Debates of Sept. 24th, 2012

Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act

[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.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the presentation of my colleague from Rivière-du-Nord, and I particularly enjoyed the examples that he slipped into his speech.

I would like him to comment or provide his opinion to see if he shares a certain vision. Actually, in listening to the debates since this morning, I have the impression that, with Bill C-43, the Conservatives are trying to depict a very simple, if not simplistic, situation: there are good guys and bad guys; it is black or white. But in my distinguished colleague's speech, it seems that there were many shades of grey, in various situations.

It makes me wonder whether this simple situation, if that is what it is, is truly so simple—when he talks, among other things, about the possibility of the minister's reviewing a foreigner's admissibility—when I hear phrases like: “if he feels it is justified by public policy considerations.” It seems to me that, with such phrases, the hon. member is being completely subjective. However, the picture the Conservatives have been painting since this morning, particularly with their examples, is that the situation is simple, black or white, and that is that.

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

Mr. Speaker, this issue of putting the public interest at risk is an idea that is not explained in the bill. Then there is the issue of serious criminality.

We will recall that the Conservatives talk about serious criminality in their bill. The hon. member for Toronto—Danforth just mentioned the fact that having six marijuana plants would lead to imprisonment of six months or more and that the Conservatives could consider that serious criminality. I am sorry, but in Canada, the vast majority of the population does not consider having six marijuana plants to be a major crime. People expect there to be some tolerance in that respect. In that sense, this bill lacks balance.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for my hon. colleague from Rivière-du-Nord.

I find that this bill really limits the minister's power when it comes to humanitarian circumstances in cases where the best interests of the child are directly involved. The bill provides for a very minor exception in terms of humanitarian circumstances.

Would my colleague agree that there should be more exceptions available to the minister when it comes to exercising his or her powers for humanitarian reasons?

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for her question.

Indeed, the bill takes away the minister's responsibility to examine humanitarian circumstances. I have the impression that this bill takes powers away from the minister that we would like him to have, and gives him powers that we do not want him to have

That is why it needs some work. The opposition will participate in good faith in order to achieve the desired goals and to ensure that this bill does not simply serve as a public relations device so the Conservatives can look good.

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

Mr. Speaker, I notice that Bill C-43 is called the faster removal of foreign criminals act. However, one of the key items in the bill would give the minister the power to declare a person inadmissible for up to 36 months according to whatever public policy consideration he may choose to use. That has nothing to do with reporting people or removing criminals; it is really about something completely different. Is that not very deceiving?

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

Mr. Speaker, that is what I am saying: it is a public relations tactic.

This bill and its provisions could have been included in the huge omnibus bill that was introduced with the budget, since these measures complement the ones it contained.

The Conservatives purposely isolated this bill in order to get some media attention. They wanted to show that they are being tough on crime and tough on criminals. Basically, they could have gotten the same work done in co-operation with the opposition.

I hope we can do that work in the days and weeks to come.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-43, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. I will be sharing my time.

We are supporting this bill's going forward at second reading, with some very strong reservations. As we have seen throughout the debate here today, the reservations speak to a number of issues in the bill that certainly involve moving further than simply the faster removal of foreign criminals

One issue we have great concern about is the concentration of more power in the hands of the minister, giving him the discretionary ability based on public policy considerations to restrict the entrance of foreign nationals, making them inadmissible for up to 36 months.

We have seen the parliamentary secretary stand up and admit that on the face of it, this is very controversial and really needs a lot of work. I think back to what has happened during my time in Parliament and the minister's actions. At his discretion, he refused entrance into Canada of former British MP George Galloway. In a resulting court case, Mr. Galloway challenged the minister over this. The Ontario supreme court came out with a 60-page decision castigating the minister for exercising this authority in that way that excluded Mr. Galloway based on certain political considerations.

Therefore, we really have to be very careful with this. This is treading into an area that has been a minefield in Canada in the past. I think back to the period before the Second World War, when we refused massive numbers of refugees from Eastern Europe because of political considerations, not because they were bad people or criminals who were going to cause a lot of trouble in Canada. No, it was because political factors were taken into consideration. If we are moving back in a direction of looking at political considerations and opening up that door where we have not been for a while, I think it is something we have to look at very carefully.

We are relieving the minister of the responsibility of looking at humanitarian circumstances in these matters, where human beings' lives are being altered irrevocably by the decisions we are making, and not making the minister look at the situation created by the acts of Canadians officials in expelling people from the country. I think that is really not in the Canadian mould. We tend to say that we believe in the sanctity of families, that we believe in the importance of paying careful attention to children, to the kinds of things that tie people together in a particular instance.

