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U.S.-Canada Border Issues Panel Discussion Transcript April 7, 2003
Moderator:
Panelist: MARK KRIKORIAN: My name is Mark Krikorian and I’m executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank here in Washington that examines and critiques the impact of immigration on the United States. All our work is at our web site, cis.org. Ordinarily, our organization wouldn’t be considering Canada’s immigration and asylum policies, because though Americans often forget the fact, Canada is a distinct sovereign nation with its own rules and its own laws. And in fact the 5,000-plus miles of border with Canada haven’t been thought of in terms of security for generations. We’ve come to refer to it as the world’s longest undefended border. And in fact the last time a threat, a security threat, came from the north was the Confederate raid on St. Albans, Vermont, in 1864, and since then we really haven’t thought of Canada as posing any kind of security risk or hosting any kind of security risk to the United States. That began changing even before 9/11. The participants in the 1999 Millenium plot, for instance, had lived in Canada, most notably Ahmed Ressam, who was caught crossing the Canadian border in Washington state with a trunk-load of nitroglycerin, caught almost by accident, on his way to blow up Los Angeles International Airport. One of his co-conspirators, this is something people often forget, (Abdel Hakim Tazayha), successfully snuck across the border and was apprehended in the United States. Even before that, (Gazi Ibruhim Abumizer), a participant in the plot to bomb New York’s subway system, was unable to get a visa to come to the United States, got a visa to go to Canada instead, and then was caught three times by the border patrol sneaking across the border into the United States. And the third time, Canada wouldn’t take him back, and so he was simply paroled, released, into the United States and deportation proceedings were started. But it really wasn’t until 9/11 that, and the new concern with homeland security, that led to a serious look to the border and asylum policies of our northern neighbor. One result of that new focus was a 30 point Smart Border agreement that the United States and Canada signed in December 2001. And there are moves to continue that kind of coordination and harmonization, as it’s sometimes referred to. In fact, this very week members of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, a prominent business organization, are here in Washington for talks on that kind of coordinated border security approach. And this is especially important for the United States because whatever tightening up we do in our own system for issuing visas, for instance, the effectiveness of those kind of reforms will be limited if they can simply be bypassed by bad guys who would be going to Canada or incidentally to Mexico, and then cross unguarded borders. Specifically with regard to Mexico, that possibility or that alternative used by terrorists was noted just today by the Washington Times when they reported about Al Qaeda operatives attempting to sneak into the United States via Mexico. And this is especially true with regard to Canada because of Canada’s lax asylum policies. We did a paper on this topic, it’s in the packets that we handed out, we published last year on Canada’s asylum system. And in fact even after 9/11 Canada’s Parliament made it easier for asylum seekers to apply for asylum and more difficult to deport asylum seekers. Perhaps what caught my attention as the most outrageous example of the ability of bad guys to avoid being removed from Canada is the Popular Front Liberation of Palestine killer, who has successfully been appealing his deportation for 17 years now, and continues to run, apparently, a candy store in Ontario, unmolested. That’s what this panel is about, to talk about the implications for the United States of Canada’s border and asylum and immigration policies. We were to have Christopher Sands as the other member of the panel. He’s a Canada expert at the Center for Strategic and International studies here in town. But a death in the family has taken him away unfortunately. We have the other member of the panel though, here, and one of the most important, prominent, active experts on this issue in Canada, Martin Collacott, a long time employee of Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs. He joined the Department in 1966, served in Asia and Africa, and eventually became Canada’s High Commissioner, which is their ambassador, to Sri Lanka, and later he was ambassador to Syria and Lebanon, and then after that ambassador to Cambodia. He was also the Foreign Affairs Department’s Director for Latin American Relations as well as the Department’s Coordinator for Counter-terrorism policies. Following his retirement in 1997, he was involved in a variety of activities. He was the chief election-watcher from Canada in Cambodia’s first democratic elections, and he is now a fellow at the Frasier Institute in Vancouver, Canada’s most prominent think tank. And he has prepared a number of articles and papers there, most notably a paper in September, which is also in your packets, on Canada’s immigration policies. And Martin, I’ll let Martin speak a little longer than he would have otherwise given the absence of Mr. Sands. And after Martin is finished we’ll take some questions and comments from the audience. Martin? MARTIN COLLACOTT: Thanks you very much Mark, and thank you also for organizing this panel. I’m here primarily to find out what American plans are in terms of border security, and figure out where Canada might fit into this. But because I was in Washington, and Mark and I are old friends, he kindly organized this panel so I’m very happy to be here today. And sorry Chris Sands didn’t make it; his views are not that different from mine in some respects but we could have got into I think some good discussion. But I’ll have to depend on the people in the audience to ask the questions, to ferret me out on certain issues. Now I want to talk about several things. I’m going to spend some time on the issue that Mark just mentioned though, and that is our lax asylum policies. And particularly its connection with the ease with which terrorists enter Canada and are able to remain in Canada because that’s come in for a lot of focus since September 11th. And this includes what is the connection between our asylum system, our refugee determination system, as we call it in Canada, and the problem of terrorism. How well are we dealing with it; what are the implications for Canada-US relations if we don’t deal with it adequately, and from a Canadian perspective how should we deal with border security issues in general, how should we interface or not interface with whatever the United States is doing. And I’ll finish up with just a few comments on some general approaches that have been suggested. A