Bill C-220

An Act to amend the Criminal Code (immigration status in sentencing)

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to provide that, in imposing a sentence on an offender who is not a Canadian citizen, a court must not take into consideration the offender’s immigration status in Canada.

Opposition Motion—Serious crimes and refugee claims

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Leader of the Opposition]

Mr. Speaker, when I sat in the basement of a Surrey home and met with the Sahsi family, I could see a combination of fear and anger in the sons who had lost their father, a law-abiding Canadian, a successful businessman, a pillar of the community, Darshan Sahsi, who was gunned down presumably by extortionists. Not long after that, I was at Radio Swift in Surrey, and as I looked up in the studio, staring me in the eye was a bullet hole put there by extortionists who had demanded that the owner pay money to avoid violence.

The other day, I spoke to a Lower Mainland, British Columbia, mother who was paid a visit by police officers warning her that a house on the street was the subject of extortion threats and so there may be stray bullets flying around the neighbourhood, such that some might consider moving their families into the basement, which is to say, not living on the main floor of the home, to avoid the prospect of a stray bullet flying through the window and killing a family member. Many others are saying they are leaving Canada altogether for fear of extortion, going as far away as possible to hide from the extortionists the Liberals have let into the country.

Why now, after 10 years of Liberals, do we in Canada suddenly have an extortion problem that never existed before? Liberal laws have turned extortionists loose on our streets, and Liberal immigration has allowed them into the country in the first place. When they get here and they finally get caught, they can declare refugee status and, under the Liberal laws, avoid leaving the country altogether.

The CBSA reported in December that 15 foreign nationals charged with extortion suddenly discovered they were refugees and claimed status so that they could stay in Canada. Now, because the Liberal government allows these phony claims to occur, Canadians will need to spend millions of dollars housing, feeding and paying the legal bills of these criminals. By the way, there will be an endless string of appeals, so that even when their claims are eventually rejected, God willing, it will still be seven years' more cost and more danger for Canadians. Liberals force taxpayers to pay for a higher standard of living for foreign criminals living wrongly in Canada than they allow for the hard-working, law-abiding seniors who built this country.

We have seen cases, case after case actually, where judges relying on Liberal laws are reducing sentences for foreign nationals who commit crimes in Canada to avoid “immigration consequences”. In one case, a foreign national attempted to buy sex with a child and received a lighter sentence so deportation could be avoided. In another, a foreign national driving the wrong way on a street crashed into and killed an entire family. He got just months in jail because the court wanted to protect his immigration status. In Calgary, a non-citizen convicted of sexual assault got leniency so that he could stay in Canada.

Canadians deserve to live in safe communities. They deserve freedom from random violence. They deserve to ride transit without fear of being attacked by strangers. They deserve to know that their kids can play safely in the streets, including into the evening hours. They deserve to run businesses without getting threatened or shot at or having their storefront burned down. They deserve justice and immigration systems that put law-abiding Canadians first, not foreign national criminals.

There is a direct cause and effect here. Liberal catch-and-release laws and Liberal open borders immigration have led to this 330% increase in extortion. We can say that in the inverse: that extortion was about 90% lower when the Conservatives were in power. As we see Liberal members trying to blame others for their 10-year-long record, we can see that it is under their watch and their laws that we have witnessed the more than quadrupling of this horrendous sector of crime.

There has been a 55% increase, under the Liberal government, in violent crime overall. Businesses are being shaken down. Bullets are shot through storefront windows. Firebombs are thrown in residential neighbourhoods. Extortionists are now so brazen that they post videos of shooting up residential communities on their social media because they know there will be no consequences for their crimes under the Liberal government. This is the daily reality for too many Canadians in Surrey, Brampton, Vancouver, Calgary and the GTA.

I was at a Calgary business that builds homes a few months back. I did a photo line, where I met with all the people who wanted to say hello. Out of about 150 conversations, there must have been 30 or so people who had either been threatened or knew someone who had been threatened. About 20% of the people I spoke to said they had been or that a close loved one had been threatened with extortion.

This crisis was not predetermined but it was predictable. We predicted that this would happen when the Liberals passed laws unleashing this crime.

