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.

Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I know my hon. colleague to be a veteran in politics and I always appreciate his candour. I wish I could be as forthcoming in my opinions as he is, and in such an eloquent way.

With all due respect to my Conservative colleague on the other side, his main point was about the concentration of power. If we look at the pattern of the government over the years, it has been the concentration of power in the PMO's office or a minister's office. I would like my hon. colleague to perhaps expound on why that is a problem.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my friend can play games about me being a conspiracy theorist, which is fine, but I fully confess that after spending eight years in a Conservative House, one becomes very concerned about conspiracies. I have no problem with that. However, what I really want to focus on is whether the minister should get more power and whether it is reasonable that we would be so concerned about giving him that power.

We do not have enough time to talk about the litany of abuses of power by the government, starting with our very democracy. This is the government that passed the law, and it loves laws, that said there would be an election on a specific date. That was it and it was final. It was decided and there was the law. The first thing it did was ignore that law and set it aside because it did not suit its purposes. That is the kind of thing we are worried about.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask a question related to the one posed by my colleague previously. It has to do with the increasing movement by the government to give complete discretion, with no criteria, to ministers or some other authority to make decisions that impact the lives of people in Canada.

One thing concerned me about the comment that was made, which I know was meant in all good faith by my Conservative colleague across the way, and that was that it was not the government's intent. Could the member please elaborate for the House?

The very reason we pass laws is to provide legal certainty. That is why laws have to be very clear and provide clear criteria for how that discretion is to be exercised. That is the very idea behind why laws are made. Once that law is passed, there is no way the government can say that is not what it meant by that law. The law is clear on its face until it is tested in the courts.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, all I can say is that the member has answered the question herself. The member is a lawyer, so she knows far more about this than I do.

As a layperson, I will just say this, when we pass a law it says to someone that they have been found wrong and that we are going to take action. There is going to be a penalty and it is going to hurt in some fashion in that person's life.

We are also big believers that the person should be given the opportunity to have an appeal, a second opportunity for justice if they believe it was not had in the first case.

When all that power is put in one human being, as flawed as we are, that is looking for trouble. It is looking for trouble if one goes at it with the right attitude, but we do not think the Conservatives even bring that to this issue.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have the opportunity today at second reading to speak to Bill C-43.

It is described as an act for the faster removal of foreign criminals. If we were debating the title of the act, I really do not think there would be anything to debate. I cannot imagine any Canadian who does not think that a foreigner who is a dangerous criminal should be removed from Canada.

As has happened lately with a number of pieces of legislation brought before the House since I have been a member, I have been surprised how far the titles have morphed from the kinds of titles of legislation I once studied at law school. It used to be that we would open a statute and we found that, not only was the book dusty, the title of the legislation was just a blanket description of what was at stake: an immigration and refugee statute or a law to deal with the Fisheries Act.

Now we have titles that seem to, and probably do, come out of focus group testing for legislative titles that would be zingers in future election campaigns. As someone who studied statutes, I find this a dismaying trend. I realized the other day while watching a U.S. program on HBO called The Newsroom that this was invented by the Republicans south of the border. I do not watch enough U.S. TV to have known that if I had not been watching The Newsroom.

Back to the topic, this piece of legislation, which would amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, definitely has merit if what it is about is getting rid of dangerous foreign criminals who have no right to be in Canada.

I assert that what we have here is always going to be a question of balance. We do not want dangerous foreign criminals with no right to stay in Canada to be here, threatening Canadians who have every right to be here. However, we also recognize that under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, permanent residents and citizens of Canada have charter rights. The question then is whether we have the right balance. Are we protecting permanent residents who are not a threat to our society or are we sweeping them up in the vast and sweeping discretion of the minister?

This could do serious injustice to people who are important parts of Canadian society, who contribute in positive ways and who we would not want to be caught up in a sweep that did not take account of individual rights, individual situations, humanity, compassion, holding families together and other aspects that have always been part of the consideration before deportation takes place.

When we ask if the balance is right in the legislation, I turn to some of the recent comments by members of the Canadian bar. Toronto lawyer Mendel Green is quoted in this story from the Toronto Sun as saying:

I am concerned about the monumental affect this will have on the immigrant community if it becomes law.... This will be a life sentence for many people.

Lawyer Joel Sandaluk, at the same press conference, representing the Ontario Criminal Lawyers' Association, said:

This will destroy families who've been here for a long time.... It will create more criminals if parents or other family members are removed from Canada.

