Colin Perkel
The Canadian Press
TORONTO The work of Canada's refugee board was called into question yesterday after an insider alleged that decisions are often written secretly by staff rather than the panel members who actually hear the cases.
Board employee Selwyn Pieters is calling for an investigation because management and staff have turned a blind eye to a practice that violates the rules and has damaged the credibility of an already troubled system.
"There's a code of silence," Pieters told The Canadian Press.
"You just do things and you say nothing. It's a systemic issue."
A lawyer and human rights activist, Pieters has worked for the board in Toronto since 1999 as a refugee protection officer, a job that entails ensuring panels hear all evidence relevant to an asylum claim.
The panels, comprising one or three members, decide the fate of refugee claimants.
The members are forbidden from consulting refugee claim officers about reasons for a decision or the merits of a case unless done in the presence of claimants and their lawyers.
But in a 13-page letter to Canada's public service integrity officer that was copied to Immigration Minister Judy Sgro, Pieters lists several cases, some high-profile, in which he took part in writing decisions in flagrant violation of the rules.
Because of the "the culture of the place," Pieters said he felt he had no choice but to go along with the routinely made requests, which he attributed to unqualified or lazy tribunal members.
In one case, Pieters said, he wrote a decision involving Xiao Dong Liang, whose brother and six associates were publicly executed in China. E-mails show the presiding panel member invited Pieters to his cottage to work on the decision in which Liang's claim was rejected last year.
Immigration lawyer Lorne Waldman expressed dismay at the notion Pieters wrote the decision and said he would recommend Liang seek to have his claim reopened.
It's like having the prosecutor write a decision for the judge in a criminal case, Waldman said.
"It just makes the whole process unfair. It's not acceptable at all and it raises serious concerns about how the board is operating and about the appointment process."
A spokesman for the Immigration and Refugee Board, Charles Hawkins, said the matter is in the hands of the integrity officer but "appropriate measures" would be taken if the complaints are substantiated.
"The board recognizes these are serious allegations," said Hawkins. He refused to discuss what action could be taken or address the specific complaints.
The refugee board has frequently come under fire because panel members are political appointees who may not be qualified to decide complex claims in which the decisions could be a matter of life or death for claimaints.
One former head of the board called the patronage "pernicious."
On Tuesday, Sgro pledged a new, tougher screening system means that would make patronage appointments to the immigration and refugee appeal board a thing of the past.
"No longer will it be who you know," she said. But calls about Pieter's letter to Sgro's office were not returned yesterday.
Waldman said the new allegations have probably come at a good time because they should provide Sgro with more ammunition to clean up the tribunal.
"If (panel members) are incapable of writing reasons on complex cases, they should not accept the appointment and they shouldn't be appointed," Waldman said.
courtesy of the Hamilton Spectator, March 18, 2004