Bill C-43 (Historical)

Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act

An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act

This enactment amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to limit the review mechanisms for certain foreign nationals and permanent residents who are inadmissible on such grounds as serious criminality. It also amends the Act to provide for the denial of temporary resident status to foreign nationals based on public policy considerations and provides for the entry into Canada of certain foreign nationals, including family members, who would otherwise be inadmissible. Finally, this enactment provides for the mandatory imposition of minimum conditions on permanent residents or foreign nationals who are the subject of a report on inadmissibility on grounds of security that is referred to the Immigration Division or a removal order for inadmissibility on grounds of security or who, on grounds of security, are named in a certificate that is referred to the Federal Court.

Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak to Bill C-43, yet another immigration bill. With 1.4 million Canadians out of work, 300,000 more Canadians today than in 2008 when there was an economic recession, one would think the House and the Conservative government would actually focus more on job creation instead of putting all their energy into dealing with perceived problems through legislative means.

Since 2000, the auditors general have been saying that the problem with who comes into the country and who gets deported is not really with the law, but with the administration of the law. A succession of auditor general reports, in 2000, 2003, 2007, 2008 and 2011, all five reports said the same thing. Between Canada's immigration service and the Canadian Border Service Agency, there are serious problems in how the law is administered as to who gets into the country and who gets deported.

The 2007 auditor general report talked about it not being clear which department did what. It said that it was not consistent as to who was deported and who came in and the level of compliance was not monitored. There was no regard as to how much it cost to remove people from the country. More damning was it could not track those who needed to be deported. For a good percentage of them, it was unknown where they had gone. In dealing with detentions and removals, the report stated that the policies and procedures were not applied consistently and that the database that dealt with detentions and removals was a complete mess, unfortunately.

That was in 2008, four years ago. Surely, things would have improved. Surely, we would know who we were letting in, whether they were criminals or not, and who was being deported. Actually, no, things have not improved.

The Auditor General did another report in 2011. Many hours and months were spent tracking what was happening with Canada Border Services Agency, which has the task of dealing with people, and Canadian immigration services overseas, as to who was admissible to Canada and who needed to be deported. It noted in chapter 2 of the report that the operation manuals had not been updated and there were actually three different screening manuals. However, with the hundreds of bulletins and manuals, if the officers wanted to check, they did not have the search capacity to do so. Therefore, they were trying to find out which manuals to apply and which bulletins they should use. They would go on a search and their computer system would not allow them to search. It was not clear. There are many and they are not necessarily updated either.

It is interesting that there is a lack of country specific risk profiles. The profiles are not systematically produced and, even if they are produced, they are not distributed. According to chapter 2.29 of the Auditor General's report, the overseas officers often have no idea what kind of person should not be coming into our country. In fact, half of the officers said that they did not have specific and sufficient information to assess if people were inadmissible. They do not know whether they have security concerns because the manual is not updated, the risk profile is not clear, it is not systematically produced and it is not distributed.

As I said earlier, there were audits in 2000, 2003 and 2008. The Auditor General went back to see whether there was a framework to ensure the quality of the jobs done, both here in Canada and overseas, and whether there was a performance review. Apparently, there is no performance review, no guidance, no training and not enough information to properly determine who should or should not come into this country. That is from the Auditor General's 2011 report, chapter 2.37.

In chapter 2.39 of the report it states that the department's 2011 program integrity framework calls for the monitoring of the quality of decision making through random, systematic and targeted quality assurance activities. That means that they check to see whether the law is being applied properly. This so-called program integrity framework has not been implemented and, therefore, is not done, which means that we do not know whether the existing law, the previous law or the future law is being applied.

We are seeing that the Conservatives keep trying to change the channel. It is the department that is broken and the system is not working, according to the Auditor General. Instead of cleaning the system and doing it better administratively, the Conservatives are wasting time. They keep trying to change the law every three months and taking the time to change the channel. For Canadians who know that something is not right, the Conservatives would say that it is not the system that is the problem but that it is the law, which is not true. According to the Auditor General, it is the system that is broken.

I have more. The Conservatives said that there are all types of problems because there is no timely review of the effectiveness of the security screening process. Whether it is CSIS, CBSA or Canada Immigration Service, we need to have all of them connected. The Auditor General said that the IT systems are not inter-operable, meaning that they are not necessarily connected. The field agents, the people out there working to decide who gets to come in and who needs to be deported, cannot get all the information they need. That is another problem.

