Bill C-11 (Historical)

Immigration and Refugee Protection Act

An Act respecting immigration to Canada and the granting of refugee protection to persons who are displaced, persecuted or in danger

Immigration

[Art Hanger, Canadian Alliance, Calgary Northeast, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the minister continually hides behind Bill C-11 as the panacea to fix this problem. Yet the problem time and time again centres around the administration of what is in the present act and the enforcement of such. That is the problem.

Two days ago Sergeant Philippe Lapierre of the RCMP's counterterrorism section said at a conference on money laundering in Ottawa that terrorists in Canada follow a similar pattern. Here is an authority who says--

[Elinor Caplan, Liberal, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, in fact Bill C-11 gives us the tools that we need to be able to tell those who are inadmissible to Canada that they will have to leave Canada more quickly. It gives us the ability to do that.

We received the additional resources to implement the bill. The member knows full well that what she has said is false. Bill C-11 is a complete overhaul. It will do the job for Canadians.

[Lynne Yelich, Canadian Alliance, Blackstrap, SK]

Mr. Speaker, the former ambassador said:

Bill C-11 is a disaster. It plays into the hands of professional smugglers. It leaves Canada wide open for easy entry of undesirables. It seems designed to ensure that the bad buys can never be sent home.

We agree.

When will the minister admit that her legislation is out of step with reality?

[Elinor Caplan, Liberal, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, the member sat through the hearings at committee. On no occasion did she suggest the bill was not tough enough. In fact everything we heard from that party and that member was that Bill C-11 was too tough.

It is a tough bill. It is a complete overhaul of the immigration and refugee determination system. It will allow us to be faster, while we continue to be fair to those who come to us and ask for protection. I reject absolutely the characterization that the member has put on the record.

[Lynne Yelich, Canadian Alliance, Blackstrap, SK]

Mr. Speaker, let me quote from a former Canadian ambassador, who said:

Bill C-11 will make it easier for asylum seekers to enter Canada and much more difficult to remove them after they get in. In normal circumstances, this failure would be deplorable. After September 11th, refusal to implement immediate reform of our system borders on criminal irresponsibility.

Will the minister accept responsibility for this bill which threatens the integrity of our immigration system?

Anti-Terrorism Legislation

[Elinor Caplan, Liberal, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, we are making the system work better and faster. We are keeping it fair. I want the member to know that whenever we have a concern about the identity of an individual, we can and we do detain. That is in the existing act and it is also in Bill C-11. He is creating the wrong impression.

[Elinor Caplan, Liberal, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, the Government of Canada will never allow terrorists to hurt our commitment and our humanitarian tradition to help those who are in genuine need of our protection. We stand firm on that.

However we recognized that the immigration and refugee protection act needed amendment and I brought that forward. We believe that Bill C-11 gives us the tools to determine who is in genuine need of our protection and who is not, factored in a fair way. We want to be able to remove those who are inadmissible to Canada as quickly as possible.

[Elinor Caplan, Liberal, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, we are taking steps to improve the integrity of both the refugee determination and the immigration system. Bill C-11 requires security screening for refugees at the first instance. That is the first step in the procedure. The new legislation stops repeat claims, which was an abuse and we recognized that. It also clogged up the system.

The minister will be able to intervene in cases where we believe someone is inadmissible to Canada. The inadmissibility provisions in Canada state that if someone poses a security threat, is a criminal or a terrorist, the person is inadmissible to Canada. If we have evidence--

Anti-Terrorism Act

[Stephen Owen, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to support Bill C-36 this evening. I add my voice to the many voices from all sides and corners of the House that have spoken of the importance of the bill which is meant to address incredibly foundational issues touching our democracy at this time.

I will talk a bit about the Canadian response, the challenge of facing terror in a democracy, the measured response the bill presents and the areas of review we will be entering into in the House and in committee.

The Canadian response to the evil of September 11 has been widespread and has unified us as a country although we have heard different expressions of how we should respond. I and my constituents in Vancouver Quadra join all Canadians in expressing our horror and deep felt sympathy for the families of the victims.

Our response, starting with the some 30,000 passengers diverted from American flights to Canada on September 11, has been extraordinary. That has been recognized across the United States and around the world. Canadians did not know at the time whether the planes harboured terrorists, had bombs on board or were a threat to Canada but we willingly opened our skies and airports to take those people in.

On September 14, 100,000 Canadians met on Parliament Hill to express their deep concern and sadness over the evil event. Within a day of the horror of September 11, ministers across a whole range of departments were working to add new resources and expedite and tighten up security measures to deal with the new reality.

In the House we have had more than 60 hours of debate on various aspects of the terror and our response to it. In all the debate there has been a common cause: to ensure we reach a proper balance in our democracy between security and freedom in the face of this type of terror. That is the challenge in front of us. It is a challenge Bill C-36 tries to address.

The balance is a delicate one. There can be no democracy without security. There can be no freedom without security. If we have only security we are imprisoned. There can be no security unless we have freedom, otherwise we have anarchy. This delicate balance must respect the reality of the times, and the times have changed for us all as the reality of September 11 has struck home.

