Bill C-11 (Historical)

Balanced Refugee Reform Act

An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the Federal Courts Act

This enactment amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, primarily in respect of the processing of refugee claims referred to the Immigration and Refugee Board. In particular, the enactment
(a) provides for the referral of a refugee claimant to an interview with an Immigration and Refugee Board official, who is to collect information and schedule a hearing before the Refugee Protection Division;
(b) provides that the members of the Refugee Protection Division are appointed in accordance with the Public Service Employment Act;
(c) provides for the coming into force, no more than two years after the day on which the enactment receives royal assent, of the provisions of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that permit a claimant to appeal a decision of the Refugee Protection Division to the Refugee Appeal Division;
(d) authorizes the Minister to designate, in accordance with the process and criteria established by the regulations certain countries, parts of countries or classes of nationals;
(e) provides clarification with respect to the type of evidence that may be put before the Refugee Appeal Division and the circumstances in which that Division may hold a hearing;
(f) prohibits a person whose claim for refugee protection has been rejected from applying for a temporary resident permit or applying to the Minister for protection if less than 12 months have passed since their claim was rejected;
(g) authorizes the Minister, in respect of applications for protection, to exempt nationals, or classes of nationals, of a country or part of a country from the 12-month prohibition;
(h) provides clarification with respect to the Minister’s authority to grant permanent resident status or an exemption from any obligations of the Act on humanitarian and compassionate grounds or on public policy grounds;
(i) limits the circumstances in which the Minister may examine requests for permanent resident status or for an exemption from any obligations of the Act on humanitarian and compassionate grounds; and
(j) enacts transitional provisions respecting the processing of pending claims by the Minister or the Immigration and Refugee Board.
The enactment also amends the Federal Courts Act to increase the number of Federal Court judges.

Preventing Human Smugglers From Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to participate in the debate today on Bill C-49, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act and the Marine Transportation Security Act. In the tradition of the government, it has given it a nickname, the Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act.

Once again, as has been the case with all of the nicknames that it has come up with, it is a very misleading nickname because this bill really affects refugees far more than it will ever affect those who engage in human smuggling.

It is unfortunate with this bill that we have seen a real setback in the kind of progress we have made in this Parliament on immigration and refugee issues. We had a great example of co-operation, of cross-party co-operation, and government and opposition co-operation, with Bill C-11, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, which passed unanimously in this House back in June. That was a place where the government introduced a bill to address issues it saw with the refugee determination process in Canada, in an attempt to make it more efficient, to speed it up and to address some of the problems existing in that process.

The opposition had trouble with that bill, but because there was an openness to dealing with the questions that the opposition had, a better bill was created. Unanimity was found, a rare thing in this minority Parliament, and I was hopeful about that kind of process. We saw, in one of the few occasions since it has come to power in the last two Parliaments, the government's willingness to actually work with others to craft a better bill, and that is what we ended up with.

Now we are set back with Bill C-49, which takes us back and tries to reopen some of the issues that the government apparently resolved back in Bill C-11. It is trying to reopen some of the issues on which it forged a compromise with the opposition parties back in the spring in this place.

That is very troubling. It seems that when we do the job that Canadians sent us here to do, to talk to each other, to do the things that are best for Canadians, when we finally have that opportunity, the government wants to turn its back on that development in a very dramatic way by reintroducing another bill that reforms a piece of legislation we just dealt with in June.

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would not call them second class. I would call them no class. That is clear.

At the beginning, I said that this was really three bills. The first part of the bill, the one called An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, seems to be intended to propose amendments to Bill C-11, which is the bill that my colleague across the floor just mentioned. This was a bill in which we tried to bring balance to the way that the bill was going forward.

What Bill C-49 does to Bill C-11, under the guise of catching smugglers, is to change how Bill C-11 works. It changes how would-be refugees are accepted into the system in Canada; it changes this radically and people ought to know.

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am rising in the House once again, this time to participate in today's debate about Bill C-49, which affects three laws: first, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act—which means revisiting Bill C-11; second, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act—and I wonder if it really is balanced; and third, the Marine Transportation Security Act.

This bills aims to correct an illegal situation. It really is a government's responsibility to protect its border security. Security is clearly a critical issue for the entire world.

I would like to refer to certain international documents, agreements that Canada has signed, thus agreeing to be fully accountable for implementing their contents.

First, I would like to remind members that Canada signed the 1951 Geneva convention. It is also signed the protocol stipulating that individuals who have been victims of persecution since 1951 must also be subject to the Geneva convention. I will obviously come back to this during my speech.

The Geneva convention and the protocol that followed are the reasons why our refugee acceptance system was created. This system, despite its faults and weaknesses, and there are some, has become a model for industrialized countries.

This bill proposes a number of clauses that would punish smugglers, those who profit from the poor people who are trying to flee their country and come to Canada to live a life free of terror, discrimination, rape and killing. These smugglers receive enormous amounts of money and they violate international laws as well as our own Canadian laws.

In response to that, Bill C-49 proposes a substantial fine, for example a fine of $1 million for any criminal organization guilty of inducing, aiding or abetting a group of people to illegally enter Canada. That is from subclause 117(3), as it would be amended by the bill.

This amount depends on the number of people arriving in the group. The offenders could also receive a life sentence.

That is an improvement, in my opinion.

These clauses can certainly act as a real deterrent for smugglers hoping to bring groups of people illegally into Canada. Still, I would suggest that impounding the vessel or ship on which they come would be an additional deterrent to these smugglers. The price of smuggling then would become exorbitant and the loss of the vessel a real economic loss.

We also wish to congratulate the minister on his intention to work with local police forces in the home countries of human smugglers.

That aspect is not included in the bill, but is an important part of any concrete action.

Refugee claimants are not criminals. How many times must we repeat this? However, Bill C-49 treats them as if they were guilty of crimes, and again, this is what the bill suggests throughout the first part of it. Why are there only five sections of Bill C-49 that impact smugglers and twelve sections that impact refugees? We thought it was about smugglers. In fact, it is about changing the Canadian law, after study, which admits prospective refugees.

Another question I have is, why is this bill sponsored by the minister responsible for public safety and national security? Is it because the Conservative government wants to give Canadians the impression that refugee claimants pose a security threat? It tried to do this with the ship that arrived off the coast of British Columbia a few weeks ago, when in fact we see several weeks later that not one person has been held because he or she is a terrorist, yet the rumour goes on.

The people who are on these ships, or whatever mode of transport they use, are seeking safety and a good life in Canada. It is not their intention to break any international or Canadian law, yet the government presumes that they do so when it decides, through a bill like Bill C-49, to detain all the individuals designated as irregular arrivals. Irregular arrivals are those people who arrive in groups larger than, one would suppose, just a man, his wife and his children.

In this way, Bill C-49 is in direct violation of section 11(g) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which states that an individual is “not to be found guilty on account of any act or omission unless, at the time of the act or omission, it constituted an offence under Canadian or international law or was criminal according to the general principles of law recognized by the community of nations”.

These refugee claimants, these people who flee in exile, include women, elderly people, young children, men and quite often, as we have learned, even pregnant women.

As a signatory to the Geneva convention, Canada is duty bound to protect these claimants. But instead, Bill C-49 would have them immediately detained. Let us be clear: “detained” is a nicer way of saying “imprisoned” or “incarcerated”.

This is contrary to article 31(1) of the Geneva convention, which states, “The contracting states shall not impose penalties...provided [the refugees] present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence.”

Even if we agreed that detention is required, the length set out by Bill C-49 also goes against article 31(2), which states, “The contracting states shall not apply to the movements of such refugees restrictions other than those which are necessary and such restrictions shall only be applied until their status in the country is regularized. The Contracting States shall allow such refugees a reasonable period... ”

I would like to emphasize the word “reasonable”.

But this bill proposes keeping these people in prison, until their identity can be proven, for up to one year.

Those of us who have worked with refugees and for refugees know that quite often, these vulnerable people have had to leave very suddenly and cannot always bring their official documents to prove their identity.

