SDIR Committee Meeting

    I call this meeting to order.

    Welcome to meeting number 59 of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development. Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format.

    I would like to inform the committee that all witnesses have completed the required connection tests in advance of the meeting.

    I'd like to remind participants to please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. All comments should be addressed through the chair. For members in the room and on Zoom, please raise your hand if you wish to speak. The subcommittee clerk and I will do our best to maintain the speaking order.

    Before I turn to the witnesses, I would like to take a moment to draw the attention of colleagues to the four budgets that were distributed to subcommittee members this morning authorizing the spending for the studies that the subcommittee has decided to launch this fall.

    First, the targeting of civil society in Venezuela; second, patterns of forced migration in different regions of the world; third, the implementation of Canada's universal periodic review; and fourth, transnational repression in developing democracies.

    If the members of the subcommittee are ready to adopt these four budgets, we can do so now. However, if the members of the subcommittee wish to have more time to study the estimates, we can do so next week.

    Is the subcommittee ready to adopt the budgets?

     Some hon. members: Agreed.

    I declare the budgets carried.

    Thank you.

    Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the subcommittee on September 24, 2024, the committee is resuming its study of patterns of forced migration in different regions of the world.

    I'd like to welcome our first panel of witnesses. From the Manhattan Institute, we have Daniel Di Martino, graduate fellow, as well as Emmanuel Rincón, lawyer. Both are appearing as individuals by video conference. From Oxfam Canada, we have Lauren Ravon, executive director, Oxfam-Québec.

    You will have a maximum of five minutes for your remarks, after which we will proceed with a round of questions.

    Welcome, Mr. Di Martino, Mr. Rincón and Ms. Ravon. I invite you to make your opening statement. You have five minutes each.

    Ms. Ravon, you have the floor.

    Thank you, Mr. Chair.

     Thank you for inviting me here today on a topic that I think about every day of the week.

    My name is Lauren Ravon. I'm the executive director of Oxfam Canada.

    Every single day, families around the world are being forced from their homes in search of safety and a better life. They are risking everything to escape conflict, natural disasters, violence or hunger, often leaving with nothing but the clothes on their backs. In my 10 years with Oxfam, I have witnessed forced displacement increase significantly.

    Last month I visited Somalia, where I met with families who had fled their lands and were now living in makeshift tents on the outskirts of villages. Their living conditions were so precarious, yet they knew they would never be able to return to their land. After four years of intense droughts, that land has been rendered uninhabitable.

    I also visited the border between Sudan and South Sudan. I remember standing on the main road that connects the two countries and seeing hundreds of people by the hour crossing over the border by foot under the beating sun. Almost all of these people were mothers and grandmothers with their kids. Many of them had been displaced twice—first seeking refuge in Sudan when the civil war broke out in their country, and then fleeing back as returnees after violence erupted in Khartoum, knowing very well that the conditions weren’t in place for their safe return but being left with no other choice.

    Forced migration is not a new phenomenon, but in recent years its scope has expanded dramatically. A staggering 120 million people have been forcibly displaced around the world. The reasons for this rise are complex and varied. Whether it’s the devastation caused by violent conflict, persecution or the worsening impacts of climate change, people around the world are being driven from their homes in ever-increasing numbers.

    In Sudan more than 10 million people have been displaced since the conflict broke out. It’s the worst internal displacement crisis in the world today. In the DRC, 6.8 million people are internally displaced. It's 2.9 million in Myanmar. About 1.9 million Palestinians have been displaced in the Gaza Strip, with many forced to flee multiple times. In all these contexts, the cause of displacement is conflict. Those who pay the price are civilians.

    Syrians account for almost one in five refugees globally, with 6.5 million Syrians hosted in 131 countries. More than 7.7 million Venezuelans have left their country over the last decade. This is the largest exodus in Latin America’s recent history, and one of the largest displacement crises in the world.

    In Central and South America, organized crime, economic hardship and political corruption have left countless individuals with no choice but to embark on a dangerous journey north. Meanwhile, in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, droughts, floods and other environmental catastrophes have wiped out all livelihoods, leading to large-scale displacement as communities seek safety and sustenance elsewhere. In South Asia, the 2022 floods in Pakistan resulted in eight million people displaced.

    Oxfam, an organization with a long history in humanitarian work, has been at the forefront of responding to forced migration. Through our programs, we help people who have been displaced meet their basic needs, such as access to clean water, food, shelter and safety. We're also working to address the underlying causes of forced migration by reducing poverty, conflict and inequality. This speaks to the need for long-term solutions that go beyond immediate humanitarian response.

    Forced migration is a global issue that demands a global response. Canada has been a leader in welcoming refugees to this country. Its commitment to providing safe haven for those in need is a source of national pride, but there is more that we can do collectively. I want to share four recommendations for the Government of Canada.

    First, Canada should increase its levels of humanitarian aid. We should expand our support specifically to countries grappling with large internal displacement crises as well as countries that are hosting large numbers of refugees, providing financial resources and technical assistance to help meet the needs of these populations.

    Second, Canada must recognize and address climate change as a driver of displacement. As climate change increasingly forces people to leave their homes, Canada should advocate for global action on climate migration and support policies that provide protections for climate refugees.

    Third, Canada should champion international co-operation and work with international partners to improve the resettlement process, enhance legal pathways for migration and ensure that the human rights of all displaced people are upheld.

    Finally, the only way to stem the tide of forced migration is to promote sustainable development. Investing in long-term development programs in regions prone to forced migration can address some of the root causes, thereby reducing the need for people to flee.

    Forced migration is not just a humanitarian crisis. It's a test of our collective humanity.

    Thank you for the opportunity to appear today.

     Thank you, Ms. Ravon. It was a great allocution.

    Mr. Brunelle‑Duceppe, you have the floor.

    Mr. Chair, whom I love with all my heart, could you ask the witnesses to speak a little more slowly to give our interpreters a chance to breathe? Otherwise, we won't make it.

    Thank you.

     Please, I would like to appeal to all our witnesses, when they speak, to speak a bit slowly in order to give a chance to our people who do the good translation for us. Thank you.

    Now I would like to invite Mr. Daniel Di Martino to take the floor for five minutes, please.

    Mr. Di Martino, you could start.

     Thank you for allowing me to testify about this very important matter.

    I hail from Venezuela, the nation that has produced the largest number of refugees and displaced persons in the world, numbering nine million today. This is a shocking fact because Venezuela used to be the fourth-richest country in the world, and it welcomed millions of immigrants in the second half of the 20th century, including my own four grandparents.

    Venezuela used to be the world's top oil exporter, yet it is now the world's top people exporter. It is the country with the largest oil reserves on the planet, yet there is no gasoline. I was forced to line up for food, medicines and other necessities, for hours, as the government told me when I could visit the grocery store and what I could buy. Inflation destroyed my family's income and made us extremely poor. I lost power and water in my home frequently, and my childhood was plagued with fear of robbery, kidnapping and murder amid rising crime.

    Unlike other refugee crises, the world's largest refugee crisis in Venezuela was not caused by a foreign invasion, by an ethnic or religious conflict, or by a natural disaster. The world's largest refugee crisis was caused by socialism. The socialist policies of the initially democratically elected regime, such as nationalization of businesses, price and currency controls, and limitless government spending and deficits, turned my beautiful nation into a horrible and a dangerous place. That is why Venezuelans flee.

    It's not just Venezuelans but also Cubans, Nicaraguans, Eritreans, North Koreans. It's millions of other people, today and in the past, who have died, suffered and fled from socialism. It is not just socialism. Behind rising numbers of refugees, authoritarian regimes of many ideologies and their actions are why most of the world's refugees have fled. Think of Syria, Russia and China. The question before you now is what to do about this.

    I'd like to suggest two sets of actions.

    The first is to attack the causes of the refugee crisis, and that means taking a stand against evil. You should stop allowing authoritarian regimes to take advantage of you and to enrich themselves. For example, Canada continues to trade with and to enrich the Cuban regime in the hopes that this is the best course of action with the oldest and the most evil dictatorship in our region. Instead of maintaining normal relations with Cuba, an ethical and smart approach is to take a stand against evil and support the Cuban people—not the regime—by helping to provide, for example, free satellite Internet on the island and by funding the democratic resistance.

    I think this boils down to a simple question, which is this: If you knew your neighbour was kidnapped in his house, what would you do? Would you call the police? Would you try to save him if there were no police? This is the situation that afflicts well over a billion people around the world. They are kidnapped by tyrants, and it is our moral duty to help them.

