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.

Immigration

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

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to respond to the member for Winnipeg North. Let me try to answer the last part of his question first, that being is the whole aspect of detention.

The member is correct. He and I both travelled to Vancouver, Laval and also Rexdale, Toronto, to view the detention facilities at all three of those locations.

He mentions Bill C-31. Part of the reason we actually did the tour was based on a number of witnesses called for by the official opposition, but also by his party, who came forward with respect to the study on the safety and security of our borders that the committee is currently working on. Witness after witness from the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party came forward and made all kinds of overtures about what they felt the conditions of the detention facilities were.

I think I have the support of the member for Winnipeg North on this. We looked at all three facilities. None of the facilities are similar in nature in terms of how they are organized and run. However, I know we would both agree that the treatment of the individuals who were under detention at those facilities is far superior than any one of their witnesses was prepared to commit and admit to at committee. Therefore, I have a deep appreciation for our ability to go on the tour of these three facilities to understand what they were all about and to see the treatment of those individuals who were detained there for specific reasons.

The member mentioned the Sun Sea and the Ocean Lady. What happens about two or perhaps three times every decade is that ships come in from offshore because smugglers believe they can take advantage of the people who are on those ships. They force them to pay enormous, ridiculous amounts of money to stuff them onto these boats and then bring them to Canada because we had the reputation of having a system that was broken with respect to refugees. The ships would come here because it was believed to be so easy. The smugglers told the people on these ships to claim refugee status in Canada and that they would be automatically granted refugee status. Those people, who wouldn't have identification, were smuggled onto these ships and brought across. It was very unsafe. The member has seen these ships. He knows how unsafe they are.

I wish that when the Liberal Party was in power for 13 years and had the opportunity, it would have changed the immigration system and addressed the issue of those who are claiming refugee status here. The refugee system was broken.

Both Bill C-11 and Bill C-31 get at the very heart of what the problem is. That is that over 60% of those who apply for refugee status in Canada are either bogus claims, withdraw their claims or go back to their country of origin because they had learned that this was a system they could take advantage of.

I wish we would have had the Liberals' support at committee and with the bills that we passed in this legislature. We have Bill C-43 coming up to get rid of foreign criminals in this country. I hope the member will consider supporting that.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

I have two quick comments. One is for Nathalie. It is with regard to Bill C-43, which I'm sure she's quite familiar with. I'd be very much interested in hearing some of her thoughts in regard to that particular bill. It may not be this afternoon, but maybe we could provide an opportunity to get your understanding of that bill.

Mr. Waldman, to continue with what you just referred to, the bail project and the electronic monitoring are wonderful things. The problem with the bail project is that it only applies in Ontario. Do you think there is something we should be doing in Ottawa to ensure that B.C. and Quebec have similar programs?

You have 100% confidence in the bail project as an alternative to detention, and you see a role for electronic monitoring. Is that correct?

Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is with very mixed feelings that I take part in this discussion on Bill C-43. I say mixed feelings because there is definitely an issue here worth discussing and finding a solution to, but this is no way to approach it.

I am here, speaking in the House, because of the voters of Trois-Rivières. We can all agree that Trois-Rivières is not exactly an immigration gateway to Canada. Imagine my surprise in the weeks following my election when I saw the plurality of the cultural communities in Trois-Rivières, when I spoke with the people of those communities and recognized the wealth of diversity. I also recognized a need to listen to one another, in order to try to understand each other, given our respective cultural baggage.

I realized that there should be an individualized approach to immigration for each of the people that I met with in my riding office. There is no doubt that, of all the files that I have dealt with in Trois-Rivières since I was elected, those related to the Department of Citizenship and Immigration have been the most complex. It seems that this goes without saying, given the nature of the subject at hand. As a result, I have a very hard time when someone tries to present a simple or even simplistic solution to a complex problem involving immigration.

Thus, to support Bill C-43 as it stands would require me to turn my back on core values that I cannot deny. It is also asking me to take a great leap of faith to vote to send this bill to committee in the hopes that major amendments will be made to it, particularly given the number of amendments that were accepted in the case of a bill as large and important as Bill C-38. If the past is any indication, there is not much there to reassure me.

However, with all due respect for parliamentarianism, I must still place some hope in committee work and in the fact that the committee could considerably improve a bill that contains certain elements that I think are essential and could do away with others that are simply not consistent with the values held by most Canadians.

For the sake of time, I will start with my biggest concern. If I have any time left, I will end with the points on which both sides of the House could come to an agreement. I hope that this approach will be constructive and will help to set the tone for the work that members of this committee will do.

My first concern is that the vision of the Conservatives' bill is completely black and white. Bill C-43 is one of many Conservative bills that, as I said earlier, proposes a simple solution to a complex problem. With regard to the bill we are discussing this afternoon, there seem to be good people and bad people but very rarely good people who have given in to a moment of weakness and are not necessarily destined for a life of crime, but whom the Conservatives want to force to leave the country.

The picture before us is, once again, presented only in black and white, with almost no shades of grey. Yet it is difficult to describe reality without using all shades of grey. We simply have to think back to black and white television, for those who are my age, anyway. If there had been no shades of grey, we would not have seen much of anything. Very few things, particularly concerning immigration, correspond to this dualistic view of the world. Any search for consensus must look at solutions that take into account a broader range of shades of grey, which will allow us to consider every possible situation.

Bill C-43 also presents a risk of considerable abuse.

Let us first talk about the powers that would be granted to the minister. I must point out that this is not a question of examining the personality of the current Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, but rather of the powers that could be exercised by any individual who is in charge of that rather complex department.

Usually, in famous western movies, there are good guys and bad guys, and there is usually a sheriff to mediate the conflict. Well, in this case, it seems that the sheriff is none other than the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism. His discretionary power will increase, while the criteria used to achieve justice seem to be decreasing.

The minister would thus have the authority needed to rule on the admissibility of temporary resident applicants. That means that the minister could rule that the foreign national is inadmissible for up to 36 months, if he believes that it is in the public interest.

I will digress for a moment. First, the verb “to believe” introduces a grey area or value judgment. It is hard to imagine that the verb to believe refers to objective criteria. The belief might vary from one minister to the next. We know that cabinet shuffles, even changes in government, are legion in our democratic system.

Bill C-43 does not define public interest. What is really in the public interest and allows the minister to determine that it would be best to deport a person?

What is more, Bill C-43 takes away from the minister the responsibility, even the obligation, to examine the humanitarian circumstances of the foreign national who is deemed inadmissible for security reasons. That again is a grey area and is difficult to define.

I believe that the minister in charge of such a department must be the instance of last resort. He must rise above the fray and not be a part of the decision-making machine, and not have a penchant for ideology.

Furthermore, the bill changes the definition of what is considered to be “serious criminality”. This will be a particularly important matter to be debated in committee. What corresponds to the NDP or Conservative view of what we might term “serious criminality”, and will also garner the broadest consensus among Canadians when it is time to describe and judge what constitutes “serious criminality”?

Previously, a serious criminal was someone given a sentence of two or more years, which was the logical connection to the judge's reasoning when judging a crime. If a crime was deemed to be punishable with a sentence of two years or more, the criterion of “serious criminality” was met.