I should also remind hon. members that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, of which we are all so proud, protects any person present on Canadian soil, regardless of their citizenship.

What about the negative consequences of detention on these people? As I was saying earlier, among these refugees we often see older people, very young children and pregnant women. Often they have been tortured, raped or abused in their country. They received no protection in their own country and they fled.

They did not receive protection from the smugglers during the dangerous voyage, but they had hope. When they arrive in Canada, despite what they might expect, they are not entitled to protection from the Canadian authorities either.

How do we explain to these young children why they are prison? What crime did they commit?

I would like to read from the Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989. Section 40(2)(a) of this convention stipulates that:

No child shall be alleged as, be accused of, or recognized as having infringed the penal law by reason of acts or omissions that were not prohibited by national or international law at the time they were committed;

How do we explain this clear violation to them?

Section 9 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms states:

Everyone has the right not to be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned.

However, under clause 20 of the new Bill C-49:

The Minister may, by order, having regard to the public interest, designate as an irregular arrival the arrival in Canada of a group of persons...

And, under clause 55 of the same bill:

If a designation is made under subsection 20.1(1), an officer must

(a) detain, on their entry into Canada, a foreign national who, as a result of the designation, is a designated foreign national;

or

(b) arrest and detain...

This is clearly an arbitrary detention.

It is regrettable that under clause 110, no appeal may be made by a refugee claimant in respect of a decision of the Refugee Protection Division. In Canada, even common criminals have the right to appeal a judge's decision.

Our humanitarian tradition that allows individuals the right to appeal decisions is entrenched, or I thought it was. Even Bill C-11, tabled in Parliament by the same minister, respected this right.

Bill C-49 also has hidden consequences. For example, section 11 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, as amended, would state that the designated foreign national may not make an application for permanent residence until five years have elapsed. Subsection 25. (1.01) of the same amended act would also state that the foreign national may not make an application until five years have elapsed. It is clear; it is stated twice in the bill.

Let us figure it out. When people arrive in Canada they are held for one year to prove their identity. The applicant may become a designated refugee, if all goes well. At that point, he must wait five years before making an application for permanent residence. Why? When the Immigration and Refugee Board establishes that someone is a refugee, that person is permitted to apply immediately for permanent residence in Canada. After the five years, if all goes well, the person applies but does not immediately become a permanent resident. We know it, I know it and everyone with immigrants in their riding knows it as well: two or three years may elapse before the government responds to the application. I estimate, and I do not believe I am exaggerating, that someone could wait up to 10 years before receiving permanent residence status in Canada.

During these 10 years not only he but his entire family will be in limbo, not knowing how life will unravel.

An irregular or designated refugee will therefore have to wait 10 years before being able to sponsor his or her family. Those are the hidden consequences of Bill C-49. Refugees cannot sponsor their families before becoming permanent residents of Canada. Given that they will not have the right to travel outside Canada during the entire period, they also will not be able to visit their spouse or children. That comes from a government that boasts about protecting family values. These family values are certainly not protected. Quite the opposite.

Amendments to the current immigration law proposed under Bill C-49 further consolidate the minister's legal authority to suspend an application for the consideration of any type of status, for example refugee status or even to be heard on humanitarian and compassionate grounds for access to Canada's protection, for a full five years. Let us not forget the individual would have already spent 12 months in jail, called detention, even before the government would look at the case. All these delays would be based on whatever the government deems to be the grounds for public policy. This amendment would then become part of section 25 of the IRPA as amended under Bill C-11.

This means that the timeline we just suggested, these 10 years, is the best-case scenario. It is not the scenario where the person is sent back or is refused anything in Canada. It is a scenario where he thinks he is going to stay, 10 years of limbo if the minister decides not to intervene.

Let us go back in time. Bill C-49 brings us back to the time of the Chinese exclusion act, the act that caused Chinese men to live their lives here in Canada without their wives, without their families. In fact many of these men never saw their families again. It caused economic hardship.

This is what caused the Canadian people to say they would not continue this, and this is when the concept of family reunification came in, when Canadians decided it was cruel to allow people, men and women, to stay here in Canada as Canadians and yet separate them from their families, wives, husbands and children, for we did not know how long.

Lo and behold, it was a Conservative prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, who had the act repealed in 1947. How unfortunate that the present Conservative government cannot continue this humanitarian tradition.

Let us go back in time again to 1986—

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand today in support of Bill C-49, an act to prevent human smugglers from abusing Canada's immigration system.

Human smuggling is a transitional criminal enterprise that spans the globe and Interpol says that it is a growing global phenomena. This form of illegal commercial migration is very dangerous and it exploits those individuals who are captured within it. Human smugglers consider their passengers to be little more than cargo and the boats on which they carry their passengers are like nightmarish prisons.

Migrants are typically stranded at sea, on an overcrowded boat, with unsanitary and unsafe conditions. These conditions often lead to severe illness or cause fatal accidents. As a result of these inhumane conditions, people die in human smuggling operations every year. Nevertheless, many illegal migrants decide to risk their lives and undertake this perilous journey for their destination country.

By charging people large sums of money for their transportation, human smugglers have made a lucrative business out of facilitating illegal migration, often by counselling smuggled persons to claim asylum in the country to which they are smuggled. Once they arrive in their destination country, these migrants are often at the mercy of their human smugglers and forced to work for years in the illegal labour market just to pay off their debts to their smuggler.

The arrival of the MV Sun Sea and the Ocean Lady in a period of less than 12 months is a clear indication that Canada is becoming a favoured destination for these human smuggling networks. Interpol says that human smuggling syndicates benefit from weak legislation and low risk of detection, prosecutions and arrests compared to other transnational organized crimes. If we do not take strong action now, more vessels will arrive and more lives will be put at risk. We cannot just stand by and allow these exploitative operations to continue.

This legislation would enable us to crack down on the despicable human smugglers who prey on these vulnerable migrants, but it also aims to stop those tempted to use this perilous form of migration by introducing several disincentives.

A key disincentive is that those arriving as a result of a designated smuggling event would not be able to apply for permanent residency for a period of up to five years. This would apply whether they are found to be in need of protection or not. During this five year period, persons found to be in need of protection would be restricted from travelling outside of Canada and would be unable to apply for permanent residency to Canada through other means. As a result, they would not be eligible to sponsor family members into Canada or become Canadian citizens during that time period.

The legislation also proposes mandatory detention for up to one year, which would also help ensure the safety and the security of Canadians.

When these migrants arrive on our shores, we have no idea who they are or where they are from. Often, they arrive without proper documentation and we do not whether they are criminals or terrorists who pose a threat to our safety and our security. Mandatory detentions would allow us to properly verify and confirm the identities of individuals to determine whether they are in fact admissible to Canada or whether they are involved in some form of illegal activity. This proposal is entirely within reason and it is fair.

The government's priority is, first and foremost, to protect the safety and the security of Canadians. This is the least that Canadians can expect from their government.

We are also taking measures to ensure that these individuals have access to fewer Canadian benefits. As we all know, Canadians enjoy health services that are among the best and most generous in the world. We need to ensure that illegal migrants are not receiving health coverage that is more generous than what is offered to other Canadians. It certainly will not happen under this government.

Currently, asylum seekers, resettled refugees, failed asylum seekers awaiting removal, detained individuals and victims of trafficking are provided with temporary health coverage through the interim federal health program.

Under these proposed changes, the scope of the services provided under the IFH program would be limited for those who arrive in Canada illegally via human smuggling operations. They would receive only basic coverage, including medically necessary care and immigration medical exams that refugee claimants must take upon their arrival in order to ensure they do not pose a risk to public health or safety.

Canada's generosity should not make us a target for criminal activity such as smuggling operations. We must remove the incentives for people seeking to come here by way of human smuggling. In doing so, we will uphold the integrity of our immigration and refugee process and our programs and ensure that the safety and security of Canadians is put into place.

