:
It has been moved by Mr. Dykstra that Mr. Tilson be elected chair of the committee.
Are there any further motions? I see none.
(Motion agreed to)
The Clerk: I declare the motion carried and Mr. Tilson duly elected chair of the committee.
Some hon. members: Hear, hear!
The Clerk: Before inviting Mr. Tilson to take the chair, if the committee wishes, we will now proceed to the election of the vice-chairs.
Pursuant to Standing Order 106(2), the first vice-chair must be a member of the official opposition.
[Translation]
I am now ready to receive motions for the election of the first vice-chair.
[English]
Go ahead, Ms. Sitsabaiesan.
:
I notice that when I look at our list of witnesses, there is one witness, the Canadian Immigration Report, that gives me a great deal of concern.
I have to say that I didn't know anything about this group before we got the notice for today's meeting, so like any MP in my position, I started to glance over their website. One of the first things I noticed about the website was that there was an article posted that praises for being the most active and fearless immigration minister in recent history. I guess it is no surprise that the government would have put this name forward to appear at our committee on this study.
I want to be clear that I would normally never object to a government witness. After all, differences of opinion are healthy in a democracy. However, as I looked through this website, I got more and more concerned—appalled, I think would be the correct word. There is a section called “interviews”, in which this organization goes to the American Renaissance Conference and interviews some well-known white supremacist. There is a video of Paul Fromm, a notorious Canadian white supremacist with ties to the KKK, that is actually posted on this website. He says, and I am quoting again,
Certainly the policy in Canada is one of ethnic cleansing and replacement. By 2015, the European founding settler people will be a minority. We will have been...ethnically cleansed out of our own country.
In another video posted on the Canadian Immigration Report website, Tito Perdue says that black people would be more comfortable under segregation, and calls their poverty self-inflicted. I will quote Tito from the website. He says,
If you look at the civilizations that black people alone have created, they generally turn out to be a kind of hell on earth.
There are even more shocking words attributed directly to the witnesses before us. There is a post from the Canadian Immigration Report that seems to defend National Socialism, the ideology of the Nazis. Again, I am quoting.
This hate on for National Socialism is completely misguided…there is nothing inherently wrong with it at all.
I could go on and cite passages that seem to justify white nationalism, or point out an entire section of this website that links crimes to specific racial groups, but frankly, it is disgusting, and I refuse to give those views any more airtime.
Mr. Chair, I am quite shocked that government members have asked this group to testify before us. I would hope that you would agree with me that these views don't have any place at a parliamentary committee in one of the most diverse, open, and accepting countries on earth.
As I said, I could go on and read out a lot more from the website, but I cannot imagine anybody sitting around this table going to that website and then being comfortable having representatives from that group speak to us today.
I am asking for a ruling about whether that particular witness is going to be proceeding to give testimony here today.
:
Mr. Chair, I'm not really 100% confident regarding the process. I know I share many of the concerns that members of the community would have regarding who should or should not be able to appear before committee.
I have trust and faith that when the committee asks me to provide names of individuals, I have a sense of the people and a reason or rationale for choosing that individual or organization before coming to committee. That said, if individuals express concerns after I submit names, I would welcome their input and ultimately determine whether I would like to keep them witnesses that I have personally called to come before the committee.
If the Conservative Party is confident that this individual has something to contribute to the committee, I don't have a problem listening. I'm not going to try to censor who the government calls before the committee, as I hope they wouldn't censor me and the individuals I'm suggesting come before us, whether today or in the future. The concern I have is that the government, now having been made aware of some very serious concerns, be confident about having this person or group appear before the committee.
I put that as a flag that's at least worthy of notice. We might even take a couple minutes' recess so they can reflect on whether they deem it appropriate.
:
I would draw members' attention to a website, www.cireport.ca. This isn't going on to look at things second- and third-hand. What we looked at is what is posted on this website. On the Canadian Immigration Report's home page they link to an upcoming documentary called
Multicult T.O., which claims Toronto is shifting away from traditional European sources of immigration in favour of the Parkdale gypsies and the Chinese colony in Markham. They go on to make other comments as well.
In an article posted by the Canadian Immigration Report entitled “CIR response to 'Milwaukee Sikh Temple Tragedy: White Supremacism, Nazism & Islam are Same Murderous Ideologies'”, they offer a defence of the Nazi National Socialism ideology. They go on to say, “This hate on National Socialism is completely misguided” and “ ...there is nothing inherently wrong with it at all.”