former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, and he was also Ambassador to Washington for many years, suggests we need a grand strategy, a comprehensive, overarching look at our bilateral relations and where border security fits in with that. Another approach is taken by John Manley who is our current Deputy Prime Minister, and he’s the interface with Tom Ridge, and his approach, at least the last time he said anything on how we should do this is that we should do this incrementally. And so from a Canadian perspective these kinds of issues are important. There’s been a good deal of talk, particularly since September 11th, even before then, of the desirability of having a North American Continental Security Perimeter, so we don’t have to be so tight on the border between our countries. And in fact the former US Ambassador Gorden Giffen, had proposed this in the Spring of 2001. Well, it has been spurred to some degree by famous case of Ahmed Ressam. He was the Al-Qaeda operative who tried to cross the border into the United States in December 1999 with explosives, presumably to set off a bomb in the Los Angeles Airport. And at his trial, which took place over a matter of months, a lot of different information came out about the extent to which there were Al Qaeda operatives in Canada. But before that the head of our government agency responsible for counter-terrorism, which is called CSIS--the organization Chris Sands is in is also a CSIS, but this is the Canadian Security Intelligence Agency—Ward Elcok was and still is the head. In 1998 he testified before a Canadian Senate Committee that there was a serious problem of terrorism in Canada. He stated that with perhaps a singular exception of the United States, there were more international terrorist groups active in Canada than any other country in the world, and that “Canada can not become through inaction or otherwise what might be called ‘an unofficial state sponsor of terrorism.’” And he gave a lot of detail on specific groups and the kinds of operations they had been involved in. Now CSIS has been given more resources since September 11th and I think they’re doing a better job of keeping track of this situation. We still do have a problem with how terrorists get into Canada and difficulties in removing them. And I should mention in fairness to my country, and I’m a very proud Canadian who wants to see it get it right, we’re by no means the only country, Western country, with a significant number of foreign terrorists on our soil. Britain, France, Germany, Spain, among others, and the United States itself has some major problems. What makes Canada unique in this regard is that we have a common border of more than 5000 miles with US, and most of our trade, our exports, are with the United States. 85% of our exports are with the US; now 25% of your exports go to Canada. But the actual ratio is even more dramatic in terms of relative importance, because more of Canada’s economy is related to foreign trade than is the United States. So about 4% or 3%, maybe 5% of your economy is closely tied to trade with Canada; about 40% of ours is. So if we don’t keep the border relatively open we do have a problem. It would be inconvenient for some border states and some industries in the case of the United States, if the border suddenly shut down; it would be devastating though for Canada. So its quite important particularly for Canada to find ways of protecting its own security and reassuring the United States that we don’t constitute a threat or people on our soil don’t constitute a threat. Now in the US a lot of the activity since September 11th has been in screening the entry and exit and possibly tracking the movements of people who come to Canada. I think most or all of the September 11th hijackers had come in on some kind of visa. And so this has received a great deal of priority. And its going to take some years to get all the systems in place, I think the current schedule is up to 2005 to get all the border points covered. There are technological challenges, a lot of resource challenges, and coordination between different agencies. My impression is that though the United States is very determined to get this done, and it will happen in due course, in the case of Canada our largest problem area has been our system for processing asylum seekers, or as I mentioned we call it the refugee determination process, since this is the channel through which most terrorists have entered Canada. Or if they didn’t enter through that channel, when they were found to be terrorists they claimed refugee status so that enabled them to stay on in many respects. Like the US we select many refugees from overseas each year, and we’re able to vet them carefully. But like the US we also have many people arrive at our borders and ports of entry and claim refugee status or asylum status. And Canada takes pride in our tradition of taking a good many persons fleeing persecution in their own countries; one of our problems though is we’ve stretched the system, to the point that we’ve made it extremely easy for large numbers of people to enter Canada without our knowing who they are. Tens of thousands of people make claims in Canada every year, and many are from countries that no other nation in the world would consider to produce refugees. Last year, for example, we allowed in nationals of 170 countries to make claims in Canada. This included 487 Americans who claimed they were fleeing persecution, as well as citizens of Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands, I can go on for some time; I’ve got a list of the numbers and the different countries if anyone’s interested. How many of these people are likely to be genuine refugees, that is, fleeing persecution at home. Well, in February of this year, the Justice Minister of Ireland made the statement that, and they’ve received a lot of asylum seekers since their economy started to boom. He said that 90% of asylum claims in his country were found to be unjustified, 10% were approved, and out of the remaining 10%, 19 out of 20 were not really entitled to asylum in Ireland as they had traveled through safe third countries where they should have made their claim. And this issue of safe third countries I’ll expand upon. So roughly what he was saying, and he’s the Justice Minister, was that maybe 1 in 200 people should’ve had their claims granted in Ireland. The “safe third country” concept is that the original UN Convention on Refugees was described, was laid down to take care of a fairly, probably, limited number of people fleeing across borders. And you wouldn’t shove them back across the border say into the Soviet Union or to Poland. It was figured out though that if someone traveled through a safe third country, that is where they should’ve claimed refugee status. If they go on to look for other countries it really means they’re asylum shopping for the best deal. And we recently completed a safe third country agreement with