I look across the aisle at the Liberal government here today. The same ministers who are now in the Liberal cabinet voted for the laws that caused this. They voted for the Liberal bill, Bill C-75, which created Liberal bail. Liberal bail is a system that requires judges to release criminals at the earliest opportunity under the least onerous conditions, something the Prime Minister continues to support.

The Liberal government, including the members sitting here with us, voted for Bill C-5, which actually reduced jail time for extortion with a gun. The Liberal government brought in laws that actually lowered sentences for violent and sexual offenders, allowing them to serve their sentences in the comfort of their living rooms. We have worked to reverse these Liberal laws by putting forward common-sense proposals that would keep our Canadian people safe. We have tried, but the Liberals will not stop obstructing in order to protect their soft-on-crime agenda.

Conservatives have tried. We put forward amendments to the Criminal Code. For example, there was Bill C-381. I think that was the member for Edmonton Gateway's bill. It would create mandatory prison sentences of 10 years for extortionists. Liberals blocked it. Liberals obstructed. We tried to repeal Bill C-75, catch-and-release bail, but Liberals obstructed and blocked us. We tried to repeal Bill C-5, the house arrest law. Liberals obstructed and Liberals blocked. They opposed the Conservative bill, Bill C-220, which would have prevented judges from giving lighter sentences to people based on the fact that they are here as immigrants.

We are calling on the government to stop obstructing and stop preventing us from fixing the system that it broke. That means acting now. Today, we have before the House of Commons a motion that would ensure that anyone convicted of a crime would not be eligible to seek refugee status in Canada. It would require that they be removed immediately from our country and that their status as an asylum seeker would immediately be revoked.

This is a reasonable motion that would bring peace and tranquility to our communities. It would allow small business people to once again operate fearlessly, focusing all of their attention on hiring workers and providing affordable goods to their customers. It would allow the law-abiding immigrants who came here to contribute to do so in open and free communities without fear of danger. It would allow places like Surrey, Brampton, northeast Calgary, Vancouver and the GTA to be peaceful and tranquil once again, as they were before the Liberal government.

We ask them to work with us, to put aside partisan obstructionism, to accept that they were wrong to liberalize our laws and our borders, and to instead stand on the side of law-abiding, hard-working Canadians and restore the promise of safe streets and a country filled with opportunity and security.

[Tim Uppal, Conservative, Edmonton Gateway, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Battle River—Crowfoot.

Canada is facing a crisis that begins at our borders and ends up in our communities. Criminals have been emboldened by weak Liberal policies, and non-citizen criminals have been able to exploit our asylum system. Some of these criminals are now exploiting the refugee system, and those with false claims are remaining in Canada.

At the same time, extortion has exploded 330% since the Liberals were elected. Families and small businesses in places such as Brampton, my hometown of Edmonton, Surrey, Vancouver and Calgary are living in fear. Many of them are actually contemplating leaving this country.

Violent crime is at the highest level we have ever seen in Canada. In British Columbia alone, extortion is up nearly 500%. This is happening right across the country and in plain sight. In fact, these criminals are filming themselves shooting at houses, creating videos and posting them. When non-citizen criminals are caught committing serious crimes, including extortion, many of them file false asylum claims, which delay deportation and provide more lenient sentencing. In fact, under the Liberal government's catch-and-release bail laws, many are put right back on the streets, where they are free to reoffend.

Despite many Conservative proposals on both issues of broken immigration and soaring crime, the government continues to make things worse by letting unvetted criminals into our country, and then allowing them to stay as they exploit asylum loopholes. The government is also refusing to enforce tough penalties for serious crimes. No wonder crime is out of control and victims are the ones paying the price.

Just last week, the Premier of British Columbia expressed deep frustration with Canada's immigration laws as they pertain to non-citizens committing serious crimes and subsequently making asylum claims. He asked for our laws to be changed and called the abuse of our system “ludicrous”. Ten years of weak Liberal laws have allowed serious dangerous criminals, many of whom should never have been in Canada in the first place, to gain a foothold and terrorize our communities.

