Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you very much. I really see the concern and I'm very happy about it, because it shows we are probably seriously approaching a good resolution. Most of the people who will be in the delegation have already been in Iraq or they are Iraqis, such as Kurdish people or others. We also have had colleagues working on the ground for several years, so we will work together.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  On several occasions I visited Turkey, and we feel that while the situation in Turkey is worse than in some other neighbouring countries, for the Yazidis the worst place is northern Iraq, so if we want to focus on humanitarian help then, as I mentioned, we have a program in place in Turkey, but....

Citizenship and Immigration committee  To the first part of your question, I apologize if I was not clear. Basically we have hundreds of applications going on for people in Turkey. We definitely use all the opportunities to resettle refugees based on a given framework right now. However, we feel that the situation in Turkey, based on the experience of other colleagues of mine, is nothing compared to what you can experience as a Yazidi in northern Iraq.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I fully agree that we could open up the source country class based on this or that type of persecution or anything that is identified in the Geneva convention as a group. Just removing the requirement that the person has to be outside of the country would perfectly solve the problem and help us, with the assistance and help of the local governments, to start to resettle IDPs who are in need.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's right, yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you very much. Basically, what we do in each and every case is investigate the reason for persecution. I think the best example is the Eritrean community. We resettled a lot of Eritreans. As we know, the Eritrean community in Eritrea is about 50% Muslim, 50% Christian. However, their persecution is not based on religion, so we don't have information on that.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think it would be a huge hypocrisy, when someone is persecuted because he's Chaldean or Syriac, that we would deny that fact. It's similar to saying we would not mention the gender of an abused woman. I mean, we are professionals. We don't care about political correctness or political interests.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Definitely. Of the cases resettled by the Archdiocese of Toronto, based on my personal experience—because each and every case goes through my hands—the majority are persecuted Christians or other religious minorities: Mandaeans, Sabians, some Yazidis, and others. I estimate that maybe altogether we might have about 80% who are minorities, but don't forget we also sponsor Ahmadiyya Muslims, who are also a minority.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Definitely. We have repeatedly heard of this problem. I visited the visa office in Lebanon. They do an excellent job; however, they don't have the liberty to do prima facie recognition. If the government would introduce that, it would speed up the process. It would simplify it, and resources would be minimized.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's right.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Oh, definitely. In the refugee field, we work in a team because everybody has a special responsibility. If we are interested in security, languages, or budget, we have different people. That is how we do it as a team. In the last 10 years, our office has had an impeccable record of going to different countries, maybe for the first time in our lives, to do fact-finding first, and then to establish what the reality is of working there.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I was thinking, on Mr. Fragiskatos' question also, that it would be irresponsible to have all the details of the planning before we get the legal framework. We are keen and anxious for that. Yes, we have a possibility, an opportunity, and a plan. However, we need the legal context to go ahead, because we cannot just go to a country to start resettling people who don't qualify according to Canadian immigration law.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We have a plan for fundraising and we have a plan to request funds from the government, because I think if you want something fast, the private sector is not able to react fast in a large manner. As I mentioned, two weeks ago our first Yazidi refugee arrived, so it shows that we have cases in place.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think it would be irresponsible to put something in place if legally we don't have the go-ahead. It's illegal at this point. Immigration Canada would send me back the file saying “Martin, what happened? Are you drunk or what? Why are you submitting a Yazidi case from northern Iraq?