Conservatives Continue to Ignore Refugee Crisis

 OTTAWA – The Conservative government continues to drag its feet on fixing Canada’s refugee system at the expense of fairness, objectivity, efficiency and compassion, Liberal Immigration Critic Omar Alghabra charged today.

 “This government is unwilling to acknowledge that it has created a crisis at the Immigration and Refugee Board, let alone deal with the ever-growing backlog of individuals awaiting case hearings under its watch,” said Mr. Alghabra.

 “Most concerning is the fact that they are putting their political interests and ideology before those facing life and death.”

 Mr. Alghabra made his comments following the passage of his motion at the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration today.  

The motion rejects the intention of the Conservative government to change the selection process for appointing IRB adjudicators.  It calls on the Conservative government to stop politicizing the IRB appointment process and to fill the 60 vacancies on the IRB with members from a pool of qualified candidates in order to process the mounting backlog of refugee cases.  According to recent reports, the backlog has doubled in the first three months of this year.

 Last month, former IRB chairman Jean-Guy Fleury told the committee that the government’s plans to allow the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to appoint half the members of an independent advisory body leaves the board open to political influences.  

Since taking power last year, the minority Conservatives have allowed the number of vacancies on the board’s 156-member compliment to grow from five to 60.

 All committee members voted in favour of Mr. Alghabra’s motion except for the Conservative members. In fact, the Conservative members will be tabling their own dissenting report to contradict the motion.

“The Conservatives campaigned on reducing political influence when it comes to government appointments, instead they are setting back the clock on significant progress that had been made over the last few years under the Liberal government,” said Mr. Alghabra. “This is further proof that they just don’t care about this issue. But Canadians care about the integrity of our systems, they care about the fairness of our processes and they care about the implication these changes will have. They continue to put politics ahead of the integrity of Canada’s desire to pursue fairness and compassion.”