Bill C-31 (Historical)

Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act

An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, the Marine Transportation Security Act and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Act

This enactment amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the Balanced Refugee Reform Act to, among other things, provide for the expediting of the processing of refugee protection claims.
The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act is also amended to authorize the Minister, in certain circumstances, to designate as an irregular arrival the arrival in Canada of a group of persons and to provide for the effects of such a designation in respect of those persons, including in relation to detention, conditions of release from detention and applications for permanent resident status. In addition, the enactment amends certain enforcement provisions of that Act, notably to expand the scope of the offence of human smuggling and to provide for minimum punishments in relation to that offence. Furthermore, the enactment amends that Act to expand sponsorship options in respect of foreign nationals and to require the provision of biometric information when an application for a temporary resident visa, study permit or work permit is made.
In addition, the enactment amends the Marine Transportation Security Act to increase the penalties for persons who fail to provide information that is required to be reported before a vessel enters Canadian waters or to comply with ministerial directions and for persons who provide false or misleading information. It creates a new offence in respect of vessels that fail to comply with ministerial directions and authorizes the making of regulations respecting the disclosure of certain information for the purpose of protecting the safety or security of Canada or Canadians.
Finally, the enactment amends the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Act to enhance the authority for the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to enter into agreements and arrangements with foreign governments, and to provide services to the Canada Border Services Agency.

[Dafina Savic]

Of course, our recommendation is to eliminate Bill C-31 as a practice. Bill C-31 did not only negatively impact Roma. In fact, the safe country list constitutes all the countries that are under the European Union, as well as Mexico and the United States. Most of the countries were arbitrarily placed on the list. After the removal.... The visa that was imposed on Hungary and Romania was a direct result of the fear of Roma coming to Canada.

Moving forward, definitely our recommendation is to eliminate Bill C-31, but if for whatever reason that's not possible, I think definitely we should reinstate the provision that was part of the Minister of Immigration's mandate, which is to revise the criteria that decide whether a country is safe or not. This is not only for Roma but also for minorities at large in most of these countries where we definitely see a rise in the far right. We see a rise of anti-Semitism as well in those countries. In those countries there is also a strong homophobic sentiment. I think we need to define the criteria under which a country is considered safe, and for whom.

[Dafina Savic]

We have a few, but I'll keep it to two.

In terms of our objectives in Canada in relation to the situation in Europe, really over the past seven years our priority has been the recognition by the Canadian government of the Romani genocide. As I mentioned, it is an essential step in preventing a genocide as we see it, especially today, because what we are asking in the bill that we drafted is for a commitment to recognizing the Romani genocide, but also with that commitment, committing to addressing the human rights situation of Roma not only in Europe but worldwide.

Also, securing rights for Romani refugees has been a priority for us, so the elimination of Bill C-31, or at least the revision of the criteria used to determine what does and does not constitute a safe country is definitely a priority. I think the Canadian government has the responsibility, at least as a first step, to speak out about the very gross violations that Roma are facing. When Roma are being killed, the world is actually silent, so I think Canada could take a lead on responsibility in this.

I just want to say that we are currently working with Global Affairs and Canadian Heritage regarding the recognition. We have asked Global Affairs to address situations with embassies in those countries, so we have been in touch, for example, with the ambassador to Bulgaria regarding the recent killing of a Roma child and the hate speech promoted by a minister at the time. We are now trying to address situations in France. The Canadian government could take a leadership role in at least facilitating dialogue between the embassies in those countries with strong Romani populations.

[Dafina Savic, Founder and Executive Director, Romanipe]

Thank you.

First and foremost, I want to thank the committee for giving me the opportunity to present the far-too-often ignored human rights situation of Romani people across the world today, a people whose very existence remains threatened, a people whose human dignity is continuously denied today across the world, a people whose fight remains largely invisible, and on which I will attempt to shed light today through my presentation.

In the Romani language, when greeting people, we say

[Witness spoke in Romani]

[English]

This translates to “I greet you with good will.”

I'm really hopeful that my presence here today will give you the will to take action on the often invisible human rights situation of Roma, which remains largely ignored today across the globe.

Seven years ago I founded a not-for-profit organization called Romanipe, whose main mission is to defend human dignity against human rights violations that Romani people face across the world. Our organization was built on the principle of unity. In that regard, it has worked in collaboration with many groups of people with whom we share suffering and has built collaborations with many different groups who have been victims of genocide. In the spirit of standing in solidarity but also in action with those groups, we also want to acknowledge our solidarity with people who have presented before this committee, namely indigenous peoples as well as the people of Burundi and the Rohingya in Myanmar. We stand with them in solidarity.

Almost 75 years ago today, the remaining 2,998 Romani prisoners of the gypsy family camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau were murdered en masse by the Nazis and their collaborators. According to the latest estimates, at least half a million Roma were killed by Nazis and their collaborators during the Second World War. Unfortunately, this history remains largely ignored, unknown and untaught globally.

Our organization has been fighting for the past eight years for the Canadian government to officially recognize the Romani genocide. On August 2 of last year the Canadian government, via Minister Freeland and Minister Rodriguez, acknowledged the commitment of the government to recognize the Romani genocide. Today we are still waiting for an official act of Parliament to be adopted so that recognition can officially be granted.

Recognition of the Romani genocide is highly important since the human rights situation of Roma and the hatred and racism against Roma remain very normalized forms of racism today given that the history of the Romani people, specifically during the Second World War, remains largely unknown and unrecognized.

During the Second World War, rhetoric portraying Roma as criminals was used by Nazis and their collaborators to justify the mass murder of at least half a million Romani people. Across European countries today, unfortunately we see that rhetoric being repeated. In many European countries, physical walls have been built to separate Roma from non-Romani citizens. These walls are not at borders but have actually been built within cities to separate Roma from non-Romani citizens. In countries like Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Romani children are disproportionately placed in segregated schools without prior testing based on the idea that Roma are mentally inferior to non-Roma.

This segregation has been documented and condemned by many organizations, such as Amnesty International, the European Roma Rights Centre and many others, which have spoken out and actually called on those countries to take concrete measures to end the segregation of Romani children in those countries. Unfortunately, as reported recently by Amnesty International and many other organizations, the segregation of Roma is still present in almost all of those countries.

As recently as 2012, cases of forced sterilization of Romani women were also documented in countries like Hungary and Slovakia. Governments of those countries have actually acknowledged that this was the case, yet no measures have been taken to actually offer compensation to the women who were forcibly sterilized in those countries.

Just recently, in fact last year, in countries like Ukraine, despite the many warnings of organizations like Amnesty International of the violent attacks inflicted on Romani settlements in Ukraine, a young Romani man was actually killed by members of the far right on the basis of the idea that Roma need to be killed to eliminate so-called gypsy crime.

In Italy, the minister of the interior, Matteo Salvini, recently announced his intention to create a Roma census, a policy that is very reminiscent of the 1933 policies inflicted upon the Jewish population in Italy at the time. This policy gained wide public support and in fact has led to an increase in hate crime against the Romani population in Italy.

Just last year, after the violent killing of three young Romani girls, graffiti throughout Rome praising the deaths of those three girls was actually documented. In fact, some pictures show graffiti saying “three less Roma”. This was just last year.

This month, in fact, in Bulgaria, neo-Nazis have marched threatening Romani villages, chanting anti-Romani slogans and encouraging anti-Romani violence.

In France, a few months ago, as a result of a medieval stereotype, Roma were accused of stealing children. There have been many violent attacks that have left many Romani families, including children, hospitalized. These things were the results of fake news being spread via social media.

Our colleagues in France are part of the only organization that has spoken out against this. Due to their efforts, the government has actually taken action.

There are many, many, many countries. These things took place in just this past month. We're not talking about years ago. We are talking about a few weeks ago that Romani people were actually killed, including in Bulgaria, simply because they were Roma.

I would like to read some of the quotes from the ruling parties in those countries with those marches. “Whoever runs over a gypsy child is acting correctly if he gives no thought to stopping and steps hard on the accelerator.” This is a quote from a political columnist and a founding member of Hungary's governing Fidesz party. “Gypsies to the gas chambers.” “Set them all on fire.” “Bury them alive.” “Stab them in the back.” These were quotes from ethnic Czechs during a demonstration against Roma in the Czech Republic.

Between 2012 and today, we have seen what we call anti-Romani marches. Most of the time these have been organized by the far right but they have also been widely supported by everyday citizens. People march carrying signs with swastikas and often dress up as Hitler and chant anti-Romani slogans.

How has the world reacted to those situations? Unfortunately, it hasn't, because, as I mentioned before, one of the most normalized forms of racism today is actually the violence committed against Roma, which is unfortunately based on the belief that Roma are fundamentally criminals.

How has the Canadian government reacted to this? Unfortunately, in 2012 under the previous government, a lot of Roma were coming to Canada to seek asylum and seek protection from the rise of the neo-Nazi movement. This was just in 2012, when the far right reached its peak. Actually, in a village in Hungary, six Roma were killed, including a six-year-old boy, as a result of these attacks by the far right.

A large number of Roma came to Canada to seek asylum. The response of the government at the time was unfortunately to repeat that rhetoric of criminality, accusing Roma of being bogus refugees undeserving of Canadian protection.

Our organization has asked that you work to address these issues with every single minister since Jason Kenney was minister. He was in fact responsible for the introduction of Bill C-31, under which specific measures were taken to restrict the entrance of Romani asylum seekers, whereby billboards were actually placed in the villages, such as in Hungary, where Roma were known to come from, discouraging Roma asylum seekers from applying to Canada. The policy measures that were taken have proven to be efficient. According to the statistics, Roma acceptance decreased by 90% between 1998 and 2012.

Our organization has actually worked with many families who have been unjustly deported. We are in fact still working with a family that is to face deportation in the next two weeks because Bill C-31 is still in place, and the countries that I have mentioned, where Roma are perceived to be animals and are threatened with being killed, are considered safe by the Canadian government. One of the provisions that we suggested be made to Bill C-31 was that the criteria of what constitutes a safe country be revised and that there be a board of experts deciding under what criteria those countries are safe.

A new government came into place, and Minister Hussen was given the mandate. That was dropped from the mandate of the minister, so those countries are still considered to be safe.

Of course, there is an increase in the acceptance of Roma, especially those from Hungary, in light of the well-documented evidence of persecution of Roma in those countries, yet there are still consequences to that bill, which we have seen from our organization's point of view. In the past three months, we have worked at least on three cases of deportation of Romani families who came here around 2012. There are still consequences to the policies enacted by the Canadian government.

Just to give you a bit of the background of our organization, when we started the organization, our intention was actually to use Canada as a model for Europe, despite Canada having its own human rights issues, in terms of how Europe could do better. Unfortunately, the Canadian government led us to do the opposite of that, because Roma coming from those countries were actually facing discrimination in their countries and were sent back to situations of discrimination, which actually doubled the discrimination of the home countries.

On that, just to give you a concrete example, according to the 1951 refugee convention, which the Canadian government has ratified, a country cannot send people back to situations where they will face persecution, whereas in the case of the Roma, that is exactly what happened. We've worked with many families, especially Romani children, who knew that they were to be refused because of the high refusal rate of refugees whose education was not recognized in countries where they already face segregation. They were sent back to their countries, faced double discrimination and actually had to drop out of school.

I'll end on that note, but I just want to take 30 seconds to make some concrete recommendations, if I may.

Essentially, what we're asking the Canadian government for is to eliminate Bill C-31 or to at least appoint a board of experts to determine what constitutes a safe country; to work with European governments to address the ongoing human rights situation in those countries; and, to officially adopt an act of Parliament. I have drafted a bill that is ready to be presented. It simply needs to be presented by members of Parliament so that the Romani genocide can be recognized. I think the committee's very mission is to prevent future atrocities from happening. That really begins with recognition.

Thank you.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

By the way, Canada used to have a program that allowed for siblings to sponsor each other. That's how I came to Canada. My aunt sponsored my dad and a family of eight to come to Canada, and that's how we made Canada our home. We should actually go back to the system and extend that to the refugees.

Thank you so much.

I do want to turn to the UNHCR for some of my questions. The UNHCR wrote a 20-page report speaking out against the 2012 Harper government's changes to the refugee determination system under Bill C-31. That was back in May of 2012. Amongst other things, there were a number of key recommendations. One of them is that the UNHCR is recommending against the differential treatment of refugees and asylum seekers where it infringes on established rights of refugees. As far as I can see under Bill C-97, there are different treatments of refugees under different streams now. So why is it okay now in this stream and it wasn't okay back in 2012?

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Madam Speaker, many times I have risen in the House to speak out and demand that legislative changes be made to eliminate the unjust cessation provisions targeting refugees brought in by the previous government. Every time I do so, I basically get the same response, such as the one I received from the parliamentary secretary in May, who said, “We acknowledge that there is room for improvement to further enhance refugee protection while ensuring that we preserve the integrity of Canada's asylum system.”

The Liberals have been acknowledging that there is room for improvement since November 2015, but like so many of the Liberal election promises, it is all talk and no action.

That is not all. Worse still, the government is spending millions of dollars per year to strip away refugees' permanent resident status, simply because individuals have travelled back to their countries of origin, regardless of the reason.

Imagine people who arrived as refugees and have spent 20 years here building new lives, contributing to Canadian society, and starting families. Years later, significant changes in the situation in their countries of origin take place, making it safe for them to travel back, maybe to see family or bury a loved one. At the time of travel, there is no law that says that their status would be put at risk if they went back to their countries of origin. However, when they apply for citizenship, instead of reciting the oath of citizenship, CBSA files a cessation application against them, and they are, all of a sudden, faced with a situation where their permanent resident status can be revoked and they can be deported. This is wrong. What is worse is that the government even acknowledges that this is wrong, yet since the passage of Bill C-31, nothing has changed. In fact, 575 individuals have had cessation applications brought against them.

Why has the Liberal government refused to repeal these provisions? The efforts of Canadians from coast to coast to coast during the Syrian refugee initiative showed Canada's humanitarian spirit and how hard we are all willing to work to help those in need.

As of January 2017, 40,000 Syrian refugees have resettled. Is the government telling them that Canada can strip away their status here and deport them if they travel back to their countries of origin for any reason? I do not think so. The government proudly proclaims that a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian. Why then do we treat refugees with this injustice? Why are they not provided the same mobility rights other Canadians have? After all, do we not abide by our own Charters of Rights? That is my question to the government.

Immigration and Refugee Protection Act

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-294, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (cessation of refugee protection).

Mr. Speaker, I rise to table a private member's bill to repeal cessation provisions in Bill C-31.

Bill C-31 came into force on December 15, 2012, and it is retroactive. Cessation applications are being brought against permanent residents because it is alleged that refugees have re-availed themselves of protection by temporarily travelling back to their country of origin.

No matter that the conditions of the country of origin have changed, no matter that they are going back to see a dying relative for one last time, no matter that the law did not exist at the time of travel, they are at risk of losing their permanent resident status.

My bill will eliminate this unfair and unjust law created by the former Conservative government. From 2012-15, the government wasted as much as $15 million in special CBSA and Department of Justice funding for cessation applications. The government should have redirected those resources into processing backlogs in family reunification cases.

I hope that the minister will take this bill and adopt it as a government bill in the Fall.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you. I don't mean to be rude, it's just that I only have seven minutes.

With that, Mr. Chair, and to the minister and his staff, could we actually get the detailed breakdown then for both the regular budget as well as from the supplementary estimates, the increased dollars that are being asked for. A clear breakdown of that would assist us a lot.

On the question around cessation, actually, I just want to touch on this for a minute. This is a different realm.

I wonder whether or not the minister can provide us with this information. How many individuals has the IRCC set a quota on bringing cessation against for the 2016-17 fiscal year? How many staff members are involved on the cessation files? Since the passing of Bill C-31, how many individuals have had the cessation process brought against them? Since the passing of Bill C-31 how many individuals have been deported? Of those deported, how many were deported on the basis that it is retroactive? That is, how many individuals have been deported for engagement in an act and had the cessation process brought against them before it was even brought in as legislation? How many cessation cases are currently on hold? How many cessation cases are currently before the courts and in which provinces? Last, will there be further action that would be undertaken by the government to address this policy?

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Madam Speaker, our government is very committed to addressing this issue. We are looking at that as part of an overall assessment of the immigration and refugee system in terms of amendments that need to be made to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, speeding up processing time, producing more fairness within the system itself.

Cessation is a problem. Bill C-31 is a problem. I look forward to continuing this discussion with the member for Vancouver East. I look forward to seeing the content of her private member's bill.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Madam Speaker, there are laws that are fair and just, and there are laws that are not.

The cessation provisions contained in Bill C-31 is an example of an unjust and absurd law. This law discriminates against refugees by effectively setting up a two-tier system for permanent residents. The way the Conservatives decided to target refugees in this unreasonable and punitive manner is simply un-Canadian.

Canadians welcome refugees to our country. The time has come for Canada to start a new chapter on the world stage. It is time to repeal the cessation provisions of C-31. This was a law that the former Conservatives brought in. The NDP voted against Bill C-31, and so did the Liberals.

I have a private member's bill to repeal the cessation provisions, drafted and all ready to go. Nothing would make me happier than to have the government take my bill and turn it into a government bill.

I urge the government to take immediate action on this urgent situation.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Immigration]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Vancouver East for raising this important issue in the House and for her continued advocacy on the part of immigration issues as the opposition critic.

This is an important debate on cessation issues in the former Bill C-31 enacted by the previous government, and the impact it has on permanent residents.

The hon. member for Vancouver East has asked a very important question, and has raised this previously with our government. In fact, the government is in absolute agreement with the hon. member for Vancouver East on the need to review this very important piece of legislation and its impact since it was enacted under the former Bill C-31.

We have, in this country, a long and proud tradition of providing protection to those in need. We have one of the fairest and most generous immigration and asylum systems in the world. Our immigration laws are applied impartially, they are based on facts, and they are meant to accord with due process.

The authority of the independent and quasi-judicial IRB, the Immigration and Refugee Board, to determine whether an individual's refugee protection has ceased is not itself a new provision. It actually predates the 2012 asylum system reforms. As well, it is important to specify that the authority to revoke permanent resident status, including the permanent resident status of a refugee, also existed before Bill C-31.

However, what is very troubling about Bill C-31 is that under the 2012 reforms enacted by the previous government, cessation of protected person status was added as grounds for losing one's permanent resident status. That effectively meant it was double-barrelled. That meant that both protected person status and permanent resident status now end simultaneously once a refugee in Canada has demonstrated that they are no longer in need of protection.

The minister, himself, has said in the House that he agrees that the legislation, which has been identified by the member for Vancouver East, is part of a long legacy of matters inherited from the previous government that our government desperately wants to review, and will review.

As members know, we are not at liberty to discuss particulars of a specific case due to privacy considerations, but the minister has expressed public sympathy with the point the hon. member is raising. I can assure the House that the government is reviewing policies and legislation introduced in recent years with a view to developing proposals to improve them.

In a relatively short time, and I will demonstrate to the House a number of measures we have taken in short order to address the legislative initiatives of the previous government that were very problematic.

For example, in terms of the government's respect for the rulings of the Federal Court, the Federal Court had found in December 2011 that the policy requiring the removal of face coverings to take the oath of citizenship was unlawful. We agree with that decision; the previous government did not. We dropped the appeal of that decision to the Supreme Court of Canada. That is the case of Ishaq v. Canada.

Another example of us being more than willing retract and retrench on legislation by the previous government is rescinding the legislation that came in under Bill C-24. We have introduced amendments to the Citizenship Act that members of the House will be familiar with. Bill C-6 makes it easier for applicants to meet citizenship requirements and helps encourage their sense of belonging and connection to Canada. It also eliminates the two classes of citizenship that were perpetuated by the previous government, which we stood fundamentally against and campaigned against.

Another example of our government's review of existing procedures that help to promote greater openness and better processing is our response regarding Haitian and Zimbabwean nationals. On February 4 of this year, the Government of Canada announced that Haitian and Zimbabwean nationals in this country would be provided another six months to apply for permanent residence on humanitarian and compassionate grounds—

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am calling on the Liberal government t repeal the cessation provisions of Bill C-31, Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act.

Bill C-31 came into force on December 15, 2012, and it is retroactive. Cessation applications are being brought against permanent residents because it is alleged that refugees have re-availed themselves of protection by temporarily travelling back to their country of origin. No matter that the conditions of the country of origin have changed, no matter that they are going back to see a dying relative for one last time, no matter that the law did not exist at the time of travel, people are at risk of losing their permanent resident status.

This law effectively created a two-tier system for permanent residents: those who could travel back to their countries of origin without repercussions and those who could not. This is to say that refugees who gained their permanent resident status legitimately could lose their PR status for returning to their country of origin for a visit. No other permanent residents face this risk. These permanent residents are fully integrated and settled into Canadian society, gainfully employed, have Canadian-born children, and are contributing to Canada. To be clear, cessation cases do not involve fraud or misrepresentation.

Let me share with members the story of the Esfand family. Mrs. Bahareh Esfand and her first daughter were classified as refugees under the principle of family unity. They originally came to Canada under the government's sponsor refugee resettlement program because her husband was found to be at risk in Iran. Since their arrival in Canada, Mrs. Esfand gave birth to her second daughter in Canada. The Esfand family is now a well-established, self-supporting family of four, who have called Canada home for the last 10 years.

When Mrs. Esfand applied for her citizenship, it triggered the cessation process, and the government is trying to revoke her status here. It is alleged that because she returned to Iran to see her family, she should cease to be a refugee, lose her permanent resident status, and be ineligible for citizenship.

Even though Mrs. Esfand's husband and her two children are Canadian citizens, CIC has frozen her 2011 citizenship application and is trying to revoke all her status in Canada. If it is successful, she will be removed from Canada, away from her children and husband, and deemed as a foreign national with no status in Canada. She has been fighting against this and is now defending the third court case filed against her by CIC. She has also been forced to file her own case to lift the freeze on her citizenship application.

Surely, any reasonable person can see the absurdity of this. By the way, Mrs. Esfand was not a refugee at risk in the first place, only her husband was, and she came under family unity.

Her case is just one among many. Through FOI, an internal document show that an annual target of a minimum of 875 vacation or cessation cases has been set for CBSA to execute. As a result, refugees are being investigated, their PR status ceased, and cases are ending up in court. This even applies to those who come from countries where there is a moratorium on removals and those who are still at risk if returned. This just makes no sense.

As we know, in real life, people travel to visit a sick or dying family member or for other legitimate reasons. To top it all off, the investigations for some of these families are triggered when they apply for citizenship. Now we are hearing reports that people are afraid to apply for citizenship. How much of taxpayer money is being wasted on cessation cases? How many officials are working on cessation cases instead of processing the backlogs of family reunification cases? How many cases has the government targeted? How many people have been deported? These are the questions that people are asking.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Al-Obeidi, a citizen of Iraq and former political prisoner of Saddam Hussein, managed to escape and became a government-sponsored refugee in 2002. He landed in Canada in 2007. Ten years after he fled, Saddam Hussein is no longer a threat. He travelled back to visit his family and to get married. In 2012, cessation provisions became law and now the government wants to take away his permanent resident status. This law makes no sense.

Will the minister repeal the cessation provisions in Bill C-31?

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to take this opportunity to thank our officials as well for appearing before us today. Certainly the issue of biometrics is one that we have studied extensively in this committee. I was very pleased to be part of the team that studied Bill C-31, which was the Protecting Canada’s Immigration System Act, in which biometrics, of course, was a key component.

Our government is committed to protecting Canadians and making it safer to travel in and out of the country. It's an effective means to combat identity fraud and the abuse of Canada's immigration system, but it's also a very effective method of identifying those who are seeking to come to Canada who have illicit backgrounds in the countries in which they live.

Do you know how many countries we currently collect biometrics from?

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you, Chair. Thank you to the witnesses.

Actually, I do not quite share that the courts in the future will interpret it differently because all you have to do is look at the Supreme Court's decision on our constitutionality on changing the Senate. They went back to its original intent of seven provinces and 50% of the population.

So I think if the people who are charged with interpreting our laws are consistent, I think these substitutions will not happen. I appreciate what Mr. Veeman said. What happens if you have a permanent resident who came here to study and then goes to the United States or goes to Oxford to study?

As long as he intends to come back to Canada to be a Canadian citizen, which in my case I did.... I went to the United States for my graduate studies and I came back and it was not an issue, but then that was under a different immigration law prior to 1976.

My question, actually, I'll speak about a corollary to this. You know, in the current bill, as with the previous one on Bill C-31, what we did was we started to regulate immigration consultants and we started to make sure that immigrants in Canada receive sound and proper advice. Now we're proposing a similar request in the Citizenship Act to also regulate citizenship consultants.

I was previously in the public accounting area and I said great, the more legislation that the government comes down with, the more there is for us to work on and to be interpreted. It becomes sort of like a work creation for us.

When I listened to Richard I asked how regulating both the immigration consultant and the citizenship consultant would benefit Canadians overall. How does this benefit the industry overall or are we just creating another avenue of business for all these consultants? Perhaps you can share your thoughts on this and how you would strengthen our immigration and citizenship acts.

Standing Committee on Finance

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to the hon. House Leader of the Official Oppositionfor raising this point of order yesterday, objecting to the unusual procedures that were accepted within the Standing Committee on Finance, in relation to the clause-by-clause treatment of Bill C-60, the 2013 omnibus budget bill.

Prior to his point of order, I was struggling with a dilemma: I was certain there was an effort to undermine my rights as an individual member of Parliament and yet there had been no formal challenge. I was not sure how to approach this, Mr. Speaker, and to put before you the ways in which I found that procedure unacceptable. I really very much appreciate that the official opposition saw fit to raise its concerns that those procedures and the procedures adopted--novel procedures, mind you--before the Standing Committee on Finance did not comport to parliamentary rules and practice and went beyond the mandate of the committee.

I agree with all the points made by the hon. House Leader of the Official Opposition and by the member for Winnipeg North, on behalf of the Liberal Party.

Before getting down to the particulars of the current situation, I wish to review some fundamental principles related to the matter before you, Mr. Speaker.

In essence, what you are asked to adjudicate here is an effort by a powerful government party with the majority of seats in this place to eliminate what few rights exist to influence legislation in the hands of only eight members of Parliament belonging to two recognized national parties, myself, on behalf of the Green Party, and members here for the Bloc Québécois, plus two members currently sitting as independents.

Within this group, the government party's efforts are aimed only at the Green Party and the Bloc Québécois. We are the only members to have submitted amendments at report stage in the 41st Parliament.

The appropriate balance between the majority and the minority in proceedings of the House is, as Speaker Milliken noted, a fundamental issue.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to be providing the written copy of this presentation to you so that I will not have to read out loud all the citations.

The following passage is very apt. Although Speaker Milliken was dealing with a situation with a minority Parliament, the issues before him of balancing the rights of the minority and the majority are the same. I quote from Speaker Milliken's ruling of March 29, 2007:

At the present time, the chair occupants, like our counterparts in House committees, daily face the challenge of dealing with the pressures of a minority government, but neither the political realities of the moment nor the sheer force of numbers should force us to set aside the values inherent in the parliamentary conventions and procedures by which we govern our deliberations.

Continuing:

Unlike the situation faced by committee chairs, a Speaker's decision is not subject to appeal. All the more reason then for the Chair to exercise its awesome responsibility carefully and to ensure that the House does not, in the heat of the moment, veer dangerously off course.

The Speaker must remain ever mindful of the first principles of our great parliamentary tradition, principles best described by John George Bourinot, Clerk of this House from 1890 to 1902, who described these principles thus:

To protect the minority and restrain the improvidence and tyranny of the majority, to secure the transaction of public business in a decent and orderly manner, to enable every member to express his opinions within those limits necessary to preserve decorum and prevent an unnecessary waste of time, to give full opportunity for the consideration of every measure, and to prevent any legislative action being taken heedlessly and upon sudden impulse.

As I noted yesterday, in particular, in your ruling related to the member for Langley's question of privilege, you said:

...[an] unquestionable duty of the Speaker [is] to act as the guardian of the rights and privileges of members and of the House as an institution.

And you cited, with approval, these words from former speaker Fraser:

...we are a parliamentary democracy, not a so-called executive democracy, nor a so-called administrative democracy.

The last quote is from your ruling of December 12, 2012, which bears directly on the matter at hand. In that ruling, Mr. Speaker, you dealt with an objection raised by the hon. Leader of the Government in the House of Commons to, inter alia, my presentation of amendments at report stage. The hon. government House leader presented a proposal that all my amendments at report stage should be grouped and one motion selected as a “test motion”, and only if the test motion was adopted would any of the other amendments be put to the House.

Your ruling was clear, Mr. Speaker. You cited House of Commons Procedure and Practice at page 250, which states:

[I]t remains true that parliamentary procedure is intended to ensure that there is a balance between the government's need to get its business through the House, and the opposition's responsibility to debate that business without completely immobilizing the proceedings of the House.

And you added:

The underlying principles these citations express are the cornerstones of our parliamentary system. They enshrine the ancient democratic tradition of allowing the minority to voice its views and opinions in the public square and, in counterpoint, of allowing the majority to put its legislative program before Parliament and have it voted upon.

You ruled then, Mr. Speaker, that my amendments at report stage on Bill C-45 could stand and be put to a vote in the House. You also set out some circumstances that would provide a potential procedure to provide me and other members in my position with a fair and satisfactory alternative to amendments at report stage.

In my view, the government House leader is now attempting to do indirectly that which he could not do directly. It puts me in mind of the finding of Mr. Justice Dickson in that landmark Supreme Court case of Amax Potash, in which Mr. Dickson said:

To allow moneys collected under compulsion, pursuant to an ultra vires statute, to be retained would be tantamount to allowing the provincial Legislature to do indirectly what it could not do directly, and by covert means to impose illegal burdens.

I again underline that as the hon. House Leader of the Official Opposition has put before us, the actions of the finance committee were ultra vires, and the whole effort here is to do indirectly what it could not do directly. I am speaking of the Conservative Party's efforts to suppress the rights of minority members.

It offends principles of fairness to use the superior clout and power of a majority government to crush the few procedures found within our rules and traditions to which I, as an individual member, have a right to recourse. It is clear that the effort being made by the finance committee on Bill C-60 is a continuation of the strategy-by-stealth of the government House leader's to foreclose the democratic rights of members, which was attempted in November of last year.

For the remainder of my argument, I would like to canvass two areas of facts that are relevant to the specifics of the question before you, Mr. Speaker. First, was the procedure adopted by the finance committee in conformity with your ruling of December 12, 2012? Second, have the amendments I have put forward in the 41st Parliament offended the rules by failing the tests of “repetition, frivolity, vexatiousness and unnecessary prolongation of report stage”?

Dealing with the second point first, I have moved amendments at report stage on the following bills, and I will state how many amendments per bill: Bill C-10, 36 amendments; Bill C-11, 11 amendments; Bill C-13, one amendment; Bill C-18, three amendments; Bill C-19, three amendments; Bill C-31, 23 amendments; Bill C-316, five amendments; Bill C-38, 320 amendments; Bill C-37, one amendment; Bill C-43, 21 amendments; and Bill C-45, 82 amendments.

What is immediately obvious is that the number of my amendments was directly proportionate to the legislation proposed by the government. Only on the two omnibus budget bills, Bill C-45 and Bill C-38, and the omnibus crime bill, Bill C-10, did I propose a relatively large number of amendments. There were many amendments, because the omnibus bills involved changes to multiple laws in a dramatic and transformative fashion. The amendments I proposed were all serious; none were frivolous. They were not of the kind, for example, put forward by the opposition of the day on the Nisga'a treaty, in which multiple amendments were mere changes of punctuation with the goal being slowing passage of the Nisga'a treaty.

The amendments I have put forward have even gained favourable commentary from some government members. On Bill C-31, the hon. Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism said, “I appreciate the member's evident concern”, speaking of me as the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, “and the fact that she takes the deliberative legislative process very seriously”.

On Bill C-11, the copyright modernization act, the hon. Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages said, “I compliment her for her substantive approach to this legislation”.

On Bill C-43, the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism stated:

I commend the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands for her constant due diligence. I know it is a particular challenge to effectively be an independent member and yet participate in an informed way in debates on virtually all bills in the House. We all admire her for that even if I do not agree with the substance of her intervention here.

In summary, the amendments I have put forward in the 41st Parliament have never been frivolous. Were they designed to slow passage? Not at all. Even on the day we began the marathon session of votes on the amendments to Bill C-38, I approached the Prime Minister personally and asked if any compromise were possible. I told him I would be at his disposal, that if one or two amendments might pass, perhaps the rest could be withdrawn, and that I was open to suggestion.

My goal throughout was serious and grounded in principle. My constituents care about these issues and these bills. I am working tirelessly in their interest. I have never engaged in preparing and presenting amendments for the sake of, as the government House leader has suggested, political games or delay for the sake of delay.

Having worked in the Mulroney government and in public policy work in Ottawa dealing with federal governments, federal ministers and federal laws since 1978, I have personal experience with what used to be the normal approach to legislating in the Parliament of Canada. This particular administration is the only one in our history to enforce rigid discipline on its members in legislative committees. It is the first administration in Canadian history to resist any changes in its legislative proposals from first reading to royal assent. Even the errors that are discovered prior to passage are protected from amendment until subsequent bills correct earlier drafting errors.

Worsening this abuse of democratic process, virtually every bill in the 41st Parliament has been subject to time allocation. If time allocation were not applied, in the normal round of debates, eventually members in my situation, who are seen as independent for my rights and privileges, although I sit here as a Green Party member, would be recognized and would participate in the debates. However, due to time allocation, there is never an opportunity to speak at second reading, report stage or third reading. With time allocation, there is never an opportunity for members in my position to make a speech unless another party cedes a speaking slot.

As a matter of practical reality, the only way to have a speaking opportunity in such time-constrained circumstances is to have amendments tabled at report stage. This approach of the current Conservative administration of rejecting any and all amendments, while simultaneously abbreviating debate opportunities, is a perversion of Westminster parliamentary tradition. It is a new and hyper-partisan approach to the legislative process.

As a member of Parliament, I believe it is my duty to work to resist this new, contemptuous approach to legislating. The ability to table amendments at report stage and to offer the entire House an opportunity to improve bills before third reading is even more critical when the legislative committee process has ceased to function as it did in all the time of all the speakers before you.

Now I turn to the question, Mr. Speaker, of how the finance committee applied the suggestions contained in your ruling of December 12, 2012. I note that the chair of the finance committee is never anything but personally fair, and I mean nothing personal against all members of the finance committee. I assume that this entire stratagem emerged elsewhere than from the members of the finance committee themselves.

I note that you suggested, Mr. Speaker, that there are “opportunities and mechanisms that are at the House's disposal to resolve these issues to the satisfaction of all members” in a “manner that would balance the rights of all members” and that “...members need only to remember that there are several precedents where independent members were made members of standing committees”. Those are all quotes from your ruling in December.

Finally, you suggested this:

Were a satisfactory mechanism found that would afford independent members an opportunity to move motions to move bills in committee, the Chair has no doubt that its report stage selection process would adapt to the new reality.

From these comments it is clear that your direction suggests that an effort might be made to engage members with rights of independents to enter into a discussion about how arrangements could be reached that would be, in fact, satisfactory. To be “to the satisfaction of all members”, your ruling implicitly requires that the suggested opportunities and mechanisms be discussed and accepted by all concerned. Further, you suggested that temporary membership was possible and that members should be able to “move motions”.

None of that occurred. I am attaching a written copy of all the correspondence between me and the chair of the Standing Committee on Finance, which I will provide to the table. As you will see, there was no discussion or offer of co-operation. The “invitation” contained in a letter of May 7, 2013 left no room for discussion. The attached motion of the committee was supported only by the Conservative members of the finance committee but not by the official opposition or the Liberal Party members.

The letter, and particularly the motion itself, had the tone of a unilateral ultimatum. My response was to ask for temporary committee membership for the duration of clause-by-clause review. This request was rejected in the letter of May 24, 2013.

As the various sections of Bill C-60 had been distributed among several committees, I attempted to attend all the hearings relative to my amendments. However, committees were meeting at the same time in different locations throughout the parliamentary precinct making it impossible to get to each one of them. I did attend meetings of the industry, finance and the foreign affairs committees prior to clause-by-clause. I asked for permission to ask witnesses questions and was denied in the finance and foreign affairs committees. I was allowed a three-minute opportunity to pose questions in the industry committee. To be blunt, my opportunities were not close to equivalent to the members of those committees.

On Monday, May 27, 2013 as requested by the finance committee, I complied with the committee and attempted to co-operate. I submitted my amendments and attended clause-by-clause throughout the meeting of the committee on Tuesday, May 28. I asked for time to present my amendments. There were 11 in total. I was given half as much time as my colleague from the Bloc Québécois. I was allowed one minute per amendment. He was allowed two minutes per amendment. I have attached copies of the Hansard from all of these discussions to abbreviate the recitation of the facts.

I prefaced my presentation of amendments with a statement that I had not asked for this opportunity nor invitation and that while I was attempting to co-operate, it was without prejudice to my rights to submit amendments at report stage. Each time I was given the floor for 60 seconds, I repeated that my participation was without prejudice to my rights to present amendments at report stage, when I had the right to move my own amendments, speak to my own amendments, and answer questions about my amendments. At report stage, I have the right to vote on my amendments.

I also supported the point made by the hon. member for Parkdale—High Park that inviting independent members to committee, in her words, “does not conform with parliamentary procedure in that only the House of Commons can appoint committee members”.

I noted that I did not have an equal opportunity to present my amendments. This observation was compounded as we went through clause-by-clause.

On two occasions, members of the committee suggested amendments to my amendments. I was not allowed to comment on those suggestions. On one occasion, a member of the government benches disagreed with a point I made, but I was not allowed to reply. On another occasion, the NDP members misunderstood the impact of my amendment, but I was not allowed to explain. I was not allowed to move my amendments. The motions were deemed moved. I was not allowed to vote on my amendments. As noted, I was not allowed even the ability to participate in discussions about my amendments.

There is no way the word “satisfactory” can be so twisted of meaning as to apply to the set of circumstances to which I was required to submit. It is a principle of fairness and natural justice that an opportunity that cannot be used is no opportunity at all.

When one considers the circumstances in which speakers have ruled that members did not have an adequate opportunity to submit their amendments, it is clear that this imposed process before the Standing Committee on Finance falls far short of the mark.

For example, in 2001, Speaker Milliken ruled that where a member was on two committees and had difficulty getting to the meeting, he could move amendments at report stage. Speaker Milliken wrote that:

...because...the member maintains that he sits on two committees, both of which were seized with bills at the same time, and therefore had difficulty in moving his amendments, the Chair will give the benefit of the doubt to the member on this occasion.

In a situation where a member of a recognized parliamentary party attended the clause-by-clause consideration at the committee but was not an official member of the committee, Speaker Milliken allowed that member's amendments to be presented at report stage. He noted:

Of course, the Chair recognizes that our parliamentary system is party driven and the positions of the parties are brought forward to committees through its officially designated members. The Chair also recognizes that some members may want to act on their own.

Underscoring this, what an example: a member of a recognized party with rights to participate in standing committees chose to be in the meetings, in clause-by-clause, and could have handed that member's amendments to another member of his party and ask that they be submitted, but the Speaker of the House supported the right of that member to amendments at report stage because he was not a committee member. I was a long, long way from the rights of that member of a recognized political party sitting in that committee back in 2003 when Speaker Milliken allowed that member's amendments at report stage.

The right of a member to actually move the amendments at committee cannot be perverted through the expedient measure, imposed by a majority party, of demanding all amendments of an independent member be submitted, denying that member the right to move the amendment, speak to the amendment, other than in an inadequate perfunctory fashion, debate or defend the amendment, giving that member no opportunity to speak to other amendments and denying the member any chance to vote on his or her motion.

There may well be some way to accommodate members of Parliament in my position, but clearly, this experiment on Bill C-60 at clause-by-clause consideration in the finance committee was not acceptable. To accept it now, and disallow rights of members of Parliament in the position of independents to submit amendments at report stage, will be to create a precedent that fundamentally abuses our foundational principles of Westminster parliamentary democracy.

Mr. Speaker, I urge you to find in favour of the point of order put forward by the hon. House leader for the official opposition and to set aside the treatment of me and the member from the Bloc Québécois and allow us to submit amendments, move amendments, debate our amendments and vote on them on Bill C-60 at report stage.

Extension of Sitting Hours

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I apologize for interrupting my colleague just at the beginning of his speech on the justification for the motion that he has just presented to the House, but we have a point of order that we need to raise because I think it establishes a couple of important things for you, as Speaker, to determine before we get into the context and the particulars of this motion.

Specifically, I will be citing Standing Order 13, which says:

Whenever the Speaker is of the opinion that a motion offered to the House is contrary to the rules and privileges of Parliament, the Speaker shall apprise the House thereof immediately, before putting the question thereon, and quote the Standing Order or authority applicable to the case.

This is the standing order that we cite, because we have looked at the motion the government has presented here today with some notice given last week.

This motion goes against the Standing Orders and certainly the spirit of Parliament. The government is not allowed to break the rules of Parliament that protect the rights of the minority, the opposition and all members of the House of Commons who have to do their jobs for the people they represent. This motion is very clearly contrary to the existing Standing Orders.

I have some good examples to illustrate this. In my opinion, there is no urgency that would justify the government's heavy-handed tactics to prevent members from holding a reasonable debate on its agenda. I say “agenda”, but for a long time now it has been difficult to pin down what this government's agenda is exactly. This is nothing new.

The motion comes to us today at a difficult time, but just because the government held a brief caucus meeting and is facing numerous problems and a few scandals, it is not justified in violating the Standing Orders of the House of Commons. No one would accept those excuses. There is no historical basis for the government to use the Standing Orders in this way. That does not work.

There are a few important things we need to point out. One is that it behooves us to have some explanation of what this motion actually does. For those of us who do not intimately follow the rules and history of Parliament, it can be quite confusing not in terms of the intention of what the government has read but certainly in the implications. It needs some translation, not French to English or English to French, but translation as to what it actually means for the House of Commons. That is why we believe a point of order exists for this motion.

The motion essentially would immediately begin something that would ordinarily begin in a couple of weeks, which is for the House to sit until midnight to review legislation. This is somewhat ironic from a government that has a bad history with respect to moving legislation correctly through the process and allowing us to do our work, which is what we are here to do on behalf of Canadians.

I am not alone in seeing that the government has shown the intention of having some urgency with respect to 23 bills, 14 of which have not even been introduced since the last election. Suddenly there is great urgency, when in fact it is the government that has set the agenda. The urgency is so great that it has to fundamentally change the rules of how we conduct ourselves in this place in response to an urgency that did not exist until this moment.

One has to question the need. Why the panic? Why now, and why over these pieces of legislation? Are they crucial to Canada's economic well-being? Is it to restore the social safety net that the government has brutalized over the last number of years? What is the panic and what is the urgency?

Context sets everything in politics, and the context that the government exists under right now is quite telling. Every time I have had to stand in this place raising points of order and countering the closure and time allocation motions that the government uses, I am often stating and citing that this is a new low standard for Parliament. I have thought at times that there was not much more it could do to this place to further erode the confidence of Canadians or further erode the opportunity for members of Parliament to speak, yet it has again invented something new, and here we are today debating that motion.

That is why we believe that Standing Order 13 needs to be called. It is because it is very clear that when a motion is moved that is contrary to the rules and privileges of Parliament—which is what I would underline, as it is the important part—the Speaker must involve himself or herself in the debate and ask that the debate no longer proceed.

The privileges of members of Parliament are not the privileges that are being talked about by our friends down the hall to falsely claim money that did not exist or privileges of limo rides and trips around the world. The privileges of Parliament that speak constitutionally to the need for Parliament are that members of Parliament have the opportunity to scrutinized and debate government bills.

Just before the riding week, we saw the government introduce another time allocation on a bill that had received exactly 60 minutes of debate. Somehow the Conservatives felt that had exhausted the conversation on a bill they had sat on for years, and suddenly the panic was on. We are seeing this pattern again and again with a government that is facing more scandal.

I was looking through the news today. Every morning I start my day with the news and we consider what we should ask the government in question period. There are some days when the focus can be difficult and one may not be sure what the most important issue of the day is. However, the challenge for us today as the official opposition is that, as there are so many scandals on so many fronts, how do we address them all within the short time we have during question period or in debate on bills.

I listened to my friend for Langley, who has been somewhat in the news of late on his attempt to speak on issues he felt were important to his constituents. We saw him move a new private member's bill today. He withdrew the former bill, and now he is moving one again. The New Democrats will support the bill going to committee for study because we think there are some options and availability for us to look at the legislation and do our job.

Whether it is muzzling of their own MPs and the Conservatives' attempt to muzzle all MPs in the House of Commons, or using private members' bills to avoid the scrutiny that is applied to government legislation, and one important piece of that scrutiny is the charter defence of the legislation and so, in a sense, the Conservatives are using the back door to get government legislation through and move their agenda in another way, or the omnibus legislation, which has received so much controversy in Canada as the government has increasingly abused the use of omnibus legislation, or the F-35 fiasco, or the recent Auditor General's report, or the former parliamentary budget officer who was under much abuse and the new Parliamentary Budget Officer who has asked for the same things he did, or infamously, prorogation, time and time again the pattern is the same. The government has complete disdain for the House.

Whether it be the scandals in the Senate, or the China FIPA accord, or the recent problems with the Prime Minister's former chief of staff, or the employment insurance scandals, or the $3 billion missing, or the 300,000 jobs that have not been replaced, the government keeps trying to avoid proper scrutiny out of embarrassment. However, the House of Commons exists for one thing and one thing alone, which is to hold the government to account.

The government will make some claims that the urgency right now is because there has not been enough progress on legislation. Therefore, the Conservatives have to hit the panic button and would have the House sit until midnight, which has consequences beyond just being a late night, and I will get into those consequences in a moment because they support our notion that it infringes upon the entitlements of members of Parliament to debate legislation properly.

The Conservatives' record shows, and this is not speculation or conspiracy, that when they ram legislation through, they more often than not get it wrong. That is not just expensive for the process of law making, but it is expensive for Canadians. These things often end up in court costing millions and millions of dollars and with victims of their own making. The scandal that exists in the Senate is absolutely one of their own making. The Prime Minister can point the finger where he likes, but he appointed those senators.

Specific to the point of order I am raising, this motion would lower the amount of scrutiny paid to legislation. It would allow the government extended sittings, which are coming in the second week of June anyway, as the Standing Orders currently exist, to allow the government to do that, but the Conservatives want to move the clock up and have more legislation rammed through the House.

Also, as you would know, Mr. Speaker, the order of our day includes concurrence reports from committee, which allow the House to debate something that happened in committee which can sometimes be very critical, and many are moved from all sides. However, they would not get started until midnight under the Conservatives' new rules. Therefore, we would study and give scrutiny on what happened at committee from midnight until two or three o'clock in the morning.

As well, emergency debates would not start until midnight. Just recently we had a debate, Mr. Speaker, that your office agreed to allow happen, which was quite important to those implicated. We were talking about peace and war and Canada's role in the world. It was a critical emergency debate that certainly went into the night. However, the idea is that we would take emergency debates that the Speaker's office and members of Parliament felt were important and start them at midnight and somehow they would be of the same quality as those started at seven o'clock in the evening.

The scrutiny of legislation has become much less important than the government moving its agenda through, which is an infringement on our privilege as members of Parliament. The Conservative's so-called urgency, their panic, is not a justification for overriding the privileges that members of Parliament hold dear.

As for progress, just recently we moved the nuclear terrorism bill through, Bill S-9.

We also had much debate but an improvement on Bill C-15, the military justice bill, to better serve our men and women in the Forces. The original drafting was bad. The Conservatives wanted to force it forward and we resisted. My friend from St. John's worked hard and got an amendment through that would help those in the military who found themselves in front of a tribunal.

We have the divorce in civil marriages act, which has been sitting and sitting. It would allow people in same-sex marriages to file for and seek divorce. All we have offered to the government is one vote and one speaker each. The government refuses to bring the bill forward and I suspect it is because it would require a vote. It is a shame when a government resists the idea that a vote would be a good thing for members of Parliament to declare their intentions on, certainly something as important as civil liberties and rights for gay men and women.

I mentioned earlier why, in the infringement of this privilege, it causes great harm and distress not just to Parliament but to the country.

I asked my team to pull up the list of bills that were so badly written that they had to be either withdrawn or completely rewritten at committee and even in the Senate which, God knows, is a terrible strategy for any legislation.

There was the infamous or famous Bill C-30, the Internet snooping bill, which the Minister of Public Safety said something to the effect that either people were with the government or they were with child pornographers, which may be an example of the worst framing in Canadian political history. There has probably been worse, but that was pretty bad. The Conservatives had to kill the bill.

We have also seen Bill C-10, Bill C-31, Bill C-38 and Bill C-42, all of these bills were so badly written that oftentimes the government had to amend them after having voted for them. After saying they were perfect and ramming them through, invoking closure and shutting down debate, the Conservatives got to committee and heard from people who actually understood the issue and realized the law they had written would be illegal and would not work or fix the problem that was identified, and so they had to rewrite it. That is the point of Parliament. That is the point of the work we do.

We have also seen bills that have been challenged at great expense before the courts. Former Bill C-2, the tackling violent crime act, with huge sections of the government's main anti-crime agenda, was challenged and defeated in court.

Bill C-38, arbitrarily eliminating backlog for skilled workers, was challenged and defeated.

Bill C-7, Senate term limits, was after years just now deferred to the Supreme Court. It is called “kicking it down the road”.

Also, there are Bill C-6, Bill C-33 and others, and there are those that are being crafted and debated right now that are going to have serious problems.

The essential thrust of our intention is in identifying the rules that govern us, and specifically Standing Order 13. The government has time and again talked about accountability before the Canadian people and talked about doing things better than its predecessors in the Liberal Party, the government that became so arrogant and so unaccountable to Canadians that the Conservatives threw it out of office. History repeats itself if one does not learn true lessons from history.

As I mentioned, Standing Order 27(1) already exists, and it allows the government to do exactly what we are talking about, but not starting until the last 10 sitting days. The Conservatives have said that there is so much on their so-called agenda that they have to do this early, allowing for less scrutiny, allowing for emergency debates to start at midnight, allowing for concurrence debates that come from committees to start at midnight and go until two, three or four o'clock in the morning.

This is contrary to the work of parliamentarians. If the Conservatives are in such a rush, why do they not negotiate? Why do they not actually come to the table and do what parliamentarians have done throughout time, which is offer the to and fro of any proper negotiation between reasonable people?

We have moved legislation forward. My friend across the way was moving an important motion commemorating war heroes. We worked with that member and other members to ensure the bill, which came from the Senate, made it through speedy passage.

Parliament can work if the Conservatives let it work, but it cannot work if they keep abusing it. Canadians continue to lose faith and trust in the vigour of our work and the ability to hold government to account. We see it time and again, and I am sure, Mr. Speaker, you have as well, in talking to constituents who say that they are not sure what goes on here anymore, that it just seems like government will not answer questions, that everyday they ask sincere and thoughtful questions and the Conservatives do not answer. Bills get shut down with motions of closure.

Let us look at the current government's record.

Thirty-three times, the Conservatives have moved allocation on legislation, an all-time high for any government in Canadian history. Through war and peace, through good and bad, no government has shut down debate in Parliaments more than the current one.

Ninety-nine point three per cent of all amendments moved by the opposition have been rejected by the government. Let us take a look at that stat for a moment. That suggests that virtually 100% of the time, the government has been perfectly right on the legislation it moves. All the testimony from witnesses and experts, comments from average Canadians, when moving amendments to the legislation before us, 99.3% of the time the government rejects it out of hand. It ends up in court. It ends up not doing what it was meant to do.

Ten Conservative MPs have never spoken to legislation at all. I will note one in particular. The Minister of Finance, who has not bothered to speak to his own bills, including the omnibus legislation, Bill C-38 and Bill C-45, which caused so much controversy. He did not bother to stand and justify his actions. I find it deplorable and it is not just me, Canadians as well, increasingly so.

This is my final argument. We cannot allow this abuse to continue. This pattern has consequences, not just for what happens here today or tomorrow, but in the days, weeks, months and years to come and the Parliaments to come. If we keep allowing for and not standing up in opposition to bad ideas and draconian measures, we in a sense condone them.

We say that Parliament should become less irrelevant. We think that is wrong. We think what the government is doing is fundamentally wrong. It is not right and left; it is right and wrong. When the government is wrong in its treatment and abuse of Canada's Parliament, that affects all Canadians, whatever their political persuasion. We built this place out of bricks and mortar to do one thing: to allow the voice of Canadians to be represented, to speak on behalf of those who did not have a voice and to hold the government of the day to account. Lord knows the government needs that more than anything. It needs a little adult supervision from time to time to take some of those suggestions and put a little, as we say, water in its wine.

It has the majority. This is the irony of what the government is doing. In moving more time allocation than any government in history and shutting down debate more than any government in history and using what it is today, it speaks to weakness not strength. The Conservatives have the numbers to move legislation through if they saw fit, but they do not. They move legislation, they say it is an agenda and they hold up a raft of bills.

Economic Action Plan 2013 Act, No. 1

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will take this opportunity to voice my disappointment and opposition with respect to the various measures set out in Bill C-60, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 21, 2013.

Once again, I am sorry that the government has decided to move a time allocation motion to limit debate in the House. This denial of democracy is especially appalling since Bill C-60 contains many amendments that will affect Canadians directly.

It is important to point out that this bill amends close to 50 laws, including a number of things that have nothing to do with the budget, strictly speaking.

Rather than splitting it up so that we can study it in-depth in committee, the government wants to impose its views in a mammoth bill for the third time in this Parliament. The Conservatives are rejecting good democratic sense, without any consultation and without in-depth debate.

What we are getting is yet another austerity program that will in no way help Canadians re-enter the workforce and that will keep the country on a precarious path.

Tax increases, tariff hikes and the elimination of tax credits for labour-sponsored funds and co-operatives: the outcome is that Canadians have less money in their pockets, have access to fewer services and are the primary victims of the Conservatives' action.

As the Parliamentary Budget Officer reported this week, budget 2012, the 2012 economic update and budget 2013 alone will lead to the loss of 60,000 jobs by 2017, and a 0.57% drop in the GDP.

This determination to make massive cuts is unacceptable because they will inevitably cause an economic downturn. What the Conservatives are doing is weakening Canadian growth to serve some backwards ideological imperative.

Issues related to immigration and the temporary foreign worker program have a prominent place in this bill. It is therefore essential that we pay special attention to them.

First, the Conservatives were true to form with regard to the temporary foreign worker program. They waited until they were backed into a corner before reacting. They waited until the very last minute to make adjustments to the program. Today, without any consultation, they quickly and with great fanfare announced adjustment measures.

In reality, what the government is announcing with regard to the temporary foreign worker program undoes everything the government has done since it was elected.

The Conservatives were pushing for an increased number of temporary foreign workers. Today, they realize that they went too far. They were allowing companies to pay temporary foreign workers 15% less than Canadians workers. Today, they admit that that was a mistake, even though they completely denied those accusations less than a week ago.

They announced a program to fast-track the processing of applications. Today, they realize that companies are taking advantage of this opportunity to replace Canadian workers.

The fact is that the Conservatives hastily went ahead with these measures without consultation, which is exactly the same criticism we have of Bill C-60 today.

The government's laissez-faire attitude has led to such debacles as the ones involving HD Mining and the Royal Bank of Canada.

We believe that the temporary foreign worker program must return to its core mandate, which is to allow companies to meet specific workforce needs for a temporary period of time when Canadians are not available to do the job, particularly highly skilled occupations.

The program must not be used to replace Canadian workers nor to cut companies' payroll costs, as the Conservatives have allowed.

Last week, Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of Canada, reiterated what the NDP has been saying for a long time.

The new user fees and the government's requirement for companies to submit a hiring and training plan for Canadian workers before being able to benefit from the program will penalize small and medium-sized businesses much more than large businesses.

SMEs will have more difficulty complying with these requirements since the costs will have a much greater impact on SMEs overall spending than they will on that of the big Canadian banks, for example.

Similarly, Bill C-60 gives the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism new discretionary powers. This is in addition to the powers he gave himself under Bill C-31 and Bill C-43.

Instead of putting the normal appeal process in place, the minister is once again setting himself up as both judge and jury in various immigration matters. As for other aspects related to immigration, the issue of fees is also cause for concern. It is important to point out that the new fees put forward by the minister for applications for permanent residence, citizenship and the temporary foreign worker program will not be subject to the User Fees Act under Bill C-60.

Accordingly, for these new fees, the minister will not have to consult with anyone, do any impact studies or inform applicants. In the last budget, the Minister of Finance gave Citizenship and Immigration Canada the latitude to increase various fees. Now he is giving that department carte blanche.

An application for permanent residence can cost over $1,500 with all the associated fees, and increasing costs even further will limit people's access to our immigration programs.

In addition to wanting to create a distinction between citizens with just one citizenship and those with dual citizenship, now the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism will also be creating a distinction between wealthy immigrants and those who are less well off. The government's decision to reduce that department's budget for integration services will have a direct and negative impact.

In closing, this House must work on behalf of all Canadians. Imposing major changes of this nature without sufficient debate shows carelessness and contempt for democracy.

The immigration measures announced in response to pressure in the House and in the media, particularly concerning the temporary foreign worker program, reek of improvisation and amateurism, as usual.

Once again, this government is demonstrating that it has no overall plan and it has no idea what it means to be accountable.

Business of the House

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to rise to ask the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons the usual Thursday question about what is on the agenda for the rest of this week and for next week.

This week's calendar has once again shown the utter lack of a plan from the government. Of the five days the House was sitting, four have been assigned as opposition days.

Yesterday, the one day the Conservatives actually chose to debate government legislation, they demonstrated once again their total lack of respect and fundamental disregard for Parliament and democracy by shutting down debate after only a few hours.

This was, in fact, the 31st time, in this Parliament alone, the government used the guillotine of shutting down debate, setting the all-time record for any government in Canadian history, in only two years.

The pace the Conservatives are on right now is that once every seven days, the government moves a motion to shut down debate on some bill or another.

Perhaps we will have a chance to discuss the new bill announced earlier this week. This bill has to do with the NDP motion presented on a previous opposition day calling on the government to amend the Canada Elections Act to prohibit tactics like the ones used in Guelph in 2011 aimed at suppressing votes.

As soon as the Conservatives announced that this new electoral reform act was coming, they had to immediately announce that they had to scrap that same plan, as they discovered so many flaws in their own legislation.

This may be reminiscent for Canadians, because they had to change fundamental mistakes in their own immigration bill, Bill C-31. They never even got to Bill C-30, the Internet snooping bill. It never saw the light of day. The Conservatives had to wait until its omnibus crime bill got to the Senate before they could fix the fundamental flaws, because they so rushed it through this place with closure.

The government is totally out of ideas and out of gas. I beg the hon. House leader across the way to give us something, anything, that shows us that the Conservatives are doing something for hard-working families and Canadians in our economy.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Your Excellency, thank you very much for your remarks. I think you were here for Bill C-31, and we thank you for that, too.

As you know, members of the committee will now have some questions for you, and perhaps for Ms. Williamson as well.

Mr. Menegakis is first.

Response to the Supreme Court of Canada Decision in R. v. Tse Act

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise today to say a few words on Bill C-55.

There are many thoughts I would like to share with members, albeit we are somewhat limited in terms of time.

I want to pick up on two or three themes. I always take great exception when the government does things in a fashion that ultimately is disrespectful to the functionality of the House.

It is a privilege to be a member of Parliament, and I value the role I get to play. I thank the constituents of Winnipeg North for allowing me to represent them. I am also very grateful for the Liberal Party allowing me to respond to the different bills and so forth.

When I look at what the government is doing here, I find it is once again somewhat disrespectful. We need to recognize that the Supreme Court of Canada made the decision that precipitated the legislation before us. This decision was not made a month ago or two months ago. This decision was made back in April 2012.

The government has known for months that it needed to change the legislation. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever that could justify the delay it has taken in introducing Bill C-55.

What the government has done through procrastination is put the House of Commons in a position where, if we want to respect what our Supreme Court has ruled, there is pressure on its members to pass the legislation not only through second reading, but also committee, third reading and so forth, before April 13 of this year.

Today is the first opportunity to debate the bill. It is a significant issue. One has to question why the government—former Reformers and now Conservatives, as the members call themselves—has taken a different approach to dealing with legislation.

Members will recall the two massive budget bills in which the government, through the back door, made amendments to dozens of pieces of legislation. I am somewhat surprised that the government did not include this change. I guess the minister responsible did not think about it, or maybe he did not get the message from the PMO that the budget bill was coming forward. I am glad that at the very least the minister did not take advantage of the budget bill.

The government has been bringing in a record number of time allocation motions. I have a fairly lengthy list, and I will not go through the entire list. Some of these issues of time allocation were quite significant, whether it was on back-to-work type of legislation, the gun registry, a pension plan, the Canadian Wheat Board, Air Canada, Bill C-31, Bill C-27 or numerous other bills.

All of these deal with opportunities that members of Parliament have to provide due diligence and go through the legislation in a timely fashion to ensure the legislation is debated and that ideas will stem out from those debates, ultimately seeing it going to the committees and allowing them to do their jobs. Hopefully the government is then sympathetic to recognizing that its legislation quite often needs to be amended. Amendments come from many members on a wide variety of legislation.

Therefore, today we have a very short window. I suspect time allocation will be placed on this bill. However, there is a high sense of co-operation from opposition parties. On behalf of the Liberal Party, the Liberal Party critic was able to address the bill earlier today and indicated that we were very comfortable in seeing the bill go to committee. We recognize the importance of that.

That does not excuse the government of its irresponsible behaviour in not providing the House the respect that is necessary when dealing with legislation. It should be held accountable for taking so long in bringing this legislation before us.

However, the Liberal Party will behave responsibly and do what it can to get it to committee. We hope the government will be sensitive to possible amendments to the legislation. We recognize the bill does deserve attention at committee and understand that hopefully there will be some changes brought forward.

There are four things that Bill C-55 attempts to do.

It requires the ministers of public safety and emergency preparedness and the attorney generals of each province to report on the inception of private communications made under section 184.4. That is a positive request. It is something that the Supreme Court did not require. It is a reporting mechanism and there is great merit for it.

Bill C-55 provides that a person who is the subject of such an interception must be notified of the interception within a specified period of time. We must give thought to what the appropriate amount of time is. Hopefully that will come out in committee. We are very much aware of the importance of our charter and the protection of our privacy. There has to be a balancing of the public good and life-threatening situations and so forth. However, there also needs to be protection for individuals who ultimately might be subjected to a warrantless wiretap. I suggest the committee would do well to have some dialogue as to whether it should be 90 days or less than that and what the arguments and concerns are. It would be interesting to hear what the stakeholders would have to say on that point.

It would narrow the class of individuals who can intercept a wiretap. My understanding is that it is more general today. What the government wants to do is narrow it to include police officers. Hopefully, we will have some dialogue at committee stage regarding contracting out. Many municipalities hire private services related to security and policing. How will they be incorporated, or will they be incorporated?

Again, there is an opportunity with respect to the limits of those interceptions for offences listed in section 183 of the Criminal Code. We can appreciate that when that type of authority is issued, we should be very careful in terms of when and for what circumstances it would be utilized. Two things that come to mind are life-saving measures or kidnappings. These are the types of things where timing is of the essence. There might be a requirement for us to ensure that law enforcement officers are able to get the necessary information as quickly as possible.

The minister and others have talked a lot about section 184.4. That is really what we are talking about and that is what the Supreme Court made its ruling on. In going through some notes and, in particular, comments by judges, I thought I would share two that are really important to recognize and are related to section 184.4, which deals with the warrantless wiretapping provisions.

The first quote was said by one of our court judges:

—the privacy interests of some may have to yield temporarily for the greater good of society — here, the protection of lives and property from harm that is both serious and imminent.

I find that to be a most appropriate statement. This is why I raised this a few minutes ago. It is important for us to take a look at the most appropriate time frame. When someone's telephone conversation is being tapped into and the individual is not aware of it, what is an appropriate amount of time between the law officer making a recording of a conversation and the individual's right to know that recording was in fact made? From what I understand, the bill suggests 90 days.

The judge has correctly pointed out the importance of this to the public. We need to recognize that it outweighs the private interest. However, in the same breath, it is still important the private interest be protected in some fashion.

The second quote is as follows:

Section 184.4 contains a number of legislative conditions. Properly construed, these conditions are designed to ensure that the power to intercept private communications without judicial authorization is available only in exigent circumstances to prevent serious harm. To that extent, the section strikes an appropriate balance between an individual’s s. 8 charter rights and society’s interests in preventing serious harm.

I wanted to read those quotes because I believe very passionately in the charter. I believe the vast majority of Canadians over the years have recognized how important it is to protect and refer to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms because we have taken ownership of that over the last 30 years. We need to do what we can to always reflect on that.

Earlier today, I had the opportunity to ask a number of members a very important question that many took for granted, and I want to use a couple of examples.

I am the critic for citizenship and immigration. I have been frustrated by the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration and some of the legislation he has brought forward. The question I posed to members earlier was related to the obligation of government ministers, with regard to the changes they are proposing at the draft stage, to get a better sense of whether these changes would meet the requirements of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms or pass a constitutional challenge. This has been an important issue for me because it has been raised in committee on several occasions. In fact, there is a group of lawyers and doctors in Toronto that is going to the Federal Court questioning the constitutionality of the decision made by the minister to cut back health care services to some of the most vulnerable in our society.

We have challenged the minister on that and it is now going to a federal court. We are not confident that the minister knew what he was doing when he brought in that change. Through Bill C-38, the minister made changes that ultimately excluded hundreds of thousands of skilled workers. Again, we questioned that. Not only does it come across as a very cruel and inhumane policy change, but when the minister brought in the change it was, and is being, challenged by a federal court. In fact, there was a ruling made by one court in Ontario indicating that the minister was wrong. I am not sure where this is at within the Department of Citizenship and Immigration, but that is another issue.

Then we had the issue of detention, which is where committees really are of benefit. We had a minister who was going to put people in a detention centre without any real right of appeal for a year, but at committee stage we were able to make some serious changes to that proposal. However, it took a whole lot to do it. Again, we had presenters at committee who said that this would not meet a constitutional challenge. That is important.

In looking at the justice area, I always thought that Bill C-30 was an interesting bill when it was introduced. I understand that the government has now withdrawn Bill C-30, but one of the arguments in that regard was that it did not go far enough in its provisions to give police officers wiretapping power over Internet services. Now Bill C-30 has come to a standstill, with the government backing off from it for a wide variety of reasons. That said, I question whether or not the current section 184.4 is something that would have been able to deal with many of the measures suggested in Bill C-30. Is that one of the reasons the government is not moving forward with the legislation? If so, one could question why it brought forward the bill in the first place. What happened regarding the exploitation of children on the Internet? Is that issue addressed in section 184.4? I am interested in knowing the answer, as I do know there was an attempt to deal with that issue in Bill C-30.

When I look at Bill C-55 as a whole, I do see merit in it going to committee, where I am interested to see what will take place. Hopefully, there will be some discussion relating to Bill C-30 because there might have been possible amendments to it that would benefit Bill C-55. Canadians are concerned about the exploitation of children over the Internet. I do not know to what degree Bill C-55 could assist in extreme circumstances in dealing with that issue.

We look forward to the bill going to committee. I hope and trust that the government will look at bringing legislation in a more timely fashion to the House and allow members the necessary diligence, without being rushed to pass bills to meet a deadline such as the Supreme Court's decision.

Citizenship and Immigration

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, if we are going to talk about the file in respect to immigration, let us look at Bill C-31 in terms of the refugee reforms in this country, or Bill C-43, the faster removal of foreign criminals act. We can look at the work that has been done within this ministry time and time again to get backlogs down to ensure that those who have high skills and need to work in this country are going to get here on a much faster basis. All of those backlogs are down. We are doing what is right for the Canadian economy in terms of how we are focused on immigration and we are going to continue to do that.

Report Stage

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank you for the time I have been given.

I would like to take this opportunity to speak out against the direction that is being taken with Bill C-43 and the Conservatives' attitude when this bill was examined in committee.

The Conservatives are incorrectly implying that we have certain motives. We will never support those who commit serious crimes, but we are concerned about this bill, which once again gives the minister more arbitrary power.

I would also like to remind members of the importance of democratic debate. The use of the time allocation motion, which is once again muzzling us, is a shining example of this government's closed-mindedness. The Conservatives have adopted a completely uncompromising attitude, which we also noticed in committee.

The implementation of Bill C-43 will make significant changes to the way newcomers to Canada are treated. It is inconsistent with the Canadian justice system, our country's precepts of compassion and our humanitarian mission. Many of the measures in this bill will have a major impact on the current system.

First, the government is intensifying deportation procedures by limiting the barriers that act as a counterbalance. On one hand, any crime carrying a sentence of over six months in prison will result in automatic deportation. The government is therefore imposing a double penalty because the prison sentence will be combined with deportation. The Conservatives have also introduced a logic whereby people are not allowed to make mistakes. That is a shameful attitude.

On the other hand, Bill C-43 puts an end to appeals in cases involving sentences of over six months, which goes against the principles of our justice system. What the government is telling us is that people are not allowed to make mistakes and that they will be deported. And, under this bill, their families will be deported along with them.

This bill also gives the minister discretionary powers without requiring him to be accountable or transparent. He will now have the authority to declare somebody a threat because of public policy considerations. The minister will be the only counterbalance to himself because of the lack of appeal process, and the concept of public policy considerations is not defined in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

In addition, Bill C-43 indiscriminately lumps all of the consequences for misrepresentation together. As a result, whether the misrepresentation is intentional or not, the individual would be inadmissible for five years.

According to the Canadian Council for Refugees, not only is Bill C-43 inconsistent with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but it also deprives people of fair consideration of their applications. It denies them access to the principle of fairness before the law and to an independent legal process.

Furthermore, the organization is critical of these new measures whereby someone who fought against an undemocratic regime would be prohibited from entering Canada. Would people like Nelson Mandela constitute a threat to Canada's national security? I doubt it.

A number of issues in this bill that we wanted to fix with our amendments are problematic. We pointed them out to the government, and we were backed up by witnesses in committee. We wanted the government to use common sense and look at the potential impact of Bill C-43.

By agreeing to go to committee, our parliamentary wing showed a willingness to be open and to compromise. We wanted to work on improving the bill. What we were asking for was warranted and realistic and would have improved the bill. Unfortunately, the government refused to listen to our suggestions and improve the bill. Instead of being pragmatic, the government insisted on justifying an ideology and regressive measures and on promoting division.

The Conservatives' statements have done everything to paint refugees and permanent residents as dangerous people, potential terrorists or people who come here only to take advantage of the system. These days, anyone who is not a full-scale citizen will not be recognized and will be considered by the Conservatives to be a foreigner with no room for error.

All along, the Conservatives have used extraordinarily rare exceptions to justify their bill, forgetting the majority of applicants, forgetting the people who will be directly affected by Bill C-43. When we expressed concerns about the impact of the bill, the government accused us of being soft on fraudsters.

When a witness stated that because the police in the country engage in racial profiling, Bill C-43 would disproportionately affect visible minorities, the expert was accused of siding with criminals. Our work in committee was constantly marred by these kinds of demagogic and poisonous comments.

This attitude must be brought to light and condemned. We wanted to debate the bill and discuss it. We were proactive and submitted proposals. But the government wanted to advance its political agenda. The Conservative ideology, which is focused on security, is helping create a system that functions by exception. This system will severely limit the fundamental rights of certain categories of immigrants.

We tried to help improve Bill C-43 while it was being studied in committee. We proposed nine reasonable amendments that addressed previous criticisms. Unfortunately, all of the opposition's amendments were flatly rejected.

In keeping with the ethical principles that guide Canadian parliamentarians, we proposed that the minister act transparently and report any decisions made through the use of his new discretionary powers. This request was rejected by the Conservatives. In so doing, the government refused to make the minister accountable to the people. It objected to the idea that the minister should provide details about the discretionary decisions he makes.

In accordance with the overarching legal principles of the Canadian system, we proposed reinstating the right to appeal, which Bill C-43 does away with. The Conservatives rejected our proposal, thereby rejecting a fundamental principle of our justice system: judicial appeal.

The Conservatives seem proud of the fact that the minister will have the power to review cases, but they neglect to mention that, as a result, he will be judge and jury. To limit the scope of Bill C-43, we suggested that the government clarify the notion of public policy considerations, which is not defined in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. We wanted to clarify the factors involved in the minister's discretionary decisions. Once again, the Conservatives refused to listen to reason.

Lastly, we wanted to clarify the procedure for interviews requested by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. We suggested that the government allow individuals to be accompanied during these meetings. The government has done away with the right to legal advice and the presence of a lawyer. We wanted a fairer process for applicants, but the Conservatives rejected our amendment.

In conclusion, our party will not support Bill C-43 because of its impact on the immigration process, the government's unwillingness to consider our amendments and the fact that this measure is at odds with our legal system. Contrary to what the Conservatives would have everyone believe, we do not support criminals. We support immigrants and Canadians. The Conservatives' stubborn determination to go it alone, to decide unilaterally, to avoid debate and discussion, will have consequences. The first of these will be a defective policy whose flaws will soon become clear.

Like Bill C-31 and Bill C-38, Bill C-43 is yet another stain on the Conservatives' immigration record. Once again, the government's actions are out of touch with reality and it is failing to consider the consequences of its actions. Once again, this government has refused to improve its laws in the interests of immigrants and Canadians. Once again, this government has taken a backward approach that conflicts with the interests of Canadians.

Bill C-43--Time Allocation Motion

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, this debate right now is about process. The government's House leader has failed Canadians in terms of respecting the proper procedures of the House of Commons. Generally speaking, we bring in legislation and allow for a free and open debate of all members of Parliament from all political parties. Time and time again, the government has brought in time allocation to prevent individual members of Parliament from engaging in debate that is critically important to their giving due diligence to the legislation before them, whether Bill C-43, the Canadian Wheat Board, the pooled pension legislation, the gun registry, the back to work legislation, the financial system review act, budget bills, CP, Canada Post, Air Canada, Bill C-31 and the list goes on.

The Conservative government, unlike any other government in the history of the chamber, uses time allocation as a way to ram through its legislation. My question is for the government House leader or the Prime Minister. How does he justify to Canadians his continuous abuse of the privileges of members of Parliament by not allowing us to stand up and voice the concerns of our constituents and of our—

[Les Linklater]

The short answer is yes, we have the authority, and we actually have been sharing with Ontario a considerable amount of information around the status of claimants, largely spurred by the Ministry of Community and Social Services, in terms of querying CIC about the status of individuals who are applying for Ontario Works.

As we moved forward with Bill C-31, Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act, we have redoubled efforts initially with the Province of Ontario, given that about two-thirds of all refugee claimants in Canada are found in Ontario. We've been working with the province to ensure that our ability to share information between CBSA, the IRB, CIC, and the Ministry of Community and Social Services is as agile as it can be under our current legislative parameters. And we are working to have in place a more systematic approach to information sharing that would respect privacy rights and principles, but would get at this issue that has been raised around individuals who have received negative decisions or should have departed Canada, that they are no longer eligible to collect social assistance.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for coming again. I can see that a lot of great work is going into this from the different departments and that you are looking at the years ahead as biometrics and everything finally get rolled out.

As we know, in Bill C-31, our friends across voted against biometric provisions.

Les, can you tell us why biometric information is important and how it's going to help with the protection and safety of all Canadians overall?

Citizenship and Immigration

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to table petitions with hundreds of signatures from people in my riding of Scarborough—Rouge River who are calling for the repeal of Bill C-31. The petitions are with respect to the fact that Bill C-31 concentrates more power in the hands of the minister by allowing him to name safe countries and restrict refugees from those countries. It also restricts access to humanitarian and compassionate considerations and would arbitrarily designate irregular arrivals and the mandatory incarceration of people who are arbitrarily designated as irregular arrivals.

The petitioners are calling upon the Government of Canada to repeal Bill C-31, which they call the “punishing refugees act”, and return to the framework of the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, which was passed with the support of all parties during the last parliamentary session.

Business of the House

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I know you look forward to this with some expectations.

I am honoured to rise on behalf of the official opposition to ask the government what it has planned for the House for the rest of this week and for next week.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the government House leader appealed to you to reject the idea of allowing separate votes on separate questions facing this House. He did so on the grounds that the amendments would not be accepted by the government anyway. What is the point of us trying to fix bad Conservative bills? According to the Conservative government, reviewing and amending bills is some sort of annoyance that it wants to do away with entirely.

However, the truth is that the government has had a terrible record of getting its own legislation right. It is a bit like trying to unpack a Russian Matryoshka nesting doll. Let us review.

Bill C-4 was panned by so many critics that we lost count. It was left to die on the order paper by the Conservatives.

Bill C-10, the omnibus crime bill, was panned by the opposition. We tried to amend it but the Conservatives rejected the amendments. They then tried to make those very same changes later on, which you, Mr. Speaker, had to reject. The changes finally got made in the unelected and unaccountable Senate down the way.

Bill C-30, the Internet snooping bill, was so bad that, once explained by the Minister of Public Safety to Canadians, the Conservatives refused to even acknowledge that it was ever in existence. That was some bit of political spin, “You're either with us or you're with the other folks”.

Bill C-31 was panned by the opposition and others. The Conservatives had to amend it at the committee themselves.

Bill C-45, the monster budget bill and the second omnibus bill, actually includes many provisions to fix the first monster omnibus bill in the spring.

This would all be funny if it were not so serious and would have such an impact on the lives of Canadians.

Lastly, I want to say how disappointing it is that the government chose to be partisan instead of saving lives in the developing world, when it voted against Bill C-388 yesterday. This bill would have made it easier for Canada to send generic medications to those who need them most. What an unacceptable decision on the part of the Conservative government.

What does the undemocratic leaning Conservative government have in store for Canadians next?

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Thank you very much, Ms. Clarke.

I know that part of this stems from the transparency with respect to Bill C-31, when we talked about safe country of origin and how we moved it from being a regulatory piece attached to the bill and included that transparency right within the bill itself, but those are exceptions to the rule. I credit the opposition and Ms. Sims for pushing on when we dealt with this issue in Bill C-31, agreeing in a convincing way that it was important to have that transparency.

That is not the regular process upon which we build legislation and, as indicated, the framework that will be utilized on negative discretion will be built into regulation. In fact, it's already public. Ms. Sims is correct. She read from the document itself, and that is a document which will be the guiding lamppost in terms of decision-making for the minister.

The fact that we need to maintain some discretion beyond that is critical. I hope the opposition understands that there are circumstances which would elude the information brought forward. If we were to put it in the legislation, it would prevent us in certain circumstances from being able to make a decision that would be necessary.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We also have Richard Kurland, who has been here zillions of times. I always enjoy it when he's here. I don't know where he stands on things, but I always enjoy his presentations. It's good to see you, sir.

Mr. Kurland is a policy analyst and lawyer, and he has been here before on Bill C-31 and the immigration backlog.

We'll start off with you, Professor Gilbert. You have up to eight minutes to make a presentation.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

You've mentioned Bill C-31, which has to do with the bogus refugee claimants. We had someone from CBSA here back on February 14, and in terms of removing someone from Canada, he talked about general costs of $1,500 just to remove them—I believe it was $15,000 if you had to have someone escort them out of the country.

It's interesting that you've mentioned the large costs associated with Bill C-31, but outside of people coming to Canada and just claiming refugee status when they're not refugees, this eTA system will actually provide general savings in different areas.

[Les Linklater]

Well, as I said, in terms of rejected claimants, under the new system that's coming on stream toward the end of the year under Bill C-31, we estimate taxpayer costs at about $29,000 a year for a failed claimant. If we're able to address a number of those issues, particularly from countries that are visa free—Hungary for one, where we do have a large influx or have had a large influx of refugee claimants from a country without a visa—the eTA is another tool to help us manage those pressures as well.

[Les Linklater]

We see where other countries are going, particularly the United States, which has had ESTA since 2008, with good success and from which we are learning. A clear example would be issues related to refugee claimants. Under the current system, we estimate the cost to Canadian taxpayers for a rejected claimant runs up to about $50,000 a year with regard to access to social services, welfare, and that sort of thing. With the new system that's coming on board later this year, further to Bill C-31, we would expect those costs to go down, given the shortened period of time that individuals are in Canada, but it's still a significant amount, $29,000 or $30,000 a year.

With eTA, if there are questions around legitimacy of traveller intent and an eTA is refused, then that's a cost avoidance of $30,000 per refugee claimant under the new determination system.

Citizenship and Immigration

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in my second petition, the petitioners call upon the Government of Canada to repeal Bill C-31, which they call the punishing refugees act, and return to the framework of the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, passed with the support of all parties in the previous Parliament, as the current bill, Bill C-31, concentrates way too much power in the hands of one minister.

[Richard Goldman]

Please read very carefully the sections that we cite at footnote 5. She is caught by proposed paragraph 35(1)(a). The proposed subsections that you just mentioned do not apply to proposed paragraph 35(1)(a). She cannot ask for ministerial relief. Persons who are excluded from protection under article 1F(a) of the convention and therefore inadmissible on proposed paragraph 35(1)(a) have never been able to apply for ministerial relief. They have been able to apply for permanent residency on humanitarian grounds. Bill C-43, under clauses 8 and 9, is taking that away. We didn't talk about it under Bill C-31. Bill C-31 didn't take it away. Bill C-43 is proposing to take it away.

Moving to the—

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

You're making my argument for me. She actually, then, has the opportunity under Bill C-31 to apply for H and C—

[Richard Goldman]

She does. This legislation does many things.

One of the things it does is it takes away the right to apply on H and C grounds for permanent residence of people who are excluded under section 35. As it's explained in our brief, by being excluded from refugee protection under article 1F, she is automatically excluded under section 35. Our citations are there. The sections of the law are there. It's all there. The reason we didn't raise this when we came on Bill C-31 was that Bill C-31 didn't take away the right of people like Salma to apply on H and C grounds. This piece of legislation, under clauses 9 and 10 of Bill C-43, does take away her right to apply for permanent residence on H and C grounds. That's—

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

I'm intrigued by your example. I suppose we're all using them to make our points here on the bill, and I appreciate that. I think all of us have the ability to do that and should be allowed to use examples to explain what we're talking about.

Salma, the person you're talking about—which is not her real name, but I understand the need to protect her—wasn't a permanent resident. She was applying for refugee status. You're relating a case that you could have presented under Bill C-31, when we did our hearings on that bill. I'm not sure why you're presenting a case of a refugee on Bill C-43, which specifically deals with those who already have permanent residency. She doesn't have permanent residency. If she was coming from a foreign country and was applying to come to Canada, and if she had been convicted in her own country or charged and it was believed to be true, she would not be admissible to Canada, but she could actually go to the Federal Court to try that. She could also apply under H and C because she actually isn't in the country yet.

I'm not sure why you're bringing this case in under Bill C-43. She's applying for refugee status, so she's not a person who falls under this piece of legislation. She'd fall under Bill C-31.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to present a petition on behalf of voters to rescind Bill C-31, which, as we know, will restrict immigrants' rights and refugee claims and will give more and more arbitrary powers to the minister responsible.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I also have another petition signed by hundreds of people who live in my riding of Scarborough—Rouge River and who are calling for the repeal of Bill C-31, which they are calling “the punishing refugees act”.

Because Bill C-31 concentrates more power in the hands of the minister by allowing him or her to name safe countries for refugees around the world and restricts access to humanitarian and compassionate consideration, the undersigned petitioners call upon the Government of Canada to repeal Bill C-31, the punishing refugees act, and to return to the framework of the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, passed with the support of all parties in the previous Parliament.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I'm going to introduce our guests.

We have Barbara Jackman, who is an immigration lawyer. She's been here before on Bill C-43.

We have Robin Seligman, who is an immigration lawyer as well. Hello again.

We have David Matas, who has also appeared before, on Bill C-31. Good afternoon to you, sir.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

As a fellow parent, Ms. Rosenfeldt, I want to thank you for being here, and more importantly, for your service to our country. Congratulations on your recent recognition in receiving the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal. It's an honour to have you with us today.

Mr. Bissett, thank you for coming back and for your very clear testimony. It's been useful for us to hear.

Let me first touch on the use of humanitarian and compassionate grounds, which have been used to shelter people who come to Canada as war criminals and are able to use that shelter to delay their deportation.

Can you comment further on the provision in Bill C-31 that is designed to remove the ability for someone who is an acknowledged war criminal to delay deportation?

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to submit a petition on behalf of residents of Toronto, over 50% of whom were not born in Canada.

The petitioners continue to express serious concerns about Bill C-31 and, among other things, the dividing of refugees into tiers based on their country of origin and unnecessarily punishing them as a result.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

All right.

What I'm going to do is ask the clerk to ask her. She's no longer before us. She's still here, so we will ask the clerk whether that information could be made available, and I'm sure it will be.

Mr. Brouwer, finally we get to you. You're a familiar face. You've been here several times, on security and Bill C-31.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you very much.

Minister, it's really good that you can be here for two hours today. I know you have a very busy schedule and a very active file that keeps you and the rest of us busy.

Minister, I believe all Canadians want a tough approach to non-citizens who commit serious, often violent crimes in our communities. Newcomer communities, the vast majority of whom are law abiding and follow the rules, would be among the first to agree with this sentiment.

As you know, I made it clear when this legislation was introduced that as a responsible opposition we are ready to work with the government to ensure that criminals of all backgrounds are not allowed to abuse our appeals process. But I want to make it clear to you today that our support in principle at second reading is not a blank cheque, and I am serving notice to you today that we expect the government to work with us to make sure that we protect Canadians and respect due process and the rule of law at the same time.

I will be blunt. We have serious concerns about the bill being proposed here. We are concerned with both its effectiveness in dealing with the issue of non-citizen criminality as well as its extraordinarily wide scope. In particular, Bill C-43 grants you sweeping new powers. The last thing your immigration system needs is to be criticized even more. The reality is we have a good independent system for determining admissibility, and we don't need it to be replaced at the whim of any minister.

What you've handed out here today, the handout we've just received—and just taking a cursory look at it, what struck me is that what you've handed out here are just guidelines. They will still be guidelines to you, with the discretion resting with you or with another minister.

Three times since I became the official opposition critic for immigration on refugee health cuts, on Bill C-31, and again on this legislation, you have introduced sweeping reforms only to have to backtrack under pressure. It is a clear sign that these reforms are being rushed through without proper consultation. We are hoping that on this piece of legislation you will be willing to listen to the stakeholders and the opposition to ensure that we have a piece of legislation at the end of the day that protects both Canadians and the rights of newcomers.

I notice, Minister, that your presentation gives some examples of some very egregious cases, which we agree with you we would want to have removed. However, I always hesitate when we make sweeping changes based on a few anomalies, instead of trying to attack those specific anomalies by fine-tuning the system.

On the note of consultation and listening to the opposition, my first question to you relates to your comments in the media last week when you promised to engage members of this committee on the section of this law that would allow you to bar foreign nationals from entering Canada for overly broad public policy considerations, which, I think even you must agree, captures almost everything in the world. While we appreciate the olive branch, my question is, why do we need this at all? Our border services already have the power to bar people who are a threat to our security or whose actions constitute crimes, including hate speech in Canada.

Would you be open to scrapping this ill-considered part of the legislation?

Border Crossings

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, in fact Bill C-31 is just coming into force. We have not yet taken any of those measures that the act provides for.

That member opposed Bill C-31. In fact, his website says that he opposes Bill C-31 and now he is calling upon the government to implement Bill C-31. That is the kind of hypocrisy that he should be going home and telling his constituents about, that on the one hand he supports Bill C-31 but on the other hand he does not.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is truly shameful to see how Canada has become a laughingstock in recent days because of our national security.

For days, the Minister of Public Safety has stubbornly repeated that all is well at the Stanstead border crossing. He continues to ignore the situation and repeats that Bill C-31 will magically solve the problem of smugglers. In the meantime, 11 people managed to cross the border and were not intercepted until they reached Magog.

It is time for the minister to realize that Bill C-31 is an utter failure and that cuts will not solve anything at the Canada Border Services Agency.

Will the minister finally take the situation seriously and wake up once and for all?

Citizenship and Immigration

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in the second petition, Canadians continue to be concerned about the Conservative government's plans for immigration and refugees as expressed in Bill C-31. This petition widely criticizes the government and raises several concerns about this issue. I would like to table that today as well.

Public Safety

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, we do know that it is not the NDP that is preventing any of that, whether it is drug trafficking, human trafficking or guns. That party voted consistently against all of the measures, including Bill C-31, that this government has taken in order to stop those measures.

The member can go back to his constituents and tell them that he sat down on the job when he should have been standing up and voting with us on Bill C-31.

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, as I have said on numerous occasions, our government increased front-line officers by 26%, but while we were doing that, that member was voting against Bill C-31, the legislation that provides tools to address exactly the issue the member is now complaining about.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

I was really glad to hear what you had to say, Ms. Douglas. I'm also someone who cares a lot about human rights. We probably have a lot in common. I created the Canadian Constitution Foundation, which is there to stand up for Canadian individuals when governments are pushing them around.

I think if we ask the wrong question, we may end up with the wrong answer. If we ask whether we have concerns about people who are wrongly detained, I would say yes, I regret that there are people who are detained who ultimately should not have been detained. If instead we ask whether we should close down the whole refugee system because we can't identify people, or because we don't have the security measures in place, then obviously, we'd be denying all those people who are truly being persecuted in their far-off lands. You and I and everyone else in the room would say that this was a wrong decision.

I think the parallel, and I'll get Mr. Grant to comment on this in a second, is whether we abandon our criminal justice system for fear of a wrongful conviction. We're humans, and we have imperfect human institutions, and there will be mistakes, no matter what we do. But most people would say that we still need a criminal justice system. Then we work progressively to improve its accuracy.

What I understand we're doing by looking at things like biometrics is improving the accuracy of our decisions so that we are, in fact, going to be detaining the right people. We will still detain people who ought ultimately not to have been detained, but that's the price for having the refugee system, isn't it?

I looked back at your comments in April when you were discussing Bill C-31. You said that you were concerned about the characterization of refugees and that the Canadian people may develop an increasingly negative perception of refugees. Wouldn't it be true that they would be even more negative if we didn't have security provisions in place to give them confidence that we can continue our refugee program?

Could you comment on that?

[Debbie Douglas]

When we look at the examples from our allies around the world who have alternative to detention programs, they do a test based on vulnerability and therefore risk.

For example, women who are travelling with their children are often not detained when there is a reasonable belief that they do not pose a threat. Often they are put in alternative shelters while their identity documents are being worked out.

Sometimes folks come from countries where it is not possible to determine their identities. We do have failed states and people make their way to our country. The question then becomes, do you keep those people in detention indefinitely, or do you take the reasonable risk that they are not a threat to us and place them in more appropriate shelter or living arrangements? That is certainly something we could take a look at.

What was interesting when we were having this conversation in Buffalo with our U.S. counterparts is they said that over the last four years Homeland Security made an intentional decision to switch their focus and resources around issues of criminality. Instead of going after folks for immigration purposes, for ID purposes, and detaining them, they put all their resources into going after those who had committed crimes, whom they had deported but who had come back into the country and were continuing to commit crimes. Then they worked with, unfortunately in the United States it's for-profit organizations, to create an alternative to the other folks whom they were dealing with on immigration and ID issues only.

I think there's a conversation to be had here in Canada in terms of what we should be doing other than detaining everyone until we determine their identity or because they've come in through what we deem to be irregular arrivals or whatever the implementation of Bill C-31 is going to bring.

[Debbie Douglas]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Dykstra, when we received the invitation we looked very carefully at the scope of the study, and we made sure that detention and deportation would fit within the scope of the study. That is why we have chosen to speak to these two issues this afternoon.

In terms of the children, it has been well documented that the incarceration of anyone, but particularly children, has a detrimental effect. The front line workers in OCASI's member agencies often speak to this.

Many of those in detention are coming from traumatizing situations, and being detained retraumatizes them. We believe that the trauma done to children is deeply troubling, and is something that will have long-term effects.

While statistics show that the majority of those who are detained are let go within about 20 days, a significant number of people are detained for much longer. The longer they are held, the worse they are affected, and the greater difficulty they have in adjusting to life outside of detention.

Detention is an expensive proposition for the government, in terms of the damage it does to human beings and the long-term health and social costs, but also in terms of economic costs, such as the costs of building and maintaining detention facilities around the country. We anticipate that with the implementation of Bill C-31 we will see those numbers increasing.

I've said all of this because I want to talk about alternatives to detention.

I, too, attended the bilateral meeting that was held a couple of weeks ago, which was co-hosted by the Canadian branch of UNHCR as well as the U.S. branch of UNHCR. Both Citizenship and Immigration and CBSA presented, along with their colleagues from Australia, the U.S., and Sweden. What was surprising to those who were representing Canada there is that we seem to be way behind in terms of any formal program that looks at alternatives to detention.

You heard from the previous witness that Australia in particular has programs where they've built in conditions that address issues of security. We're not talking about looking at alternatives to detention that would allow, for example, war criminals to get out of detention, but about paying particular attention to those who are at low risk, those who are vulnerable, for example, pregnant woman or people in the deportation stream who are ready to go home and have no need to be in detention.

Here in Canada the only program we are able to point to as an example is the Toronto bail program. It's certainly something we can build on. Australia works very closely with the Red Cross, but also with other civil society organizations and NGOs. They have set up quite extensive and effective programs where those who do not belong in detention and are going through the process, either for ID purposes or deportation purposes, are able to live in the community until such time as they are removed from the country. We believe—and they have testified to the fact—that this is certainly more humane and cost-effective. Compliance is in the 90th percentile.

It is certainly something I'm strongly recommending. The time has come for us as a country to look at a national formal alternative to detention program. I would love to have a conversation about that when I'm finished.

Before my time is up, I also want to talk about the second point, which is the impact of the Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act. My concerns are based on two factors. First—

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Sorry, Mr. Chair. I know that Ms. Douglas has strong feelings, which I happen to disagree with, about detention, and that's fine. That's the great thing about this country. But the fact is we are dealing with the security of this country in terms of how we can make sure our borders are more secure. I fail to understand the relevance of how children not being with their parents in detention, or the age of those children, is relevant. It was very relevant with respect to Bill C-31. In fact, we changed the clauses within the legislation based on some of the presentations, such as Ms. Douglas's. But I really would like to hear what she believes will make for a stronger secure border, and not necessarily about issues which, while relevant to the ministry, are not relevant to what we're working on right now.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Ms. Douglas, I really appreciate your being here today. You know a lot, and you did a great job on Bill C-31 in terms of presenting your position. But we're studying the security boundaries of the country, and I hope you're going to get to that point. I know your feelings—

[Debbie Douglas]

I promise not to use up my whole 10 minutes, after my last time here and your great patience with my going over time.

Mr. Chair and members of the committee, I want to thank you again for this opportunity. I apologize for not having copies of my remarks for you. Time ran away on us, unfortunately.

We would like to address two items in your area of study. I will begin with the issue of detention.

The committee has already heard that the majority of people detained for immigration reasons are being held because of identity issues, or because they are waiting to be deported and have been considered a flight risk. The majority of those in detention are in immigration holding cells and the rest are in provincial jails.

We are deeply concerned about both situations, but especially the latter, the fact that people who have not been charged or convicted of a crime are being held in the same conditions as those who have are being punished.

While immigration holding centres are different from provincial jails inside, whenever the person needs to go outside for something such as medical attention, she is often handcuffed and shackled and treated as if she were a criminal. I know you have that report. It was part of the presentation to you by Dr. Cleveland in April on Bill C-31.

We know that people being held in immigration detention will often forgo medical treatment because they wish to avoid the humiliation and trauma of being treated like a common criminal.

Children in detention are an ongoing concern. I know that my colleague, Jenny Jeanes, spoke to that as well. Already they are being held with their parents under our current laws.

We were glad to see that when Bill C-31 came back, the government had removed the automatic detention of children. While it's not written into Bill C-31, the reality is that unfortunately, young children will end up in detention with their parents because otherwise, they will be separated from the only person—or persons, if both parents are being detained—they know and trust, as opposed to being left with strangers.

Either situation seriously affects children and their parents. It is not surprising then that many parents choose to have their children with them. I think the last time I was here I talked about that as putting parents in a position of no choice, where they have to choose between having their children detained or giving them up to the custody of the state.

Our concern includes as well that children between 16 and 18 years are detained. The committee has heard from government witnesses that 500 children were in detention last year, and these were refugee cases. Some of our colleagues who have appeared before this committee have already noted that those figures may not capture the full scope of which children are in detention with their parents—

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Yes, but if the state determines within that 48-hour timeframe that the person doesn't qualify for refugee status and then sends him back, my point is that there are countries in the world that have a lot less of a timeframe to prepare a case than we do in Canada, and that is with Bill C-31.

It leads me, Ms. Jeanes, to a couple of points. One of the points you made when you were here with respect to Bill C-31 was to request, as many of the witnesses did, that we go to the facilities across the country. We did. We went to all three of them. We viewed them in-depth and went through each and every one of them. In fact, we had lunch at Laval just to get a clear understanding of what the food was like there, because that was another one of the complaints that a number of you brought forward.

You said today that although we went, one day doesn't qualify as a true interpretation of what happens there. I have to say that while I have my own specific understanding after visiting the three facilities which model we should be running, Laval isn't one of them. I find that the comments of organizations that are not Amnesty International and are not Red Cross....

You don't have any specific obligation under any provincial or federal government jurisdiction. You're free to go there and visit with potential refugees and those who are being detained there, but you don't have any official responsibility to do so on behalf of any government.

[Jenny Jeanes]

Okay.

However, most of the families that I have met in detention include young children between zero and five, even breast-feeding children, where it is not reasonable or even possible for the children to be separated from their parents. One of the key problems with accompanying children is that the IRB does not consider the best interests of these children when deciding whether to maintain detention for or release the parents.

I would like to share stories of some of the families we have met in detention.

One is about a woman refugee claimant from Ethiopia and her three children, ages four years, three years, and eight months. At her seven day review, her lawyer presented a known shelter for women and children refugees as an alternative to detention, arguing that considerations should be given to the presence of three young minors in detention. However, detention was maintained, and the family spent 29 days in detention, during which the children were ill and had to be taken several times to hospital.

A female refugee claimant from Somalia was held with her young son who was quite ill. After more than 40 days their detention was once again maintained, despite affidavits from family members in Canada as to their identity, despite the presence of an alternative, and despite arguments about the child's health.

Some parents share with us the difficulties their children face in detention, including fear, trouble eating or sleeping, or physical discomforts. Other parents indicate that while their children do not seem disturbed by being in the centre, their own stress and anxiety have negative effects on their children.

The next point I would like to address is that of the detention of vulnerable persons, including the elderly, those experiencing physical or mental illness, pregnant women, or unaccompanied minors.

One of the problems that arises with vulnerable persons who are detained for identity is that once the decision has been made to arrest and detain, vulnerability is no longer directly relevant to the decision to release or maintain detention. There is no clear direction for either CBSA or the IRB to consider release due to vulnerability or compelling circumstances.

In 2009, I met a 75-year-old woman from the Democratic Republic of Congo in the holding centre, a refugee claimant detained on identity. She had a significant language barrier and health problems. An alternative was offered from the day she was detained in the form of a community worker who spoke her language and was willing to provide shelter and support. This alternative was endorsed by her designated representative, a social worker. However, the woman spent 17 days in detention, which was very difficult for her since she was unwell and had trouble communicating even via an interpreter.

In our experience, many vulnerable people end up in detention, which creates an enormous strain not only on them, but on CBSA's resources, and yet often suitable alternatives exist. It would seem there is a lack of clarity as to how to address vulnerability.

In 2010, CBSA conducted its own internal review process called “CBSA Detentions and Removals Programs - Evaluation Study”. In the final report released in November 2010, CBSA identified areas for improvement in detention, including better training on mental illness, and the need for clearer guidelines as to how to address vulnerable persons, since the wording of enforcement manuals was found to be insufficient. This was seen to result in inconsistencies across Canada. For example, minors, persons with mental health issues or other special needs were extremely unlikely to be detained in the Atlantic and prairie regions, unlike other regions.

A special mention should be made of unaccompanied minors. Although there is greater clarity in the law and regulations as to detention being a last resort, we have seen numerous cases of unaccompanied minors spending nearly a month or longer in detention, despite alternatives existing. In one fairly dramatic case, the unaccompanied minor herself had a baby with her, was breast feeding, and had family members with whom she could stay in Canada.

My next point focuses on the inability for IRB members to adequately review detention on identity grounds. Unlike flight risk or danger to the public, immigration division members cannot overturn the initial decision to detain on identity made by a CBSA officer, no matter how much evidence the detainee has provided, or how fully they are collaborating, and certainly not based on any compelling circumstances.

Sometimes new evidence is provided at detention reviews that was not available to the arresting or investigating officer, including new documents or significant testimony. Board members' experience in handling detention cases allows them to develop a familiarity with the identity issues, but they do not have the power to satisfy themselves of the person's identity, no matter how much experience they have.

In one case, a Kurdish refugee claimant appeared for review after having spent 40 days in detention on identity grounds, in part due to doubts as to the authenticity of two UNHCR identity documents. At the review, a letter from the UNHCR was provided to the board member confirming the authenticity of the documents; however, the board member was unable to render a decision on identity and instead provided an additional 12 days of detention for CBSA to confirm the information.

In other cases, documents with security features have been found to be authentic and verifications completed, yet CBSA calls for detention to be maintained for other factors, such as waiting for a passport to arrive. In such cases, the board member is unable to overturn CBSA's opinion on identity even when multiple elements confirming identity are present.

All of these factors place a strain on CBSA resources when alternatives are often possible, but I would like to focus on the strain it places on detainees. During our weekly visits, we hear from refugee claimants about how hard they find detention.

One of the most common things we hear about is the shame they feel at wearing handcuffs. Handcuffs are a powerful symbol of punishment for most. We also hear about the shame of being under constant surveillance, the fear of deportation, and chronic physical discomfort such as constipation and fatigue.

We regularly meet detainees who speak no English or French.

The toll that detention takes on the mental health of refugee claimants has been documented in the research of Janet Cleveland from McGill University.

There is the added stress of having to prepare one's refugee claim while in detention, with no privacy and with obstacles to communicating with family or legal counsel. Detainees regularly express distress at having to prepare their personal information form within 28 days. This will be exacerbated with the shorter delays under Bill C-31.

In light of all these observations, I believe there is the potential for far more consideration of alternatives to detention by both CBSA and the IRB. This would reduce the human costs of detention and also the considerable financial costs.

I recently had the opportunity to participate in a binational round table meeting on alternatives to detention, which was organized by the UNHCR. Many examples of alternatives were provided. It was clear that alternatives can be effective and necessary, and that one key element is to develop tools for early screening of vulnerable persons.

The UNHCR has published new guidelines on detention that provide fresh direction to states as to when detention is reasonable, proportionate, and necessary, and when alternatives are appropriate. They call for an assessment of the overall reasonableness of detention, taking into consideration all factors, including special needs or considerations.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I call the meeting to order.

This is the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, meeting number 53. Orders of the day, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), are our study on “Standing on Guard for Thee: Ensuring that Canada's Immigration System is Secure”.

For the first hour we have two witnesses. One is here with us today all the way from Montreal. From Action Réfugiés, we have Jenny Jeanes. You have been with us before, on Bill C-31. You're the program coordinator. Thank you for coming again today.

All the way from London, England, by video conference, we have Lutz Oette, counsel with the group REDRESS. Sir, can you hear me?

Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-43, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. This legislation includes many provisions relating to immigration. Some are valid and interesting, while others seem less appropriate.

In short, the bill grants more power to the minister by giving him the authority to rule on the admissibility of temporary resident applicants. It removes the minister's responsibility to review humanitarian and compassionate grounds. It grants the minister a new discretionary power to issue an exemption for a member of the family of a foreign national who is deemed inadmissible. The bill also amends the definition of “serious criminality” to restrict access to the appeal process following an inadmissibility ruling. It increases the penalty for false representation and, finally, it clarifies the fact that entering the country by resorting to criminal activities does not automatically lead to inadmissibility.

I would like to begin by sharing something with hon. members. I am always a bit uncomfortable when we talk about immigration, and that is for a very simple reason: I am not myself an immigrant. I live in the country in which I was born. I never have to question myself. I live in my home country, with my relatives and with my language. My cultural references are the same as those of the majority around me. I never had to consider emigration as an option. If I left to live elsewhere, it would only be for a while. It would not be emigration but, rather, an extended stay.

I know what I am talking about, because I lived abroad. I once was the one who had to adapt. I had to work hard to learn how to function in a foreign language that I did not fully master. I developed new social skills that I was not familiar with. In Russia, I changed. I developed a bit of Russian in me. Thanks to this subtle change, by the time I left Moscow, I had acquired a Slavic heritage that will always stay with me. Mores vary from one country to another.

At the same time, because I was forced to adapt to this otherness, I was becoming increasingly more Quebecker and Canadian. I understood more clearly what it meant to be born in Canada. I could not but realize that the relationship I had with my country was one of trust. I knew that Canada would always be there for me.That trust generated a feeling of pride. I am convinced that many here know what I am talking about.

If I mention my stay in Russia, it is because I want to make us think. During the debate on Bill C-43, we should think about our relationship with the rest of the world. We have been debating the reform of the immigration system since last fall. I am referring to Bill C-4 and Bill C-31. I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to Bill C-43, because it gives me a chance to level a criticism at the government. Not only am I not pleased with the tone used by the government when it talks about immigration and refugees, but I am even more upset by the tone and the comments of some members of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.