    Advancing freedom abroad is even more important because you simply can't welcome all of the world's refugees, and they would rather stay in their home countries, with freedom, than go to Canada.

    Second, you must have a rational and effective refugee policy that picks the right number and the right kinds of refugees and that helps those refugees succeed. My research with the Manhattan Institute on immigrant assimilation and its fiscal impact in the U.S. has many lessons applicable to Canada.

    First is that the immigrants who are most likely to succeed economically are those who speak the language of their new home country and who are more highly educated, as well as arrive as children or young adults. These are also the immigrants who tend to pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits from the government. Selecting refugees who are younger, who speak English or French, and who are more educated means that you can welcome more of them at no cost.

    Canada has a successful, privately run refugee sponsorship program, but a recent explosion in asylum claims and government-funded refugee sponsorship threatens the long-admired Canadian immigration model. Excessively high numbers of less-selected immigrants lead to a strain on public resources and on housing, which Canadians are now feeling and are complaining about.

    Canada has already taken a good step to fix this by reimposing visa requirements on Mexicans, but you can continue by limiting government-funded refugee sponsorship and by relying more on private sponsorship.

    Subcommittee members, I have met countless refugees, especially in my role as founder of the Dissident Project, my organization that sends immigrants from countries ruled by tyrants to speak at American high schools and to tell their stories. I view refugees as an asset to democracy. You should use the stories of the thousands of people who fled tyranny to come to Canada to educate young Canadians about the privilege of living in a free country. The best thing you can do for refugees is to honour the promise of freedom in Canada, for you and for the world, and not to let your nation turn into another place to flee, like what happened in mine.

     Thank you.

     Muchas gracias, señor Martino.

    I would like to invite Mr. Emmanuel Rincón to take the floor for five minutes, please.

    The floor is yours, Mr. Rincón.

    Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.

    [Technical difficulty—Editor] discuss the effect of the mass migration in the western world and why we are facing this enormous crisis.

     Excuse me. Can you hold? We have a technical issue. We would like to check it, please.

    It has been decided that we are going to the first round of questions with the first two witnesses. Then, our IT team will be in contact with Mr. Rincón to try to solve the problem.

    I'll allow members to ask the witnesses questions.

    We would like to start with M. Ali Ehsassi.

    Ali, you have the floor for seven minutes, please.

    Thank you, Mr. Chair.

     Thank you to our witnesses. It's great to have you back, Ms. Ravon.

    I saw a report a few days ago, which was issued by the UN. Essentially, it was saying that in an era of indiscriminate warfare, like we're currently experiencing, they had found that 40% of the people who had died in war zones were women.

    How common is this? This is certainly a new trend. I think this report was saying that the number of women who were dying in various countries, due to indiscriminate warfare, has doubled within a year.

    What do you think the ramifications of this will be, and how do we address this issue?

     Thank you for that question. It's definitely something that we're observing.

    The fact that more and more wars are being fought in densely populated urban areas in particular, with a huge impact on civilians, is, to be honest, kind of a disrespect for international humanitarian law. It means that more civilians, overall, are being hit. It's not only women. It's civilians in general, but in particular, women and their kids are dying more.

    I would also say that something that is less covered but equally worrying is that many more women than men die in humanitarian and natural disasters. I don't think this is a well-known fact. As humanitarian disasters caused by natural catastrophes that are climate-driven are on the rise, we're going to see more and more women dying, in particular. This is often because women have less mobility than men. For example, they're the ones who are less likely to be able to leave their homes. They're the first to be caring for their elderly father or kids, and are not getting to safety in time. As the number of floods, hurricanes and violent storms happening is increasing, we're seeing more women dying.

    Something that we've been really advocating for is more investment in women being able to prepare communities for the worst-case scenario, so that they are actually involved. We see that when women aren't involved in preparing for the worst, the worst happens to them first. Women not being involved in national disaster preparedness plans means that decisions are made that are based on men's ability to flee or to prepare—not women's.

    Both in conflicts and in natural disasters, women are definitely bearing the brunt today.

     Absolutely.

    You made a number of really good recommendations. I was wondering if I could focus on the last one, which was promoting a focus on sustainable development. How prevalent is it for European and North American countries to promote sustainable development?

     It seems self-evident that, if people have good living conditions, are less at risk of a natural disaster and actually have access to jobs, they'll want to stay in their country. Most people have no intention of leaving their homes. They don't want to leave their homes, but we're seeing that, with the rise of conflicts and of climate-induced disasters, a lot of international aid is going to humanitarian response.

    Our concern at Oxfam, and that we're experiencing ourselves, is that there's a bottoming out of financing for development work. We're running from one emergency to the next, putting a band-aid on and then going to the next place. Ultimately, the programs that invest in job creation, technical and vocational training, women's empowerment, climate-smart agriculture—all those things—are no longer being invested in because all we're doing is rushing around, trucking in water, emergency food aid and cash distribution. We're not investing in what keeps people safe, healthy and at home.

    I am concerned about trends I'm seeing where, first of all, global solidarity with countries that are being hit by disasters is strained. Development budgets aren't growing around the world, by any stretch, but on top of it, the fact that we have so many emergencies means that more money is going to humanitarian causes, which we need. However, if you're not doing both in tandem, we're just chasing our tails.

    We've talked a long time—and I think I spoke with many of you before—about the need to fund across the humanitarian development peace nexus. What that means is that we need to be connecting the dots so that, when we're going into a community that's been hit by an emergency, we're not only trucking in water for today but we're building, for example, solar-panel desalination plants in that community so that they will have access to water in the long term. It means also that we stop seeing efforts to empower women as non-life-saving and therefore non-fundable under humanitarian programs, which currently is the case.

    Humanitarian program definitions are very narrow, so any work that has to do with gender equality or women's empowerment does not meet the definition and can't get funded. If we got rid of these strict barriers between what we consider to be humanitarian response, long-term development and, then, peacebuilding efforts, we could have a more seamless integration of the work that we do.

    To give one example that I might have shared with you in the past, Oxfam supported a really interesting program funded by the Government of Canada, a women's voice and leadership program in Pakistan. The whole purpose of the program was to build up the capacity of local women's groups to advance their communities, whether it was with economic development, justice or women's political participation. When the floods hit in Pakistan, many of these organizations we were working with said, “We want to be part of the humanitarian response,” yet we weren't able to use the funding, which we had for programming for these organizations, to allow them to do humanitarian response. The line is so rigidly drawn that it would have required a whole new renegotiation of our programming. That's because the way development funding is generally set up is that it has this clear delineation and you can't move from one to the next.

     We're really recommending that, at Global Affairs Canada, we have two things: First is more funding across that nexus of development and humanitarian, and second is that we include things that we refer to as “crisis modifiers”. Basically, when you develop a project, you already know that something is likely going to go wrong, so you anticipate that. In a country that's prone to flooding, for example, within your development program you have crisis modifiers to say, “If flooding hits the region where the programs are happening, then we'll pivot to these sorts of activities rather than having to go back to the drawing board.”

    Thank you very much.

     Thank you.

    Now I invite Mr. Majumdar to take the floor for seven minutes, please.

     Thank you very much for your perspectives on dealing with this.

     Mr. Di Martino, I want to talk a little about what your colleague from Oxfam raised. She said that, in your home country, 1.7 million Venezuelans are internally displaced, and that crime and corruption, broadly across the Americas, are fuelling a refugee crisis. I want to spend a little time, sir, focusing on the kinds of actors that animate this refugee crisis.

    You had a chance to talk a little about the failed socialist experience in Venezuela. I'm curious, when it comes to how countries like Canada engage with Venezuela, Cuba and other authoritarian regimes in the Americas, what would be a better way to uphold principles of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law in a way that would restrain the refugee crisis rather than exacerbate it?

     In general, there's a misconception that these countries like Cuba or Venezuela have become poorer as a consequence of sanctions, when in reality the economies have been bankrupted by the governments themselves. The best example of that is what happened in Venezuela. When the whole western world sanctioned Venezuela and its government, the government was forced to dollarize the economy—and most of the population now uses U.S. dollars or Colombian pesos—and inflation fell. It didn't go up as a consequence of international sanctions.