the United States, I’ll comment on that later, that hasn’t been put into affect that. There’s also a safe country of origin principle that is used that if someone comes from a country like Great Britain that doesn’t really persecute its citizens by our standards, then there’s no reason why they should be able to claim refugee status. Obviously we don’t worry about those things. There was a case of a 12 year old boy in 1998, living in Great Britain, he was actually a US citizen, he claimed he was being persecuted because he had an abusive father. The government pointed out that in fact a, his father was dead, and b, the British government should be able to deal with abusive parents. But we gave him refugee status as someone fleeing persecution, in Canada. So we’ve stretched the definition pretty far. International rates, generally are around 12% approvals as refugee status, and another 6% are given some kind of extended stay for some other reasons. In the case of Canada, where decisions are rendered, we give about 60% approvals, which as you can see is considerably above the international average of 12 or the Irish Justice Minister’s estimate of 1 in 200. There are situations further complicated by a Supreme Court decision, a Canadian Supreme Court decision in 1985, which gave the refugee claimants the same legal rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights as Canadian citizens. And when the Charter of Rights was drafted we had a section which was going to apply to Canadian citizens and people there legally, and in fact it was stretched to include everyone; it was recommended that it didn’t. So refugee claimants in Canada legally can appeal under the section of the Charter of Rights. And Mark mentioned the case of one fellow whose name is Mohammad Issa Mohammad who was actually convicted for machine-gunning passengers during a hijacking on El Al, served time and was released under a hostage exchange, turned up in Canada on an immigrant’s visa and was found out to be a convicted terrorist. And that was in the late 1980’s; we are still trying to remove him. He’s had I think 30 or 40 appeals but our system allows for that. So if someone’s very determined to stay in Canada, a few have been deported but not too many, and its perhaps because of the difficulty in removing them that our CSIS spends more time on keeping track of them. In 2001 the National Post, which is one of our two national newspapers, published a list of 17 Al Qaeda operatives who had been arrested and sentenced in other countries and were based in Canada but had never even been charged in Canada, during their stay there. And the New York Times in fact had an article last month which says, it was headlined: “In Anti-terror effort, Canada’s authorities use surveillance more than arrests.” And its still true to some extent. And even in the surveillance area we’re far from perfect. The Ahmen Ressam case showed that while he turned up in Canada, and was refused refugee status he eventually got, fraudulently obtained a Canadian passport under an assumed name, used it to travel to Afghanistan for training in bomb-making under Al Qaeda, and came back and CSIS lost track of him because he had changed his name, and eventually got caught by an alert US customs agent. I would say that since 9/11, CSIS has been given more resources. They’re always trying to do a serious job, and perhaps that will be less likely to happen today again to be fair. But another problem of dealing with terrorism in Canada, and I mean international terrorism, not our homegrown terrorists like animal activists, animal rights activists, is that we have had I believe a less than robust approach by some Canadian politicians when it comes to dealing seriously with terrorism. Back in 2000 CSIS issued a report, released a report, stating Canadian politicians seeking ethnic votes were soft on terrorism. That was the headline and they went into detail. Despite this warning, only a few weeks later, Paul Martin, who was then the Minister of Finance, and is now the leading contender to replace Prime Minister Chretien, attended a dinner hosted by an organization widely regarded, including by your State Department, as a front group for the Tamil Tigers, who are one of the most ruthless and violent terrorist organizations in the world. It was found out through access to information he was briefed in advance on who they were. When he was criticized for this in the Canadian House of Commons for having attended the dinner, he responded that it is not the Canadian way to make such criticisms because it involved an ethnic community. That denial did not prevent the former head of CSIS, and who also had been Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Reid Morden, from stating a few days later that the Liberal party, which is our party in power, was timid on terrorism for fear of losing ethnic votes. The Tigers are not the only terrorist organization that some people think have been treated leniently; the Canadian government only recently got around to designating Hezbollah as a terrorist group, and that was only after very intense lobby from influential community groups. And for a long time it simply took the approach that well Hezbollah has some political functions, legitimate political functions as well as welfare roles so you shouldn’t tar them all with the brush of terrorism. CIDA, our International Development Agency, the equivalent of USAid, is still giving some funding to Tamil Tiger groups involved in welfare; they use the term you know “if we stop doing this the terrorists will have won.” So there is a tendency not to be too tough on terrorism. When, after Ahmed Ressam was apprehended in December 1999 and Seattle shut down its Millenium Celebration plans, and Lamar Smith just down the hall here who is chair of the Subcommitte on Immigration and (?), convened a meeting on border security, the US recognized that this Al Qaeda bomb planning had some serious implications. Our Prime Minister in fact said to Canadians, you know, “don’t worry about the threat of terrorist attacks, enjoy the holiday season…don’t be terrorized by fear. Enjoy yourself, it’s a New Year, its Christmas; we’ve finished a good year and we’re going into the new millenium. In a sense our Prime Minister was right because the funds being raised in Canada, say by the Tamil Tigers to blow up civilians in Sri Lanka, or weapons being procured by Hezbollah for terrorist acts in the Middle East, or the bomb built by Ahmed Ressam were not aimed at Canadians, and in his view therefore we should be able to relax and enjoy the Millenium. A few days after the events of September 11th he was able to stand up in the House and declare: “I am not aware at this time of a cell known to the police to be operating in Canada, a terrorist cell to be operating in Canada, any terrorist cell with the intention of carrying out terrorism in Canada or elsewhere.” This kind of positive gloss wasn’t destined to last