I do not want to preach to anyone, but, for me, it is important to distance myself from the unenlightened remarks we sometimes hear. Pride in one's own country should not give rise to disdain for another's. Nor should it necessarily give rise to an undue fear of foreigners. That is silly and simplistic.

I remain convinced that the government's interest in ethnic communities that have settled in Canada is purely mercenary. The government is not comfortable with immigration and even less so with refugees. My impression is that they see jihadists and smugglers everywhere. I am not accusing them of that; it is just the impression I get. I am sorry.

That said, of the three government bills to reform the immigration system, Bill C-43 is the least contentious. It deals with the faster removal of dangerous criminals.

Who could be opposed to that, really? Not the Canadian public, not the NDP. Canada is not a haven for failed tyrants, multimillionaire dictators and petty mafiosi of every description.

In support of this bill, the government wants to show us lists of expert witnesses who agree that dangerous criminals should not be allowed into the country. Really? What a revelation.

I can assure the government that no one, anywhere, wants people who are guilty of serious crimes to be walking free among us and abusing our hospitality.

But I wonder what the government plans to do in order to really crack down on these criminals and to protect Canadians. That is the burning question because the answer is turning out to be a little disappointing.

Basically, Bill C-43 gives more discretionary powers to the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism. The minister will be the one to decide who can stay and who must leave right away. So he will become a kind of James Bond, working 28-hour days to protect Canadians from evil, twisted foreigners and their illicit master plans.

Bill C-43, like Bill C-4, gives the minister more arbitrary powers. I am well aware that we have to crack down on criminals who would come here and put our peaceful communities at risk. No one would ever say otherwise; but why must it be the minister who decides?

The answer is simple. It is so the minister can cut off the appeals launched by those charged with crimes. The minister could then decide to kick out anyone filing an appeal, or, let us come right out and say it, everyone filing an appeal.

All this will help us save time and money and will send the problem far, far away to other less sympathetic shores. When you get rid of a problem, have you not solved it?

With this bill, the government says it is attacking a specific, urgent problem by creating a legal limbo and opening the door to arbitrary measures. This is worrying. How far will the minister's authority go? Where will the limits to these new powers be set?

I just want to say to the government and to the minister that granting discretionary authority is not the answer to every problem. The minister cannot micromanage everything by himself in his office as soon as an exceptional case turns up. That is not a system, that is a despot.

Another very important detail is that they want to prevent all family members of a convicted criminal from visiting Canada. They have been careful to cast a wide net. The idea behind this is that the members of a Mafia family, or some kind of gang or the families of overthrown dictators will not be able to come to Canada and will not be able to bring their problems here. It is clearly a desirable goal, in and of itself. However, there are always exceptional cases, even though they are rare, and the minister's discretionary powers will not be intermittent. They will be enshrined in legislation and create a legal limbo that will last forever.

Furthermore, this is a huge undertaking. All family members of criminals sentenced here or abroad will have to be identified, and the road to Canada barred for them. Since the departmental cuts were made, this difficult task will have to be carried out quickly and well with fewer human resources.

The government wants to get rid of the backlog in the immigration system by creating massive research projects for immigration office employees. I imagine there is no other solution.

What I am saying is that the substance is good, but the form seems deficient. The government wants to protect Canadians and better manage our immigration system. The New Democratic Party recognizes that immigration is a priceless resource for Canada and wants to ensure that our system is effective, professional, swift and reliable.

The NDP also recognizes that action must indeed be taken to prevent the abuse of our system. The government is trying to resolve the issue, but it is going about it the wrong way. We think this is a worthwhile bill and that it must be studied in committee. We have already said that Bill C-43 has many admirable elements that deserve our support. In particular, the NDP is pleased that the bill exonerates the victims of human smugglers and that their victim status is guaranteed. Apparently, the government has learned not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I listened carefully to the speech by the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism when he introduced his bill. I find it somewhat disorienting to hear him use the word “foreigner” to describe people who have not officially obtained their Canadian citizenship even though they are permanent residents.

All of us, without exception, are the descendants of immigrants. I am getting tired of seeing the Conservatives dismantle what has taken decades to build: Canada's reputation as a compassionate, equitable and fair country. A country that stands up for itself, that knows how to say yes, but also knows how to say no and how to show someone the door when it is necessary, as is the case with serious criminals. I do not want to hear that such and such a budget has tripled; frankly, in a department the size of Immigration, money is not everything. We are not dealing with columns of numbers. We are dealing with human beings who have often been more unlucky than we have. I would appreciate it if the government would stop hiding behind its accounting ledgers.

In conclusion, I am aware that the Conservative government has had to tackle immigration reform but is not terribly interested in it. And with good reason. As soon as the word “immigration” is spoken on the other side of the House, the word “economic” follows in the next sentence. They do not understand that some departments have obligations to the public, and are not just companies that must make a profit. A country is not run the same way as a business. But I am wasting my breath trying to tell them so.

Some institutions exist for reasons that are not strictly economic. Immigration is an inevitable global phenomenon and it will increase in the years to come. Canada would be well-advised to have its immigration system structured by people who see beyond simple economic interests.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join today's debate on Bill C-43, an act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. The government has tagged it with new lines, calling it the faster removal of foreign criminals act. It is unfortunate that these types of titles have now been introduced into legislation that is supposed to be very serious. This one is very serious. It is a continuation of our immigration drift.

We are going to support the bill to get it to committee because as New Democrats we believe our immigration system is fundamentally flawed and broken, and we are open to discussing how to improve it in any capacity. Some of the issues in the bill are going to be raised, and we will have some good expert testimony at committee to talk about these issues.

It is important to note that our immigration system is necessary in our country for us to function in an economic democracy. We do not have a population that can sustain itself alone.

We have been founded on the principles of multiculturalism and openness. That is changing because we are slowly eroding our immigration system. In fact, even in Windsor West, the riding I represent, I have an immigration office. The doors are shut. People cannot go there to get help on their immigration files.

Karen Boyce and Ian Bawden are in my office. Karen has been with me for 10 years and is finally going to retire at the end of December. I thank her for her commitment in all the cases she has strove through. In fact, many times on her own time she would actually get up in the middle of the night to call an embassy somewhere else to try to get paperwork or something processed. She would do that, literally, all the time. That is how dedicated she is. She has fought many times to have children pulled off planes, who were going to be deported to countries of which they never were actually part. They were born in Canada and their parents had been denied or their process for humanitarian grounds had not been accepted.

It is unfortunate, because when we look at an economy like ours in Windsor, it is critical that we have these processing issues taken care of rather quickly because we have so many people who cross the border into the United States.

I always use this example because I think it is important. We have a lot of doctors and other professionals who are not recognized in Canada and in Ontario who end up working over in Detroit, Michigan, and bringing that economic income stream back to our area. Ironically, sometimes when our hospitals are full here, or there is a specialty that we do not have, we send Canadian citizens over to those hospitals where they can be treated by the doctor who is not trusted over here in Canada. It is ironic that we pay a premium for it.

What is important is that we have many people who cannot get to their jobs until their actual immigration and processing have been completed. Often if we do not solve these cases they can lose those jobs. Those jobs are critical for our economy. The Canadian economy is not having the rebound we want, and I see it every single day on the streets of Windsor, so any extra employment that we can access in the United States is important. It has been a common thing that we have been doing for many years. It is one of the reasons we have a strong and healthy relationship. It is a symbiotic relationship between the Detroit greater region and Windsor Essex County. In fact it makes it a good economic strong hub. Part of that is the ability to traverse back and forth. Our immigration system is not contributing to success.

One of features of the bill that gives me some cause for concern is the concentration of power into the minister's office. At any time he can revoke or shorten the effective period of declaration for admissibility. That is one particular example.

The reason I am concerned is that I remember during the debate on Bill C-31, which was a refugee act that was changed, listening to the minister and the government members. The words they were using on Bill C-31 about the refugees in general were “protection”, “take advantage”, “security of population“, “abuse”, “crackdown” and “bogus”. With that type of tone, what are we going to have out of a minister's office that is going to have more capabilities and less control on oversight if that is the general theme and attitude about refugees?

I want to name a few refugees to Canada, because it is important to put a human face on our refugees. They are people like K'naan. He was born in Somalia. He spent his childhood in Mogadishu, lived there during the Somalia civil war and came to Canada in 1991. Is a person like that a threat? He is a refugee.

How about Adrienne Clarkson, our former Governor General of Canada? She emigrated from Hong Kong as a refugee in 1942. She came here, making her mark and contributing to Canada.

Fedor Bohatirchuk, a chess grandmaster who has since passed away, was persecuted in the Ukraine. He came to Canada and contributed for many years.

Sitting Bull, the Sioux chief, is an interesting one. He left America for Canada as a holy man who led his people as a tribal chief during the years of resistance in the United States. Sitting Bull eventually came to Canada from the United States and became a successful citizen.

In looking at some of these issues, I want to touch on one of the points that has been made with respect to criminal activity. Some of the comments that have been made by professionals are important.

Michael Bossin, a refugee lawyer in Ottawa, spoke about how those who have been convicted of an offence, even a small or lesser offence, can now be deported outside of the country, which will put them further at risk or in trouble. I used to work at the Multicultural Council. I had a program called youth in action. I will talk a bit about that in a minute. However, I want to mention that when refugees or youth commit crimes it is sometimes a cry for help; sometimes it can be due to mental health; sometimes it is just a really bad mistake; sometimes they do not have medication and it could be due to psychological issues that are taking place. When they get into programs that assist those people, they actually become better citizens and better people who are more engaged and contribute to society on a regular basis.

The issue of mental health in the general Canadian public is swept aside, let alone when it involves those who are involved in a criminal activity. It is important for judges to have more flexibility to be able to determine the case. Before I get into the work we used to do, I want to say that our judicial system has made some terrible mistakes. It is not perfect. Mistakes can be made when decisions are being made with respect to people. Maybe information is not presented properly, did not get there or was inadmissible. As we know, those who have money will get the best lawyer they can because they want the best representation. How many refugees in Canada are walking around with a pile of cash and can hire the best lawyer? I have often seen this issue come through my office. It is horrible that people have spent money on lawyers by borrowing it from other people or using credit cards and other types of things, which they find very difficult to repay because they do not have that economic stream going at the moment, and that puts them in an even worse situation. That is the harsh reality of our judicial system.

I want to talk a bit about the Multicultural Council program that I ran. We had 16 to 18 youth at risk between the ages of 18 to 30. I know they are called youth, but it went all the way up to age 30. However, they were usually in the 20-year range. We had eight Canadians who had been in Canada basically all of their lives, who had made mistakes that created a problem by way of a minor fine, a penalty or a criminal record. Then there were eight new people who had just immigrated to Canada. We mixed them together to create a program called multicultural youth in action wherein they did community work, learned all kinds of life skills and conducted interviews. We had an over 90% success rate at getting them back into school and/or employment. When we think about it, that program ran for several years and was very successful.

I will conclude with this. What we were able to do with some of those youth, and I say some because we could not get them all, was save taxpayers money because they were not going back into the judicial system or going into the penal system, where they would actually learn more behaviours and take a longer time to be rehabilitated, as opposed to paying the price for what they had done and learning to contribute as a citizen.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak on Bill C-43, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. I want to thank my colleague from Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing who just spoke. I could feel how passionate she is about this issue.

I also want to thank the hon. member for Newton—North Delta who has played such an important role in the House on immigration and refugee issues. I thank her for her fine work on that.

The bill addresses the issue of people who come to Canada and commit crimes. The timing of the bill is interesting, because it comes on the heels of some very serious, difficult and controversial changes in immigration and refugee policy that have touched many members of my own community in Parkdale—High Park. I am speaking specifically about the refugee reform bill, Bill C-31, and also about cuts to refugee health care.

Part of my community is a place where many newcomers first come to Canada. We have seen waves of refugees come from different parts of the world. There are many religious institutions and places of worship that are amongst the oldest in the city of Toronto, because my riding is the first stopping off point for many newcomers to Canada. We have the oldest continuously functioning Jewish schul. We have one of the oldest Hindu temples. We have religious institutions of various denominations.

More recently we have many refugees coming from places such as Tibet and Hungary, as well as other places in Eastern Europe. Something that has been very controversial in our community, and we have joined health professionals in opposing, are the changes to deny some refugee claimants health care benefits.

I have seen, first-hand, people in my community who are directly affected by these changes. It has not been helpful that certain communities, such as the Roma community, have been demonized by the government. It creates a situation that is unhealthy for them here, even prior to the status of their refugee claim being assessed.

It is interesting that the Conservatives are now introducing a bill to get the immigration discussion back into a territory where they feel more comfortable, and that is the tough-on-crime approach. I see that in the political context of dealing with refugee and immigration issues.

The bill would concentrate more power in the hands of the minister in terms of discretionary authority over the admissibility of temporary residents. He can declare a foreign national inadmissible for up to 36 months if in his or her opinion it is justified by public policy considerations. The bill also relieves the minister of the responsibility to consider humanitarian and compassionate situations such as taking into consideration the interests of a child. The minister no longer has to consider humanitarian concerns at all.

It also gives the minister new discretionary authority to provide an exemption to the family member of a foreign national that is “inadmissible” if the minister believes it is against the national interest, specifically examining national security or public safety.

There are also changes in the bill about what constitutes serious criminality. Previously a conviction in Canada resulting in a prison sentence of two years or more constituted an automatic revocation of a permanent or temporary resident's right to an appeal. This would revoke that right with a conviction of six months or more, which has to be explored and investigated as to what kinds of crimes we are looking at and who would be most likely to be affected.

It would increase the penalties for misrepresentation, taking them from two years to five years for inadmissibility for permanent resident status. One thing that is very positive in the bill is that it would clarify that if someone enters Canada as part of an organized criminal activity, that on its own would not constitute inadmissibility, which may be important to people who are trafficked into Canada through some kind of criminal organization.

While I believe Canadians are legitimately concerned about the issue of non-citizens who commit serious crimes in Canada, we have a concern about concentrating more arbitrary powers in the hands of the minister. The vast majority of newcomers to Canada, and I have direct experience with many newcomers in my community, are law-abiding people who do not commit crimes. We believe the Conservatives ought to spend more time and effort ensuring these people are treated fairly and are reunited with their families as quickly as possible.

Conservatives cannot have it both ways. We cannot take someone such as Conrad Black and welcome him back to Canada with open arms and claim, as the minister did, that this was independent of politics and handled by bureaucrats, and then introduce a law like this which clearly would concentrate more discretionary decision-making power in the hands of the minister. Suddenly he seems to have a conversion on the road to Damascus and wants to deport convicted criminals instead of welcoming them with open arms. That is quite a change. However, there are a number of other ways the minister could help, such as maybe no longer appointing his friends to the Immigration and Refugee Board and having a fairer process there.

While the issue of criminal activity and ensuring we are not getting the wrong people in Canada is important, we believe there are concerns that are not being taken into account. Mental health issues are a big area of concern. In my communities and in communities across the country, there are people who come here as refugees from war-torn countries. They do not get the kind of mental health support they need. We know there is a disproportionate representation of people who are mental health survivors in the prison system who desperately need help and would benefit greatly from help here in Canada, including many refugees whom deportation will not help.

Canadians would see people from war-torn countries being disproportionately rejected from Canada under the bill. Mental health is clearly a huge issue, as is the lack of ability to appeal. That is also left up to the discretion of the minister. The lack of appeal is something that has been criticized in other immigration initiatives by the government and is certainly something that I would question here.

While of course we support ensuring that Canadians are protected from criminals who would take advantage of our immigration and refugee system and come to this country and commit crimes, there are problems with the bill that need serious discussion, investigation and change in order to do the job that it is meant to do.

[Annick Papillon, NDP, Québec, QC]

Mr. Speaker, what else is there to say after the hon. member for Gatineau summed up the issue so well? I will say that it is with very mixed feelings that I take part in today's debate.

First, I want to stress that, yes, we do share the government's concern over serious crimes committed by individuals who are not Canadian citizens. However, we think it is just as normal to share some real concerns about Bill C-43.

This bill will prevent permanent residents and illegal immigrants who are sentenced to a jail term of six months or more in Canada from appealing their deportation order. The individuals convicted would then be sent back to their country 12 to 15 months sooner than if they could have pleaded their case before the Immigration Appeal Division.

Currently, only immigrants sentenced to more than two years in a penitentiary are deprived of that right. According to the Department of Immigration, over 2,400 convicted individuals are currently appealing to the Immigration Appeal Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board. The new rule would eliminate half of those cases.

The bill includes other changes to the act. For example, those who are inadmissible for serious reasons will no longer be allowed to apply to stay in the country on humanitarian grounds. Moreover, the Minister of Immigration would be given a new power. That is indeed the case. Another power is given to the minister. Obviously, he must have felt that all the powers given to him under Bill C-31 were not enough.

And now this government goes so far as to deny permanent resident status to an individual, for reasons of public interest. We can be sure that the courts will have their hands full, even though that is already the case.

Finally, under Bill C-43, a foreign national would also be denied entry to Canada if a member of his family is denied entry for reasons related to security, organized crime or war crimes, even if the individual who committed the crime does not accompany that person.

The immigration minister said that his Bill C-43 seeks to restructure the deportation of convicted criminals by restricting their access to the appeal process. The minister indicated that, currently, many immigrants who have been convicted of crimes can avoid deportation because they were sentenced to a prison sentence of less than two years. The term “many” should be put in perspective because, according to Statistics Canada, in 2010-11, 86% of all prison sentences were of six months or less. We want facts because facts show the real picture.

As I already mentioned, this bill seems to follow the Conservative government's alarming pattern of giving greater discretion to ministers in matters of immigration and public safety. The high degree of discretion that Bill C-43 grants to the minister with respect to issuing or revoking a declaration, which would prevent a foreign national from becoming a permanent resident for a maximum period of 36 months, seems to go too far and must be clarified. To justify the discretionary powers that he would be given, the minister said, “We just do not have the time.”

Unfortunately, a little bit of time is what some immigrants need sometimes, if only to fill out all the forms and paperwork, to ask questions and make telephone calls to find out where a certain document has to be submitted and by when. Furthermore, massive cuts are being made to Citizenship and Immigration's client service unit. It would not be very difficult for the minister to give them a little more time. It would be the least he could do.

Michael Bossin, an immigration lawyer in Ottawa, says that, in his experience, jail time for these young offenders teaches them a lesson, they get a job, become responsible, build a family and no longer pose a danger to the public. According to Mr. Bossin, with a stay of removal, a young immigrant reacts as though he were on probation and often changes his conduct. Mr. Bossin believes that the changes to the new law could result in the export of Canada's social problems and will not deal with the underlying causes of criminality.

Once again, this government relies on clichés far too often and it does not address the source of the problem. That is what it should be doing instead.

In addition, Mr. Bossin believes that people with a mental illness would suffer undue hardship if they were deported to a country where they are often stigmatized and punished because of their condition. On that topic, Ms. Lash, an immigration and refugee lawyer with community legal services in Ottawa, says that those changes will affect many individuals with psychiatric problems.

According to lawyer Joel Sandaluk, if Bill C-43 becomes law, it is likely to divide families. He states that this is going to destroy families who have been in Canada for a long time and that, if the parents or other family members are deported from Canada, this will do irreparable damage. The damage will be irreparable because we are talking about the lives of human beings. We must never forget that.

In addition, Andras Schreck, vice-president of the Ontario Criminal Lawyers' Association, said that Bill C-43 raises constitutional issues under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Lawyers across Canada are speaking up for the rights of Canadian immigrants, many of whom came to Canada at a young age. They were raised and educated here, they started families here and they started businesses here. Many companies in Quebec City were founded by immigrants who have received major awards for entrepreneurship. By the way, I congratulate them and I am proud of them.

The government's proposal is clumsy, because it is likely to have a significant impact on immigrants who do not have Canadian citizenship. In fact, the legislation will even apply to permanent residents who have been in Canada for decades.

As justification for this bill, the government has given examples of cases where immigrants have committed serious crimes and then used the system to delay their deportation for years. Those examples show flaws in the system, I agree. It is important to study the matter. We need to know what those flaws are and make sure that any gaps are plugged rather than resorting to stereotypes.

The NDP wants to move this bill forward in committee. Despite the bill's clear deficiencies, we want to hear experts give their opinions on the matter so that reasonable solutions to the problem can be found. New Democrats believe that it is possible to work with the government to prevent non-citizens who have committed serious crimes from abusing our system of appeals, and to do so without trampling on human rights. The NDP also supports those newcomers who want the government to focus on improving the fairness and the speed of the immigration system for the great majority of people who do not commit crimes and who live by the rules.

To conclude, this is one more bill where the Conservative government tells itself that there is nothing finer than to use its majority to push bills through and to steamroller over the opposition and especially over experts in the field. I have quoted a number of them here who confirm that we absolutely must take longer with, and go deeper into, social problems. This bill is oversimplified. We are showing prejudice and a lack of class in dealing with our immigrants. They are here among us and they function very well. In some cases, they are extraordinary people. I have met them, and frankly, they are models for our society.

I feel that it would be a real shame to remove these models, who are teaching our younger people profound and universal Canadian values. It would be a real shame to send these people back with their rights trampled on in this way.

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Canada has a reputation for being a welcoming country, but unfortunately, under this government, problems with our immigration system keep piling up. Instead of dealing with the cumbersome bureaucracy, the Conservative government has instead introduced another bill, on the heels of Bills C-4 and C-31, that will not do much and, in fact, will cause more problems of injustice.

Bill C-43 seeks to deal with crime and speed up the deportation of immigrants who commit crimes in Canada, but also of permanent residents who have become Canadian citizens.

My colleagues in the official opposition and I, along with colleagues from the other opposition parties, all agree that it is important to have a reliable and fair judicial apparatus. People who commit serious crimes and who are not Canadian citizens should indeed be punished, but let us not be deceived by this bill. The fight against crime is just a smokescreen. The real purpose of Bill C-43 is to give the minister more discretionary power and to remove all flexibility from the justice system and all independence from judges. This will only further politicize our immigration system instead of making it fairer and more efficient.

The bill will make a number of changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. I will name a few.

It will change the appeal process in certain cases, which goes against a fundamental right; permanent residents, refugees and illegal immigrants who receive a prison sentence of six months or more in Canada can no longer appeal their deportation; the bill will also allow authorities to hold at the border individuals who pose a risk to Canadians; it will require Federal Court judges to impose certain detention conditions on a person deemed inadmissible; it will put more powers in the hands of the minister—he could decide to deny temporary resident status if doing so is justified by public policy considerations interest, but unfortunately, the bill does not define “public policy considerations”; in fact, the bill gives the minister the power to define “public policy considerations” himself—; and the bill removes the right to appeal if the prison sentence was six months or more.

The first problem with this bill is that it does not differentiate between a minor offence and a serious crime, which is what the hon. Liberal member pointed out. An immigrant who receives a six-month sentence would automatically be deported. The right to appeal is revoked. In addition, the bill redefines “serious criminality” and includes minor offences. With no right to appeal and with such a broad definition, we can expect to see court challenges. This approach is not at all consistent with Canadian law.

The other problem, which is even more serious, has to do with the discretionary power the minister wants to give himself. He is the one who decides whether to issue a visa or not, but he is no longer required to consider the humanitarian circumstances of the situation. That is a double standard. In fact, we get the impression that the minister is targeting immigrants and refugees, forgetting that the vast majority of them are not criminals.

There is no question that this bill will end up eliminating the safeguards that allow our justice and immigration systems to deal with particular circumstances. Immigration officers and judges no longer have the power to examine the cases before them. That is quite serious. Judges have the power to judge, but they no longer have the power to do so properly. Way to go. The minister is imposing a standard model on the system. Abuse of power is a very real possibility. If the government makes mistakes, how will the people affected be able to defend their rights? They have no recourse, and that is serious.

The goal of the bill is commendable, but all those aspects give us reason to fear that there is a breakdown in our Canadian justice and immigration systems.

The fundamental question is this: do we want major decisions in criminal law to be made by a minister? In a state governed by the rule of law, such as Canada, the principle of balance between the judicial, governmental and legislative powers is essential.

Why is the whole process being so politicized? What is the justification for this discretionary power? The Minister of Immigration answered this recently by saying that he did not have the time, and added that it was important to act when foreign nationals were at an airport. It does not always happen like that, and things are not always so simple. In fact, it is always more complicated.

Too much haste could produce the opposite effect and create a system plagued by abuses of power, as we heard earlier. It could trigger legal challenges and lapses with regard to our international obligations. The bill's intention is good, but the text really needs to be improved, to ensure that it respects our basic rules of law. The entire immigration system needs to be reformed, but certainly not with the radical measures proposed by the Conservative government.

Our system is marred by bureaucratic problems and arbitrary decisions. Since the Conservatives came to power, there has been a backlog of over 1.5 million immigration applications. Parents and grandparents who want to be reunited with their children and loved ones wait, on average, for seven years before receiving a decision. Skilled workers have to wait an average of four years. Some spouses and children who were supposed to be given priority wait three years—and these are the priority cases.

Instead of accelerating the processing of claims, the government is cutting programs for refugees. The planned cuts to the interim federal health program will deprive some people of health care services. The Conservatives are proud of that. They claim to be champions of the economy, but in reality, they are failing miserably. Many immigrants are still waiting for their foreign degrees and experience to be recognized. The federal government could create tools to recognize foreign credentials and allow these skilled workers to contribute to our economic growth.

The Conference Board of Canada estimates the financial loss created by the failure to recognize foreign credentials to be $4 billion a year. And what about the partisan appointments to the Immigration and Refugee Board? Applicants' cases are not all treated the same way, and the criteria are not always applied consistently. Why does the government tolerate such an arbitrary and unfair process? This partisanship does not reflect well on Canada and denies immigrants access to a fair and equitable system.

This government treats immigrants like disposable objects. For example, it increased the number of temporary workers by 200% while allowing employers to decrease these workers' earnings by 15% as compared to the earnings of Canadian workers. Rather than encouraging the long-term integration of immigrants, the government is treating them like second-class citizens.

As the daughter of a refugee, I can say that the contribution of women and men, immigrants, refugees, people who come to start a life here is incredible. On average, newcomers are better educated and have a well-developed business sense. The rate of entrepreneurship among newcomers is very high, and they create jobs and participate in the local economy. We cannot assume that all immigrants are potential criminals. That is managing through fear. Foreign nationals can contribute to Canada both economically and culturally.

Let us also not forget that this country was built by people who came from all four corners of the earth and who chose Canada as their homeland. Why not improve our system to give skilled workers the opportunity to come and work in areas where there is a labour shortage? Instead, the government is cancelling the applications of 280,000 skilled workers, freezing sponsorship applications for parents and grandparents, and continuing to deny visas without reasonable grounds and without the possibility of appeal, thereby preventing families from being reunited for the weddings or funerals of their loved ones.

As New Democrats, we are in favour of a justice and immigration system that condemns violence, criminality and fraud. It is vital that we protect our country against criminals, while treating them fairly. We are prepared to work with the government on bills such as this one, but it must be improved and amended to make it acceptable from a legal standpoint. We believe that some aspects of the bill are constructive, but the traffickers at fault must be punished, not the victims.

Why do the Conservatives not put aside their ideology and make it possible for all of us to work on the bill in committee to make it better? It is possible for Canada to welcome newcomers and fight crime at the same time.

It is possible to do all that at the same time.

[Annick Papillon, NDP, Québec, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I was listening to my colleague from Beauport—Limoilou speak, and I thought to myself that this really is a Conservative government that is overreaching itself, that is going a little too far beyond the powers it should have. We see it granting itself discretionary powers in Bills C-31 and C-43, and now in Bill C-44. I know there are a lot of immigrants in my distinguished colleague’s riding, especially in the Beauport area. I am also thinking of them today.

In light of what we can see and what my colleague and his whole team can see on the ground in Beauport—the requests they get from those people—I would like him to tell us a little about how the people caught in red tape see things.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would first like to commend my colleague on his speech.

He reminded us of the importance of focusing on improving the immigration system to make it faster and more efficient with regard to family reunification, foreign credential recognition, and the situation of temporary foreign workers.

This bill redefines the notion of permanent resident in a fairly specific manner. In my opinion, we need to pay close attention to these profound changes. There has already been Bill C-31, and now there is Bill C-43. I think that the fact that the minister could potentially be given even more discretionary power is clearly a danger that we really need to pay close attention to.

Some stakeholders have pointed out something important about first-time offenders: that they could be deported even though they are not at all familiar with their country of origin.

What can my colleague tell us about this?

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak about Bill C-43 to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. This bill does have some potential, but it also contains some disturbing elements that, in my opinion, should be more thoroughly examined in committee.

In many ways, these amendments to our Immigration and Refugee Protection Act could lead to abuse of the system and abuse of power. Let us start with the clause that gives the minister more discretionary power. This clause gives the minister—not judges or the courts—the authority to rule on the admissibility of temporary residence applicants. In fact, this amendment allows the immigration minister to arbitrarily decide what risk a refugee represents, “if the Minister is of the opinion that it is justified by public policy considerations”.

Let us now move on to the clause that allows the minister to avoid the responsibility of examining humanitarian grounds in the case of a foreign national who is deemed to be inadmissible. My colleague just spoke about it. In Canada, the government wants to give the immigration minister the opportunity to review people's files to assess whether or not they should be deemed admissible. This would allow the immigration minister to be inflexible with regard to the extraordinary circumstances in which asylum seekers sometimes find themselves.

Let us add to that the clause that amends the definition of “serious criminality”, a clause that uses extreme cases to defend Conservative measures to combat crime. In Bill C-43, the Conservative government is once again introducing the doctrines of its crime agenda by applying them to immigration. Whether we are talking about Bill C-31 or Bill C-43, it is always the same thing with the Conservatives.

This bill penalizes all refugees who arrive in Canada. Instead of defining and setting out a framework for the legal treatment of serious crimes committed by non-citizens, Bill C-43, in its present form, punishes legitimate refugees, as well as the civil society organizations, lawyers and other people who are trying to help them.

Michael Bossin, a refugee lawyer in Ottawa, is of the opinion that the amendments to the new law could result in Canada exporting its social problems rather than dealing with the root causes of crime.

The minister said that he wants more power to intervene in order to deport criminals. In my opinion, he should spend less time organizing press conferences that paint a negative picture of newcomers, as in the announcements we saw recently, and instead provide police with the resources they need to protect us from criminals from all walks of life.

Instead of giving far too much vague power to the Minister of Immigration, why do the Conservatives not concentrate on improving the fairness and speed of the immigration system?

There are many immigrants in my riding. They represent almost one-third of the population of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine. I meet some of them every week when I return to my riding. In fact, I work on many immigration cases. I have one employee who works full-time on these cases because there are so many of them. The applications are straightforward and move along well. At the meetings, the applicants are given all the certificates, are told that they have been accepted and that they must forward their medical certificates. They wait for the certificates, but it takes months and months to get an answer. All the changes at embassies have made things worse.

There are many people who are good citizens and who have every right to come to Canada in the near future. There are problems with family reunification. There are people who want to come here to start businesses. Others want to come here to work and to live in a free country like Canada. But they sometimes have to wait up to 36 months before getting an answer, even if everything is in order. Even if a young 26-year-old man is moving here to be with his 25-year-old wife, even if these people will better Canadian society, even if they are going to work, are educated, are in perfect health and would make model Canadian citizens, they have to wait 36 months.

In my opinion, this type of bill should really address the problems we are currently having: the red tape involved and the slowness of the process. That is not what I am seeing. None of the bills introduced by our Minister of Immigration will solve the problem.

We have seen cuts to the embassies and more restrictions imposed on people who want to come here. The government is accusing immigrants and refugees of being criminals, but it is not coming up with anything to make things better. There is nothing in the bill about people who are here legitimately or about plans to help make the process smoother, because often it is an unpleasant and lengthy process. People anxiously await documents. The family in Canada is anxious as well. I think it would be better to include something to address that.

Hon. members will agree that most people whose application is rejected did not commit a very serious crime. Often the minister will nitpick about minor things and minor technicalities in order to have fewer people come here to Canada.

Most newcomers to Canada would like to be treated fairly and, more often than not, be reunited with their family members.

Bill C-43, as introduced in the House, gives far too much discretionary power to the Minister of Immigration and gives far too little importance to human rights. Nonetheless, as I have already said, it shows that the Conservatives have taken a slight step forward. The bill clarifies that entry to Canada as a result of criminal activities is not enough in and of itself to warrant a determination of inadmissibility. This measure protects the victims who are implicated in serious criminal activity.

The NDP supports measures to help victims of trafficking and the provisions that show respect for and openness toward the victims of trafficking. What is more, the NDP urges the government to support an efficient judicial apparatus that respects human rights.

The new legislation limits the right of a permanent or temporary resident to appeal to the Immigration Appeal Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, including in cases of extenuating circumstances for those who are sentenced to more than six months in prison and cases of appeals related to humanitarian considerations for those deemed inadmissible on grounds of security, violating human or international rights, or organized criminality.

Mario Bellissimo, a Toronto lawyer and a member of the executive of the immigration section of the Canadian Bar Association, said that it is misleading to designate permanent residents as foreigners, that they are casting the net too wide. If people make one mistake—even if it is a non-violent crime—they will be removed.

Mr. Bellissimo believes that Bill C-43 reflects the government's lack of confidence in the immigration tribunal and the Canadian judiciary.

Why should such important cases have to suffer because of the Conservative government's lack of political will?

These changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act require more careful examination. That is why we will send the bill to committee. As I said at the beginning, we think this is a good start and the bill has potential. There are still some immigration issues to resolve, but we must examine them carefully and determine how we will resolve them.

It can be sad when I meet with my constituents. The people who come to my office have often been turned down as refugees. They were asked for proof. I recall one young woman. I will not give her name or say where she is from, but she sought asylum because she had problems with the police in her community. But she was asked to prove that the police were not on her side. These are the kinds of situations that I would like to resolve, because when a person has problems with the police, it is hard to get a certificate saying that the police are causing the problems.

I think that very serious problems should be studied to see how they can be resolved.

In conclusion, the NDP believes that we can prevent non-citizens who commit serious crimes from abusing our appeal process without violating their rights. Let us remember our Canadian values and work together to build a stronger, fairer Canada. Let us show refugees, temporary residents, permanent residents and immigrants that Canada is a welcoming country, as it has always been.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-43.

In a democracy, due process is the very life blood of our freedoms and the protection of citizens' rights. Political power as such must rest with this Parliament and not with any given minister. Any move that is seen as usurping the power of Parliament has to be, at the very least, questioned in this place.

Bill C-43, I would suggest, is coming on the heels of some very heated criticism of the Conservative government and its proposed refugee reform in Bill C-31. It also cuts at health care, as we hear spoken of in this place. It would seem to us that perhaps the government is trying to change the channel with Bill C-43.

The Conservatives' mantra for the last six years has been pretty much “tough on crime”. To some extent, they have extended that past the point of reality and into a great deal of spin.

When government members speak about the need for Bill C-43, they use some pretty extreme examples of foreign nationals abusing the immigration appeal process, to blow smoke over the fact that this bill is designed to effectively remove checks and balances that permit some flexibility within our system for extraordinary circumstances.

I am a believer in due process and the need for the right to an appeal. Not everybody's story is the same. There is a variety of things that can happen, and I will touch on those as I move forward.

However, I also support the ability for humanitarian and compassionate consideration for those people who, in some terms, might be inadmissible on various grounds: security, humanitarian, international rights violations or organized criminality. There are exceptions to every rule. Many times the whole story needs to be truly evaluated regarding a removal order.

We have had situations in Hamilton. For instance, at least one woman I am aware of, who had a number of children born in Canada, received a removal order. The order was suspended, but had there not been some reconsideration of the facts of that case, a pause for a second look, she and her children would have been forced out of this country. They may, in due course, still be forced to leave, but at least they will have had the benefit of due process and a real evaluation of their situation.

I want to stress that New Democrats do recognize the need for efficient and responsive judicial apparatus for the removal of serious criminals from Canada. Having said that, we do not support closing the door on an appeal process. There has to be balance.

None of us is perfect, nor are the ministers of the government. The reality is that sometimes in some places innocent people, even those not totally innocent, may have been inappropriately moved out of this country too quickly if they did not have the option of appeal.

In my opening remarks I talked about the supremacy of Parliament. We do not support granting the minister the power to unilaterally prohibit a foreign national from becoming a temporary citizen for up to 36 months based on public policy considerations. This is simply too vague and I would suggest unnecessarily too broad an application of ministerial discretion.

We have respect for the ministers of the government, and we understand that in most instances they are doing their due diligence as they see it. However, granting extraordinary powers is not going to be in the best interest of Canada and the rights of Canadians.

New Democrats stand with newcomers who want the government to focus on making the immigration system faster and fairer for the vast majority who have not committed any crimes and who have followed the rules.

Practically every member in this place has stories of people, good souls, who waited in line, filled out the forms and did all of the things that were required of them to gain access to Canada and eventually become a citizen, only to be waiting in suspended animation for years.

We want to be sure that whatever changes are made are fair. When the minister talks about this particular bill, he talks about tough but fair measures and repeatedly emphasizes that it is easy for a non-citizen to avoid deportation. The reality is that one should not commit crimes. That is understandable. That is something we support.

However, Bill C-43 redefines serious criminality for the purpose of access to appeal. I keep coming back to that area of appeal, that area of a last chance. Once a conclusion is made on a final deportation order, Canadians expect us to be absolutely sure of the importance and necessity of removing that person.

I would suggest that this change merits further committee study. We in the NDP will support sending the bill to committee. We understand there is an issue. This is not a circumstance where we are on this side of the House saying that we are just going to oppose blindly. We are going to offer positive suggestions for changes to the bill at committee. We will extend our hand to the government to ensure that whatever bill is put forward will accomplish the job at hand, but protect people's rights in the course of that effort.

The narrowing of circumstances under which humanitarian and compassionate considerations can be taken into account makes the system less flexible. This has already raised concerns from groups advocating for people with mental illnesses, for example, who may not have been in control of themselves at the time a crime was committed. There has to be some consideration for that circumstance.

I have had family members over the years who had various stages of depression or various stages of mental illness. In one case a close relative was medicated for all of her life and was hospitalized for 10 years for a serious situation. At that time she was not in control of who she was. That person by the way was my own mother.

The broader discretionary powers in Bill C-43 would grant the minister the power to issue or revoke a declaration that would prohibit a foreign national from becoming a temporary citizen for up to 36 months. Many people in the community feel that this would go too far, and that is something for the committee to consider.

It is troubling to note that the Conservatives have marketed the bill almost exclusively on its design to speed up the deportation of serious multiple offenders. Could that be to draw attention away from the fact that Bill C-43 would remove an appeal process and would bestow these new and extraordinary discretionary powers to the minister?

This is not a case where decisions should be made by one person. Very serious decisions take place relative to removing someone from our country. These decisions have an impact on a person's life and family. There are occasions where it is absolutely necessary to remove someone, but we want to be sure that on those occasions the person has had due process and an appeal process. When we reach the conclusion that the person must leave, we can do that in clear conscience, knowing the facts and not relying solely on the judgment of the minister.

I am going to skip through part of my speech because I think my time is just about up.

In 1999, the Australian immigration system underwent a reordering with striking similarities to what is before us today. It is often worthwhile to look at another country, particularly a democracy similar to our own. The mistakes that were made in the Australian case were clear and well documented, and for some reason our minister thinks that Canada ought to repeat them.

Previous to 1999, people were protected against deportation if they had been residents of Australia for 10 years or more. However new amendments gave the minister new powers to dismiss appeals without judicial review. Many of those people had arrived in Australia as infants.

That kind of excessive power is what the NDP is concerned about. We are concerned that the appeal process would be shoved aside and these extraordinary powers would be granted to the minister. That would have a terrible effect on people in the community and their view of what life is like in a free country.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very honoured to speak today on behalf of the people of my riding about Bill C-43, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the short title of which is the Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act.

One of the reasons why I am interested in this subject is because I am an immigrant myself. My father was also an immigrant to the country in which I was born. Before becoming a Canadian citizen, I was a permanent resident. I heard the many very relevant comments of my colleagues in this regard. However, we have not yet heard from the Conservative members, which is unfortunate.

Like my NDP colleagues, I have many reservations about this bill. First, there is the short title: the Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act. Instead, we should talk about serious foreign criminals.

Bill C-43 refers to two types of people who do not have Canadian citizenship. There are newcomers, who are called “foreign nationals”, and long-time residents with permanent resident status. Permanent residents are in a different category than so-called foreign nationals because, under the bill, permanent residents can be temporary workers or students, for example.

One thing that seems to come back in all the pieces of legislation that have been introduced since the beginning of the 41st Parliament is the constant need to give more discretionary power to the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism. Frankly, this is a trend that I find very threatening as a citizen. Every time that a power is taken from the courts and judges and given to a minister, we have cause for concern. What is strange is that many reports have demonstrated that the law is not properly and fairly applied because of the lack of resources in the ministry and in the agency in charge of immigration.

One of the problems with this bill is the removal of the right to appeal in certain circumstances. That is dangerous, in my opinion. Obviously, nobody likes long appeal processes that last for years. However, the other extreme, which is, namely, no right to appeal, is certainly no better. I see nothing in this bill to prevent the possibility of abusing the system and this is something I would like the justice committee to be able to modify at the next stage.

This is another immigration bill. That is quite strange, because the government tells anyone who will listen that its priorities are the economy and job creation. As it says, it is focused like a laser on the economy and job creation.

We have a number of reservations. Reports from the Auditor General have uncovered serious problems in the processing of immigration files. Specifically, there have been problems with transparency and with information management at the Canada Border Services Agency.

The Auditor General has mentioned that the act is applied randomly and that is very troubling. It is all the more troubling given the Conservatives' current tendency to concentrate decisions more and more in the hands of a few responsible people. But they are reducing the staff tasked with conducting the investigations that lead to the conclusions that allow those decisions to be made.

When you are a member of an immigrant community, as I am, you are inevitably very sensitive to the way in which immigrants are treated when they are convicted of crimes, especially those that the government is now calling serious crimes.

So that brings us back to the famous definition of a “serious criminal“. Previously, it was someone sentenced to more than two years in prison. From now on, it will be someone sentenced to more than six months in prison.

While, in theory, serious criminals are the only ones responsible for their actions, in practice, we see that crimes committed by a handful of people actually spill over onto the entire immigrant community to which those people belong. One of the direct consequences is that, more than anyone, immigrants themselves want a justice system that is effective, but above all fair, a system that ensures that crimes committed by a handful of people, however serious they may be, do not reflect negatively on an entire community that is living and working honestly and taking its place in the economy of this country.

I would also like to refer back to Bill C-31 that was brought before us in the spring and that received royal assent in June. Once again, it is very important not to lump together immigration and crime, not even by association, because too often, even systematically, when immigration and crime are lumped together, the result is xenophobia. Xenophobia is a real cancer for any open society, like ours in Canada, and for any country that has decided to use immigration as a way to replace the generations that have passed on.

Generally speaking, it is risky to examine an immigration issue in the context of a bill that targets a minority made up of foreign criminals among which only a very small number are serious criminals.

Let us now talk about the right of appeal. A number of my colleagues pointed this out. In a process—and this is a concern everyone shares—whenever the opportunity to appeal is removed, the image of justice is damaged and there is a risk of adding to the cynicism of a segment of the population that does not believe in our justice system.

There is a risk to the credibility of the justice system. That is why I am rather critical of this bill. There is a risk of adding to the cynicism of a segment of the population that does not believe in justice or in the justice system.

There has also been much talk about the case of new permanent residents who are awaiting their citizenship. There is also another situation that we do not talk about, namely that of people with dual or multiple citizenship. Quite often, people, immigrants, will not apply for Canadian citizenship. This is not because they do not want to participate in the life of our country but, rather, because they already hold citizenship that they would automatically lose if they took Canadian citizenship. This decision not only has consequences for the person who decides not to take Canadian citizenship, it also has an obvious impact on the children who did not make that choice, who did not have the opportunity to express their views on the fact that their parents decided not to take Canadian citizenship.

I am going to conclude by saying that, for all these reasons, we will support Bill C-43 at second reading. However, given the strong reservations that we have, we will give the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights an opportunity to hear expert testimony that may support the serious concerns raised by my colleagues and myself during this debate.

[Sana Hassainia, NDP, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to inform you that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Saint-Jean.

The debate on Bill C-43, dealing with the removal of foreign criminals, is one I am particularly interested in. This is another step in the comprehensive reform of our immigration system that the Conservatives are doing their utmost to undertake. As the stakes are high and as the decisions made in this House will have major repercussions on many people's lives, it is essential to thoroughly study the changes proposed in this bill.

Ultimately, this bill proposes to do away with the control mechanisms that allow the immigration system to respond to exceptional circumstances in a flexible way. Powers are being taken out of the system and placed into the hands of the minister, who, more than ever before, will be able to decide unilaterally what is good and what is not good for individuals and for our country.

I have to say that this trend leaves me confused in a number of ways. My first concern is with the concept of serious criminality. At the moment, as we know, someone who is not a Canadian citizen can be sent back to his country of origin if he is convicted of a crime punishable by two years or more in prison. This is intended to keep Canadians safe, while leaving some room to manoeuvre for individuals making a simple mistake. There is a good balance between compassion and public safety, in my opinion. But Bill C-43 would reduce the prison term triggering deportation from Canada from two years to six months. This would considerably broaden the categories of crimes punishable by removal from our country, pure and simple. I believe that this major change requires more thorough study.

Which crimes would henceforth be considered serious enough to justify deportation? Are there not cases in which deportation would be out of proportion to the offence? I feel that we must think about this before we act, given the dramatic consequences of deportation.

I believe that the government is trying to show its muscle here as it has done with various other bills in the past. This is their no-nonsense, tough on crime approach. But have the consequences of that approach been seriously studied?

I would like to quote the president of the Canadian Somali Congress, Ahmed Hussen. In describing the potential consequences of Bill C-43, he said that a good number of the people who are likely to be captured by this new law are first-time offenders who, if given a chance, could reform and change their behaviour.

This means that if we lower the bar from two years to six months, we could end up disproportionately punishing people who, although they made a mistake—it happens—are capable of turning things around. Where is the compassion that helped our country become what it is today? I do not see that in this bill.

I must point out that the immigration minister promoted this bill by using examples of extremely dangerous offenders. Of course we all agree with the idea of preventing dangerous people from walking freely in our streets. I am just as concerned as the minister about the safety of my fellow Canadians. I recognize the need to have an effective justice system in order to deport serious criminals who are not citizens.

However, emotion must not win out over reason in such a complex debate. Blindly and indiscriminately lowering our threshold of tolerance without considering each individual's particular circumstances is not a good solution.

Now let us talk about the vast discretionary powers given to the minister. I cannot support the removal of the appeal process for certain people. Furthermore, I cannot agree with giving the minister unilateral power to prohibit a foreigner from becoming a temporary resident for a period of 36 months, if he feels that it is justified by public policy considerations. That power is much too vast and too vague.

In addition, there is a problem with Bill C-43 that the government does not seem to have thought about. We could end up deporting offenders who came to Canada at a very young age and who no longer have any ties to their country of origin. That has happened before. A young person who immigrates at the age of two with his parents has no memories of his country of origin. He considers himself to be Canadian. His friends are here, as are his social network and family. He has gone to school and worked in his community. When he makes a mistake and commits a crime, however, he does not have the same rights as a citizen and risks being deported.

It is not a fundamentally bad concept. We all understand that serious crimes must be punished severely. That is why the rule regarding a two-year prison sentence is justified. However, by reducing that time frame to six months, we run the risk of deporting people who commit relatively minor crimes to countries they do not know.

The problem I have with this bill is not so much its intention, but rather the means it uses. Protecting society from dangerous criminals is one thing; cracking down indiscriminately and imposing disproportionate punishments on anyone who makes a mistake, no matter how minor, is quite another thing. Does the government realize how difficult it might be for someone to be deported to a country they do not know? I urge the government to seriously consider this question. In short, I would like to say this: let us make the system tougher when it comes to removing criminals if need be, but let us not do so blindly.

Another aspect that really worries me is mental illness. The minister does not say very much about this aspect in his press conferences on the bill, but many convicted criminals have mental health problems.

His bill deprives judges of a great deal of their discretionary power to consider the circumstances in which a crime is committed. I do not think this is a good idea.

According to Michael Bossin, a lawyer who specializes in refugee rights and has extensive expertise in that regard, in many cases, people who have mental illness problems often commit crimes when they are not treated. That is a well-known fact. Many convicted criminals struggle with mental illness.

What do we want as a society? Personally, I think proper treatment should be provided to offenders whenever possible. Locking these people up or sending them to their country of origin only covers up the problem; it does not solve it. It means off-loading the problem onto someone else. That is not what I expect from a country like ours.

People struggling with mental illness must receive care, even if they have committed a crime. This is not being soft; it is being compassionate and wise.

Since Bill C-43 practically ignores this troubling aspect of criminal behaviour, we have a right to question the bill's real intentions.

This leads me to my last point. This reform does not seem to based on any true facts or hard evidence. The government seems to be taking the same approach it used to amend the Criminal Code. It is clamping down without any sense of the outcome.

Can the minister tell us what crimes will henceforth be punishable by deportation? Can he explain why a person with a mental illness would be better off in prison or in his country of origin than at a hospital? Has he calculated the cost of his reform?

The cost associated with Bill C-31, for example, is $34 million. How much will Bill C-43 cost? We do not know.

Nor do we know the current number of deportations that are the result of a conviction, or how many cases involving a deportation order for a serious criminal offence have come before the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada.

Without such crucial data, how can we assess the potential repercussions of this reform?

I am convinced that it is possible to prevent non-citizens who commit a serious offence from abusing our appeal process without trampling on their rights. Like the vast majority of newcomers, I would like to have a government that is focused on improving the immigration system to make it faster and fairer.

On top of all the questionable changes that I have already mentioned, this government's modus operandi makes me wonder what its real intentions are.

The Minister of Immigration seems to be contemplating a two-tier system. Just look at the treatment Conrad Black received recently. Mr. Black committed a crime for which he served a sentence abroad, but when he wanted to return to Canada, the minister said he did not want to get involved and that the case should be left in the hands of the officials.

However, through Bill C-43, the minister is now asking for much more freedom of action. He also wants to have more discretionary power in order to intervene in cases involving the deportation and entry of criminals. We cannot always get everything we want in life. We cannot call for an independent system one day and ask for vast discretionary powers the next day.

What is good for Conrad Black has to be good for everyone else. If Mr. Black's file is reviewed by officials, then every file should be. In that sense, the proposed reform in Bill C-43 seems out of touch with reality. Does the minister want judges and officials to enforce the rules, or does he want to decide on everything himself?

This doublespeak does not seem very fair to me and makes me wonder about the minister's true intentions.

I am going to summarize my opinions about Bill C-43.

We all want to be tougher on non-citizens who commit serious crimes in Canada. However, like many experts, I am concerned about this Conservative bill that increases the minister's arbitrary powers. Judges will have fewer powers, and individuals who are mentally ill will be treated with indifference. The government is making these changes even though the vast majority of newcomers to Canada are law-abiding individuals who do not commit crimes.

I remember that, in 2006, the Conservative government promised to increase the number of police officers on the streets in our communities. But, for various reasons, the government did not keep its promise. I do not know if that was because the government lacked the will, because it was out of touch with reality or because it had misplaced priorities. What I do know is that the government cannot now make permanent residents pay the price for its inaction. Why not focus once and for all on protecting our communities, rather than on demonizing newcomers? Portraying them as future dangerous offenders, as the Minister of Immigration did in a news conference, is not helping. It looks as though he is trying to divert attention to a certain category of individuals rather than doing something useful.

For all these reasons, I think that Bill C-43 should be studied further in committee. A number of questions and concerns remain unanswered, and the only way to make the right decision is to think more about it.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you, Dr. Tyndall. I have a very short time and I do have another question for you. And thank you for focusing in on infectious diseases, which definitely has a lot to do with our overall security.

A particularly troubling aspect of these changes, the ones that have been made recently, is that potentially legitimate refugees from so-called safe countries, under the recently passed legislation, Bill C-31, will be cut off from even basic medical coverage. Eventually we will learn what these so-called safe countries are, but we don't know yet.

Can you talk about how the cuts affect these particular refugee claimants, especially when it comes to infectious diseases and overall security?

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

—yes, sure—as Bill C-31 indicates, that there will be countries of safe origin, and therefore you wouldn't have status in terms of being able to apply, at least for an appeal.

Citizenship and Immigration

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of the members of my riding of Davenport in Toronto who continue to express concern over Bill C-31. This petition calls for the reversal of some of the more egregious elements of that bill.

Immigration

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Mr. Speaker, very quickly, I think we are addressing these issues. Part of the reason we are having a security study and part of the reason Bill C-31 was put in front of the House and was duly passed, without the support of either of the opposition parties, was to get at the very root and heart of what the member is suggesting.

The member can feign indignation all he wants about the process and what he thinks should happen and what the conditions are. Even if they come here as mass arrivals, people get treated fairly and they get treated well. The fact is that we have people who deserve refugee status in Canada, and it is not those who jump the queue and put themselves in a position to prevent those who are true refugees from getting that designation and permanent residency here in the country and starting a new life.

I reach out to the member. It is time that he started working with us rather than against us in reforming an immigration system that was long overdue for change.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to respond to the member for Winnipeg North. Let me try to answer the last part of his question first, that being is the whole aspect of detention.

The member is correct. He and I both travelled to Vancouver, Laval and also Rexdale, Toronto, to view the detention facilities at all three of those locations.

He mentions Bill C-31. Part of the reason we actually did the tour was based on a number of witnesses called for by the official opposition, but also by his party, who came forward with respect to the study on the safety and security of our borders that the committee is currently working on. Witness after witness from the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party came forward and made all kinds of overtures about what they felt the conditions of the detention facilities were.

I think I have the support of the member for Winnipeg North on this. We looked at all three facilities. None of the facilities are similar in nature in terms of how they are organized and run. However, I know we would both agree that the treatment of the individuals who were under detention at those facilities is far superior than any one of their witnesses was prepared to commit and admit to at committee. Therefore, I have a deep appreciation for our ability to go on the tour of these three facilities to understand what they were all about and to see the treatment of those individuals who were detained there for specific reasons.

The member mentioned the Sun Sea and the Ocean Lady. What happens about two or perhaps three times every decade is that ships come in from offshore because smugglers believe they can take advantage of the people who are on those ships. They force them to pay enormous, ridiculous amounts of money to stuff them onto these boats and then bring them to Canada because we had the reputation of having a system that was broken with respect to refugees. The ships would come here because it was believed to be so easy. The smugglers told the people on these ships to claim refugee status in Canada and that they would be automatically granted refugee status. Those people, who wouldn't have identification, were smuggled onto these ships and brought across. It was very unsafe. The member has seen these ships. He knows how unsafe they are.

I wish that when the Liberal Party was in power for 13 years and had the opportunity, it would have changed the immigration system and addressed the issue of those who are claiming refugee status here. The refugee system was broken.

Both Bill C-11 and Bill C-31 get at the very heart of what the problem is. That is that over 60% of those who apply for refugee status in Canada are either bogus claims, withdraw their claims or go back to their country of origin because they had learned that this was a system they could take advantage of.

I wish we would have had the Liberals' support at committee and with the bills that we passed in this legislature. We have Bill C-43 coming up to get rid of foreign criminals in this country. I hope the member will consider supporting that.

Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this morning and afternoon, I listened closely to my colleagues' remarks on Bill C-43, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

I want to make one thing clear. This bill would affect a very small percentage of permanent residents: those who abuse our immigration system. During this debate, my Conservative colleagues referred to some extreme cases to support their argument. That was a diversionary tactic because the vast majority of new immigrants commit no crimes and follow the rules.

My constituents want the government to focus on improving the immigration system to make it faster and fairer, something this government has failed to do since coming to power.

The NDP will support this bill at second reading so that the committee can take a closer look at it. However, as we have seen during today's debate, my caucus has some major reservations when it comes to this bill.

Before I say more about the bill, I would like to reiterate that it is one aspect of this government's piecemeal approach to immigration. Earlier this session, the government introduced Bill C-31, which, as we know, creates two classes of refugees and completely undermines refugees' rights.

You will recall that this government also reduced refugee health care services, which means that many of them will not have access to the health services they need. Is that the best way to treat people who often are penniless and have been traumatized? I think not.

Many doctors, organizations and groups of experts, including the Canadian Paediatric Society, oppose the proposed changes that will limit access to primary and preventative health care for some of the most vulnerable children and adolescents in Canada. These changes deprive a large number of children of treatments or doctor's visits if their parents do not have money to pay for the health services and medications. This is beneath a civilized country such as Canada. We must take care of our refugees.

When I travel abroad, I am very proud to wear the Canadian flag. Why? I am proud because, to other countries, Canada represents a model of diplomacy, a fair country, a humanitarian country where people are treated with dignity and fairness, no matter where they come from. However, this Prime Minister's Conservatives are transforming this country by dismantling, among other things, our immigration system.

Among other things, this bill takes away the minister's responsibility to examine the humanitarian circumstances. At present, the minister is required, at the request of a foreign national, to examine the humanitarian circumstances of the foreign national who is deemed inadmissible on grounds of security, human or international human rights violations, or organized criminality. If the minister deems it is justified, an exemption for humanitarian reasons may be granted, taking into account the best interests of a child directly affected. Unfortunately, this will no longer be the case if the bill is passed.

In addition to undermining our humanitarian reputation, the Conservatives are promoting the mentality of “them against us”. However, in our communities, the line between them and us is not black and white. With this bill, we run the risk of removing people who arrived at a very young age with their parents, have spent their lives in Canada, and cannot call anywhere else their home. They may not be Canadian citizens, but these people have contributed to our communities, have paid their taxes and are part of our society.

This Conservative government's approach is simply to deport people. It is like discarding these people without any concern for their well-being.

I would like to read some comments from Ahmed Hussen, the president of the Canadian Somali Congress, who thinks that the new bill will result in a huge increase in the number of young male immigrants who are deported without appeal:

The net will be cast wider and it will capture even more people. One big mistake on the part of these young men could see them sent to a dangerous place they know nothing about.

He also said:

For the people that are likely to be captured by this new law, we feel that a good number of them are first-time offenders who, if given a chance, would most likely reform and change their behaviour.

Why does this government not concentrate its efforts on increasing front-line immigration services? Why is the Conservative government eliminating the jobs of public servants who process immigration applications? Why is the government refusing to take action to facilitate family reunification? Instead of cutting services for Canadians, this government should give our immigration system the tools it needs to function.

Now let us talk about Bill C-43, which we are debating right now. There are two aspects of the bill that concern me. First, this bill puts even more powers into the hands of the minister, giving him authority over the admissibility of applicants for temporary residence. The minister can declare that a foreigner is inadmissible for a maximum period of 36 months if he feels that it is justified by public policy considerations. This creates a very dangerous grey area. What constitutes public policy? That is not clear in this bill.

The Conservatives are already wary of newcomers, and they have a tendency towards repression, so I am not sure we should be giving more discretionary powers to the government, and to this Conservative government in particular.

My other concern about this bill is that it changes the definition of “serious criminality” with respect to appealing a determination of inadmissibility. In the past, a conviction in Canada that carried a sentence of two or more years would lead to the automatic revocation of a permanent or temporary resident's right to appeal to the Immigration Appeal Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board.

I can give some examples. If this bill passes, we could deport people who have six marijuana plants, for example, since they could be subject to a six-month sentence. These are not people who have committed violent or serious crimes and who deserve to be punished.

This bill also targets people with mental illness, who are already overrepresented in our justice system. Many individuals have spoken out against this bill because of that. John Nash, an immigration and refugee lawyer with South Ottawa Community Legal Services, said that these changes will affect many people with psychiatric problems. He said that many people with mental illness end up in the criminal justice system. Those people could be deported too.

Instead of focusing on job creation, the Conservatives are attacking the most vulnerable members of our society. Instead of focusing on job creation, the Conservatives are attacking unemployed workers by forcing employment insurance beneficiaries to accept jobs that they are overqualified for and that do not pay as well as their previous jobs. Instead of doing something about climate change, this government has its head in the sand, which will hurt future generations. Instead of improving our immigration system to deal with applications quickly, the government is portraying all immigrants as criminals.

I want to make it clear that New Democrats recognize the need for an efficient legal system that can deport serious criminals who are not citizens. However, the Conservatives' proposed solutions are not balanced and could have devastating consequences in addition to politicizing our immigration system.

Our immigration system is broken. Just read the Auditor General of Canada's reports, which show that Canadians are waiting longer to bring their relatives to Canada and that lineups are getting longer.

I hope that once we are together in committee, my Conservative colleagues will take the NDP's concerns regarding Bill C-43 into account and accept our proposals.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this is my first opportunity to address you as Mr. Speaker. Congratulations on your appointment to the chair.

I appreciate the opportunity to raise my concerns regarding Bill C-43, which I hope will be addressed in further study at committee. New Democrats recognize the need for an efficient and responsive judicial apparatus for removing serious criminals who are not citizens. However, this bill seems to extend beyond this and effectively removes some of the required checks and balances within our immigration system.

I have a few concerns with the changes included in Bill C-43. Bill C-43 would concentrate more power in the hands of the minister, giving the minister new discretionary authority over the admissibility of temporary residents. It would relieve the minister of the responsibility to examine humanitarian circumstances and as well would change what would constitute serious criminality for the purpose of access to an appeal of a determination of inadmissibility.

Previously a conviction in Canada with a sentence of two years or more resulted in an automatic revocation of a permanent or temporary resident's right to an appeal at the Immigration Appeal Division. Bill C-43, however, would revoke the right to appeal inadmissibility when there would be a conviction of six months or more.

New Democrats have said time and again that we do not support closing the door to an appeal process as it is an essential component of checks and balances in our immigration system.

An appeal process allows officials to make determinations on an individual basis, weighing all the factors to determine if someone should or should not be deported. Further to this, with the government's tough on crime agenda, we have seen a whole slew of crimes receive a mandatory minimum sentence of more than six months. The change from two years to six months merits further study of the offences that would now be included in this.

This concentration of power in the hands of one minister is a trend we continue to see under the government and is a cautionary tale of the direction of our immigration system under a Conservative majority. Granting the minister the power to unilaterally prohibit a foreign national from becoming a temporary resident for up to 36 months based on public policy considerations is a vague and broad discretion.

The broad and far-reaching powers given to the minister in Bill C-43 seem to once again go too far and require balance. Additionally, there seems to be a double standard at play when it comes to ministerial authority. When convicted foreign criminal, Conrad Black wanted back in Canada, the minister claimed that the matter was handled independently, yet now he wants the power to deport criminals.

Across the country, immigration and health experts have been raising their concerns to the changes in the bill. There are concerns among advocates that the bill runs a risk of deporting offenders who arrive in Canada with their parents at a very young age. Despite Canada being the only home they know and grew up in, we would deport them to a country about which they may know nothing.

Moreover, professionals who work with immigrants and refugees have stated that this new federal legislation unfairly punishes the young and people with mental illness. Bill C-43 has been marketed exclusively on its intent to speed up deportations of serious multiple offenders. However, the devil is in the details and these details merit further study and expert opinion.

What I also find particularly troubling throughout the course of immigration changes the government has introduced is the language that the Conservative government continues to use when speaking about newcomers in our country.

When discussing Bill C-31, refugees who were fleeing war-torn countries to save their lives were continually referred to as “bogus” and “queue jumpers” in need of mandatory detention by the members opposite. Now under Bill C-43, permanent residents are referred as “foreigners”. This term is misleading and wide-sweeping, completely neglecting the fact that permanent residents have spent the majority of their lives in Canada, contributing to our communities and paying taxes.

The majority of newcomers to Canada are law-abiding citizens who do not commit crimes. Rather than introducing legislation that continues to demonize newcomers, where is the support for newcomers who follow the rules? Why is the government not spending more time ensuring that the majority of newcomers in Canada are being treated fairly and are not waiting three to five years to be reunited with their partners and children? We need a government that acts to help new Canadians reunite with their families and find work that matches their skill set.

The New Democrats look to work with the government to prevent non-citizens who commit serious crimes from abusing our appeals process without trampling on rights. We continue to stand with newcomers who want the government to focus on making our immigration system faster and fairer for the vast majority who do not commit crimes and follow the rules.

We can allow the systems currently in place, including our immigration tribunal and Canadian judiciary, to do their work or provide them with the necessary resources to do the job effectively rather than trivializing the judicial process and giving the minister the authority to arbitrarily make decisions. I should add, if the minister were serious about improving Canada's immigration and refugee system, he would stop appointing his friends to the Immigration and Refugee Board.

We could also do what the Auditor General has repeatedly recommended and make improvements to the current system and administration of the laws currently in place, including proper training, service standards and quality assurance checks.

Rather than continually portraying newcomers negatively, the government should focus on giving law enforcement the resources it needs to keep us safe from all criminals.

I spent the summer talking to constituents about community safety and social issues in Scarborough. What I heard from constituents were worries and concerns for the need for support and prevention strategies to keep our youth from turning to crime and actions from the federal government to keep our communities safe. At the end of the day, victims were concerned that crimes were being committed in their communities and steps were not being taken to prevent these crimes.

I hope the government will take the concerns raised by experts, myself and my colleagues on this side of the House seriously at the committee level and that it will listen to the experts' warnings about the impacts and consequences of the bill on people with the intention of improvements and upholding rights,.

It is a warning to us all that some of the concerns raised by experts during the study of Bill C-31 are already being realized. Thanks to Bill C-31, all refugee claimants are now banned from applying for a pre-removal risk assessment within one year of receiving a negative answer on their claim. This assessment is used as a second chance to consider whether it is truly safe to send a rejected claimant back to his or her country of origin.

Last week, we learned of a woman from Iran who could face deportation despite new evidence proving that she faces an adultery charge that could, under sharia law, result in her being stoned to death. Although her lawyer obtained new documents to speak to her refugee claim, because of the changes included in Bill C-31, this new evidence cannot be considered by the Canada Border Service Agency officials because of the one-year rule.

I recall hearing this very concern raised, that new evidence can come to light during this one-year period, during the Bill C-31 study at committee. Unfortunately, this concern, along with many others, fell on the deaf ears of our government and were left unaddressed.

I hope that this is not repeated during the study of Bill C-43 in committee, but rather that we listen to the experts and work together to prevent non-citizens who commit serious crimes from abusing our appeals process while upholding our Canadian values.

Citizenship and Immigration

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have a few petitions to present today.

The first petition is from members of my riding who are very concerned about the government's direction as it pertains to refugees and immigrants. The petitioners are calling for a reversal of Bill C-31 and essentially a rewrite.

Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a fair question. When legislation is passed and discretion is given to the minister, questions certainly arise about how varying and how significant that scope of discretion is.

As an example, when we worked through the previous Bill C-31, one of the issues that we dealt with at committee addressed the same type of issue, in that case the discretionary power of the minister to determine a safe country of origin. Those applying for refugee status fall under a different category of application and appeal if they come and claim refugee status here based on their safe country of origin. We listed very specifically in the legislation exactly what the requirements would be for the minister to be able to designate a safe country.

I would suggest to my hon. friend from Toronto—Danforth that we would do the same with this piece of legislation. That is why, when we give discretionary powers to the ministers, it should be in the legislation and should not remain in the back of a regulation or deputation of some sort that is not laid out clearly in legislation.

The member will see that when the legislation comes forward.

Message from the Senate

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

I have the honour to inform the House that when the House did attend His Excellency the Governor General in the Senate chamber, His Excellency was pleased to give, in Her Majesty's name, the royal assent to the following bills:

Bill C-26, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (citizen's arrest and the defences of property and persons)—Chapter 9, 2012.

Bill C-40, An Act for granting to Her Majesty certain sums of money for the federal public administration for the financial year ending March 31, 2013—Chapter 10, 2012.

Bill C-41, An Act for granting to Her Majesty certain sums of money for the federal public administration for the financial year ending March 31, 2013—Chapter 11, 2012.

Bill C-288, An Act respecting the National Flag of Canada—Chapter 12, 2012.

Bill C-278, An Act respecting a day to increase public awareness about epilepsy—Chapter 13, 2012.

Bill C-311, An Act to amend the Importation of Intoxicating Liquors Act (interprovincial importation of wine for personal use)—Chapter 14, 2012.

Bill C-310, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (trafficking in persons)—Chapter 15, 2012.

Bill C-25, An Act relating to pooled registered pension plans and making related amendments to other Acts—Chapter 16, 2012.

Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, the Marine Transportation Security Act and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Act—Chapter 17, 2012.

It being 2:15 p.m., the House stands adjourned until Monday, September 17, 2012, at 11 a.m., pursuant to Standing Orders 28(2) and 24(1).

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

I have the honour to inform the House that messages have been received from the Senate informing this House that the Senate has passed the following bills:

Bill C-25, An Act relating to pooled registered pension plans and making related amendments to other Acts;

Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, the Marine Transportation Security Act and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Act;

Bill C-310, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (trafficking in persons).

Status of Women

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today on this World Refugee Day to outline the Conservatives' contempt for women.

In Bill C-31, a bill against refugees, the Conservatives are targeting the most vulnerable women by directly attacking sexual abuse survivors who are seeking asylum. The Conservatives do not care.

The Conservatives also attacked women in Bill C-10, by putting more and more women in prison for minor crimes, when statistics show that the majority of women in prison are also mothers. This legislation is breaking up families.

The omnibus budget bill, which was passed on Monday, amends the Employment Equity Act. Again, women are being targeted.

The height of contempt is Motion M-312, a motion that, in 2012, opens the abortion debate. Women have fought for their rights, and the Conservatives are allowing a man to interfere and send women back to the days of knitting-needle abortions.

Looking back over the past year, there is not much here for the fairer sex. What is more, our Prime Minister does not even trust the women in his caucus to speak on his behalf during question period. Indeed, only 22 questions out of 349 were answered by women. That is a measly 6%.

That is sad, but the NDP will always be proud to stand up for women.

Strengthening Military Justice in the Defence of Canada Act

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak today against the second reading stage of Bill C-15. Before my colleagues across the way start saying that I do not like the military and all of those things, I will stress that it is because I so strongly support the men and women in our military who sacrifice so much to serve our country and put themselves on the line that I find it very difficult to support this legislation. Surely, our men and women who serve us at home and overseas in unimaginable circumstances deserve due process, and that is what this is all about. It is about transparency, accountability, t doing the right thing and natural justice.

When I look at Bill C-15, I do acknowledge that the government has taken a baby step in the right direction. However, it is only a baby step and does not go far enough.

As I look at the legislation, I experience déjà vu. Not too many days ago I stood in the House and talked about another bill, Bill C-11, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, which was legislation that the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism praised as being a miracle. It was legislation that all political parties worked on and together they included elements that would address human smuggling, put processes in place that would speed up processing times and short-term detention for people who did not have identification verification, all of those things. I want to acknowledge my colleague from Trinity—Spadina who did such an amazing job on that file. The government side and the other opposition party also praised that legislation.

Then, lo and behold, out of the blue we then had legislation that went backward and undid so much of the work that was done. Bill C-11 was the Balanced Refugee Reform Act and we ended up with Bill C-31 in its place, which undid all the work that was accomplished in Bill C-11. That is exactly the déjà vu I am experiencing now.

Once again we had legislation that was in Parliament, Bill C-11, which had been acclaimed but was still not fully implemented, and then it was undone. On the other hand, Bill C-15 undoes the amendments that were accepted in Bill C-41. Once again, we need to look at what the drive is behind this. The drive behind it seems to be the majority my colleagues are experiencing across the way. I was really hoping that after a year of being a majority government it would have gotten over that and gone on to do the work of Parliament in a way that respects the role of the opposition and, of course, the contributions the opposition has to make when it comes to legislation.

As I was saying, I was experiencing déjà vu. Here we are with this iteration of Bill C-15, and none of the compromises, amendments that were made in Bill C-41 are in it. Why? It is so tiring to hear about how the Conservatives are all about the military and how the opposition does not care about the military.

When I look at this legislation, I wonder how much my colleagues sitting across the aisle really care about the men and women who serve in our military and put their lives at risk and why the Conservatives have chosen to ignore key recommendations from a critical report written by Antonio Lamer, which was issued in 2003. There were 88 recommendations in that report. Out of those 88 recommendations, only 28 have been dealt with to date.

I am not fully blaming my colleagues across the aisle. The other opposition party also had an opportunity to implement the recommendations that were made in the Lamer report and it chose to sit on them. I do not know why, maybe it was dealing with a lot of other issues. Surely, no other issue can be as important as ensuring that the men and women who serve in our military get justice and get treated fairly.

We have all of these things going on. One good thing that I suppose we could say, as could my colleagues across the aisle, is that Bill C-41 was never acclaimed.

My colleague who spoke just before me is such an eloquent speaker. I just hope that one day in the future I can emulate even 10% of what he is able to express so clearly and so succinctly.

As my colleague said, the government had the opportunity, because the bill was at the report stage, to deal with it before Parliament was shut down for the last election. However, it chose not to.

Here we are a few days before Parliament closes and, again, through bullying tactics, we will sit until midnight every night this week. Why was the legislation not introduced earlier so we could have dealt with it? It could have gone through all the stages.

Here we are at 10:50 p.m. on the Tuesday night, before Parliament recesses on Friday, debating the treatment of our men and women who serve in the military to give them the kind of fairness that we expect as civilians. Where are the priorities of the government? Certainly not with the men and women in the military. The government seems to have other priorities.

When I looked at all of this, and I will go through this in detail, I was struck by a quote from the Minister of National Defence in February 2011, when he appeared before the Standing Committee on National Defence, the same defence minister who occupies the seat today. This is what he said when he endorsed the summary trial system:

—the summary trial system strikes the necessary balance between meeting the unique disciplinary needs of the Canadian Forces and the needs to respect the rights of individual members of our military....Canadians similarly need to know that their country's military system will treat those who serve fairly and in a way that corresponds to Canadian norms and values.

Does the minister still believe in those words? If he does believe them, why is the minister not accepting the fact that the summary trial system is tainted with undue harshness? Sentences are resulting in criminal records for minor offences. Why is the minister ignoring the need for greater reform than the baby step that is being proposed in this legislation?

When we look at all of this, we really begin to question the motives and what drives the government.

In the previous iteration last year, the NDP put forward some amendments. Quite a few were accepted. Other important amendments that were passed at committee stage at the end of the last parliamentary session are not in Bill C-15, although a couple are. The ones that are not there include the following.

First, the authority of the Chief of Defence Staff in the grievance process, responding directly to Justice Lamer's recommendation, is not included in the bill. Second, changes to the composition of the grievance committee to include a 60% civilian membership is once again not included in the bill. Third, a provision ensuring that a person who is convicted for an offence during a summary trial is not unfairly subjected to a criminal record. Once again, that is not included.

What would address some of our concerns with this legislation? We absolutely need further amendments and we need to ensure that the summary trial system is fixed. Summary trials are held without the ability of the accused to consult counsel. There are no appeals or transcripts of the trial. The bit that I find very hard, maybe because of the background I have had, where I have always believed that if people are accused of something, they have the right to representation. Then they have the right to go before a person who is fairly neutral. In this case, people end up having to go in front of one of their commanding officers. If they go before one of their commanding officers, I am not sure how independent that is and what kind of pressure that puts individuals who are there to advocate for themselves without legal counsel. This absolutely puts undue pressure on our armed forces when they can be convicted for very minor service offences.

I am sure that some members previously had employers somewhere, other than the Canadian people. Perhaps they had some kind of an accusation against them, or maybe they came to work late or whatever and before they knew it, there was a grievance. They then had to defend themselves, in other words, put their case forward. First, they could not get representation. Second, they had to go before their employers. Imagine the kind of depressing effect that has on people when they have to go in front of someone who has that much power and authority over them? That actually has a chilling effect on even the accused's desire for justice because they are afraid of the kind of impact that could have on their career and so on.

The kind of minor offences we are talking about, and I think I could often be accused of these, are: insubordination, and I think I was born with that one; normal quarrel and disturbances, almost everyone in the House would have to be charged at some time or other; absence without leave, imagine all those young people at school ending up with criminal records because they were away without leave; drunkenness and disobeying an officer's command.

This is a very serious business. I really do not want to make light of it because it actually affects our military. However, at the same time, when I am reading some of these trivial things, I am thinking that we are going to give our men and women who serve our country, without holding anything back, a criminal record for these. If they end up with a criminal record, once they are out of the army, crossing that border could become almost impossible.

I deal with cases of people who were stopped, had charges of drinking and driving even 10 years ago and were still finding it difficult to cross the border.

Is that the way we want to treat our men and women when they go looking for certain jobs? As members know, there are jobs where people deal with the public and there is a requirement for criminal record checks. If we did any of these things, as long as we were not too far out there, we would not end up with a criminal record. Military members are already held up to such high standards, so why are we, in the idea of criminality, stooping so low as to give them a criminal record? We really need to pay attention to this.

It is not easy living with a criminal record, but I will not get into that. The members know that anyway. If they have not experienced it themselves, I am sure they have had constituents who have come and talked to them about it.

Regarding reform of the grievance system, I absolutely understand grievances and I also understand accountability and transparency. Whenever we have professionals, whether the RCMP, teachers or any other profession that we hold to account, one of the key things is that civil society has engagement. Once again, this bill fails to address that. It is really critical when grievances are under review, there be a representation from civil society on the panel. This would give it that authenticity that we often talk about, and the accountability.

At this stage, I will read a quote from the Lamer report. It is quite amazing. I did not know this gentleman, but he is very learned obviously, because he gets to the heart of the matter. He writes:

Grievances involve matters such as benefits, personnel evaluation reports, postings, release from the Canadian Forces...all matters affecting the rights, privileges and other interests of CF members...unlike in other organizations, grievors do not have unions or employee associations through which to pursue their grievances...

I want to stress this. He says:

It is essential to the morale of CF members that their grievances be addressed in a fair, transparent and prompt manner.

That becomes really critical when we take a look at reforming the grievance system.

I will read a quote from Colonel Michel Drapeau, a retired colonel from the Canadian Forces and military law expert. In February 2011, before the committee, he said:

—I find it...odd that those who put their lives at risk to protect the rights of Canadians are themselves deprived of some of those charter rights when facing a summary trial. If Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland have seen fit to change the summary trial system, it begs the question: why is Canada lagging behind?

I plead with my colleagues across the way to see the light of day and please address and give fairness to our military men and women who serve us so unselfishly.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our guests.

I actually found it interesting, Mr. Bell, because a lot of what you talked about were things that actually came out in our previous work on Bill C-31 with regard to biometrics and security in this country. You hit the nail on the head when you said that we're lacking a lot of exit controls in this country, and also about the fact that we need to make sure that who applies is who arrives, and who arrives is actually the person they say they are. So I really appreciate—

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you very much.

Thank you for your presentations today.

As you know, with respect to biometrics, we have expressed some concerns in the past with regard to privacy issues, and they still remain a major concern for us. One of the documents we asked the government to provide for us, and I'm sure my colleagues remember, was a privacy impact statement for Bill C-31. I think we are still waiting for that, in one way or another. It would be good to get a copy of that report, even though Bill C-31 has passed us by.

When we met with Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart, this is what she had to say:

As the honourable members certainly know, the Privacy Act imposes obligations whenever the federal government gathers personal information. Federal agencies must ensure certain safeguards, must limit secondary use, and must list their data holdings publicly, irrespective of the citizenship of the individuals involved. Also, should any legislative or regulatory changes be made to the immigration system, I would expect to receive detailed privacy impact assessments from the appropriate institution.

We know that the Senate has begun its hearings on Bill C-31. And we're certainly hoping that at least in that other place they will be provided with the privacy impact assessments as they are going through the hearings, even though we didn't have them.

I have brief questions, but I'm going to give them to you a couple at a time.

When the government outsources the collection of biometric data to private companies, such as NextgenID, what is done to ensure that Canada's privacy laws are being respected?

Second, how is the data retained and stored, and how many people would have access to it?

[Robert Bell, Senior Vice-President, Corporate and Business Development, NextgenID Canada Inc.]

Mr. Chairman, and honourable committee members, we are pleased to appear before you on this important study examining the security of Canada's immigration system.

As someone who has been active in the field of biometrics for close to a decade, I will begin my remarks by noting how encouraging it is to see that biometrics are specifically included as one of the subject areas in your study. The realization that biometric identification technology has an integral role in immigration strategies is, in my view, significant.

NextgenID has worked with a number of governments at initial stages to help them determine if they should use biometrics, and if so, which biometrics they should use for passports and for border control. We have then participated in delivering technology and systems to help these countries implement face and fingerprint biometrics for passport, visa, and national ID issuance, as well as for border control.

My colleague Mr. Ilan Arnon has been the key technical person on many of these projects, and he will be able to answer your questions, given his first-hand experience on such projects around the world.

I'll begin by discussing examples of security gaps and some specific opportunities to deploy biometrics to strengthen our immigration system.

Deploying the right biometrics in the right applications will unquestionably both improve the security of our immigration system and expedite the clearance of legitimate travellers. Our work has been focused on systems for face recognition, fingerprints, and iris biometrics, which I would suggest are the only biometrics suited to the identification requirements associated with immigration and border control. Any system such as that seeks to verify identities and detect persons on a watch list.

I would like to address three specific security gaps that can be filled in part through the use of biometrics. One relates to visa issuance. The second relates to identity confirmation at the border. The third is a bad-guy lookout at the border, basically surveillance, looking for faces, and seeing if those people are on the bad-guy list.

With regard to visa issuance, the government is currently planning to capture fingerprints and face images during the application process. This isn't in place yet. This is just under initial contract at this point, as I'm sure you're aware. These fingerprints will be used as the biometric to confirm the identity of the traveller on arrival. So if you issue the visa, you make sure that the person who's coming to the border is actually the person he says he is.

This is a commendable first step. However, I would suggest three ways in which this could be improved at a relatively low incremental cost. Given that the face has been captured, facial recognition can be used to check if the applicant is on Canada's bad-guy list. Remember, for a known terrorist there will probably be a photograph, but it's unlikely there will be a fingerprint on file. A face can be captured upon arrival, and facial recognition can then be used to confirm the identity of the visa holder.

Review of a possible match can be performed immediately by an immigration officer with minimal training, unlike the case for fingerprints, for which you need an expert. If a potential face match is found, then fingerprints can be used as an alternate biometric during a secondary check. That's for visa issuance.

The second item is identity confirmation at the border.

When a person arrives at our border, he or she is either known or unknown. Known travellers have been pre-screened through the visa application program or the trusted traveller program. A trusted traveller simply has to confirm that he or she is the rightful holder of the passport. Iris recognition is used for trusted travellers, and as noted, fingerprint is planned for use for visa travellers. Canada is looking to extend participation in the trusted traveller program, CANPASS and NEXUS.

Beyond that, the advent of e-passports will make the use of biometrics to screen all travellers possible and practical. For example, in Australia, at all airports, the e-passport is read, and then a live image is captured and compared with that on the e-passport to determine the authenticity of the traveller. New Zealand and a number of European countries are moving in this direction as well, so they're automating their processes. This means that a good forged document will not be sufficient to gain entry into Canada.

This approach is also leading to automation, using e-gates at the border to quickly screen low-risk travellers and to enable the immigration officers to focus on the high-risk individuals. Canada should be planning to use this approach for e-passport holders from the U.S. and visa-waiver countries. Canada will start issuing e-passports this year. The other countries have been doing so for some time.

A following step would be to then effectively extend the border perimeter by conducting the same identity verification checks at the point of embarkation or before. Let's know who they are before they get on a plane that's coming to Canada.

The third item I want to deal with is what we call “bad-guy lookout”. Currently at our border control positions, there are video cameras deployed to capture and record the passage of travellers through the border. This provides a good record to support an investigation if there has been an incident at the border. However, it does not support facial recognition or watch-list checks that would allow a proactive response.

With the creation and maintenance of a watch list of persons of interest, these same cameras, perhaps with different camera lenses or positioning, could also act as face recognition cameras. The face images could be captured and compared against the watch list. If there is a potential match, this could be reviewed or adjudicated by the officer at the border post or at a central location, and a traveller could be sent to secondary inspection if required. If cameras are set up for identity verification, as mentioned earlier, then of course the same captured face could be used for a watch-list check.

I've been talking about face recognition. Why face? For these applications, face is the best biometric. In some cases it's the only biometric that would be effective. For identity verification at the border, the face is the only mandatory biometric on the e-passport, so it is the only biometric that can be used for the over 100 countries that will be issuing e-passports by the end of the year. For bad-guy lookouts, face is the only biometric for which there is likely an available image to verify against, and the only biometric that can be easily captured at a distance. Face recognition works well, and has been proven to do so in countries around the world for the applications recommended.

I guess the question is that we've talked about technology, but is there a problem? I think it is clear from the press—and I think you people would probably know better than I—that there are significant numbers of persons who commit crimes in Canada, are arrested, charged, tried, and convicted of these crimes, and then deported, only to come back under another identity to do that same thing again. On the CIC website there are five examples of people who have been deported for serious crimes, only to return—some three times, one 17 times—as repeat offenders. They come back, they commit crimes again, and they're removed from the country. This is a cost to society that can be largely eliminated with the proposed bad-guy lookout.

Mr. Chairman, let me close my remarks by noting that as someone who has worked in the industry for years, I am greatly encouraged when I see studies such as the one this committee is undertaking and initiatives such as Bill C-31, which expressly authorizes taking biometrics and enabling what is in effect the bad-guy lookout system at the border. What categories of person should be included in such a bad-guy database is a policy decision for government to make, but it is important for you that you appreciate how the technology itself supports such efforts.

Canada is clearly moving towards the screening and security approach in the Canada-U.S. border agreement and in our recent adherence to the five-party conference—Canada, the U.S., the U.K., New Zealand, and Australia—on biometric data sharing to prevent immigration fraud. Biometrics is a technology that can significantly enhance the security of our immigration and border systems, while also expediting the clearance of legitimate travellers.

I hope these opening remarks have been of assistance. I look forward to any questions you may have on the subject.

Thank you.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Just to change the topic here, we've had Bill C-31 being passed through the House of Commons. We've also had concerns from European Union countries, a number of them, in regard to the visa issue.

With regard to Bill C-31 being passed, was it direct pressure from the European Union to have this bill passed?

Citizenship and Immigration

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship]

Mr. Speaker, that question is rather special. Indeed, the government has noticed that immigration in Canada is at an all-time high and is the highest per capita in the developed world.

Quebec selects its own economic immigrants under the Canada-Quebec agreement on immigration. That being said, Bill C-31 is not about immigration. It addresses the abuse of our asylum system and human smuggling.

Do the hon. member and the NDP believe that Laval's economy depends on bogus asylum claims and illegal immigration? I do not. I believe that the people of Laval agree with this government: we need to fight human smuggling and the abuse of our asylum system—

[José Nunez-Melo, NDP, Laval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, every year, thousands of immigrants choose to make their life in the city of Laval. It is their home port.

Yet the Conservatives want to make life more difficult for all current and future claimants. Laval needs immigrants in order to keep developing. With Bills C-38 and C-31, the Conservatives are putting the brakes on Laval's prosperity and economic development.

Why are they attacking immigrants?

Immigration

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions to present today.

The first petition is signed by members of my riding of Kitchener—Waterloo pertaining to Bill C-31.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I'm going to call the meeting to order. This is the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, meeting number 48, Tuesday, June 12, 2012. This meeting is televised. The orders of the day are pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), studying “Standing on Guard for Thee: Ensuring that Canada's Immigration System Is Secure”. That, translated, means the security of Canada's immigration system.

I have just a few comments before we start. First of all I wanted to thank Madame Béchard and Ms. Elgersma for the briefing note you gave us as to the evidence we've heard to date on this subject, since February. Of course, we were interrupted by a study of Bill C-31.

I will be attending the Liaison Committee tomorrow, as the chairman, to seek approval for spending to the three detention centres: Laval, Toronto, and Vancouver. We'll see how that goes. If it is successful, I will count on the two critics and the parliamentary secretary to ask their house leaders—I don't know whether it's the house leaders or the whips, maybe both—because a motion would then have to be made in the House approving our attendance on those visits.

We're going for an hour. We have the Canadian Centre for International Justice, Jayne Stoyles, executive director. Good afternoon to you. We have the Canadian Council for Refugees, Loly Rico, vice-president. Good afternoon to you. You each have up to 10 minutes to make a presentation to the committee. I think you've been here before, so you know the rules. Then we'll go in rounds asking questions.

Ms. Stoyles, you may proceed.

Thank you.

Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

It being 6:30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the amendment to the motion for the third reading of Bill C-31.

Call in the members.

The House resumed from June 8 consideration of the motion that Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, the Marine Transportation Security Act and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Act, be read the third time and passed, and of the amendment.

Citizenship and Immigration

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition from dozens of people in the Vancouver area calling on the Government of Canada to withdraw Bill C-31, a bill that punishes legitimate refugees and does nothing to stop human smuggling.

The petitioners point out many troubling aspects of Bill C-31, including: giving the minister the power to hand-pick which countries he thinks are safe without advice; creating two tiers of refugees based on how they arrived in Canada; a five-year mandatory wait for bona fide refugees to become permanent residents and reunite with their families, again based on how they arrive in the country; and treating 16-year-old refugee claimants as adults, including detaining them.

The petitioners call on the government to scrap Bill C-31 and implement Bill C-11, Balanced Refugee Reform Act, legislation that passed just last year with the support of all parties in this House.

With the third reading vote scheduled for tonight, it is the last chance for the Conservative government to do the right thing.

Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to stand and support Bill C-31, the protecting Canada's immigration system act.

Many hon. members have already had the opportunity to participate in this debate. In fact, a number of constructive suggestions have been brought forward and the government has acted in good faith and responded with several amendments that address concerns that were raised about the bill as it originally had been tabled. Nevertheless, it is important to step back and put one aspect of this debate into perspective. Among other needed measures, Bill C-31 would help bring about some very important reforms to the refugee system.

Clearly, Canadians are the most generous people in the world. They want to provide protection to those who need it. Unfortunately, our asylum system is not just being used by those who need our protection. Too many people are abusing our refugee system to gain quick entry to Canada and to jump the immigration queue. Nothing illustrates this abuse better than the fact that one-quarter of all asylum claims in Canada come from democratic, rights respecting European Union member countries. That is more than from Africa or Asia. Canadians are generous people, but we rightly have no tolerance for those who abuse our generosity or take advantage of our country. Canadians have told us, loud and clear, that they want to put a stop to this abuse. Have an asylum system, but let us use it, not abuse it.

Bogus claimants clog our refugee system and make those who legitimately need protection wait far too long, on average almost two years, before they can get a decision on their claim. Bogus claimants are undermining and eroding the faith of Canadians in our system. They are also costing Canadian taxpayers, who are left to foot the bill for the generous and expensive taxpayer funded health care, welfare and other social benefits that draw these bogus claimants.

The measures in Bill C-31 would help curb that abuse. This bill's measures would help protect the integrity of our refugee program. There is no better way to demonstrate our great humanitarian tradition in Canada than by ensuring we can provide protection more quickly to those we genuinely need it.

The reforms in Bill C-31 would help prevent abuse of our system by ensuring human smugglers, violent criminals and bogus asylum seekers would be removed from Canada more quickly.

However, my remarks today will be more to the positive results of Bill C-31, which is something that is getting lost in this debate as we hear the opposition members and their questions. Once Bill C-31 is passed, genuine refugees will receive Canada's much needed protection more quickly. This is a goal and outcome that I think all members in the House of Commons would like to support and see achieved.

In their comments about these particular measures, some hon. members have unfairly accused the government of trying to undermine Canada's tradition of humanitarianism and compassion when it comes to refugees. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our government and all Canadians take great pride in the generosity, fairness and compassion of our immigration and refugee system. Indeed, nothing in Bill C-31 would ever diminish that.

Even with these reforms, Canada will still have the most generous asylum system in the world. We will be number one. In fact, because these reforms will enable those who need our protection to get it even faster, I would argue that they will make it better.

For generations, Canadians have opened our arms to those who need our protection. More than one million refugees have been welcomed to our country since the Second World War. Our Conservative government is proud of and looking forward to continuing that tradition. Just this past December at the United Nations in Geneva, Canada committed to further concrete actions in order to provide protection to those in need.

I urge all hon. members in the House to join me in supporting this important bill and to ensure its speedy passage to make certain that genuine refugees get the help they need in our country.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and for the Asia-Pacific Gateway]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be sharing my time with the hon. member for Crowfoot.

I am pleased to rise in the House today and offer my full support for Bill C-31, protecting Canada's immigration system act, which would strengthen Canada's immigration and refugee system and better enable Canada to maintain its significant humanitarian legacy while also ensuring the public safety of Canadians.

Until recently most Canadians believed that large-scale human smuggling was something that just did not happen here, that it happened somewhere else, maybe in countries like Australia, or they read about it in the paper. That all changed in 2009 when Canadians witnessed the arrival on the west coast of the MV Ocean Lady carrying 76 migrants. Less than one year later, close to 500 migrants arrived on a second vessel, the MV Sun Sea. Shortly after that, a sea container was uncovered at the port of Montreal concealing yet more individuals who had tried to enter Canada illegally.

In response, Canadians told us they wanted our government to act decisively to crack down on criminal human smuggling.

We must act before another tragedy strikes, like the one that occurred off the coast of Indonesia just last December when close to 200 irregular migrants destined for Australia perished when their vessel capsized in rough waters.

Even more recent events remind Canadians that human smugglers continue to target Canada to this very day and we must remain vigilant.

Many Canadians may not know about this, but very recently a human smuggling operation was dismantled in Togo. A large number of people were in Togo waiting to board a ship to come to Canada. With the hard work of authorities there and other countries, including Canada, this trip never took place.

Just a few weeks ago a human smuggling operation in Ghana was dismantled thanks to intelligence provided by Canadian officials. Our officials are working incredibly hard and are to be commended for their work to crack down on these despicable criminal organizations.

The recent capsizing of a small boat off the coast of Nova Scotia reminds us that these dangerous voyages too often end in tragedy. Every year countless people die before they reach their destination.

Bill C-31 includes mandatory minimums for criminal human smugglers and would hold shipowners and operators to account for the use of their ships in human smuggling operations. The bill also includes the mandatory detention of anyone who arrives as a participant in an irregular arrival.

I would note that in response to experts and opposition colleagues, our government has amended Bill C-31 to include detention reviews at 14 days and 6 months. These amendments were supported by the NDP at committee, but despite our government's efforts to work in good faith to amend the bill to ensure it is as effective as possible, the NDP has chosen, as it often does, to be blindly partisan and continues to oppose and delay the bill.

Detaining individuals who arrive as part of a criminal human smuggling event and whose identities are not known is what any responsible government would and should do. Oftentimes the boats that arrive on our shores carry the criminal smugglers themselves and who knows who else. These are not just people who are perceived threats. For example, to date, of those who arrived on the MV Sun Sea, four have been found to be inadmissible due to security concerns, and one has been found to be inadmissible due to war crimes. Even more striking, in regard to the Ocean Lady, to date, 19 have been found to be inadmissible due to security concerns, while 17 have been found to be inadmissible due to war crimes.

I would like to take a moment to congratulate the RCMP for its hard work in its human smuggling investigations and for laying charges on six of the alleged criminal smugglers to date.

To be frank, I am shocked that the NDP and the Liberals believe that unidentified individuals, who could be terrorists, violent criminals or criminal human smugglers, among others who could victimize innocent Canadians, should be allowed to roam the streets before their identity has been established. Our government will not allow this to happen. Unlike the NDP and the Liberals, Canadians can always rely on our Conservative government to protect their safety and security and that of their families.

Experience around the world has taught us that only dealing with the push factors of criminal human smuggling is not effective. The pull factors must also be addressed.

That is why Bill C-31 includes provisions and disincentives to prevent those who come to Canada as part of a designated irregular arrival from applying for permanent residence status for a period of five years and prevents individuals from sponsoring family members for five years.

Again, we acknowledge that these measures are tough, but we believe they are necessary and fair. Unless both push and pull factors to criminal human smuggling are addressed, this despicable and dangerous activity will continue.

By not supporting Bill C-31, the NDP and Liberals are sending a clear and, to be frank, shameful message that if people can afford tens of thousands of dollars to pay a criminal smuggler to bring them to Canada, they can jump the line, but if they are poor, they can languish in a refugee camp. They are telling criminal human smugglers that Canada will continue to be a doormat.

Unlike the opposition, our Conservative government is sending a clear message that our doors are open to those who play by the rules, including legitimate refugees. However, we will crack down on those who endanger human lives and threaten the integrity of our borders.

Human smuggling is a despicable crime. Canadians think it is unacceptable for criminals to abuse Canada's immigration system for financial gain.

Recently, the Government of New Zealand introduced legislation to enhance its ability to deter human smuggling by making it as unattractive as possible to human smugglers and the people to whom they sell their services. Its proposed measures include the use of mandatory detention and streamlined refugee and protection claims processes. This is sounding fairly familiar. Other policy changes include reassessing a refugee claim three years after it is first determined, with permanent residence not granted unless this reassessment is approved. Family reunifications have also been restricted so that those who do gain residence after three years can sponsor their immediate family members to join them in New Zealand, but not their extended family members.

The fact that other governments, such as New Zealand's, are proposing similar measures shows that this is truly an international concern that needs to be addressed.

Indeed, human smuggling networks in Southeast Asia have proven their reach and determination. We know that they continue to actively target Canada as a destination. This is why the Government of Canada is pushing forward with reforms to strengthen the immigration and refugee program in this country.

We must be tough in order to prevent human smugglers from taking advantage of our generosity and from putting vulnerable people's lives at risk. We must be fair to those who follow the rules and come to Canada through legitimate channels seeking peace and prosperity.

However, the system must also be fair for all Canadians, who expect that our borders and shores to be safe and secure, and who expect this government to protect our generous systems from abuse. That is why the Government of Canada introduced this piece of legislation, which I am supporting today.

We will continue to take all necessary action in the future to deter the ugly practice of human smuggling while continuing to meet our humanitarian obligations.

I strongly urge all of my colleagues in the House to support Bill C-31 and ensure its swift passage.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, the member and I usually have pretty close views on a number of issues in this country. I am a little surprised. He is saying that the bill is, from his perspective, going to hurt refugees. I am not quite sure why. In the current system, it takes an average of over 1,000 days, over three years, for a refugee fleeing persecution from his or country to achieve refugee status here in Canada. This piece of legislation would mean that some will receive that application and approval within 45 days, others within no more than 246 days.

While he says he is on the side of refugees, by not supporting the legislation, the member is actually telling all legitimate refugees in the world who have been approved to come to Canada that they are going to have to continue to wait upwards of three years to achieve the status of refugee here.

I am asking him, I am imploring him, to support the bill. Help refugees in this country who are trying to stay here in Canada and achieve that status. Vote in favour of the bill. It is much better than keeping the current status. I would like the member to try to explain how on earth he could imagine that the system we have now is better than the one we would have under Bill C-31.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to participate in the debate on Bill C-31, the Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act.

The latest version of this bill is a slight improvement over the original thanks to some amendments. I would like to thank the government for that, but the fact is that many experts strongly criticized the bill, leaving the Conservatives little choice but to make amendments. Even though the amendments improved the bill, it is still problematic in many respects.

One of the many problems with Bill C-31 is that it will create two classes of refugees: those arriving through regular channels and those arriving through irregular channels. This classification will have serious consequences because individuals will not be treated the same way. According to the Barreau du Québec, this measure is “possibly discriminatory, illegal and contrary to Canada's international commitments”.

There is a real danger that people will be deported to countries where their lives are in danger. This two-tier system will actually increase the risk of error. Yet Canada is bound to protect the right to life, liberty and security of every person in this country, including so-called illegal refugees.

For example, if one person comes from another country by sea and another person comes by air, they can be treated differently. We feel that such a situation is not really acceptable.

Another major shortcoming of this bill that was not amended is the fact that it gives the Minister of Immigration additional powers for no good reason. Under Bill C-31, the Minister of Immigration will decide which individuals qualify as regular arrivals and which as irregular. That puts too much power in the minister's hands. Not only does this bill create a two-tier system, it also politicizes it. This part of the bill has been strongly criticized by many experts, including the Barreau du Québec.

The system was working fairly well, but now the Conservatives are trying to exert even more control over it. We must not oppose the politicization of the immigration system just because the Conservatives are the ones in power. No party or politician should have such powers. There is no reason for it, and the Liberal Party has been clear on that.

If for example, a group of individuals arrive from a country that we have good relations with, but the circumstances are such that the safety of the group is indeed compromised, what will the minister do? He might base his decision on the current state of relations with that country instead of basing it on an objective opinion, as some have pointed out in the past and in committee. Will the minister declare these people as irregular arrivals in order to preserve good relations with their country of origin? If we do not have good relations, a different decision might be made that might not suit the people involved. Will the minister acknowledge the threats against them and declare the arrival regular? Why politicize the matter? It is a bad decision regardless of the minister's intentions.

What is more, the initial bill prevented illegal refugees from being heard before the end of a 12-month mandatory detention. The bill has since been amended to allow refugees to be heard within 14 days, then heard again after six months. Why wait six months? The Liberal Party is wondering why the government would not allow refugees to be heard again every month. We proposed 28 days. I think the government should implement an even more flexible system because, once the identity of the people is known and we know that they are good people and true refugees, why should they have to stay in detention and incur costs for the system and the government?

There is still a two-tiered system at play. The Conservatives should at least withdraw the unreasonable, arbitrary six-month review period.

The safe countries designation also poses a problem since, once again, the minister has the power to decide which countries are safe and which are not. Again, by politicizing the immigration process, we will have to choose between our relations with other countries and protection for refugees. The unfortunate refugees from so-called safe countries will have to go through a much more complicated process and might be sent back to their country of origin for political reasons. That is unacceptable and certainly unjustifiable.

The Conservatives must leave it to the experts to decide which countries are safe and which are not, while reviewing the files case by case. It is not up to the minister to decide. The parliamentary secretary will correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that the bill does not contain a list. We do not know which countries will be safe and we do not know the criteria for designating them.

Mandatory detention for so-called irregular arrivals is highly problematic, especially when it comes to children. Once again, a number of experts opposed this measure and challenged the legality of this bill. Indeed, Bill C-31 will subject 16- and 17-year-old children to mandatory detention if they are considered irregular arrivals. We know the Conservatives like to beleaguer our children, but why not exclude children from mandatory detention? They are too young to have decided to immigrate to Canada; it would have been their parents' choice. Why punish these particular children? This measure smacks of Conservative ideology, which makes no distinction between adults and children. The Conservatives would always rather punish than prevent.

The question of children aged 15 and under also poses a problem. Two choices are being proposed regarding their fate: either they are separated from their parents and sent to another institution while their parents are detained, or they are detained with their parents. Neither option is acceptable, in my view. If the arrivals present no danger to Canada or Canadians, there should be no mandatory detention, and this is especially true when children are involved. Several experts confirmed that the psychological effect on children in both cases would be devastating. This measure will likely be challenged before the courts, and I doubt it is even constitutional. In short, this bill represents another step backward for Canada.

Furthermore, the people who are deported after their application is rejected will not be able to apply for permanent resident status in the following five years. When that is added to mandatory detention, a person might have to wait more than six years to immigrate, sometimes just because of a purely political—crassly political—decision. This measure is not necessary and, I repeat, it is arbitrary. Are there studies that prove this approach should be adopted? Our immigration system is working rather well, so why change all of it?

We have spoken at length about this bill, but one question remains: what is its true objective? The government says that it wants to give priority to regular refugees. And yet irregular refugees will be subject to mandatory detention whether or not they pose a risk to Canada. These two categories of refugees are dealt with in the same manner.

Of course, Canadian taxpayers will foot the bill for detention, even though it is pointless. We have become used to the Conservatives wasting public money on incarcerating people while cutting services to the public. What is most contradictory about this bill is that the government wants to incarcerate more people in order to prevent delays in processing so-called regular refugees.

However, we all know that detaining these people will cost Canadian taxpayers a lot of money. Why not just spend the money on hiring more staff to process the applications? It would be a little more efficient and perhaps would allow these refugees, who have probably filed legitimate applications, to start anew. The Conservatives' logic does not stand up. In the interest of fairness and cost savings, detention should not be mandatory.

The Conservative government says that it also wants this bill to serve as a deterrent to illegal immigration. Yet, the Conservatives are targeting the refugees and not the smugglers. Why have the conservatives chosen to attack such an easy target—the refugees? They should be targeting those who make money by exploiting human misery and breaking our laws. Illegal immigrants already take huge risks to escape misery. The threat of penalties will not dissuade them from entering Canada illegally.

As I have said in the past, most of these immigrants do not look up Canadian laws on the Internet before coming here. If they are exploited, if they are in a precarious situation and are forced to come here, they do not come because they want to be detained or because they are familiar with Canadian laws. They come because they are fleeing poverty in their country of origin. They know nothing about our laws. They are prepared to risk their lives to escape poverty. In other words, this bill will only create more problems for refugees and will have little impact on smugglers.

Must I remind the Conservatives that these same smugglers will usually turn illegal immigrants into slaves once they arrive in the country? The bill should target the people who profit from the crime and not victims and desperate people. As I have already said, with this bill, we will just add to the stress these victims are already suffering.

For all these reasons, my Liberal colleagues and I will vote against this bill. The amendments made by the minister are not enough and only partially fixed the many shortcomings in the original bill. As many experts and officials stated when the bill was studied in committee, the law works as it is. This bill will only create more problems for immigrants, before it is contested and likely declared unconstitutional in court.

I repeat: this bill will not achieve its goal, simply because its focus is not in the right place.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly respect the member's position and her speech this morning on Bill C-31. Of course, I disagree with just about everything she had in there.

However, there were two amendments that the government moved, and I would thank her and the other members on the committee from the NDP and from the Liberal Party for agreeing and voting unanimously in favour of both amendments that the government passed. While we heard a lot of opposition to the bill today, there was a faint hope within the context of the bill, and we did see some support.

