Bill C-43 (Historical)

Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act

An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act

This enactment amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to limit the review mechanisms for certain foreign nationals and permanent residents who are inadmissible on such grounds as serious criminality. It also amends the Act to provide for the denial of temporary resident status to foreign nationals based on public policy considerations and provides for the entry into Canada of certain foreign nationals, including family members, who would otherwise be inadmissible. Finally, this enactment provides for the mandatory imposition of minimum conditions on permanent residents or foreign nationals who are the subject of a report on inadmissibility on grounds of security that is referred to the Immigration Division or a removal order for inadmissibility on grounds of security or who, on grounds of security, are named in a certificate that is referred to the Federal Court.

Motions in amendment

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Immigration is very selective in the way in which he puts things. He says “foreign criminals”. What he is really talking about is 1.5 million plus people who call Canada their home, their permanent residence. That is one thing we need to recognize.

The other thing we need to recognize is that the minister likes to refer to extreme cases. What about the individual who has been living in Canada for 10, 12 or 14 years, graduates from high school and goes with his buddies to the United States and maybe uses false identification in order to get some alcohol served to him? That is the type of individual who the minister would deport. That is the type of individual the minister likes to use as an example, the extremes.

My question to the member is this. Does she believe that the minister is doing a disservice to Canadians by using extreme examples and bringing in legislation so that the public thinks the government is getting tough on foreign criminals, as the minister likes to label it?

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we have to think, when people are granted permanent residency and they come to live in Canada, that we have done our due diligence. Once they come here, then there are certain responsibilities we have as a society as well.

Imagine the case of someone who arrives here with family at the age of one. The family has lived here for quite a number of years but has not applied for Canadian citizenship because they assumed that after a certain number of years they would actually become citizens without going through a process. We have had some of those cases. What is really egregious in this bill is that, if that young man should commit a crime at the age of 19 and receive a minimum sentence of six months, he could be deported without an appeal.

Whenever we talk about foreign criminals we forget that we are talking about families who call Canada their home. We absolutely want to make sure that serious criminals are not in the country. However, we have to have a process that is fair and transparent.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with every single point just made by the immigration critic for the official opposition. However, I also believe that if I had been asked the question, which I imagine the Minister of Immigration may ask me, do I not believe that foreign criminals who have committed serious crimes in Canada should not be able to continue to stay here much longer after the deportation order, I would agree with him.

How can I agree with both of them? The essence of my amendments goes to the problem that we have with this legislation, which is that the legislation goes too far. It is overly broad, overly harsh and creates an unlimited discretion that we have not seen in previous immigration acts, allowing the minister, for instance, to deny permanent residency. Thus, someone who is not already in Canada could be denied the chance to come to Canada for a very vague and undefined purpose of public policy reasons.

While I was not a member of the committee, we reviewed the testimony that was given at committee, and the amendments I am putting forward today are drawn from the evidence given at that committee by the Canadian Bar Association, the Canadian Council for Refugees, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers.

I am particularly grateful to Professor Donald Galloway of the University of Victoria for his help in preparing these amendments. He is one of the founders of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers and recently stood for election in Victoria as a Green Party candidate. I am indebted to him for his help.

What we have with this legislation is a public relations title, the faster removal of foreign criminals act. However, it goes beyond that. The bill would affect people who are not accused or convicted of criminality. It would affect people who are relatives of those who have been deemed inadmissible. For instance, an excellent example of where the bill fails to achieve the proper balance is on the subject of misrepresentation. Under Bill C-43, if someone is found guilty of misrepresentation on their application to come to Canada they are barred for five years. There is no distinction made between deliberate fraud or misrepresentation and the kinds of errors that occur through faulty language skills, such as inadvertent, unintentional misrepresentations.

In the brief time I have been a member of Parliament, I have been exposed to so many immigration cases on behalf of my constituents. I have seen fact sets that I simply would not have imagined occur, but they occur with great regularity. I have Canadian citizens whose child was born in the U.S. and who have come back together and have never got around to sorting out the child's citizenship. These children, for all intents and purposes, are Canadian. However, under Bill C-43, if they run afoul of the law and are convicted of something with a six-month sentence they are going to be inadmissible for further application.