The Auditor General went on and identified other serious problems. It is not just the system. The report also mentions that there is an absence of a formal training program or curriculum. The workers are not formally trained. It says that close to 40% of the analysts had not received training. They do not know how to apply the law because they have not received training. It is not their fault. As well, 74% were missing training in research techniques. That is the majority. Three out of four front-line officers were missing training in research techniques, so they do not know how to do it.

To make it worse, even though there is no formal training program or curriculum, if they have been there for a long time, maybe they would gain that information and knowledge from experience, but no. Forty per cent of the staff have employment records for two years or less, which means there is a high turnover in the front-line staff. There is little stability. With high turnover and very little training, it makes the situation much worse.

It is the system and the administration of the law that are the problems. Instead, rather than fixing the problem, we have yet another immigration bill, Bill C-43, to deal with the admissibility of temporary residents. We can change the law all we want but if there is the absence of a formal training program or curriculum, a high turnover, the manuals are not up to date, there is very little risk assessment and the system is not being reviewed in a way that is comprehensive, there is a serious problem.

The Auditor General went on to say that when officers make decisions, they normally document the reasons for them. Actually, 28%, which is 3 out of 10, have documentation, which means that when 7 out of 10 officers make decisions, they do not document them. Did the person who made the decision follow procedure as to who gets deported and who gets admitted? We do not know. Did the person who made the decision conduct a full assessment? The public does not know because the person did not document what he or she did when the decision was made. Normally there would be mandatory checks but that was not done in 80% of the cases and the checklist was not used, which is a serious problem.

What did the Auditor General say needs to be done? He said that there needs to be a quality assurance process, good training and service standards. Are there service standards yet? No. CBSA and CIC have no service standards. How do we know whether the people coming into this country or being deported are the right people? We do not know.

The Auditor General asked how the problem got started. Apparently, in 2003, when CIC used to deal with enforcement, it separated that out and gave it to the Canada Border Services Agency, which established it and changed the act. Since then, it has not been clear as to who does what. It has done two memorandums of understanding and yet the information, management and share services were still under negotiation as of a few months ago. It is still trying to figure out who is supposed to do what. It was supposed to do a joint risk management strategy so that it would be clear as to how risk would be dealt with, those who are allowed to come into the country through temporary resident permits, except that its joint risk management strategy has not been implemented. It sounds good but it has not done it yet. Instead of ensuring that the director and the front-line staff do what they need to do, we have yet another legislative change.

According to the Auditor General, there is a huge problem. Chapter 2.96 states that CIC and CBSA do not have systematic mechanisms for quality assurance or measuring performance that would provide a reasonable level of assurance that their processes are working and that practices are appropriate for today's challenges.

Furthermore, the organizations have only recently begun to develop a joint risk management approach, as they have not done it yet, and similar issues have been identified in our audits since 2000. This is not a new problem. There needs to be a sustained effort by CIC and CBSA to address the gaps in the admissibility determination process so that the related risks are properly managed.

That was in 2011. What about this year, 2012? The assistant Auditor General, Wendy Loschiuk, and the principal responsible for the audit I was quoting from, Gordon Stock, came to the immigration committee. At that time, committee members asked whether all the recommendations in the Auditor General report had been implemented. Ms. Loschiuk said that even though some better techniques to track people had been adopted, the whereabouts of some of these people were still unknown.

In fact, it is not clear where 41,000 of these folks have gone and, of the people who were detained but released on bonds, it is not clear whether they have complied with the conditions of their release. There was little information available on the costs of detaining and removing persons or on whether policies and standards for detention were applied fairly. Now we would be giving the minister even more arbitrary power to apply these so-called policies and standards even though we do not know whether they are being applied fairly because there are no performance standards. This whole thing is absurd. They need to better coordinate their efforts.

The report is very damning. It says that there are lots of gaps in the system and very little helpful information available from security partners. It also says that security screening for a permanent residence visa can sometimes take more than three years, which is too long. It also says that the system to check whether it is working needs to be strengthened for the admissibility determination process.

