Bill C-31 - What it means

There is little in Bill C-31 about Canada's refugee resettlement program (whereby refugees abroad are selected at Canadian visa posts). Unlike refugee determination in Canada, the definitions and processes relating to refugee resettlement will appear only in the Regulations. The following are the most important changes in what the bill does have to say about refugee resettlement.

• Section 66 imposes a leave requirement on all applications for judicial review. This means that refugee applicants overseas and/or private sponsors will no longer have an automatic right to be heard at the Federal Court if they receive a negative decision, but have to apply for permission from the Federal Court. Even now, without the leave requirement, few refugees overseas are able to bring their case to the Federal Court, because of all the practical difficulties. The new leave requirement will make it even more difficult for refugees overseas to get any kind of appeal.

 
• The bill provides for Regulations establishing quotas for numbers of applications accepted, processed, approved and numbers of visas issued (S. 14(2) (c)). This opens the door to the imposition of quotas on the numbers of refugees sponsored or otherwise resettled.

• The bill refers specifically to resettlement in its Objectives with respect to refugees. Section 3(2)(b) includes in the objectives of the Act to "affirm our commitment to international efforts to provide assistance to those in need of resettlement".

 

• The evaluation of whether refugees have the "ability to successfully establish" is to consider social and economic factors and the period during which refugees are expected to successfully establish is to be extended to 3 - 5 years. The goal here is to ensure that the need for protection is the overriding objective. This proposal should reduce the number of refugees rejected because they are believed not to be likely to settle in the same time as immigrants. However, the CCR continues to call for the successful establishment criterion to be eliminated altogether.

 
• Resettled refugees are to be exempted from inadmissibility on the basis of excessive medical demand. This will make it easier for refugees with health problems to be resettled. To strengthen this recommendation, it should be included in the bill.

• Dependants (spouses and children) of refugees already landed in Canada will have a one year window of opportunity to be processed as part of the permanent resident's application. This will promote family reunification and mean that family members will not need to be sponsored under the family class or demonstrate their own refugee claim, if they apply within one year of their family member's arrival.