    The purpose of the sanctions should either be to dislodge a government or to contain its capacity to do harm. What is that capacity to do harm? They use foreign currency to buy weapons to repress people. They use international currency, trade with China and ties with other authoritarian regimes to fund terrorist organizations. There are Hezbollah ties with the Venezuelan government just as with the Cuban government. There are guerrilla groups working from Colombia and Venezuela that are funded by the Venezuelan regime. Those terrorist groups, guerrilla groups, fuel more refugees from other countries.

    You want to starve these governments of funding so they stop doing harm. Understand that they are not governments but criminal organizations that occupy a territory.

    The way to help the population is a different way. For example, with the Venezuelan people, Canada has done a lot to allow Canadians to sponsor Venezuelans to come to Canada as refugees, and so have other countries. A different way to help the internal population is humanitarian aid, which people have mentioned. I think the best way is to facilitate international transactions.

    How can we allow the Venezuelan people to access U.S. dollars rather than domestic currency so that they can escape inflation? How can we provide Internet access and access to information so that democratic leaders within the country can make change?

    That's the kind of thinking we need to have.

    When you look at how Canada, the United States and others are acting in Venezuela today as the pressure continues, do you think more can be done to recognize the forces of democracy, human rights and the rule of law than has presently been done?

    The biggest issue is that Canada continues to trade with Cuba, and Canadians continue to visit Cuba as if it were a normal country, thinking that this is going to stimulate the economy. I mention Cuba specifically because the sanctions policy and international relations of Canada and Cuba are very different from Canada and Venezuela. Canada has taken a strong stand in favour of freedom in Venezuela while it has not for Cuba.

    That matters because the reason the Venezuelan regime stays in power is Cuban spies and support from the Cuban regime on the island. They are the same transnational organization. The Cubans receive oil, and the Venezuelans receive Cuban spies. This is widely reported.

    This matters because a lot of people believe that, for example, Canadian tourists in Cuba will help the Cuban people when, in reality, the Cuban government keeps all of the proceeds and pays a miserly salary of one dollar a day to the Cuban workers who are in those hotels. You're not stimulating the economy of Cuba. You're stimulating the regime, and that's really unethical. This is even beyond economics. This is about ethics here.

    When you think about how the northern part of the hemisphere deals with refugee pressures coming from the southern part of the hemisphere, how do we have better tools to try to differentiate between screening out the oppressor, the criminal, the dictator and the trafficker, and spending more time on finding ways to help marginalized people succeed at starting a new life?

    The people who will be best able to know who the people involved in these regimes are when they come into a freer country like Canada are other people from that country.

    If you're going to screen Venezuelan refugees, you likely need input from other Venezuelans who are already in the country. This is why I think so many people say they're part of the Cuban Communist Party or the Venezuelan United Socialist Party, people who distribute food and withheld food aid for political reasons in Venezuela, who have been able to get to the U.S. or Canada. They have been able to get through because there were no other Venezuelan or Cuban immigrants who were paying attention or looking at those files. It's much more likely that people from those countries will know who is involved in criminal activity than people from other places.

     I think we have 30 seconds left for a quick question.

    Sustainable development is a topic that's been raised today, and I'm sure we'll raise it many times after.

    In 15 seconds or so, how important is establishing the rule of law, free markets and actual capitalism as an antidote to the types of socialist failures we're experiencing across this hemisphere?

    Humanitarian aid is not going to solve the world's refugee crisis. It almost all goes to consumption spending. It's bread for today and hunger for tomorrow.

    The only way to solve the refugee crisis is to have economic growth. Humanitarian aid has never pulled a country from poverty to riches. It has only been economic freedom.

     Thank you, Mr. Majumdar.

    We're going to suspend the meeting for a few seconds to do another test with Mr. Rincón.

    We are good.

    Mr. Chair, I would ask that people don't speak too fast for the interpreters.

    Thank you.

    I would like to invite you to take the floor for five minutes.

    Please, don't speak that fast. Take it slow.

    Go ahead, please.

     As we speak, there are millions of people abandoning their home countries, leaving their homes, their families, for the purpose of finding liberty, jobs, the rule of law and, in particular, to have the opportunity to have a life.

    We've been told that the only reason these people are moving around is the lack of opportunity—and that is true. However, what we haven't heard, at least not in a proper way, are the causes of this happening.

    I'm from Venezuela, a country that used to be one of the richest countries in the world. In fact, in the past century, we got to be in the top five of the nations with the highest GDP per capita, way higher than Canada, and now we are one of the most miserable economies in the world. More than 80% of our people live in poverty. The minimum wage is $3.50 per month. This means that there are teachers, doctors and other professionals who are earning less than $50 per year, and this was supposedly a way forward to achieve equity thanks to socialism.

    If we're going to speak about the causes of mass migration and refugees, we need to talk about the political systems that are causing the collapse of various nations all over the world. According to the Organization of American States, based on the data of United Nations, Venezuela is right now the country with the most refugees all over the world. We have more people fleeing the country than Ukraine, Syria and even Afghanistan, countries that are facing, right now, invasions and civil wars.

    This means that more people are abandoning at this moment a country that used to be one of the most prosperous countries in the world because of a socialist system that delivered all the powers to the state supposedly for the well-being of the people and turned into a dictatorship, which has already happened a lot of times in the course of history.

    Venezuela has right now eight million people outside of its territory. That is more than 25% of our entire population. We could populate two times a country like Uruguay with this number of people. What do we need to do now? Of course, we have to eliminate all kinds of wars in the world and also fight against any totalitarian regime that is collapsing our societies.

    The past week, the Maduro regime killed an opposition leader named Edwin Santos. He was the father of two. The totalitarian regime killed him only because he was one of the people who worked to make sure that all the votes in the past election in Venezuela were counted. Now, his wife is alone with two children in a country without opportunities, without jobs, without proper salaries and with no rule of law. In an environment like this, how can you expect people not to try to escape?

    If we really want to fight against mass migration, against the accumulation of millions of people all over the world in a refugee state, in conditions of vulnerability, we need to be fighting against the root causes of this crisis, at least in our hemisphere. We are talking right now about Venezuela, but the same can be said about Cuba or Nicaragua.

    This past July 28, millions of people voted in Venezuela for a change, despite all the violations and abuse of power. Millions of people said that they wanted a free Venezuela, a democratic system. We showed the world that we won. We presented the ballots that proved that Edmundo González won the presidential election. Despite that, there are numerous countries all over the world that right now are refusing to accept and recognize González as the elected president. Canada is one of those countries too.

     I will kindly ask this sovereign, enormous and respected country, if it really wants to fight against dictatorship, mass migration and the suffering of millions of people all over the world, to recognize González as our president, and not only make a recognition but also lead a coalition of countries to make sure that the vote of the Venezuelan people is respected.

    If you choose to be neutral in situations of injustice, you are de facto choosing the side of the oppressor. If you are watching your neighbour torturing their children, killing their family, and you do nothing, you are being complicit in the crime. Please pardon me. I don't want to sound disrespectful, but if we really want to achieve something with this meeting, we should focus on acting, not just pretending to do it. We can really change the world.

    Canada, the United States and the European Union can really do something to change the lives of millions of people all over the world. The only thing that we need is to have the political will to do it. If the developed countries want to really help the people of the third world nations to have an opportunity to live better, the answer is not to accept them all into their countries. The real answer is to fight to protect freedom and democracy in these nations, and in that way, to make sure that, in the first place, people don't have this necessity of abandoning their homelands.

     I know it is not easy, and not all the countries are in the same situation, but in the case of Venezuela—

     Can you wrap it up, please? Time is running out.

    I'm going to finish right now.

    You can really right now stop the refugee crisis by recognizing democracy and fighting with millions of Venezuelans to put in charge the government that the majority has already chosen.

    Thank you very much.

     Gracias, señor Rincón.

    Gracias.

    Thank you.

    Mr. Brunelle‑Duceppe, you have the floor for seven minutes.

    Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    I'd like to thank all the witnesses for being here for this very important study.

    Ms. Ravon, we've heard a lot of things so far in the committee. I would like to put things in perspective in terms of the causes of the migration waves, particularly in relation to the types of political regimes. Isn't it true that non-democratic political regimes can be sources of migration, without necessarily being far-left or far-right regimes?

    Thank you very much for the question.

    We see a number of causes of displacement. Just bringing it back to who the political leader of the day is, authoritarian or not, that is one cause, but it's one cause among many. For us, it's a kind of triangle. It's poverty, it's stability around the democratic process and it's climate-induced catastrophes. This is what we're seeing, and now conflict is piling on top of that.