We could see families ripped apart through this legislation. The piece that is missing is the ability to take into account all of the circumstances. One size does not fit all. This legislation makes no distinction, for instance, between conditional sentences, which are given out in the community, usually for lesser offences, and sentences that apply to someone being jailed.

For me personally, and not speaking on behalf of all the organizations that submitted concerns to the committee, the most egregious part of the bill is proposed section 22.1 of the act, because it will give the minister of citizenship and immigration the right to deny temporary resident status for up to three years for what are described as “public policy considerations”. These are not defined. In other words, the public policy considerations are not tied to the public relations title of the bill, the faster removal of foreign criminals act. A public policy consideration could be unlimited, given that it is a matter of the minister's discretion. If there is a public policy that we do not want foreign funded radicals opposing pipelines in Canada, I submit that that would be a class of person that a less reasonable Minister of Citizenship and Immigration than the current one would use in the future to bar people from coming to Canada on a whim.

This goes against the grain of everything this country is about, that we as a country have been enriched by accepting and bringing in a wide range of citizens and residents from all around the world. However, this bill would allow children, for instance, who have been here for their whole lives to be deported for relatively minor offences, without access to appeal. This is simply against what Canada and Canadian citizens want. If it were more properly balanced, I do not think anyone on this side of the House would have a problem with it.

The bill states that those falling under section 34, that is, people who are inadmissible on grounds of security, or on the grounds of human or international rights violations under section 35, or on the grounds of organized criminality under section 37, can no longer apply for compassionate, humanitarian consideration. This would be overly broad. As I mentioned, the hon. member for Newton—North Delta has put forward a number of the kinds of circumstances where we would not, in the normal course of things, imagine that Canada would sweep up people, deport them and deprive them of their opportunity for an appeal.

Those of us on this side of the House who want to see the bill amended want it amended so that it would actually focus the minister's responsibilities and those of law enforcement on the removal of those people who are a legitimate threat to peace and security, people who actually fall under the category of criminality, who have been convicted of offences involving crimes of violence.

This legislation does not have any of those caveats that would allow law enforcement agencies, immigration and citizenship agents, and the minister to make a decision, with compassionate and humanitarian Canadian values at play, that we not uproot a person, a child or teenager, who has lived in this country virtually all their life. He or she may not yet have their citizenship. They are permanent residents or are temporary residents. The permanent residents category is very large in this country for people who have literally been here all their lives, except for perhaps the first six months or two years of life. This legislation does not take into account any of those circumstances in deciding if people can be deported, and they will not have access to ministerial discretion and further appeal.

I mentioned earlier that it would deem people inadmissible if they are related to someone else deemed inadmissible. Family members who want to come to Canada for a visit and who have committed no crime can, under Bill C-43, be told that they cannot come to Canada, even though the inadmissible family member is not travelling with them.

This does not seem to fit any public policy rationale. It appears to exclude people through association. Moreover, given that other family members may be residing in Canada, it would only serve to further punish a family that has already had a family member ruled inadmissible and been removed.

If a person released from detention is subject to inadmissibility on grounds of security, they could be released on condition. Essentially, inadmissibility on security grounds could speak to a whole range of reasons. These are not necessarily identified in this legislation, that is, in what way the person is a security danger.

The mandatory conditions do not really need to be added to the bill because we already have adequate measures under existing legislation to deal with most of the circumstances that would be of concern to Canadians.

In closing, I would ask the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism whether he is not willing, even at this late date, to consider that the bill may be overly broad. I will not say that the bill's purposes are public relations, because I think there will be circumstances in which Canadians will be glad to see some of the provisions of the bill. However, surely, even at this late date, at report stage, we could take on board some amendments in line with the recommendation of so many expert witnesses to ensure that Bill C-43 speaks to Canadian values, speaks to the rule of law and our traditions that people have a right to be heard, that their side of the story gets to be heard. These traditions and rule of law go back to the earliest history of our western civilization. They go back to Magna Carta and we should not ignore them.