By changing this criterion from two years or more to six months or more, will judges be asked to change how they interpret the law and make their rulings? Absolutely not. It means that we are opening the door to including all sorts of crimes that, under the old law, would not have been viewed as “serious criminality” and that detractors would consider to be grounds for deportation.

We can well imagine that judges will not change their rulings and that a much larger number of cases may find their way into the new process set out by Bill C-43.

What about the right to an appeal process? It is no longer an option, even for someone given a six-month sentence for a crime that most Canadians would not consider a real threat to public safety.

For example, imagine an immigrant with an incurable illness that causes unbearable pain. He decides to seek relief by discreetly growing five or six pot plants at home. He is not selling drugs. While some parliamentarians are considering the possibility of legalizing marijuana, for just such a situation, that person could be found guilty of a serious crime and be deported to a country that he does not know well enough culturally to live in safely and soundly. He may have come to Canada as a child. Canada could be his only refuge and ours the only culture he has ever known.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this morning and afternoon, I listened closely to my colleagues' remarks on Bill C-43, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

I want to make one thing clear. This bill would affect a very small percentage of permanent residents: those who abuse our immigration system. During this debate, my Conservative colleagues referred to some extreme cases to support their argument. That was a diversionary tactic because the vast majority of new immigrants commit no crimes and follow the rules.

My constituents want the government to focus on improving the immigration system to make it faster and fairer, something this government has failed to do since coming to power.

The NDP will support this bill at second reading so that the committee can take a closer look at it. However, as we have seen during today's debate, my caucus has some major reservations when it comes to this bill.

Before I say more about the bill, I would like to reiterate that it is one aspect of this government's piecemeal approach to immigration. Earlier this session, the government introduced Bill C-31, which, as we know, creates two classes of refugees and completely undermines refugees' rights.

You will recall that this government also reduced refugee health care services, which means that many of them will not have access to the health services they need. Is that the best way to treat people who often are penniless and have been traumatized? I think not.

Many doctors, organizations and groups of experts, including the Canadian Paediatric Society, oppose the proposed changes that will limit access to primary and preventative health care for some of the most vulnerable children and adolescents in Canada. These changes deprive a large number of children of treatments or doctor's visits if their parents do not have money to pay for the health services and medications. This is beneath a civilized country such as Canada. We must take care of our refugees.

When I travel abroad, I am very proud to wear the Canadian flag. Why? I am proud because, to other countries, Canada represents a model of diplomacy, a fair country, a humanitarian country where people are treated with dignity and fairness, no matter where they come from. However, this Prime Minister's Conservatives are transforming this country by dismantling, among other things, our immigration system.

Among other things, this bill takes away the minister's responsibility to examine the humanitarian circumstances. At present, the minister is required, at the request of a foreign national, to examine the humanitarian circumstances of the foreign national who is deemed inadmissible on grounds of security, human or international human rights violations, or organized criminality. If the minister deems it is justified, an exemption for humanitarian reasons may be granted, taking into account the best interests of a child directly affected. Unfortunately, this will no longer be the case if the bill is passed.

In addition to undermining our humanitarian reputation, the Conservatives are promoting the mentality of “them against us”. However, in our communities, the line between them and us is not black and white. With this bill, we run the risk of removing people who arrived at a very young age with their parents, have spent their lives in Canada, and cannot call anywhere else their home. They may not be Canadian citizens, but these people have contributed to our communities, have paid their taxes and are part of our society.

This Conservative government's approach is simply to deport people. It is like discarding these people without any concern for their well-being.

I would like to read some comments from Ahmed Hussen, the president of the Canadian Somali Congress, who thinks that the new bill will result in a huge increase in the number of young male immigrants who are deported without appeal:

The net will be cast wider and it will capture even more people. One big mistake on the part of these young men could see them sent to a dangerous place they know nothing about.

He also said:

For the people that are likely to be captured by this new law, we feel that a good number of them are first-time offenders who, if given a chance, would most likely reform and change their behaviour.

Why does this government not concentrate its efforts on increasing front-line immigration services? Why is the Conservative government eliminating the jobs of public servants who process immigration applications? Why is the government refusing to take action to facilitate family reunification? Instead of cutting services for Canadians, this government should give our immigration system the tools it needs to function.

Now let us talk about Bill C-43, which we are debating right now. There are two aspects of the bill that concern me. First, this bill puts even more powers into the hands of the minister, giving him authority over the admissibility of applicants for temporary residence. The minister can declare that a foreigner is inadmissible for a maximum period of 36 months if he feels that it is justified by public policy considerations. This creates a very dangerous grey area. What constitutes public policy? That is not clear in this bill.

The Conservatives are already wary of newcomers, and they have a tendency towards repression, so I am not sure we should be giving more discretionary powers to the government, and to this Conservative government in particular.

My other concern about this bill is that it changes the definition of “serious criminality” with respect to appealing a determination of inadmissibility. In the past, a conviction in Canada that carried a sentence of two or more years would lead to the automatic revocation of a permanent or temporary resident's right to appeal to the Immigration Appeal Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board.

I can give some examples. If this bill passes, we could deport people who have six marijuana plants, for example, since they could be subject to a six-month sentence. These are not people who have committed violent or serious crimes and who deserve to be punished.

This bill also targets people with mental illness, who are already overrepresented in our justice system. Many individuals have spoken out against this bill because of that. John Nash, an immigration and refugee lawyer with South Ottawa Community Legal Services, said that these changes will affect many people with psychiatric problems. He said that many people with mental illness end up in the criminal justice system. Those people could be deported too.

Instead of focusing on job creation, the Conservatives are attacking the most vulnerable members of our society. Instead of focusing on job creation, the Conservatives are attacking unemployed workers by forcing employment insurance beneficiaries to accept jobs that they are overqualified for and that do not pay as well as their previous jobs. Instead of doing something about climate change, this government has its head in the sand, which will hurt future generations. Instead of improving our immigration system to deal with applications quickly, the government is portraying all immigrants as criminals.

I want to make it clear that New Democrats recognize the need for an efficient legal system that can deport serious criminals who are not citizens. However, the Conservatives' proposed solutions are not balanced and could have devastating consequences in addition to politicizing our immigration system.

Our immigration system is broken. Just read the Auditor General of Canada's reports, which show that Canadians are waiting longer to bring their relatives to Canada and that lineups are getting longer.

I hope that once we are together in committee, my Conservative colleagues will take the NDP's concerns regarding Bill C-43 into account and accept our proposals.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to start by saying that I will share my time with my colleague from Rivière-des-Mille-Îles.

On June 20, 2012, the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism held a press conference to introduce Bill C-43, which has some provisions for the faster removal of foreign criminals to their country of origin.

This bill would allow for the faster deportation of foreigners and permanent residents who are convicted of a serious crime in Canada or abroad, and it would refuse them access to the Immigration Appeal Division. To that end, the bill redefines “serious criminality” as being any crime that was punished in Canada by a term of imprisonment of at least six months, instead of the period of two years that is currently found in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

Furthermore, with Bill C-43, the government is asking this House to once again grant increased and unlimited discretionary powers to the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, including the power to agree or refuse to grant temporary resident status to an individual for a maximum period of 36 months based on public policy considerations, without specifying or defining “public policy”.

