OTTAWA – The Reform party says Canada should stop the practice of allowing foreign women to apply for refugee status based on gender discrimination at home.
Calgary Northeast MP Art Hanger said allowing “gender-based refugee claims” is a perversion of the Canadian system.
“Membership in the female gender in a culture that does not subscribe to Canadian standards of gender equality should not be a basis for a refugee claim,” he said in a paper on reforming the refugee acceptance system.
The policy proposal has been condemned by women’s and refugee advocacy groups.
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“This policy has made Canada a progressive nation,” said Sunera Thobani of Toronto, chair of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women.
“We know that the majority of the world’s refugees are women and children but most of those accepted are men. The Reform policy would be a step backward.”
But Hanger claimed it is simply trying to reverse a trend of imposing Canadian standards on other countries and using ideological standards to decide who can enter Canada as a refugee.
Beginning in 1992, the Immigration and Refugee Board accepted that women persecuted at home because they are women could apply for refugee status.
It could range from dissident women afraid to return to a life of persecution in a strictly male-controlled society, to women afraid to return home because of threats of spousal abuse or unwillingness to return to societies in which female circumcision is practiced.
Impose views on others
Hanger said the Reform party supports gender equality but does not believe Canada can impose its views on the rest of the world, or become a haven for women who want equality and cannot receive it at home.
“The Reform party finds the extension of Canadian standards of behavior and law to every member of every society on earth to be an impossible dream.”
The issue of gender-based refugee claims was just one of many problems of the system leveled by Hanger and the Reform party.
He criticized the size, power and cost of the Immigration and Refugee Board in calling for its abolition. He also called for reduced acceptance levels for refugees and for the end of social assistance to refugee claimants before they have been accepted into the country.
Hanger said the present system of processing refugees on the basis of “self-proclaimed” status results in denial of refugee status to many around the world who really need a sanctuary.