This leads me to believe that once the bill is passed and we have moved forward, a number of members from both the Liberal Party and the NDP who will see the light of day and see that this is in fact the right bill. Bill C-31 is the right legislation in terms of reforming our refugee system.

The member spoke for a couple of moments on designated safe countries. It should be made very clear that the transparency about the method and scope of how safe countries would be designated is now in the bill. It was not in the prvious bill, Bill C-11, but it is in the current bill now.

Most importantly, the member spoke at great length about the issue of children and that a decision would be made for those under 16 years of age. That is an addition to the bill that did not exist under Bill C-11. I know she was not here back when we were talking about this issue, but when the government passed legislation on the issue of sexual consent of a minor, we moved the age from 14 to 16. I would like the member to comment on why her party argued so vehemently against raising the age of consent to 16, yet today she says that 16-year-olds are not in a position to make the types of decisions that she is talking about.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I finished off by talking about the mandatory detention of bona fide refugees just because of the way they arrived here in Canada and the impact that would have on children. I want to expand on that a little bit.

I talked earlier about the emotional and the social costs, but we also have to look at the financial burden that the Canadian public would have to pay, because to keep people, legitimate refugees once they arrive and have gone through identification and security checks, in a provincial prison will be a costly matter. The last time I looked at those numbers, we were looking at anywhere from $60,000 to $80,000 a year to keep somebody in a provincial jail.

Besides that, we have to look at the human cost. Here we would not only be fiscally irresponsible and break UN conventions, conventions to which we are signatories, but we would also be fiscally irresponsible at a time of restraint, and it would be a cruel way to treat some of the world's most vulnerable people when they arrive on our shores.

I have heard a lot about how the bill will punish smugglers. I look on the bill as the “punishing refugees bill”, because that is what it does. Under the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, we already have $1 million in fines and life imprisonment for smugglers. If we really want to go after smugglers, we have to work with the international community and get to the source. It is my belief that all these smugglers we are supposedly going to catch will not be on the ship or boat when it arrives.

The current detention and security check system that we already have actually led to charges being laid against some of the people on the boat that arrived from Sri Lanka, but over 90% of the people who arrived on that boat were accepted by Canada as legitimate asylum seekers. However, under this legislation, we would be putting them in prison, and that just makes no sense to me.

There is another aspect we have to look at. We all know the importance of family. All of us like to have our family around us. We can imagine refugees arriving here after running away and putting their lives at risk to get to this new country where they will seek protection. Their number one goal will be to have their family members join them also . Sometimes it will be a mother who might have been able to run away with only two of her kids and might have had to leave a kid behind. Sometimes the whole family remains behind, and only one person escapes.

In those cases, under this legislation, once again we have a two-tiered system that would prohibit legitimate asylum seekers from applying to have their families join them here. They would not have any travel documents. That again goes against the UN convention.

We are not talking about going away on cruises and things like that. For example, if somebody gets here, they might have some family just over the border in the U.S. and they might be able to go there and meet them. If they have arrived here from Mexico, maybe they cannot go back to Mexico but some of their family can get into Guatemala, and they could meet with them there. In these cases, we would once again be limiting and denying some very fundamental rights to people.

This five years of forced separation, by the way, is before they can apply. We know, given the way processing goes in this country right now, two or three or four years could be added to that. We can imagine the impact that kind of separation would have on families.

Once again it would not just be the mental torture that the families would suffer in knowing that their children and other family members were in danger; it would also be the social impact.

There would also be health care costs. Just imagine the impacts it will have on health care. Not only do we keep people in prison for up to a year, but now we will keep them separated from their families.

The impacts cannot be underestimated. We had witness after witness tell us about the impacts of incarceration on children and on adults. Every one of them said that it interferes with the settlement of families and becoming productive, and we heard as well about the costs to health care that I just raised.

Also, we are concerned about biometrics. We are not concerned that biometrics will be used in two areas, fingerprinting and digital photos. Rather, what we are absolutely concerned about is that the committee has not had a chance to study the privacy impact assessment. That is very important for all of us. Obviously, these reforms are not clearly consistent with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

At this time I have an amendment.

I move, seconded by the member for Saint-Lambert:

That the motion be amended by deleting all of the words after the word “That” and substituting the following: this House decline to give third reading to Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, the Marine Transportation Security Act and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Act, because it:

(a) gives significant powers to the Minister that could be exercised in an arbitrary manner, including the power to designate so-called “safe” countries without independent advice;

(b) violates international conventions to which Canada is signatory by providing mechanisms for the Government to indiscriminately designate and subsequently imprison bone fide refugees—including children—for up to one year;

(c) undermines best practices in refugee settlement by imposing, on some refugees, five years of forced separation from families;

(d) adopts a biometrics programme for temporary resident visas without adequate parliamentary scrutiny of the privacy risks; and

(e) is not clearly consistent with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, the Marine Transportation Security Act and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Act, be read the third time and passed.

Citizenship and Immigration

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, today we are debating at third reading Bill C-31, protecting Canada's immigration system act. Bill C-31 would provide protection to genuine refugees more quickly, while allowing us to remove human smugglers, criminals and bogus claimants faster.

Could the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Immigration please tell the House what the consequences would be if the NDP and Liberals have their way and prevent this important and necessary bill from passing?

Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question. The detention issue has been the one which has been most significantly torqued by the opposition in terms of what it exactly means.

In our country over the last 8 to 10 years, approximately 100,000 refugees have sought and obtained refugee status. I mentioned in my speech that we have had two irregular arrivals. Arrivals such as those will be deemed to be irregular arrivals if they happen in the future. In those situations, because individuals come over in mass quantities, literally hundreds of individuals and families, we have no method to determine the identity of those individuals or whether they deserve to seek refugee status in our country.

It is important to know that when individuals are detained, they will be treated fairly. They are going to be well taken care of, but they are going to be detained until we can identify them and determine that they are not going to be a harm to Canadian society and until it is determined whether they truly deserve refugee status in our country. The opposition has failed to acknowledge that less than half of one per cent of all of the refugees who have come to this country in the last 10 years would be deemed to be irregular arrivals. Significant as it is, we can see that this is a very special process that will be used very little, but human smugglers will know it will be used once Bill C-31 is passed.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for his contribution at committee. We spent hours and hours, days and days, listening to witnesses and working through the bill. He was probably a little surprised that two very significant amendments were proposed by the government and were accepted. In fact, I have to thank the member. Both of the amendments put forward by the government were supported unanimously by the government, NDP and Liberal members at committee.

What we have in the bill, and it has been through the legal process in terms of understanding the designated safe country origin, is a quantitative and a qualitative analysis of how the designated safe country process would work. As good as Bill C-11 was, it lacked the accountability of how that designated safe country process was going to work. It was actually going to be in regulation. We are much more transparent in our approach to designated safe countries with Bill C-31 because the process is actually in the legislation itself.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to the bill.

Having listened closely to the previous speaker's presentation on your ruling, Mr. Speaker, I will speak to one point on the issue that relates to Bill C-31 and to Bill C-38.

There are a number of issues in Bill C-38, our budget bill, that have a lot to do with immigration. I appreciate the member's description of what the opposition's role is in terms of keeping the government to account and accountable. However, what he failed to mention was the amount of time allocated in committee for both Bill C-31 and Bill C-38. Bill C-38 was given an unprecedented amount of time for debate, more than for any other bill in recent history. The fact is that the member would not and did not acknowledge the hours and hours spent debating each and every one of these clauses at committee, which is part of the parliamentary process. He did not even want to acknowledge the time given by the government, in agreement with the opposition, to have that debate.

I have said that because we took exactly the same approach with Bill C-31. We opened the doors at committee and said that we should bring in all witnesses. The opposition members believed that this was a big, fundamental bill that would change the refugee system in our country so they wanted to hear from all the experts in the country. Even though we had gone through the entire process once already, we went through it again. I did not hear an acknowledgement from the member opposite for the efforts made in terms of our parliamentary process and listening to what people had to say, and not just witnesses but all members of the opposition who had the opportunity to present their changes, thoughts and beliefs on what the bill should look like. With respect to Bill C-31, there were two significant amendments that were made at committee. These were not amendments that had to be made. As everyone knows, there are enough votes at each of our committees here on the Hill for us to win without having to make changes, without having to do anything other than that this is what will be moved forward for third reading and this is the bill that will receive royal assent.

In our case, we heard from witnesses and we made two significant changes. One had to do with cessation. The way the clause could have been interpreted, an unintended consequence could have been the potential for that individual to lose permanent residency if the country of origin had changed status. We made adjustments to that piece of the legislation. We also made a significant change to the detention issue for irregular arrivals. The original clause included a detention period of up to 12 months. Upon hearing from experts and witnesses who presented their case, the minister and the government listened and made a significant decision. We said that individuals who arrive in what is deemed an irregular arrival, as we saw with the Sun Sea or the Ocean Lady in British Columbia, they would have a hearing after 14 days. Subsequently, if they have been determined to have or not have success with respect to their refugee application, they would be given another hearing after six months.

Therefore, contrary to what the opposition members have been saying over the last week about this government's position with respect to listening, it does listen and it has listened. Bill C-31 is a stronger bill today at third reading than when it was introduced at first reading. Contrary to what the opposition members are saying, this government does spend a lot of time listening, understanding and moving toward the best piece of legislation that we can put forward.

In fact, it speaks to our refugee system here in the country. We welcome more resettled refugees than almost any country in the world. Based on the continued implementation of Bill C-31, which encapsulates a number of pieces of Bill C-11, which was our original refugee reform act, we will have an additional 2,500 refugees per year settle into our country, which is a 20% increase.

It again shows that Canadians have always been known to be fair and compassionate. Our country has a long and proud humanitarian tradition. This bill only strengthens that tradition all the more.

However, it is safe to say that our system, and it is no secret, is also open to abuse. We see that abuse on a daily basis. We are a generous and welcoming people but we do not have tolerance for those who take unfair advantage of our country. Canadians have told us loud and clear again and again that they want a stop put to the abuse which exists within our immigration system. By introducing Bill C-31, and where we are today at third reading, we will see and have shown to those people in this country who have asked us to, that we will protect the integrity of immigration and our refugee system.

There are three main areas covered by the bill which are all interrelated.

First, Bill C-31 includes further and much needed reforms to our asylum system. While the Balanced Refugee Reform Act went a long way to reforming Canada's refugee system, further reform is absolutely necessary. The opposition likes to ask why. The answer is very simple but it cannot be found by using political rhetoric. This is all based on a very factual, necessary and purposeful argument.

We need to look at the cold, hard and indisputable facts. In 2011, Canada received a total of 5,800 refugee claims from democratic, rights respecting member countries of the European Union. That is an increase of 14% from 2010. That number is actually more than the number of claims that we receive from Africa or Asia. There is a simple problem here. The top source country for refugee claims is Hungary, which is an EU member state. Of all refugee claims in 2011, 4,400, or 18%, came from Hungary. That is up almost 50% from 2010.

What is even more telling is that in 2010, of the 2,400 claims made by Hungarian nationals, only 100 of them were actually made in countries other than Canada. They all came to Canada to make a refugee claim from one country, except 100. There is a problem here. There is an obvious issue that needs to be dealt with. It means that Canada received 2,300 claims from Hungary, which is 23 times more than any other country has received from Hungary. The fact that most gets to the core of why further refugee reform is needed is that virtually every one of these claims was abandoned, withdrawn or rejected. Refugee claimants themselves are choosing not to see their claims to completion, meaning they are not in genuine need of Canada's protection. In other words, their claims are bogus.

The reason these claims are bogus is that people are choosing to come all the way to Canada. They have a choice. There are 26 other countries right next door and most, if not all, are part of the EU. These bogus claimants come here to exploit Canada's generous asylum system because of the lucrative and expensive taxpayer funded health care, welfare and other social benefits that are allowed under the current system we have in place. In fact, these bogus claims y cost Canadian taxpayers in excess of $170 million, and that was just last year alone.

Bill C-31, protecting Canada's immigration system act, is part of our plan to restore integrity to our asylum system and restore Canadian's confidence in our immigration system. The bill would make Canada's refugee determination process faster and fairer and would result in faster protection for those who legitimately need refugee protection. It would also, and this is the important aspect of it, ensure faster removal of those whose claims are withdrawn, those claims that are bogus and those claims that have been rejected.

We will speed up the refugee claims process in a number of ways. For example, one major component of Bill C-31 is the improvements to the designated country of origin provision. This will enable the government to respond more quickly to increases in refugee claims from countries that generally do not produce refugees, such as most of those that are in the European Union. Claimants from those countries will still have the opportunity to be heard in terms of their application and to be deemed refugees in Canada.

Contrary to what the opposition has said, there is, for every person who claims refugee status in this country, an opportunity to be heard and an opportunity to have their case determined by the Immigration and Refugee Board. We will change that process so that it will take close to 45 days versus close to 1,100 days that exists now, more than on average three years to process a refugee application in this country.

If 97% or 98% of claims from particular countries are abandoned or withdrawn, we can just imagine how many months and how many years an individual can take advantage of the Canadian system just because of the number of days it takes to get through this process. This will happen no more. We will turn the system around. We will ensure that everyone gets a hearing and we will ensure it is completed within and about as close to 45 days as possible.

The designated country of origin provisions, which I mentioned and are included in Bill C-31, would bring Canada in line with its peers. Countries, like the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Switzerland, all recognize that some countries are simply safer than others and we can presume them to be so based on criteria, both quantitative and qualitative, that are included within the bill itself. Therefore, refugee claimants from those designated safe countries may be reasonably considered under the expedited process, the 45 day process that I mentioned.

We have had some discussion about the UN lately. I am encouraged, or at least listening, when the opposition stands to speak in favour of pretty much anything that the UN does. I thought it would be important this morning to show that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, has acknowledged that by saying:

...there are indeed safe countries of origin. There are indeed countries in which there is a presumption that refugee claims will probably be not as strong as in other countries

Mr. Guterres also agreed that as long as all refugee claimants have access to some process it is completely legitimate to accelerate claims from safe countries.

I will take that one step further. Abraham Abraham, who is the former United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, also is not opposed to the process upon which we have designated safe countries. He indicated:

...as long as this is used as a procedural tool to prioritize or accelerate examination of applications in carefully circumscribed situations, and not as an absolute bar.

We are not just implementing a process that is being used everywhere in a number of countries in the world. We are using a process that is endorsed and understood to be a correct one. It does not exist in our Canadian system as it is right now.

I want to underscore, despite what the opposition has said, that every refugee claimant will continue to receive a hearing before the independent quasi-judicial Immigration and Refugee Board regardless of where he or she came from. Furthermore, every refugee claimant in Canada will have access to at least one level of appeal. These procedures exceed the requirements of both our domestic law and our international obligations.

I will add this is not the purpose nor the reason for passing the bill, but there is a financial benefit to the process in which we will now receive and determine refugee applications. We will save not just federal taxpayers, but provincial and territorial taxpayers, $1.65 billion over a five year period.

How will we use that money? The premiers, finance ministers and ministers of immigration across this country will tell us exactly how they could use that money, whether it be for settlement services, or whether it be for enhancing health care delivery. What we are offering is an opportunity for savings, an opportunity for that money to be used not to fund bogus claims, not to finance those who want to take advantage of our system, but to actually assist Canadians here in our country.

Unfortunately, what is lost in debate over the bill is what it will mean for genuine refugees who are fleeing persecution and who fear for their lives. Under Bill C-31, genuine refugees will receive Canada's much needed protection much more quickly. They will not be waiting three years in the determination process, but will be waiting as little as 45 days to know that they indeed have a home here in Canada. I cannot for the life of me understand how the NDP and the Liberals could be against that process.

Bill C-31 includes tough but fair and necessary measures to combat, deter and crack down on the criminal act of human smuggling. On this side of the House, we are not scared to face the issues of human trafficking and human smuggling. We will face them like no government in this country has before, and we will continue to do that.

Until recently, most Canadians believed that large-scale human smuggling was something that did not happen here, that it was something they just read about in the paper. They thought it only happened in other countries, for example, Australia.

That all changed in 2009 when Canada witnessed the arrival on the west coast of the MV Ocean Lady, which carried 76 migrants. It was almost as if it were a test case to see what would happen when the ship arrived, because less than one year later, the MV Sun Sea came, which held close to 500 migrants. This was not a cruise ship. This was not a ship designed to hold individuals. This was a ship designed specifically by human smugglers who take advantage of these individuals and extract as much money as they can, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, from individuals, who end up spending most of their lives paying that money back. The smugglers would put these individuals on not much more than a freighter to come across the ocean and land here in Canada.

Just as we have new members who are seeing individuals who are not true refugee claimants come to Canada to take advantage of our system, so we have human smugglers who understand the business of smuggling and the lowest common denominator in terms of which country will accept the individuals and how to take advantage of that. Not only are they taking advantage of our country, but they are taking advantage of the individuals.

We all know the stories. On board many of these ships are criminals and terrorists from a country and the human smugglers themselves who, unbeknownst to others, are dressed as if they are also in a position to claim refugee status in our country.

That is going to change. We are going to let the world know that human smuggling is not only unacceptable in this country, but that there will be a very significant price to pay for those who want to get into this business.

We do not have to look too far back to the past number of short weeks and months to know that we are catching these individuals. They are being sought out. They are being charged and they will be convicted. That is how we will stop this business.

There are so many more parts of Bill C-31 that are critically important, whether it be human smuggling, whether it be the issue of irregular arrivals, or whether it be the system itself in terms of how long it takes. We are moving from a system that takes 1,000 days on average to answer a refugee application submitted to the minister to one in which it will take anywhere from 45 days for those who are coming from designated safe countries, versus those who are coming from non-designated safe countries. There is an appeal process in place for each one of these individuals.

There is a process in place where we are now responding to those who truly deserve to be in our country. The best part of all of this is it sets in place a process that is fair to Canadians.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

moved that Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, the Marine Transportation Security Act and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Act, be read the third time and passed.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I am not quite as enthusiastic as the member for Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, but I will try.

This morning, my hon. friend, the member for Edmonton—Leduc and chair of the hard-working Standing Committee on Finance reported to this House that Bill C-38, the Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act, has passed the committee and been recommended for adoption by the House.

I am pleased that the Standing Committee on Finance followed the lead of the House with respect to the longest debate on a budget bill in the past two decades. The committee gave this bill the longest consideration for a budget bill in at least two decades. That is in addition to the subcommittee spending additional time to consider the responsible resource development clauses.

This very important legislation, our budget implementation legislation, economic action plan 2012, will help to secure vital economic growth for Canada in the short, medium and long term. Given the fragile world economy that is around us, this bill is clearly needed, so we must move forward. Therefore, I plan to start report stage on the bill Monday at noon.

In the interim, we will consider second reading of Bill C-24 this afternoon. This bill would implement our free trade agreement with Panama, which I signed when I was international trade minister, some 755 days ago. It is now time to get that bill passed.

Tomorrow, we will consider third reading of Bill C-31, the protecting Canada's immigration system act, so the Senate will have an opportunity to review the bill before it must become law, within a few weeks' time.

Next week I plan to give priority to bills which have been reported back from committee. It goes without saying that we will debate Bill C-38, our budget implementation bill. I am given to understand that there is a lot of interest this time around in the process of report stage motion tabling, selection and grouping.

Additionally, we will finish third reading of Bill C-25, the pooled registered pension plans act, and Bill C-23, the Canada–Jordan economic growth and prosperity act.

The House will also finish third reading of Bill C-11, the copyright modernization act. The bill is a vital tool to unlock the potential of our creative and digital economy. It is time that elected parliamentarians should have their say on its passage once and for all. I would like to see that vote happen no later than Monday, June 18.

If we have time remaining, the House will also debate second reading of Bill C-24, the Panama free trade act, if more time is necessary, as well as for Bill C-7, the Senate reform act, and Bill C-15, the strengthening military justice in the defence of Canada act.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to say that it's a pleasure to be here, but really, when I look at the time, 10:25 of an evening, I'm sure we can all think of a million things we would rather be doing.

It's causing me a great deal of concern that here we are at this very late hour discussing something very fundamental and critical, and that is an immigration issue that, for some weird reason, is buried in a budget, a budget that is so large that it's hard to fathom everything in it.

What's of greater concern is that this issue has never been discussed by the immigration committee. It has not been before us. We did everything we could to sever it out of this report so that we could take it to that committee and have an informed discussion.

What we're talking about here, Mr. Chair, is not just numbers. We're not talking about the deletion of 300 people, not only them, but their families who waited very patiently in a lineup. We're actually talking about 300 families. I want you to imagine how many people this is impacting, and here we are at 10:25 at the end of a very long process, and I'm not sure how much justice we can give this.

These are the people who played by the rules we made. They didn't make the rules; we made the rules. I've often heard the minister saying—Jason Kenney, that is—there are so-called queue jumpers in our immigration system, but here we are punishing people who have been waiting in line and playing by the rules. That is just so un-Canadian.

This morning I had an e-mail from one of these applicants from Hong Kong, and he actually asked me what was happening to the compassionate Canada he had heard so much about. He actually applied to come to Canada rather than the United States, and now, after five years, he's being told, delete button, you're gone. He's thinking he could have applied five years earlier and been settled in the States and not been through the kind of pain he has been through.

It was brought home to me that here we have a black eye for Canada across the world, whether it's in Manilla, where there were demonstrations, whether it's in Hong Kong, whether it's in India, or whether it's in China. What these people are saying and what people in my riding and across Canada are saying is this is not the right way to go. This is just not fair.

By the way, Mr. Chair, there was a study done on the backlog point by the committee a few years ago, but let me assure you that not one person or one recommendation included hitting the delete button. As a matter of fact, the report is very, very clear. They put forward an array of ideas for eliminating the backlog, and there are three main options they did put forward, but not one of them was hitting the delete button. As a matter of fact, the report states that most witnesses recognized the government's legal obligation to process all applications.

Here we are in a budget discussion that is going to impact the lives of 300 families who waited patiently in a queue we put them in, and they were just waiting their turn to come to Canada. We're changing the rules on them.

I have to tell you that I've heard stories of families who make plans once they get in the queue, and they know they're going to come to Canada. I heard of a family who sold some of their assets in order to take English classes and put their son through a school in China because they felt he would be able to come here and assimilate a lot easier. There is a family in the Punjab who sold their land, and because of the cost of living they can't possibly buy back that land because it is now out of their reach.

I look at all of this, and I'm wondering what has happened to our sense of fairness. Even the committee that studied this issue earlier said that even when it came to ministerial instructions that are intended to alleviate the backlog, the perception of fairness prevails. The study actually goes on to say that terminating the applications of people who have been patiently waiting in the queue is a decision that cannot be made. That previous study accepted that this was not the way they could go, and here we are.

As a matter of fact, in that report the committee lauded the work done by the department to reduce the backlog to date, saying that the pre-February 2008 backlog for federal skilled worker applications had been reduced by half, two years ahead of schedule. That's on page 13, in case any of you are desperate for midnight reading tonight. It went on to say that the action plan for faster immigration marked a turning point in immigration application backlogs and progress toward backlog reduction. That's on page 23. Then why would the minister make such an unfair cut under these circumstances?

You look at what was in that report and the kinds of accolades that were given for the reduction, and then here we have a cleaver being taken and a very arbitrary date, 2008. Some of the other professionals and skilled workers who are waiting to come to Canada are saying things like “This year, it's 2008. We applied in 2010. Who's to say that a year down the road it won't be that anybody who applied before 2011 is gone?”

What are we doing to the pool of people we hope to attract to Canada in the future? What kind of an image of Canada are we projecting out there, that we would treat people in such a poor way?

We're a nation that is built by immigration. I'm a first-generation immigrant myself. I chose Canada to be my home. I applied for a teaching job. I came here. I thought it was going to be for a year or two, and I'm still here.

I love this country, but with the kinds of changes I'm seeing happening and the way we're starting to treat newcomers or potential newcomers with so little regard and so much disrespect, really, I would say we'll have many skilled workers out there wondering if Canada is really a place of fairness, of compassion, a place that is inclusive, where they want to come to raise their children, where they want to be part of nation-building.

I know it's very easy for those of us who live in Canada now. We think, “Well, they're not here yet. They're not Canadians. They have no rights.” Canada has never had that kind of an approach towards our international relationships or the way we treat people in other countries. Recently, with Bill C-31, and now with this buried in a budget and left to debate at the very last minute so we can spend very little time on it and really not do a proper analysis of impact, here we are at this late hour, thinking—or not thinking—about the impact we are going to have on families.

There's another case I want to share with you here. There's a family in China, where they have, as we all know, a one-child policy. Upon hearing that they were on the wait list and that they were going to get to come to Canada soon, this family actually sold their apartment. It wasn't a house, but it was their home. They sent their child over here to study because they thought that would really help in the assimilation and would help in the transition. Both the parents, professionals, have been taking English classes and learning as much about Canada as they can. I'm sure they know far more about Canada right now, from what they write, than I did the day I arrived.

For these people, it's not just that we're deleting their application. We're actually deleting their dreams and hopes and aspirations of a home in Canada. I want all of us to imagine what it would feel like if you were in those shoes, if that happened to you. How would you feel? What sense of betrayal would you feel?

As I look at this, I keep hearing about bogus this, bogus that, queue jumpers. In the last week or two the House and my committee have been filled with rhetoric about queue jumpers.

I keep thinking that here are people—normal folk—in other countries who wanted to come to Canada, as I did. They wanted to come here to make this their home. We looked at their applications and said, “Great. Well done. We're going to put you in the queue. We're only letting in so many a year.”

First of all, we didn't have to have that backlog; there was a way we could have been addressing it in a more aggressive manner. But then, out of the blue, we say to them, “You know what? We've changed our mind. If you applied before 2008, you're gone. We'll give you your money back.”

We can send them back a cheque for the processing fees, but how do we give them a cheque for their hopes and dreams? How do we do that? How do we address the absolute feeling of betrayal they're feeling right now from Canadians—all Canadians?

I know the opposition has been very vehemently opposed to these steps, and we will continue to oppose them. At the same time, as I sit here, I'm thinking of the conversation those families must be having and the kind of burden we have placed on their shoulders.

I sometimes wonder how some people—not on this side of the House, but definitely across the way—will be able to sleep at night, knowing they are absolutely impacting the hopes and aspirations of people to whom we gave hope. We gave them those aspirations. We took in their applications, and we had them wait.

It should also be noted that the backlog has actually grown, and I would say deliberately grown, since the Conservatives came to office in 2006. If there were a real intention to address that backlog, those ways would have been found. They were suggested by the committee. Instead, that backlog was allowed to grow, so now, in a piece of legislation that is buried in a 400-plus-page budget.... I don't see what the budget has to do with immigration in this case.

Anyway, here we are. It's buried in the budget, and we're going to hit the delete button. That is going to impact over 300,000 families, not individuals. I just want you to think about the impact that is going to have, not only on that immediate family, but on all the extended families. Many of those people have relatives over here, and they don't like the way Canada is going.

Thank you.

The House resumed from June 1 consideration of Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, the Marine Transportation Security Act and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Act, as reported (with amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

Immigration

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship]

Mr. Speaker, the use of detention in immigration matters is a perfectly ordinary tool in all immigration and refugee asylum systems in the developed world, in all liberal democracies. We have created measures in Bill C-31 to ensure that Canada respects its obligations to protect refugees—meaning real victims of persecution. We want to stop those who are not real refugees from abusing our generosity.

Ours is a very balanced approach that thoroughly respects our legal and moral obligations toward refugees.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, last Friday the United Nations committee against torture expressed serious concern with several clauses of the Conservatives' Bill C-31.

The UN committee recommended that refugees only be detained as a last resort and that all refugees be entitled to a fair and equitable appeal process.

Will the Conservatives take these concerns into account and revise this ill-conceived bill, at last?

Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Minister of State (Transport)]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today in support of Bill C-31, the protecting Canada's immigration system act.

Canada enjoys a global reputation as a nation that champions democracy, equality and freedom of speech. I believe strongly in the benefits and opportunities that come from a diverse society.

The fact is that most Canadians have a chapter in their family history that includes immigration and resettlement. It is what helps define Canada. There are countless individuals and families around the world who want to add the same chapter to their family history by coming to Canada. This is a source of pride for our government and for all Canadians.

Unfortunately the reality is that there are individuals and criminal organizations that see our generosity as an easy target to make a high profit with low risk. These criminal elements use Canada's great reputation to spin false and malicious stories of how refugees can bypass the proper channels by paying a set fee.

Until recently most Canadians believed that large-scale human smuggling was something that did not happen here, that it was something that they just read about, that it happened in countries like Australia.

All that changed in 2009 when Canadians witnessed the arrival on the west coast of the MV Ocean Lady, carrying 76 migrants, and then less than a year later 500 migrants arrived on the second vessel the MV Sun Sea. Shortly after that a sea container was uncovered at the port of Montreal, concealing yet more individuals who wanted to enter Canada illegally.

Suddenly Canadians' eyes were wide open. Suddenly they realized this was a problem. Canadians reacted. They told us they wanted our government to act decisively to crack down on those who would endanger the lives of men, women and children by selling them false dreams and transporting them in unsafe vessels or shipping crates.

I realize my time is short, but members on this side of the House have done extraordinary work in this area. The member for Kildonan—St. Paul has her human trafficking private member's bill. The Minister of Immigration is probably the best immigration minister that Canada has ever had.

The Minister of Immigration has a very strong understanding of the bill. He has consulted extensively. He knows what is right for Canada and he knows what is right and fair for everyone involved in immigration or as a refugee.

Our bill would put a stop to foreign criminals, human smugglers and bogus refugees abusing our generous immigration system and receiving lucrative tax-funded health and social benefits. At the same time, the bill would protect those who would be truly in need more quickly.

Those who are truly in need is a very important aspect. Why should those who are in need be penalized by those who abuse the system, the criminals or the people who are not genuine refugees? There is a system, but the old system is broken. The new system, under the greatest Minister of Immigration ever, will be a better and fairer system and, most important, the best system for Canada.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I kind of wish I did not have to speak to Bill C-31 at report stage because it is a bill that we in the NDP very much oppose. We are very concerned about its passage through report stage and on to third reading.

Our colleague, the member for Newton—North Delta, has worked so hard in committee. She tried valiantly to make amendments to the bill at committee to improve it.

I will begin my remarks by reflecting on the history of the bill. It has an interesting history. There was an original bill which was amended to become Bill C-11, as a result of the Conservative government being in a minority Parliament. It was interesting that at that time there was some co-operation and collaboration to actually remove some of the worst aspects of the bill and to move forward with a bill that was more acceptable to members of Parliament. Of course, now there is a majority Conservative government and it is very disturbing to see that what the Conservatives did was rather than continue with former Bill C-11, they came back with a bill that is quite horrifying in terms of what it will do.

What I find disturbing is that when we hear the speeches from the government members, on the one hand they say that the bill is all about fairness and balance and that we are going to be treating refugees in a proper way and respecting international conventions and Canada's history around refugees. Then on the other hand, everything that comes out of the Conservatives' mouths is basically about abuse of the system.

It is the same kind of mantra we hear so much on the government's legislation around law and order, the Criminal Code and criminal justice. It is always about focusing on what the Conservatives see as abuse and changing laws in massive widespread ways that have an impact on society as a whole. It is a very disturbing pattern that we have seen with the government. It is a tactic the Conservatives use to divide people.

There are fears about people coming to Canada. People have many fears, but when we see a government deliberately playing on those fears and exploiting people's concerns, whether it is about immigration, refugees, or whatever it might be, it feels really bad. It feels like this is absolutely what we should not be doing. Our laws should be based on overall merit, objectivity and the public interest, rather than singling out abuse. We have seen that many times in the political environment. An example would be the attacks on people who are poor, who live on welfare. We call it poor-bashing, where laws are designed to basically scapegoat people on welfare when the rate of abuse is no more than for people in the financial sector who are involved in abuse. It becomes very much a class issue, a term which we do not use very often in the House. It becomes a way of singling people out, of targeting particular segments of our community by saying there are good people and bad people, there are criminals and there are victims, making that very simplistic division.

I wanted to begin that way because we see it so often in much of the legislation that is coming forward. Unfortunately, Bill C-31 is no different. It is a bill, like many other bills from the Conservative government, that confers greater power and authority on the minister.

I am the health critic for the NDP. We have seen recent changes in the health field around the Food and Drugs Act that will do the same thing for the Minister of Health. It will confer much greater power in terms of decision-making away from expert advice, away from a broader notion of public interest. It becomes much more of a partisan, and I would say ideological, decision-making process. Bill C-31 which deals with our refugee system is no different and in fact is probably worse.

There are many reasons to oppose the bill. One is that it concentrates more power in the minister's hands. For example, he would designate what are safe countries without any advice from independent experts.

Another major concern is it will restrict access to the humanitarian and compassionate consideration grounds for a refugee. This will be very problematic. It means that people will have to claim, at the beginning of the process, whether they will file for refugee status or humanitarian and compassionate grounds consideration. This will be a huge issue because people may not know at that point which avenue they will need to pursue. As it is now, people can go through the process and they can also file on humanitarian and compassionate grounds and know it is a due process on which they can rely.

The big concern is the arbitrary designation of so-called irregular arrivals and all that means, This raises huge alarm bells. I remember reading over the years what had occurred in places like Australia where it had mandatory detention and the kind of xenophobia and violent public discourse that took place as a result of that kind of government practice and legislation. Many of us feel this is something Canada now seems to be embarking upon. It is absolutely the wrong way to go.

I feel very concerned because when we have the minister making decisions without expert advice, those decisions can become very political and partisan. Yes, we are in politics, we all make political decisions, but when we deal with something as fundamental as a refugee process that is governed under international, UN and Geneva conventions, how we approach that is critical. Therefore, having the minister saying what is a safe country or saying that, for example, the European Union is not a safe country misses the complexity of our global environment.

I recently saw a film called Never Come Back, which is about the Roma in Canada. The film begins by speaking about Roma people who have settled in, particularly in the communities of Hamilton and Toronto. At the beginning, we think these are great contributors to the local society. There were people working in schools and long-term care facilities as cleaners and in pizza places and they had a soccer team. We wonder whether these people have been persecuted or are they refugees. Then the film takes us back to their home communities and we see the unbelievable persecution that the Roma had experienced, which was horrifying. It is something that is going on as neo-Nazism, xenophobia and violence against targeted minorities grow.

It is very alarming that the simplistic approach of the bill and the fact that it would give the minister so much power would possibly mean that many people who would be refugees legitimately fleeing persecution, hard-working Canadians who will make an enormous contribution to our society when they come here, would be cast aside for political reasons. We have been told that the bill is about getting at abuse. There is this heavy-handed approach at basically eliminating the possibility of many legitimate people from also coming through.

That is only a bit of what I wanted to say. However, it is another sad day that this legislation will go through. The bill has been resoundingly criticized by every major organization that deals with this issue. Even new groups, like the Canadian Doctors for Refugees in Canada, are so concerned about regulatory changes involving refugees and their health coverage. Because of that, they formed a new group and 50 of them visited the offices of elected members. We have not seen this before. I think it is because this kind of legislation will impact so many levels of our society that people who have not spoken out before are now saying they have to speak out.

We hope that possibly some of our amendments on report stage will be approved. I am skeptical about this, but nevertheless we will continue to speak out against this kind of legislation.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Cooperation]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to add my voice today to the debate on this important piece of legislation.

As we know, Bill C-31, the protecting Canada's immigration system act, would help us carry out long-needed reforms to the refugee system and help crack down on human smugglers who may try to abuse Canada's generous immigration system. However, I would like to focus my remarks today on another important component of Bill C-31: the measures in this legislation that would allow the introduction of biometric technology for the screening of temporary resident applicants.

Currently, when individuals make immigration applications, in most cases, they only need to initially provide written documents to support their applications. Quite frankly, a modern immigration system can do a better job of ensuring safety and security. Indeed, biometrics, photographs and fingerprints to be more specific, provide greater certainty in identifying travellers than documents, which, as we all know, can easily be forged or stolen.

Our government is facilitating the travel of legitimate travellers to Canada. However, it is no secret that there are countless numbers of people each year who are not allowed to come to Canada who, nevertheless, find ways to enter. There are countless examples on an almost daily basis of violent criminals, terrorists, human smugglers and war criminals among others, who have entered Canada using false documents.

In fact, there are several examples of criminals entering Canada on multiple occasions after being deported. There are even examples of criminals re-entering Canada using false identities and documents up to 15, 19, 21 different times. This has to stop, and biometrics will help our government end this fraud and abuse. Biometrics will help our government protect the safety and the security of Canadians.

Biometrics is one of the most effective ways to correctly identify individuals. Biometrics would be an important new tool to help protect the safety and security of Canadians by reducing identity fraud and identity theft. As fraudsters become more sophisticated, biometrics would improve our ability to keep violent criminals and those who pose a threat out of Canada.

The legislation being debated today, and regulations that would follow, would allow the government to make it mandatory for travellers, students and workers from certain visa-required countries and territories to have their photographs and fingerprints taken as part of their temporary resident visa, study permit and work permit applications. This would mean that photos and fingerprints would be collected as part of a standard visa application process before the applicant arrives in Canada. This would help with processing visa applications and later, with confirming the identity of visa holders when they arrive at our borders.

The use of biometrics as an identity management tool in our immigration and border control systems is a welcome development that is a long time in the making.

It would also bring Canada in line with what is quickly becoming the international norm in this area.

As my hon. colleagues may know, many governments around the world have already introduced biometric collection in their immigration and border programs. They include the United Kingdom, Australia, the United States, New Zealand, Japan, countries of the European Union, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Although the use of biometrics for visa applications would be a new development for Canada, the fact that so many other countries have already adopted biometrics has an added benefit. Many visa applicants to Canada would already be familiar with the process. This would make for a smoother transition to this system.

By providing a fast and reliable tool to help confirm identity, biometrics would strengthen the integrity of Canada's immigration system and help protect the safety and security of Canadians while helping facilitate legitimate travel. This would greatly help our front-line visa and border officers to manage high volumes of immigration applications and the growing sophistication in identity fraud.

At the same time, the use of biometrics would be beneficial to applicants themselves because, in the long run, as I noted, the use of biometrics would actually facilitate entry to Canada by providing a reliable tool to readily confirm the identity of applicants.

For instance, in cases where the authenticity of documents is uncertain or in doubt, biometrics could expedite decision-making at Canadian ports of entry. Using biometrics could also protect visa applicants by making it more difficult for others to forge, steal or use the applicants' identity to gain access into Canada.

The legislation and regulations would also allow for biometric data collected from foreign nationals to be used and disclosed by the RCMP for domestic law enforcement. For instance, in a criminal investigation, if there is a match to a temporary resident's fingerprints, the RCMP would be authorized to disclose that information to another law enforcement agency. This may help, for example, in cases where unidentified fingerprints are found at a crime scene, or where assistance is needed in identifying victims.

This is yet another tool to help enforce Canadian laws and to ensure that Canada's doors are not open to those who would break the law or endanger the safety of our citizens. Let me stress, however, that the use of biometric information for law enforcement purposes would be conducted in accordance with Canada's privacy legislation.

Allow me to quote from a recent editorial on Bill C-31 which appeared in the Montreal Gazette. It noted:

The collection of biometric information is a sensible security precaution that will be a valuable tool in preventing people from slipping into the country with false identities.

It would be hard to disagree with this take on biometrics. After all, the many benefits of introducing biometric technology for screening visa applicants make it a welcome and, as the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism has described it, a “historic” development for our immigration system.

Furthermore, the use of biometrics is increasingly becoming the standard by which other countries operate. By passing Bill C-31, the protecting Canada's immigration system act, we would be ensuring that Canada keeps up with the many countries already using biometrics in their immigration and border programs.

The implementation of biometrics makes so much common sense, I cannot for the life of me understand how the opposition NDP and Liberals could vote against these provisions.

Canadians, including my constituents in Newmarket—Aurora, do not want criminals to be able to enter Canada, live in their neighbourhoods and roam their streets. I am quite certain neither do the constituents of any of the NDP and Liberal MPs in this House.

The NDP and Liberals are trying to gut biometric provisions. They are voting against one of the most important measures to prevent criminals and terrorists from entering our country. They are voting against a tool that will help protect the safety and security of all Canadians, including their constituents.

It is only our Conservative government that is supporting measures that will help prevent any more innocent Canadians from being victimized by foreign criminals who should not be in Canada in the first place.

Biometrics would protect the integrity of Canada's immigration system. It is an important new tool to help protect the safety and security of Canadians by reducing identity fraud and identity theft. As fraudsters become more sophisticated, biometrics would improve our ability to keep violent criminals and those who pose a threat to Canada out.

For these reasons and many others, I wholeheartedly and without reservation urge all members to vote against the irresponsible NDP and Liberal amendments that would stop the government from implementing biometrics, and instead support Bill C-31 and ensure its speedy passage.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, it is obvious that the hon. NDP member is very ill-informed about Bill C-31.

For example, he said that the bill will result in the incarceration of minors and children, which is not true. The bill includes a clear provision that exempts minors who are designated as irregular arrivals—smuggled human cargo—from detention.

I must point out that there is a huge difference between the incarceration that he spoke about and the detention of immigrants. Incarceration suggests imprisonment. However, no immigrant is imprisoned in immigration detention centres. All immigrants are free to leave Canada at any time. It is not imprisonment.

Living conditions at detention centres are like those at a two star hotel with a bit of security. What we have heard is nothing but rhetoric.

In addition, he said that the government had not accepted any amendments, which is not true. For example, the committee adopted a provision that will allow a review of the detention by the IRB after 14 days of detention, and after six months of detention in the case of immigrants who were smuggled into the country. Is he not aware of these amendments?

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, they always say that the government does not want to incarcerate children. Unfortunately for my colleague who just spoke before me, UNICEF does not share that opinion. UNICEF has made recommendations urging the Canadian government not to incarcerate children and those recommendations have been ignored by the government. That is the problem. All the witnesses who appeared before the committee, including the government's witnesses, indicated that this was not a good bill, and that they have some reservations about it.

I will share some of the most striking testimony. The Barreau du Québec said:

Accordingly, the Barreau recommends withdrawing Bill C-31 and promoting and improving the application of the Balanced Refugee Reform Act with regard to the [problems raised].

The Barreau du Québec is calling on the government to withdraw this bill. It believes that the bill is ultra vires. Echoing the Barreau du Québec is the Canadian Bar Association, which recommends that Bill C-31 in its current form be withdrawn—not amended, but withdrawn. They say this is not a good bill. That is serious.

The Supreme Court of Canada issued two important rulings in Singh and Charkaoui. In those rulings, the court indicated that, no matter what the government wants, when it incarcerates someone, it must provide that individual with access to justice and ask a judge to rule on the legality of his or her incarceration. That is fundamental.

The Conservatives are not adhering to that; they are dismissing it. They are giving the minister discretionary powers—very significant powers, too much power.

This has been reiterated by UNICEF, an organization that cannot be accused of being made up of crypto-communists or pro-terrorist militants. UNICEF has stated:

...we are concerned that many of the provisions of Bill C-31, as currently framed, are overly broad; provide for sweeping ministerial discretion without judicial accountability or other checks and balances in the system; are unconstitutional under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms; and violate Canada's international obligations, as stated in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Those comments were made by UNICEF, the organization responsible for defending children's rights around the globe. It issued a series of recommendations aimed at excluding children under the age of 18 from the application of this legislation. I would remind the House that, at present, despite what the government member who spoke before me said, under this bill, children can be incarcerated. Anyone between 16 and 18 can be sent to prison.

Furthermore, we need to understand that these are people who arrive with families. Are parents who are incarcerated going to stand for their three- or four-year-old child being sent who knows where? These people have no guarantee that any children who do not go with them to a detention centre will be treated properly elsewhere. There will be language barriers, cultural differences, and so on.

This means that, at present, children can be and will continue to be incarcerated. UNICEF condemns this. It is calling on the government to guarantee that no one under the age of 18 will be sent to an immigration detention centre. It is pretty simple, yet this government does not seem to understand.

So they really must not have listened to the testimony that was given. Everyone said it: these detention centres do not respect this at all.

People who claim to support the safety of children—and I would like to believe that the members opposite do too—say that children can find themselves in these detention centres with their parents but also with criminals that Canada rightly deports.

So, for a certain period of time, children are being detained with common criminals. They are being detained with people who engage in anti-social behaviour and who have to be deported from Canada. These are not just illegal refugees, but serious criminals. They are being deported because of their anti-social behaviour and they are being given the opportunity to interact with children. That is unacceptable. Many people testified in this regard. Everyone agreed on this point. No one who testified disagreed with this position. Yet the government did not approve this resolution.

There is also the matter of the child's age. Sometimes, when children are between the ages of 16 and 18, it is difficult to determine their exact age. UNICEF proposed a procedure that is in place in every other country. Canada has not implemented it yet.

People asked that the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, Canada's obligations with respect to the status of children, the UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms be respected. They made a series of recommendations, which were all presented. Not one of them was approved by the government. Not one. None of the recommendations to protect children and the rights of all Canadians—because they are also our rights—were approved.

Detaining someone without giving him the opportunity to explain his situation before a judge does not just violate the rights of refugees, it also violates the rights of all Canadians. When the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is not applied to one Canadian, it is not applied to every Canadian.

It is striking that all of the witnesses said that this is not a good bill. Yet there is a law that could come into effect in June. It is a good law that was unanimously supported by the House and by witnesses. It respects the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and our international obligations, and it enhances our global reputation. But no. The Conservatives are replacing it with—and I am sorry to have to say it—a bill that is complete garbage.

This legislation gives a minister powers that should never be given to a single man. These include discretionary powers to determine what constitutes a safe country, an irregular arrival and the definition of a child.

Mr. Speaker, thank you for letting me know that I have just two minutes left.

The experts have spoken. They have said that this is at odds with the charter. It is not hard to understand. Two Supreme Court rulings have made it clear that the government does not have the right to do this, yet it is going ahead. It is truly a tragedy that we are wasting our time on legislation that, as soon as it is enacted, will be dragged into court on the basis of the charter and the case law. The Supreme Court justices have already ruled on these issues, and they have said no.

Constantly ignoring good advice suggests some level of ill will. According to the experts, we have a law that protects us.

There is already a law that prevents criminal and terrorist elements from entering Canada. All of those who are unacceptable or bad for Canadian society already get weeded out. They do not get into Canada. That bears repeating. The government likes to scare people into thinking that bad guys are coming to Canada to kill and rape. The Conservatives like using those words, but their assertions have no basis in reality.

The truth is that, when irregular arrivals by boat land in British Columbia, government officials sort through them to identify common criminals and war criminals. Those people do not get into Canada.

The House resumed consideration of Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, the Marine Transportation Security Act and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Act, as reported (with amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak today on Bill C-31, the protecting Canada's immigration system act, and to voice my strong opposition to the irresponsible NDP and Liberal amendments that will gut this necessary and important piece of legislation, which will improve the country's immigration system in a number of important ways.

Immigration is central to our country's history, to our prosperity, to our international reputation for generosity and humanitarianism and our great success as a nation. That is why I am pleased to speak today in support of a bill that is designed to ensure that our country has a strong, effective and efficient immigration system.

Bill C-31, the protecting Canada's immigration system act, aims to strengthen Canada's immigration system in three very specific ways.

First, it would further build on the long-needed reforms to the asylum system that were passed in Parliament in June 2010 as part of the Balanced Refugee Reform Act.

Second, it would allow Canadian authorities to better crack down on the lucrative business of human smuggling by integrating measures that the government previously introduced in the Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act.

Third, it would enable the introduction of biometric technology for screening visa applicants which would strengthen our immigration program in a number of important ways.

All these measures are important for many reasons and I would like to spell out how and why.

On refugee reform, Canada has the fairest and most generous asylum system in the world. In fact, we resettle more refugees than almost any country on the planet, and we are increasing that number by 20%, a record of which all Canadians can be proud. However, it is not a secret that our system is open to abuse. The facts paint a clear picture.

Last year asylum claims for democratic and rights respecting European Union countries made up a quarter of all claims in Canada. Shockingly, that is more than the claims we received from Africa and Asia. What is more, virtually all these asylum claims from the EU were either abandoned or withdrawn by the claimants or rejected by the independent IRB.

In other words, these people were not in need of Canada's protection when they applied to come to Canada as refugees, but they came anyway. They came to soak up our generous benefits and to try to jump the queue because they did not want to wait in line and follow the rules like everyone else. While here, these bogus claimants have access to our generous taxpayer-funded health care system and our welfare benefits. Indeed, the average bogus asylum seeker costs the taxpayers $55,000 each.

The opposition can argue against this bill, but they cannot argue with those facts.

The measures in Bill C-31, the protecting Canada's immigration system act, would accelerate the processing of refugee claims, especially for nationals from designated countries that generally would not produce refugees. They would also reduce the options available to failed claimants to delay their removal from Canada.

In short, these measures will help to prevent abuse of the system and will ensure that all our refugees determination processes are streamlined as much as possible. This will be accomplished without affecting the fairness of the system and without compromising any of Canada's international or domestic obligations with respect to refugees. Most important, by growing the refugee system in these ways, the legislation would also ensure that the refugee claimants who really needed our protection would get it even faster. For those who deserve to come to Canada, for those who are truly refugees, the system will become fairer and it will become faster.

As well with this new legislation, taxpayers are expected to save $1.65 billion over the next five years. This is money that can go to health care, to education, to roads, to all the other things that we hold dear in our country.

As I mentioned at the top of my remarks, the second piece of the protecting Canada's immigration system act incorporates measures that address human smuggling.

Several months ago in the House the Minister of Public Safety introduced Bill C-4, preventing human smugglers from abusing Canada's immigration system act.

As my hon. colleagues are well aware, we debated that bill extensively throughout the fall sitting of Parliament. The anti-human smuggling measures contained the bill would help maintain the integrity of our generous immigration system, while curtailing the abuse of that system by human smugglers whose activities would undermine the security and safety of Canadians.

Cracking down on human smugglers is an important element of protecting the integrity of our immigration system. After listening to expert witnesses, Canadians and parliamentarians, the government has proposed amendments to the detention portion of that bill.

The amendments would allow for a first detention review within 14 days and subsequent reviews every 180 days. As before, a person would be released before this time upon being found to be a genuine refugee. As an additional safeguard, the government will also propose an amendment which allow the Minister of Public Safety, on his own initiative and at any time, to release a detained individual when grounds for that detention no longer exist. We are putting great protections in the system for true refugees.

Detaining individuals until their identity has been established is what any responsible government would and should do. The human smuggling groups include architects of these criminal operations, war criminals and serious criminals. These are not just perceived threats; these are real threats, threats to Canadians, threats to our seniors, threats to our children.

For example, on the Sun Sea, to date, four people have been found inadmissible to Canada for security reasons. One has been found inadmissible because of being guilty of war crimes.

In the Ocean Lady, to date, 19 people have been found inadmissible to Canada for security reasons, while 17 have been found inadmissible due to war crimes.

These are significant numbers. Unlike the NDP and the Liberals, our government wants to keep these people off the streets and out of our country. By opposing these provisions, the NDP and the Liberals are saying to their constituents that they want these inadmissible people, war criminals, these security threats, to be let into our communities where they will go underground immediately and be difficult to track and left to threatened the safety and security of all Canadians, our seniors, our children, our single moms. These people are true threats and it is our responsibility as parliamentarians to ensure they do not have access to Canada.

The first component of Bill C-31, protecting Canada's immigration system act, would create a legislative framework for the long-planned implementation of biometric technology as an identity management tool in our immigration and border control systems.

This component of the legislation and its corresponding regulations that would follow would allow the government to make it mandatory for certain visa applicants to Canada to have their photographs and fingerprints taken as part of their temporary resident visa applications. Because biometric data is more reliable and less prone to forgery or theft than other documents, these measures would strengthen immigration screening and enhance our security and help reduce fraud.

Biometrics form an effective tool to manage high volumes of applications and growing sophistication in identity fraud measures. Using biometrics will help prevent known criminals, failed refugee claimants and previous deportees from using false identities to obtain a Canadian visa. It will help prevent innocent Canadians from being victimized by foreign criminals who should not be in the country in the first place.

Implementing biometrics will bring Canada in line with a growing list of countries that already use biometrics in their immigration and border control programs.

I stand in strong support of Bill C-31, and congratulate the minister and the parliamentary secretary for bringing in needed amendments. I will support the bill and I ask the opposition parties to do the same.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-31 but before I get into my speaking points, I did not have an opportunity to reply to the parliamentary secretary for natural resources but I want to put on record the very clear NDP position on this.

First, I want to acknowledge the good work done by the member for Newton—North Delta and the member for Vancouver Kingsway. The member for Newton—North Delta indicated that witness after witness at the committee meetings studying Bill C-31 told us that the legislation was fundamentally flawed, unconstitutional and that it concentrated too much power in the hands of the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.

Bill C-31 would effectively punish legitimate refugees and do nothing to stop human smuggling because none of the NDP substantive amendments were adopted by the government members at committee and because MPs from all parties just passed the balanced refugee reform package in the last Parliament. The member for Newton—North Delta recommended that all clauses be deleted from this legislation. I think that is a fairly clear position from the NDP.

I also must correct the record around the member for Vancouver Kingsway. I know all members of the House at various times selectively quote from speeches and press releases, but I want to indicate that the member for Vancouver Kingsway actually said that Bill C-31 was a bill that was “...unconstitutional, violates international conventions, punishes refugees and harms Canada's long reputation as a responsible recipient of those needing protection”. That is from the website of the Canadian Council for Refugees. I think that is fairly unequivocal about the NDP position on Bill C-31.

As responsible parliamentarians, the New Democrats studied the bill very carefully. I would remind people that it is another omnibus bill, which seems to be a pattern that we are seeing from the Conservatives.They are not allowing parliamentarians to divide bills up and have thorough and considered study of each section of the bill to ensure we are not having unintended consequences and that the impact is exactly what the bill was intended to do. We have seen other examples in the House where we have had to go back and correct after the fact when we have made errors in bills that have been passed.

Bill C-31 would repeal most of the compromises from the former Bill C-11, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, which was from the 40th Parliament. It received all party support. Again, members from the New Democrats worked very hard with other parties to ensure that it was a more balanced approach. Bill C-31 re-introduces Bill C-4, human smuggling, which targets refugees instead of the smugglers, and it introduces the collection of biometrics for temporary residents.

I do not have enough time in 10 minutes to go through all aspects of the bill but I will touch on a couple of points. The bill would concentrate more powers in the hands of the minister by allowing him or her to name safe countries and to restrict refugees from these countries. Under the former Bill C-11, this was to be done by a panel of experts, including human rights experts. It would restrict access to humanitarian and compassionate consideration. It includes a clause that would prohibit refugee claimants who have been incarcerated in their home country for over 10 years and would not allow for tribunal discretion in the case of political prisoners. One that has been pointed out in this context is Nelson Mandela who was convicted and sentenced for sabotage in the apartheid era of South Africa. Although the New Democrats agree that Canada should not accept those with a criminal background, many refugees are actually fleeing political persecution and some consideration must be given to those refugees.

The bill would allow arbitrary designation of irregular arrivals and their mandatory incarceration.

Bill C-31 re-introduces most of the provisions of Bill C-4, which were widely condemned by refugee advocates and are likely unconstitutional. It would change the Balanced Refugee Reform Act 2010 without even implementing the law as it is. That act was passed by the minority Parliament after a series of compromises led by the NDP and was set to come into effect in June 2012.

I want to emphasize a couple of key points. The bill would punish refugees and would not address the problem of human smuggling. We just passed the Balanced Refugee Reform Act last year and the Conservatives are going back on that compromise that they spoke in favour of mere months ago. The minister wants to concentrate more arbitrary power in the minister's hands to treat refugees differently depending on how they come to Canada.

There were some amendments that were considered. This was not only through the NDP but also by refugees and stakeholder groups. A couple of these amendments were to allow for initial detention review at 14 days initially and subsequently at six months, and to clarify that the government would not have the power to revoke the permanent residency of successful refugee claimants if conditions should change in their countries of origin unless it was found that they obtained their status through fraudulent means.

However, it is important to note that these amendments did not deal with a number of very serious situations: provisions that would give the minister the power to hand-pick which countries he or she thinks are safe without the advice from any independent experts; measures to deny some refugees access to the new refugee appeal division based on how they arrived; and a five-year mandatory wait for bona fide refugees to become permanent residents and reunite with their families, again based on how they arrive in the country.

A number of other serious concerns were highlighted as potentially unconstitutional or potentially in violation of our international obligations.

We are specifically talking about refugees but many of our constituency offices end up dealing with significant amounts of casework as a result of immigration, whether it be visitors visas, refugee claims or a number of other factors like that. I am dealing with two cases in my riding. One case concerns a family member who is now in Canada. The person is professional, hard-working and has been in the country for a number of years. Her sister has been applying to come to Canada as a resident. She has been on the list for seven years and she is a skilled, professional worker. We have no idea what is going to happen to her application. Despite the number of years she has been on the list, the amount of money she has paid and that she has done everything that she needed to do, she will not be able to come to Canada even though she is one of those skilled workers we are looking for. This family, which has been waiting patiently for seven years, has been thrown into turmoil.

The second case I am dealing with concerns a visitors visa. The person was born and raised in Canada and he married somebody from another country. This woman has adult children in the other country who are professionals and who have extended families and property. They just want to come here to visit mom and dad. These family members have been repeatedly denied visitors visas because they are deemed to be a threat or risk to not return, despite their very clear ties to their home country. What will happen in this case is that this Canadian family, with significant assets in this country, will sell its assets and move to the country where the woman's family lives. What we will have here is the loss of a professional and his wife who live in the country and the loss of their significant assets because the other country will welcome them with open arms. We need to look seriously at some of this processing.

In its comments on the amendments, the Canadian Council for Refugees stated:

While the CCR welcomes changes that improve protection for refugees in Canada, the majority of the CCR’s key concerns with the bill remain, including:

Provisions to designate ‘irregular arrivals’ and ’safe countries’ (also referred to as ‘designated countries of origin’) that discriminate simply because of a person’s origin or method of arrival

Speedy and inflexible timelines that prevent people from telling their stories and preparing their cases properly

A five-year ban on permanent residence applications and family reunification for “irregular arrivals” once they are recognized as refugees

Mandatory detention for some claimants

The Canadian Council for Refugees concludes:

Unfortunately, other amendments represent a step backwards with respect to restrictions for claimants from ‘safe countries’ applying for a Pre-Removal Risk Assessment (PRRA). In its original form, Bill C-31 put in place a 12-month bar; the amended version of the bill will increase this to 36 months. This change renders the PRRA ineffective.

We have an organization that works hard on behalf of refugees and it cannot support this bill. Surely the opinion of somebody who has the face-to-face knowledge from working for years with refugees should be considered.

I will close with a comment by Dr. Meb Rashid who said that as a physician who has had the privilege of working with refugee populations for over 10 years, he was deeply concerned about the impact of mandatory detention on the health status of an often overly traumatized population.

I urge all members of this House to oppose the bill.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources and for the Canadian Wheat Board]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased today to rise in the House to speak to Bill C-31, the protecting Canada's immigration system act, and we are speaking at report stage.

Unfortunately, we are debating what I would call irresponsible opposition amendments that try to gut this important piece of legislation. I would like to take a few minutes to explain what the negative consequences would be if the NDP and the Liberals succeeded in delaying and stopping this bill from going forward.

Bill C-31, once passed, will make Canada's asylum system much faster and fairer. The most negative and important consequence of the opposition amendments would be that legitimate refugees would have to wait longer to receive Canada's much needed protection. Under the current system, it takes almost two years for a decision. Our Conservative government believes that is unfair and unacceptable. That is one of the main reasons we have introduced Bill C-31.

By introducing and supporting the opposition amendments, the NDP and Liberals are telling true refugees fleeing war and persecution around this world, many who literally have scars on their backs, that they should wait longer than is necessary to receive Canada's protection and for the certainty and piece of mind that comes with that protection. This is truly shameful.

The measures in Bill C-31 unquestionably complement Canada's proud humanitarian tradition of providing protection for those who are most in need of it. That tradition manifests itself in many internationally recognized ways. For example, Canada is one of only about 20 countries in the world that resettle refugees. In fact, we annually resettle about one out of every ten refugees who are resettled globally, more than almost any country in this world. That is something that we can be proud of. The government has pledged to continue this tradition. By 2013, Canada will resettle up to 14,500 refugees. That is an increase of 2,500 refugees since 2010.

On top of this, every year Canada grants protection inside the country to thousands of asylum seekers. Bill C-31 will continue to move forward Canada's strong humanitarian tradition. With that being said, no one should doubt that there are many concerns with the way that our current refugee system operates. We know there is significant abuse of the system and of Canadians' generosity. Bill C-31 would help address those problems.

Let us take a look at the facts. In 2011, 62% of all asylum claims were either abandoned or withdrawn by the claimant or rejected by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. Far too many taxpayer dollars are being spent on such claims. Indeed, the average failed refugee claim costs taxpayers around $55,000.

Another concern is the recent spike in refugee claims from countries that are generally considered to be safe. These are countries with traditions similar to our own with respect to human rights and commitments to the rule of law. For instance, Canadians would be interested to know that last year nationals from European Union countries accounted for about a quarter of all refugee claims made in Canada. That is over 5,800 claims from the European Union in 2011, more than the claims that are received from Asia or Africa.

What is more, virtually all of the asylum claims made from EU countries were abandoned or withdrawn by claimants, which is their own admission that they were bogus, or they were rejected by the independent IRB. The cost to hard-working Canadian taxpayers for those unfounded claims is at least $170 million per year.

These facts speak for themselves. A large number of asylum seekers in Canada are simply not in need of our protection. Instead of waiting patiently to come to Canada through the proper immigration process, too many of these people are trying to use our asylum system as a back door to gain entry into Canada. The very unfortunate result is a clogged refugee system where those who legitimately need protection must wait far too long before we can process their claims.

Canadians are generous. They want to provide protection to those who are genuinely in need. However, I can tell the House that Canadians have no tolerance for those who blatantly seek to abuse that generosity. We need to send a clear message on behalf of Canadians on this, that being that if they are not in need of our protection they will be sent home quickly.

I would like to try offering an explanation about why the current system results in so many unfounded claims.

To begin, too much of our time is spent on processing applications from people whose applications for asylum are ultimately rejected. This has contributed to a significant backlog of cases at the Immigration and Refugee Board. Currently, about 42,000 claims are pending. In a nutshell, the current system is too slow, not only for our refugees who are genuinely in need of our protection, but also for dealing with bogus claimants who seek to abuse our system and our generosity.

Long wait times make Canada a much more attractive target for those whose only motivation for seeking asylum is to take advantage of our many generous social benefits while they wait for a decision. Ultimately, again, it is hard-working Canadian taxpayers who end up footing that very expensive bill.

Under the current system, claimants can access taxpayer-funded health care and claim social assistance for several years while their claim is still pending. On average, it can take up to four and a half years from the time an initial claim is made until a failed claimant is removed from Canada. In some cases, this process has taken more than 10 years. Every Canadian I know would say that this is clearly unacceptable.

The situation is also far too cumbersome which makes it more vulnerable to abuse. Bogus claimants who seek to abuse our system know they have many avenues and many different layers of recourse. They know they can further prolong their time here by seeking these different avenues of recourse. That is precisely what many of them do to further delay their removal from Canada.

The NDP members have praised the goals of this bill. They have said that the system needs to be faster and that more needs to be done to crack down on those who abuse the system. I will quote the NDP immigration critic and MP for Vancouver Kingsway who had this to say:

I think what we need to do is build a system that has a fast and fair determination process. And that’s something that I’ll give [the minister] credit for. I do think that’s what his intention has been all along. And we all want to work towards that. We don’t want endless dragging on of this stuff because refugees, when they come here, you know, they do qualify for basic sustenance...it is at the cost of the Canadian taxpayer.... We want a fast, fair system where we can give a sanctuary to people who need it quickly and we can weed out the people who don’t have valid claims, get them through a fair process. And if they’re not valid at the end of the day, deport them out of Canada swiftly.

The Liberal immigration critic and MP for Winnipeg North also has supported these goals. He said, “I support the need to make quick decisions in regards to refugees.”

Countless others support Bill C-31 as well. Immigration experts, lawyers, settlement organizations and average Canadians all overwhelmingly support Bill C-31. They have all said that something needs to be done. Our Conservative government has now taken action.

I am not surprised, but I am disappointed, to see that while the opposition members say one thing, they have done quite another. Instead of working in good faith with our government to pass legislation that is in the best interest of Canadians and genuine refugees, they have chosen to play politics with this issue.

The measures in Bill C-31 would help protect the integrity of our immigration system. At the same time, they would not change the fact that Canada's refugee determination system remains one of the most generous in the world. If the measures contained in Bill C-31 are implemented, Canada will be able to develop a faster, fairer refugee system that better protects those who genuinely need our protection. We will also be able to remove bogus asylum claimants from the country faster. Too many taxpayer dollars continue to be spent on bogus applications from people who are not in need of protection.

It is for these reasons that I implore all members in this House to vote against the NDP and Liberal amendments. I ask them to support Bill C-31 and help to ensure its speedy passage.

The House resumed from May 17 consideration of Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, the Marine Transportation Security Act and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Act, as reported (with amendments) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

First of all, we would have a bit of a train wreck on our hands with respect to the asylum system, because the IRB and CBSA are not in a position to implement the provisions of the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, which was passed in June 2010, because they've been frozen waiting for the revisions included in Bill C-31. The Balanced Refugee Reform Act is scheduled to come into effect on June 29 of this year. So it's essential that royal assent be given to Bill C-31 before June 29 so we can delay the coming into force and then retool the new asylum system to ensure that it's up and running by the end of this calendar year. That's absolutely essential.

If it were defeated, it would send a clear message to the criminal human-smuggling syndicates around the world that Canada is a ripe target, and that we're not serious about combatting them or depressing the price of their would-be clients.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

What if the NDP and the Liberals succeed in frustrating the passage of Bill C-31? Can you give us some broad comments on what would happen?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Biometrics is a big part of the increase in the department's budget—I think it's about $25 million. This is contemplated in Bill C-31, giving the government the legislative authority to collect biometrics from foreign nationals in their applications for temporary resident visas. This system is a key part of the Canada-U.S. “Beyond the Border” action plan signed by President Obama and the Prime Minister last year. It will vastly improve our immigration security by harnessing technology allowing us to ensure that people who apply for visas and enter our borders are who they claim they are. This way, we can virtually eliminate the gaps that exist from relying on biographic paper data.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Mr. Minister, I see the main estimates include funding for the implementation of biometrics. We know that Bill C-31, Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act, includes provisions that will allow the government to implement biometrics. Can you tell us why it's so important, and how it will help the protection, safety, and security of Canadians?

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Actually it is, or Bill C-31.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

With respect, again, to asylum claimants coming from designated safe countries, let's put this in perspective. In 2010, for example, we received, to be precise, 2,298 asylum claims from Hungary, 22 of which were deemed positive. That's less than 1%. And 2010 is one example. Over 99% of the claims from that country were abandoned, withdrawn, or rejected.

Now, I would point out that under the new, faster system we are adopting, hopefully, through Bill C-31, asylum claims coming from designated countries will be dealt with within 45 days. That's about six weeks' time.

I would suggest to anyone coming from Hungary, let's say, to Canada, whether they're a visitor or whatever their category is, that they should ensure that they come here with health insurance. They have health coverage in their country of origin. They have full mobility within the European Union, which is a full-service collection of welfare states. And I would submit that it is not an obligation of Canadian taxpayers to finance comprehensive health care for visitors from the European Union, including the 99% of asylum claimants who end up being rejected.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon, we will continue with the NDP's opposition day motion.

Tomorrow, we will finish report stage on Bill C-31, the Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act. Including second reading, this will be the eighth day of debate on the bill, in addition to many committee meetings. As the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism told the House on Tuesday, this bill must become law by June 29.

On Monday, we will resume the third reading debate on Bill C-25,, the pooled registered pension plans act. Following question period that day, we will mark Her Majesty the Queen's jubilee and pay tribute to her 60 years on the throne. After that special occasion, we will get back to the usual business of the day, debating legislation. Bill C-23, the Canada–Jordan economic growth and prosperity act, will be taken up at report stage and third reading.

Jumping ahead to next Thursday, we will resume debating Bill C-24, the Canada–Panama economic growth and prosperity act, at second reading. I would also call Bill C-25 that day if the debate does not finish on Monday.

Finally, June 5 and 6 shall be the seventh and eighth allotted days, both of which will see the House debate motions from the NDP.

I can confirm notice of a motion for unanimous consent regarding the private member's bill, Bill C-311. This is the bill to amend the Importation of Intoxicating Liquors Act that the NDP filibustered the other day. I understand the NDP has now agreed that was a mistake and it is willing to allow it to proceed to a vote at this time. Therefore, we anticipate we will be consenting to that motion to undo the damage that the NDP unwisely did when it filibustered the bill previously.

[Patrick Grady, Economist, Global Economics Ltd., As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'm pleased to have received your invitation to testify on the immigration measures in Bill C-38, part 4, although it's a very small part of a rather large pie.

For background, I'm an economist who has studied immigration issues. I collaborated with Professor Herbert Grubel to do a study for the Fraser Institute, which estimated that since 1987, immigration has been costing the Canadian government $16 billion to $23 billion per year.

I'm also on the advisory board of the Centre for Immigration Policy Reform. This is a new organization that was established to advocate for immigration policies that are more in Canada's economic interest. We believe it makes no sense to continue to bring in so many immigrants every year when there are so many Canadians unemployed and immigrants are performing so poorly in the labour market. Our view is that immigration should be used only to complement the existing workforce in Canada and not to provide a quick source of cheap labour for employers that discourages Canadians from entering the labour market.

We also believe we should rely on our own education and training infrastructure, which is among the best in the world, to meet our labour needs, and we believe it's capable of doing so. We also think we should only rely on temporary foreign workers in exceptional circumstances. It shouldn't have been blown up the way it has in recent years, as almost a first supply of labour for many employers.

For more than 20 years, the performance of immigrants has been deteriorating from what it was in the past. Immigrants were able to come, and after a period of adjustment they were able to gradually adapt and earn as much as other Canadians. It's been only since the Conservative government came in during 2006 that serious efforts have been made to address this problem.

You're all aware of Bill C-51, in 2008, to deal with the huge backlog that had built up following the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act back in 2001. There were three sets of ministerial instructions.

Important measures have been introduced by the government that we think are very good. There is the Canada experience class, particularly recent attempts to put more emphasis on arranged employment and job and language skills in immigrant selection. Also, there are the Bill C-31 reforms to help fight human smuggling and protect Canada's immigration system, and of course the other measures to combat fraud, including marriage and refugee fraud. It's important that people have confidence in the function of our immigration system if it's going to continue to have political support.

Turning now to the immigration policy changes in Bill C-38, part 4, in spite of the steps taken, the backlog problem has persisted. There was no real evidence that the performance of recent immigrants was improving in general, except for maybe those with arranged employment or some of the federal skilled worker groups.

The backlog has threatened to undermine the efforts made in improving immigrant selection. You have a group of people you've committed to bring in who were selected under old rules, and they're getting older every year. You have a waiting time of up to 11 years, so by the time they get here, not only are they unsuitable, but they're much older than optimum immigrants would be.

As I pointed out when I appeared before the committee on immigration and citizenship last October, the only choice the government really had to prevent a further deterioration in immigrant performance and growing claims on the fisc was to legislate away the skilled worker backlog, which is what they're doing in this bill.

The government also needs the authority to deal with the issue of refunding the application fees. The minister of CIC requires the authority to issue the ministerial instructions needed to implement his proposed new immigrant selection procedures, since the old ones weren't working.

Bill C-31—Time allocation motion

[Joe Daniel, Conservative, Don Valley East, ON]

Madam Speaker, countless people choose to pay criminal human smugglers tens of thousands of dollars to come to countries, including Canada, because they can afford to try to jump the queue instead of waiting in line like everyone else.

As was the case in Nova Scotia, these trips often end in deadly tragedies.

Bill C-31 includes measures to deter people from becoming part of a human smuggling event. Shamefully, the NDP and the Liberals are against these measures.

Would the minister please comment on why he thinks the opposition is opposed to measures to crack down on criminal human smuggling events?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Madam Speaker, that is a very good question. A filibuster is a parliamentary tactic that seeks to delay or prevent a vote on a motion by means of endless debates.

We just heard the hon. opposition member say that she believes that every member should speak to the bill at every stage. If that applied to every bill, then it would be impossible for Parliament to take action, to make decisions and to get anything done.

In a parliamentary context, we have to find a balance between democratic debates, deliberations, consideration of changes and actions. I believe we have found a good balance with, as I was saying, more than 130 speeches, almost 50 hours of debate and the adoption by the government of the motions moved by the opposition.

At the end of the day, our deadline is June 29 and we have to fix the problems with our asylum system, which is the purpose of Bill C-31.

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Madam Speaker, I want to begin by expressing how grateful I am to the government for allowing us to debate this bill for 13 days. Indeed, we have here a budget implementation bill that amends roughly 70 Canadian laws in 430 pages, and we debated it for only one week. I understand that to the government, 13 days is a long debate.

The minister was talking about a filibuster. Apparently we had a filibuster during consideration of Bill C-31. I would like to know his definition of filibuster. Indeed, to him, holding a democratic debate in the House, listening to public opinion and studying bills are part and parcel of a filibuster.

I would like the minister to rise and explain to us the meaning of filibuster and the difference between a filibuster and a democratic debate on amendments he made to his bill.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Madam Speaker, it was just this morning that I received more emails in my mail pouch dealing with the issue of Bill C-31 and the concerns--

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Madam Speaker, that question is just complete nonsense. The reality is that every member has had an opportunity to speak repeatedly on this bill. First of all, many of the elements of Bill C-31 were debated in the previous Parliament under the heading of Bill C-49. Second, in the earlier part of this Parliament most of the provisions of the bill were debated in the form of Bill C-4.

Altogether in this Parliament there have been 47.5 hours of debate, 130 speeches, meaning 130 MPs have spoken to the bill, and 43 hours of committee study. If there are any questions that have not been posed, or any views that have not been expressed during those almost 50 hours of House debate and over 40 hours of committee debate, I would really like to know what they are. I do not know who has been asleep at the switch.

I can say that I have followed this debate very closely. I have been in the House for almost every single hour of debate, and I do not hear new questions or new points of view. I just hear the same speeches being regurgitated over and over again. Eventually we must act in order to meet the deadline of June 29 and to keep our commitment to Canadians to fix the broken asylum system.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Madam Speaker, that is a reasonable question. The government did give priority to Bill C-31. Since the bill was introduced in the House, we have spent more hours debating this bill than almost any other bill. We made it a priority to send the bill to committee.

As I just mentioned, the bill has been debated for 13 days or 47.5 hours. Members have given 130 speeches on this matter, which is a lot. There have also been questions and comments after almost every speech. The bill was studied in detail in committee.

I must point out that the government made the substantial amendments suggested by the committee. The government agreed to the amendments proposed by the opposition.

Quite frankly, I believe that this is an example of a process that works very well when it comes to the proceedings and the opposition interests.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. minister for his clarifications. We are all well aware that the bill has a time limit stemming from legislation passed in the previous Parliament. I would like to ask why time allocation in this instance must be rushed to such an extent that we will not have a proper discussion in this place of amendments that are now properly before the House. There should be the opportunity for members to speak to their own amendments in relation to Bill C-31.

I want to thank the hon. minister for being more flexible and willing to take on changes to this legislation and other legislation in the 41st Parliament, but there is more that should be done on this bill before we are finished with it.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Madam Speaker, I can. In fact, there is a very clear and compelling deadline that we are rapidly approaching which requires the rapid adoption of Bill C-31, the protecting Canada's immigration system act.

In the last Parliament, the 40th Parliament, this place adopted then Bill C-11, the balanced refugee reform act, that included major revisions to Canada's asylum system which are scheduled to come into force by June 29, 2012.

Since that time, we have seen the growing problem of both human smuggling and a large and growing wave of unfounded asylum claims particularly coming from the European Union. Therefore, we have concluded that it is necessary to strengthen the asylum reforms and adopt measures to combat human smuggling. That is why we have had to delay the coming into force of the balanced refugee reform act from the last Parliament. To be blunt, we are not in a position to implement the new system contemplated in Bill C-11 in the 40th Parliament. If we do not adopt this legislation, if it does not receive royal assent by June 29 of this year, a new law will come into effect that the appropriate administrative agencies, such as the IRB, are not yet ready to put in place.

I would point out to my hon. colleague that this bill has received 13 days of debate, 47.5 hours of debate and 130 speeches at second reading and report stage. It had 15 committee meetings with over 43 hours of committee study and 109 witnesses. It was preceded in a previous Parliament by Bill C-49,, which had many similar provisions including 3 days of debate, 10 hours of debate and 30 speeches.

In fact, this bill and most of its provisions have received an enormous amount of debate and consideration both in this place and at committee. There is a deadline with a great deal of urgency that we adopt this by June 29.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

moved

That in relation to Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, the Marine Transportation Security Act and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Act, not more than one further sitting day shall be allotted to the consideration of the report stage and one sitting day shall be allotted to the third reading stage of the said bill and, fifteen minutes before the expiry of the time provided for government business on the day allotted to the consideration of the report stage;

and on the day allotted to the third reading stage of the said bill, any proceedings before the House shall be interrupted, if required for the purpose of this Order, and in turn every question necessary for the disposal of the stage of the bill then under consideration shall be put forthwith and successively without further debate or amendment.

Citizenship and Immigration

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition calls upon the government to withdraw Bill C-31 because it is not fair to all refugees. It restricts appeals and gives too much discretion to the minister.

Bill C-31—Notice of time allocation motion

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

While I am on my feet, I will advise that Bill C-31, protecting Canada's immigration system act, has been debated on six days in the House and there have been over 80 speeches. That is in addition to over a dozen committee meetings where members studied the bill. Yet even with all of that debate and study, I must advise that an agreement has not been reached under the provisions of Standing Order 78(1) or 78(2) concerning the proceedings at report stage and third reading of Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, the Marine Transportation Security Act and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Act.

Under the provisions of Standing Order 78(3), I give notice that a minister of the crown will propose at the next sitting a motion to allot a specific number of days or hours for the consideration and disposal of proceedings at those stages.

Citizenship and Immigration

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition is a Toronto-wide petition with regard to Bill C-31. As we know, over half of those who live in Toronto were born outside of Canada.

This bill strikes at the heart of the very foundations of who we are as a country. The fact that this bill would tear families apart is of deep concern to members of my riding and people right across the country. Jailing refugees for six months without the possibility for appeal, forcibly separating refugees from their families for at least five years, dividing refugees into tiers based on their country of origin, unnecessarily punishing them as a result and expanding ministerial powers to shape legislation by removing parliamentary oversight and access to an appeal process are just some of the things in Bill C-31 that people right across the city of Toronto have deep concerns about.

It is an honour for me to present this petition on their behalf.

Opposition Motion--Komagata Maru Incident

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Madam Speaker, on May 23, 1914, the ship, Komagata Maru, arrived in Burrard Inlet near Vancouver with 376 passengers aboard from British India. At that time, Canadian immigration officials enacted regulations to block immigrants from India from being admitted to Canada. Immigrants were required to come by continuous journey from their country of birth and enter with at least $200 cash each. This continuous journey regulation did not mention race or nationality and, on the surface, seemed fair and applicable to all immigrants. However, it was an open secret that the regulation was intended to be applied primarily to people from British India.

When the Komagata Maru arrived onshore, Canadian immigration authorities did not permit passengers to leave the boat, claiming that they could not be admitted until officials had determined if they met the requirements of the continuous journey regulation. Since they were refused permission to land, the passengers lived aboard the ship for two months, like prisoners, continuously threatened by famine and disease. For the entire two months, the passengers of the Komagata Maru, the Indian community in British Columbia and Canadian immigration authorities were engaged in a heated legal battle about the passengers' right to enter Canada.

At the end of the two months, only 20 passengers were given permission to stay in Canada and, on July 23, 1914, the Komagata Maru was forced to leave Canadian waters. When it returned to Calcutta, India, 19 passengers were shot by the British Raj.

This tragedy was a major embarrassment for the Canadian government of the day, and even today it reminds all Canadians and particularly Canadians of South Asian heritage of past injustices.

The Komagata Maru tragedy is a reminder of a policy of exclusion for immigrants based on the unjust basis of culture, religious belief and skin colour.

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Newton—North Delta.

Despite the prejudice and hostility in Canada that the Komagata Maru story exemplified, the South Asian community has survived and prospered in Canada. The community emerged in the 1980s with a positive and confident outlook, and today in a more tolerant and compassionate Canada, the Komagata Maru remains a powerful symbol of unjust discrimination.

Despite Canada's proud tradition of protecting refugees, the country has not always been generous toward those in need of protection. However, we have learned painful lessons from our history and, since then, Canada has set an international gold standard for how we treat and welcome asylum seekers and refugee claimants.

This was our reputation until the current government began to reform our refugee and immigration system and change the way we treat asylum seekers to a regressive level similar to what was seen at the time of the Komagata Maru. By ramming through Bill C-31, people who flee a country and arrive by boat, like the Komagata Maru, would not be permitted to land in Canada. However, once they step foot on Canadian soil, they would be detained, some in provincial prisons, and treated like common criminals.

This tragedy of the Komagata Maru shows us where we went wrong and where we should never return. However, as we are witnessing with Bill C-31, it is becoming yet another example of Canada failing to learn from the mistakes of the past. This is one perfect example of immigration laws gone wrong and resulting in the unnecessary loss of human life.

As a country, we need to ensure that immigration reform will not result in any more loss of human life. Unfortunately, I do not think this will be the case should Bill C-31 pass.

The tragedy of the Komagata Maru is a dark chapter in Canadian history and this dark chapter must finally be closed. The people of the South Asian community deserve closure for this trauma so that the process of healing and reconciliation can begin. What better time to acknowledge this fact than during the month of May, Asian Heritage Month, and mere days before the anniversary of this tragic event?

In 2008, the Prime Minister attended an outdoor cultural festival in Surrey, B.C. where people were led to believe that he would announce the date of a formal apology. Rather than listening to the festival organizers who advised that an apology from the state would be ill-received at this park, the Prime Minister chose to issue an apology anyway. This apology was widely regarded as rude, insincere and disrespectful.

A dignified official apology for the Komagata Maru tragedy is long overdue. By refusing to formally apologize for the Komagata Maru incident, the Conservatives have essentially created two different levels of apologies for historic wrongs. This is wrong.

Without an apology in Parliament, there is no official acknowledgement that what Canada did was wrong. The South Asian community in Canada deserves a respectful acknowledgement of this historic wrong.

Today, as we remember how Canada treated the Komagata Maru in 1914 and we commit to learning from our past, we ask the government to officially apologize in the House of Commons to the South Asian community and to the individuals impacted in the Komagata Maru incident.

Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-31, a bill that dramatically changes the refugee system in Canada and, in my respectful view, does so for the worst.

I was our party's immigration critic when the bill was introduced some three short months ago. Following the introduction of the bill, I was inundated by ordinary Canadians and stakeholders alike who were worried and shocked about what the government was proposing.

It is no exaggeration to say that the bill is opposed by every major stakeholder group in the country. Churches, doctors, immigration lawyers, settlement service organizations, academics, refugee groups, cultural organizations and refugees themselves.

Rarely has a bill been so roundly condemned by so many. Why? Because it is readily apparent to anybody who studies this omnibus legislation that the bill is unconstitutional, punitive to refugees and will be completely ineffective in deterring human trafficking.

I am extremely disappointed to be back here at report stage after the Standing Committee on Immigration and Canadians heard many hours of very trenchant and damning testimony. I am disappointed to see that the government has ignored the recommendations of over 40 witnesses representing the full spectrum of the immigration community, who warned about the damaging and misguided effects of the bill.

I am referring to witnesses such as the Canadian Pediatric Society and psychologists who warned of the effect that mandatory detention would have on refugees who had been traumatized by persecution, violence, torture or other atrocities.

The government has ignored this testimony and is moving forward with this backward approach. Most telling, those same groups testified about the particularly damaging effect that detention had on children, whom the bill would also see in detention.

I think of the testimony of Peter Showler, Lorne Waldman and other members of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, probably the most knowledgeable group of people in the country on refugee law. Peter Showler used to be the head of the Immigration and Refugee Board. They testified that the accelerated timelines to make refugee claims would be impossible to meet in an adequate manner. In their testimony and their experience hearing cases, this would lead to mistakes and decisions not to grant asylum to bona fide refugees.

I want to pause to say this. Rarely is a mistaken decision more damaging and dangerous than a mistaken decision in a refugee determination case. To be refugees, they have to show that they have a well-founded fear of persecution. This often means they are fearing for their lives. Therefore, a wrong decision could lead to a deportation of someone back to a country where that person might face torture, persecution and death.

That has happened. In the past year there have been cases. There was a case recently of a Mexican refugee claimant denied here, sent back to Mexico, who then was murdered by her ex-husband, a police officer, whom she claimed persecuted her.

Those lawyers also spoke of the provisions for mandatory detention, arbitrary designation of irregular arrivals, denial of appeal to certain classes of refugees and ignoring the best interests of children, all of which went against our Constitution and international conventions alike. The government, unfortunately, ignored that expert testimony.

I think of the testimony of Gina Csayni from the Roma Community Centre in Toronto, who spoke of the real human rights violations and systemic discrimination in Europe. She spoke about how Roma refugees would be negatively affected by having EU countries designated as safe. She spoke about how disheartening and insulting it was to hear our Minister of Citizenship refer to them as bogus and she explained why he was wrong.

I want to pause there and say that we are all very intimately familiar with the persecution, the genocide, against the Jewish people in World War II. What is less commented upon is the fact that Roma, along with the disabled, were also targeted for their ethnicity, rounded up, tortured, medically experimented upon, detained in concentration camps and murdered simply because they were Roma.

This is not just any ethnic group. It is an ethnic group with a history of being the victims of genocide in Europe. There is absolute rock-solid evidence that Romas still face persecution, and states are unable to protect them even today.

The government ignored that testimony. In fact, it doubled down and continued to use inflammatory language referring to Roma refugees as bogus.

We heard from Chris Morrissey and Sharalyn Jordan from the Rainbow Refugee Committee and others who spoke about how the so-called safe country determination process threatened LGBTQ refugees specifically. Over 100 countries of this world have some form of legislative discrimination against the LGBTQ community, including death in some countries.

Again, the government plows forward as though these stakeholders never spoke.

Experts from Australia, a country the government likes to selectively quote from when its adopting policies it likes, testified that the draconian rules that the government was imposing to try to deter human smuggling—that is, rules that direct punitive elements at refugees—had no deterrent effect at all. Australia has adopted the same procedure that this bill would, and there has been no diminution of refugee claimants coming to the shores of Australia since it adopted those rules years ago. The government ignored that evidence.

The government did make two important changes, and it is important to point that out because it shows what an effective official opposition can do and it shows when parliamentary committees work.

Witnesses and opposition members warned about the impact of clauses 18 and 19. These clauses would allow the minister, through the IRB, to strip permanent residence status from people who had been living in Canada for many years on the basis that conditions had improved in the countries they fled.

The minister said repeatedly that this was not his intention. Actually he went much further than that. He said that the bill categorically did not have this effect. He vociferously and arrogantly derided members of Parliament and stakeholders who brought up the subject. In the end, however, he realized and acknowledged that he was wrong, that he did not understand the effect of the bill that he wrote. He has still not apologized for the vitriol and derision with which he so wrongly defended these clauses.

The other change that the government agreed to was to require a review for the mandatory detention at 14 days and at six months. This came after witnesses, including witnesses sympathetic to the government, had a consensus that this provision was blatantly unconstitutional, as the New Democrats pointed out for months.

This means that the government put forward a bill and could not find one expert in the whole country who deemed it to be charter compliant. This is shocking.

I would also point out the intransigence of the minister who insisted throughout that this bill was constitutional, repeatedly, only in the end to find out, just like the official opposition said and the stakeholders said and the legal community testified, it was not constitutional.

This change notwithstanding, experts still believe other provisions make this bill unconstitutional and we may be tied up in the courts for years figuring that out.

I want go back to the beginning and ask this question. Why this bill? Why does the government insist on going forward with the bill when many of the problems the government claimed to address were already dealt with in the previous Parliament in Bill C-11? We dealt with them when all parties, the Conservatives included, came together and passed the Balanced Refugee Reform Act. We all recognized that the refugee determination system was slow and we put forward reasonable solutions to this problem.

The minister stood in this very House and praised Bill C-11. He said that the amendments that were worked out by all parties in the House made the system faster and fairer and he called that legislation “a monumental achievement”.

When I asked the minister whether he was wrong then or wrong now, he said that he was wrong then. Well, that may be honest, but it does not inspire confidence and it raises serious questions about the real motive behind this bill.

Why would the Conservatives throw a bill in the trash can, a bill that the minister praised, and reintroduce a bill that in previously unamended form was inferior? Even the Minister of Immigration said that.

One part that still puzzles me is the minister's insistence to give himself the power to unilaterally declare a country to be safe. Under Bill C-11, designated persons still have the right of appeal to the Refugee Appeal Division. Under this legislation they do not. Under the previous legislation the minister had to consult with a panel of experts before determining a country to be safe. Under this bill he does not.

On television the minister said that he had run simulations that showed the system under the previous bill would not work. However, when I have asked for the data from these simulations, even under access to information, the minister cannot produce that information.

There is no need for this bill. Canadians know it. The official opposition knows it. The immigration community knows it. The government should withdraw the bill now before serious damage is done to refugees and Canada's reputation as a compassionate country.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague raised the concept of designated safe countries, where the minister can select a country and designate it as safe. The result of that is refugee claimants from that country would have certain rights denied them, like the right to appeal to the refugee appeal division.

In Bill C-11, which preceded this bill, the minister agreed to the concept of having an independent commission made up of a couple of human rights experts who would also have to agree on the minister's decision. The minister himself said that this made the process more transparent and accountable, yet in Bill C-31 the minister has taken that out.

Could the member explain why the Minister of Immigration does not want to have an independent panel as a protection to ensure that a designated safe country is proper instead of leaving that decision solely to a minister of the crown with no independent oversight? Why is that?

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is with great disappointment that I rise to speak to the amendments put forward by the opposition at report stage. I say “disappointed” because the opposition is playing exactly the sort of petty and blind partisanship that turned Canadians off politics. It is important to explain to Canadians the negative consequences that would result if these opposition amendments were adopted.

The opposition will not admit it, but Canadians know that Canada's immigration and refugee system faces challenges and is open to abuse. The protecting Canada's immigration system act would make Canada's refugee system faster and fairer. This bill would put a stop to foreign criminals, human smugglers and refugees with unfounded claims from abusing Canada's generous immigration system. At the same time, this bill would provide protection more quickly to those who are truly in need. Canadians take great pride in the generosity and compassion of our immigration and refugee programs, but they have no tolerance for those who abuse our generosity and seek to take unfair advantage of our country. The facts speak for themselves. Canada welcomes more resettled refugees than almost any country in the world. In fact, we are increasing that number by an additional 20%. Our tradition of compassion and protection will continue and will grow.

However, our immigration system is open to abuse. Every year, thousands of bogus refugee claimants come to Canada. They choose to file bogus refugee claims in the hope that their lengthy processing times and endless appeals will result in their obtaining permanent residence in this country. Immigrants to Canada, like me, are very welcoming and fair but we have no tolerance for people from safe countries who abuse our refugee system as a way to jump the queue and get into Canada without having to wait and follow the proper process like everyone else. We have no tolerance for those who take unfair advantage of our generosity.

It is unfortunate, but not surprising, that the opposition parties, NDP and Liberals, conveniently ignore the facts when they speak against Bill C-31. The amendments they introduced at the report stage prove that. These amendments show that the opposition members continue to ignore the facts that underscore the need for this important piece of legislation and undermine the opposition's criticism of it.

These are the facts. In 2011, Canada received 5,800 refugee claims from the European Union alone, a 14% increase from 2010. That means that a quarter of all refugee claims were from the democratic European Union, where human rights are respected. That is more than Africa and Asia. Canada's top source country for refugee claims was Hungary, an EU member state. In fact, in 2011 Canada received 4,400 refugee claims from Hungary alone. In comparison, Belgium received only 188, the U.S. only 47, and France and Norway only 33 each. It is very telling that in 2010, Hungarian nationals made a total of 2,400 refugee claims around the world and 2,300 of those claims were made in Canada. That means that only 100 refugee claims were made in other countries around the world. Canada received 23 times more than all other countries combined.

What is more, in the past few years virtually all of these claims were abandoned, withdrawn or rejected. The majority of these claimants chose to abandon or withdraw their claims, a clear sign they were not in need of Canada's protection. These claimants are, by definition, bogus. They are paid for by hard-working Canadian taxpayers. Canadian taxpayers pay upwards of $170 million per year for these bogus claimants from the European Union. Taxpayers fund their welfare, their education and their health care. Hard-working taxpayers are sick and tired of footing the bill for bogus refugee claimants who abuse the system at everyone else's expense. Too many tax dollars are spent on bogus refugees.

Bill C-31 would put a stop to this abuse. Allow me to illustrate. The bill would help speed up the refugee claims process in a number of ways. It would challenge the designated country of origin policy and enable the government to respond more quickly to increases in refugee claims from countries that generally do not produce refugees. Claimants from designated countries of origin would be processed in about 45 days compared to more than 1,000 days under the current system. The less time claimants spend in Canada awaiting a decision, the less incentive there is for people to abuse our generous asylum system and use it to jump the queue in the regular immigration process. Bill C-31 would also stop the ability of bogus claimants to use endless avenues of appeal to remain in Canada, receiving generous taxpayer-funded health care and social assistance benefits.

Bill C-31 would prevent refugee claimants from submitting a refugee claim at the same time as they apply for humanitarian and compassionate consideration. It would also bar claimants from submitting humanitarian and compassionate applications for one year following a final negative decision from the IRB. In addition, under the balanced refugee reform act, individuals with a final negative decision from the Immigration and Refugee Board would be barred from applying for a pre-removal risk assessment for 12 months.

Taken together, these measures send a clear message to those who seek to abuse Canada's generous refugee system. Those who do not need our protection would be sent home quickly. They would not be allowed to remain in Canada by using endless appeals to delay their removal. At the same time, for those who need refuge, these measures would help to get protection even faster. Every eligible asylum claimant would continue to get a fair hearing by the Immigration and Refugee Board. Again, even with these needed changes, Canada's refugee determination system would remain one of the most generous in the world.

Human smugglers are criminals who operate in the underworld and charge large amounts of money to facilitate illegal immigration. The protecting Canada's immigration system act would help crack down on these smugglers in a number of ways. It would enable the Minister of Public Safety to designate the arrival of a group of individuals into Canada as an irregular arrival. It would establish mandatory detention of those individuals in order to determine their identity, admissibility and whether or not they have been involved in illegal activities.

As my hon. colleagues know, the detention provisions in Bill C-31 were recently amended and now reflect that the first detention review would occur within 14 days and subsequent reviews every six months.

I note that NDP members supported these amendments at the committee but now they are trying to gut the very amendments they supported. This is more proof that their main goal is to play games rather than work in good faith in the best interest of Canadians.

As before, a person would be released before this time upon being found to be a genuine refugee. As an additional safeguard, the Minister of Public Safety, on his own initiative, at any time, can also order the release of a detained individual when grounds for detention no longer exist. Mandatory detention would also exclude those designated foreign nationals who are under the age of 16.

The government is sending a clear message that our doors are open to those who play by the rules, but we will crack down on those who threaten the integrity of our borders. With these proposed measures, the integrity of Canada's immigration programs and the safety and security of Canadians would be protected.

Unfortunately, by introducing these irresponsible amendments, the opposition has shown that it does not support strengthening the immigration system. It has shown that it does not support genuine refugees getting protection more quickly or protecting hard-working Canadian taxpayers from having to foot the bill for bogus refugee claimants and human smugglers.

I urge the opposition to stop playing games, listen to the will of their constituents and vote against these amendments.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, there might be a bit of irony here. Today we are debating Bill C-31 which, in good part, is before us because of two boats that came to Vancouver, the member will recall, the Sun Sea and the Ocean Lady.

Now, if we go back to 1914, the Komagata Maru is a boat that came from Asia and was never allowed to land, and we are going to debate that issue tomorrow. People within the Liberal Party and, I suspect, New Democrats and Conservatives would ultimately argue that was a mistake, yet if we listen to what the minister said today in his presentation, he said that is not the way to come. People do not come to Canada via boat; they have to come through legitimate means.

Does the member agree that there is some irony there? Tomorrow we are going to be apologizing to the Indo-Canadian community because of the way we treated some 376 individuals who, back in 1914, attempted to land here, yet we just had a minister, and others, say that this is not the way to come to Canada and that they want to prevent that.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure whether the last four minutes of that speech had anything to do with Bill C-31. It had a lot to do with HRSDC, but it had nothing to do with citizenship and immigration or public safety. I appreciate the member speaking about policies that do not relate to the bill.

In any event, I would like to get his response to one thing that is paramount and that he did not speak to.

The NDP has tried to make hay of the fact that, as they say, there are no issues in there that would actually get at the smugglers themselves, in terms of being tough on them.

When we look at the bill itself, there is failure to file to pre-arrival information--our amendments would make it much more difficult for them, from a criminal perspective—as well as failure to comply with ministerial direction and providing false and misleading information. All of these would be tougher on those who have the nerve to smuggle people into this country.

I wonder if the member would say why he will not be supporting the piece of this legislation that would get tough on smugglers who try to bring people into this country and who take advantage of them by taking the money right out of their pockets.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of the good residents of York South—Weston, my constituents, to try to make some sense out of what is happening but I am afraid I am not able to make sense of it.

A bill has already been passed by Parliament to do what the Conservatives have been saying these past many months, since Bill C-4 and now Bill C-31 have come before us. Bill C-11 will take effect. For whatever reason, its implementation was delayed until June of this year, but it will take effect and it will solve the problem of 95% of refugee claimants from some European countries actually abandoning their claims because the provisions in Bill C-11 do precisely what the government says Bill C-31 would do. Therefore, what is the purpose of Bill C-31? It is really to put more control in the hands of the minister by making the minister solely responsible for determining which countries are safe and which are not.

That leads one to speculate wildly about what possible reason it could have for putting such control in the hands of the minister. We could speculate that it might have to do with the Department of Foreign Affairs or with giving favoured nation status in return for trade agreements. I have no idea. The problem is that we are rushing ahead with a bill that does the same thing as another bill already does. When we examine the difference, it is that the minister would have the power. It does not make sense. The portion of the bill that is new is the part that supposedly deals with human smuggling.

I was listening today to the U.S. ambassador, Luis CdeBaca, who is the head of the U.S. task force on human trafficking. So as we do not get confused, human trafficking and human smuggling are two different things. Human trafficking is engaging in slavery practices in other countries in the world and in countries close to home. What he said made me realize that had the kinds of things the Conservatives are proposing here been in place years ago, they would have prevented the praise that the U.S. ambassador gave us this afternoon.

He said that he was proud of the fact that Canada was one of the very first countries to abolish slavery. In fact, Canada accepted refugees from none other than the United States. Those refugees came to my former hometown of Windsor through the underground railroad. If this law had been in place, who knows what would have happened to those individuals who are now the ancestors of many prosperous and well-deserving families of this country, some in my riding? Those individuals could possibly have been detained in jails for up to a year and prevented from supporting or sponsoring their families. It beggars belief to imagine a regimen similar to what is being proposed by the government to deal with a supposed irregular arrival problem by detaining refugees.

We have heard the government say over and over again that it is on the side of the victims. This is making victims pay. These individuals are the victims of a crime. That crime is perpetrated by the smugglers and yet the government's reaction is to punish the victims. They are the only people it can get its hands on, because the smugglers have long gone, so it punishes them.

I have heard the Minister of Justice suggest that once people know that Canada's laws are such that it is not welcoming and victims will be punished, it will dry up the supply. It is a supply side economics argument, which we have heard a lot from the government, that it will dry up the supply of potential victims of crime.

The problem with that is that there are not a lot of Canadians who read the Criminal Code before they commit a crime, and I doubt very much that there are a lot of people in Somalia, Sri Lanka, or wherever these people come from, who have an opportunity to read Canada's immigration legislation to determine that they will go to jail if they pay someone $10,000 to bring their family over to Canada. That is just not going to happen. We do not publish our legislation in all the languages that might be spoken in these countries either. It is just strange.

In addition to those victims being punished, the minister is suggesting that we will not have to worry because the government will deal with refugee claimants from countries that he has designated as safe countries—he or she, depending on who the minister might be. The minister will determine which countries are safe, and people from those countries will be booted out of this country really fast if they are not true refugees. How do we determine whether they are true refugees? We do that by giving them a chance to plead their case within 14 days. They then have no access to appeal and no access to the refugee appeal division.

There are in fact two classes of refugees. There is a class of refugees who come from countries that the minister has not designated, and we do not know which countries those are yet, and there is a class of refugees who are legitimate refugees in every sense of the word, but who come from countries that the minister designates as safe. They, therefore, would have only one kick to get their suggestion that they are refugees before a tribunal and they have no access to the refugee appeal division. The minister has stated on several occasions that they could file an application in Federal Court. The trouble is that they will be deported long before an application in the Federal Court goes anywhere.

The other thing that bothers me about the attitude of the government toward the whole refugee system is that the minister has suggested on several occasions that he is upset that refugees skip over other countries before they come to Canada, that they should go somewhere else, that they should not come to Canada. I am proud of the fact that they want to come to Canada. We all should be proud that we have such a welcoming and such a wonderful mélange of all the countries of the world that people feel comfortable in coming to Canada. We should not force refugees to go somewhere else simply because they happen to pass by another country on the way. That smacks of a being reluctant to take refugees in the first place, although I know that possibly is not what the minister meant.

The minister also talked about jumping the queue. He does not want refugee claimants to be in a position to jump the queue ahead of legitimate immigrant applicants. He has now created the biggest immigrant queue-jump in the history of this country by eliminating what might be 300,000, and I am not sure of the exact number, legitimate applications for immigration to this country with the stroke of a pen and putting everyone else ahead of those people. Every other applicant to this country would now jump the queue if they applied post-2008, or whatever the year was that it was changed. Those individuals have jumped the queue and the rest must start again. That is so wrong, yet the minister says that he does not like queue-jumpers. He is talking out of both sides of his mouth.

The other issue that covers this whole immigration thing is the issue of temporary foreign workers. It is another example of the doublespeak we get from the government about how it wants to welcome refugees and welcome new Canadians, but we will now have a situation where temporary foreign workers are being allowed into this country and will be paid 15% less than everybody else. That will drive down wages. The minister says that it is only for those jobs where we have a shortage. We know there are jobs out there. Airline pilots are being brought in as temporary foreign workers. There is no shortage of airline pilots in this country, but we have companies bringing airline pilots to this country as temporary foreign workers, and now they can pay them 15% less. That is just going to drive down wages in this country.

Those are the kinds of immigration policies that we do not agree with, including this bill.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Mr. Speaker, on the topic of Hungary, we do accept legitimate refugees. However, it is a fact that 95% of refugee claims from Hungary were just abandoned, suggesting that these people were not genuine refugees. They did not have the fear to actually pursue their refugee claim in Canada so they just abandoned it and disappeared into the system.

What we are trying to strengthen through Bill C-31 are those kinds of situations where it is clearly a fraudulent refugee claim used to exploit Canada's generous refugee and immigration system. By doing biometrics, by putting the other elements of Bill C-31 in place, we will address those issues.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Newton—North Delta is very engaged when it comes to immigration issues.

I will get back to the point I was trying to make about biometric identification because it is really part and parcel of the whole immigration bill. When the opposition members are looking to gut the whole bill, they will cut the biometrics, even though they say that they agree with that as a tool.

I will just remind the hon. member about the things we are trying to address here. We are trying to improve relations with safe countries so that we can facilitate travel into this country. I will take the example of Hungary. We received over 4,400 refugee claims last year from Hungary alone. Enacting Bill C-31 will allow us to streamline travel, not just with Hungary but with the entire European Union.

It is really important that the biometric pieces of the bill be passed, along with everything else in the bill, including the turning back of refugee claimants from safe countries.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in this House today to speak to the report stage amendments to Bill C-31, Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act, which has been introduced by the opposition at report stage.

Some of my hon. colleagues have already spoken about the negative impact the measures in this legislation would have on the government's ability to carry out badly needed reforms to the refugee determination system, reforms Canadians have asked for and expect. Others have spoken about how these measures will prevent the government from being able to crack down on criminal human smugglers who try to abuse Canada's generous immigration system.

In my allotted time today I would like to focus my remarks on how the opposition's irresponsible amendments to gut Bill C-31 will prevent the government from being able to introduce biometric technology for screening temporary resident applicants.

The introduction of biometrics would strengthen our immigration program in a number of ways. As members may be aware, there are several examples of serious criminals, human smugglers, war criminals and suspected terrorists, among others, who have entered Canada in the past, sometimes repeatedly, by concealing or misrepresenting themselves and their history.

Let me give a few examples. Esron Laing and David Wilson were convicted of armed robbery and forcible confinement. They returned to Canada three different times. In fact they are known as the “yo-yo bandits” because just like a yo-yo they kept coming back.

I know that three times seems like a high number, but I am sad to say that many serious criminals are deported and manage to return to Canada many more times than that.

Another example is Anthony Hakim Saunders, who was convicted of assault and drug trafficking. He was deported on 10 different occasions. That is right. It was an astonishing 10 different times. Just like the yo-yo bandits, he kept returning.

Edmund Ezemo was convicted of more than 30 charges, including theft and fraud. He was deported and returned to Canada eight times.

