Canadian Council for Refugees



Bill C-31 - What it means BACK


 
 

REFUGEE DETERMINATION: ELIGIBILITY

(Sections 94-96)


As is currently the case, not everyone who wants to make a refugee claim will be heard: only those found eligible by Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC). The bill however enlarges the categories of people whose claims will be found ineligible (i.e. will not be referred for a hearing to the Immigration and Refugee Board).
 

The only recourse offered under the bill is a Pre-removal Risk Assessment and this is only open to claimants who have been outside Canada for at least a year since their first claim. The Pre-removal Risk Assessment offers very much less protection than a refugee claim: applicants have no right to an oral hearing or to an appeal, and the decision is made by immigration officials, rather than the Immigration and Refugee Board.
  Currently, claimants are ineligible on grounds of criminality only if the Minister issues a "danger to the public" certificate. Even the current restriction is out of line with international standards, since the allegations of criminality should be considered in the context of a refugee hearing, where the crimes committed can be weighed against the threat of persecution.
 

The automatic exclusion of people convicted of crimes outside Canada is particularly dangerous for refugees. The criminal justice system is often used as a mechanism of persecution. Not infrequently, people who are being persecuted are convicted on the basis of trumped up charges for crimes that they have not in fact committed. Under the proposed system, such people will have no opportunity to show that they were wrongly convicted.