I have further quotes from other lawyers. Lawyer Guidy Mamann also said this about the potential residents who could be swept up and deported with no chance of appeal and without any exercise of individual discretion. He said:

These are young children brought to Canada at a young age as permanent residents, raised and schooled in Canada...[but] never took out citizenship.... It is unconscionable that a country like Canada, which has always allowed for second chances, to now embark on a new ‘one strike you’re out’ approach.

Last, I will cite lawyer Andras Schreck, vice-president of the Ontario Criminal Lawyers' Association, who said that the bill is drafted in such a way that it could easily sweep up people guilty of minor offences and have them deported. He said:

We are not talking about serial killers, murderers or bank robbers.

Let us take a look at what kind of people could be swept up by the bill and what kinds of crimes people would have to commit for there to be no right of appeal and the person would just be sent out of the country. This can be described as crimes for which people are convicted for a sentence of six months or more.

The current law deals with crimes where sentences are two years or more. To bring it down to six months or more for a crime for which the ultimate sentence could be as much as ten years in jail would bring in a series of crimes that do not threaten the security or at least the safety of Canadians. In other words, it would take in a number of crimes that do not involve any threat of violence. If someone is found guilty of a crime and sent to jail for six months or more, nowhere does this new legislation require that the crime be a crime of violence or something that threatens the security of Canada.

The kinds of crimes listed that I found might fit this definition for which someone who is a permanent resident could get a six month sentence but a ten year maximum would include the deportation for possession of a stolen or forged credit card and the use of that credit card knowing it had been cancelled, the unauthorized use of a computer or forgery, and a host of other offences that carry ten year maximums. In that case, we are talking about no discretion, no appeal.

What could easily happen is that if any one member of a family, a parent or a younger member, children born in Canada, relatives participating in Canadian society or any one part of the fabric of a Canadian family, is found guilty of something that is not in any way a crime of violence but receives a sentence of up to six months with a maximum of ten years, that individual is gone. The individual would have no chance to plead his or her case.

I will quote one other lawyer on this matter who, I am proud to say, is the current nominated candidate for the Green Party in Victoria in a byelection. His name is Donald Galloway. He is a founder of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers and is also a professor of refugee and immigration law at the University of Victoria. In looking at this, he suggested that there was an inherent legal balance built into section 34 of the current act so that the courts have accepted broadly defined prescribed grounds of inadmissibility that are found in section 34(1) based on the assumption that these same sweeping inadmissibilities are balanced by the provisions in section 34(2).

If Bill C-43 were enacted, it would fundamentally destabilize the legal balance by removing the layer of individualized, personalized, case-by-case review guided by, in some cases, humanitarian concerns and compassion that acted as a safeguard against the breadth of prescribed grounds for inadmissibility found in section 34(1). Beyond issues of compassion and fairness, this ill-conceived change would force the courts, as they have already indicated, into a position where they will need to intervene and fix the act to provide a reinterpretation to ensure that the act remains constitutional, otherwise it will violate the charter.

I will now turn my attention to another section of the act that I find particularly egregious and which does not deal with criminals and does not deal with people already in Canada.

If the minister, under the new clause 8, which would change section 22 of the current act, is dealing with a foreign national who has applied to become a temporary resident of Canada, the minister would have unfettered discretion to make a decision to refuse that person the right to be a permanent resident of Canada with no objective criteria that can be measured. This is very unusual. The clause states that section 22.1(1), which can be found under clause 8 in the proposed Bill C-43, allows the minister, “on the Minister’s own initiative, declare that a foreign national...may not become a temporary resident if the Minister is of the opinion that it is justified by public policy considerations”. This banishment can last for up to three years.

Going back to my time in law school doing legal drafting and statute interpretation, we cannot find anything that gives us more freewheeling power to make up our mind which ever way we want than the language “Minister is of the opinion”. No court will be able to step in and say that it does not like the way the minister has exercised his or her discretion. I am using his or her as this will apply for all time. I am not just thinking of the minister at the moment. This would be a permanent change to our legislation and a dangerous one. The legislation says “the Minister is of the opinion”, and then what? What is the minister of the opinion of? The Minister is of the opinion that it is justified by public policy considerations. We could not come up with something that gives more freewheeling discretion, not bound by anything in particular. What kind of public policy considerations? Maybe the public policy considerations could be that we have too many of a certain kind of person in a town. Who knows? It is without objective criteria.

I hope that when this legislation goes to committee and is studied in committee we can rebalance the balance that must be there.

I stand here as leader of the Green Party not in favour of keeping dangerous foreign criminals in Canada but in keeping the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Mr. Speaker, while I share many of the same concerns with the member from the Green Party, I am not clear whether she will support the bill going on to committee if, for instance, a convicted war criminal was found and there were questions like that.

