CIMM Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE LA CITOYENNETÉ ET DE L'IMMIGRATION

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Wednesday, December 1, 1999

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[English]

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney (Mississauga West, Lib.)): I will call the meeting to order. I welcome everyone to the meeting of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.

Members of the committee, we have two very special witnesses before us today, who are both former Canadian ambassadors. You have their biographies in your package. We have Mr. Martin Collacott from Vancouver, B.C., and Mr. William Bauer from Hensall, Ontario.

Gentlemen, thank you for coming. We understand that although you are listed in the order in which I introduced you, you have somehow drawn straws and decided you'll reverse the order in terms of your presentation.

Our first presenter will be Mr. Bauer, who is, among other things, currently completing a book on world migration, illegal immigration, and the abuse of the refugee determination system in Canada and elsewhere in the industrialized world. With those credentials and of course your former work around the world for some 38 years, we're sure you will give the committee some interesting insights.

We are here until 5:30 p.m. If we need to take that entire envelope, we will, but we're at your pleasure to make a presentation. We will then have questions and answers from the committee. Mr. Bauer, welcome, and please begin when you're ready.

Mr. William Bauer (Individual Presentation): I suppose it's worth mentioning en passant that I'm here in an individual capacity really. I don't belong to an organization. I don't have a cause. The only reason I'm working on this subject is that it's one that concerns me. It's one that has concerned me for some time, since I was involved in the refugee determination program for nearly four years.

I will preface the remarks I make, but I will first say that I think it would be most useful to all of you if in my initial remarks I just made an exposition of the framework within which I see the problem your committee is dealing with at this time, which is the refugee determination system and illegal migrants. I assume that your deliberations have been triggered by the events of this summer. That's one aspect of this.

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In the question period I'd be glad to answer questions having to do with ways in which the system might be improved. I think it's a waste of time to set out an encyclopedic list of things that might be done if you're not interested in that much detail. However, there are a number of ways the system might be improved and strengthened while still remaining fair. As I said, having set the framework, it would be easy for me to respond to any questions about changes that might be made.

The only other point I'd make is that the one thing I've found in both my previous careers and since I left them is that this is one of the more politically delicate subjects. It is very easy to avoid this subject or to give it a once-over lightly. What I'd like to convey is that this is an extremely serious problem. It's not just a problem that's affecting Canada. It's affecting many countries in the world, not just the industrialized countries but also the Asian countries.

However, the industrialized countries are particularly concerned because they have an established refugee determination system, which triggers as soon as anyone arrives and says “I claim refugee status”. It is a major problem, and other governments are working at this extremely seriously and very intensely—more so, I might say, than in my observation of the Canadian government.

The third preface I would add here is that nothing I say should be interpreted as being critical in a partisan political way. The current system was drafted and introduced by the Progressive Conservative government in 1989 and has been maintained with very few changes since 1993, when the present government was elected. One major mistake the Tories made was to make the Immigration and Refugee Board a patronage pot. Unfortunately, when the Liberals achieved power they did not change that mistake, so we still have the same problem. As I said, nothing I say should be interpreted as criticism of any political party.

I think we can agree that every sovereign society has the right to determine who should be a part of it. There may be disagreements about the scale of immigration or about the nature of immigrants, but it's a traditional component of Canadian life. I also think reasonable people all agree that it is an essential component of Canadian national life.

A second generally accepted view is that victims of persecution and oppression who have to leave their own countries as refugees should be offered protection and decent treatment when they arrive. This obligation is enshrined in the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees, which you're quite familiar with. It is also enshrined in the Immigration Act. The definition of a refugee, which is contained in the convention, has been transferred verbatim into the Immigration Act.

The government paper, which I think was entitled “Building on a Strong Foundation”, introduced earlier this year summed it up very well. It stated what I think most Canadians do believe, that ours is a special place. Consequently, admission to the Canadian family is, in the view of most Canadians, a privilege, one extended because of family ties, special attributes that contribute to our national wealth and social fabric or, equally important, our commitment to the protection of the persecuted. I think that summarizes almost universally accepted Canadian views on what immigration is all about in this country.

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I found that some of the confusion in the public debate this summer has revolved around the obligations of the Canadian government to refugees, refugee claimants and immigrants. The government has an obligation under its own laws and the 1951 convention not to return somebody it has determined to be a genuine refugee to the country where that person would be at risk of persecution. It has no obligation whatsoever to accept someone who claims to be a refugee unless and until that person establishes that claim at a fair hearing. Finally, it has no obligation to accept anyone as an immigrant unless that person meets the requirements set out in the Immigration Act; that is, family reunification, contribution to Canadian society, and so on.

Increasingly, fraudulent claims to refugee status are abusing the refugee determination system in order to gain immigrant status, Canadian citizenship, and, in many cases, illegal access to the United States. There are many genuine refugees who are entitled to protection, but there are also—and we have to bear in mind this unpleasant fact—large numbers of people who claim to be refugees who do not fit the definition but who have become very skilled at arguing their spurious claims.

I would say that the test of any refugee determination system is how effectively it separates the genuine refugees from the frauds and how well it discourages the frauds from placing such a load on the system that it gradually becomes slow, easily deceived, and ultimately, I would say, dysfunctional in terms of its objective.

Fraudulent claimants have a lot of motives. Some are would-be immigrants who do not meet the legal criteria for immigration, and that's health, educational qualifications, various skills and so on.

Some are would-be immigrants who don't want to take the time to follow the normal procedures when they can board a plane, a boat, or a bus and enter Canada immediately, claim refugee status, obtain accommodation, welfare support, medical treatment and facilities while waiting for the determination of their claim.

Some are fugitives from national or international justice. They are not just ordinary criminals but also war criminals and others who have committed murder, torture, rape, and genocide in their own countries.

Some are terrorists who want to use Canada as a safe haven where they can plan attacks on other countries and other groups, where they can prey upon their own ethnic communities for funds to carry out their activities and engage in crime such as drug trafficking, credit card fraud, and those types of things to obtain money for arms and other uses.

Now, as I said, Canada is not the only country facing the problem of unauthorized migration. There are about 100,000,000 migrants moving around the world trying to establish themselves in a country other than their own. There are millions of illegal immigrants in Thailand, Malaysia, and India. Estimates for South Africa vary widely: the minimum is 500,000 illegals now, and the maximum quoted is 4 million, but no one really knows.

In many of these cases, the illegals are tolerated as long as they provide cheap labour and don't provide any strain on the social structure. In most Asian and African countries, they normally don't claim refugee status mainly because there is no procedure established for that to take place.

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Most countries in the world have acceded to and ratified the 1951 convention. However, in order to do a refugee determination, you need an apparatus and legal administrative procedures to process people. This practice is probably limited mainly to the industrialized countries of the world. Not even Russia has procedures, yet there are probably between 500,000 and a million potential illegal refugee claimants in Moscow and the surrounding areas right now. Most of these people are waiting to be smuggled through the Baltic States and eastern Europe into western Europe and North America.

There's a determination system in most industrialized countries, but this whole system in all these countries is gradually being seized up by sheer numbers. The United Kingdom will have 90,000 claimants this year, most of them coming in from Europe. It already has a backlog of untreated claims of 90,000. At the end of this year it is going to have 180,000 cases to deal with. Despite huge amounts of money it is throwing into the system, it will not be able to manage this.

Switzerland, this year alone, has 55,000 claimants. Belgium has 21,000 claimants. Then there are the costs of maintaining the people and the system. Germany alone spends nearly five billion Deutschmarks a year on just sustaining refugee claimants.

Trafficking has become a huge problem because there have developed in response to the demand very intricate, flexible smuggling rackets and routes that were essentially developed for the trade in drugs: cocaine, heroin, amphetamines. The same people, basically the same agents and the same corrupt officials, use the same geographical routes, which move back and forth depending on where the pressures are applied. The same routes that were used for drugs are being used for people. The transnational crime syndicates that use these routes and carry out trafficking look upon bodies as simply another commodity, like a packet of cocaine. They'll throw it over a ship, if they have to, just as quickly as they'll throw overboard a packet of cocaine.

It's very profitable. The estimates vary a great deal. In trades like this you obviously can't look at their books, but most people who are experts in this figure that the international trafficking syndicates earn about $10 billion U.S. a year from this traffic. That's an awful lot of money, and it can corrupt and motivate an awful lot of people.

The people involved vary. The Russian Mafia, the Chinese triads, the Colombian drug cartels, the Tamil tigers and the Russian and Italian Mafia cooperate with each other. It's globalization on a major scale. They use each other's resources, but there are understandings that they don't bother each other too much. The small fry that carry the stuff, like the mules who carry drugs, are not too concerned about smuggling people because the penalties are minimal even if they're caught, which they seldom are, and the small fry very seldom get more than a rap over the wrist, unlike if they were found with a couple of kilos of cocaine or heroin. People are a fairly safe commodity because most countries don't have very stringent laws against trafficking.

