Madam Speaker, Bill C-3 is once again before us.
The Liberals have dismantled our immigration system and turned it into a circus. They have thrown open our borders, inviting in millions of people over the last decade without the necessary housing, health care or jobs to support them. Let us look at the results.
Housing prices have shot up to unattainable levels. We were already in a housing deficit before increasing our population. Adding millions of new people to a housing market that was already undersupplied created an environment that resulted in skyrocketing rents and out-of-reach home prices.
Just last week in my riding, a mother told me that her daughter wanted to start a family but could not because they could not afford to buy a home. A father told me that his son is working full-time but cannot afford a place to rent and is stuck in the basement. Many of my colleagues on this side of the aisle, and I am sure on the other side of the aisle as well, are hearing the same stories across our entire country.
At the health committee, witnesses noted that if immigration levels continue to be mismatched with provincial health care delivery, outcomes for all Canadians will suffer. Canadians are already suffering. The Liberals' not considering health care capacity in their immigration policies has meant longer wait times for both immigrants and Canadians. People are waiting upwards of eight hours in hospital emergency rooms, and when they are admitted, they are in the hallway for hours and hours, if not days. People are waiting months to see a specialist for basic diagnostic services. Longer wait times mean that everyone's health suffers.
Right now there is also a huge job crisis. In the greater Toronto area alone, youth unemployment is hovering dangerously close to the 20% mark. The importance of a first job in high school or when coming out of higher education cannot be overstated for our youth wanting to start their adult life. A first job for youth builds critical skills and kick-starts a career. Without the ability to get a job, especially a first job coming out of higher education, long-term earnings are impacted, careers are stalled and a sense of hopelessness kicks in.
That is the situation our youth find themselves in after 10 years of disastrous Liberal immigration policies, when a mind-boggling number of temporary foreign workers and international students were let into the country. When the Prime Minister says we need to make sacrifices, what he really means is that both new immigrants and Canadians must suffer because of 10 years of Liberal failed policies.
With all that in mind, forgive me if I am a bit skeptical about the Liberal migration bill before us, as it promises to potentially add thousands of new Canadians into an already overburdened system and would do nothing to address the challenges we already have.
As I have previously mentioned in speeches with respect to the bill, Liberals will say that they have to pass the legislation because of a lower-court ruling that said that the first-generation limit of citizenship by descent could go on indefinitely. What the Liberals fail to mention is not only that they did not appeal the court ruling but also that they have control over how it is implemented, through the legislation they put forward, as a minority government.
The legislation before us today does not include the common-sense amendments passed at committee, as we have heard all morning. Those amendments would have turned a lousy Liberal bill into a slightly less lousy Liberal bill. Yesterday felt a bit like déjà vu: Liberals once again were joined by their coalition partner, the NDP, to vote down our common-sense amendments.
I am going to summarize what happened. The committee studied the bill. Conservatives worked together with our Bloc colleagues to pass reasonable amendments, such as new Canadians' being required to know one of our two official languages and to have a criminal background check to protect the safety of Canadians. There were a lot of other important points.
The Liberals then came to the House and voted down all the amendments. What were the amendments? Liberals voted against new Canadians' having a criminal background check. Residents in my riding do not want people with criminal records immigrating to Canada and walking our streets.
Liberals voted against new Canadians' knowing a little bit of either the English or the French language. It is hard to integrate into a new country already knowing the language, let alone not knowing the language, which is certainly setting immigrants up to fail. Even the minister said that our official languages were part of Canadian values. If they are Canadian values, as the minister suggested, why did the Liberals vote against putting them in the bill? Why did the minister, who believes that, not put the requirement in the bill in the first place?
Liberals also voted against harmonizing the residency requirements that someone needs to fulfill in order to obtain citizenship through naturalisation with those for citizenship by descent. Providing proof of three years of residency over the entirety of someone's life would cause huge administrative problems. The proposed amendment would have changed this to three years within a five-year period, consistent with how our immigration system works now. How is an immigration officer supposed to verify three years of physical presence over the course of someone's life, using records that are decades-old or that, in many cases, may not even exist?
I have something to get off my chest. At the immigration committee last week, the immigration minister, the seventh Liberal one in the last 10 years, was questioned on a different bill. When I started mentioning to her the potential improvements, she said that suggestions and helpful comments are very much appreciated, and she went on to say that the committee is there to give recommendations.
How the process on Bill C-3 has played out is emblematic of the last 10 years of the Liberal government. The Liberal government does not care about recommendations. It does not care about what other parliamentarians have to say. It has no respect for amendments or recommendations coming out of the standing committees of Parliament.
Our immigration system is an unmitigated disaster right now. Multiple parties took part in the legislative process, proposing amendments to make a lousy piece of Liberal legislation better. What do the Liberals do? They vote down amendments, not only on the bill before us but on pretty much every bill that comes into the House.
I have news for the members opposite: Canadians elected them, just as much as they did us, to come to Ottawa. In fact, 174 members of the 343-member House are not Liberal. That may be a surprise to the members opposite, who are behaving as if they had a huge majority in the government. Do the members opposite realize that their voting down these amendments tells me and all Canadians that Liberals do not care if Canadians can speak English or French?
It tells me and all Canadians that Liberals do not care if they can execute their immigration policies. It also tells me and all Canadians that Liberals do not care if new Canadians with criminal background records are being released into our communities.
I will end with this: I am not surprised that the Liberal government is putting forward more legislation that would add to the chaos in our immigration system. We know that the immigration system is a train wreck, because each of our constituency offices is inundated with immigration files, every office except, of course, the Prime Minister's. It has been half a year since the out-of-touch Prime Minister was elected; he still does not have a constituency office to serve his riding, so he would not know what we are dealing with every day in our constituency offices.
If the Prime Minister cannot figure out how to serve his own constituents, how can we expect him to serve the country? The Prime Minister's priorities are everywhere else but here.