This has certainly taken the attention of the public over the past 12 months. We have seen two ships arrive in our country for the purposes of smuggling, which is why the scope of the bill needs to be implemented. I have heard opposition members claim that this bill is some sort of a knee-jerk reaction to what has happened. I find that compelling in a way because, if this were a reaction to what had happened, then they would have to argue that we are actually about 11 months late introducing this legislation.

This legislation was put together over the past series of months to ensure that we have legislation that is strong, that is certainly consistent with the charter and with our Constitution, and, most important, that is consistent with the feelings and the positions that Canadians have held on this issue across our country.

There is no doubt that the issue in itself is a difficult one. We all know and, as members of Parliament, we have listened to the positions, arguments and stories in our ridings of refugees who have claimed asylum. We have heard them say that they needed to come to Canada in order to escape the perils they faced in their country. There is no question that the reason these ships are here is that our system is so generous and open and we want to ensure that those who need protection and those who are truly refugees have a place to come to in safety where they can become Canadians, find employment, find a new way of life and raise their families in a country as democratic and open as Canada.

However, the fact remains that the only answer to solving this problem of ensuring those who are clearly refugees, clearly want to be here and clearly need to be here go through the process that we have in place.

The previous speaker mentioned Bill C-11, which is exactly what this country needed in terms of reforming our refugee legislation. We took great pains to get through that process. I know, as the parliamentary secretary, we worked hours upon hours and days upon days to get that legislation back to the House of Commons so it would be supported at third reading. When it did come back here, it in fact received support from all parties. We now have a new system in terms of refugee reform legislation that will be implemented over the next 18 months.

Bill C-49 is so well augmented with Bill C-11 that we will have completely reformed and changed the direction that this country needs to take when it comes to refugees and those who need to seek asylum here. They will need to seek asylum in a way that follows the system that we have in place, not to jump the queue and not to be forced by smugglers, who take advantage of every person on that boat, to pay for their freedom rather than earn that freedom through a process that we have in place, which is one of the most generous in the world. We cannot have it.

The Canadian people have spoken loud and clear on this issue. The one thing that we need to continue to come back to is fairness, because this is what the Canadian people understand so much better than the rest of the world. No Canadian wants to see individuals living in peril in their country. If it is important enough for us to understand that freedom of security, of governance and of democracy needs to happen here in this country and they deserve that, then our arms are wide open to them, but we have a process and a system.

There are people who are taking advantage of these individuals, charging them more money then they could ever afford in their lifetime, to get on to a boat and somehow find a way to come here. They make promises and claims. They literally push those individuals onto the vessel to get them here to Canada. They tell the individuals that Canada will accept them, that Canadian laws are so generous and in need of so much repair that when they land here they will be given the status they so want.

Those refugees who have a rightful claim and a rightful place for freedom will get that here in this country. However, those who do not are standing in the way of those who actually do.

This process of human smuggling, of bringing people into this country by crowding them onto a ship and having them land on Canadian soil, is not the way Canadians want this to happen. Canadians want to know who is on that ship and who is going to claim refugee status here.

Simply turning these hundreds of individuals loose on Canadian soil has the potential to put Canadian lives and health in peril. We do not know where these individuals have come from. We do not know if they are true refugees. We do not know if they are terrorists. We do not know if they are criminals in their own country. That is not the type of environment we want here in this country.

This bill changes all of that. It sets in place a process that will show respect for those who truly deserve refugee status. It will send a loud and clear message to countries and smugglers who live off the proceeds of these individuals that we will not be in a position as a country to accept this any more.

The Minister of Public Safety, the President of the Treasury Board, and the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration and Multiculturalism made this announcement in front of one of the ships that arrived here. They made the announcement on the west coast, but that message travelled to the east coast of our country almost immediately. There is page after page of endorsement. Group after group, editorial after editorial, Canadian after Canadian have said that this legislation is right, it is timely, it is good, it is fair. It is something that everyone in this House should be supporting.

One headline reads, “Ottawa tightens rules on human smuggling”. The Headline News article states:

The bill, titled “Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada’s Immigration System Act,” shows that Ottawa will not tolerate abuse of the system by getting ahead of the immigration line, but stresses that the federal government of Canada will continue to welcome legitimate immigrants who could contribute to the country.

An editorial in the Calgary Herald stated:

Tough anti-smuggling legislation aimed at stopping boats of illegal migrants from showing up on Canadian shores, places the punishment where it belongs, on the smugglers.

...It's a welcome crackdown on a crime most Canadians would agree is heinous.

The list goes on. Another editorial on human smuggling stated:

The government must act to safeguard the integrity of Canada's immigration system, which welcomes 250,000 newcomers a year. Polls show that the public's high level of support for immigration dipped by 20 per cent after the arrival of the Sun Sea and the Ocean Lady -- even though asylum seekers and skilled immigrants are two very different streams.

That is a very important point to realize. We are a country that accepts, at the present time, per capita more immigrants than anywhere else in the world. We are open to skilled immigrants. We are open to low-skilled immigrants. We are open to seasonal workers. We are open to immigrants who want to come to this country to build a new life for themselves and their families.

What we are not open to is those who want to come here to take advantage of our system, those who in fact want to move to the front of the line. Smugglers know this. They know that in their hearts Canadians want to help these people so they take advantage of it.

By passing this legislation, we would at least be putting ourselves in a position where we no longer would be that country where terrorists and smugglers simply say, “We will dump them all in Canada. We will make millions and millions of dollars, and we will dump them all in Canada because Canada does not have the laws in place to prevent this from happening”.

Canadians have spoken loudly on this issue. They want to welcome new immigrants to this country. Many of us in this House have parents or grandparents who came to this country as immigrants. There are members in the House who came to this country to become Canadians. All of them have done it in a way that respects the rule of law in this country and that respects the system of fairness that all Canadians have come to accept.

The opposition is trying to say that this is something it is not, that this is a position we hold because we want to hurt people. It is the exact opposite. That type of rhetoric has no place in this House of Commons.

There are individuals and families who need our help, but those families and individuals are not just those who seek refugee status in our country. They are the very families and individuals who are Canadians and are here right now.

We need a system of fairness. We need a system of equality. We need a system of acceptance. We need a system that protects Canadians, but says to those who claim refugee status that we are a country that is open, we are a country that is free, we are a county that is accepting, but let us make sure that we do it with fairness and that we do it through a system that protects the individuals who are truly refugees and that protects Canadians here.

This is legislation we need. This is legislation that Canadians want. This is legislation that will actually put our country in a position not only to promote why this is a great country to come to, but why this is a great country in which to live.

There are smugglers and others who take advantage of the most down and out in an attempt to profit, and there may be those in the opposition who would allow that to continue and will vote against this legislation. However, there is no one on this side of the House who will do that. We are going to make sure that we fight as long and hard as we need to in order to put this legislation in place and bring our system up to where it needs to be.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the minister can look at the blues. I said that the Bloc Québécois would be prepared to support a government bill that punished human smugglers. The problem is that, because of these smugglers, we are creating a new category, designated foreign nationals. That is the Conservative philosophy and ideology that the Bloc Québécois has always opposed. We should not create different categories of refugees based on their country of origin or the way they arrive in Canada. They all should be treated the same way.

That is why we were prepared to support the government's Bill C-11. We would also be prepared to support Bill C-49 if it addressed only human smugglers. The Conservatives are taking advantage of the problem with human smugglers and the media attention around the arrival of a boat to push their right-wing ideology. We will always be opposed to this Conservative right-wing ideology, under which they are incapable of treating all human beings, especially children, the same way.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

I understand the minister because those people, obviously, are not Canadian citizens. But they are still citizens of the world who have a right to benefit from the treaties that Canada has ratified and that allow them to seek asylum.

Once again, what we are seeing with Bill C-49 is that the public safety minister can designate as irregular an arrival in Canada of a group of persons, who then become designated foreign nationals. Designated foreign nationals who claim refugee or protected person status will be treated differently from other asylum seekers. The fact that different applicants would be treated differently is what we found to be unacceptable in Bill C-11. In Bill C-49, a different status is created for these designated foreign nationals.

