Mr. Speaker, I stand here because I take great exception to this particular piece of the finance bill. First and foremost, I call this governing by stealth. This is a substantive change to the way that the immigration act is going to work. It is a substantive change in the process. This piece of legislation should have gone to the right committee. The right committee, with the expertise and the experience, is the immigration committee.
The bill could have come in the way bills like this one should always come in. This should come in as an immigration amendment, as part of the immigration changes being made by the government. It should be spoken to in the House and then go to the appropriate committee, which would be the immigration committee. The immigration committee, with all of its expertise, should talk to people around the country and find out how they want to deal with it.
Putting the bill in the House right at this moment and sticking immigration reforms into a confidence bill on finance is really the kind of thing that we have come to expect from the Conservative government. The government is all about stealth in changing things and about getting its way.
True, there is a little bit of money involved in this bill, so I want to make a second point. The minister is putting $30 million into the bill and expects us to believe that this is going to change the backlog of applications that the minister says she needs to deal with.
The Liberal minister of immigration in the previous government put in $700 million, a process and a plan just before the election. The minister had gone through with contracting out the process for the purpose of decreasing the backlog.
I have no idea what happened to that plan. It had already started. Much of the contracting had been done. It was accepted by cabinet and by the department. What happened to it? What happened to the $700 million? Now we hear that the $700 million has been replaced by $30 million and the government has no plan.
Giving unprecedented power to a minister to make decisions that override the process, that break all the rules and that have no accountability, is an absolutely atrocious way to conduct government. It is undemocratic. It ignores Parliament and the parliamentary committees that have the expertise. It ignores information on the issue that might make it work if, as the minister says, her objective is to bring down the backlog. This bill does none of that.
This legislation removes the current process entirely. We do not know how the minister is going to choose people, and she does not have to tell us. She can make choices about who comes into the country and who does not come into the country, and she can do this with a sweep of a pen. She has no requirement to tell anybody her reasonings. This is kind of sad, which is the best word I can find.
By the year 2011 Canada will be dependent on immigration for 100% of its net labour force. Why? Because we are not having babies. Canada's birth rate is negative. Our aging population is well over 65 and no longer in the workforce. Canada can never be a productive and competitive nation if we do not have people available to work.
It is obvious that immigration is of seminal importance to the economy of this country and of seminal importance to the future of this country, its whole social infrastructure and the way that we have always set values in a country like ours. Canada was built on immigrants, other than the aboriginal people who were the first peoples of this nation and who opened the doors to immigration, against their better judgment.
We came from every country of the world, originally from Europe. Many people came here seeking a better life, seeking to fulfill their dreams of freedom. They wanted their children to grow up in a country of opportunity. They came from everywhere in the world and built a nation. We continue to build this nation on the backs of immigrants, which is an appropriate thing to do, because we are a new world nation, so to speak.
Many of the first wave of immigrants who came here from Europe should feel concerned about the bill. They will remember that they were denied entrance into this country on fairly basic reasons, like the region they came from, where they originally belonged and that their values were different from certain European values.
The Chinese will tell us that for 25 years they were a bachelor community because they were not allowed to bring over their wives and children. We heard a member of the House talk about the Komagata Maru. We heard another member speak to the St. Louis, which was turned away because the Jews from Europe tried to come here, seeking to flee Nazi Germany, and they were turned back on a whim, on an ideology.
We no longer live in that kind of country. We live in a country where there must be clear and transparent rules so people who wish to come to this country know those rules and know when they can and cannot come here. They need to know whether they fulfill the requirements, based on a hope that they can pass the security requirements, to come here. They did come and they have continued to come to build a nation.
It is true that many of our new immigrants come from Asia and Africa and they, too, are bringing with them expertise. Fifty-one per cent of our new immigrants have post-secondary education and a diploma. However, only 22% of Canadians who were born and live in Canada can boast about having a post-secondary degree or a diploma of any kind.
We are bringing in people who can contribute to this country because we need a workforce for our productivity and competitiveness. We need to remember that this country was built by immigrants who were seeking to contribute to it and to have a better life. They brought with them their families because families create stability. A nation is built when people put down roots and a nation continues to be built, not by temporary workers, but by people who come here with their families and who invest their hopes, their dreams, their hard work and their loyalty in Canada. Our great nation has become what it is today because of those people.
I do not understand how we can give the minister the unprecedented power to decide who will or will not come here without having to give any reasons. The minister is asking us to trust her because she will do the right thing.
We have seen time and time again that we cannot trust the government. I would say that most cynical Canadians would say that they cannot trust any particular government, but that is not the point. The point is that this is why we have bureaucracies, processes and clear ways of doing things.
At the same time, this would close the door to our newest immigrants, those who have come from Asia and Africa, on a whim, and it would close the door to their bringing in their families. Only letting people in for economic reasons seems, from the beginning of time, to be the Conservative ideology. Mr. Diefenbaker did that a long time ago and Mr. Mulroney wanted to change immigration so that it would only be economic migrants coming here.
To build a nation we need to bring a mix of people into this country to put down roots and to work, but they need to bring with them their families. If we decide to only bring people here because of the work they can do and ignore their families, we will be back to what the Chinese remembered.
We have heard the government apologize and give redress but when we apologize and give redress we are supposed to have learned a lesson and will not do it again. If we put in place all of the protocols that would make that happen again, then we have learned nothing and the redress and the apology become hollow.
I am suggesting that we need to debate the issue of changes in immigration in the appropriate bill and in the appropriate place, which is the immigration committee, and not to run it through under the radar screen as the government is trying to do. I call that governing by stealth.