indefinitely. After September 11th there were some reports that some of the hijackers had entered the United States through Canada. The issue was again raised as to whether terrorists in Canada could pose a threat to the United States. These reports turned out to be unfounded; none of the hijackers did come through Canada. John Manley, who is the Federal Cabinet Minister responsible for border security stated that the impression Canada was a significant, had a significant terrorist problem was in fact an urban mythology which had grown out of the false reports of the terrorist, some terrorists transiting Canada, as well as a recent episode of the TV series ‘West Wing,’ which depicted terrorists entering the US through a non-existent border between the province of Ontario and the state of Vermont; they don’t touch. Well, the problem here of course is the fact that while Manley was quite justified in pointing out that these particular reports were unfounded, his statements in no way contradicted the facts, as indicated by Ward Elcock’s testimony to the Canadian Senate Committee, and a good many accurate news reports that there was a major problem of terrorism in Canada. And United States authorities responsible for security are fully aware of all these facts. So that while the Canadian government may be able to convince some Canadians that the suggestion we have a major problem with terrorism may be nothing more than a myth, this kind of claim I don’t think cuts much ice with knowledgeable American authorities, who probably consider it naïve to say the least. Well you may ask at this point: why is it possible Canadian leaders can deny that we have a serious problem with terrorism? Well it comes about from considerable measure from, in my view from the fact that our immigration and refugee policies in recent decades have been driven largely by pressure from special interest groups, as well as perceived political gains on the party in power, particularly when it comes to immigration policy, less so with refugee policy. And the government therefore does not want to see its policies in these areas affected by the events of September 11th if it can be avoided. What happened after September 11th therefore was that Canada did its best to demonstrate that it was fully engaged in the fight against terrorism in terms of pledging troops in Afghanistan and strengthening anti-terrorism legislation before Parliament. Immigration and refugee legislation on the other hand, were described as “reflecting Canadian values and principles” and therefore hopefully would be immune for changes which might have to be made in response to September 11th. Our current Minister of Immigration (?) Coderre in fact has recently made statements to the same effect, that immigration and refugee constitute Canadian or reflect Canadian values and there shouldn’t be any major changes. When a Canadian is arrested abroad on suspicion of terrorism in fact the Canadian government’s response is usually to regard him mainly as a Canadian who needs protection, rather than a terrorist who should be investigated. There was in interesting case last fall, a chap called Maher Arar, who was a dual Syrian-Canadian citizen. He was on his way from Tunisia to Montreal and his plane stopped in New York and he was arrested by American authorities. And they decided to send him to Syria. The Canadian government wasn’t happy about that, they did get consular access. Why would they send him to Syria? Well my take was that the government, and the American government doesn’t particularly like Syria when it comes to terrorist issues, but they had more confidence in the Syrian government to deal with him—they immediately arrested him and investigated his Al Qaeda background—than they did in the Canadian government. We have other cases where the—how are we for time? I’m getting near the end-- We had another case where there was a Canadian official, or Canadian who turns out to be a very senior official in Al Qaeda, named Kadr, who was running as a front a charitable operation in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Pakistani’s arrested him for being involved in a bombing and our Prime Minister visited there and said well he is a Canadian, and he got him released. Well now his three sons are were captured in Afghanistan and a couple of them were in Guantanamo (sp?) Bay and the Canadian government has asked that they take custody of them because its rather cramped down there and they’re worried about him as a Canadian. So this gets some idea of what some of our priorities are. It has been suggested that if we allow our policies to be changed in order to satisfy American concerns we’d be surrendering some of our sovereignty, by doing so. Those of us like myself who think we need major reforms in fact take the view that most of the things we should be doing, which would be satisfying to the American government on this issue, we should be doing anyway for our own welfare and for our own protection. And in fact one of the ironies is that by not controlling our border we’re eroding our sovereignty to some extent, because one of the characteristics of a sovereign independent state is you’ve got control over your border. Right now virtually anyone who wants to enter Canada can do so by just saying they’re a refugee claimant. If we tighten up on this system we not only reassert our sovereignty by giving better protection to our border but we also have the rather important spin-off that we satisfy the United States for some extent. Now once again I stress, Canada’s not alone in its failure to exercise adequate control over your border; you have enough problems with your borders as well; not just the Canadian border but your border with Mexico. So you’ve got lots of homework to do in that respect as well. But there is a huge issue and problem with asylum seekers, and again we’re not the only country that has it. Britain had more than 100,000 claimants last year, and they’re considering sending them all to a holding area in somewhere like Albania 'til they know who they are. The European Union is now involved in some rather intense discussions on how they handle it. And most asylum claimants I might add are not terrorists, but most of them aren’t fleeing persecution either; they’re using the system to try and get a better life, and by our reckoning if they want to come here they should do so as regular immigrants. But the numbers are so overwhelming that the European Union is getting quite concerned and there probably will be major changes in the international regime for handing asylum seekers in the days to come. Now, I haven’t tried to cover all the different dimensions of border security; there are a lot of them, involving both movements of goods and movements of people. But I focus on our refugee determination system and mention briefly your current concentration on screening temporary visitors. Obviously both countries are going to have to look at these in some more