If they are denied refugee status, they have to wait five years before they can apply for permanent resident status. In the meantime, their claim could be re-evaluated to determine whether they can return to their country.

They cannot travel outside Canada or apply for permanent resident status or citizenship for five years. Consequently, they cannot sponsor members of their family, such as their spouse or children. Designated foreign nationals who have been denied asylum cannot appeal to the new refugee appeal division, only to the Federal Court. They also will not have access to health benefits that other refugees can access through the interim federal health program.

And so, not only is the principle of fairness—which says that all refugees have access to the system—being called into question, but asylum seekers who arrive in a group will be in a sort of legal vacuum for five years, which will strip them of the same rights given to asylum seekers who follow the usual refugee process. Just because a group of people arrives, that does not mean that they are not legitimate refugees, and the Bloc Québécois feels that this categorization would be extremely prejudicial to them.

The acceptance rate for refugee claims by Sri Lankan Tamils is 80% on average, and there is no indication that the situation in Sri Lanka will change and that it will be deemed that their lives are not in peril.

It must be understood that the Bloc Québécois' objective has never changed and has always been to oppose categories based on the origin of claimants or how they arrived here, because Canada has signed international treaties. Therefore, these people can make a claim, but that does not mean it will be accepted. We need an analysis process that is effective and quick. For that reason, the Bloc Québécois asked for the current process to be revised and for an appeal division to be set up so these individuals would have the opportunity to assert their rights. It must be effective, and we have to invest the money needed to do that.

The Conservative ideology was bolstered by the arrival of a large number of refugees, which received extensive media coverage. The Conservatives decided to make this their priority and to set aside all the opportunities they had to modernize the current process through Bill C-11.

This does not bode well for future discussions. In fact, the legal vacuum created for this category of designated foreign nationals, who are not yet classified as refugees, keeps these designated foreigners in legal limbo for five years, when they file a claim for refugee or protected person status. During that time, they cannot apply for permanent residence or family reunification. Consequently, they cannot sponsor members of their family or their spouse. Furthermore, they are not free to move or to enjoy all the rights that other claimants may have.

As I mentioned, Canada's international and constitutional obligations are important. Not only does this bill run counter to its international obligations under at least three treaties it has signed, but it also contravenes the Constitution and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which states in subsection 15(1):

Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.

Which includes how they get to Canada.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be speaking, on behalf of the Bloc Québécois, about Bill C-49, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act and the Marine Transportation Security Act.

It is important to clearly understand the objectives of this bill. One of the objectives is to allow the public safety minister to designate as irregular an arrival in Canada of a group of persons, who are categorized as “designated foreign nationals”. Designated foreign nationals who claim refugee or protected person status will be treated differently from other asylum seekers.

That is the reality. My Conservative colleagues are trying to tell us that this bill is meant to crack down on human smugglers, but its real objective is to create two categories of refugees, or rather a new category for designated foreign nationals. That is the reality.

Again, the Bloc Québécois will not support Bill C-49 and will vote against it, because it aims to do more than just crack down on human smugglers. It will punish people who are fleeing persecution, including children. Once again, the Conservatives are using a specific example from recent events—which made headlines in Quebec and Canada—to advance their law and order agenda, even though the measures they are proposing will not change the situation. The reality is that these people have arrived, they are here and the bill will not change anything in terms of the situation that unfolded when the last boat arrived in British Columbia.

The Bloc Québécois therefore opposes any new refugee category that would be justified only by the manner in which refugee claimants arrive. The fact that claimants arrive in a group does not mean they are not legitimate refugees. The Bloc Québécois believes that a new category that puts even heavier burdens on refugees would be prejudicial. We also deplore the fact that this government is backtracking, after a compromise had been reached on refugee reform. For years now, we have been calling for the refugee system to be updated and for the creation of an appeal system. We had nearly reached an agreement with the government, but instead it has decided to push ahead with its agenda rather than a compromise, because of a media event.

We in the Bloc Québécois believe it is simply inconceivable that all refugee claimants who arrive in a group can automatically be imprisoned for a maximum of 12 months, with no possibility of disputing their arrest. Worse still, according to the bill, that period can be extended indefinitely. This is a matter of fundamental human rights and democracy, specifically, the right to liberty. No human being should have to face such a situation.

This bill on illegal immigration goes against the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as well as Canada's international obligations under the 1951 refugee convention, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Bloc Québécois believes that it would be completely irresponsible to vote in favour of a bill that flies in the face of at least three treaties meant to protect fundamental human rights.

For years, the governments, Liberal and Conservative alike, have allowed the current refugee system to get bogged down without doing anything about it. The thing that should be noted about this alarming statement is that this is not the first time the Conservative government has tried to resolve the problem by tightening the rules around asylum seekers coming to Canada. Take, for instance, the decision to require visas from Mexicans and foreign nationals from the Czech Republic, or the government's unwavering desire to develop a list of safe countries of origin as part of the refugee system reform. We do indeed detect, in the development of immigration policies, a discriminatory tendency to want to close the borders, including to those who are seeking refugee status. The proof is in the targeted range for total protected persons, which went from between 26,000 and 31,800 in 2008 to between 19,600 and 26,000 in 2010, not to mention the growing use of propaganda rhetoric that, in the name of national security, is used to justify taking a hard-line approach to this category of immigrants.

Although the government is saying it wants to punish human smugglers with this bill, it is instead punishing people who are fleeing persecution, including children. Once again, the government is being utterly discriminatory toward these refugees and is putting words into action to separate what it considers to be good refugees from bad refugees, as though their lives were not equally threatened.

The current system is bogged down because no one wanted to modernize it. When refugees arrive in large numbers, the government's tendency, which was solidified under the Liberals and confirmed by the Conservatives, is to tighten the system and prohibit them from entering the country. Under international treaties that Canada has signed, refugees deserve at least to have their file reviewed. Will we keep them all here? Not at all. Far from it. We will offer hospitality to those who truly need it and who are being persecuted in their home country, but we have to develop an effective file analysis system that respects human rights.

The Bloc Québécois has repeatedly shown the House that the existing system should be updated. The Liberals did not want to do it. The Conservatives appeared to want to do it—we hoped so, at least—but the Minister of Immigration was rebuffed with this bill, which flatly rejects everything he had put in place through discussions and negotiations to change the existing system. By creating a new class of refugees or foreign nationals requesting asylum, they are rejecting all improvements to the existing system.

I will now turn to security. When the MV Sun Sea arrived, the government issued a barrage of public statements positioning the arrival of boats as a threat to the security of Quebeckers and Canadians. As it turns out, those statements were unfounded. True to their ideology, the Conservatives used a widely reported event to promote their own political law and order agenda. There was no reason to believe that the arrival of the MV Sun Sea posed a threat to the security of Quebeckers and Canadians.

Under the existing law, any asylum seeker arriving by boat must be fingerprinted, photographed and interviewed. Canada's waters are under the authority of the Canada Border Services Agency, the CBSA, which has the power to detain asylum seekers if there are any doubts about their identity and to oppose their release before the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Immigration Division.

Some of the other 76 Tamils from Sri Lanka who arrived last year aboard the Ocean Lady and requested asylum remained behind bars for more than six months. None of them were found to be members of the Tamil Tigers or any similar organization. They were eventually released once the CBSA found that they were not a threat to national security.

Let us not forget that the 492 passengers aboard the MV Sun Sea accounted for less than 2% of the asylum requests received annually. The record, 5%, occurred in 1999, when four boats arrived carrying 600 asylum seekers. In 2010, the number of requests should be around 25,000, the lowest average in the past 20 years.

Arguments to the effect that the arrival of huge numbers of refugees poses a threat to public safety do not hold up. They certainly do not justify passing a bill that treats refugee claimants so harshly. We are not saying that smugglers should not be punished. However, this bill punishes legitimate refugee claimants. That is the problem. In addition, we feel that the existing act has all the mechanisms required to manage the arrival of these boats.