It is the section 1 limits of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that we must turn our attention to in Bill C-36. Our rights and freedoms are subject to “such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society”. We must always keep that limitation in mind as we measure our response.

Bill C-36 is complementary to a whole range of other initiatives and pieces of legislation. It would complement and add to the criminal code which covers the whole range of offences a terrorist might commit. However it specifically focuses on terrorism. It would supplement and build on the initiatives set out in Bill C-24, the organized crime legislation passed by the House in the spring.

Bill C-36 would add breadth, strength and definition to the provisions of the United Nations Act which allows us by regulation to implement United Nations security council resolutions. It would also build on the Immigration Act and give more definition to the provisions of Bill C-11 on immigration.

In terms of our international responsibilities and our responsibilities to our neighbours in the United States, Bill C-36 would allow us to ratify and implement the last two international conventions on terrorism: the international convention for the suppression of terrorist bombings and the international convention for the suppression of terrorist financing. This would bring us into the position of having ratified and implemented all 12 UN conventions on terrorism. That is immensely important.

It is also important that Bill C-36 would build on the hate propaganda provisions of the criminal code. It would make hate propaganda a crime and allow it to be deleted from public Internet sites.

Bill C-36 would build on the money laundering and proceeds of crime legislation we have in place to deal with criminal organizations. This legislation deals mainly with enterprise crime but could clearly be focused on terrorist organizations.

Bill C-36 is a measured response and an immensely important part of the democratic exercise we are involved in. Its balance is shown by a whole range of ministerial responsibilities. We would need the permission of the attorney general before initiating the investigative hearings, the preventive arrest provisions or the Canada Evidence Act certification which would allow the CSE to intercept communications which are targeted at foreign sources but enter Canadian airwaves.

The listing provision would need the recommendation of the solicitor general and the approval of cabinet. It would need to be reviewed every two years and could be challenged by the courts in judicial review.

As well, judicial oversight is woven into the whole bill. Investigative hearings reviewing the listing and preventive arrest provisions within 24 hours of being brought before a judge would provide effective judicial oversight.

Most important, the legislation comes out of the collective wisdom of the House as expressed over the last 30 days. There are issues that are still open for serious debate, and the Prime Minister and Minister of Justice have indicated their intention and desire that the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights review these concerns in detail and provide further advice.

These will touch in particular on the important new provisions regarding preventive arrest, investigative hearings, the whole process of listing and delisting, parliamentary review, and the definition of terror. This is the first time terror has been defined and it is an immensely important centerpiece of the legislation.

It has been suggested in the House that some of the provisions, particularly the new ones, be made sunset clauses. The Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights will be considering ways in which the legislation can be properly tracked over the next short period of time to consider whether it is achieving its objective, whether there are unintended consequences or whether there should be amendments.

I am confident in supporting Bill C-36 that it responds to the common objective and common cause of every member of the House: to deal with the horror and evil of terrorism in our democracy in a way that finds the proper balance between security and freedom.

Terrorism

[Elinor Caplan, Liberal, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-11, which is before the Senate at this time, does exactly what the member opposite is saying today that he would like to see happen: streamline our procedures and make it more easy and more efficient for us to be able to remove those by denying access to the IRB and by removing appeal rights.

They voted against the bill. Further, they tried to reinstate appeal rights for security tests to Canada. They cannot have it both ways.

[Elinor Caplan, Liberal, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, the fact is that in Bill C-11 we have actually eliminated the right to an appeal of the immigration appeal division for those who pose a security threat to Canada.

Do members know what happened on June 4? That member and members of the opposition voted to restore the appeal rights to make it more difficult for us to pursue those who pose a security threat to Canada. That is the fact.

Privilege

[Steve Mahoney, Liberal, Mississauga West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, unlike many of the debates that we have in this place, this is an issue that Canadians are fairly seized with. The number one question that most Canadians would ask is: How will this affect me? Will this bill give broad sweeping police powers to the state and interfere in my everyday activity, or is this a bill that will provide safety and security for me and my family?

It is important that we discuss this bill in the context of both of those questions. Bill C-36 is in fact an anti-terrorist bill. It is not an anti-immigrant bill, anti-refugee bill, anti-Muslim bill, anti-Afghani bill, anti-Pakistani bill, or anti any of those things because if it were it would truly be anti-Canadian. Unfortunately the debate around this entire issue is in some quarters, mostly the media, focused on this aspect.

There have been many times in this place when my friends opposite and I have disagreed, sparred and had vociferous debates. However this is a time when parliamentarians an all sides of the House have shown that their number one concern is for the safety of Canada.

I congratulate the Leader of the Opposition and the other leaders of the opposition, even the leader of the NDP. Even though we may not agree with her particular position on this matter, there is a constituency within Canada that shares her viewpoint. This democratic place called parliament is the place where those kinds of countering viewpoints need to be put forward.