Dale Anthony Wyatt was convicted of trafficking drugs and possession of illegal weapons. He was deported and returned to Canada on at least four separate occasions.

Kevin Michael Sawyers was convicted of manslaughter. He was deported and returned to Canada twice.

Then there is Melando Yaphet Streety, who served a jail sentence in Canada after he was linked to four underage girls working in Toronto's sex trade. This criminal was deported and returned to Canada within the same year. That is right, all within the same year. Once he returned to Canada, he continued his life of crime.

The use of biometrics would help us prevent these criminals from entering Canada. Let me briefly explain how. Under the existing system, visa applicants only need to initially provide written documents to support their applications. Biometrics, photographs and fingerprints would provide greater certainty in identifying travellers than documents that can be forged or stolen.

In a nutshell, Bill C-31 and regulations that would follow would allow the government to make it mandatory for travellers, students and workers from certain visa-required countries and territories to have their photographs and fingerprints taken as part of their temporary resident visa, study permit or work permit applications.

Biometrics would help with processing applications. Later, when a visa holder arrives at a Canadian port of entry, the Canada Border Services Agency would also use this information to verify that the visa holder is the person to whom the visa was issued.

The use of biometrics would strengthen the integrity of our immigration program by helping to prevent known criminals, failed refugee claimants and previous deportees from using a false identity to unlawfully obtain a Canadian visa and enter our country under false pretences.

Biometrics would also bolster Canada's existing measures to facilitate legitimate travel by providing a fast and reliable tool to help confirm identity. As we can imagine, this would greatly help our front-line visa and border officers to manage high volumes of immigration applicants and the growing sophistication in identity fraud.

While it is easy to see how using biometrics would help our own officials make decisions about visa applications, it is also important to consider how their use may provide benefits to the applicants themselves. After all, in the long run the use of biometrics would facilitate entry to Canada by providing a reliable tool to readily confirm the identity of applicants.

Let me give an example. In cases where the authenticity of documents is uncertain, biometrics could expedite decision-making at Canadian ports of entry. The time spent at secondary inspections could be reduced. Using biometrics could also protect visa applicants by making it more difficult for others to forge, steal or use an applicant's identity to gain access into Canada.

To those who may be concerned about the impact of these new measures on travel to Canada, allow me to say that the implementation of biometrics would only apply to a relatively small percentage of visitors to Canada. Indeed more than 90% of visitors to Canada are from countries that are exempt from visa requirements, with visitors from the United States being the most obvious example.

It is also important to note that a number of other countries around the world have already incorporated biometrics into their own immigration and border programs. These include like-minded countries, such as the United Kingdom, Australia, the United States, New Zealand, Japan, countries in the European Union, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Because it is becoming so common in international travel, many of these applicants to Canada would already be familiar with the process and have experienced it first-hand in their travels abroad. What is more, the experience of other countries has shown that there is normally only a small short-term drop in application volumes following the introduction of biometrics collection.

I have no doubt that Canada would remain a destination of choice for visitors from around the world, and in the long run the use of biometrics would facilitate entry to Canada by providing a reliable tool to readily confirm the identities of applicants.

As some of my hon. colleagues may know, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand are members of the Five Country Conference, or FCC, an international forum that examines immigration and border security issues. Under the FCC's high value data sharing protocol, Canada shares approximately 3,000 refugee claimants fingerprint records annually with partner countries. Information sharing allows Canada to, a) better identify immigration fraud, b) improve our ability to detect refugee claimants who misrepresent themselves, and c) protect Canadians from foreign criminals.

Biometrics information has uncovered individuals who have used multiple identities and have inconsistent immigration histories and criminal records. For example, information sharing has resulted in, first, the U.K. returning to Australia a wanted rapist posing as an asylum seeker who subsequently pled guilty; second, Canada revoking the refugee status of a man British records proved was an American citizen; and, third, the U.K. taking action against an asylum seeker who FCC records showed had used nine different identities and six different documents across the FCC countries.

Approximately 11% of fingerprint files shared with our FCC partners have resulted in a match. About 13% of these matches have revealed individuals who presented conflicting names, dates of birth or nationalities.

The introduction of biometrics as an identity management tool in our immigration and border control systems is both long planned and long overdue. More and more it is also becoming an international norm. By passing Bill C-31, Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act, we would be ensuring Canada keeps up with many other countries.

Collecting biometric data is a highly reliable way to reduce identity fraud while facilitating legitimate travel. As a result, biometrics would strengthen and modernize Canada's immigration processes. I am sure that all hon. members of this House would agree that what I have described is a secure and straightforward process—a no-brainer, so to speak.

Unfortunately, the opposition amendments would prevent the government from introducing biometrics. The opposition's complete lack of concern for the safety and security of their constituents is quite frankly appalling.

The NDP is trying to gut this bill by saying they are okay with criminals, terrorists, war criminals and the like coming into our great country and victimizing innocent Canadians.

I urge the NDP and Liberals to give their heads a shake, to stand up for the safety and security of their constituents and all Canadians and to vote against these ridiculous amendments.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to rise today to speak to Bill C-31, protecting Canada's immigration system act and at report stage.

The amendments put forward by the opposition speak volumes about the real agenda in this place. When in front of the cameras, the NDP and Liberals claim they want to make Parliament work, but when the media is gone, their actions prove to be the complete opposite.

Our government listened closely to the thoughtful testimony given by each of the dozens of witnesses who appeared at our committee. We have also said that our government's focus is on passing a bill that is as strong and effective as possible.

Accordingly, we agreed to reasonable amendments that furthered the goals and principles of this bill. Even the NDP immigration critic praised our government at committee for its willingness to make this bill even better. Unfortunately, with these report stage amendments, the opposition NDP and Liberals have shown yet again that they refuse to do anything other than continue to be blindly partisan and that they are not here to work together on a better piece of legislation that is in the best interests of all Canadians and most importantly in the best interest of genuine refugees who truly are in need of Canada's protection.

Let me explain to this House and to Canadians the consequences of these amendments put forth by the opposition if they were to be adopted and if the bill were to be completely gutted.

Canada's asylum system is internationally renowned for its fairness. Not only does it respect our Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the UN convention on refugees; it actually exceeds both. Indeed, Canada is one of the largest recipients of asylum claims, even though we are isolated geographically compared to most other countries. Many people come here great distances from around the globe to seek asylum here.

Consistently, the independent Immigration and Refugee Board, IRB, has delivered rulings that show that the majority of claims overall are unfounded. In 2011, 62% of all claims were either rejected by the IRB of Canada or abandoned or withdrawn by the claimants themselves.

To focus on one particular area, there were more than 5,800 new refugee claims from European Union nationals last year. Shockingly, this is more than we receive from countries like Africa or Asia. Not only that, but virtually all the claims from the European Union are withdrawn or abandoned by the claimants themselves or rejected by the independent IRB. In fact, 95% fit this category.

If the current rate of rejected, abandoned and withdrawn claims continues, it will come at a cost to the taxpayer. Last year, the cost to Canadian taxpayers for the unfounded claims was nearly $170 million. We believe that the reason we see so many of these rejected claimants travel so far to seek asylum here is that the current system invites them to do so. It is like a pull factor. The ability to quickly access our generous taxpayer-funded social and health benefits is definitely the pull factor for some of these people. It has become quite clear that our current refugee system is ripe for abuse.

The reality is that, instead of waiting patiently to come to Canada through the immigration process, too many people are trying to use our asylum system as a back door to gain entry into Canada. Through Bill C-31, we intend to strike the right balance with our refugee system in order to deter abuse of our country's generosity and the generosity of Canadian taxpayers like those in my riding of Scarborough Centre.

We also wish to discourage the horrible crime of human smuggling by building on existing criminal prohibitions that target human smugglers. Bill C-31 would make it easier to prosecute these cases and would provide for mandatory minimum periods of imprisonment for those convicted of this serious crime.

There is no doubt that Canada has become a target for the highly lucrative and lethal practice of human smuggling. The recent tragic loss of life involving a sailboat with four nationals aboard, which ran into trouble off the coast of Nova Scotia leaving one man dead and three sailors lost at sea, is a prime example of the danger that irregular travel to Canada can create.

The government had no way of knowing that these people were coming, and since this vessel was not registered, it is quite clear that something irregular was going on. This is a matter of great concern to our government, but it should also concern all Canadians. Tragically, the end result of this perilous voyage was disastrous for all those involved.

This crime threatens both Canada's security and the lives of many desperate people who seek the services of smugglers from around the world. The government, therefore, has both a legal and a moral obligation to put an end to these criminal operations.

Given all these factors, it is imperative that we find a way to deter abuse of our immigration and refugee system. Bill C-31 would allow us to do just that.

First we must try to reduce the pull factors that entice disingenuous claimants from coming to Canada. Under the current asylum system, long wait times make Canada a much more attractive target for those who wish to game the system. While they wait for their claims to be processed, failed claimants can work in Canada and have access to our generous social support systems, like welfare in my province of Ontario.

Designated countries of origin are countries that do not generally produce refugees. Claimants from those countries would still get a fair and independent hearing, but they would be processed in about 45 days, compared to 1,038 days under the current system. The bill would also further streamline the process by limiting access to appeals for groups, such as those with manifestly unfounded claims, or claims with no credible basis. We would also prevent refugee claimants from submitting a claim at the same time as they apply for humanitarian and compassionate consideration. Following a negative decision from the IRB, Bill C-31 would also bar claimants from submitting the humanitarian and compassionate applications for one year.

In order to have an effective immigration system we need faster decisions, which must be complemented by timely removals. An expanded assisted voluntary returns and reintegration program would help failed refugee claimants leave Canada more quickly and voluntarily and would help them make a fresh start in their home countries.

With regard to human smuggling, the legislation would deter human smugglers from targeting Canada with their dangerous voyages. Bill C-31 would make it easier to prosecute human smugglers and would also strengthen the criminal law's response to human smuggling. The bill would make ship owners and operators accountable for use of their ships in human smuggling operations, and it would introduce stiffer penalties and fines, including mandatory minimum prison sentences, for those convicted of human smuggling.

With the passage of Bill C-31, the government would continue to honour the values Canadians hold dear by ensuring that our asylum system remains fair to those who truly need our protection. By discouraging and reducing abuse of our refugee system, we would be able to direct more of our resources to those refugees who actually need them.

We believe these measures are necessary and we believe these measures are fair. We believe that Bill C-31 lives up to its title and, if passed, would indeed protect Canada's immigration system so that it would serve Canadians. Unfortunately, if the opposition amendments were adopted, the entire bill would be gutted and we would not be able to improve our refugee determination system. If the opposition NDP and Liberals got their way, genuine refugees fleeing persecution, death and torture would have to wait longer to receive Canada's much-needed protection. Hard-working Canadian taxpayers, like those in my constituency of Scarborough Centre, would continue to be forced to foot the bill for bogus claimants who are here for the sole reason of soaking up taxpayer-funded health care and welfare benefits.

It is for these reasons that I urge my colleagues to vote against these irresponsible and shameful amendments, amendments that are a detriment to genuine refugees and all of the hard-working Canadian taxpayers in our great country.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to stand today to add my voice in opposition to this legislation, the anti-refugee bill, and in support of the NDP amendments.

As New Democrats, we oppose the bill because we will not support the punishment of asylum seekers, and that is exactly what the bill would do.

We also believe the Conservative government should change the title of the bill to “the punishing refugees act”. The title of the bill should reflect the nature of its content. If we are to be honest with Canadians, we need to tell them what the minister is doing and the true direction we are headed under the government.

Canadians are proud of our country's tradition of providing protection for those in need. With the passing of Bill C-31, the Conservative government will effectively be killing this tradition.

For over two weeks, the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration heard from witnesses who spoke on the content of Bill C-31. Witness after witness told us this legislation was fundamentally flawed, unconstitutional and concentrated too much power in the hands of one minister.

The well-informed opinion of these witnesses should not be taken lightly. We are talking about witnesses representing Amnesty International, the Canadian Bar Association, the Canadian Council for Refugees, the Canada Research Chair in Global Migration Studies and front-line workers who provide legal, medical and psychological support to people who have fled persecution. These are experts in this field. They know far more about this topic than many in this room. Therefore, their testimony should be taken seriously and simply not ignored, which is exactly what the government is currently doing.

As I stand in the House, a key component of our highly respected democracy, with plush carpets and clean water, food to eat, peace in our country, I am reminded that elsewhere in the country and around the world people are not so lucky.

Right now, at this very moment, people are being persecuted, are experiencing discrimination, are living through conflict, public unrest and general instability, and some are forced to make the decision to flee the only home they have ever known, fleeing for their lives and the lives of their loved ones.

People flee their country because they are desperate and they have no other option if they want to ensure the safety of their families. However, with the passing of Bill C-31, if they come to our country as asylum seekers, much like my father did, depending on their means of arrival and undefined number of people they arrive with, instead of being treated like human beings they will be treated like criminals, treated as guilty until proven innocent. We all know that is not the Canadian standard.

The bill would punish victims of persecution and victims of human smuggling. It would punish those who, because of a lack of money or option, would do whatever it takes to keep their families safe. I ask my colleagues in the House to empathize and put themselves in their situation. I ask them to think for a moment of what they would do to keep their partner, their children, their mother, their grandmother safe. If they needed to, would they run, flee the country that was unsafe through any means?

The Conservatives refuse to accept that our system currently works. We already capture the real criminals and deport them. The sentence for human smuggling is already the most punitive it can be in our country, life in prison and a fine of $1 million, yet we continuously hear members opposite saying that we need to take away the rights of victim in order to catch the human smugglers. The bill would do nothing to catch human smugglers. It would punish refugees and refugee claimants and not the human smugglers.

Instead of targeting the illegal smuggling rings, the Conservatives would rather arbitrarily designate some refugees as “irregular arrivals” and incarcerate all of them. Now, upon arrival, designated refugees will be held in provincial jails, handcuffed and treated like prisoners, with minimal review.

New Democrats are opposed to the measures in the bill precisely because Canada will now be known for punishing the most vulnerable and traumatized people in the world.

My constituents are concerned. Some of the refugees who were on the MV Sun Sea and Ocean Lady live in my riding of Scarborough-Rouge River. They have been given refugee protection by our government. They are making a home in our neighbourhoods, contributing to our economy and giving back to our community.

As the designated foreign national category is retroactive to 2009, these valuable members of our community who came on these two migrant vessels, along with future so-called irregular arrivals, will now be treated as second-class citizens under the new two-tier refugee treatment system that will be created.

Under the bill they, and all so-called designated refugees, would be barred from applying for permanent residence for five years. This is different from all other refugees, who are allowed to apply for permanent residency immediately. The bar would prevent families from reuniting for five years and further as they went through the already lengthy sponsorship system.

We are separating children from their parents. If fathers or mothers flee their country to make way for their children, they would now be separated from their families for a minimum of at least seven years. Children who are 13 will be young adults by the time they would see their mother and father again. Formative years of their life will be lived spent away from their parents.

Further, by the time their parents would be eligible to actually sponsor them, the children may not qualify as dependents anymore, meaning that they will now be forced to live permanently separated from their parents and parents separated from their children.

We could have made the bill better. New Democrats proposed concrete changes to the bill. It was a disappointment to the witnesses, the stakeholders and all involved when all of these good propositions that would have provided improvements to the bill were opposed by the government time and time again.

While baby steps were taken, none of the NDP's substantive amendments were adopted by the government members in the committee.

New Democrats have a better solution to our refugee and immigration system. In fact, just last year, all parties compromised to pass Bill C-11, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act. That bill was applauded by our current Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism.

Bill C-31, however, ignores these compromises and includes all of the worst parts of the former Bill C-11.

What is worse is that Bill C-31 will pass before we will even have the chance to see the outcome of the changes included in Bill C-31. The government has not even allowed for the changes to take place.

One of the most troublesome measures that the Conservatives refused to revise is impossibly tight timelines for submitting an application to the Immigration and Refugee Board. The refugee system is being set up to fail. The asylum seekers are being set up to fail.

Witness after witness, including the Conservatives' own witnesses, said that these timelines were too short, that they would create incomplete and inaccurate applications. On top of that, some refugees would be refused the right to appeal their application.

We all know, unfortunately, that mistakes can be made at the IRB. The board is not perfect. With cuts to its budget and limited resources to hire adjudicators, the likelihood that mistakes will occur would be even greater. New information could come to light after an expedited claim is mistakenly processed. Without access to an appeal, this information may never be heard.

The consequences of these decisions could truly mean life or death.

Banning access to an appeal for some claimants undermines the international obligations to refugees.

A further dangerous consequence of the bill is that the power to designate a country as safe for all is concentrated solely in the hands of the minister. No country is truly safe. A country that may be safe for some residents may be unsafe for other residents.

Impartiality toward the development and maintenance of this list is extremely important. It is confusing why Bill C-31 would remove the safeguard of having a panel of experts maintain and review this list, as was decreed in Bill C-11 .

We have earned a gold standard on how we treat refugees fleeing persecution in the world. The current government is tarnishing our earned reputation. The Conservatives' changes to the refugee and immigration system will erode Canada's humanitarian reputation around the world.

I cannot support the bill and the move to a discriminatory refugee and immigration system. I cannot support the punishment of asylum seekers and refugees. That is why I oppose the bill and support the amendments put forward by the NDP.

The government needs to abandon the legislation and go back to the drawing board.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for the good work he does on the committee. I found his voice to be a voice of reason and understanding. He spoke in favour of many of the positive points of Bill C-31 on repeated occasions.

In fact, let me quote him. The Liberal immigration critic, the hon. member of Parliament for Winnipeg North, was quoted in the March 30 edition of the Vancouver Courier, as saying, “In principle I support the need to make quick decisions in regards to refugees”. That is a telltale signal of how he feels about the legislation.

However, I will quote somebody else I know he feels very close to, although I do not. This is what that person had to say: “I want a legitimate, lawful refugee system that, to get to the openness point, welcomes genuine refugees”. He then says, “Look, there are a number of countries in the world in which we cannot accept a bona fide refugee claim because you don't have cause, you don't have just cause coming from those countries” and “otherwise we'll have refugee fraud, and nobody wants that”. That was in the Saint John Board of Trade on August 13, 2009, from none other than the former leader of the Liberal Party, Michael Ignatieff.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak in support of Bill C-31, protecting Canada's immigration system act.

Before I get into the bill, I want to give a little background about the riding I represent and the people who make up the wonderful riding of Richmond Hill in Ontario. Richmond Hill is nestled in the heart of the GTA. It is one of the most diverse communities in the country consisting of Canadian citizenships, landed immigrants and people aspiring to become citizenships who come from virtually every nation in the world. In fact, in the greater Toronto area in which I reside, over 150 dialects are spoken on a daily basis. I am very much in touch with the needs of the multicultural community and what it means to come to Canada for a better life for themselves and their families and to take advantage of the opportunities that are available in this wonderful nation in which we live.

I feel compelled to voice in the House what I hear from the people who reside in the great riding of Richmond Hill with respect to Bill C-31. I am hoping that, in the short time that I have, I will be able to properly articulate their views on this legislation since a large percentage of the people who reside in my riding were immigrants to this country at one time or another.

We have heard opposition members state their position. There are a few things that need to be again highlighted to bring the subject into proper focus. I think we all agree in the House and certainly Canadians agree across this nation that Canada has the most fair and generous immigration system in the world. However, Canadians have no tolerance for people who abuse our generosity. It is a responsibility of parliamentarians and certainly the government to take the proper measures to crack down on those who abuse that generosity. Protecting Canada's immigration system act would make our refugee system faster and fairer.

I will provide a plain statistic. Processing an application today of a refugee claimant in our country takes an average of 1,038 days. That would be reduced to 45 days for those who are claiming refuge in Canada from designated countries and 216 days for those from other countries around the world. Imagine someone who is persecuted, whose life is threatened and has been tortured, comes to Canada for a better life and is tied up in a system for 1,038 days while bogus claimants are clogging up the system? Imagine people coming here for a better life and waiting the better part of three years for their application to be decided on before they can start contributing to Canada as a viable new immigrant to this country. The measures in Bill C-31 would ensure that the people who need it the most get into the country a lot faster. That, I submit, is a very compassionate approach to refugee reform.

I applaud the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism for the courage he has shown in spearheading this through. That is what members are hearing in their ridings and it is certainly what I am hearing in my riding, that we need to be compassionate and look after those in need. If we clog them up in the system after they have come to this country and they do not know what is happening or what will happen for the next two and a half to three years, that is not showing compassion.

Unfortunately, human smuggling is a very lucrative business and there are those who engage in that disgraceful act of preying on those in need for financial profit. We need to crack down on those people because, in my opinion, and I believe in the opinion of every member in this House, there is no place in Canada for human smugglers to prosper. We should close every possible loophole we have to eliminate that possibility from happening.

We have a responsibility as a government and that responsibility is predicated upon the fact that Canadians expect us to ensure that those people who are welcomed into our country are properly identified so that we know who is going to walk the streets beside our families, live in our communities and work with us in our place of employment.

This bill would provide for a significant investment in the identification of people and that is the concept of biometrics. Biometrics is a 21st century identification tool that we have heard is very much a positive step for us take. We have heard it from law enforcement agencies across this country, including the RCMP, the CBSA and CSIS.

It makes sense to Canadians and it should make sense to all of us that we know the identity of individuals before we allow them to walk on our soil in, before they walk beside our families, before they work in our communities and before they shop where we shop. We need to know their identity. Biometrics is a method that will help us to more quickly identify people who want to come into our country. It is something that should be applauded by all members in this House. I do not think anyone would want people here who have perpetrated a war crime, who are a security risk in their own country, who have done prison time or who are criminals who came over here on a ship and have thrown their records into the water so they cannot be identified when they arrive.

I cannot imagine any Canadian saying that we should let people into our country without identifying them, that they have said that they are refugees and we should believe them.

It is a responsibility of our government to ensure that we look after the safety and security of Canadians first. It is also our responsibility to ensure that our good nature is not taken advantage of by those who come here claiming they are refugees, take the benefits and then shortly thereafter leave. It is does not make sense. It boggles the mind that 95%, if not more, of applicants from the European Union either abandon, withdraw their claim or the refugee board deems them inappropriate or inadmissible to Canada.

Those people tie up the system and that is at a cost of about $170 million per year to the Canadian taxpayer. I think it is critically important for us to ensure that people who claim to be a refugee or claim that they being persecuted in a European Union country is a legitimate refugee. It is important for all of us to realize that the European Union is a union of 27 democratically elected nations. The first choice that someone who feels they are being persecuted would have would be one of the other 26 countries before they would come to Canada. That would only makes sense. They are democratically elected nations.

In closing, I will t quote what some others have said. In an article in the Edmonton Journal dated February 17, 2012, it states:

Good moves on refugees.

Given the financial stress placed on our system by those numbers, there has to be a more efficient, cost-effective means of weeding out the bogus claimants from Europe and elsewhere.

A Toronto Star editorial from February 21, 2012, reads:

...[the Minister of Immigration]'s latest reform plan would reduce the current backlog of 42,000 refugee claims; cut the processing time for asylum seekers from "safe countries" to 45 days...and save money.

Ian Capstick, MediaStyle NDP commentator on CBC's Power and Politics, as early as February 16, 2012, stated, “Obviously there are certain countries like the United States of America, for instance, in which...we should accept no refugees from”.

I would ask all of the members of the House to consider the importance of this legislation and vote for it as quickly as possible for the betterment of Canada.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House to continue the debate on Bill C-31, the Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act.

Canada and the government are proud of our tradition of being a country of openness to newcomers and a place of protection for refugees. Indeed, since the government came into office in 2006 we have maintained the highest sustained levels of immigration in Canadian history, admitting on average over 250,000 new permanent residents each year, and maintaining the world's strongest tradition of refugee protection.

We are increasing by some 20% the number of resettled refugees that we accept, increasing the integration support that they receive, so that Canada will receive the highest per capita number of resettled refugees in the world. Of course, we also have a generous refugee asylum determination system to ensure that foreigners who come to Canada who have a well-founded fear of persecution are not returned to face danger.

However, this bill is a necessary part of our efforts to protect the openness and generosity of our immigration and refugee protection systems against those who would seek to abuse Canada's generosity, more specifically, through commercial and dangerous human smuggling operations, fake asylum claims, large numbers of which are in our asylum system, and other efforts to subvert the integrity of our immigration system and the consistent application of its fair rules.

I would like to commend the members of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration on their diligent work and their many hours of hearings on Bill C-31. They heard from dozens of witnesses and diligently considered amendments to the bill.

The members who were in the House in the previous Parliament will remember that we passed Bill C-11, which set out a balanced refugee system. They will also remember that, at that time, the government and the opposition agreed to make certain amendments to the bill to ensure that it was balanced or, in other words, to make sure that the system was quick, effective and fair. At that time, we were happy with the results of that legislative effort.

However, since June 2010, there has been a huge increase in bogus refugee claims in Canada, particularly by EU nationals.

Indeed, last year, we received close to 6,000 refugee claims from EU nationals, which is more than the number of claims we receive from Africa or Asia. Almost none of these European refugee claimants attend their hearings before the Immigration and Refugee Board, and according to our fair and legal system, almost none of them are legitimate refugees.

That is one of the reasons why we need to strengthen the integrity of our system to really discourage bogus refugee claimants from coming to Canada and abusing our country's generosity. Processing these fake claims costs Canadian taxpayers approximately $50,000. These are the objectives of Bill C-31.

Further to the statements made by members of Parliament, including opposition members, and by some witnesses who appeared before the parliamentary committee, the government considered any reasonable amendments to create a better bill that meets its objectives of combatting human smuggling more effectively, preventing bogus refugee claims and strengthening the security of our system.

Let me review briefly some of the amendments that were adopted at committee.

First, one such amendment relates to clause 19. Clause 19 provides for the automatic loss of permanent resident status if an individual loses protected person status as a result of cessation.

Cessation means that the Immigration and Refugee Board, I emphasize the IRB, not the minister, can take away someone's refugee status if it is proven that the person no longer needs protection. It has always been in IRPA, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, since it became law in 2002.

Since we introduced Bill C-31, we have heard concerns that an improvement of the conditions in someone's country of origin could result in the automatic loss of an individual's permanent resident status by a decision of the IRB, regardless of how long they have been a permanent resident in Canada.

Some have worried that Canada was moving toward a conditional permanent residence situation for refugees, which I should point out is not unusual in other democratic countries. The United Kingdom and Germany, for example, do not grant immediate permanent residency for protected people. However, this was never the intention of the bill.

To clarify our intentions, we moved an amendment at committee that one automatic cessation ground be removed from clause 19. The cessation ground we are removing reads as follows:

the reasons for which the person sought refugee status have ceased to exist.

The effect of this amendment is that cessation for these reasons, such as a change in country conditions, would not result in automatic loss of permanent residency. This would ensure that permanent resident status is lost automatically only when the cessation decision of the IRB is the result of the individual's own actions.

For example, if people come to Canada, make an asylum claim that is accepted by the IRB, but shortly after receiving such status, they return to live in the country of origin, which they allegedly fled due to fear of persecution, we would reserve the right under IRPA to go before the IRB to say that it appears they never needed our protection because they have immediately re-availed themselves of their country of origin. Therefore we could commence proceedings of the IRB to seek an order to cease their protected person status and revoke their permanent residency, but that would only be if they have done something to demonstrate essentially that they defrauded our asylum system.

The government also moved an amendment that relates to pre-removal risk assessments, also known as PRRAs. When failed refugee claimants are given removal orders from Canada, they can under certain conditions apply for a PRRA, which would trigger a review to make certain that the failed claimants are not being removed into situations where they might face a risk of persecution, torture, cruel and unusual punishment or loss of life.

In its original form, Bill C-31 called for a one-year ban for failed refugee claimants, including those from countries that generally do not produce refugees, which I might add, is a phrase used by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

This measure was intended to simplify the refugee system, eliminate duplication and expedite the removal of failed refugee claimants. The government proposed an amendment that extended this ban to three years for failed refugee claimants from countries that generally do not produce refugees.

The extension of the bar for these claimants is aimed at addressing existing process vulnerabilities that lead to misuse by those who are not in need of protection. It would facilitate the removals of those individuals not in need of Canada's protection, without the requirement to conduct a redundant second risk assessment.

Since the extension of the bar on PRRA would apply only to failed claimants from countries known to not normally produce refugees and generally considered safe, which countries, by the way, based on our proposed guidelines, would see at least three-quarters of asylum claims being rejected, abandoned or withdrawn, there is already a minimal likelihood of returning someone to a situation of risk.

It should also be noted that each eligible claimant would have received a hearing on the merits of his or her case before an independent decision-maker at the quasi-judicial IRB, which decision-maker would have rejected the claim and found no risk in returning the claimant.

In addition, the legislation would provide the minister with the ability to exempt someone from the bar on PRRA, either the one-year bar for most failed claimants or the three-year bar on PRRA for failed claimants from designated countries. That is to say, for example, that if there were to be a major event, say, a coup d'état or civil war in a country, the minister could exempt failed claimants from that country from the PRRA bar, allowing them to in fact apply for and receive a second risk assessment. It is also important to note that this amendment does not preclude a failed refugee claimant from continuing to seek leave to the Federal Court for judicial review of a negative decision of the refugee protection division of the IRB.

Some of the measures in Bill C-31 that received the most feedback from parliamentarians and members of the public were those that concerned the mandatory detention of foreign nationals who arrive in Canada as part of a designated irregular arrival, which effectively would be a large-scale human smuggling voyage. These measures, of course, were part of the section of the bill designed to deal with human smuggling.

This amendment would allow for a detention review by the immigration division of the IRB on the detention of a smuggled migrant in a designated arrival initially at 14 days prior to the detention and then subsequently at 6 months, rather than the 12 months that had originally been proposed in the bill.

I would like to once again thank all the members for their important work in committee. I am eager for all the amendments to be accepted here in the House.

The House resumed consideration of Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, the Marine Transportation Security Act and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Act, as reported (with amendments) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, first, arising out of questions of decorum, I am a believer that anything we do to elevate decorum here is a positive thing. I encourage him. For example, one of his members today, in a question, referred to a minister as being responsible for the department of propaganda. That is an example of what we consider to be the inappropriate kind of thing we hear from the opposition all the time.

We are very interested in seeing this Parliament function and making decisions. We have been happy to see that happening on the budget, with the longest ever debate on a budget bill probably in Canadian history. We were happy to facilitate that through the rules. We will continue to ensure that we have broad and thorough debate here, but that we also make decisions so we avoid going down the path that others would like to go, to see us go down the path that we see Greece going down and places like the United States, where they have not had a vote in the senate on a budget bill since April 29, 2009. We do not want to have that kind of indecision and crippling of our economy. However, we are moving forward.

The government's top priority is the economy. On Monday night, as scheduled weeks ago, the House passed Bill C-38, the Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act, at second reading, bringing us one step closer to balancing the budget and assuring the responsible development of our resources.

The bill, which implements economic action plan 2012, is now with the Standing Committee on Finance and a subcommittee for detailed study by those two bodies.

As a result of the extensive debate we ensured for this bill, even the deputy leader of the NDP described it yesterday in the House as “being studied more than any other budget bill.”

Just so my friend understood this clearly, it was his own deputy leader who described the bill in the House yesterday as having been “studied more than any other budget bill”. That demonstrates our commitment to full debate in this House.

This afternoon, we will continue report stage for Bill C-31, the protecting Canada's immigration system act. This bill needs to become law before the end of June, so we will resume debate on the immigration bill on Tuesday, May 29, after the House returns from its upcoming constituency week.

Tomorrow the House will have an opposition day when we will debate an NDP motion.

On Monday, May 28, the House will have third reading of Bill C-11, the copyright modernization act which would help our creative and digital economy. After years of thorough study and debate in this chamber, the members of the other place will finally have a chance to consider this important economic legislation.

May 30 shall be the fifth allotted day, which I believe will see a Liberal motion debated. Finally, May 31 shall be the sixth allotted day, which will go to the New Democrats.

Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would simply like to say that we unanimously agreed on a refugee bill that contained a measure whereby a panel of experts was to sit to address this matter of establishing a safe country list.

I would like to remind this House that now, under Bill C-31, only the minister has this discretionary power to establish a safe country list. That is neither democratic nor normal.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question with regard to the designated countries of origin.

The NDP members are either choosing to misrepresent the clause and the interpretation of it or they are purposely misleading individuals who are trying to get a better understanding of Bill C-31.

Many countries use the principle. Ireland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland are all counties that use designated countries of origin. Most important, there are quantitative and qualitative reviews that will automatically kick in when a country reaches the threshold of being designated a country. It does not happen automatically. The review includes ministry officials and other ministries i terms of input.

Why does the member continue to misrepresent exactly what is in this bill in terms of the designated country of origin?

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, for two weeks in a row, we heard testimony from experts, front-line workers and refugees who came to express their concerns about Bill C-31 while it was being studied by the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. I want to remind the House that a policy without justice is an inadequate policy. Bill C-31 completely jeopardizes refugee rights, and creates two classes of refugees.

The NDP does not support Bill C-31. The Conservatives should withdraw it so that the new Balanced Refugee Reform Act can work. Never before have the rights of refugees been as threatened as they are under the Conservatives. Never has our democracy been as discredited as it has been under the Conservative government, which is incapable of respecting the compromises consensually agreed upon with the other parties.

The government is unable to remember that the ratification of international refugee or human rights conventions requires us to make our legislation and policies consistent with the provisions of the international conventions we have signed. The experts who spoke to us reminded us that Canada is a signatory to the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees. They feel that Bill C-31 protecting Canada's immigration system act respects neither the letter nor the spirit of the convention.

Let us first recall that Bill C-31 is an omnibus bill to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, unfortunately by incorporating into Bill C-4 the most unreasonable provisions of former Bill C-11, which received royal assent in June 2010. This bill raises serious concerns in addition to those already raised by Bill C-4, the unconstitutional nature of which we have raised and highlighted in our previous interventions. All the witnesses we heard during the committee's study of the bill agreed unanimously.

I would like to draw the attention of the House to some of the concerns with this bill, both in terms of the Canadian charter and the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees. In response to Bill C-31, the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers has said that, like the sorry Bill C-10, Bill C-31 is extremely complicated.

The most draconian measures in Bill C-4 have again been made part of Bill C-31. Take automatic and mandatory detention, for example. Bill C-4 proposed mandatory detention for one year for people fleeing persecution in their country of origin and entering Canada without identity documents in their possession.

Clearly, the safety of Canadians is a priority for the NDP. That is why the current immigration legislation provides for detaining foreign nationals when their identity is not known, when they might run away, and especially when public safety is at risk. So we can see how the provisions on detention found in Bill C-4, which are being reintroduced in Bill C-31 are a direct violation of our Constitution.

Furthermore, the jurisprudence constante of the Supreme Court is categorical in this regard. The Barreau du Québec, the Canadian Bar Association, the Young Bar Association of Montreal and other legal experts who gave testimony were categorical about the unconstitutional nature of detention under Bill C-31, and specifically the detention of children.

The 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child prohibits the detention of children and defines a child as a human being under 18 years of age. We are asking that the age of the child be consistent with the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Finally, the experts whom we have heard from in committee have hammered away at the point that the detention of children is prohibited because it is detrimental to them psychologically, mentally and physiologically, and to society as a whole. For example, Australia had introduced mandatory detention for asylum seekers, but it had to backtrack, because, not only did detention cause costs to skyrocket, but it also destroyed the fabric of society and communities.

Why are the Conservatives attempting to put themselves above the rule of law, which is a key principle of our democracy, even though they know what our highest court said about detention in the Charkaoui case? Why are they asking the House to pass a bill that we know will be subject to court challenges, as a number of experts reminded us?

Why are they attempting to mislead the House by proposing that it pass laws that they know violate not only our Constitution, but also the Canadian charter and human rights conventions that our country has signed? Pacta sunt servanda is a principle of international law. Signed conventions have to be respected.

There are also deadlines that violate a principle of natural justice. Lawyers specializing in refugee rights have said that they are deeply troubled by the short time frames that Bill C-31 gives refugee claimants to seek Canada's protection. They find that Bill C-31 drastically changes Canada's refugee protection system and makes it unfair.

Bill C-31 imposes unrealistic time frames and unattainable deadlines on refugee claimants and uses the claimants' inability to meet those deadlines to exclude them from protection.

In fact, under the terms of Bill C-31, refugee claimants have only 15 days to overcome the trauma of persecution, find a lawyer to help them, gather the documentary evidence to support their allegations, and obtain proof of identity from their country.

If their application is dismissed, refugee claimants would have 15 days within which to file an appeal under Bill C-31. As anyone can see, the deadlines imposed on refugee claimants do not allow them to make a full response and defence.

Under our justice system, the greater the risk to life, the longer the time frame accorded to the person being tried to prepare his defence. Bill C-31 does not respect this principle of fundamental justice. A number of witnesses pointed this out to us.

I am also deeply concerned not only about the new term—designated country of origin—that Bill C-31 introduces into our legislation but also about the undemocratic nature of the process for designating the countries in question. Under Bill C-31, the minister alone has the power to designate safe countries of origin, without first defining the designation criteria for these countries that refugees may come from.

According to the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, the designated safe country list and the unilateral power granted to the minister dangerously politicize Canada's refugee system.

Refugee claimants who are on a designated safe country list have even less time to submit their written arguments and will not be allowed an appeal.

Bill C-31 also relieves the minister of the obligation of justifying why a country is safe or considering the differential risks that certain minorities face in a country that is safe for other people.

If Bill C-31 is passed, refugees will become more vulnerable because their fate will depend on the political whims of the minister and the government. Failed claimants from designated countries of origin can be deported from Canada almost immediately, even if they have requested a judicial review of the decision. In other words, a person can be deported before his case is heard.

The Geneva convention stipulates that the personal fears of victims of persecution are to be taken into consideration. Nowhere does it say that international protection is given to victims of persecution because of the country in which the persecution occurred, or whether or not the victim used clandestine means to reach a state that is a party to the convention.

It is not only in undemocratic countries that religious minorities are persecuted. Discrimination based on sexual orientation is not restricted to undemocratic countries. Persecution based on race can occur in any country in the world. All member states of the European Convention on Human Rights are democratic countries. But the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights is replete with decisions condemning democratic states for their abuse of individuals.

The government has frequently invoked the UNHCR's favourable opinion of the safe countries of origin list.

I would like to conclude by mentioning my final concern about the changes being made by Bill C-31 with respect to applications on humanitarian grounds. These applications are a tool that allow individuals to remain in Canada, even if they are not eligible for other reasons. Unfortunately, under Bill C-31, applicants awaiting a decision from the Refugee Appeal Division cannot simultaneously submit an application on humanitarian grounds.

I would like to point out that our country has always been in the forefront where basic human rights are concerned.

The refugee problem is a human rights problem and, since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, all people are acknowledged to have these rights, whatever their race, religion, political beliefs or lifestyle.

Asylum seekers are above all human beings. They are to be treated with respect, humanity and dignity. More than anything else, they fall into the category of vulnerable people who need our compassion and our protection. What is involved here is universal human justice.

This bill and these universal values are poles apart. That is why Bill C-31 should be rejected.

The House resumed consideration of Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, the Marine Transportation Security Act and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Act, as reported (with amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

Motions in Amendment

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to speak to Bill C-31, Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act.

The government has put forward two amendments at report stage in order to ensure the bill completely reflects the amendments that were adopted at committee. I am pleased to speak to these amendments today.

Canada has the fairest and most generous immigration system in the world. We welcome more resettled refugees per capita than almost any other country. That number is rising. We are increasing by 20%, or an additional 2,500, the number of refugees we resettle each year.

The fact is that our system is open to abuse. Bogus refugees and human smugglers have been using Canada as a doormat for far too long. Canadians have no tolerance for those who abuse our generosity and who take unfair advantage of our country. The government is committed to strengthening the integrity of Canada's immigration system. Bill C-31, the amendments that were adopted at committee, and the amendments we are debating now at report stage all serve the same purpose. Through them, the government would take action to crack down on this abuse and make Canada's asylum system fairer and faster.

We would put a stop to foreign criminals, human smugglers and bogus refugees abusing our generous immigration system, using endless avenues of appeal to remain in Canada and receive lucrative taxpayer-funded health and social benefits. At the same time, we would provide protection more quickly to those who are truly in need.

As we know, bogus refugee claimants are bogging down the system, resulting in genuine refugee claimants, who are fleeing torture, death and persecution, waiting on average almost two years to receive a decision on their cases. Our government believes this is unfair.

Under Bill C-31 genuine refugees would receive Canada's protection in a few short months instead of a few years. This is laudable and surely should be supported by every member of the House. Canadians have given the government a strong mandate to protect Canada's immigration system and we are active on that mandate.

The two amendments introduced by the minister at report stage are technical amendments. They both seek to ensure the amended bill fully and accurately reflects the amendments that were adopted by the committee after an in-depth study and testimony by dozens of witnesses. One amendment seeks to ensure the French and English wording used throughout the bill are consistent. The second amendment would ensure that the entire bill reflects a new subsection that was created through an amendment that was passed at committee.

These amendments directly respond to the testimony and suggestions of witnesses such as clarifying provisions around revocation of refugee status, adding detention reviews at 14 days and again at 6 months for those who arrive as part of a human smuggling event, and ensuring that asylum seekers who come from countries that have been designated as safe no longer have endless avenues of appeal which allow them to remain in Canada for years and receive lucrative taxpayer-funder social assistance and health care benefits.

The minister has rightfully been praised for his willingness to accept amendments to the bill. He has said all along that he would be willing to seriously consider any reasonable amendment to make it fair and fast and provide Canada's protection to genuine refugees in need while removing bogus refugees more quickly and cracking down on the despicable crime of human smuggling.

This often has repercussions because we never know if it is a human smuggling event mixed up with a human trafficking event, and sometimes it gets very precarious. The government's amendments that were adopted at committee and the amendments we are debating now are proof that the government is committed to implementing a bill to improve our refugee system so that it is as strong and as effective as possible. We owe that to all Canadians.

It is evident that our government is willing to listen and to work to create and amend bills that are in the best interests of Canadians. Our constituents expect no less.

Let me give you a sample of what is being said about our government and the minister's openness to amending and further improving this bill. A recent Ottawa Citizen editorial stated:

[The minister] deserves praise for showing a few leadership qualities that are in short supply these days: willingness to talk, the courage to listen, and the flexibility to change his mind.

This is in keeping with what Canadians have seen of [the minister] in the past. Although he's unabashedly partisan, he is able to work with MPs from all parties. He seemed deservedly proud of the fact that he managed to get another refugee bill passed in 2010, with opposition support, when his government held a minority. The fact that he's still working with other parties when his government has a majority speaks well of him.

[The minister] seems determined that his time in public office should result in a legacy of better policy, not just a long string of election victories and an eventual corporate or patronage sinecure.

I cannot agree more.

Even The Toronto Star has praised the minister and in an editorial stated that his willingness to amend the bill suggests that he“is trying to make the refugee system faster and more fair”. In an editorial The Embassy stated, “good for [the minister] for agreeing to changes to the refugee bill, C-31”.

It is not just the media that is praising the government and the minister. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association stated in a news release that it “welcomes the Minister of Immigration's announcement that the government is proposing amendments to Bill C-31...”.

It goes even further than that. The NDP immigration critic and MP for Newton—North Delta stated on several occasions that she welcomed any move by the minister and the government to make improvements to the legislation. She spoke very favourably at committee of the government's willingness to take into account the views of various witnesses and stakeholders and to amend the bill, especially the detention provisions around human smuggling events.

Unfortunately the NDP has been playing partisan games with the amendments both at committee and at report stage. The opposition NDP and the Liberals will surely vote against these reasonable technical amendments. By opposing technical amendments that ensure the French and English wording is consistent, and that ensure the original version of the bill reflects the addition of a new subsection that was added at committee stage, they show that while the NDP and the Liberals say in front of the news cameras that they want to make Parliament work, their actions show quite the opposite is true. By voting against these amendments the NDP and the Liberals are proving yet again that they cannot be anything other than blindly partisan and that they are not willing to work with the government in good faith to pass legislation that is in the best interests of Canada.

I urge the NDP and the Liberals to change their position, stop opposing and trying to delay this important piece of legislation. I urge them to support these report stage amendments and the entire Bill C-31, to work with our government to help crack down on bogus refugee claimants and criminal human smugglers abusing the generosity of Canadian taxpayers and treating our country like a doormat.

I urge the opposition to support these amendments and the bill that would have the positive impact of providing protection more quickly to genuine refugees fleeting persecution, torture and death.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary reinforces why it is we have a two-tier system. We need to recognize that the people on the Sun Sea and the Ocean Lady will be deemed as irregular arrivals once this legislation passes. If we had applied that same principle to what the government wants today, that would have been applied to a ship that came from India, Europe or Vietnam. The government would have classified these individuals as irregulars. The moment they are branded as irregular arrivals, they will be treated differently from other refugees, which goes against the 1951 United Nations convention. That is something that was brought to the government's attention, even in committee.

I want to pick up on the point that Bill C-31 would tarnish Canada's leadership role in the whole area of refugees. For many years, Canada has been a leader when it comes to the development of refugee policies. Countries throughout the world have looked to Canada as a model and to see how they might be able to emulate it.

What became quite apparent at the committee level after listening to presenter after presenter was that this would tarnish our reputation. One of the primary reasons for that was the establishment of the two-tier refugee, better known as the irregular arrival versus the other form of arrival, and the consequences of that. For example, as with the Sun Sea and the Ocean Lady, people left their country because they were scared of being tortured or possibly killed, or whatever the reason might have been. They would be victimized once again by being put into a detention centre and then, because they would be labelled as irregulars, even if they were classified shortly thereafter as being bona fide refugees, they would not be able to sponsor their children or their spouse for at least five years, unlike other refugees. To me and everyone else except the Conservative members of the committee that is a two-tier system.

The Conservatives talked a lot about the importance of mandatory detention. I will concede that they did change their minds once we were at the committee stage, and I applaud them on doing that, but we need to look at the reality of it. The current system related to detentions works. Canada Border Services presented at the committee. We already have the ability to do what is proposed in this bill in terms of being able to keep people in detention centres. That aspect of the system is not broken. The government has made that up in order to bring in what it had originally called “the anti-smuggling bill”. That is the one for which the Prime Minister and the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism stepped on the back of a ship to give the impression that we were being invaded by refugees. That aspect of the legislation does not need to be fixed. It works and yet the government is prepared to tarnish our reputation in order to have a photo op and create a false impression with Canadians.

As I said, the Conservatives did back down at the committee stage and changed their mind. Now they are saying that there will be a 14 day review, which is great. We support that idea. However, after that it is a long six months. We suggested that, at the very least, there should be some sort of review every 28 days. They call it judicial overview.

We should not have to keep people in detention if there is no need to keep them in detention. However, for some reason the Conservatives believe they should, at a huge cost. I am not just talking about the dollar figure. I am also talking about the social cost of it.

The government likes to think it is about families and yet it wants to lock up parents of children who will be put into foster care facilities. Better yet, the government is saying that people will have a choice, the choice being that they can take their eight-year-old son with them to jail so they can still be together. What kind of a dilemma is that? As a parent, my choice is that I can either take my eight-year-old child with me into a jail or a detention centre or I can have my child separated from me and living in a foster care facility. One does not need to be a psychiatrist to understand that will cause all sorts of social issues going forward after the matter has been resolved.

There is the issue of age. We moved amendment after amendment to try to deal with the recognition that there is a difference between 16 and 18 years of age.

At the end of the day, we believe the minister is now saying that he is the one to decide. Not only can he tell who is a regular or irregular arrival, he wants to be able to say what is a safe country and what is not. One had better not be on that safe country list because it will be a whole lot more difficult. People had better come with a lot of paperwork and have it filed, and know who they will be recruiting to represent them because they will not have very much time to get their case together in order to adequately represent themselves.

How many advocates, groups and individuals, whether they were lawyers or lay people who came before the committee, said that was not enough time? The government is not allowing individuals the opportunity to make and state their cases.

We in the Liberal Party want a process that will not only be fast but we want the other “f” word also: fair. That seems to have escaped the government. It does not seem to recognize the importance of fairness in the system. That has been lost on the minister.

We talked at great lengths in regard to the safe country list. We do not believe for a moment that the minister should have the responsibility of designation. We believe there are people who are much better equipped to determine which country should be deemed a safe country. That is why, in previous legislation, when there was a minority Conservative government, there was a consensus. Even the current Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism acknowledged back then that it was good legislation and it made sense.

What did that legislation say? It said that there would be an advisory panel of professionals, of people who had an understanding of human rights and so forth. Those individuals would be the ones to identify those countries around the world that could be deemed as being safe.

We were hopeful that was something on which the government would have been open to amendments. When the government said that it was open to amendments, we went into the committee stage in anticipation that would, in fact, be the case. The government made some amendments that came out of its own party but there was nothing in terms of recognizing the advisory committee, even though all political parties agreed to that previously and it would have improved the legislation.

The Liberal Party put forward numerous amendments. The Green Party picked up on a number of those amendments. We had hoped to give the government a second chance by getting it to support those amendments.

We do not support the bill as a whole because we believe the government has really dropped the ball on this reform package. We recognize the importance of speeding up the process but we also believe that there needs to be fairness, judicial overview and ministerial accountability and that is missing in this bill.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am certainly not going to give the member that kind of guarantee. What I will do, though, is identify the fact that he talked about a two-tiered system.

We, on this side of the House, do not believe that UN-sanctioned refugees who have been living in squalor and who have been waiting for years, in some cases over a decade, to find out where they will start their new lives and who have already been declared refugees, should, in any way, shape or form, be superseded by irregular arrivals who are claiming refugee status in Canada.

What Bill C-31 would do, and what Bill C-11 did, is it would eliminate the potential of a two-tired system.

We need to ensure that all those individuals who have already received refugee status get their opportunity for a new life in Canada. Those are the individuals who deserve to get here quickly. Those are the individuals we have committed to.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I have a very specific question for the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration with regard to this whole idea of the two-tiered refugee system.

There is a retroactive portion in the bill that, if passed, means that the individuals who arrived on the Sun Sea or the Ocean Lady could be subjected to Bill C-31, which means that, if and when they acquire refugee status, the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism gets to decide whether they will be able to sponsor a family member shortly after being recognized as legitimate refugees.

Is the parliamentary secretary prepared to give a guarantee to the House that the individuals who arrived on the Sun Sea and the Ocean Lady will not be subjected to this legislation?

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

I appreciate the question, Mr. Speaker, because it gives me the opportunity to identify that 80% to 85% of what was in Bill C-11 has been carried forward to Bill C-31.

One of the reasons we introduced this legislation is that the process, even under Bill C-11, would take an extremely long period of time to work through. The minister, the government and the department identified that an opportunity to move forward and expedite the process through which a refugee claimant could make a claim to become a refugee here in Canada would actually speed up that process. , Bill C-31 would give an individual or a family who is applying to become a refugee here in Canada a much quicker process.

Therefore, even if those individuals are in detention during that period of time, they would now have two opportunities for a review of their file. We believe that before that second review takes place in six months, we will have made the identification and will have determined whether the individual is a claimant who has been denied or a claimant who is a true refugee here in the country.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, there were a few amendments that we did support at the committee stage. We also made it very clear at committee that we could not support the clause. However, we supported those amendments because they would mitigate the harm that would be there for the refugees. They absolutely did not go far enough when it came to the review for those people in detention. Fourteen days is too long for people to wait.

However, I want to ask a question along a different tack.

The current act, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, actually allows the government to detain new arrivals until it has confirmed their identity and done a criminal check and a security check. That actually exists right now. I think we need to very clear about that.

However, the new bill, Bill C-31, says that there will be mandatory imprisonment for up to a year for irregular arrivals and that there will be no automatic release once they have their identification, security checks and criminal record checks have cleared. That is a big concern for us.

The question for my colleague is on how they will --

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure to have the opportunity to rise and speak yet again at report stage of Bill C-31.

I want to make it clear that the minister, I and this government from day one have stated that we would consider any reasonable amendments put forward that would be consistent with the goals and the principles of the bill.

I would remind the House that Bill C-31 aims to make Canada's refugee system fairer and faster. It also aims to provide protection to genuine refugees who need to be qualified for assistance much more quickly, while we remove those asylum seekers who are bogus, of criminal background or who come here from a human smuggling perspective.We are after hose human smugglers, and the bill makes it very clear.

To no surprise, the minister, I and my colleagues on committee, who did an amazing job, and this government had a chance to keep our word. After lengthy and in-depth study at committee and after hearing from literally dozens of witnesses, the government did agree to several amendments that would strengthen the bill.

There are two further amendments that we have presented at report stage. As the minister will also explain, as will those who will follow me, both amendments are technical in nature. The first amendment affects clause 26 and simply corrects a French word in one of the amendments passed at committee to ensure it is consistent with the English word used and the French wording used throughout the rest of the legislation.

Clause 26 of Bill C-31 includes the detention of anyone who arrives on Canada's shores as part of a human smuggling event, and for good reason. It is the responsibility of any government to protect the safety and security of its citizens. Smuggled migrants often arrive in Canada with no documentation. At first, it is literally impossible to tell who is who.

Just a couple of days ago, and these are the second charges that have been laid with respect to the irregular arrival of the Ocean Lady and the Sun Sea, the RCMP laid charges against two of the alleged organizers of the MV Sun Sea human smuggling operation who arrived on the boat along with other smuggling migrants. I want to congratulate the RCMP for its hard work on these cases and on the previous charges it laid in relation to the Sun Sea and the Ocean Lady.

These vessels included on them criminal human smugglers, the organizers of these dangerous and too often deadly voyages, terrorists and other criminals among others. It is important that all of the individuals who arrived as a party to a human smuggling event are detained until their identities are established and it is determined whether they pose a risk to the safety and security of Canadians.

I am a little shocked that the NDP and the Liberals would vote against these provisions and this amendment. My constituents in the riding of St. Catharines, almost without exception, support the intent and the movement of the bill in terms of what it will do for refugees, what it will do to those who would not be qualified refugees and the whole component of human smuggling. I am certain that if went into the ridings of my colleagues on the other side of the House, we would determine that most of their constituents support the legislation.

It behooves me to say that it would seem to me that when it comes to Bill C-31, the position taken by both the NDP and the Liberal Party is about ideology rather than the safety and security of Canadians.

At committee we put forward amendments that would add reviews when we came to the whole aspect of detention. Those individuals who arrived on these irregular arrivals, as we saw with the Sun Sea and the Ocean Lady, would in fact be detained for the purposes of identification, for the purposes of determining whether they are in fact true refugees and for the purposes of determining whether they were criminals in their own country or were the individuals who organized the event of the smuggling.

We have said, and we have made changes within the content of the bill through amendment at committee, that after 14 days, these individuals will have an opportunity for a review of their file. If their file has not been completed within a period of six months after the first initial review, they will have an opportunity for a further review.

We have to keep in mind that under Bill C-31, decisions on refugee claims will take place within a few short months, compared to the current system where the origin application is heard, on average, within a one to two year period of time.

The fact is this legislation does exactly what it is supposed to do. It moves the process up much quicker so a determination is made at a much sooner stage in the process, as soon as 45 days in most circumstances. If that is not the case, within the context of the irregular arrival, the individuals will still have an opportunity to have their hearing after six months. We have solved what many on the other side of the House say we should do.

I want to thank the NDP immigration critic who, as she stated at committee and in the House, which I appreciated, welcomed the move by the government to add detention reviews. She in fact praised the government for its willingness to listen to the witnesses and feedback we received and the fact that we were open to accepting amendments that actually did improve the legislation.

For the record, she was not the only one. Rob Shropshire, interim executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees, stated that the amendment to clause 26 and other clauses to add detention reviews was certainly “a good thing.”

It is important to give credit where credit is due. The one thing I have experienced at the citizenship and immigration committee since I have been there is that there is, within the walls of Parliament Hill, the ability to work with each, not necessarily agree but certainly do our best to work together.

Credit where credit is due, the NDP did support every amendment that the government put forward to improve the detention provisions related human smuggling in this bill. I want to thank each of the members of the committee for doing that. Unfortunately, despite supporting the amendments at committee, the NDP will vote against this amendment to improve this new provision and it will still vote against the improved bill.

I find that rather telling about the NDP's position on this bill. The NDP members will vote against this technical amendment to ensure that the wording is consistent through the bill even though they voted for the original amendment at committee.

I suppose after having complimented the NDP members of the committee who supported the amendment, it is rather unfortunate and a reminder that the NDP says one thing to Canadians in front of the news cameras and does another thing in Ottawa. If they want to make Parliament work, then they should be consistent in terms of where they support what has been proposed by the government and acknowledge that throughout the process versus what I believe to be a good start and then a very quick completion.

The second amendment the government has put forward at report stage is also technical. It is needed as a result of an amendment that was adopted at committee stage. The committee adopted an amendment that added a subsection to clause 83, and that amendment was simply not numbered. The amendment adds 83(1). Clause 83(1) pertains to the one-year ban on the pre-removal risk assessment for failed asylum claimants.

These are two technical amendments that the government will support to move the bill forward.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, no doubt I will get the opportunity to expand on how the Liberal Party feels about Bill C-31, but for now I will put it in the form of a question and statement and ask the member to provide comment.

One of the greatest concerns we have is that Bill C-31 would set into place the establishment of a two-tier refugee system. Canadians need to be aware of that.

I believe that at the end of the day this will tarnish Canada's international leadership on the refugee file. Many countries around the world look to Canada for the way we treat refugees. The bill is unconstitutional in many ways. It goes against the UN convention in other ways. The establishment of a two-tier refugee system is just wrong.

I wonder if the member would further expand upon that, specifically on those refugees who would be penalized by being deemed irregular. They would be unable to sponsor their family members because they would have been determined irregulars by this particular minister.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

moved:

Motion No. 1

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 1.

Motion No. 2

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 2.

Motion No. 3

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 3.

Motion No. 4

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 4.

Motion No. 5

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 5.

Motion No. 8

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 7.

Motion No. 9

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 8.

Motion No. 10

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 9.

Motion No. 11

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 10.

Motion No. 13

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 11.

Motion No. 14

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 12.

Motion No. 15

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 13.

Motion No. 16

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 14.

Motion No. 17

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 15.

Motion No. 18

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 16.

Motion No. 20

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 17.

Motion No. 21

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 18.

Motion No. 23

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 19.

Motion No. 25

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 20.

Motion No. 26

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 21.

Motion No. 27

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 22.

Motion No. 33

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 24.

Motion No. 36

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 25.

Motion No. 46

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 28.

Motion No. 48

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 29.

Motion No. 49

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 30.

Motion No. 50

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 31.

Motion No. 51

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 32.

Motion No. 52

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 33.

Motion No. 53

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 34.

Motion No. 54

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 35.

Motion No. 57

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 37.

Motion No. 58

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 38.

Motion No. 59

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 39.

Motion No. 60

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 40.

Motion No. 61

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 41.

Motion No. 62

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 42.

Motion No. 63

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 43.

Motion No. 64

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 44.

Motion No. 65

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 45.

Motion No. 66

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 46.

Motion No. 67

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 47.

Motion No. 68

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 48.

Motion No. 69

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 49.

Motion No. 70

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 50.

Motion No. 73

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 52.

Motion No. 74

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 53.

Motion No. 75

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 54.

Motion No. 76

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 55.

Motion No. 77

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 56.

Motion No. 78

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 57.

Motion No. 79

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 58.

Motion No. 82

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 60.

Motion No. 83

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 61.

Motion No. 84

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 62.

Motion No. 85

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 63.

Motion No. 86

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 64.

Motion No. 87

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 65.

Motion No. 88

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 66.

Motion No. 89

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 67.

Motion No. 90

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 68.

Motion No. 91

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 69.

Motion No. 92

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 70.

Motion No. 93

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 71.

Motion No. 94

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 72.

Motion No. 95

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 73.

Motion No. 96

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 74.

Motion No. 97

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 75.

Motion No. 98

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 76.

Motion No. 99

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 77.

Motion No. 104

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 80.

Motion No. 105

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 81.

Motion No. 106

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 82.

Motion No. 107

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 83.

Motion No. 108

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 84.

Motion No. 109

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 85.

Mr. Speaker, I will begin by saying that it is indeed a sad day that we find ourselves here debating this draconian legislation that witness after witness told us is unconstitutional, violates Canada's international obligations, concentrates too much power in the hands of the minister and will end up costing the provinces more in detention costs.

Bill C-31 has many troubling provisions, including giving the minister the power to hand-pick which countries he thinks are safe; measures to deny some refugees access to the new Refugee Appeal Division based on how they arrived; a five-year mandatory wait for bona fide refugees to become permanent residents and reunite with their families, again based on how they arrived in the country; and treating 16-year-old refugee claimants as adults, including detaining them.

After months of pressure from New Democrats, stakeholder groups and refugees themselves, the minister finally admitted there were major flaws in his legislation, unintended consequences, and made some modest amendments. However, let me be clear. They do not go far enough to win our support for a bill that is so fundamentally flawed and mean-spirited.

In an open editorial to Postmedia News on April 25, a group of prominent immigration, legal and constitutional experts said this:

The Bill protects no one and threatens many. It treats asylum seekers as criminals rather than people who need our protection. It is discriminatory, conflicts with Canadians' sense of fairness, and violates the fundamental rights guaranteed to all people by the Canadian Charter of Rights....

It goes on to say:

In particular, bill C-31 would give the minister of...Immigration...the power to "designate" a group of refugees - including women and youths - who can be jailed for up to 12 months....

On this point, I want to be very clear. The minister wants to create two tiers of refugees. He would concentrate more arbitrary power in his own hands to treat refugees differently depending on how they come to Canada. I would ask the House this. What happened to equality under the law?

Witness after witness told us at committee stage that Bill C-31 would have the effect of punishing legitimate refugees and would do nothing to address the problems of human smuggling.

For example, Rivka Augenfeld told the committee on Wednesday May 2:

I'd like to [just] add that this bill...[says that it wants] to control smugglers, and [in order] to control smugglers it is punishing refugees. It's punishing people because of the way they arrived. ...nothing to do with the content of their claim. The content of the claim becomes secondary to the method of arrival.

In the meantime, I would submit that the previous legislation, which is now in place, gives you all the tools you need to go after smugglers and big smugglers....

She goes on to say:

The victims may come, but the victims [who arrive] need [our] help. And we don't know—based on how a person [arrives in this country]...—what the content of their claim is.

It is sad that we find ourselves again having this debate because we just passed refugee reform last year. The Conservatives are going back on compromise they praised only months ago.

In 2010, the Minister of Immigration singled out my colleague, the hon. member for Trinity—Spadina, for her “remarkable diligence” working the government to amend Bill C-11 to limit the number of fraudulent applications and reduce the backlog in Canada's immigration system.

At the time, we believed we would finally get a refugee reform package that was fast, fair and consistent with Canadian values. Everyone was reasonably happy with that outcome. Even the minister found it to be a very reasonable “compromise”. He went on to say that it “is nothing short of a miracle”.

However, here we are again debating the piece of legislation that goes back on almost all of the compromises that were made in the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, and now we have a punish refugee reform act before us even before those important reforms have been allowed to take place.

In addition to the many constitutional and moral problems we have with the bill, it is also fiscally irresponsible, and the Conservatives should understand this argument, and has the potential to saddle the provinces with huge increases in detention costs.

Chantal Tie, a representative from the Canadian Council for Refugees, said to the committee on May 3:

What does fiscal responsibility have to do with Bill C-31? We believe fiscal responsibility is about spending taxpayers' dollars wisely. The CCR is committed to an affordable refugee protection system.

Then she goes on to say:

Our current system is doing an individualized risk assessment, which works well to protect our society and ensure the integrity of the immigration system. The figure we used was 6% [from CBSA], which means that 94% of refugee claimants on average do not need to be detained. If this bill passes, we will be detaining 100% of designated arrivals for a year. The math is simple. Ninety-four percent of the people we will be detaining will not need to be detained, if past experiences serve us well.

Members can do the math.

Mary Crock, a professor from Australia who has studied that country's disastrous attempt to punish refugees, told our committee on May 2:

...these measures do not deter. They cost a fortune. Financially they cost a fortune and socially they cost a fortune....

It is important to note that the Australian legislation, which is similar to ours, has not proven to have had a deterrent effect on human smuggling.

Simply put, the bill is not in the interest of sound fiscal management and prudent use of taxpayer money at this time when budgets are stretched thin.

As I mentioned before, another key area of concern for us is that the minister is giving himself the power to hand-pick which countries he thinks are safe, without advice from independent experts. Members will remember that the addition of a panel of experts to determine a so-called safe country was a key compromise to the opposition under the yet-to-be-enacted Balanced Refugee Reform Act.

It is our view that any country is capable of producing a legitimate refugee. The most glaring examples come from the Roma in Hungary, women and children in abusive homes in places like Mexico and the LGBTQ community in many countries of the Caribbean, Africa and beyond. There are numerous cases of those who are persecuted for religious reasons in countries that might otherwise be deemed safe by our minister.

There is another problem with the designation of so-called safe countries that ties in with the meanspirited announcements last week that refugee claimants are about to have their health coverage slashed by the Conservatives.

Yesterday in a piece in the Embassy, reporter Kristen Shane pointed out that a potentially legitimate refugee from a so-called safe country delivering a baby or undergoing emergency surgery for a heart attack at a Canadian hospital would have to pay for it out of pocket because of changes to the government's refugee health insurance act, said to take effect in July. Shame. Knowing that potentially legitimate refugees from so-called safe countries could actually be denied basic emergency medical coverage for the delivery of a baby and even for a heart attack is unconscionable.

We believe the government needs to go back to the drawing board on Bill C-31, and therefore we will be opposing it. Because none of the NDP's substantive amendments were adopted by the government members at committee, and because MPs from all parties just passed a balanced refugee reform package last Parliament, I have moved to delete all clauses from this legislation.

If my hon. colleagues from the Conservative Party were really concerned about human smuggling, they would be less focused on photo ops and more focused on enforcing our already strict laws. They would give the RCMP the resources it needs to get the job done, instead of playing politics with the world's most vulnerable. I hope they will listen to reason, scrap this flawed legislation and return to the framework we all agreed to in the Balanced Refugee Reform Act.

Speaker's Ruling

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

There are 109 motions in amendment standing on the notice paper for the report stage of Bill C-31.

Motions Nos. 12, 19, 22, 24, 30, 31, 34, 35, 37, 39, 40, 42 and 47 will not be selected by the Chair because they were defeated in committee.

All remaining motions have been examined and the Chair is satisfied that they meet the guidelines expressed in the note to Standing Order 76(1)(5) regarding the selection of motions in amendment at the report stage.

The motions will be grouped for debate as follows.

Group No. 1 will include Motions Nos. 1 to 5, 8 to 11, 13 to 18, 20, 21, 23, 25 to 27, 33, 36, 46, 48 to 54, 57 to 70, 73 to 79, 82 to 99 and 104 to 109.

Group No. 2 will include Motions Nos. 6, 7, 55, 56, 71, 72, 80, 81 and 100 to 103.

Group No. 3 will include Motions Nos. 28, 29, 32, 38, 41 and 43 to 45.

The voting patterns for the motions within each group are available at the table. The Chair will remind the House of each pattern at the time of voting.

I shall now propose Motions Nos. 1 to 5, 8 to 11, 13 to 18, 20, 21, 23, 25 to 27, 33, 36, 46, 48 to 54, 57 to 70, 73 to 79, 82 to 99 and 104 to 109 in Group No. 1 to the House.

The House proceeded to the consideration of Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, the Marine Transportation Security Act and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Act, as reported (with amendment) from the committee.

Citizenship and Immigration

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition on behalf of the residents of my riding around some of the more egregious elements of the government's Bill C-31, the immigration act.

I thank you for the opportunity to present this on behalf of Davenport.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is sad that the parliamentary secretary thinks that refugees clog up our system when these are people who are fleeing situations of persecution or oppression from wherever they are coming. They are asylum seekers.

The parliamentary secretary needs to stop blaming the backlog on the previous Liberal government. I agree that the Liberals handled it poorly, but for the last six years, the government has not done much to make the situation any better. It has actually made it worse.

Family reunification and family support are extremely important factors for healthy and effective integration of our newer immigrants in Canada. People who have faced war, who have faced traumatic experiences beyond our imagination will no longer have access to this vital support system, and thanks to the amendments to our immigration laws, including Bill C-31, they will now be revictimized.

When will the government understand the importance of family reunification and immediately reverse the moratorium on parent and grandparent class applications within the family class?

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, certainly with the response the minister gave to the member's question and the position that our government has taken on this issue, the member either has not been listening very closely or she does not respect the fact that we have taken huge strides when it comes to family reunification and, in fact, when it comes to the immigration system overall.

The member shows a lack of respect for the 30-plus hours of witness testimony which brought the issues to our attention. Bill C-31 is going to change the way the refugee system in this country works for the positive in the sense that it will do more for those who are true refugees. It will also ensure that those who are not true refugees will not clog up our system, which hurts those who truly need assistance, and has a huge impact on the Immigration and Refugee Board and the immigration system as a whole.

Specifically, the one thing the member did not respond to, and which her party said it supported, as did the third party, is how we have dealt with the issue of the family class with respect to parents and grandparents.

We implemented the super visa program late in the fall of 2011 and it can only be described as a tremendous success. In fact, the super visa does something no other visa did before. It allows parents and grandparents who would like to visit their children and grandchildren to apply for a 10-year visa to come to this country. The super visa allows parents and grandparents to come to Canada for up to two years to stay and visit with their family and assist with the upbringing of children if that is their wish.

The fact is, that program had to be implemented because there was a backlog of over 165,000 applications which started way before we formed government. In fact, it was never dealt with by the previous administration and it put us in a position of having to act.

In 2011, to work through that backlog, we increased by 60% the number of parents and grandparents who are allowed to come into this country. We implemented the super visa which has put families and parents in a position to come here faster and to stay for a period of up to two years. The only requirement is that they get their own health insurance so that when they are here, they do not put a burden on Canada's health care system.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, last fall the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism announced, effective immediately, a moratorium on new applications to sponsor parents and grandparents to immigrate to Canada. This unfair punishment for new Canadians and Canadian permanent residents is compounded by new measures recently introduced in the punishing refugees act, also known as Bill C-31, which will place a mandatory five-year wait time for refugees to become permanent residents and apply to reunite with their families.

The last time I asked the minister about this issue, he blamed the problem of the backlog of applications on the Liberals. We continue to hear the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism claim that his department is increasing and speeding up the reunification for family members, but with this moratorium on family reunification and a five-year bar for refugees, the Conservative government is making it harder for families to stay together. The Conservative government has to take responsibility for that.

Parents and grandparents wait an average of seven years to come to Canada. One family in my riding has waited over 16 years. Now, people will have to wait an additional five years on top of an already lengthy separation. But wait, this excruciatingly long countdown for parents to see their children, and grandparents to see their grandchildren will not begin until 2014. The government will not be accepting new applications to sponsor parents and grandparents until 2014, if at all. While we know there is a substantial backlog for family class applicants, refusing to reunify families is not the way to deal with the backlog.

Working as the member of Parliament for Scarborough—Rouge River, I have spoken with many families who have been waiting years and years to have their parents and grandparents join them here in Canada. We all know the benefits of having our parents and grandparents here with us. We understand the value of reuniting families. I am lucky enough to have had my grandparents join me here in Canada from Sri Lanka. They have added so much value to my life.

We need to address the existing inequities in the system and develop a balanced and equitable approach to dealing with the backlog. This includes raising the overall level of immigration and the number of immigrants that we accept each year to approach approximately 1% of the population.

When will the Conservative government start putting families first and help those who have waited so long to be reunited with their loved ones?

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition asks that a vote not be held in the House on Bill C-31 and that the government set the bill aside because it represents a step backwards for refugees and immigrants.

I am very pleased to present this petition, which is supported by a number of organizations, including the Carrefour communautaire de Rosemont, the Organisation populaire des droits sociaux de Montréal and CANA, an organization in my riding of which I am very proud.

Iran

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Chair, it is my pleasure today to rise and speak on this important issue of human rights. After the graphic pictures painted by members on all sides of the House, there is absolutely no doubt in anybody's mind that Iran has serious human rights violations.

Recently I have been dealing with a different aspect of legislation, Bill C-31. When I was home over the weekend, I had the opportunity to meet with some of my constituents who told me the reason they chose Canada is because of our charter, our respect for human rights and our Constitution. They shared with me their worries about some of the proposed changes in Bill C-31, which I would call the punishing refugees act.

We know how terrible it is in Iran. Just imagine a group leaving Iran. Upon arrival on our shores they would be put in prison because they would be considered irregular arrivals. If they had children under 16 years of age, we would give them the choice of keeping their children with them or giving them over to provincial social services. That is not a choice I would want to make as a mother.

These people would have to wait 14 days, and that is only after the opposition and witnesses pushed, before their detention, which is in a prison, would be reviewed. Let us call it what it is. Then they would have another six months and then for five years--

Citizenship and Immigration

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the third report of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration entitled Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, the Marine Transportation Security Act and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Act.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Thank you, Chair. I appreciate all your comments and the thanks you passed around. I won't repeat them, other than, on behalf of the government, to endorse them. I certainly agree, and we agree with all the comments you've made.

I remember that the ending of Bill C-11 and the result of the vote was a little different from what it was today, but I do want to say, as I said throughout our time of going through clause-by-clause—I may not have mentioned this during the witness phase—that I do believe in our process. I do believe in the system.

Every time I have been involved, since I've been elected federally, in moving legislation forward, second reading.... Many folks out there don't know the process we use to pass a piece of federal legislation, but the process we use is one that does have checks and balances. It has checks and balances whether we have it from a minority government perspective or whether we have it from a majority government perspective, and although those checks and balances may be a little bit different when you put the two against each other, the fact is that we came into this process, from a government perspective, listening and potentially making amendments. The outcome of what we see in Bill C-31 is from amendments that we believe came forward based on advice, based on legal opinions, and based on the opposition's perspective on this.

I am proud of the fact that we, as a government, as a committee, and as members of this committee, actually moved this forward understanding that no one can say that the 29 hours—close to 30 hours—of time we spent listening to witnesses and the additional countless hours we spent over the last couple of days moving through this bill have not been useful in making it a better piece of legislation.

Whether or not at the end of the day you support that piece of legislation is not nearly as important as the fact that the process we have in the Canadian parliamentary system actually works. It's proven through this piece of legislation that citizenship and immigration can and does work. I truly believe this is a better bill today than it was before it came to committee, and I will be certainly making those comments and statements at third reading.

This may not have the coming together of all the critics and the minister in the middle of the House of Commons shaking hands after third reading, but it certainly has us being able to look across the table and understand that the process we have gone through over the last number of weeks is one in which we have listened and we have worked with each other.

On the chair's comments with respect to how we've respected each other through this process, it's too bad people in the public say that question period is symbolic and that that treatment of each other is what the federal Parliament is all about. If you were to watch what happened here at committee—nobody would want to watch all of these countless hours—the fact is that we worked very well together.

It's a compliment to Ms. Sims, who jumped into this literally with the fire at her feet, based on the fact that she got the position less than 48 hours before we started clause-by-clause. My congratulations to her for a job well done on behalf of the official opposition.

Also Mr. Lamoureux, because he is a House leader, wasn't able to attend all of our meetings with respect to witnesses, but, Kevin, I can assure you that even when you're not here, your presence is heard.

Thank you very much.

I also want to thank my colleagues, who may not have said a lot here over the last couple of days, but they have repeated on a regular basis that this is a committee that we thoroughly enjoy sitting on. We have not only learned a great deal, but we feel we're having a pretty strong input into the process here in Ottawa.

Thank you very much.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Yes, absolutely. I recommend not putting any sort of time limit in terms of what might happen in third reading. We should try to allow for full and open debate.

I say that, Mr. Chair, because when we look at the title of the bill, it is very clear. The idea behind it was to try to improve the system. Based on that, I would argue that ultimately this bill attempts to deal with a crisis that really does not exist.

I say that because this bill can be broken into three parts, if I can generalize it very briefly.

One of them deals with the whole concept of speeding things up for the refugees. I believe that everyone inside this room and all of the witnesses who came before the committee recognize that the current system needs to be sped up. It's better for the refugees and the taxpayers. It's better for everyone. We recognized that a couple of years back. That's why we had Bill C-11, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act. That bill did receive good, solid support, and it dealt with the issue of speeding up the process.

The second thing was for the minister to deal with human smuggling. This bill takes into account Bill C-11 and Bill C-4. You'll recall, Mr. Chair, that Bill C-4 is still on the order paper. It's all about the Sun Sea, the Ocean Lady, and human smuggling. I often make reference to the picture of the Minister of Immigration and the Prime Minister standing on the back of I think the Ocean Lady, but it might have been the Sun Sea, trying to highlight this “crisis”. The reality is that the system wasn't broken; the system was actually working.

When my colleague from the New Democratic Party made reference to both the Sun Sea and the Ocean Lady, there were well over 550 refugees. The current system identified security risks, and those individuals—I believe there were six of them—are still in detention today because the Government of Canada has concerns in regard to that. There should be no doubt among committee members that there is nothing wrong with the system we have here today.

The third and broader issue is biometrics. As I pointed out in an earlier comment, this isn't something new. It's been happening throughout the world. In fact, it was first introduced somewhere around seven or eight years ago as a pilot project. I think the committee recognized that fact, and that's the reason we were investigating the issue of biometrics and how it might be able to benefit Canadian society going forward.

It would have been a whole lot better to have completed that study, reviewed the pilot project that was initiated years ago, and then developed a separate piece of legislation in order to deal with that. Then we could have had witnesses or whoever else participate to have better definition or clarification of the regulations to address some of the questions that were being posed.

In principle, we have been consistent in saying that we do not support Bill C-31 because it does establish two tiers of refugees. There is the whole concept of mandatory detention. Even though I acknowledge that after listening to the committee and the public, the government and the minister did recognize that they had made a mistake—and that's a good thing—we are very concerned about this family separation issue. That's why I asked for a recorded vote on clause 81. I wanted to make sure that it was perfectly clear and that people in this committee realized that we were preventing families from being able to reunite, or at least this minister was.

From an opposition point of view, I can tell you that the Liberal Party will be watching very closely what this minister does and how he decides to use his new power potentially against those victims—I underline the word “victims”—of the Sun Sea and the Ocean Lady. They have come from a country in which they were victims. Is this minister going to revictimize them? We'll have to wait and see, but rest assured, this is an issue the Liberal Party will be following very closely.

We are concerned with the timelines. There's so much within the legislation, and that's why, at the end of the day, I believe we would have been far better off, at the very least, to bring back this bill six months from now. How could we make this a bill that would deserve the title we're giving it? Right now, I don't believe it deserves the assigned title.

If we were to allow more time and genuinely fix the bill, there might be some merit for this particular clause, but as it stands right now, we do not support clause 1. I look forward to the bill entering third reading and debate in the House, where I'll be able to add a few more comments from my perspective and the perspective of the Liberal Party of Canada.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

It's before those here, Mr. Chair, and again it's a technical amendment. The clause was amended to provide that only subsection 15(3) of the BRRA would come into force on royal assent of Bill C-31.

Basically, it means that the 12-month bar on assessing a pre-removal risk assessment would be in effect upon royal assent of the proposed legislation. It's just a follow-up to the previous section.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Chair, I'm going to move that Bill C-31 in clause 60 be amended by replacing lines 1 and 2 on page 29 with the following:

(b.1) subject to subsection (2.1), less than three days have passed since their claim for

To put it into context, Mr. Chair, it expedites timelines for claimants from DCOs and no access to the RAD for designated foreign nationals or claimants from DCOs. It is necessary to remove the 12-month bar—we've had some discussion already on that particular issue—for a rejected claimant to request pre-removal risk assessment.

I'm going to refer to comments by Sean Rehaag, a graduate from Osgoode Hall. He said the system is robust, as the criminal justice system is. It does have errors, and there are appeals or checks in place to help mitigate them. Clearly, then, in less than robust systems there will also be errors, so we do need to have adequate checks in place. This is something we thought might be adequate for us to look at, at least better than what was being proposed earlier. So compared to the alternative, I think this is something that could be supported.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to quickly turn to the word “statistically” used by Mr. Weston. Since he wants to talk about statistics, could he tell me how many refugee boats full of irregular arrivals have come over the last decade? There have been very few. Yet Bill C-31 relies on arrival statistics, which are very low. Also, this is not Utopia. When we talk about human beings, fundamental rights, recognizing the right to seek asylum and the rights of refugees, we are talking about a concrete reality grounded in fact. People are fleeing persecution and are taking boats or using any other means to come here.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The Canadian government has an obligation to create a balance in our refugee determination process to make it fast while upholding our Canadian values of fairness. This amendment would do that.

There were witnesses who raised numerous concerns about concentrating this decision in the hands of the minister. Without an independent panel of experts, the qualitative criteria should be explicit. We have heard and we've said that no country is truly safe. A country that is considered safe for some residents may be unsafe for others.

Impartiality towards the development and maintenance of this list is extremely important. If this is not going to happen, then the criteria included in this amendment must be considered. It's confusing as to why Bill C-31 would remove this safeguard.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Bill C-31 provides for the minister to designate countries of origin. The amendment seeks to amend the bill so that the minister must appoint an advisory panel to assist in making the designations.

House of Commons Procedure and Practice, second edition, states at pages 767 and 768:

Since an amendment may not infringe upon the financial initiative of the Crown, it is inadmissible if it imposes a charge on the public treasury, or if it extends the objects or purposes or relaxes the conditions and qualifications specified in the royal recommendation.

Mr. Lamoureux, in my opinion, the amendment proposes a new scheme that seeks to alter the terms and conditions of the royal recommendation, and I therefore rule the amendment inadmissible.

I don't think we can debate my ruling. You can challenge it.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Chair, there's a lot of discussion or mention about what Bill C-11 included, or which part of Bill C-11 is included in this bill. I've heard the opposition say they wish all of Bill C-11 was moving forward. This was part of Bill C-11, this whole issue around transgender issues. We looked hard and studied on a very detailed basis the fact that there would be countries where, regardless of their designation, individuals would be able to seek refugee status in Canada based on the persecution they faced for being gay, lesbian, or transgendered. That hasn't changed from Bill C-11, and I'm surprised to hear the opposition not wanting to support it, first, or to amend it.

Second, I would like to clarify that the witnesses we had who spoke to this issue were very much focused on the current process with which they were unhappy. They actually didn't provide proposals or options on how to improve Bill C-31. Their focus was on the issues they felt were unresolved and hadn't been dealt with through the current process. I do think this is what I believe to be part of, as you said, the great Canadian compromise, and part of that compromise is embedded in Bill C-31 based on what we learned from Bill C-11 on this issue. The witnesses who did provide the information on this issue very much emphasized the current problems they have with the current system, versus how they felt. While they indicated they didn't support Bill C-31, they didn't provide us with a detailed recommendation as to how to improve it.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

As you know, we don't believe the minister should have the power centralized for him to be able to designate countries, but here in this particular section we're very concerned that for those who are from designated countries, the bar has been raised for them to 36 months.

It took the NDP a lot, I would say, in the last great compromise to agree to what exists in Bill C-31 right now, which is a 12-month period. But this 36 months is just way over the top and not acceptable to us as well. We do not buy the rationale that this is actually going to do anything for our policy or our image in the world right now.

Canada is a very compassionate country, a very caring country, and here we are now raising the bar higher and higher for certain types of asylum seekers. These are the people we would have already accepted as refugees under the Geneva Convention, and even after accepting them that way we're going to continue to have a two-tiered approach: you're wearing a white shirt today, so you will get this kind of a treatment; you're wearing a yellow shirt, you'll get that kind of a treatment. It's as arbitrary as that.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Mr. Lamoureux, I think that's the first time I've agreed with you.

I was just going to remind everyone on this committee that we have several guests here, officials, who are here for the purpose of Bill C-31, and we still have a lot of amendments and clauses to go through before the end of the day.

I know we're scheduled right up until, I believe, midnight tonight. I would suggest that perhaps we could postpone it until that point in time, and I'm sure we could go in camera and decide if we want to discuss that any further, once this committee has finished at midnight.

Thank you.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Chair, I suggest in good faith that after we've dealt with Bill C-31—and we might be able to deal with it relatively quickly—maybe the steering committee could have an in camera meeting to address the concerns of not only the NDP but the Liberal Party and I'm sure even the government members.

I wouldn't necessarily want to jump to any conclusions. For example, Mr. Chair, we in the Liberal Party believe we should have seen a separate, stand-alone piece of legislation, as opposed to our dealing with this issue through the budget. That's why I think it's probably better if we have that discussion immediately following Bill C-31, if possible, depending on what time we finish.

I don't think there's a need for any sort of a vote now. Let's just deal with Bill C-31. After that, let's have this discussion, and maybe the steering committee could get together. Things seem to be moving along quite nicely right now.

That would be my recommendation.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Mr. Chair, if I may, of course the ultimate decision on how we proceed in this committee is yours, but we are here discussing Bill C-31. I concur with your comments that we have a job to do here today.

I've also been in agreement with the practice of the committee: the subcommittee meets and discusses what's to be studied next. We are studying security. We've met with a lot of witnesses. I'm sure much more work needs to be done on that. To leave that study now and do something else will be discussed in the subcommittee. But to continue to have this discussion today on what should happen next, without finishing the job we have at hand....

We're on clause 36 of some 85 clauses. I think we should continue doing this job right now to finish our task today, and then by all means, the honourable member's suggestion can be reviewed by the subcommittee and discussed among.... We have confidence in the subcommittee. As a committee, we've demonstrated that. The subcommittee can decide on how we proceed, bring it to us, and then we'll go forward.

But to interrupt this meeting now.... I'm sure that wasn't Ms. Sims's intention, by any stretch of the imagination. I don't think she wanted to interrupt it, but that's the result. We're in the middle of something. We should be finishing the job at hand right now before we go to the next thing. The minute we start talking about time allocation and the budget, we would have to say all kinds of things about that as well, and we're going to go on forever with that. For sure we're in total disagreement with some of the tactics being used by the opposition, but this meeting is not the place or the time for it.

We are at the end of a marathon discussion on Bill C-31, having heard a plethora of witnesses. I admit a lot of work has been done by all parties here, with the amendments that have been put forth. We're going through clause-by-clause consideration.

Just to finish up, without being repetitive, I think we should finish our task at hand, and then the subcommittee can evaluate what we do, if they want to change the process of how we proceed.

That's my point. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I can tell you what this committee has normally done in the past and what I plan in the future.

When we finish one project, we generally meet as a subcommittee and plan what we're going to do in the future. There are all kinds of things. We debate what items we're going to.... It could be those items. The government may have some suggestions. The official opposition may have some suggestions. They have one now.

We were going to meet next week, as a subcommittee, to plan where we're going in the future. So I'm at a little bit of a loss.

You are, in a way, contradicting your whole approach to Bill C-31. You have complained that we're not having enough time, and now you appear to want to debate a motion on Bill C-38.

The government has indicated that it's not going to support your motion.

Quite frankly, I would prefer that the topic be left until we meet as a subcommittee. I first of all want to meet with the analysts and the clerk to hear what they have to say about the report we've been working on and to prepare a report for the subcommittee on their suggestions and some of the topics that have been raised in the past. That would take place next week, as opposed to now, in the middle of the time scheduled for dealing with Bill C-31.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Chairperson, I'm inclined to be sympathetic to what it is you're saying. Normally I might not say this, but the concern I have is that we had an agreement that this bill, Bill C-31, would pass today. That's the mindset I had come into committee with.

Having said that, I share many of the concerns the NDP have with regard to the budget debate. I suspect that this is where this is coming from.

I could also say that had I known we were able to make these types of motions today, there are many other issues.... For example, I'd love to cease and desist the current study the immigration committee is doing on biometrics and then explain why. We should be having that discussion about what we replace it with. This is a legitimate concern. There are legitimate concerns with regard to the crisis situation in the provincial nominee program. We have serious issues related to visitor visas not being approved.

It's a fairly lengthy agenda we could have. I would love the opportunity to welcome into the debate all those issues.

My concern is that if the member starts to itemize the reasons we should be making this a priority, I would feel somewhat obligated to itemize what I believe, on behalf of our party, are priorities for this committee to be looking at.

What we might want to do is deal with Bill C-31. If there is some time at the end of that discussion, and the committee is open to it, I too would like to introduce some motions for us to look at as a committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Well, you know, now that Mr. Dykstra has said that....

I will say that you have spent a great deal of time saying that you don't have enough time to deal with Bill C-31, and all of a sudden, you're interrupting the proceedings to deal with an entirely different bill.

Mr. Lamoureux.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Chair, I would move that Bill C-31 in clause 36 be amended by replacing line 20 on page 18 with the following:

Division, and must accept documentary evidence

The essence of it, Mr. Chair, is just to allow for new evidence that would be acceptable in the appeal process.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Chair, before any other motions are put in regard to Bill C-31, I want to get on the record the amendment we're now talking about. In the past, we, as a political entity, have expressed our concern that refugees, or people applying to become refugees, even if they're from a safe country, be provided some reasonable opportunity of appeal.

What the government is proposing to do, in essence, is to say that technically a refugee’s only appeal is the Federal Court, which raises a great deal of concern with a wide variety, if not all, stakeholders. For that reason, I think the government would be making a mistake by going into an area where an individual’s only recourse for a decision made is to take it to the Federal Court. We know that at times the Federal Court, in itself, can be a fairly lengthy process, anywhere from three months to over a year. Unless we amend the current legislation, Mr. Chairperson, the individuals seeking an appeal will not even be in the country at the time their appeal is being heard.

I'm sure members can appreciate the concerns stakeholders would have, for the simple reason that there's always been this sense of justice that someone going through an appeal have the opportunity to be in the country, at least until that final determination is read or given. It's a serious concern we have.

With that in mind, whether it's the NDP amendment or amendments from the Liberal Party attempting to deal with that issue, those are my comments for committee members.

Thank you.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Chair, as my colleague has just articulated, this particular bill, Bill C-31, denies access to an appeal to the RAD for negative refugee decisions for a very lengthy number of groups, and I just want to read those into the record: claimants from a designated country of origin; designated foreign nationals; those who have withdrawn or been found to have abandoned their claims; claims that the RPD determines have no credible basis or to be manifestly unfounded; claimants who entered Canada from a safe third country but who could claim refugee status because they fit an exception to, let's say, the Canada-U.S. agreement; and claimants whose refugee status was revoked after vacation or cessation hearings.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

This is the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, meeting number 45, on Thursday, May 11, 2012. This meeting is televised.

The orders of the day, pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 23, 2012, are for study of Bill C-31, an act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and other acts.

We are in the midst of debating amendment NDP-16. Ms. Sitsabaiesan has asked for the floor, and she has it.

(On clause 36)

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, our government's priority is, of course, the economy. We are committed to job creation and economic growth.

As a result, this afternoon we will continue debate on Bill C-38, the jobs, growth and long-term prosperity act. This bill implements the budget, Canada's economic action plan 2012, to ensure certainty for the economy.

For the benefit of Canadians and parliamentarians, when we introduced the bill, we said we would vote on it on May 14. The second reading vote on the jobs, growth and long-term prosperity act will be on May 14.

After tomorrow, which will be the final day of debate on this bill, we will have had the longest second reading debate on a budget bill in at least the last two decades.

On Monday and Tuesday we will continue with another bill that will support the Canadian economy and job creation, especially in the digital and creative sectors.

We will have report stage and third reading debate on Bill C-11, the Copyright Modernization Act.

This bill puts forth a balanced, common sense plan to modernize our copyright laws. Committees have met for over 60 hours and heard from almost 200 witnesses. All of this is in addition to the second reading debate on Bill C-11 of 10 sitting days.

After all that debate and study, it is time for the measures to be fully implemented so Canadians can take advantage of the updated rules and create new high-quality digital jobs.

Should the opposition agree that we have already had ample debate on Bill C-11, we will debate Bill C-25, the pooled registered pension plans act; Bill C-23, the Canada–Jordan free trade act; and Bill C-15, the strengthening military justice in the defence of Canada act in the remaining time on Monday and Tuesday.

Wednesday, May 16, will be the next allotted day.

On Thursday morning, May 17, we will debate the pooled registered pension plans act. This bill will help Canadians who are self-employed or who work for a small business to secure a stable retirement.

In the last election, we committed to Canadians that we would implement these plans as soon as possible. This is what Canadians voted for and this is what we will do.

If it has been reported back from committee, we will call Bill C-31, the protecting Canada's immigration system act, for report stage debate on Thursday afternoon.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

I just want to confirm that I recall that testimony very clearly. It's a haunting story.

It's indeed why we have to make sure that there are appeal procedures. This approach that is reflected in Bill C-31 does allow for internal review and at the same time accords the human rights that those who are legitimate applicants need, by speeding up the whole system. I acknowledge the concern raised by my colleague in that very haunting story and say that we have balanced those concerns against others in the bill.

[Scott Nesbitt]

I'll make two points that I hope will help clarify the wording a little bit and why those particular words are used, Mr. Chair.

The first is that the wording of the proposed amendment is, you'll notice, almost verbatim the same as the wording of the existing section 56 in IRPA. Section 56 of IRPA gives authority to an officer, rather than the minister, to release somebody from detention before the immigration division starts its detention reviews for the normal run—the normal detention scheme, not the Bill C-31 detention scheme.

The same wording there is used: an officer may order the release of an individual where the officer is of the opinion that the reasons for the detention no longer exist. The reasons for detention—that wording is understood to be the reasons for which the person was first detained. One of the reasons is in 58(1)(a) to (d), as we've referred to before.

The particular “of the opinion” wording is used throughout IRPA where there's a legislative intention to ensure that the minister's decision is given a greater degree of deference than perhaps may otherwise be the case.

So it is not that a tribunal or a court reviewing that decision objectively decides for itself whether those reasons for detention exist, but rather looks at whether the opinion of the minister is reasonable. It's a slight difference, and it really has to do with the deference to the minister's view when that decision is being reviewed by a subsequent body.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

I move that Bill C-31 in clause 27 be amended by replacing line 32 on page 14 with the following:

designated foreign national who is 18 years

(Amendment negatived)

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

I move that Bill C-31 in clause 26 be amended by adding after line 20 on page 14 the following:

(1.1) Despite subsection (1), on the conclusion of a review under subsection 57.1(1), the Immigration Division shall order the continued detention of the designated foreign national if it is satisfied that any of the grounds described in paragraphs 1(a) to (c) and (e) exist, and it may not consider any other factors.

Basically, what the amendment does, Chair, is clarify that the immigration division must order the continued detention of a foreign national if any of the factors in paragraphs 58(1) to (c) or (e) exist, and this amendment actually removes from consideration (d), which explicitly excludes designated foreign nationals.

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have taken note of Mr. Dykstra's comments. I would basically say to him that Bill C-11 became a good act. You passed that legislation. You even supported, approved and encouraged it. It was the legislation that could solve all problems. The shortcomings that you have raised do not exist, which means that terrorists and thugs who come here are screened out.

Those people have been detained. They have been separated from the refugees. So claiming that our national security is in danger and that we don't want those people to be our neighbours is not realistic; it is not happening and it will not happen, even with the former legislation and, especially, with C-11.

The problem with Bill C-31 is that you are going to punish those who came here as irregular arrivals. That is punishment. It is not detention because they have already been detained. It is imposing a penalty under difficult material conditions.

I am not sure whether anyone can answer the question, Mr. Chair. In terms of detention centres, will there be material changes? Will new detention centres be built? Will buildings be transferred from the Canadian prison system to the Department of Immigration? What will you do to improve the situation? Spending a year in a provincial prison is no picnic.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It's an interesting dilemma. On the one hand, the system currently in place has clearly been demonstrated to be effective. It has actually worked. We have the capability to detain individuals that government would be concerned with in regard to safety or any other issues. The system is there.

Then the minister comes up with this Bill C-31, mandatory detention. Opposition and lawyers from coast to coast, many average Canadians, and plenty of refugees start running up the red flag saying that it is not right for this government to be bringing in mandatory detention. There was a fairly significant backlash to this minister's decision to bring in mandatory detention.

Then we come to committee stage and presenter after presenter makes the case that mandatory detention is a bad thing.

The minister, in his wisdom, through the committee here, has now said that we're going to succumb to the pressure. We're going to acknowledge that, yes, we made a mistake. I acknowledge the courage it would have taken for the minister to recognize he did make a mistake here.

We're now putting in something that at least allows for judicial oversight. That is, in fact, a positive thing. The idea that it's 14 days versus seven days.... Sure, it would be great to have it at seven days. I think in the one amendment that we were looking at we had 20 days, which was based on one of the presenters. The fewer the days, the better it is. The amendment that's being put forward is something that would make the legislation better, if in fact the 14 days were to pass.

But you know, had the minister brought in legislation originally where it talked about putting in this restriction, where it said we were going to be having 14 days, and we were going to have six months after that, we in the opposition would have been voting no. The reason why we would have been voting no is because we would be arguing that the system currently works and this makes the issue worse. That's the reason why we would be voting against it.

In acknowledgement that the minister has made a substantial change, I think there is value in terms of saying yes to the amendment only because it improves the original legislation. But in no way should it be taken, Mr. Chairperson, as an endorsement of what it is the minister is actual doing, because we need to recognize that the current system is better even with the subamendment that has been proposed to the amendment itself.

That is the reason why we would support the subamendment. I anticipate, given the numbers, that it will likely not pass and then we'll go on to the amendment itself.

I did want to make it very clear that the minister, yes, has recognized he has made a mistake, but he hasn't gone far enough. That, we would argue, is most unfortunate, Mr. Chairperson, because imagine if you're that refugee and you don't quite make the 14 days. After 14 days, you haven't been cleared. You're waiting six months before you're going to get the next opportunity to be released from the detention centre.

That's the reason why we believe, at the very least, we should be looking at...one presenter said 25 days. This particular amendment suggests 30 days. The fewer the better, quite frankly. I'd feel most comfortable with 25 days. If we had 25 days, at least then it would better reflect the current system.

In that sense, then, I would have nowhere near as much reservation in terms of voting in favour of it. I just wouldn't want my vote to be misinterpreted, and that's the reason why I thought, Mr. Chairperson, I would express what my feelings are and what the Liberal Party's position is on this whole issue.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Chairman, given that there has been a recorded vote on the issue—and some of the comments—I thought it best to say a few words.

First, in addressing Mr. Weston's point in regard to.... He seemed to take some exception to the idea of two tiers of refugees. We do need to be fairly clear on that particular point. Even with what I understand are the amendments that are coming onside from the government, there are still going to be two types of refugees here in Canada.

If you arrive via plane because you might have the economic means as an individual, make a refugee claim as a legitimate refugee, work through the system, and are given that refugee status, you as a refugee are treated quite differently from someone who might not necessarily have the same mode of travel available, or the same financial resources, and who ultimately comes in as part of a larger group of people via a boat.

As Mr. Dykstra points out quite well, in the last 10 years we might have had 150,000 to 200,000 refugees come in. Out of that, you're talking about a relatively small percentage that would be coming in via boat. We're talking about two sea vessels combined, the Sun Sea and the Ocean Lady, with fewer than 560 people. But because of that mode of arrival, the government has made the determination that it's important that Canada establish these two tiers for refugees and the whole concept of mandatory detention.

Yes, we're glad to see that the government appeared to be listening to some of the concerns in committee, but it hasn't gone anywhere near far enough in acknowledging the many flaws within Bill C-31, which would include, as an example, getting rid of mandatory detention, period. What we do know is that the current system actually works, and it has worked and served Canadians well in regard to detention. We heard that from the Canada border people.

So we support the amendment, and we look forward to ultimately hearing all of the government amendments related to this particular issue.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

I was actually going to raise a point of order, because in this particular committee we're discussing Bill C-31, and I think asking questions about another bill that's not before this committee is inappropriate. We really need to address what is in this bill that is before the committee today.

Since the question has now finished, my point of order is no longer valid.

Thank you.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Chairperson, I would move that Bill C-31 in clause 24 be amended by replacing lines 6 to 8 on page 13 with the following:

(a) they are released as a result of an officer ordering their release because the officer is of the opinion that the reasons for their detention no longer exist.

Mr. Chairperson, in short, this allows a person out of the mandatory 12-month detention if there is merit and they have been granted status. This is an important amendment. I would look to the government to possibly provide comment on this amendment, if they so choose.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairperson.

I would move that Bill C-31 in clause 24 be amended by replacing line 3 on page 13 with the following:

Division and who was 18 years of age or older

As you've already pointed out, Mr. Chair, it shows that the NDP and Liberals are in sync on this particular idea of 18 versus 16.

(Amendment negatived)

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Our Liberal colleague is proposing this amendment, and we are proposing the same thing with subsection 12(1). Witnesses who have appeared before the committee have stressed the devastating impact of detention. Aside from the refugees, for whom the consequences of adopting this bill will be devastating, we must think very seriously about our responsibilities and our role as parliamentarians.

As part of our study, this committee has heard from some very qualified people who drew our attention to the anticonstitutional nature of a number of provisions of Bill C-31, including provisions relating to mandatory detention, particularly of children. But we are continuing to be deaf to the experts' observations.

I'm wondering what the experts we heard from, the front-line workers who presented studies and the refugees who told their stories are going to think of us, the MPs that we are.

To come back to clause 23 of the bill, which amends the mandatory detention of designated foreign nationals 16 years of age or older, I would like to remind everyone once again that these provisions are anticonstitutional and violate international conventions, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees prohibits the arbitrary detention of asylum seekers, except for security or identification purposes. The Convention on the Rights of the Child prohibits the detention of children. The convention states, and I'm clarifying, that a child is a human being below the age of 18 years.

We are asking that the age of the child be harmonized with the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Furthermore, the experts we've heard from reminded us that mandatory detention is prohibited, except for the reasons set out in the IRPA.

Lastly, they stressed to us that the detention of children is also prohibited because it is devastating for them and for society. For children, this detention has devastating effects, both psychologically and mentally, and on their development. The separation of children from their parents, or even just seeing them detained, has an inhuman impact on them.

To conclude, we know what the 1951 Geneva Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child say about this. Experts from UNICEF and the other experts have also told us that the detention of asylum seekers is an exceptional measure that can only be considered as a last resort. The detention of children is inhuman and devastating. Canada should not introduce it into the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. Having said that, the purpose of the amendment that the NDP is proposing here is, once again, to make Bill C-31 consistent with the Convention on the RIghts of the Child with respect to the age to be considered in deciding whether to release children who may be detained, or shouldn't be detained at all. A person stops being a child upon reaching age 18. That's what the conventions we've signed say.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate the consideration the Liberals and the NDP have given to this. As everyone around this table is aware, we did move from a perspective that anyone under the age of 16 is exempt from the legislation, and the determination is made by the parents, obviously, what will happen to the children, if there are parents available to make those decisions. Obviously, if they are children under the age of 16, the state will have the responsibility to determine what should happen. That was a huge change from the previous Bill C-49 on human smuggling, in that it did not have an age exclusion with respect to detention.

On that side, the first point, Mr. Chair, is that I think we've moved a great deal from Bill C-49, representing the former human smuggling bill, to our current Bill C-31.

The second point is that the government is of the opinion, and there is a lot of evidence on the justice and legal side to show this, that the age of 16 is appropriate; it is an age when those individuals are at least able to make a decision and determine on their own what may or may not—or at least have some input into their outcomes. So we've determined that they can make an independent decision on whether they want to (a) use the services of a human smuggler, and (b) make decisions here when and if they arrive in Canada. It's our determination that the age of 16 is fair and it's appropriate, so we will not be supporting the amendment.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Good morning. We will convene the meeting.

This is the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, meeting number 44, on Thursday, May 10, 2012. This meeting is televised.

The orders of the day, pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 23, 2012, are Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, the Marine Transportation Security Act and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Act.

We voted on clause 19 as amended, so we will proceed with clause 20.

Shall clauses 20, 21, and 22 carry?

Mr. Lamoureux.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

I move that Bill C-31 in clause 19 be amended by replacing line 17, on page 11, with the following:

ceased for any of the reasons described in paragraphs 108(1)(a) or (d); or when the final determination is made within one year after the date on which refugee protection is conferred;

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

It is moved that Bill C-31 in clause 19 be amended by replacing line 17, on page 11, with the following:

ceased for any of the reasons described in paragraphs 108(1)(a) or (d),—

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development and to the Minister of Labour]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for giving me the opportunity to speak on this important issue.

Let me be clear in outlining the circumstances that would lead to someone being detained when the person arrives in Canada. First, if officials suspect that someone is a criminal, has committed crimes against humanity, is a war criminal, or otherwise poses a threat to the safety and security of Canadians, that person will be detained.

Second, under Bill C-31, protecting Canada's immigration system act, anyone who arrives as part of a human smuggling event will be detained once that person arrives in Canada, except for anyone under the age of 16, who is exempt from detention. The reason is that they often do not have correct documentation.

It is important to also point out that the architects of the human smuggling events are also on the boats, among everyone else. Accordingly, it is important to detain these individuals until their identity is discovered and verified and their risk to the safety and security of Canadians is verified.

I think detaining foreign nationals for these reasons is what any responsible government would do. I know my constituents sleep better at night knowing that these people are detained and that our Conservative government takes the safety of their families seriously.

Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for the NDP. Surely the NDP is not saying that it wants these people to be let free into our communities, among our constituents and theirs, before we know if they pose a threat. The NDP claims it wants people to be released more quickly, but yet again the NDP has shown that it says one thing and does another.

Under Bill C-31, the refugee determination process will be streamlined, resulting in genuine refugees receiving Canada's protection more quickly while criminals and refugee claimants will be removed faster.

The current refugee determination process takes almost two years for the first hearing. Under Bill C-31, it will take only two to three months for a first hearing. This means that anyone who is detained as part of a human smuggling event and found not to be a risk will not have to wait two years to have their claim heard and be released. Instead, anyone who arrives and is found not to be risk and found to be a bona fide refugee will be released in a few short months.

