Juno News - Feds roll out fast-tracking for asylum claimants from dangerous countries

00:00:00.000 Hi, Candice Malcolm here with True North and I want to talk about my latest report that

00:00:10.080 I had in the Toronto Sun and the Sun newspaper chain. This is about changes that the IRB,

00:00:16.800 so the Immigration and Refugee Board, quietly announced last week and I was one of the only

00:00:22.320 journalists in Canada to write about it. So under the new system that the government has announced,

00:00:28.080 they will move to something called a file-only approval for asylum seekers who have come to

00:00:34.960 Canada. So there's a little bit of background on the issue. There's been a huge new backlog created

00:00:40.960 in Canada. When people come into Canada both legally and illegally and they file asylum claims,

00:00:47.040 they wait in a queue to have their case heard before an immigration judge. Now because of the

00:00:51.840 huge influx of illegal border crossers at Roxham Road, as well as just a general increase in asylum

00:00:57.760 seekers in Canada, we had 55,000 last year in 2018, a huge backlog has accumulated. There's over 64,000

00:01:05.280 people waiting to have their case heard before immigration judge. And so in order to address

00:01:11.600 this backlog, the government's announced changes to fast track these approvals. And one of the things

00:01:17.840 that they've now introduced, it's truly incredible, is a program that will allow fast tracking of

00:01:25.520 individuals from very dangerous countries and terrorist-producing countries. So the government

00:01:31.840 created a list of countries. And if you happen to come from one of those places, potentially you will

00:01:37.280 have your case approved without ever appearing before an immigration judge, without ever having to

00:01:43.760 plead your case or have your credibility checked in a courtroom. It's a huge change from the traditional

00:01:51.680 approval process that Canada has long had. And it does create a lot of red flags because, frankly,

00:01:58.320 the refugee-producing countries are also often countries that produce dangerous criminals, 1.00

00:02:04.720 dangerous individuals, and even terrorists. And so I think this is a concern for everyone. I wanted to

00:02:10.960 bring in security expert Leo Knight, who's joining us, our latest True North edition. Leo, thank you so much for

00:02:19.040 joining us. You're very welcome, Candice. And so what do you think, what do you make of this report,

00:02:24.800 and what are some of the concerns that you have? Well, I have many, many concerns about this. The,

00:02:32.240 not the least of which, you just mentioned the named countries where people are coming from.

00:02:37.360 There's countries on that list like Yemen, Chad, Eritrea. I mean, it's just absolutely ridiculous. I mean,

00:02:44.720 in Eritrea, I don't think there's been a functioning government since probably sometime in the 70s.

00:02:51.360 How do you do background checks? How do you know if what these people are telling you are accurate,

00:02:56.000 unless you can question them by an IRB judicial panel? Are we just going to rubber stamp an

00:03:03.520 application prepared by a paid lawyer? Is that all it is? He knows the right answers to put,

00:03:10.880 so he puts this, and there's no way that the system can cross-examine it? That's just ridiculous.

00:03:17.360 Yeah, so let's just go over it. So the new process is called the file review process,

00:03:22.240 and I'm going to list the countries that the government has laid out on the IRB website

00:03:28.000 that will no longer have to necessarily have an actual hearing. So we have Iran, Libya, Pakistan,

00:03:36.800 Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Venezuela, Turkey, Egypt, Afghanistan, Burundi, Syria, Eritrea, Iraq,

00:03:46.400 and Yemen. So, you know, a lot of these countries are failed states, they might not have a functioning

00:03:52.880 government. How would how would the Canadian government even know that an individual was

00:03:57.280 from that country? Like, say you landed and said you were from Afghanistan, but you had no

00:04:02.400 official documents. How would they even be able to verify? Or forged documents, or stolen documents,

00:04:08.480 or documents that you had that were official that you flushed down the washroom in the plane on the

00:04:15.040 way over. You know, there's so many variations of this, and there's no way of getting at the truth.

00:04:21.760 You know, as you say, it's a file review process, so they're going to land or they've paid somebody,

00:04:29.120 you know, somebody who's engaged in people smuggling or people moving,

00:04:34.160 and he's going to have a lawyer on hand who will prepare some papers, and it looks good,

00:04:38.000 and the bureaucrat will check off all the boxes, and suddenly we've got the next Osama bin Laden 0.68

00:04:43.120 living here. It's terrifying. And the point you raised is really important that the file,

00:04:49.360 the application that these individuals are submitting, it's not usually something that they've

00:04:54.640 filled out themselves. Is that right? It's usually filled out by a third party, by a Canadian trained

00:05:00.480 immigration lawyer, or someone knows generally what to say in order to get approved through the

00:05:06.080 government. So you're not even really getting a snapshot into who this individual is, other than

00:05:12.720 how it's framed through their lawyer. No, you're taking every paper at face value, and expecting that,