Why create a new category? The Conservatives simply decided to advance their ideological agenda.

Let us examine the compromise struck by Bill C-11. The Conservative government seems to be obsessed with classifying refugee claimants based on their numbers or origin. Such a measure was widely denounced when Bill C-11 on reform of the asylum system was studied. Initially, the federal government wanted especially to implement the concept of designated countries. Failed claimants from countries deemed to be safe would not have had access to the new refugee appeal division, a measure deemed extremely discriminatory by the Bloc Québécois.

The Conservative government insisted on this country classification. It said that, if this measure was not accepted, it would scuttle its own bill. Imagine. By making a strong case for refugee rights to the government and the other parties, the Bloc Québécois helped members reach a last-minute compromise designed to produce a reform that was truly effective and, even more importantly, fair to all asylum seekers.

Once again, it is important to understand that under international treaties that Canada has signed or recognized—and that Quebec would have signed if it were a country—all refugee claimants are treated with respect and have the right to be treated fairly, no matter their country of origin.

Even though the concept of designated countries still exists, this division will be accessible to everyone, including claimants from the designated countries. To compensate for that, two other expediting mechanisms were put in place. That was the compromise with Bill C-11. If the Refugee Protection Division rejects a claim for refugee protection, it may state in its reasons for the decision that the claim is manifestly unfounded if it is of the opinion that the claim is clearly fraudulent. Unsuccessful claims submitted by claimants from the same country that are referred to the RAD would then be expedited. There will be regulations regarding the processing times for refugee claimants from a designated country. They will be shorter than for regular claims so that claimants who file unfounded claims can be deported as quickly as possible.

The Bloc Québécois cannot believe that the government has decided to take a step backwards, when a compromise had been made regarding the reform of the current refugee system. In fact, with Bill C-49, the government is creating a new category of refugee, based solely on the way the refugee claimant arrives. That is what is unacceptable.

The Bloc Québécois agreed to make compromises on Bill C-11. The government wanted safe countries. For those arriving from these countries, there was no division that applied, while for those not arriving from safe countries, there was a division that did not apply. All the government said was that the same standards apply to everyone, but for certain countries, the processing time would be shorter. Obviously, that was a compromise that the Bloc Québécois could accept, given the Conservatives' intransigence. Now, the government has changed its mind and is ignoring all of the debates and forcing Bill C-49 on us, because there was a story in the news that gave the government the opportunity to advance its ideological agenda, whether it will admit it or not. Once again, I was listening to the Conservative member who spoke before me. He made it clear that the goal was to combat illegal smuggling, but the real goal is to create a system that treats refugee claimants differently when they arrive by that means.

So there is a new category. The Minister of Public Safety, citizens of the world—

Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act

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

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this bill. The bill should be called “attack the refugees” and not preventing human smugglers from abusing Canada's immigration system act. If it was about human smugglers, then there would not be amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to deal with the refugees and immigration portion. There are only a few pages in the act that deals with human smugglers. We prefer to attack the criminals, the traffickers and smugglers and not the victim.

The bill concentrates absolute power in the hands of the minister to decide which refugees will be subjected to draconian measures. With no clear definition on irregular arrivals, it can apply to any group of refugees, immigrants, or visitors.

The bill would also hurt legitimate refugees and those who help them. It would prevent refugees from bringing their spouses and children to Canada for at least 10 years. It would detain women and children that the minister deemed arrived in Canada irregularly for at least a year. It would repeat a shameful chapter of Canadian history by punishing and interning refugees and their children.

I will speak about the impact of detaining children, children who have not committed any crime.

A study was done recently by the United Kingdom. Over 15 months, the U.K. detained 1,300 children. On average that is 1,000 per year. There were 889 children detained for more than 28 days.

The report by the Royal College of Paediatrics and the Royal College of Psychiatrists found many elements. It found that detaining children was harmful to their mental health and that they were filled with terror. It found that children who saw their parents cry and in stress led to eating, sleeping, and learning problems. Of the children studied, 73% of those who were detained had emotional and behavioural problems. They were disoriented, depressed, anxious, confused and frightened. They had nightmares and some refused to feed themselves. A few of the children lost 10% of their body weight and one-quarter of them began bed-wetting. There was a regression of language. One child out of twenty-five became selectively mute. Many of the children had somatic symptoms like headaches and stomach pains.

This kind of treatment, putting children in jail and in detention, is callous and cruel. The U.K. did a review and the new Conservative coalition government said that it was a moral outrage that children were detained.

Canada detains six to seven children per night. If this bill passes, there would be a dramatic increase because any number of these children and their parents, whether women or men, will be part of the people designated as arriving to Canada in an irregular manner, whatever that means.

Every four weeks a judge in the U.K. has to sign a new authorization to continue to detain a child. This bill says that a child arriving on the shores of Canada, irregularly, will be detained for at least a year and then there will be a hearing every six months. A child could be detained for at least 12 months if not more.

Seeking a release after a year would have no appeal process, which would bring it to the courts. The government would not be bound by the court. I always thought Canada had a rule of law and that we should not do things in an arbitrary manner. The bill would do that.

Canada has some dark history. I previously talked about the boat, the S.S. St. Louis, that came to Canada in the late 1930s after going to the U.S. The boat arrived at Halifax harbour carrying 900 Jewish refugees who were seeking sanctuary. Tragically, because of racism, xenophobia, hatred and anti-Semitism, these refugees were sent away. Two hundred and fifty of them were murdered in the Holocaust after returning to Europe. The refugee law at that time was unjust, cruel and mean-spirited and it led to death. We have always said that never again would we practice the policy of none is too many. We have always said that we will not repeat history.

The bill would allow a boat such as the S.S. St. Louis to dock in Canada. However, those people, whether they are men, women or children, would be detained for at least a year. We may tell some of them that they are genuine refugees and they will be allowed to stay, but they will not be allowed to apply for permanent residence and therefore will not be able to sponsor their children or spouses to come to Canada for at least five years.

What would happen if the people on the S.S. St. Louis were accepted after a few years? They would have to wait for five years and then apply for permanent residence and bring their children over. However, because of the huge backlog, they will have to wait three to four years to bring their children over, no matter whether their children are coming from a refugee camp or another country and facing persecution. A person deemed to be a genuine refugee would have to wait at least nine years to bring a son, daughter, spouse to Canada. How many people would survive in a refugee camp, especially a child, for nine years?

Therefore, we are talking about punishing and attacking refugees, and not just those who arrive on Canada's shores. We are also talking about their relatives who are stuck back home. We are telling them that they either do not come to Canada, or if they do, they have to kiss goodbye their kids or their spouse for at least nine or ten years. They might never see them again.

What kind of law is this? It is not about dealing with smugglers. It is about attacking the refugee claimants. What is happening with these refugees. They will be victimized three times: first, by the persecutors, whoever is hunting them down; second, by the smugglers; and finally, by Canada. It also will incur huge costs. It costs at least $80,000 to $90,000 per person we detain or jail in Canada. We should think of the cost that it will incur to Canadian taxpayers.

Many of them could easily work and being paying taxes. Why will we not allow them to do that, while we process their claims and process them quickly? However, that is not what we are doing. We will just detain them.

Very few refugees know about the kind of laws of the countries to which they go. They do not search them out. In fact, studies show nine out of ten of these people do not know the laws of these countries. We know that Australia, for example, has a very punitive law, but it has not stopped the boats from arriving on its shores or deterred people from arriving there.

For months we debated the issue that all refugees coming to the shores of Canada must be treated equally under one set of rules, one law. We dealt with that in Bill C-11. We said that every person must be treated equally under the law. That is our charter. However, this bill would set up two classes of refugees. One would be the designated kind and they would be treated much worse than others who somehow have arrived in Canada.