In a system that is supposed to help protect Canadians, it is just as important to review the decisions to grant visas as it is to review the decisions to deny them. As the Auditor General said, rather than focusing on decisions on why visas are denied, we should focus on how visas are granted. However, that has not been done.

Is this a serious problem? Yes, the system is in serious need of change. However, I want to put it in perspective. Only 1% of applicants for temporary residence and 0.1% of applicants for permanent residence were found to be inadmissible. Of the 257,000 people who come to this country and become permanent residents, what are we talking about? We are talking about 46 people, which is not a huge concern in terms of changing the law. The real concern is how the law is being administered.

The Conservatives have fallen down on the job of ensuring the law is being applied properly and fairly.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-43 contains some fairly significant changes. We would like to think that the government will be open to ideas or the possibility of amendments, especially in the area of the ministerial power, but also in other aspects of the legislation.

What are the member's thoughts about the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism being given the authority to tell someone that he or she cannot come to Canada without having any checks in place? Does she feel that this would be an amendment that she would be supportive of in terms of ensuring there is a check in place to limit the minister's ability to deny someone access to Canada?

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, according to the Auditor General, the law is being applied in an arbitrary fashion right now, so there are already serious problems. To give the minister the power to declare a person inadmissible for up to 36 months if the minister is of the opinion that it is justified by public policy considerations means that decisions will be made in a closed-door, opaque and non-transparent manner.

What are public policy considerations? Is it in some kind of menu? Are there criteria? Are there any specific guidelines? Is it open for debate? Is it open for discussion? We do not know.

There is a pattern to how the Conservative government operates. Closed-door decision-making without the consultation of both Parliament and the public seems to be the pattern. In my mind the power is completely centralized in just the minister's hands, especially when the department, according to the Auditor General, has no performance review and makes decisions in an arbitrary manner.

[Hélène LeBlanc, NDP, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech and her description of a situation that seems to be ongoing, which is the lack of adequate resources that would enable the Department of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism to do its job.

I would like to know what her concerns are following the budget announcement and the cuts that continue to be made to the public service.

What does she foresee in terms of service delivery by the Department of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism?

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the cutbacks are with respect to both the Canada Border Services Agency and Canadian immigration centres. It means that there will be even higher staff turnover, there will be even less training, and decisions will be made in an even more arbitrary manner because there is no performance review. In many ways, people who are waiting to get served will wait longer.

For border services, it means that more illegal guns will be smuggled into the country, that people who should be inadmissible may end up being in Canada and that those who should be allowed to come to Canada will not be able to come. It may be that CBSA cannot track down those who should be deported, and those who should not be deported for humanitarian reasons, because they grew up in Canada all their lives and their entire families are here, or who can reform themselves and become good citizens, may end up being treated unfairly and be deported. That would be unfortunate.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her presentation and for very clearly showing not only how the current laws are not being implemented but that the staff who are charged with carrying out these checks and balances do not have the resources and do not have any systems in place. Therefore, it seems rather strange that we are going down this road right now.

My question to my colleague is this. When she meets with different community members from our diverse population, what kind of feedback is she getting on this mean-spirited approach that the Conservative government is taking to transform our immigration policies and paint a picture of newcomers as criminals and cheaters who are just here to use the system?

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we are actually dealing with 0.1% of permanent residents, so it is a very small number. With all this attention through press conferences and media stunts, I am afraid that the general public will have the opinion that a lot of immigrants are hard core criminals, which is not the case.

I hear very often that the law is not being applied fairly. There are people who would point out that such a person should not be in Canada. Why is that person still here? There are other cases where people have asked, how come my uncle cannot come to Canada? Why is he inadmissible?

I have heard from my constituents of cases where there are people who have assisted in supporting opposition movements or pro-democracy movements in a country that is governed by a dictator. They are freedom fighters and yet because the government declared them criminals, even though they are not, they are then not allowed to come into the country, even though those are the kinds of people the Conservative government is celebrating. They cannot get their permanent resident status because they are “inadmissible”, even though the work they are doing is in fact being encouraged by the Conservative government.

I have heard of all types of unfairness because of the way the law is being implemented at this moment, and in the last 15 years, actually.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for Trinity—Spadina for her eloquent comments.