What is happening today with foreign gangs and criminals across this country is a symptom of two deep structural failures caused by the Liberal government. First, foreign criminals have learned that Canada's asylum system is porous and easily manipulated and second, weak Liberal laws have made our system unable to keep criminals in jail or deport non-citizen offenders. These two failures are driving up crime almost everywhere across the country.

On top of this, the Liberals stopped performing criminal record checks on immigrants, allowing people with criminal pasts to come here and continue their criminal careers. Before the summer, I asked the government what it was doing to protect Canadians. The answer was that it is going to hire 1,000 new RCMP officers. In the fall, we asked how many of them had been hired. Those RCMP officers have not yet been hired.

Weak legislation on crime, which does not even keep the worst criminals in jail, as well as Canada's asylum system, which has become a shield for foreign gangs and criminals, continue to spread crime and disorder throughout our streets without an end in sight.

Conservatives have put forward real solutions. On extortion, I introduced my private member's bill, Bill C-381, the protection against extortion act, that would have restored mandatory jail time. The Liberal government voted against it.

On asylum abuse, we warned the government years ago that criminals were exploiting gaps in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, and in November, the Conservatives proposed an amendment to Bill C-12 to bar non-citizens convicted of serious crimes in Canada from making refugee claims. This was a common-sense proposal that would have prevented the abuse of our asylum system and stopped non-citizens from using refugee claims as a tactic to delay deportation after committing serious crimes. The Liberals rejected it at committee.

The Premier of British Columbia has said that Canada's immigration laws must change, and he is right. Conservatives agree with him that non-citizens convicted of serious crimes should not be allowed to file asylum claims. We also agree that Canada must bar non-citizens with active judicial proceedings for serious crimes from making refugee claims. This would stop those who believe they can commit serious crimes and avoid deportation by abusing Canada's asylum system.

Furthermore, the practice of judges granting leniency at sentencing to help non-citizens avoid deportation must end. Too many individuals convicted of serious crimes have benefited from this practice at the expense of victims and public safety.

Conservatives attempted to make these changes by amending Bill C-14, but Liberal members voted it down. That is why the member for Calgary Nose Hill introduced Bill C-220, which is a simple one-line change to the Criminal Code to end this practice once and for all. The bill will be up for a vote in a few weeks, and we hope the Liberal government will support the Conservatives with this bill.

The Liberal government has failed repeatedly. Its members voted against Conservative motions to end loopholes for false refugee claims. They voted against tougher sentencing for extortion in my bill, Bill C-381. They have refused to repeal Bill C-5 and Bill C-75, which created Canada's revolving-door justice system. They have now rejected our common-sense amendment to Bill C-12 to bar non-citizens convicted of serious crimes in Canada from making refugee claims.

Conservatives are calling on the government to stop blocking justice and to bar non-citizens convicted of serious crimes from making refugee claims. We also must bar non-citizens with active judicial proceedings for serious crimes from making refugee claims and end the practice of sentencing leniency designed to help non-citizens avoid deportation.

There are overdue, crucial changes to Canada's immigration system and asylum laws that would finally close loopholes and prevent serious offenders from using Canada's immigration system to their advantage.

Canadians deserve to feel safe in their communities. They deserve a government willing to stand up for victims, not criminals, and they deserve a federal government that will finally fix the asylum and immigration failures at the core of this crisis. Conservatives have the common-sense solutions. We are ready to work with the Liberals to expedite legislation that will deliver these long overdue changes and restore safety to Canadian neighbourhoods.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today on this motion we put forward in the House.

I have had the privilege of travelling to Rwanda multiple times. It is a beautiful country. When I say I am going to Rwanda or have been to Rwanda, people look at me with shock on their faces, because they have an image of a country that was rocked by genocide 32 years ago, which it was. It was a tragic thing, but the country has been rebuilt. It is a beautiful country, hilly and tropical. The fruit there is amazing, and so are the people. It is now a very safe country that is well developed. There are roads and buildings. They have a beautiful soccer centre and a basketball centre. It is an amazing place. They had the cycling UCI Road World Championships there last year, which was the first time ever in an African country.