I should add that these groups are enablers. One very important one, which I think is relevant to Canada in particular, is a gang called the Big Circle Boys. This gang came here mostly in the early 1990s and established itself in Canada by claiming refugee status and in most cases either achieving it or not being deported.

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This was a group of Red Guards that was particularly nasty. It was so nasty that when the cultural revolution ended its members were thrown into jails around Canton. This was why its members were called the Big Circle Boys.

They then escaped into Hong Kong, where they set up an extremely complicated and ruthless gang. About 300 of them are in Canada and they are now moving into the United States, Britain, and Europe. They are probably running the ships that are coming across the Pacific in collaboration with Taiwanese shipowners, Korean crews, or whatever. They have huge amounts of money.

When it comes time to talk about penalties for traffickers, I would suggest there are other things that are more important, because these people are untouchable. The guys that run the Big Circle Boys and the triads are very safely ensconced in China, Hong Kong, and elsewhere. You are never going to find them and you're never going to convict them. One may as well concentrate on deterring them rather than on convicting them.

You could ask why Canada is such an attractive target. I understand from the refugee board that this year it expects the total number of claimants to be up to 30,000, from 25,000 last year. It's not the easiest country to get into, although the largest proportion of illegals and refugee claimants do come across the land border from the United States.

I think the second-largest number of illegals come by air. In order to get on an airplane abroad to come to Canada, you need a document that will pass examination. People who come here do need to have some kind of document.

A relatively small number of illegals also come by ship, although that's growing since the United States has more or less succeeded in interdicting ships coming to the west coast and east coast of the United States—although one just landed in Atlanta about a month ago. More of them are coming to the west coast, and there will be a lot more coming next summer when the weather gets better.

Canada is difficult, and therefore it costs more for people to come here and go to the United States through here. A boat ride is about $25,000 U.S., and it's not a cruise. The police tell me that it is about $50,000 U.S. by air, which is twice as much. As you saw from the people arriving off Vancouver Island, it is not very comfortable on those boats. Air is the most comfortable route and the one used by preference by those who can afford it.

Another reason it will keep increasing in Canada is that the Europeans are trying to get their approach coordinated. It will be harder and harder for illegal migrants claiming to be refugees to get into the European countries, and certainly into the European Union. Countries such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, which will soon be members of the European Union, have been told that they will not become members until they settle their border issues and stop being an access point into western Europe.

As you know, under the Schengen agreement, once you're in one of the nine east European Union countries that are party to the Schengen agreement, you can move anywhere in any of the countries without any documents at all. It is totally open. Tens of thousands enter Italy, which has a very difficult coast. The Europeans are constantly irritated with the Italians because most of these people don't claim refugee status in Italy because they want to get to Germany, Switzerland, or Britain. So they just move on. In most cases they are not detained and there is nothing to stop them at that point. And of course once they get into western Europe there are innumerable ways they can get to Canada and the United States as well.

This is an open area, and there will be more pressures on us as the European Union countries try to coordinate their efforts to stop the traffic.

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I just want to make one other point. It's very easy to say, and many times it is said, “Well, these are just immigrants. They are leaving a very hard life. Canada can afford to be generous and compassionate.” I think this attitude is both irresponsible and wrong. I will take just a little extra time, if I may, Mr. Chairman, to explain this, because I think this is the crux of it.

If the political will is going to be developed to deal effectively with this, it will take a long time to work out the system. There are no quick fixes in this matter and there are no simple packages of things that will be done. There are a number of things that have to be done legislatively in terms of the regulations, the administrative practice, and the assigning of resources, both personnel and financial resources, to the problem.

If this is simply ignored as a problem, a lot of things flow from it. First, as you well know, we have a law called the Immigration Act. You've all seen it. The officials who have testified before you have told you how it works. The IRB officials and the immigration officials have explained how the refugee system works.

Immigration and refugee determination are carried out under the law and everyone is expected to live by it. The courts apply the law when the actions of officials are challenged. When fraudulent refugee claimants arrive in Canada their intention is to evade the law. I've talked to a number of police who know how the illegals operate. They are instructed by their shepherds, their snakeheads, or their tour guides on exactly what to say if their false documents are challenged by immigration officials. They are told that if their passports or identity documents are destroyed or handed back to them, they are to claim refugee status. These are the instructions they are given.

That is a serious offence. It's also, I think, an invitation to look upon Canadian law generally, and certainly the Immigration Act, with contempt by the people who achieve citizenship or landed status by fraud and deceit and by the failure of the government to apply the law fairly, effectively, and consistently.

If we don't eliminate abuse of the refugee determination system, we'll lose control of our immigration system as a whole and thus of the people who become citizens of Canada. Immigrants will be chosen by themselves, not by the Canadian government or the Canadian people. No country in history has ever willingly allowed this to happen. This is the ultimate violation of a sovereign society, which all over the world retains the right to decide who will become a part of that society.

A government is obliged to protect the security and the well-being of its citizens, and neither the security nor the well-being of Canadian citizens, in my view, can be protected if you don't have control over who enters the country and becomes a citizen.

Genuine refugees—and there are lots of genuine refugees, don't misunderstand me on that—and legitimate immigrants who, as family members, apply to come here to work and become citizens will be affected, because their processing will be delayed longer and longer. Refusal could even be the result as the sympathy of the Canadian public gradually erodes when they see what is happening.

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The health and social services of our major cities—in particular, Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal—will be increasingly overburdened by the demands of aliens who jump the immigration queue, who are not screened and who call on these services as a matter of course. Canadian security—and I think of Air India—is threatened when terrorists to whom we have given sanctuary use Canada as a base for carrying on their killings here and elsewhere.

Our integrity is destroyed if we give shelter to hundreds of war criminals and also allow our country to be used as a conduit into the United States. There are war criminals here. Some of them are turned up and deported from time to time, but many of them are not. A paper done inside immigration a couple of years ago said that there were at least 300 modern-day war criminals, not Nazis, who have achieved Canadian landed immigrant status or citizenship through the refugee determination system.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): I wonder if I might ask you to try to wrap up. We could get to Mr. Collacott and then go to questions.

Mr. William Bauer: Yes, indeed.

A lot of these gangs are large-scale drug dealers. Our kids are being affected by this particular operation. The drug money is partly just the usual thing going outside the country to the people who run these things. Others are using it to buy arms and explosives to carry out a task elsewhere, in their own countries in some cases.

Many ethnic communities, one or two in particular I can think of, are being leeched by the very people they fled their country to escape from, who are living in the same city with them and who are extracting money from them every month in order to support their operations abroad. I'm talking here about the Tamil tigers.

The largest group of Tamils outside Sri Lanka, leaving aside India, is in Canada, and Toronto particularly. Many of these people are victimized and in fear because the people who tortured and persecuted them in Jaffna and other parts of Sri Lanka are here as Canadian citizens and still operating as Tamil tigers.

Finally, we are spending probably between $300 million and $500 million a year in social costs for fraudulent claimants. We are spending about $150 million a year on the operations alone of the refugee determination system. Let's say that half a billion dollars a year of taxpayers' money is being spent on this system in one form or another.

In the meantime, the UNHCR is always falling short on its fundraising. The UNHCR is looking after 20 million identifiable refugees, who are fleeing not just persecution but war, famine, and everything else, and we are contributing less than $20 million a year to the UNHCR for those 20 million refugees.

The whole thing is skewed, Mr. Chairman, in a way that I think is worthy of very close attention and change. The main reason I took the time today to appear before you is to try to explain what I can about how the system is working and how it isn't.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): We appreciate your time. After we hear perhaps a 20-minute or so comment from Mr. Collacott, it will then leave us the better part of an hour for questions and answers back and forth.

Mr. Martin Collacott (Individual Presentation): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Like Mr. Bauer, I became concerned about problems with the refugee determination system as well as the immigration system when I was working abroad as an ambassador. You had the additional experience on the IRB. I also—and I think this is probably in my biographical notes—have an interest in seeing that Canada remains a tolerant and compassionate society and that we continue to accept refugees.

I think my notes may indicate that my wife is Asian, part Chinese and part Vietnamese. I have sponsored many relatives from Asia. Some of them escaped by boat, so I have a double interest in immigration and refugee issues. I also worked for the Ontario government for several years in the immigration area with non-English-speaking immigrants. So I have a strong interest in immigration questions from a number of dimensions.

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I will conclude this comment with some specific recommendations. I will start with what focused public interest on these issues, which was the arrival of the boat people this summer.

