Poste - Canadian Coalition for the Rights of Children

Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and
Freedoms requires that the refugee claim must be
determined in accordance with the principles of
fundamental justice.
Persons ineligible to have their claims
heard by a Refugee Board 58
• war criminals;
• persons posing a security threat;
• persons convicted of serious crimes;
• persons previously found ineligible;
• persons, determined not to be Convention
refugees, who have not been outside Canada
more than 90 days;
• persons with refugee status in another country
who can be returned to that country.
Percentage of Refugee Claims deemed eligible 59
1993-94 99.5
1994-95 99.3
1995-96 99.5
1996-97 99.4
Unlike applicants abroad, a refugee claimant within
Canada does not need to be medically admissible,
establish an ability to be self-supporting, or have
adequate settlement arrangements. 60
Convention refugee applicants must undergo a medical
examination to determine if they would be a danger to
public health in Canada (e.g., tuberculosis). Their
application would not be rejected on these grounds, but
they may experience a delay in the process because of
needed medical treatment.
Legal Representation
According to the Canadian Council for Refugees:
Right of counsel should be guaranteed at all
points in the process, including port-of-entry
interviews. Measures must be taken to ensure
that this right is effective, and not made
meaningless by the inadequacy or absence of
legal aid coverage.... Legal aid coverage for
H O W D O E S C A N A D A M E A S U R E U P ?
109
refugee claims varies from province to
province, but in many parts of the country it is
either minimal or non-existent. This means that
many refugee claimants must present their case
for refugee status with poor legal
representation, or none at all. 61
However, the Joint Centre of Excellence for Research on
Immigration and Settlement—Toronto says that:
Given that refugee counsel are typically
schooled in the adversarial procedure, they
present proof through the detailed examination
of claimant and witnesses. Replacement or
modification by means of a more investigative
procedure has been recommended. Such a
system would place no burden of proof on the
refugee claimant. The role of counsel would
become one of collaboration rather than
struggle. Consequently, the determination
process could be expedited through a more
collaborative and investigative procedure in
which questioning is undertaken by CRDD
members themselves rather than by refugee
counsel and RHOs, while existing procedural
guarantees of the right to counsel and legal aid
would be retained. 62
Documentary Evidence
Refugee Board members have access to a documentation
centre to assist them in making decisions. According to
Citizenship and Immigration Canada, this is “one of the
world’s finest refugee documentation centres.” 63 Others,
however, dispute that claim.
The credibility of documentary evidence is a
source of concern in refugee hearings.
Information assembled by the Immigration and
Refugee Board’s Documentation Centres has
frequently been called into question. Although
refugee claimants are given an opportunity to
refute adverse information used against them
during refugee hearings, Board Members
appear to give greater probative value to
documentary evidence than to the claimant’s
testimony... Little is known about the sources
used in the production of documents. 64
—Joint Centre of Excellence for Research on
Immigration and Settlement—Toronto