I am interested in some of the suggestions made by the previous speaker regarding sunsetting. There is a section of the bill that requires it to be revisited and redebated in three years time. Whether it is an automatic review in three years or a cancellation of certain policies, unless they are reaffirmed in this place they are all issues that can be fairly and effectively dealt with in committee. They are technical aspects as to whether or not certain search and seizure aspects of the law should be continued or discontinued.

Should there be a wiretap that lasts one year instead of 90 days? Should there be intrusive abilities to monitor situations within this country, abilities that we would probably not have supported on September 10 of this year?

Since September 11 we have had to look at life through a different prism. Canadians are frightened and justifiably so. However, what concerns me is some of the hysteria that has literally thrown gasoline on an open flame.

I refer to recent allegations in the media last week which said that 50 refugees from Afghanistan and Pakistan had been allowed into the country without any security checks whatsoever. I can say that the switchboard, if we want to call it that, in my constituency office lit up. People were concerned and outraged as to how this could happen.

I too was concerned as to how we would allow someone in, particularly today but at any time in our history, without a reasonable security check and so I investigated. What did I find? I found that there was not one refugee from Afghanistan or Pakistan.

On that given day at Pearson airport there were indeed 29 people who applied for refugee status, which is not an unusual occurrence. The largest volume of refugees come through Pearson airport. Each and every one of those people was fingerprinted, photographed, checked through CSIS and cross-checked through the RCMP. No one was allowed to enter the country without a security check.

I will not be critical of anyone in particular in this case. However some members have said that when refugees come to this country and are a security risk or a flight risk, meaning they will not turn up for their hearing, then they should be detained. They are detained if those determinations are made.

I can take anyone who wants to go to a number of motels in the Brampton-Mississauga community that have been acquired as detention centres by the federal government to see families languishing. If there is a problem in our refugee system, and there is, it is in the length of time it takes to process the applications to provide a fair hearing.

We believe that Bill C-11, which will be before the House after it passes through the Senate, would help in that regard because it would allow single person panels instead of the three people needed to hold the hearings now. That should triple the number of hearings and should speed up the process dramatically. That is a case of human rights that need not interfere with this bill or any bill that targets anti-terrorism.

I wholeheartedly support Bill C-36. It is a response that our government has put forward in a timely, thoughtful and well researched way which says to Canadians that the government will fight terrorism with its friends in America, Great Britain and around the world. We will stand united as members of NATO as we have in other conflicts in the world.

A clause was invoked as part of our agreement with NATO known as article 5. Article 5 states that when a member of NATO is attacked all members are attacked. It is an all for one clause. If any Canadian falls through the cracks of discrimination in our zealous attempt to fight terrorism, the attack on that individual Canadian citizen is an attack on all of us. I caution that it can and does happen.

Let me share with the House the experience of a gentleman by the name of Mohamed Abdel-Aziz Attiah who was an engineer on contract with AECL at Chalk River. He was a Canadian citizen for 27 years. He is married to a Canadian citizen and has four children born in Canada. He moved from Mississauga to work at the Chalk River facility.

He was interviewed recently by CSIS and the RCMP for 90 minutes after which there were no charges, but because his name was Mohamed Abdel-Aziz Attiah they remained suspicious. They were concerned about security. There were no charges laid against the individual but after he went out for lunch and arrived back at the facility that he had worked at for some time, and at which he was being offered a permanent position, he found that his security card had been cancelled with no explanation and no reason. Today he languishes without a job, without an income and with a wife and four children, trying to understand.

Is it because of his name and heritage that he was fired? He asks what he did wrong. They trusted him before September 11. He wants to know why they do not trust him now. Is it because his name is Mohamed?

I know no one in this place would support that, yet it is a current case. It is an unjust case and in passing an anti-terrorism bill we must ensure that people like Mohamed and others are not discriminated against. This is not McCarthyism in the 1950s. It is clearly a united attack against terrorism that can come in any nationality, any skin colour and from anywhere in the world, even right here in Canada.

Citizenship and Immigration

[Elinor Caplan, Liberal, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, I will be very clear in my answer.

In the existing immigration bill and in Bill C-11 the ability to negotiate a bilateral safe third agreement is there. A number of years ago there were discussions but given the fact that more than 40% of refugee claimants in Canada come to Canada through the United States, the United States was not interested in pursuing that agreement.

Immigration

[Elinor Caplan, Liberal, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, after the events of September 11 I instructed my department to intensify security screening at our ports of entry. This was purely an operational matter within the legislative scope that is available under the current law, requiring no new legislative authority.

While the current law does have grounds to bar access to the refugee determination system, it does require multiple steps and poses significant delays. That is why with Bill C-11 we have streamlined so that those who are eligible to make a claim will be identified--

[Roger Gallaway, Liberal, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in a September 26 CBC radio interview the minister of immigration said she had given the order to do indepth security screening of entrants. She said this had begun and that they had not waited for Bill C-11.

Could the minister of immigration tell us, since Bill C-11 has not passed, under what or whose authority she is acting?