When I talk to Rwandans about what it is like in Canada, they do not believe me. The conversations are quite interesting. I talk about things like homelessness and how we can see homeless people in any major city, tent cities, people cooking on fires in our cities in Canada. When I tell that to people in Rwanda, they do not believe me. I talk about the drug use we see in our cities, the fentanyl use, people literally dying on our streets and the way our government actually supports that by providing tools and facilitating the use of drugs and in some cases giving hard drugs to people. They cannot believe that. One certainly does not see that on the streets of Kigali in Rwanda.

The obvious consequence of these things is that crime has increased since 2015 in Canada. Violent crime is up 55%, firearms crime is up 130%, extortion has skyrocketed and is up 330% across the country, sexual assaults are up 76%, and homicides are up 29%. This is the result of some of the changes that the Liberal government has made. It is hard to imagine that when one is sitting in a country like Rwanda. We have a perception that it should be a problem in Rwanda, but it is actually a problem here, not there.

Then I tell Rwandans that police are increasingly powerless. Any of us who have talked to police officers will hear every time that they got into policing to catch the bad guy and put him in jail. They are increasingly frustrated that they cannot do that because courts are releasing the bad guy. It is frustrating police officers to the point that they do not even bother to arrest some people for crimes now because it just does not matter.

Why is this happening? It is partly because of Bill C-5, which took away mandatory minimums. It allowed judges the freedom to give lesser sentences, which has happened across the board, and not for little things; it is for serious things such as gun trafficking, robbery with a firearm and drug trafficking. These kinds of offences are now not subject to mandatory minimums, and judges are free to give whatever lenient sentence they may choose.

Bill C-75 was a big expansion of bail. It was the bill that not allowed but actually required judges to consider the least possible thing they could do to a criminal. There is a thing called “the principle of restraint” that was introduced in the bill, for police and courts to ensure that release at the earliest opportunity is favoured over detention. It forces our criminal justice system to release criminals at the earliest possible opportunity. This is how we arrived at the revolving-door bail situation, where people are arrested and end up back out on the streets.

These are the things that have been done by the government that have caused crime to increase in our country and light sentences to prevail. The consequences of crime are gone. We have completely lost control of crime in our country. When I say these things to a person from Rwanda, they are shocked. This is not the view of Canada that they have, but it is the true Canada that we do have.

On the immigration side, we have to remember that somebody who is not a citizen of Canada showing up at our borders does not have the right to become Canadian. Canadians are the ones who decide who can become Canadian. Canadians are the ones who decide that we should allow certain people to come into our country and in certain quantities. Those are our decisions to make. They are no one else's.

For many years, Canada had a consensus on immigration. If someone is not an indigenous person, then they quite likely have an immigrant in their background somewhere. My grandparents came here 100 years ago, so I am the product of immigration to this country, as are most of us here who are not indigenous people. Canadians were happy and comfortable with that. We had a system that picked the brightest and the best people because that is what benefited Canada the most. If one talks to an economist, they will say that we should be selecting people who have the potential to earn higher-than-average incomes in our country to bring all of us up as a country.

This worked well, but we also left room to help those in need. We all recognize that there are refugees who come to our country, and we need to help those people too. This system worked, and immigrants would be the first to say that.

Then the Liberals completely lost control. They allowed in way too many people, and we have seen the impacts of that on our housing, our jobs and our health care. Trying to buy a house is expensive. Trying to pay rent is expensive. Jobs are hard to find. Our unemployment rate for youth is very high.

It has overwhelmed our system. Sometimes people forget about this, but we have a system in our country that was designed to process tens of thousands of people a year. It has now been dealing with millions of people a year, and it cannot keep up with that volume. Something like security screening, for example, is woefully inadequate and behind. As a result, someone can sneak into our country as a criminal and we probably will not catch it. This is a sad thing to say, but it is the reality. We see it every day.

We also have low-wage people coming into the country, which suppresses wages. It gives employers an opportunity to have a temporary foreign worker they can pay a low amount of money to, so Canadians do not have jobs. This is why we have such high unemployment among the youth in our country. Those same youth are faced with high rents while not having a job. They cannot find a place to live.

