Citizenship and Immigration committee  Another motive for the year's detention stems back to what happened to the first boat from China that arrived here in the mid-nineties. A boatload of asylum seekers arrived from China and they were all released. None of them showed up for their board hearing and we have no idea w

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In the case of the Roma people in eastern Europe, I've served in the Balkans in eastern Europe, which has a large Roma population. Clearly they are being discriminated against, but discrimination is not persecution. If you start considering everybody who is discriminated against

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Taxpayers should be very concerned about it, but taxpayers assume, as they do, and probably just as well, that the government is acting in their interest. Refugee policy is not something the average Canadians think about or are concerned about. They make the assumption that the g

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. I think the safe third country agreement signed with the Americans was deeply flawed. The Americans know as much about our refugee policy as we do. They were aware that if they had a safe third country agreement, they would get stuck with thousands of people who had relativ

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, I am. I don't agree with the cost. I did my own calculations, and it's fairly simple arithmetic. In 2008, there was a backlog of 60,000 asylum seekers here. The department tells us that it costs $50,000 a year to look after one failed asylum seeker. If you have 60,000, tim

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The European figures have been magnified somewhat by the movement of Roma people from the Czech Republic and Hungary. That started back in 1994, actually, and it has continued ever since. Thousands, I would guess close to 15,000 Roma people, have arrived in Canada. A very high pe

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Okay. I think there are some good parts to this bill that have to be supported, but my concern is that it doesn't go far enough. This new bill will not work unless it has a system for screening out, at the front end, those people who obviously are not refugees and who do not hav

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm going to read my statement today in the interest of time. I'm not going to talk this morning about how terribly expensive our current asylum system is, or how it encourages human smuggling, or how it presents a serious security threat to Canada, or how it undermines our imm

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I certainly disagree with Mr. Brouwer about Muslim immigration, and my focus on that is a human rights issue. Anybody who can read the newspapers these days or watch television knows where the terrorist acts are occurring and who is doing them. Europe has given us an example. If

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Some do health. I said criminal and security.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As far as I know, they don't have any criminal checks or security checks. If they're working in health-related occupations, they do have to have a health test.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, I can't tell you, but I get this from Muslim friends of mine who are in a position to know. I can name them, and I'm quite sure they could tell you the names of the mosques, and be willing to. Salim Mansur, who is a professor at Western University, is one who is—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There was only one that I can think of, who was eventually actually removed. I forget his name. He was alleged to be an Iranian agent and was ordered deported. That's the only one I can recall.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, that's not the case. But the numbers were lower through the 1970s and 1980s. The largest number that came to Canada was in 1913, we had some 400,000 people come here.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We weren't checking them at all. We were sending them out to the prairies.