My question, though, is about the current situation of immigration in Canada in general. I have noticed, as have my staff, that there has been a clampdown on visa applications for family members and that the length of time it takes for family reunification to take place has been extended to the point where, in some cases, it takes 14 years to bring family members together. In some cases these family members are deceased before they get here.

Could the hon. member comment further on the state of immigration generally in this country?

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in one word, it is a mess.

The system is in a mess. The Auditors General may not use that word but if one reads all the reports that she and he have done in the last 10 years, and even in the last two years, the reports would reveal that the system is in a mess. Canadians are waiting longer and families are having a hard time getting their loved ones into Canada.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I must advise the House that I am going to share my time with the member for Rivière-du-Nord. We will each speak for 10 minutes.

I would like to start by saying that the title of the bill, quite obviously, is something that should give us pause. The reference to foreign criminals is something that seeps throughout the entire bill. It could, if we are not careful, help construct society's understanding of the contexts that are being discussed in the bill in a way that would separate those of us who are lucky to have full citizenship from those among us who are merely landed immigrants or permanent residents.

I would like to come back to that point when I discuss, a bit later, the cutting of appeal options in new categories of cases. However, I do want to put on record that one of the biggest problems is almost a discursive problem by the reference to foreign criminals in this undifferentiated way in the title.

The second big problem with the bill is that, in some ways, it combines two extremes in terms of the exercise of state power in this context.

One extreme is that it would give a full, at least in terms of the text, and unfettered discretion to the minister with the new section 22.1, which would allow him or her to refuse temporary residence visas on his or her own opinion of what are public policy considerations. There is nothing in the bill that talks about any constraints on that.

We had an answer earlier in the House when the parliamentary secretary suggested that the government might be open to giving a bit more substance to that, but at the moment it is not in the bill.

On the other hand, we have no discretion at all on other fronts in the bill in a way that adds to the repressive dimensions of its structure. Within section 64, which would change the threshold for no appeal rights after being determined to be inadmissible from two years to six months, removing the appeal as of right, there would be nothing in between. There would be no procedure for a leave to appeal. It would be all or nothing. If people have been convicted for an offence that has involved imprisonment of six months, then they have no right of appeal from the decision on admissibility to the Immigration Appeal Division.

On the other hand, in terms of no discretion, there is a new section 25 wording that would remove not just the right of the minister but the power of the minister to consider humanitarian and compassionate considerations in a category of cases.

Now, I want to be careful here when I add this in as a problem because those categories of cases are worded very broadly and they seem like the kind of cases when one would never want to exercise discretion to allow somebody to stay. “Security”, “organized criminality” and “violating human or international rights” are the words used.

However, even within those categories, they are so generally worded, “organized criminality” and “security”, that it is not difficult to imagine some circumstances in which there may be reason to lighten the severity of the law and allow somebody to stay. In fact, that is how the system has worked. On occasion the minister does exercise exactly that discretion for those reasons. The fact is that has been eliminated.

We have to look very carefully when this does hit the committee as to whether or not the use of extremes, nothing in between, has actually created a bill that would, down the road, show itself as producing a lot of hardship.

I am going to primarily address the question of the reduction of the elimination of the right to appeal to a broader category of persons and, also, the public policy discretion of the minister.

With respect to that public policy discretion, let me start here. The new section 22.1 says:

The Minister may, on the Minister’s own initiative, declare that a foreign national...may not become a temporary resident if the Minister is of the opinion that it is justified by public policy considerations.

He may do that or she may do that for up to 36 months.

That is it. That is all we have there.

It is not too difficult to imagine how, in the hands of a certain minister or in a certain period of time, this could be exercised very arbitrarily, if not abusively. There is nothing in the bill to constrain that, other than, I hope, the fact that there would be judicial review available, but judicial review is one of the worst possible ways to produce checks in any legal system because it requires time, money and good lawyers to actually get anywhere. We need to have a system of decision making within the bill itself that checks the minister in his or her decision making, and public policy consideration is just simply far too broad a mandate to give any one person to exercise in the context.

I will not go into specific examples, but we do know of at least a few examples where the Minister of Immigration has clearly not wanted somebody to enter the country for reasons that, under the surface, appear to be more about politics than they do about sound public policy. That clause has to be looked at in committee. It has to be beefed up if it is to be retained.

