Posted: Tuesday, 17 August 2010

The government has amended the refugee determination system. The CLC has concerns with aspects of these amendments.

The CLC regards that the government's safe country of origin amendments to Bill C-11, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, as being flawed because it will create an unfair two-tier system that would deny some claimants access to the appeal based on their nationality.

Claimants that will be particularly hurt include women making gender-based claims and persons claiming on the basis of sexual orientation or sexual identity. In many countries, that otherwise seem fairly peaceful and safe, there can be serious problems of persecution on these grounds.

An effective refugee system requires determination of individual claims based on all the facts and the law by an expert and independent body.

This proposal actually takes Canada back to 1910 when a 'listing approach' was similarly employed. In 1910, the Immigration Act was embedded with discriminatory policy that created an excluded class of immigrants deemed ‘undesirable’ because of Canada’s climate or its social, educational, labour or other requirements, or because their customs or habits would make assimilation unlikely for certain newcomers.

Rather than list the offending countries hosting ‘undesirable’ migrants, immigration officials were given discretionary powers to exclude prospective immigrants on the basis of race, national or ethnic origin, or creed by simply placing their applications in the excluded class category.

Differential treatment towards prospective newcomers was further reinforced when the government established a list of preferred and non-preferred source countries for immigration selection.

Preferred applicants had affinities to the United Kingdom and USA. Next in preference came immigrants from northern and western Europe, followed by those from central, eastern and southern Europe.

Reverting to a system where the government determines what are 'safe' and 'unsafe' countries runs the risk of ideological positioning and foreign policy considerations trumping a determination system based on facts and law with an expert independent body assessing the veracity of asylum seekers.