I used to live in Ottawa but I now live in Vancouver. I'm sometimes described as an escaped fed or an extinguished ambassador, but I consider myself a Vancouverite now, and there are some people here from Vancouver.

This was the perception of many people on the west coast. We had several hundred people arrive from China on four boats, almost certainly trying not to be detected and land without being caught. When they were caught, some of them acknowledged that they were all destined to go straight on to the United States. It's quite clear, and nobody disagrees, that they were being organized by criminal people traffickers. In the circumstances, there was no reason to expect that they had any intention of seeking refugee status in Canada.

Well, they were caught, unexpectedly for them, and immediately a large, expensive, elaborate, and time-consuming Canadian refugee determination system swung into action to find out, notwithstanding the details of their arrival, that there still might be at least one person among them who by chance, coincidentally, would be eligible to claim refugee status. In case some of them had never heard of claiming refugee status, the system provides them with full information on how to make a credible claim.

This still didn't help the first 30 or so claimants whose cases were heard by the IRB, but one woman now has finally been granted refugee status on the basis that she opposes the one-child policy in China. I'll comment later on whether her specific concerns should constitute a reasonable basis to become a refugee, but for the moment I will just say that if this is a valid reason, then most of the women and perhaps many of the men in China would be eligible to claim refugee status here.

Canada has had a very impressive record as a refugee-receiving country. We've been praised by the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the UNHCR, both for the numbers we've accepted and the manner in which we've received them.

A particular case was the large number of Indochinese refugees we took in after 1979. In terms of numbers, we've been particularly generous. There is an international organization you've probably heard about. It's an organization of 16 refugee-receiving countries called the Intergovernmental Consultations on Asylum Refugees and Migration Policies in Europe, North America and Australia. We'll call it the IGC for short.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): I hope they don't have a letterhead.

Mr. Martin Collacott: Just IGC will do. It tracks the movements of refugees. These are 16 major western refugee-receiving countries. This deals basically with refugees accepted in-country, because they don't seem to keep track so much of refugees accepted overseas. We have 4.9% of the population among those 16 countries, but we accept 22% of the refugees who are accepted in-country. Part of the reason is that we accept 44% of the claims made in Canada, whereas the average for the 16 countries is only 13.4%. If you take out Canada, it is 11.3%, about one-quarter of our rate of acceptance.

I think most Canadians do support a system that accepts reasonable numbers of claimants who have a genuine need for protection, and, as I have indicated, I hope we continue to do so. However, there is widespread concern in the public that the system is being abused.

One reason why things are being stretched here is that Canada has begun over the years to grant refugee status on grounds that most other countries do not or do not to the same extent. The relevant UN convention defines refugees as persons who, as you know, have a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in social groups, or political opinion. These people are called convention refugees.

There is also a second type of refugee, according to the UN, a non-convention refugee. As Bill Bauer referred to them, they are people who were not subject to persecution but left their own country for reasons of civil war or natural disasters and are considered to require temporary protection but not permanent resettlement.

In one year the IGC analysed the cases of a quarter of a million people who made claims in these 16 countries. In that year, it found 16.8% were deemed to be convention refugees and 19.2% were deemed to be non-convention refugees needing temporary protection. The remaining 64% were not refugees by any standard.

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The 16.8% who were considered convention refugees was not too far removed from the percentage of the 16 other countries that have accepted 13.6%, but it's a much lower rate than the 43.8% Canada accepted. Of 36% who were refugees, less than half were considered convention refugees.

We have stretched the definition not just to include people deemed only to need temporary protection rather than permanent resettlement, but to include people who are abused spouses, or, in the case of China, people who opposed the one child per family policy.

Interestingly, Canada feels sympathy for people who have escaped domestic violence or the one-child policy, but some time ago warned the international community of the consequences of stretching the definition. At a meeting of the UNHCR in 1991, the Canadian representative said that to expand the convention would only serve to disadvantage those most in need, the ones who are really fleeing persecution. If the refugee definition is drawn too broadly, we risk defining the problem into unmanageability; that is, so many people will be eligible on so many different grounds that we'll be overwhelmed.

Another aspect of our system—and it's not really within the IRB, but it does have a major impact in terms of public unease—are judicial decisions related to the refugee system. I'll just mention one recent case, that of José Jiminez. He is a claimant who was convicted in the United States of three prostitution offences, as well as resisting arrest, and he then came to Canada.

Mr. Jiminez was about to be deported for threatening a man with a knife in a park in London, Ontario, and the other man was advising potential clients that Jiminez had AIDS. When he was about to be deported, a federal judge ruled that under the provisions of our refugee system he should be allowed to remain in Canada because he might not be able to get the same treatment for his AIDS in his native El Salvador that he was getting from Ontario Health Care.

The Department of Citizenship and Immigration said that he could get the same treatment, but the judge ruled that he wasn't sure he could. So Mr. Jiminez is probably here to stay.

That type of decision, although it's not really part of the IRB process, has not helped public confidence.

Another very contentious dimension is the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I guess you've probably heard the famous Singh v. the Minister of Employment and Immigration case mentioned many times. In 1985 the Singh case had a profound effect on Canada's refugee determination process. As a result of that decision, a full oral hearing on the basis of fundamental justice according to section 7 of the charter is available to all claimants.

For many observers, that decision has been a major factor in creating the many-layered and the frequently lengthy process that, in the words of the Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson, has thrown the entire system into chaos.

I would like to make two points on the Singh case. First, Madam Justice Bertha Wilson of the Supreme Court, who wrote it up, concluded that the word “everyone” in section 7 applied not just to Canadian citizens and those with permanent residence in Canada, but to anyone who'd succeeded in setting foot on our soil in whatever circumstances.

In my view, this interpretation involves a fundamental erosion of Canadian sovereignty. In fact, if one were to follow through logically on this interpretation of “everyone”, you'd have to say that there is no reason why “everyone” can't be everyone on the planet. Why just restrict it to people who have managed to get into Canada under any circumstances?

Jeff Simpson made the point that court decisions should take into account their effect on public policy and public opinion, even where judges want to demonstrate that they are large and liberal in their views. In this regard, I was pleased to note that the newly appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court has reportedly said that the impact on public policy is a consideration in her approach to judicial decisions.

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A second element of the Singh decision, which I think bears re-examination, is the conclusion that in accordance with fundamental justice, a claimant is entitled to a full oral hearing. A ruling made under the same section of the charter, not in connection with refugee claimants, in the British Columbia Court of Appeal just two months after the Singh case in 1985 stated that it would be folly to suppose that the principles of fundamental justice demand a full oral hearing in every case. They may in some cases, but not necessarily.

Although there have been a number of very thoughtful commentaries in recent weeks in the media about the need to revisit the Singh case, the government has thus far refused even to consider whether some kind of review is in order.

Several possible solutions have been put forward, including the invoking of the notwithstanding clause, but there are other variants that have been looked at to examine how this section should apply to the refugee determination system. I believe the merits of the case for review are sufficiently compelling that sooner or later it will have to be looked at, and, from my perspective, the sooner the better if public confidence has been restored.

Bill Bauer has already outlined some of the negative effects of the current system, and I'll run through my list quickly. It will overlap to some extent.

It's so easy to get into the system—even if one is turned down, they are, more often than not, able to stay in Canada indefinitely—that it attracts a great number of people who do not deserve our protection and would not be granted protection by any other country.

The extent to which the refugee determination system is abused and derided was brought home to me quite graphically when I was serving as ambassador in a country in the Middle East in the early 1990s. On several occasions, Canadian citizens or landed immigrants described to us in detail how they had exploited and circumvented the system. One would have thought they would be reluctant to tell us all the details, but they gave the impression that Canada must be looking for people who can do this. They said that Canada could not be that stupid that it would set up a system so full of holes. They thought that we must have a lot of tax dollars we were unable to get rid of, so they told us they would do this, this, and this, thinking that it was pretty admirable from a Canadian point of view.

There are other negative effects. I think the current system erodes public sympathy and creates increasing resentment on the part of the taxpayers because of the high cost of the system and its limited effectiveness. It is very unfair to immigrants who wait in line to put in their applications and wait patiently to come to Canada, while we reward those prepared to go around the system and get benefits immediately upon arrival. It's also harmful to legitimate immigrants who are sometimes confused by the public with bogus claimants because they come from the same countries.

As Bill has mentioned, it's a magnet to organized people traffickers who bring in people for criminal activities and it makes it easier for terrorists to get in.

Bill also mentioned that we spend a huge amount of money on the refugee determination process for several thousand people who have the money to get to Canada, but spend only a fraction of that on the millions of people in refugee camps who are suffering.