    We can't reduce it to one cause, but we know that countries that have political stability, economic stability, social safety nets, employment opportunities and a sense of security create the conditions for people to stay put. This is why people stay home and they don't flee. Not all of that is caused by political leaders of the day, but a democratic society where people have a say in how decisions are made and how government funds are spent, in particular on public services, makes a huge difference.

    Therefore, investing in public services is something that we advocate for. It's obviously much easier to do in a democratic regime, but I wouldn't say that everything has to do with politics. Today, climate-induced disasters can hit any country. We are being hit in Canada. We see the forest fires, the debilitating smoke and the flooding in Quebec, where I live. We have a democracy, and we're still being hit by climate crises that will eventually cause displacement in our own country.

    As we look at the causes of the migration crisis, we need to understand they're complex, but the only way to answer them is to invest in sustainable development. That means, in some contexts, climate-smart agriculture. In another context, it's building codes that are resilient to natural disasters, and, in others, it's youth vocational training where you have a huge youth population and not enough employment opportunities. In every context, it's investing in gender equality. We know that countries that have more gender equality are also more stable and are less likely to contribute to global displacement crises.

    It's a complicated answer, but it's a complicated problem. If we want to be addressing it, we need to be looking at that interplay between democratic development, sustainable development, humanitarian aid—when necessary—and peacebuilding.

    One last thing on peacebuilding is that we hear so few women's voices in peacebuilding efforts. If women are not involved in those processes, they're less likely to hold in the long run and, again, that will contribute to fuelling this cycle of crisis, war and displacement.

    One of your recommendations—I think it's the third one—is that Canada act as a leader on the international stage to bring together as many countries as possible to co-operate on migration. Migration is one of your areas of expertise, and you've seen a lot of migration waves over the years since you've been with Oxfam.

    You'll agree that Canada is neither a military nor an economic power. However, it's a country that has a history of human rights and leadership for peace—a Quebec sovereignist is telling you that. We can think of Brian Mulroney, Lester B. Pearson and a number of other great Canadian politicians who have had an impact on the international scene.

    Do you feel that Canada's star has dimmed a bit in recent years on the international scene? If not, do you feel that Canada is having less of an impact on the international scene than before when it comes to issues such as the well-being of migrants and refugees?

     The world definitely needs more democratically elected leaders that are willing to speak up on issues of human rights and global security issues. We need more. There are not that many voices.

    I wouldn't speak specifically to Canada not sufficiently being a leader. I would say that we're not hearing that many leaders on the global stage that are actually advancing a human rights agenda and advancing an agenda on international humanitarian law. There aren't that many voices.

    There's a distrust of multilateral systems. There's an increasing distrust in UN processes. We need more voices that are speaking out on these issues. There's a kind of vacuum of discourse on fundamental principles around gender equality, human rights and the rights of refugees. Not demonizing people who are on the run but actually speaking up in their defence is really critical.

    There's definitely more room for Canada to be speaking up. It's a time when, if you look across the G7 and the G20, there aren't many leaders that are really speaking out in defence of the principles that I think most Canadians would really cling to and believe in. We see ourselves as a country that was built on various waves of migration and as a welcoming country. It's expressing that at a time when there's rising xenophobia, when there are these populist trends that are fuelling fear of the people who are going to be coming to our borders. That's very harmful.

    Yes, there's room for Canada, certainly.

    I'll move on to something more concrete. You talk a lot about gender equality, and with good reason.

    We're talking about the global migration crisis. There's a fairly well-known route from Brazil up to Colombia and Venezuela, and then through Central America to the United States.

    Are you aware of what's happening on that route? What does it mean for women and girls to cross the entire continent from south to north?

    You have 30 seconds, Ms. Ravon.

    Thank you for that question. It means a lot to me.

    There are two things that are not being covered by the international community in that very dangerous migration trail.

    One is care responsibilities. That's women who are left alone to care for family members and for children as men are leaving their communities—

    On a point of order.

    We'll have to start that answer over again because there was no interpretation.

    Thank you.

    There are two things. We're seeing that, in many communities, men are migrating and women are left alone to care for children and the elderly, so there's a big care crisis. It's really on women's shoulders. They're having to hold entire societies afloat as men are migrating outside of communities.

    The second trend we're seeing is that women on this migration trail are at incredible risk of sexual violence. This is something that's under-reported and not sufficiently covered in terms of the humanitarian services along that very dangerous migration corridor.

     Thank you, Ms. Ravon.

    Thank you, Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe.

    I invite Mr. Gord Johns to take the floor for seven minutes, please.

     First, I just want to thank all the witnesses for testifying.

    Certainly, Ms. Ravon, thanks to you for the work that Oxfam does and to all of the people involved in Oxfam for the humanitarian work that they do to save lives every day. I really appreciate it.

    I'm going to follow up on Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe. He talked about the important role Canada played when it came to stability, security, human rights and peacebuilding. We think about Lester B. Pearson. He won a Nobel Peace Prize.

    There's actually a Peace Train Canada group leaving from the west coast and coming to Ottawa in November. They're calling for the restoration of a Pearson peace centre—for it to reopen. It played an important role in developing capacity and having conversations. People from as far away as Bamfield and Port Alberni, in my community, are coming. Their vision is:

    They cite a few things:

    They call on the government to:

    Do you think this would be important for us to look toward?

     Thanks.

    I don't know anything about this specific initiative, so I wouldn't speak about that.

    I think what's important for Canada to do is to connect the dots better among the different ways we are in the world and how we show up—how we conduct trade and do diplomacy, humanitarian aid, development work and defence. Right now, it feels quite disconnected. Connect the dots. We know we're safer if the global community is healthier. Our diplomacy can advance some of this work. It doesn't only have to be through aid dollars or a humanitarian response.

    What I want to see is Canada having more coherence across the trade, diplomacy, development and humanitarian spectrum.

    I appreciate that. Obviously, they're advocating for the reopening of this centre to create dialogue in order to support that important work.

    Now, you spoke about the unique risks women and girls face in situations of forced displacement. You shared horrific stats with us earlier.

    What measures can be taken to address those risks on the ground—in refugee camps and on transit routes—through international frameworks? Can you make recommendations to this committee?

    A lot more can be done. We, as Oxfam, have concerns about the way humanitarian aid is delivered.

    As I mentioned before, anything that has to do with advancing women's rights and gender equality—like specific programs focused on women in a humanitarian response—is not generally deemed eligible for funding, because it's not perceived as life-saving. We need to either widen our definition or understanding of humanitarian aid, or build in a joint approach, where you have programs supporting women's empowerment and equality alongside humanitarian initiatives. Right now, humanitarian responses have a very narrow focus on protection, but that doesn't build a more equal society after the humanitarian response has passed. Widen that up.

    At Oxfam, we work on gender and emergencies. This can allow women to be involved in local committees that determine how aid is going to be spent. It can mean skills training so women are participating in water initiatives or learning how they can maintain boreholes after an international organization like Oxfam has built them so they can be involved in long-term maintenance. All of that is so disconnected, right now, from the way we fund humanitarian work, and we don't get the full impact we could. Canada is a generous humanitarian funder. However, by divorcing the two, we're running after our tail. We're going from one emergency to the next.

    Whether it's a natural disaster or a war, women's rights backtrack. This is systemic. We lose ground on gender equality. Therefore, in the world we're living in today, we're likely see significant backsliding if we don't make those investments.

    Thanks so much for that.

    According to the UNHRC, Lebanon is going through this terrible conflict and they're hosting the largest number of refugees per square kilometre in the world, including approximately a million and a half Syrian refugees.

    Can you provide an update on the current situation in Lebanon and how it has led to the forced displacement of Lebanese people, as well as refugees and migrants already living in Lebanon? What can Canada do to respond to this growing humanitarian crisis at this time?

    Thanks for raising Lebanon in particular.

    First, I would say that the Government of Canada has been very helpful by having a matched contribution both with members of the Humanitarian Coalition that Oxfam is part of and with the Red Cross. It's matching Canadian donations to the humanitarian response in Lebanon. That's fantastic.

    I want to highlight how effective the match is. Right now, we're seeing that people in Canada do not know about the crisis people are experiencing in Lebanon. I will tell you, frankly, that this has been one of the hardest humanitarian emergencies to fundraise for in Oxfam's recent history. The reason is that people tend to give less for a humanitarian response when a country is hit by war. We tend to give more generously when people are struggling with drought, floods, hurricanes or any other natural disaster. People tend to only hear talk in the news about the belligerence, the bombs and the militants. We hear the geopolitical side of the story—the politics behind the conflict in Lebanon—but we don't hear much about the mom trying to keep her kids alive or about people literally living in public parks in Beirut today because they have nowhere to get shelter.