Would she no agree with me that there is a question of priorities here? The government is presenting the bill before the House when there are so many other problems that exist. The underemployment of new Canadians costs us $5.9 billion a year in losses because of their underemployment. We have hollowed out our foreign engagement, eliminating culture as a pillar of foreign policy, and we do not meet them on their soil anymore. We have hollowed out the system to integrate professional new Canadians. Now, we have hollowed out Canadians' trust in new Canadians.

Would the member not agree that perhaps the government's priorities are misplaced? Even though we are supporting the bill at second reading, and we hope she will join us in order to improve the bill at committee, does she not see a question of priorities?

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

Mr. Speaker, with not just some but a lot of concern and mixed feelings, I will support sending the bill to committee. However, as I am not a member of that committee, I reserve the right I have as the member representing the Green Party and Saanich—Gulf Islands to submit amendments at report stage if I am not satisfied that the bill has been re-balanced appropriately to reflect the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and respect for it.

The member's question about war criminals is a good one. It sounds pretty much like a no-brainer. If someone is a war criminal, we do not want the person in Canada, nor do we want people who have defied their government, committed crimes and spent time in jail. However, every now and then a person like that gets honorary Canadian citizenship, like Nelson Mandela.

The move under this proposed legislation and other legislation, such as the mandatory minimums under Bill C-10, is toward an authoritarian automatic discipline, which is unforgiving forever and lacks any compassion, humanitarian or even a thought process. That I will always oppose.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure the member did not mean to refer to Nelson Mandela as a war criminal.

When I talk to immigrants in Edmonton or anywhere else, they are the ones who are most upset when people, who get away with serious crimes, come from abroad to be part of Canada as landed immigrants or permanent residents. The expression “get away with murder” is true in some cases but a little extreme in most. However, the immigrants I talk to are some of the most upset about others who do not play by the rules and take advantage of Canada's generosity or, as some would suggest, over-generosity.

No one is suggesting that we take away people's rights or ability to appeal, but they should not appeal endlessly for seven to ten years, time and time again, when the evidence is clear and it is simply the immigration industry prolonging the process.

The immigrants I talk to play by the rules and they expect everybody else to as well: existing Canadians, natural born Canadians and new Canadians.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. friend for Edmonton Centre for catching me on that. I certainly did not want to refer to Nelson Mandela as a war criminal.

My point is that history is written by the victors and quite often someone who is accused in another country and called a convicted terrorist or something we would not want in Canada. However, if we lose our ability to examine particular circumstances, we lose our ability to think and to be truly Canadian.

I believe that what we want to do with this legislation is consider all the ways in which it could go awry, which, I am sure, is the minister's intention in bringing this forward. For example, if a member of a family that has been in Canada for a long time is convicted of the misuse of a credit card or of forgery, the bill says “no more chances, you are deported”. That cannot be the Canadian way.

[The Acting Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

Before resuming debate, it is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Alfred-Pellan, RCMP; the hon. member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, Employment Insurance; the hon. member for Malpeque, Ethics.

[Hélène LeBlanc, NDP, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise in this House today to speak about Bill C-43, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, also known as the Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act.

Before I speak about this bill specifically, I would like to briefly tell you about my constituency, LaSalle—Émard. LaSalle actually is celebrating its centenary this year. It was founded by a nobleman, René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle, who settled there more than 100 years ago. The name LaSalle comes from the name of this Frenchman who arrived more than 300 years ago. The French settled there, then the English. In fact, my constituency has been shaped by those French and English settlers, who worked together to build the community.

For decades, LaSalle—Émard has welcomed large numbers of newcomers, new Canadians. We have an Italian community that is one of the largest on the island of Montreal. Immigrants have become well established. We also have a large Chinese community and a large southeast Asian community, people from India, Pakistan and other countries in the region. We also are fortunate to have welcomed many people from North Africa and even from other parts of Africa.

LaSalle—Émard really is very representative of a number of communities in Canada as a welcoming place, a place where communities share their daily lives. I must tell you that I am very proud to represent the constituency, because it gives me the opportunity to meet people from every background: Quebeckers, English-speakers, British people with Scottish and Anglo-Saxon roots, and also people from communities all around the world.

As the member of Parliament, I have also put together a team to welcome and provide services to Canadians. I have come to realize that those services involve immigration to a great extent. Our immigration system has been stretched to the limit for years by the lack of resources, the lack of funding, the closure of embassies and places where people can submit visa or citizenship applications, and so on.