Extreme examples can be used by the minister. I will also put forward the example of a child who has been in this country virtually all of his or her life. To remove that child without access to humanitarian or compassionate grounds would go too far.

Surely some of these amendments could be accepted by the Privy Council side of the House.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship]

Mr. Speaker, I commend the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands for her constant due diligence. I know it is a particular challenge to effectively be an independent member and yet participate in an informed way in debates on virtually all bills in the House. We all admire her for that even if I do not agree with the substance of her intervention here.

We did consider opposition amendments. The member does not have an opportunity to sit at every committee. However, had she been at the immigration committee during its consideration of Bill C-43, she would have heard a huge number of witnesses supporting the bill in its various aspects.

Let me just address a couple of the points my colleague raised. One was the inadmissibility of family members. In one respect the bill would make it easier for family members of people who are currently inadmissible to come into Canada. If one of the family members is medically inadmissible, currently all members of the family cannot come into Canada. We would end that broad reach of inadmissibility through an amendment in the bill, because we do not think family members should be penalized because of the sickness of one of them.

However, what we are seeking to do on the restrictive side is to render inadmissible family members of those foreign nationals who have committed human or international rights violations or been involved in organized criminality. The member says there is no public policy rationale for this, but in point of fact there is.

In the last Parliament the government was hammered by the opposition for allowing the admission into Canada of close family members of the former Tunisian dictator, Belhassen Trabelsi. There is a reasonable expectation that close family members of a dictator or a mafioso, for example, have profited or benefited from, and are certainly conscious of, the crimes that have been committed. This is one example of where there is a very sound public policy rationale to make sure that the wives and children of dictators, major human rights violators and mafiosi, do not come into Canada. Would the member not agree that is a reasonable public policy?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, again the hon. Minister of Citizenship and Immigration has picked the extreme examples, but the terms of this legislation are going to catch quite a lot of other people.

The disallowing of family members visiting the country is overly broad, particularly without giving them the opportunity to establish why they should be considered admissible for a family visit. We know that one person's dictator one day is someone else's best friend the next. I am not suggesting that we want dictators allowed into this country, but many Canadian businesses were doing a lot of business with Colonel Gadhafi and helping out his family members.

I am not suggesting that we open up our immigration system to family members of dictators, but organized criminality as a class, and particularly some of the language that is used here, is overly broad and would not apply to the Colonel Gadhafis of this world or the Trebelsis of this world, but to family members who might have a very clear reason to visit Canada and who should not be deemed inadmissible because another family member has been deemed so.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, after listening to the Conservatives, it would appear to me that they believe that we have no law in this country to stop mafioso or war criminals or international gangbangers coming to Canada, believing that Canada is a place these people have been able to come to. My understanding of our Criminal Code is that we do have laws for that.

Why does my hon. colleague think the Conservatives are hiding behind dictators and war criminals and not addressing the issue--

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

No we do not. Not to close family members. That is why we are amending it. You asked us to do that; you asked for the amendment last year.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the poor man over there is nearly hysterical. I would ask my hon. colleague to help calm him down so that we can address the fact that we are also talking about the Conservatives getting a big net so they can scoop up a whole manner of people who have done very small things, and then the Conservatives will get to crow to their base.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am not going to presume to imagine the motives of the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration nor of his caucus, but I do think this bill goes too far. Every single public policy expert, every single organization that analyzes the impact of laws on our country, the Canadian Bar Association, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Canadian Council for Refugees, organizations that function on a public policy basis, all find this legislation as going too far.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to comment on Bill C-43 and the amendments that are being proposed at this stage.

It is important to recognize that throughout the committee process we listened to a wide variety of presenters, experts and different types of stakeholders. At the end of the day numerous amendments were brought forward. There was a great sense of disappointment from the Liberal Party and, I believe, the other opposition members as well, in regard to the government's refusal to recognize that it has gone too far.

