CKNW Editorial
for August 6, 1999

Now that we’re all hot and bothered over refugees – John Reynolds MP is scared stiff about the message we’re sending to third world countries – perhaps it’s a good time to take stock.

Canada’s practice has been to accept any refugee who finds his way to this country. The thorny question arises when one tries to define refugee.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says, and we have adopted the definition, that a refugee is one “who has felt compelled to leave their homeland because of a well founded fear of persecution due to race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.”

Do we accept that as a reasonable definition? It seems pretty fair to me.

The next question arises as to when that determination is made.

It must be made before a person is deported otherwise the policy is nonsense. If you can deport people just because they arrived without documentation or lawful immigrant status that is a non policy.

Some would deny any application for refugee status if the claimant has no identification. I find that a bit harsh – it would deprive many otherwise legitimate refugees of their claim. ID can be lost, may never have been in place in the first place or there may be a well founded fear that their identification could compromise relatives or friends at home. But I’m not so naïve as to think that is usually the case … prospective refugees destroy their identification because they think that will buy them the time to establish themselves as refugees. But you have to treat everyone the same – the Kosovar who may have fled without time to get his ID and the person on the plane who flushes his passport down the toilet.

And the fact remains that if a claimant does have a well founded fear within the definition that is not altered by documentation or lack of it. The reality is the person is here and has to be dealt with and though many would disagree I’m sure, I find it a bit harsh to send a person who would otherwise qualify back to death or prison because of lack of identification.

But we have, it seems to me, the option of saying notwithstanding the UN directive we simply will not let anyone claim refugee status unless he has satisfactory documents to show who he is. But, this caveat, if that is done the courts are almost certain to say that this rule must apply to everyone – Kosovars, Cubans, Chinese whatever, regardless of whether or not they can play baseball or hockey.

Having got that far – namely that we only permit those who arrive on our shores with satisfactory documentation to move to square 2, what process do we put in place? Our problem here is that it must be a fair process and give natural justice or it will be struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada. It must then be a hearing where all interested parties have the right to be heard, presumably with counsel and interpreter.

Here, of course, is where we get into practical difficulties. Refugees do not come in at a steady pace but tend to arrive in bunches. Rather than one or two claimants there are more likely to be 50 or more, sometimes hundreds at once. This puts a stress on the system and brings delays. Unless this hearing is to be a sham – sort of like the Queen of Hearts whose judgments were eminently predictable – there must be a deliberation by a judge or judges.

Should, then, the claimants be held in custody until that judgment is rendered and all appeals have been exhausted?

Perhaps. But we had better make sure we have facilities other than a high school gymnasium. And we’d better get used to displaced persons camps growing ever larger as time passes. And we must do this for everyone.

So I say as I have from the beginning that it’s open to Canada to examine and, if deemed appropriate, revise the system. And I accept the fact that many callers and those who have written me genuinely think our system is wrong.

There is another matter. Time was that we accepted, virtually without question, that people fleeing Iron Curtain countries qualified as refugees. Now that the curtain has gone do we no longer consider Communist Cuba and Communist China as, prima facie, repressive regimes? And I ask the question I have asked twice before -–if a boatload of white British people fled a Caribbean country turned bad, would we get as excited as we have over the recent boatload of Chinese? I very much doubt it.

And I remain very troubled by the attitude of the Reform Party. There is an edge to their comments so very reminiscent of the attitudes of some of their members towards minorities, homosexuals, and people in trouble with the law. There is a sharpness of language and a discernible sneer. There is the obvious couching of bigotry in the non bigot’s language. I hear John Reynolds and Ted White speak and I can hear the taunts of the Reform cowboys during the flag incident … I can hear the “I’m-not-a-bigot” from Bob Ringma, the MP who would send a homosexual employee to the back of his store … I can hear the I’m-not-anti-Jewish-but-just-committed-to-free-speech mutterings of Doug Collins … and I can hear the explanations of the most appropriately named Art Hanger as he goes to Singapore to see how floggings enhance the justice system. I wish the sensible sounds of Chuck Cadman, Keith Martin, John Cummins, Val Meredith,  John Duncan and others could override these other sounds but they’re just not loud enough.

In conclusion, let us, by all means, review our policy for refugees but let’s make sure that the same rules that apply to white hockey players or Cuban baseball players apply right across the board.