The next provision to look at is section 64 which, as everybody has noted, lowers the threshold for removing the right of appeal on an inadmissibility decision from two years imprisonment to six months. If a person has been in prison for six months, that is it in terms of them having any right of appeal. They would not have any.

We should think about some of the things in the Criminal Code that can attract six months, and they may not that often, such as stealing oysters, section 323, selling a betting pool, section 202, and the list goes on. There are lots of offences that can attract six months. We would like to think the system would never end up seeking to deport somebody for these kinds of offences, but the moment we go down from two years to six months, we actually enter that territory where these kinds of Kafkaesque possibilities are there.

What about more recently, the effects of mandatory minimum legislation in Bill C-10? We know now that with marijuana, for example, the growing of six plants can lead to a six months sentence. The sentence cannot exceed six months, but it can also be six months under the new Bill C-10, when that takes effect in the Criminal Code: six months, six plants, no appeal. Does that seem at all proportionate to the kind of more nuanced decision making that we would want our laws to recognize. We hope that would never be used as a basis by the system to seek to deport somebody in and of itself, but there is nothing protecting against that result the way it is written.

The biggest problem is that the lower the threshold, the more people will be caught by it. More people who have permanent residence and landed immigrant status will suddenly be put in this category of deportable, even though what they have done in the grand scheme of things is not nearly as serious as what used to be the case under the law.

We have to begin to reflect on how much ownership we have to take of those among us who get into criminal trouble, who do end up with sentences right at the edge of six months, eight months, nine months. Who is responsible? What society is responsible for dealing with that issue? Is it always the other country that has a formal nationality, a country that a person may not have seen in 30 years, a person who may have come here at age two or age three and does not even speak the language of the other country, for example, or is it the country where the person grew up and basically produced the condition under which the crime occurred? We are not responsible for it, but we are that person's brothers and sisters. How do we think about the fact that the lower the threshold is, the more likely it is that people among us will end up in the headlights of the minister or the department of administrative immigration for this kind of deportation.

In the general sense, the bill may not appear offensive to those on the other side or to many in society, but when we look at how minimal the trigger is for somebody to be deported with no right of appeal, we really have to question whether this is the way our society wants to go. Two years itself is already something that was a compromise. Why we have gone to six months has escaped me.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I talked earlier about how the government was doing such a huge disservice to those 1.5 million permanent residents who called Canada their home. For a wide variety of reasons, many of them are unable to obtain their citizenship. In many of those cases, it is in part because the government has been so negligent in terms of not processing the citizenship applications in a timely fashion.

However, the way in which this issue has been dealt with puts a wide tarnishing brush that makes all permanent residents look bad in the eyes of many, by classifications like “foreign criminals” and such. Many sentences actually incorporate the word “criminal”, for example drinking and driving for a first-time offender. There are many different examples and I suspect a vast majority of Canadians would not support the fact that everyone who becomes a criminal should be deported from Canada. Would the member share the same concern that I and other members of the Liberal Party have in regard to that fact?

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I share some of the concerns. I am not convinced that the government itself wants to tar people with that brush in that way.

As I started out by saying, the phraseology in the act refers to foreign criminals. For the 1.5 million or more landed immigrants or permanent residents in our country, a number the member indicated but I do not know if it is the figure, the effect of that word “foreign” is to create this kind of us/them within our own society. Some consequences for some people will be much worse than for others, even though they are just as much members of our community and Canadians in our country as somebody who has gone to the next step and become a citizen.

Therefore, I have a problem with the effect. Whether it is part of the intention, I have doubts. I cannot imagine that is the intention of the government.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is nice seeing you in the chair. It is the first time I have had the chance to congratulate you and the first time I have seen you in the chair.

I have a question for the hon. member across and I appreciate the approach. Based on the member's speech, there is an issue which he hopes to deal with at committee, meaning he assumes it will get to committee, and I appreciate his support in getting it there. The issue is that the six-month criterion is already there in the previous legislation, as clearly indicated by both the parliamentary secretary and the minister today. The difference is that there is an approach that for an offence that has a two year less a day incarceration there is an appeal process.

I want to be clear that this is his issue. He thinks there should be still a loophole. If the people in Toronto—Danforth told the member that they thought it appropriate that those who were not Canadian, those who had not bothered to become Canadians but were here as foreign nationals, committed serious crimes and if they did it in six months that appeal should be gone, would he change his position?