In addition, in response to the concerns raised by this NDP member's colleagues and experts, our government has acted in good faith and agreed to provisions to add additional detention reviews to Bill C-31. This means even more opportunity for those who have come as part of a human smuggling event.

Unfortunately, the NDP has criticized these important amendments. Instead of working collaboratively and being practical, the NDP has decided to oppose and be ideological. This is very unfortunate, but it is not surprising, because the NDP has a habit of complaining; then, when the government acts to work with the NDP to fix a problem, the NDP does not support it.

I urge the member for take her own advice, work with our government to improve the detention provisions in Bill C-31 and support this very important piece of legislation.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, on February 8, 2012, I rose in the House to ask the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism about the very worrisome situation at the Laval immigration holding centre, which is in my riding of Alfred-Pellan.

I was not satisfied with the answer and therefore I thank you for giving me the opportunity to again speak about this matter in the House today.

Things have happened since the last time we discussed this matter. In fact, Bill C-4, the subject of my question, has now been replaced by Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, the Marine Transportation Security Act and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Act.

There are three immigration holding centres in Canada: one in Toronto, one in Vancouver and one in Laval, in my riding. Refugees who cannot prove their identity are incarcerated in this facility, which looks like a prison. In fact, in Laval, the centre is located in a former penitentiary. Detainees are put in chains when they are moved and they are separated from their families.

The centre tells the refugees that the process for verifying their identity will take just a few days, but some will spend weeks, even months, at a place that operates as a medium security prison. It is terrible because, contrary to what the government believes, newcomers and refugees are not criminals and should not be treated as such.

Studies show that such prison stays will have adverse psychological effects on these individuals. Newcomers in these refugee centres are not entitled to access to psychotherapists or consultations with social workers. In fact, individuals with behavioural problems or suicidal individuals are transferred to a maximum security prison or are simply separated from the others.

This brings me to a number of questions. Is this the federal government's roundabout way of limiting immigration and the number of refugees in Canada?

We are talking about individuals who have left everything behind in their country of origin, in order to find refuge and to emigrate to Canada, a welcoming and developed country. I would like the government to put itself in their shoes for a minute. It must be awful to leave one's country for safety reasons and arrive at a place thinking it will be a welcoming land, only to quickly realize that you are given the same status as a criminal.

Some people prefer to suffer and put up with the pain rather than go to a hospital in chains.

Allow me to ask you a question: is there an emotion that hurts more than physical pain? The answer, Mr. Speaker, is humiliation. No one should be humiliated. However, that is what happens to new immigrants in these immigration detention centres. That is simply unacceptable.

We have learned that the government plans to make cuts of $84.3 million, or 5.3%, by 2015, and that includes a 13.1% cut to the Immigration and Refugee Board. We wonder how the government plans to remedy this situation. Passing bills such as Bill C-31 and making these types of cuts will stretch immigration processing from a few months to several years.

Why is the government doing nothing to remedy this situation, which is unbearable for newcomers? When will the government get down to work and suggest some real solutions?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Chair, I would move that Bill C-31 in clause 14 be amended by replacing line 8 on page 10 with the following:

or a designated foreign national, or a claimant from a designated country of origin who is inadmissible or who does not meet the

Mr. Chairperson, in essence, this allows the minister to make exemptions in individual cases. In one sense, it provides some further clarity in regard to it not being just foreign nationals. That's the purpose of the amendment.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Chair, I would move that Bill C-31 in clause 12 be amended by deleting.... I can't quite make this out, but I have “line 30 on page 6 to line 3 on page 7”. I think you might have some other number, as opposed to 30. Is it 29?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

I would move that Bill C-31 in clause 10 be amended by replacing line 30 on page 4 with the following:

conducted within 48 hours of their arrival; or

As to whether it's 48 hours or 96 hours, we're very much open to either. Forty-eight hours just happened to be the number of hours we put in. When people come in, in a boat situation or a more-than-two situation, there should a reasonable time before the minister can designate them as irregular arrivals. There could be situations where the individuals in question might be able to provide appropriate identification and background information so that they could avoid that designation. At least that was the intent. I trust that's what the amendment is reflecting.

I would welcome opinions and thoughts on this.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

I move that Bill C-31 in clause 6 be amended by replacing line 16 on page 3 with the following:

prescribed biometric information, which may be collected and disclosed only if it is necessary for the purpose of verifying the foreign national's identity or for the purposes of national security and, in the case of a disclosure to be made to the government of a foreign state, the disclosure may be made only if there is an agreement or arrangement with that govemment that it may use the biometric information only for the purpose of verifying the foreign national's identity and that the information shall be destroyed as soon as the verification process is completed.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

In my opening remarks I made reference to one or two amendments that I would like to submit. This is a fairly straightforward amendment. I would move that Bill C-31, in clause 2, be amended by replacing lines 9 and 10 on page 1 with the following:

“designated foreign national”--

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I didn't mean to be too extended in my comments. I just thought I would take advantage of the opportunity to express myself, because on many of those presentations I only had five minutes. This allows me to air a little bit of frustration, and I'm sure my colleague from across the way can sympathize with why it is that we are so concerned about Bill C-31.

The point is, Mr. Chairperson, that in trying to address the legislation and in listening to all of the presenters who made presentations, I have had the opportunity to discuss with members of my own Liberal caucus. There are a number of concerns that we have raised in regard to the bill. What I did was highlight some of the major concerns.

I have before me a series of amendments. I don't necessarily want to go through all of the amendments, because as we go clause by clause we'll be afforded the opportunity to talk about those amendments. But the concern is.....

To the credit of the NDP, I think Ms. Sims recognized it right up front by saying that we need to set aside some additional time so that we can ensure that we are afforded ample opportunity to thoroughly discuss each amendment. I think that would have been a very good motion, had it been allowed to go ahead, Mr. Chair. It's not necessarily a reflection upon your particular ruling—I abstained from that particular vote, I must say—but I think there would have been some merit to it.

There was one in particular that, when I was looking through the bill late last night—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I'm not going to allow it to be debated. I will need unanimous consent to allow it to be debated. I'm going to take the position that this time was set for Bill C-31. That's the motion.

We just went through that exercise a few seconds ago on whether we would come back tonight, and that required unanimous consent. Unanimous consent has been given on terms.

I take the position that this motion is out of order until we have disposed of Bill C-31, which was made pursuant to an order of this committee, and to change that—

Citizenship and Immigration

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration has heard from dozens of witnesses in a very short period of time, because the Conservatives want to pass Bill C-31 very quickly, but the bill does not correspond to any of the fundamental principles of Canadian justice.

In fact, too much power is concentrated in the minister's hands. He even has the right to remove permanent residents who have been living here for years.

This bill will foster intolerance of refugees and xenophobia. Deport, control, remove, incarcerate: Conservatives like to use these terms. They do not hesitate to promote a bill that, according to the Canadian Bar Association and the Barreau du Québec, violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This bill goes against too many of our principles.

I will leave the fearmongering up to them.

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Thank you kindly, Mr. Chair.

Clause 19 of Bill C-31 introduces a concept that is radically different, in other words, giving refugees conditional permanent residence. A person who has been recognized as a legitimate refugee and who has obtained permanent resident status can have that status revoked at the minister's discretion if, at any point, he feels that the refugee's country of origin has become safe. Does that not violate refugee status rules allowing an individual to truly make a new life for themselves?

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

One of the areas I wanted to ask you about...and you have done a great job of complimenting Canada in terms of the system it has. I mean that in a very non-partisan, non-political way, because I truly believe in the system that we have, but it is in fact broken in many ways.

We've heard over the last week and a half about the thousands of individuals who are coming from the EU, claiming refugee status here in Canada by the thousands, abandoning their claims, and going back to their countries of origin. We know that there are in the neighbourhood of 40,000-plus individuals in the country right now who have either abandoned their claims or have simply not pursued them any further and are not located, either by the CBSA or by Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

We also know that there are over 2,000 individuals whose refugee applications were approved but then subsequently were found under appeal to be fraudulent or not true, and we are in the process of trying to ensure that those individuals do not remain in the country; that they are sent back to their country of origin.

So while I submit that there are great things about our system, part of the reason Bill C-31 is here is, for example, the thousands of applications that are withdrawn or simply abandoned.

In your opinion, if a claimant voluntarily withdraws or abandons their claim and returns to their country of origin, is that not an admission by the claimants themselves that they simply are not in fear of persecution in their country of origin?

[Furio De Angelis]

I'm sorry I haven't brought with me ExCom 44, which I would have read in that regard. But I have quoted it before, saying that detention is permissible; that it's possible to include a detention phase at the beginning of the process in order to exactly meet those concerns that you are referring to.

I would have liked to read it because there are safeguards anyway in that detention that would have called for a review mechanism, for instance, which is very important. So, yes, it's as you say, but Bill C-31 doesn't really comprehensively adhere to the safeguards and review mechanism that are contained in ExCom 44 or international standards at large.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Sure.

These are from lawyers and facts that I got from the National Post. We know that it's a very right-leaning newspaper, so if.... Anyway, I digress.

I'm going to jump to timelines, because it will change gears.

What are your thoughts or views on the timelines that have been imposed under Bill C-31 and the consequences of these new timelines?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate the presentation and I especially appreciate the detailed presentation that you provided us in written format. It's very well stated.

We do find that Bill C-31 has many, many different flaws in it. I can make reference to the mandatory detention as being something that will no doubt be taken to the Supreme Court. I expect there are a number of clauses that will in fact be successfully challenged at some point in court. I don't believe the government's done its homework in regard to that particular issue.

But there are other issues that really do concern us that I would like to receive some feedback from you on.

One is a United Nations 1951 resolution that dealt with the whole idea of two tiers or a double standard for refugees. It would appear that this legislation is establishing that. For example, if you're deemed as an irregular refugee and you're held in detention, you are not going to be able to sponsor your children. For example, even if you're deemed a refugee and you've been released out of mandatory detention, you still cannot sponsor for at least five years a child or a spouse.

I wonder if you might want to comment on that aspect, given other refugees in fact are able to if they weren't designated or they weren't irregulars. It seems to me it's a clear distinction: two types of refugees.

[Furio De Angelis]

I will answer in English, if I may.

It's very clear that UNHCR does not oppose a list of designated countries of origin. However, it must be understood that the DCO list is a procedural tool. It's not a process, only a procedural tool. We are putting too much emphasis and focus on this. It is a procedural tool that may help in certain situations to facilitate the processing of asylum claims.

What is really important is the process. In order to make a solid process in refugee status determination, there is a need for certain things to happen. Once the process is solid, a designated country list is a tool. It's a tool that may be helpful if used in a certain manner.

The process that makes for a strong and robust asylum determination system includes adequate time for submitting an application—there has to be enough time to find counsel and collect the information necessary. There has to be a first-level hearing that is solid and robust by an independent tribunal like the IRB. Of course, IRB members must be well-trained decision-makers. There must be enough resources put into research on countries of origin, because refugee status determination is a difficult art and requires continued training.

You also need a review phase, a capacity for reviewing errors, in fact and in law. It's very important to catch errors, which may lead to bad decisions and therefore refoulement.

Finally, at the end of the process, there must be a quick removal. The quick removal part of the process is the real disincentive. We are talking very much within the context of Bill C-31. If you have a solid process and a quick removal at the end of that process, you will create a disincentive, which hopefully will take care of the people who want to abuse the system.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Before I get to my questions, I would just point out that we heard from European Union officials this morning. They told us how important it was to respect our international obligations towards refugees and asylum seekers under the 1951 Geneva convention. They also told us that the European Union could opt for sanctions against certain countries that chose not to respect such conventions.

My question has to do with the list of designated countries. The minister said that UNHCR did not object to creating a list of designated countries of origin as part of a balanced reform of the refugee system. Could you please tell us whether UNHCR agrees with the approach to designated countries of origin as set out in Bill C-31?

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

I certainly appreciate that. I'm just stating examples of where our detention legislation in Bill C-31 is actually not as aggressive as it may be in some other countries.

I think you would understand that as we were developing the policy, we did look to what other countries were doing that were not accused of being in contravention of the UN convention on refugees.

I have another example. I just returned from the Netherlands, and in my meetings with officials, I was surprised to learn about one of the aspects of detention they use when individuals destroy their documentation after they arrive at the airport. When individuals walk up to the visa officers, immigration officers, and indicate that they arrived in the Netherlands with absolutely no identification, those individuals are then held and detained at the airport until their information...or at least until information is available to determine who these individuals are.

At the airport, if they are determined, there and then, not to have an issue with respect to asylum, it is the airline that is actually responsible for flying these individuals back to their country of origin.

I'd like to get your thoughts on that. I certainly entertain the recommendation that you made that there are alternatives. I'd also point out that there are other countries that are far more aggressive than Canada in terms of detention, number one.

The second is that we're in a position of not being as aggressive as a number of other countries that we partner with in a lot of other areas. So I would submit that you would have to take a look at that when you're viewing this, because that's exactly what we did, and you're viewing other countries in terms of their detention law versus the one that we're bringing forward here.

[Furio De Angelis, Representative in Canada, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair, honourable members of the committee, ladies and gentlemen, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, welcomes the opportunity to comment before the committee on Bill C-31, the Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act.

UNHCR offers these comments on federal legislation further to the mandate entrusted to it by the United Nations General Assembly, in other words, to direct and coordinate international efforts to protect refugees around the world and to seek solutions to their problems.

UNHCR recognizes the strength of Canada's commitment to protecting refugees around the world, as well as the challenges that the country must address. Canada must ensure the sustainability of its system and maintain its high standards in protecting displaced individuals seeking asylum, while finding durable solutions within its borders.

The UNHCR written submission, a copy of which has been provided to this committee, provides our full comments and recommendations regarding Bill C-31.

My comments today will focus on selected provisions of the bill that will have the most significant impact on Canada's asylum procedures. These comments fall within two general themes: provisions that provide for the differential categorization of asylum seekers and provisions that have the effect of restricting access to the asylum process.

Regarding the designation of foreign nationals as irregular arrivals, UNHCR understands and shares the Government of Canada's concern about the need to combat people smugglers. Yet asylum seekers are often compelled to resort to smugglers to reach safety. The proposed designation of irregular arrivals may lead to an unwarranted penalization of those in need of international protection and, in effect, punish the victims of the smugglers or traffickers for having sought to escape persecution.

With regard to the grounds for designating someone as an irregular arrival, Bill C-31 will create two classes of asylum seekers and refugees in Canada based on the designation provision. Of particular concern is the designation for operational reasons.

Consequences of the designation that are of concern to UNHCR include mandatory detention without review for 12 months, no appeal rights, restriction on the issuance of convention travel documents—which may be at variance with article 28 of the 1951 convention—reporting requirements despite the granting of convention refugee status, and the five-year bar on regularizing status and its implications for family unity.

UNHCR recalls that the principle of family unity is enshrined in international law. The UNHCR executive committee, of which Canada is a founding member, has underlined on several occasions the need for the unity of the refugee's family to be protected. From a non-discrimination point of view, UNHCR does not believe that the grounds for designation as irregular arrivals provide a legitimate justification for a substantially differentiated treatment. The legislation may be at variance with human rights-based non-discrimination guarantees contained in international human rights instruments.

UNHCR's long-standing position has been that the detention of an asylum seeker is inherently undesirable. The situation of asylum seekers differs fundamentally from that of ordinary immigrants in that asylum seekers may not be in a position to comply with the legal formalities for entry, not least because of the urgency of their flight or their inability to approach authorities. Article 31 of the 1951 convention takes this situation into account and prohibits penalties being imposed on refugees on account of their illegal entry or presence.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee has noted that for detention to be lawful, it must pursue a legitimate governmental objective that it is determined to be necessary, reasonable in all circumstances, and proportionate in each individual case, and that detention can only be justified where other less invasive and coercive measures have been considered, and that mandatory and non-reviewable detention is unlawful as a matter of international law.

In UNHCR's view, the relevant provision of Bill C-31 as currently drafted would be at variance with several international standards. For these reasons, UNHCR strongly recommends that the government refrain from introducing a mandatory detention regime for irregular arrivals in relation to refugees and asylum seekers, and that alternatives to detention be explored.

Regarding designated country of origin, UNHCR does not oppose the introduction of a designated or safe country of origin list as long as this is used as a procedural tool to prioritize or accelerate the examination of applications in carefully circumscribed situations.

The designation of a country as a safe country of origin cannot establish an absolute guarantee of safety for nationals of that country. It may be that despite general conditions of safety in the country of origin, for some individuals the country remains unsafe.

It is important than an assessment of countries of origin as safe is based on reliable, objective, and up-to-date information from a range of sources. One way of achieving transparency and quality decision-making could be by ensuring that the designation is done by a panel of experts.

I now wish to turn to measures that UNHCR fears may restrict access to the asylum process.

Regarding the restriction of access on asylum on criminality grounds, in UNHCR's view asylum applications should not be considered inadmissible unless the individual concerned has already found effective protection or access to an asylum procedure in another country.

UNHCR has already expressed its views in the past over exclusion elements being examined under the heading of ineligibility or inadmissibility to the refugee proceedings. Our submission to this very committee on March 5, 2001, which set out the office comments on the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, remain valid. UNHCR is of the opinion that exclusion from refugee status on criminality grounds should be considered in accordance with article 1F of the 1951 convention, within the assessment to determine the merits of the claim, rather than at the admissibility or eligibility stage.

Regarding shortened time limits under the new asylum process, UNHCR supports efforts by government authorities to decide applications in a timely manner. However, states need to balance efficiency with the fairness of the procedure. Overly restrictive timeframes in the context of a sophisticated asylum process can lead to increased rates of abandonment and the rise of a number of unrepresented claimants. Asylum claimants do not ordinarily have the knowledge to navigate the legal system. Even where a client retains counsel, enough time needs to be allowed for applicants to apply for legal aid and to find a counsel. The consequence of abandonment are, in effect, a final, negative decision, as there is no right to an appeal or access to a pre-removal risk assessment for one year after the negative decision. In this respect, appropriate resources should be allocated towards creating, maintaining, and supplementing legal services for asylum seekers.

Regarding the refugee appeal division, UNHCR welcomes the implementation of the RAD; however, it would recommend that an appeal be available to all claimants. The right to appeal is a fundamental requirement of a fair and efficient asylum procedure, to which no exception should be made. At the core of the 1951 convention principle lies the principle of non-refoulement, whereby those with protection needs cannot be returned to a place where they will be at risk of persecution. The purpose of a second review through an appeal mechanism is to ensure that errors of fact or law, at the first instance, can be corrected to avoid injustice and to ensure respect for the principle of non-refoulement.

Regarding restricted access to the pre-risk removal assessment and to humanitarian and compassionate applications, pre-removal risk assessments and humanitarian and compassionate applications are important safeguards against the deportation of persons who are not recognized as refugees according to the law, but who are still in need of international protection. In particular, given that many categories of asylum seeker will not have access to an appeal under the RAD, the availability of such mechanisms are all the more important to maintain as a procedural safeguard.

Regarding the reopening of a refugee claim, UNHCR maintains that claims for protection should be reopened when new evidence comes to light, including situations where there has been a breach of natural justice, to allow for the claim to be re-examined in its entirety, and recommends that the jurisdiction of the RPD and the RAD to reopen claims be affirmed.

Regarding the cessation of refugee status, the proposed amendments in the bill to bar the appeal against a negative decision on cessation of refugee status, leading to subsequent possible revocation of permanent resident status, will result in a state of uncertainty for many refugees, including resettled refugees, and thus will undermine the durable nature of the resettlement solution. UNHCR recommends the decision on cessation should be subject to appeals and should not automatically bar access to or revoke permanent resident status.

Finally, regarding the disclosure of information, in the context of refugees and asylum seekers, UNHCR recommends that appropriate safeguards be introduced in the text of Bill C-31 to avoid the transmission of biometric and other information, either directly or through a third party, to countries of alleged persecution.

Chairman Tilson, honourable committee members, ladies and gentlemen, I thank you.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for being here today. It was interesting to hear your comments.

We've been meeting, as you may well know, with several groups over the last little while, listening to the concerns people have either in favour or in support of certain clauses in Bill C-31. The process for us here is that in due course we'll be reviewing the bill line by line and taking into consideration this democratic input that we have from our witnesses, so your testimony is very important to us. So thank you again for being here.

I want to address the issue of a legitimate refugee who actually really needs the help, because I think that is a common element for all of us. We all want that. We all want to be able to service as quickly as possible the person who is coming here, who was persecuted, whose life was in danger, possibly facing torture or death in their own country. We're finding that a lot of these folks who need help are tied up in a system behind a group that is quite often not a legitimate refugee group, tying up the system.

To process a claim today can go as long as 1,038 days. With the measures in this proposed bill, we can reduce that to 45 days for claimants from designated countries, and 216 days for all other claimants.

One phenomena we're seeing is that we're getting, from one part of the world in particular, 95% of the claimants either abandoning or withdrawing...or their claim is flat-out rejected.

Now, that 95%, apart from the fact that it's costing about $170 million a year—let's just not put a value, because we're talking about human life here—is really tying up the people who legitimately can come into the country.

Can I get your comments on why people would voluntarily abandon or withdraw their claim and return to a country in which they originally claimed they were being persecuted?

[William Prentice]

In the first kind of case that we identified, as our volunteers tell us, we know of two situations here in the city of Ottawa, with the refugees we work with, where, if Bill C-31 were enacted and applied retroactively, individuals and their families would have their status jeopardized.

Both cases can be referred to later in testimony, but suffice it to say that humanitarian considerations compelled two refugees in two separate instances to use their passports of origin in order to travel to nearby countries to rescue family members.

In the second case, there is widespread concern, notably among our friends in the Rwandan and Burmese communities, that recent developments in their country of origin might lead to the invocation of the cessation clause, thereby putting the status of legitimate refugees in question, notably with respect to their application for citizenship.

Again, we have four examples we could give to express a more general concern emanating from our friends in the Rwandan community and from the primate's fund sponsorship of Kachin families and a Karen family from Burma.

[Laurette Gauthier Glasgow]

We know that immigration and refugee systems can always be improved. We recognize the government's underlying desire for a fair and consistent immigration and refugee system. We also welcome proposals to increase by 20% the number of resettled refugees and the funding for resettlement programs. We even welcome measures that would facilitate and accelerate the processes for the successful integration of refugees into Canadian society.

However, Bill C-31 raises several serious concerns. The Canadian Council for Refugees, amongst others, has articulated concerns with which we concur. These concerns emanate from our long-standing and practical experience with the refugee community and from our deep religious convictions to welcome the stranger and to protect the vulnerable—values that we believe are shared more broadly by others in our open and democratic society.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you for appearing before us.

Currently under Bill C-31, penalties are only imposed on shipowners. I'd like your thoughts on whether you think that goes far enough. What about people who arrive on planes?

Would you care to take a shot at that, Mr. Elcock?

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Okay.

The Canada Border Services Agency cannot predict how many people might be detained under the provisions of Bill C-31. In fact, there have not been any recent mass arrivals, like those involving the Sun Sea and the Ocean Lady vessels. Obviously the bill was not in force at that time.

As far as the proposed amendments to Bill C-31 go, do you think the safe country designation could help to identify so-called fraudulent refugees?

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses for being with us today.

One of the functions of intelligence services is to prevent acts that pose a threat to our interests and values, especially when it comes to the irregular arrival of foreigners.

What did you learn from the arrival that gave rise to Bill C-31, in other words, the situation involving the two boats off Canada's west coast?

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Let me ask this question. Currently in the provisions in Bill C-31, where it only requires biometric data to be collected from people coming to Canada temporarily, do you believe this should be expanded to collecting data from anyone who isn't a Canadian citizen who is applying to come to Canada?

Again, for safety and whatever else with regard to the Privacy Act, biometric data would be, obviously, disposed of once they became a Canadian citizen. But instead of just people who are coming to Canada temporarily, do you believe it should be expanded to include people who are applying to come to Canada in general?

It's just an opinion question. I'm not sure if anyone has the expert knowledge; I'm just looking for an opinion.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome to our three guests.

I am going to start my first line of questions with Mr. Elcock, but I want to make a comment with regard to what Mr. Loren said.

You stated with regard to biometrics that it's kind of like what fingerprints were years ago, and it's a statement that.... We've had countless other witnesses say that we're actually bringing Canada in line with many other countries around the world that use biometrics, such as the U.K., Australia, the European Union, and New Zealand, etc. So I'm glad that you also said the same thing. I think we are playing a bit of a catch-up game right now.

Mr. Elcock, this question is with regard to biometrics or sources of intelligence. What do you think about our provisions in Bill C-31 with regard to that particular aspect in the bill?

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you very much.

My last question is directed to Germany. Compared to many other EU countries with the designated country of origin policy and process, under Canada's bill, which we're proposing, Bill C-31, Canada would have longer timelines for DCO countries than many other European countries do today.

Do you agree with that, based on information that you can provide?

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

We've actually done some research, and it is 10 to 14 days, which is actually a much shorter timeline than what we're proposing in Canada under Bill C-31.

We keep hearing that we might be in violation of the UN convention on refugees. In your opinion—and this is to any of the guests who can answer this question—is the United Kingdom in contravention of the UN convention on refugees?

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to extend a special welcome to all of our guests today. There are certainly a large number here, and I'm very delighted to see you all here.

Much of Bill C-31, which we're debating here, has to do with designating certain countries as safe countries. I know that many democratic European countries designate certain countries as safe and actually accelerate asylum procedures for claims from those countries. There's a long list of these countries: United Kingdom, France, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Finland, Ireland, Netherlands, and so on. This is not something new on the world stage. Canada is actually behind a lot of the other countries we're most commonly compared against.

I just have a question specifically regarding the United Kingdom, the U.K. The process for claimants in some streams takes as little as 10 to 14 days—that's what I've been told. Is this a correct statement?

I'm not sure who I should direct this to. Perhaps our guests—

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

This has become a recurring theme. I had hoped that when we started the process, in terms of witness presentation—and I don't hold any of you responsible for this—we would be hearing from different themes in terms of support or not support of the bill. I find I'm repeating myself on a regular basis.

Based on the opposition that you have to the bill, I understand your perspective, but we have heard it on a number of occasions already. In fact, I do want to clarify a couple of things.

Number one, the former United Nations High Commissioner Abraham Abraham said that the UNHCR does not oppose the introduction of a designated or safe country of origin list, as long as this is used as a procedural tool to prioritize or accelerate examination of applications in carefully circumscribed situations and not as an absolute bar. Many countries, including the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, and Finland all use and implement the designated safe country.

In terms of the criteria for claimants from countries—for example, there are two quantitative thresholds for countries that have a mass number of applications into our country, for those who are seeking asylum as refugees. They have to meet one of two quantitative thresholds, or limits, as set out in the order. The proposed triggers for a review are based on rejection rates, withdrawal, and abandonment rates. A rejection rate, which includes abandonment and withdrawal, of 75% or higher would trigger a review. Similarly, an abandonment and withdrawal rate of 60% or higher would also trigger a review, and I repeat “a review”. It doesn't automatically mean that the designation is going to take place. An internal review led by the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration, in partnership with a number of other ministries within the government, will make the determination or recommendation based on a review that the country that is in question has either hit the criteria from a quantitative perspective or is subject to a review based on the number of withdrawals or abandonments that we have seen. So there are defined criteria that will be here.

I was part of Bill C-11. I sat through every minute of the hearings, and also the negotiations in terms of moving it forward, and 80% to 85% of Bill C-11 is going to move forward. There are just additional aspects that we have brought to the table here.

Under Bill C-11, which was a problem with respect to the designated country, there was no provision for transparent criteria. The criteria would be determined by the group itself. The concern we had was (a) what would those criteria consist of, and (b) there were no assurances as to the time allocation of how long that determination process would take. So at least through here, (a) we have a transparent set of criteria, and (b) we actually know the timeframe within which this designated country application will actually take place.

For claimants from countries with a low number of claims, we're actually going to move to a qualitative checklist, which will be established right in the legislation itself. So the qualitative checklist will include (1) the existence of an independent judicial system in that country; (2) recognition of basic democratic rights and freedoms, including mechanisms for redress if those rights or freedoms are infringed; and (3) the existence of civil society organizations.

While I respect that you may not agree with the process in terms of how we come to the conclusion, it's unfair, and it's also untrue to state that there aren't qualitative and quantitative criteria built in to both the legislation and the mechanism that will be used to go through the process for review. It's really important that this gets put on the table. I think part of the reason that folks come to the table and state that they're unsure of, or leery of, the designated safe country is that this information isn't necessarily at your fingertips. I do understand that is a concern, but I also understand that as we move forward in terms of Bill C-31...and part of the reason why we're doing these hearings is to afford us all the opportunity to understand the bill as it sits in a much stronger form.

Kelsey, I wanted to ask you about one of the concerns I have. I respect the fact that the opposition to a particular piece of legislation is democratic, but so is the support of the legislation, and we've heard from a majority of Canadians across this country that in fact this bill doesn't go far enough and that it should be more aggressive in its nature. We don't necessarily agree with that. We want a bill that is going to do both: suit and meet the expectations of most Canadians, and also, obviously, respect the rule of law as closely as we possibly can.

You spoke a number of times about the issue of rights and fairness. Over the last decade, we're talking about approximately 100,000 to 120,000 refugees who have come to this country and have been accepted, of which there were only 600 in the last decade.... Two ships have come here with approximately 600 people, and you've spent a great deal of time focused on the rights of those 600 individuals, while not acknowledging and complimenting the fact that between 100,000 and 120,000 refugees in fact have had those rights, in the same aspect that you're talking about.

So what we're concerned about here is only one small part of the bill, which gets at the irregular arrivals. I think it's important to note that we are talking about...less than half a per cent of the impact of our system within this bill is focused on those who come as different arrivals—other than by land or off-land.

I come to this point because currently we have over 40,000 individuals who have claimed refugee status in Canada and who we can't find. We don't know where they are. We have over 2,000 individuals who were approved for permanent residency or refugee status and actually got it by basically cheating the system, by not being forthright and honest about their perspective—or at least their claim.

For me, when you say we have to protect the rights of an individual, we also have to protect the rights of Canadians, and my concern is that we cannot.... I know it's important that everyone is as equal as we can potentially come to, but there is a balance that gets struck when we have over 40,000 people—and that's why I believe the system is broken—who we currently cannot locate. We do not know where they are. Now, we don't know if they present a danger to society; we won't know until something actually happens. But then...and there, I think, is where the rights of Canadians as individuals are and that we as a collective have to ensure. The government's responsibility is to protect those rights as well.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

It comes from looking at the cost savings by having Bill C-31 protecting our borders and extrapolating over a five-year period, on the basis of the fact that we have to look at about somewhere between $50,000 to $70,000 per refugee claimant, which is the cost to us today.

[Karina Fortier]

We had two sessions where we tried to raise awareness about this project. We set up a table where a lot of people pass through, and as I said, we just stopped people and asked them if they had heard about Bill C-31. Most people hadn't heard about it. We told them what it was.

Further than that, it's summer now and most students have gone home or are on vacation. As for next year, we're very interested in getting the media involved and, as you said, connecting with other universities.

We are hoping this bill is not going to pass so that we have more time to oppose it, with the connection of other networks.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

I'd like to pick up on that particular point and maybe add a little bit more to it. I think we do need to be clear that Bill C-31 will be a fairly extensive bill in terms of financial costs to taxpayers, but more importantly, there is the issue of human rights, the idea of challenges that will no doubt come out if this bill passes as it is, without amendment. There will be constitutional challenges. Many, including myself, would argue there would be successful constitutional challenges because of the mandatory detention clause.

There are other issues surrounding the bill that one would argue have tarnished Canada's international reputation, and I think that's most noteworthy. When you look at the larger picture of the number of refugees worldwide, in excess of 10 million refugees, Canada has historically played a fairly strong role in terms of providing leadership on the refugee file. This is going to take away from our ability to do that.

To Karina and Kelsey, I appreciate your comments. I'd be very much interested in receiving a copy of the petition you make reference to. I think it's great that a body of students at McGill has taken an interest in what's happening in Bill C-31. You both expressed passionately your thoughts on it.

I have a very limited amount of time; that's why I wanted to get a few points on the record.

I guess my first question is in regard to what else is happening at your university. Are you expanding, making other universities aware of it? I would welcome the opportunity to even have a discussion on Bill C-31 with the minister at your university, if the minister were prepared to go to debate this particular bill.

Can you provide what else is happening at your university?

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank our witnesses for being here this morning.

Some of the witnesses who have appeared here have talked to us about the importance of having a speedy system, but they have also said, as you have stressed this morning, that it must be based on respect for fundamental rights and humane, universal justice. In our opinion, these are really key points that will have to be taken into account in relation to this bill.

I have one question regarding the country of origin designation process. Bill C-31 amends both the country of origin designation process and the criteria for making that designation that are set out in the Balanced Refugee Reform Act. Could you comment on the new process that is proposed for designating countries of origin?

[Alex Neve]

Okay.

The last point I want to make is a point about appeals. For years the lack of an appeal on merits has been the notable shortcoming in Canada's refugee system. We welcomed, therefore, the inclusion in Bill C-31 of establishing the Refugee Appeal Division. What is deeply troubling, though, is the discrimination in terms of who gets access to an appeal, most notably those who have arrived as part of an irregular arrival or those coming from designated countries of origin.

Discrimination in something so fundamental as access to justice contravenes Canada's international human rights obligations. An appeal hearing is not superfluous; it is essential, and this should not be part of the bill.

Thank you.

[Alex Neve]

Thank you, and good morning, committee members.

The right to liberty is a cornerstone human right grounded in the innate human yearning for freedom. Human rights norms universally, therefore, make it clear that the state's power to take away liberty through arrest and imprisonment is and must be constrained and restricted. To ensure that the right to liberty is well protected, human rights treaties clearly lay out that anyone deprived of their liberty must first be informed of the reasons for their imprisonment and then have a prompt and effective opportunity to challenge their imprisonment before a judge or other legally authorized person.

Amnesty International's research has demonstrated that asylum seekers and other migrants the world over are particularly vulnerable to abuses of the right to liberty. In particular, it has become clear that numerous governments have resorted to locking up refugees and migrants as a means of deterring other refugees and migrants from coming. Nothing in international law recognizes that as a valid reason to take away liberty.

International law does recognize that states have the right to control their borders. There is also, of course, an obligation to ensure that individuals are not sent back to countries where they would face persecution. At the border, therefore, international law is very careful. It has recognized that only for a length of time strictly necessary may a state be justified in detaining asylum seekers to verify an individual's identity, to ensure that someone who poses a flight risk will appear for proceedings, or because someone poses a demonstrated threat to security. But there must be a timely ability for the individual to challenge the reasons for their imprisonment.

International standards recognize that the liberty rights of certain groups of migrants, such as asylum seekers and minors, must be particularly scrupulously protected. The refugee convention, for instance, lays out that the mere fact that an asylum seeker has entered a country through illegal means is not in itself valid reason for punishment. The UNHCR's guidelines on detention note that asylum seekers have often experienced considerable trauma and hardship that must be taken into account in making any decision to detain them. International law with respect to both refugee protection and the rights of children is also very clear that minors should only be imprisoned as a measure of absolute last resort.

Bill C-31 contravenes these universally established norms protecting the fundamental right to liberty. Individuals are not detained for any of the recognized grounds for detaining migrants, such as verifying identity or dealing with flight risks or security threats, all of which are already well established in Canadian law. The reason they lose their liberty is instead the mere fact that they have entered Canada as part of a group of individuals designated by the minister to be an irregular arrival. It has nothing to do with the individual's own circumstances. It makes no difference whether they have a plethora of valid identity documents or a collection of forgeries, whether they are guaranteed to show up for future proceedings or almost certain to go underground, or whether they pose an obvious and grave threat to national security or are a paragon of virtue. Their arrest and imprisonment are automatic, solely on the grounds of how they arrived. There's no exception for individuals who make refugee claims. There's no exception for individuals who have experienced torture, rape, or other human rights violations. There is no exception for minors over the age of 16.

The problems with this new detention regime do not end with the grounds for arrest and imprisonment. They extend to the crucial internationally mandated requirement that individuals who are locked up must have meaningful and regular access to a judge or other authorized person to challenge the reasons for their arrest and seek their release. Under Bill C-31 they do not. The immigration division is to review the reasons for their continued detention on the expiry of 12 months after they have been taken into detention, and “may not do so before the expiry of that period”.

Arbitrary mandated detention without timely review violates Canada's international obligations. UN-level human rights bodies have made this clear. The UN Committee Against Torture, commenting on similar mandatory detention provisions in Australia, called for it to be abolished. Notably, that same committee will be reviewing Canada's human rights record later this month, and this issue is in front of them.

Last month the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination called on Canada not to go ahead with mandatory detention provisions. Those provisions should be withdrawn. Canada rightly criticizes arbitrary detention in other countries. We cannot do so credibly if we legislate it ourselves.

The safe country of origin concept is also one that Amnesty is concerned about. We're concerned that it is not workable and cannot be applied in a principled manner. We know. Human rights research and reporting are things we have been doing for over half a century. We grapple with this all the time.

Amnesty International is asked to do exactly this all the time: to rank countries, to compare countries, to measure countries from one year to the next. We're asked to give a statistical measure summing up a country's human rights record, and we do not do so for several reasons, but very pragmatically we do not do so because there is no way to do it objectively and accurately. There is no way to draw the line between countries that are safe and countries that are unsafe when it comes to human rights.

How does one compare a country that has widespread torture but generous access to education with a country that has no torture but draconian laws that limit access to education for women and minorities? How much torture, how much restricted education, just how much and of what would it take for a country to move over the line from safe to unsafe or from unsafe to safe? It cannot be done in a way that doesn't in the end involve subjective and arbitrary line drawing, and when it comes down to people's lives, rights, and freedom, subjective and arbitrary are not acceptable. There is too much risk of countries being categorized as safe, therefore, because of irrelevant trade and foreign policy considerations, and in that regard we were troubled to see that an earlier proposal for an expert advisory committee in this area is no longer on the table.

[Béatrice Vaugrante, Executive Director, Amnesty International Canada Francophone, Amnesty International]

Good morning, everyone. I would like to thank the committee for giving Amnesty International an opportunity to present its views on Bill C-31.

Amnesty International has analyzed this bill from the perspective of the following three points. First is our expertise in the area of compliance or non-compliance with international human rights law and Canada's commitment in that regard. There is also our experience. We are often asked to protect the rights of asylum seekers in Canada and we intervene when we consider it to be necessary. And there is our commitment, at the global level, to protecting the rights of people who immigrate and are trying to flee fear and want, as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says, at whatever cost it may be to their families.

To begin with, we acknowledge that the process for accepting refugee claimants is difficult and complex, and will certainly always have its imperfections and inconsistencies. It calls for an ongoing process of change and reform. Amnesty International agrees that it is the responsibility of governments to guarantee the integrity of any refugee determination system. Those changes and reforms, which are certainly designed to achieve greater effectiveness and are concerned with abuses, must nonetheless always be based on respect for the rights of claimants.

Amnesty International is concerned. Bill C-31, which is being considered today, violates Canada's obligations under international law and violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We will start by identifying the issue of discrimination, which we are disappointed to see can be found in several provisions of the bill. All refugee claimants should be treated fairly. The discrimination is based not only on manner of arrival in Canada, but also on country of origin.

My colleague, Alex, will come back to three general provisions of the bill that would, if they are implemented, generate serious violations of international laws relating to protection of refugee claimants, to human rights and to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The first provision talks about making it mandatory for designated foreign nationals to be imprisoned with no review of the grounds of detention possible. The minister may decide that a person is a designated foreign national if the minister believes the person used human smugglers to enter Canada. The second provision makes it impossible for designated foreign nationals to appeal an unfavourable determination regarding their refugee status. And the third provision talks about identifying countries of origin as safe solely by decision of the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism.

The following points are also of concern to us: the fact that access to permanent residence status is barred for five years, which prevents family reunification; the times allowed, which are much too short and unfair; and the unfairness and impossible choices that exist between the refugee protection process and the humanitarian reasons process.

Amnesty International has nine recommendations to ensure that, at a minimum, this bill meets Canada's international obligations in relation to human rights. What we are talking about are obligations that Canada itself helped create and develop.

I am going to let Alex speak to the next three points.

[Kelsey Angeley]

When our generation assumes the political positions that you now occupy, we do not want the burden of correcting past mistakes. While we are welcome participants in Canada's democracy, and our testimony at this hearing is proof of that, it is you who are its current caretakers. We ask you to consider the long-term consequences of this bill and how it will shape the country we will inherit.

By disregarding Canada's international obligations, Bill C-31 threatens Canada's moral integrity on the international stage and the soft power that comes with being a humanitarian state.

When Australia implemented similar legislation, its image and reputation as a humanitarian state were called into question. We do not want to see that happen with our country.

Furthermore, infringing on the rights and dignity of asylum seekers—as are guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms—puts everybody's rights at risk. When one person loses their rights and dignity on Canadian soil, everyone's rights and dignity are put at risk.

Moreover, our peers are in consensus with us that Bill C-31 represents a misuse of finances. As the Auditor General's May 2008 report notes, it costs $70,000 a year, on average, to detain a refugee claimant. Had Bill C-31 been law at the time of the MV Sun Sea arrival off the coast of British Columbia, Canadian taxpayers would have spent $34,440,000 on detaining people who had done nothing but exercise a right guaranteed to them by international and domestic law.

As there currently exist provisions under the IRPA for detaining individuals who are deemed a threat to Canada or who cannot be identified, generalized detention is unnecessary and expensive. We believe it would be more responsible and productive to use taxpayer money to perhaps hire more legal aid workers and lawyers to help refugee claimants navigate the determination process, or to create more positions on the Immigration and Refugee Board, which would not only ensure a fair hearing for refugee claimants but would help to expedite the process.

Bill C-31 is not a political or a financial legacy that we wish to inherit. Rather than leaving it to us to correct this mistake in 10 years, we ask you, the honourable members of Parliament, to make sure we avoid it altogether.

[Karina Fortier, Student, B. Refuge, McGill University]

We therefore undertook an awareness campaign with the objective not of persuading people to our position, but simply of informing them about the content of Bill C-31. And what happened was that a majority of the students we approached were opposed to the proposed changes. In the space of just four hours, we collected over 150 signatures to stop Bill C-31 from being passed. I would also like to ask the committee's permission to send it a copy of the petition.

Ladies and gentlemen, members of the committee, why do you think that young students like us are wary of this bill being enacted? The reason is that we make up a demographic group that takes an interest in the news and in Canadian politics, but that actually will not hold any seats in the House of Commons for another 10 or 15 years.

In the meantime, we are apprehensive as we follow the enactment of new laws like this one, which proposes to put entire groups of newcomers, including minors, in detention for one year. We are shocked by the fact that families will be separated for at least five years. We are shocked that entire countries might be considered to be safe, when to obtain refugee status, a person has to prove that they have been persecuted in their country, as an individual.

We consider it to be anti-democratic that the responsibility for drawing up that safe country list will be assigned to just one person, the minister. We wonder why the government considers the distinction between real refugees and bogus refugees to be so important, and penalizes the latter group. Even if they do not meet all the criteria in the official definition of a refugee in the Geneva Convention, a large majority of those refugee protection claimants are in need of help.

We are also disappointed that the minister would deny that the proposed changes will in fact punish these so-called bogus refugees.

[Kelsey Angeley, Student, B. Refuge, McGill University]

Good morning, Mr. Chairman and honourable members.

Thank you very much for hearing our testimony today. We are honoured to speak before you on behalf of a group on the McGill campus called B. Refuge. For the past four years, B. Refuge has worked to facilitate interactions between refugee claimants and students, with the purpose of sharing language and culture and helping to orient refugee claimants to the city.

The work we do is premised on the belief that refugee claimants are valuable members of our community and potential Canadians. By asking Canadians to view refugee claimants as frauds and criminals, Bill C-31 undermines this premise.

Accordingly, this past year we have turned our attention to raising awareness among our peers about Bill C-31 and educating them on the dangers we believe it presents to refugees and to the larger Canadian community.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Thank you.

The provisions in Bill C-31 don't prohibit genuine refugees from sponsoring their family members or acquiring permanent residence; they merely impose a waiting period.

What's wrong with that? Do you think the government's attempt to strike a balance, as they say, in this regard is legitimate?

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses as well. Going back to the motivation for this bill, we've heard some government members say it's to deter the asylum seekers from coming in large numbers, and we've heard others many times say it's not about deterrence.

In your expert opinion of the bill—and we know that Bill C-11 still hasn't been implemented and Bill C-31 is now being pushed through—what do you think is the motivation? Either one of you.

[Prof. Sharryn Aiken]

Yes.

Again, I focus on the package of provisions that Bill C-31 is attempting to address. You're talking about timelines. There's no issue from an international law perspective about acceleration, as long as the claimants have adequate time to prepare for their hearing. The question is, what else are we saying? Are we denying them the right to appeal? Are we denying them the right to access counsel? Because effectively they'll have no opportunity. Those are the concerns. It's not the notion of expediting the claims in and of itself that we're concerned about.

[Prof. Catherine Dauvergne]

Well, I would certainly be pleased to see the whole bill withdrawn. I can't deny that. I just don't think the mandatory detention provisions in Bill C-31 can be saved. I don't think they can be brought into compliance with the Constitution or with international law, and I think the provisions for designating a foreign national go hand in hand with those mandatory detention provisions.

On the west coast, when the boats arrived, the refugee lawyers group in Vancouver really had problems staffing detention reviews. The Department of Justice couldn't deliver detention reviews, although we ran them until midnight every night. So it might make sense, and hence I have suggested in the case of mass arrivals, that in order to allow any government to remain in compliance with its own law, a different timeframe—going to 20 days, 25 days, 30 days—for detention reviews for mass arrivals is an amendment that would allow the government not so frequently to be in breach of the law, as it has been in the case of recent boat arrivals.

But certainly with regard to mandatory detention, I think these provisions should be withdrawn entirely.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

In listening to both presentations, but Catherine's in particular, I can't help but think that here we are passing Bill C-31, or we're here in committee with the expectation that the government is going to want to pass this bill, but hopefully there will be a series of amendments to the bill.

You paint a fairly bleak picture. In essence, you're saying that Australia's system has clearly demonstrated its failure, specifically in and around that whole mandatory detention question. We seem to be going further than what Australia is actually currently putting in place.

My question to you is, do you think this is in fact a bill that can be amended, or should it just be sent back? Should we allow the previous bill, Bill C-11, to go forward and just go back to the drawing board? What would be your suggestion?

[Prof. Catherine Dauvergne]

Australia created a system in 2001 in which individuals who arrived on boats were denied family reunification rights and were given only temporary protected status that could later be turned into protected status. It is worth noting that in Australia, somebody who gets protected status, except for between 2001 and 2007, becomes a permanent resident on that day. It's a complete determination that is quite different from any Canadian scheme.

What happened in 2001 when the decision was made that people who arrived on boats would get inferior protection? Until 2001, most people arriving on boats in Australia were able-bodied young men, to put it bluntly. After the change, when family reunification rights were cut off, the people arriving on boats were more likely to be family groupings, with a greater number of children and their moms. This is a real issue in Australia, because people drown every year doing this and it puts different communities at risk. It was also very clear that people seeking protection were willing to take this risk because they were in very difficult circumstances.

Those particular provisions about having only temporary protection and no right of family reunification were removed from Australian law in 2008 because of the harm they were causing to people seeking protection. The removal of family reunification rights is one thing that is directly targeted at people who are designated foreign nationals under Bill C-31.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

The great Canadian compromise that's been talked about a lot but has never really been implemented is Bill C-11 in its entirety.

I know you talked about Australia a fair bit. In 2008, Australia reformed their immigration system because they saw there were some flaws in it. Can you explain the problems with Australia's past immigration policy, and how Bill C-31 will have the same problems?

[Professor Sharryn Aiken, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, Queen's University, As an Individual]

Thank you.

Good morning. I will address the anti-smuggling provisions and designated foreign national regime as well. I intend to focus somewhat specifically on the case of the Sri Lankan Tamil refugee claimants who have arrived in Canada over the last few years.

I want to say at the outset that I endorse and rely upon two briefs primarily—that prepared by Amnesty International, in particular part I of that brief with respect to anti-smuggling provisions, as well as by the Canadian Bar Association, particularly part VI, addressing the designated foreign nationals regime. For those reasons I won't rehearse the provisions in those two briefs but point you to them.

Bill C-31 would impose multiple penalties on claimants as well as protected persons designated as part of an irregular arrival. As you know, the penalties include mandatory detention without access to review for 12 months; the denial of the right to apply for permanent residence status or family reunification until five years have passed since a favourable determination of their protection claim; denial of access to relief based on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, temporary resident permits, or refugee travel documents for five years or longer; and finally, denial of the right to appeal an unfavourable determination of a protection claim to the newly established Refugee Appeal Division.

It is my view that the minister's discretion to designate is overly broad. It's not limited to mass arrivals, and it may be applied retroactively to March 2009. Arrivals of two or more persons “by irregular means” could attract designation.

Let's be very clear: the genesis of these provisions was a response to the arrival of two boats off the coast of British Columbia, the Ocean Lady in the fall of 2009, followed by, almost a year later, the MV Sun Sea. These provisions have been specifically targeted to the case of the Sri Lankan Tamil refugee claimants. If we have any doubt, the proposal to make them retroactive to March 2009 should leave no question lingering.

I will say more in a few minutes about that, but I want to emphasize that in my view these provisions are unconstitutional and violate a number of important provisions in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, as well as the 1951 refugee convention.

These violations are detailed very thoroughly in the CBA and Amnesty briefs, as well as in the May 3 submission of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, “Canada Must Protect, Not Punish, Refugees”.

I want to urge quite simply, and in the most forceful terms, that we ensure that these provisions are eliminated from the final version of Bill C-31. It is my view that no amendment or incremental improvement around the edges should be acceptable. I want to point out that existing tools within the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act are more than adequate to deal with genuine concerns about mass arrivals.

Let's look at how the system responded to the two boats off B.C.

Refugee claimants were detained until authorities were satisfied that they knew who they were and/or that they didn't pose any security risk. Those for whom there were still concerns remained in detention until those concerns were addressed. It's true that detention reviews are supposed to take place within the first 48 hours. It's merely a review; it doesn't mean that somebody gets released after 48 hours. Indeed, as I mentioned, many refugee claimants were subject to prolonged detention while authorities addressed concerns about who these people were and whether or not any of them posed a genuine risk.

For people on those boats with respect to whom there were security concerns, the government had ample tools in its legislative tool box to designate them a risk and use admissibility procedures before the Immigration and Refugee Board to bar access to the asylum procedure altogether. Indeed, a number of people, particularly those arriving on the Sun Sea, faced those very procedures.

What I want to emphasize is that concerns about irregular arrivals are legitimate. It does pose an enormous burden on a government to process a large group of people who all arrive together—when it's some 500 people, for example—but we have the tools to deal with it, and they work, quite frankly. I see no reason to impose what in my view would be an egregiously draconian set of provisions on people, many of whom may end up being genuine refugees. I want to say that at the outset.

I want to go back to the situation of the Sri Lankan Tamils because there seems to have been much misunderstanding with respect to the causes and conditions that led these people to assume risky voyages in the first place and to brave several months on the high seas to come to Canada.

Sri Lanka, as you may know, is a country that has been wracked by ethnic conflicts that spiralled into civil war, the roots of which can be traced to the period immediately following the country's independence. For 30 years, this civil war was brutal. Atrocities were committed by all parties to the conflict, but we need to keep squarely in view the fact that the primary driver of that conflict was the Sri Lankan state's failure to recognize minority rights within that country: its failure to grant its Tamil citizens, some 18% to 20% of its population, equal rights.

With intermittent ceasefires when conditions appeared to ameliorate, things improved. However, overall, there were significant rates of disappearances, extremely high rates of torture and detention, and a complete lack of accountability throughout the course of that civil war.

The war finally ended with the defeat of the LTTE in May 2009, but as the International Crisis Group has noted in a series of reports over the past three years, including two very recent briefs in March, we see neither peace nor even modest steps toward genuine reconciliation in that country. Indeed, there is deepening militarization in the north and a policy of Sinhalization, a policy that explicitly privileges the majority ethnic group and continues to systemically disadvantage Tamils and Muslims, the two minority groups in Sri Lanka.

Now, recent media reports have suggested that acceptance rates for Sri Lankan Tamils have plummeted. I'm making reference to a recent report in the National Post, but in reality, Sri Lankan Tamils were accepted at the rate of some 57% in the last year. Of all claims made by Sri Lankan Tamils, 57% were accepted. That's a very significant number. Yes, it's down from the high of some 91% of positive claims in 2009, but it is still a very significant number.

I put a call out to refugee lawyers across the country when I realized I would have the opportunity to appear before you today, and I asked them to send me the positive decisions they've received with respect to clients they've represented from the Ocean Lady or the Sun Sea. I had an opportunity to review four such decisions very recently, four positive decisions, three from the Sun Sea and one from the Ocean Lady, and I want to share with you some of the observations made by the board members in those cases.

They include observations such as this one: that the Sri Lankan government continues to screen and check former Tamil Tiger members and those it has suspected in the past of being a Tiger member or supporter. This is seen as a pre-emptive strategy to discourage Tamil radicalization.

Suspected Tiger members and rehabilitated Tiger members are regularly subjected to rearrest or harassment or are forced to act as informants for the military. The new detainees are often not formally charged. Many are tortured.

Under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, government officials who may commit wrongful acts such as torture are provided with immunity from prosecution. Legal proceedings against government officials are prohibited if an individual acted in good faith.

The long and the short of it is that human rights violations persist in Sri Lanka to an enormous extent.

Do Sri Lankan Tamils have a choice in terms of what to do? Those who are able to get on a plane and fly to Thailand, Malaysia, or Indonesia, or to take a voyage to India, find themselves languishing for years. In Thailand in particular, I want to emphasize, there are still at least 60 people in detention in deplorable conditions, without adequate hygiene or nutrition.

They are told to join the queue, yet there is no queue. These countries are not signatories to the UN refugee convention, and at best they wait for years.

[Professor Catherine Dauvergne, Canada Research Chair in Migration Law, University of British Columbia, Faculty of Law, As an Individual]

Good morning, and thank you for the invitation to speak with you this morning about Bill C-31.

I have been doing research into immigration law in Canada and Australia for nearly 20 years now. I teach refugee law in both countries.

This morning, I am going to talk about the mandatory detention system that is in effect in Australia.

I am also pleased to take questions on any aspect of Bill C-31.

I would like to thank you for having the presentation I will be making this morning translated for me. Given that 10 minutes goes by very quickly, I am going to begin by making a recommendation.

I'm just going to turn to the final point I want to make.

Australia now has more than two decades of experience with a mandatory detention scheme for people seeking refugee protection. Almost everybody seeking refugee protection is detained at some point. This system has not achieved its deterrence objectives. It has harmed many people and it has cost thousands of millions of dollars. In some respects, as I will detail momentarily, it is not as severe as the Bill C-31 proposals. For this reason I recommend to you that Bill C-31 be amended to eliminate the designated foreign national regime and to eliminate the mandatory detention scheme.

Recognizing that mass arrivals do provide serious challenges for any government, I recommend as an alternative to these provisions that you consider, in the case of a mass arrival, which is to be defined as a group of more than 50 individuals, where there is potential reason for detention under the current IRPA provisions—for example, when there is a difficulty establishing the identity of individuals—that if a group of more than 50 has arrived at the same time, the schedule for detention reviews be amended to allow for adequate and appropriate consideration of those individuals. The current detention regime requires reviews at 48 hours, 7 days, and 30 days, as you are aware. In the case of a group of more than 50 people arriving, it would be appropriate to alter this schedule to have an initial review at 20 days, a subsequent review at 25 days, and then move on to the ordinary scheme of reviews at 30-day intervals for any individuals who would still be detained after 45 days.

You will have heard from other witnesses about the first two reasons to reject the proposed mandatory detention scheme. This scheme is in breach of several provisions of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and it also is in breach of key international human rights documents to which Canada has long been committed. What I will focus my time on this morning is the evidence from Australia.

Australian evidence has now established that the detention regime there is not deterring people from seeking refugee protection in Australia. The evidence from Australia also demonstrates that this type of detention leads to lasting harms to individuals who are subject to it.

The mandatory detention regime for all unauthorized arrivals to Australia began in 1989. The majority of those who arrive in Australia without a visa are briefly detained, but most people are now granted a bridging visa—some, if they arrive at an airport, within a matter of days. For boat arrivals it's usually within two or three months. This bridging visa serves to release people from detention into the community.

Since 2001, Australia has had two separate streams for offshore arrivals and for mainland arrivals. As of January of this year, which is the midpoint of the Australian fiscal year, there were 4,783 people in one form or another of immigration detention, including community detention, which we would call release on conditions. The estimated spending for the current fiscal year on immigration detention in Australia is $629 million Australian, and that is pretty close to par with the Canadian dollar right now.

The Australian detention regime has been under active scrutiny since 2008. Some of the changes that have been made to this scheme include a move towards community detention rather than detention centres.

Children and families, as a matter of policy, are not to be held in detention centres. They are housed in special alternative places of detention, for the most part. The parliamentary inquiry that reported in March of this year found that there were still a few children in detention, but it's against policy.

Immigration detention is now officially considered to be a last resort in the Australian scheme, and all immigration detention is to be for the shortest possible time. The newest parliamentary inquiry in Australia is recommending a maximum of three months of detention time.

If we look at a comparison between Australia's immigration detention scheme and the scheme that would result in Canada from Bill C-31, we find that they are similar, in that there is a two-tiered system that is punitive to irregular boat arrivals.

In Australia, the time for people to be in detention is theoretically indefinite but presumptively shorter than 12 months. The Bill C-31 scheme is 12 months, but theoretically indefinite, so there's longer detention there.

Children and their families are not to be detained. The Canadian proposal, by contrast, says that young children will not be detained but may be separated from families.

In Australia, those who are in detention have priority processing for refugee claims in order to ensure the shortest possible time in detention. There is no such priority under Bill C-31 for people detained in Canada.

In the Australian scheme, anybody who is held in detention and making an asylum claim is granted legal aid for the preliminary and subsequent merit review stages of the asylum process. There's no guarantee of legal aid support in the Canadian proposal, Bill C-31.

It's also notable that Australian experience over the past 10 years has shown that a very high number of individuals who arrive on boats actually end up with refugee status; the appendix to the parliamentary report says 90%. I recall earlier figures suggesting it's closer to 80%, but that is still a very high acceptance rate, demonstrating that people who make these kinds of journeys are in fact those who are the most desperate.

The Australian mandatory detention regime has been found, in a number of inquiries, to breach both international and domestic human rights. It has not reduced the number of people coming to Australia to seek protection. There is a new study out of Monash University—which is not yet published, but which I heard about at a conference about three weeks ago—suggesting that the variations in rates of people arriving in boats in Australia can be completely attributed to conditions in sending countries, as well as weather conditions, rather than changes in Australian law.

There have been four major inquiries into the effectiveness of the Australian system since 2001, adding tens of millions of dollars to the cost. The evidence, which is now widely accepted—and this is reflected in the parliamentary report—includes the following: there are very high levels of suicide and other self-harm behaviours among the detained community; there are very high levels of depression and of post-traumatic stress disorder; these mental health problems affect the refugee determination process and make the process more difficult to manage; prolonged detention exacerbates previous trauma; and the detention regime harms family relationships and children's mental health in particular, whether the children are in detention or separated from their families because of detention.

Current developments in Australia include a commitment to move to community detention rather than closed facilities, both because of reduction of harm and because of reduction of cost, which has proven quite persuasive.

There was a temporary regime in Australia from 2001 to 2007 that restricted family reunification rights for people arriving on boats. This regime has been dismantled, so this is a departure from the direction that Bill C-31 is heading in.

There has been extensive work to improve conditions within detention centres. The bridging visa program has been expanded, with a sharp uptick since last November, so that more people are getting out of detention.

Last, the parliamentary report on Australia's immigration detention network was just released this past March—so a number of weeks ago—running to 356 pages.

I'll conclude there. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Good morning.

This is the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, meeting number 40, on Monday, May 7, 2012. The orders of the day, pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 23, 2012, are Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and other acts. This meeting is televised.

We have our first panel with us today; it has two members. We have Professor Catherine Dauvergne. She is the Canada research chair in migration law at the University of British Columbia Faculty of Law.

I understand you have a PowerPoint presentation, which we'll be watching.

Professor Sharryn Aiken, good morning to you. She is from the Faculty of Law at Queen's University. I went there, but I think it was so long ago my picture is down in the basement.

It's a pleasure to have both of you here. You each have ten minutes to make an introductory statement, and then there'll be questions from the committee.

Professor Dauvergne, you may proceed first.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I do want to express my empathy for the passion with which you make your presentation and the work that you do on behalf of your community. I think we all come from backgrounds that suggest that we have cultures within Canada and those that we support. My parents both came here from the Netherlands and certainly I do find myself at times overly protective of the Dutch and want to stand up for them at every opportunity. So I want to emphasize that we understand what you're saying and appreciate what you've brought to the table both in terms of your suggestions and your passion.

I do want to ask a few questions about the issues that we face as a government. While we try to use as much empathy as we can when making decisions, we do have to make legislation and move that legislation forward, and that's done through words, not necessarily through emotion.

One of the issues we face with Hungary is that back prior to the year of 2008 when there were visa restrictions within Hungary, the applications we received for asylum seekers were in the neighbourhood of 20 to 30 people a year. In 2009 there were 2,500 and in 2010 there were 2,300. These numbers just went through the roof. When we see that 95% to 98% of those individuals come to Canada for a period of up to 10 to 12 months, and just prior to their hearings taking place at the IRB, they do not show up for those hearings—or we find they have returned to Hungary—that is an issue. I think you would agree with me that a number of those individuals didn't come here to seek refugee status. They came here for different reasons. I won't label what those reasons are but they weren't for reasons of seeking asylum.

How would you deal with that issue other than how we're dealing with it through Bill C-31? This isn't specific to Hungary. We face similar types of issues with all countries. Before we implemented the restriction with respect to the visa for Mexico, the numbers were just going through the roof. They were astronomical. We had over 10,000 applications in 2008, of which 400 were deemed to be successful refugee applications. All the rest were not.

So we need a fix. We need to solve this problem because it's clear that there is an opportunity for people to take advantage of the system here in Canada.

[Maureen Silcoff]

The primary concern, I think, is the DCO list. In an ideal world, we would remove it completely. We know this is not likely, so in terms of what's actually possible, we would much prefer to go back to the criteria in Bill C-11, where there was a human rights expert panel that would decide the criteria as to whether a country was safe, as opposed to the current system of statistics.

We also believe there's insufficient time, as other people have said, to file the BOC and to have the hearings. Important criteria, as well, are the restrictions that flow from the designated country list. There is the lack of a refugee appeal division, RAD, and the inability to stay in Canada while judicial review is pending. These two criteria are new to Bill C-31. We would ask that they be removed.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm curious. I think most of us appreciate the passion with which you've made your presentation. This hearing today is specifically about Bill C-31. In the next five minutes, could either one of you address specific changes that you think need to be made to the legislation that's before us? Having considered your plight, now we need to hear from you about the specifics of the bill that you'd like to be changed.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Just before I start asking my questions, I would like to emphasize the fact that the witnesses are here to be heard. We must show our respect to our witnesses, whoever they may be.

We had a witness yesterday, a woman from Australia. She told us about her concerns about Bill C-31. In fact, a similar bill has been implemented in Australia particularly with respect to mandatory detention. She told us that this mandatory detention has significant economic and social costs, particularly for children.

My question is for either one of you. What type of mental and physical health risks are there for children who are detained in the longer term? Under this bill, some children will be separated from their family. What are the consequences of this kind of separation on their health and their subsequent reintegration?

[Dr. Richard Stanwick]

The decisions about the risks and what steps to be taken have to be left to the elected officials sitting around this room. If you have to impose these conditions, and you believe there is a risk to the community, we're asking you to keep in mind how vulnerable children are and take steps to protect them. If you are going forward with Bill C-31, then we have made recommendations that, if this is the request and this is the appropriate course of action that this government decides, you please keep children in mind when you're housing them, their education, and all those things.

[Dr. Richard Stanwick]

Actually, I think this question has two parts to it.

One is the detrimental effect of being kept in those circumstances, because being a child is a tremendous period when you are acquiring skills and developing. Your brain requires active play, engagement, socialization. It's actually a double whammy that if these children are held back in those sorts of settings where they do start having sleep disturbances, going right up to suicidal ideation, which has been documented in England and Australia under similar detention-type circumstances, you're starting them from a negative, even when they leave. What they're missing out on, and this is what we were asking that Bill C-31 consider, are the normal requirements to become a healthy child. Those are exercise, play, the ability to get a good education.

Really, what we're trying to emphasize is that if this does go forward, the detention centres have to take into consideration the needs of the children if we want to create a healthy generation that follows this one.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

I'm hearing what you're saying.

I don't know about anybody else in this room, but I was separated from my parents for four years, from the age of three to seven. So I understand, I understand what you're saying. However, we do have to identify people before we allow them into the country. That is a clear thing that we need to do.

One of the key elements in Bill C-31 is the issue of biometrics, a 21st century identification tool, as it has been presented to us from law enforcement agencies in this country, supported by the RCMP, CSIS, and CBSA. We are implementing that type of a tool, if you will, in Bill C-31 to ensure that we can process people faster.

[Dr. Richard Stanwick]

In responding to your question, I think what we want to do is bring a recognition that if you place children in settings that are essentially detention centres, you will traumatize them. They will not achieve their full potential as future Canadian citizens.

In the sense that you're right, perhaps 10% of those individuals justifiably should be removed. The other 90% that came off a ship, honestly, if you walked past them in a Walmart today, you would not recognize them as being refugees. They would blend in with Canadian society.

It's the children who are so profoundly influenced. A year for you and me is simply a year. For a child, it's part of a lifetime. What we're saying is that if you are going ahead with Bill C-31, recognize the downsides of the detention centres and take the steps to mitigate the impact on children's health so that you have really healthy, productive citizens from the ones you allow in.

[Jenny Jeanes]

These are cases that the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, passed in 2010, probably would have helped.

We have concerns about some of the new changes in Bill C-31.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to all of you for appearing before us today and for sharing your views and for, quite frankly, the very passionate way in which you explained some cases you're familiar with.

I want to go through a couple of points first. I really think we're all trying to accomplish the same thing here. Our goal is to try to get legitimate refugees, people who need our assistance, into the country as fast as possible. We need a mechanism in order to accomplish that in the fastest possible way. Clearly the system today is broken. It is not working.

I think Canadians take pride in the generosity and compassion of our immigration and refugee programs. They have no tolerance for those who abuse our generosity and seek to take unfair advantage of our country. Canada remains one of the top countries in the world to welcome refugees. In fact, we welcome more refugees per capita than any other G-20 country. Canada welcomes one in 10 of the world's resettled refugees. That is more per capita than almost any other country. In fact our Conservative government has increased the number of refugees resettling each year by 2,500 people.

Bill C-31 proposes changes that build on reforms to the asylum system passed in June 2010 as part of the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, as you well know. The proposed measures would provide faster protection to those who genuinely need refuge and faster removal of those who don't. Currently the time to finalize a refugee decision, if you will, takes 1,038 days, on average. With these new measures in Bill C-31, that could be as low as 45 days for people coming from designated countries and certainly 216 days for all other claimants, surely the very people who need that assistance.

Let's talk about family reunification. People are coming here from countries where they were facing persecution, torture, death in many cases. Surely the amount of time they have to be in a holding pattern when they come to our shores so they can be properly identified and processed.... That's the key. We want to identify people before we allow them into Canadian society for obvious reasons.

Forty-one people who came on the Sun Sea and Ocean Lady were found to be security risks or had perpetrated war crimes in their country. We can't allow just everybody. I know we want to be compassionate, but we have a responsibility to the Canadian people and I'm sure you understand that. You wouldn't want them in your neighbourhood. You wouldn't want them going to school with your children. You wouldn't want them around your families. Nobody would.

Would you agree that this is a problem that needs to be fixed? That's my question to you. Please, any and all....

[Dr. Richard Stanwick]

Good day, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.

I'm Dr. Richard Stanwick, a pediatrician and public health specialist. I also probably have a unique qualification in that I was dockside on August 13, 2010 with the RCMP and the Canada Border Services Agency for the arrival and processing of 492 refugees from the Sun Sea. I participated in the organization of the health response as well as the provision of on-site public health and pediatric advice.

I am here this afternoon representing the Canadian Paediatric Society, a professional organization representing over 3,000 health professionals dedicated to child and youth health.

My opening remarks today are going to be focused specifically on the health of children and youth, and what we can all do through public policy to ensure they have the potential to become active contributing members of Canadian society.

As pediatricians, we are committed to working with all levels of government to make decisions and develop programs, programs—and I want to emphasize this—that are based on emerging science that clearly shows how young people develop and what should be in place within their communities to ensure their optimal long-term health and development.

Child health experts now have a truer understanding of the importance of family in ensuring and supporting the development of children than was previously the case. We know that good preventive health care, early education, physical activity, and a balanced diet set the foundation for a productive and healthier adulthood, and that protective aspects of a good childhood experience inoculate individuals for improvements in all aspects of their life, be that mental health, physical health, high school completion, and even employability. Conversely, we know that higher than normal levels of stress contribute to ill health.

Former Japanese internees in World War II experienced a twofold increase in cardiovascular disease and premature mortality than did individuals who were not interned. One epidemiologic study suggested that internees die 1.6 years earlier than a comparison non-interned group. So-called “toxic stress” is particularly harmful when it occurs during childhood and when it's not mitigated by nurturing relationships with significant adults.

On the basis of this evidence—the importance of family and a positive childhood experience—we respectfully ask the government to reconsider and withdraw Bill C-31. If the bill is not withdrawn, then we strongly advocate that it be amended in specifically those sections that could lead to refugee children under the age of 16 being either detained with their parents or separated from them for a period of a year. If the legislation must be passed into law, we would ask and encourage you to ensure that it has provisions to keep families together. These provisions should really integrate them into communities as quickly as possible, and ensure immediate and ongoing access to health services and care, including preventive care such as with immunizations and—I think we would want to emphasize as almost equally important—ongoing access to education and other social and community values and associations.

Both options in the current version of C-31 cause great concerns to pediatricians because essentially we're forcing a Sophie's Choice on the parents. Should children under 16 go into detention with their parents, there is no assurance that they will have access to the education or health services they need. It's also vital that children have the benefit of safe recreation and we have concerns that detention facilities will not have age-appropriate facilities that will allow them to play and exercise—all critical in normal development.

A peer-reviewed article by Rachel Kronick and Cécile Rousseau, published last October in Paediatrics & Child Health clearly documented the serious effects of detention on claimant refugee children in both Australia and England. Here's what they found. Almost all the children suffered a mental health problem. Some of them had sleep disturbances and separation anxiety. The range of problems went to even more serious post-traumatic stress disorders, self-harm, and suicidal ideation. Developmental delays were common. There were reports of mutism and behavioural issues. Infants wouldn't breastfeed properly and older children were engaged in food refusal. Many children lost previously attained developmental milestones, which shows that detention itself had negative effects on their development, and the problems could not be solely attributed to the experiences before arriving in this country or their country of refuge.

The other choice that parents have would be to give up their children to a child welfare system that is already overtaxed and struggling to meet the needs of children and youth currently living in Canada.

Consider what it would be like to be separated from family just after arriving in a new country, perhaps after experiencing conflict or separation, war or starvation. You'd consider that traumatic for an adult. For a child, it's unimaginable. This kind of separation would create the type of stress and trauma for both the child and adult, making future integration into Canada far more difficult—and this is the concern.

Apart from separation from the family, in many cases the child welfare system would be hard pressed to find a foster family that understands the culture from which the child comes, or perhaps even to find one where the adults speak the same language. It is likely the demands on the health care system will be more taxed if refugee children are put into detention or in foster care while awaiting their parents' release from detention, as opposed to the family being settled into Canadian life with access to health care, community services, and schools.

In British Columbia, our representative for children and youth, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, and our provincial health officer, Dr. Perry Kendall, studied over 50,000 children born in 1986 who were attending school in our province 10 years later. In the largest study—to the best of our knowledge—or at least one of the largest studies in Canada, they found of the children living under ministry supervision in foster homes or with relatives, 41% were involved with the criminal justice system by age 21. The rate of legal problems was much lower, only 6.6%, among children living with parents.

The Canadian Paediatric Society urges that Bill C-31 be amended specifically to ensure families with children, and families that are expecting children, be kept together on arrival in Canada, and that they are not placed in detention centres. We ask that families have immediate and ongoing access to needed health, community, and education services. This will help children integrate smoothly into Canadian life and support them in achieving good health quickly.

In recent years this government has recognized and apologized to groups of individuals who were detained or separated from families simply because of who they were—most notably, aboriginal Canadians who were forced into residential schools. There was an understanding and recognition in Prime Minister Harper's apologies to generations of first nation and Inuit people that great harm had been done to individuals, especially children, by separating them from their families and cultures. Sadly, in many cases, this harm proved insurmountable for the victims. Even now, many years after the residential school system has been dismantled, the negative results persist, in some cases, generations later.

I think there is a little irony in that at this time the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada is crossing Canada as these hearings are held in this committee room.

During World War II, Canada undertook forced removal and detention of the Japanese population on the west coast, separating Japanese men from their families, and relocating them to war camps. Women and children were sent to inland towns. Prime Minister Brian Mulroney formally apologized to Japanese Canadians in 1988 and provided compensation to survivors of wartime detention. Ottawa marked the 20th anniversary of this recognition under the leadership of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. If we, as a country, have recognized the ill effects on health of such schemes, then why would we consider instituting detention again?

These are examples of repeated failure to deal with other cultures. We, as Canadians, should be recognized as a nation by our ability to do things right, not for being ready to apologize for getting it wrong again and again.

Thank you.

[Jenny Jeanes, Program Coordinator, Action Réfugiés Montréal]

Hello. My name is Jenny Jeanes and I am responsible for Action Réfugiés Montréal's detention program. Since joining Action Réfugiés Montréal in 2005, I have visited the Canada Border Services Agency holding centre in Laval, Quebec, on a weekly basis.

As our only staff person who visits the detention facility, I rely on the assistance of law student interns, who accompany me to the centre. Each week we meet newly arrived refugee claimants who, for the most part, have been detained in order to verify their identity. We try to help them understand complex immigration procedures, especially the requirements for their refugee claim.

We assist them in finding counsel. We supply phone cards to those who need to call their families and ask for their identity documents to be sent. We also identify the more vulnerable detainees, including pregnant women and families with young children, in order to provide them extra support.

Before leaving the office yesterday, I spoke to two young detainees who needed phone cards to call their families back home. These young men, one 17 years old and one 18 years old, are from Sierra Leone, a West African country that not long ago was torn apart by a decade-long civil war, and with upcoming elections, faces new unrest.

They travelled to Canada by boat and were detained upon arrival. Tomorrow they will have spent one month in detention. They have already made contact with their families, but a single phone card provides only nine minutes to call their country. They are still waiting for their documents to arrive, hoping family members will be able to help them.

One has already obtained from his family a faxed copy of the only official document he possesses, but his family has not been able to gather the funds to post the original. They know no one in Canada, so when they need help with cards, they phone our office and ask for “Auntie Jenny”.

They are just two of the hundreds of detainees we assist each year, but their situation brings to mind two of our main concerns with Bill C-31: the 12-month mandatory detention for designated irregular arrivals and the very fast processing times for refugee claims.

These two young men meet the criteria of claimants who could be designated as irregular arrivals and detained for one year without review. Although one is 17 and legally a child, he would not be exempt from mandatory detention.

Even if they were not designated as irregular arrivals, they are already halfway along the 60-day delay for a refugee hearing, as proposed by Bill C-31. They have yet to obtain identity documents, let alone meet the requirements for preparing a refugee claim. With the assistance of a lawyer, they have just begun to tell their stories. They speak limited English, relying on an interpreter to assist them. Their lawyer will have to tease out the complexities of their country's situation, distinguishing their personal fears from generalized violence and instability and examining the impact of regime change on their individual lives.

Over the years, I have met refugee claimants detained at late stages of pregnancy, and even some who have given birth while detained, returning to the detention centre with a newborn baby. I have met elderly claimants in detention and those sick with diabetes or other illnesses. I have met claimants who have been raped or tortured or who have seen family members killed and have ongoing nightmares.

I have met many young children under the age of five who accompanied their parents in detention, sometimes for over a month. One very young woman, herself an unaccompanied minor, spent almost a month in detention with her own baby until she was able to satisfy authorities as to her identity. She spoke no English or French, and was separated from her own family members in Canada, who were released before her due to their identity documents.

I have learned that refugee stories are often complicated and that it takes time for a claimant to be able to share their experiences. In our brief, I mention the case of a young gay man from Algeria who spent three months in detention until his identity was verified. He was scared and ashamed of disclosing his sexual orientation and was uncomfortable around other detainees during his three months in the centre. He was so psychologically fragile that he was unable to testify at his eventual refugee hearing, even after several months in Canada. Only with the help of a therapist was he finally able to clearly explain his need for protection, and he was accepted as a refugee. I would just like to add that this therapy was not available while he was in the centre.

I'd also like to tell you about a woman from Nigeria who we first met in detention in 2008. She has since been accepted as a refugee and is now a permanent resident in Canada, but it was a difficult road to where she is now. She arrived in Canada eight months pregnant and spent most of the last of her pregnancy locked up in the holding centre, where rules dictate when and what to eat, when to sleep, and whether one can go outside for some air. It took her 40 days to obtain identity documents and be released, and she gave birth less than two weeks after leaving detention.

Being in detention is a difficult experience for most of the claimants we meet. We hear repeatedly about the shame of being handcuffed and under constant surveillance; the fear of deportation exacerbated by the regular removals of other detainees; and chronic physical discomfort, such as constipation and fatigue. We regularly meet detainees who speak no English or French, and are extremely isolated by language barriers. Claimants express distress at having to prepare written documents to start their claims while detained, where they have no privacy, there are obstacles to communicating with their families, and there is little contact with their legal counsel. As mentioned in our brief, there is no privacy for phone calls, and even when lawyers can visit the centre there's limited time and space for consultation.

We have a unique perspective, being able to meet individual detainees week after week and hear their experiences. Detained refugee claimants tell us of the significant challenges they face during days, weeks, or months of detention. It is hard to imagine 12 months of mandatory detention. Having seen how many obstacles refugee claimants face when detained at the beginning of the refugee process, we worry that the short delay of only 60 days or less will result in refusals for people genuinely in need of protection. Many of these individuals would not even have access to appeal under Bill C-31 provisions, eliminating the chance of having errors corrected.

Thank you.

[Glynis Williams, Executive Director, Action Réfugiés Montréal]

Good afternoon. My name is Glynis Williams. I am the director of Action Réfugiés Montréal, and on behalf of that organization, I would like to thank you for allowing us to present our concerns about Bill C-31.

Action Réfugiés Montréal was founded in 1994 by the Anglican and Presbyterian churches in Montreal. Our mandate includes assisting refugee claimants who are detained in the Canada Border Services Agency holding centre in Laval, which my colleague Jenny will soon describe. In addition, we match women refugee claimants with volunteers, and our third program is sponsoring refugees from overseas. We believe that one of our strengths is that we work with both inland refugee claimants and refugees who are overseas. This is a somewhat unique situation in Canada.

Twenty-four years ago I started working with refugee claimants who were being detained in Montreal. As the founding director of this organization, we chose to make the detention program a priority. As mentioned in our brief, though, we are also concerned with clause 19, which allows the minister to initiate a process that would declare cessation of refugee protection resulting in a former refugee's removal from Canada. Furthermore, there is no remedy available to the individual or family once the decision has been made. This clause renders permanent residence an oxymoron for most resettled and accepted refugees.

A story illustrates this point. Sixteen years ago the Presbyterian Church in Montreal agreed to sponsor a young Iraqi woman, a victim of Saddam Hussein's regime. She had been interviewed in a Jordanian prison by a Canadian visa officer at the request of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, a rare situation that reveals the persecution refugees can face even in countries of first asylum. She lived with me for a short while using lots of sign language—I do not speak Arabic—and several volunteers became her good friends. We raised the required $8,000 to care for her in that first year. I just discovered recently that she's still only a permanent resident, not a citizen, even though she has three Canadian-born children, she owns a house, drives a car, and works in a day care. She speaks French very well.

This clause could definitely apply to her, and for what purpose? She and her husband both work, pay taxes, and their daughters are Canadians and they have very little knowledge of Iraq. In the language of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, refugees seek a durable solution, something which too few manage to obtain. The humanitarian basis of Canada's refugee programs, whether it is government-assisted, privately sponsored refugees, or accepted refugee claimants within Canada is mocked by this proposed clause and must be withdrawn.

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Of course, I'd like to thank our witnesses for sharing this information with us.

Ms. Jordan, a good number of countries around the world currently include sanctions against homosexuality in their criminal code. Some legally tolerate what they call crimes of honour committed against members of the homosexual community.

If you are open to it, I would like to give you my five minutes. Tell us how many of these countries—countries that have a democratically elected government and a legal system but that still apply criminal sanctions and still tolerate crimes of honour toward homosexuals—could be declared safe under Bill C-31.

[Sharalyn Jordan]

With all due respect, there has not been a gender analysis done on Bill C-31. Our on-the-ground experience suggests that no, it will not be helpful. Our people will be affected.

The Auditor General has identified the source of the backlog as the lack of resourcing of the IRB—

[Sharalyn Jordan]

Bill C-11, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, provided for consultation with human rights groups before a country could be designated. That's one of the measures that's been removed in Bill C-31.

So yes, I do see that as one of the problems with the way that the designated country list has been included in Bill C-31.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

There are a few things that aren't perceived properly. Bill C-31 is proposing changes that will build on reforms that the asylum system passed as part of the Balanced Refugee Reform Act. This bill will not change any of the protections that the LGBT community has. In fact, it's going to help people from this community seeking status in Canada to get it faster and protect those refugees because that's what we do.

We are a compassionate country, and we are going to make sure that people that are needing our protection do get it. We are a signatory to the Geneva Convention and many other international agreements that we dutifully follow.

Also, I want to point out that Minister Kenney has been a great defender of the gay and lesbian community, and has encouraged the gay and lesbian community here in Canada to privately sponsor LGBT refugees. That option exists. In fact, they should listen to the minister, take him at his word, and apply to do that.

The other one, because I do want to talk to Mr. Amble about some security issues, is that 99% of people that do arrive here are out in the community, are working, and are contributing, while their claims are being processed. Only 1% are detained, and that's where the problem comes in for some of our security issues and why detention can be important until we understand who these people are.

Mr. Amble, over to you quickly on the detention side first, let's begin with that because I only have a few minutes.

A lot of these folks, especially smuggled, trafficked folks, come from places that are rife with terrorist groups and other criminal organizations.

If you were one of these people, for example, would a mass smuggling event be something you would conceal your identity under when you arrive?

Do you follow me?

[Christine Morrissey]

The reality is that people who are genuine refugees who live in really challenging circumstances and face persecution on a regular basis will find whatever means they can to come to a place of safety. Certainly, Canada has been identified as one of those by many people around the world, and that is very clear from the sexual orientation and gender identity perspectives.

I agree with you that there are many people who would prefer to spend a year in detention, and I do think it is a way of appeasing the Canadian public—the ones that Michael mentioned before. To some extent that has grown because of the way the media have painted things, and the way the public has been exposed to this ongoing language around refugees and refugee asylum seekers. The problem with the detention that's presented in Bill C-31 is not the detention per se. The problem is the 12-month no review. A 12-month no review is totally outside of Canada's legal framework.

[Sharalyn Jordan]

We appreciate that the government has seen that the initial interview or the screening interview at 15 days will not work. It will be ineffective and costly.

As people who are on the ground with refugee claimants, we can tell you that legal aid applications in B.C. take at least a week, and good refugee lawyers meet with their claimants at least three or four times before they prepare the written document. There will not be time in 15 days. We need at least 30 days for a basis-of-claim document.

Then in terms of preparing for hearings, you are asking people to document hidden forms of persecution. They go to great lengths to find medical records, police records, and this takes time when you're navigating in different languages. The 30 days or 45 days or 60 days proposed under Bill C-31 simply will not work. People will arrive inadequately prepared, and we have seen that bad evidence results in bad decisions.

In Canada we have some of the finest decision-makers in the world around sexual orientation and gender identity. They understand the issues. They have been trained. But you need to give them the opportunity to do their job right.

[John Amble]

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, honourable members, I am privileged to speak to you today. Thank you for having me back and thank you for the opportunity to provide some comments on the bill at hand, Bill C-31.

I have studied extensively the phenomenon of homegrown terrorism in the West. During the course of my research, I have looked closely at the connection between the threat of terrorism, and asylum laws in refugee application-processing programs. I am not an expert on the intricacies of asylum laws in any given country, including Canada, but I am happy to speak to the security implications of the systems that I have encountered.

My comments will be limited to these security implications. I hope you understand, if I acknowledge areas in which I might be less than qualified to offer an assessment of aspects of the bill in question that extend beyond the realm of security, and particularly the dangers of terrorism. I want to strongly qualify my comments by stating that the risk of terrorism is not proportionate to the number of a country's immigrants, either legal or illegal; to the number of approved asylum requests; or to the number of people who remain, say, in a country despite being denied asylum.

However, the evidence does show that a risk arises when either asylum and refugee processing structures are not properly developed or the laws are inadequately enforced.

It is in the highest tradition of western democratic values to welcome immigrants of all origins. Nowhere have such values been put into practice more fully than in North America, particularly in Canada. However, equally important are our government's responsibilities of ensuring accountability and providing security.

As an American, I can say unequivocally that Canada's reputation as a nation that both welcomes and values its immigrants is well known in the U.S. Living in the U.K. and travelling across Europe and elsewhere in the world, I certainly have the sense that Canada is viewed as a beacon of hope and opportunity around the globe. However, paired with this welcoming reputation is a certain awareness, at times even a cynical appreciation, of Canada's very generous social welfare programs and their extensive availability to newly arrived immigrants.

This is something shared with other countries as well, mainly those in western Europe. Too often, this generosity is exploited, as it often is here in the U.K., and notably in Scandinavian countries as well, for example. As I understand it, ending the manipulative exploitation of such programs, which sometimes carries on for an extended period of time, is one of several objectives of the bill being discussed here today.

From my standpoint, I would argue that there is also a security component to this. Recent history from European countries certainly shows that Byzantine refugee legal structures are sometimes exploited by people who threaten the security of the host country. Thus, you have senior radicalizing preachers and a number of convicted terrorists who have claimed asylum and subsequently received surprisingly large sums of money through very generous social welfare programs. Many of these individuals are currently in prison.

To give an example that involves Canada, in the so-called millennium bomb plot, an individual named Ahmed Ressam planned to detonate a bomb at Los Angeles International Airport, which was thwarted at the Canada-U.S. border in December of 1999, as I'm sure you all know. Ressam had entered Canada in 1994 on a fake passport. He was arrested and he applied for refugee status. He was released pending a hearing and subsequently received several years' worth of social welfare benefits. When his application was denied, he appealed, and that too was denied in 1998. However, no removal order could be carried out, because at that time, he was at a training camp in Afghanistan. He would later return on a fraudulently obtained Canadian passport.

Incidentally, another millennium plot was disrupted just days later, halfway around the world in Frankfurt, Germany. Four men were arrested who were believed to be planning to blow up the Strasbourg Christmas market just across the border in France. Two of those arrested were failed asylum seekers living in Britain, whom the British government had failed to deport for several years.

Now, anecdotes are not a suitable substitute for the broader data that appropriately reflects the realities on which effective policy is based. But such incidents do illuminate the security implications of refugee and asylum policy, and are instructive in any discussion of such policy.

Practically speaking, I would like to highlight two factors of immigration laws that can weaken a country's ability to safeguard against the threat of terrorism. The first is when systems are overburdened and the asylum application process is delayed by backlogs, potentially allowing somebody entering the country under false pretenses and with a goal of conducting a terrorist attack a lengthy period of time in which to move freely within the country.

The second factor is a matter of inadequate enforcement of immigration laws, allowing failed asylum seekers to remain in the country. This is a problem that seems to impact the U.K. quite considerably.

To mitigate against such dangers, there should be some means of maintaining an awareness of where those asylum seekers are, so that removal orders can be implemented for those whose applications or appeals are denied.

In addition to addressing the challenge of knowing where asylum seekers are once they enter Canada, it is also important to know specifically who they are. For a variety of reasons, this task can be considerably more difficult than it sounds.

Insofar as it is prudent to know who exactly is entering the country, not just as a refugee but under any visa or permit program, biometric data provides a very valuable tool. I understand that expanding the use of such information is part of the legislation this committee is examining.

I'll conclude here with three recommendations based on my research that I believe can enhance the security of Canada's refugee laws.

First, every effort should be made to expedite the process to grant refugee or asylum status in the minimum period of time that continues to allow for a complete and secure investigation. In addition to making the process run more smoothly generally by removing backlogs, I think such an action can have a real impact on improving security by eliminating the sometimes very long window during which an asylum seeker who enters the country with any sort of nefarious intent might be free to, for instance, plan and execute an attack.

Second, a system should recognize that some countries of origin produce a disproportionate number of those involved with terrorism globally. To that end, identifying a list of so-called safe countries, as this bill would allow, can also have a very positive second-order effect. It will allow for greater emphasis on applications from individuals coming from those countries with known human rights abuse issues, some of which are also more likely to produce a worryingly large number of the world's terrorists. That being said, this should also be balanced with the very critical appreciation that terrorists may also, at any time, arrive from countries that don't fit the traditional profile.

Finally, refugee processes should embrace newly developed advances in technology, as I discussed earlier, such as those that allow agencies to collect, access, and store biometric information safely. Relationships with other governments that also make use of such tools should be leveraged. Ties with countries with whom Canada has enjoyed long-standing information-sharing relationships should be enhanced, but new agreements should also be formalized where prudent.

Like the U.S., Canada has historically benefited from a great degree of security by virtue of the vast oceans to its east and west. But as threats to national security have evolved to encompass many for which these natural barriers are less effective, and as global population movements have become simpler, faster, and cheaper, information-sharing relationships with a wider variety of partners can be expected to pay major dividends.

With that, Mr. Chair, I will end my remarks.

Thank you again for the invitation to appear today. I look forward to answering any questions you may have.

[Michael Deakin-Macey, Past President, Board of Directors, Victoria Immigrant and Refugee Centre Society, As an Individual]

Thank you very much.

Good morning to all members of the committee and all those who are witness to these proceedings.

I recently travelled to Europe with my sweetheart and visited the grave of one of her relatives who died at Passchendaele in Belgium. It's very emotional seeing the name of a relative on a tombstone, especially when so far from home. There are many others there too, and many among them are Chinese workers brought in to dig graves for the fallen. They dug well into 1919 to bury the dead.

I start with this because Canada at that time did not treat the Chinese particularly well, especially by today's standards. Yet despite this, the Chinese are buried in the same graveyard. Despite all of the things that generation did wrong by today's standards, when the time came, they did the most honourable thing possible: they all rest together.

I see myself as a quiet Canadian. By that I mean I work to take care of my family, I volunteer in my community, and run my small business with hopes of employing more people in the future. My volunteer activities have caused me to be here before you today, because I'm the past president of the board of directors of the Victoria Immigrant and Refugee Centre Society in the city of Victoria, British Columbia.

It's a small organization of approximately 30 full-time staff with a budget of $2 million a year. I was a very involved president. I know business and learned the somewhat arcane business of the Canadian immigration and refugee system at the street level. It works despite itself. Our funding came from more than a dozen sources and it consumed 20% to 30% of the staff's time applying for and administering all of these programs. Simply put, it needs a bit of improving.

I've been following the debate in my current role as a quiet Canadian in a quiet city. Canada is a generous country to the point that some see us as simple and often take advantage. Simple is a country that takes care of everybody, regardless of whether or not they're Canadian.

The Canada Health Act of 1984 guarantees access to emergency health care regardless of nationality. We get many visitors who are sick and show up in Canadian emergency rooms. We treat them, no questions asked. Then we try to get compensated for what it costs us to treat them. Being generous is not inexpensive.

Which brings us to today and the question of refugees, at least that's the reason I was asked to come. The Sun Sea was brought into my home town of Victoria. The first thing that Canada did was to ensure that they were physically safe and then to get them any medical attention that they needed, as well as food, clothing, and a clean place to sleep. Yes, they were detained, but they were not denied entry. Our country took care of them.

As reported in The Toronto Star on August 21, 2010 by Petti Fong, three in five Canadians believe that the ship should have been turned back. Yet the government did the honourable thing despite public opinion at the time.

Bill C-31 is partly a debate about the detail of our refugee system, partly a response to the public's desire to stop large groups of illegal refugees from taking advantage of our generosity. The devil, as always, is in the details. Let us remember that nobody is attempting here, in my opinion, to stop refugees from coming to Canada. Proportionately we take more than most countries.

We want to stop the organized trafficking of refugees using Canada as a target of their activities because of our international reputation as a simple country. This uses scarce Canadian resources that are better utilized getting the horrendous backlog of legitimate immigration applicants—800,000 and counting I believe—processed, letting those poor, quiet people waiting patiently in other countries know whether the answer is yes or no to being allowed to come to Canada.

Like our forefathers who ensured that the Chinese labourers rested with the fallen Canadian soldiers, I want to ensure that we continue our national generosity of taking care of all refugees who come to our shores, while placing reasonable restrictions on how quickly they become Canadians based on their method of arrival. We owe it to all Canadians, past and present, to continue quietly building this simple country we call home.

Thank you.

[Christine Morrissey]

The expedited timeframe proposed under Bill C-31 will not give LGBT claimants a fair chance to obtain competent legal counsel and prepare themselves and their evidence. We are pleased that the government has heard the concerns we expressed that a screening interview at 15 days would be unfair, ineffective, and extremely costly. Returning to a written basis of claim prepared with legal counsel is a step in the right direction. However, with this responsibility returned to community groups and lawyers, it is only fair that we be given reasonable opportunity to do a decent job. Legal aid applications take time, and we work with language and cultural gaps, and extremely intimate and sensitive testimony.

How would you begin to talk with a relative stranger about being sexually assaulted by police officers at gunpoint, or having your family threaten to stone you if you don't agree to an arranged marriage? Under these circumstances, how would you collect the documents that prove your fear of persecution? Could you do so in 30 days? Could you do so if using e-mail or fax put you and your family at further risk?

We know people who have been sent back to harm because they were unable to say what they needed to say, or because documentation was impossible to obtain. We fear that the vast majority of LGBT claimants will be inadequately prepared for hearings, resulting in poor decisions and unfair rejections.

[Sharalyn Jordan]

We strenuously object to the provisions that detain without prompt and independent review, deny due process, and delay access to permanent residency. Recently we received a letter from a gay man in detention in the Lower Mainland. He was from a country that imprisons LGBT people. He was afraid to speak openly with his assigned duty counsel, and felt extremely unsafe around the other detainees. Under Bill C-31 he would have to stay closeted and vigilant in jail for 12 months. His chances for a fair hearing would be severely curtailed.

Detention punishes the 94% of refugees who are not security threats. Existing legislation provides for detention until identity and security can be identified.

[Christine Morrissey]

We have grave concerns about the injustice and harm caused to LGBT refugees designated as irregular arrivals under Bill C-31. Agents may be the only way LGBT asylum seekers can escape persecution, given that neighbouring countries are often unequally safe. In some regions of the world there is no safe haven for LGBT asylum seekers, so overseas refugee protection is not an option.

Consider the experience of one of our members, Adil, a gay man from an east African country that criminalizes homosexuality. If he fled to Kenya, a nearby country, he would face at least an eight-year wait for resettlement, while trying to survive in a country that has a 10-year prison sentence for homosexuality, and having to hide in camps or remain destitute in a city. UNHCR officials, typically locals, are not trusted and are often not trained in sexual orientation or gender identity decisions. We are working with overseas refugees from countries that publicly execute gay men. The UNHCR accepted that they were gay, and nonetheless denied their claims for protection.

Going back to Adil, an agent agreed to take him to Europe. Instead, Adil ended up in South America, where he was forced to work as a farm labourer. Over several months his work crew was moved north. They were eventually dropped off just over the Canadian border with $20 cash each. They went their separate ways. The mode of arrival says nothing about whether someone is a genuine refugee or not.

Adil found his way to a church, and the pastor helped him start a refugee claim. However, Adil was not able to disclose the reasons why he feared persecution. It was only after several meetings with his lawyer that he felt enough trust to say that he was gay.

[Christine Morrissey, Founder and Member of the Board, Rainbow Refugee Committee]

We strongly oppose giving the minister sole discretion to create a designated country list that denies access to appeal. A safe country list cannot accommodate the current state of complexity and flux in safety and protection for LGBT people. For example, Brazil holds the largest pride parade in the world with over three million people participating. It also has the highest rate of homophobic murders reported in the world. Is Brazil safe because the murders are reported, or unsafe because they happen in the first place and police are incapable of curbing them? Would you put Brazil on a designated country list?

South Africa recognizes same sex marriage, is democratic, has an independent judiciary, and civil society organizations. Based on Bill C-31, it could be placed on the designated country list. Yet there are 10 cases a week in which lesbians have been targeted for corrective rape, and the police have done nothing to investigate. Would you give a lesbian from South Africa an expedited hearing and no access to an appeal?

[Sharalyn Jordan]

Thank you.

On behalf of all my colleagues at the Rainbow Refugee Committee, I want to thank you for giving us the opportunity to share our point of view on Bill C-31.

Rainbow Refugee supports efforts to create a fair, efficient, effective, and affordable refugee system. We share goals of upholding the integrity of refugee determination. In 2010, we were grateful for the opportunity to discuss Bill C-11 with this standing committee and we took notice when parliamentarians worked together and listened to those of us who work closely with refugees to revise what is now the Balanced Refugee Reform Act.

Rainbow Refugee is disturbed to see that Bill C-31 resurrects measures that we identified as problematic, and includes new measures that disproportionately harm lesbian, gay, bi, trans, and queer refugees. These concerns are based on a decade of experience focused on this work.

Canada has been a global leader in refugee protection for those facing persecution due to sexual orientation or gender identity. We were the first country to recognize that transphobia and homophobia can result in persecution; 21 countries now do the same. This protection is vital in a world where 76 countries continue to criminalize lesbian, gay, bi, and trans people.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Ladies and gentlemen, we'll start. This is the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, meeting number 39, Thursday, May 2, 2012. As to the orders of the day, this meeting is televised pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 23, 2012, Bill C-31, An Act to Amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and other acts.

You will note that because we have three witnesses on this panel, this meeting will be one hour and 15 minutes.

We have Sharalyn Jordan, a member of the board of the Rainbow Refugee Committee, good afternoon, and we have Christine Morrissey, who is the founder and a member of the board. Hello, you've been here before for the backlog studies, and thank you for coming again.

We have Michael Deakin-Macey, who is the past president of the board of directors of the Victoria Immigrant and Refugee Centre Society, good afternoon. We put you off from this morning because we had to vote, and I thank you for coming around this afternoon.

We have from London, England, by video conference, John Amble.

You gave evidence on our security study. So thank you, sir, for coming and helping us with this particular bill.

Each group will have up to 10 minutes to make a presentation. We will start with Ms. Jordan or Ms. Morrissey or both.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all of our witnesses for appearing before us today. This is indeed a good exercise in democracy. We welcome your comments and input as we are studying Bill C-31.

I'd like to make a few quick points if I may, and elaborate in the short time that I do have about the bill and about Canada and what Canadians expect of good government when it relates specifically to the issue of immigration and refugees. As Canadians, we take great pride in the generosity and compassion of our immigration and refugee programs. But Canadians have no tolerance for those who abuse our generosity and take unfair advantage of our country. I'll allude to some examples of that.

Canada remains one of the top countries in the world welcoming refugees. In fact, we welcome more refugees per capita than any other G-20 country. Canada welcomes one in ten of the world's resettled refugees. That is more per capita than almost any other country on the planet. In fact, our Conservative government has increased a number of refugees resettling each year by 2,500 people.

Bill C-31 proposes changes that build on reforms to the asylum system passed in June of 2010 as part of the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, as you may know. The proposed measures in this new bill will provide faster protection to those people to whom I believe you're all referring, those who genuinely need refuge, and faster removal of those who do not.

I want to speak a little bit about the processing times. With the measures in Bill C-31, the time to finalize a refugee claim would drop from the current average of 1,038 days to 45 days for claimants from designated countries and 216 days for all other claimants. Surely for someone who is fleeing persecution in their country or torture or possible death, to be in limbo in a system for 1,038 days is traumatic.

If we can get those folks processed faster into Canada and reduce that period to as short as 45 days, or an average of 216 days for those who are not coming from designated countries, that will speak to compassion, to faster family reunification, and to the humane aspect that we all want to see in dealing with people who really need our help and support.

As a government, we have a responsibility to ensure the safety and security of Canadians. I don't think anybody in this country would want to permit anyone into their neighbourhood without knowing who they are, without somebody knowing their identity. That's important. As we heard in earlier testimony, and some of you alluded to hearing the testimony this morning or perhaps on other days, it is incumbent on us to identify people before we allow them into our country.

I'm going to use two, what I believe to be, fine examples of what can happen if we do not exercise that responsibility. The Sun Sea and Ocean Lady arguably carried many people who were fleeing persecution in their country and who needed our support and help. On the Sun Sea, four people were found to be a security risk and one was found to have perpetrated war crimes. Five people were denied entry. From the people on the Ocean Lady, 19 were deemed to be a security risk and 17 were found to have perpetrated war crimes. This was a total of 41 people. Had they not been detained, had we not taken the time to identify them, to ensure the legitimacy of their claims plus who they were, we would have permitted 41 people into our neighbourhoods around our families, around our children, around parents.

[Lesley Stalker, Member-at-large, Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers]

Good morning, members of the committee.

My remarks today stem from a basic premise, which is that everyone in this room is committed to the protection of people who are at risk of persecution in their countries of origin, and that no one in this room would applaud or welcome the refoulement, or return, of persons to a place where their lives or liberty would be at risk.

This has to be our touchstone. As we go through the bill, we have to ask ourselves whether the provisions of the bill impede or enhance our ability to identify those who are in need of protection.

I would like to share my concerns about two groups of claimants who are, in my experience, likely to fall through the cracks and face refoulement under the ultra-fast timelines of Bill C-31, regardless of our good intentions.

The first group includes those who are traumatized because of past persecution.

There's an inherent conundrum in our refugee system, and it's this: The people who have been severely persecuted in the past and are most in need of protection are often the least able to tell their stories. There has been extensive scientific research into this. Many people think that the first story a claimant tells is likely to be the truth, so it's important to get the account before the claimant has a chance to colour his or her story. But in fact, it typically takes a great deal of time to get a coherent and accurate account. There are a number of reasons for this, but for reasons of time, I won't go through them. I'd happy to answer questions later, if you would like elaboration on the scientific reasons trauma impedes the ability to share a story.

The problem, for practical purposes, is that the more severely traumatized an individual, the greater the likelihood that he or she will be found lacking in credibility. The person's account is likely to be found incoherent, inconsistent, vague, or contradictory. So the claimant is likely to be dismissed as lacking in credibility.

The only way to counter this is to educe medical, psychological, or psychiatric reports that corroborate the physical and mental scars of trauma. And this takes time. It takes time, because claimants who are traumatized often will shut down their experiences. They don't want to talk about them; it's their way of coping. The accelerated timelines under Bill C-31 will impede our ability to identify those who have suffered persecution.

The second group I am concerned about are those who are in detention. As you've heard this morning, detention in all centres outside Toronto and Montreal is in correctional facilities. Correctional facilities are designed to manage people who have been convicted of or charged with criminal offences. These are typically people who are quite difficult to manage. Moreover, correctional facilities impose quite severe restrictions on the ability of people inside the facility to communicate with the outside world. These restrictions apply to refugee claimants. There are severe restrictions on incoming calls. There are severe restrictions on outgoing calls. There is no access to Internet. There is no access to email. As a result, claimants have a great deal of difficulty obtaining identity documents or other evidence germane to their claims, such as complaints they may have filed with the police in their countries of origin, medical reports from hospitals, and so forth.

They also have—

[Marian Shermarke, Clinical Advisor, Centre de santé et de services sociaux de la Montagne]

Mr. Chairman, I join Mr. Sougavinski in thanking you for the opportunity to come before you and to share with you our concerns with regard to Bill C-31.

The idea behind Bill C-31 is to reduce the activities of smugglers and criminals by punishing asylum seekers who come to Canada through underground channels. We feel that this bill is an academic exercise because it will not put a stop to claims by individuals who turn to smugglers to bring them to Canada, so that they can seek asylum for their protection. That academic exercise will, on the contrary, put asylum seekers' lives at greater risk. Those who do arrive may be in bad shape.

I want to share the story of two young Chinese nationals who left China for Hong Kong with a smuggler. From there, they fell into the clutches of other smugglers who took them to Thailand. Then, they left for France and, from there, to South Africa. From South Africa, they went to Brazil, in order to finally join their father in Canada, a father who was an asylum seeker, an accepted refugee. Those young people were abused on their way here. They lived in terrible conditions and were assigned to hard labour. They were in the clutches of smugglers for much longer than expected.

So we have to be careful about what we wish for.

I am now getting to my comments on the time frames provided for hearings. We think that the time frames for meeting hearing requirements are too short. Those time frames do not take into consideration the reality of asylum seekers. By not taking into account the context within which asylum seekers arrive, Bill C-31 sets them up for failure at their hearing.