To simply say that we are going to relieve the minister of that responsibility needs some definite explanation. Why should the minister not want to have some ability to deal with this? Why should this not be part of his responsibility? When we have an impact upon people's lives, we need to understand that it is our responsibility and that we need to look at those things in the context they are presented. It is not that simple.

One provision that I find very difficult is the proposed increase in the penalty for misrepresentation. We are all MPs here. We all have offices. We all see people coming in, immigrants, landed immigrants, and people who are looking to get their parents or children into the country. The forms can lend themselves to mistakes.

The difference between a mistake and a misrepresentation is sometimes a very narrow line. When it comes to someone's educational qualifications, he or she may say, “I went to school there. I graduated there”. Is that acceptable? Can he or she prove it? Are there other issues that come into the presentation or the information that may need some clarification?

We need to look very hard at what “misrepresentation” means and what it entails. That can be done in committee. How can we define it carefully so we are not simply shutting people who make a mistake out of the country. We have to be very careful with that. It is something that can lead to all kinds of problems for people.

What constitutes “serious criminality?” This is something we have had a good debate on today. Quite obviously, when we move from a sentence of two years down to a sentence of six months, we are moving the bar pretty low. We are taking that bar right down so the ability of someone to get under it will be much more difficult. We really need to understand it. I assume the committee will go through some statistical analysis of what it will mean, what kind of offences have been generated that produce a sentence of six months in contrast to those that would produce sentences of two years.

Certainly, we have all seen people go to prison for six months for fairly minor offences that do not justify the disruption of their family life or taking them away from employer, if they happen to be good employees, doing all of that for something that is criminal but not necessarily of a serious nature. Therefore, the definition really needs work.

It will be interesting to see how it comes back from committee and what happens with the bill, what kinds of amendments and definitions are struck so we can truly understand how this will impact society.

I trust the Conservatives will follow the example the parliamentary secretary set with the one particular passage in the bill that he clearly stated needed work. We need an understanding of the whole bill in a very careful fashion, which can come through committee. After that, we can see whether the bill will be acceptable to this party. I am sure there will be further consideration of that.

These are important issues which are not to be taken lightly. I trust the government will go into that committee with the good intention of really coming to grips with this bill.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I have had the opportunity to have a couple of briefings both with the parliamentary library as well as the minister's office with respect to the bill. I made reference to the fact that if Bill C-43 were to pass, Nelson Mandela's wife would not have been able to have visited Canada during a very interesting time in world history. It was pointed out to me that Mr. Mandela's wife had some issues relating to the law too so that might not necessarily have been a good example. However, one can make reference to Mahatma Gandhi's wife, as she would not have qualified to visit Canada. I thought that was somewhat interesting.

The point is that if this law is passed, it will have a significant impact on individuals to be able to visit Canada, not because of their own personal behaviour but because of the behaviour associated with someone in their family. By doing that, we are denying those individuals the opportunity to visit family in Canada.

Could the member comment on the unfairness of that, especially given that in the same legislation the minister is taking the power to deny someone the ability to come to Canada? There is a bit of a contradiction there.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, over the past seven years as an MP, I have seen many people turned down visiting Canada, joining their family here. I had the example of that rather forcefully put to me about a week ago in Yellowknife, when a fellow told me that his grandparents would never get to see their children in Canada. That example speaks to the problem that exists in the immigration system, where we view people with a jaundiced eye when it comes to their motives.

Now we are going to add on another characteristic where a person's entire family will be under scrutiny in order for it visit Canada. We have another piece that will make it more difficult for family reconciliation, or the humanitarian comfort that we seem to want to deny people who come to our country to build the country, to make it a success. We put all these burdens on them. This is one that also deserves great attention.

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

Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciated one of the points raised by my colleague—the issue of misrepresentation. I think he has identified something very important: there can be a difference between intentional misrepresentation and misrepresentation caused by a mistake. In the case of immigrants, mistakes can arise because the perception of what constitutes a crime is different from one country to another, and from one culture to another. For example, political prisoners may be considered to be common criminals in their country, while we see them as political prisoners.

If he can, I would like the hon. member to elaborate on this aspect that he started to explain.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, once again, “misrepresentation” is a very interesting word. Are we to go in front of a judge to determine whether someone has lied or has simply made a mistake on his or her form? No, it will probably be done by somebody in an embassy in Turkey, for instance, where someone would look at the thing and say that its not correct, that the person did not do that, and that is the end of it. In the experience of it in my office, that is where many of these many misrepresentation issues start and finish.

This concept of increasing the time to five years on an issue that is already a very difficult issue is something we have to deal with very carefully.

In fact, if we were to get some clarity on “misrepresentation” within the bill, that may actually help the situation generally in our country, so we can ensure our embassy staff worldwide are very well-acquainted with understanding the importance of determining the difference between “misrepresentation” and “mistake”.