We also allow large numbers of people to come and stay here who are not well equipped to integrate into Canadian society and then will be sponsoring their relatives. I'm not talking about the genuine refugees; I'm talking about the bogus ones. I think that strains the social fabric of Canada and its spirit of tolerance. It also affects our relations with the United States. It has not said very much yet, but we are such an easy conduit for people to go to the United States that it is not very happy.

As an ambassador, it affected me in certain respects, in that I had trouble issuing visitor visas and student visas to people. The Americans could easily issue visas because it is hard to claim refugee status there, but I could not issue them to the same people because it's so easy to claim status here. That was unfair to the visitors.

What are some of the recommendations? The one I've already mentioned is to have another look at the Singh decision or that section of the charter. A somewhat more contentious one is the large percentage, maybe 50% or 60%, of the people who make claims in Canada cross the border from the U.S.A. Some countries do adopt the legal fiction that you are not in the country until the immigration officer says you can come in.

We have a lot of missions in the United States that could process their applications. Admittedly, they're not set up to be able to do this at the moment. It would take some rejigging to make it possible to do that. There would have to be exceptions for people who are about to be deported from the U.S.A. That is not a simple solution, but it is one that bears looking at.

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One reason why they don't want to make them abroad is that last year we accepted 9,500 refugees from abroad. Three-quarters were accepted in Canada, but if you haven't got a good case, you don't have much chance abroad. If you haven't got a good case, you can at least get into the system here and probably never get deported.

The minister announced last week that she will clarify and enhance existing grounds for detention of claimants, which is very important to me. This would include, for instance, those who arrived without documents and were uncooperative. However, while public attention was focused on those coming in by boat, much larger numbers were steadily coming through the airports and were quietly ignored.

It wasn't until some of the people who were released from the first boat disappeared that the government began detaining those from the second, third, and fourth boats. The government still wasn't detaining people coming in through the airports until sometime in October, when 22 Chinese people arrived on one flight from Budapest. I guess the government felt it had better do something or someone could notice it.

In relation to that, I think we should try to find ways of encouraging people not to get rid of or destroy their documents. This is obviously part of the technique of confusing the immigration officer so they can stay here. I also think we have to do something about the people arriving at the airports.

One of the main reasons the minister touched on this in a statement in Vancouver last week was the disarray in the current system. It is so layered that there are many opportunities for delay. She also indicated that she intends to reduce and consolidate the number of steps and reduce the processing time by 2002 to six months.

In a publication by the previous minister, it was stated that there would be a reduction in the processing time and that there would be certain levels folded into the IRB process, like the PDRC, the post-determination refugee claimants in Canada class risk assessments, and the risk assessment humanitarian review. I think that will be a good thing. It involves expanding a little bit the parameters of the IRB to include the convention against torture. I think that could all be folded in.

The Auditor General's report of two years ago on the processing of refugee claims recommended a processing time of ten weeks. I don't see why this shouldn't be aimed for, because it would fit in well with the minister's stated goal of not detaining claimants any longer than necessary.

The Auditor General also noted in one recent year that 49% of scheduled hearings were postponed or delayed, causing major delays in the overall process. That shouldn't be permitted unless there is a compelling reason.

The minister in this document also stated that there would be heavier penalties for people smugglers if they were caught. This makes good sense, but as Bill Bauer said, you will probably not catch the organizers very often, not the big fish. The only way you can really deter the smuggling is to make it not work. Most of the people smuggled in are not going to stay here unless they're very clearly real refugees.

Another item in the 1997 report of the Auditor General is the recommendation that claimants be sent back to third countries if they came from there. This was provided for in 1989. The immigration department estimated that 40% of claimants could be sent back to a safe country after their initial hearing to pursue their claim.

Under the Dublin convention, the European Union already has agreements in place that prevent people who have already reached one safe country from asylum-shopping by going on to another one. This is what happened in the case of the Sri Lankan Tamil boat people in 1986. They had been living in Germany for three years, but they thought there was a better deal in Canada. That kind of provision is unpopular with people who specialize in helping refugees once they're in-country.

Much has been said about the selection and performance of members of the IRB. The immigration legislative review, which came out almost two years ago, recommended that, instead of order-in-council appointments, the board be composed of career public servants with expertise in refugee and international human rights laws, as well as in procedures for making fair, legal, and consistent judgments.

The Auditor General had a good deal to say about the consistency of the decisions. He noticed that during one period, for instance, 75% of Bangladeshi claimants were accepted in Montreal and 25% in Toronto. Well, something is peculiar about that. Obviously there needs to be better consistency.

• 1630

The minister also suggested that to get better efficiency there should be only one board member for most hearings. Right now you can have one board member with the consent of the claimant's counsel, but she's considering making that a fixture. I think that's a good idea. You would have to make sure that if you had just one board member he or she would be very well versed and capable. She also leaves provision for three members in complex cases.

The Auditor General pointed out that we have one of the worst records in the world for claimants where due process has deemed they don't need our protection and are not refugees. This shortcoming alone is a major inducement for persons without a credible claim to enter Canada and get into the refugee determination system. A new automated tracking system was ready for introduction in 1997, but it was cancelled due to budgetary constraints. Lack of resources is a huge problem.

There has been some success at interdiction at airports overseas, but if we had more resources we could be much better. The Auditor General has recommended that the senior immigration officers, who make the initial determination of whether someone should go into the system.... They used to make a detailed report, have a detailed interview, and then decide. They don't do that now because they don't have time. The IRB would benefit from that. We have to put more resources into tracking and into the removal of rejected claimants.

Detention measures would require more resources. The Aussies have been faced with an onslaught of people, and have just made the decision to pay $150 million a year for detention to try to stop it. That takes a lot of money, but if we have a more streamlined process and we get people out of here faster, we can save that money in other places.

We need a major overhaul of the system. The Auditor General cautioned the government about making patchwork changes. He said that we need a thorough review of the whole process. In my view, the minister has made some moves in the right direction, but it will take a lot more than that.

It's important for the government to listen not just to advocates who want to keep the system the way it is because of a vested interest, but to listen to a whole range of views. There have been various techniques for scaring people off these issues. They are often described as racist if they raise these issues because many of the claimants are visible minorities. That argument had limited success in Vancouver with the boat people because most members of the Chinese Canadian community didn't think much of the claimants' case. The supporters switched that to say that there were class differences. They said they didn't like them because they were from the wrong class. When that didn't wash too well, people took the line that Canada had to take these people, who were being driven away from China, because China was impoverished due to Canadian predatory trade and investment policies.

There is a whole series of arguments. What we need is a sustained and informed national debate, which is long overdue. It is not just the government, but opposition parties that should also approach this on a non-partisan basis. The United States Congress has a bipartisan committee that deals with these things. I think we have to take a non-partisan view. If we are going to retain public confidence and still be able to get the genuine refugees but not have our system abused, we need to undertake a full overhaul of the system now.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Thank you very much, gentlemen.

I have six people on the list. We'll start the ten-minute round with Mr. Anders.

Mr. Rob Anders (Calgary West, Ref.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have heard the suggestion before about going after the airlines, trying to set up some sort of way of discouraging the destruction of documents on board the planes. They need to have the documents when they board the plane, but when they get here they magically disappear.

The first question I have deals with having the airlines return them at their own cost. This might be something that would help. Maybe the possibility of fines would help. I don't know. I was just wondering what you gentlemen think of this.

The other question I have is on the issue of detention. You mentioned the Australians are looking to spend $150 million on the detention process. I think Canada will have to consider that.

As you both have far more expertise and experience than I, as a new member of this committee, what would either of you recommend in terms of a detention process to streamline it and make it effective?

• 1635

Mr. William Bauer: I would go with detention first. There is a lot of jurisprudence in this country about detention. It is an extremely complex subject. You can't simply detain people unless there are reasonable grounds for believing that they pose a threat to society or they might flee.

Detention is certainly one of a variety of routes one can follow to make Canada an unattractive target for a fraudulent claimant. A genuine refugee will put up with detention if he or she is fleeing from genuine persecution.

We have a fair system. I have never had any doubt in my mind that a genuine refugee would be sent back to the country from which he or she came. They will put up with quite a bit. Although understandably they may be sensitive to authority and all that, there are ways of doing it. That may be something the experts in the justice, Solicitor General, or citizenship and immigration departments could deal with in detail better than I could.

The Australians are doing something interesting in conjunction with the same bill and have already introduced it as regulations. They are giving anyone who arrives and achieves refugee status a three-year resident visa. During that time, the person will not be able to bring in any family members. This makes it less attractive for the fraudulent claimant.

When it comes to the airline issue, I always wonder if changing things is practical. If it is not, I feel there is no point in even fiddling with it. The airlines already are subject to a $3,000 fine for someone arriving illegally. It's not always applied, but they pay quite a penalty.