detail. I think when the United States has up and running all its systems for screening and tracking and making sure people leave that come on temporary visas, it will be very difficult if Canada doesn’t also look at this if we want to keep our border as open as possible. To my knowledge we’re not spending nearly, devoting nearly as much attention to this as the United States is, and I think we’re going to have to do some catch-up. Many of the fundamental weaknesses remain in Canada, and we have Bill Schepit (?) from the Canadian Embassy who might be able to comment or give us more background on just what we have in mind. But I think we need to address, and Canada in particular if we want to keep the border open, needs to address these issues in a much more comprehensive way. This has become even more important in the last couple of weeks because as some of you are probably aware, Canada’s reputation hasn’t been too glowing in Washington, partly because we didn’t back the United States in the Iraq war, but probably more so because of the rather inept way in which some Canadian leaders commented on it. But your ambassador in Ottowa Paul Saluche (?) was very critical, and I can tell you as an ambassador you don’t take any joy about making public statements critical of the country you’re accredited to. You know the role of the ambassador is usually to try to build up relations, create good will, and its never a joy to have to say something critical. And its usually done in private, rather than public. In this case he had to do it publicly But we also are suffering somewhat from the fact that we’ve let our military run down so we don’t really have a credible international military presence. So I think its particularly important under the circumstances that we do deal in a comprehensive way with the issues of border security. Its going to take a while to do it. There are different approaches that have been suggested. Alan Gotlieb, our former Ambassador here and I think I mentioned him earlier, has suggested we need some kind of what he calls for want of a better name a “grand bargain,” a total look at our foreign relations including issues affecting border security and immigration and refugee issues, that Canada will probably have to propose it if we want it. It should be at the highest levels, it should be bold and comprehensive. John Manley on the other hand, who’s responsible again for border security issues with the United States wants an incrementalist approach, that he thinks we should go little by little. My sense is that that will probably not be adequate to meet the Security concerns of the United States, that if we don’t start dealing with some of the issues now in a formidable way that it will catch up with us. And again its, in my view for Canada, its not a matter of sovereignty, it’s a matter of common sense. There may be some areas where we do disagree with the United States as a matter of sovereignty, but I don’t think most of it should be that. So these are some introductory comments, and I’d be glad to take some questions. MARK: Thanks Martin, now let me take the prerogative of the Chair and ask a question: what I wanted was your assessment on how much pain Canada might have to feel before the politics of immigration and refugee issues changes. In other words, Canada has been able to continue as it has with regard to immigration and refugee policy because the terrorists aren’t trying to blow anything up in Canada as you mentioned, and because the United States hasn’t undertaken any kind of retribution, if you will, or even, if not so much retribution, but a tightening of the border in a way that would make commerce more difficult. My question is your assessment for how much pain Canada might have to feel before the politics of the issue within Canada, which is what’s going to determine what Canada actually does, shifts. MARTIN: That’s a good question and I think one aspect of it is, is that the United States has not come down, publicly at least, in saying you know if you don’t do this this is going to happen. I remember hearing Gordon Giffen speak at a conference I attended in San Antonio about a year and a half ago, a couple of months after September 11th. And he said look; we and Canada have to work together on this and we’re both going to take certain measures. We don’t think its productive to be publicly pressuring in Canada on this, we hope Canada does it on their own in due course. And I mean he’s quite right, any country is going to get defensive if you criticize them publicly, and you only do that as a last resort. On the other hand his statements made it quite clear he does expect us to use common sense and be moving on this. How much pain is difficult to say; if you had another September 11th, the border might slam shut for at least a while, or you might have a major slowdown anyway, its hard to say it wouldn’t. I think how much pain might be experienced and how quickly is not easy to say except that there almost will be some, certainly will be some repercussions. And if we don’t do some major things or start working on them now by the time the pain comes its not going to go away very quickly. If the United States gets in place all its systems for tracking and taking biometric measures of people coming in through their various ports of entry, keeping track of them, and Canada’s done nothing in that regard, it could take us several years to get started on that. So I think there will be pain. And hopefully though at least we have good enough communications with the American authorities, and I’m assuming John Manley has that, that we do something about it. John Manley, by the way, and I think probably all the Canadian Cabinet, has a better idea of where we’re going. He is the interface with Tom Ridge. And he’s made some forthcoming statements at times and I think at times he’s had to tow the line. He made a famous statement back in October 2001. He says Canada goes to the dining room table, he was talking about military capability, he said and when the bill comes we go to the washroom. Well he quickly stopped making that kind of statement. My sense is he is conscious of some of these issues, but by the same token, I’m afraid until we feel some real pain, those who don’t want changes in immigration and refugee policy are very influential and very powerful, as they are in the United States, and I am worried that there are not signs of sufficient movement. Yes we’ve done some things, and I can name some of them. We completed the Safe Third Country agreement with the United States, which will go into effect fairly soon, but that takes care of 32% of our refugees claimants or asylum seekers at current rates. There are even problems with that because there were lobbyists in there, Canada has some exceptions, for instance if someone’s charged with a crime where they can be executed in the United States or elsewhere, we’ll take them because we’re all heart. We’ll make an exception for them. The