Bill C-31 - What it means

The bill introduces new provisions for assessing the risks faced by people who for one reason or another are denied access to a refugee hearing before the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB). The risk assessment will apply the same definition as the IRB (Convention refugee and persons in need of protection) but will be conducted by Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Essentially three categories of people will have access to this risk assessment:

• People who cannot make a refugee claim because of a removal order against them (both the current and proposed systems prohibit claims if there is a removal order).

 
• People who cannot make a refugee claim because they made a claim in the past (and it was denied, found ineligible, withdrawn or declared abandoned). These people are only eligible for even this limited risk assessment if they have been outside Canada for one year since their claim. For people whose claim was previously refused, only new evidence can be submitted.

 
• People who are inadmissible on grounds of serious criminality, security, human rights violations or organized criminality, or rejected under Section F of the Refugee Convention. In making risk assessments in this category, the danger to the public and to the security of Canada will be balanced against the risk to the person.

• Although this risk assessment seems intended to serve as a safety net, it will not be able to catch many people at risk. Take, for example, a person who is refused as a refugee claimant, but remains in Canada for several years, because of a stay on removals to the country. She hears that several members of her family have been arrested because of the family's political activities. But she has no right to a risk assessment where she could bring this new evidence. Similarly, people who leave the country and come back after less than a year cannot be heard.

 
• The review of people in the third category above goes some way towards recognizing the prohibition in the Convention Against Torture (CAT) against sending anyone to torture. But the provisions make clear that the government does not intend to abide by the absolute prohibition in the CAT, since they intend to balance risks to Canada against risks to the person, meaning that some people will be sent back to torture.

 
• The risk assessment will be evaluating exactly the same risks that the Immigration and Refugee Board evaluates in the refugee hearing. Yet the bill gives this job not to the IRB, but to Citizenship and Immigration Canada, which will have to set up its own structures, training programs, documentation centres, etc. This is neither efficient, nor likely to lead to good decision-making.