00:05:20.960 or because we're such nice people, we just say, oh, I guess it must be true. Well, frankly, it's likely

00:05:28.960 not true. You know, most people from those countries, especially failed states, you know, if there's no

00:05:37.040 rule of law, then they do whatever the heck they want to survive. And we're supposed to import that

00:05:43.760 into this country and expect that they'll assimilate with no assistance. It's ridiculous. This guy

00:05:53.040 thinking. Yeah, I think that there's just so many troubling instances. And, you know, it isn't just

00:06:00.240 the fact that they could be approved to have their refugee claim accepted, and they get to live in

00:06:04.800 Canada, then, you know, then the problems continue, like you said, they have to somehow be integrated or

00:06:09.520 assimilated into our society. And it's not a very good first step to get into Canada. So what do you

00:06:16.960 think is the solution here? What do you think the government should be doing instead?

00:06:23.760 Well, I didn't even like the previous solution where they were asked questions by the IRB. I mean,

00:06:28.560 the IRB judges are government appointees. So depending who the government in power at the time is,

00:06:35.840 of what their political thinking is, will depend on what the political thinking of that judge is.

00:06:40.240 And most of them that are on the panel are holdovers from the Chrétien government

00:06:45.440 of the 90s and early 2000s. You know, the whole concept, if you're interviewing somebody,

00:06:53.120 is you ask them a mixture of open and closed questions, trying to discern whether they're being

00:06:59.120 truthful, whether there's any deceit there. And the problem with something like this is you don't have

00:07:04.320 any ability to do that interview. It just doesn't happen. It's, you know, it's, it's a file that's

00:07:09.440 prepared by a lawyer or a consultant. And, you know, then a bureaucrat rubber stamps it. There's no,

00:07:14.480 there's no checks in the process. And I just can't see that as right.

00:07:18.720 Especially given there's so much other context of, you know, there was a story a couple weeks ago of

00:07:24.160 an individual that was flagged as a national security concern. It was given a permanent residency.

00:07:28.880 I know that conservative government has called on parliament to do a review of security measures,

00:07:33.760 just given the fact that we have that influx of illegal border crossers coming from Quebec.

00:07:40.000 And it reminds me that last year, I wrote about the same story back when it was still a rumor.

00:07:44.160 And I interviewed a Chrétien-era immigration judge appointee. And he basically echoed exactly

00:07:50.320 what you're saying that the whole point of these interviews is to judge a person's credibility.

00:07:55.920 And to tell whether or not they're, they're credible, whether their story is accurate,

00:08:00.400 whether they're telling the truth that immigration judges, you know, maybe they're partisan, maybe

00:08:05.120 they're left wing or liberal, but even those folks, they're still trained to be able to tell when an

00:08:10.080 individual is lying or whether there's inconsistencies in their stories. And so without that person to

00:08:15.600 person, you know, interaction just really leaves us open and so vulnerable. I think we should be

00:08:22.240 moving in the other direction that we should be moving towards more in-person interviews with

00:08:26.400 everyone as a precondition for coming to Canada. I absolutely agree with you. I mean, you know,

00:08:33.520 are we a sovereign nation or not? You know, do we have the Charter of Rights and Freedoms or not?

00:08:39.040 You know, do we follow the rule of law or not? If we do, then how come we just throw the law out the

00:08:44.560 window for all of these folks from these countries because the system is gummed up? You know, the

00:08:52.640 the policies of the government, the current government are such that they have gummed up the system.

00:08:58.400 I mean, I wrote a piece

00:09:02.640 when Chrétien was the prime minister and was about them having lost and no idea where over 40,000 refugee

00:09:10.000 applicants were. I mean, this is nothing new. You know, the government has been long

00:09:14.640 incompetent in dealing with refugees. And, you know, the stated policy of the politician is that

00:09:21.680 we should do this. We need to be a open armed, welcoming nation. The police involved, the RCMP and

00:09:31.840 immigration saying, wait a second, we got to know who we're bringing into this country,

00:09:36.080 you know, and then the at the sharp end of things are the street police who have to deal with the

00:09:40.800 problems that they brought in. Yeah, you're right. I always would have a little bit of kind of ease

00:09:46.160 in mind, whatever, you know, the the left when politicians were saying, know that behind, you know,

00:09:52.080 the politicians, there were some really hard nosed, serious individuals who work in the bureaucracy,

00:09:57.840 who care a lot about security, that would fight back against this kind of thing. I think that's why

00:10:02.320 it's so disheartening to see that they've gone ahead and introduced a policy that just appears to be

00:10:07.360 so reckless and potentially so dangerous for Canada. Well, Leo, thank you so much for joining

00:10:13.840 us on this. And we look forward to more conversations with you. You're very welcome, Candice. Thank you.

Juno News - February 14, 2019

Feds roll out fast-tracking for asylum claimants from dangerous countries

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