    Whether your family is hit by a drought or a war, if you can't feed your kids, you can't feed your kids. I think having the government help organizations like Oxfam get the message out—telling Canadians how badly Lebanese people today are suffering—is very helpful, because we are struggling to get that attention. There's definitely donor fatigue. People feel like the world is on fire, and it's hard to know where and when to give. However, the suffering is real. Whether it's because of war or something else, if you've lost a limb, if your child has died of hunger or if you have nowhere to sleep at night, the problem is the same for you.

    We need the government to help us get the word out. The matched contribution for members of the Humanitarian Coalition is extremely helpful to us, so I am thankful for that.

     Thank you, Mr. Johns.

    Ms. Ravon, Mr. Di Martino and Mr. Rincón, thank you for your really great testimony. Thank you for your participation.

    Mr. Lake.

    On a point of order, Mr. Chair, we got the tech issues figured out for Mr. Rincón. Then only two parties even had a chance to ask him a question, and neither did.

    I don't know if this would work for him, but could we at least offer him the opportunity to hold on and take questions in the second round, if anybody has questions for him? He doesn't have to do another opening statement.

    An hon. member: [Inaudible—Editor]

    Hon. Mike Lake: If one of us wants to ask a question of him using our time, we should have the ability to do so. You don't have to.

    Mr. Rincón, would you agree to stay for the other part of the meeting and be ready to answer if some members would like to ask you a question?

    It's okay with me.

    Thank you. No problem.

    Again, thank you for your participation in this important study. If you feel that you have some other information you'd like to share with the committee, please feel free to write to the clerk. Thank you.

    The meeting is now suspended.

    I call the meeting back to order.

    I'd like to welcome our second panel of witnesses.

    First, we have Alexander Waxman, an expert in the protection of internally displaced persons and refugees for over 12 years with UN humanitarian agencies in sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and Southeast Europe. He is appearing as an individual.

    We also have Lauren Lallemand, co-executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees, who is participating in the meeting by video conference.

    Finally, from Doctors Without Borders in Canada, we have Jason Nickerson, humanitarian representative.

    Welcome to all of you. Up to five minutes will be given for opening remarks, after which we will proceed with rounds of questions.

    Mr. Waxman, you have the floor for five minutes.

     The floor is yours.

    Thank you.

     Committee members, it's an honour to be invited to speak today. I will situate what I consider an event horizon in terms of migration, IDPs and refugees from my vantage point as a protection and child protection expert working at the front lines of major humanitarian responses.

    Excuse me. Can you speak more slowly in order to give our interpreters a chance?

     Pardon me. No problem. They also have a copy of this.

    This is from my vantage point as a protection and child protection expert working the front lines of major humanitarian responses over 12 years for UNICEF and UNHCR.

    There are three prime drivers of IDP and refugee flows. First, deleterious socio-economic conditions and poor overall governance in countries across sub-Saharan Africa, MENA and Asia are causing people to seek economic betterment, which in turn is tied to seeking asylum and refugee status in favourable host countries like Canada, western Europe and Scandinavia.

    Crisis protraction is another cause of internal and external movement, as most crises on the global map are human-driven, lasting years, decades or even generations. Somalia, South Sudan, Nigeria and Yemen are prime examples of these conflicts.

    Climate change is an ever-increasing driver. Desertification, longer and harsher heat waves, and a paucity of water infrastructure are motivators in this regard and will continue to be as climate change worsens. The Lake Chad basin crisis is emblematic of this.

     Migration, as I have stated, is an “event horizon” upon us, a term borrowed to describe the point when nothing escapes the gravitational pull of a black hole. Similarly, a plurality of crises will worsen from unaddressed socio-economic change in vulnerable nations alongside climate deterioration, driving more to be on the move. The ability to respond with agility to movements will be lost with the economic burden increasingly placed on countries like ours.

    Humanitarian funding for UN agencies is an annual one that is known as the “humanitarian programme cycle”, or HPC, which donor countries like ours fund. It is as outmoded as the post-war documents that created many UN agencies. Nearly all crises today are protracted. Durable funding streams need to be deployed with expert staff to enforce structural change aimed at handing over responses, especially IDP situations, to local authorities to manage. Too often, local governments do little on the response side, leaving humanitarian feeding, shelter, protection, etc., up to the UN and international NGOs.

    The nature of the HPC cycle means that technical experts are hired once funding is secured, and then deployed in-country after months of bureaucracy worthy of Franz Kafka. If one is lucky, we get six or eight months to respond to the crisis on the ground. This leads local actors and government to view UN agencies as fickle. Meanwhile, UN agencies use half-started or poorly conceived projects as statistical successes in terms of the numbers they reach to justify further funding extensions.

    The same goes for international and local NGO vassals on the ground who execute the grunt work of UN projects. Most of them are poorly staffed or managed and wait to see if they will get funds from UN agencies to retain staff or not. Cooking the books—excuse the term—to make it seem like there are large needs is an incentive to ensure contract extensions.

    Strategies for changing this paradigm, such as the grand bargain localization strategy, are highly problematic, as they favour direct funding to local NGOs, so-called LONGOs. These LONGOs are managed by persons with little to no financial acumen, staff who constantly turn over and staff who are not well trained in international humanitarian practices. The risk of wasted donor money is high in this regard.

    There are major—major—mandate replications inside the UN system. I will use child protection as a singular example. Just one subset of child protection, called family tracing and reunification, is mandated to UNICEF, UNHCR, the IOM and ICRC simultaneously. Each agency has its own internal database of cases and does not share it with others, citing data privacy. In reality, each is trying to maintain domain dominance to justify continued funding. On the ground, this means that families and children are often confused as to who is handling a case. The tracing process gets gummed up in UN bureaucracy and inter-agency rivalry. Families and children turn to informal channels, such as smugglers, as a solution, making them more vulnerable.

    There are major flaws in UN human resourcing, especially at UNHCR and UNICEF. At UNHCR, RSD adjudicators—refugee status determination, that is—in the field often have no law degrees, yet they are assessing asylum or resettlement claims that ultimately come to our shores based on flimsy interview work, out-of-date country-of-origin research and little oversight.

    Can you wrap it up, please, Mr. Waxman?

     I have just four more bullet points, sir, if you wouldn't mind. That would be fine.

    Moreover, UNHCR can and does outsource its RSD mandate to other agencies with even less expertise and oversight, such as the DRC.

    Data-driven needs assessments, which are ostensibly nationwide statistical exercises, are incompletely done. At UNICEF's Global Education Cluster in Geneva, for example, a contractor with merely a degree in English literature, living in Panama, was designated to lead global trainings on statistical exercises because they were the spouse of a senior UNICEF education officer. How can we expect data to be accurate when non-data scientists are at the helm owing to nepotism?

     I'll conclude with my last two points. Most refugee claims are socio-economic in nature and not rooted in the grounds of the 1951 convention, which stipulates conferring refugee status due to a well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality or membership in a particular social group. As such, asylum seekers here in Canada and those abroad processed by UNHCR massage their claims to include elements in commonly accessible country-of-origin reports to substantiate their case in a tick-the-box fashion.

    I will stop now. I have submitted this document.

     Thank you.

    You can refer to it yourselves, and the translators can share that with you.

     I welcome any questions. Thank you for your time.

    Thank you, Mr. Waxman.

     Now I would like to invite Ms. Lallemand to take the floor for five minutes.

     Thank you, Mr. Chair and the members of the committee for inviting me and my fellow panellists to speak before you today.

    The Canadian Council for Refugees is Canada's leading national umbrella representing 200 frontline organizations across the country working with refugees and migrants. For this reason, I will concentrate my remarks on Canada's response and welcoming of refugees.

    Every year, millions of people are forced to leave their homes due to conflict, violence, human rights violations, persecutions, disasters and the impacts of climate change. The number of forcibly displaced persons has reached unprecedented heights in 2024. It is now upwards of 122 million people, double what it was a decade ago. Given this unprecedented need for protection, last week Canada made the troubling decision to slash its immigration levels. This included reductions in the number of government-assisted refugees, privately sponsored refugees and special emergency measures.