The reality of asylum seekers is that, within those very short time frames, they must also get their bearings in a society whose language they do not speak. They have to find housing. They also have to initiate the immigration claim procedure and find a lawyer.

Regarding the medical aspect, it is important to understand that those people have been damaged by many traumatic experiences in their country of origin and also by what they have suffered since their departure. During that period—which is part uprooting and part quest for safety—asylum seekers, although traumatized and vulnerable, focus all their efforts on maintaining their physical and mental integrity so that they can reach their final destination.

That concerted psychological effort is often a last-ditch attempt that the country of refuge must match by providing the best possible reception and integration. If the host society fails to fully provide the required protection, the asylum seekers' mental and physical integrity will once again be compromised. That is another possible source of trauma, which makes those individuals even more vulnerable.

[Chantal Tie]

What does fiscal responsibility have to do with Bill C-31? We believe fiscal responsibility is about spending taxpayers' dollars wisely. The CCR is committed to an affordable refugee protection system. When money is wasted, it is not available to fund the important task of providing protection. Right now, we understand from Mr. Dykstra that only one percent of refugee claimants actually need to be detained.

Our current system is doing an individualized risk assessment, which works well to protect our society and ensure the integrity of the immigration system. The figure we used was 6%, from CBSA data, which means that 94% of refugee claimants on average do not need to be detained. If this bill passes, we will be detaining 100% of designated arrivals for a year. The math is simple. Ninety-four percent of the people we will be detaining will not need to be detained, if past experience serves us well.

There is no reason to believe that a smuggled refugee claimant is not a genuine refugee. A refugee's mode of arrival tells us nothing about the genuineness of the claim. The UNHCR has repeatedly pointed out that many genuine refugees arrive irregularly and without papers. The reason is obvious: If you're being persecuted by your government, it is hardly likely to give you travel documents or an exit visa to facilitate a visa application to Canada.

The cost of detaining the 94% of claimants who do not need to be detained for that year is huge, if we use the CBSA's figures of $200 a day or $73,000 a year. But if refugee claimants were given work permits and were able to maintain employment and become taxpayers, the cost differential would be enormous.

There's now compelling evidence of the devastating impact of the cost of mandatory detention in Australia. The figures are all in our brief. Look at them. Let's learn from the Australian experiment instead of repeating its mistakes.

And remember, none of these cost estimates take account of the enormous human cost of detention, the impact on the physical and mental health of the detainees, which is severe. Neither do they take into account the future cost of managing these impacts once the refugees are accepted and join our communities as permanent residents. These include documented incidents of—

[Loly Rico, Vice-President, Canadian Council for Refugees]

Good morning. I came to Canada 22 years ago as a refugee with my husband and two children. At that time I was five months' pregnant. I am bringing to you my story to explain how important it is to withdraw Bill C-31.

When I arrived, I was protected by Canada, and my children were able to grow up with their father at their side. In my country, my husband was almost killed and he was jailed and tortured. In gratitude for our protection and the treatment we received, we founded a refugee house where we welcome women and children who are fleeing gender persecution.

If we had arrived in Canada after June 29 of this year and this bill was law by then and we were designated on arrival, we would have been be detained, my children and I would have been separated from my husband, my children would have been given to a foster home or stayed in jail with me, and I would have given birth in jail.

At the immigration holding centre in Toronto, there are no facilities to keep families together. Women are in one wing with their children, and men are in another wing. They are only allowed to meet for 45 minutes in the morning and 45 minutes in the afternoon. Imagine yourself in that situation, only being able to see your family for a short time every day, only being able to carry your newborn baby for a short time every day. This is an outright violation of Canadian values.

What I'm trying to say is that we need to focus on the Canadian values of keeping families protected and together. Bill C-31 is a violation of these values.

Another way we will be keeping families separated is through the five-year waiting period before applications for permanent residency will be allowed by designated arrivals.

Most of the women who come to our centre have left behind young children. In the current process it takes them roughly six years to reunify with their children because of the delays, especially if visas have to be processed through the Nairobi office. With the five-year waiting period, they will be separated from their children for 11 to 12 years. This could mean half of a child's life. This will have a strong emotional and social impact, because these children will need to have specific programs and support to be appropriately reunited with their mothers and fathers and vice versa. We are seeing the social impact on the families that are reunified after eight to ten years.

Refugees feel tremendous guilt at having been safe here while their children and spouses were left behind in precarious situations. Families need to go through a process of recognition where children need to be reacquainted with their mothers and the mothers recognize and accept that their children are no longer their babies, but adolescents. Families need help to make this adjustment, which sometimes is impossible. Often they need counselling to adapt.

The CCR asks: How is deliberately separating refugees from their families compatible with family values?

[Chantal Tie]

The Canadian Council for Refugees believes in a refugee system that's fair, independent, and affordable and one that honours our legal obligations under the charter and the UN convention. We have joined with Amnesty International, CARL, and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association in calling for the withdrawal of this bill. Our briefs detail the myriad ways in which Bill C-31 is unconstitutional, undermines our humanitarian traditions, and violates our international obligations. We care deeply about all of these issues, but today we'll be speaking only about detention and processing times, from a family values and fiscal responsibility perspective. We're asking that those of you with the power to withdraw this bill ask yourselves: is Bill C-31 compatible with these values?

What does family values have to do with C-31? If family values means anything at all, it has to mean protecting and preserving the family and caring for children. It means that we don't deliberately do things that we know will harm families and children physically, socially, or emotionally. Two of the ways this bill harms families and children is by detaining designated arrivals on a mandatory, unreviewable basis, and by delaying permanent residence for five years, thereby preventing family reunification. The CCR has asked, how is detaining designated arrivals in jails or detention facilities compatible with protecting children and families? How can you justify placing children in the care of Children's Aid or in jail because you insist on imprisoning their parents?

I say “jail”, because in Ottawa, where I practise immigration and refugee law, people are detained at the detention centre on Innes Road, along with common criminals. They are subjected to locked cells, mandatory searches, sometimes strip searches, severe restrictions on visitations, and mobility restrictions. Men and women are housed separately, with few opportunities to socialize and communicate. If they have mental health issues, they are placed in maximum-security segregated detention.

[Prof. Delphine Nakache]

First of all, I fully agree with you, and I'm sorry if I was misinterpreted on that fact.

Once again, international law does not forbid immigration detention per se, but it states, among other things, that immigration detention has to be done on a case-by-case basis. Mandatory detention per se is unconstitutional and illegal to me, according to international law. I certainly see where you are coming from and I support this view too.

I would be more than happy to provide the committee with some reports that have been written specifically on alternatives to detention. I think these are very good reports that could certainly provide you with an insight on what the possibilities are here, and there are concrete possibilities.

In relation to other aspects of C-31, I think that many of them are problematic. The one that you mentioned, the fact that we can send someone back if the situation has changed in their country of origin, needs to be considered with caution. Why is that? Because if people in the country of destination here in Canada have—I will say that in French—

They have taken root and have really developed considerable ties to the country of destination. In that case, I see it as very problematic—if only from a human standpoint—to send those people back to their country of origin.

Bill C-31 contains many provisions I consider to be problematic. Those provisions violate the fundamental principles of refugee law.

I prefer to let other people testify and talk at more length about those very important issues, as you said.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Chair, I have five minutes and I do want to try to get across a couple of points.

First and foremost, I think it's very important that we emphasize that mandatory detention is indeed, from my and the Liberal Party's perspective, unconstitutional and will be challenged.

Not only does Bill C-31 raise concerns regarding challenges to our Constitution, I would ultimately argue that it also tarnishes Canada's reputation to be a world leader in dealing with refugees and whole issue of refugees more broadly, where we have 10 million plus people around the world who are in need of some sort of asylum or are in refugee camps and so forth. Our potential to be able to influence that is being tarnished by Bill C-31.

I want to go to the Sun Sea and the Ocean Lady. The Sun Sea carried 492 people and the Ocean Lady 76 people. There are six people who are still in detention. The current system allows us to keep in custody those individuals who are a high risk to Canadian society. They remain in detention. That's an important point that needs to be made.

Ms. Nakache, you made reference to detention. I appreciate your words and that they are based on finances and the fact that it violates the Constitution. Those are excellent points that I concur with wholeheartedly.

The question I have for you is this. There are other aspects to Bill C-31, such that if you are deemed a refugee and your circumstances change abroad, you could lose your status as a refugee or your ability to sponsor a family member, even if you have been deemed to be a refugee for years.

I'm wondering if you can provide a quick comment on that.

[Prof. Delphine Nakache]

I have many documents with me today, but not the one from the Auditor General's report. What I remember is that the overall costs of detention in a correctional facility derive from an agreement between CBSA and the provinces, with CBSA paying the provinces to keep those immigration detainees in detention. As for the overall costs, unfortunately, we really need more statistics on that. We need more readily available statistics available for anyone.

I remember asking them for that information for my report, but they said they couldn't provide me with that type of information. But in that report, for the years 2005 to 2007, the overall costs of detention in correctional facilities were higher. They were higher knowing that more than one third of immigration detainees are in correctional facilities. Actually, the cost is really much higher in correctional facilities than in detention facilities.

I would like to state one further point. I oppose Bill C-31 and came here because I really wanted to give you a specific illustration of a specific problem. I do believe that detention is not an effective deterrent against irregular immigration. I do believe that there are other ways to address your problems and issues around irregular immigration. As you said, it is also true that there are problems relating to detention in immigration facilities, but this increase in detention in correctional facilities is problematic and should really be looked at closely before we go further with the implementation of the bill.

[Prof. Delphine Nakache]

Perfect.

This report shows that CBSA payments for provincial prisons exceed CBSA-run detention facility costs. So contracting with provincial facilities in several parts of Canada represents a huge cost to taxpayers.

Therefore, before measures are implemented for detaining more asylum seekers for a longer period of time, it is important to first address the real issues surrounding the detention conditions of asylum seekers in provincial correctional establishments.

Some steps toward greater involvement by the federal government have already been taken. However, it is essential to go further to solve these problems before those problems get exacerbated if Bill C-31 is implemented.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Good morning, everyone. This is the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, meeting number 38, Thursday, May 3, 2012. The orders of the day are pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 23, 2012, Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and other acts.

We have two witnesses today, Delphine Nakache, a professor with the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Ottawa, and James Bissett.

You have been here many times, sir. Good morning to you.

You each have up to 10 minutes to speak to us.

We will start with you, Ms. Nakache. Thank you for coming.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Actually, the purpose of detention is to ensure that before individuals go into Canadian society we have an understanding of who they are and whether they are qualified refugees or in fact they are not refugees. As we found with the Sun Sea and the Ocean Lady, people aboard those ships were actually war criminals or terrorists.

Part of it, from our perspective, is the importance of identifying individuals who are claiming refugee status and understanding who those individuals are and what their past is all about. It's an issue of safety.

Let me be clear. In the last decade this has made up less than 0.5% of what our refugee system is all about. When we talk about a refugee system overall—you pointed it out, and I'm proud to hear that even as far away as Australia, Canada is considered to have one of the best refugee and immigration systems in the world—it doesn't mean that we are fixed or we shouldn't be improving it.

Part of the problem is that less than 40% of those who apply for refugee status actually achieve that refugee status in the country. The system itself is so broken that it takes upwards of two and a half years on average to get an initial response to a refugee claim.

We have individuals who lose their refugee cases after three or four sets of appeals. They've spent seven or eight years in this country. They get married here, have children, purchase homes, have jobs, and they're forced to go back to their country because they've failed to qualify as a refugee. Our system is such that we need to fix it.

We just had a witness from the embassy who acknowledged that Hungarians in the thousands were coming to Canada because it was an easy system to take advantage of. The list of what is required to be humanitarian doesn't include that we're easy to take advantage of, that the rest of the world sees us as easy pickings.

Under C-11, which you'll hear some of the opposition members indicate is being replaced by C-31...but clearly 70% to 85% of C-31 is actually what C-11 manufactured. Within C-11 is an additional 2,500 refugees who are coming to this country, of which 2,000 are privately sponsored and 500 are government sponsored. That puts us in the top two or three per capita in the world.

Our system needs to be fixed. It needs to be set in order; it hasn't been in many years, almost decades. But at the same time we still want to maintain—and I hope you understand this government's intention as far away as Australia—the integrity of that system and in fact ensure that it remains one of the best systems in the world.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Ms. Crock, you've continued to comment about the purpose of detention as being some sort of a deterrent, that you feel that's the reason we're doing this. Where did you come up with that idea?

Who told you that the reason the government is moving with respect to C-31...that the purpose of detention has something to do with deterrence? The bill doesn't say that. The government hasn't said that. Who has told you that?

[Prof. Mary Crock]

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you.

I have spent some time in Canada. In fact, I was in Canada during the period of September 11, 2001, when Australia took the opportunity to change its laws quite dramatically so as to become much more punitive towards people arriving by boat.

I would like to address, in particular, in my opening remarks, the changes proposed in Bill C-31, which involve the treatment of irregular arrivals through the introduction of mandatory detention of one year and the introduction of temporary protection visas.

It is our view that the amendments place Canada at risk of breaching obligations it has assumed under international law. I see that you have already had a number of people address you on this issue.

I would also, however, like to talk to you about Australia's experience and the extent to which the laws you are now envisaging for Canada have had very detrimental effects in Australia. I will leave my Canadian colleagues to spell out how I think the proposed laws would be in breach of Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

I'm sure you've had many people expressing their disappointment that Canada appears now to be engaging in something of a race to the bottom in terms of its standing as a humanitarian country. Not only, I think, is it abandoning ostentatiously the role it has played in modelling international legal best practice in human rights, but it appears to me to be going out of its way to cherry-pick all the elements of regressive bad practice that have been devised by its two main comparative countries, Australia and the United States.

The sadness for me, I think, is that in doing this, Canada is setting itself on a slippery slope from which it will be very difficult to return. This has been Australia's experience. Put simply, in practical terms, I do not think the measures you are proposing to introduce will act as effective deterrents to irregular migrants. They are likely to have huge financial, and more importantly huge social, costs.

I do acknowledge, however, that the measures you are looking to introduce are powerful electoral tools. They work, in fact, to foment and focus unease with persons of visible difference in society. For this reason, in societies like ours that are heavily multicultural, they can be socially very damaging. In this respect, in fact, the laws represent some of the most cynical initiatives governments can take to play to what we might call the redneck elements of society.

Our former Prime Minister, Paul Keating, in fact, referred to Australia's version of these laws as “lifting the rock”. He could have added, “stirring the scorpions”, un véritable noeud de vipères.

If I may, I'll just briefly talk to the two measures we want to focus on. First is the introduction of one-year mandatory detention. Australia's mandatory detention laws, you may be interested to know, began as laws that, in fact, mandated detention for nine months. In fact, they specified 273 days and were put in place for a group of about 400 asylum seekers from Cambodia, who were also, interestingly, styled “designated persons”. I should tell you that they in fact remained in detention for four years before they were ultimately sent back to Cambodia and then brought back to Australia, where they were all given permanent residence.

I think the changes you are proposing are of quite critical significance, because as I say, they are, for me, the thin edge of the wedge that is likely to see Canada introduce increasingly draconian legislation that will be increasingly abusive of human rights. I share the previous interlocutors' concerns about the terms of the legislation and the fact that the mere suspicion of a person's status as an irregular arrival would be enough to mandate detention.

I'm less concerned about release after somebody has been recognized as a refugee. My concern is that once you introduce mandatory detention, the prospect of processing times stretching out actually increases; it doesn't diminish.

One of my concerns about the legislation and about giving the power to an official to mandatorily detain somebody is the removal of judicial oversight of that process—the fact that somebody must be detained for one year and that judicial oversight will only occur every six months.

When we did this in Australia, we used very similar language. In fact, there appears to be quite a degree of legal borrowing happening in this space. One of the effects of this was that we ultimately saw a great number of legal permanent residents, and indeed even a citizen, being arrested and removed from the country without the oversight of the judiciary because our laws talked about mandatory detention. In fact, our laws talked about the “reasonable grounds to believe”, but even so, without judicial oversight of the process, people were wrongfully detained.

We are able to supply for you the financial costs that mandatory detention has brought for Australia. Over the years, the cost has grown exponentially. In the 2011-12 budget, we spent more than $700 million running our detention centres offshore, and our detention centres onshore cost us nearly $100 million. These are not small amounts of money, and they have grown exponentially over the years. You will find yourself spending huge amounts on building more and more detention centres as these come. The amounts we have paid out to people who were wrongfully detained because of the laws we put in place.... A report in recent years in 2011 suggested that the Australian government has paid out more than $16 million in compensation to asylum seekers and detainees who were wrongfully detained.

I would also invite you, however, to have a look at the social cost of these measures. We have found in Australia that mandatory detention has never deterred a single asylum seeker. Unfortunately, countries like ours tend to attract genuine asylum seekers. I know that there is also a concern with people who are not launching genuine claims, but in fact in world terms, our countries attract people who have genuine refugee claims. The result is that when you introduce punitive laws like these, they can affect the whole fabric of society.

I will just say in closing that the measures to introduce temporary protection visas are also extremely regressive. In Australia, not only did they not deter anybody; they in fact changed the composition of the asylum-seeker population coming to Australia, because instead of being able to bring families in using legal methods, people were forced to use irregular migration to get their families to join them. For that reason, we saw within a very short space of time an enormous increase in the number of unaccompanied children and women who were coming out as irregular maritime arrivals.

These are very complex matters. We live in western democracies that are attractive to people who have been persecuted around the world. We also live in democracies that have been built on systems of justice and equality that should be the envy of those of us who are citizens of this society. To introduce laws that threaten that fabric, that encourage these events is very regressive.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Okay. Thank you very much.

The other question I have is this. We've talked a fair bit here earlier today about the psychological trauma of detention, both for adults and children, especially for refugees who come here from, I would say, not very stable environments. Perhaps both of you could comment on the legal elements of, let's say, forced detention.

When you read our bill the way it is written, Bill C-31, it actually does say that you can be kept in detention for up to a year. Nowhere is it explicit in there that once you've been designated a refugee, you're going to be released. We will be looking at some amendments in that area, obviously. Could you comment, not on the personal toll it takes psychologically, but on some of the legal challenges?

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you.

I'd actually like to make reference to Bill C-31, because in actuality, once we determine that they are legitimate refugees, they will be released from detention.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

In order for Canada to really be able to contribute to that immense problem of displacement, we need to be able to influence the world. The world does look at Canada and the policies. I think this is where Bill C-31 likely causes the most damage to our reputation and to our ability to contribute to that 10 million. Is that a fair assessment, Mr. Milner?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Chair, I'd like to continue with the whole idea of moral authority. I think one of the discussions that has actually been lost in this whole debate on Bill C-31 is that if we take a look at the bigger picture, we have over 10 million refugees throughout the world.

[Prof. James Milner]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am very grateful for the committee's invitation and for this opportunity to appear before you today.

While Bill C-31 would affect Canada's domestic refugee system, my presentation today considers the implications of Bill C-31 for Canada's international refugee policy.

The current strategic outcomes and program activity architecture for Citizenship and Immigration Canada specifies that CIC, along with its partners within the Canadian government, aims to influence the international refugee policy agenda by participating in a range of multilateral, regional, and bilateral forums. In fact, CIC, working with CIDA and DFAIT, has had considerable success in pursuing this objective and especially in demonstrating international leadership and influencing the international approach to the issue of protracted refugee situations, which is a topic I will speak about in just a moment.

My concern with Bill C-31 is that it contains three elements that would likely undermine Canada's ability to pursue this objective, as they could have a negative effect on Canada's ability to influence its position within the global refugee regime. These three elements are ministerial authority and the designation of safe countries of origin, the use of detention in response to irregular arrivals, and provisions for the revocation of permanent residence status, especially for refugees who have been resettled to Canada.

My commentary on Bill C-31 today is informed by the findings of a research project I have co-directed at the University of Oxford for more than 10 years. The project has examined the politics of the global refugee regime and how certain states, like Canada, are able to promote an agenda that is focused on solutions for refugees. This research has found that Canada has been quite successful in influencing refugee policy at both an international and a regional level. I would be happy to provide some examples of these successes in the question time. I won't get into them now, in the interest of time.

Our research has indicated that Canada's ability to play this leadership role is primarily a result of its moral authority, its demonstrated commitment to multilateral cooperation, and the reputation it has for a fair and impartial domestic asylum process. In contrast, we have found that countries that adopt restrictive legislation, especially legislation that includes provisions for mandatory detention and measures explicitly intended to deter the arrival of asylum seekers, lose their ability to influence the global refugee regime, especially when it comes to negotiating with refugee-hosting states in the global south.

In the interest of time, I would like to provide some background on the global context before I focus my comments on these three elements of concern and suggest amendments for the committee's consideration.

The past 20 years have witnessed an important shift in the global refugee system. One of the manifestations of this shift is the rise in so-called protracted refugee situations. These are situations were refugees spend a minimum of five years in exile without a durable solution to their plight. Some two-thirds of refugees in the world today—that's 7.2 million refugees—are in a situation of prolonged exile, and 80% of these refugees remain in their region of origin. In fact, some of the largest refugee hosting states in the world today are countries such as Pakistan and Kenya. These are countries that face many of their own challenges with stability and development.

Many of these hosting countries respond to the mass arrival and prolonged presence of refugees by requiring refugees to remain in refugee camps. These camps are frequently very isolated and very insecure places, where refugees do not enjoy the freedoms and rights afforded to them under the 1951 convention, such as freedom of movement and the right to seek employment.

While the precarious condition of refugees in these camps is problematic, perhaps more alarming is our demonstrated inability to find solutions to protracted refugee situations. In 1993 it took an average of nine years to resolve a refugee situation. Today it takes closer to 20 years to resolve a refugee situation.

Canada has identified the resolution of protracted refugee situations as an international priority. Through its statements to the UNHCR's executive committee and to the UN General Assembly, Canada has called for international action to address these situations and make solutions for refugees more predictable. This priority has been echoed in CIC's own strategic outcomes and program activity architecture, specifically, strategic outcome 2, program activity 4.

Canada has primarily used mechanisms to advance this priority of helping to resolve refugee situations.

The first is refugee resettlement. The government should be congratulated for announcing that Canada will resettle as many as 14,500 refugees a year. This would confirm Canada as the second largest refugee resettlement country in the world.

It would, however, be problematic to conclude that protracted refugee situations can be resolved through resettlement alone. The current global total of resettlement opportunities is about 80,000 opportunities a year. With 7.2 million refugees eligible for resettlement, it would take 98 years to resolve protracted refugee situations through resettlement alone. This is why Canada uses diplomatic engagement in combination with resettlement to play a leading role in resolving protracted refugee situations.

Based on Canada's moral authority in the global refugee regime, it has been able to lead negotiations internationally and at a regional level to move protracted refugee situations towards their resolution through a combination of resettlement, repatriation, and local integration. I would argue that this is a very cost-effective way to strengthen the global institution of asylum and to seek solutions for specific refugee situations.

As I have mentioned, Canada has been able to play this role because it has moral authority in the global refugee regime. It has a demonstrated commitment to multilateral cooperation, and it has a reputation for a fair and impartial domestic asylum process. In stark contrast, other states in the industrialized global north, especially some European states and Australia, have been seen to lose influence and moral authority in the global refugee regime as a result of the adoption of more restrictive asylum policies at home. Again, in the interests of time, I won't go into these examples of how this happens, but I'd be happy to talk about that during the question time.

Given the importance of Canada's moral authority in pursuing its interests within the global refugee regime, and given the role that changes in domestic policy and practice have had on the moral authority of other states within the regime, I submit that it is important to consider the international implications of Bill C-31. There are three elements of Bill C-31 that would likely undermine Canada's moral authority within the global refugee regime.

My first concern relates to ministerial authority and the designation of safe countries of origin. Negotiations with host states in the global south on refugee policy frequently include considerations of the importance of depoliticizing refugee issues and the value of transparent and bureaucratic decision-making mechanisms when responding to the arrival of asylum seekers, either through individual or mass arrivals. Canada's ability to make this argument with host states in the global south would be undermined by the provisions of the bill that give the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration discretionary power to designate certain countries of origin as safe.

I therefore recommend that the bill be amended to mandate an independent advisory panel of experts the task of compiling and maintaining this list of safe countries of origin.

My second concern relates to the use of detention in response to irregular arrivals and designated foreign nationals. The use of mandatory detention as a deterrent against the arrival of future asylum seekers has not only been demonstrated to be ineffective and extraordinarily expensive, especially in the case of Australia, this provision has been a central feature of the restrictive asylum policies in the global north that states in the global south have identified as a justification for limiting the range of rights they afford to asylum seekers and refugees on their territory. Canada's ability to encourage host states in the global south to move away from the encampment of asylum seekers and refugees and the provision of greater freedom of movement would be undermined by the detention provisions detailed in the bill.

I would therefore recommend that Bill C-31 should be amended to remove reference to the mandatory detention of irregular arrivals and designated foreign nations.

My third and final concern, and I'm moving to my conclusion here, relates to the provision of the revocation of permanent resident status. A central priority for Canada's engagement with the global refugee regime has been to encourage every opportunity for refugees to secure a permanent and durable solution to their plight. Canada's ability to make this argument internationally would be significantly limited if Bill C-31 contained provisions through which refugees who have been resettled to Canada and granted permanent residence could have this legal status revoked, except in cases where it is demonstrated that the application for resettlement was obtained through a fraudulent claim, and here I would refer to Professor Audrey Macklin's testimony earlier on, vacation versus cessation—

[Andrew Brouwer]

Thank you you for that question.

We have a range of concerns relating to the designation of countries of safety. It's our first position that it's never appropriate to designate a particular country as safe. Refugees may come from any country in the world, and the reality is that conditions change quickly in countries around the world, so a country that was safe may overnight become very unsafe. The result of the designation is that those people will be denied access to the kinds of protection that Canada should be providing.

In terms of some of the changes that have been proposed in Bill C-31, even as compared to Bill C-11 the last time around...at least the last time around there was to be an advisory committee that included outside advice on which countries were or weren't safe and should or shouldn't be designated. The minister has taken out any access for external advice and turned it into a completely insulated government decision, and we have huge concerns about that.

Beyond that, UNHCR has commented about the designation of countries. My understanding about their position is that they have said that in certain circumstances it may not be inappropriate to accelerate claims from some countries, but even the UNHCR has consistently said that an appeal has to be there even if you're going to designate a country. Bill C-31 takes that appeal away, and, as I mentioned earlier, not only does it take that appeal away, but there is also no real access to Federal Court for people from designated countries.

We're also concerned about the changes at the IRB, about the fact that decision-makers at the Refugee Protection Division now will be civil servants, not people who are put there for a fixed term with some degree of independence. They are now going to be the only people hearing claims from people from countries that their boss has designated as safe. We have concerns about how that is going to be impacting their ability to make impartial decisions on refugee claims before them.

[Carole Dahan]

On detention, Mr. Opitz said this morning that we detain people until their identity is established. That is true today. That is true of the present system. Under Bill C-31, if the group is designated, then they would not be released, even after their identity is established. That is a very significant change.

One of the recommendations would be to eliminate, for designated groups, the one-year bar to having a detention review, and to preserve the opportunity to go before an adjudicator, a member of the immigration division, every 30 days.

We are concerned about identity and about security of Canadians, but once those thresholds have been met, then prospective immigrants should be given the opportunity to present themselves before the ID and have an opportunity to be released. So that would be another change.

[Carole Dahan]

I think we'll split the time because we have different recommendations.

In respect of the basis of claim form, I think the 15 days are untenable and unworkable. The same 15 days are also untenable and unworkable for the RAD.

Right now in the Federal Court we have 15 days to file the notice and then a further 30 days to perfect our record. Now we're going to be asked to do basically the same thing, which is obtain the CD of the hearing, somehow transcribe it, identify the errors, meet with the clients, and then prepare a record identifying the errors for the Refugee Appeal Division. All of that we're going to have to do within 15 days—on top of getting legal aid, having legal aid do a merit screening, and finding counsel. It's simply untenable. It's unworkable. As it stands today, it's simply window dressing. I don't think it's going to help refugees in any substantive way.

Looking at recommendations, one of the basic recommendations would be to extend the time. The Federal Court gives us 45 days to perfect the record. I think that's a reasonable amount of time. In respect of the hearing dates themselves, 30 days and 60 days, that's simply not enough time.

Mr. Goldman alluded to it in his testimony today. There was a time when the board was able to hold hearings within four to six months on a routine basis. It was only after the backlog that it went up to an average of 21 months. Our office routinely got called to schedule hearing dates within that timeframe, so we know it's doable. We know it can be done, and we know a fair and reliable system is achievable. It is an achievable goal. I don't think Bill C-31 gets us any further.

[Andrew Brouwer]

Very practically speaking, we regularly see errors made by the refugee board, problems in representation by previous counsel or by consultants. When they come to us, people are at the very end of the line. They're detained and they're about to be removed, and it's the first time they're getting a lawyer to look over their case and determine that they're actually at risk.

The system we have right now allows at least some access to the Federal Court in certain circumstances, access to a pre-removal risk assessment to raise new evidence, and that's all. That's all we have right now. We also have, in certain circumstances, a humanitarian and compassionate remedy, although that's something that only works in a few kinds of cases, for example, when the best interests of the child are at stake.

Under Bill C-31, none of that is there. So by the time these people come to us, under Bill C-31, there will be little or nothing we can do for them, despite the fact that the evidence demonstrates that they're at risk when they go back.

[Andrew Brouwer]

Okay.

We can't afford to make mistakes. When it comes to refugee status determination, we have to make sure that we have at least one solid mechanism to make sure there's a remedy for that mistake. Bill C-31, as it stands, does not provide that for many categories of refugees.

Thank you very much.

[Andrew Brouwer]

Thank you.

A mistake in the refugee determination system can cost a life or expose a fellow human being to torture, persecution, arbitrary detention, or even death, hence the absolute necessity of an effective safety net. Under Bill C-31, some refugees will have a safety net by way of an appeal to the Refugee Appeal Division and an administrative stay while they seek leave for judicial review in the Federal Court. But some won't.

While there are clearly issues with how the RAD will work and the impact of unworkable time lines combined with increased detention, the fact that there is at least a mechanism for an appeal is absolutely central, and it's what we need in Canada under the obligations we have under international law and the charter.

An effective appeal on the merits of the claim is a fundamental requirement under international law. It's something that's been recommended repeatedly by UNHCR, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and many others. Bill C-31, while it maintains the RAD, will, however, deprive some groups of refugees of access to the RAD, namely nationals of countries that have been designated as safe by the minister, anyone the minister has designated as an irregular arrival, people who are admitted to Canada under an exception to the safe third country agreement, and those whose claims have been designated as manifestly unfounded by the refugee board. Not only that, but these same refugee claimants will be denied real access to the Federal Court for judicial review. That is, while they still nominally have the right to seek leave for judicial review of the Federal Court, they won't benefit from an administrative stay while the court considers whether or not to look at their case, as they do under the current system.

In most cases, if the minister is successful in speeding up the process, as he intends to, refugees who fail at the refugee board will be deported long before any Federal Court judge lays eyes on a leave application. Further, the jurisprudence of the Federal Court and the Court of Appeal is clear that once a person has been deported, a Federal Court judicial review application in respect of the risk assessment is moot. There's no point in looking at it because the person has already been deported.

This is crucial—this bit of information and this relationship between access to the RAD and access to the Federal Court—because it shows you that contrary to information that the minister has provided, and I apologize for being political, the fact is that in reality there are certain groups of refugees who will have no access to any review of the first-stage decision on their refugee claim.

With the one-year bar on the PRRA and the bar on access to H and C consideration, the reality is that there will be no effective mechanism whatsoever at law to remedy mistakes that have been made by the first decision-maker at the refugee board. That, in my submission, is contrary to fundamental international human rights law. It's also unconscionable. I think that as Canadians, all of us agree that we don't want mistakes made when it comes to refugee determination. We need to make the decision right.

Just to be clear, how much time do I have, Mr. Chair?

[Carole Dahan]

Thank you. Thank you for inviting us to present before you.

My name is Carole Dahan, and I'm the director of the refugee law office at Legal Aid Ontario. This is my colleague, Andrew Brouwer, a staff lawyer at the RLO.

As I said, we're a staff office of Legal Aid Ontario, and we're a very small office; there are five lawyers and five support staff. About 50% of the work we do involves persons in detention. I have visited the immigration holding centre, the IHC, that was spoken about this morning on numerous occasions, and I concur with Janet Cleveland's assessment of it as a jail, and certainly not, as Minister Kenney has characterized it, as a hotel.

I'm not going to spend my precious minutes talking about the IHC, but if any members have further questions about the IHC or about the provincial jails where detainees are also held, we have lots of experience with those facilities and I would be happy to address that later.

In the work that our office does with detainees, we're often the last resource, the last chance for representation of the most vulnerable clients. Many of our clients have, for one reason or another, been unsuccessful in their refugee claims and are facing imminent removal. Because we are a very busy and very small office, we only take cases where there is evidence that the person is at real risk of persecution.

For example, one gentleman who found us while at the IHC had come to Canada from war-torn Chechnya and had made a refugee claim right at the airport. He was one of the lucky ones who had the presence of mind to bring a number of documents establishing his identity when he was fleeing. They were submitted to the IRB, and they in turn submitted them for what's called forensic testing, because of the prevalence of forged documents coming from that area of the world. The IRB lost the documents before they were ever forensically tested. While they accepted his Russian citizenship, they found that he was not a convention refugee because he had failed to establish his identity as a Chechnyan.

Shortly after that, he began the process of trying to get a new document, a new birth certificate. He contacted his sister, but because we were dealing with a war-torn nation at the time—his house had been bombed and been burned down—his sister had to travel to another city, to the registrar of births, to obtain a new birth certificate. In the meantime, he was served with what's called the pre-removal risk assessment, his PRRA, which he completed himself, but without this new evidence, it, too, was rejected.

The new evidence arrived 17 days after his PRRA was rejected. It was at that moment that he found us, while detained, and we were able to assist him in submitting a new, second PRRA, with the new birth certificate that conclusively proved that he was, indeed, Chechnyan. With that evidence he was found to be a convention refugee and at long last given the protection that he was seeking all along.

Why am I telling you this story? I'm telling you this story because it illustrates several issues with respect to Bill C-31.

Number one, it shows that human errors do occur.

Number two, it demonstrates that the very tight time lines, the 15 days for the basis of claim form and the 30 days and 60 days for the hearing are simply not enough time to obtain proper and supportive documentation from back home, let alone psychological assessments, which Cécile Rousseau and Janet Cleveland spoke about this morning, or even just physical medical examinations to support a claim.

Third, it demonstrates the need for a safeguard. Even when there has been a recent negative decision, when there is new and persuasive evidence that goes to the heart of the person's claim of persecution, there must be a mechanism by which evidence can be examined and evaluated. Without it we run the risk of refoulement.

Bill C-31 would have barred my client from submitting a new PRRA for one year from the date he had received his IRB decision, and he would have been sent home to face persecution.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that everyone be given a further PRRA after the IRB has made a decision, but when there are exceptional circumstances and when there is new evidence, then the bar should not exist. There must be a mechanism to review this new evidence before the person is sent back.

I'm very conscious of the time, so I would also add that in the circumstances there would be no automatic stay of removal. My colleague is going to talk about that in a different context. Just as now, we would have to convince either a removal officer to defer the removal, pending the new PRRA, or we would have to convince a Federal Court judge to defer the removal pending a new PRRA. So we're not adding another layer to the process, but we are asking that the one-year bar be reconsidered.

I have some other recommendations that I'm happy to share with you later.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to present three petitions. The first petition concerns Bill C-31 on refugee reform.

The petitioners point out that there are serious concerns about the measures to curb human smuggling and that it would punish refugees, including mandatory detention for certain refugee claimants, along with unchecked ministerial powers to designate countries of origin, eliminating provisions for advice from independent experts.

The petitioners call for the legislation to be replaced with legislation that is fair, independent and in compliance with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Canada's international obligations.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Okay.

Like other countries, Canada is a signatory to the Geneva convention and being a signatory means having a legal and moral responsibility. Now, the government tells us that Bill C-31 will give refugees more protection. Do you share that opinion?

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My thanks to the witnesses for joining us today.

Yesterday, one of our witnesses mentioned humanitarian principles in connection with Bill C-31. He reminded us that, when refugees seek protection, they want to come to a country founded on freedom and the rule of law, a country in which they want to ask for protection. They do not come to take advantage of the system, there is no doubt about it. This is about human dignity above all. He stressed this in his conclusion when he said that they come here in order to subsequently serve Canada. I just wanted us to remind ourselves of that.

In addition, some witnesses have told us that Bill C-31 is not the best way to discourage smugglers or to stop human trafficking. In your opinion, what are the greatest threats associated with this bill?

[Dan Bohbot]

In my view, Bill C-31 actually will give enormous discretionary power to the minister who, in my opinion, will go beyond transparency and justification in order to obtain the desired result.

Let us not forget that a large percentage of claims from European countries, such as the Roma from Hungary, were accepted before people started making speeches characterizing them in advance as bogus refugees. After the political speeches from the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, the acceptance rate at the board went down. There is a direct cause-and-effect link between the minister's speeches and the panel's acceptance rate. Now, if you want to give him even greater discretionary power, how can it be presumed in any way other than that the rate will go down even more as a result of the political rhetoric?

[Dan Bohbot]

Mr. Weston, Bill C-11 has already been passed and it already changes the system that is designed to speed up hearings. Bill C-31 categorizes people even before they have made a claim for asylum. That is where the problem lies. The minister gives himself discretionary powers and sends the message to the panel that he himself can determine who is persona non grata.

In my opinion, this political influence on the panel's decision-making process is the crux of the problem. This is political interference in immigration matters and we should avoid it. We should trust the decision-makers and let them do their jobs.

[Dan Bohbot]

Very well, thank you. Okay, I'll continue.

On the other hand, these same people can be released immediately after their refugee claim is approved, in other words through an IRB hearing in 60 days. How can the administrative tribunal decision maker be more sure of the identity of these inmates than Immigration Canada is? It isn't realistic to think that the administrative tribunal will feel independent in light of these punitive measures.

The frequently asked questions page on the RCMP's website explains the difference between human trafficking and human smuggling:

Human trafficking involves the recruitment, transportation or harbouring of persons for the purpose of exploitation (typically in the sex industry or for forced labour).… Human smuggling is a form of illegal migration involving the organized transport of a person across an international border, usually in exchange for a sum of money and sometimes in dangerous conditions.

The minister never makes this distinction and his speech confuses the two concepts. It is very rare for refugees to be able to obtain a visa to come to Canada. Smugglers are too often the only way for refugees to leave their country and arrive here to make a refugee claim. These are real refugees from countries that do not respect human rights. These are people who have no choice because they are facing persecution.

Canada already has a tradition of human smuggling. The Loyalists fled New England to take refuge in Canada. The Underground Railroad mainly helped American slaves find freedom in Canada. Common law is the legal basis of our law in Canada. It is the result of centuries of tradition that led to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms:

Article 39. No freemen shall be taken, or imprisoned, or disseized, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way harmed—nor will we go upon or send upon him—save by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

Article 40. To none will we sell, to none deny or delay, right or justice.

These are passages from the Magna Carta, which dates from 1215 almost 1,000 years ago. The Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 provided protection against arbitrary arrest and detention. A person detained had the right to know the reasons for his arrest, to challenge the detention and to obtain release.

Now I come to section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

7. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

Section 10 makes this clear:

10: Everyone has the right, on arrest or detention: (a) to be informed promptly of the reasons therefor; (b) to retain and instruct counsel without delay and to be informed of that right; (c) to have the validity of the detention determined by way ofhabeas corpus and to be released if the detention is not lawful.

These quotations come from the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and we must be proud of them.

Bill C-31 goes contrary to these principles of fundamental justice. This bill is turning back the clock 1,000 years on our principles of justice.

For example, persons designated as part of an irregular arrival and 16 years of age or older must be detained. The detention is not reviewed for 12 months and they have no access to the RAD. If the person is accepted, they cannot ask for permanent residence for five years following the IRB decision, they get no refugee travel document and they have to report to an immigration officer.

Then, for designated countries of origin, the Refugee Protection Division, the RPD, fast-tracks applications. The people involved have no access to the RAD and they cannot get an automatic stay of removal when seeking a judicial review from the Federal Court. These provisions can also be applied retroactively. Asylum seekers are therefore not all treated equally by the legislation or the justice system.

In addition, budget cuts to the IRB announced in the federal budget will have the effect of no longer providing the failed claimant with a transcript of the evidence he gave before the negative decision. The—

[Dan Bohbot, President, Quebec Immigration Lawyers Association (AQAADI)]

Thank you.

The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration speaks at great length on the independence of the administrative tribunal, the Immigration and Refugee Board, or IRB, and how the decision-makers will make independent and impartial decisions. However, Bill C-31 raises doubts about that.

For instance, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration justifies his discretionary power to decide which countries are designated countries of origin by saying that he must be able to respond quickly to avoid a wave of fraudulent refugee claimants. He justifies this measure by saying that he wants to let Hungarians, for example, come to Canada without a visa and avoid having people make claims for refugee protection in Canada.

So it's the minister himself who decides in advance what represents a wave of fraudulent claimants. So it isn't true that Bill C-31 gives the administrative tribunal full independence in the decision-making process. The minister himself said the opposite in his testimony before this committee.

As for people who will be considered part of an irregular arrival, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration justifies his discretionary power and detention for one year by the fact that Canada cannot let in people who have not obtained a visa before they arrive in the country. He continues to scare us with the idea that these people will not have identity documents, that their identity will have to be established before they can be released and that, lastly, people will not have recourse to automatic release as an alternative to detention. In fact, the current legislation justly sets out a detention review mechanism prior to release.

The minister went on in his testimony to explain that these people will pay smugglers to get to Canada and that the smugglers are dangerous criminals who endanger the lives of the passengers. Once again, the minister is trying to influence the fate of the refugee claimant through these punitive and discriminatory measures.

The minister is inconsistent when he explains that individuals who arrive irregularly need to be detained for security reasons for one year—

[Richard Goldman, Spokesperson, Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes]

Thank you, Rivka.

Although the Table de concertation adds its voice to stakeholders such as the Canadian Council for Refugees, which feels that Bill C-31 is so flawed as to require replacement with more balanced legislation, in order to be constructive we will be focusing on the Refugee Appeal Division and post-claim recourses, and providing our observations and recommendations on that.

First of all, the importance of a Refugee Appeal Division has long been recognized. When Parliament adopted the IRPA in 2001, it contained a Refugee Appeal Division, which was supposed to be accessible to all. In Bill C-11, this was adopted. Of course the IRPA RAD was never implemented. It's also important to bear in mind that a number of international human rights agencies have pointed out the pertinence of a Refugee Appeal Division. Quoting from page 2 of our brief:

UNHCR considers an appeal procedure to be a fundamental, necessary part of any refugee status determination process. It allows errors to be corrected, and can also help to ensure consistency in decision-making. Canada, Italy, and Portugal are the only industrialized countries which do not allow rejected asylum seekers the possibility to have first-instance decisions reviewed on points of fact as well as points of law. In the past, a measure of safeguard was provided by the fact that determinations could be made by a two-member panel, with the benefit of the doubt going to the applicant in case of a split decision. With the implementation of IRPA on June 28th, 2002, this important safeguard will be lost.

Likewise, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has stated:

Given that even the best decision-makers may err in passing judgment, and given the potential risk to life which may result from such an error, an appeal on the merits of a negative determination constitutes a necessary element of international protection.

I'm going to look now at the restrictions on the RAD under Bill C-31. There are four major restrictions, which I'll look at in turn.

First of all, let's consider asylum seekers from designated countries of origin. These claimants will have super-fast-tracked hearings to be held as soon as 30 days after their arrival. This will make it difficult or impossible for them to prepare their case adequately, get documentary proof of persecution, obtain identity documents, or even to secure legal counsel, not to mention overcoming the trauma of rape, sexual assault, or whatever else they may have been through. So the risks of human error in this situation are extremely high.

Second, there is the matter of arriving in Canada as part of an irregular arrival. This has no relation whatever to the merits of a refugee claim. In fact, from certain countries the only way to get out is with false documents. Passport offices may not be functioning or a genuine refugee may not get a passport. If two or more such persons arrive together, if any group arrives together with the assistance of a smuggler, they can be designated an “irregular arrival”. “Group” is not defined in the act, so it could be as few as two people, as far as we can tell. There's no logical basis for a presumption that a group of such claimants coming from, say, Iran, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or Somalia are making abusive claims that do not merit a right of appeal.

Third, there are persons who have claimed asylum at the Canada-U.S. border already, under the U.S.-Canada Safe Third Country Agreement. Very few refugees can enter at the border and make an asylum claim. There are a few exceptions. The main exception that remains today is to have a family member in Canada. If somebody manages to enter at the border and claims asylum, he will also be subject to a restriction on his right of appeal. We really don't understand why this should be the case. As a matter of fact, in a briefing call that was held right after the introduction of Bill C-31, it was explained to us that the worst that could happen to these people is that they'd be returned to the States. Actually, that's an error. As of the expiry of the reciprocal agreement in October 2009, it's not possible to return them to the States. They would be sent directly to their country of alleged persecution, with no right of appeal. So this seems to be based entirely on an error.

With the fourth exception, “manifestly unfounded or no credible basis” claims, the above three exceptions kick in even before the claimant has been heard by the IRB.

This fourth exception only kicks in at the IRB itself. What can happen is a person who in principle has a right to appeal can have their hearing, and if the decision-maker says that the claim is manifestly unfounded or has no credible basis, they will lose their right to appeal. This strikes us as extremely perverse, because the decision-maker in effect can insulate himself or herself from review. In other words, if they make a small mistake and refuse a well-founded claim, it can go on appeal. If they make a big mistake and say that a well-founded claim is manifestly unfounded, it can't be reviewed.

It seems to us that all of these exceptions therefore violate basic principles of fairness and in some cases even logic.

It's also important to keep in mind that these same four categories will not have effective access to the Federal Court, because although it's possible for them to apply to the Federal Court, they will no longer benefit from a stay of removal. Therefore, they can be removed on day 31 or 61 and have no appeal, no access to the Federal Court in practical terms.

Other post-claim recourses are also being eliminated. The so-called pre-removal risk assessment, or PRA, wasn't a very good procedure, but this will be practically eliminated, because people will not have access for 12 months after refusal. The government has said it wants to remove people far faster than that, so practically speaking the PRA will be out the window.

Final recourse that is also effectively being eliminated is the humanitarian and compassionate recourse. This does not overlap with the refugee claim. It takes into account other things, such as gender-based discrimination, or other types of discrimination that do not rise to the level of persecution. It can also take into account best interests of the child, and so on. An exception is created in the law for humanitarian applications based on best interests of the child and medical considerations. However, no stay of removal is being provided for those cases. They can still be removed on day 31 or day 61. Consequently, as a result of these different exceptions to the RAD, there is the very unrealistic 15-day timeline for filing at the RAD. We can talk about that more.

This, along with the gutting of the other post-claims recourses, means that we may finally have a Refugee Appeal Division in Canada, and yet the majority of refused claimants will have absolutely no avenue to have their refusal reviewed.

Our recommendations are as follows. First of all, Bill C-31 should be withdrawn and replaced with fair and balanced legislation. On the specific topic of the Refugee Appeal Division, all claimants should have access to the RAD. The corresponding regulations should allow 45 days for filing and perfection of appeals to the RAD. The bar on filing of humanitarian and compassionate applications while a refugee claim is pending and for 12 months following a refusal should be removed. Humanitarian and compassionate applicants should benefit from an automatic stay of removal until such time as their humanitarian and compassionate applications are ruled upon.

Thank you.

[Rivka Augenfeld, Spokesperson, Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes]

Good afternoon.

I'll do my presentation in French, and my colleague will speak in English.

First, on behalf of the Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes, we thank you for inviting us to speak to you.

The Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes is an umbrella group of 142 community organizations assisting refugees and immigrants across Quebec. Founded in 1979, our organization's mission is that of defending the rights of newly arrived persons and families, regardless of their immigration status.

It is also important to tell you that our organizations help refugees across Quebec, under the agreement sponsored by the state, which the rest of Canada calls the Government-Assisted Refugee Program. These people are set up all over Quebec, with contracts from the Quebec ministère de l’Immigration et des Communautés culturelles.

Through our experience, we have developed considerable expertise on the question of recourses for refused refugees. We witness first-hand, day after day, the consequences of human errors in the refugee determination process and the extreme challenges of trying to have such errors corrected. We presented a brief on this matter to this committee in 2007.

Today, we are going to focus on this aspect of the provisions of Bill C-31.

My colleague, Richard Goldman, will continue the presentation.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Thanks, Madam Chair.

Let me echo what Ms. Sitsabaiesan said. Everyone in this room cares about the kind of people you're talking about. I think we may be misled if we ask the wrong question. Does anyone in the room want to see someone detained without reason? No one wants to see that.

I think we have to ask the right question. We're answerable as a government to 34 million Canadians. They expect us to maintain, as it's said classically in the Constitution, the peace, order, and good government of the country.

There are provisions in this bill to minimize the unfairness. For instance, anyone can apply to the public safety minister for release if circumstances warrant.

By the way, the number one concern in the bill is stated as in the best interests of the child. Those things prevail in Bill C-31, although I think they've been—

[Dr. Janet Cleveland]

What I would urge you to do, actually, is to look at the report of the senatorial inquiry in Australia that just came out in March 2012, after a very in-depth study of their system, the umpteenth study, because they've had problems again and again and again over the years, and they have reports stacked quite high.

Basically, they found, among other things, that in 2010-11 the self-harm rate for about 6,000 detainees was 1,100 incidents of self-harm. Self-harm means self-cutting, attempted hanging, drinking shampoo or detergent to try to kill themselves, voluntary starvation, these kinds of acts, and six actual suicides. That's an extremely high rate. It's ten times the normal suicide rate in Canada, just to give you an idea. And this is a population held for less than a year in general, so not that far from what we would see under Bill C-31, quite possibly.

Basically, the committee concluded, and we quote this in our brief, that it was crystal clear that detention had disastrous effects on mental health. This has been proven over and over and over again. And now what Australia is doing, after 20 years of mandatory detention for so-called irregular arrivals, is they're moving to a system that is much closer to our current system in Canada; that is to say, people will be held essentially during identity checks at the beginning and then they will be released on what they call a bridging visa, which is actually equivalent to normal asylum-seeker status in Canada.

So after 20 years of mandatory detention, Australia said it was a failure, it wasn't working, it has been a disaster in mental health terms, it's very costly. Ninety percent of the asylum seekers who came as irregular arrivals and were detained were later accepted as refugees in Australia and have gone on to become Australian citizens. So you can imagine the cost to society is huge.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

The government has said that Bill C-31 will end up reducing costs. But in appreciation of your testimony and others, there are extensive costs associated with mental or physical health issues, and these can be exacerbated by reason of the detention of youth and pregnant women and the like. I know you began to go into it, but do you have some appreciation of what these costs might entail, having regard to the whole spectrum of fallout from this type of detention?

[Dr. Janet Cleveland]

I just want to say that if you look at the experiences in Australia, for example, where you have extremely high rates of suicide and self-harm among asylum seekers who are detained under a regime that is very comparable to Bill C-31, I think that gives you a sense of how serious it can be for people who are already traumatized.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Given your testimony this morning, particularly with regard to the mental health concerns and the consequences of detention, in what ways can Bill C-31 be modified to address the concerns you have both shared with us?

[The Vice-Chair (Ms. Jinny Jogindera Sims), NDP, Jinny Sims]

There you go. We will leave that question sitting there for now. Thank you very much.

I'm going to take some questions, and I do have agreement from the chair, because as vice-chair I stepped in as chair for today.

My first question is to Ms. Cleveland. Please feel free to add as well, Cécile.

We know that under Bill C-31 children 16 or older will be incarcerated as if they were adults, while children under 16 will either be separated from their parents and put into provincial care, or unofficially held with their parents.

What are the probable mental health consequences if children are separated from their parents and handed over to child protection agencies while their parents are detained, and what are the probable mental health consequences of children being denied, officially or unofficially?

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

I also want to broach the subject of biometrics, which is a key element of Bill C-31. I'd like to hear your comments based on your experience. Do you think that biometrics will help us identify potential risks, even before people consider coming to Canada?

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I want to welcome you back, Mr. Grubel. It's always nice to have a former parliamentarian come back to see us.

I want to also welcome our renowned researchers and members of academia who are presenting before us today. Thank you for joining us.

I have a number of questions. Hopefully I'll be able to get them out in the seven minutes, or the six and a half that I have left.

Specifically addressing Bill C-31, particularly in light of the testimony that we heard this morning, the new measures in Bill C-31 would see us finalize a refugee claim in about 45 days, from the current 1,038 days, for claimants from designated countries of origin, or 216 days for all other claimants.

Taking into consideration the compassionate and humanitarian aspect, for somebody who is a legitimate bona fide refugee seeking refuge from persecution, torture, or possible death in the country they're coming from, surely it is advantageous to them to be processed into the country in 20% of the time that it currently takes.

We cannot entertain the possibility of allowing everybody who shows up through what would otherwise be deemed illegal means automatically into the country without doing the proper checks and balances to ensure the security and safety of Canadians. We heard the Sun Sea reference this morning. From the Sun Sea and the Ocean Lady, 23 people were deemed security risks, and 18 were found to have perpetrated war crimes in their country, for a total of about 41 people that were questionable.

[Dr. Cécile Rousseau, Professor of Psychiatry and Researcher, Transcultural Research and Intervention Team, Division of Social and Cultural Psychiatry, McGill University]

I am Cécile Rousseau, professor of psychiatry at McGill.

There is strong evidence in the scientific literature in our research on children—which is a separate research area—and also in our clinical practice in the last 20 years that detention has strong and pervasive effects on children's mental health. It has effects. We have hundreds of terrible stories. I won't have time to explain them to you, but it has effects on attachments and on what we call internalized problems, such as depression, anxiety, school phobia, and learning problems. It provokes traumatic symptoms, such as nightmares and withdrawal, and it is also a source of behaviour problems for children who were well adjusted before that.

There was a move and a change from Bill C-4 to Bill C-31, which indicates—and I really want to congratulate the government on this—that the government was sensitive to the Canadian association of pediatricians, the Canadian association of child psychiatrists, and the association of public health directors. These three associations asked you and the minister not to detain children. We welcome the fact that children under 16 are now excluded from detention. We think this a recognition that the government knows this is harmful for children.

This will not, however, protect children, because children still will be in detention with their parents. For an eight-year-old child, being “detained” or “in detention with mom” is a semantic difference, and they don't know about semantics. Otherwise, they will be separated from their parents and placed in foster care. This has even worse mental health consequences, so we certainly do not wish to go there.

Finally, there will be no protection for pregnant women or for 16- and 17-year-olds, whose brains are still not totally developed.

Why is detention of children a public health hazard? Well, this is what we call toxic stress, because helplessness strongly decreases resiliency. It would take a very long time to explain to you that this is the kind of stress where there's no escape, but we know that this directly affects the developing brain of the child.

The separation from parents damages attachment and shatters basic trust. It provokes a whole range of consequences. In the short term, we see acute traumatic stress disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, adjustment disorders with different symptoms, and also adolescent risk-taking and suicidality, which are very common too. In the medium term, it is costly because those kids, who very often will stay in Canada, develop learning problems and relational difficulties.

As for the long term, we need to study it. We're calculating the cost with the social work department at McGill. This is likely to be very costly. A pregnant woman who has a damaged baby because of prenatal stress or insufficient prenatal care...this is hundreds of thousands of dollars. A kid who drops out because he has developed learning problems is a huge cost for Canadian society. We have to consider these public health costs beyond the humanitarian consequences.

Finally, there's this quote from a mom: “Canada is supposed to be a civilized country—to detain a mother and a baby is not civilized.”

I plead with you.... I think Canada.... I have been and I am still very proud to be Canadian. This would preserve our values and our capacity to protect the children—

[Dr. Janet Cleveland, Psychologist and Researcher, Transcultural Research and Intervention Team, Division of Social and Cultural Psychiatry, McGill University]

Thank you very much.

My name is Janet Cleveland. I'm a psychologist, former lawyer, and now a researcher on refugee mental health. For the last three years I've worked essentially full-time on the impact of detention on refugee mental health, and I've many times visited the immigration holding centres in both Toronto and Montreal, so I can give you lots of details about what it's really like there, if you wish, later on.

My colleague Cécile Rousseau is a professor of psychiatry at McGill University and is a world-renowned scholar in the field of refugee mental health, with over 160 scholarly publications.

I'll say a few words about the study we recently finished. As I mentioned, it was conducted at the immigration holding centres in Toronto and Laval, close to Montreal. We interviewed 122 asylum seekers who were detained in those two institutions, and we also had a comparison group of non-detained asylum seekers with the purpose, of course, of seeing the impact of detention. You have two essentially identical groups except one is detained and the other is not. They did mental health questionnaires and interviews.

The immigration holding centre, as I mentioned earlier, is a prison, of course. That is to say, people are handcuffed when they travel between the prison and the downtown area for their hearings. There are uniformed guards everywhere, surveillance cameras, extreme limitation of movement, no liberty essentially, extremely rigid rules, and so on. People can be punished by being put in solitary confinement if they don't respect basic minimum rules like getting up in the morning on time. It's a prison environment, and therefore there is a serious impact in terms of mental health.

The first thing one has to look at is that it's a population that is already, generally speaking, very severely traumatized. It has had high exposure to trauma. To give you an idea, within the two groups, people had experienced, on average, nine major traumatic events during their lifetime. This is off the charts. This is extremely high. One or two major events is considered quite high, quite serious.

We're also talking about a very serious type of trauma. I also want to point out that it's essentially identical in the two groups. You have two groups with the same trauma exposure before arriving: typically physical assault, family members who have been assaulted or killed, etc. There are those types of major trauma. They get to Canada and one group is detained and the other is not.

If you look at the difference in terms of their mental health—these are symptoms that are above the clinical level, so we're talking about sufficiently serious to be considered clinically suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, or anxiety—after only 31 days on average in detention, the difference is absolutely huge. There was almost twice the level of post-traumatic stress disorder in the group that was detained, 32% in total. Depression was also over 50% higher in the detained than the non-detained group. As I say, this is after an average of 31 days in detention, a relatively short time, certainly considerably shorter than what is envisaged under Bill C-31.

Quickly, just to give you a sense of the people we're meeting with, on the screen is a quote from a young Somali man whose father was killed in front of him by warlords. He was defending his son from being recruited forcefully by the warlords. Luckily, his uncle was able to get him a false passport and a false visa to get to Canada. He was in prison for a couple of months at the immigration holding centre. He was very severely traumatized, as you can see from this quote, and was also in deep mourning, and yet he was held for two months, which of course considerably increased the level of post-traumatic stress disorder he was already suffering from.

There was a woman in a somewhat separate part of the study, for which I met 21 asylum seekers who had arrived on the Sun Sea. Of course this is exactly the type of group targeted by Bill C-31. This is a very typical example of what people have been through. Many members of her family had been killed in front of her by a shell falling on them, and she herself of course was also impacted and had very serious PTSD.

Finally, I'll just point out that if we look at the Sun Sea asylum seekers, for example, they were detained for long periods, and yet—at least under existing legislation—had access to detention review. People were freed within the first couple of months who would not be freed under Bill C-31--for example, a couple with a child who was very severely handicapped with cerebral palsy. There are other examples I have given here.

I'll turn this over to my colleague.

[Herbert Grubel, Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute, As an Individual]

Thank you, Madam Chair, honourable members of the committee. Thank you for inviting me again to share with you my views on pending legislation aimed at improving Canada's immigration system.

Minister Jason Kenney, the government, and the members of this committee deserve much praise for taking on this difficult task.

By now, you will have heard much criticism from well-organized lawyers and human rights advocates about the shortcomings of Bill C-31. All of these criticisms deserve your attention, and some may help to improve some detailed provisions of the bill. I will stay away from discussing the issues raised by these critics, except to urge the committee to remember that the views of lawyers and rights advocates are not entirely driven by their unselfish desire to protect the rights of asylum seekers. These witnesses also have much at stake, professionally and personally.

I have no personal stake in the effects and operation of Canada's refugee legislation. My remarks are motivated by the desire to discuss how Bill C-31 will affect the well-being of Canadians, which is a topic often neglected in discussions that focus on the effects of the bill on the well-being of asylum seekers. However, before I do so, let me be clear that my analysis should never be interpreted as suggesting that Canada should withdraw from its commitment to help people escape from persecution abroad. The issue, as I see it, is that while our moral commitment is and should remain firm, it should not be without limits. Just as most of you and I gave less to charity when we were young and poor, struggling to take care of our families, we give more now when we can better afford it, and so should Canada during the present fiscal crisis.

Bill C-31 will reduce the cost of our commitment to help foreigners. It is therefore appropriate for our present fiscal conditions. In this spirit, let me remind you of the undisputed existence of Canada's serious fiscal problems due to stubborn deficits and the effects of an aging population on the unfunded liabilities of pensions and health care programs.

There's also no doubt about the fact that the administration of the existing refugee system is costly. As Martin Collacott told you earlier this week, and James Bissett will tell you in more detail tomorrow, the direct cost for every claimant has been estimated to be about $60,000, and the annual costs of dealing with all of the claimants in Canada are in the billions.

In addition, present refugee policies cause successful claimants to settle in Canada without having to pass the points or other tests. Studies have shown that most of them will have below average incomes and tax payments while they absorb benefits provided by our universal social programs. My estimates suggest that the annual fiscal burden of such immigrants is about $6,000, on average, and probably greater for admitted asylum seekers.

I believe that Bill C-31 will not only make the system fairer, but it will also reduce the number of asylum seekers and successful claimants. These reductions will give rise to savings, which will reduce the deficit, allow governments to provide more public services, or lower taxes.

These benefits of Bill C-31 going to Canadians are accompanied by costs to asylum seekers. You have heard much from lawyers and other witnesses about violations of due legal process and the way in which seekers suffer from a reduction in the standards of fairness in their treatment. We are faced here with an iron law of economics: government benefits to some impose costs on others. The trouble with Bill C-31 is that no estimates of the value of these benefits and costs exist. Yet in the end, your decision to vote should rationally be influenced by such calculations.

The value of feeling good about being generous to foreigners, and even of meeting to the fullest extent the commitments made through international agreements--the value of those benefits to you is not infinity. If the benefits were $1 billion for each less fairly treated applicant or wrongfully rejected claimant, the bill would be more desirable than if the benefits were $1 million or $100,000. In the absence of these numbers, you have the unenviable task of voting for a bill without full knowledge of the benefits and costs. My sympathies are with you.

In case you're interested in my personal views, let me tell you that I would vote in favour of Bill C-31 because, based on my knowledge gained in my study of economics, I believe that the likely benefits to Canadians are high enough to warrant the imposition of some costs on asylum seekers. But let me add, frankly, that I have a moral bias entering these views. I believe that charity should start at home, and that the well-being of foreigners should come second, and only after we have gotten our fiscal house in order.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

If Ms. Sitsabaiesan wants to make allegations about what her perspective is or is not on the Canadian government or this party, that's fine, but it has nothing to do with Bill C-31. She can go out there and do it in public and get as much press as she'd like to, because I know that's exactly what she's trying to do. It has no place around this table when we're trying to deal with a bill.

Whether you agree or disagree with it, the bill is a very difficult one to work through, and I'd appreciate it if she could stick to the topic and not meander onto human rights issues that have nothing to do with this bill.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

That has nothing to do with Bill C-31.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Thank you, gentlemen, both for being here and for what you do. As somebody who has stood on the ground in Burundi and in the Congo and Rwanda, with Food for the Hungry, and who has recently been in Iraq and travelled to Pakistan on human rights missions, I love meeting people who dedicate themselves to working with people who have no voice and who have been subjected to the kind of things you talk about.

But I also want to refute the notion that there is some sort of division within our government, as you were suggesting, Mr. Matas. I'm proud of a minister, and many Canadians of all political stripes are proud of a minister, who is renowned the world over, as Minister Kenney is, for defending human rights, for going to China, and for going to Burma—at least we had our Minister of Foreign Affairs in Burma recently—and for knowing the situation of the refugees in Syria and Jordan who have tumbled over the border from Iraq. This is a minister who is a renowned human rights advocate.

So while you may disagree with aspects of the policy, I fear we may be getting the wrong answers by asking the wrong questions. I suspect that you are in favour of expediting the process for people who are legitimate refugees. So when you point out individual cases that may go the wrong way as a consequence of Bill C-31, it doesn't mean we should throw out the baby with the bathwater.

What I'm saying to you is, let's not suggest this is a dichotomy, an either/or situation.

Maybe, Dr. Rashid, you can comment on the importance of our expediting the process. We now look at over 1,000 days, on average, for a refugee claimant who is clearly a refugee, and all Canadians want that person to receive status as quickly as possible. That timeframe is going to be reduced to a small percentage of that. How do you feel about that improvement in the compassionate treatment of such an individual?

[Dr. Meb Rashid]

Yes. I'm a family physician, so I speak very strongly about prevention. One of my obsessions in the last few years, after working with new immigrants and refugees, is to try to capture them early. So obviously you want to treat tuberculosis before it becomes active, and you want to immunize people before disease manifests itself.

With the direction that I think Bill C-31 takes, certainly there is an implication in terms of mandatory detention and the aggravation of existing mental health issues. I think there is literature on that.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you to both of you for coming to make the presentations you did.

Under this new legislation, Bill C-31, we're talking about the potential for a detention for up to a year, and then over the next five years people not being able to have travel documents or to apply. That's very clear in the legislation at face value. If there is something else in the works, we certainly don't know about it.

Recently, you might have heard some announcements. It seems we have a government that has got into the habit of making proclamations, because those are ministerial orders or announcements. This bit was built into the budget, and it was the reduction in health care benefits to refugees. In light of that announcement, what kind of an impact, one way or another, do you think that would have on refugees arriving on our shores, and what kind of a case could be made for these refugees getting good health care benefits to have long-term benefits for Canada, for us as a society?

[David Matas]

My answer is yes, I'm 100% behind the push to promote respect for human rights in Sri Lanka. I think that's valid. I think it's important. I think what parliamentarians have done is good. The problem is it's inconsistent with Bill C-31. That's the problem.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

I'd like to remind my honourable colleague that David Matas used the example of Sri Lanka as a way to build his argument on how to change Bill C-31.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

I just want to remind my honourable colleague across the way that we are here to address Bill C-31.

[David Matas, Lawyer, As an Individual]

Thank you for inviting me.

I would like to address only one of the many changes proposed by Bill C-31—the provision that deals with designated foreign nationals, which you've heard about before.

I am a former chair of the immigration law section of the Canadian Bar Association, a former president of the Canadian Council for Refugees, and a former legal network coordinator of Amnesty International, and I endorse the positions of these organizations on the bill.

What I'd like to do is not just reiterate their concerns but approach the issue from a different perspective: the inconsistency with other government policies of the components of the bill relating to designated foreign nationals.

Because there is a majority government now in Parliament, Bill C-31 will pass in its present form unless at least some government members want it changed. So the admittedly daunting task I have tried to set myself here this afternoon is to attempt to achieve just that, to attempt to persuade government members that they should want to change Bill C-31, because the provisions in the bill relating to designated foreign nationals contradict and undermine government policies.

The designated foreign national provisions of Bill C-31, like the rest of the bill, are general in nature but their genesis was quite particular. The proposals began with Bill C-49, introduced in October 2010 into Parliament in response to the arrival of Tamil boat people aboard the MV Ocean Lady and the MV Sun Sea. The Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism justified the proposed legislation by reference to these arrivals. The proposed legislation is retroactive to before these arrivals, pointing to the relevance of these arrivals.

In May 2009, Sri Lanka ended a long civil war where there were 80,000 deaths. At its end, there was a frenzy of killing and mass detention of Tamil civilians. Tamils in Sri Lanka continue to be victimized by the victors in the war, and the systemic discrimination, harassment, and persecution of minority Tamils by elements of the majority continue with a vengeance.

The first policy I'd like to identify as clashing with Bill C-31 is the government policy on human rights in Sri Lanka, which I endorse. Prior to the October 2011 Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Perth, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said there should be a boycott of the next Commonwealth summit in Sri Lanka unless there is progress on human rights in Sri Lanka.

The Government of Sri Lanka appointed a commission of inquiry, which was a whitewash. The Government of Canada more or less said so, and maintained its position on the boycott after the Sri Lanka report. It rejected the report as failing to address the human rights concerns arising from the end of the civil war. Very good, but if we want to promote human rights, we have to protect refugees. That is obviously true for the individual claimant, but there is an overall aggregate linkage as well. Protecting refugees enhances respect for human rights in the country fled. Failure to protect refugees shows indifference to the plight of victims.

When resettlement states say no to refugees or gives a hard time to refugees, what violators hear is that what they do, they can do with impunity, without consequences. Bill C-31 is bad in principle, but it is even worse in context. It says to the Government of Sri Lanka, “Go ahead, mistreat the Tamil minority. We don't care.”

The second policy conflict is a statement of Minister Jason Kenney in Parliament in October 2010, again a statement with which I agree. He said:

...we have begun preliminary discussions with our international partners, including Australia, which obviously has a great stake in this issue, and with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to pursue the possibility of some form of regional protection framework in the Southeast Asian region.

In part that would entail encouraging the countries now being used as transit points for smuggling and trafficking to offer at least temporary protection to those deemed by the UN in need of protection and then for countries such as Canada to provide, to some extent, reasonable resettlement opportunities for those deemed to be bona fide refugees, which is something we are pursuing.

Again, very good, but this policy of encouraging the countries now being used as transit points for smuggling and trafficking, although it sounds fine, is basically not happening.

One reason for the mistreatment of asylum seekers in Asia is the pressure put on those countries by resettlement countries. Another reason is the poor example resettlement countries give.

The logic behind the designated foreign national provisions is to discourage new arrivals from coming, like those on the Ocean Lady and the Sun Sea. Aside from its cruelty, it is likely to have a perverse effect, leading countries of proximate refuge to mimic its cruelty and prompting asylum seekers in those countries to flee in much the same way the passengers on the Ocean Lady and the Sun Sea did.

To a certain extent, Minister Kenney recognized the problem, but he said we needed a short-term solution and a regional framework with a mid-term solution. Now we're 17 months from that statement about a regional framework, and as far as I can tell, nothing has happened.

In the meantime, what we have to look at in discouraging flight is not only creating disincentives to flight, but also creating incentives for people to stay. By setting a poor example to countries of intermediate refuge, we are removing the possibility, or discouraging the development, of these incentives.

The contrast among the various government policies dealing with Sri Lankan Tamil refugees and Sri Lankan human rights are so striking that we can legitimately ask what's going on. It seems disorganized, to say the least.

One answer is the manner of government policy development. The arms of government dealing with human rights and refugees are separated. International human rights promotion is the domain of the Department of Foreign Affairs. Refugee protection falls within the bailiwick of the Immigration or Public Safety departments. While there is an administrative logic to this sort of bureaucratic separation, it makes divergence between promotion of respect for human rights and refugee protection all too easy.

The designated foreign national provisions of Bill C-31 should be withdrawn from the bill for all the reasons my colleagues have given, but also because they're not consistent with overall government policy. They clash so directly with other policies that they need to be reconsidered.

The government should be presenting a coordinated approach to human rights, refugee protection, and refugee resettlement. My hope is that the government will abandon its present clash of policies and instead present to Parliament a policy where promotion of respect for human rights abroad and protection of refugees work together.

Thank you very much.

[Dr. Meb Rashid, Medical Doctor, Crossroads Clinic, Women's College Hospital]

Thank you very much.

I want to first thank you for your invitation and for the work being done to determine the impact of Bill C-31 on the arrival of refugees in Canada.

Just as a bit of background, I'm a family physician who has worked extensively with newly arrived refugees, going back about 10 years. I did my undergraduate medical degree at the University of Toronto, completed my residency program at McGill University, and did some training at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. I am part of the steering committee of the North American Refugee Health Conference and was a member of the group that recently published evidence-based guidelines for the assessment of newly arrived immigrants and refugees.

At present, I'm the medical director of the Crossroads Clinic at Women's College Hospital in Toronto. It's a new clinic that serves newly arrived refugees in Toronto. Women's College Hospital is an academic site, and I'm affiliated with the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto.

Over the last 10 years, I would say that I've seen thousands of refugee patients who've arrived in Toronto. I was quite involved with the migration of the Karen refugees from Thailand, for example. More recently, I've seen numerous Hungarian Roma patients in my practice. As such, I've seen both resettled refugees and refugee claimants, and I feel well positioned to speak to the health issues that challenge these populations. I also feel comfortable speaking to the impact of elements of Bill C-31 and the resulting impact on the health of newly arrived refugees.

I want to start by acknowledging that from where I sit, Canadian refugee policy is something that should make Canadians very proud. Despite the negative comments that have been recently widespread in the media, many of us believe that Canada has been a leader in providing refuge to some of the world's most vulnerable people. Canada has truly settled people based on a need for resettlement, not just on the ability to integrate. And I think we should be proud of this legacy. We have done it in a manner that respects our international obligations, and we have provided people with a reasonable opportunity to articulate their stories.

Canada has historically been an ally to persecuted people internationally, and I believe this is a reciprocal relationship. I truly believe that many waves of refugees have thrived post-migration and have contributed in meaningful ways to Canadian society. I think of the success of the Vietnamese refugees or the South Asian refugees from Uganda as relatively recent examples.

Bill C-31 is a huge bill that will likely significantly change the refugee system in Canada for many people. I want to preface my comments by emphasizing that we know that many of those who will be affected by this bill will eventually become Canadian citizens. As such, maintaining the health of refugee claimants would appear to be not only a moral issue but an issue that in many cases will impact the health care costs of those who will eventually become new Canadians. Changes in policy that exacerbate existing health care issues will diminish the potential of successful claimants to seamlessly integrate into Canadian society.

Although the health issues vary significantly in different waves of refugees, one consistent reality is that the migration trajectory of refugees puts them at higher risk of having mental health issues, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety. I would suggest that this should be kept in mind as we examine particular aspects of the bill that will affect refugees.

A few years ago, I met a gentleman who had arrived from a country in Africa. He was a striking figure, well over six feet tall. He was immensely articulate. He was well educated. He'd done his Ph.D. in a neighbouring country before returning to his homeland, where he became involved in politics as a member of an opposition party.

The first day I met him, this striking figure sat in my chair and he cried for an hour. His story was such that a few days before he arrived in Canada, he had been taken into custody by officials there. It was the third time he had actually been incarcerated. This time, he was beaten into unconsciousness. He woke up in the hospital, and luckily, he had a sympathetic nurse who told him that his assailants were waiting for him outside and that as soon as he woke up, they were going to take him back into custody and continue their questioning. She smiled, and she said, “You know, there's a back door over there, and I'm leaving on break.” So in his hospital clothes, he took off out the back door and made a run for the border. Luckily, when he got to the border, he had a family member there with some means who actually arranged with an agent to get him on a plane to leave the country. He is certain that like many of his colleagues, he would have died in custody if he hadn't been able to get out of the country.

I cite this case to shed some light on the issue of using human smugglers to flee persecution. We all recognize the tremendous abuse often committed by such criminals. The stories of people who have been scammed by such agents have been well documented. My patient had no choice. He was lucky that in his case he was successful in getting to Canada and in being eventually recognized as a convention refugee.

Stories like this are unfortunately not uncommon. I would think that all of us, if our lives or the lives of our families were in immediate danger, would do what we had to do to flee such persecution. This sometimes leaves people with no other choice but to use agents. Of course, this is not the ideal, and many people are victimized by their desperation.

Nevertheless, Bill C-31 seems to strike another blow to those who have had to risk their lives by using such smugglers. By recognizing the use of smugglers, the bill allows for the detention of individuals for up to a year. It prohibits people from sponsoring family members for five years, effectively keeping people from their partners and children for even longer.

Bill C-31 correctly acknowledges the tremendous risk posed by smugglers and agents. Unfortunately, it doesn't recognize that for many, smugglers are the only channels available to flee persecution. Bill C-31 increases sentencing for smugglers, but there are tremendous consequences for the refugees themselves. We heard overtures of this bill being a deterrent for those considering the use of smugglers. My experience suggests a deterrence would not apply to those who are truly fleeing impending threats. When you feel imminent danger, you do whatever it takes to leave. We would all do the same thing.

Bill C-31 allows for the detention of those suspected to have used smugglers. The impact of placing vulnerable people in detention is well documented. We know this triggers mental health issues, and the severity of these issues is proportional to the duration of detention. This impact has been documented to be particularly profound on children. Bill C-31 will force families to decide whether they should keep their children in detention with them or place them in foster care in a country and a system with which they're usually completely unfamiliar.

I have another patient in my practice. She's in my practice currently. She's from a Spanish-speaking country, one that could very easily be placed on the designated countries list. She was a criminal prosecutor for the state. After successfully prosecuting gang members, she was taken hostage, beaten, and sexually abused. She remained in the country until her neighbours informed her that people had come looking for her again one day when she wasn't home. She fled and came to Canada with the hope of having her children join her in the near future.

I'm confident she'll be seen as an individual who requires protection and will be determined to be a convention refugee. Her greatest issue now, though, is not her safety. She's separated from her two sons who are in the care of their father. She has reason to believe that they may also be under threat, and in our conversation she's so worried about them that she has spoken about returning home despite the very real threat of her being killed. Their father takes good care of them, she says, but in her words, all children need their mothers.

There's nothing unique about the torment of a parent who is separated from her children. Unfortunately, in my practice, this is too common.

Provisions in Bill C-31 will prevent some refugees from sponsoring family members for five years. These would be successful refugee claimants who have already been recognized as convention refugees requiring protection. I can't fathom the motivation for such a policy. Most of my patients who fled without family members did so because of dire circumstances. Many struggle with social isolation after arrival. Keeping permanent residents from seeing family members for over five years seems unnecessarily cruel. It undoubtedly imposes tremendous emotional stresses on people who have already suffered tremendously. Separating families of soon-to-be Canadian citizens does not seem to serve anyone well.

Finally, I want to comment on the designated country list. I have witnessed many people over the years who have had successful refugee claims despite coming from countries where some would think refugees should not originate. I think of a whistleblower in Mexico who was threatened and nearly killed despite moving to different cities on a number of occasions. I've been impressed with how the IRB takes the precaution to judge each claim on its own merit. It seems unnecessary to fast-track people from countries that don't, upon first inspection, appear to be refugee-creating countries.

My experience with the Hungarian Roma has been very instructive for me. I had not seen many refugees from Europe until encountering this particular migration. At this point I would say I've seen over a hundred Roma refugees and I've heard numerous accounts of similar stories, unprovoked violence by organized groups of neo-Nazis. The present political situation in Hungary is certainly not a topic on which I have any expertise. Nevertheless, I have sat and listened to the stories of many of my Roma patients. Their fear seems very real. Their stories, although different, share many similar themes that speak to systematic violence.

Creating two groups of refugee claimants underlies the message that some groups of populations face persecution even if the larger population does not. I have met many patients who have been determined to be convention refugees from countries that have not produced large numbers of refugees. Making the distinction based on country of origin seems to diminish the credibility of minorities who may be true victims of persecution.

As a physician who has had the privilege of working with refugee patients for many years, I've always stated that I've worked with the world's heroes. I'm amazed at the true resiliency of the human spirit. Daily I have the opportunity to serve those who have endured unimaginable trauma. Consistently they arrive with tremendous optimism and a desire to contribute to Canadian society. I'm deeply concerned that Bill C-31 will unnecessarily retraumatize a significant number of these refugees. I applaud efforts to expedite the refugee process. Nevertheless, this cannot be at the expense of the mental health of such a vulnerable population.

I will finish with a quote from a medical article from Steel et al in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health. They conclude their analysis of the mental health impact of detention by stating:

In their attempt to manage the international asylum crisis, it is important that Western countries do not inadvertently implement policies that cause further harm.

I am afraid there are too many elements of Bill C-31 that will cause harm to such vulnerable populations.

Thank you.

[Jennifer Egsgard]

Yes. Obviously, I would agree that it would violate the charter as well, particularly sections 7 and 12. I think the Charkaoui case, which the Supreme Court decided several years ago, indicated that indefinite detention without review is unconstitutional and does violate the charter, and that is precisely what is proposed by Bill C-31.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Thank you.

The detention system for designated foreign nationals under Bill C-31 has sparked a great deal of interest on the part of our witnesses. Some of them feel that it is a violation of the rights protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and by international obligations. What do you think, Mr. Frelick?

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank our witnesses for appearing before us today.

Mr. Wlodyka, I'd like to continue the line of questioning with you, if I may, sir. There are many things in Bill C-31 that address the real issue of trying to facilitate the process time of legitimate refugees who are seeking asylum coming to Canada from countries in which, of course, they're facing persecution of some kind. The new measures in the bill finalize a refugee claim from an average of 1,038 days to 45 days for claimants from designated countries of origin, and 216 days for all other claimants. Certainly, someone who is fleeing their country for fear of their life would greatly benefit from reducing the amount of time they'd be in the system in Canada. I think that's one of the key goals of the bill.

What impact do you think bogus refugees have on genuine refugees who have to wait longer?

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

Mr. Wlodyka, the government side has asked you directly if you are supportive of the idea of a designated country of origin, and you have said that it is a smart allocation of resources on the condition that it be appropriately transparent and accountable in light of the choices and decisions being made.

As it is written in Bill C-31, are those safeguards transparent and adequate enough for you to be able to support this provision?

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Would you think the designated safe countries of origin provisions we find in Bill C-31 go far enough?

[Andrew Wlodyka]

Thank you very much.

Members of the committee, it's a pleasure to speak with you this afternoon. I'm a lawyer. I used to be a member of the Immigration Appeal Board and assistant deputy chair of the Immigration and Refugee Board. I'm speaking to you from a perspective both as an advocate representing refugee claimants and other people who have had to go through the immigration system, as well as a decision-maker who has had to wrestle with the difficulty of making a decision that affects people's lives.

I also understand, because of this perspective, that it is a difficult challenge to deal with a refugee determination system that is expeditious and fair. I believe the government should be commended on its effort to reform the refugee determination system. Clearly, in my judgment, the status quo is not an option. It is unfortunate that these changes were not made after the Singh decision back in the mid-1980s. The taxpayer might have been saved a lot of money, and enormous backlogs might have been avoided. But then, in my judgment, it's a case of better late than never.

Another comment I have is that refugee determination must be looked at in the context of protection and not in terms of immigration. These two systems are very different. As much as possible we should respect those differences. For people who wish to immigrate to Canada, there is a process of selection. There is also an avenue of exercising humanitarian and compassionate grounds. Both can be made within Canada and outside of Canada. Refugee determination is a very different process. One should as much as possible keep these things separate.

I do not have a problem, then, with requiring people to choose a path to follow. The one-year bar until an application can be made on humanitarian and compassionate grounds is, in my judgment, not an unreasonable one.

I would also encourage the government as much as possible to make the process of refugee determination outside of Canada as transparent as the process inside Canada. Proposed section 99 of Bill C-31 certainly allows claims from both inside and outside of Canada.

Unfortunately, my bitter experience has shown that refugee claimants who have made claims outside of Canada certainly are not getting the same kind of fair treatment that they obtain inside Canada. A review of decisions is much more difficult and an enormous challenge. Those people or organizations who help refugee claimants abroad know all too well the challenge of challenging decisions made by visa officers outside of Canada. I would certainly encourage that these officers receive the same kind of training that board members, both public servants and GIC appointees, receive.

I have other comments in relation to the loss of permanent residency status.

I certainly don't have a problem with people losing their permanent resident status if their refugee claims are vacated due to fraud. The provisions that deal with that, in my judgment, are fair and reasonable.

The area in which I have a problem is that there is a provision dealing with loss of permanent resident status under section 19, where there is a cessation of refugee protection. An application is made, and then determination is made under various criteria laid out, including change of circumstances.

In those kinds of cases, I think it would be grossly unfair to remove permanent resident status from persons unless there's some kind of tie-in to a ground of inadmissibility, such as misrepresentation or criminality. In those cases, those permanent residents should have recourse to the immigration appeal division to deal with the case, both on legal grounds and on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, as set out in subsection 63(3) of the current legislation.

With respect to time limits for proceeding with refugee claims, we have a seemingly greater emphasis on expediting cases of claimants from designated countries of origin—manifestly unfounded claims and such. This is very problematic. I think all refugee claimants, whether they come from designated countries of origin or not, should have similar timeframes for initiating their claims. A 28-day time limit, in my judgment, is tough enough. To impose a much harsher timeframe, especially given the rather precarious state of legal assistance in this country.... It varies from province to province. In our province, in British Columbia, legal aid is not very handy to have; it's very difficult to obtain.

I would certainly encourage the government to think of some other process—rather than just giving money to provinces, creating a system whereby there could be some assistance at the initial stage. In my judgment, the more assistance you provide at the beginning, the more likely the whole process will be fair to the very end.

With respect to the power to designate a country or part of a country or class of nationals, I do not have a problem with the minister having this power, as long as the criteria are transparent. In my judgment, the process undertaken should be something akin to making regulations. This means that interested parties should be able to comment; it's not sufficient just to publish the designation in the Canada Gazette. The minister is accountable to Parliament and to the public. I don't have as much confidence in these “experts”; I'd rather put my trust in parliamentarians and ministers, who in the end are accountable. Therefore, with respect to this provision, I do not have a problem.

I know there's always a concern about criteria irrelevant to the determination, such as trade considerations, military considerations, alliances. None of those are set out in the proposed regulations, and in my judgment, decisions made based on such things would be subject to legal challenge. Frankly, that should be sufficient deterrence to prevent the minister from going down that road.

I also do not have a problem with having different refugee determination regimes for different classes of refugee claimants. After all, the bottom line is that even the ones from designated countries of origin would have access to the Federal Court, which they've had since 2002, with leave. It is only with respect to other refugee claimants that additional access to the refugee appeal determination system is provided, which the DCOs would not have. But in my judgment, the present system of judicial review by the Federal Court for those kinds of cases is more than adequate.

The regulatory provision for a stay proceeding has been removed, but there is still access to the Federal Court, provided that the tripartite test is met; therefore, a stay order can still be obtained. It would be another thing if there were to be no right of judicial review or no hearing at all for DCO-type cases, and that's certainly not the case here.

After all, we're trying to design a system to expedite removal of people who do not satisfy the criteria for refugee status. To leave it the way it is would simply perpetuate the problem, and we would never be able to have a system that works, unless we finance it at enormous expense, which clearly the public is not prepared to tolerate.

In terms of the bar to making applications for permanent residency for illegal arrivals, in my judgment a five-year bar is excessive; three years is more than sufficient. After all, we're talking about individuals who have made a meritorious refugee claim. To prevent them from applying for five years, in my judgment, is overkill.

If a person wants to apply for permanent residence, there are options other than making a refugee claim. First of all, they can make the refugee claim outside of Canada; then there would be no bar to reuniting the family members. They could apply outside or inside on humanitarian and compassionate grounds without going down the refugee stream. They can also choose the immigration selection system for making an approach to get immigration status.

Clearly, we need to have some kind of a system to deter people from using the route offered by people smugglers. It's always easy to say we can prosecute people smugglers—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I call the meeting to order. This is the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, meeting number 35, on Tuesday, May 1, 2012, pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 23, 2012, Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and other acts. This meeting is televised.

We have two witnesses with us today. The first witness is from Vancouver, British Columbia, and is a lawyer.

Andrew Wlodyka, you will be speaking for up to 10 minutes, sir, if you wish.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

I'm sorry. I don't want to interrupt you, but if I may, the word “jail” does not appear in Bill C-31.

[Mitchell Goldberg]

Thank you for your question. There are three comments that I will make.

First, as I said in my previous answer, yes, I agree that speeding up the process is important. My clients are very frustrated and very sad when it takes so long to have a hearing, and they're thinking about their family overseas, whom they want to bring here. They know they can't start the process until they're accepted as a refugee under the current system. They're often desperate to get a hearing quickly, and that's where I think the Balanced Refugee Reform Act got it right.

You said that BillC-31 is compassionate because it speeds up the process. I think that the Balanced Refugee Reform Act was compassionate. I don't think one year in jail is compassionate to people who aren't even being charged with a crime. The government just doesn't like how they arrived.

To answer the second part of your question—

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Opitz, and thank you to our witnesses for appearing before us today.

Mr. Goldberg, from the outset of your presentation to us, you clearly said that you recommended that the bill be withdrawn. You also said that the bill has nothing to do with refugees, if you will, or speeding up the process.

I want to point out a couple of things that I think you perhaps may have missed in making your assessment. With the measures in Bill C-31, the time to finalize a refugee claim for a legitimate refugee would drop from the current 1,038 days to 45 days for claimants from designated countries of origin, and 216 days for all other claimants. Surely you would agree that someone who is fleeing persecution, possible death or torture in their country, would be greatly advantaged by the speeding up of the process for their coming into Canada. I think it points—and we've heard this from other witnesses—to a very compassionate element in the bill.

You mentioned your children. I really thank you for sharing your personal story of your children. I'd like to talk a little bit about some other measures that are in Bill C-31 that will help us to identify a terrorist or a criminal possibly even before they come to our borders. Hopefully, we should be able to identify them. But in the cases where we don't, let's take the two examples of the Sun Sea and the Ocean Lady.

On the Sun Sea, five people were denied, four for security reasons and one for war crimes. On the Ocean Lady, 19 were ruled inadmissible for security reasons, and 17 for war crimes. That's a total of 41 people. I'm sure that you and every other Canadian in the country would be appalled at the thought that 41 people who have perpetrated war crimes or have a record of security breaches in their country would be allowed to live in their neighbourhoods, to be around their children and their families.

I'd like to speak a little bit about the issue of biometrics. We heard testimony at this committee from experts, including officials at the highest level, from the RCMP, CSIS, CBSA, law enforcement people, who attested to the fact that biometrics is a 21st-century identification tool. It is a tool designed to assist countries, that is, law enforcement folks, to identify risks or potential risks. Can you elaborate on that? What would your thoughts be on that? It really points to things that are in the bill that very much have to do with refugees and the security of Canadians.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Thank you, again, to our guests for being here.

I am a member of three bars, but not the Quebec one. It is really difficult.

When we consider rights and responsibilities, there is always a question of balance. It is always our challenge as lawmakers to think of everything we should think of.

Clearly, you have pointed us to aspects that we have to take into account. In your remarks you have emphasized the area of due process.

Again, I think we face the peril of the false dichotomy. We face the peril of saying there are those who only care about efficiency and cost control and those who only care about human rights. I think that's probably a distortion of what we actually see in this committee, because each member cares about both.

There is a right to appeal. Certainly, you continue to have a right to the Federal Court in Bill C-31, and there is another right to review that. Again, you may deem that to be less robust, Mr. Goldberg, than what you would like, but let us not forget those who are in line. They are people who no one would dispute as being real refugees, people who have come, as the minister said in his testimony, with the scars on their backs, who would otherwise have to wait 21 months on average. Those people now receive an expedited hearing. So we have a program that will process more quickly the people that everybody knows should be processed, without eliminating the others who may not have a claim but at least still have some process in a country that doesn't owe them a legal duty but the moral responsibility that we all care about as Canadians.

I simply want you to look at this from the perspective of preserving the integrity of a system that is under stress, of preserving the democratic support for a refugee program that we cannot afford to lose, of preserving the fiscal ability to support this, which we all care about. As lawyers we tend to look at the due process thing and focus on it to the exclusion of other things.

Mr. Goldberg, as someone who has the benefit of historical analysis, as we both do given our respective heritages, can I ask you to do that and to make sure that you're treating this with the balance that we need to hear to see you and all our other witnesses as credible?

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Chair, we're discussing Bill C-31. I believe Mr. Goldberg is making a very hypothetical situation about what would have happened, how it would have been interpreted or applied in 1939.

[Mitchell Goldberg]

No. I think it's important to be who we are. All our parents, grandparents, have come from other countries. I'd like to answer that question as the grandson of Jewish refugees from Europe. I think it's important to ask what would have happened to the German Jews who were on the S.S. St. Louis in 1939. You may remember that Canada turned them away during the era of “none is too many”, when no Jewish refugees were too many, according to the Mackenzie King government of the day. What would have happened if Bill C-31 had been in effect in 1939? Well, those German-Jewish refugees would have been declared irregular arrivals, because they arrived by boat. They would have been subject to one-year warrantless mandatory detention. If they were recognized as refugees, they would not have been allowed to sponsor their children and their spouses who were in concentration camps in Europe before 1944, by which time the final solution was in full effect. So I do not think we've learned from history.

[Mitchell Goldberg]

That is false. Subclause 36(1) of Bill C-31 lists seven reasons, under proposed subsection 110(2), that refugee claimants will not get access to the refugee appeal division. Among those seven reasons are designated foreign nationals and people from designated countries of origin. It is there in black and white in subclause 36(1) of C-31. I'm sorry, but that's wrong.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

I didn't ask you to go on about why you didn't like it. I read in your submission why you didn't like it. I'm trying to get at the point of ill-defined criteria. You didn't answer the question.

I will state, in case you were unaware, that designation, number one, is not automatic. There are quantitative thresholds involved in this. The rejection rate of the country has to be 75% or above. The rate of abandonment of applications has to be above 60%. With respect to those countries that have a low number of claims, we require, before we even go down that road, that they have an independent judicial system and that there is a recognition of basic democratic rights and freedoms.

Before we determine that a country should be designated, a review is triggered in which, number one, CIC, the minister, would conduct a review and consultations with other government departments, a number of whom sat at this table at the beginning of this process. Number two, we actually have in place a number of guidelines that would be followed in terms of the review process.

While you may not agree with the process, it's one that is going to be quicker. It's one that is going to be more transparent and it's going to be more consistent. It will include officials from different government departments at senior levels, including deputy ministers, assistant deputy ministers, and directors who have expertise in this area.

While I would submit that you have the right to disagree with the way Bill C-31 is going to move forward, I don't think you can actually argue that they are ill-defined criteria. It's important to point out that there are criteria set out to move forward.

Throughout your submission you indicate that there is not a right of appeal for those individuals who are determined to be from a designated safe country. I would like you to expand on that, because that's not, in fact, the case.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I'll stop the clock. Normally we let you talk about anything you want to talk about, but we're talking about Bill C-31, I would remind you, and I don't think your first question had the remotest connection with Bill C-31.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

As you know, Bill C-31 provides the minister with the new power to revoke permanent residency from protected persons if the situation in their country of origin changes and they are no longer at risk. The minister said that was not the intended effect of the bill's provision. However, you and many others have expressed your concerns.

Could you explain how you came to that interpretation and why that situation worries you?

[Mitchell Goldberg]

Thank you very much for the question.

It is very clear that the mandatory detention is a violation of the Canadian charter—sections 7, 9, 10 and 12 in particular. The Supreme Court has already made a relevant ruling in the Charkaoui case. The chief justice spoke very eloquently when she said it was unacceptable to detain immigrants to Canada for an extended period of time without granting them the right to a judicial review.

You know that the current legislation provides mechanisms for detaining individuals if there are doubts about their identity. That is already in place. In addition, if people are suspected of being a threat to public safety, they are detained. However, judicial reviews are conducted to ensure that unlawfully detained people are released.

I think we would have to go back to the Second World War to find a similar situation in Canada, a democratic country. We would have to go back to the mass detentions of Canadians of Japanese origin. That was the last time, in Canada, that individuals were sent to concentration camps simply because they were of Japanese origin. We can draw a parallel between that situation and what the government is proposing in Bill C-31, and that is unacceptable.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank our witnesses for joining us this morning.

Yesterday, professor Macklin warned us in her testimony about Bill C-31, which would violate the principles of natural justice and the rule of law. We have heard a number of testimonies, and I admit that I am quite worried, especially since the human faces of refugees or refugee protection claimants have been completely blurred out and set aside.

Here are my questions. In your brief, you claim that a year of mandatory detention in the case of illegal arrivals is unreasonable and excessive. Could you give us a more in-depth explanation of what you consider to be unreasonable and why it is excessive, especially in light of the charter and of international law?

[Mitchell Goldberg]

Thank you very much, Mr. Plourde.

I am speaking to you today not only as a lawyer, but also as the father of two children. I have two daughters: Sabine, 13 years old; and Naomi, 17 years old. My children were the inspiration for the following three scenarios.

In the first scenario, I arrive in Canada with Naomi and Sabine. The minister designates me as an irregular arrival, which means that I must be detained. Naomi, who is 17, is also subject to that system and must be imprisoned for 12 months with me. However, Sabine, who is 13, will have a so-called choice: she can either go to prison with Naomi and me, or be placed in an institution for 12 months and separated from her father and sister. Those are the options provided by Bill C-31. Not only as a lawyer, but also as a Canadian, I am ashamed to think that vulnerable individuals who are seeking protection in Canada may be detained.

In the second scenario, I am a Syrian refugee. I am an opponent of the current regime and have consequently come to Canada to seek protection. Fortunately, the court has recognized me as a refugee; I have been granted refugee status. Unfortunately, according to Bill C-31, as I have been designated as a refugee, I will be able to apply for permanent residency only in five years' time. I am very desperate to bring to Canada my daughters, who are still in Syria. I am afraid that the military members of the Syrian government are actively searching for me. I fear that, if they find my daughters, they will abuse them and ask them where their father is. I am afraid that, when my girls say that they don't know or that their father is abroad, they may be in physical danger. However, there is nothing I can do to bring them to Canada. I will not even be able to begin the process before my five years is up, and that means it may take seven years after I am recognized as a refugee for me to bring them over. That means that Sabine, who is 13 years old, will be 20, and Naomi, who is 17, will be 24, before I can see them.

Here is the third scenario. I arrive in Canada in 2000, from Algeria. I am recognized as a refugee. In 2002, I become a permanent resident of Canada. I marry a Canadian woman. We have two children, who are now four and seven years old. Of course, my children are Canadian, since they were born in Montreal. The minister is now claiming that circumstances in Algeria have changed, as the war has ended. There is still some violence, but the situation is not like it was in 2000. According to the Bill C-31 provisions on cessation and conditional permanent residency, I may have to appear before the board. My only defence will be claiming that the situation has not changed. I have always told the truth, but I may be sent back to Algeria. I could not use the best interest of my Canadian children as an argument. I have no right to an appeal. There is no forum where humanitarian considerations can be invoked.

[Nicolas Plourde, President of the Bar, Barreau du Québec]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ladies and gentlemen members of the committee, as the elected President of the Barreau du Québec, I want to thank you for inviting us today to discuss such an important issue for Canadians—the security and effectiveness of our immigration system.

I would like to begin by emphasizing the importance the Barreau du Québec attaches to the improvement of the security and effectiveness of the Canadian immigration system. I invite you to read about the Barreau du Québec's previous involvement in the area of immigration, especially the letters regarding bills C-49 and C-11.

As you probably know, the Barreau du Québec is a professional order with a membership of 24,000 Quebec lawyers. The Barreau is proud of its worldwide involvement in the implementation of democratic governance and institutions founded on the rule of law. Its primary purpose is protecting the public. In that work, it strives to carry out its social responsibility by standing up for the democratic values of our society, including human rights.

The Barreau du Québec has reviewed Bill C-31, which reintroduces Bill C-11 and amends the Balanced Refugee Reform Act. The Barreau du Québec fears that the changes the bill makes to the classification process will result in discriminatory and differential treatment of claims, which may undermine claimants' confidence in the legality and legitimacy of the decisions made regarding their refugee protection claims.

That being said, the Barreau du Québec believes that protecting the Canadian immigration system is indeed an important issue and that the Canadian government is right to try to deter illegal immigration. That may make it necessary to circumscribe certain rights in the public interest. However, the bill contains harsh measures, including the automatic detention of designated foreign nationals for a period of up to a year. My colleague Mr. Goldberg will tell you more about the negative effects we fear regarding this measure.

The Barreau du Québec is also opposed to the restriction of the right to appeal a decision on its merits to the Refugee Appeal Division. The Barreau believes that an applicant's confidence in the state calls for the promotion and maintenance of a judicial structure of accessible and independent tribunals, as well as just and effective representation.

Before I yield the floor to my colleague, Mr. Goldberg, for a more thorough account of the Barreau du Québec's position, allow me to quickly introduce him. Mr. Goldberg has been a lawyer and a member of the Barreau du Québec since 1989. He is a member of the Barreau's committee on immigration and citizenship. He has been working in immigration and refugee law since 1990. Therefore, he regularly represents foreign nationals in all sorts of cases involving various immigration applications and refugee protection claims in Canada.

Mr. Goldberg is heavily involved in his area of expertise. He worked as a volunteer for a human rights organization in Guatemala. He is also active within the Canadian Bar Association and its liaison committee with the federal court. He is one of the founding members of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, where he has been the vice-president since 2001.

Mr. Chair, with your permission, I yield the floor to my colleague Mr. Goldberg.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

One of the main goals of Bill C-31 is to identify people who want to come into the country through illegal means, which would be unfair to people like Mr. Mossallanejad and many others who came here to seek asylum from persecution and possibly death and torture in their countries of origin. These people today can wait as long as 1038 days. That's almost three years from the time their application goes in. They fall behind bogus applicants, behind people from the European Union. The European Union is a union of 27 countries. So if someone feels unsafe in one of those 27 countries, all of which have democratically elected governments, they have 26 other choices they can go to.

Mr. Mossallanejad didn't have the choice of going to 26 countries where he would be safe. So folks like him need to get priority. There's the compassion in Bill C-31—to service people who need it faster and allow them to come into the country faster and not fall behind these bogus applications, many of which are being abandoned, creating a cost problem and clogging the system.

Once somebody claims refugee status, we need to go through the process of assessing the application on its merits regardless of where they are in the world. Bill C-31 addresses that issue and focuses attention on the people who need it most. I think it's important to bring that up.

Do you think Bill C-31 would reduce human smuggling into Canada by eliminating the ability to take advantage of our generous immigration system and social services? They're using it as a fast track to get in, blocking people who legitimately need it.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

Therefore, you agree that by discouraging people from simply walking into this country and saying they're claiming asylum, it will actually be a fairer system for them to go through the proper channels under Bill C-31 when coming to Canada?

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

So in your opinion, provinces should really be support this particular measure in this bill because when I think of about $1 billion for Ontario.... I'm in the GTA, and transit is a municipal issue there; I hear again and again that we need subways. I mean $1 billion could go a long way toward helping municipalities right across the great province of Ontario.

I would like to thank you on that. I know you mentioned that the Taxpayers Federation supports the measures in Bill C-31, but I'm wondering if you've got any specific comments from some of your members on this particular bill.

[Ezat Mossallanejad]

Thank you very much for this golden opportunity.

I speak from the perspective of survivors or torture, war, genocide, and crimes against humanity. I also speak to you from the perspective of a person who came to Canada as a political refugee. I'm a victim and survivor of torture and spent four years in jail for human rights purposes.

I will share with you initially the positive aspects of Bill C-31. Then I will come to some areas of concern, and finally I will have some special requests for you.

To begin, let me bring to your respected attention that since its inception in 1977, the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture has provided its holistic services to more than 19,000 clients from 136 countries. It is the most important centre in North America, and the second at a global level.

Let me begin with some of the positive aspects of Bill C-31. The fact that you give discretionary power to the minister to release designated foreign nationals when exceptional circumstances arise is very positive. Exemption of children below the age of 16 from detention is positive as well, but separation from their families during the incarceration of their parents is an area of concern. Finally, the consideration given to the best interests of the child and to the lack of emergency medical care in the countries of origin when someone applies on humanitarian and compassionate grounds is positive as well.

Now I come to the areas of our concern. The first concern, as a centre providing direct services to survivors, is the very short time period for processing refugee claims. It ranges from 30, to 45, to 60 days for different categories of refugees. In our view that is neither feasible nor just. It sometimes takes me three months to come up with the proper documentation of someone's torture, by using psychiatrists, psychologists, and physical practitioners. I don't know how it is possible to do that in a short time, and whether there are resources for that.

The second area of concern with Bill C-31 is the fact that almost five categories of refugee claimants are denied access to the refugee appeal division, and in some cases they are denied Federal Court remedies.

I'll give you one example. The bill has denied people whose credibility is rejected. Most of my clients contradict themselves because they are survivors. They are disassociated. They suffer from deep depression and severe mental health problems, so they are rejected. There are other remedies that in the course of time will prove their credibility. We believe they should have access to the appeal division and Federal Court remedies.

Another area of concern is the designated countries of origin. Please note that we are living in a changing world: The situation of a country can change overnight, so please be extremely careful in preparing the list.

There are also some categories of people, for example LGBT people, who are subject to torture almost everywhere. Canada is an exception. But when you just come up with designated countries of origin, they might be denied protection. We are very concerned about that.

Also, another area is designated foreign nationals. We are very concerned about this. Based on my experience working with refugees in Canada for 27 years, I know they can be in detention forever. They can be in limbo also for many years, because they are denied access to...for five years. They have no opportunity for family re-unification. Even if they are accepted as protected persons, they should report to the police. This is against article 16 of the Convention Against Torture that speaks to the prohibition of other inhumane, cruel, degrading treatment or punishment. Please do something about that.

Also, we are concerned about the limitation of pre-removal risk assessment and coming up with some limitation on applying on humanitarian and compassionate grounds after one year of rejection. These are the remedies for survivors of torture and we have done it in the past.

Finally, we are very concerned about the vacation of status and the cessation clause. Let me tell you that the scars of torture never go away. Psychologically, the scars will remain for the rest of one's life. People “mis-present“ themselves as survivors and that should not be grounds to vacate their status. Also, a country's situation might change, but I think that is a change on its face value not real value, given the fact that impunity is a global problem and that warlords and torturers remain active even if a country's situation changes. That should not grounds to come up with this cessation of refugee status.