The detention, as I said earlier, is arbitrary. The minister may on discretionary grounds based on “exceptional circumstances” be able to release a few people, but we know we should not leave things in an arbitrary manner. It should be set in law so it is clear who will be jailed and who will not be.

The law basically says that all who come here in an irregular fashion will be detained for over a year. It also says that they will not have an opportunity to have an independent tribunal to review their case because if the minister decides their identity has not been established, then there would not be any independent tribunal to review their case, which again, in some ways, contrary to the charter and international law.

Why am I talking so much about detention? A few weeks ago, Toronto held a event called Nuit Blanche, which is an art extravaganza. There were a lot of art shows in different parts of town. I went into a gallery that had a big photo exhibit. The photo exhibit also had tapes and recordings of people in detention in the U.K. I have never heard these kinds of stories first hand from the people who have been detained, but the stories are phenomenal, especially from the children and young people, about the kind of suffering. On average in the U.K it is only for a few weeks, yet the kind of trauma they experience is unbelievable. These are the ones who are awaiting deportation. They have already had their cases judged against them.

In the case we are dealing with, we have not even judged against them yet. Many of them could be genuine refugees and yet we are still jailing them, including their kids. Therefore, it is not possible for us to support a bill of this kind.

Another thing about the bill is that if people's refugee claim gets rejected they would not be able to go to the Refugee Appeal Division. We debated the Refugee Appeal Division for about 10 years and we said that all refugees must have the right to be heard in front of an independent tribunal, which we were about to set up, called the Refugee Appeal Division. By eliminating the opportunity to correct errors at the first level, the bill again puts Canada at risk of violating its most fundamental obligation toward refugees, which is not to send them back to their death.

The bill has other elements that are difficult. It would prevent refugees from going outside Canada. For example, if refugees wanted to go to a United Nations war crime convention or testify to a panel dealing with war crimes, they would not be able to do so. I can understand why the minister said that it was important to ensure they do not go back to the place where they claim they are being persecuted. However, this law actually says that they would not be able to leave Canada at all because they would not be able to get a travel document. Again, that is a problem. By detaining refugees for so long, it makes it harder for refugees to integrate into Canadian society and eventually apply for citizenship. We have seen real problems with this. This was tried with the Somali refugees in the 1990s when thousands were denied permanent residence for years.

Let us look at Australia, which is where I know the minister has been. In the last three years, Australia has moved away from a policy of detention and temporary status for refugees. I do not know why we are repeating what it has moved away from.

What is really in front of us are two options. One is to see refugees, newcomers as a burden. Refugee claimants can be seen as burdens or we could care for them. We did that. We saw the St. Louis refugee claimants as burdens. We made a mistake. We sent people to their death. We cared for the Vietnamese boat people, welcomed them and allowed them to stay and they are doing extremely well in Canada. What is it that we plan to do? Do we see refugees as burdens or do we see them as worthy of our care?

I would support the elements in this bill that punish smugglers in a serious manner. Those are elements that we could definitely support because we do not want to be soft on crime, especially for people who are committing crimes against immigrants or refugees, and we need to punish them harshly. However, what we should not do is attack the refugees. We should not attack the victims because this will not assist Canada's reputation or we will just end up repeating a very sad, tragic chapters of Canadian history where we interned people and where we sent people to their death.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Madam Speaker, the solution is quite simple, which should please the minister. It is simply Bill C-11, which he introduced in the House last spring, regarding the balanced refugee reform that was passed unanimously with a few amendments that everyone agreed on. It was indeed a balanced reform that gave the minister all the tools needed for action.

If he truly believes that the bill introduced by the Minister of Public Safety is the solution for dealing with illegitimate claimants, why does it only deal with those who arrive by boat? Why does it target only 2% of all refugee claimants, and moreover, those who arrive from countries that have some of the highest acceptance rates in the world? The minister says he needs legislation, but he needs it for the 2% of claimants for whom it is least needed. What is the point?

If the minister truly believed this, he would have introduced something that would target the other 98%, not just the 2% that have the highest acceptance rates.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

moved that Bill C-49, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act and the Marine Transportation Security Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Madam Speaker, I am proud to open the debate on Bill C-49, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, whose purpose is to combat the serious crime of human smuggling.

I am pleased to introduce this bill. Canada is very proud of its long tradition of being a place of migration for people from around the world. We receive more newcomers than any other country in the developed world, 0.8% of our population, every year as new permanent residents.

We are also proud of our long humanitarian tradition of being a place of protection and refuge for victims of persecution and violence, those who need our protection. This goes back long into our history, in fact to the days of the arrival of the United Empire Loyalists, the Black Loyalists, the Underground Railroad, the eastern European refugees before the war, the refugees from Hungary and Soviet and Communist oppression after the war, and, most famously, the over 60,000 Indo Chinese who were welcomed by Canadians in 1979 and 1980. This underscores our long and deep humanitarian tradition as a place of protection.

Canada receives more resettled refugees than any other developed country in the world. This is so important to Canadians that our government announced earlier this year an increase of 20% in the number of resettled refugees who we will receive. That means that, beginning next year, we will welcome some 14,000 refugees in need of our protection each and every year, which is in addition to those who come to Canada making asylum claims that are assessed by our Immigration and Refugee Board and through various appeals and administrative appeals in our legal system.

One of the problems this Parliament recognized was the abuse of that asylum system, which is why Bill C-11, Balanced Refugee Reform Act, was adopted unanimously by this Parliament following all party co-operation in the spring in order to significantly speed up the process of refugee determination, providing protection to bona fide refugees and the removal of those who seek to abuse Canada's generosity.

However, Canadians are deeply concerned with a particularly pernicious crime, a crime that exploits vulnerable people in their dream to come to Canada, the dangerous crime of human smuggling.

In the past year, it is well known that Canada has received two large vessels on our west coast, together carrying nearly 600 illegal migrants to our shores, people who, based on our intelligence, had paid criminal smuggling syndicates some $50,000 each in order to come to Canada in the most dangerous and exploitative way possible.

The remarkable openness of Canada to immigration in general and refugee protection in particular, which makes possible our very generous approach to immigration, is dependent on public confidence in the system. I submit that Canadians demand an immigration system that is characterized by a sense of fair play and a rule of law. What disturbs them deeply about these mass illegal smuggling operations is precisely that they undermine those principles of fundamental fairness and the rule of law.

The position of Canadians and the position of this government is and ought to be that we will be a country of openness, we will be a country that provides protection to those who are in need of it and we will lead the world in the moral obligation of refugee protection, but we will not be treated like a doormat by criminal networks that seek to profit from, frankly, encouraging people to come to this country illegally in a fashion that puts them and others in moral danger. We know that every year hundreds and potentially thousands of people around the world fall victim to the dangerous ruse of smuggling syndicates.

Let me be very specific about the problem we face and then allow me to identify the strong but fair remedies that we propose in Bill C-49 and in certain associative operational actions that are taken by this government and its agencies.

First, I came back last month from a visit to Asia, including to Southeast Asia, where I met with counterparts in various foreign governments. I met with our own Canadian intelligence police, border security and Immigration officials and learned a great deal about the vile trade of human smuggling in that region.

What I learned was the following. There are approximately three or four criminal syndicates operating in that region that have a long history of being involved in the arms smuggling trade. Because there has been an end to hostilities in the Sri Lankan civil war, those syndicates have now decided to smuggle and to traffic a different commodity, which is human beings. They have refocused their logistical ability to selling people the opportunity to be smuggled illegally to Canada.

I have been told by our partners in the region that they believe these syndicates have the capacity to deliver several large steel hulled vessels with the ability to bring in each hundreds of illegal smuggled migrants to Canada each year. Prospectively thousands of people are being smuggled to our country in this dangerous fashion.

This government, any government and any minister of immigration, as my friend from Toronto knows well, has a profound responsibility to maintain public confidence in the immigration system. What we have seen since the arrival of the last smuggling vessel is a fundamental and very disturbing decline in public support for immigration in general and refugee protection in particular.