If someone arrives in Canada and does not have documents, knowing the person must have had documents to get on the aircraft, we know he or she must have flushed them down the toilet, given them to the person who escorted the group of six, or whatever. I don't think it is really fair or just to hold the airlines responsible for that act.

They have enough things to worry about on board the airline without looking in washrooms to see if someone's flushing a passport down. They can't confiscate documents from passengers. There are a whole series of restraints on them. If they are not in a position to legally enforce their position, I don't think it's fair to make them pay a penalty for it.

As there are already training programs for airline staff, I would suggest—and this is an important point—that they be given access to the system. If people are getting on aircraft with fraudulent documents, that would be the only way you could slow up the process at the other end.

I think the airline staff should be trained more systematically and more thoroughly by immigration enforcement people so that they could do a better job than they are perhaps doing now in screening out people who have fake Canadian passports or whatever it happens to be.

I believe there would be a compromise with your suggestion, but your particular suggestion of holding them liable for what an individual does on the aircraft, aside from air rage or trying to hijack it, would probably not be workable in law.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Mr. Collacott, do you have anything to add to that?

Mr. Martin Collacott: I think we can do a lot more than we have done in this area. One of the problems is that it has been discussed with airlines, and they're often not very enthusiastic about anything that slows down the movement of their passengers. Sometimes when we have tried to make a deal with some airline there have been threats that it will stop coming to Canada and we'll lose our rights. That has not been an easy history.

• 1640

I think we can do more. I first mentioned the interdiction overseas, which takes the pressure off the airline, but that takes a lot of resources. It costs a lot of money to have a Canadian base overseas to do this. We've had success where we've had them, but we haven't covered too many.

I think we should look further at holding the documents on board. I've never had my passport held on an aircraft, but I've had it held on a cruise ship for the entirety of the journey.

The second way of doing it, which would take some trouble, would be to photocopy the document. The question of whether we can turn someone around when they arrive at the gate in Canada is a separate issue, because they're still technically on our soil. If we had this legal fiction, we could put them right back on the plane if there was obvious subterfuge.

I think we should explore these areas, and other countries may want to, because they're facing the same problem.

On the detention question, I gather that the Australians are now going to detain everybody who comes in by boat. I don't know about those coming in illegally by plane. Bill mentioned the three-year visa, which is a sort of tentative visa. I think they would probably still be the only people who would be considered as possibly being legitimate refugees, not those who are considered bogus. They're going to be detained until they're processed and out of there. They're simply being deluged with people right now. We're not because it's not a good season for boats to cross the Pacific.

However, we are going to see more and more of these problems. And like it or not, we will have to look at some pretty tough solutions.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Mr. Anders, you still have two minutes. I would want to try to keep the answers in that frame, because I have five or six other questioners.

Mr. Rob Anders: Sure, I understand.

The other question I wanted to ask is with regard to what we provide in terms of accommodation, welfare, and medical coverage.

I'm thinking of a fellow I met in the United States by the name of Howard Phillips. He was saying that you have to be mindful of what you're attracting people for. If you're attracting people for things like entitlement or privileges, like accommodation, welfare, and medical benefits, he says we should watch out. He says we will be getting people who want to take advantage of a system. That is problematic for a country in the long term in terms of what types of people it attracts.

What changes would you like to see made or what do you think we could do in terms of altering the mix in such a way that we would not have a situation where people are looking for freebies?

Mr. William Bauer: I think it's quite true, it does attract fraudulent claimants. It's very expensive in terms of medical costs in the big cities. A lot of the emergency wards are crowded, partly because of the tremendous unexpected load. At this very moment, the British are trying to provide support in kind. I think it is 50 pounds a week in cash.

Anything that would fulfil what is probably a charter obligation, or would be established as one, in terms of medical accommodation, financial support, and legal support without actually putting the money in the hands of the person concerned would probably solve the problem, because a lot of the welfare money is deflected. We know that and the police know that. It is the first thing they apply for. The form is filled out in Niagara Falls, New York, often by claimants, and delivered over here, and the cheque is issued the moment they arrive. The money goes to somebody else and is doled out or is tithed, as the case may be. I think in kind is something like that.

When you have Toronto, where no accommodation is left, where all the temporary accommodation is filled up and there are homeless people, you have a serious problem. It's just one of the many problems that sometimes seem almost insoluble.

Mr. Martin Collacott: I have just a very quick addition. I would see it the same way. It's not an easy one. If you can do it in kind, I think it's less of an inducement. You still have to provide for basic support.

• 1645

The cash is an inducement. A friend of mine took a taxi in Washington and the driver was a refugee claimant from a particular country. He said that he and his fellow countrymen had moved and settled in the United States but that the Americans were very mean because they were making it difficult for them to go back every month and claim their refugee welfare cheques in Canada. Now that's a bit of a personal kind of comment, but that kind of money, which they were still collecting from Canada, was clearly an inducement for them. If you could do it in kind in some way, I think it would still help give support without making it an unnecessary inducement.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Those names were provided to the immigration officials, were they?

Mr. Martin Collacott: The name wasn't volunteered by this gentleman.

Mr. John Bryden (Wentworth—Burlington, Lib.): Mr. Chairman, I am one who has read the Singh decision. Just for the record, I make the observation that the justices considered the rights of convention refugees; they did not consider the rights of bogus convention refugees. In fact in the Singh decision there was one claimant who had entered the country with false papers, had been in for two years under a false identity, was caught, arrested, and then made a refugee claim, but this was not considered. We have mentioned to the minister that perhaps there should be a reference back to the Supreme Court on this kind of issue to see if we can plug that up.

I have a question I want to put to you. You touched on a point that just absolutely bewilders me. I was scandalized by the decision to accept this person because of the sterilization threat among the emigrants. That of course invites similar refugee claims from about a billion Chinese, because both males and females are subject to the possibility of sterilization when you have an overpopulation problem like that.

Obviously, the problem of defining a refugee cannot be left to the refugee boards. This is a preposterous decision. It is just simple madness. Is this something where perhaps the definition of “refugee” should be turned over to say the foreign affairs department, which surely is a body of government that is in the business of determining whether there is a civil war going on and refugees are being produced, or is in the business of determining whether there is a dictatorship or some other rule of government that is engaged in systemic persecution?

Is the definition of “refugee” determined in other countries by their departments of external affairs, or is it similarly left up to sort of the ad hoc committee that we have here? How does it work?

Mr. Martin Collacott: There are two dimensions to your question. First, the assessment of what is going on in a particular country I think is important. The Auditor General's comment on the different acceptance rates for Bangladeshi probably relayed the fact that one board was looking carefully into what was happening there and one wasn't, although I'm not sure why any Bangladeshi were accepted in particular.

If the decisions are going to be well made, there has to be a good base of knowledge as to what is happening in the country the claimant comes from. Even when we have that information, the other question we must ask is where do we draw the line, which I think is the first aspect. If you are going to include people simply fleeing a civil war and hopefully being able to return home, as happened with the Kosovars, is that really where you want to draw the line? I don't think that was the original intention of the UN convention; it was individuals fleeing persecution on specific grounds.

You have to rethink how widely you want to cast the net and then you have to look at getting specific information on the circumstances under which that person left and where they came from. Is there really a grounds for claiming refugee status if you're from New Zealand, for example, or is there anything going on there that would justify it?

Mr. John Bryden: But my question isn't that. I understood that from your remarks. Should it be left to the refugee boards, or should it be left to the expertise of the Department of Foreign Affairs, which surely has ambassadors abroad? It has commentaries all the time that determine whether a nation is engaged in systematic persecution, for example.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Could I just ask you to clarify? Are you saying they should be the ones who define a refugee?

Mr. John Bryden: Yes.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Isn't that done by the United Nations convention?

Mr. John Bryden: No, that's not what I'm saying. I am asking if there are other countries that use their department of external affairs or foreign affairs to define the countries that are producing refugees. We know what a refugee is. Obviously the United States isn't producing refugees—or is it? I'm not sure.

Mr. William Bauer: We've had a couple.

Mr. John Bryden: Yes, I'm sure we have.

Mr. William Bauer: They succeeded, but it was overturned. Let me explain.

• 1650

I hear your point very clearly, but it's important to understand that the process of determining who is a refugee involves detached people. It's similar to a court, except you don't have witnesses other than the claimant; you don't have evidence other than open evidence and what the claimant gives you; you don't have any testimony that would contradict.

The IRB is an administrative tribunal to provide fairness and a system of hearing that enables a claimant to put his or her case. It's based on the law. And the law basically is, on the one hand, the definition of a refugee contained in the 1951 convention and in the Immigration Act, and on the other hand, what is becoming a massive pile of jurisprudence handed down by the Federal Court and Supreme Court of Canada and to a certain extent, although not with the same weight as judicial decisions, the handbook of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

So you have to hear the evidence the claimant gives, and that has to be a tribunal of some make-up along the lines of a court.

