Lui Temelkovski

[Petitions, December 12th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition from the good people of Oak Ridges—Markham, who call upon the House of Commons to condemn the targeted killing of the Tamilselvan, the Tamil peace negotiator, and urge the Sri Lankan government to stop its military aggression against Tamils in Sri Lanka.

[Diabetes, November 23rd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, November 14 marked World Diabetes Day. Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Canada launched a campaign across Canada to urge the federal government to commit to funding for type 1 diabetes research in the budget of 2008.

After meeting with several constituents regarding diabetes, I was surprised to learn that globally, Canada has the third highest occurrence rate of type 1 diabetes in children 14 years or younger.

Because diagnosis often occurs in childhood and adolescence, type 1 and other forms of diabetes threaten to place a heavy burden on Canada's health care system.

In one of those meetings, I was presented with two keys to deliver to the Minister of Health and Minister of Finance signifying my support for the foundation's funding initiative.

I believe Canada has the potential to play a role in the treatment of type 1 diabetes.

[Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, November 19th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member for Windsor—Tecumseh speak about this. Obviously we do not agree on the outcome of the issue of Bill C-3. His party tends to believe that we should not go further into this and explore other avenues, even though the basic premise of the bill may be flawed, but we would like to take it to committee, where all party members will be able to contribute to this and amend it in such a way that it can be fixed to be applicable and can be applied in the future for those people who are detained.

I have a question for the member. Does he think there are sufficient instruments in place whereby applicants coming to Canada can be identified before they land in Canada as to whether they are terrorists or members of some war crime situation from other countries? Or should there be additional time taken prior to them having the right to come into Canada and then certificates issued for them subsequently?

[Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, November 19th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, in his debate, the member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek mentioned that deported persons will never know the reason why they are deported. He found that offensive. I would like to suggest to the member that every country actually has the right to refuse someone entry. I believe it is called persona non grata. Every country has that right in regard to entry into a country and it never has to give people a reason why they are refused entry into the country.

As well, he mentioned that Canadians will never know what threat they were under. Perhaps he can explain a little further along those lines about how we can sometimes suck and blow at the same time.

[Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, November 19th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I heard the member for Saint-Jean speak to Bill C-3 and I also heard the question posed by the member from the NDP.

I am led to believe that the NDP believes that amendments cannot be made at a committee meeting. I am very surprised because I know the member has participated in making amendments to bills at other committees. I am sure that he understands the process, that we are able to make amendments. The help of the opposition parties is needed in order to send this bill to committee so we can debate and fix the bill. We all agree that this bill is flawed and it needs a lot of help, especially the help of the NDP.

The member for Saint-Jean mentioned in his speech that he would not like to have people deported to some countries. Maybe I could jog his memory about the safe third country provision. If there is a difficulty in their country of origin, the country from where they came, we will send them to a country that is safe and that is not their country of origin. However, I also share the belief that people should not be deported to a country where they would be prosecuted, imprisoned or lose their life.

Perhaps the member could expand on this as well as the idea of amending the bill at committee stage.

[Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, November 19th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I heard the member eloquently explain the situation the way it is right now and what she is really looking at. It sounds like we are in favour of taking this bill to committee so we can further review it.

My concern lies with the time we have as of the ruling. The Supreme Court ruled in February 2007 and February 23, 2008 comes very quickly when we have a Christmas break and return near the end of January. In the hon. member's view, will we have substantial time to look at all the alternatives, amend the legislation, and bring it back for the final reading in the House?

[Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, November 19th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with intent to the member for Burnaby—Douglas. He served on the committee when I was a member of it, from 2004-06, and we dealt with this issue of security certificates at that time.

We heard from many witnesses at the time. The committee travelled across Canada, discussing this issue and other issues of citizenship and immigration. We could not believe there would be people in Canada who were not charged and imprisoned. They were simply held without charges for unspecified periods of time.

We also had some recommendations in the committee report to look at these people and have them either charged and processed through the criminal court or released and returned to a country that was safe, or look at a third country alternative.

Could the member explain to us how his constituents view this, not charging anyone and detaining them for unspecified periods of time serves democracy today?

[Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, November 19th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I have had the pleasure of serving on the citizenship and immigration committee with the hon. member for Kitchener—Waterloo and other members in the House. I know that he is very seriously involved on this file.

He mentioned that there are six people right now under security certificates in Canada, of which five are out on bail and one is in jail. Could he give us more information on the length of stay under the security certificates? This has been shown to have been a problem in the past.

[Criminal Code, June 19th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I heard the hon. member for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound talk about a number of issues in this bill.

First, what is somewhat of a surprise is the Conservatives cannot see that their image of being tough on crime in this bill will be very soft on crime. Second, maybe the member can respond to this. If he removes the m's for millions and the b's for billions, would he still have the registry or not?

[Republic of Macedonia Recognition Act, May 16th, 2007]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-443, An Act to recognize the Republic of Macedonia.

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to ask the government to recognize the Republic of Macedonia under its constitutional name, which is the Republic of Macedonia and no other.

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