Finally, Bill C-43 provides for imposing additional, more stringent conditions with regard to permanent residence for foreign nationals who are deemed inadmissible on security grounds. It also proposes eliminating the power granted to the minister to review a humanitarian application from a foreign national who is inadmissible to Canada when there is reason to believe that he has been involved in the crimes described in section 34 and subsequent sections of the current Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

The security of Canadians has always been and is still a priority for New Democrats. Without handing the government a blank cheque, the NDP believes it is possible to work with the government to prevent foreign nationals who have been involved in serious crimes from using stalling tactics successfully to delay their deportation from Canada.

However, because Canada enforces the rule of law, the NDP would like to remind this House that measures to enforce our legislation must never violate the principle of the rule of law, the national obligations entered into by Canada under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and international human rights agreements. Finally, measures to enforce our legislation must not violate the principles of fundamental justice when they involve the right to life, liberty and security of the person.

In a number of cases in which the government has been unsuccessful, our courts have consistently reiterated the importance, in the words of Justice Zinn of the Federal Court, of “the balancing necessary in a constitutional democracy that follows the rule of law.” They have repeatedly held that foreign nationals on Canadian territory have the right to claim the legal and judicial guarantees available under our legislation. The Singh decision, handed down by our Supreme Court, illustrates this principle.

In that case, the Supreme Court informed the government that asylum seekers who are in Canada are entitled to fundamental justice when their normal or accelerated deportation to another country means they are likely to be tortured or exposed to threats to their life, their freedom or their safety. In another case, the Supreme Court held that, in a democracy, not every response is available.

Unfortunately, when judges hand down decisions concerning asylum seekers, decisions that frustrate the Conservatives' political imperatives, they are subject to virulent attacks by the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, who accuses them, as he did on February 11, 2011, of acting on a whim, or perhaps in a fit of misguided magnanimity. It is unacceptable to question the independence of our judges when they refuse to facilitate the achievement of the Conservatives' political aims or when they refuse to base their decisions on elements other than legal, justice and equity considerations.

In his speech, the minister complained about judges who, in his view, have been preventing him from deporting a foreign criminal for six years. He publicly discredited the guardian of the law and the rule of law, that is, the judiciary, by suspecting Canadian judges of frequently handing down prison terms of less than two years for the sole purpose of blocking the criminal's rapid deportation.

The minister also attacks Canadian judges every time they reverse or overturn the careful decisions he says are made by the highly trained public servants on administrative tribunals and even other judges.

The Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism's criticisms of Canadian judges lead us to believe that, for the Conservatives, decisions regarding the removal of foreign criminals must be made without the possibility of appeal regardless of who makes the decision and the irregularities involved. For the Conservatives, judges who rule on cases involving the removal of foreign criminals must make their decisions based on the Conservatives' political and ideological imperatives rather than on the rule of law. That is unacceptable.

Such a vision of justice is not that of a country in which the rule of law prevails and where there is a permanent separation of power among the legislature, the executive and the judiciary in order to prevent abuse and maintain constitutional order. The lord that Justice Zinn cites found this tension to be acceptable because it demonstrates that the courts are performing their role of ensuring that the actions of the government of the day are being taken in accordance with the law. Lord Woolf concludes by saying that the tension is a necessary consequence of maintaining the balance of power between the legislature, the executive and the judiciary.

As set out in the preamble of the Constitution Act, 1867, Canada is founded on the rule of law. According to Justice Zinn: “The rule of law provides that the Government and all who exercise power as a part of the Government are bound to exercise that power in compliance with existing laws.”

The courts are the institutions that the Constitution charged with ensuring that the government's decisions, including decisions regarding the removal of foreign criminals, are being made in compliance with the existing laws.

While ensuring that the safety of Canadians is not jeopardized, the NDP is reaffirming its concern and its willingness to place more emphasis on improving the equality and speed of the immigration system for the majority of people who have not committed any crimes and who follow the rules.

Clearly, there is a need to protect the integrity of our immigration system. This is especially true since many workers in the area of refugee rights, in particular members of the Canadian Council for Refugees, have been calling for a reform of the system for many years.

The flaws in our immigration system are well known. However, unfortunately, the Conservatives are using a small number of high profile cases—usually involving permanent residents who were charged with serious crimes and then used the appeal process to delay their deportation—to justify the need to have a faster process for deporting foreign criminals who are living in Canada. The minister's office describes the bill as tough but fair, and repeats that it is easy for non-citizens to avoid deportation: all they have to do is not commit any crimes.

The current Immigration and Refugee Protection Act contains clear provisions that enable law enforcement authorities to be tough on criminals who try to abuse our immigration system. For example, it sets out that foreigners found guilty of crimes must be deported from Canada immediately, and it recognizes the detention authority of officials.

Officials may detain individuals without a warrant and arrest individuals who cannot produce identification.

Furthermore, there are more categories of people who are inadmissible to Canada than under the previous Immigration Act of 1985. Under the IRPA, foreigners may be deemed inadmissible for a number of reasons, including under section 34, for being a danger to security, section 35, for jeopardizing human rights, section 36, for acts of serious criminality or, section 37, for being involved in organized crime, section 40, for misrepresentation, and for terrorist acts.

Under section 52 of the act, individuals facing a deportation order must leave Canada immediately and never return.

Under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act individuals cannot appeal a removal order for jeopardizing security, for human or international human rights violations, or for organized criminality. The Act denies them the right to have the decision reviewed. Smugglers are subject to particularly deterrent sentences.

Instead of making the necessary corrections to make their department run smoothly, the Conservatives are trying to circumvent all control, even the control of judges.

We demand that the individuals affected have the opportunity to go before a judge to contest expedited removals order concerning them.

The application of removal measures must respect the balance between the need to safeguard Canadians and national and international human rights obligations. A measure—

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration what I thought was a good question. I followed it up and suggested that the minister might even want to take note of it and possibly respond to it. I then asked a question of a New Democratic member, because we have not seen Conservative members asking questions or making presentations on Bill C-43. It is an important question and for whatever reason the minister has not been successful in answering it. I posed the question in some of the briefings that I received and again I did not receive an answer.

The question in essence goes back to the whole issue of a visitor's visa. Canadian Immigration officers around the world have the responsibility of deciding and distributing visitor visas to individuals who want to come to Canada for a visit. Now one of the requirements is that If a family member wants to come to Canada and another member of that family has been part of an organized gang, that person will be disqualified from coming to Canada.

Therefore, the question that I think stands to reason is this. Are immigration officers going to have the additional responsibility of reviewing this legislation and if implemented, and I have no doubt it will be, are significant resources going to be added to the immigration offices around the world? Is that not a fair question? Should the minister not answer that question before the bill goes to committee?

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by saying that we share the government's concern about serious crimes committed by individuals who are not Canadian citizens.