In defence of white nationalism, this is what they write: “'White Nationalist' seems to be the more frequently used terminology, which implies a form of ethnic-identity nationalism not unlike Israel, Kosovo or South Sudan. Never have I read of a White Nationalist murdering someone or otherwise engaging in ill behaviour outside their home nation. This again is very different from Islamists, many of whom see the whole planet as a battleground.”
Chair, I'm not talking about a link to one article that could be questionable. I will tell you that when I found this last night, I was very upset. Look, we know in Canada we have diverse points of view. I'm not trying to shut down freedom of speech, but what I am questioning is parliamentarians having this person or group—I don't know if it's a person, but I'm talking about a group that has this on its website—as representatives before us today. That's what I'm questioning.
Ms. James, I was referring to the motion with regard to the interim federal health program, and I would argue it is critically important that we as a committee deal with this immediately.
I'm sure members have received correspondence and possibly talked to constituents. More importantly, I suspect this issue has been weighing heavily on all our minds as members of the citizenship and immigration committee. I know it has for me personally. The purpose of this amendment is to try to deal with what I believe is a critically important issue affecting the lives and health of a good number of refugees.
We have a letter in support of the motion that was just recently brought forward from the president of the College of Family Physicians of Canada, who was aware that this motion was going to be coming forward and, I believe, wanted to provide encouragement for us as a committee to deal with this letter.
I wanted to be able to share with committee members that numerous organizations have appealed to the committee, indirectly if not directly. I'm talking about the associations in large part that I've listed in the motion, but it also would include, and I would reinforce, the Canadian Association of Optometrists, the Canadian Association of Social Workers, the Canadian Dental Association, the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Nurses Association, the Canadian Pharmacists Association, the College of Family Physicians of Canada, and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.
Literally hundreds if not thousands of other health care workers from across this country—many different stakeholders, very strong advocates, some presenting as professionals—see that what has taken place earlier this year is going to have a very profound impact on many lives. What they really want to see, and I fully support, is for our committee to look at the consequences of the decision that has been made with the idea of coming back to the government with some recommendations as to where we go from here.
I think that as a committee we have the resources to be able to gauge the impact, most importantly by having these professionals contribute presentations before us so we could get an assessment of the impact of the decision. If we do not do that, my fear is we could have cases in which lives would be threatened and we could see an increase in health care expenditures going forward because individuals are not getting the required treatment. There is a valid argument for us as a committee at this point, given our current study is not as time sensitive as this particular policy initiative, that it would be in our best interest and in the best interest ultimately of the refugees we're taking into our country to not only debate this particular motion, but to see this motion passed.
What you'll find, I believe, is wide support outside the committee for our committee to deal with the issue. It's a personal appeal from me. I'm hoping other members of the committee might want to contribute as to why they feel this is an issue we should be debating. Whatever could be done to accommodate it, I'm more than happy to.
Mr. Chairperson, I know you and I have had a discussion with regard to it. After weighing the most recent information that I've been provided, I think this is of the utmost concern for our committee, and we could really do well by looking at it, listening to those presentations, and coming up with some recommendations as to how we can minimize the effect or improve the current policy with regard to providing health services for refugees.
We're talking about, in good part, the most vulnerable individuals in our society.
It's a personal appeal. I'm hoping that members are hearing it and I'd be interested in hearing what your thoughts are on dealing with this today.
:
This is the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, meeting number 50. The orders of the day, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), are the study "Standing on Guard for Thee: Ensuring that Canada's Immigration System is Secure".
For the record, most people know that representatives of the committee, in the context of this study on security, visited detention centres in Vancouver, Laval, and Rexdale, which were low risk, and also visited one high-risk detention centre.
We also visited the Immigration and Refugee Board. I expect that these issues will be debated in the report when we're ready to present the report to the House of Commons.
We have two witnesses before us today. On video conference from Toronto, we have Mr. Lorne Waldman, who is a partner in Lorne Waldman and Associates.
Good afternoon to you, sir. Sorry to keep you waiting.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association wants to thank the committee for inviting us.
I will begin my remarks in French and will then continue in English.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that was founded in 1964 to protect civil rights and freedoms in Canada. It provides education, representation and intervention programs to decision-making bodies like this one and to courts. It mainly works with volunteers and lawyers across Canada.
My comments will focus on three issues that were raised in response to your report.
I would like to begin by discussing the need to set up an independent accountability regime for the Canada Border Services Agency. I will then talk about the thorny and divisive issue that is the treatment of individuals suspected to have committed war crimes or crimes against humanity. In conclusion, I will quickly go over certain aspects of the security clearance regime.