I have had the opportunity outside Ottawa to talk about Bill C-43 and to express the general concerns we have, including the attitude that the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism and the government have toward immigrants. It is not an immigrant friendly government. Going forward we will see the true colours of this Reform-Conservative party unfold, as we have witnessed first-hand in terms of some of the changes that the government has made to immigration programming, the delays a person experiences in being able to acquire citizenship, and in general the manner in which the government portrays refugees in a very negative way. We are now seeing the very negative connotation of 1.5 million-plus permanent residents being labelled as foreigners.

When I think of the amendments at this stage, they are nowhere near as extensive as they could have been had the minister been open to receiving amendments and allowing committee members on the government side to support what I believe were good, solid amendments to the bill by the Liberals and other opposition members. We listened to a number of presenters at committee. I want to comment on a couple of amendments.

Motion No. 25 is a transitional provision that would make the bill retroactive. It would be simply unfair to have Bill C-43 apply to those who commit offences before the bill actually comes into force.

Richard Kurland is an immigration lawyer who comes before the citizenship and immigration committee as a witness on a regular basis. He said:

Imposing, with retroactive effect, the penalty of removal from Canada is incompatible with some of the tenets of our criminal justice system. The sentencing judge did not have the opportunity at the time of sentencing to deal with the individuals, so, ironically, rather than expedite the removal of criminals from Canada, it may well retard that effort, given the legal issues that are raised by the issue of retroactivity.

The Canadian Bar Association stated on that particular point:

The retroactive application of Bill C-43 has the potential to create significant unfairness. Bill C-43’s transitional provisions would deny appeal rights even if the offence or conviction in question was before the amendments, unless the case has been referred to the Immigration Division before the provisions come into force. The timing of the referral is not an equitable basis on which to decide who ought to be stripped of appeal rights. In the course of sentencing, criminal courts take a holistic view of an offender’s circumstances and the consequences of the sentence imposed. The loss of a right to appeal a deportation order is an important and valid consideration for a sentencing court. The retroactive nature of the provisions is particularly harsh for individuals who have received a longer sentence on the basis that they would be allowed to serve their sentences in the community under conditional sentence orders.

Throughout the process, we heard very striking presentations which pointed out many of the mistakes in Bill C-43. It is a flawed piece of legislation. It the minister wanted to do the House a favour, I would suggest that he would seriously look at putting this bill on hold. At the very least, maybe he could allow for a new bill to be brought in to deal with the issues the government chose to ignore at committee. The mistakes are fairly extensive, and that is just referring to the motions that are before us, not to mention the different amendments that were brought forward at committee which we were not able to reintroduce at report stage.

Specifically dealing with other motions, we could talk about deleting clause 8 which would allow for the use of public policy considerations to deny entry. We do not support the minister's ability to determine based on “public policy considerations” an individual's inadmissibility.

If we listen to what the witnesses had to say, Barbara Jackman, a constitutional lawyer stated, “I have no doubt that the public policy grounds will lead to denying people admission on the basis of speech.”

Michael Greene from the Canadian Bar Association stated:

We believe this power is unlimited, unaccountable, un-Canadian, and unnecessary. It doesn't have a place in a free and democratic society that cherishes civil liberties and fundamental freedoms. It's wrong to say that the minister is currently powerless. We have nine different inadmissibilities to Canada. We also have hate crime laws and anti-terrorism laws that specifically target people who promote violence against vulnerable groups in society. People with track records or an intention to engage in hateful rhetoric in Canada are inadmissible under existing immigration laws.

Motion No. 7 would delete clause 9. This clause in Bill C-43 would remove the H and C access for those inadmissible under sections 34, 35 and 37. Again, we do not support the restricted access to humanitarian and compassionate grounds for applications as the process itself does not delay deportation. Witnesses testified that sections 34, 35 and 37 are broadly interpreted by courts. Individuals who may get caught by sections 34, 35 and 37 should be given access to humanitarian and compassionate grounds.