And what is happening here too, right inside the Department of Citizenship and Immigration? Cuts once more. There is not enough staff and not enough funding to meet the demand. So what is happening? People are coming to their member of Parliament's office to get information and answers to their legitimate questions and requests.

Every week, we meet with people to talk about their situations. Sometimes it is something quite simple. There is a wedding in the family and the people want their relatives to attend the ceremony, but the visa is denied. All the information has been provided. All the documents have been sent, but for some reason or another—a totally legitimate reason—the visa is denied.

However, other people come to talk about situations that are more complicated. They are expecting a loved one to join them, or they are refugees who have been issued a deportation notice. That is what is happening at our riding offices. It is always an immensely human story that is told in our office. As Canadians, we cannot even begin to imagine the situations that some people are in. We live here, in Canada, freely and comfortably. We have all our papers. We can get a passport, our driver's licence, and our health card without too much difficulty. But there are people who leave behind unimaginable situations, such as famine. There are people who have lived in refugee camps, where it is hard to imagine how they would get their documents, a licence or anything. Those are the stories and events that sometimes—far too often lately—land in our offices.

What we have before the House is a bill that seeks to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act whose short title is the “Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act”, because it is about foreigners.

I want to reiterate this: the NDP recognizes the need to have an efficient legal system in order to deport serious criminals who are not citizens. The NDP believes that it is possible to work with the government to prevent non-citizens who have committed serious crimes from abusing our appeal system without violating people's rights. This is the first thing that I want to say about Bill C-43.

However, this is Parliament. There are laws. The questions that we should be asking when we are in government are as follows. On what basis is this bill being introduced? Is this bill necessary? Does the Criminal Code contain provisions to prevent this situation? These are the questions that I am asking myself and that a government should ask itself before introducing a bill. There are other questions. Does this bill meet an urgent, pressing need or respond to a disastrous situation that is currently affecting our system? That is a question that should be asked. Does this bill fill a gap? That is the question that I am asking because a bill should be justified and justifiable.

There is one other thing that I would like to point out. As my colleagues already noted, this government has a strong tendency to want to push the judiciary into the political arena. In other words, it will transfer powers to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. I explained the situation in my riding office. At some point, will it not just slow down the system and, once again, get into subjective territory to transfer such power to a single person outside the judiciary? The power would be concentrated in the hands of one individual.

I raise all these questions about the bill.

I am happy to answer any questions.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Cooperation]

Mr. Speaker, the member spoke at length about her riding and the wide range of groups of people she represents. I too, in Newmarket—Aurora, represent a community that has changed very quickly over the last 10 years. I have been pleased to welcome into Newmarket—Aurora people from every corner of the world. These are people who have come to Canada because in many cases they are looking to escape from places in the world that have been plagued with difficulty and corruption. They have come to Canada because they are looking to raise their families in safe communities.

My question to my colleague is: Why does she want to expose the constituents in her riding to people who have been deemed foreign criminals, dangerous to our society and our communities? These very people who have come here and played by the rules want to live in safe communities, which is what we are trying to establish. Why does she want it to be different?

[Hélène LeBlanc, NDP, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague.

I completely agree with her that we all want safe communities in which people can live in peace.

However, I wonder whether the bill addresses the flaws that appear to be in the Criminal Code or in our current immigration system, which is there to identify people who may be serious criminals.

Once again, it does not seem clear to me, and this could be clarified in committee, but what does “serious criminality” mean? I would like to know because I am being told that a prison sentence of six months or more is given in cases of “serious criminality”. One member mentioned violent crime.

Quite simply, things need to be clarified.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative member in her question illustrates why it is that this is an anti-immigrant bill, at least in good part. She keeps wanting to use the terms “foreign criminal” and “dangerous people”.

What we are talking about are permanent residents. Most of the criminals she is referring to are not child molesters, murderers, drug addicts and so forth. With a six-month sentence, we could have 19-year-olds who have lived in Canada for 17 years but never got their citizenship, who got caught with six marijuana plants in their home. They are going to be deported. The rest of the family stays, but they are going to be deported to another country, even though they have been here for 15 of 17 years, because they did not get their citizenship.

All the Conservatives have to do is read their own legislation. My question is: Is the wording not important in terms of how the government is even labelling this issue, much as it used the term “bogus refugee”?

[Hélène LeBlanc, NDP, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will quote an excerpt of an article I just read on this subject:

The federal government has always had the authority to strip landed immigrant status from a permanent resident convicted of a serious crime, but Bill C-43 would allow appeals only for those sentenced to less than six months in jail, down from the current threshold of two years.

This authority already exists in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. So is this bill necessary? That is what I was asking.