At the same time as that, we are letting in criminals, as I said, because we cannot really screen properly. We have, for example, IRGC members from Iran here in Canada, who have been able to come here, launder their money and have a pretty good life, and they should not be able to do that. We have scam artists who are taking advantage of the immigration system.

Let us remember that immigrants are not the criminals here. Immigrants are not the problem. There is a very small fraction of people who are the problem, but when we have a system we can take advantage of, bad things happen.

This leads me to the unholy marriage of an out-of-control crime system with an out-of-control immigration system. This is where we find ourselves. We talk a lot about immigration, and some of my constituents do not necessarily have experience with this, so I want to read this because it is shocking. This is an example of an extortion letter. It says:

WARNING...we are...gang members, we want our share from your busineses like protection money. as you seen on news on November...two shotting on houses...were targeted because we asked them [little] money they...denied.... We want...peacefully from you this amount if you...do...business here in abbotsford—

This is in Abbotsford.

—you have no other way...please make sure do not contact...POLICE....

We asking only 2 million...in cash...here or we might get...INDIA we have links all over do not ignore us, it will efect you realy bad. we will contact you next month we gave you 1 month to decide....

This an example of an extortion letter that people are getting, and it is not just one. There were 36 incidents like that in Surrey in the month of January alone. There was a situation on January 19 where a business received a message like that, and their place was shot up overnight. People do not necessarily even report these things. Also in Surrey, there were 15 suspects of this type of crime who were arrested by the police, and they immediately claimed asylum.

This a problem in our system. The asylum system is broken. There are 300,000 people in our asylum queue right now waiting for a hearing. That is the size of Saskatoon. The equivalent of the entire city of Saskatoon is currently waiting for nearly four years, which is how long it is going to take to process them. Because our system cannot process them, 100,000 of those people are simply waiting for security clearance.

This why NDP Premier David Eby from British Columbia called the situation “ludicrous”. He said that something had to change, that something has to be different. We proposed these changes. My colleague from Calgary Nose Hill proposed a change like this to Bill C-12 that would have barred asylum claims from people who are convicted of a crime. Premier Eby actually wants to go further by barring people from claiming asylum if they are in a judicial process for a serious crime. We think that is a good idea. We want to partner with the House to make that kind of thing happen.

Let us remember that Bill C-5 removed mandatory minimums for extortion with a handgun. There are also sentencing discounts, which allow judges to reduce sentences. There are multiple examples of this. It happens all the time. We need to fix this by undoing Bill C-5 and Bill C-75 so that there are true consequences. The member for Oxford brought in Bill C-242, which is the jail not bail act.

We need to fix Bill C-12, as I just described, but we also need to implement Bill C-220, which is from the member for Calgary Nose Hill. It would forbid judges from giving sentencing discounts where it impacts deportation. Criminals who are convicted of a crime greater than six months are subject to deportation, so judges are giving them sentences of less than six months so they are not subject to deportation.

We need to fix this. Something is wrong in Canada. We have to get crime and immigration back under control. The motion today would do that. For the benefit of Canadians, all Canadians, especially young ones, we need to do this today.

Strengthening Canada's Immigration System and Borders Act

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Mr. Speaker, it is certainly a great time to get up to speak. We are into the Christmas season now and kind of in that spirit. I was reading this morning about something the NDP interim leader, the member for Vancouver Kingsway, said yesterday. Apparently he had asked the Prime Minister to grant party status again to the NDP in order to, in his words, make the House “function better”. I do not think it is a good idea.

I was thinking that maybe the member was just continuing his comedy shtick from the parliamentary press gallery thing a week ago, which, by the way, I think was quite funny. He was not as funny as our leader, but it was pretty good. Actually, if we are in that mode, I have a better idea of something to ask the Prime Minister, and that is to grant Canadians what they really want, which is for him to go back to his job at Brookfield and allow the Conservatives to run this country and fix the massive problems we have.

Continuing on the Christmas theme, I want to give heartfelt thanks to all the support staff in this place. There are translators, pages, people in food services, security people and all kinds of staff in this building, including our party staff and all our own staff, who work so hard. I really want to thank all of them and wish them all a very merry Christmas.