As a result of this principle, we support this bill at second reading. However, we still have some concerns about this bill, which we feel casts too wide a net over immigrants.

I would like to use a simple analogy to explain the situation to Canadians watching today. When I was young, one of Greenpeace's big campaigns in the 1980s was to save the dolphins. The problem at the time was that tuna fishers were catching dolphins in their nets because the nets were too big. As a result of a campaign against this action and pressure on the processing companies, they changed their way of doing things. That is why we see the “Dolphin Friendly” logo on cans of tuna.

I hope that, as a result of the concerns we voice about this bill and the work done in committee, the Conservatives will make sensible changes to improve this bill so that it becomes “Immigrant Friendly.”

With this story, I want to illustrate two things: first, Bill C-43 is a big net, perhaps too big, and in our desire to catch criminals, innocent immigrants are going to get caught in this large net and get hurt in the process. We have some suggestions for improving this bill.

Like most Canadians, we are concerned about criminals and crime, but we want to proceed responsibly and not engage in demagoguery, as the members on the government side often do.

Before explaining what we want to improve, I would like to point out that the opposition's priorities are the economy and the quality of services, such as health care, provided to Canadians. It is sad to see the government fuel stereotypes by focusing on bills that target immigrants and establishing a link between criminal behaviour and immigration.

As many of my colleagues have mentioned, the vast majority of immigrants are honest. They work hard if we let them.

I would also like to mention that crime is a complex process. One of the causes of criminal behaviour is poverty, and not a person's country of origin.

We know that, historically, immigrants have often been targeted and seen as a threat to the well-being of a population during periods of economic crisis.

I hope that the government is not trying to fuel stereotypes. Crime is not really widespread in the immigrant communities, but the government is dwelling on the extreme cases. As we say in English:

It is just a few bad apples.

Keeping with my focus on the economy, I would like to address immigration and our economy and point out where the government's priorities should lie, in general, regarding immigration issues. Then, after talking about where the priorities should be, I would like to look at this particular piece of legislation and point out its useful elements and perhaps where some of the weaknesses lie.

The reason I would like to emphasize this, in a more general sense at first, is that criminality is so often the result of social marginalization and the economic difficulty of individuals and their communities. As I mentioned before, it is not linked to their country of origin or where they come from in the world but to much more complex factors, which I will get into.

First of all, instead of focusing on the few bad apples as the government has, the government should instead focus on the lost economic opportunities of our immigrant communities.

In a study by the University of Ottawa Research Group on the Economics of Immigration, the researchers found that if we found better ways to integrate our permanent residents, such as if their salary scale were similar to that of domestic labourers—in other words, if they were on a more even playing field with domestic workers—we would see a net increase in real GDP. We would also see better labour productivity and an improved federal fiscal balance. If the government is serious about the economy—and it says its priority is on the economy and jobs—focusing on those elements of our immigration system would offer far better benefits than putting the priority on the criminalization aspects of immigration law.

The study further found that immigration can help solve the issue of population aging. It was an interesting factoid in this research. We often hear from the government that OAS is not sustainable, which first of all, is patently false; we have shown the government at many stages that OAS is sustainable in the long term. Certainly, the immigration community could improve the sustainability of old age security. That was studied by this group just last year.

Instead of focusing on minority criminal elements, the government should instead use the power of the federal government for good, by doing such things as encouraging the benefits of employing immigrants in professional spheres, encouraging employers to be proactive by making arranged employment offers and using the federal government to help businesses find quality overseas labour, not to cut costs as it appears the government is doing by offering 15% less to workers but to improve the quality of our workforce.

If we emphasized that as an immigration policy and cast out a net in the world to catch the most qualified and brilliant people from other countries, enticed them to come here and enticed employers to start giving arranged employment offers to these people, we would see great benefits to our immigrant communities. It has been shown that immigrants with arranged employment offers earn 74% more than those who do not have them. There is a systemic problem of underemployment. The problem in the immigrant community of not being able to be employed to their full potential has serious economic effects and drags on our economy, which we could improve if we took action and leadership.

The government could improve funding to language programs. My colleague from York South—Weston pointed out many of the cuts made to settlement programs. Researchers and experts in the field know that language ability is one of the key factors in the full employability of permanent residents. If we improved funding to language programs offered by the provinces and gave guarantees and benchmarking, we would see net improvements. We have seen that the government is willing to offer piecemeal, half measures of giving loans to professionals wishing to improve their credentials in Canada. We believe the government is not doing enough to recognize fully the contributions that professionals trained abroad could offer to our country.

The Conservatives have talked a lot about this, but instead of focusing on this problem of recognizing foreign credentials, they choose to make these few bad apples a priority, the few criminals who have abused the system. If they are truly concerned about Canada's economy and it is truly their number one priority, as they say day in and day out, then they should look at the economic aspects of immigration, rather than the few criminals who cheat the system. As I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, my suspicion is that they are playing a political game and are being demagogic in their approach to immigration. I do not think their true priority is the economy. Rather, it is keeping their base close to them.

I have had many conversations with permanent residents in my riding and in other ridings, frankly. I have talked to an engineer who was trained abroad, and he spent up to two years looking for a job in his field. After landing, he was still searching for employment in the engineering field. We know Canada needs engineers in certain sectors, yet he could not find a job. This just should not be happening.

There are 1.5 million permanent residents who could contribute to our economic success if they were allowed to do so and if the government got behind them. Unfortunately, the government's priority seems to be looking at the criminal elements of our immigration community.

In a study, Bonikowska, Green and Riddell found that immigrants have more years of education and experience than Canadian-born individuals. Bastien, Bélanger and Ledent, in their study, found that having a degree from a western country increases the chances of finding a skilled job. There are some very complex questions that arise in these findings that I think the government should begin to tackle, to dismantle, but instead it is focusing on the criminal aspects of permanent residents, as I said.

To summarize, improving the economic situation of our permanent residents may actually decrease the rates of criminality, which are already incredibly low and not a serious demographic problem.

After addressing where our true priorities should lie, let us look at this particular piece of legislation and the positive and negative aspects of it.

I would like to start with the short title of the bill, faster removal of foreign criminals.

Certainly, people who have come to Canada as tourists and commit a crime, I would have no problem calling them foreign. If they are here on a trip and commit a crime, they are “foreigners”, in common parlance. However, someone who has undergone the years necessary to come to our country as a permanent resident, has undergone all the steps to acquire permanent residency, I would say is not a person who is foreign to us. I would never characterize such a person as a foreigner. Therefore, first of all, I take issue with the short title of the bill.

Someone who has been here for 20 years, does not take citizenship and screws up would be treated the same as someone who has been here for just one month. There is no discretion in the bill to differentiate these two individuals. I would be very uncomfortable treating these two people in the same fashion. That is something, if it comes up in committee, that I would urge the government side to tighten.

I do not think most Canadians would call somebody who has been here for 20 years a foreigner. I personally never use the term and I am uncomfortable with it. When I lived overseas, I was uncomfortable being called a foreigner. It immediately sets a distinction between somebody who belongs in the country and somebody who does not.