third country, or Safe Third Country agreement, by the way, is based on the fact that if someone’s in the United States already, they can’t come up to the border with Canada and make a claim there ‘cause they should’ve made it in the United States. They’re already in a safe country. By the same token, someone in Canada who wants to make a refugee claim has to do it in Canada, it can’t go to the United States. But we’ve made exceptions to this agreement which isn’t in effect yet not only in cases of people accused of capital crimes, but minors, because we want to be nice to children, but this will probably exacerbate the problem of minors being used as the lead for their family by smugglers. If someone has a relative in Canada, any kind of relative, a grandparent or a cousin, we’ll let them in, whereas you couldn’t nominate someone, sponsor someone, who is a cousin or a grandparent. But a lot of the relatives you couldn’t sponsor if you’re a landed immigrant or a Canadian, but we want to be generous to the family class people. So there are some problems there. We are doing some other things. We’re appointing more of what are called, or training and appointing more, immigration control officers. Which is a very good program. These are posted overseas, and they advise airlines, and they themselves go out to try to intercept people trying to get into Canada on fraudulent documents, and we’re appointing more of them. My sense is frankly in appointing more of them, that our view is unless we can cut them off before they get to Canada, once they’re in Canada, the system, the influence of the groups in Canada, is going to make it very very difficult to remove them. And the government, my sense is, is they’re in a bit of a panic and if they can keep people from making claims in Canada and getting into the system, they’re much better off. Genuine refugees will make claims overseas. But if you haven’t got a strong case, you’re going to try to get to Canada first, because once you’re in Canada, your chance is like winning the lottery if you’re a refugee claimant, in terms of the benefits you can get, in terms of the rates of approval, in terms of the sheer numbers; we take a higher rate per capita than almost any other country. In terms of the chance is that you’ll never be removed if you want to fight the case; there’s all sorts of reasons why Canada’s your goal. So we’re going to continue to attract large numbers of people who aren’t genuine refugees. If you are a genuine refugee and you apply through the United Nations High Commission for Refugees or the Canadian mission abroad, you have a good chance of being accepted. If you’re not, if you don’t have a good claim, you’ll come here. So we are taking some measures, but in my view not nearly enough. MARK: Thanks Martin. Questions from anybody in the audience? Well I’ve got, Id actually like to ask another question if no one else has one. And that is if you could tell us a little about domestically what it is that makes it difficult for Canada to tighten up its immigration policies. In other words what’s the politics that, that in Canada, other than when you specifically referred to kind of a concern about sovereignty and sort of a dislike being pushed around by a larger neighbor, but I mean what are the internal political dynamics that make it possible for a mass murderer to run a candy shop for seventeen years and never be deported. MARTIN: And when you say immigration I assume you’re talking about our asylum system, because mechanics of immigration is, in general is another subject that has an impressive lobby but a lot of the issues aren’t the same. In his case, Mohammed Issa Mohammed, the main mechanic is that under our, the interpretation of, it was called the Sing decision of the Supreme Court under the Charter of Rights, he has a great many appeals that are possible, almost, I wouldn’t say endless, but he’s, I think he’s either on his thirtieth or fortieth appeal at the moment; he’s cost the Canadian taxpayers $3million. This has been created partly because in the refugee industry, the lawyers, not surprisingly, have played a major part. And the ideal is that you can keep appealing forever; this is a lawyer’s paradise. One of the arguments that I make, and by the way the Minister of Immigration two weeks ago did propose to Cabinet that we’ve got to restructure this. And we, it was recommended by a government commission five years ago that instead of having such an elaborate system of incidentally well-paid political appointees, some former, some good people, some former bureaucrats, I hate to classify them as good people. But the Immigration Refugee Board is a bit of a boondoggle (?) and he suggested, in fact, the Minister, restructuring this, having what this, reported recommended well-trained public servants trained in civil rights law and human rights law and in refugee issues who make the decisions. The lawyers, the legal profession would like a fairly elaborate system of legal claims, and most countries who get thousands or tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of claims have some system for trying to deal with this fairly expeditiously; it doesn’t always work. But making decisions sometimes at the bureaucratic level. Now the refugee lobby says well you can’t do this because you may be sending someone back to certain death; well there are a couple of dozen other countries which take refugee claimants and in almost all cases they travelled through them on the way to Canada. So ideally in a perfect world you would have endless numbers of legal appeals, but in a practical world, and we have applications from hundreds of thousands of people wanting to immigrate, you cannot have judicial or quasi-judicial system to deal with all of this; you’ve got to deal with some of it expeditiously. So we’re, I think we’re looking at a scaled-down, a still fair system, where we give people a hearing and look at their cases, but the idea that if you turn down any of them therefore take a hundred if you might turn down even one wrong unfairly, I don’t think makes sense. We simply cannot function; we have a huge backlog in Canada now. You have a huge backlog in the US. And I think we’ve got to have fair but much more streamlined systems and quite frankly, and there are some very good immigration refugee lawyers, but there’s also a vested interest on the part of many in creating as much employment as possible. I think there may be some role there but I don’t think you can make an endless series of legal appeals; I think you’ve gotta have some administrative decisions made and for the most part upheld. I’ll just add something to that. You asked what kind of lobby there was, well there are also many fine organizations—refugee service organizations—whose, who have every good intention of helping refugees, helping them to get resettled, but invariably, they used to be all self-financing, they raised their own funds—Mark’s Center has an excellent paper