Again, individuals like Barb Jackman stated:

What you don't understand, or what I think you need to understand, in terms of that legislation is that for persons for whom there are reasonable grounds to believe they were members of a terrorist organization, or at some point in their youth they may have been involved in street gangs or something like that, and they have grown up and left it behind them, it leaves them without any remedy whatsoever on humanitarian grounds. That is not a piecemeal change to the legislation. That is a fundamental change to our immigration history. From the time we got legislation in 1910 there has always been a broad discretion on the part of the minister or a body like the immigration appeal division to allow people to remain in Canada on humanitarian and compassionate grounds in recognition of the fact that hard and fast rules don't fit with the fact that people are human beings. This legislation will mean that for the first time ever there will be classes of people who don't get any kind of discretion, who don't have access to any kind of discretion, who won't have anybody looking at their case. That is so out of keeping with our humanitarian tradition in terms of the way our legislation has always been structured.

Angus Grant, another immigration lawyer, stated:

--the parameters for finding someone inadmissible under sections 34, 35 and 37 are extremely broad. Whereas in criminal law there is the requirement that to find someone guilty we have to establish that they are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, in immigration law we don't even have to find that they have done an act on a balance of probabilities, in other words, a 50% plus 1% chance that the person committed an act that is proscribed by the IRPA. All we have to show is that there are reasonable grounds to believe that an individual committed an act or was a member of a group that committed an act that is proscribed by the bill.

There is so much more that I could talk about. There were stakeholders and individuals who brought to the table a great deal of background, education and real life experience. They have asked the Conservative government to make changes to Bill C-43 so that we could have better immigration law in Canada. However, the government has chosen to ignore the many amendments, which I believe has ultimately led to the bill that we have before us today being fundamentally flawed.

We appeal to the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism to do the right thing and start looking seriously at voting in favour of amendments so that we can minimize the flaws in this piece of legislation.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship]

Mr. Speaker, first, I would sincerely like to thank the hon. member for Winnipeg North for his forthright opposition to the bill, because nothing could more clearly demonstrate how far removed the Liberal Party has become from the common sense of Canadians on matters of immigration and national security than his opposition.

The member quoted from a wide array of left-wing immigration lawyers who have a stake in the broken status quo. They are the folks who make the appeals.

It is interesting. We have immigration lawyers who, funnily enough, he did not quote, who have done some of these appeals and who agree with the bill. He should know one of them, Reis Pagtakhan, who ran against him for his nomination. He said that the bill deserves support in the “provision that eliminates the right of permanent residents to appeal removals to the immigration appeal division for sentences of six months or more in prison. While some”--like some of the far left lawyers he quoted from, like Barbara Jackman--“argue that this would unfairly penalize long-term permanent residents who may be deported for their actions, what is missed in this argument is that the permanent residents who face deportation are criminals. It should be stated that these individuals are not alleged criminals; they are not accused; they are not innocent. They have been convicted of a crime in a court of law”.

Similarly, Julie Taub said:

I have represented those who have been found to be criminally inadmissible to Canada, and I have gone to the Immigration Appeal Division to get a stay of removal for them, successfully in almost all cases.... Unfortunately, the majority of the clients I have represented reoffend or they breach their conditions.... I listen to their heart-felt apologies and promises, but time and time again they reoffend and they breach the conditions.... I really support this bill because criminals remain in Canada who are not Canadian, and it's almost impossible to deport them.

Why did the member not listen at committee to the victims of violence, to the crime victims organizations, to the immigrant organizations, to the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, to the Canadian Police Association, all of whom endorsed this bill? Why did he disregard their pleas for us to deport serious convicted foreign criminals more quickly?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the minister's question is flawed on many points.

First and foremost, I would suggest to the minister that I listened to far more hours of debate at the immigration committee than he did to all of the different stakeholders who came before the committee.

Second, his information is flawed. Reis Pagtakhan, the individual he referred to and whom he actually quoted, did not run against me in the nomination. He was a good supporter of mine, but he did not run against me in the nomination.

If he wants me to quote Reis Pagtakhan, because after all he quoted Reis Pagtakhan, I will provide a quote that he gave at committee. Had the minister been there maybe he would have been able to reflect on this particular quote.