In the proposed section 22.1, the government's amendment would allow the minister to prevent someone from becoming a temporary resident if he feels it is justified by public policy considerations. That statement is much too vague. The English version of the bill uses “public policy” and the French version uses “intérêt public”. Those are not at all the same. There are nuances between the two. That statement is much too vague.

Legislators from all parties often base their decisions on morality. We often see in the immigration system that children are judged based on offences committed by their parents. We can find many examples in many moral systems where judging children for their parents' crimes is not a fair way of doing things.

It worries me that this bill gives the minister a new discretionary power to grant an exemption for a family member of a foreigner deemed inadmissible.

At the request of the individual or on the initiative of the minister, the minister may ignore the inadmissibility of a family member of someone who is inadmissible for reasons of security, human rights or international law violations, or organized crime, if he is satisfied that it is not contrary to the national interest.

National interest requires the minister to specifically take into account national security and public safety. Why not completely remove the section that concerns the children of the guilty party instead of giving the minister a discretionary power? Instead of giving the minister a discretionary power, the bill could state that children will not be found guilty like their parents.

What I agree with is that serious, violent criminals and war criminals should not receive a safe haven in Canada. That is why we are supporting the bill in principle at second reading. The principle of the bill is not misplaced, but it needs serious improvements.

Likewise, we believe that the priority should be placed on bettering the condition of the vast majority of law-abiding immigrants rather than targeting the tiny minority of law breakers. Maybe improving the condition of permanent residents would also have the effect of lessening the incidents of criminal activity, which is already very low, as I mentioned before.

We will be voting in support of this bill at second reading in order to clean up the sloppy elements of this obtusely written bill, because even though Maclean's may have named him the hardest working minister, something I do not deny, it obviously does not read his legislation and may confuse press conferences with hard work. Perhaps the minister should spend more time on the legislation and less time on the media prep for it.

Like the association of police chiefs, we think we need to close the loopholes in immigration legislation, and we support the principle of the bill. However, we believe the bill needs tightening up in committee.

In addition to the association of police chiefs, here are other validators of our position.

Mario Bellissimo, lawyer and executive member of the Canadian Bar Association, is one of the nation's top lawyers and part of an immigrant community that has often been tarred with the criminal epithet. He said referring to permanent residents as foreigners is misleading.

They are casting the net too wide... People make one mistake—even if it's a non-violent crime—they will be removed.

Furthermore, he thinks the bill reflects the government's lack of confidence in the immigration tribunal and the Canadian judiciary. We believe in the power of the Canadian judiciary and the tribunals to take care of these cases and to offer fair judgment. We do not believe that the minister necessarily needs discretionary powers.

As a member of Parliament, I personally help my constituents with the immigration process, but I have never once gone to the immigration minister to lobby a case that has already been dealt with by the judiciary and the tribunals. I simply have trust in the system. I believe in that system and I believe it needs support and leadership. However, taking the discretionary element away from the tribunals and judiciaries and giving it to the minister is not the right way to go.

In terms of dealing with violent criminals and war criminals, we certainly agree with the approach of the government. That is why we would support this bill in principle at second reading, to give the government time to do its homework and tighten up the bill.

Just as the tuna canners of old created dolphin-friendly tuna, we hope the government will make this legislation permanent resident friendly.

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

Mr. Speaker, I think all of us as members of Parliament can relate many heartbreaking stories about what is going on in the immigration system. However, I want to ask the member a question about Bill C-43.

I asked one of his colleagues about the lack of ministerial discretion to make an exception on compassionate grounds. It is limited only to where a child is directly affected. However, there is sweeping discretion that is quite mind-boggling in clause 8, which states:

The minister may, 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.

Public policy considerations are not defined.

The member's speech, of course, spoke to deporting people. What about refusing to allow someone to become a permanent resident with no real criteria being applied?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, as the government tries to give Canadians the impression through Bill C-43 that there are all these foreign criminals here who have to be dealt with, there is also a great deal of concern that we maybe also need to look at the other side when the member talks about the issue of priorities. There are immigrants who are exploited by immigration consultants and employment agencies and we do not necessarily hear of the same sorts of actions by the government in trying to deal with them.

Over the weekend I met an unfortunate person who was a live-in caregiver. In her situation, she was the victim of an employer who had been using his authority for purposes of sexual exploitation. She is fearful of how this will impact her as someone who wants ultimately to be a landed immigrant here in Canada.

Inside the House of Commons, we should be talking about other areas of concern that negatively impact those people who are being exploited. That priority does not seem to be there for the government. Would the member comment on that, given that he was talking about the exploitation—

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have noticed that, as we have gone through this debate, we on this side of the House seem to be the only party interested in what is going on. I have not heard a lot of questions or comments from the other side.

Bill C-43 is called the faster removal of foreign criminals act. The minister himself suggested that the bill would make it possible for legitimate visitors and immigrants to get better treatment. This bill may do that in a tiny way but it would not do it for the majority of well-meaning and non-criminal persons currently in Canada or those who want to come to Canada who are being treated with the slowest process since God made molasses. It is an incredibly slow process.

I have the privilege of representing the riding of York South--Weston which has an immigrant population of well over 50% and well over half live in apartment buildings. That is one of the reasons that my riding is a magnet for refugees and those refugees will be the ones facing the worst time of their lives as a result of the government's new applications. These refugees will find it more difficult to become Canadian citizens because it will be harder for them to reach all of the required thresholds. They will also find it more difficult to sponsor family members once they do become citizens.

The minister suggested that lessening the rules against spies would make it so much easier for persons to come to Canada and stay in Canada. If individuals spied against Canada or Canada's interests, they would not be considered a spy if they were spying for some other country or in some other country. Reading between the lines, it may be that the government is also adding industrial spying to that, although it is hard to tell. I am assuming that would make it easier for the tens of thousands of people who come to Canada, I say tongue-in-cheek, because that is clearly not a big problem.

The minister also suggested that if one member of a group does not meet the criteria, for medical reasons or otherwise, the whole group would be turned down. I agree that that is an excellent use of this legislation. That would actually cause some people to come to Canada who were otherwise be turned down. However, as I will tell members later, there are far more people being turned down for temporary visas without any reason. This is only a small part of the big problem.

The minister also suggested that the Minister of Public Safety could offer relief in some cases. Again, this another tiny piece of the puzzle.

The parliamentary secretary made it clear in his comments that the government's objective is to reduce the backlog of problems created by people coming to this country, and he referred specifically to the backlog that affected temporary foreign workers and the backlog that affected permanent skilled workers taking jobs that are not being filled by Canadians.

Missing from both of those objectives is the huge backlog of family reunification applications. There are probably hundreds of thousands of backlogged cases, some of which will take as many as 14 years from application to reunification because of the delays in processing and because there are not enough people working for the minister to get these things done. We have examples.

A woman wants to sponsor her husband but it is taking an unusual amount of time for the application to be processed. The background check is taking a long time to complete. The couple has been repeatedly asked to wait until a security background is completed, which means they have had to file several sets of medicals at their own expense. The application for sponsorship was forwarded in 2008, four years ago.