I want to begin by specifying that the association is always interested in the protection of procedural justice standards with a view to ensuring that people are treated fairly across Canada. The Border Services Agency is being given more and more constraining powers. However, the agency's supervision system is something of an anomaly in Canada. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have an oversight regime. Of course, I want to highlight the efforts being invested by the government—and this issue has been considered by the House—to improve the RCMP's oversight regime. However, the Border Services Agency has no such regime in place. There is an internal complaint process, but that is insufficient in a context where increasingly constraining powers are being used.
In a democracy, increased powers or discretion should automatically be paired with a certain monitoring oversight. It is important to see that as part of the effort to increase the confidence of Canadians in the border regime.
[English]
I'll come back later with examples to show how necessary this might be, but in short, there is a gap in our accountability framework. CSIS has independent supervision, and the RCMP will have an even better one, but CBSA does not. Many people call us; we have encouraged them to use the internal mechanism for complaints, and it has not been satisfactory.
In our view it would just be part of the regime of increasing powers at the border to ensure that indeed there is some accountability framework. We are not asking for oversight because we suspect foul play or bad form; it's just the right thing to do in a democracy. It's just good governance.
In our view it's not necessary to create a new agency—it wouldn't be very popular to talk about that now—but we might be able to enlarge the mandate of some of the current agencies. I urge you to reflect on this as you move forward in your recommendations.
Secondly, there is the difficult issue of persons suspected of war crimes or crimes against humanity. CCLA, like other human rights organizations, is fully engaged in the fight against impunity. It's absolutely essential that people who may have committed crimes of war or crimes against humanity be brought to justice and tried properly. Similarly, people who are innocent of such crimes should be vindicated and should be cleared.
The obligations of Canada on this score are important, and I urge the committee to engage as parliamentarians and to ask for more information on this context. That will be my pitch to you. I think what CCLA recommends is that we should have a policy to extradite or prosecute people suspected of crime, not simply to deport them. I think that simply deporting them is like passing the buck. It's not owning up to our responsibilities to ensure that crimes against humanity are fully prosecuted.
We certainly want an immigration regime that's good for Canada, and it also has to be good for the world. Every day Canadians around the globe are subject to injustices at the hands of dictatorships, and it's incumbent upon us to make sure that war crimes or crimes against humanity are fully prosecuted.
CCLA will be intervening in the Ezokola case. I know that Mr. Waldman will be there as well. This hopefully will clarify some of the standards of proof that are necessary to exclude someone from the protection of being a refugee because he or she is suspected of war crimes or crimes against humanity. I would urge you to continue to consider the necessity to ensure that there is some fundamental justice in the way in which these decisions are made.
It's a difficult question. There's no doubt that different cases raise different facts. Not everyone can be extradited, because there are places where they won't be tried fairly and places where they would be tortured or suffer persecution, but prosecution should be our duty here. I urge you as parliamentarians to demand reporting mechanisms from the ministry to ensure that the decision not to prosecute or not to extradite and instead to deport is reached only as a last resort and only in the clearest of cases.
In our view there's a lack of transparency here that you may want to explore further in your report. We owe it to the world to carry this responsibility forcefully.
Finally, I'll talk about security clearances and norms of procedural fairness generally.
CCLA has a long tradition of ensuring that. We need to treat people fairly in Canada. That's what we're all about, and we have to continue to do that. I think it's important that we have similar norms of justice no matter who it is that is being treated in Canada. Any time there is a depletion of the justice requirement, I think we should be worried. We should insist that norms of fundamental justice continue to be maintained throughout the system. I urge you to put that as a principle of your recommendations.
Last week we issued a report on police checks. Essentially it was about the way in which many people who are found not guilty have information about withdrawn charges or even the verdict of not guilty being disclosed in the context of police checks for employment in vulnerable sectors and so on. It has prompted lots of calls throughout Canada. We've had many calls. I raise it here because many of the calls were about security clearance. I thought I would share with you some of the stories and the issues that have come up.
[Translation]
Basically, we have come to the conclusion that the security clearance regime must be reviewed. We suggest that the Privacy Commissioner or another organization be given the mandate to carry out that review, so as to ensure that the information management process is adequate and that there are sufficient processes for correcting information.
People are sometimes victims of poor information management, in a way. However, that seriously affects their ability to work and travel. We think that the correction processes, retention practices and procedural justice standards involved in the security clearance regime must be strengthened and made more transparent for Canadians and those living in Canada.
