Mr. Speaker, we worked long hours at committee, but we appreciated the couple of amendments that did mitigate the possible damage we saw within the bill. However, as I look at the legislation we already have in place, I wonder why need the proposed legislation.
In 2011, legislation that was praised by the minister of education, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, actually addressed the issues that the government says it is trying to address. In fact, Professor Audrey Macklin had this to say:
I think that the Balanced Refugee Reform Act seemed to address many of the legitimate policy objectives that the government seeks to attain under Bill C-31. What Bill C-31 adds to it are provisions that are unconstitutional, and from a policy perspective, I think, problematic and unlikely to achieve what they claim.
There are some significant concerns that the opposition has with the legislation, and not just in relation to this bill. One of the key areas of concern is where the Conservative government seems to be moving, and it is not toward parliamentary democracy. It is becoming very difficult for parliamentarians to debate key issues because more and more power is rested in the hands of ministers, and in this case, the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism. That is a very dangerous precedent. It is not a road we should go down.
We, as parliamentarians, get elected and the opposition has a critical role to play. The role of the opposition is to hold the government accountable and all members of parliament should be able debate legislation. However, in this legislation, more power is given to the minister. It is more power than the minister already has, which, by the way, is far more than any minister should have, regardless of political party. I am not speaking against the minister, but against the power that would be vested in any minister.
This power used to belong to an independent panel of experts, and the opposition agreed with that. We were in full agreement with that in the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, which had an independent panel of experts. It was a panel, independent of government, that would make the designations of so-called “safe countries”.
Here we are once again with the arrogance of the Conservative government. It is trying to put more and more power into the hands of its ministers to escape the scrutiny that any legislation or any changes to areas such as immigration deserve. We have considerable concern with this.
I think we have agreement, and even with members on the government side at committee stage, that none of us can guarantee that there is one country that is absolutely safe for all citizens. Even democratic countries have human rights violations and sometimes incidents that would fall under the legitimate UN resolutions to protect people from persecution.
For example, Mexico is a democratic country. However, we know that the LGBT community in Mexico comes under considerable persecution and that has been recognized with the number of asylum seekers accepted from Mexico.
Chantal Desloges, an immigration lawyer, had this to say:
I have major concerns that concentrating the power of the DCO list only within the ministry and not consulting a panel of experts is wrong, because it opens the system to major political influence.
In the previous incarnation of this bill, the DCO list was decided by a panel of experts, and as a professional, I would be comfortable with that. However, leaving that decision to the sole discretion of the ministry is not a good idea.
We are not making this stuff up. We have heard witness after witness say that the concentration of power in the hands of the minister was absolutely the wrong way to go.
When we look at the legislation, it also violates international conventions, to which Canada is signatory, by providing mechanisms for the government to indiscriminately designate and subsequently imprison bona fide refugees, including children, for up to one year.
Liberty is something we value. We will cases in Canada where asylum seekers who, as my colleague pointed out, do not come here on a cruise ship. They endanger their own lives because it is more dangerous for them to stay where they are. They come to our country to seek refuge. By the way, under a UN convention, to which we are a signatory, they are doing something that is perfectly legitimate. They are coming to our country to seek asylum.
Once those asylum seekers, if they should arrive by ship, are in our country in numbers of two or more, what will we do to them? Remember, these people are not escaping from affluent lifestyles. We are talking about people who might have been on the run for a long time and are willing to risk their lives and leave their loved ones behind to escape to find a safe haven.
What does a safe haven do for them? As soon as they land, we tell them that we will imprison them. I will use that word because we do not have enough detention centres. We heard witnesses testify that even, today, on any given day, some people end up in provincial jails. For example, British Columbia has no detention centres, so irregular refugees would be placed in a regular jail. Guess what? If they are 16 years of age or older, they will be placed in jail as well. I do not know about other members, but I know that when my son, who is now close to 30, was 16, I certainly did not think he was an adult. Sometimes I wonder about even now, but that is beside the point.
For children under the age of 16, we were absolutely pleased when we first heard the minister say that accommodations would be made for them. However, when I heard what that accommodation was, I thought, what kind of choice was that. The accommodation is that the parents will have a choice. They can give their child up to provincial agencies or they can keep them with them in prison.
If they are escaping from the kind of life-and-death situations that we have heard about, stories of rape and other horrible situations, then we are telling them that they can give their children to absolute strangers or they can keep them in prison with them. That is absolutely not a choice. It is a shameful way for us to treat arrivals into our country.
I want to expand on this a bit. The NDP, the official opposition, was absolutely clear. We know that when people arrive, we need to have identification. We also tried to move amendments that once the checks had been done and they were not considered a threat to the country, they would be released. We did not get that. For up to a year, these people will be kept in a prison, and once again we have to trust the minister may do this.
If we have learned anything, we should learn from the experiences of others. In testimony from Australia, we heard the kind of emotional and financial costs and also the long-term costs to society to which this kind of a detainment could lead. We cannot ignore the experiences of other countries.
Being a teacher, I am always very hopeful that we will learn from mistakes made by others. I am pleading that we do not make the same mistakes and then end up with social costs to our communities. It is very difficult to feel welcomed and then to get engaged in nation-building and to really be productive in their community when the first thing people face is prison for up to a year. It is not a way to treat children. Also, as members know, there are other costs to the health care system as well.