(Chair) in the chair.

[Translation]

My name is Ratna Omidvar and I am a senator from Ontario.

[English]

I am the Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology. Welcome to our guests and to the people who are watching us on the waves. We apologize for the delay, and we are looking to see if we can extend this meeting for another 10 minutes. Regardless, we’re all now operating within a more constrained time frame. I ask for everybody’s cooperation.

Let me begin by welcoming everyone again and members of the public watching our proceedings. Before we begin, I would like to do a very quick round table, introducing my colleagues to the witnesses and the public.

Gigi Osler, senator from Manitoba.

[Translation]

Senator Jean-Guy Dagenais, senatorial division of Victoria, Quebec.

[English]

Wanda Thomas Bernard, senator from Nova Scotia.

Welcome. Mobina Jaffer from British Columbia.

[Translation]

Judith Seidman, senatorial division of De la Durantaye, Quebec.

René Cormier from New Brunswick.

[English]

Thank you, colleagues.

Today, we continue our consideration of Bill S-235, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. Joining us today on our first panel, we welcome: Shalini Konanur, Executive Director and Lawyer with the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario; Danette Edwards, Interim General Counsel at the Black Legal Action Centre; Andrew Brouwer, Senior Counsel, Refugee Law Office, Legal Aid Ontario; and Fatuma Alyaan. Thank you so much for joining us today.

We will begin with opening remarks. Ms. Alyaan and Mr. Brouwer, you go first, followed by Ms. Konanur and Ms. Edwards. Given that our start time was delayed, I’m going to have to ask you to keep it to four minutes each.

Thank you, Madam Chair and Senator Jaffer, for inviting me to speak to this essential committee. I’m here today not only for my family but for so many other young people and former kids in care who do not have this opportunity. I am also here as one of many, many people who have been struggling to keep our families together as they face deportation from Canada.

I want to tell you what the current laws have done to us and why they need to change.

Child welfare has caused separation and lasting harm to our families. As children separated from our parents and loved ones, we went through traumatic situations and carried a lot of stress. Think about the stress on children facing abuse and neglect, trying to advocate for ourselves, knowing we might get punished even more for speaking up. We carry the emotional and mental weight of all that, and we carry it alone.

My brother and I were taken into the system from our family as young children just a few months after arriving in this country. I was just 8 years old, and Abdoul was 6 years old — almost the same ages as my two kids now. We were separated from each other and spent the rest of our childhoods bouncing from foster home to foster home in the care of the government rather than of our family. My aunt Asha, who brought us to Canada, fought for years to get us back. After years of trauma and suffering, my brother and I learned as adults that despite living in Canada since we were little — in government care — we still didn’t have full status in Canada. We only learned this because the Canada Border Services Agency, or CBSA, was working to deport Abdoul.

For Abdoul and I, our childhood was a fight to survive in child welfare. The child welfare system was a stand-in for our family, but they did not get us the citizenship we needed to be treated equally with other kids and to access the resources and supports we needed to thrive. The result of this challenging childhood has been that most of our adulthood has been a struggle to keep our family together.

Therefore, senators, we need this bill to pass and stop the harm that child welfare and deportation have done to refugee and immigrant kids — like me and my brother — in Canada. I’m 31 years old and still not a citizen, even though I have lived here for almost my entire life. This has impacted my ability to work and access housing and health care. It has exposed us to the possibility of getting deported from the only country we know — our home. Children in care shouldn’t have to wait until they leave the system to get citizenship, of course. In my experience, there’s no reason to delay a child in care getting full status. I have heard that children’s aid agencies are taking steps to try to avoid these situations in the future. But for Abdoul and me, it’s already too late. We aged out of care a long time ago. Please use this opportunity to stop others from going through what we have.

Six years ago, the Prime Minister said that something needed to be done. Yet, here we are, still fighting, and we still do not have our citizenship. More family members have been deported and more families have been separated while we’ve been fighting. We have to stop using immigration and child welfare to punish people.

One important change is to automatically grant citizenship to all those children whose “parents” have been in the provincial and national governments through child welfare systems. Please support this bill today.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Alyaan.

Thank you. Madam Chair, Senator Jaffer, members of the committee, thank you very much for inviting me to speak to you today about this very important bill. My office will urge you to adopt it too.

I’m a refugee lawyer. I’ve been practising for 20 years, the last dozen at the Refugee Law Office at Legal Aid Ontario, where I serve as senior counsel. I’m joined here today by my colleague Samuel Loeb.

Our office represents dozens of young people who came to Canada as children — often as permanent residents — were taken into care or supervision by child welfare authorities, and have crossed over to the youth criminal justice system, swept into what’s been called the child-welfare-to-prison pipeline.

As Ms. Edwards will note shortly, the large majority of these kids are racialized. In one Ontario city, for example, 65% of kids in state care identify as African-Canadian. This is in a city where only 8% of the general population so identifies. That drastic overrepresentation continues in Canada’s prisons.