called “Show me the money,” a few ago in the United States they began getting government funding. And now they do have a vested interest in making sure the numbers of refugees doesn’t decline. Canada used to take refugees on an ad hoc basis; there was the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, the Indo-Chinese boat people, which I have some in-laws, my wife is from Vietnam. We used to do it on an ad-hoc basis, but as these organizations became funded by the government, and they began hiring people at some pretty good salaries, they developed a vested interest and Canada then began setting annual quotas; it didn’t matter what the particular international situation was. And in one year in the late 80’s, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees estimated something like there were 33,000 refugees who needed permanent resettlement, these aren’t the millions who are just temporarily fleeing conflict, but people being persecuted. So out of that 33,000 Canada established its share as 52,000. Out of 32, 000 globally. We actually only took 19,000, but we were doing our best. But it changed from looking at the actual number of people out there who needed resettlement, to saying well we’re going to take so many thousand this year. And it becomes a kind of self-perpetuating, so while the refugee settlement do a very admirable and important job, they do develop a vested interest in maintaining the levels and I remember one case in your paper, it mentioned someone who I think had been deputy head of the government agency dealing with it left to become head of one of the refugee advocacy organizations and at a very ample salary. So again, I don’t want to downgrade the importance of these groups, but you do get a major vested interest; they’re very very skilled in Canada at lobbying the government, and basically taking the high road morally that if you turn down any of these people, you’re really not a very nice person. These are some of the issues I think you have to contend with in getting debate going in these areas. Another major problem is that in both immigration and refugee issues, most of our refugees and most of our immigrants, 70% about or more, are from developing countries that are visible minorities. And those that don’t want to see any changes very often raise the spectre of racism; if you want to adjust immigration levels you must be a racist. It’s a little hard to stick to me because my wife is a visible minority and an immigrant from Asia. But these are some of the issues that complicate the whole debate and make it very difficult to have a rational and balanced national debate; you either lack compassion or you’re a racist. Not always, but it makes it quite difficult to discuss these things openly. Audience member: Given the large numbers of immigrants coming into Canada I would imagine it must be somewhat of an expense for the federal government; how are the native Canadian citizens feeling about such a large number coming into their country? MARTIN: Now by native Canadians do you mean aboriginals or just Canadian-born? Audience Member: I mean just, quote unquote, you know…. MARTIN: Canadian born. Yep, well that’s a very interesting question because generally in the surveys taken a fairly large percentage say well the numbers are about right. Where the people have a view usually more say that we have too much, too high a level instead of too few. One of the problems in getting an accurate picture though is is that 75% of our immigrants, and I’m talking now about immigration, not just refugees, is that 75% of our immigrants go into just three cities, and Toronto had the highest absolute number of immigrants in 2001 of any city in North America, even more than New York in absolute numbers. That’s where, I think, we have to look at the issues carefully. But in outside the cities—95% go to the large cities and 75% go to just three cities—outside of that, the government keeps repeating that there are tremendous economic benefits from immigration. So all across the rest of Canada they’re told that immigration is the answer to a maiden’s prayer, where there aren’t very many immigrants. And in fact in areas of the country like the Maritimes and the prairies where the population’s declining they’re told that well, you know, you’ve really got a problem because you don’t have enough immigrants. The Canadian government and the present minister has recognized this problem, and he has a program to try and get them to disperse more effectively; it’s a real challenge. Not too many people I’ve met think its going to work very well, because if you can’t find economic opportunities for Canadians in the prairies and the maritimes its going to be very difficult to get newcomers to go there. But the Canadian public attitude has been moderately positive. But the people in the cities, the big cities, recognize there are all sorts of problems. And there are also problems with sheer numbers and whether some communities are getting too dense, and how well integrated-- many of the same problems you have in the United States. What I’m trying to do and I know what Mark’s trying to do is simply get more information out there to the public so there can be an informed public debate. And we can make some rational decisions. But there are a huge number of vested interests; its not easy to get that debate going. MARK: Yes, sir (pointing) Audience Member: I wanted to know about this sort of recent development with the SARS, that mystery illness; it seems like Canada has a high number of cases. Is there any though about sort of changing border practices because of that? MARTIN: I don’t think so; that’s a tough one. One of the problems is it takes about ten days for the disease to develop. But we have a major center in Toronto that’s one of the, usually cited as one the four major centers in the world. I didn’t pass through Toronto by the way on the way here, I came through Montreal. I’m going home through Toronto so I don’t know what they’ll think of me in Vancouver. There are a lot of medical issues related to immigration, but I can’t say what the fallout will be with that. The more discussed issues, medical issues on immigration, are the substantial number of non-treatable tuberculosis cases that are coming in; if there, there should be in principle some way of trying to check these people out before they come. The problem with SARS is we have just a lot of visitors, or Canadians going back to Asia for visits, and it takes about 10 days to incubate apparently. So I guess the jury’s still out on that one; if it becomes a world-wide epidemic people may start to look at it. But I don’t have any quick useful comments to make on that one. Audience Member: You made some brief comments about Canadian opposition to the war, the war in Iraq, and I wanted you to expand a little bit to the extent that you see that potentially influencing or not bilateral discussions for migration accord, or immigration reform