One of the proposals I would make to you is that the information available to that tribunal is not particularly good, in my view. It's contradictory. It goes in all directions. It's from public sources. There should be a role for DFAIT, as external affairs is now called, and its missions abroad to provide detailed information about certain aspects of things.

The courts and the IRB have gradually expanded the membership in a particular social group subject to persecution beyond what it was in 1951. It now includes, for example, a 200-pound man who claimed he had been beaten by his wife for 10 years and couldn't get the police to protect him. Where the state is unable to protect somebody, there's no reason we can't talk to the state and ask if this man really exists and did this really happen.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): What did the wife weigh?

Mr. William Bauer: Probably 400 pounds.

Mr. John Bryden: I grant you that, but I'm still not getting where I want to get here. What I don't understand is why do I, as a parliamentarian, have to leave it to this refugee board to determine what the heck a refugee is in terms of this particular case where we have now opened the door to a billion Chinese based on sterilization? Surely, somewhere it is Parliament's responsibility to define that. Why are we leaving it to the board? Is there some other area where we can put that responsibility?

Mr. William Bauer: I don't like to discourage you, but this decision about forcible sterilization is a Supreme Court decision and the law of the land. When a board, a panel, or a court listens to a refugee claimant and is persuaded that if a particular refugee claimant is returned.... And this can be a he or she, because some men must have a compulsory vasectomy. If they believe, because of the testimony and all the surrounding documentation, that the person will be subjected to forced sterilization if returned to China, they have no choice but to rule the person to be a refugee because of a Supreme Court decision.

Mr. John Bryden: Which decision?

Mr. William Bauer: Chan, I think it is. Is that the one?

A voice: Yes.

Mr. John Bryden: Okay. Thank you.

Mr. William Bauer: It went right up through the Federal Court.

Mr. John Bryden: Was it a unanimous decision or a majority decision?

Mr. William Bauer: I think there were two dissenting justices. It is the law of the land.

What I'm saying, sir, is that the administrative tribunal is necessary in order to judge, as a jury would judge, the story of an individual claimant. Accepting that claimant simply means that you accept her or his story and that you accept that if he or she is returned, she or he will be subjected to this. It doesn't mean you accept all their citizens who are subject to the same law.

Mr. John Bryden: A billion people out of a Supreme Court decision. That is just madness.

Mr. William Bauer: Well, that's another subject.

• 1655

Mr. John Bryden: Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): We will now go to five-minute rounds. Maybe we could try to compress so we can get everybody's questions in.

Mr. Grewal, you're up for five minutes.

Mr. Gurmant Grewal (Surrey Central, Ref.): Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank Mr. Bauer and Mr. Collacott for taking time and for their enlightened presentation. I will make a couple of observations and then ask my questions.

I do not think there is anyone in Canada who doesn't want general refugees to be welcomed, but the problem is the fraudulent refugees. I think Canada is doing a very good job in marketing to the rest of the world, particularly the underground world and the criminal people, that Canada is the place to be.

The Prime Minister made a statement a few days ago. It's not too often that I agree with his statements, but I agree with this statement, although not necessarily the intention. He said that Canada was the place to be. That was the model the immigration minister suggested to the Prime Minister for the sake of our country. I think he's right, because Canada is the place to be—for criminals, terrorists, and all those people we don't want.

A great marketing job is done by the weaknesses in our system, which are being exposed. Everyone knows where our system is weak and certain people try to take advantage of those weaknesses.

A comment was made about refugees who come to Canada without documents. According the Auditor General's report, 60% of visitors who come to the country and apply for refugee status land here without documents. We know that when they board the plane they have documents. With the advancements in technology, one suggestion I would make is not photocopying and not fining them, but scanning the document. They would only have to carry a disk, which would be an easy and effective way to do it.

Two senior immigration officers in Hong Kong, Mr. Brian McAdam and Corporal Robert Read, blew the whistle when 2,000 visa forms were stolen from the Hong Kong embassy. It is not the gentlemen who steal these visa forms. Naturally, those 2,000 criminals somehow enter our country.

On another project called “Sidewinder”, there was no political will to proceed with it because of the political pressure. It was stopped right away and all the evidence that was gathered was shredded by CSIS.

So my first observation is that there is no political will to correct the system. The government punishes those who blow the whistle. Even Corporal Read is still suspended. With your extensive experience, do you feel there is a political will to improve the system?

I have another question for you. Everyone has a favourite example to give, but I will give mine. Two years ago a couple came from Australia. They applied for refugee status when they arrived and received $3,000 from welfare and other things. They stayed in the country for two months, had a wonderful vacation, and then went back. Do you think claimants should be undergoing a detailed interview at the border or port of entry? If yes, what would be your comments about that?

I will very quickly ask you a third question. Do you think detention of those people whose cases are not concluded would be a good idea? If the process is faster, do you think that once an illegitimate refugee fails they should be deported?

According to the Auditor General, only 4,000 out of the 20,000 people who have already been deported can be found, and 16,000 are consumed somehow in the system or cross to the south of the border. Should they be detained until their case is finally concluded?

I want to make this question clear, because as soon as those people who apply for refugee status in Canada get landed documents, they go back to their parent country. They are refugees in the first place because of their fear of persecution or oppression, but as soon as they get landed documents, why are they allowed to go back to their country to get married or to see their relatives or friends? Should there not be a restriction saying that they should not leave the country until the situation in their country improves?

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Could you try to condense?

• 1700

Mr. Martin Collacott: Yes. I will give a few quick answers.

This is not in the same order in which you put the questions, but you mentioned the problem at missions abroad and the disappearance of the visas. There have been several problems at Canadian missions where there have been improprieties. We obviously have to try to have the best security we can.

One of the difficulties, though, is again resources. We've downsized to save money. It costs a lot more to have a Canadian posted abroad than to hire a local, but there is sometimes a price to pay for that, because we've got to pay the local wages. A lot of money can be made out of visas either being processed illicitly or stolen visas. From that point of view, I would like to see somewhat more Canadian resources abroad to deal with that.

I believe you mentioned interviews at the port of entry. One of the recommendations in the Auditor General's report dealt with people arriving without a credible claim. It stated that there should be a fairly detailed interview for anyone making a claim, which should be recorded and handed over to the IRB. I think refugee lawyers are not very pleased with that one. They always insist that they should be able to provide counsel first on how to play it. Well, I like the Auditor General's system: yes, they'll eventually get counsel, but they should be interviewed right on the spot when they enter.

Detention is not an easy subject. I think we have to look at that more thoroughly, because it will be the biggest deterrent to bogus refugee seekers. The Australians are going to do it now for everybody who comes in by boat or comes in without documents as a strong deterrent.

There is one last question I would like to touch on. You mentioned people going back home after having fled for refugee reasons. When I was the high commissioner in Sri Lanka, one of my successors noted that a very large percentage of the refugee claimants went back there. They said that they had fled persecution and civil war, but I knew there was no persecution against Tamils. There was a civil war between the army and the Tamil insurgent group, but most of the people were quite comfortable going back for visits to the country. I am sure you are aware of other countries where the same thing has happened.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Thank you very much.

We'll go to Mr. Telegdi for five minutes.

Mr. Andrew Telegdi (Kitchener—Waterloo, Lib.): Mr. Chairman, having been a refugee from Hungary, I certainly wouldn't have been too happy about being detained. I just wanted to get that on the record.

Mr. William Bauer: Especially since there were 24,999 others of you in the same place. At any point of time, there are 25,000 people in the backlog of the IRB.

Mr. Martin Collacott: I do not want to interrupt you, but can I make a point?

Mr. Andrew Telegdi: Let me first put my question and then you can comment. I don't have a whole lot of time.

You made the point that many of the people coming into the country come through the U.S. You also made the point that the U.S. is getting upset at us. Now we both have a problem, but the fact of the matter is that we get more from them than they get from us. I hope you will comment on that.

Regarding the boats, I think our policy is to detect them, intercept them, detain them and then adjudicate. The ones who get free are freed, and the others are sent back. That was the strategy we took after we saw what happened to the first boat.

Would you agree that it is not very profitable for the triads to be using boats to come to this country because these boats are very slow and very easy to detect, and as long as we continue to detect them it will work well?

The other question I have concerns your comment on war criminals. After the Second World War, war criminals entered the country legally. We have now taken a very strong position with regard to war criminals. Once we know the person is a war criminal we can revoke his or her citizenship, even if they are living here.

