Speaking notes for The Honourable Jason Kenney, P.C., M.P. Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism

At a news conference to announce Senate passage for Bill C-11 — the Balanced Refugee Reform Act — and launch a summer tour to promote refugee resettlement
Ottawa, Ontario, June 29, 2010

As Delivered

First of all, a warm welcome to all of the clients and newcomers to Canada who are being helped by the Catholic Immigration Centre. So many of you were, I know, in camps. Those of you who are from Nepal were in United Nations High Commissioner camps in Bhutan for many years, maybe 15 years or so, and you’ve now come to Canada. We wish you great success.  I’m very happy especially to see your children because in Canada anything is possible, especially for them. These little guys may grow up to be ministers or maybe one of them will be Prime Minister of Canada some day.; That’s possible in this country.

But I really want to thank Carl and the whole team here at Catholic Immigration Centre for the good work that they do. It’s an important centre that really represents the important work of settlement organizations for newcomers everywhere in Canada.

Since coming to office in 2006 our government has increased by nearly 400% federal support for settlement and integration services for newcomers and that has helped organizations like the Catholic Immigration Centre to provide more and better services. They do so here. Carl’s team includes several hundred volunteers. They serve thousands of clients from every corner of the world. They represent the good work done by settlement organizations right across the country.

But perhaps the clients that are in greatest need of a bit of help when they first arrive to Canada are people like many of you who have arrived here as refugees, people who are victims of violent conflict, of ethnic cleansing and of persecution who had no choice but to leave your homes, as many of you had to do. Typically many of these refugees end up living in refugee camps or in urban slums hoping for a chance for a fresh start and for a new beginning.

We are delighted that Canada is able to act on its long tradition of being a place of refuge and protection for victims of persecution such as yourselves. I am pleased to announce today that following the passage of Bill C-11 in the Senate of Canada, and following a multi-partisan consensus in the House of Commons, today the Balanced Refugee Reform Act will become law. It will receive Royal Assent. When it becomes law we will be adopting reforms that will give additional procedural fairness to asylum claimants in Canada but will also help to protect the integrity of Canada’s refugee and immigration systems to ensure their fairness now and in the future.

We will also, as a result of these reforms, be increasing the number of refugees who we resettle to Canada by 20%. We will be increasing the number of resettled refugees each year by 2,500 additional refugees. This is remarkable because Canada is already receiving one out of every 10 resettled refugees in the world like yourselves. For example, those of you coming from Bhutan who have been in camps in Nepal represent several thousand Nepalese who we are receiving in Canada.

Each year we receive about 10,000 to 12,000 resettled refugees, most of them United Nations Convention refugees. Because of the reforms that are being put into law today we will be increasing that to 14,500 resettled refugees each and every year. In addition to that we will be increasing, as a result of today’s law, we will be increasing the federal support for the successful integration of government assisted refugees by 20%, or $9 million, through the Refugee Assistance Program. It’s a program that has been frozen for 10 years but we are receiving more newcomers who have greater needs and we will be providing greater assistance through the good work of organizations like the Catholic Immigration Centre and other settlement groups across the country.

In addition to those enhancements for the Government Assisted Refugees, who have particularly acute needs for getting started in Canada, helping them find jobs, helping them to learn English and French, helping them to find housing and deal with their many practical challenges, including for many of you helping you find winter clothing in a few months so you’ll be ready for the Ottawa winter, in addition to those things we will also be particularly increasing our support for privately sponsored refugees.

Many people will remember that 30 years ago Canada accepted tens of thousands of Vietnamese boat people and others from Southeast Asia and Indochina, including Cambodians who had to flee political violence and communist oppression in their countries. Canadians opened their homes in what became the birth of what we now call the Privately Sponsored Refugee Program.

Every year about 3,000 Canadian churches, faith-based groups and other organizations in civil society raise money and find homes to sponsor, welcome and integrate refugees from around the world. As a result of today’s Royal Assent of Bill C-11, I am happy to confirm that the government, as part of its increase in resettlement, will be accepting an additional 2,000 privately sponsored refugees as part of the 2,500 increase in our target for refugee resettlement overall.