In relation to clause 8 and the minister's grab for more power, Reis Pagtakhan stated:

This section is troubling in that the ministerial discretion opens up the possibility of decisions being made without clearer criteria. Canadians are entitled to know what actions could cause a person to be barred from coming to Canada.

That is why I say that just because the minister has said something it does not mean that it is true. Quite often it is not true. That is one of the issues we have to address.

At the end of the day we want to see immigration policy that is well thought out and immigration policy that makes sense. Had the minister actually listened to what was being said at the citizenship and immigration committee, the bill would not be in its current form because amendments would have been passed at the committee stage that would have made the legislation better for all Canadians.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the consideration of all members, particularly those of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, for their review of this important legislation, Bill C-43. We have already heard about the number of the amendments proposed to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and other statutes proposed here, although I believe there has been a number of mischaracterizations of the bill.

The bill seeks to do three things primarily. First is to make it easier for the government to remove dangerous foreign criminals from our country. These are convicted serious foreign criminals. Second is to make it harder for those who may pose a risk to Canada to enter the country in the first place. Third is to remove barriers for genuine visitors who want to come to Canada.

There is a number of provisions, the most prominent of which would be the elimination of access to the Immigration Appeal Division for foreign nationals who have been convicted by a Canadian criminal court of what IRPA currently deems “a serious crime”, that is to say a crime which has resulted in a penal sentence of six months or more.

On this point, there has been a lot of obfuscation from the opposition members who have suggested that we will lower the bar for defining what constitutes a serious crime in immigration law. That is completely inaccurate. In 2002, when Parliament adopted the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, it decided in its wisdom, under the leadership of a former Liberal government, to define “serious criminality” under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act as a crime that had resulted in a penal sentence of six months or more. That is the law and we would not change the law in that respect. We hear all sorts of completely bizarre, risible scenarios from the opposition about how this would be applied.

The member for Winnipeg North just imagined that Canadians who bought alcohol when they were not of the age of majority in the United States would get a six-month penal sentence in Canada. I do not know what planet he is living on, but that is not an offence in Canada at all and it is certainly not a criminal offence that carries a six-month penal sentence.

We have heard from opposition members that poor, innocent young Canadians who just happen to have six marijuana plans will be caught by police and they will be thrown out of the country pre-emptively because of this. Again, it is an effort by the opposition members to mislead. The criminal offence to which they refer is possession of a substantial amount of narcotics, in that case six marijuana plants, with the intention of trafficking.

Why did Parliament impose a mandatory minimum sentence for possession of six plants with intention for trafficking? It is precisely because that is how the organized drug gangs operate. They get a bunch of people to cultivate relatively small numbers of plants so that in the past if they were caught, they would not have faced a serious penal sanction. Parliament decided to render that a serious crime with a mandatory minimum prison sentence for trafficking drugs to kids. However, anyone who knows anything about actual sentencing practices will realize that a six-month penal sentence is, according to Parliament, quite appropriately a sentence that carries a penal sanction of six months or more.

The opposition members constantly try to diminish the gravity of these offences, but they do not seem to recognize that these offences create victims in Canada. That is why Sharon Rosenfeldt of the Victims of Violence has said:

As an organization that works with victims of violent crimes and their families, we applaud this proposed change. We feel that streamlining the deportation of convicted criminals from Canada will make our country safer. Limiting access to the Immigration and Refugee Board’s Immigration Appeal Division, and thus reducing the amount of time that convicted criminals may spend in Canada, is an important proactive step in ensuring the safety of all Canadians.

Similarly, the Canadian Police Association has said that it:

—welcomes the introduction of [this bill]...particularly with respect to the enhanced prohibitions against those who have committed serious crimes abroad from coming to Canada....This legislation will help us by streamlining the procedures necessary to remove individuals who remain at-risk to re-offend.

Similarly, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police said that it:

—supports the efforts of [this bill] to provide for a more expeditious removal from Canada of foreigners who are convicted of committing serious crimes against Canadians. As well, we support measures to prevent those with a history of committing criminal offenses, or who pose a risk to our society, from entering Canada. The Act will help to make Canadians and those who legitimately enter Canada safer.