Another individual tried to sponsor his parents starting in 2007. They have now had three medicals because they keep expiring because it is taking so long.

Where is the government on trying to figure out how to make these things faster? The Conservatives are talking about getting criminals out faster, but they are not talking about getting deserving sponsored immigrants into the country faster.

Another person has been sponsoring his parents and siblings since 2003. We are now talking nine years. They have now gone through three medicals and they have had their third police clearance done because they keep expiring. In the meantime, the father has passed away. That is what happens when the system takes too long: people die in other countries as a result.

A woman, a convention refugee, who applied for permanent residence, also included her 11-year-old son in her application. Her son is alone in Nigeria. Immigration officials have said, “Too bad, there is a 24-month wait to process her application”.

Another individual has been sponsoring parents and one dependent sister since 2008 and is still waiting. The list goes on and on, and this is but a small sampling of those we have heard about in my office. There are hundreds more in my office, and I have only been there since last year, who have run afoul of the system. We are having to tell them that it takes 14 years, 10 years or nine years, and their parents or their grandparents will die before the application goes through.

Then there is the backlog in skilled worker applications that the minister talked about. Yet with the stroke of a pen the minister actually got rid of hundreds of thousands of skilled worker applications and forced them all to apply again. How is that speeding anything in our system? We are talking about speeding the removal of foreign criminals, but we are not doing anything to speed up the process for legitimate people who want to come to this country and provide a skilled, valued service to this country.

I have one applicant who has been trying to come to Canada for five years. He made the application before the “stroke of the pen” issue. At the time he applied, the language requirement was less stringent than it is today. He has studied and worked in the United States. He taught in the United States, so obviously his English is good but somehow he failed the English test that was given to him out of Cambridge University in England.

Why we are giving British tests for Canadian English is beyond me. To a person who is not a native-born speaker, it may be difficult. He found it difficult. He missed by one point. He is a doctor. We need doctors. He is actually certified to practise in this country. He wants to bring his wife with him, who is also a doctor, and his daughter, who is in medical school. They cannot come because he fell short by one point because the language requirement was no good. The skilled worker application has its flaws too.

As for temporary foreign workers, the other side keeps crowing about the many jobs they have created. How many of them are filled by temporary foreign workers? There are over 300,000 jobs currently filled by temporary foreign workers. They are temporary, so that is in the last two years. Since the last recession ended or whenever the economic meltdown happened under the Conservative watch, over 300,000 of those supposed new jobs they have created are actually being filled by temporary foreign workers.

Now, with a stroke of the pen, the minister has decided those foreign workers can be paid 15% less than their Canadian counterparts, so it will be even easier for an employer to say they cannot find anybody because the employer is offering 15% less than the going rate. People are not taking the jobs, so the employer wants to hire foreigners.

We have temporary foreign workers flying planes in this country. We do not have a shortage of airline pilots in this country, but we have temporary foreign workers working for some airlines.

There is something wrong with this system. It would appear to be a part of the Conservative economic action plan to drive down wages in this country through the use of temporary foreign workers at 15% reductions, through the use of reductions in EI that force people to take wages at 30% lower rates than they earned before, and by doing all this, the Conservative can then say, “Hey, our economic action plan is working. We are improving Canadians' productivity. We are getting more out of them for less”.

That is not what Canadians want. Canadians do not want to be working for less money, to have their standard of living eroded by the government. They want real action on the economy and they do not want it through the use of temporary foreign workers, which the parliamentary secretary referred to as a good thing.

We also have a whole bunch of issues with the PRRA system, the pre-removal risk assessment. I have a couple of examples here. We have an individual who is being deported to Spain. His mother is a refugee in Canada who has finalized her refugee status and is actually allowed to stay in Canada. She was born in Peru. He was born in Spain as a result of her being raped. Now he is being deported back to Spain because he was not covered by her refugee application. He is 12 years old. He knows no one in Spain. Spain is the last place he wants to go because it was the source of a lot of pain for his family. What government does this to people?

Now the new rules would be: no entitlement to a PRRA because we do not want to do that anymore.

These are examples of how the system is not working. We are tinkering on the edges with something that might appeal to the Conservative base across the way because it has to do with law and order. It might appeal to the baser instincts of some individuals in the Conservative base, because they can tout it as law and order. However, it is such a small part of the overall problem of immigration in our country that it is difficult to imagine that so much time and effort is being spent on this kind of thing instead of on the real problems that face immigrants in our country, instead of on the real problems that face those who are already here and those who should be here as a result of sponsorship applications. Those delays in the sponsorship applications are costing lives. People are dying in other countries.

The minister also mentioned in his speech this afternoon that he is spending lots more money on immigrant settlement services. He mentioned a figure of $35 million. Well, it sure is not happening in my riding. My riding has seen cut after cut in immigrant settlement services to the point where some organizations have folded altogether. Is that because we have fewer immigrants coming to my riding? No, there are lots coming to the riding. In fact, there are two apartment buildings that are now full of Roma refugees in the last two years, so much so that the superintendent has had to go out and hire a Hungarian translator because he cannot communicate with these people. They are coming to the riding in great numbers but the services that they are asking for keep disappearing.

We have a 6% cut at Access Alliance; a 4.2% at COSTI, which caused a layoff; a 10% cut at the Learning Enrichment Foundation. Midaynta lost all of its funding, $400,000. It has closed up. York Weston Community Services Centre lost $800,000. It closed, with twelve and a half people laid off. Languages that are no longer helped in this riding are Dinka, Nuer, Spanish, Arabic, French, Kiswahili, Russian, Farsi, Dari and Somali.

York Weston Community Services Centre was urged the previous year to sign a long-term lease. It did. The government said the organization was good for it and that it should sign the five-year lease. It signed it and then all of its budget was cut, some $800,000 gone. Northwood Neighbourhood Services lost $378,000, which caused the layoff of five settlement workers and admin staff. That is 100% of its Citizenship and Immigration Canada funds. It gets money from other places, so it is only 30% of its overall budget.

These things are happening in my riding. For the minister to tell us, bold-faced, that he is spending more on settlement services is just crazy. Community Action Resource Centre lost $305,000, which was 40% of its budget. It lost all of the federal funding. It still has some provincial funding, but it has lost 12 staff. It has caused layoffs in my riding, which is already a riding with a huge unemployment problem.

The Vietnamese Women's Association lost $30,000 in Citizenship and Immigration Canada funding. Access Alliance lost $300,000. Toronto District School Board's newcomer services for youth lost 100% of its funding and the program was closed.

There actually are many more but I am going to run out of time if I read them all. The point is that the government is single-mindedly focused on the wrong problem. There is a problem with settlement services in the riding. There is a problem with immigration systems into the riding. There is a problem with the family sponsorship system and with too many temporary foreign workers being allowed to come to this country and take jobs that would otherwise be filled by Canadians.

Rather than focusing on those problems, the government is going to speed up the removal of a handful of criminals, and not necessarily even the right criminals. Because of the cuts to the immigrant settlement funding we now have employers in the riding telling us that it is making it difficult for them to employ the skilled immigrants coming into the country under skilled worker applications because they do not have the necessary fail-safes and backup mechanisms and training to learn how to live in Canada. Those things are not there any more.