• 1705

I have one last question. In 1995 a ministry advisory committee was set up to improve the competence of the people who were appointed to the refugee board. I am sure you're aware of that, but if you're not, it was mentioned in the Auditor General's report that you referred to before. I will leave those questions there and give you an opportunity to respond.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Mr. Bauer can respond this time.

Mr. William Bauer: I am aware of that committee. I think Gordon Fairweather was the chairman of it. He left it because he couldn't get the PMO to accept the recommendations. And that was published.

Gordon Fairweather is a pink Tory, of course, and was chair of the board for quite some time. He knew what a good member ought to be, although he wasn't always able to ensure he got them when the Tories were in power either. However, he left because he was so frustrated. But I won't carry that any further.

I know this is still, may I say, a patronage pot. I know the members who are appointed. There are good people and then there are people who are appointed as patronage appointments who turn into good officers. I'm not saying it's not possible to be both.

Mr. Andrew Telegdi: I will just stop you there. How did you get on the board?

Mr. William Bauer: I got on the board because I had 37 years in the foreign service and a number of people thought I'd be a very informed chair.

Mr. Andrew Telegdi: Was it a patronage appointment?

Mr. William Bauer: It was an order-in-council appointment.

Mr. Andrew Telegdi: Okay.

Mr. William Bauer: All of my ambassadorships were order-in-council appointments. Whether I worked for Joe Clark, Mr. Chrétien, or Mr. Trudeau, there was no patronage with me. I have never belonged to a political party and have never worked for one.

Mr. Andrew Telegdi: But this is the same system that appoints board members now, except that it does not have the benefit of a ministry advisory committee, which the AG said was an improvement over the old system under which you were appointed. I think that should be on the record.

Mr. William Bauer: Yes, I think it is fine to have that on the record, as is the record that Mr. Fairweather resigned.

You said that the war criminals came in legally after the Second World War. I would disagree with that. They came in by hiding their records. There are at least 300 war criminals in this country today who are here because they hid their records. Some have been found out because their fellow citizens have squealed on them and enough resources were put to work to get them deported.

However, there are a lot of criminals still here from Rwanda; all over Yugoslavia; Ukraine; a few from Russia, although war criminals isn't the word; Burundi; Congo; Algeria; and Somalia. Somalia majors, under the Siad Barre regime, were trained by the Americans and tortured people.

Mr. Andrew Telegdi: No, no. I think the point is that they're spending money to—

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Andrew, he's responding to your questions and your time is over. Let him respond.

Mr. William Bauer: Secondly, I think you said that boats were easy to detect. I am afraid I have to disagree with that. We don't have the resources on the west coast to detect more than a sprinkling of them.

I have talked to police who say that they don't know how many boats have managed to land illegal migrants, who simply went ashore and disappeared into Canada or into the United States, because they could never detect them. It's a huge coastline to protect, and we don't have the resources—and quite frankly, probably never will have. I think the idea that we can put up a screen to keep them out is just not practical in naval terms. They also have very sophisticated detection instruments themselves to detect when they've been detected.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Do you want to add something, Mr. Collacott?

Mr. Martin Collacott: I have two quick comments on two other points.

You mentioned you had come from Hungary as a refugee. One of the differences between what is happening now and what happened when the people came from Hungary is that we invited the people from Hungary. We made a deliberate act of taking them in, as we did the Indochinese, the Kosovars, and the Asians who came from East Africa in the early 1970s. I think Canadians are comfortable with that. However, I think it is when people come in, organized by criminal gangs, without being asked to come here, that erodes public confidence.

The other point you asked about was the U.S.A. because we have people moving in both directions. These are different types of movements. I personally think the ones coming here from the United States are being encouraged by the Americans to let their visitor visas expire because they want to get rid of them and Canada is an easy out. They can present themselves at the border and then get in legally.

• 1710

The ones the Americans are unhappy about are the smuggled people who are illegally entering the United States from Canada, such as the boat people. Apparently almost all of the Chinese boat people are destined for the United States. They are being smuggled in, unlike the people coming the other way. Our system invites people to come the other way legally, but the Americans are not inviting in the smuggled people. So it's a big movement both ways, but a different type of movement.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): We will have Mr. Anders for five minutes. Although it's late in the committee, might I just suggest that we try to direct answers back through the chair, which might cut down on the inter-dialogue that's bound to occur.

Mr. Rob Anders: Mr. Chairman, I have a question, which I realize is more of a financial matter, but it concerns this idea of Canadians working in our embassies or consulates overseas.

I understand that if a local person is paid a pittance of a wage, and probably is in many situations, they will be exposed to some black market high-value documents on a day-to-day basis and will be tempted to sell these documents or be somehow involved in the selling of them. Do either of you have any idea of what the cost would be to increase the Canadian presence or to make it all or mostly Canadian workers who work overseas in our missions, consulates, or embassies?

Mr. William Bauer: I don't think you could put a global cost on it.

Let me correct one thing. A long time ago I used to administer the locally engaged people abroad. They are paid in the top quartile of their professional group in the country in which they work. They are not underpaid. They are not given a pittance.

The immigration program officer, who is the initial screening person at a post abroad, is usually a highly educated and professional person paid better than most of his opposite numbers in that society. This is how we used to get good employees and keep them.

However, anybody is corruptible. Canadian officials have been corruptible too, so that's not a total solution. Money is not the answer here. As I said, with $8 billion sloshing around in the world, there's a lot of room for corruption. This is big money, and it can happen.

I would say that for the Canadian government to send a family with two children abroad it would cost at least $200,000 a year, aside from salary, accommodation, and everything else.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Mr. Collacott, very briefly.

Mr. Martin Collacott: Yes. The wages our locally engaged workers get are good by local standards, but most of the immigration posts are in developing countries where most immigrants come from. The wages are low by Canadian standards, and certainly low in terms of what they can sell a visa for. We have to pay some of our locals in places like Japan and Switzerland more than an equivalent Canadian would get, but that is not where the immigrants come from. So there is a problem.

I don't think you have to replace all the positions with Canadians, but probably a few key positions so that we can exercise better control. However, there is no question that it will still cost, even if you replace say one or two people at each of the major posts.

Mr. Rob Anders: A question was posed or a general comment was made by my colleague with regard to the scanning or holding of documents. I've never been on a cruise ship, so maybe I should ask this question of my parents, who have frequently been on a cruise ship.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Hotels in Europe do it as well. They will hold your passport at the front desk all the time.

Mr. Rob Anders: I was just wondering what the witnesses would suggest in terms of holding documents on the planes, or on whatever method of transport people so choose. I know they probably will not have any current knowledge in what the scanning situation is, but I remember a previous witness saying that there was a pilot project, I believe, going on in regard to that.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Maybe I can help with that. This was dealt with in the last committee, which you, Mr. Anders, were not on. I made the suggestion that we institute scanning at certain ports throughout the world. There is a pilot project under way to determine the best technology to use, but apparently there has been some—surprise, surprise—bureaucratic slow-up. However, it is under way and it is something the ministry is looking at.

I will not take that off your time. I just wanted to let you know that is currently being considered and looked at by the ministry.

Do you have anything you want to add, Mr. Bauer?

• 1715

Mr. William Bauer: Yes, Mr. Chairman. I want to apologize, to a certain extent, because we have hardly scratched the surface, not through the fault of the chair or the members but perhaps because the witnesses have been long-winded. But this is an extremely complicated subject.

Someone asked if there was a political will to deal with certain things. There is not much, because, as I said at the beginning, it's an extremely sensitive subject to every member of Parliament and every cabinet minister, and it should be, because the repercussions are going to be much worse. I'm only sorry that I did not get a chance to read you my list of what I would do, if I could, at all levels of the process to make it easier.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Since we still have two other questioners, why don't we let them get their questions in and if we still have time we can get to your Christmas wish list, Rob.

We will go to Ms. Leung.

Ms. Sophia Leung (Vancouver Kingsway, Lib.): Mr. Chair, I thank both the witnesses for their very informative presentations.

I want to touch on the area of prevention...before declaring someone an illegal immigrant. I think you both agree that the government already takes action in this area. Most illegal immigrants arrive here with the misconception that they are coming to the golden mountain or whatever. As we all know, they are given these flawed expectations from the criminal organizations that do the smuggling. The government realized the problem a couple of months ago and has been sending RCMP and immigration officers to China to try to resolve the problem.

I and two other members of Parliament went to China in September. We had discussions with some high-level government officials and they agreed that prevention was very important before people got on the boat or on the airplane with misinformation and false hopes and dreams. They agreed that both countries would join forces to work at this and come up with a public education movement to teach those peasants. This group of Fujian peasants are illiterate and were easily misled. This may also be the background of other groups. In the meantime, none of this is being told to the public, the citizens. Both the government here and the government there have agreed to join forces and work on that.