     Shockingly, the number for protected persons and their dependents abroad was cut by 31%, from 29,000 to 20,000. With a current backlog in this category of over 100,000 active applications, the 2025 numbers are signalling that only one out of every five refugees and family members will get permanent status and be able to move on with their lives. Furthermore, the levels for government-assisted refugees will drop from 23,000 to roughly 15,000. The level for privately sponsored refugees will be reduced by 5,000.

     Refugees being resettled from overseas often wait more than three years for their application to come to Canada to be processed. These cuts will mean that refugees will be forced to wait in situations where their lives are at risk on a daily basis. The federal government has framed these cuts in the context of a changing economy. However, Canada has not been immune to a global trend of rising anti-immigrant sentiment and rhetoric that dehumanizes vulnerable migrants. It has been particularly troubling to see the way that refugee claimants have been politicized and incorrectly labelled as a crisis within our country.

     We know that Canada has a remarkable capacity to resettle and welcome refugees, and ensuring that immigration policies are not overtaken by xenophobic discourses is crucial to ensuring that the federal government continues to plan for adequate levels of humanitarian immigration.

     I would like to take a moment to highlight concerns that the CCR has included in our call for equity in response to crises.

     Canadians expect the government to show leadership in providing immigration pathways to people affected by major catastrophes. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada is currently developing a crisis response framework. This framework must be developed with a consciousness of the long-standing neglect of crises on the African continent.

    Canada has demonstrated it has the capacity to welcome those displaced from conflict through the measures adopted in response to the situations in Ukraine and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, crises such as the one unfolding in Ethiopia's Tigray region in recent years, for example, have not been met with any special measures. Despite the scale of the crisis currently unfolding in Sudan, media and political attention has been limited and the emergency response has been a fraction of what has been made available in other situations.

     Canada's history with colonialism and the effects of systemic racism are reinforced through immigration systems in multiple ways, and these further exacerbate existing marginalization. The concern for equity and transparency must be at the heart of Canada's crisis response.

     I will now conclude by speaking briefly to the safe third country agreement between Canada and the U.S., which was expanded—

    Could you wrap it up please? The time has run out.

    Thank you.

    This agreement has had devastating impacts on tens of thousands of forcibly displaced people seeking protection. It has not stopped irregular crossings. It has only made them more dangerous and underground. The CCR maintains that this agreement should be withdrawn.

    Just to very quickly conclude, I would reiterate that the fundamental rights of those fleeing persecution need to be at the centre of Canada's concern.

    Thank you very much.

     Thank you, Ms. Lallemand.

    Now, I would like to invite Mr. Jason Nickerson to take the floor for five minutes, please.

    Thank you very much.

    Good evening, and thank you for having me here.

    Doctors Without Borders, or Médecins Sans Frontières, provides medical humanitarian care to people who have been forced to flee their homes because of violence, conflict, persecution and, increasingly, climate change. Our teams provide vital medical care at every step of people's treacherous displacement journeys, including providing surgery and trauma care, maternal health and obstetric services, vaccination campaigns, mental health activities, the provision of clean drinking water—

    I'm sorry, Jason.

    I have a point of order. We're getting the French interpretation on our English channel.

    This is good.

    Voices: Oh, oh!

    It might be good, except I can't hear the English.

    Can you check the mics?

    I think it's good. I'm not hearing anything now.

    Go ahead, please.

     Thank you.

    We're at a staggering moment. There are more forcibly displaced people around the world today than at any other time in modern history. Many of the people who are caught in impossible situations of acute and high-intensity violence must flee to survive, yet while more people require life-saving humanitarian assistance than ever before, we're also witnessing alarming gaps in responses to large crises of forced displacement.

    I'm going to speak to you about three specific crises involving forced displacement: Sudan, the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Rohingya crisis. Each is a distinct crisis, but all are characterized by inadequate global action despite massive humanitarian needs.

    This April marked one year since conflict engulfed Sudan, forcibly displacing millions of people internally and into neighbouring countries such as South Sudan and eastern Chad. Today, the situation is worse than ever. Hundreds of thousands of people are facing immense suffering including malnutrition, trauma and a lack of access to basic health care.

    Earlier this month, MSF was forced to stop outpatient treatment for 5,000 children with acute malnutrition in Zamzam displacement camp in north Darfur because warring parties blocked deliveries of food, medicines and other essential supplies. There are 2,900 of these children under the age of five with severe acute malnutrition. Their lives are now in immediate danger.

    Meanwhile, in the North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people are urgently in need of food, shelter, drinking water and protection from sexual violence amid violent conflict between multiple armed groups, including government forces. In 2023, MSF-supported clinics provided care to 20,556 survivors of sexual violence, which is roughly two survivors of sexual violence every single hour.

    This alarming situation has deteriorated further. MSF teams treated nearly 70% of the total number of survivors of sexual violence in 2023 in just the first five months of 2024. In September, eastern DRC was also the epicentre of the current Mpox epidemic in Africa, a virus that will be impossible to contain unless efforts are made to improve the appalling living conditions displaced people have been struggling with for too long.

    MSF is the main provider of health services inside the fenced Rohingya refugee camps in Cox's Bazaar in Bangladesh, where roughly one million people live. Here, people who have fled violence and persecution today find themselves contained and are prohibited from accessing education or employment. Just this summer, an MSF survey revealed that almost one in five people tested for hepatitis C had an active infection, but a lack of capacity in the camps means that many Rohingya people are going to miss out on treatment and being cured.

    Seven years ago, Canada took a leadership role in the global response to the Rohingya crisis, but today, Canada has seemingly failed to renew its Rohingya strategy after it expired in March 2024. Canada needs to honour the commitment that it made to the Rohingya people and to the humanitarian community and renew and properly resource its strategy immediately.

    People's lives are further endangered by attempts by states and other actors to contain, deport and deter people from seeking safety in other countries. Harmful policies do not deter people from fleeing violence and seeking safety, but they do force people into impossible situations, such as making perilous journeys across dangerous seas where thousands of people routinely die.

    Canada should not only be responding to these humanitarian and political crises but should also be denouncing policies that prevent people from escaping situations of violence and deprivation and that increase their vulnerability.

    I want to thank the committee for taking the time to look into these issues and the role that Canada can play to address these emergencies. In DRC, Sudan, Bangladesh and beyond, minutes matter for people who are forced to flee their homes—

     Can you wrap it up, please? The time is up.

    —and humanitarian assistance can make the difference between life and death. MSF is going to continue to respond, but humanitarians cannot stop wars, humanitarians cannot lift blockades and humanitarians cannot prevent the crises that today are driving alarming levels of displacement.

    You have the voice and power to act decisively. Canada has a voice that needs to be fully engaged in addressing the problems that are today fuelling these humanitarian crises, and we hope that Canada can find the political will and the moral courage to continue to step up.

    Thank you.

    Thank you, Mr. Nickerson, for your declaration.

    Now I would like to open the floor for questions and answers. I would like to start with Ms. Damoff.

    You have the floor for seven minutes, please.

     Thank you so much, Chair.

    Thank you to all of our witnesses for being here today.

    Dr. Nickerson, it's so nice to see you again. I want to thank you for the work that you do around the world. It's so meaningful and impactful.

    You mentioned climate change. Could you talk briefly about how that's impacting what you're seeing around the world?

    We think of climate change in many of these crises as a crisis multiplier. We're trying to understand and untangle exactly what this means.

    In our projects, in some instances, there are very clear medical impacts that climate change has, for example, changing patterns of disease. In some instances, diseases such as malaria have a seasonal routine or pattern to them, but we're seeing peaks of malaria that are more intense. We're seeing seasonal malaria cases arriving at different times and so on. Climate change, from a medical perspective, is in some instances changing the patterns of disease and making them more unpredictable.

    From the perspective of forced migration, what we hear from people, in particular people who are dependent on agriculture for livelihoods and so on, is that, if soil becomes unusable, it becomes a bit of a complex integration of multiple things. If somebody is dependent on a climate-sensitive industry for economic viability, and they're living in a conflict setting and so on, this multiplies the level of stressors that a person is facing.

    We are hearing in our projects more and more that people are saying that climate is impacting their ability to have a basic livelihood and is one of the factors that is contributing to a decision to flee, but that's often layered on top of underlying violence, conflict and other things as well.

