Yes, absolutely. I recommend not putting any sort of time limit in terms of what might happen in third reading. We should try to allow for full and open debate.
I say that, Mr. Chair, because when we look at the title of the bill, it is very clear. The idea behind it was to try to improve the system. Based on that, I would argue that ultimately this bill attempts to deal with a crisis that really does not exist.
I say that because this bill can be broken into three parts, if I can generalize it very briefly.
One of them deals with the whole concept of speeding things up for the refugees. I believe that everyone inside this room and all of the witnesses who came before the committee recognize that the current system needs to be sped up. It's better for the refugees and the taxpayers. It's better for everyone. We recognized that a couple of years back. That's why we had Bill C-11, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act. That bill did receive good, solid support, and it dealt with the issue of speeding up the process.
The second thing was for the minister to deal with human smuggling. This bill takes into account Bill C-11 and Bill C-4. You'll recall, Mr. Chair, that Bill C-4 is still on the order paper. It's all about the Sun Sea, the Ocean Lady, and human smuggling. I often make reference to the picture of the Minister of Immigration and the Prime Minister standing on the back of I think the Ocean Lady, but it might have been the Sun Sea, trying to highlight this “crisis”. The reality is that the system wasn't broken; the system was actually working.
When my colleague from the New Democratic Party made reference to both the Sun Sea and the Ocean Lady, there were well over 550 refugees. The current system identified security risks, and those individuals—I believe there were six of them—are still in detention today because the Government of Canada has concerns in regard to that. There should be no doubt among committee members that there is nothing wrong with the system we have here today.
The third and broader issue is biometrics. As I pointed out in an earlier comment, this isn't something new. It's been happening throughout the world. In fact, it was first introduced somewhere around seven or eight years ago as a pilot project. I think the committee recognized that fact, and that's the reason we were investigating the issue of biometrics and how it might be able to benefit Canadian society going forward.
It would have been a whole lot better to have completed that study, reviewed the pilot project that was initiated years ago, and then developed a separate piece of legislation in order to deal with that. Then we could have had witnesses or whoever else participate to have better definition or clarification of the regulations to address some of the questions that were being posed.
In principle, we have been consistent in saying that we do not support Bill C-31 because it does establish two tiers of refugees. There is the whole concept of mandatory detention. Even though I acknowledge that after listening to the committee and the public, the government and the minister did recognize that they had made a mistake—and that's a good thing—we are very concerned about this family separation issue. That's why I asked for a recorded vote on clause 81. I wanted to make sure that it was perfectly clear and that people in this committee realized that we were preventing families from being able to reunite, or at least this minister was.
From an opposition point of view, I can tell you that the Liberal Party will be watching very closely what this minister does and how he decides to use his new power potentially against those victims—I underline the word “victims”—of the Sun Sea and the Ocean Lady. They have come from a country in which they were victims. Is this minister going to revictimize them? We'll have to wait and see, but rest assured, this is an issue the Liberal Party will be following very closely.
We are concerned with the timelines. There's so much within the legislation, and that's why, at the end of the day, I believe we would have been far better off, at the very least, to bring back this bill six months from now. How could we make this a bill that would deserve the title we're giving it? Right now, I don't believe it deserves the assigned title.
If we were to allow more time and genuinely fix the bill, there might be some merit for this particular clause, but as it stands right now, we do not support clause 1. I look forward to the bill entering third reading and debate in the House, where I'll be able to add a few more comments from my perspective and the perspective of the Liberal Party of Canada.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