When it comes to youth who are not citizens, there’s a further harm. For them, the pipeline from child welfare extends not just to prison but continues to deportation to a country they do not even know. As Ms. Alyaan explained, her family’s story is a case in point.

By the time children age out of care, many are unaware of their immigration status. They simply — reasonably —assume that, having lived in Canada for years, they are Canadian citizens. The first time many of these young people learn that they’re not Canadian citizens is when officers of the Canada Border Services Agency visit them in jail to advise them that they are on their way to deportation.

After years of often traumatic experiences in the child welfare and criminal justice systems, many of these individuals are experiencing mental illness and now they’re exposed to yet another assault on their dignity: banishment to a country they do not know and where they may not even speak the language. It’s the ultimate rejection by the country they thought was theirs. It’s the final failure of the system.

This bill helps to rectify that situation. It recognizes that these mostly racialized people who grew up in Canada, in the care or under the supervision of child welfare agencies, are entitled to equal treatment as full members of the Canadian community. It’s a small but bold and desperately needed step toward undoing some of the harm of systemic racism in the child welfare, criminal justice and immigration enforcement systems.

As lawyers, there’s only so much that we can do. We have to operate within the confines of existing law, but the existing law is unjust. Bill S-235 provides a remedy.

Let me close with a brief observation. I was here two weeks ago when the government officials were here testifying before you. I heard the concerns that they raised about so-called unintended consequences. In our view, they raised nothing that cannot be resolved by this committee, either by dismissing certain concerns as being unfounded, or amending the bill to ensure that those concerns are fully addressed. I hope we can address those during the Q & A. Thank you.

Thank you.

[Translation]

Thank you. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and honourable members of this committee. I want to take a brief moment to thank Fatuma for sharing her story with us, and I want to say to you clearly that the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario is in full support of Bill S-235.

I want to tell you how thrilled I am to be here today and that we’re actually speaking about this issue and potential meaningful change, because our legal clinic works with 2,000 to 3,000 people here on immigration matters. Unlike Andrew, we work on the other side, the non-refugee side, with people who have no status or are being removed and need temporary status — the most vulnerable in our system. We do humanitarian and compassion applications to see if we can fix those situations. We do submissions on criminal admissibility to see if we can stop those removals. We do deferral requests to Canada Border Services Agency to see if we can convince the CBSA not to remove these people that we’re talking about today. We do stay motions in Federal Court and temporary resident permits. I’m happy to answer any of your questions on those areas. We also do authorizations to re-enter Canada.

Over the years, we have worked with several young people in care who have been serviced by child welfare systems on their cases. I was able to obtain some statistics for 2023. Currently, we have 23 children that we’re supporting in cases like this on immigration matters.

We also work with a number of adults who have come out of the child welfare system in the exact situation that’s been described already. That is, they have discovered that they do not have the immigration status to stop a removal that has been triggered by criminal inadmissibility.

I want to tell you quickly what I know. What I know from my work is that these issues impact racialized children disproportionately. We already know that the data tells us that Indigenous, Black and racialized children are overpoliced by both the criminal justice system and the child welfare system. There are populations of people who come out of the child welfare system who do not have citizenship. That, we know. There are systemic and structural barriers that have led to the failure to obtain citizenship. That is why we’re here today — namely, to talk about this legislation.

We also know that many of the clients who have been convicted of criminal offences will eventually have a triggering of criminal inadmissibility in immigration law, which starts the process of removal and deportation.

One piece that I think about a lot is that in many of the cases that I see, the criminal behaviour is often connected to the traumatic experiences in childhood and within the child welfare system. You can see a thread in the behaviour and in the criminal activity that comes from that traumatic experience. We have had almost no success in stopping the loss of their status and their removal. We have had almost no success in our attempts to authorize re-entry to come back to Canada, which is part of the reason that we are here today — namely, to talk about that.

In the interests of time, I don’t want to speak too much about the clients that I see, but I have given you those clients with whom I’m working in my written submissions and in my speaking notes.

I want to tell you about one current client who was in care in child welfare, came out of that system and has now been triggered for removal with deportation. He’s lived here for 29 years, since the age of 3.

In conclusion, the populations that we serve and the ones who are impacted by this legislation are, in my view, Canadians. They are Canadian children; they are Canadian adults. They grew up in Canada. They were raised by families and child welfare systems and were engaged in those systems. They were educated by our Canadian education system. The ones who I work with have been embedded in the community and they contribute just like my own children do. In no uncertain terms, they believe — and I am strongly telling you this — that Canada is their home. Their only distinction is not holding or having access to Canadian citizenship because of the legislative barriers that we have created. I am delighted that we are looking at a bill that starts to break down those barriers. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Konanur.

Good afternoon, chair, Senator Jaffer and honourable members of the Senate. Thank you for inviting me here today.

The Black Legal Action Centre, or BLAC, is an independent legal aid clinic that provides free services to people all over Ontario.

BLAC steers a coalition called Our System, Our Children, Our Responsibility. The title alone tells you what it’s about. It’s a campaign against the deportation of child welfare survivors.