I also want to give a special shout-out to the parliamentary dining room staff. They are always missed in the thanks. I am not a very good tipper, so this is my way to make up for that. Canadians would probably be happy to know that oftentimes many of us from different parties meet in the dining room and talk about substantive issues. We actually are able to talk with each other and get business done. I want to thank Lynn, Charles, Guy and all the staff in the parliamentary dining room, as well as my dining room colleagues I talk to many times; they all know who they are. I thank them so much and wish them all a merry Christmas.

I will move on to Bill C-12. This was the marquee legislation of the government when it was introduced as Bill C-2. Just so everybody is clear, Bill C-2 is the designation for the first bill introduced by a government. Bill C-1 is kind of a technical thing. The government members put all their effort into Bill C-2; it is the most important thing. Has anyone heard of the current session's Bill C-2? No, they have not, because it became stalled because it was a mess.

The pieces of Bill C-2 that the government could rescue came into what is now Bill C-12, which is what we are debating today. This is part of the government's pledge to do amazing things at unimaginable speeds. Here we are, and there have been no amazing things done. In the whole year, I think the government has passed two bills. If that is unimaginable speed, then I do not understand the word “unimaginable”.

The purpose of the bill, partly, was to fix immigration problems around asylum and deportation, because everybody in our country knows we have tremendous problems in that area. There were some good things in it, but there were so many more things that we needed to do in order to properly fix our flawed system.

We proposed 27 different amendments, and I think eight of them were accepted, so there were many that were not accepted. I have to commend the Bloc, which worked very hard at committee to help. Its members put forward some of their own ideas, we put forward ideas, and we were able to work together and get the committee to agree to a lot of things.

Even the Liberals agreed to some things, but then of course had the Speaker turn them down once they came to the House. For example, with respect to foreign criminals, we had created an amendment that would deport people convicted of serious crimes, because there are many cases where judges are letting immigrants get lesser penalties. However, that amendment was not passed by the Liberals.

Our asylum system is so broken. There is a story today from British Columbia, where 14 people were identified by the British Columbia extortion task force and were charged with extortion. A lot of effort was put into this. Extortion is a big problem right across the country, but particularly in B.C. Guess what all 14 of these newly charged people did. They claimed asylum, so their charges are now on hold because they are in the asylum system. It is probably a four-year wait, and of course they get benefits. They receive all the wonderful benefits we choose to give to people who are claiming asylum, even though we know the claims are illegitimate.

We put forward an amendment to automatically reject asylum claims from any non-Canadian guilty of a serious offence, but of course it was rejected by the Liberal government. We put forward many amendments to restore sanity to the asylum system, such as that lying to an officer would result in an automatic removal, that knowingly withholding information would automatically terminate a claim and that not showing up or not complying with basic requirements would terminate a claim.

We also proposed that once someone had been denied, but then appealed, only emergency health care would be provided. That was rejected. We also proposed that designated learning institutions be on the hook when they bring someone into the country and that person claims asylum, but that was also rejected by the Liberals.

We did work on human trafficking, trying to get amendments for tougher penalties to protect victims, but of course the Liberals voted no. We also put forward amendments on transparency so we could bring back some basic transparency on reporting. Often we have to do deep questioning and written questions to the government to try to find answers, and the government refuses to provide some of that information. Some of the amendments were passed, but not all of them, and some of them were stripped out.

Probably the biggest success the Conservatives got was that we proposed that the government would not be able to do mass conversion of temporary residents to permanent residents; that amendment was accepted. We also proposed that the government would not be allowed to give mass extension to temporary residents with student visas and things like that.

The bottom line is that we worked very hard to toughen up and fix our weak system. Unfortunately the Liberals blocked most of this work.

Speaking of working hard, I want to mention that we on this side of the House have put a lot of effort and work into improving our immigration policies. A lot of people think the opposition's job is to oppose, and it certainly is, but we also want to propose solutions, so we have proposed many. Our entire caucus worked very hard under the leadership of our shadow minister for immigration, who is the member for Calgary-Nose Hill. She worked very hard and did a great job of making sure we had substantive policies that would actually help to fix our country.

