Madam Speaker, the Liberal Party agrees with reforming the system so processing times for refugees are fair and reasonable. After all, refugees are people seeking refuge, a safe place to go because life is untenable for them wherever they happen to be.
We are concerned that the government has taken this bill to reform the system and it has muddied the waters on it, using it as a vehicle for trafficking. The government is trying to say that it wants to separate the refugee from the trafficked person. No one is arguing the intent of that. We all agree with it. The question is to how it is being done. The process that the bill lays out is very unjust and it contravenes many pieces of international law, a charter and the United Nations convention on the rights of refugees. First and foremost, it gives two ministers the sole power to decide.
It gives the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism the power to decide what a safe country is, with absolutely no accountability. There is nothing built in for sudden changes in circumstances in a country that sounds as if it is safe and in the offset is seen to be safe. I want to remind members of this. We thought Germany was a safe country and because of that, the people on the St. Louis were turned back to absolute death and to concentration camps. We did not know what was going on within Germany.
When we say we know about so-called safe countries, we have to look at countries that we trade with, countries that are on the surface a so-called European Union and developed countries, so-called democratic countries, where human, minority, women's, ethnic and religious rights have been denied to many groups and minorities within that country.
I go back to the issue of the Sinti and the Roma. Everyone likes to ask if the Sinti and the Roma cannot go off to one of the 25 European nations. I will quote Catherine Dauvergne, UBC professor, Canada Research chair in Migration Law. She said, “Some individuals have utterly inadequate rights protections, which is why some Roma are found to be refugees, in Canada and elsewhere”.
I go to the Organization for Security and Co-operation. I am the special representative for gender. I work closely with the special representative for migration and minority rights and we see in pockets of many countries, the denial of any rights to the Sinti and Roma. In countries like Italy and Spain, we see this happening and yet they are so-called democratic countries. The idea that the minister will designate safe countries is a slippery slope.
Not only that, but people coming from a so-called safe country have no recourse, if they apply as a refugee, to due process or appeal. That is an unacceptable thing under the rule of law. The Minister of Public Safety has the power of mandatory detention for a people who make a refugee claim and if that refugee claim is made with another individual or individuals, they can go to jail for one year because this claim has been made by a group. We do not even have the definition of what a group is. The group is anybody over two people. That in itself is an infringement on rights of people. It infringes on the right of association.
I want to remind members of the Vietnamese boat people who came to our country seeking refuge. Canada opened its arms to them. They went into communities that embraced them. Today, those same Vietnamese boat people are model citizens in Canada and we have benefited very much by their being here.
Let us look at another so-called safe country. In 1989, when the Tiananmen massacre occurred in April, if the Chinese students who were being threatened had come to our country a month later, they would not have been accepted and would have been jailed because they came as a group seeking refuge because of changed circumstances regarding Tiananmen Square . We have to learn from our past experiences.
Today, we do not need to take this kind of abuse of rule of law. We have technology and we have diplomatic relations with many countries. It is easy for us to talk to these countries to get information about a person of interest or about a suspicious person or group. I do not understand why we have to detain people for a whole year. We could use technology on this, if we want to be compassionate and understanding, to avoid harming people who are real refugees by sending them back to almost certain detention, torture and death in some instances. It is improbable that we cannot get this kind of information within 60 days.
The ministers should consider rule of law. If a government ignores rule of law, then it makes Canada a non-democratic nation. We love to talk about the pillars of democracy, rule of law is one of them. The government is ignoring rule of law and basing fear-mongering on the fact that there are all kinds of people coming to Canada who are terrorists. There are ways around this, so I do not understand why the government would ignore rule of law. There are ways in which the government can dilute the threat. It can use technology. It can talk to diplomatic people within the country and find out if these people are people of interest.
What is the process or the provision for the release of mass arrivals in the event that it comes to light that there were significant changes in circumstances within the country from which those mass arrivals came? I go back to China and Tiananmen Square. I go back to the St. Louis. I go back to the Vietnamese people. Is there a provision in the legislation that would allow us to say that we were wrong, that we are sorry, that circumstances have changed and that we need to accept these people? No. They would have been placed on mandatory detention immediately for a minimum of a year.
I want to go back to the list of safe countries. Should we put in a clause that says it would be mandatory to review that list if we hear from another nation or other groups about something suspicious going on in another country that we deem to be a safe country? Is there a way of going back and looking at a sunset clause on that place?
These are the kinds of checks and balances that we need in good legislation. We all have concerns about the backlogs. We care about that. Let us not forget that it was the government that failed to fill a lot of vacancies on the refugee board, creating that backlog. The Conservatives dragged their feet on that.
Let us not forget the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to which the government is a signatory. The minister has looked at that and said that minors under 16 years of age will be excluded from this, but we would be taking children away from their parents. Imagine children leaving their homes, going into some hole of a boat scared and frightened and then upon arrival, they are taken away from their parents who are put it detention without those children knowing where they will be sent. Imagine the psychological damage we would do to that child. That is totally abhorrent. It totally opposes the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is cruel, it is inhumane and it also contravenes the 1951 refugee convention.
There is another piece in the bill that bothers us. People cannot apply on humanitarian and compassionate grounds for one year following a negative decision. What is this? Where do these people go? Are they stateless people? What happens to them? These are important questions we have to ask.
There is also a five year waiting period before an individual can apply for permanent residency. This would create a bunch of people with absolutely no rights.
Section 7 of the charter speaks to life, liberty and security of the person. The denial of access to families, denial of appeal violates that right to liberty of the person.
Section 9 of the charter speaks to the right not to be arbitrarily detained. This legislation would break that section.
Section 12 of the charter talks about cruel and unjust punishment. The bill would inflict cruel and inhumane punishment.
People who are afraid of torture, afraid for their lives or the lives of their families will do anything to come to safety. Australia found that it costs more to detain people than if there were a different set of circumstances. Australia is now looking at its bill.
This bill has a basis of political intentions. It appeals to the fear in people. It does not give information and education to Canadians to allow them to understand the reality of the circumstances of refugees and to understand the difference between refugees and traffickers. It therefore—