Now, I come to our special request. Please, our beloved legislature, I beg you to incorporate all important provisions in the legislation itself and not leave them for regulations.

My second request is to please provide the minister with the discretionary power to protect people who need protection. Even the most comprehensive legislation cannot anticipate exceptional cases.

Then my third request is to please be as flexible as possible. Tough legislation and tight restrictions will be counter-productive if they fail to consider the root causes of the problem.

Finally, you know that since 1976, the immigration act has gone through many changes, many amendments, and still you have the problem. Please come up with a vital link between immigration and human rights. Please designate an ombudsperson responsible to Parliament for monitoring immigration practices.

Thank you very much.

[Derek Fildebrandt, National Research Director, Canadian Taxpayers Federation]

Thank you very much.

Honourable members, on behalf of the 70,000 supporters of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, I thank you for the invitation to testify today regarding Bill C-31.

My name is Derek Fildebrandt. I am the national research director at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

The CTF is a not-for-profit citizen advocacy group dedicated to lower taxes, less waste, and accountable government. We do not have charitable status and we do not accept a penny in government support—we never have, and never will.

Canadian public policy is riddled with sacred cows that cannot be touched, and very few people are willing to take the heat for wading into them. Few in Ottawa have roots in the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, however. I will pre-empt what will likely be an inevitable point raised and note that our alumni includes Jason Kenney, the author of the bill before us today. Since he left the CTF 16 years ago to run for Parliament, we have supported several of his initiatives, including Bill C-31.

The CTF makes no claim to being immigration and refugee experts, but we are a watchdog of how our public money is spent.

The bill has our full support for three reasons. First, it upholds the belief of Canadians that our refugee system should be compassionate and welcoming. Second, it strengthens that system by making it more timely and efficient. Third, it is projected to save Canadian taxpayers at least $1.65 billion over the first five-year period.

Included in the reforms in Bill CC-31 are a new appeal process for applicants, a guarantee to remove failed applicants in a timely manner, and a safe-country designation to help streamline the process. Estimates put the waiting time for a refugee claim to be heard at 60 days under the proposed reforms, a massive improvement over the 19-month average right now.

Currently a failed asylum seeker costs taxpayers over approximately $50,000, a cost carried mostly by provincial governments for health care and welfare spending. It is estimated that this cost will be reduced to $29,000 per claimant under the proposed regime. This is still not cheap, but it is a marked improvement nonetheless.

The bill will ensure that refugee claimants of questionable status will spend less time using the generous health care and welfare benefits of our provincial governments, creating major efficiencies for taxpayers. In Ontario alone this will save more than $1 billion over the first five years; in Quebec, $465 million; in British Columbia, $99 million; and in Alberta, $46 million.

Getting better bang for our buck is a goal that has long been left out of the conversation around refugee policy for fear of this sacred cow, that any change would be viewed as uncompassionate or present a political target for opponents.

At the Canadian Taxpayers Federation we are critics most of the time, pointing out where governments do wrong. Here you might recall our calculation in January of the pensions of members of Parliament. Nevertheless, when governments do something right we're unafraid to support it. The government's willingness to take this on has the full support of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and we encourage members of Parliament to work together to pass this bill and avoid the temptation on all sides to turn this into a political football.

Thank you for your time.

[Richard Kurland]

It is a tongue-in-cheek question and it merited a fun reply. Yes, we would love to have the ability to expeditiously determine every case, but we're constrained by resources and the physical time required to get things done. Yes, we can improve things. The point is that Bill C-31 improves things.

I take issue with mandatory detention and the mass arrival system for the reasons I've made known. Don't overlook the positive aspects: the glass is more than half full on this one. We can do a better job on the front end if we have the resources. It's a trade-off with other sectors in government.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Very well.

Past witnesses have talked about the child's best interest. Some witnesses have claimed that Bill C-31 fails to take that interest into consideration.

You find that a year of detention as punishment for irregular arrivals is unreasonable. Why?

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Okay.

More time is needed to obtain additional details, study the bill thoroughly, take into consideration the conditions and applications in order to determine the potential consequences.

Bill C-31 prohibits family reunification in illegal arrival cases. What do you think about that? Does it comply with the charter?

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Yesterday, Martin Collacott said that drug dealers are turning to human smuggling now because the penalties are less. Do you agree with the statement, and do you think the measures in Bill C-31 go far enough?

[Richard Kurland]

Well, missing in the analysis of Bill C-31, and probably because of the shortage of time as pointed out in testimony, is what Canada does do alongside Bill C-31. The budget provides resources, more resources in an era of restraint, for intelligence gathering and sharing overseas to help stem the sources or drivers that produce refugee claimants to this country.

After the marine arrival, Canada, without public credit for doing so, allocated intelligence resources to the neighbouring countries of Sri Lanka, using its diplomatic resources to stem the flow and correct the situation on the ground. In Europe, Canada is a contributor to the Roma situation there, in terms of finding solutions proactively. Alongside our silo of refugee determination, our silo of immigration processing, we are holistically allocating resources on the diplomatic, intelligence, and law enforcement front to augment our partnerships abroad to address precisely your question.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you very much.

It causes me concern that a minister who is so hands-on with everything he does with the immigration file has maybe missed this. Now he's open to amendments, but we will see about that.

How do the provisions in Bill C-31 dealing with detention of designated foreign nationals differ from the provisions that already exist in the current law? This is another area of concern. Canada does not have a history of just throwing people who come here as asylum seekers en masse into prison indefinitely, or at least for up to a year. So what are these differences and what is significant about the differences?

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

That leads to my second question. I was going to ask you if you support Bill C-31 and why. Do you want to comment on that?

[Richard Kurland]

Well, it isn't a path to bankruptcy because the input on the intake is finite, so there's not going to be an uncontrolled bleed of money.

In addition, this bill actually tightens up the process, monitors, and controls on the financial side. In addition, on our refugee board, what I've seen in the technical design, on the layout, the framework of the new refugee determination system is an increase in efficiency. Processing times are to be dramatically and significantly cut, thereby reducing the total inventory of refugee claimants during the refugee determination process, because you're going to be doing more cases faster with fewer resources.

Our central Canadian provinces and B.C. will have, as a result, lower carrying costs of the refugee inventory because you're going to see less demand on public assistance. The work permit controls will effectively create taxpayers for some of these refugee claimants when the positive determination signal is struck. Finally, overall, you may see a change in the composition of the intake. I do not expect the same source countries to be in place post-arrival of Bill C-31.

[Peter Edelmann, Member, National Immigration Law Section, Canadian Bar Association]

Thank you for the opportunity to address the committee today.

We members of the CBA section spent the last several weeks studying this bill in as much detail as time allowed. As you are aware, it's a very complex piece of legislation, with major impacts on immigration and refugee law.

We have some detailed written submissions that set out a number of concerns we have with the bill. I'm going to focus on two issues that encompass a number of points within the bill today. The first is the scope of the legislation itself, and the second is the expansion of powers being delegated by Parliament to the minister.

The CBA section is particularly concerned with the omnibus nature of the bill. In particular, with respect to the stated objective to pass this legislation on a very short timeline—before June 29—given the scope of the changes, there is a very short amount of time available, and even in that short amount of time, we've identified a number of different problems with the bill.

The scope of the changes is massive, and understanding these reforms is further complicated by the layering of multiple sections—previous acts that have yet to come into force, parts of IRPA that haven't come into force.

On top of that we have the changes that were made by the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, Bill C-11. Layered on top of that, we have changes in Bill C-31 that make changes to the sections of IRPA that were not in force and changes to the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, and other, further changes.

Just trying to understand all of that and cross-referencing the amendments is quite a task in and of itself. The Library of Parliament, which has done an admirable job in trying to summarize the legislation, indicates that the creation of RAD, for example, would take place immediately upon royal assent. I should hope that is incorrect, as the Immigration and Refugee Board is not in a position to implement RAD upon royal assent. The error made by the Library of Parliament is understandable given the multiple coming-into-force clauses within the bill.

So we have nested clauses within the bill that even the Library of Parliament is having challenges to understand. The minister himself has demonstrated a lack of understanding of fundamental aspects of this legislation.

Clauses 18 and 19 of the bill would unequivocally change the law to make cessation a basis of inadmissibility and loss of permanent resident status. As a lawyer who regularly works with the Latin American community, I can tell you that this change has potentially devastating consequences for thousands if not tens of thousands of permanent residents.

I'll give you the example of a Chilean refugee who fled the Pinochet regime in the 1980s, who has been a permanent resident and contributing member of Canadian society since that time. The new cessation provisions would mean that person could, at any time, be taken before the board for cessation proceedings, and there would be no defence. The changes in Chile are clear; the Pinochet regime fell many years ago.

Such refugees would not only lose their permanent protected person status, but they would lose their permanent resident status, they would have no appeal, there would be no consideration of humanitarian factors, and they would then be removed as soon as possible.

Aside from the nature of the provision itself, what's of particular concern to the CBA is the fact that the minister appears not to understand the nature of the change. In fact, he has repeatedly and adamantly claimed there is no change in the cessation provisions before the House and in the public sphere. I'll just read from the Montreal Gazette, March 8, 2012, a letter written by Minister Kenney. He says:

Your editorial wrongly claims that Bill C-31...includes a new power that allows the minister of citizenship and immigration to revoke permanent-resident status from refugees in Canada.

He goes on to say:

Bill C-31 only modifies the current law by changing the current redundant process for revoking fraudulently obtained refugee status and permanent residency in two separate steps, to a one-step process at the independent IRB that revokes both simultaneously. It is an administrative change, and not a new authority.

This is clearly incorrect.

There is a consensus among lawyers. The consensus between the CBA, the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, a number of other people who have studied this bill, the Library of Parliament, and the department itself make it clear that this interpretation is incorrect.

The minister himself appeared before this committee, and appeared to admit that was not what was intended and that he was open to an amendment. We hope that amendment would in fact be made. I do hope that will be followed through by this committee.

What is of particular concern is the speed with which this complex legislation is being passed without the time to properly study it. You're being asked to pass a bill on a very short timeline and we don't know how many more unintentional consequences there will be—and there are—in this bill.

With all due respect, no one whom I'm aware of has been able to study this bill in depth. That includes me and Mr. Kurland. And I'm not pointing at Mr. Kurland or the people who are appearing before this committee, but in terms of all of the unintentional consequences, we simply haven't had time to study in depth this piece of legislation.

The problem is compounded by the lack of details. When IRPA was passed in 2002 there were concerns raised that there was a shift to legislating by way of regulation. The trend continues with this bill. For a lot of the parts of this legislation, we've not seen the regulations that are going to fill in the details. We have biometric provisions that simply say that the government is going to set this out in regulations. It's very difficult for us to comment about that. As to whether or not biometrics is a good idea or not, there are no details in this bill. Then there are the removals as soon as possible and the timelines.

In other respects, the details are not even by way of regulation, but by way of ministerial order. For example, with respect to the designated countries of origin, they will not only be designated by ministerial order, but the very criteria by which they will be designated will also be decided by the minister. There is nothing in the act that would prevent the minister from setting the levels at 100% so that any country could be designated at will.

One of the more striking examples of the expansion of powers is with respect to investigative detention, which significantly widens the CBSA's powers. Currently, paragraph 58.(1)(c), which was introduced in 2002 shortly after the terrorist events of September 11, allows for the detention of permanent residents and foreign nationals at ports of entry on suspicion of a security threat and violation of human or international rights. The government justified this at the time as anti-terrorist legislation. Inadmissibility for security and these types of rights violations is quite rare.

The bill proposes to greatly expand these powers to include detention for mere suspicion of almost any form of criminality, even minor criminality in the distant past, whether or not a person has ever been arrested or charged. For example, a 20-year-old permanent resident suspected of using fake identification to get into a bar while visiting the U.S. would be subject to detention with little or no recourse while the minister investigated the suspicion of inadmissibility based on what could be the offence of uttering a forged document. It carries a maximum penalty of 10 years or more and is therefore considered serious criminality under the act. This same permanent resident could arguably be detained on the same basis 20 years later.

The bill would grant exceptionally broad powers of detention to officers, with little or no direction with respect to their application. That is the breadth of what we're talking about.

I present this as an example because it's of particular concern that Parliament is delegating its power, whether it's to the minister or to officers, when it's not properly circumscribed. That type of delegation does not contribute to law and order. It in fact undermines the rule of law upon which this institution is based. I hope that as parliamentarians you take pause with respect to the delegation of these types of powers with little direction.

[Richard Kurland]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

In keeping with past tradition, I'll keep my remarks brief and to the point, jealously guarding the chair's time.

After canvassing individuals, associations, and colleagues from coast to coast, I have found that there's a collision of passions. On the one hand, there is our natural inclination to provide our generous protection to the persecuted, the refugee. That's in keeping with Canada's fine traditions. On the other hand, the public desire for control and respect of Canadian sovereignty requires that we guard against those who would abuse Canada's generosity when it comes to protecting the refugee.

How do we reconcile these two passions? You will likely see throughout the day experts who will explain that we're making a mistake on the refugee determination side in Bill C-31. I'd like to contribute by explaining very quickly how this came about and the struggle to reach the right balance.

First, what I tell people is to look at what is not in the proposed law. Canada had the opportunity to introduce the power to interdict would-be refugee claimants on the high seas. It cannot be ignored that that political choice was intentionally made not to interdict overseas in respect of our genuine desire to protect the persecuted. Other countries, western democratic countries, engage in this practice, but not Canada.

In terms of numbers, you're looking at 35,000 refugees per year, and over a 10-year period you can guesstimate that there are at least a 250,000 to 350,000 claims.

The section of Bill C-31 attracting the most interest of my colleagues relates to mandatory detention, denial of family reunification for five years, and those sorts of things, connected to a mass arrival. I suggest that people should focus on solutions. It's easy to identify prospective charter violations.

Where is the solution? What must be known is that political opinion, subsequent to the arrival of over 500 claimants in vessels created a severe downslide in Canadian support for our immigration programs in their entirety.

How many of these marine arrivals occur in a decade? In two decades, there have been three. That’s an average of about two every ten years, with the highest number being recently. So of 250,00 to 350,000 people, you're talking of about 1,000 or 2,000 in 30 years. I can't light my hair on fire when the numbers are that low. Of the poor people who did arrive and make a claim, as with other categories, an average of about 40% were accepted in our typical fashion, with others sliding in under other programs such as on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.

But regarding the principles at stake, including mandatory detention in Canada, I have not heard the War Measures Act invoked. But the public opinion that requires a solution engages a political communication strategy on the part of the Government of Canada to deter arrivals. Deterrence is the result of a law that may well indeed be charter-inappropriate. What remains to be seen is the effect. The gamble is the political embarrassment of having a law declared contrary to the supreme law of this country, the charter.

The practical outcome of this may well be the reduction, if not the elimination, of mass arrivals in marine fashion.

That's the political backdrop and strategy, and I would love to hear solutions from other witnesses rather attacks on the legalistic, technical position of it being pro or contra the charter. We need to work in this room together prospectively to find a solution whereby we can achieve both passions equally—to protect the persecuted and prevent the abuse of our Canadian generosity. That's the task.

Having said that, I move quickly—I will close in about a minute, if not two—to some things that may be tinkered with technically. The idea of a safe third country list is politically problematic, so I would recommend some consideration of a sunset clause on the list. Instead of being whacked twice politically for a decision to put something on, and then something off, put something on with a timer so that the country name drops off the list automatically without further ado after a period, such as 24 months. That saves you a lot of embarrassment down the road. It's practical; it's doable.

I'll walk quickly though the other aspect, and then I'll pass the torch. Two illustrations should be borne in mind when looking at Bill C-31. The St. Louis mass arrival by boat: How would you treat those Jews? Would it be mandatory detention for a year? They did it back then. An oven or a detention in Canada? It's an easy choice. Then there's the Tiananmen Square massacre and the students who arrived in this country. Before June 1989, no one believed there was a problem in Chine. Now what? So build those safeguards so you can proactively have a little safety valve, a little delay, for the pre-Tiananmen sequence of events. I think that's important.

That's going to be my time for now. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Good morning, everyone.

I call the meeting to order. This is the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, meeting 34, Tuesday, May 1, 2012. This meeting is televised.

The orders of the day are pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 23, 2012, Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and other acts.

On our first panel this morning for the first hour is Mr. Richard Kurland, a policy analyst and attorney.

Good morning. You have appeared before us many times. I see the word “attorney”. Does that mean you're an American?

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

I want to ask a couple questions of Mr. Skarica.

If we can get those done, Ms. Douglas, I'll give you at least the rest of that time to respond.

Mr. Skarica, you haven't referred directly to Bill C-31. I wonder if you could, in terms the steps it takes to get at the issues you've brought forward today.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Let me answer that question for you, because the man sitting next to you is the exact reason, and the purposes he has mentioned are the exact reasons we had to bring this issue forward. For Bill C-11, I was parliamentary secretary. I sat in every single one of those meetings, and went through the whole process and the negotiations.

I was proud of what happened with respect to Bill C-11, and a lot of the aspects of Bill C-11 are going to move forward because of Bill C-31. So you don't like Bill C-31 and you like Bill C-11, but a lot of what's in Bill C-31 is Bill C-11. So there have to be things in here that you actually appreciate.

My point is that you've listened to what Mr. Skarica has had to say. You've heard about the 15 convictions he has achieved. You've heard from him—it's what he does for a living—that we have not been successful and that our system is broken.

We will not solve the problem of what we have in front of us —this problem right here—with Bill C-11. Bill C-11 will not solve this problem. You know what we'll end up doing if we only do Bill C-11? We'll just simply slap down visas on Hungary and hope that gets us around the issue, as we've had to do with Mexico and the Czech Republic.

That's not the process we want to use. If we're going to enter into agreements with the EU, if we're going to make sure that our economies are like-minded and that we become free-trading partners, we must have a system that the rest of the world believes is foolproof—at least in the efforts that it makes.

The system that we have now in this country, as Mr. Skarica has said, is broken. Simply disregarding Bill C-31 and accepting the fact that a majority of what's in Bill C-11 is good but doesn't go all the way to solving our issue.... I just have to state for the record that I obviously disagree with your position. I respect that you are here. I just wish you wouldn't have stated at the very outset that all of Bill C-31 wasn't good and should be removed.

Second, we need to get tougher to be able to identify the people Mr. Skarica was referring to, and biometrics is in this bill, and you've indicated that it's not worth pursuing—

[Debbie Douglas]

But it won't. Bill C-31 gives parents the option of no choice. They can have their children detained with them, or they can give up their children to the state. As someone who is seeking asylum, being faced with a Sophie's choice, not at all to belittle the Holocaust, is a presupposition of no choice in terms of their children being detained.

One of the things that we have been taking a look at is what the past practices have shown us in terms of the mental health of young people who have been detained and/or removed from their parents.

These are some of the concerns that I think this committee needs to take into account when looking at mandatory detention, particularly the detention of children under the age of 16. Often, in Canada, we think of the age of adulthood as 18. Bill C-31 talks about children as 16 and under. That, in itself, is a problem.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Can I just ask how much time I have left? Okay, I'm just going to keep talking.

When I think of Bill C-31, I think of it being in the best interests of Canada as a nation. I think it's in the best interests of the safety and security of the Canadian citizens and the people who are here in Canada. I also think it's in the best interests of Canadian taxpayers. And let's face it, they are the ones who are footing the bill for fraudulent claims. I also believe that this bill is in the best interests of legitimate refugees, bona fide refugees, who need Canada's help.

Would you agree with all of those statements?

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

It's a huge problem provincially in Ontario because bogus refugee claimants come here by fraudulent means and are here long enough to make their applications to receive our lucrative benefits, but then they don't necessarily show up for the first hearing and then, of course, it's hard to track these people down. I'm listening to your story and I'm shaking my head, not in shock but in agreement. It's very upsetting, especially with respect to the cost to Canadian taxpayers.

I'm just wondering if you could tell this committee why generally you accept the provisions in Bill C-31 and why you think they will make a huge improvement—

[Debbie Douglas, Executive Director, Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (OCASI)]

I'll begin for OCASI.

Thank you for having us.

The Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, better known as OCASI, is the provincial umbrella group for agencies that work with immigrant and refugee communities here in Ontario.

OCASI and our member agencies are very concerned about Bill C-31. Let me start off by saying that we're actually asking this committee to recommend that the bill be withdrawn and that we move forward with Bill C-11, which is scheduled for implementation at the end of June of this year.

Very quickly, we are concerned that the bill would create a multiple-tier system of refugee protection in Canada, which we believe could result in some claimants being denied the right to appeal. It makes refugee protection in Canada dangerously vulnerable to political whims, rather than ensuring a fair and independent decision about who is a refugee. It subjects some refugees to different and harsh treatment based on the country of origin, mode of arrival, and whether or not the person has citizenship in Canada, as it has to do with the revocation of permanent residency.

I just want to set the stage a bit in terms of how we have been addressing issues of refugees and asylum seekers before I pass it on to Francisco.

In 2010, Canada accepted about 24,000 refugees in all classes. This was about 11,000 fewer than the 35,000 who were accepted in 2005. In 2005, refugees in all classes accepted in Canada were about 13% of all permanent resident arrivals. In 2010, they were down to 8% of those arrivals, a drop of almost 5%.

In 2005, the number of refugee claimants present in the country constituted approximately 0.3% of the Canadian population. Five years later, in 2010, the percentage of refugees compared to the Canadian population was slightly lower at 0.28%. In 2010, we accepted 3,400 fewer claimants than five years earlier, in 2005. At the same time, the number of people forcibly displaced in countries around the world has been growing.

We believe, and we are deeply concerned, that Bill C-31 will reduce even further the number of individuals who seek to enter Canada in search of asylum.

The minister has said that Canada welcomes more resettled refugees per capita than any other country. Meanwhile, according to the UNHCR “Global Trends” report of 2010 that was released last year, 80% of the world’s refugees are in the global south, in the world’s poorest countries such as Pakistan and the Congo. The report found that roughly 43.7 million people are displaced worldwide. Of that number, 27.5 million people are displaced within their own country due to conflict.

In this global context, Canada’s involvement in resettling refugees, while admirable—and I don't think any of us around this table are arguing about that—doesn't quite measure up to the commitment of other countries in the world. According to the same UNHCR report, in 2010 Canada had 4.2 refugees per U.S. dollar of its per capita GDP compared to Pakistan at 709, Congo at 475, Kenya at 247, and Chad at 224. The comparison becomes more stark when one considers the fact that Canada’s GDP per capita is considerably higher than that in the countries named.

We're also deeply concerned about the growing anti-refugee sentiment in Canada and the extent to which this could be exacerbated by government messaging about the bill. I heard some of the language used earlier today while I was listening to some of the other witnesses makes their presentations and to the question and answer period. Messages that characterize asylum seekers in stereotypically hurtful ways, suggesting that they are bogus and are a drain on Canadian society, can have a harmful effect. We are also deeply troubled by the misperception that these measures are necessary because Canada is facing supposed floods of refugees. This messaging contributes to increased intolerance towards refugees and has a harmful impact on their resettlement opportunities in Canada.

While we believe that most of the measures are quite problematic, let me just concentrate on two pieces and then I promise I'll shut up.

First is shorter time limits. I know that the previous witnesses spent some time on this topic, but we are particularly concerned that the shorter time limits will pose additional difficulties for particular claimants. We are particularly concerned, as a council, with lesbians, gays, and trans folk, as well as women fleeing domestic violence, who often need to develop some sort of trust before they will disclose or “come out”, as we say here in North America, about their sexual orientation or their search around gender identity issues. We believe this will present increasing difficulties for them in having their claim together within the 15 days proposed in this bill.

For me, this is also tied to the safe countries list. I won't go on and on about the safe countries list. You've heard many arguments about the ongoing concerns. But we absolutely know that in countries that Canada has deemed to be democratic, and countries with whom we may have trade agreements, and countries with whom we work closely outside the EU—and you've all heard how safe the EU is for particular groups of people—particular groups still face severe discrimination. This discrimination at times not only leads to severe physical abuse, but also at times to death. Even here in the Americas we have examples of this.

One of the stories that I want to share just briefly, which is about four years old, is about a young Mexican woman whose claim was refused. She was sent back and was killed. Unfortunately, there is a more recent case that came up, the case of Veronica Castro, also from Mexico. Her claim was denied. A year before she was deported she was saying to friends that the decision was a life and death one for her if she were to be sent back , and she was hoping for their prayers. She wrote to one of her friends that her deportation was a matter of life or death, and said: “I'm shaking and terrified every time I think about my deportation. I am really scared”. Thirty-three days later, after being deported back to Mexico, on January 12, 2012, she was murdered.

So those are the kinds of stories that we know and that we are concerned about if we were to move forward, as a country, to adopt this bill.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

With the new measures in Bill C-31, the time to finalize a refugee claim would drop from the current 1,038 days to 45 days for claimants from designated countries of origin, or 216 days for all other claimants. Surely that is a big advantage for the folks who actually need that assistance from us.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Thank you.

I have a question about mandatory detention. So a detention regime, as I keep calling it, for designated foreign nationals, as people will be called, provided by Bill C-31 has attracted considerable attention, because it is a violation of rights incompatible with the Canadian charter and, of course, with our international obligations.

What is your opinion on this, and what alternative would you recommend for dealing with mass migrant arrivals?

[Julie Taub]

I am not one of the drafters of the current Bill C-31. Had I been, I would have suggested a third category: safe countries of origin, where no claims would be considered. I would have included all the European Union countries; the United States; New Zealand; Australia; Switzerland; and Norway, which is not part of the European Union, and would not even consider claims from those countries. By the way, Switzerland has that policy on its books, as do most of the European countries, regarding these safe countries of origin. They process them in two days to three weeks.

I read the list of countries whose citizens I have represented before the refugee board. You may have noted that none of those countries appears on my list. I won't represent people from them because I don't believe they are genuine refugee claimants.

Again, and I don't know how often I should reiterate this, the European Union has 27 countries. We have 10 provinces and 3 territories. Anybody from Quebec can still go and live and work anywhere in Canada. Anybody from one of those 27 countries in the European Union has a choice of 26 other countries to go and live and work.

And discrimination is not persecution.

[Julie Taub]

I don't want to dwell on that. Suffice it to say that I am a former member of the Immigration and Refugee Board, and an immigration and refugee lawyer in Ottawa exclusively since 2001. Previous to that, I was on the refugee board.

I think it's important to refer very briefly to my personal background, so you'll have a thorough understanding that I have not only professional but also personal, in-depth knowledge of what a refugee is. I am a sister of a child Holocaust survivor, and I am a child of my late parents who were Holocaust survivors, so I know what it is to be a refugee.

My late mother and my sister, who is much older than me and still alive, survived Ravensbrück concentration camp. My late father escaped a labour camp in Germany and got back into Czechoslovakia, and hid out in the Tatra Mountains during the war. He managed to save his elderly parents and for some time he hid with the partisans, that is, with the resistance groups, and finally he hid in a bomb crater and was rescued by the Soviet army.

From that experience, I wish to address the committee today.

I'm here to support Bill C-31. I might also add that I have represented hundreds of refugee claimants. Since 2001, I have had claimants from Sudan, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Ethiopia, Uganda, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Colombia, Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, and even Mexico. That list may not be exhaustive. I certainly didn't have a chance to review all of the clients I've had in the last 11 years.

Recently, I've had some hearings for Eritrean clients in January and February, which were outstanding from late 2009 and 2010. I have at least a dozen outstanding refugee claims from 2010 that still haven't even been scheduled for hearings.

I support the accelerated process that the minister has brought forth, because waiting two or three years to have a hearing is completely ridiculous.

As we all know, and I'm sure you all know, the Holocaust was the basis of the 1951 international convention, and its updated protocols in 1967. This convention was not drafted to serve an industry of criminal smugglers, the people who may or may not be genuine refugees, or to facilitate asylum shopping, that is, asking which country one can get into to get the most generous benefits and highest acceptance rate.

It was not drafted to even consider claims from citizens who come from established democracies. I'm not talking about those where the qualitative and quantitative criteria set by the minister can vary from year to year. I'm talking about established democracies that have evolved over the centuries, such as the United States, New Zealand, Australia, the European Union countries, and even Japan since World War II.

I do not believe that the convention and those who drafted it had this in mind, that people such as U.S. citizens would be considered for refugee claims.

The current system that we have, as far as I am concerned, besmirches the memory of Holocaust survivors. The very thought of treating on equal footing somebody from the United States or Britain or Sweden with refugees from Darfur or Rwanda, or women fleeing Sharia law or genital mutilation—and I have represented them all—is just outrageous as far as my personal opinion goes. Then there's also the issue of Christians who are now fleeing massacres in certain Islamic theocracies. Those are the real refugees.

The over 100,000 Karen people sitting in Mae Sot district of Thailand in UNHCR refugee camps are also the real refugees. I have personal knowledge of the Mae La refugee camp, because my daughter, now a physician, volunteered as a fourth-year medical student in Mae Sot medical clinic in northern Thailand. That Mae Sot medical clinic services that sprawling, horrible refugee camp of over 100,000 Karen people. Through her intervention and my intervention we were able to bring to Canada one Karen person who had originally been turned down, Eh Hso Gay, whose aunt and uncle lived in Ottawa. The only way someone could leave the refugee camp was to have an appointment at the clinic. She brought Eh Hso Gay into the clinic twice. I sent her the questions and told her to interview her, and then she was interviewed by the CBC and, of course, Immigration Canada heard that and they reversed the decision and Eh Hso Gay was brought to Canada.

Now, when there is criticism that there are designated countries of origin, I have no issue with that. And I have no issue with safe third-country agreements, because believe you me, Jewish refugees who were trying to flee Europe would not have shopped around. They would have gladly taken any country, any first country they could have stepped foot in, and made their asylum claim there. They wouldn't have traipsed around the world to find a country with more generous benefits.

As I speak now, anti-semitism is on the rise in Hungary. And since I was an infant born on the Hungarian side of the Czech-Hungarian border at that time, I have friends in Hungary, one of them being Peter Feldmajer, the head of the Jewish community in Hungary. Anti-semitism is what the new right wing government has almost state sanctioned. He said to me that the young Jewish people, his children included, are leaving. But they're not making refugee claims; they're going to one of 26 other European Union countries, and they're not coming to Canada. They're going to one of the other countries or to Israel. You don't have masses of Jews coming from France, where they're being attacked daily, and making refugee claims. They're going to other EU countries.

It's said that there's not enough time to make a refugee claim in the 45 or 90 days, etc., the minister is trying to set to accelerate the claims. But under the current system claimants have 28 days to submit a personal information form. And all the hundreds of claimants I have represented never had an issue getting that personal information form, which is the basis of the claim, to the Immigration and Refugee Board. The issue has been having to wait two years to get a hearing. That's where the issue is.

Moreover, having an accelerated process for claimants from designated countries of origin is not an issue, because we're simply implementing measures similar to those in many EU countries. For example, some countries in Europe do the following—and I have a whole list of these countries. In the United Kingdom, for those coming from what are considered to be safe countries of origin, they fast-track the claims in 10 to 14 days. In France, it's 15 days. In Germany, it's two days if they come from countries such as Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. They don't even accept refugee claims from other EU countries, because as you are fully aware, a citizen of one EU country has the absolute right to go and live and work in another EU country. You might say that if we're going to refer to the Roma, there might be an impediment because of language. Well, when they come to Canada there is the same impediment. They speak Hungarian or Slovak, depending on where they're coming from.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome, gentlemen. Thank you very much for your presentations here today.

The intent of Bill C-31 is to help facilitate the process to make it faster. The intent was not to penalize people who legitimately seek our assistance. With the new measures in the bill, the time to finalize a refugee claim, a legitimate refugee claim, would drop from a current average of 1,038 days to 45 days for claimants from designated countries of origin, or 216 days for all other claimants.

So we can imagine what a huge benefit this will be to somebody who's really seeking and needing asylum from persecution in their own nation. In my opinion, that's a big positive of this bill.

Mr. Collacott, let me preface my question by saying that human smuggling seeks to circumvent the proper channels. In your opinion, are human smuggling rings becoming more elaborate?

[Peter Showler, Director, Refugee Forum, Human Rights Research and Education Centre, University of Ottawa]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon to the members of the committee.

I have provided you with two written briefs. The first deals with the bill's changes to the refugee claim process. The second addresses the policies underlying the anti human-smuggling provisions of the bill. There is a detailed biography in the first package.

You will see that I have worked as a lawyer representing refugees. I was a member of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada for more than six years deciding refugee claims. I was then the chairperson of the Immigration and Refugee Board for three years, with a managerial perspective on managing the resources of the refugee claim system. Finally, I have been an academic studying refugee systems and the international protection of refugees.

In making a recommendation I want you to know that I view the refugee system from all four perspectives. Certainly, I do not view myself as a member of any lobby in any particular direction. My fundamental allegiance is to the Canadian refugee system, one that makes decisions that are correct, fair, fast, and efficient.

In the time allowed, I will address only three aspects of the bill—the short time limits of the refugee claim process, the lack of an appeal for some claimants, and the government's deterrent strategy for group arrivals. My first brief includes a summary analysis of Canada's refugee system. It provides a brief description of the current system, some of its flaws, some of the reforms recommended by Bill C-31, and four recommendations that come out of that.

In regard to the refugee claim process itself, I must say candidly that the time limits are simply too short and will undermine its fairness and its efficiency. Refugees will not have a realistic opportunity to tell their story. A 15-day limit for claimants to file their basis-of-claim form is simply not enough time. In my brief at pages 4 and 5 I outline all of the steps that a refugee claimant has to take in order to file that form.

Please imagine a refugee claimant who arrives at Pearson Airport and makes a claim. They do not speak English. They know nothing of the city or Canadian culture. They don't know where to live. They don't know how to use public transport or how to use a cellphone, which they may have. They have very little money, and they don't understand the refugee system. Within 15 days they are expected to find a competent lawyer, see if they can get legal aid approval, instruct the lawyer appropriately for the lawyer to draft, through an interpreter, the information and deliver it to the Immigration and Refugee Board.

The result of a 15-day limit, in my view, will be more unrepresented claimants and more mistakes in the written form. Poorly drafted and incomplete statements make more work for a board member. Members depend on accurate information to prepare for the hearing. Poorly prepared hearings waste hearing room time and induce mistakes. I recommend that you grant 30 days to provide the written statement to the board. It is a modest gesture, with dramatic results.

For claims inside of Canada at the CIC office, there's a different procedure. I refer to it in my brief, and you can ask me questions about it if you wish. For an appeal to the refugee appeal division, there will be 15 working days to file and complete the appeal. Once again, it is simply not enough time. We cannot assume that it will be the same lawyer representing the claimant at the appeal. Some claimants are already unrepresented, and candidly, some claims are lost because of poor legal representation in the first place.

Under our current system, the time allowed for judicial review applications is 45 days. It has been the experience of counsel over many years that it is not enough time. By contrast, the refugee appeal division members will have 90 days to make their decision. I'm telling you that 15 days is far too short. I recommend 45 days in order to file and complete the appeal. Again, you can ask me questions about that.

For the designated country of origin claims, hearings are scheduled for 30 days after delivery of the claim form. This is an insufficient amount of time for claimant and counsel to obtain and deliver the evidence. The most important evidence is claim-specific. It's usually located in the country of origin, and it's often difficult to obtain. In addition to that, medical and psychological reports are often by far the most germane evidence for the board member to consider. I think you would all understand that it's not possible to obtain those, particularly psychological reports, within 30 days. If the evidence is not available, the results will either be adjournments of hearings—which is inefficient—or unfair decisions based upon incomplete evidence. I recommend that we return to the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, which allowed 60 days for the DCO hearings, and 90 days for regular hearings.

The minister has said that the faster process is necessary to deter fraudulent claimants. In our current system, to process a claim, it takes four to five years from date of claim to date of removal, and that is obviously far too fast. This is not a justification, though, for imposing unrealistically short timelines. Claims that are decided in six to nine months are more than adequate to deter manifestly unfounded claimants. For regular claims, 12 months would be adequate.

I can tell you, based on 25 years of experience in the field, that claimants, whether fraudulent or not, often invest everything in trying to get to Canada. They mortgage their homes. They borrow money. If those people return to their country in five to six or seven months, I assure you that you will not see a second wave of fraudulent claimants from that country. Superfast turnarounds of 45 days or 75 days are simply unnecessary and, in my view, they will be unfair in the sense that incorrect decisions will be made.

In regard to section 36, which defines the six categories of claimants who will not have a right of appeal, firstly, I applaud the government for implementing the refugee appeal division, which has been in the law since 2002 but was never implemented. The lack of an appeal has been one of the critical flaws in Canada's refugee system. This will certainly help to ensure that the board's decisions are well reasoned and reliable.

Refugee claims are not easy to decide. The evidence is inaccessible. Claimants are fragile witnesses. Mistakes are made, inevitably, by the best of board members—and candidly, I must say that some members fall below that standard.

I think you heard Professor Rehaag this morning refer to some of his reports. They are definitive reports, showing that for the individual acceptance rates of IRB members, the variance between the individual rates is unacceptably broad. The unavoidable fact is that for some of the decisions, they are simply not reliable. The solution to that is to have a refugee appeal division appeal for each one of those decisions.

In my brief, I refer to why, for some categories of claimants, it is even more important that they have an appeal. You can ask me questions about that if you wish.

In conclusion, on the issue of fast process, I'll just simply make three points: allow for modestly longer time limits, to give claimants a fair and reasonable opportunity to prove their claims; allow an appeal to every claimant to catch the mistakes that are inevitable, especially with a faster claim process; and have prompt removals of failed claimants. Those timelines are more than adequate to eliminate fraudulent claims while ensuring fair and reliable decisions.

My second brief deals with the attempt to deter group arrivals by way of one-year mandatory detention—or up to one year—and long-term separation of families. I've left the arguments on legality and constitutionality for others.

Mr. Kenney has stated that the purpose of these provisions is to deter asylum seekers from using irregular means to seek protection in Canada. The assumption that mandatory detention will deter asylum seekers from coming to Canada in groups unfortunately has no basis in fact. Australia imposed mandatory detention on all boat arrivals in 1994. Over the following several years, the number of arrivals increased, not decreased.

As well, my brief provides you with the statistics on the number of claims in a chart. It also shows the work of UNHCR researchers, which shows that mandatory detention does not deter asylum seekers.

There are reasons why mandatory detention does not work. There are four principal reasons. First, there were studies done of the detainees in Australia. The majority of the detainees did not even know about the detention policies, the reason being that their primary source of information was the smugglers. Even the minority who did know about the detention policies did not believe them. They thought, “Australia, this is a country where there is the rule of law and democracy.” They did not think it could be that bad—

Immigration

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, if the NDP members would take a bit of time to read the budget, they would see exactly what the cost of the strategy would be moving forward with respect to this immigration policy.

More important, the immigration committee is spending six hours a day for the next number of days reviewing and determining the extent to which Bill C-31 would have a positive impact on this country.

I simply ask the NDP if it is willing to put its money where its mouth is, because it has not yet. If it wants to come forward with constructive amendments, if it wants to support the legislation that would work for this country and for the refugee system that we have, in fact, it should--

[Prof. Audrey Macklin]

The two examples I gave were of somebody who comes from a country and has lived in Canada for many years, and where, in that country of origin, circumstances have changed, 10, 20, or 30 years down the road. That person, under Bill C-31, would be subject to cessation of refugee status, as under the existing law, but also, under the proposed law, if refugee status cessated they would automatically lose permanent resident status. That's one.

The other circumstance is situations of so-called re-availment. The minister sounds like he's concerned about people who immediately get refugee status and go back, right? But re-availment—that is, going back to the country of origin—can happen 15 or 20 years down the road, not because they weren't fearful of persecution when they arrived in Canada and made the refugee claim, but again because circumstances have changed in the country of origin.

Those two bases of legitimate cessation are nonetheless not a legitimate basis for revoking permanent resident status, but under the overinclusive nature of BillC-31, those people would be vulnerable. It would be simply a matter of ministerial discretion as to whether the minister decided to initiate proceedings against them.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We talk about the people who come with the scars on their backs. How about the people who come with the scars in their minds and in their emotions, such as a five-year-old child who was traumatized and still has memories of war—but that's just my story.

Under Bill C-31 a designated foreign national found to be a refugee, unlike other refugees, will be subject to restrictions such as that five-year wait to apply for permanent residency. They won't be able to sponsor their families to join them, and of course, they will be subject to reporting requirements.

Are these measures justified in light of the claimant's mode of arrival? It's generally the mode of arrival that ends up having them designated. What is the impact going to be on these people resettling here in Canada if they can't get their permanent residency claim and they can't have their family come here with them?

The questions are for any of you, all of you.

[Prof. Audrey Macklin]

I think that the Balanced Refugee Reform Act seemed to address many of the legitimate policy objectives that the government seeks to attain under Bill C-31. What Bill C-31 adds to it are provisions that are unconstitutional, and from a policy perspective, I think, problematic and unlikely to achieve what they claim.

Let me just say that with respect to clauses 18 and 19, what is being portrayed is a lack of power to deal with people who, let's say, arrive in Canada, acquire refugee status, and then take a holiday back in their country of origin. That's the scenario, right? There is no lack of power to deal with that situation under the existing law. There may be a lack of resources. There may be a choice not to deploy the resources to deal with those situations, but there is no lack of power. There is ample power.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thank you.

The minister has said he is confident that Bill C-31 is charter compliant. Very briefly, do you believe that to be the case?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Rehaag and Ms. Macklin, I want to focus my questions on the two of you.

The first is a rather bizarre question, but I want to ask it. Will your level of income over the next number of years diminish as a direct result of the passage of Bill C-31?

[Prof. Audrey Macklin]

The two other areas in which it happens in Bill C-31 are the designation of countries as safe and the designation by the minister of people as so-called irregular arrivals. It's important to know that these instruments are not actually covered by the Statutory Instruments Act, so they are not subject either to parliamentary oversight or even to the process for regulatory rule-making by cabinet. This causes actual concerns about democratic legitimacy. What it does is it gives a minister the power to make law. That's different from a power to exercise discretion. It's actually a power to make binding rules, and sometimes rules which, it turns out, are inconsistent with regulation, and possibly, arguably, on occasion, inconsistent with legislation.

Quite apart from what you'd take to be the merits of the content of any instruction, I'd suggest to you that the practice of ministerial instruction itself, from a democratic perspective, from a parliamentary legislation perspective, is on shaky legal ground.

[Prof. Audrey Macklin]

I hope you can all agree that the examples I gave are not circumstances that would make you think that this person has engaged in a form of misconduct that legitimatizes an automatic revocation of permanent resident status.

Bill C-31expands the possibility of revocation in a way that renders it overinclusive. That means that it includes people and penalizes people who, as I understand from the minister's comments, are not intended to be the targets of this provision. Nevertheless, the law includes it.

What's the problem with overinclusive legislation? Well, there are a couple of problems. One is that it puts everybody who might be subject to it in a position of insecurity and fear. Second, it grants the minister discretion that is in no way tailored to the legitimate purposes of the legislation. It therefore opens the risk of arbitrary exercises of power. I think those are two significant concerns that can easily be ameliorated by tailoring the legislation in a way that legitimately responds to what the perceived need or policy objective is.

I propose two of them here. I can lay them out in greater detail, but I'm conscious that you wanted a brief answer.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you very much. I want to thank the three of you for coming to make your presentation.

The one thing that really hit me as you were speaking is that you brought us back to looking at the human element involved when we're talking about refugees. We are not here to talk just about the smuggling enterprise. We already have the ability to punish the smugglers, and we're all for that, but this is about the human element.

I have a number of questions, and I'm going to ask you to keep the answers brief so that I can get through to everybody.

Audrey, I have a question for you. You provided two scenarios in which people would be losing permanent resident status under Bill C-31 that they would not have lost under the current system. Can you expand on the problems in these cases, and talk about how you would amend the bill to address these problems?

[Prof. Audrey Macklin]

Okay.

On alternatives, delete clauses 18 and 19 from Bill C-31. The existing powers under IRPA already authorize the minister to seek revocation of a person's permanent resident status if it is obtained through fraud or misrepresentation. Alternatively, add a presumption in the vacation provision to clarify circumstances where a return to the country of origin shortly after obtaining refugee and permanent resident status is the basis of evidence of misrepresentation of fraud in the acquisition of that status.

Thank you.

[Prof. Audrey Macklin, Representative, Professor, Faculty of Law and School for Public Policy and Governance, University of Toronto, David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights - University of Toronto]

Like Professor Rehaag, I want to thank you for the opportunity to appear in front of you today.

I am going to address the impact of provisions in Bill C-31 that seek to expand the circumstances in which permanent resident status of refugees can be revoked.

I have three questions that I seek to answer here. First, does Bill C-31 confer new powers on the minister? Yes. Are these additional powers necessary to achieve legitimate policy objectives? No. Can Bill C-31 be amended to align its provisions with those legitimate policy objectives? Yes.

First, it is important to understand what the status quo says. As IRPA currently exists, it is possible for the minister to seek what is called vacation of refugee protection under section 109. Vacation of refugee status is the process by which the minister seeks to revoke refugee status of somebody who never needed refugee protection in the first place. That is somebody who acquired the refugee status through misrepresentation or fraud.

If the minister is successful in obtaining vacation before the Immigration and Refugee Board, then that person's refugee status is lost as well as permanent resident status. There is a certain harmony to that, because of course, misrepresentation is also a basis for revoking permanent resident status. For refugee status lost for misrepresentation, the consequence is loss of permanent resident status for misrepresentation.

Under the current law there is also a different provision called cessation. The minister may seek cessation of a refugee status where the person no longer needs refugee protection, and the evidence from which one might infer that refugee protection is no longer required might consist of a variety of possibilities, including for example, re-availment of protection in the original country, or a change in circumstances in the country of origin such that there is no basis for currently fearing persecution in that country of origin. That's vacation, where refugee status was never needed, and cessation, where refugee status is no longer required.

Under the current law, when a claim is cessated, it does not follow that permanent resident status is also revoked. Why? That is because the person concerned has not necessarily done anything that is inconsistent with maintaining permanent resident status. There is no misconduct, as it were.

What does Bill C-31 do? It visits the same consequence of automatic loss of permanent resident status on one whose refugee claim is cessated that is currently visited on one whose refugee claim is vacated. In order to understand the difference, I want to give you two scenarios of circumstances where permanent resident status would now be lost under Bill C-31, where it would not be lost under IRPA as it currently exists.

For example, in one scenario a refugee comes from Bosnia in 1993. She obtains permanent resident status. In 2008 she returns for a year to work for an international organization in Sarajevo. She lives peacefully in Bosnia for a year, returns to Canada. Under Bill C-31 the minister could seek to have her refugee claim cessated, and if successful, the automatic consequence of that would be loss of permanent resident status.

Another example, a refugee claimant from Rwanda comes in 1994 and obtains permanent resident status. He sponsors his wife. They raise a family in Canada. At some point, let's say in 2012, the minister decides that it's now safe for Tutsis in Rwanda and so he seeks to cessate this person's refugee claim. If successful, on the basis of a change of circumstances in Rwanda, then this person's refugee claim would be lost as well as permanent resident status, and almost 20 years after the fact, that person would be automatically removable, deportable, to Rwanda.

The consequences of this amendment under Bill C-31 is deportation of people who are long-term permanent residents in Canada with no recourse, and no appeal to the immigration appeal division, for people who have done nothing wrong, and indeed, in the case of a change of circumstances in the country of origin, they have done nothing at all. They have merely been living their lives in Canada.

There are no limits to the power of the minister's discretion to exercise this new power. That puts all permanent resident refugees at risk. They will never know if, when, or why the minister might seek cessation of their refugee status.

[Dr. Sean Rehaag]

Thank you.

My name is Sean Rehaag. I am a professor at the Osgoode Hall Law School. I am here with Professor Audrey Macklin from the University of Toronto's faculty of law. Both of us work primarily in the area of immigration and refugee law.

Professor Macklin and I share many of the concerns regarding Bill C-31 raised in the briefs submitted by the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, the Canadian Bar Association, and the Canadian Council for Refugees.

Rather than attempting to summarize those concerns here, though, what we'd like to do is focus on two specific issues. I'm going to speak about the refugee appeal division and Professor Macklin is going to speak about why the bill should not provide new powers to the minister to remove permanent residence from refugees.

Let me jump right into the three quick points that I'd like to make regarding the refugee appeal division.

My first point is to remind the committee that refugee determinations are among the most serious decisions that are made in Canada. If individuals who meet the refugee definition are not recognized as such, they may be deported to countries where they face persecution, torture, or even death. Because of these life and death stakes, the Supreme Court has found that refugee determinations implicate constitutional rights to life, liberty, and security of the person.

The second point I'd like to make is that all administrative decision-making processes are prone to error, and refugee determinations are no exception. If anything, refugee determinations are more likely to result in errors due to the inherent challenges of this type of decision-making. These challenges include having to make factual findings about what may happen in the future in distant countries, and having to make credibility determinations based on the testimony of claimants who may be suffering from post-traumatic stress, who often come from very different cultural backgrounds, and whose testimony is typically filtered through an interpreter.

In addition to these challenges, there's extensive evidence showing that IRB refugee decisions are all too often arbitrary. For the past six years I've published statistics on the Canadian Council for Refugees' website setting out annual grant rates for IRB refugee claim grant rates. Each year dramatic variations are evident in these grant rates, with some members granting refugee status in almost every case they hear and others granting refugee status seldom, if at all.

Even when factors such as country of origin are taken into account, massive, unexplained variations in refugee claim grant rates persist, suggesting that outcomes turn at least in part on the luck of the draw, on who decides the application. In this context, errors in IRB refugee decisions are not only inevitable, they are likely common.

So my second point is that given both the likelihood of errors and the life and death stakes involved, it's essential that claimants have access to an appeal that can reliably catch errors.

My third point is that aside from appeals on the merits to the refugee appeal division, there is no reliable way of catching errors in refugee determinations. It is of course possible to apply for judicial review in Federal Court. However, judicial review is highly constrained. Refugee claimants must ask for leave or permission from the court before getting access to a hearing. In the vast majority of cases, about 85%, leave is denied. Even where leave is granted and a hearing is held, there are constraints on the process. Most importantly, the Federal Court rarely reconsiders factual findings or credibility determinations made by the IRB. Most cases actually turn on these factors.

In addition to these procedural constraints, there is evidence that the Federal Court's decision-making in this area is inconsistent. Earlier this year I released a study that examined over 23,000 applications for judicial review of refugee decisions from 2005 to 2010. During this period some Federal Court judges granted leave in 1% of cases and others in more than 70% of cases. So really it's the luck of the draw; outcomes turn on who decides the case.

Taken together, the procedural limits on judicial review and the evidence of inconsistent decision-making at the Federal Court suggest that judicial review cannot reliably catch errors in IRB decisions.

In my view then, because of the life-and-death stakes involved, because errors are inevitable, and because judicial review cannot catch these errors reliably, it is essential that all refugee claimants have access to an appeal on the merits. Bill C-31 removes appeal rights for some claimants, and my recommendation is that these appeal rights be restored.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you very much.

I have to stipulate that I'm one of those who is very protective of any invasion of my privacy, so I always have lots of questions around biometrics. It's not that I have anything to hide, but I always worry about where that data is going to go.

My understanding was that in Bill C-31, the biometric limitations that are spelled out there were only going to be used to determine identity. But beyond that I'm gathering there is all kinds of sharing that goes on, so maybe you could further outline for me how the biometric information we are collecting for this purpose under Bill C-31 could be used beyond that.

[Les Linklater]

That's great.

Good morning again, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.

We are pleased to appear before you today to talk about Bill C-31 amendments related to the use of biometrics in Canada's immigration program.

I will first focus on the broad benefits of the use of biometrics followed by comments on the planned implementation of biometrics in CIC's temporary resident program.

Identity verification is central to the decisions taken by officials responsible for administering and enforcing the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, IRPA, since accurately identifying a person is the fundamental element in effectively determining that person's admissibility. The challenge for Canadian immigration and border officials is to efficiently separate the thousands of mala fide cases from the millions of legitimate ones that we see each year. When doubts arise, time and resources are required to authenticate identity. When doubts are repeated at subsequent encounters of a traveller with immigration and border officials, additional time and resources may be required to re-authenticate identity.

Biometrics is a 21st-century identity management tool that can identify people based on an intrinsic physiological characteristic such as fingerprints. Unlike identity documents, biometric information is unique to each individual and cannot be easily forged.

Biometrics therefore helps supplement existing biographic information-based screening tools by significantly reducing the chance that one individual can pose as or be mistaken for another individual. Once biometric information such as fingerprints has been enrolled, the identity of that individual has been effectively fixed for as long as that information is retained.

Using biometrics will strengthen the integrity of Canada's immigration program by helping prevent known criminals, failed refugee claimants, and previous deportees from using a false identity to obtain a Canadian visa.

Biometrics will also help facilitate legitimate travel to Canada by providing a fast and reliable tool to help confirm identity. Furthermore, the use of biometrics will put Canada in line with most other western countries that are now using or preparing to use biometrics in their immigration and border management processes. These include the United Kingdom, Australia, the United States, New Zealand, and many countries in the European Union.

CIC is working in partnership with the agency and the RCMP to begin using biometrics in the temporary resident program. Starting in 2013, foreign nationals from certain visa-required countries and territories applying for a temporary resident visa, work or study permit will be required to provide biometric data to obtain a visa.

What we will do is take a fingerprint as well as a photo of all individuals applying from certain visa-required countries. The fingerprints that are collected will be sent to the RCMP for storage and will be checked against the fingerprint records of refugee claimants, previous deportees, criminals, and previous temporary resident applicants. The results of these checks will inform the visa decision-making process. At a port of entry, a border services officer will use the photo taken abroad to verify that the visa-holder is the same person to whom the visa is issued. Fingerprints will be verified at secondary inspection lines at the discretion of the border services officer. The use of biometrics means that these border officers will be able to make more confident decisions based on more accurate information.

Mr. Chair, I should note that CIC recognizes the importance of having the appropriate privacy safeguards in place to protect the biometric information collected under this initiative. We therefore continue to consult with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner to ensure that adequate privacy protection safeguards are in place for all aspects of the initiative.

Finally, with regard to the specific clauses found in Bill C-31, these would provide the necessary authorities for the collection and use of biometric information by allowing the government to:

(a) set in regulations which foreign nationals must provide biometrics, what information must be provided, and the procedures they must follow when making a temporary resident visa, work permit, or study permit application;

(b) set exemptions to those requirements in regulations, for example, for children, for the elderly, or diplomats;

(c) set regulations to facilitate the use of biometric information for Canadian law enforcement, and;

(d) exempt from the application of the User Fees Act the establishment of a biometrics fee.

The bill would also enhance the authority for CIC to provide services to the CBSA and to partner with other governments in providing services to applicants.

In closing, the collection and use of biometric information as supported by this legislation will strengthen the integrity of Canada's immigration program and facilitate legitimate travel, while at the same time protecting the privacy of applicants.

Thank you for your time. We will be pleased to answer any questions you may have.

[Les Linklater]

I think, as Mr. Hill explained, the grounds for detention are not going to change with Bill C-31. Individuals will be subject to detention if there are issues related to establishing their identity, if they pose a risk to Canada or Canadians through criminality or security, or if they pose a flight risk. I think it's important to underline that individuals, who may be part of a designated mass arrival, if they are able to help cooperate with CBSA and the RCMP to establish their identity and they don't pose a risk to the public, would be released from detention.

[Les Linklater]

The notion of permanent residence in Canada comes down to the according of a privilege by the government and by the country. Individuals who need Canada's protection under Bill C-31, as I just explained, will continue to receive that protection. I think the minister is right in saying that these new provisions under C-31 will probably strike a cord with individuals who are contemplating participating in a smuggling venture if they understand what the consequences could be to them in terms of their family situation, while ensuring that the penalties for the smugglers are enhanced to also try to further deter those types of networks.

[Les Linklater]

I think it is important to underline that Bill C-31 will continue to ensure that Canada upholds its domestic and international obligations towards people seeking protection. The principle of non-refoulement is, first and foremost, part of our analysis of the various provisions of this legislation. No one will be returned to a country where they face the risk of persecution or torture. They will receive Canada's protection if it's determined that they do require it.

What is different about Bill C-31 is that we will be able to move individuals through the system much more quickly than has been the case, to ensure that those who need our protection are given it much more quickly.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

I'm going to touch base very quickly on a question asked by Ms. Groguhé from the NDP. She started to say that we're violating the Charter of Rights and Freedoms or the UN Refugee Convention, but in fact that's not the case. Under Bill C-31, we're still complying with all the regulations within the charter and the United Nations Refugee Convention.

Could you comment on that very quickly?

[Les Linklater]

It's fair to say that Canada's use of detention, even under Bill C-31, will be much less the case than is the norm in many other countries. Mr. Hill mentioned the average daily population in immigration detention across the country at about 500. When you think about the number of claimants we receive in any given year—last year I think it was around 25,000 and the year before about 23,000—it really does represent a small percentage of individuals who come to Canada to make a refugee claim.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Would you say that, even with Bill C-31 and the provisions that are outlined within it, Canada will use the detention of refugee claimants sparingly in comparison with other western countries? Is that true, or are we going to go beyond what other countries are doing?

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and welcome back. Welcome to all of our guests today.

As I've been listening and we've been talking about the different aspects of Bill C-31, I cannot believe Canada is the only country that will process some claims faster than others. I'm wondering, Mr. Linklater, if you can expand on that.

Is Canada the only country that will actually do this, or are there other western industrial countries—that we're compared against— that will also be doing the same process and have the same system set up?

[Peter Hill]

Yes. I would say that overall Bill C-31 has a number of measures that may well deter individuals from coming to Canada, but I would like to point out and try to underline that detention is not intended and is not designed at all to be a deterrent.

The purpose for a detention, which is in accordance with internal norms for immigration detention, is threefold. Detention is maintained to confirm identity, to ensure that the public is protected from danger so that dangerous persons are not released into the country. And, third, detention is maintained when there is a concern that the individual represents a flight risk and is unlikely to appear for their refugee or immigration processing. Those three conditions are the bedrock of the detention provisions that are proposed under Bill C-31.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to thank our witnesses for being here today.

There is a lot of speculation when an analysis like this is begun. We just heard Ms. Sims speculate that the number of individuals in detention will increase if Bill C-31 is passed.

Mr. Linklater, is it possible that the number of detained individuals will decrease because the rest of the world will know that Canada does not admit people who are not true refugees?

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

In the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the legislator made it possible to hold the refugee claimant on limited grounds, particularly to verify the person's identity while complying with Canadian legislation on detention in Canada. In Bill C-31, we are introducing provisions that seem to depart from the act and the charter.

I'd like to know what you think about this and what these new provisions are based on.

[Les Linklater]

Our estimates are that with the provisions contained in Bill C-31 that's generally what will happen. The claims will be heard on a much faster basis. Those who need protection will then be channeled in to the permanent resident stream much more quickly, and we wouldn't be removing those individuals. Those individuals who are found not to need Canada's protection would then be moved into the removal stream with the view that removal would take place within one year from their last negative decision at the IRB, whether that's the RPD or the new appeal division. With new tools like the assisted voluntary returns program, which Mr. Hill mentioned in his opening remarks, we feel that this is going to help incent individuals to depart Canada voluntarily as well, and will allow CBSA to focus on high-profile and serious cases for removal within that one-year period.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

From beginning to end, if I recall correctly, it can currently take in excess of 1,000 days, versus somewhere around 200 days after Bill C-31 is implemented.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

When the minister appeared before us last Thursday—you were here, Mr. Linklater—one of the things that struck me was the amount of time it takes for a bona fide, legitimate asylum claimant to be processed today versus what the case will be if Bill C-31 is implemented.

Can you give us those numbers one more time, please?

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, all. Thank you for being here today and for testifying before us on this beautiful, bright Monday morning.

I want to speak a little bit about how Bill C-31 would reduce the attraction of coming to Canada by way of illegal human smuggling. What we want to do, of course, is limit those who use those channels.

First, why do you think certain individuals seek Canada for asylum rather than a country that is near by? Something must attract them for them to want to come all the way to Canada.

[Peter Hill, Director General, Post-Border Programs, Canada Border Services Agency]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And thank you to the committee for the opportunity to be here today. When I last appeared at this committee, the CBSA's mandate as a border enforcement agency was outlined in addition to its role in administering Canada's immigration laws. Building from that appearance, I would like to focus my remarks today on how Bill C-31 would impact the CBSA, should Parliament pass it into law.

First, I would like to speak to the impacts on refugee reform.

The implementation of Bill C-31 would not change the CBSA's operational responsibilities in processing refugee claims upon arrival at our ports of entry. What would change for the CBSA, however, is that the agency would be expected to remove individuals within one year, where possible, following the last negative decision on their claim for asylum in Canada.

To enable us to address potential increased removal demands, the CBSA has put in place a removals strategy that includes expanding the assisted voluntary returns and reintegration pilot program. This program encourages voluntary returns as a cost-effective and timely option that complements traditional enforced removals by providing increased counselling, education, and incentives to leave.

This program has proven to be successful in other countries. As better integration assistance is provided for participants, it ensures that they would be less likely to attempt to return to Canada.

I would now like to focus on the human smuggling component of this legislation.

When people arrive in Canada as part of a suspected human smuggling operation, it is the responsibility of the CBSA to determine whether or not these individuals are a threat to Canada. Under the current system, the existing detention review periods of within 48 hours, seven days, and 30 days are not designed to deal with cases involving large volumes and complex human smuggling operations.

The task of distinguishing genuine refugees from those who may pose a public safety threat are complex and time-consuming. By allowing Canadian authorities the additional time necessary to investigate, individuals can be assessed more effectively and their cases dealt with more efficiently.

As such, the mandatory detention provisions are necessary in order for Canadian authorities to investigate persons whose identities have not been determined or who may be inadmissible for reasons of criminality or security. After one year, those found not to be refugees would have the grounds for their detention reviewed by the Immigration Refugee Board after a period of 12 months has passed since their initial detention, and then again at the end of six months. In addition, individuals could be released on application to the Minister of Public Safety if, in the minister's option, exceptional circumstances warrant an early release.

Specifically regarding the detention of minors, I would like to add that in all cases this is considered a measure of last resort. The CBSA's position has been and will continue to be, under Bill C-31, to always consider the best interests of the child.

Mr. Chair, I'd like to thank the committee for the opportunity to speak to you today. The CBSA is committed to ensuring Canada's immigration laws are respected, and we will continue to take appropriate enforcement action to ensure the safety and security of the Canadian public.

Thank you.

[Les Linklater, Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic and Program Policy, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

Good morning, Mr. Chair, and members of the committee.

Thank you for the invitation to appear before you today. We are pleased to be here today to discuss the Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act—legislation that would strengthen and improve this country's immigration system.

In particular, I've been invited to address the asylum system reforms and the human smuggling measures in Bill C-31. I and my other colleagues in the next panel will be happy to address any questions you may have with respect to the biometrics measures in Bill C-31.

To begin, Mr. Chair, allow me to note that Bill C-31 further builds on the long-needed reforms to the asylum system that were passed in Parliament in June 2010 as part of the Balanced Refugee Reform Act. The proposed new measures would further accelerate the processing of refugee claims for nationals from designated countries that generally don't produce refugees. They would also reduce the options available to failed claimants to delay their removal from Canada.

It may surprise some committee members to know that Canada receives more asylum claims from countries in Europe than from either Africa or Asia. Last year alone, almost one quarter of all refugee claims made in Canada were made by European Union nationals.

I think we could all agree, Mr. Chair, that EU countries have strong human rights and democratic systems similar to our own, yet they produced almost 25% of all refugee claims to this country in 2011. That's up from 14% the previous year.

In recent years, virtually all EU claims were withdrawn, abandoned, or rejected. The refugee reform measures in Bill C-31 would help prevent abuse of the system and would ensure that all of our refugee determination processes are as streamlined as possible. This would be accomplished without affecting the fairness of the system and without compromising any of Canada's international and domestic obligations with respect to refugees.

Cracking down on human smugglers is an important element of protecting the integrity of our immigration system, Mr. Chair. That's why Bill C-31 would also help the government take action on the dangerous yet lucrative business of human smuggling.

Bill C-31 would establish mandatory detention for up to a year for individuals who come to Canada as part of an irregular arrival, in order to determine their identity and admissibility, including whether they have been involved in any illegal activity.

Mandatory detention would exclude those designated foreign nationals who are under the age of 16. Also, once an individual's refugee claim has been approved, that individual would be released from detention.

Bill C-31 would reduce the attraction of coming to Canada by way of illegal human smuggling by limiting the ability of those who do so to take advantage of our generous immigration system and social services.

In closing, Mr. Chair, let me say that the proposed measures in Bill C-31 strike the right balance between ensuring the safety and security of Canada and Canadians, and making sure that those who are in need of Canada's protection continue to have access to it.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll now turn to Peter Hill, my colleague who is director general at the agency.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Good morning. This is the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, meeting 32, on Monday, April 30, 2012.

The orders of the day—this meeting is televised today—are pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 23, 2012, Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, the Marine Transportation Security Act and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Act.

I have to figure out a way of shortening that down. It's too long to read.

First of all, did you all miss me last week?

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would still like to clarify something about refugees. I just wanted to mention that not all refugees have scars and that, in some designated countries, people have made different choices in terms of gender or sexual orientation.

How will Bill C-31 cater to those refugees?

[The Vice-Chair (Ms. Jinny Jogindera Sims), NDP, Jinny Sims]

I will move on to deal with the bill right now anyway, just as soon as I can get to the right page again.

Minister, Bill C-31 also allows you to designate a group of refugees, the ones who arrive in groupings as you said, as irregular arrivals. If their refugee claims are accepted, they'll be designated foreign nationals and will have to wait five years before they can apply for permanent residency—and we know that the waiting lists after that could be another five. So isn't that a very long time for bona fide refugees to be separated from their children and families? It could be a husband, a wife, or little children, but children definitely could be involved.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

I would just like to remind everyone that we're here for Bill C-31, and I think this may be a point of order because you're talking about something completely out of the context of this bill and the purposes of this committee meeting.

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Have you consulted the provincial authorities in question? Have you told them that they might be called upon at some point as a result of Bill C-31?

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

So what will be the change under Bill C-31? What do we project that to be?

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Minister, you've clearly identified some of the gaps that were found, which led to the conclusion that further reforms were needed. I have a series of questions here I'd like to ask, but just to begin, can you tell us what the projected savings are under Bill C-31?

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

All right, thank you very much.

Subclause 81(1) of Bill C-31 allows you, Mr. Minister, to designate groups as “irregular arrivals” retroactively for anyone who has arrived since March 31, 2009. This would include claimants who arrived on the migrant vessels Ocean Lady and Sun Sea. Retroactive punishment is actually prohibited in our charter with respect to the Criminal Code. Why do you think it is appropriate here? Do you think that this will actually invite court challenges that will tie up the legislation for years to come?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

That's a fair question.

When we began the policy work on the biometric visa requirement, our initial idea was to do this incrementally, because it's a huge project, quite costly, and operationally complex. So I think we didn't want to bite off more than we could chew at any one time, which is why we'll be proceeding with an incremental application of the temporary resident visa biometric requirement on a growing number of countries, rather than universal application at once. This is following the incremental model of Australia and the U.K., for example. We'll start the system and then build on it, so there's an economy of scale there.

However, I think you raise an interesting question. I just think that this biometric requirement is going to improve our immigration security screening by light years, by orders of magnitude, particularly in the context of the enhanced information sharing agreements that we anticipate with the United States through the beyond the borders agreement. We will be able to much better identify individuals who might represent a threat to Canada's safety and will finally will be able to screen out those foreign criminals who have come to Canada and have been deported in the past, who have too frequently re-entered on fake documents.

It's hugely important, and I think this should be applied in principle to permanent residence applicants as well. I mean, for goodness' sakes, if someone's going to come to live in Canada for their entire life, we should use reasonable measures to identify who they really are and whether they constitute a security risk. So I would be in favour, in principle, of expanding the authority in Bill C-31 to include PR applicants as well.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

I would like to go back to the effects of detention, which, as we have described, are devastating on asylum seekers and society.

In Quebec, the Centre de santé et de services sociaux de la Montagne, which is a parapublic service, has been successful in terms of alternative detention measures. Could your department use this experience as an alternative to the automatic detention provided for under Bill C-31?

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

I would like to thank the minister and all the witnesses for joining us today.

As Ms. Sims said, a compromise had been found on Bill C-31, dealing with a fair reform program. It is unfortunate that Bill C-31 targets refugees to the same extent as smugglers and associates them with the smugglers.

Mr. Minister, you must know that, under the Geneva convention on refugees, the illegal nature of the method used by victims to flee persecution is not an obstacle to recognizing refugee status. Yet you have made it a major criterion in Bill C-31. Why?

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Minister Kenney.

Canada, as we know, is the most fair and generous country in the world with regard to our immigration system. We're sometimes compared to other countries, for example, western countries or other countries such as the United States or Australia

I'm just wondering if you can speak to this. After the full implementation of Bill C-31, will our system still be more generous and be the best in the world, or will it be less generous than the other countries we are compared against? I wonder if you could expand on that, please.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Oh yes, it is from current practices, I'm sorry.

But this is reflective of legislation we introduced in the last Parliament. That's nothing new in Bill C-31. One of the most important aspects of the anti-smuggling provisions of Bill C-31 and its two prior bills is to indicate that if you get positive protection status as a smuggled migrant, having arrived as an irregular designated arrival, you will not get immediate permanent residency. Yes, you will have to wait five years for permanent residency.

One of the reasons we did this is from our having looked at the Australian experience. For several years they had what was called a temporary protection visa for smuggled migrants, during which period the number of smuggling boats that arrived in Australia went down dramatically. The moment they restored immediate permanent residency visas for smuggled refugees, the number of boats went up into the hundreds per year. So we thought this was the single, most effective way to dissuade people from paying smugglers to come to the country.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. Minister, you've repeatedly said that there are no new powers in Bill C-31 with respect to the loss of protection of status and/or the removal of permanent residents. Many would interpret that as somewhat misleading and somewhat incorrect for an individual who comes in and is designated as an irregular. After being in Canada for three years and the circumstances change, they will lose their eligibility requirement to become permanent residents. Would you not agree that is a change from current practices?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

First of all, I'd like to congratulate Ms. Sims on her appointment as the critic for immigration and citizenship for the official opposition. I look forward to working with her and all of her colleagues.

I am proud of the compromise that we achieved in Bill C-11 in the last Parliament. I think it was a huge improvement over the status quo. However, we have now seen, since the adoption of that legislation, a continued and growing wave of unfounded asylum claims coming from democratic countries, which represents a fundamental threat to the integrity of our system. Since that time we've seen a growing escalation in the number of unfounded asylum claims coming from Europe. When I say “unfounded”, it's the claimants themselves who indicate that by not showing up for their hearings, in large measure.

So we came to the conclusion that we needed fast and flexible tools to be able to address large waves of unfounded claims from such jurisdictions. That's why we revisited some of the provisions in Bill C-11. This bill, Bill C-31, maintains the basic architecture of Bill C-11. It does maintain the refugee appeal division, which adds an additional procedural safeguard for the vast majority of failed asylum claimants. It does maintain a faster system. The system in Bill C-31 is faster and fairer. The main difference is a streamlined appeals process for people coming from countries that do not normally produce refugees. This reflects normal practice in other liberal democratic countries with respect to their asylum systems.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you, and welcome to the committee, Mr. Minister. We're here at the same time.

Minister, in 2010, you singled out one of my colleagues, Olivia Chow, who was our critic at the time, for her “remarkable diligence” in working with you and the government to amend Bill C-11 and limit the number of fraudulent applications and reduce the backlog in Canada's immigration system.

Ms. Chow said at the time that “Canada will finally get a refugee reform package that is both fast and fair”. It seemed everyone was happy. We all put a little water in our wine and, to quote you, “found a very reasonable compromise”. In fact, it was described as nothing short of a miracle. The compromises made the government's legislation acceptable. These included establishing a panel of experts to determine safe countries, allowing access to appeal for designated nationals and those from designated safe countries, and having greater timelines to start the appeal process.

Bill C-31 repeals almost all of those compromises and it would seem that you have gone back on your word, Minister. So the question is what changed, Minister? Why is your government using its majority to undo this reasonable compromise that everyone agreed was working?

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Minister, Monday in the House, you mentioned the number of hours that have been given for debate on Bill C-31. You also mentioned the number of hours that we debated Bill C-10 and Bill C-4.

As an aside, let me say how much it we appreciate you and your senior officials making your time available here so many times to come to the committee.

Mr. Linklater, I'm beginning to think that you're a committee member you've been here so often. It just shows respect for the parliamentary system and the availability of the minister has just been absolutely outstanding for us.

Minister, can you provide the committee with some of those figures on the time we've spent debating Bill C-31, Bill C-10, and Bill C-4?

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Let me begin by welcoming Mrs. Sims and Monsieur Giguère to the committee.

Minister, thank you once again for joining us today. I want to thank the senior officials for being here with us.

Minister, most Canadians and I are very proud of our welcoming and generous nature. As you know, we have welcomed over one million refugees to Canada since World War II. I believe generally Canadians are very proud to be a safe haven for people in need, who actually face persecution, death, torture, and a number of other things in their country of origin.

However, the countless stories we hear of bogus refugees, criminals, human smugglers, and war criminals entering and re-entering Canada, sometimes rather easily, results in Canadians losing confidence in our system. This is a serious concern and one of the reasons I believe our government has introduced Bill C-31.

Can you please elaborate for us on the importance of Canadians not losing confidence in the integrity of our system and why Bill C-31 will go a long way to restoring that integrity in our immigration system?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I promise not to. Well, I'll try not to.

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you, colleagues for your study of Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, the Marine Transportation Security Act and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Act.

Canadians should take great pride in the fact that we are recognized around the world as a compassionate and generous country. Polls consistently demonstrate that a majority of Canadians, both those born in Canada as well as immigrants, view immigration as a positive contribution to our country.

Canadians recognize the many benefits that immigration brings to our country, but they have no tolerance for those who seek to take advantage of that generosity. People who abuse our generous immigration and refugee programs undermine the integrity of the entire system and public confidence in it.

It's clear that some people have taken notice of our country's generosity, and they have learned that they can use the immigration system to their advantage. The fact that Canada now receives more refugee claims from the European Union than it does from Africa or Asia is, I think, evidence of that, particularly given that virtually none of those European asylum claimants are found to be in need of our protection.

The simple fact of the matter is that we spend far too many tax dollars on applicants who are not in need of our protection, but who come here to access our social benefits because we do nothing to stop them or even dissuade them from doing so.

In introducing Bill C-31, our rationale is simple. By focusing the resources of our system on providing protection to those who genuinely need it, we will improve our ability to help those people. But we can only focus our resources on genuine refugees by fixing the system to make it clear that abuse will not be tolerated.

With Parliament's passing of the Balanced Refugee Reform Act in June 2010, we made some progress towards this goal, but gaps remain in the new system.

The arrival of the Ocean Lady and Sun Sea confirmed that Canada has also become a target for the lucrative criminal enterprise of human smuggling. Human smuggling is also suspected in the most recent tragedy, which involved the deaths of four passengers on board the SV Tabasco 2 off the coast of Nova Scotia.

The crime of human smuggling is conducted by individuals whose only concern is their profits; they have no regard for human life or the safety of their passengers. As the Prime Minister has said, human smugglers are some of the world's worst criminals—people who profit from exploiting the miseries and aspirations of some of the world's most vulnerable people.

Bill C-31 will enable us to punish human smugglers and make it easy to prosecute them. It will create disincentives that will reduce the attraction of coming to Canada via a human smuggling operation, which will save lives.

Finally, it will ensure the government can fulfill its responsibility to ensure that foreign nationals who are inadmissible, or who may pose a threat to Canadians, can be properly identified and assessed for risk so that we can take appropriate action.

Let's be clear that Bill C-31 would allow Canada to maintain the most generous refugee system in the world. Right now we are a world leader in the number of convention refugees we resettle. Canada welcomes one of the highest numbers of refugees per capita, and this legislation will not change that. In fact, concurrent with these reforms to our asylum system, we are increasing our targeted number of resettled refugees by 20% so that we will be the number one recipient of resettled refugees worldwide. Of course, we're also increasing their integration support through the refugee assistance program.

Essentially this bill will make Canada's refugee system faster and fairer. It will speed up the process for deciding refugee claims. This will allow us to provide better protection more quickly to those who are truly in need of it.

Under the UN convention on refugees, our legal and moral obligation is clear. We have an obligation not to return people to a country where they have a well-founded fear of persecution due to race, national religion, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. Under Bill C-31 we will continue to meet and exceed these obligations.

Let me quickly run through the major components of the legislation.

First, claimants from designated countries—those that reality and experience show do not normally produce genuine refugees—would have limited access to the recourse mechanisms that currently enable them to delay their removal from Canada for years. They would all continue to have access to full, fact-based hearings before independent decision-makers at the Immigration and Refugee Board on the unique merits of their claims, with no negative prejudice associated with their claims because they may come from designated countries.

This means that a claimant from a designated country who receives a negative decision from the IRB will not have access to the new refugee appeal division we are creating as a result of Bill C-11 in the last Parliament. They would continue to be able to ask the Federal Court to review a negative decision, but they would not benefit from an automatic stay of their removal during that time.

The United Nations has long praised Canada for the generosity of our current refugee system. The UNHCR has also recognized the validity of expedited processing for claimants from safe countries of origin. In fact, the former UNHCR representative to Canada, Abraham Abraham, said:

UNHCR does not oppose the introduction of a “designated” or “safe country or origin” list as...a procedural tool to prioritize or accelerate examination of applications

I would note that my department's data suggest that over that past three years the majority of failed EU claimants have not asked the Federal Court to review the IRB's negative decisions on their claims, because the vast majority have abandoned or withdrawn their own claims, indicating of their own volition that they do not need our protection.

This suggests that failed claimants would not even attempt to access the additional level of appeal provided under the RAD, even if they had access. And don't forget, should any EU country become a designated country, failed claimants could still seek relief from the federal court to appeal a negative decision.

On the topic of irregular arrivals and human smuggling, Bill C-31 maintains all of the measures contained in the former Bill C-4. Importantly, however, we have proposed a new measure that would exempt minors under the age of 16 from the mandatory detention provision.

I should also note that foreign nationals who arrive as part of an irregular arrival with the documents required for entry to Canada will not be subject to the mandatory detention provision, as long as they are not found to be otherwise inadmissible under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

While detention could last as long as one year, designated foreign nationals would be released sooner should they receive a positive determination on their refugee claim by the IRB or if they apply for and receive release from the Minister of Public Safety based on exceptional circumstances. For individuals who are held up for up to 12 months, the IRB will review their detention at that point and regularly afterwards at six-month intervals.

Mr. Chairman, the protection of our borders and of Canadians is our highest obligation, and we are making these changes because they are necessary. The current detention review periods under IRPA were not designed to deal with mass arrivals or the sorts of cases involving complex human smuggling operations of the scale that have recently targeted Canada.

Sophisticated transnational human smuggling ventures are frequently launched from areas of the world where terrorist and criminal organizations are known to be active. Passengers on board these ventures often arrive without proper documentation. In these circumstances, the task of distinguishing legitimate refugees from those who may pose a public safety threat creates a serious challenge. The processing of irregular mass arrivals, therefore, takes a lot of time. Put into very simple terms, human smuggling operations are difficult to investigate.

I wish to underline that detention will allow for a full and proper investigation of a migrant's identity and a determination of whether an individual is indeed admissible to Canada, as well as any risks they may pose to Canadians. After all, it is the government's duty to assess whether those who seek entry to Canada are inadmissible for reasons of serious criminality, security, health, or other grounds.

The alternative is to release everyone into Canadian communities before we have identified them, conducted security assessments, or determined whether they are genuine refugees, and then hope that the bad guys, who are not admissible to Canada, show up for their hearings and don't simply disappear underground. That would be irresponsible.

The government's duty to protect the safety and security of Canadians has been recognized by the Federal Court, by the Supreme Court. In fact, in one of the cases following the arrival of the Ocean Lady, the Federal Court said:While the importance of not unduly detaining such persons cannot be forgotten, the protection of Canadians and Canada’s pressing interest in securing its borders are also worthy considerations.... In cases of mass arrivals from some parts of the world it may well take several months for the Minister to complete an investigation, particularly where the identity of the individuals is in issue.

The proposed amendments respond to a harmful practice that has numerous negative consequences. Large-scale organized smuggling ventures like the ones that have targeted Canada in recent years threaten the integrity of our system. Smuggling ventures also jeopardize the health and lives of those smuggled into Canada.

First, smugglers make unfair and untruthful promises to those who are smuggled. In many cases, passengers hand over all of their life savings to their smuggler on the false promise that when they arrive in Canada their affairs will be in order. The smuggling journey itself can result in the death of some passengers. Every year thousands of people die in smuggling operations around the world.

I should be clear that in the case of the two large marine arrivals that have been the focus of public attention, we believe that in most cases people paid around $5,000 Canadian as a down payment, with an obligation to pay up to $40,000 upon arrival, over time—essentially in an indentured context—to the smuggling syndicate's representatives in Canada. To me that is where smuggling can actually turn into a form of trafficking.

Essentially, there are three principal challenges contained in this bill to address human smuggling. First, we would broaden the offence of human smuggling in two specific ways. We would further expand the offence to capture the various ways it can be committed. We also add the element of recklessness to the offence.

Under section 117 of IRPA, the offence currently states:No person shall knowingly organize, induce, aid or abet the coming into Canada of one or more persons who are not in possession of a visa, passport or other document required by this Act.

I underline this because sometimes in debate we've heard people say that coming as a prospective asylum claimant through a smuggling operation is just a normal form of migration and not a problem.

No. It violates multiple laws, including IRPA in several respects, such as in section 117.

With our proposed changes, the offence would read that no person shall commit this offence either “knowing that, or being reckless as to whether, their coming into Canada is or would be in contravention of this Act”. Broadening the offence of human smuggling will give police and prosecutors the flexibility they require to respond to all forms of human smuggling.

Secondly, this legislation would create mandatory minimum penalties that target the most egregious forms of human smuggling and that reflect the objectives I have already discussed. These mandatory minimum penalties send an unequivocal message that such conduct will not be tolerated.

Finally, we're taking steps to hold shipowners accountable by increasing the penalties for offences under the Marine Transportation Security Act.

These criminal law improvements are a critical component of our overall response to human smuggling, but they should not be considered in isolation. In order to be effective and adequately address the crime of smuggling, each of these amendments is designed to work together with the others.

With this bill, we also seek to discourage passengers from using the services of a human smuggler by introducing several disincentives. First, we would also impose a five-year ban on applications for permanent resident status for persons who are part of a designated irregular arrival. Without the ability to become a permanent resident for five years, these individuals would also be unable to sponsor their family members to come to Canada during that period.

I think this is probably the single most important element of the bill in deterring smuggling. It will change the economic calculation for prospective clients of smuggling syndicates if they realize they will not be able to have family members in Canada assisting them and paying off their debts to the syndicate.

We believe these changes are fair and are necessary to deter passengers from using this dangerous form of travel to Canada. I also wish to remind you once again that all eligible claimants would continue to be entitled to a fair and independent hearing before the IRB, without a negative prejudice associated with their claim.

At the same time I recognize that there have been some criticisms of this legislation and some of the provisions I've just described. As I indicated, as we move forward with this legislation I am open to considering all reasonable suggestions from the committee as to how we can improve the integrity of our system and focus it on legitimate refugees.

On that I want to say that in the last Parliament we demonstrated openness to reasonable amendments, but in my view those amendments have to achieve the objective of discouraging smuggling and false asylum claims.

Finally, as you know, the bill includes provisions for legal authorization for the government to collect biometric data from applicants for temporary residency status. I can address that at greater length during the question period, but we believe it will facilitate an improvement by orders of magnitude in our immigration security screening. It constitutes an essential element of the beyond the borders agreement signed between President Obama and our government.

Mr. Chair, I'm happy to take your questions.

In closing, I believe this bill strikes the appropriate balance between reinforcing the integrity of our system, dissuading those who seek to abuse it, but also ensuring protection for those who are bona fide victims of persecution, in the best traditions of Canada's humanitarian instincts.

Thank you very much.

Citizen's Arrest and Self-defence Act

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I have been listening to the member talk on Bill C-26, which is about citizen's arrest, and he has been meandering all over the place, covering all sorts of different legislations and bills with which we were dealing. He talked about Bill C-31, which would improve the refugee act. Now he is talking about illegal handguns and border services. He is absolutely not talking about the subject at hand, Bill C-26, which would enhance citizens' protection.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity to speak once again to Bill C-26.

It now appears that the bill is being framed as sort of the victims versus the offenders by the other side. I would like to clarify our party's position on victims versus offenders.

The bill came from our party in the first place through the member for Trinity—Spadina. It was an attempt to turn an offender who was really a victim away from being an offender. How does that work? It is where someone who was a victim of a crime, attempted to arrest or stop a person who committed a crime and he became an offender, according to the police, because he had unreasonably detained someone.

This bill is all about that. It is to try to regain the balance between victims and offenders. The bill is now one of the very few in this Parliament to have had actual agreement on amendments at committee. Many bills have gone through committee that have had zero amendments approved by the other side.

That leads me to comparisons between this bill and other bills which have created victims, by the other side, and in which the amendments we have proposed have been outright rejected. I am of course referring to Bill C-31, which has elements of this bill in it all over the place. People who flee countries, where those people are victims of crime or who have their own personal well-being threatened, to come to a safe country are themselves victims. They are the victims of crime in those countries. They are the victims of persecution. They are victims in any imagined sense of the word.

However, if these people arrive here by the wrong method, they immediately become an offender, according to the government. If they are victims of human smuggling, they are imprisoned and are considered to be offenders.

We need to turn those things around. This is a situation that cannot be allowed to stand. Unfortunately the votes on Monday meant that those bills are now off to the Senate and perhaps they will become law.

We have a situation where the other side is accusing this side of being soft on offenders and hard on victims, and the exact opposite is true. The government has determined that people who are victims will be made offenders. The immigration bill is but one example.

That is an example of a bill where the parties actually did work together. The previous Parliament actually passed a bill that was praised and lauded, that struck a balance between people being victims and being offenders.

However, now we have a government that is insistent on its ideologically driven anti-immigrant agenda that will now treat potential immigrants who come here by magic, because they found a way to get here when they were unable to get here any other way, as criminals.

In addition, those individuals who did everything right, who acted in accordance with the law, who applied to come to Canada years and years ago are now going to be treated as criminals because they are having their money given back to them and are being told “Sorry, we did not get to your application 10 years ago, and we are never going to get to it. You have to apply again”. Those people are being made into victims by the government. We are treating people horrendously.

I also want to talk about how this bill has a possibility of creating a vigilante system. We will support it, but I want to be very clear that we do not support anything which takes Canada further into the sort of American mentality of “shoot first and ask questions later”. We do not agree with that kind of mentality.

I was in a high school in my riding last week. In that high school was a bunch of Grade 10 students. They were 13 to 15 years old. I asked them how many of them owned an illegal handgun or knew someone who owned one. Half the class put up its hand, and that is not unusual. When I asked them why all these handguns, their immediate answer was for self-defence, that they had to defend themselves against others in their communities who had handguns.

What is the government doing about the proliferation of handguns that I find in my riding? There was a drive-by shooting last night and someone was shot just last week in the same neighbourhood by illegal handguns that have arrived in my riding.

What is the government doing about the proliferation of weapons of destruction, of killing? It is removing border protections. It is laying off border services people. It is cutting the number of sniffer dogs that might stop these guns from coming into the country in the first place.

The Conservatives have decided it is better to have guns come in and to--

Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to have this brief opportunity to discuss Bill C-31 and how it proposes much needed reforms to secure our immigration system.

A number of my colleagues have spoken on this matter and illustrated a number of safeguards Bill C-31 contains to ensure that Canada will take a prudent and balanced approach to protecting the immigration system from abuse. Both the government and opposition parties have noted with pride that Canada has a long tradition of providing protection to those who are in need of it. With Canada accepting 1 out of every 10 refugee claims made in the world, it is very clear that the Canadian system is the most compassionate and generous in the world today. As a government, members on this side of the House have every intention of continuing to build on that great tradition.

Refugees who make honest claims and come to Canada because they truly need protection have nothing to fear. There will always be a place in Canada for them for as long as they need it. Canadians have given us a strong mandate to protect Canada's immigration system. We are acting on that mandate. We are creating a faster and fairer immigration system.

The Globe and Mail editorial board has applauded Bill C-31. Listen to what it had to say:

[The] Immigration Minister...['s] refugee reforms, aimed at making the process more efficient and decisive, are generally good. If implemented, they will improve an unwieldy asylum program...

The legislation rightly focuses on weeding out claimants who are not genuine, and stemming the flow of asylum seekers from countries such as Mexico and Hungary that are democracies with respect for basic rights and freedoms....

Fast-tracking refugee claims from these countries, and ensuring failed claimants are promptly deported, is an excellent way to ensure Canada does not become a magnet for abuse. The bill will also implement biometric identification, such as fingerprints and photos, for people who apply for visitor's visas. This welcome change will guard against the use of false identities.

What I would like to see acknowledged by the New Democratic Party and the Liberal Party is the fact that the system should have a mechanism in place that allows Canada to deal with refugee claimants who were not honest in their claims and gained permanent residency in our country through fraudulent means. The opposition MPs keep rising in the House and exclaiming that this rule is taking away people's rights. We are committed to preserving the place of people who are legitimately persecuted and make honest refugee claims. Canada will continue to protect these people. Their rights are not in question now and never will be.

The so-called rights in question, the rights that the NDP is trying to defend, must then belong to those who made fraudulent claims. This is patently absurd. It is not a right to defraud the Government of Canada. It is not a right to defraud Canadian taxpayers. It is not a right for refugee claimants to provide false information to the government to gain permanent residency in Canada and with it gain access to Canada's generous system of health and social benefits. The total savings to taxpayers as a result of this bill would be $1.65 billion over five years. If we do not pass this bill, then we will continue to pay up to $170 million per year for bogus EU claimants.

The NDP does not understand this approach and how it will save taxpayers money. Instead, the NDP approach to dealing with someone who manages to sneak by the system, who is able to swindle the system and Canadian taxpayers, is to do nothing. If it is found out that refugee claimants have cheated the system, the NDP wants to reward them by letting them stay in Canada and letting them claim social benefits at the expense of working families for even longer. This is wrong.

We are making sure that fraudulent refugee claimants do not get to benefit from their deception. The comments from NDP members suggest that they are intent on protecting people who cheat the system. The government is trying to close this loophole. Immigration lawyer Richard Kurland has even called the minister a loophole closer. He went on to say:

Finally someone recognized that the open wallet approach of the past, offering free education, free medicare, and a welfare cheque to anyone who touched Canadian soil making a refugee claim was not the right thing to do. So I'm glad to see today that finally, after several years, someone has the political courage to take the political risk of saying, if you're from a European country and you can land in London or Paris or Berlin, fill out paperwork, and legally live there, work there, pay taxes there, you shouldn’t be allowed to make a refugee claim in Canada. Buttress that with this reality check. Over 90 per cent, and in some years 95 per cent, of the target group, the Roma claimants, didn't even show up for their oral hearings. They rode on the taxpayer.

The government has said all along that Bill C-31 would make the immigration system faster and fairer. If members read the bill, they would know that is exactly what we are doing. Just as we are making the immigration system faster and fairer for legitimate refugee claimants who are truly in need of our protection because of persecution in their homeland, we are also making it more efficient to remove those refugee claimants who face no such persecution and those who have managed to cheat the refugee process.

Canadians do not want what the NDP wants, which is to let fraudulent refugee claimants stay in Canada. We must take action to crack down on the abuse of our generous immigration system. Our government is committed to strengthening the integrity of Canada's immigration system.

The protecting Canada's immigration system act would make our refugee system faster and fairer. This bill would put an end to foreign criminals, human smugglers and bogus refugees abusing our generous immigration system and receiving lucrative taxpayer-funded health and social benefits. At the same time, this bill would provide protection more quickly for those who are truly in need. Canada has always made a place for those who have needed our protection. I encourage everyone in this House to support this bill.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank all members who have participated in this debate over the course of some 23 hours of debate over 5 parliamentary days, 64 members having spoken to the bill, in addition to which this bill was preceded, in part, by Bill C-4. Bill C-31 is subsuming Bill C-4. If we combine the amount of debate on the two bills, we have had 41 hours of debate over 14 days, with 137 speeches, a very fulsome debate, and I do hope that this important bill, an act to protect the integrity of Canada's immigration system, will be referred for close, detailed study to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.

Allow me, at this point, to respond to some of the concerns and criticisms levelled by opposition members against this balanced effort to protect the integrity of our fair and generous immigration and refugee determination systems.

First, throughout the course of this debate, particularly today, we have heard a level of demagogic rhetoric that I personally regard as being irresponsible.

Thankfully, in this country, we have a broad public consensus in favour of immigration and refugee protection. Thankfully, we have avoided the kind of heated and divisive politics of immigration we see, for example, in certain western European countries. I believe it is incumbent upon all of us as elected representatives to maintain the breadth of that consensus through a responsible and balanced discourse on these issues, not to say that we will always agree on particular features of our asylum or immigration systems but that we should engage in the debate in a responsible way.

I hear opposition members saying, as the deputy leader of the NDP did, that this government is “beating up on refugees”.

When I hear members like the member for Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel say that we are promoting xenophobia, when I hear that the bill is against immigrants and that the government is creating fear, I am in fact hearing irresponsible voices in a debate that calls for us to be very careful and very cautious at all times.

This is really outrageous. Xenophobia, beating up on refugees and anti-immigrant are the kinds of terms we could fairly ascribe au Front national de la France, to the British National Party or to the xenophobic parties of western Europe that are against immigration and refugee protection.

However, here are the facts. This government, objectively speaking, based on the facts, based on the evidence, is the most pro-immigration government in the history of this dominion. Since 2006 we have admitted, on average, 254,000 permanent residents. That represents an increase of 14% over the levels of the previous Liberal government, which admitted 222,000 permanent residents, on average. This represents, under this government, the highest sustained levels of immigration in Canadian history, adding nearly 0.8% to our population per year, the highest per capita levels of immigration in the developed world.

As the Prime Minister has noted, this was one of the only developed countries in the world to maintain robust levels during the global economic downturn, as opposed, for example, to the government of one Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who cut immigration levels almost in half during the early 1990s, or the government of Jean Chrétien, who cut immigration levels from 260,000 under this minister and his colleagues in 1993 to 175,000 in 1995. Those are the facts. The opposition asked us to have evidence-based policy. Here is evidence.

Here is more evidence. We already accept one out of every ten resettled refugees from around the world. According to the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees, we receive more resettled refugees per capita than any country in the world, already, under this so-called xenophobic, anti-refugee government.

However, guess what. Because we so profoundly understand this country's unique vocation as a land of protection for victims of persecution, of ethnic cleansing, of violence, because we understand that from the united empire loyalists to the black slaves who came north through the underground railroad to the victims who fled communist totalitarian states throughout the 20th century, because it was a Conservative government that opened the doors to the Vietnamese-Indochinese refugees in 1979, because we understand that this is in our DNA as a country, this government is increasing the number of convention refugees we accept from around the world by 20%, and we are increasing at a time of fiscal restraint. We are increasing the integration support we give to them by 20%, so we will be far and away the number one recipient of resettled refugees in the world. Therefore, I say to my friends in the opposition how ridiculous and shameful it is to characterize that record as one of xenophobia and promoting “beating up” on refugees.

What the bill before this place seeks to do is to take a balanced approach to refugee protection that exceeds both our charter and UN convention obligations. Our obligation under the charter, as defined by the Supreme Court in the 1985 Singh decision, is very simple. It is to provide to asylum claimants an oral hearing before a competent decision-maker where credibility is an issue. We exceed that requirement by giving all claimants access to a full hearing, regardless of which country they come from or whether such country has been designated by the minister or not, regardless of the means through which they came and whether they came in a smuggling operation or not.

Notwithstanding most of the speeches from the opposition, every single asylum claimant will have access to the same full, fair, independent hearing at the quasi-judicial IRB, in full compliance with natural justice, due process and the requirements of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which system, according to the UN High Commissioner on Refugees, is the model system in the world for refugee protection. We are maintaining and in fact enhancing that system through the creation, for the first time, of a new full, fact-based appeal and oral hearing afforded failed claimants at the newly created refugee appeal division.

When I hear the hypocrisy about this from my colleagues in the Liberal Party who were in government for 13 years and refused to create a full appeal process for failed refugee claimants and who criticize this government, which is increasing the number of refugees we accept and creating for the first time a refugee appeal division, I say to my friends in the Liberal Party that they should be ashamed.

Our record speaks for itself. We are adding additional procedural protection for failed asylum claimants, but in this context we must deal with the reality that there are far too many who seek to abuse our generosity and that of our asylum system. Nearly two-thirds of asylum claimants are determined or deemed not to be well-founded claimants. Many of them, if not most, are manifestly fraudulent claimants who come here. They ought to come through the regular immigration procedures but very often are advised by consultants and maybe lawyers. We have had lawyers actually charged recently for coaching people to make fake asylum claims. People who are coached sometimes unwittingly go along with this to make false claims when they do not actually have a well-founded fear of persecution, which is the test in the convention for refugee protection. This has become an acute problem coming from certain democratic countries.

No country in the world is perfect. Certainly, none of the countries in the European Union are. However, it is a space that allows full mobility within 27 democratic member states, so why is it that Canada would be getting 90% of the asylum claims from around the world from the European Union? Why is it that almost 100% of those claimants do not show up for their own claim but rather abandon and withdraw the claims of their own volition? This is rather clear evidence that there is a highly organized wave of unfounded claims. That is not to say that their lives are perfect in Europe, but clearly by their own admission they do not need our protection. That is why we propose an accelerated process with limited appeals for people coming from designated countries. That is not to say that the minister would interfere in the decision-making process. That is nonsense. This is a full, independent, quasi-judicial decision that every claimant would benefit from.

I would further point out that this bill would allow us to give protection and certainty to bona fide asylum claimants in two to three months rather than two years. It would also allow us to remove from Canada false asylum claimants who have had the benefit of due process in a few months rather than several years, allowing them to restart their lives back in their countries of origin instead of abusing the generosity of Canadian taxpayers.

This is a balanced approach that respects our moral and legal obligations toward refugees. I am proud to support it.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise in the House today to debate Bill C-31, the Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act. The title of this bill is misleading because the only thing the bill protects is the Conservatives' paranoid ideology.

Once again, the Conservatives have a repressive agenda. They want to muster support by making people feel that they are under threat. This is the same kind of tactic we see our neighbours to the south using against illegal immigrants, an easy target for those seeking to drum up support for certain intolerant politicians. As we are seeing with Conservative policies, Canada is quickly becoming Americanized.

To perpetuate the illusion that their Canada is still a different country, the Conservatives are placing disproportionate emphasis on the monarchy and past wars, but those symbols are not relevant to Canadians' day-to-day lives. The Canada we love is an open nation that respects everyone and protects its people from arbitrary rule. We are proud of our past, but we live in 2012, so, back to this bill, which has a lot in common with American policy from the 1960s.

Bill C-31 targets a group of people who are fleeing persecution and suffering. These people are easy targets for the Conservatives because they have no legal status in Canada and no right to vote. The Conservatives can demonize them without suffering any consequences come the next election.

Instead, the Conservatives should tackle human smugglers, those who make money by exploiting human misery and breaking our laws. Illegal immigrants already take huge risks to escape misery. The threat of penalties will not dissuade them from entering Canada illegally. In other words, this bill will just cause more problems for refugees and will do little or nothing to punish smugglers. Do I have to remind the House that these smugglers typically treat illegal immigrants as slaves once they get here? The government should target those who stand to gain from the crime, not victims and desperate people.

I am extremely concerned about several aspects of this bill. First of all, I would like to note the changes to the deadlines that refugees must meet in completing their forms, the basis for their claim. Refugee claimants will have only 15 days to complete and file their applications. That is not long enough. Claimants need to obtain legal advice and must have time to prepare their cases and, above all, to become familiar with how things work in Canada. It is therefore unreasonable to give them only 15 days to complete their applications.

Another aspect of the bill that concerns me is giving the minister the power to create a list of designated countries of origin. Without having to consult any experts, the minister can make decisions that will have serious consequences. This seems arbitrary to me and, considering how the Conservatives have behaved in this House and during the election, many Canadians are worried about this measure.

As I already asked, why is this bill being so hard on illegal immigrants? Under this bill, anyone who arrives in a group will be detained for one year, even 16-year-olds. This typically Conservative “solution” is completely ridiculous. It will not stop illegal immigrants from entering Canada. They are often desperate and are being manipulated by human smugglers. They will not even be aware of the risk of imprisonment that they face when entering Canada illegally. It is unlikely that refugees will have read the Canadian legislation before coming here.

In other words, this will have no deterrent effect. Furthermore, who will have to pay for these detentions? Canadian taxpayers, once again. Before the Conservatives make Canadian taxpayers pay the cost of putting more people in prison, do the Conservatives have even one study that says that this will be beneficial in any way?

This government is looking more and more ridiculous because of its lack of professionalism and rigour. What is unfortunate about all of this is that taxpayers and refugees will be the ones to pay the price.

And what will happen to the young people under 16? They will try to reach Canada with their parents, who will be in prison. Who will take care of the young people? The state, of course, and it will fall to the provinces once again. In other words, the Canadian taxpayers will be on the hook again.

Why impose a 12-month minimum prison sentence? Why send the bill to the provinces yet again? This measure seems both unnecessary and expensive. Of course, increasing the age of imprisonment to 16 is better than throwing a seven year old in jail, but again we have to consider the effects on the children of having their parents in prison for such a long time. What is more, those who will be imprisoned will not even be able to appeal the decision.

The Conservatives are making the provinces pay again. For example, as a result of the Conservatives' policies, Quebeckers will have to foot the bill for creating a new firearms registry, building prisons, taking care of the children of imprisoned illegal immigrants, for the losses resulting from the expropriation of certain copyrights and for using the new Champlain bridge.

The Conservatives also want to balance the budget on the backs of the provinces. By constantly dumping their problems onto Quebec, the Conservatives are only providing ammunition to those who believe federalism is doomed to fail. Even separatists describe the Conservative Prime Minister as a great sovereignist.

Furthermore, those who are deported because their application has been rejected will be barred from applying for permanent residency status for five years. If we add this to the minimum one-year detention for immigrants who arrive from a designated country of origin, it will take more than six years for a person to immigrate. I do not believe that this measure is necessary. Are there studies that suggest this is the approach to be taken?

This bill raises another question. Is it constitutional? The withdrawal of permanent resident status from a person who loses their refugee status without committing a crime seems excessive. It is very likely that there will be Supreme Court challenges because those with refugee status are also protected by our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Legitimate applicants may be detained longer than necessary, which contravenes their right to freedom and legal rights. In addition, detaining someone for a minimum of 12 months without reviewing their file contravenes the Charter because it limits that person's right to legal recourse. Minimum detention of 12 month is also cruel for both children and parents and does not allow judges to decide whether or not the risk of reoffending justifies such imprisonment.

To conclude, I would remind the House of how much the Conservatives hate expert opinions, and that this is bad for Canada. In this case, the government is questioning the intelligence of judges and immigration experts. With this bill, the minister and the Conservative Party are claiming to be better qualified to decide the fate of immigrants smuggled into Canada than the experts are. Once again, this is a right-wing policy designed solely to create fear and exacerbate xenophobia. Yes, unfounded refugee claims must be rejected, but our government must not send the message that the doors to Canada are closed—quite the opposite. Imposing a minimum sentence, allowing the minister to decide what countries are acceptable and what countries are not, and separating children from their parents for as long as a year are not acceptable policies.

Regardless, we know that the Conservative government will not admit it is on the wrong track and will not amend its bill.

We must make efforts to prevent human smuggling and to punish smugglers, not the people who are fleeing human misery. It is unfortunate that we are again debating a bill that will not achieve its goal, simply because it is aiming at the wrong target.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there are a couple of thoughts that come to mind. First, I will share his disappointment that they are not coming on board. If there was an opportunity for them to do that in a thoughtful way, we would certainly appreciate that kind of support. As we go forward, who knows what can happen? However, it may not happen in this case.

Let me say what is not humane. What is not humane is when people, through the system that we have, base their hope on something that is not real. There may well be people who come in through the back door as bogus refugees and I think we would find consensus on both sides of the House that if inappropriate refugees come into Canada and redirect the focus away from people who have done it genuinely, we would want to get rid of those bogus refugees. I think we could find support in that.

What is really the challenge and really inhumane is when people are in the system for years and years and do not have their cases heard because of the significant backlog. That is what is wrong. What we are going to see through Bill C-31 is a significant streamlining that is humane and fair and treats refugees with greater respect.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as I begin my comments, I want to acknowledge the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism. It was important enough for him to come to Canada's tenth-largest city, and for those who do not know that is London Ontario, to be able to make some statements directly about Bill C-31 and the positive impact that it would have for people who would be affected by this. I wanted to acknowledge to him personally how much I appreciate that. As I make more formal comments, I appreciate the efforts of his department and the parliamentary secretary for ensuring the work that they have done provides us with what is a strong, fair and good bill.

As I rise today to discuss the importance of Bill C-31, I want to talk about this legislation, which ultimately is intended to strengthen Canada's already renowned immigration and refugee systems. It is quite evident that Canada has the most fair and generous immigration system in the world. However, our government and fair-minded Canadians have no tolerance for those who would exploit our generosity and take unfair advantage of our country's immigration and refugee system. As a result, we are taking action to crack down on this abuse by strengthening the integrity of Canada's immigration system through Bill C-31.

