a small village in Hungary. The Jobbik political party, which is on the far right and openly anti-Roma, has a paramilitary organization that works in solidarity with them. They wear the same Arrow Cross uniform from during the Nazi era.
came to our Roma community centre in October and heard first-hand testimony about this.
These neo-Nazis stayed in this village, 2,500 of them. After the demonstration and the rally ended that day, they stayed for three weeks. It took the international community—Amnesty, Red Cross—to intervene to get these thugs to stop terrorizing the people in this community.
Just now—
:
I do a lot of public education around gypsy fiction and Roma reality. A lot of people, even some people with double degrees, still don't know who the Roma are. They've heard of gypsies and know all the stereotypes, the negative connotations, that go along with being a gypsy.
I grew up in this country. My Canadian friends always thought it was kind of cool, but they asked me funny questions—i.e., do I have a crystal ball at home, or do I have a caravan in my driveway? Some of my friends would wear the gypsy Halloween costume to school. That stuff was a little bit perplexing at times, but it didn't hurt me.
Whenever I encountered a person who was ethnic Hungarian, for example, they would tell me—not every time, but often—if I were willing to divulge who I was and my background, “Keep that to yourself. That's shameful. Don't let anybody know that. Keep it a secret.”
There's this whole fiction that gypsies like to travel and can't settle down, and find it impossible to be sedentary. That's a lie. I mean, when you're kicked from place to place and not allowed to stay, it doesn't mean that's how you normally are.
Another fiction is this whole criminality thing. There's not this mass community of criminals in Europe. It doesn't exist. There are people who are criminals, just like in every other single community there are people who are criminals.
In the Roma community there's been a huge problem with the cycle of poverty—lack of education, people committing crimes of poverty. You hear this whole rhetoric in Hungary of the gypsy terror. You hear about gypsy criminals. It's dehumanizing. In Gyöngyöspata they had that mass rally because of the gypsy terrorists. But if you read a little bit deeper, you end up finding out that people were stealing firewood from the local privatized forest to heat their homes because they live in such endemic poverty.
The reality is so much different from the fiction that we have over here, but the problem is that the fiction here influences people's thought process, even at schools. At the schools our kids go to, staff are reporting to me that many of their colleagues have these very negative stereotypes of gypsies. When kids hear the discourse that happens often in our media, it just compounds the problem.
They believe the kids don't want to go to school. What they don't realize is that they're living for three years in this abysmal state of not knowing if they're coming or going, or what they're going back to.
There are so many complicated issues. It's so important to be able to depict Roma reality versus gypsy fiction.
In Europe it's very clear who are the Roma, as these are homogeneous societies. Ask somebody from Greece, from Italy, from Hungary, “How can you tell if someone is Roma?” Often it's because everybody who's not the ethnic majority are Roma. The only diversity that exists is in the main European city centres. As soon as you leave Budapest, it's a mono-ethnic, homogeneous society.
:
Thank you for the question.
I'd like to first of all address statistics, and then I'll deal with why people withdraw.
We see in the year 2011 that about 4,500 people initiated claims. About 800 were withdrawn, about 250 were abandoned, 160 were accepted, and 738 were refused. Half of the claims initiated were still pending.
When you look at the numbers, the percentage of withdrawn claims over the number of claims pending is not very high. It's a matter of how you look at the statistics. There is no refusal rate of 98%. There is no abandonment rate of 98%, and there is no withdrawal rate of 98%.
We see that in one in five cases of people who actually appear before board members, their cases are approved.
Now, why do people withdraw? This is a little bit of a complex situation, and there are certain factors that I think warrant looking at.
First of all, as Gina mentioned, it's very difficult for people who have low or little education to navigate a complex legal system. Until recently, there has been very little community support to assist these refugees. There has been a huge problem with a handful of unscrupulous lawyers and consultants who have actually done an injustice to this community. Numerous complaints have been filed at the law society against these lawyers. I myself am cleaning up dozens of messes from what happened. People lose hope. The lawyers don't show up. They don't answer their phones, and sometimes people just end up withdrawing their claims.
I'd like to make another point. If you come here to so-called scam the welfare system, you don't withdraw your claim. You stay here, and you take every last penny from welfare. The fact that people withdraw means that they're not in it for the money.