Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the indulgence of the House. As members will know, I make a point of attending all debates on bills for which I am responsible. I take the importance of ministerial presence in these debates very seriously and so I appreciate the indulgence of the House in this respect.
Mr. Speaker, Bill C-43 is an important measure to strengthen the integrity of Canada's immigration system. We call it the Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act. We all know that Canada welcomes newcomers from around the world. Since coming to power, this government has accepted more immigrants than any other government in Canadian history: over a quarter of a million per year, or 14% more than the previous Liberal government. We have also maintained the highest per capita immigration rate in the developed world. This means that we add approximately 0.8% of our population through immigration every year. We have also increased the number of resettled refugees by 20%. We will be inviting more than 14,000 additional convention refugees to settle in Canada, which will give us the highest refugee resettlement rate in the world.
Our government has also tripled funding for settlement and integration services for new immigrants. We have done so much to help immigrants integrate and succeed.
When I work closely with new immigrants to Canada, I listen to them when they say that they want an immigration system that is fair and in keeping with our laws. That means that they want an immigration system that is based on the rule of law. They do not want anyone who poses a threat to the safety of our communities to come to Canada or to remain here. They want a system that welcomes newcomers from all over the world who want to come here, obey our laws, build Canada, contribute by paying taxes and respect Canada. New Canadians have no patience for those who come here to abuse the generosity of Canada and Canadians.
That is what I hear from new Canadians all around the country, that they and all Canadians, whether born here or newly arrived, treasure our country's historic posture of openness to the hard work and talents of newcomers, including refugees from persecution. At the same time, Canadians, especially those who came to this country from abroad, have no patience with those who would violate our laws or abuse our country's generosity. That is why we brought forward Bill C-43, the faster removal of foreign criminals act, which seeks to make several amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. These are designed, on the one hand, to facilitate and make easier the entry into Canada of legitimate visitors and immigrants and, on the other hand, to give us stronger legal tools to bar from Canada those who may pose a risk to this country and to remove from Canada those who have committed serious crimes and been convicted of such by our fair judicial system.
Allow me to review the provisions of the act. First, with respect to facilitating the admission of bona fide visitors and immigrants, the bill seeks to narrow the breadth of the inadmissibility provision for espionage to focus on activities carried out against Canada or that are contrary to the interests of Canada.
Quite frankly, this has the effect of covering those who may have been involved in espionage for close democratic allies of Canada and who may in fact have been gathering intelligence on behalf of Canada against common security threats. We believe that the wording in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act is unnecessarily broad and that we ought to focus the inadmissibility provision with respect to espionage on those who have been engaged in spying contrary to the interests of Canada.
Second, the bill would permit the temporary entry of persons with an inadmissible family member, except where the family member is inadmissible for security, human or international rights violations, or organized criminality.
There could be a family, for example, that has applied to visit Canada but has one medically inadmissible family member, that is to say, someone who according to officials and a medical exam might pose an excessive burden on Canada's taxpayer-funded public health system. In that case, under the current law, the entire family, all members, would be rendered inadmissible because they are considered as a package, as it were. This amendment would allow us to sever the one inadmissible person from that group, so that the other family members could still be admissible to Canada. This is a measure that has been broadly supported by immigration practitioners and others who see the unnecessary breadth of the currently law.
Third, the bill provides express authority for the Minister of Public Safety to grant ministerial relief on the minister's own initiative. This is to say that if our legal system, let us say the Canada Border Services Agency, which is delegated by me under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, finds that someone is inadmissible, there is a lengthy, time-consuming process to seek relief from the minister. This clarifies that the minister could take that initiative, and it streamlines the relief process for legitimate and bona fide visitors or immigrants.
I will now talk about measures in the bill that will strengthen the integrity of the system and protect the safety of Canadians.
First, the bill will create a new authority for the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism. The minister will be able to deny temporary resident status to foreign nationals for up to three years based on public policy considerations.
This would allow the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, on public policy grounds, to deny admission to Canada for up to three years to a foreign national who otherwise may be admissible. This is a very delicate part. It is a very delicate proposal that we are making, and I really to hope that the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration will focus on this particular proposal to help guide me, frankly, and the government as to how we can construct criteria, either by ministerial order or published regulations or perhaps even an amendment to the bill itself that would help us address, let me call them, really exceptional or extraordinary circumstances.