Employers are coming to my office and saying it is a problem for them as employers. They are saying that they cannot be as productive or efficient as employers because although these people have great skills to do the jobs, they are not getting along in Canada because the settlement services are just not there. Maybe we need some Conservatives to actually listen to these employers and hear the fact that cutting settlement services was not a good thing. Cutting the settlement services also makes it difficult for the children of these recent immigrants.

I have a huge Somali community in my riding, again because my riding is a place where it is easy for refugees to come because the rents are so cheap and the riding is full of low-income housing. Those Somali refugees have been here for maybe as long as 20 years. It has been 42 years since there was an election in Somalia. The country just had an election this month and a new president was elected. There was a big party celebrating that because they are hopeful that maybe Somalia will turn itself around.

However, the problem is this. We have the tragedy of six Somali youth this summer who were tragically murdered in what we can only assume was some kind of gangland problem, but it raises the spectre of what happens to those disaffected Somali youth when their settlement services are gone, when they have no hope, no job, no help from the government, when the services that even the ministry of public safety had have been cut? There have been cuts and more cuts and these kids have no hope. Some of them turn to crime as a result. What is going to happen to those kids who get a six-month or longer sentence and who are 18 years of age and have been in Canada 17 of those 18 years but are still Somali? They are going to get deported to a country that is war-torn, that really has no government, that is unsafe and where they have no family. That is just wrong.

I said earlier that the wrong people are perhaps going to be deported and I would point to those Somali youth in that regard. With just one bad occurrence they will have a record, but are now going to have an even bigger problem. If the sentence is six months or more, they will get kicked out of the country without their family.

Yet as I said to the minister earlier, Conrad Black is still here and although the crime he committed in the U.S. could apparently have been punished by a 14-year sentence here in Canada, he is still here. It tells us that there seems to be a double standard. There seems to be a system that if someone is just stealing money from ordinary Canadians through some kind of fraudulent system, that is okay and the person can come back.

I also want to comment because Todd Baylis Boulevard is in my riding and was named after the Todd Baylis who was killed. We in the NDP will do anything we can to make sure that kind of thing does not happen again. We are not opposed to the part of the bill that would prevent a criminal being left in this country long enough to be able to commit crimes of a violent nature, nor would we ever be. However, we want to make sure that it is done in a way that is fair and honest and does not rest so much power in the hands of one or two ministers.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this is my first opportunity to address you as Mr. Speaker. Congratulations on your appointment to the chair.

I appreciate the opportunity to raise my concerns regarding Bill C-43, which I hope will be addressed in further study at committee. New Democrats recognize the need for an efficient and responsive judicial apparatus for removing serious criminals who are not citizens. However, this bill seems to extend beyond this and effectively removes some of the required checks and balances within our immigration system.

I have a few concerns with the changes included in Bill C-43. Bill C-43 would concentrate more power in the hands of the minister, giving the minister new discretionary authority over the admissibility of temporary residents. It would relieve the minister of the responsibility to examine humanitarian circumstances and as well would change what would constitute serious criminality for the purpose of access to an appeal of a determination of inadmissibility.

Previously a conviction in Canada with a sentence of two years or more resulted in an automatic revocation of a permanent or temporary resident's right to an appeal at the Immigration Appeal Division. Bill C-43, however, would revoke the right to appeal inadmissibility when there would be a conviction of six months or more.

New Democrats have said time and again that we do not support closing the door to an appeal process as it is an essential component of checks and balances in our immigration system.

An appeal process allows officials to make determinations on an individual basis, weighing all the factors to determine if someone should or should not be deported. Further to this, with the government's tough on crime agenda, we have seen a whole slew of crimes receive a mandatory minimum sentence of more than six months. The change from two years to six months merits further study of the offences that would now be included in this.

This concentration of power in the hands of one minister is a trend we continue to see under the government and is a cautionary tale of the direction of our immigration system under a Conservative majority. Granting the minister the power to unilaterally prohibit a foreign national from becoming a temporary resident for up to 36 months based on public policy considerations is a vague and broad discretion.

The broad and far-reaching powers given to the minister in Bill C-43 seem to once again go too far and require balance. Additionally, there seems to be a double standard at play when it comes to ministerial authority. When convicted foreign criminal, Conrad Black wanted back in Canada, the minister claimed that the matter was handled independently, yet now he wants the power to deport criminals.

Across the country, immigration and health experts have been raising their concerns to the changes in the bill. There are concerns among advocates that the bill runs a risk of deporting offenders who arrive in Canada with their parents at a very young age. Despite Canada being the only home they know and grew up in, we would deport them to a country about which they may know nothing.

Moreover, professionals who work with immigrants and refugees have stated that this new federal legislation unfairly punishes the young and people with mental illness. Bill C-43 has been marketed exclusively on its intent to speed up deportations of serious multiple offenders. However, the devil is in the details and these details merit further study and expert opinion.

What I also find particularly troubling throughout the course of immigration changes the government has introduced is the language that the Conservative government continues to use when speaking about newcomers in our country.

When discussing Bill C-31, refugees who were fleeing war-torn countries to save their lives were continually referred to as “bogus” and “queue jumpers” in need of mandatory detention by the members opposite. Now under Bill C-43, permanent residents are referred as “foreigners”. This term is misleading and wide-sweeping, completely neglecting the fact that permanent residents have spent the majority of their lives in Canada, contributing to our communities and paying taxes.

The majority of newcomers to Canada are law-abiding citizens who do not commit crimes. Rather than introducing legislation that continues to demonize newcomers, where is the support for newcomers who follow the rules? Why is the government not spending more time ensuring that the majority of newcomers in Canada are being treated fairly and are not waiting three to five years to be reunited with their partners and children? We need a government that acts to help new Canadians reunite with their families and find work that matches their skill set.

The New Democrats look to work with the government to prevent non-citizens who commit serious crimes from abusing our appeals process without trampling on rights. We continue to stand with newcomers who want the government to focus on making our immigration system faster and fairer for the vast majority who do not commit crimes and follow the rules.

We can allow the systems currently in place, including our immigration tribunal and Canadian judiciary, to do their work or provide them with the necessary resources to do the job effectively rather than trivializing the judicial process and giving the minister the authority to arbitrarily make decisions. I should add, if the minister were serious about improving Canada's immigration and refugee system, he would stop appointing his friends to the Immigration and Refugee Board.

We could also do what the Auditor General has repeatedly recommended and make improvements to the current system and administration of the laws currently in place, including proper training, service standards and quality assurance checks.

Rather than continually portraying newcomers negatively, the government should focus on giving law enforcement the resources it needs to keep us safe from all criminals.

I spent the summer talking to constituents about community safety and social issues in Scarborough. What I heard from constituents were worries and concerns for the need for support and prevention strategies to keep our youth from turning to crime and actions from the federal government to keep our communities safe. At the end of the day, victims were concerned that crimes were being committed in their communities and steps were not being taken to prevent these crimes.