Let the record be clear that the opposition is disregarding the voices of victims' rights organizations, our police and those who are charged with keeping our society safe. What the government seeks to do is when foreign nationals have received a serious criminal sentence of six months or more, the CBSA will then issue a removal order against them, an exclusion order, deeming them inadmissible to stay in Canada. They will no longer be able to appeal that to the Immigration Appeals Division as a result of the bill.

In the past, by appealing to the IAD of the Immigration and Refugee Board, that would typically gain foreign criminals about nine months for that appeal to be heard. If that appeal was refused, they would then appeal that negative decision to the Federal Court. Occasionally they would then be able to further appeal the negative decision by the Federal Court to the Federal Court of Appeals. That takes serious convicted foreign criminals, who have already benefited from due process, including the presumption of innocence in our criminal system, and allows them to delay their deportation for, in that case, two to three years.

That is how Canada ends up with people like Jackie Tran, whom I mentioned before, who was running a Vietnamese drug gang in Calgary. The gang was responsible for the deaths of several people. Like most capos in organized criminal groups, this fellow was too smart to actually pull the trigger, as far as we know. Instead he had other henchmen do that for him. There is no doubt he was in charge. The problem was the police were only able to get him on relatively minor offences, like assault with a weapon, drug trafficking, drug possession and failure to comply with court orders. Because of the current provision in IRPA, which allowed him to appeal his removal order to the IAD for sentences of two years less a day, he managed to delay his removal by six years.

Patrick De Florimonte, a Guyanese national, was found guilty of several criminal offences.

Charges included assault with a weapon, assault causing bodily harm, uttering threats, multiple counts of theft, drug possession, drug trafficking and failure to comply with court orders. He managed to use these loopholes. which we would close, to delay removal by four and a half years.

Then there is the case of Gheorghe Capra, who had over 60 convictions of fraud, forgery, conspiracy to commit fraud, obstructing a police officer, failure to comply with court orders. Again, because those sentences were all less than two years, he managed to appeal those and delay deportation for five years. He reoffended and created new victims.

I honestly cannot imagine why any member of this place would want to allow someone like Mr. Capra, who has no right to be in Canada, is not a Canadian citizen and lost through his own volition the privilege of staying in Canada through his criminal recidivism, to continue to delay his removal from Canada and claim new victims.

For example, there is the case of Mr. Jeyachandran Balasubramaniam, who was convicted of assault with a weapon, drug possession, drug trafficking and failure to comply with court orders. Again, through the same procedures we would close, he managed to delay his removal for seven years.

That clearly demonstrates why the provisions to limit appeals to the IAD are so broadly supported.

Let me address a couple of the other points in the short time available to me. The member from Winnipeg talked about how terrible it was that we would close access to humanitarian and compassionate consideration for certain people. What he failed to mention was that the people we would exclude from H and C consideration would be those who had been found by our legal system to be inadmissible on security grounds for human and international rights violations and for organized criminality.

I will give the House one example. Léon Mugesera was one of the members responsible for inciting the Rwandan genocide that led to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. He got to Canada.

When it was learned that he was involved in the genocide, efforts were made to have him deported from Canada, but he delayed his removal by nearly 20 years. I do not think that the vast majority of Canadians feel that a man involved in genocide should have his application considered on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. This man had no compassion and did not consider the humanity of the victims in the Rwandan genocide.

And that is why we are supporting this bill.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for going over this legislation, which the opposition still believes is too overarching. As I said earlier, we tried to present very reasonable amendments. We tried to codify and to make the bill more reasonable so we could support it. We believe and are seriously committed to ensuring that serious criminals are deported and kept out of Canada. However, that also requires some investment from the government to border security and all those things.

This new law relieves the minister of the obligation to consider humanitarian and compassionate consideration. Is this the kind of Canada we want and why would the government and the minister want to be relieved of considering the best interests of children in possible deportation cases?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would not. In fact, children are a consistent principle for consideration by the Canada Border Services Agency in handling removals.