According to the most recent polling that I have seen, over 60% of Canadians say that our response to this threat to our sovereignty, our laws and the fairness of our immigration system should be to prohibit these vessels from entering Canadian territorial waters. Fifty-five per cent of Canadians have said that even if these vessels land and some of their passengers subsequently attain refugee protection under our laws, that those people should be returned to their country of origin, notwithstanding a positive legal determination on their asylum claim.

That is the public opinion environment. Imagine how much more vigorous Canadians would feel about this, if we actually had several vessels arriving, which I am informed is within the logistical capability of the criminal organizations involved.

We cannot allow that to happen. The easier path is to do nothing. The easier path is to mouth platitudes. The easier path is to take no difficult decisions. However, the necessary and responsible path is to take firm and meaningful action that does everything we reasonably and legally can to deter and disrupt the smuggling networks, to reduce both the pull and the push factors in this illegal migration so that it stops. To do otherwise is to put at risk the broad public consensus, which has historically existed in Canada in favour of immigration and refugee protection, and I will not allow that to happen on my watch as minister of Immigration.

Some would have us believe that we can successfully deter the smuggling operations simply by focusing on the smugglers. How I wish that were true. How I wish it were true that we did not have to, at the same time, address the demand side of the equation in the smuggling enterprise. However, to pretend that is the case, to pretend that we can avoid disincentivizing the customers of the syndicates from paying $50,000 to come to Canada is naive in the extreme.

Therefore, let me present the general approach of the government and then the legislation in particular.

First, it is evident there are legitimate refugees in need of protection in Southeast Asia. It is also true, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, that it is always preferable to find a local or regional protection solution for those who are bona fide refugees and to do everything possible to prevent them from being exploited by trafficking syndicates. That is why we have begun preliminary discussions with our international partners, including Australia, which obviously has a great stake in this issue, and with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to pursue the possibility of some form of regional protection framework in the Southeast Asian region.

In part that would entail encouraging the countries now being used as transit points for smuggling and trafficking to offer at least temporary protection to those deemed by the UN in need of protection and then for countries such as Canada to provide, to some extent, reasonable resettlement opportunities for those deemed to be bona fide refugees, which is something we are pursuing.

However, to be honest, that is a mid to long-term solution. Working on that with the UN and our international partners will not stop the fact that criminal networks in Southeast Asian countries are planning to smuggle their customers to Canada. They are in the process right now. People have already paid their upfront fee and are sitting in waiting positions in parts of Southeast Asia. Vessels have been acquired. Officials have been, shall we say, induced to co-operate with these networks. The operations are not abstract. This is not a possibility. This is not a theory. This is a real and present reality and we must react with real, present and current action to disincentivize the smuggling networks.

It is also true, insofar as we are talking about a flow of illegally smuggled migrants of Tamil origin, that we acknowledge Canadians have a stake in seeing a just and durable peace in Sri Lanka. We acknowledge that the Tamil people have legitimate aspirations and that they deserve to be protected from violence and persecution. That is why, through the Department of Foreign Affairs, our High Commission in Colombo and through multilateral institutions, we continue to strongly encourage the government of Sri Lanka to make every effort to find a just resolution to the legitimate aspirations of its Tamil minority. That is one important issue. A regional protection framework is another important issue.

Perhaps the most important element in combatting the smuggling is to stop the boats from leaving the transit countries in the first place. That is why our government has directed relevant security and intelligence agencies to increase their presence and capability in the transit countries, partly to assist the transit countries in improving their capacity to detect fraudulent documents and smuggling networks and to gather better and actionable intelligence to prevent people from being loaded on to the vessels in the first place.

In this respect, I would note that two weeks ago the Royal Thai Police detained some 150 individuals who were in the country illegally, without status. Apparently they were planning to board vessels to be smuggled possibly to Canada. Therefore, that work is being done as well. There is increased and improved police and intelligence co-operation in the region among ourselves, the Australians and the transit countries.

However, should a vessel successfully leave a transit country, and we are talking about these leaky, decommissioned cargo vessels that people are loaded onto like cattle to take the dangerous voyage across the Pacific, and arrive in our territorial waters, Canada, after the adoption of Bill C-49, will continue to fully honour our humanitarian, domestic and international legal obligations to provide refugee protection.

We will not endanger the lives of people, as some would have us do, to prevent them from entering Canadian waters. Nor will we violate our international obligations under the convention for refugees and torture or our domestic obligations under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to provide protection to those who are deemed by our legal system to be in need of it, to have a well-founded fear of persecution in their country of origin. This is to say that we will not, in the technical term refoulement, send back to the country of origin someone who has arrived even through this dangerous, illegal and irregular form of marine migration.

We do need to send a strong message to the smugglers, which is why Bill C-49 proposes strong mandatory minimum prison sentences for those involved in smuggling operations. Those who are involved in smuggling under 50 people would face a mandatory minimum prison sentence of at least 3 years. If there are one of two aggravating factors involved, they would face a mandatory minimum of five years. If the group is over 50 individuals, they could face a mandatory minimum of 5 years unless there was an aggravating factor, such as having put the life or safety of their customers in danger, in which case a 10 year mandatory minimum. We believe this will help to cause the smugglers and the crews that work for them to think twice before targeting Canada for their sordid trade.

We also propose massive new penalties for the shipowners, those who are at the back end of this business enterprise, this terrible criminal profit-making venture. They ought to know that they stand to lose millions of dollars if they acquire a ship to be used for this illicit purpose.

Also, we have broadened the ability to make it easier to obtain successful prosecutions against people smugglers through amendments to the relevant law. We take other measures targeting the smugglers very clearly.

However, when we are talking about an illicit market, one thing history, common experience and economics all tell us is that as long as there is a sufficient demand and a sufficient price, there will always be someone willing to provide a service or a good. Therefore, we cannot be naive about the imperative of diminishing the demand side of the equation in the smuggling enterprise.

We must ask ourselves this. Why are people coming from third world countries paying $50,000 to come to Canada in this dangerous way?

Some of the people we are talking about are actually coming from democracies like India. Recently CBC News did a report on individuals in Tamil Nadu in Chennai in the great Indian democracy who had paid smugglers to come to Canada. One of them wanted to come to Canada because he or she had heard this country provided free monthly salaries. In part, there is an economic pull factor to Canada.

It is clear to us that the capacity of someone who lands in Canada, for example, a positive refugee protection decision, to immediately then sponsor family members, means that the $50,000 price point used by the syndicates is not just an investment on the principal applicant getting into the country, but on those family members who will then follow. Therefore, $50,000 makes sense on the smuggling market because the price point actually will eventually allow several family members to come to Canada in reasonably short order.

That is one of the reasons why it is important to change the business model of these smuggling syndicates by disincentivizing. This is why we propose that those who have been designated to have arrived in a smuggling event and who get a positive protection decision would have temporary residency in Canada for a period of five years. I would be happy to develop that further on questions.

Combating Terrorism Act

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Madam Speaker, it is almost a cliché to say that the events of September 11, 2001 changed the world, but Professor Wayne MacKay, a professor at Dalhousie law school, wrote in a article called “Human Rights in the Global Village” that this was only partly true because:

—terrorism has been an international force for many years. However, on September 11, 2001 the reality of terrorism was visited on the heartland of the United States and it became clear to all that even a super power was vulnerable to the forces of terrorism afoot in the world. The world may not really have changed as a result of “9/11”, but the way that the United States, and by association Canada, approach the world did. We have become more cautious and national security has become a value that trumps most other values--including human rights.

Like most people, I have a very vivid recollection of where I was when the planes hit the Twin Towers in New York City. I was starting my first week at Dalhousie law school and was in the student lounge, which was packed with other students. We were all utterly silent.

I am not really one for numbers. I can never remember if it is Bill C-11 or Bill C-392 or Bill C-9 in the 40th Parliament or the 38th Parliament, but I remember Bill C-36, the Anti-terrorism Act that was introduced in 2001. I remember it like I remember 9/11 because even though I was a fresh-faced law student eager to learn about this great big concept called the law, a concept based on human rights, justice and fundamental freedoms, I still knew that Bill C-36 was a departure from that base of justice and human rights.