between the two countries. Is the Canadian opposition such that its going to impact those discussions. MARTIN: I made that comment and, now I don’t want to get into the merits and demerits of taking part in the war; that’s a separate and interesting subject, and what apparently really set the cat among the pigeons were some of the comments by senior Canadian leaders about this. My, the connection I drew there was simply that it’s fairly clear that people in the administration are not overly fond of Canada. Now I don’t think it will impact directly on immigration and refugee issues. The way I put it was--I think it could have, and its hard to judge how much impact it could have on our regular bilateral issues. You know, getting, resolving a bilateral problem is complicated. You have the—those of you who follow Canadian-US relations we have a dispute over softwood lumber, about Canadian wheat exports to the United States. We find the US a very exciting country to deal with because you’ve got to deal with all sorts of different constituencies from Congress to sectors in the industry; its complicated business. And sometimes if we appeal to support from the administration, if we have very good relations, to try and resolve some of these things. And there is speculation that at least at the moment we may have less sympathy from that particular direction; so its not easy to say exactly what the fallout will be; but I think we are justifiably worried about whether there will be fallout. The main reason why I mentioned that was that at a time where I don’t think we have as many friends in the administration as we might normally have, I think its all the more reason why we should be getting things straight on these other issues. And they will take a long time to work out; I’m not saying they’re simple, and so on. But it underlines to me, I mean if we really end up falling far short of what the United States would think is a reasonable response on these issues, it could, under the current circumstances it could be even worse. But I don’t want too tie too closely those too issues, but I think there is an indirect relationship. I think it underlines the urgency of trying to sort out what we’re going to do on border security and coming up with some measures that are both in Canadian interests as well as reasonably satisfy the United States. MARK: Let me ask one last question. This is, as we have congressional staff members here and its sort of related to this: is there anything that Congress or the administration, our Congress and our administration, could do constructively that would move the issue forward in Canada, or is it sort of better we keep our mouths shut, at least officially speaking, so as not to cause people to dig their heels in? MARTIN: Well I don’t know what Tom Ridge is telling John Manley but I imagine he’s being fairly candid. I hope that it takes a turn that where it isn’t necessary to make public criticism. And when Paul (Saluchi) came out and made public comments on the fact that we weren’t pulling out weight militarily, and finally we were making some inappropriate comments about our position on the war in Iraq. You know, that’s pretty painful for an ambassador. Usually at the worst you say those things privately, when you say those things publicly that is really a last resort and you don’t want to have to. I’m not privy to the discussions that John Manley and Tom Ridge had. But I think its probably useful for the Americans to give our side, if they’re not already doing it, a reasonably good roadmap of where things are going so at least we know what’s happening and what expectations there might be. We might not agree with all of them but at least we’d have a good picture of it. I hope that’s happening, and it may be, but at the present time my main impression as an outsider is that I don’t think we are moving enough on some of the very important issues, that we’re going to be there by the time the US has its elements in place. So Paul Saluche’s comments suggest that they weren’t getting much very appropriate response, although things happen very quickly there, so it’s a bit very difficult to make any general speculations on some of these other issues. I hope we’re fine-tuning it so at least we know where we stand. Now whether or not, for instance, John Manley can get movement within Cabinet, I frankly am not too optimistic on where things stand now, that our government wants to move definitively on some of these issues. I don’t know what will happen when Paul Martin takes over, but he hasn’t to my knowledge made any particular statements that suggest there would be greater movement there. So I’m not terribly optimistic, I might say, that we’re going to get any major movement going, but I hope the United States is very frank, and I hope it can remain at the private level, and let us know what’s expected. There is now pressure from other sources than just people like me; there’s a major private sector body, which I think you referred to, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, that’s near 100 strong; they’re meeting with Tom Ridge. And they are emphasizing the fact that as representing Canadian industry, we better get it right on this. We don’t want to find out that after two or three years that we really haven’t done nearly enough and then we’re in to border restrictions that may take several years to rectify, which could be again just devastating for Canada. So I hope the United States is being, and I would expect they would be, very up front on what’s happening. Now again, the US, and this is one of the things I wanted to look into while I’m here, is taking measures on screening particularly temporary visitors; there’s a whole bunch of different proposals under consideration. I hope to get a little better feel--I’ll be releasing a paper in about June on these subjects—get some more feeling about what the United States has in mind for itself, what kind of measures its going to take, and where Canada, where the United States at least would like Canada to fit in. Now we still, we’re a sovereign country, and I’m proud we are and we’re going to take our own decisions. But we’ve got to remember the US is a sovereign country and if the door slams shut that’s their privilege, so I think we’ve got to look at this from both sides of the border and understand each other’s problems. MARK:
Thanks Martin. This is an issue that is not going to go away, its going
to continue to crop up, and its very, its unfamiliar for us, because
although Canada and the United States are clearly sovereign nations we
have for a long time not really operated on the assumption that the
outside world starts at the northern border, but we may in fact start to
have to think that way. And that’s going to lead to a lot of changes
both for Canada and the United States. Thank you all for coming, and
like I said, all of the Center’s work is on our website at www.cis.org,
and I hope to see you at our next event. Thanks. |