    Once they've already fled, it would also cause.... I'm thinking of the Rohingya, in particular with flooding. You're in a refugee camp. You hardly have the capacity to deal with flooding, which would in turn lead to more disease in that camp, I would suspect.

    Yes, absolutely. I'm a public health specialist. At the moment, we're responding around the world to more outbreaks of cholera than at any other moment in time. There's a global stockpile of cholera vaccines that's been depleted for more than two years. Some of that is due to market conditions, but it's also largely due to the fact that we're simply seeing more cholera. That's not all entirely dependent on climate change, but some of it certainly is.

    This is a certain reality where, as climate is having an impact, particularly on infectious diseases, when we have outbreaks that occur on top of a refugee crisis or a forced displacement crisis or so on, we're going to run into a lot of different crises that are converging all in one place.

    MSF has used the language of a protection gap and then there's the emergence of the term survival migration. Can you explain what that is?

    We're not a protection organization, so I don't think that we're necessarily the best placed to fully comment on protection gaps necessarily. We see this in our medical programs.

    The statistics that I mentioned before around more than 20,000 survivors of sexual violence in our clinics is how protection gaps present in MSF programming. This is what we see. We see people who are victimized, people who have been assaulted and injured and who are in need of medical care, as a result of the failure of protection systems to adequately protect them.

    The previous witness from Oxfam—I don't know if you heard her talk—was talking about the increasing impact on women. My colleague also mentioned that.

    Are you seeing, in the people you're dealing with, a change in demographics in who is fleeing?

    I want to be cautious about making general assumptions about, you know, hundreds of millions of people because every crisis is quite different. The conditions that lead somebody to flee are going to be quite different and so on. We consistently see that women and children are among the most vulnerable in any humanitarian crisis around the world. However, I think we also need to recognize that gender plays a significant role in these crises. In some instances, we see men, for example, who might be specifically targeted because they are men, but the result is that we see more women in our programming who are fleeing and who are in need of medical care.

    The short answer is yes. I mean, these vulnerabilities are very real. This is why, you know, from a public health perspective and as somebody who's worked on doing needs assessments and so on, it's very important to understand who is standing in line at the clinic, whether there is a significant gender disparity there, why that exists and so on. We need to make sure that programs are adequately identifying people who are most vulnerable and most in need and targeting specific strategies to reach them.

    I was in Costa Rica this summer and went to a migrant shelter. One of the things that I learned when I was there is that they're seeing more families. It used to be just men who were fleeing. It's now whole families, and the long-term mental health impact on those kids....

    Are you seeing that in your work? I recognize that every country is different, and I don't know if you're working in Central America or not.

    We have programming throughout Central America. The other witness has been an expert in protection issues and maybe has something to add, but, certainly, we're providing quite comprehensive primary health care. We're seeing a huge need for people to receive quite basic primary health care as they're fleeing whatever situation of violence. We're seeing massive mental health needs. People have been exposed to very high levels of violence. To your point, yes, certainly, it's families, it's women and it's children. We see a full sort of family unit in many of these programs.

    I've run out of time.

    I'd like to invite Mr. Majumdar to take the floor for seven minutes, please.

     Thank you.

    I'd like to keep it tight if that's possible.

    First of all, Alexander Waxman, thank you for tabling your full report and for your initial introductory remarks. I look forward to reviewing them in detail.

    Emmanuel Rincón, I wanted to talk to you about Edmundo González. The failure to recognize him as the legitimate Venezuelan leader, as you indicated in your testimony, comes at a cost, a direct cost in terms of how refugees are weaponized. Would you take just a minute to describe how weaponizing immigration is a tool that dictators like Maduro use to destabilize the region and entrench their hold on power?

    Thank you.

     In fact, in just the past month, the month of September, the migration through the Darién, which is a gap in Panama that people are using to go to the United States, has increased by 60% since Maduro stole the election, and the countries of the world are denying the real results that the opposition has shown.

    Right now, what we have is a major crisis because Maduro is throwing away some people who were in jail from the criminal gang Tren de Aragua. Those people are hiding among normal people who are trying to migrate, and they are getting inside of our neighbouring countries. It's happening right now in Peru, in Colombia, in Ecuador, in Chile and also in the United States. Maybe it can happen in the future to Canada too.

    The thing is that these people are right now robbing and killing people. In the past week, they also have been taken in real estate departments, and they are figuring out how to kidnap all those properties. They are really making a mess in all the region, so that is a big mess.

    As I was saying at first, I think that the developed countries have the mission to not only provide a shelter to the people but also to fight for democracy in all of the hemisphere. The mission of Canada has to be to try to get democracy into our country, not trying to bring all the people, all the refugees, to this country, because that is what the dictator wants.

     Thank you much for that.

     It's often a misnomer that policies of appeasement might abate a refugee crisis when, instead, it enhances it, so I appreciate that.

     Mr. Waxman, you've had 12 years of great practitioner experience across the world. In your testimony, I was struck by just how broken the international refugee system has become. I know that there are lots of calls for accountability, for more efficient delivery of services and to simplify ways in which refugees can access services.

    Do you have some suggestions of things that you have seen that actually focus on accomplishing that accountability in the UN system?

    Thank you for the question—it's a good one. I haven't actually seen anything within the UN system other than almost spreading out the need to conduct...so I'll speak specifically to refugee status determination. This is the process by which an asylum seeker, a person who's crossed an international boundary, is saying that they fear that they cannot go back to their country of origin. They have to prove that. Somebody has to basically, for better or for worse, interrogate them as to where they're from, and then figure out whether or not they meet the convention grounds.

    That system, in itself, is weak, because the threshold for the burden of proof is the lowest possible threshold. It's not a criminal standard. It's not a civil standard. The benefit of the doubt is given to the claimant. Whatever the claimant says, the interviewing officer simply has to accept it at face value, more or less. Once the interview is done, he or she then goes to a series of reports, whether it's by Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch. Those are often recycled reports.

    I'll just pick something—let's say, an ongoing conflict in Somalia, or something like that. You have to prove that you're from south-central Somalia. How do I really know, as an interviewing officer, that you're from south-central Somalia? You could actually be a Kenyan Somalian posing as somebody from south-central Somalia. You just need to know a few facts. You speak the same language—Af Soomaali. You prove verbally that you're from a clan structure, which I simply just have on a sheet that's printed out in English for me. Then, if you have been coached to read from just a few lines of a Human Rights Watch report or Amnesty International—bing—you cannot be returned or refouled. Therefore, you go into the pipeline for resettlement.

     I never saw anything within the UNHCR system to do that. On top of that, I also saw so-called reforms within UNHCR to then offshoot RSD from their own RSD unit to other agencies, like the Danish Refugee Council, for example.

    I'm going to turn my time to my colleague, MP Lake.

    Thank you.

    Just to follow up on that, actually—I'm interested in that—when you take a look at the overwhelming numbers that we've heard today, and you take the context of what you're saying and think about those who actually meet the standard, the truly most vulnerable people in the world. What is the cost to them of an inefficient bureaucratic system that isn't focused?

    It's huge amounts of waiting time. I've worked in India where some people can wait two or three years after an interview to see whether they have refugee status. India is one of the few countries that is a non-signatory to the refugee convention.

    They're vulnerable to all kinds of exploitation within India. They can themselves become irregular movers. They can resort to smuggling, try their luck in another country or another situation, that sort of thing. That's a huge risk.

    I only have a short period of time.

    Jason, I'd love to go to you, but I probably won't have time, so I'll stick with Alexander.

     We've heard a few witnesses today talk about democracy and governance. In terms of keeping the number of migrants down, taking a look at where things are moving and where the potential hot spots are, I imagine future migration issues could be avoided by working with democratically elected governments like the one in Venezuela, supporting the legitimately elected folks in Venezuela—

     I'm sorry, but the time is out, Mr. Lake.

     May I answer? Is there no room for an answer?

    I'm sorry. We have passed the time. I have two others to pass it to.

    Mr. Brunelle‑Duceppe, you have the floor for seven minutes.

    I have to be fair to everyone.

    No problem. I'm a first-time participant. Thank you for schooling me.

    Thank you, Mr. Chair. You get used to it.

    Dr. Nickerson, you focused on three crises in your presentation: Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Rohingya.

    I'm not an expert like you. However, I get the impression that these three conflicts have something in common. From a Canadian perspective, there's funding for humanitarian assistance. For several years, the UN has been asking countries like Canada to invest up to 0.7% of their GDP in humanitarian aid. We're at 0.30% right now. That's less than what the Stephen Harper government invested, when the Liberals said that it had reduced the percentage of humanitarian aid.