BLAC is an organizational mentor for the collective of child welfare survivors. We receive frequent calls from people in the community who need urgent assistance, facing either deportation or other criminal law issues.

While BLAC does not specifically take on immigration cases in our practice like the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario does, we are deeply concerned with the relationship and connection between systemic anti-Black racism and its adverse impact on the communities we serve. We are concerned with the rights of Black people in Canada.

In 2016, in the One Vision One Voice report, a municipality in Ontario indicated that Black children represented 65% of children in group care, despite only making up 8% of the municipality’s population. Despite similar rates of neglect and physical, sexual and emotional abuse as White children, Black children are 40% more likely to be investigated and 18% more likely to have their abuse substantiated.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission also found that the proportion of Black children admitted into care was 2.2 times higher than their proportion of the child population. These statistics speak for themselves.

Black people are generally overrepresented in the child welfare system largely because Canada’s child welfare policies are oppressive, discretionary practices are biased and culturally safe service responses are lacking. Parenting responsibility in Canada is shifted to law enforcement when a child goes into care. Law enforcement is responsible for things such as dispute resolution, discipline and enforcing the rules of the home. Often, this is where Black children first encounter the criminal justice system.

For some reason, Black people, whether they’re adults or children, are seen as less deserving of our compassion. It is viewed as perfectly acceptable to deport a child who has lived in Canada all of their life — you’ve heard examples — to a country they have never known. The fact that a person has already served their sentence is ignored, and they are subjected to a second level of punishment: deportation from Canada.

From the data available, we know that gaining full Canadian citizenship is difficult if you’re from a predominantly Black country. We know that Black families face far more scrutiny and apprehensions from child welfare authorities. We know that Black people historically receive harsher sentences within the criminal justice system. And we know that deporting these children whom we have already failed to protect is not the solution. Children should not be penalized for their lack of immigration status. This is an issue over which children have little or no control.

We believe that Bill S-235 accords with the federal government’s Black Justice Strategy to ensure that Black people have access to equal treatment and protection before the law in Canada and is a response to the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent’s call to action.

Under international human rights and family law doctrines, Canada has an obligation to ensure that children have the opportunity to become citizens of this great country. Canada should be proud to provide its most vulnerable children with a place to belong — a place to call home.

In closing, we ask that Canada honour its commitments and give dignity and citizenship to these children. Please support Bill S-235, as it recognizes the structural racism barriers faced by Black children caught up in the child welfare and criminal justice systems. Thank you.

Thank you to all our witnesses. That was compelling testimony. You work in the trenches of this issue. You experience it. You have a great deal of credibility. I believe I speak for all of us when I say that this is an injustice that we have to fix. Let’s find the right way of doing so.

We have a lot of colleagues with a lot of questions. Colleagues, three minutes each today, including your questions and answers.

Mr. Brouwer, during the questions, if you can actually give us your perspective on how to address the concerns raised about a week ago, we would be very grateful; the same goes for other witnesses as well. Our first question is from Senator Cordy, vice-chair of the committee.

I’ll try to get my question out in a minute and a half. Thank you very much. It was very compelling testimony and very much from the heart. I appreciate that.

We heard from the government officials when they were here that there’s a lack of data. Now, we know that if we’re going to make changes, particularly with the government, you need the data to make it happen because it’s more compelling. In order to have this strong voice, you need the data, which the government told us they don’t have. We also heard about the overrepresentation of Indigenous, Black and racialized people.

Do you have the data the government said they didn’t, about the number of children who age out? I think, Ms. Konanur, you spoke about it. They might not officially be Canadians, but their whole being is Canadian. What do you do? Do you have a way of getting the information, or is that a problem?

Our clinic and the Black Legal Action Centre have been working with the Canada Border Services Agency for a number of years on this issue and other issues around data collection. I think the Catch-22 is that the people who can collect the data are the CBSA. As civil society, we are not in a position to collect the national data on that, which is why, when I spoke, I was only able to give you a flavour of what’s going on at our clinic. In 2023, we were supporting 23 children. That’s a microcosm number of one tiny organization in one part of this country.

I think that in an analogous way, this is the same question that was asked of me when I spoke at committee on changes around forced marriage. We don’t have the data, so let’s not make the changes. What we were told by our U.K. counterparts is, if you know what the issue is, you don’t need the data to make changes. If you have enough credible evidence, you don’t need it. Our country followed that. They actually created legislative change on forced marriage without the data.

I feel we’re in the same space here. When we have these committee meetings, and we’re able to give you our on-the-ground experiences, and that’s credible, that can be taken as the impetus for moving this forward.

I’m going to move right to you, Mr. Brouwer, and I’m going to take you up on your offer. Indeed, we did hear about unintended consequences. CBSA and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, or IRCC, officials said this bill doesn’t appear to align with the categories of citizenship outlined in the Citizenship Act, and that without a transitional provision, the bill would automatically provide citizenship to a new category of persons upon Royal Assent, retroactive to all persons who meet the criteria. This is some cause for concern.

I’m now going to offer you the opportunity to put forward a way we might change this bill to avoid that kind of situation.