Six of the boats that were headed to B.C. were intercepted by the Chinese government. This is very important. We are now problem-solving by discussing the different ways and means to do that when they are here. We should think ahead, because this is just beginning.

I would like your comments on other ways we could try to strengthen our prevention process and maybe highlight the consequences of their coming here. I will use the example of a person who apparently went underground in New York. He called someone he knew in Vancouver and said he had not realized what would happen and that he wanted to go back to Vancouver. This is all based on the information we know. We also know that if we present a correct picture, the Chinese government will willingly say that it will help.

Through my contacts, I recently heard that some lawyers and business people who came back from China said that the central government in Beijing, the group we talked to, was working very closely with the Canadian ambassador. Now that the news comes down from the central government to the Fujian provincial government, will it be tighter now? Is there any other way to really help us to be preventive before all these boats land here and we have all the problems?

• 1720

I don't support detention because we cannot cover the enormous costs. It is also unfair for certain provinces. I would like to ask both of you if you have any suggestions.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Mr. Collacott.

Mr. Martin Collacott: Certainly the ideal way of prevention, as you've already outlined in the case of the Chinese boat people, is to get the boats to stop coming. I'm glad that people like yourself went there to discuss this.

This is not easy, because the central governments had lots of fun in Fujian province in the past. There were piracy operations run by the People's Liberation Navy out of Fujian province for three years, and finally the customs had a shootout with the PLA Navy down there.

My father-in-law is from Fujian province. I speak firsthand when I say that they are pretty tough people.

That certainly would be the ideal situation, plus an agreement by the Chinese to take people back, which is not easy if they come out without documents.

Having said that, if the boats keep coming, the only real deterrent, frankly, is to make it not worth while when they get here. I think we're going to have to be fairly tough on detention. Going back to what Mr. Bauer said, if there is a real refugee there, we'll find them, but we are not going to make it easy for the very large percentage of them who are not. If we can get to the day when they simply stop coming, that would be ideal. I'm glad we're working on that as hard as we can.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Mr. Bauer, briefly.

Mr. William Bauer: Although the Chinese government in Beijing will say that they will cooperate because it is a bad thing, I think one has to be realistic. One of the main problems the government worries about is corruption at the local level particularly, and even at the centre. Many of the people who are cooperating with the snakeheads are local officials. It's very hard for the central government to control it.

I find it ironic, having spent half my career arguing internationally for people to have the right to leave their country, that we are now going to authoritarian governments saying “Please keep your people in”. It's one of these absolute dilemmas that is excruciating in its irony. This is what we did in Vietnam: we asked them to keep people when we were fighting to get them out.

I think Mr. Collacott's suggestion is the best one. If we make it unattractive and make it so that we do not pay for people who aren't real refugees, the word will get back. However, as you know very well, Fujian province has been sending people to the golden mountain for a hundred years now. It's a traditional exporting province of China, and it's so deeply built at the village level that it will take a lot of work to do it.

Ms. Sophia Leung: I just want to quickly say one thing. The reason I believe the Chinese government will cooperate is that it is in its interest. It knows that during our discussions we have said this is for China's sake, but it also feels embarrassed for Canada.

Any country that has a big exodus, even Canada, would wonder what was wrong with their country. The Chinese government knows that was the point we put to them. So it agreed to cooperate.

I also think you are right when you say that there is corruption. Do you realize that China recognizes Canada as its best friend? It does not want to break that tie, and it does not want to break our trade and diplomatic ties.

The minister of defence has informed me that they have patrol boats out daily, which helps to tighten things up. However, as you said, we should give them the truth: that there is no golden mountain, only detention.

Mr. William Bauer: They have an arrangement.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Thank you, Ms. Leung. I know you are passionately and heavily involved in that issue.

Mr. Bryden, I now have you on the list, but I was wondering if you would give up your time so the two witnesses could wrap up.

Mr. John Bryden: No, actually.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Then I suggest that you be brief.

Mr. John Bryden: I'm trying to get information.

There is one thing I've never understood about these migrants. How is the profit made when these people are essentially poor? Where do these snakeheads get their money?

• 1725

Mr. William Bauer: When they arrive, often an entire extended family collects back in Fujian. The money is not always collected upfront. Sometimes part of it is. They go to New York and work in a restaurant or in a sweat shop sewing garments together. They go to Toronto and do the same thing. They work for the Big Circle Boys and do their dirty work for them.

There's a whole range of things they do. One of the enablers in this whole business is business firms in the United States and to a certain extent in Canada that will take these people, who they know are illegal, because they're cheap slave labour. The unions hate it, and I don't blame them. In the United States, the meat-packing and chicken-processing industry is just loaded with illegal Latin Americans.

They get their money that way and send it back, or the families have to find it. There have been many cases, certainly in the United States, where families have had the finger of their daughter sent back to them as a warning of what will happen next. It was chopped off. These are vicious people, and they'll get their money no matter how they have to do it.

There is another way they get their money. There are 500,000 women illegally trafficked into western Europe a year, according to the UNHCR, for prostitution. There are young children being sent to western Europe and to Canada as prostitutes for pedophiles. I read just the other day that Canada is becoming one of the favourite destinations for sex tourists of the pedophile variety because we have young boys. At the Immigration and Refugee Board, there's been an increase—I noticed it even when I was there—in unaccompanied minors, young boys who come up with an “uncle” and recite a story.

There are many ways they can pay back the money. Believe me, none of the people running these trafficking operations are doing it without getting paid or without imposing a penalty if they don't get paid. I think you'd agree with that, would you not?

Mr. John Bryden: We're really talking about slavery in the 21st century, aren't we? It's slavery.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): I'm afraid we're out of time, but I wonder if you, Mr. Bauer, would submit the list you mentioned after Mr. Anders asked you a question.

You have both been very interesting witnesses and very helpful on this issue. I agree with the opening remarks. I at least recall Mr. Bauer making them and I'm sure Mr. Collacott would agree with them. He said that this is not and should not be a partisan issue. This is a system that's extremely important for the next hundred years of this country and we've got to make sure that it works in the best possible way.

Could we therefore impose upon both of you to submit to the committee a succinct and direct brief with your suggestions as to what you would do?

Mr. Martin Collacott: I actually presented my specific points and I think you have a copy of it.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Mr. Bauer, could the committee get your ideas in writing?

Mr. William Bauer: I could probably give you a few highlights orally.

Mr. John Bryden: Mr. Chairman, why don't we just allow him to speak it into the record? We have another couple of minutes.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): We could do that, but we all have other meetings. The committee is over at 5:30 p.m. As much as I'd love to sit here for another half hour, I'm just not able to.

Mr. William Bauer: I think one of your members said that I should have done it at the beginning instead of engaging in what I think he called a diatribe. I'm very sorry if it was a diatribe to some members, but it wasn't meant to be. It was factual. I have no axe to grind. I didn't take three days out of writing my book to come here in order to deliver a diatribe to a bunch of intelligent MPs.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Don't castigate the rest of us for one comment. We appreciate your efforts very, very much.

Mr. William Bauer: No, only one member. I believe in being frank about these things, Mr. Chairman. I don't sit here listening to that sort of ad hominem argument.

On the other point, I intend to devote about three chapters of my book to proposals for improving the system.

Mr. Rob Anders: When is it coming out?

Mr. William Bauer: As soon as I get away from this meeting. I don't want to seem disrespectful, Mr. Chairman, and I'm not being disrespectful.

• 1730

The changes that can be made are many. Some of them are small and incremental improvements in the present arrangements at the access end of countries abroad. For instance, Mr. Bryden mentioned the foreign affairs ministry. It used to be that in some countries, like Germany.... The embassy at Bonn, and now in Berlin, cooperated very closely with the immigration department and the German authorities to check out on people who were asylum-shopping, who had protection in Germany but came to Canada after three or four years. They don't have the resources in what's called DFAIT, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, to provide that kind of service. The Norwegian foreign service checked out villages in Sri Lanka in the north and found that many of the refugee claimants they were receiving didn't exist. They'd come from India.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Mr. Bauer, I'm really sorry, but we are out of time. We just cannot go through all other countries' histories on this matter. The committee does not have the time to do that.

Mr. William Bauer: I understand that.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Steve Mahoney): Perhaps you could submit your highlights. We don't want to take away from your book or cause some kind of an advance release on something that I'm sure we'll all be paying good, hard cash to buy.

On behalf of the committee and all parties, I want to thank both of you. I want to thank you both for the tremendous service you've given to this country over the last many years and for the experience you bring here. I can assure you that the chair does not see any of your deliberations today as a diatribe but rather as informed, very frank, and helpful comments on this system.

This committee stands adjourned until nine o'clock tomorrow morning in this same room.