This bill proposed by our government is targeted to make our refugee system faster and fairer and at the same time to put a stop to foreign criminals, human smugglers and refugees who abuse our generous immigration system so they can receive lucrative taxpayer-funded health, welfare and other social benefits. In fact, the ratification of the bill would save Canadian taxpayers at least $1.65 billion over five years, while providing protection more quickly to those truly in need. Through these improvements to the asylum system, the bogus claimants who are from countries with democracies that have respect for basic rights and freedoms will be weeded out.

The fact is too many taxpayer dollars are being spent on people who are not fleeing genuine persecution, who instead seek to manipulate and take advantage of Canada's generous asylum system to receive lucrative taxpayer-funded health care, welfare and various social benefits.

In its initiatives to ensure Canada does not become a magnet for abuse, some of the clear measures in Bill C-31 include the following.

The first is fast-tracking refugee claims and ensuring failed claimants are promptly deported. However, people deemed in need of protection will not be returned to their country of persecution regardless of what country they have fled.

The second is implementing biometric identification such as fingerprints and photos for people who apply for visitors' visas for the reason that this important change would guard against the use of false identities.

The third is preventing the attraction of fleeing to Canada through means of illegal human smuggling operations by: increasing the penalties for human smugglers, ensuring the lucrative benefits refugees receive are not more generous than those received by the Canadian public; preventing human smuggling associated individuals from applying for permanent resident status for a period of five years, given that they successfully apply for refugee status; and preventing those individuals from sponsoring their family members also for a period of five years.

Canada has a well-deserved international reputation for having the most generous and fair immigration system in the world and, since 2006, our government has welcomed the highest sustained average of immigration in Canadian history. Canada provides protection to more than one in ten refugees resettled each year worldwide, more than almost any other developed country in the world. Conversely, given the stated inefficiencies and flaws that are currently infecting the integrity of our system, Canadians have given our government a strong mandate to improve Canada's immigration system through Bill C-31, which would help us put a stop to those who seek to abuse that generosity.

Effective response measures to these detrimental abuses are needed now more than ever in order to restore the integrity and public confidence of our system. Our current system calls for the need for a faster and fairer refugee determination process, resulting in effective and efficient protection for legitimate refugees and faster removal for illegitimate claimants.

My constituents in London West and all Canadians expect that our borders and shores are protected and secure and our generous systems are protected from abuse.

Canada's current refugee system is flawed as it is vulnerable to abuse. Due to this, too many taxpayer dollars are being spent on people who are not fleeing genuine persecution, but are seeking to exploit Canada's generous asylum system to reap those benefits. For example, in 2011 Canada received 5,800 more refugee claims from the democratic and human rights-respecting countries, otherwise known as safe countries of the European Union, than from Africa or Asia, which was a significant increase, 14% from 2010.

Former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff has recognized the legitimacy of designating certain countries as safe and ultimately even advocated rejecting all claims from those countries, which Bill C-31 does not propose to do.

This is a popular misconception of the bill, which is that by creating a process that allows certain countries to be designated as safe, Bill C-31 creates a two-tier asylum system and therefore violates the UN Convention on Refugees and/or the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. However, that is completely false. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms as well as the 1951 UN refugee convention require that all refugees be given the opportunity to have their claims heard. The process in Canada goes above and beyond its domestic and international obligations and that would not change under the proposed act.

Canada has and will continue to have one of the most generous refugee systems in the world. All refugee claimants will continue to have their cases heard by the independent Immigration and Refugee Board. Furthermore, every failed refugee claimant will continue to have access to at least one level of appeal.

On February 26, Paul Attia of Immigrants for Canada stated:

Immigrants for Canada (IFC) represents the views of countless immigrants across our nation who hold strongly to the view that Canadian immigration policy should always be in Canada's best interests. The immigrants IFC represents worked very hard, and sacrificed much to arrive on Canadian shores, and who chose to do so in an honest and legal way. Accordingly, these same immigrants welcome legislation that works to ensure that people who have no valid claim to our protection are not able to use the refugee determination system to obtain permanent residence in Canada.

Under the act, our government can put a stop to those who seek to abuse our generosity, save a substantial amount to Canadian taxpayers, give protection to genuine refugees in a much more timely manner and allow the quick removal of illegitimate claimants who cheat the system and abuse our generosity.

Bill C-31, protecting Canada's immigration system act, is truly in the best interests of Canada and of genuine refugees themselves. That is what we are talking about here. Canadians have given our government a mandate to improve Canada's immigration system and our government is acting on that mandate.

I emphasize the importance of the bill and urge the support and ratification of it as it stresses tough but fair measures to stop those who would abuse our generosity from becoming part of Canadian society. I do sincerely hope that my hon. colleagues across the floor will agree and join me in supporting this crucial legislation.

When we talk about the integrity of our immigration system, it is critical that we look not just at what a political position might be, but that we look at what the integrity of doing the right thing is intended to do. If members opposite look at doing the right thing, they will look deeply at this. They will look at this legislation and say that this is right for people who are not cheating the process, that this is right for people who are trying to do their very best to come to Canada the proper way and make a honest contribution to Canada and make our country a better place.

That is why I am so sincerely appreciative of the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. Perhaps for the first time we have found a minister who has the guts and the forthright approach to make this the most fair and transparent system, the right system for Canada. I would like to applaud him and I thank him on behalf of all Canadians.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, what we are being told makes no sense. One of the aspects of Bill C-31 would allow the minister to designate so-called safe countries.

I am a member of the Standing Committee on International Trade. Not only are we not being given the opportunity to debate at length the free trade agreements signed with minor countries that trade with Canada—such as Jordan, Panama and Honduras—but we also face great challenges. The government obviously is pushing hard to sign these agreements with countries that have serious problems and that cannot guarantee, among other things, the rights of workers, the elimination of problems related to money laundering or, as in the case of Honduras, a solution to the problem of gang violence.

I would like to ask my colleague opposite what there is to gain from allowing the minister to draw up a list of safe countries when government priorities already allow countries whose safety is questionable to make trade agreements with Canada? This makes absolutely no sense to me.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to join everyone here today to speak to Bill C-31, protecting Canada's immigration system act.

I thank the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism for not only bringing forward this much needed act, but for being here in the House while the bill is being debated to answer questions, explain what the act entails and how it would improve upon the refugee claimant system that we have here in Canada. I also thank his parliamentary secretary for the work he has done in carrying this bill and ensuring we have this fulsome debate here in a democratic process.

I often hear from constituents in my riding of Selkirk—Interlake how important it is that we fix the refugee system. We always hear stories of people who come in and abuse the refugee system. They take dollars out of Canadian taxpayers' hands and use it in ways that benefit them personally but do not broaden the economy or culture of Canada. There have been a number of emails circulating on the Internet that find their way into the offices of members of Parliament and it is about time that we address some of the concerns that constituents have had. There are emails that have been going through cyberspace and letters to editors that have been written over the years that address the situation of whether people are legitimate asylum seekers, how many dollars are attributed to those individuals as they sit in the queue waiting to have their refugee claims heard, and whether or not they gain access to Canada or are denied and have to be returned to their country of origin.

I do not think anyone in this House could disagree that Canada has the most fair and generous immigration system in the world. However, as I said, no one has tolerance for the abuse that the Canadian refugee system has undergone over recent history.

However, for people to think that our government is trying to crack down on refugees and that there would also be a crackdown on overall immigration, I can say that is absolutely false. Since we have come to power, total immigration into Canada has gone up 15% on a year over year basis. That has helped Canada in finding skilled workers, finding people to work in our health care system and bringing people into our communities to help us continue to grow and prosper as a country. There is no doubt that immigrants who have come to Canada and call it their home have contributed significantly to our economy and helped us to get through the economic downturn.

Bill C-31 is a follow-up to what we have already done under Bill C-11, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act. I do not think it has been said enough here that we have committed as a country to increasing the overall number of refugees we take in every year by 2,500 per year. That is almost a 10% increase of where we were last year and it is still generous. It means that we are still reaching out to help those who are in need and that we will help people who are in countries where they are being persecuted, prejudiced, possibly facing genocides and other atrocities to have the opportunity to come to Canada. We want to make it faster for refugees to come through the system and get safe asylum.

We will do that through a number of different ways. We will establish the safe countries list. By having a safe countries list we hope to reduce the backlog we have today of over 42,000 refugee claimants who are seeking asylum in Canada. Bill C-31 would reduce the overall processing time to 45 days for those people coming from the safe countries list. Right now, claimants coming from safe countries are seeing an average processing time of 1,038 days. We would dramatically reduce that time.

Second, as was mentioned earlier by the member for Barrie, we would bring in biometrics and follow suit with what so many other countries have done. We would bring in digital photographs and fingerprinting, as well as give people seeking asylum the opportunity to make their application in their own countries at Canadian consulates and embassies to get their names into the system along with data. By allowing them to make those claims in their own countries before they come to Canada would expedite the process.

The third important thing here is that we are going after the human smugglers. We do not want to see people profit from other people's disadvantage. We do not want people going out and extorting thousands of dollars from people to bring them to Canada, even though they come from countries where they can make those refugee claims. It is important that this bill addresses that.

As the minister has already said, we are not going after the actual bona fide asylum seekers. Rather, we are going after those who are out to abuse our system. We use the word “bogus” a lot and it gets thrown around but there are those who absolutely abuse the system.

All we need to do is look at the facts that we are dealing with today. The European Union, western world countries, democracies with human rights and established rules of law, account for 23% of all claims coming to Canada. In 2011, 5,800 refugee claimants came from the European Union, which is 14% over 2010, and, more important, it is more than we are getting from Africa and Asia where there are countries that have dictators, where we know people are being persecuted either because of their religious belief or race or are being disadvantaged because of their gender.

It is just amazing that we are getting so many claims from the European Union. Out of those claims, and this is where the word “bogus” comes in, when they actually need to appear before the Immigration and Refugee Board, 95% of those claimants never show up to defend their case. They are saying that they are sorry that they have wasted our time and have taken our money but that they will go back home now. What we are hearing is that they are getting off the plane or the boat, coming from countries like Hungary, the Roma in particular, saying that they are a refugee and then ask for the cheque. They are not even attempting to go through the process of proving that they are disadvantaged in the country that they reside.

The Roma coming from Hungary are essentially 18% of all the claimants that Canada faces. They are the large majority of those coming out of the European Union. That accounts for over 4,400 people, which is an increase of 50% from 2010. Last year, 4,400 people from Hungary tried to claim refugee status here in Canada.

People In the European Union have the freedom to move around without visas and without passports. They get to go back and forth and work in each other's jurisdictions. Therefore, how can these people be economic refugees or political refugees, or be persecuted under a system where they can go anywhere they want within the European Union, where we know there are some great democracies and leaders in human rights and the rule of law?

Belgium only received 188 people from Hungary in 2011. The U.S. only received 47 applicants. France and Norway only received 33 each. We are dealing with 4,400 refugee claimants from Hungary. How is that a fair system when we have people applying who are coming from legitimate countries where they want to get away from war, from government-forced famines or from being persecuted because of their religious beliefs?

This would have a huge savings cost wise for the Canadian taxpayer because we would be removing these people who are just using the system but, more important, it would speed up the system and open the door for legitimate asylum seekers. Those are the ones we want to reach out to and to see overall numbers increase by 2,500 refugees a year, so that Canada's generosity and compassion will still be second to none in the world.

Again I congratulate the minister and his department for their foresight and for going ahead and making these changes so that we can once and for all do away with a system that is broken and allow us to address the real needs of those seeking asylum around the world.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, at the end of her speech, the member said that she would like to leave it on a positive note and she talked about the reunification of a couple. I would like her to comment on one aspect of Bill C-31. The Minister of Immigration is putting into place a situation where refugees, after a year of detention, will need to wait an additional four or five years before being eligible to sponsor a spouse left in a country that they left because of fear for their life. Under this bill, they will wait years before being reunited with their family.

I would ask the member if she could provide comment on that aspect of the bill that would prevent people from being reunited in a more timely fashion.

[Annick Papillon, NDP, Québec, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for that question because it shows very clearly how the Conservatives think. They have invested, so that is supposed to do the job. They have put money into it, so everything should be fine.

What I wanted to do was bring a human perspective to it. In fact, I am not surprised to see that the minister also failed to grasp the main point after the human element, which is the dialogue with the provinces to solve the little problems I wanted to raise when I decided to talk about immigration, because this was the opportunity to do just that.

I very sincerely hope that this government will live up to its responsibilities and that it will be able to engage in dialogue to improve things. This is not just a question of investment or of doubling the number of hours. There are human beings behind it. Everything possible must be done to make it work. They cannot always set up an F-35 secretariat, or a veterans committee, to solve things.

It is very distressing to see that the minister wants to give himself more responsibilities, because that makes us wonder whether a committee or a secretariat is going to be created. We are wondering how far it will go. So far, I really am not sure that it is going to go well.

Thus, Bill C-31 certainly does not reflect what we on this side expect, and what Canadians expect.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know exactly what the member was talking about, because it was really not Bill C-31. She expressed reasonable concerns about integrating newcomers. On that subject, I must inform the member that since 2006, this government has more than tripled federal investments in integration services for newcomers, in Quebec and throughout Canada, in particular for francization, language training and job searches for newcomers.

With respect to resettled refugees, we are increasing the number we accept by 20%. We are also increasing support for those refugees under the refugee assistance program. So we are doing a great deal to help newcomers.

We are also reforming immigrant selection at the federal level so they are able to arrive in Canada much faster with jobs organized before they arrive.

Is the member aware of these investments? Does she think that tripling investment in integration is important or not?

[Annick Papillon, NDP, Québec, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-31 on immigration because much of my campaign last year focused on the idea of having an immigration system that is as transparent as the justice system. Unfortunately, Bill C-31 does not meet these expectations of offering something fairer—not at all.

I received a lot of feedback in Quebec City after Bill C-31 was introduced. Many community agencies, citizens' groups and voters have spoken to me about this issue. They think it is completely ridiculous. It goes too far. We cannot leave everything in the hands of the minister, as the bill intends.

For the Quebec City agencies that are crying for help when it comes to this bill, there is a clear lack of resources to help immigrants in distress. People get lost in red tape and are discouraged most of the time because they do not understand. They see visas getting rejected for strictly administrative reasons—bureaucracy. It is under this government no less.

At first glance, the changes in Bill C-31 seem only to make clarifications to the existing legislation. However, this bill makes draconian changes to situations that are already precarious.

The first thing that jumps out and that I must highlight is the arbitrary power that the minister has clearly given himself. With this discretionary power, he can overturn any decision that has already been made. It is obvious that this will not resolve the issue I am being asked about: why does it take three years for one immigrant to obtain citizenship, and ten years for another? There is a lack of transparency. It is not clear.

The change that scares future immigrants the most, and which we hear about regularly, is the rejection of applications and the pure and simple cancellation of most of the economic class applications. People have been waiting for 7, 8, 9 and even 10 years for positive news about their file, and their applications are going to be returned with a refund of the initial payment—a matter I will not get into at this time—because the minister wants to eliminate the backlog of applications filed since February 2008.

Rapid changes in the demand for labour in Canada would explain this situation. However, what about the people, the human element, the people who have held out hope all these years? The minister will say that they can resubmit their applications and that, if they meet the criteria, they will be chosen quickly. However, what is not being publicized is the fact that, since these people applied, the program has undergone some fine tuning and the law of natural selection now comes into play: the cost of applying has increased. There is no guarantee that the application will be accepted. Hopes are crushed.

Another change would see refugees sent back to their country of origin if the situation there improves. This is what organizations in my riding and people who call and email are telling me. People come here and adapt to life here. They start their lives over in Canada. They make friends and find work here. Their children are raised in Quebec or Canadian culture. Yet the government would send them back to a country they no longer know, a country they fled under difficult circumstances, in most cases. They left everything behind, hoping for a better life. And Canada, which invited them in to give them that opportunity for a better life, would deport them just like that because things have improved in their country? They can live peacefully here. They will want to adapt to our customs. They certainly have the right to that opportunity.

Bill C-31 has yet more shortcomings. For example, there is no mechanism to challenge blunt refusal with respect to family reunification. Families separated by time and borders that are frequently not their own are denied the opportunity to bring their spouse and children because they did not list them when registering. Registration happens in refugee camps where people live in terrible conditions. Once they arrive, they are given a vague one-year window to declare another individual on their application. That makes no sense. Bill C-31 does not address that, but it happens.

Immigration is much more than bringing people through the nation's door, welcoming them and then letting them go.

I recently met with a group of immigrants from my riding. I invited them to my office to discuss their concerns and the problems and issues they faced when they arrived in Quebec.

It is quite simple: they waited and they hoped. They lived the dream and were happy, but even after years, their diplomas are still not recognized and they are still having a hard time finding a good job. Reality bites. There is not enough support. When we really look at it, it seems as though the government believes that it has allowed them in and filled its quota, and now they have to get by on their own. Of course, this summary does not apply to refugees, but I heard this from the mouths of qualified workers who have come here to keep our economy moving and whom we are abandoning. We are not helping them fit in to our Canadian way of life.

Canada is a dream that is often inaccessible and sometimes incomprehensible. People fill out forms, answer questions, put up with delays, and still more delays, pay money and are eventually given the opportunity to fulfill their dreams, and this is all priceless. They are asked to leave everything behind—their house, their culture, their lives—to be submerged in a foreign culture, and they are asked to act like us, to be like us and to thank us. But what tools do we give them?

Just a few hours of French lessons and everything should be perfect? What about life in our society and what about our values? What about support, follow up and a real helping hand? Bill C-31 does not address any of that. Yet that is definitely a reality that many of my hon. colleagues must face in their constituency offices—they must see people going from tears of joy to tears of despair, and get all kinds of calls from people who want to know where to turn.

We see families separated, years of waiting just to be rejected, and hopes dashed. Fortunately, some situations end well. We help people achieve the dream of reunification and staying here. However, I always wonder. I hope everything will go well for them, but we never know. We are in the process of giving the minister more and more discretionary power and that makes no sense.

I also condemn this blatant lack of provincial-federal and interdepartmental dialogue. The government is certainly not known for listening to the provinces. There is no shortage of examples of problems that are only going to get worse under this Conservative government. People have simply lost everything. The federal government requires one thing, the provincial another. One accepts things when the other refuses or vice versa. Costs keep piling up. A federal-provincial dialogue would help people.

The same goes for a dialogue between the federal departments. Is it normal for a person to have his work permit rejected because there is a delay in processing claims at Human Resources and Skills Development Canada? No, that is not normal. The person is not responsible whatsoever for any such delay. The surprising thing is that he has to pay for these delays out of his own pocket every time and usually more than once. As far as I understand, the applicant is certainly not reimbursed.

This Bill C-31 does not reflect our values. This Bill C-31 does not help refugees. This bill is putting everything into the hands of the minister. That is not really a good thing.

I will close on a more positive note because that might be what we should focus on. Recently, in my riding in Quebec City, I met a newly arrived immigrant couple. In fact, it was a spousal reunification. The wife had waited years for her husband to finally be able to join her. To see such happiness is priceless. There are human beings behind all this paperwork.

We have to think of the people.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to share something with the member. Maybe he has had the opportunity to read the press release that was issued by the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers in its response to Bill C-31.

In the second point, it states that “the draconian measures of C-4 are rolled into this new bill“, obviously referring to Bill C-31 and that “C-4's proposed mandatory, unreviewable, warrantless, year-long detention is patently unconstitutional. The Supreme Court of Canada decided this issue in the clearest of terms.”

The second point being, “family separation for at least 5, and up to 8 or more years, will have a disastrous consequence for refugees.”

This is in fact what Bill C-31 is proposing to do.

This is not the Liberal Party or the New Democratic Party saying this. These are individuals who have represented refugees for many years. This is a professional organization. Would the member comment on that statement by the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers?

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened very carefully to my colleague's speech. I wish to thank him for his speech. However, unfortunately, the hon. member seems to believe in magical thinking, as do most of his cabinet colleagues.

It is a very serious problem, because Bill C-31 repeats some aspects of Bill C-4, for example, concerning the 12-month mandatory detention of foreign nationals who are arbitrarily designated by the minister. In the end, we all agree that we are talking about a measure that could be a deterrent, as long as the people detained are informed of it and can weigh all of the consequences.

Elsewhere in the world, experience has shown that this does not work, but that is not the most serious aspect. The worst aspect is that, if this bill passes, it could be formally contested under section 9 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which has to do with arbitrary detention. Thus, we will be back at square one.

Considering the cost of this kind of detention and the possibility that it will be abolished, how can my colleague justify this kind of spending and such a waste of time, not to mention the suffering of the people detained?

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak to this legislation. It is something that my constituents ask me about on a regular basis. I have communicated with them several times on some of the great initiatives which the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration has put forward in the past. Those measures were always warmly received. Our minister is doing a great job. Not only is he a great minister, but he is a great representative of Calgary Southeast and our home province of Alberta.

Canadians are rightfully proud of Canada's long-standing humanitarian tradition and the fact that we are one of the top countries in the world to offer protection to those who sincerely and genuinely need asylum. At the same time, reasonable Canadians would not disagree that our refugee system is in some need of reform.

As we see time and time again, genuine refugee claimants wait far too long for a decision on their claim. That is because those who seek to use our asylum system as a back door to get into Canada do so at the expense of genuine refugees.

Illegitimate claimants clog our refugee system and create unnecessarily long wait times for those truly in need of Canada's protection. This leaves in limbo those who are genuinely in need. Long delays also encourage individuals who are not in need of our protection to use the refugee system as a way to remain in Canada. Essentially, delays allow those who do not really need our protection to abuse our system and our generosity.

Last year processing times for a decision on a claim before the independent Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, affectionately known as the IRB, could take more than 20 months. Because of the resources available, it could take an average of four and one-half years from the time a claim is made until a failed refugee claimant has exhausted all legal avenues and is removed from Canada. This is completely unacceptable.

This makes Canada an attractive target for illegitimate claimants since they know that they can remain in Canada for several years while their claim is processed, during which time claimants can access our generous taxpayer-funded social benefits and perhaps obtain a work permit. In other words, these individuals basically establish themselves here in Canada without knowing if they are going to be approved as a refugee or not. Illegitimate claimants come here at a huge cost to Canadian taxpayers. The average unfounded claim costs about $55,000. Last year alone bogus refugee claimants cost Canadian taxpayers $170 million.

We need to send a clear and unmistakable message to those who seek to abuse Canada's generous asylum system that if they are not in need of protection, they will be sent home quickly.

The protecting Canada's immigration system act seeks to address these problems with our refugee system by providing faster protection to those in genuine need while quickly removing those who are not.

To help reduce the attraction of coming to Canada, these new measures would further accelerate the processing of all refugee claims, particularly for nationals from designated countries that generally do not produce refugees. This policy would provide the government with an important tool to respond to spikes in claims from countries that one would not normally expect a refugee to seek or claim asylum from.

This legislation would also reduce the options for resources available to failed claimants. Currently, these options permit failed claimants to further delay their removal from Canada. Even though many failed applicants know they will be unsuccessful, they also know these avenues of appeal will help them prolong their stay here where they can continue to have access to our generous system.

Let me be very clear about one thing. Under these new measures, all eligible refugee claimants would continue to be entitled to a fair hearing before an independent decision-maker. However, there would be no automatic stay of removal for claimants from designated countries of origin once a negative decision had been rendered by the IRB and the claimant had applied for judicial review to the Federal Court. This means that failed claimants could no longer use the Federal Court process to further delay their removal.

As I said, it currently takes an average of four and one-half years before a failed claimant has exhausted all avenues of appeal and is removed from Canada. In some instances it has taken over a decade. All the while, failed claimants have access to our generous tax-supported services such as health care and other social benefits.

Canadians work hard to support these services. They do not appreciate it when their hard-earned tax dollars go toward supporting foreign nationals who should not even be here in the first place, who come here under false pretenses knowing full well what they are doing.

The success of the new system hinges on our ability to speed up the current processing times for refugee claims. This is essential because the less time claimants spend in Canada awaiting a decision, the less incentive there is for people to abuse our generous asylum system and queue-jump the regular immigration process. Also, if we can speed up the current processing times for refugee claims, genuine refugees would get our protection more quickly.

Hearings at the IRB for claimants from designated countries of origin would occur within 30 to 45 days. Claimants who are not from designated countries of origin would also have their hearing timelines accelerated. It is proposed that these hearings would be scheduled within 60 days of being referred to the IRB, compared to the current system which takes over 1,000 days. It is no wonder that Chris Selley from the National Post said that the immigration minister is:

--certainly showing more guts than we came to expect from his Liberal predecessors....

Blame whomever you want, these timelines are completely preposterous. And they are one of the two biggest reasons that so many asylum-seekers make for Canada....But if a refugee claim was processed in, say, two months, instead of a year or two or five, the incentive for people with weak claims to give it a whirl would be massively reduced, as would the overall burden on the system.

John Ibbitson from the Globe and Mail also spoke positively about the bill:

I think we need a system first of all that doesn’t cost too much. I mean if you spend four years processing a bogus refugee claim, that’s the taxpayer who pays for it and that person may also be on welfare and other forms of social assistance during that time. So I agree. And I think there is broad public support for the idea that we need to process refugee claimants fairly and swiftly.

Finally, John Ivison from the National Post stated:

I was talking to somebody today who was saying within four days of a claimant landing in Toronto, they can be claiming welfare. Now that’s an obvious magnet for refugees all over the world. We have the most generous refugee system in the world. We have an acceptance rate of something like 50 per cent. Nowhere else in the world comes close to that.

Well, how many people do you need to consult to figure out that Hungary should not be our leading source of refugees? What had happened was that the ten, the top ten countries that we receive refugees from did not figure in the UN’s top ten list of refugees.

These new measures would be accomplished without affecting the fairness of our generous refugee system and without compromising any of Canada's international and domestic obligations with respect to refugees. By improving the refugee system in these ways, this legislation would also ensure that the refugee claimants who really do need our protection would get it even faster.

These proposed measures would continue to meet our domestic and international obligations. They would also maintain the balance and fairness that are the foundation of our refugee system. I am confident that they would honour the spirit and support for refugees that Canadians value.

In supporting this legislation, my hon. colleagues in the House can help to provide a quicker, more secure beginning for victims of violence and persecution around the world and help deter abuse of our refugee system. I urge all hon. members in the House to join me in supporting Bill C-31.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Winnipeg North likes to keep us waiting for the question.

On issues such as biometrics and other matters where the government talks about cost savings, there are provisions in Bill C-31 that are very costly. For example, mandatory detention of irregular arrivals for a minimum of one year could cost up to $70,000 per claimant. Refugee claimants from designated countries would not be able to apply for work permits for at least six months and they would be forced on to social assistance. These are the parts of the bill where the economics absolutely do not make any sense.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, in Bill C-31 there are three areas we need to explore and discuss and I look forward to doing that in committee.

The old bill, Bill C-4 will die because Bill C-31 replaces it. There were significant challenges brought forward by lawyers across Canada who said that Bill C-4 had some serious legal aspects. They challenged its worthiness to even pass in a court of law in Canada and said that it was unfair to refugees. That is one component of the bill.

A second component of the bill deals with legislation which this House passed but the government is trying to amend so as to no longer have an advisory committee. The minister wants to have the power to designate countries as safe countries. Rather than having an advisory board, the minister wants that power.

I would like the member to comment on the third component, which deals with biometrics. Does the NDP have a position on the use of biometrics in regard to visas?

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, human smugglers are not profiting from human smuggling here in Canada. They are profiting from it in the countries in which they ply their trade. We need to be clear on that, and I do not think the government is.

However, I am honoured to be here in this place today, as I am every day that I am here, to represent the people of my riding of Davenport, in which we have a very diverse community. More than 50% of the people in my riding were not born in Canada, and in fact we have refugees living in our riding.

I want to tell the House a little story about some of the people in my riding. There is one gentleman, and I cannot name him, but he came into my office. He runs and owns a bakery; in fact he owns two. He owns a house, his kids go to the local school, he is involved in volunteer activity and he is involved at his local church. He came to my office because he is living in fear. He applied for refugee status, his claim was denied and he is awaiting a decision under humanitarian and compassionate grounds. However, under this bill he has lost all his protection. He is very worried that he is going to go back to the country of his birth and face the situation for which he left in the first place.

The government likes to talk about scammers of the system. We need to realize that people who essentially take their lives into their own hands and flee their home countries are doing it because they absolutely have to. This member of my community is a strong part of the fabric not only of the riding of Davenport, but this is an example we could talk about right across the country. This is one reason and this is an example, a human story.

I would challenge any members across the way, if that were one of their constituents, that they would not be going to bat for that constituent. In fact, if the members across the way had those stories coming into their office, how could they not respond? As we have heard from the government many times today, it has a proud tradition, an internationally lauded position on human rights and immigration. However, the government does not seem to like to remind Canadians that it is all in the past. Today it is a very different reality.

I know the government does not like to listen to experts. We know that, but I get this time and I am going to talk about expert opinion, and one of the beauties of this place is that government members cannot stop me.

The Justice for Refugees and Immigrants Coalition consists of Amnesty International Canada, the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Canadian Council for Refugees. It supports an immigration system that is fair, independent of political considerations and affordable. In its view, Bill C-31 is unconstitutional, undermines our humanitarian traditions and violates our international obligations and it should therefore be withdrawn.

One has to wonder if the government ever chose to consult expert opinion. I know that it gets out the white pages, phones some lawyers and gets some juicy quotes, but does it really speak to the organizations that have dedicated their lives? I have met many people who work in these organizations. They could be pulling in six figures on Bay Street, but they are there in the trenches working with refugees.

Refugees today are Canadian citizens of tomorrow. I started my speech off with the example of the constituent in my riding who has a business, has a family and has bought a house. His family in his home country is constantly under threat of violence and he is worried sick that he is actually going to have to pull up roots and go back.

It is one of the enduring ironies of the government. It loves to go on and on about the whole idea of family values, and yet it has crafted legislation here that is going to pull families apart. A family is a family is a family. It does not matter where it comes from or how it got here. It is incumbent upon us, here in this place, if we want to talk about family values, to try to keep kids with their parents, notwithstanding all the other issues that the government and others bring up around immigration.

I also want to remind the members opposite of something, because I think some of them occasionally forget this. I remember a minister of education in the government of Ontario years ago, and I am sure he is a good friend of many members across the way. In fact, he served closely with many of them in the cabinet of the government of Mike Harris. The education minister said we have to create a crisis and then we can blow the thing up. He did not quite say it like that. I am paraphrasing. It was a long time ago.

However, essentially, the government talks about the wait time. Many members, certainly on our side, who do the tough work in their constituencies know that we get many constituents coming in with issues around immigration and refugee hearings. However, the government seems to think, therefore, let us starve the system of resources and then completely change it, all in the name of something it calls efficiencies. We all know that is a code word for privatization and for staff reductions.

I also want to bring up the issue of designated countries. In my riding and in the downtown core of Toronto, we have many Roma who came to Canada as refugees, many in 2008. The situation for Roma in Europe has not got any better. We know we have tight relations with the European Union and we are currently negotiating a free trade agreement behind close doors with the European Union; but if we look at the first round of elections in France yesterday, we can note a distinctly hard right anti-immigration thread going through the politics of Europe. That has filtered down to the most vulnerable and historically vulnerable communities of Europe, one being the Roma. We have a large community of Roma and they are hard-working, peace-loving human beings who we have embraced. Are we just going to tell them the deal is up and we are going to send them home?

There are so many issues that the bill does not address. We have a lot of work to do on this. I urge the government to consider some expert opinion and to work with us on this side to create a humanitarian, fair, cost-effective system.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Barrie for his excellent speech and his in-depth understanding of some of the content within Bill C-31. I also want to compliment him as chair of the Canada-India Parliamentary Association. He has done an outstanding job of reaching out wherever necessary, both in his riding as a representative and in the city of Toronto as a liaison for the South Asian community.

From his meetings and discussions with that community, I wonder if he could comment on what its support or comments on the bill have been and what direction the committee could take from them in terms of moving this bill forward.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to offer my contribution to this vital debate about the future of Canada's internationally renowned immigration system.

I am sure all hon. members in the House can agree that it is crucial to Canada's national interest that our immigration system functions fairly, effectively and with integrity.

If enacted, the measures in Bill C-31, otherwise known as protecting Canada's immigration system act, would help ensure that the immigration system would continue to function in a just way.

Let us not mince words. Our immigration system is one of Canada's greatest assets. It is one of the reasons we have the great country we do today.

I think of my own riding in Barrie, Ontario and of some of the people from Barrie who have come to Canada recently. They represent some of the best values to which we could ever aspire.

I think of Beethoven Crasco who, when he first came here, was working two jobs to support his family and still found time to volunteer at our local hospital.

I think of Tahir Nawaz who within a few years of coming here organized a large fundraiser for the Red Cross as he wanted to give back and be engaged in the community.

I think of Aaron Sureshkumar who, after coming from Sri Lanka and working tirelessly, managed to not only find a job, but created and opened his own factory producing hot tub covers, which are now being sold all across North America. Coming here with very little, he now employs dozens in Barrie and is opening an expansion.

That type of work ethic embodies the Canadian spirit unequivocally.

I know most MPs go to citizenship ceremonies. We can never have better example of why we appreciate immigration than those ceremonies. I remember going to my first one when I was on city council 12 years ago and seeing a new Canadian cry at the thought of getting her citizenship. It really is inspiring. It reminds us of why we live in such an amazing country.

Immigration has brought countless newcomers and their descendants to our shores, immigrants who have brought immeasurable benefits to Canada's development, have contributed to the richness and diversity of our country and have helped make it the free and prosperous society it is today. Therefore, it is our duty as legislators to ensure that we enact laws that protect and ensure the strength of our immigration system.

The measures in Bill C-31, once enacted, will do exactly that, so I am happy to support this legislation.

I would like to speak today about one of the important pieces of the protecting Canada's immigration system act. The measures in this legislation will enable the introduction of biometric technology for the mandatory screening of temporary resident applicants.

As members know, Bill C-31 would also help carry out long needed reforms to the refugee system and would help crackdown on human smugglers who may try to abuse Canada's generous immigration system.

Regarding biometrics, the Montreal Gazette had this to say in a recent editorial on the bill we are debating today. It wrote:

The collection of biometric information is a sensible security precaution that will be a valuable tool in preventing people from slipping into the country with false identities.

I agree with this analysis. I would go even further and echo the words of our Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, who has described the implementation of biometric screening of visa applicants as a “historic” development in Canada's immigration system.

Under our current system, when individuals make immigration applications, in most cases they only need to initially provide written documents to support their applications. A modern immigration system can do a better job in ensuring security. How? Let me provide an explanation of how this new system would work.

Essentially, the legislation under consideration today, and the regulations that will follow, will allow the Government of Canada to make it mandatory for travellers, students and workers from prescribed visa-required countries and territories to have their photographs and fingerprints taken as part of their temporary resident visa study permit or work permit applications.

That is it in a nutshell. It will simply mean the photos and prints will be collected as part of a standard visa application process. For overseas applicants, they would be collected before the applicant arrives in Canada. This will help with processing visa applications and later with confirming the identity of visa holders when they arrive at our borders.

The introduction of biometrics as an identity-management tool and our immigration and border control system is a welcome development that has been a long time in coming and long overdue. It is also something that will bring Canada up to speed with what is quickly becoming the international standard in this domain. Many governments around the world have already introduced biometric collection in their immigration and border programs. Here are some examples: the United Kingdom, Australia, the United States, New Zealand, Japan, the European Union, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia and Malaysia to name a few.

Although it is a long time in coming for Canada, the fact that so many other countries have already adopted biometrics brings a side benefit. Many visa applicants to Canada will already be familiar with the process. This will make for a very smooth transition to the system. Also, because other countries have already gone through the transition to biometrics, we already know that there is normally only a small, short-term drop in application volumes following the implementation of biometrics.

It would be difficult to argue that what I am describing here is anything but efficient, effective and a straightforward process. In terms of the security of the immigration system, implementing biometrics will help stop known criminals, failed refugee claimants and previous deportees from using false identity to obtain a Canadian visa.

Biometrics will help improve the integrity of our immigration system and will bolster Canada's existing measures to facilitate legitimate travel by providing a fast and reliable tool to help confirm identity. This will greatly help our front-line visa and border officers to manage high volumes of immigration applicants and the growing sophistication in identity fraud. It will provide great benefits to the Canadian officials making visa applications and border entry decisions.

At the same time, it will be beneficial to applicants because in the long run the use of biometrics will facilitate entry to Canada by providing a reliable tool to readily confirm the identity of applicants. For instance, in cases where the authenticity of documents is uncertain, biometrics could expedite decision making at Canadian points of entry. Using biometrics could also protect visa applicants by making it more difficult for others to forge, steal or use an applicant's identity to gain access into Canada.

Finally, Canada has committed to the exchange of biometric information with the United States beginning in 2014. This will help both Canadian and U.S. authorities spot failed refugee claimants, deportees, previously refused applicants and applicants using fraudulent identities before they get to North America. This initiative is part of our two countries' action plan on perimeter security and economic competitiveness, which provides a practical road map for enhancing security, while speeding up legitimate trade and travel across the Canada-U.S. border.

Let me give a few practical examples of why biometrics is fundamentally necessary in Canada. Let us take the example of Esron Laing and David Wilson, who were convicted of armed robbery and forcible confinement. They returned to Canada on three different occasions. In fact, they are known as the “Yo-Yo Bandits” because just like a yo-yo, they kept coming back.

I know that three times does not seem like a high number, but I am sad to say that many serious criminals are deported and manage to return to Canada many more times than that. For example, Anthony Hakim Saunders was convicted of assault and drug trafficking. He was deported on 10 different occasions. That is right, an astonishing 10 different times. Just like the “Yo-Yo Bandits”, he kept returning.

Edmund Ezemo was convicted of more than 30 charges, including identity theft and fraud. He was deported and returned to Canada eight times.

Dale Anthony Wyatt was convicted of trafficking drugs and possession of illegal weapons. He was deported and returned to Canada on at least four separate occasions.

Unfortunately this is only a tiny sample of the examples I could use to illustrate the number of people who are not eligible to come to Canada but do.

The many benefits of introducing biometric technology for screening visa applicants makes it a welcome and historic development for our immigration system. Furthermore, the use of biometrics is increasingly becoming the international norm. By passing Bill C-31, protecting Canada's immigration system act, we will be ensuring that Canada keeps up with the many other countries in the world already using this system.

For this reason and many others, I will be supporting the bill wholeheartedly. I encourage all members of the House to do the same.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

Certainly there are elements in the bill that would be violations of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but that is not the key issue here. However, a second key issue is the absolute lack of consultation, such as when Bill C-11 came forward.

Groups affected by this were not consulted.

There were some big mistakes in Bill C-11. Some consultation was then done and those things were changed. However, under Bill C-31, the amendments were rolled out again. Therefore, this is a very similar process as with many of the other bills that the government has put forward.

The Conservatives have shown that they are not interested in the public good or the best interests of the people because they did not consult groups in such a way as to ensure a good bill. They drafted it without consulting anyone because they want more power over immigrant and refugee groups.

[Pierre Jacob, NDP, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Mr. Speaker, can my esteemed colleague tell us how Bill C-31 blatantly violates the Canadian charter and several international treaties? I would like her to summarize the most obvious violations.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to enter the debate on Bill C-31. The Liberal Party believes that it is very reasonable to review, consult on and update refugee and immigration laws from time to time in order to address ways in which they may no longer meet the public interest, address issues that have come up since the last revisions and make improvements. The Liberal Party supports that, but Bill C-31, unfortunately, has some very serious flaws.

The fact that the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism is the only person who will decide what countries of origin are safe will mean that there is no accountability and no recourse available, and the refugee system will become dangerously politicized.

We see that playing out from accounts in the media about the immigration minister himself and funds potentially being used to organize partisan fundraising from immigrant communities. It is a very dangerous precedent.

The goal is to give one person in this country the power to determine which people will be eligible to claim refugee status and which people will not.

That is dangerous.

This bill will allow the Minister of Public Safety to decide which groups of people are irregular arrivals, and thus gives him too much discretion but no accountability.

The elimination of an appeal process for people who come from a country on the safe country list or for people designated as part of an irregular arrival does not guarantee that the law will be applied uniformly.

Our party opposes long-term detention without warrant, and opposes an unfair review process where the first examination is not held for 12 months. The proposed policies amount to cruel and unusual punishment.

It is clear that, while supporting improvements to make the laws more timely, more fair and more effective, there are many ways in which these are dangerous changes that put unaccountable power in the hands of ministers who have, allegedly, been abusing that power.

The Liberals believe that creating two classes of refugees is not acceptable and that the bill undermines the compassion and support Canada has historically provided to those seeking refuge from situations of risk, danger and abuse in their home country. It punishes selected refugees both by branding them in negative ways as security risks when, in most cases, that is not the case, and by locking them up for long periods of time and treating them much more harshly. This punishing of refugees is an unacceptable way of reforming our system and very likely open to charter challenges.

I will talk about two parts of the context of this.

My daughter was in Sri Lanka seven years ago at the time of the tsunami, which was a humanitarian disaster of massive proportions in Sri Lanka. She was, fortunately, not harmed. She was part of a convoy of aid that citizens had pulled together to drive down in trucks to the areas most affected. What she told us when she came back was that it was extremely dangerous. There were huge security measures that the group needed to take. These convoys of aid were at risk of being hijacked by government forces and by Tamil forces at various times. It was a dangerous situation where there was a civil war and the Tamil citizens were victimized by forces in their own country.

A few years later, the civil war came to a head. There were reports in 2009 that 10,000 citizens were killed and that 280,000 Tamil citizens were displaced in their own country and living in refugee camps. That is the framing for the arrival in British Columbia.

As the member for Parliament for Vancouver Quadra and a British Columbian, I was aware of the humanitarian disaster leading to people leaving the country and coming as refugees to Canada at that time. One boat arrived in October 2009 and a further boat arrived shortly thereafter.

I have an interesting analysis of the arrival of the boat bringing Tamil community members whose lives had been at risk, whose family members had been probably killed by either the government or Tamil rebel forces and who literally were the kind of humanitarian asylum seekers who Canada has a responsibility to accept and to support and has done so successfully in the past.

I will read a couple of sentences from the abstract of the analysis in the Canadian Journal of Communication, No. 4, 2011, by Ashley Bradimore and Harald Bauder of Ryerson University. This analysis looks at 32 articles. It does a careful analysis to ensure that this is a representative sample of the articles in the Vancouver Sun, Toronto Star and National Post. It analyzes the framing, representation and identity in these articles, showing that there was an overall negative representation of the Tamil refugees. The press emphasized issues of criminality and terrorism and constructed the refugees as being a risk. The sentences read:

The discussion established security—rather than human rights—as a focal point and portrayed the immigration system as both “failing” and “abused” by “bogus claimants”.

This security-oriented framework provided a discursive background for the refugee reform Bill C-11, Bill C-11, which has been replaced by Bill C-31.

We see a context in the discussions across national discussions that are not talking about the humanitarian issue or the situation with people arriving from Sri Lanka in these Tamil boats. The discussion centres on illegality and a lot of negatives. In fact, the analysis of the news articles at the time showed that some 66% of the articles sampled had negative terms in the headlines to describe the events, such as “terrorism”, “suspected”, “illegal”, “apprehended”. That is how between 50% and 67% of the headlines characterized the situation of the Tamil refugees coming to British Columbia.

Why was it characterized so negatively? Was that just the media portraying refugees from a known n country where there had been abuses and humanitarian tragedies? Was the media just being negative or was there a government hand in all of this?

It turns out that, in this analysis of articles, between 50% and 68% of the quotes and references in these articles were either from government sources or the police. The government sources were very widely quoted in these articles. What is the significance of that? It turns out that the immigration minister of the day came out very early on with some very negative comments. For example, the minister signalled, “there should be no rush to unconditionally embrace as refugees the 76 men, believed to be from Sri Lanka”. Another one reads, “We obviously don't want to encourage people to get into rickety boats, pay thousands of dollars, cross the oceans and come to Canada illegally”.

Another one reads:

Without prejudice to this particular group of people, [...]

We want to ensure that we don't end up with a two-tier immigration system, one tier for legal law-abiding immigrants who wait patiently to come to Canada the legal way, and another that [encourages] false refugee claimants to come through the back door.

These comments played a significant role in changing the discourse in the media from what was once centred on the humanitarian to talking about illegality, the bogus and queue jumping. That then becomes the basis for putting forward Bill C-31, which is an attack on refugees. First the Conservatives lull the public and then they attack the refugees, perhaps with impunity. However, the Liberals will be speaking out against it.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I need to provide some information for my colleague opposite that she may not be aware of. First, it is an absolute given that I welcome parliamentary debate. That is why we are all here.

However, the point that may have eluded my colleague is that the current system is crushingly expensive for the Canadian taxpayer to bear. It is the Canadian taxpayer who is currently funding the inefficiencies and ineffectiveness of the system. The proposal in Bill C-31, protecting Canada's immigration system act, is to make it more just, more fair and much more responsive to the needs of all Canadians, whether they are new or currently reside here.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in support of Bill C-31, protecting Canada's immigration system act. This legislation will provide a quicker and more secure beginning for victims of violence and persecution around the world.

As a Canadian, I am very proud of our compassionate tradition of providing a safe haven to refugees. Since World War II, Canada has provided protection to over one million refugees. It is clear that the government is committed to continuing this proud tradition, and that is why we will uphold Canada's commitment to resettle more refugees. By 2013, Canada will resettle up to 14,500 refugees, an increase of 2,500 since 2010. Canada welcomes one of the highest numbers of UNHCR-designated refugees. Bill C-31 will not change that.

What Bill C-31 will do is make our generous immigration system faster and fairer. It is no secret that Canada's immigration system is open to abuse, but when people come to Canada to abuse our immigration and refugee systems, it undermines public confidence in our immigration programs. It is that true people have taken notice of our country's compassion; the fact that Canada now receives more refugee claims from Europe than from Africa or Asia shows there is something wrong with the refugee system.

The simple fact of the matter is that we spend far too many taxpayer dollars on applicants who are not in need of protection. Last year alone, bogus refugee claimants cost Canadian taxpayers over $170 million.

Bill C-31 continues to give all refugee claimants, including those who arrive by way of human smuggling, the right to file a claim for refugee protection with the independent Immigration and Refugee Board. We will, therefore, not refuse any eligible person access to our asylum system. As such, this legislation will allow Canada to maintain one of the most generous refugee systems in the world; however, it will speed up the processes for deciding on refugee claims. This will allow us to provide protection much more quickly to those who are truly in need of it.

Under the UN convention on refugees, our obligation is clear: we have an obligation not to turn away people who have a well-founded fear of persecution, regardless of race, nationality, religion, et cetera. The fact that we will continue to grant access to our asylum system to all eligible claimants and that they will get an oral hearing before the independent Immigration and Refugee Board means that we will continue to meet these obligations. In fact, under Bill C-31 we will continue to exceed both our international and domestic obligations.

While all refugee claimants would continue to be able to ask for refugee protection, claimants from designated countries—that is, those that generally do not produce refugees—would have limited access to the recourse mechanisms that currently enable them to delay their removal from Canada for many years. This means that claimants from designated countries who receive a negative decision from the IRB would not have access to the refugee appeal division. They would continue to be able to ask the Federal Court to review the negative decision.

The United Nations has long praised Canada for the generosity of our current refugee system. As I said, all eligible applicants, including those from designated countries of origin, would continue to have access to our current refugee system.

The problem is that the current system is far too slow. On average it can take up to 4.5 years from the time an initial claim is made until a failed claimant is removed from Canada. During this time, claimants can access our taxpayer-funded health care and claim social assistance for several years while their claim is still pending. Long wait times mean greater costs to Canada taxpayers.

Similarly, the system is also too slow for people who need our protection. People in genuine need of our protection now wait about 20 months for a decision on their claim. This is unfair. As a result, the current response to genuine claimants is “Sorry; we know you need our protection, but you have to wait two years before we can even let you know whether you will get it.” This is entirely the wrong message that we should be sending to genuine refugee claimants.

These people need our protection, and we owe it to them to let them know whether we can provide it within a reasonable amount of time.

The reality is that instead of waiting patiently to come to Canada through an immigration process, too many people are trying to use our asylum system as a back door to gain entry into Canada. All the while, these claimants clog our refugee system and make those who legitimately need it wait far too long. While there is no question that Canada is a generous nation that seeks to provide protection to those in need, we must place limits on our generosity when others blatantly seek to abuse it.

This is what immigration lawyer and expert Richard Kurland had to say about Bill C-31, in part:

Finally someone recognized that the open wallet approach of the past, offering free education, free medicare, and a welfare cheque to anyone who touched Canadian soil making a refugee claim was not the right thing to do.

He continued:

We were just taken for a ride by a lot of people for a long time. Today that loophole is dead, and I really hope the word gets out to the smuggler community and back to source countries to not try it.

What is more, both the former NDP immigration critic and the current Liberal critic have stated publicly that they support the principles behind Bill C-31. The former NDP immigration critic said:

Well, I think what we need to do is build a system that has a fast and fair determination process. And that’s something that I’ll give [the minister] credit for. I do think that’s what his intention has been all along. And we all want to work towards that. We don’t want endless dragging on of this stuff because refugees, when they come here, you know, they do qualify for basic sustenance...it is at the cost of the Canadian taxpayer. So we do have an interest in making sure there’s a quick determination that’s correct and fair and get these people into our communities....

He continued:

We want a fast, fair system where we can give a sanctuary to people who need it quickly and we can weed out the people who don’t have valid claims, get them through a fair process. And if they’re not valid at the end of the day, deport them out of Canada swiftly.

Yet both the NDP and the Liberals have decided to vote against this important piece of legislation. They have decided to vote against providing Canada's protection to genuine refugees in need and they have decided to vote against hard-working Canadian taxpayers.

We need to send a message to those who seek to abuse our generosity that if they are not in need of our protection, they will be sent home quickly. Alternatively, the message we should be sending those who genuinely need our protection is that if they need our protection, they will now get it more quickly.

It is only by fixing our refugee system that we can effectively increase the generosity of our system. With the passage of the Balanced Refugee Reform Act in June 2010, we made some progress toward that goal, but the fact is that gaps remain in the new system. In introducing Bill C-31, our rationale is simple: by focusing the resources of our system on providing protection to those who genuinely need it, we improve our ability to help those people in need.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague made a very informative and polite speech. I want to ask him about one specific aspect of Bill C-31.

We have a Minister of Public Safety who tells Canadians that if they are not with a particular piece of legislation then they stand with child pornographers. We have a Minister of National Defence who cannot give straight answers on a massive procurement. We have a Minister of Industry who is getting his hands slapped for cozying up to big business. We have a President of the Treasury Board who shovels money out the back door. How can we really trust the Conservative government to put more power into the hands of a single minister without proper oversight?

I would like my hon. colleague to comment on that part of the bill.

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it was very interesting to hear the government House leader say that a committee should be allowed to complete its work before decisions are made. That is the situation on Bill C-31 with respect to biometrics. A committee was engaged in a study to discuss the facts and meet with experts and witnesses in order to reach a decision on biometrics. However, the Conservatives just shot that out the cannon and are now proceeding with this bill before the committee's work is done.

Of course, it is always a pleasure to stand in this House, but I wish we were debating a bill that I would be able to support.

The title of Bill C-31, protecting Canada's immigration system act, is an improper and inaccurate title because rather than protect it, it would do damage to Canada's immigration system legally, socially, morally and internationally.

New Democrats strongly oppose Bill C-31 because it would punish refugees instead of ensuring a fast and fair refugee system.

This is not the first bill this Parliament has seen that targets the wrong group. I would point to Bill C-4, which I spoke up about several months ago, which has now been rolled into this bill.

I would like to sincerely thank my colleague, the member for Vancouver Kingsway, for his hard work and leadership on this file.

I want to talk about the omnibus nature of the bill which, from a structural point of view, is something that is a disturbing recurring feature of the Conservative government's legislation.

Bill C-31 is an omnibus refugee reform bill that combines the worst parts of former Bill C-11 from the last Parliament with Bill C-4 from this Parliament.

We saw this strategy before when the government put nine separate pieces of serious and complex crime legislation into one omnibus bill which it then put out for discussion and debate, therefore denying parliamentarians the opportunity to properly debate the merits of each individual bill.

Now the minister is combining two separate major pieces of legislation, as well as another serious issue, that of biometrics, into one unwieldy bill.

For Canadians who may be watching the debate, I want to explain what those bills are.

Bill C-11 was introduced in the last Parliament. It was debated, went through committee, was amended and passed in this very House. It went through all three readings in the other place, passed, received royal assent and was waiting to be implemented in June. Now, by introducing this bill, the minister has stopped that bill from being implemented. That bill was geared toward reforming Canada's refugee system.

When speaking to that bill on Tuesday, June 15, 2010, the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism stated:

We have, in good faith, agreed to significant amendments that reflect their input, resulting in a stronger piece of legislation that is a monumental achievement for all involved.

These amendments, I am happy to say, create a reform package that is both faster and fairer than the bill as it was originally tabled.

The minister has now gone back to the original bill and thrown out all the wonderful hard work done by parliamentarians and the amendments that he lauded as faster and fairer than the original bill, the very bill he said was inferior to the amendments that were made by all parties in the House. It baffles me that the minister has yet to explain his reasoning behind this.

One of the first bills the Conservatives introduced, and one of the first pieces of legislation that I spoke to was Bill C-4. Now the minister has wrapped that bill into Bill C-31. There is no explanation as to why he would do that to a bill which had already been introduced and was moving through the system. This slows the bill down and puts it back at the start of the legislative process.

As I am opposed to the original bill, I do not necessarily mind that it will take longer before it becomes law, but it is certainly a waste of our time and taxpayers' money.

Bill C-4 has been plainly condemned by virtually every group and stakeholder involved in the immigration system in this country: lawyers, refugee groups, churches, immigrant settlement services across the board, and, I might add, a great number of my constituents.

The government has rolled everything into one bill and has added one more controversial issue that deserves its own debate. The government has added the issue of biometrics to the bill.

The Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration held meetings and was in the middle of an important study on biometrics when the government introduced this legislation that steps on the very thing it is supposed to be studying. Sadly, it is no great surprise to me that the Conservatives moved on this before the facts were in and the work was completed. It is a little haphazard and half-baked like a lot of things they propose.

What does this say about the government's view of the work of standing committees and the experts and witnesses who appear before committees when the government reaches conclusions before the committee members have heard all the evidence? We would not accept it in a court room and we should not accept it here. That is one among many of the problems the government has.

One of my major concerns is the excessive power that the bill gives to the minister. The minister has the discretion to designate countries of origin or safe countries, to designate a group as an irregular arrival and determine what conditions would be placed on those designated refugee claimants. The designations have serious consequences and there should be oversight in making these determinations. Designated countries of origin would be countries that the minister believes do not produce legitimate refugees, usually because they are developed democracies.

The minister has thrown out the panel of experts to advise him, and I ask why. If the minister is so confident that he can choose which countries are safe countries, why would he not want the benefit of advice from experts in human rights? He praised this very idea as a good one 18 months ago. He still has not explained himself.

The Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism may have great faith in his own judgment, but to have one person make such important determinations as to which country is safe or not, which country is or is not capable of producing refugees, and who is an irregular arrival is extremely troubling and sets a dangerous precedent. That is too much power for one person to have. It sounds to me that he is creating his own little PMO of control in immigration. We should build in checks and balances. That should be the case no matter who the minister of immigration is, even a New Democrat after we form government in 2015. I do not know who would make the argument that the system is not better served by having that kind of check and balance in place.

With regard to the DCOs, the bill removes the requirement that a determination be made by a panel including human rights experts. By concentrating the power to designate a country in the minister's hands, it opens the prospect that decisions could be made for political and/or foreign policy reasons and considerations. Thus, these designations by the minister create two classes of refugees.

Refugee claimants from DCOs would face a much faster determination process and faster deportation for failed claims. An initial form must be filled out and submitted within 15 days of the claim. DCO claims submitted in Canada would be decided within 30 days, DCO claims submitted at a port of entry would be decided within 45 days. All others would be decided within 60 days. Failed DCO claimants could be removed from Canada almost immediately, even if they have asked for judicial review. In other words, a person could be removed before the review is even heard and that is unacceptable to me and to the members on this side of the House.

Furthermore, DCO claimants have no access to the new refugee appeal division. Herein lies what is fundamentally backward about the bill. The accelerated timelines make it difficult for people to get proper legal representation. This could lead to mistakes and subsequently a negative decision. Legal experts have warned that these accelerated timeframes and restricted access to the refugee appeal division would create an unfair system. The effect of the accelerated deportation would mean that people would already be removed from the country before the legal process had run its course. We know that once people have been removed it is much more difficult to get them back here if they are legitimate claimants.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, the Marine Transportation Security Act and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee, and of the amendment.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like the member to comment on the process by which Bill C-31 was drafted. For previous bills, the opposition parties and the government specifically agreed to, among other things, the creation of an advisory committee to define a “safe third country”. The government went back on those agreements and came up with Bill C-31.

What does my colleague think of the fact that bipartisan or multi-party agreements in the House can result in reasonable compromises that everyone is happy with, and of the fact that this process led to Bill C-31, which is totally unacceptable and violates all of the previous agreements? Can the member justify the government's decision and its dismissal of reasonable arguments put forward by the NDP and the other opposition parties?

[Bryan Hayes, Conservative, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak today in support of Bill C-31, the protecting Canada's immigration system act.

Since Bill C-31 was tabled earlier this year, we have had the opportunity to debate its provisions on a number of different occasions in the House. I have listened to all sides of the debate and my hon. colleagues have made their points with conviction and often with passion.

I remain convinced that Bill C-31 is legislation that will improve our country's immigration system in a number of important ways, including, of course, cracking down on the lucrative business of human smuggling.

Human smugglers are criminals who operate around the world, charging large amounts of money to facilitate illegal migration. This is an important national issue because the actions of human smugglers undermine the security and safety of Canadians.

In some parts of the country, such as British Columbia, there is also an important global issue. It was on Vancouver Island in B.C. where the drama of human smuggling played out most prominently in recent years, in the cases of both the Ocean Lady in 2009 and the Sun Sea in 2010. It was these two incidents, more than any other, that demonstrated that this was not a theoretical problem in the country. It is a real problem.

Last summer, another human smuggling ship, the MV Alicia, carrying almost 90 Sri Lankan Tamils bound for Canada, was intercepted in Indonesia. In January another 200 Tamils seeking to come to Canada were duped by smugglers and left stranded in the small west African country of Togo.

Just a few weeks ago, the SV Tabasco 2, sank off the coast of Nova Scotia. The captain was killed, three crew members are missing and five survivors are requesting refugee status in Canada. The Minister of Public Safety has suggested that this could be another case of human smuggling.

All of these incidents underline the need to take action.

Bill C-31 would help to do so in a number of ways. It would enable the Minister of Public Safety to designate the arrival of a group of individuals into Canada as an “irregular arrival”. It would establish a mandatory detention for those individuals for up to a year in order to determine their identity and admissibility, including whether they had been involved in any legal activity. Mandatory detention would exclude those designated foreign nationals who were under the age of 16. Also, once an individual's refugee claim had been approved, that individual would be released from detention.

The bill would make it easier to prosecute human smugglers and would impose mandatory minimum prison sentences on those convicted of human smuggling. It would hold shipowners and operators to account when their ships were used for human smuggling. It would reduce the attraction of coming to Canada by way of illegal human smuggling by limiting the ability of those who would do so to take advantage of our generous immigration system and social services.

Cracking down on human smugglers is an important element of protecting the integrity of our immigration system. That is why these provisions have been included in Bill C-31.

Aside from human smuggling, the bill aims to strengthen Canada's immigration system in two other very specific ways. The bill would further build on the long needed reforms to the asylum system that were passed in Parliament in June 2010 as part of the Balanced Refugee Reform Act. These new measures would further accelerate the processing of refugee claims for nationals from designated countries that generally would not produce refugees. They would also reduce the options available to failed claimants to delay their removal from Canada.

It may surprise some of my hon. colleagues to know that Canada receives more asylum claims from countries in Europe than from either Africa or Asia. Last year alone, almost one-quarter of all refugee claims made in Canada were made by European Union nationals. That should give us pause for thought.

EU countries have strong human rights and democratic systems similar to our own and yet they produced almost 25% of all the refugee claims in this country in 2011. That is up 14% from the previous year. At a time of economic uncertainty for most people, this state of affairs comes with a large price tag for Canadian taxpayers.

In recent years, virtually all EU claims were withdrawn, abandoned or rejected. In 2010-11 alone, this was the case for 93% of European Union claims. If this trend continues, that means that the unfounded claims from the 5,800 European Union nationals who sought asylum last year will cost Canadian taxpayers nearly $170 million.

The refugee reform measures in Bill C-31 would help prevent abuse of the system and would ensure that all of our refugee determination processes are as streamlined as possible. This would be accomplished without affecting the fairness of the system and without compromising any of Canada's international and domestic obligations with respect to refugees.

Finally, the bill would enable the introduction of mandatory biometric collection for screening temporary resident, visa and study and work permit applicants, which would strengthen our immigration program in a number of ways.

This component of the legislation and its corresponding regulations that would follow would allow the government to make it mandatory for temporary resident visa applicants to Canada to have their photographs and fingerprints taken as part of their temporary resident visa applications.

Because biometric data is more reliable and less prone to forgery or theft than documents, these measures would strengthen immigration screening, enhance security and help reduce fraud.

It is no surprise to me that this important bill has received widespread support. This is what immigration lawyer, Julie Taub, had to say:

I’m an immigration and refugee lawyer in Ottawa, and a former member of the Immigration and Refugee Board. I can tell you from theory and practice that the current refugee system is very flawed, and cumbersome, and definitely needs an overhaul. It takes up to two years to have a claimant have his hearing. And there are far too many bogus claims that clog up the system, and use very expensive resources at a cost to Canadian taxpayers.

I also like the fact that he is going to fast-track these claims, so they do not clog up the refugee system for genuine claimants. I have clients who’ve been waiting since 2009, early 2010 to have their hearing, and I represent many claimants from, let’s say Africa, the Mid East countries, who base their claim on gender violence or Christian persecution in certain Middle East countries, and they have to wait, because the system is so clogged up with what I consider to be unfounded claims from citizens of safe country of origin.

As Canadian parliamentarians, we should all be committed to maintaining Canada's generous and fair immigration system, which is the envy of the world. We need to ensure that such an important system is always operating in our national interest and as effectively and efficiently as possible. That means that we need to preserve what works well in the immigration system and improve the system in areas where there are shortcomings.

The measures in Bill C-31 are necessary to protect the integrity of our immigration system. I support Bill C-31 and I encourage all of my colleagues in the House to join me in doing so.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have spoken on this bill before, but we are now debating a reasoned amendment at second reading. I want to thank my colleague for Vancouver Kingsway for putting forward the motion that we are now debating that would eliminate many of the very offensive provisions of this bill.

I listened to the government member who spoke before me. Obviously the government is feeling frustrated that yet again it cannot get one of its bills through. It brings in closure and tries to shut down debate. On this particular bill, as with many other bills that we have seen, the concern in the broader community is unbelievable.

I was in my riding over the last couple of weeks, as I know many members were. I heard from people time and again, particularly those working in the refugee settlement system assisting refugees, how worried they are about the bill and the fact that it is going through Parliament. I want to reflect how bad people think this bill is.

I am glad that we are having this debate and that the member for Vancouver Kingsway put forward his motion. It gives us another opportunity to try to expose the grievous flaws in this bill. The bill would hurt people and tarnish Canada's reputation as a place of refuge for refugees. In effect, it would create a two-tier refugee system and that is something we should be very concerned about.

I want to express concern about the discretion that the bill would give to the minister. I heard the minister earlier in his remarks saying that is not true and not something that would happen. However, when one reads it, this is clearly a strong element of the bill. Again, it is a trend that we have seen with the Conservative government. It tends to centralize more and more power in a minister's hands and take away power from experts, panels and the system itself. It raises enormous suspicion among Canadians about the political motivation of the government with this kind of legislation.

We have a specific concern that the bill would make it easier to terminate refugee protection. I was astounded to learn that even once individuals became permanent residents they could have that taken away from them after the fact if conditions changed in their country of origin. This would create incredible uncertainty for refugees who had gone through the process and become permanent residents. In fact, it may even contravene international norms on the treatment of refugees. This is very concerning.

We have already had some debate and discussion on the clause that would prohibit refugee claimants who have been incarcerated in their home country for over 10 years and would not allow for tribunal discretion in the case of political prisoners. I heard the member give an example. What about someone like Nelson Mandela who is now an honorary citizen of Canada? Under the proposed system, he would not have been allowed in Canada. This very broad brush being cast over the system would deny unique and important circumstances of people who have been under political persecution to get the kind of protection they need. This leads me to wonder about the motivation behind a number of these bills.

I hear Conservative members time and again focus on the word “abuse”. It seems to me, whether it is the drug bills, bills under the criminal justice system or Bill C-31, that they focus on a number of issues around abuse, make out that it is the norm and then penalize the whole system. They basically take a very hard-line approach on the whole system which penalizes legitimate claimants. I think this is very wrong. It is a pattern that has been emerging with the Conservative government in more and more legislation that has come before the House.

One of the areas of most concern in the bill is the changes to humanitarian and compassionate consideration. I know many of us, in our local constituencies, assist with casework for refugees. In my riding of Vancouver East, my staff and office work very hard. Over the years we have had hundreds of cases in which we have helped claimants with humanitarian and compassionate grounds. It is a very important element of the process.

The fact is the changes being contemplated in the bill mean that while claimants are waiting for an IRB decision, they cannot apply for H and C concurrently. That means claimants have to make a very difficult decision at the beginning as to whether they want to file for refugee status or humanitarian and compassionate consideration. We know that failed refugee claimants cannot apply for H and C for one year following a negative decision and possibly, by that time, they may have been deported.

Why is this important? I know from the casework we have done in our community that many people can have a refugee claim denied, but nonetheless may have a legitimate claim on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. Our belief is that a failed refugee claim should not get in the way of an H and C consideration.

This change in the act will make it more and more difficult and onerous for refugee claimants to actually have options before them, which they now have. It is definitely a hardening of the system. It is a narrowing of the criteria. It is a focus on abuse that now applies system-wide and makes it much more difficult for people.

As a result of these changes, if they do go through, members of Parliament are going to find it very difficult to work with claimants in our local communities and we are going to see a lot of hardship. We are going to see people facing a system that has closed down on them. I am very worried and concerned about the impact the bill will have.

Another concern with the bill is the fact that the minister will have the power to designate a group of refugees as irregular arrivals. Exactly what that means and what the criteria will be is something we will need to find out. We need to find out how this will work. The very fact that it will create two classes of refugee claimants is something about which we should be very concerned.

As many of the experts have pointed out, and I referred to some of the organizations earlier that had voiced their concerns about the bill, this section of the bill is very possibly a violation of charter equality rights and also international conventions. The notion of detaining mandatory detention for up to a year when the minister has designated irregular arrivals is very offensive to us.

I remember reading over the years about the situation that took place in Australia where it had mandatory detention. First, it created a political environment of hatred against refugees and allowed that environment to get stronger. I think that is what we will see here. This is what the Conservative government is apparently motivated by, creating an environment where we can beat up on refugees and say that somehow everybody is abusing the system.

The idea of having two tiers of refugees and singling certain people out when they may be legitimate refugees is very problematic.

I am proud that the NDP has stood in opposition to the bill, because there are serious flaws and concerns about it. It should be scrapped. I hope the amendment of the member for Vancouver Kingsway is approved in the House so we can go back to the drawing board and do this properly.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I know that Bill C-31 would help our government put a stop to those who seek to abuse our generosity. It would help to get immigrants here faster. We would welcome them and be glad to have them work in our system.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

Mr. Speaker, on February 16, our government introduced Bill C-31, which would restore integrity to our asylum system by making Canada's refugee process faster and fairer, thus resulting in faster protection for legitimate refugees and faster removal for bogus claimants.

Canada's immigration system is known for being the most generous and fair in the world, but we are also vulnerable to abuse. Bill C-31 would work to keep it fairer for everyone.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to rise in the House today to speak in support of Bill C-31, protecting Canada's immigration system act. It is so important for us to help ensure the integrity of our immigration system, and the bill would do exactly that.

Immigrants come to Canada seeking a new life and new opportunities for their families and themselves. Our immigration system is the most fair and generous in the world. However, Canadians have no tolerance for those who abuse our generosity and take advantage of our great country. Indeed, Canadians gave our government a strong mandate to protect Canada's immigration system. We are acting on that mandate through this bill.

Bill C-31 introduces many reforms that would help deter individuals and organizations that would seek to engage in illegal and dangerous human smuggling operations. It would also provide faster protection to genuine refugees, as well as faster removal for bogus claimants. With its introduction of biometrics, it would also bring Canada in line with other countries that already use biometrics in their immigration programs, such as the United Kingdom, Australia, the European Union, New Zealand, Japan and the United States, among others.

Although the bill presents many positive changes to our immigration system, the opposition NDP and Liberals continue to propagate myths regarding it. That is why I will try to explain to them today, as many of my colleagues have attempted to do in the past, exactly how these myths are incorrect.

First, the opposition states that the minister will be able to single-handedly pick and choose safe countries. This is categorically false. What the opposition does not understand is that there are laws and regulations that surround such decisions. The factors that would lead to a country's designation would be clearly outlined. It would be based on the decisions taken by the asylum claimants themselves, for example, through the decision to abandon or withdraw their claims, as well as through the independent Immigration and Refugee Board, but not single-handedly by the minister. In fact, it is clear that the criteria proposed to consider a country for designation will actually be more transparent and accountable than under the Balanced Refugee Reform Act.

Another common misconception put forth by members opposite is that Bill C-31 would prevent political prisoners, such as Alexandre Soljenitsyne, from making asylum claims in Canada. It is quite clear, when one reads the bill, that this claim is absolutely false. Political prisoners are not and will not be excluded from making refugee claims.

As is the case now, the only refugee claimants who are unable to access a refugee hearing are those who have been convicted of a serious crime, suspected of being involved in terrorism, have committed war crimes or crimes against humanity or have been involved in organized crime under Canadian law. This does not include political prisoners who have not been charged or convicted of a crime punishable under Canadian law. In fact, what the opposition fails to understand is that serious criminals who have been convicted of crimes punishable under Canadian law have always been barred from making a refugee claim in Canada, and Bill C-31 does not change that.

However, under the current system, serious criminality is based on the arbitrary measure of the length of a jail term rather than the severity of the crime committed. Under this legislation, serious criminality would instead be based on the severity of the crime, as defined under the Canadian Criminal Code.

The opposition additionally claims that Bill C-31 would include the mandatory detention of everyone who arrives as part of a human smuggling event for a minimum of one year. This claim is entirely false. If the opposition members were to read the bill more thoroughly, they would find that Bill C-31 includes an exemption from automatic detention for minors under the age of 16. Furthermore, adults aged 16 and over would be released from detention as soon as they received a positive opinion on their refugee claim from the IRB. In cases of human smuggling, it would be overwhelmingly irresponsible to simply release those involved in a criminal human smuggling operation before officials were able to confirm their identities and establish whether or not they posed a risk to the safety of Canadians. Those whose identities cannot be established and who have been determined to be threats to the safety and security of Canadians or those suspected of being architects of criminal activity could be held longer under this bill. This is a provision that is entirely fair and should be entirely supported. This government has always been very serious about maintaining the security and safety of all Canadians.

The final misconception that I would like to address today pertains to biometrics. Several of my colleagues have spoken out in favour of biometrics in the past and for good reason. They would help expedite identity verification and decision making by officials and would result in shorter wait times. Biometrics would also help prevent the forgery or theft of an applicant's identity to gain access into Canada. However, some members of the opposition choose to say that the government would not adequately protect the privacy of those who provide biometric data. This is simply not true. There are privacy laws in this country and the government plans to follow them. Citizenship and Immigration Canada has been continuously working with the Privacy Commissioner on the implementation of biometrics. Personal information of applicants would be used, retained, shared and disposed of in accordance with Canada's privacy laws. Biometric data would be immediately disposed of when an individual received his or her citizenship. Furthermore, biometric data would not be required of Canadian citizens.

These are but a few misconceptions and myths put forward by the NDP and Liberal opposition. What is not a myth, though, is that the opposition parties are working against a bill that would restore integrity to our asylum system, making Canada's refugee determination faster and fairer in order to quickly provide refuge to legitimate refugees and remove bogus claimants. The NDP and Liberal opposition is working against a bill that would make the asylum system less prone to abuse. The NDP and Liberal opposition is working against a bill that would save the taxpayers millions of dollars every year, would help restore public trust in the immigration system and would ensure that Canada's generosity is only extended to those who genuinely need it.

The government was given a strong mandate to improve Canada's immigration system. In response it has presented Bill C-31, a bill that would help stop those who seek to abuse our generosity.

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague for his very clear and compassionate speech. As he mentioned, Bill C-31 is the incarnation of the former Bill C-49, and it also includes everything that was denounced in Bill C-4 with respect to refugees. Instead of attacking smugglers and those who abuse refugees, this bill directly attacks the refugees themselves. Furthermore, the Conservatives are trying to make the public afraid. They are fearmongering about refugees' lack of identification. These refugees flee their countries and do not have the time to take their papers with them. I would like my colleague to expand a bit on this subject.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder who is writing the notes and doing the research on Bill C-31 for the NDP because they are completely misinformed. For example, the hon. member just said that, under the proposed system, the minister will directly control the determination process. That is absolutely not true.

All the decisions on requests for asylum will be processed by the Immigration and Refugee Board, an independent quasi-judicial agency, in accordance with all the rules of the act and without any interference by the minister. There will be no change in how the decisions are made. This is what will change: in the refugee protection division, where the hearings will be held and where the decisions will be made, there will be permanently appointed officials instead of members appointed by the Governor in Council. That way cabinet will be less involved in determining who will make the decisions.

The hon. member said there is an anti-refugee sentiment. Is he aware of the fact that our government is increasing by 20% the number of refugees that we will accept as resettled refugees and that we are also increasing the refugee integration assistance program by 20%?

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-31. However, I would have preferred that this bill not be introduced at all and that we not debate it. In my opinion, this is an objectionable bill. There are a number of problems with it and it is certainly going to result in legal challenges.

I would like to start by saying that Bill C-31 builds on Bill C-11, which was introduced in the previous Parliament. With a minority government, the Conservatives were unable to pass the strict and severe bills that they wanted. Now, they are taking Bill C-49, which was also from the previous Parliament, and making the necessary changes to complete their biased and discriminatory immigration policy the sole purpose of which is to close our borders for as long as possible to foreigners seeking asylum in Canada.

The change in this government's tone on immigration and citizenship is striking. Most of Bill C-31 is practically copied word for word from the former Bill C-49, the short title of which was Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act. It was promoted as the bill that would protect refugees and discourage smugglers who were endangering the lives of foreigners trying to enter Canada by boat. Bill C-31, which is pretty much the same, is entitled Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act. The image is eloquent.

The Conservatives are now showing their true colours. The intent of Bill C-31 is no longer to protect refugees, but to protect the integrity of Canada's immigration system against ill-intentioned refugees who abuse the generosity of Canadian laws and who try to take advantage of our country. These comments were made and repeated by the previous speaker.

In the previous Parliament, some immigration bills, especially, Bills C-11 and C-35, were passed after much discussion, debate and compromise by all parties. A compromise was even reached on Bill C-49, the predecessor to Bill C-31. This time, the Conservative government is no longer receptive to amendments. On the contrary, the minister himself said that there are gaps in the Balanced Refugee Reform Act and that Canada needs stronger measures that are closer to the original bill we introduced in March 2010.

This time, the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism is not honouring the agreements reached by the various parties.

At the time, a number of groups that defend rights and freedoms condemned Bill C-49. Amnesty International, the Canadian Council for Refugees, the Barreau du Québec and Professor Peter Showler, to name just a few, roundly condemned several key provisions of the bill, saying that they represented a serious violation of Canada's international and constitutional obligations.

In fact, this government is still using the pretext of national security to justify its lack of transparency and its desire to keep people in need out of the country, with no regard for Canada's constitutional and international obligations.

Far from having improved his bill in response to the criticisms about humanitarian considerations in previous bills, the minister instead says that he will not give in to the “immigration industry” lobby whose criticisms only reinforce the idea that the government is truly on the right track. It would be hard to be any more arrogant.

In addition to the government's arrogance, its narrow vision and demagoguery must be condemned.

With this bill, the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism is creating a new category of immigrants and giving himself the power to arbitrarily impose a different processing system for those immigrants than for other asylum seekers. This discretionary power is, in fact, the power to declare the entry of foreign nationals into the country as irregular by using loosely defined criteria based on national security interests, which was probably the genesis for the idea that this power cannot be delegated.

The creation of this category of refugee was specifically designed to block the entry of as many refugees as possible and it completely disregards the right to equality under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. These asylum seekers often come from countries where fundamental rights are denied and where living conditions jeopardize their health and lives.

It is utterly ridiculous, even irresponsible, for a government to arbitrarily punish refugees who arrive by boat on the pretext of wanting to separate the good refugees from the bad as quickly as possible. That makes no sense. A refugee is not a qualified immigrant who can be selected. We cannot select refugees, simply by virtue of their refugee status. According to this government's logic, refugees who are not selected are bad refugees.

The fact that the minister would be able to create two classes of people is unacceptable and downright disturbing. Human beings are all equal, and the minister must never forget that Canada has a legal responsibility toward these people under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and a moral responsibility arising from its international obligations under various human rights treaties.

According to Peter Showler, director of the Refugee Forum and former member of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, concerns about a deluge of illegal refugees are unfounded because both routes to obtaining refugee protection—the Refugee and Humanitarian Resettlement Program, which targets international refugees as defined by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and Canada's Inland Refugee Protection System for refugees arriving in Canada spontaneously—have historically been responsible for the same number of permanent residents in Canada, around 12,000 per year.

The difference between the two systems is control: control over the number of people coming in, the selection criteria, and the procedures and processing times. This is a legitimate concern, but it should not legitimize the crass justifications that the government is using to block access for people who need help.

For example, the minister claims that Canada is getting more and more claims from certain countries, such as Hungary and Mexico, and that these claims often come from “bad refugees” who do not really need protection. According to Mr. Showler, the Immigration and Refugee Board nevertheless accepts a significant number of claims from those two countries, 17% and 8%, respectively.

The minister also claims that this new bill will enable the board to do some “housecleaning” and shorten the waiting list for “good refugees” who have to wait patiently in refugee camps because illegitimate refugees who arrive by boat bog the system down by using fraudulent documents to get into Canada.

That, according to Mr. Showler, is not true because, on the one hand, not all refugees abroad can reach refugee camps, and on the other hand, the United Nations convention recognizes that it is difficult for refugees to be granted asylum, so it allows them to use fraudulent documents to seek refugee protection.

The Conservatives are trying to create an unhealthy climate around immigration, and specifically refugees. The executive of the Canadian Council for Refugees is very concerned about this and stated, “it is very worrisome when the government tries to create an anti-refugee sentiment among the population”. Several statements made by government MPs have promoted that very sentiment.

According to Wanda Yamamoto, president of the Canadian Council for Refugees, “the bill is discriminatory and creates a two-tier system of refugee protection in Canada. It also makes it dangerously vulnerable to political considerations, rather than ensuring a fair and independent decision about who is a refugee. Our refugee system needs to give everyone a fair hearing, based on the facts of their case and regardless of their country of origin.”

Determining refugee status will henceforth be directly controlled by the minister, who now has the power to establish his own criteria. Janet Dench of the Canadian Council for Refugees said, “there is an arbitrary element in this, which the government is exploiting and abusing.”

Politicizing the immigration system is a very dangerous thing to do. The system had found a rather fair balance between security and individual liberties. All of that is now being compromised in the name of national security. From now on, any difficulty identifying refugees will be considered a threat to national security and, as a result, will justify different, more severe and punitive treatment than for all other kinds of refugees.

The Canadian Bar Association stated that Bill C-31 lacks clear qualitative thresholds and raises serious concern about excessive ministerial discretion. Furthermore, given the serious legal consequences that flow from a designation made by the minister, these amendments are overbroad and unsustainable.

Executive officers of the Canadian Bar Association went even further and recommended that implementation of the proposed changes be delayed to allow for immediate and meaningful consultation with all stakeholders.

I have only touched on some of the important aspects that support dropping this bill. We have asked the government many times to drop Bill C-31. This bill fuels an anti-refugee sentiment and exacerbates fears that are often legitimate, but that are being misguided with a bill like this one.

I think it is a shame that we are voting on this bill this evening with yet another time allocation. The NDP cannot vote in favour of Bill C-31.

We will strongly condemn this bill.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to talk about safety in a well-known case. Mr. X worked as a police officer in Mexico and investigated drug cartels and the murders of women. Due to his work, he received death threats. Several officers in his unit were killed. He believed he was next and he fled to Canada. His refugee claim failed, as the judge believed that there was adequate protection in Mexico for those who are targeted by organized crime. However, was it safe for Mr. X?

Bill C-31 would attempt to limit the number of refugees who seek protection in Canada by designating some countries as safe. The minister would have the sole authority to designate these countries. Does the hon. member believe there is a reliable and objective means of distinguishing between safe and unsafe countries when it comes to human rights protection? If so, could he describe it, please?

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Conservative member who just expanded on Bill C-31, for which the time allocated for debate has been limited, yet again.

How does he justify the fact that the detention will violate a number of rights and freedoms of asylum seekers, refugees and immigrants? This practice was condemned in Australia, since it is an arbitrary detention denounced by Amnesty International and a number of human rights groups.

Some people, including children, might be imprisoned for a year simply because they arrived by boat, like my parents did.

The government considers this mode of entry into the country to be illegal. How does the hon. member justify this?

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and for the Asia-Pacific Gateway]

Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to have this opportunity to join the debate on Bill C-31, protecting Canada's immigration system act, which would further improve Canada's refugee determination system, as well as our immigration system.

I think we can all agree that Canada has one of the most generous and fair refugee systems in the world. In fact, the facts speak for themselves. Canada currently welcomes one out of every ten resettled refugees worldwide. Since World War II, Canada has provided a safe haven to more than one million refugees and our humanitarian efforts have been recognized by the United Nations.

Canadians can take great pride in the openness and welcoming nature of our refugee system. At the same time, few Canadians would disagree that the system is badly in need of reform. As we see time and time again, refugee claimants wait too long for a decision on a claim. This puts in limbo those who are genuinely in need of Canada's protection but it also allows those who are not really in need of our protection to abuse our generosity and take unfair advantage of our country.

Last year, processing times for a decision on a claim before the independent Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, the IRB, could take more than 20 months and, because of the seemingly endless recourses available, it can take an average of four and a half years from the time a claim is made until a failed refugee claimant has exhausted all legal avenues and is removed from Canada. In some cases, it has taken more than a decade.

As one can imagine, these long delays, as well as access to generous taxpayer funded health and social benefits, encourage individuals who are not in need of our protection to use the refugee system as a way to remain in Canada for years on end.

To address these problems, Bill C-11, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, was passed in June 2010. That legislation included a number of improvements to the refugee system to provide for faster protection and faster removals with the aim of deterring abuse.

Bill C-11 provided for faster processing timelines to quickly decide claims. It introduced a designated country of origin policy to further expedite the processing of claims from those countries. It also restricted access to post-claim recourses to allow for faster removals for claimants not found in need of protection.

However, as we proceeded with the implementation of that bill, it became clear that further reforms were needed. We are concerned, for example, that we are receiving a large number of refugee claims from countries where human and democratic rights exist and which are not typically refugee-producing, such as those in the European Union. If members can believe it, Canada actually receives more refugee claims from the democratic European Union than from Africa or Asia. What is more, in recent years, virtually all European Union claims were abandoned, withdrawn or rejected. If that trend continues, that means that the unfounded claims from the 5,800 EU nationals who sought asylum last year will cost Canadian taxpayers nearly $170 million.

When we consider that 62% of all asylum claims were either abandoned, withdrawn or rejected by the IRB last year, it becomes clear that too many tax dollars are spent on these claimants and on tax-funded social benefits.

We need to send a message to those who would abuse Canada's generous refugee system that if they are not in need of protection they will be sent home quickly. At the same time, those who truly need our protection will get it even faster, while providing an extra level of appeal to most failed claimants.

That is why the Government of Canada introduced Bill C-31, which we are debating today, which will, if passed, further strengthen the asylum system and deter abuse. I will be very clear about one thing. Under these new measures, all eligible refugee claimants would continue to be entitled to a fair hearing before an independent decision-maker.

To begin, we propose to eliminate the information-gathering interview that was developed under the Balanced Refugee Reform Act and replace it with a basis of claim. This document would be submitted at the same time as the eligibility interview for those who make their claim inland or within 15 days for those who make their claim at the port of entry.

Under the proposed measures, refugee claimants, particularly those from designated countries of origin, would receive a hearing before the IRB more quickly. Hearings at the IRB for claimants from designated countries of origin would occur within 30 to 45 days. Claimants who are not from designated countries of origin would also have their hearing timelines accelerated. It is proposed that these hearings would be scheduled within 60 days of being referred to the IRB.

However, to be effective, faster decisions on refugee claims must be complemented by timely removals. Quick removals would contribute to reducing overall costs associated with Canada's refugee system by deterring abuse. Under a reformed refugee status determination system, the Canada Border Services Agency would place a higher priority on apprehending and removing failed refugee claimants. In particular, the CBSA would remove failed refugee claimants within 12 months following a final negative decision by the IRB.

As we know all too well, failed refugee claimants may turn to other options to delay their removal from Canada. That is why limits on other recourse options have been proposed in this legislation.

In closing, let me reiterate, the proposed protecting Canada's immigration system act builds on reform passed in June 2010 as part of the Balanced Refugee Reform Act. These new measures further accelerate the processing of refugee claims for nationals from designated countries which are those that generally do not produce refugees. In addition, the proposals reduce the options available to failed claimants to delay their removal from Canada.

Even after these changes, Canada's refugee determination system would continue to meet our domestic and international obligations.

This is what The Globe and Mail had to say about Bill C-31.

Immigration minister's...refugee reforms, aimed at making the process more efficient and decisive, are generally good. If implemented, they will improve an unwieldy asylum program....The legislation rightly focuses on weeding out claimants who are not genuine, and stemming the flow of asylum seekers from countries...that are democracies with respect for basic rights and freedoms....Fast-tracking refugee claims from these countries, and ensuring failed claimants are promptly deported, is an excellent way to ensure Canada does not become a magnet for abuse. The bill will also implement biometric identification, such as fingerprints and photos, for people who apply for visitor's visas. This welcome change will guard against the use of false identities.

I urge all hon. members of this House to join me in supporting Bill C-31 in order to deter abuse of our refugee system, and provide a quicker and more secure beginning for victims of violence and persecution around the world.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like my colleague from Charlottetown to elaborate on Bill C-31.

This bill creates a new category of refugees called “designated foreign nationals”. This seems to go against the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, and it gives the minister discretionary power that he did not have before. We have a problem with that. In this case, as in many other cases, we see a number of aspects that show that bills are being introduced to give ever-growing discretionary powers, which remove the possibility of judging cases in a more objective way.

I would like my colleague from Charlottetown to say a few words about the impact that creating this “designated foreign national” status will have on the refugee processing system.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to rise in the House today to speak to the importance of Bill C-31, protecting Canada's immigration system act. This legislation would improve the Balanced Refugee Reform Act by providing new measures which would ensure a fast and fairer refugee determination process.

Our Conservative government has increased the number of refugees that will resettle every year by welcoming an additional 2,500 people for a total of 14,500 individuals. Canada resettles more refugees than any other G20 nation. The fact is our refugee system is open to abuse and this is undermining Canadians' faith in our generous system. Bill C-31 would put an end to the systematic exploitation of our asylum system and prevent abuse of Canadians' generosity and goodwill. It is in the best interests of all fair-minded, hard-working taxpaying Canadians that this House should pass Bill C-31. Let us examine the reasons this bill is so important.

Bill C-31 would restore the integrity of the Canadian asylum system by enhancing opportunities for bona fide refugees to have their claims addressed in a timely manner. Currently, the number of false claims, namely from democratic countries in the European Union, is overwhelming our system. The sheer volume of claimants precludes officials from focusing their attention on those legitimate refugees who are in true need of our assistance.

It astounds me that in 2011 the number of refugee claims from the EU was greater than the number of claims from Africa and Asia. Indeed, 23%, or almost one-quarter of all claims, now come from EU nationals. Canada's top source country for refugee claims is not a country in Africa or Asia, but Hungary. Moreover, virtually all refugee claims made by EU nationals are abandoned, withdrawn or rejected. These bogus claims cost hard-working taxpaying Canadians an outrageous $170 million per year. For this reason, Bill C-31 would improve the system by recognizing that there are qualitative differences among countries and their general attitudes toward human rights and the rule of law. The bill responds to the differences by designating some countries as safe.

Under Bill C-31, the factors that would lead a country to be designated as safe would be clearly outlined both in law and in regulations. The most important factors are objective in that they refer to the actual acceptance rates of claims from a given country. In other words, the designation of a country as safe would be based on the results of decisions taken by asylum claimants themselves, such as the rate at which they abandon their own claims as well as the decisions rendered by the independent Immigration and Refugee Board.

Unlike the Balanced Refugee Reform Act which has quantitative and qualitative criteria specified only in regulation, Bill C-31 would enshrine these factors in legislation, leaving objectively verifiable quantitative factors to be set out in a ministerial order. As such, the criteria used to prompt a review of a country's designation would become more transparent and accountable than they would have been under previous legislation. For example, quantitative factors would be specified in a ministerial order and include assessments where: 60% or more of total asylum claims from a country are withdrawn or abandoned by the claimants; 75% or more of total asylum claims from a country are rejected by the independent Immigration and Refugee Board. These qualitative factors enshrined in the form of legislation would look to universally accepted democratic principles such as whether the safe country has an independent judicial system, practises basic democratic rights and freedoms and has political and legal mechanisms to redress infringements of those rights and freedoms, and/or allows civil society organizations to exist and flourish.

As I have outlined above, this bill would repair our broken asylum system by stemming the flood of obvious baseless applications and putting in place a process that can ensure a fast and fair determination of legitimate applications simply by distinguishing between safe democratic countries and states with oppressive brutal regimes.

This is also a piece of legislation that respects the rule of law by affording all claimants, including failed claimants from safe countries, the right to judicial review. Every failed claimant would have access to at least one level of appeal. People deemed in need of protection would not be returned to the country from which they fled. Furthermore, under Bill C-31 the majority of refugee claimants would gain access to an additional level of appeal, specifically the refugee appeal division, for the first time.

Canadians pride themselves on being a compassionate society, as well as fair-minded and just, and they would not tolerate repatriation of foreign nationals knowing that persecution and harm would befall them, so the appeal mechanism can respond to uniquely exceptional circumstances. At the same time, this cropping of the current massive applications for appeals would curb the abuse of Canadians' generosity and prevent contempt of our legal system.

Furthermore, under this legislation, Canada would remain a safe haven for genuine refugees seeking asylum. However, claimants who have been involved in acts of serious criminality will not be welcomed into this country. Whereas the current system bases serious criminality on the more arbitrary measure of the length of jail sentence imposed, Bill C-31 rightly bases serious criminality on the specific crime the claimant actually committed, as defined under the Canadian Criminal Code.

This is also in line with the definition of serious criminality under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, which states that a serious criminal is a person who has been convicted of a crime which, under Canadian law, is punishable by a jail sentence of at least 10 years. As such, political prisoners are not and will not be barred from making refugee claims.

Reforms to the Canadian refugee system are much needed and enjoy broad-based support. This government has listened carefully to Canadians who seek restoration of a fair and balanced refugee system that protects Canadian values of integrity, compassion and fair play. I submit that the enactment of this proposed bill would go a long way in securing those values.

Let us listen to what others are saying. Our colleague, the former NDP immigration critic from Vancouver Kingsway, has recognized the flaws in the current system. He has spoken of the need to “build a system that has a fast and fair determination process”. Indeed, he went further and acknowledged:

And that’s something that I’ll give [the Minister] credit for. I do think that’s what his intention has been all along. And we all want to work towards that.

Furthermore, a Globe and Mail editorial dated February 17, 2012 reads:

The legislation rightly focuses on weeding out claimants who are not genuine, and stemming the flow of asylum seekers from countries such as Mexico and Hungary that are democracies with respect for basic rights and freedoms...

Fast-tracking refugee claims from these countries, and ensuring failed claimants are promptly deported, is an excellent way to ensure Canada does not become a magnet for abuse.

In conclusion, I am thankful for being given the opportunity to speak to the merits of Bill C-10. I would like to thank my esteemed colleague, the hon. minister, for introducing this important piece of legislation and for being in the House during this debate. It is in the best interests of legitimate asylum seekers that we should pass this bill to bring much-needed change to our broken asylum system, and it is in the best interests of Canadians as well. I urge all members of the House to join me in giving support to Bill C-31's passage.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the member on her recent appointment as the critic for immigration.

There are numerous implications for children spread throughout Bill C-31, and I cannot touch on all of them.

My hon. colleague referred to one of them, a kind of Sophie's choice situation for the parents, about whether children under the age of 16 will stay with them in detention or be relinquished to the state.

Another issue is the age of 16 years. International human rights law generally, and the convention on the rights of the child in particular, indicates that adulthood starts at 18 years of age. This legislation is particularly problematic in that the age limit of 16 years has been set.

Finally, as I mentioned earlier in my answer about cessation and family reunification issues, when permanent resident status takes five years to achieve, that also is an issue. Often a family member, a child or a parent, will make it to Canada and then will not be able to see other family members for at least five years.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the preface of the member's question does a great job of setting out the issue underlying the question.

There are at least two aspects of Bill C-31 that come up against the reality the member described. One is the designation of so-called safe countries. The notion that there is a safe country is a problematic concept, but the idea of quickly changing conditions makes it even more problematic. The fact that Bill C-31 removes the notion of a panel of advisers to the minister on determining what countries will be safe makes it even worse.

Under the cessation regime, the minister or the government could apply for cessation, which could be for a period in time when things had changed; the government comes on the scene when it thinks things are safe in order to send some permanent residents back to the country, but then conditions could change again. The idea of changing conditions has to be taken into account.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am privileged to rise for my inaugural speech in the House of Commons since my election as the member of Parliament for Toronto—Danforth.

Permit me to begin by first thanking the people of Toronto—Danforth for having placed their trust in me in the March 19 by-election. I recognize that the bar has been set very high, in that I have both the distinct honour and the distinct challenge of succeeding a truly great member of the House, the Hon. Jack Layton, whose untimely passing this past August 22 triggered an outpouring of emotion among Canadians such as our country has rarely known.

I pledge to represent the vibrant community of Toronto—Danforth tirelessly, with integrity and following the example set by my predecessor. Like Jack Layton, I will do my utmost to contribute to Parliament both constructively, working with others to secure just and sensible results and by resolutely defending the progressive values of the people of Toronto—Danforth.

In that spirit, I turn now to address the substance of the legislation before the House on second reading of Bill C-31. This omnibus bill is intended to amend a variety of existing statutes, most notably, IRPA, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, and the Balanced Refugee Reform Act.

The Balanced Refugee Reform Act is itself mostly a far-ranging effort to amend IRPA and the ink is still wet on it, in that it only enters into force at the end of June.

It is important to recall that the Balanced Refugee Reform Act was ultimately a product of hard work and mutual compromise from all corners of the House, having been adopted with eventual all party support. Less than a year after it achieved a majority in the House last spring, the government is abandoning compromise and is steamrolling ahead with its own particular uncompromising view of refugee policy.

In support of this characterization of the government's Bill C-31 legislative initiative, allow me to briefly discuss a few, and I emphasize only a few, of the disturbing additions or changes to refugee law that Bill C-31 will usher in if it is permitted to pass.

First, the minister, if he deems it to be in the public interest, may characterize a refugee claimant, or refugee claimants, as having arrived in Canada irregularly. This decision would turn these claimants into designated foreign nationals, which I will subsequently simply refer to DFNs. Crucially and shockingly this designation as DFNs would subject them to automatic detention.

In contrast to regular refugee claimants whose detention must be reviewed after 48 hours and again in 7 days and then every 30 days thereafter, these irregular claimants could remain for 12 months before there was a first review of their detention. Indeed, for good measure, Bill C-31 explicitly adds a provision saying that review would be precluded before the end of 12 months. Thereafter, their detention would be reviewed in six-month increments.

Little could run further afoul of the international refugee law's strong presumption against detention which requires a stringent necessity test to be made and of the international refugee law's requirement that the necessity of detention be subject to early and then frequent review.

Under the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, a refugee claimant has access to a full appeal to a Refugee Appeal Division panel. However, now, under Bill C-31, a designated foreign national, this second-class refugee created by the act, could no longer access the appeal process established in the Balanced Refugee Reform Act. If the first instance decision maker, and that is the Refugee Protection Division, denied the person's refugee claim, not only would he or she have no right of appeal, but he or she would be subject to immediate deportation.

It is true that a DFN refugee claimant still may seek what is known as a judicial review, but it is important to note, in light of the answers being given in the House before the break, that this is not the same as an appeal. It is a much more limited process. It is found in the current law. It removes the automatic stay of deportation found in the current law so that in many, if not most, cases judicial review will occur after a person has been removed from the country.

What if a designated foreign national is successful in the refugee claim and is recognized as a refugee? Surely at that stage one would think Bill C-31 would provide that the successful claimant would be treated like any other refugee, but unbelievably, no. To start with, the designated foreign national who is recognized as a refugee continues to wear that designation as a state imposed badge of dishonour. He or she is subjected to reporting requirements to which other refugees are not subjected.

More atrociously, an accepted refugee who started out as a designated foreign national cannot apply to become a permanent resident of Canada for five years after being found to be a refugee. This could result in the refugee not becoming a permanent resident for six or seven years, assuming there will be processing delays with some applications. Compare this to a regular refugee who is actually required to apply for permanent residence status before 60 days are up.

One might ask, what is the big deal? If a refugee gets to stay in Canada, what difference does it make if the individual has permanent resident status or some sort of refugee status? One huge difference is that the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act requires that a person be a permanent resident before the person is able to sponsor family members, such as the person's spouse, children, or parents, to immigrate to Canada. Thus, under Bill C-31 irregular refugees would have no hope of reuniting with family in Canada for at least five years.

Currently, family class applications in this country are often processed at a snail's pace. It is not uncommon for it to take three years for a child or a spouse to be admitted and sometimes up to six years for parents. It is no stretch to say that a refugee who started out as a designated foreign national may have to wait 10 years for family members to join him or her.

If that is not enough, a designated foreign national refugee will not even be able to travel outside Canada to spend time with family, for example, in a country other than the country of origin which the refugee fears going back to. Why is that? Bill C-31 decrees that such a refugee will not be given travel documents until he or she becomes a permanent resident, that is, until at least five years have passed, despite the fact that the refugee convention requires that travel documents be issued to refugees once they are “lawfully staying” in the host country. Fortress Canada thus becomes prison Canada for the designated foreign national refugee. If he were still alive, Kafka could not have written Bill C-31 better if he tried.

It does not end there. The DFN provisions apply retroactively to March 2009. After Bill C-31 becomes law, the minister could decide to designate the Tamil refugees who arrived on the Ocean Lady in October 2009 and the Sun Sea in August 2010 as irregulars. The only part of a DFN regime that does not apply retroactively is the detention regime.

Finally, there is the stunning change in the law with respect to cessation of refugee status. This basically means that after the government applies to have a refugee status removed, that simultaneously removes the permanent resident status, which subjects the individual to being removed from the country.

Time does not permit me to go into many other problems with the bill, such as problematic changes to the safe countries regime, the implications for children, the radical cuts in the time that refugee claimants have to prepare their cases, and the advent of a biometrics regime which comes with no privacy safeguards and allows Canada to share this data with other countries.

There is much in the bill that requires close and exacting scrutiny once it gets to committee. I hope that government members along with the opposition will take the committee process seriously and not back the government in what is ultimately repressive legislation. At some point, MPs have to stand up for their conscience as well as for their constituents.

The House resumed from March 26 consideration of the motion that Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, the Marine Transportation Security Act and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee, and of the amendment.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, first let me acknowledge the important vote we had in the House last evening to approve this year's budget. Economic action plan 2012 is a low-tax plan for jobs, growth and long-term prosperity. Since July 2009, almost 700,000 net new jobs have been created in Canada. We are on track, and our budget seeks to achieve the same kind of long-term growth and prosperity.

Mr. Speaker, the House will adjourn this afternoon to celebrate Easter and Passover, followed by a pause to work in our constituencies. When we return on Monday, April 23, the House will have the sixth day of second reading debate on Bill C-31, the Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, April 24 and 25, the House will consider report stage and third reading of Bill C-26, the citizen's arrest and self-defence act, for which I anticipate broad support.

Finally, on Thursday, April 26, we shall have the first allotted day, which will belong to the official opposition.

Refugee Rights Day in Canada

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as the daughter of refugees, I am delighted to celebrate Refugee Rights Day in Canada. On this day in 1985, the Supreme Court recognized that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms also protects the fundamental rights of refugee claimants.

Unfortunately, 27 years later, the federal government is trying to take away these rights by politicizing the refugee selection process, which must be fair, independent and equitable. Bill C-31 will discriminate against some refugees by revoking their right to appeal.

Not only will this government be engaging in discriminatory practices, but it may even deport refugees who have become permanent residents. In 2012, this is cruel and makes no sense. I believe that I am a good example of how refugees can integrate well into life in Canada.

I invite my Conservative colleagues to abandon their divisive politics. They should instead recognize and celebrate the socio-cultural and economic contributions of thousands of refugees living in this country, like my parents, who have helped build the Canada that we know today.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

It's been a few years since I read that agreement. Maybe it has been a year and a bit. I did read it thoroughly at the time. But I must admit that I was paying more attention to the education factor than to the impact on wine. Thank you for that answer.

Does anybody have any more information on that? Obviously it is not your bedtime reading either, which is always good to know, right?

Here's another question. How would Bill C-31 benefit provinces or territories in which, at present, wine grapes are not grown and/or wine is not produced?

Business of the House

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, before I go to the question, I have a point to make. As we know, we will have the budget later today. What we have seen repeatedly is a breach of the long-standing tradition of the Westminster Parliament of not putting out in advance information that is in the budget. However, we have seen it repeatedly done by the government, not just in this budget but in prior ones.

My first question for the government House leader is whether that will be a continued practice and, if it is, why do the Conservatives not just do away with the sham of any confidentiality around the budget.

My next question is this. Could the government House leader confirm which four days will be dedicated to debate the budget? We have had various indications from him. If he could, we would ask that he be more specific at this time, assuming that it will start tomorrow.

Also, the government should accept the fact, as expressed by all Canadians, that Bill C-31 would dismantle our immigration and refugee protection policies and that the minister obviously does not understand the impact of that legislation.

Can the hon. member opposite confirm that the government is dropping that bill, yes or no?

We also have Bill C-30 outstanding, which is the so-called lawful access bill. It was up for debate at some point but it seems to have disappeared off the radar, along with Bill C-4. Both of them are quite misguided pieces of legislation. I am wondering if the House leader can tell us if the government will go ahead with these bills or come to its senses and either send them back for rewriting or just drop them completely.

Finally, there is a motion, which all parties in this Parliament accepted, with regard to the voter suppression scandal and it calls on the government to rapidly look at amendments to various pieces of legislation that would prevent that type of scandal and abuse of the democratic process from happening in the future. Is the government proceeding with any legislation and, if so, when will we see it?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Mr. Guterres absolutely did not. If you want to point to me anything in the UN convention that talks about an appeal, let me know what it is, because there isn't anything. The requirement of the convention is essentially this: a commitment of non-refoulement. A country must have a system available to assess the legitimacy of a claim as to whether someone has a well-founded fear of persecution on various enumerated grounds.

We provide every claimant, under Bill C-31, with access to a—

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

Minister, I think I can help you with that request for criticism.

I wanted to talk about the designated safe countries provision under Bill C-31. This is the proposal you have in your bill that would allow you, on your own—without the committee that you've now said you were wrong to have praised for being transparent and clear—to designate a country as safe for certain refugees.

Now, we know that these people who come from a safe country will have no appeal to the refugee appeal division, only to Federal Court. I'm aware that you're not a lawyer, but I assume you're aware that an appeal to the Federal Court is not an appeal on the merits of a decision; it's an appeal only on procedural fairness grounds.

You've also said that this complies with a statement of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and that he approves of the practice of designating certain countries as safe. However, the UN High Commissioner actually said that if a country designates certain countries as safe, there must be an appeal on the merits of any initial decision, something that your bill explicitly does not have.

So why did you remove the appeal to the refugee appeal division from the previous bill for refugee claimants from so-called safe countries when you agreed that it was a good thing in the past, and in violation of the statement of UN High Commissioner for Refugees?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Thank you, Madame Turmel, for giving me the opportunity to clarify a great deal of misunderstanding on this point.

In point of fact, section 108 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act already allows the minister to apply to the Immigration and Refugee Board for the cessation of protected persons status, or the revocation of permanent residency on various enumerated grounds, including a change in country conditions.

So there is no new power accorded to the minister under Bill C-31. Cessation of protected status or revocation of permanent residency can only be decisions made by an independent member of the IRB, not by the minister.

The only change that's made under Bill C-31 is that cessation of protected status and revocation of permanent residency could be made in a one-step process at the IRB rather than a two-step process. After all, if you're going to cease the protected status of someone who obtained it fraudulently with the intention of subsequently removing their permanent residency, the view is that it's much more sensible to do that in one stage rather than two.