Bill C-4: An attack on refugees

Bill C-4: An attack on refugees

By Rathika Sitsabaiesan

On September 19, 2011, I stood in the House of Commons and participated in the debate concerning Bill C-4, a bill which the government has called “The Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada’s Immigration System Act”. But what is this bill really about? In my opinion, it is not at all about stopping human smugglers, but rather it is an attack on refugees and on the Canadian Immigration System.

We have seen this bill before in Canada. It was presented in the last Parliament as Bill C-49. In the speech made to introduce Bill C-49, the Conservative government made it very clear that the bill was drafted as a response to the arrival of the MV Ocean Lady in 2009 and the MV Sun Sea in 2010. While this direct link was not made when Bill C-4 was introduced, the similarities between the two bills are very clear.

This bill makes a number of false claims and assumptions in its attack on refugees. This bill largely positions refugees as “queue jumpers”. This is a falsehood – refugees and asylum seekers must still follow the same processes and procedures of all claimants. This government is trying to paint refugees as jumping the immigration queue. When you are fleeing persecution, war or a natural disaster, you cannot be called a “queue jumper”.

Since being elected as MP for Scarborough-Rouge River, I can easily say that the number one form of casework that is done out of my office is immigration related. And of that immigration casework, there is an unbelievable amount of family reunification cases. People in our area are frustrated because they are waiting 5 to 10 to 15 years to have their loved ones join them in Canada.

The backlog for parents who are waiting to come to Canada is in the hundreds of thousands because the number of visas for parents and grandparents issued has been reduced to close to 44%. This year there are only 11,000 parents who can come to Canada. In 2005 and 2006, the target was 20,000. This is a reduction of 9,000 people.

This backlog is not the only backlog that exists. This Conservative government claims that it is clearing the backlog for skilled workers, when in actuality the backlog for skilled workers grew. In 2005, there was a backlog of 487,000, and now it is 508,000. This means that in the past 6 years, this backlog has actually grown by 173,000.

This so-called “clearing the backlog” is not working. It is not working for skilled workers and it is not working for families trying to reunify.
There are hundreds of thousands of people waiting patiently, some not so patiently, to come to Canada. This is due to nothing other than a failed immigration policy. People are really upset that they have to wait so long. Yet rather than amending the immigration policy to deal with the backlogs and the time constraints, the Conservative government uses the scapegoat of refugees, claiming that it is the fault of refugees rather than the fault of failed immigration policy. This government says that refugees are “jumping the queue and taking the spots of other people”.

What they fail to mention, is that for refugees, there is no queue to jump. There is no line-up for people who are in serious danger, for people who are living through a civil war, for people who are being persecuted because of their gender, religion, sexual orientation, etc. When your life or the life of your family is called into question, there is no line. These people must leave their country immediately. Once they are safely in Canada, they must then join the exact same queue as everyone else who wants to gain some sort of status in our country. Through this falsehood of queue jumping, this government creates a divide between refugees and people trying to gain status through other streams of immigration. This “divide and conquer” tactic is one major problem with Bill C-4
A second issue I have with this bill is the power it gives to the Minister of Immigration. This bill distinguishes two different classes of refugees – a regular refugee and a new classification of a “designated claimant”. The “designated claimants” are described as a group of refugees who have “irregular arrival”. The bill does not say how big a “group” is, so it could be two people or more, nor does it define arriving in an “irregular” fashion. With the bill’s clear link to Bill C-49, it is easy to suspect that an “irregular arrival” is by boat. What this bill then does is criminalise these refugee claimants, who arrive by boat, suggesting that people who wish to flee war, conflict or persecution, but do not have the means to purchase a plane ticket, so instead risk their lives by throwing themselves onto a rickety cargo boat, and then spend months crossing the ocean are not real refugees or real asylum seekers, but criminals.

This legislation then requires the mandatory detention of all “designated claimants”, whether they arrive by foot, by boat or by air, including women, children, babies, the sick and the elderly. Should this bill pass, anyone who is “designated” would be required to be detained for a minimum of 12 months, and can be held for up to five years or until identity can be proven and the proper documentation is presented. After these people are released and approved as a true refugee, they are denied permanent residence or family reunification for at least five years after that. This breaches sections 9 and 10 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which protect people against arbitrary detention and the right to prompt review of detention. Arbitrary detention is also a violation of a number of international treaties.

Furthermore, should Bill C-4 pass, decisions on claims by “designated claimants” cannot be appealed to the Refugee Appeal Division. This removal of the right to appeal is extremely abhorrent as mistakes can be made in our refugee process, and this appeal process is vital to ensure that these mistakes can be corrected.

There are many more problems with this bill, but at the end of the day, the number one problem is that this bill does not do anything to stop human smuggling. It does not do anything to deter smugglers, further punish smugglers, or to give more power to the appropriate authorities to apprehend smugglers. Instead, it will criminalize refugee claimants, and put them behind bars in detention centres. These proposed actions and arbitrary power for the Minister do not address the issue of human smuggling; it discriminates against refugee claimants and asylum seekers.

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Rathika Sitsabaiesan, MP for Scarborough-Rouge River