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, if the people in my riding actually took that position and were able to argue it to me in a convincing way, obviously I would be open to changing my mind on things. The fact is that people in my riding live cheek by jowl, those who are citizens and those who are landed immigrants. Landed immigrant status can often last a very long time. It has nothing to do with dragging their feet but has a lot to do with the luck of the draw. Sometimes people are landed immigrants because they have come as children and do not opt for citizenship until quite a bit further in their lives. Then something happens where they get into trouble with the law.

The whole question I was trying to address was this. Whose community is responsible for people who get into some trouble with the law that can sometimes lead to six months versus two years, which is a huge gap? Who are responsible? The people themselves are responsible, but society as a whole has to bear some responsibility. What if those people know nothing about the society that we are thinking about deporting them to? Should we not think of them as our co-citizens, even though in the law they may not be citizens? That is my approach.

[Pierre Dionne Labelle, NDP, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have the impression that what we are seeing here is a massive public relations operation, where the government is saying that it will be tough on crime; that is the Conservatives' mantra. It is an easy public relations operation in that, meanwhile, the government is ignoring what is really going on with immigration in Canada.

I will mention three recent examples that shocked me deeply. Unfortunately I feel there is no justification for what happened. This summer, 25 beach soccer players from Morocco requested a visitor's visa to play in a competition in Montreal. They were coming from the Olympic Games, so it was unlikely that one of them would seek refugee status. Unfortunately, these players were barred from Canada. Thirty-five Haitian businesswomen who wanted to come to Canada to present their achievements were also prohibited from entering and remaining in Canada because, according to the department, a number of them did not have the financial resources or did not provide enough of a guarantee that they were going to return to their country. This week some Burmese artists were prohibited from visiting Canada.

The number of foreign nationals from developing countries who are denied entry to Canada is growing. The government wants Canada to be a place where only the rich and famous can come, even if they have a criminal past. I am thinking in particular of a certain gentleman who was involved for many years in the media and who was given a red-carpet welcome.

This bill is a diversion tactic. I am specifically thinking about the concentration of powers in the minister's hands. The Conservatives are trying to politicize the immigration process in Canada by increasing the minister's powers. One clause in particular states that the minister can declare a foreigner inadmissible for up to 36 months if he feels it is justified by public policy considerations.

I would like to talk about the specific case of a buddy of mine who is locked up in Morocco, Mouad Belghouat. He is a Moroccan rapper who was charged and sentenced to one year in prison for showing police officers with donkey heads in one of his videos. He was sentenced to a year in prison. In Morocco, showing police officers with donkey heads is considered a serious crime. These officers were violently beating protestors.

It goes without saying that this sentence contravenes a number of international conventions on freedom of opinion and expression, including the UN's International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

I have to wonder whether, in light of the minister's discretionary powers, Mouad would be allowed into Canada in the future. Would the serious crime that he allegedly committed in Morocco, according to Moroccan authorities, make him ineligible to come to Canada? Could the minister deem this foreigner inadmissible because he threatened the public interest in some way?

All this confuses me. The bill must be examined in more detail in committee so that we can limit the scope of the powers granted to the minister.

I think it would be a good thing for all parties in Parliament to work together so that this bill can be something other than a Conservative propaganda tool. This bill should truly target dangerous criminals instead of politicizing the Canadian immigration process, which is what it seems to be doing.

They say that these measures could affect 2,400 of the 1.5 million immigrants or refugee claimants. The Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism says that in some cases, people have drawn out their appeals for 20 years. According to my numbers, that is incorrect. Apparently, this new bill would reduce appeals periods by anywhere from 12 to 15 months. That is not on the same scale at all, which proves that the purpose of this bill is propaganda.

There are other important aspects, such as refusing an appeal by a person who has committed a crime punishable by six months in jail. A number of crimes could lead to deportation even though Canadian society, while not sanctioning them, does not view them as violent crimes or crimes against persons. The Conservatives do not seem to be very concerned about the impact of these deportations on families and children.

This whole issue needs to be cleared up in committee. I really hope the committee will amend parts of this bill in response to our concerns.

Thank you for your attention and interest.