As first-year law students, a group of us started a student association called SALSA, the Social Activist Law Student Association. SALSA was and continues to be, and it is still at Dalhousie law school, the coming together of like-minded students who are interested in seeking justice, environmental, social and economic justice. We want to see it realized in our communities.

When Bill C-36 was introduced in 2001, we did not know what to do, but we knew we had to do something. Therefore, we organized a panel of human rights and justice criminal law experts to talk about the bill and educate us on what was exactly going on and what the bill was trying to accomplish. Some of us wrote letters to the editor, others wrote op eds and we wrote to our members of Parliament.

There was a growing consensus then that the dangers of Bill C-36 were that it would trump our human rights and civil liberties in the face of national security and allow for government to act in the shadows shrouded in mystery and secrecy. However, the one thing everybody hung their hats on was the fact that there was a sunset clause in the act. That was the first time I had even heard the term “sunset clause”. The idea was that after a period of time, a review of the legislation would automatically be triggered by Parliament.

The current bill, Bill C-17, proposes amendments to the Criminal Code that would reinstate provisions from the Anti-terrorism Act of 2001 that expired under that very sunset clause in 2007. Very specifically, the bill relates to investigative hearings whereby individuals who may have information about a terrorism offence, whether it is in the past or the future, can be compelled to attend a hearing and answer questions. No one attending a hearing can refuse to answer a question on the grounds of self-incrimination, which is quite different than if someone is in a court facing Criminal Code charges.

The other issue is preventive arrest whereby individuals can be arrested without a warrant in order to prevent them from carrying out a terrorist act. It is detention based on what someone might do. The arrested individual has to be brought before a judge within 24 hours, which is fair, or as soon as feasible and the judge determines whether that individual can be released unconditionally or with certain conditions for up to 12 months. Also, if those conditions are refused, the person can be imprisoned for up to 12 months.

International human rights and domestic human rights are increasingly related when we look at the global village of today. What we do in Canada affects the greater and wider world and our actions have worldwide implications. Similarly, actions outside of Canada's borders can and do have an impact here.

As Greg Walton wrote in a piece for the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development:

Canada has an obligation to provide a model; we need to stand straight lest we cast a crooked shadow.

After my graduation from law school, I had the opportunity to work with Professor Wayne MacKay doing research and assisting with his preparation for the lecture that I spoke about, as well as his appearance before the Senate committee actually reviewing the anti-terrorism legislation back in 2005. While I was working with him, one topic of conversation that we kept coming back to was the idea of racial profiling.

Racial profiling has been defined by the Ontario Human Rights Commission, which is a really good definition, as follows:

...any action undertaken for reasons of safety, security or public protection that relies on stereotypes about race, colour, ethnicity, ancestry, religion or place of origin rather than on reasonable suspicion, to single out an individual for greater scrutiny or different treatment.

Professor MacKay pointed out that before September 11 the issue of racial profiling was really about driving while black. A stark example of this comes from my home province of Nova Scotia with the story of Kirk Johnson, a boxer whose case appeared before the Nova Scotia Human Rights Tribunal. When Mr. Johnson was repeatedly, over years, pulled over by police in his expensive car with Texas licence plates, the tribunal found that actually race was a determining factor in the police's decision to pull him over again and again.

Since September 11, that phrase, driving while black, has actually been recoined as flying while Arab. Profiling is broader than just race now. It takes into account religion, culture and even ideology. Concerns about profiling based on race, culture or religion are real but they are accentuated by threats of terror. There is an alarming tendency to paint an entire group with one brush when in fact it is the act of individuals rather than religious or ethnic groups that are at fault.

We know about the uproar in the United States with the proposed building of a mosque six blocks from the site of the World Trade Centre. We think that kind of thing certainly could not happen here but here at home, on the day after the arrests of 17 terrorist suspects in Ontario, windows were broken at an Islamic mosque in Toronto. It can happen here and it does happen here.

At the Senate committee hearings in 2005 actually reviewing the Anti-terrorism Act, Canadian Muslim and Arab groups argued that if law enforcement agents were going to use profiling in their investigations, profiling needed to be based on behaviour, not ethnicity or religion. However, in a Globe and Mail article, a member of this House on the government side cited a different opinion when he said, “(y)ou don't send the anti-terrorist squad to investigate the Amish or the Lutheran ladies. You go where you think the risk is”.

Within the context of Bill C-17, we need to think about the real danger of imposing a sentence. I know it is not a sentence in the strict criminal terms of what a sentence is, but it is a 12-month sentence in prison based on something someone thinks a person might do. We can layer that with the fact that we know profiling is happening in Canada.

We know the Criminal Code works. We know there are provisions in the Criminal Code for a wide range of charges related to anti-terrorism. It is working. How do we know that? It is because these proposed sections that we are talking about in Bill C-17 have never been used. Therefore, why would we take that risk?

We have anti-terrorism legislation that has proven to be useful. The reason that these two provisions have never been used and were not renewed at the end of the sunset clauses is that they did not meet that balance between national security and human rights and civil liberties. There is a reason they expired with the sunset clause and there is absolutely no reason for us to bring them back to life today.

Balanced Refugee Reform Act

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I have a number of motions whereby there have been consultations among all parties and I think, if you were to seek it, you would find unanimous consent for them. I will begin with the first one.

I move:

That, notwithstanding any standing order or usual practice of the House, Bill C-11, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the Federal Courts Act, be deemed to have been amended at the report stage as proposed in the report stage motion in the name of the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism on today's notice paper; be deemed concurred in as amended; and that the House be authorized to consider the bill at third reading later today.

(Bill C-11. On the Order: Government Orders:)

June 11, 2010--Concurrence in report stage of Bill C-11, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the Federal Courts Act--the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.

Citizenship and Immigration

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the fourth report of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration on Bill C-11, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the Federal Courts Act. The committee has studied the bill and has decided to report the bill back to the House, with amendments.

Business of the House

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague, the deputy House leader for the Official Opposition, for her questions.

When I get into addressing the issue of the upcoming government legislation that I intend to call, I will make reference to Bill C-34, which was her first additional question. The other question dealt with private member's Bill C-391 and the report that came back from the committee about that legislation. I am sure the member is well aware of the process of private members' business. It has nothing to do with the government business and therefore those negotiations and consultations will take place between yourself, Mr. Speaker, and the sponsor of that legislation.

We will continue today with the opposition motion. Tomorrow we will call Bill C-2, the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement, which is at third reading.

I would also like to designate pursuant to Standing Order 66(2) tomorrow as the day to complete the debate on the motion to concur in the third report of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.

Next week we will hopefully complete all stages of Bill C-34, Creating Canada's New National Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 Act. I would like to thank the opposition parties for their support of that legislation and for allowing it to pass expeditiously when we do call it.

There may also be some interest to do something similar for Bill C-24, First Nations Certainty of Land Title Act; Bill S-5, ensuring safe vehicles; and Bill S-9, tracking auto theft and property crime act.

I would also like to complete the remaining stages of Bill C-11, Balanced Refugee Reform Act.

In addition to those bills, I would call Bill C-23, Eliminating Pardons for Serious Crimes Act; Bill S-2, Protecting Victims From Sex Offenders Act; and Bill C-22, Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation Act.

I would also like to announce that on Monday we will be having a take note debate on the subject of the measures being taken to address the treatment of multiple sclerosis. I will be moving the appropriate motion at the end of my statement.

Pursuant to Standing Order 66(2) I would like to designate Tuesday, June 15, as the day to conclude debate on the motion to concur in the first report of the Standing Committee on International Trade.

Finally, I would like to designate Thursday, June 17, as the last allotted day.

At this time I will be making a number of motions and asking for the unanimous consent of the House for them, starting with the take note debate motion.