[English]
We've had several calls, then, about the way in which.... From the consultations we did with the police sector and the security sector, in my view the issue is not so much a question of polarized debate. It's more a question that clarity is needed. There is some ambiguity in the law, and I think it needs to be clarified. Everybody would be better off if they knew better what their obligations were in terms of privacy—
The Chair: We—
Ms. Nathalie Des Rosiers: I will conclude on that.
:
Thank you very much. I'll try to be brief. I'm going to pick up on a few topics that Ms. Des Rosiers touched on.
First and foremost, I would like to address the issue of the accountability regime. In the Arar report, Commissioner O'Connor recommended many years ago, in 2005 or 2006, that there be oversight of the activities of the Canada Border Services Agency, especially in relation to national security operations. Unfortunately, those recommendations, although government initially said they supported them, haven't been implemented. It highlights a broader problem that my colleague just mentioned. The Border Services Agency has very broad enforcement powers. They have very broad powers of arrest, search and seizure, and detention, and these powers are not subject to any independent oversight by any oversight body.
We often get complaints from clients about the conduct of CBSA officers. The complaints may or may not be well founded, but if there is a serious complaint of misconduct, it's important that there be a mechanism for verifying. In our democracy, where we have the rule of law, that's the only way we can ensure accountability. Really, there is no independent accountability regime vis-à-vis the Canada Border Services Agency, and this is a very serious problem.
I'm now involved in a dispute with the Border Services Agency over their authority to force one of my clients to attend an interview. They insisted, and I'm now going to court. It's the only way I can resolve this dispute, because there is no independent mechanism for arbitrating. It seems an expensive way of trying to determine the limits and scope of authority of the Border Services Agency.
In terms of my friend's comments on war crimes, I'll just pick up on one point.
I agree with the idea that the immigration act has to be enforced, and I also agree with the idea that it's the duty of our government to ensure that people who are wanted and who failed to appear for deportation should be apprehended, but sometimes the methodologies used are counterproductive.
I should say that in the case of the most wanted list for war criminals, that really has produced situations such that people who could have been deported now may not be able to be deported. That's because we live in an age when the publicity that occurs when governments like Canada's make statements is huge, and the Internet makes this information accessible. I'm involved in a case now with one of the persons who was on the list, who is now in a situation in which we have asserted, and an immigration official has agreed, that he would be at risk if he were deported. The idea of a most wanted list publishing the names of people who are wanted for war crimes was ill-conceived. I don't have the same concerns about other types of most wanted lists.
The third issue that I want to speak about briefly, and then I'll stop and leave it open for questions, is the question of detention. I thought that was one of the focuses of today's meeting. I've been doing immigration law longer than I would care to admit—it's been over 25 years—and I've seen the incredible increase in the use of detention by immigration authorities.
Some of that is necessary because we're in a world today where many people are coming to Canada, and it's more difficult to find out who they are. The prevalence of false documentation is higher. Certainly it may be necessary to detain people until we know who they are, because if we don't know who they are, we can't really ascertain whether or not they pose a danger to society.
It may be necessary to detain people who pose a danger to society, but we're seeing detention used in a lot of other circumstances in which people don't pose a danger and we know who they are. This is of particular concern first because of the impact of detention on the individuals.
You visited the Rexdale facility, which is a minimum security facility. I don't know if you had an opportunity of going to the Toronto West Detention Centre, which is a maximum security facility where a lot of the immigration detainees are held. I can tell you it's a very demoralizing, depressing place for a person to be detained, because it's a holding facility for people awaiting pretrial. There are no facilities for any kinds of activities there, and immigration detainees don't get any access to any of the facilities. We have people who are being held in immigration detention for one or two years in conditions like that.
Of even more concern to me is the issue of detention of children. There are children who are being detained, and if you went to Rexdale, I'm sure you saw children there. It's completely unacceptable that children are being detained, and they're not getting any kind of access to services that should be made available to them. I'm very concerned about the impact that detention is having on children who find themselves in detention because their parents are being detained.
I'll stop here. There is a lot more we could say about detention. The one other point I want to make is that detention is extremely expensive, and the government should be considering all of the different alternatives to detention. I've used electronic monitoring as an alternative to detention. We have a bail project in Toronto, an alternative to detention, but it's not being used enough, and it should be used more.
We have to creatively look at different ways to ensure that people who should be under some kind of monitoring are kept under monitoring, but in ways that don't require them to be detained in the immigration facilities because of the expense and because of the impact on the individuals.