I hope the government will take the concerns raised by experts, myself and my colleagues on this side of the House seriously at the committee level and that it will listen to the experts' warnings about the impacts and consequences of the bill on people with the intention of improvements and upholding rights,.

It is a warning to us all that some of the concerns raised by experts during the study of Bill C-31 are already being realized. Thanks to Bill C-31, all refugee claimants are now banned from applying for a pre-removal risk assessment within one year of receiving a negative answer on their claim. This assessment is used as a second chance to consider whether it is truly safe to send a rejected claimant back to his or her country of origin.

Last week, we learned of a woman from Iran who could face deportation despite new evidence proving that she faces an adultery charge that could, under sharia law, result in her being stoned to death. Although her lawyer obtained new documents to speak to her refugee claim, because of the changes included in Bill C-31, this new evidence cannot be considered by the Canada Border Service Agency officials because of the one-year rule.

I recall hearing this very concern raised, that new evidence can come to light during this one-year period, during the Bill C-31 study at committee. Unfortunately, this concern, along with many others, fell on the deaf ears of our government and were left unaddressed.

I hope that this is not repeated during the study of Bill C-43 in committee, but rather that we listen to the experts and work together to prevent non-citizens who commit serious crimes from abusing our appeals process while upholding our Canadian values.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I have had the opportunity to have a couple of briefings both with the parliamentary library as well as the minister's office with respect to the bill. I made reference to the fact that if Bill C-43 were to pass, Nelson Mandela's wife would not have been able to have visited Canada during a very interesting time in world history. It was pointed out to me that Mr. Mandela's wife had some issues relating to the law too so that might not necessarily have been a good example. However, one can make reference to Mahatma Gandhi's wife, as she would not have qualified to visit Canada. I thought that was somewhat interesting.

The point is that if this law is passed, it will have a significant impact on individuals to be able to visit Canada, not because of their own personal behaviour but because of the behaviour associated with someone in their family. By doing that, we are denying those individuals the opportunity to visit family in Canada.

Could the member comment on the unfairness of that, especially given that in the same legislation the minister is taking the power to deny someone the ability to come to Canada? There is a bit of a contradiction there.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-43, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. I will be sharing my time.

We are supporting this bill's going forward at second reading, with some very strong reservations. As we have seen throughout the debate here today, the reservations speak to a number of issues in the bill that certainly involve moving further than simply the faster removal of foreign criminals

One issue we have great concern about is the concentration of more power in the hands of the minister, giving him the discretionary ability based on public policy considerations to restrict the entrance of foreign nationals, making them inadmissible for up to 36 months.

We have seen the parliamentary secretary stand up and admit that on the face of it, this is very controversial and really needs a lot of work. I think back to what has happened during my time in Parliament and the minister's actions. At his discretion, he refused entrance into Canada of former British MP George Galloway. In a resulting court case, Mr. Galloway challenged the minister over this. The Ontario supreme court came out with a 60-page decision castigating the minister for exercising this authority in that way that excluded Mr. Galloway based on certain political considerations.

Therefore, we really have to be very careful with this. This is treading into an area that has been a minefield in Canada in the past. I think back to the period before the Second World War, when we refused massive numbers of refugees from Eastern Europe because of political considerations, not because they were bad people or criminals who were going to cause a lot of trouble in Canada. No, it was because political factors were taken into consideration. If we are moving back in a direction of looking at political considerations and opening up that door where we have not been for a while, I think it is something we have to look at very carefully.

We are relieving the minister of the responsibility of looking at humanitarian circumstances in these matters, where human beings' lives are being altered irrevocably by the decisions we are making, and not making the minister look at the situation created by the acts of Canadians officials in expelling people from the country. I think that is really not in the Canadian mould. We tend to say that we believe in the sanctity of families, that we believe in the importance of paying careful attention to children, to the kinds of things that tie people together in a particular instance.

To simply say that we are going to relieve the minister of that responsibility needs some definite explanation. Why should the minister not want to have some ability to deal with this? Why should this not be part of his responsibility? When we have an impact upon people's lives, we need to understand that it is our responsibility and that we need to look at those things in the context they are presented. It is not that simple.

One provision that I find very difficult is the proposed increase in the penalty for misrepresentation. We are all MPs here. We all have offices. We all see people coming in, immigrants, landed immigrants, and people who are looking to get their parents or children into the country. The forms can lend themselves to mistakes.

The difference between a mistake and a misrepresentation is sometimes a very narrow line. When it comes to someone's educational qualifications, he or she may say, “I went to school there. I graduated there”. Is that acceptable? Can he or she prove it? Are there other issues that come into the presentation or the information that may need some clarification?

We need to look very hard at what “misrepresentation” means and what it entails. That can be done in committee. How can we define it carefully so we are not simply shutting people who make a mistake out of the country. We have to be very careful with that. It is something that can lead to all kinds of problems for people.

What constitutes “serious criminality?” This is something we have had a good debate on today. Quite obviously, when we move from a sentence of two years down to a sentence of six months, we are moving the bar pretty low. We are taking that bar right down so the ability of someone to get under it will be much more difficult. We really need to understand it. I assume the committee will go through some statistical analysis of what it will mean, what kind of offences have been generated that produce a sentence of six months in contrast to those that would produce sentences of two years.

Certainly, we have all seen people go to prison for six months for fairly minor offences that do not justify the disruption of their family life or taking them away from employer, if they happen to be good employees, doing all of that for something that is criminal but not necessarily of a serious nature. Therefore, the definition really needs work.

It will be interesting to see how it comes back from committee and what happens with the bill, what kinds of amendments and definitions are struck so we can truly understand how this will impact society.

I trust the Conservatives will follow the example the parliamentary secretary set with the one particular passage in the bill that he clearly stated needed work. We need an understanding of the whole bill in a very careful fashion, which can come through committee. After that, we can see whether the bill will be acceptable to this party. I am sure there will be further consideration of that.

These are important issues which are not to be taken lightly. I trust the government will go into that committee with the good intention of really coming to grips with this bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, I notice that Bill C-43 is called the faster removal of foreign criminals act. However, one of the key items in the bill would give the minister the power to declare a person inadmissible for up to 36 months according to whatever public policy consideration he may choose to use. That has nothing to do with reporting people or removing criminals; it is really about something completely different. Is that not very deceiving?

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the presentation of my colleague from Rivière-du-Nord, and I particularly enjoyed the examples that he slipped into his speech.

I would like him to comment or provide his opinion to see if he shares a certain vision. Actually, in listening to the debates since this morning, I have the impression that, with Bill C-43, the Conservatives are trying to depict a very simple, if not simplistic, situation: there are good guys and bad guys; it is black or white. But in my distinguished colleague's speech, it seems that there were many shades of grey, in various situations.

It makes me wonder whether this simple situation, if that is what it is, is truly so simple—when he talks, among other things, about the possibility of the minister's reviewing a foreigner's admissibility—when I hear phrases like: “if he feels it is justified by public policy considerations.” It seems to me that, with such phrases, the hon. member is being completely subjective. However, the picture the Conservatives have been painting since this morning, particularly with their examples, is that the situation is simple, black or white, and that is that.