For example, we worked to restore the value of citizenship. That is a problem we have in our country right now. For example, we were very concerned about Bill C-3. It is the bill that would generate endless chain migration, which allows people not born in the country to become citizens, have their children not born in the country become citizens, and on and on. We tried very hard to put some common-sense amendments in the bill, which, of course, were rejected.

The other big one is online citizenship ceremonies. The one-click online citizenship ceremonies are still, certainly in Saskatchewan, the majority of the ceremonies. For many newcomers to our country, the ceremony is the most important thing to them in this phase of their life. To have them sitting behind a computer at home because it is expedient for the department is just embarrassing, frankly. It does not convey the true purpose and meaning of becoming a Canadian citizen. We pushed hard to eliminate the online ceremony, and the government is, I think, slowly moving in that direction, but not fast enough, in our opinion.

We suggested an end to the temporary foreign worker program. There is a youth jobs crisis in our country right now; the unemployment rate for Canadian youth is hovering around 15%, which is far too high. The temporary foreign worker program is part of the reason.

Of course we need to consider agriculture and some other considerations, but generally we have way too many temporary foreign workers, and we do not need our immigration minister to be the chief HR officer for a place like Tim Hortons. I have nothing against Tim Hortons, but there are many Canadians who could work there. The minister confirmed, by the way, just a couple of days ago, that the program is staying. She said that nothing is going to be changing there.

We worked hard to restore the sanity of sentencing immigrant criminals. The member for Calgary-Nose Hill introduced Bill C-220 to end sentencing reduction for immigrants. This is a big issue. An editorial in The Globe and Mail said that judges in our current system “are protecting non-citizens from the consequences of their criminal conduct”, and the author lamented that no one seems to consider “whether Canadians would want those offenders as citizens” in the first place.

Essentially, judges look at the current rules, which say that if a non-citizen is convicted of a serious crime with a sentence of six months or more in jail, they have to be deported, and they reduce the sentence to below six months so it does not affect the non-citizen's citizenship status, which we think is wrong. There should be one standard for all people. Whether they are a Canadian citizen or non-Canadian citizen, the same standard should apply, and that is not the case.

Of course, there is ending the pull factor for asylum, including getting rid of free hotel rooms, endless medical benefits, and departure tracking, which are other things we do not do in our country that the Conservatives have some good policy ideas for.

There are so many things that we worked hard on this year in order to provide good policy solutions for the government. Pretty much all of them were, of course, rejected, but the bottom line is that we worked hard on them. We believe that we can fix our system, but there are so many things that need to be done.

The Liberals took the lazy route with Bill C-12 and did the bare minimum number of things that need to be done, but there is so much more. Conservatives will continue to work to fix legislation like C-12 and continue to propose solutions to make this country better and to make our immigration system work better.

Once again I wish everyone in the House a merry Christmas.

Addressing the Continuing Victimization of Homicide Victims' Families Act

[Claude DeBellefeuille, Bloc, Beauharnois—Salaberry—Soulanges—Huntingdon, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would be remiss not to begin my speech on Bill C-236 by pointing out that Quebec's early childhood week is drawing to a close. Yesterday was National Child Day.

It seems only fitting to share that today, because it is a day for acknowledging that children are people and citizens in their own right who are entitled to freedom, safety and a life without violence. We must never forget that children are not only our future, but also our present, and we need to do everything in our power to take them into account, especially in our political decisions.

I thought it seemed appropriate to highlight that today, considering that many children in Quebec, in Canada and around the world are experiencing violence at this very moment. We need to reaffirm that children have rights. I would like to thank the community group ESPACE Suroît for sponsoring this awareness week in my riding.

We are here today to debate Bill C‑236, introduced by my colleague from Parkland, with whom I have the pleasure of serving on the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. His bill seeks to amend laws such as the Criminal Code, the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and the Prisons and Reformatories Act.

Today we begin the second reading debate on this bill, which is part of a trend, a series of bills that have been introduced since the beginning of the parliamentary session. It may be worth reminding members that, this week, we debated Bill C‑221, which aims to support victims' families and keep them informed of developments regarding the offender's sentence. Bill C‑220 was also introduced, which also seeks to amend “the Criminal Code to provide that, in imposing a sentence on an offender who is not a Canadian citizen, a court must not take into consideration the offender's immigration status in Canada”. That bill was introduced by the member for Calgary Nose Hill, who sits on the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration and has been speaking on Bill C‑12.