That's all I'll say for now. Thank you.
:
Thank you for that question. I think it picks up on the question from the previous speaker.
The case she cited was a case involving a gentleman who had already been convicted. It's a different situation from the situation we're discussing here about people who have been accused of war crimes or crimes against humanity but who haven't yet been convicted. The question is, they may have been found by an immigration member at a very low threshold. Remember, there are three thresholds, and the immigration threshold of proof is less than a balance of probabilities. It's a very low threshold of proof; it wouldn't be enough to find a person guilty.
We are dealing with people who have been found to be war criminals at a very low threshold, and then we have to decide what to do with them. As the previous speaker said, there are circumstances when we should consider trying them in Canada.
I can give you one example, and that was the gentlemen from the most wanted list who was actually deported. He was from Honduras. In fact, Honduran human rights groups contacted people in Canada and said, “Don't send this gentleman home. If he gets home he won't be tried; he'll be free. He is someone who should be tried, and we have evidence to prove that he may well be a war criminal. Please keep him in Canada.” That's an example illustrating that if we are committed to holding people accountable, we should seek to try them in Canada.
The other example you gave, of course, is of people who are war criminals and can't be deported, because to deport them would be to risk subjecting them to torture. That's one of the cases I'm dealing with now. In those types of situations we have to consider the possibility, if we believe they really are war criminals, of trying them in Canada.
Of course we have the International Criminal Court, and that gives us another option. If we believe that a person is a war criminal and he can't be sent home because he won't get a fair trial or he'll be tortured in his country, it's possible to ask the International Criminal Court to consider dealing with those cases.
It's a very complex question, and it's not one that has a simple answer.
:
The issue of detention is complex. It really depends on the reason for the detention.
There are two fundamental reasons we detain people in immigration. One is that we think they may be dangerous because they have a criminal background or a terrorist background, or we may detain them because at the specific moment they come to Canada, we're not sure who they are and we're concerned that they might be dangerous. That is one ground. We have to be very careful in those circumstances.
The other reason we detain people is to ensure that they appear for hearings. In that context, there are fewer concerns. It's really just a matter that if we don't detain them, maybe we're going to have to find them, and there's going to be an expense attached.
The options depend. One of my clients was wrongly accused of being a member of al-Qaeda. He was ultimately cleared after eight years. He was released under electronic monitoring, camera surveillance in his house, and a whole series of conditions.
Other clients who aren't dangerous can be released with some kind of simple weekly reporting. The bail project, which is something I am pretty sure is financed by the government, is a very inexpensive way of ensuring compliance. People register with this project that's funded by the government, and the bail project then acts as an intermediary between the government and CBSA to ensure that people comply with the conditions. If they don't comply, the bail project tells the government, and the people are taken back into detention.
There are different options, depending on the seriousness of the case.
My question is for Mr. Waldman.
Mr. Waldman, my question is fairly straightforward. In the society where we live, where technology is so advanced that now we talk about electronic monitoring and so on, if a person comes in and he's not documented and we don't know who he is—we know how he got in, he flew in—then isn't it the responsibility of us as Canadians, as parliamentarians, to ensure we understand all that information first, through interviews, and questioning, and perhaps our links to Interpol and foreign governments, before we even allow him into the society in general?
I hear that if you let them in, even those on the bail program or on electronic monitoring, it still potentially can be a risk factor for Canadians.
:
As Ms. Des Rosiers said, when we're talking about trying to detect people who may pose a danger for whatever reason, prior to their coming into Canada, there are only two ways to do that.
One is to impose a visitor visa requirement. We would have an opportunity at that point to screen the individual, which would give us an opportunity to check with intelligence agencies, and if we were concerned about their health, we could require them to do a medical.
The difficulty with imposing visitor visa requirements is that it costs a lot of money and impedes our tourism and our ability in terms of people coming into Canada, because we have to be selective. However, if we were to require everyone in the world to get a tourist visa, then we would obviously be able to pre-screen every person coming to Canada.
There's a balance between the cost of doing that and the benefits. Clearly, that would be the most efficient way of protecting our society, but we don't do it because it costs too much money. We don't have the resources. We can't afford to close our doors in that kind of way.
The second way is by improving our intelligence sharing. This issue has been discussed repeatedly. Hopefully, the intelligence agencies have made steps. There are still a lot of steps that need to be made, but we have to ensure that we share intelligence, that we get reliable intelligence from agencies that are reliable.
Those are the two ways in which I think we could improve our methods of ensuring that undesirable people don't get into Canada.