    Does it affect the work that Doctors Without Borders does on the ground?

    I'll answer in English.

     There are a few points to make here.

    The first is that we've heard several times today that humanitarian needs are extraordinarily high. I believe the UN estimate is that there are 300 million people in need of life-saving humanitarian assistance and who are covered by a humanitarian response plan. This impacts Médecins Sans Frontières in a number of different ways. The first is that we are responding to a very large number of humanitarian crises in roughly 70 different countries. We did 16.5 million outpatient consultations in our programs last year. The needs are very high.

    On the humanitarian funding question specifically, I want to emphasize that we're a largely privately funded humanitarian organization. Canada is, in fact, one of only three government donors that we apply to for funding. We're largely privately funded, which allows us to respond very quickly when emergencies happen.

    However, the fact of the matter is that the humanitarian system is stretched. There are huge needs that are going completely unmet. Some of that is an efficiency problem or other things. Some of it, very honestly, is simply a lack of funding. In the Rohingya crisis, for example, World Food Programme rations are down to $10 U.S. per person per month. There is simply a funding shortfall for many of the crises around the world.

    Yes, those numbers are scary. I'm glad to see that the analysts are taking note of them.

    You also talked about Canada's role. You said that Canada has failed in recent years in its role as a leader on the international stage. That includes humanitarian assistance, the promotion of peace and human rights. Personally, I haven't seen Canada take action or, in any case, have a very credible voice internationally on the three crises you mentioned.

    Is that what these three crises have in common?

     I'm going to start with the Rohingya crisis, because I think it is a very good example of a crisis where Canada stood up and showed significant leadership.

    In 2017, at the outset of this crisis, Canada appointed Bob Rae as the special envoy for the Rohingya crisis. There was a report generated. There were recommendations and so on. This was significant not only because of those actions but also because the political capital it mobilized at a high level empowered Canada to take action at the country level in Bangladesh, where quite a bit of significant advocacy happened on behalf of the humanitarian response and of the Rohingya people. That permeated into other countries as well. There was a lot of very good work that happened under Canada's Rohingya strategy. Unfortunately, that wasn't specifically renewed in the budget. We think it should have been. That work needs to continue.

    I mention it because it's a very helpful reminder that Canada can take on some of these crises and show significant leadership. I'm not saying that a special envoy is always going to be the solution, but having high-level political endorsement of a Canadian response that mobilizes humanitarian funding, diplomatic efforts, humanitarian advocacy, humanitarian policy and so on can be very effective when all of these resources are put to work in response to a crisis.

    Simply funding a humanitarian response is not enough to address the underlying problems that create it or the myriad of problems that come along as organizations try to respond and negotiate access and so on, particularly in violent conflicts.

    Again, you're the expert, not me, but I think I see a commonality among these three crises. I talked to you about funding and Canada's leadership role, but there also seems to be a lack of media coverage.

    I'm in Lac-Saint-Jean every weekend, and no one talks to me about these crises. This is normal, since people have their own daily lives, and their own economic and social reality. However, these are some of the worst humanitarian crises on the planet, and we don't hear about them. That may not be the Government of Canada's role, though.

    Is there a lack of media coverage? Are politicians doing enough to make these crises more publicized, so that people are more interested? I could be wrong.

     It's both, in my opinion. It is very challenging to draw attention to neglected crises.

    We talk about what we see in DRC, in the Rohingya camps in Bangladesh, in Myanmar, in Sudan, in Chad, in South Sudan and so on. It's very difficult to get media attention.

     You have 10 seconds.

    Do crises like the ones in Ukraine or Gaza, which we hear about every day, overshadow the ones that have been going on for some time now, the ones you've told us about?

    I think yes, but the needs are also very high in these crises.

    Just quickly, on your second point, it's absolutely essential that members of Parliament are speaking about the neglected crises and trying to find a useful role for Canada in responding to these crises.

    Yes, I think that we, as humanitarian organizations, have a responsibility to try to push this into the public dialogue, into the media and so on, but parliamentarians as well have a very clear responsibility to be talking about it, whether it's at committee, in statements in Parliament or somewhere else.

    Thank you, Dr. Nickerson.

     I invite Mr. Johns to take the floor.

     Again, I just want to extend my appreciation for the work you're doing and your important testimony today.

    We heard Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe talk about the decline in aid from Canada.

    Dr. Nickerson, you talked about 300 million people in literally life-saving requirement situations—the most ever in history.

    Here in Canada right now.... We've heard from Ms. Lallemand—I'm going to give her a chance to speak a bit about it—who raised concerns about the government's plan to reduce immigration levels at a time like this. Certainly, we're seeing rising anti-immigration sentiment around the world and here in Canada.

     Migrant Rights Network has just published an open letter to the Minister of Immigration and to our own Prime Minister on this issue. It's been endorsed by 143 organizations so far.

    A portion of the letter reads:

    Ms. Lallemand, do you agree that refugees and migrants are being scapegoated right now by policy failures?

    What can be done to counter that narrative?

    Thank you very much for your question.

    We have, at different moments, tried to address what we consider very troubling actions on the part of both federal and provincial leaders with the ways they speak about migrants and, in some cases, about international students, linking them to the different affordability crises that you mentioned.

    I'll just note that during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Canada was not accepting anyone and our land borders were effectively closed, we had some of the largest increases in housing prices. This is a very clear indication that it actually does not have anything to do with the number of migrants arriving. These are long-standing social structural issues.

    We encourage policy-makers and media to really question the kinds of linkages and narratives that are being pushed and ensure that they are not falling into traps of either talking points of right-wing groups or the backlash that we're seeing more widely across lots of different countries towards migrants, especially racialized people.

     I really think there is a role for government officials to be closely watching how they speak about these very vulnerable populations and also ensuring that the media is not unnecessarily reproducing these narratives, even just to report on them.

    Thank you.

     I really appreciate my friend and colleague, Ms. Damoff, talking about mental health supports.

    Dr. Nickerson, maybe you can speak about the mental health impacts of forced displacement on populations like children, which are obviously more vulnerable to those impacts. Maybe you can also add how difficult it is for displaced persons to access trauma-informed mental health care.

     Mental health programming has really become a core aspect of our humanitarian medical response. When you're inside a high-intensity armed conflict, people are exposed to a tremendous level of violence. It's unpredictable. It's often indiscriminate. People are exposed to very high levels of psychological stress, and they're in need of mental health assistance and support.

    There continue to be huge gaps in this kind of programming. I would also say, as well, for more severe mental health disorders and psychiatric conditions, there's almost little to no aspect of that included in many humanitarian responses, so there's a very significant need.

    In terms of trauma-informed responses, this is exactly how we're implementing a package of psychosocial care. I would say it is a really important aspect that I think needs to be considered.

    We're a medical humanitarian organization. We integrate these things into our programming, and particularly for a service package such as sexual and gender-based violence care, there's the medical response and the psychosocial response, which we provide as a comprehensive package, but then people also continue to need access to legal assistance. They need housing. They need shelter. They need protection and so on.

    I think there's really a need to consider the full suite of services that people need in these kinds of acute humanitarian crises.

     Sure. I think you touched on it. It's an ongoing thing, rebuilding their lives. They're going to need help through that process, but what can be done to build capacity for psychological first aid on the migration routes and in those host countries for those displaced people?

     I'm not sure that I can give you a fully comprehensive answer.

    You have one minute, please.

    It's not my area of expertise, but I'd be happy to submit some additional information on that to the committee.

     Mr. Waxman, I think you're itching to add to it.

     I can just quickly touch on it, and I can speak from, for example, UNICEF's standpoint. They do things like child-friendly spaces, so that is anybody under 18. They're often play spaces. It's like play between kids and things like that. It's used as a sort of psychological stress release, rather than individual one-on-one types of counselling. It's that triage-level type of stuff. They are quite specialized in that. They have things called education kits, “EiE kits”. They are literally metal boxes and children's play kits, so that is actually one of the more useful things that is done en route and in IDP or refugee areas.

     Thank you, Mr. Johns.

    Thanks to all our witnesses. Thank you for your participation in this important study. Thank you for your testimony. If you feel that you have other information to share with the committee, feel free to write to the clerk.

    Is it the will of the committee to adjourn the meeting?

    Some hon. member: Agreed.

    The Chair: The meeting is adjourned. Thank you, all.