Inland Protection

children of many refugee claimants, failed refugee claimants and children who are themselves refugee claimants or failed refugee claimants are unable to attend post secondary educational institutions while they or their parent(s) are awaiting a decision on an application to CIC due to the high cost of that education. These children are considered international students.

1. Some of the provincial health insurance plans (such as OHIP in Ontario) do not provide provincial health insurance coverage for “family members” of protected persons who are residing in Canada and who are being processed for permanent resident status simultaneously with the protected person;
2. It is a waste of resources to have to make a refugee claim for these family members in Canada just so that they will have IFH coverage;

1. There are many protected persons who delay in applying for landing beyond the 180 days because of their inability to raise the $550 cost recovery fee, or other valid reasons;
2. The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration has not yet satisfactorily responded to the CCR request to eliminate the $550 processing fee for protected persons;
3. The IP5 Guidelines state incorrectly that protected persons who apply late for landing and are being processed as humanitarian and compassionate cases, must meet all the normal admissibility criteria for immigrants, including medical, financial and identity document criteria.
4. Protected persons who are being processed as H&C cases and who don’t have “satisfactory identity documents” are being refused landing.

1. The IRB will not conduct any refugee determination hearings until claimants have received security clearances;
2. IRPA requires that hearings be held expeditiously;

1. Protected Persons require Protected Persons Status documents to apply for Canada Student Loans and for Canadian refugee travel documents;
2. Some Protected Persons, particularly those with landing delays (for whatever reason),are issued Protected Persons Status documents with a validity of six months;
3. The six month limit prevents both acquisition of loans and the ability to travel outside of Canada:

1. IRPA Regulation 117(9)(d) provides for a lifetime exclusion from sponsoring a family member, with no discretion to consider an explanation, however compelling, or to impose a lesser period of exclusion;
2. Ina significant number of cases, there has been no intention to misrepresent and, in other cases, there are mitigating circumstances that may constitute justification;
3. The application of this article is having an extremely detrimental impact on many innocent children, in violation of Canada’s obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child to take into account the “best interests of the child” concerned in any decision of a public body;
4. IRPA provides for a general inadmissibility of two years in cases of misrepresentation and officers have considerable discretion as to whether even that inadmissibility should be imposed;

1. Current limits on the numbers of immigrants and refugees who can come to Canada each year and the unequal division of these numbers between economic and humanitarian classes of immigrants have resulted in long waiting periods for the re-unification of families and the admission of sponsored refugees;
2. The limits on and division of immigrant and refugee numbers appear to be arbitrary and to have been set without public consultation;
3. It is widely recognized that family reunification is taking too long and the delays in the processing are causing great hardship;
4. The group with the most pressing need for family re-unification is refugees;

1. There is a situation of generalized risk in Colombia;
2. The government refused the CCR’s request that it review the situation in Colombia in 2003; 

1. Section 25(1) of IRPA grants the Minister broad discretionary authority to exempt an inadmissible person from any provisions of the Act or Regulations, if there are humanitarian and compassionate reasons for doing so;
2. The Regulations severely restrict this broad discretionary authority by requiring persons who are approved in principle for landing on H&C grounds to meet all admissibility requirements in order to be landed, including medical admissibility;
3. A person who receives a positive H&C decision and who is found medically inadmissible is refused landing and may face removal from Canada to a place where their life is at risk, or, if granted a temporary resident permit (TRP) for three years, may then be denied provincial health insurance coverage during the three year TRP period and thus face a risk to their life due to inability to access adequate medical care in Canada;
4. Applying the criterion of medical inadmissibility to a person who has been granted approval in principle on H&C grounds constitutes discrimination contrary to section 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and is an improper fettering of the Minister’s discretion under section 25(1) of IRPA;