We also debated Bill C‑225, which was introduced by another member who sits on the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, the member for Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola. This bill responds to the sadly growing phenomenon of domestic violence.

The government also introduced Bill C-14, which essentially covers six main points: It provides clarification on the principle of restraint, introduces a reverse onus for interim release, imposes tougher bail conditions, introduces sentencing measures, eliminates conditional sentences for sexual assault and makes amendments to the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

It is fair to say that, since the beginning of this Parliament, the legislative agenda has had a strong focus on crime, victims of violent offenders and bail. We have been very busy. As a member of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, I see that we will have a lot of work to do when it comes to hearing from witnesses on the various bills that will be passed at second reading and sent to committee.

I would like to thank my colleague from Parkland, who introduced this bill. He was motivated to introduce this bill because it responds to a real need. Lyle and Marie McCann of St. Albert, Alberta, disappeared 14 years ago. Their family cannot get closure because the murderer has never confessed to his crime. What is more, he refuses to reveal the location of Lyle and Marie McCann's remains. That is why this bill is called McCann's law.

I want to talk in more detail about the changes the bill would make to the Criminal Code.

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to add as an aggravating factor for sentencing purposes and as a reason to delay parole the fact that a person who is convicted of certain offences refuses to provide persons in authority with information respecting the location of bodies or remains. It also amends the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and the Prisons and Reformatories Act to add that fact as a consideration in the making of certain decisions under those Acts.

The amendments to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and the Prisons and Reformatories Act are an important aspect of the bill.

In fact, the purpose of this bill is to consider the victims and the families who cannot grieve their loss because the location of their loved one's remains is unknown to them. Families, like the McCann family, suffer from not knowing the whereabouts of their loved one's remains, and many never get closure, as the bill's preamble explains.

The Bloc Québécois is aware of this reality and believes that the families of victims have the right to know the location of their loved one's remains. We consider it important that judges who choose to ignore this aggravating factor be required to provide a written explanation to help family members understand their decision.

In the past, little was said about victims' rights. In recent weeks, however, we have debated a number of bills that address them. This fall, we have talked at length about victims' rights only to conclude that victims also have rights, such as the right to information. They have a right to receive information during the parole process. They have a right to understand why the person who murdered their loved one can get parole after so many years. They have a right to understand and participate in the process. The bill introduced by my colleague from Parkland is another example of Criminal Code amendments designed to keep victims better informed.

The bill states that the court must be satisfied that the offender knows the location of the body. There may be extenuating circumstances. There was a case in Quebec where the person eventually revealed the location, but it was the St. Lawrence River. Obviously, it is nearly impossible to recover a body from the St. Lawrence River. The family of the victim, Lyne Massicotte, was never really able to mourn her death. After repeated questioning, the family finally found out that the murderer had thrown the body into the St. Lawrence. This brought them no comfort, as they could not arrange a funeral without her body. This is a very difficult situation for anyone to go through, and we understand how hard it must be for all the victims' families and loved ones.

As I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, the Bloc Québécois will be supporting the bill at second reading so we can hear from witnesses and experts in committee. We want them to explain what is being done in Australia, England and the United States. We want to know how other countries, with which we have many international relations, are addressing this new phenomenon, namely, the location of victims' bodies remaining undisclosed. Is it similar to what my colleague's bill proposes? We want to hear these testimonies.

As everyone knows, the Bloc Québécois believes in rehabilitating prisoners. We want to ensure that this particular aggravating factor is introduced, but without it being punitive or coercive. We want judges to take aggravating factors into account and uphold their decision.

Right now, many families, who may even be listening to us, are experiencing grief that they cannot process because they do not know where their loved one's remains are. My colleague's bill aims to give families and loved ones the opportunity to obtain this information. If the accused provides the information, it could perhaps allow them to obtain parole a little sooner. This could allow loved ones to get emotional closure.

We believe that loved ones deserve better and that thorough work in committee will shed the necessary light on this issue, for the sake of the victims and their families.