Under the current law, a foreign national is typically inadmissible only if he or she has a criminal record in a foreign country for crimes that would also be considered serious in Canada. That excludes political prisoners, because so-called political crimes with trumped up charges are not a crime in Canada. Or, if they are or have been a member of a criminal organization or a banned terrorist group or, as I mentioned before, have been involved in espionage or may pose a serious security risk to Canada, he or she is inadmissible, or if they are medically inadmissible, and some other categories.
Here is the problem. From time to time we get people seeking admission to Canada who may not have a criminal record abroad, but who may actually be coming here to incite hatred and violence, or to incite terrorism.
I will give the example of two British nationals, I believe, named Abdur Raheem Green and Hamza Tzortzis. Last year, they came to Canada even though they had a horrible record of promoting hatred against women, homosexuals, gays and lesbians, Jews and certain other minorities. A number of Canadians were afraid that the men intended to come to Canada to incite hatred, violence and perhaps even terrorism. Under current laws such persons cannot be prevented from entering Canada. For example, in some countries, it is not a crime to promote hatred against Jews or homosexuals.
This bill would give the minister the discretion, with certain limits, to prevent certain foreign nationals from entering Canada if they plan to promote violence, even though it is not a crime in their country of origin.
This is something we will have to study in more detail when the bill is before the standing committee.
Second, the bill seeks to lower the current threshold to bar access to the Immigration Appeal Division for serious criminality from a minimum sentence requirement of two years to a sentence of six months and also bar those who are convicted of an offence or have committed an act outside Canada, which if committed in Canada would carry a maximum sentence of at least 10 years. Perhaps this is my colleague's most important element of the bill.
Let me explain. The perpetually angry member for Winnipeg North and sadly misinformed Liberal critic for immigration was outraged with the suggestion that we should deport foreigners in Canada who had been convicted by Canadian courts of a serious crime, punished and given a sentence of six months or more.
Apparently and regrettably, the Liberal critic is not aware of even the basics of the current immigration law. The Immigration Refugee Protection Act, adopted in 2002, when his party was in government, says that if a foreign national is convicted of a crime with a sentence of six months or more, he or she is subject to deportation. That is what the current law states.
Here is the problem. Because the Liberals were more concerned about the procedural rights of criminals than public safety, they allowed for a loophole, which was that people who were convicted of a crime of six months or more as foreign nationals would be subject to deportation. However, if the sentences were two years or less, so somewhere between six months and two years, they could appeal the deportation order to the Immigration Appeal Division.
How does this work? I have a case wherein a foreign national, Cesar Guzman, raped a Canadian senior citizen. He was convicted of sexual assault. His sentence was 18 months in jail. He managed to delay his deportation for four years, meaning that this man who sexually assaulted a Canadian senior, this foreigner, was walking our streets posing a risk to other Canadians. Why? Because after his conviction, he would have gone to the Immigration Division of the Immigration Refugee Board that would have ordered his deportation pursuant to the current provisions in IRPA. Then he would have used the Liberal delay tactic. He would have appealed that deportation order to the Immigration Appeal Division. I do not have his whole chronology here, but I am sure, because I have seen this hundreds of times, he would have lost at the Immigration Appeal Division and then appealed that to the Federal Court. If he was really aggressive, like some of these other characters who we have seen, he would have appealed that negative decision to the Federal Court of Appeal.
If we add up each of those appeals, what does that mean in concrete, real world terms? It means violent foreign criminals, convicted by Canadian courts of law, are walking our streets when they should no longer be in Canada because they have lost the privilege of being here. That is the point the member does not seem to understand. To be a foreign national in Canada, whether as a visitor or as a permanent resident, is a privilege. It is not a hard one to keep. All we ask of the individual is two things: first, if that individual wants to maintain permanent residence, he or she has to live here for two out of five years; and, second, that the individual not commit a serious crime.
The vast majority of new Canadians will never commit a serious crime and they therefore have no tolerance for the small minority who do, who have lost the privilege to stay in Canada. I agree, because I am as committed, as any member of the House, to due process and natural justice in the rule of law. I agree that even serious convicted foreign criminals should get their day in court. I agree that they should benefit from due process. I agree that they should not be deported without consideration by the Immigration and Refugee Board. However, I do not agree that they should get endless years in court and be able to abuse our fair process. With this bill, we would put an end to that abuse.
We have cases like in my own hometown of Calgary. Calgarians, especially those in the Vietnamese community, were outraged.
The member for Winnipeg North is laughing—