Those 2,000 additional refugees will be coming through the Privately Sponsored Refugee Program and they will be settled by what we call sponsorship agreement holders. I’m pleased to tell you as well that our government has recently significantly increased our support for the sponsorship agreement holders, many faith-based organizations in particular, who help newcomers and provide them with a very rich opportunity for resettlement, a lot of rich local family community support for their integration.

These are remarkable changes because, ladies and gentlemen, I can tell you, if you look to the announcement this week in the United Kingdom and many other countries, most other developed countries have frozen or reduced their commitment to the resettlement of refugees. Canada is going in the other direction. Canada is increasing today, as a result of these changes, as a result of the passage of the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, we are increasing our support for those who are most in need of it around the world. That is to the credit of the generosity of the Canadian people.

Let me say that I’m also launching today a summer tour that will be focusing on refugee resettlement.  I’ll be going across the country.  In fact, I started this in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, on Friday of last week. We are going to go across the country and encourage the sponsorship agreement community to do more. The government is doing more.; Taxpayers are going to do more. We’re calling on civil society today and throughout the summer to do more as well.

We don’t want to overburden those good organizations and volunteers who are already involved. So I am going to focus my efforts this summer on encouraging churches, faith-based organizations and other civil society organizations who are not involved in resettlement of refugees to get involved.

Let me give you an example of how important this is. Our government increased targets for resettlement of refugees from Iraq out of the Middle East, people who have had to flee their homes because of sectarian violence. We are now receiving 4,000 such refugees every year. That’s the allotment that we have set aside but we don’t have enough organizations in Canada sponsoring many of those refugees.

So today I’m putting out a call to people of good faith, people of conscience, compassionate Canadians to step up to the plate and help us to provide a new and secure beginning for thousands of those Iraqi victims of persecution and violence as well as others around the world.

I’ll give you another example of the kind of people I’ll be focusing on this summer. Obviously because of the brutality of the regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran and the Islamic Republic of Iran we have seen thousands of dissidents, Baha’i, Christian, gays and lesbians and others have to flee Iran. Many of them are now living in Turkey. Our government has responded by increasing our resettlement targets for refugees out of Ankara, out of Turkey.

I want to put out a call for organizations that may not have been involved in the resettlement of refugees to think about ways they can help those Iranian dissidents, those Iranian gays and lesbians, those Iranians who have been persecuted because of their faith or their conscience or their political beliefs.

Just to give you one example, I’m going to challenge organizations in the Canadian gay and lesbian community to think about how they can get involved in the Privately Sponsored Refugee Program as sponsorship agreement holders. They obviously have a passionate concern for gays in Iran who are facing capital punishment, who are facing persecution simply for who they are. We want to give those people who have had to flee an opportunity for resettlement to Canada.

One way to do so would be to use the increased number of Privately Sponsored Refugee positions that we have set aside by creating sponsorship organizations to help some of those people come to Canada.

This will be the focus of my summer activity. Let me just close by once more thanking my colleagues in the Opposition, my critics in particular who worked together with me in a remarkable act of cross-partisan collaboration to get things done for Canadians. As a result of their work we are seeing today what I think is a minor miracle. I came to this place three months ago to launch our Balanced Refugee Reform Act. We said at the time that we would listen to constructive ideas about how to improve the Bill.

We did listen. We did consult. We had a remarkable cross-party consensus in the House of Commons and today in the Senate that will lead to a much better refugee system for Canada, a faster and fairer system, a system that provides enhanced procedural fairness for refugee claimants and which will also ensure that we can more quickly remove false claimants who are abusing Canada’s generosity because we need to ensure that the system is there for people in need of protection, not people who should be coming to Canada through the ordinary immigration procedures.

I want to thank once more Olivia Chow, Thierry St-Cyr, Maurizio Bevilacqua and everyone else who was involved in this remarkable achievement that is going to allow Canada to continue to lead the world as a place of protection and refuge for those most in need.