Finance Committee on May 7th, 2008

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Could be?

[Sima Sahar Zerehi]

Exactly, interpreted.

That's exactly the problem with the law, with these amendments, and the way they're being pushed through. Because there aren't enough community consultations, a lot of doors are still open, and a lot still needs to be reviewed and looked at. The way the wording is, it could be read that humanitarian and compassionate applications outside the country may not be looked at.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

I have a very quick question for you. A couple came to see me in my capacity as a member of Parliament. They had exhausted their two or three refugee status applications--

[Sima Sahar Zerehi]

You can only do one in Canada.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Well, there's appeal. They had their appeal.

I had a discussion with them and asked how they got here. They said they had lied to get into the country and they wanted their MP to help them.

Is your organization supporting people who have lied to get into Canada?

[Sima Sahar Zerehi]

First of all, we're working on a campaign; the campaign's point of unity is opposition to Bill C-50 at this moment, and a regularization program that meets the needs of undocumented workers.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Thank you; that's my time. I share my time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Go ahead, Mr. Dykstra.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

I want to continue on. I have one difficulty, and I wanted to ask you about it.

For every single piece of legislation that comes forward--and it doesn't matter whether it's a Liberal government or a Conservative government--you can make the claim you've made: that the interpretation of the new legislation could be one thing or it could be another. In fact, I suppose the reason we have a court system in this country is potentially to challenge those issues.

Could you tell me if you at least had a chance to read or watch the response? It doesn't sound like you trust the minister on this, so I want to get whether or not you've had a chance to read the transcripts. I'm happy to provide them for you. Ms. Lyon was very clear in her responses.

Are you saying that the ministry hasn't prepared this documentation that well either, and it shouldn't necessarily be trusted?

[Sima Sahar Zerehi]

I've heard Minister Finley address questions around this issue again and again in different settings, as well as other discussions. I don't feel that I need the transcripts to read it again.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

You haven't heard from Ms. Lyon. Have you read Ms. Lyon's documentation? She spent an hour here being grilled by the 13 of us. Have you had a chance to read her perspective on this?

[Sima Sahar Zerehi]

No, I have not had a chance to read her perspective on it, but at the same time, what the Conservative--

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Hold on a second. Hold on. I'm asking the questions.

[Sima Sahar Zerehi]

You asked a question, and I get to respond.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Mr. Chair--

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Go ahead.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

You come here and you want to challenge this legislation. I don't have a problem with that, but when you come here, you haven't read what was documented here by the ministry official who is responsible for this, and you say we need to remove it from finance because we need to do more research on it with the Department of Citizenship and Immigration. Well, those people have gone across the country or in front of panels like this and at that other ministry to determine this.

What I can't understand is how you could have more consultations on this and somehow come back to the ministry, which is going to write the legislation anyway, and say that you now like the legislation or you like the stuff that's been written after further consultation, when in fact she has come here to clarify every single point you made here today.

[Sima Sahar Zerehi]

First of all, I'm not the person who comes up with the legal opinions.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Mr. Chair--

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

We'll allow her to go ahead.

You can answer the question, and I'll ask the members to just keep quiet while we listen to the answer.

[Sima Zerehi]

Absolutely.

First of all, I'm not the person within our organization who comes up with the legal opinion. I leave that to the lawyers. My responsibility is then to communicate that legal opinion in easy-to-understand plain language to the communities that are affected.

Our legal opinions have again and again told us that this is the interpretation. You're telling us, and the immigration department has told us, “Trust us.” That's what we're hearing. We're hearing, “Trust our interpretation. Trust what we're saying. We're the good guys; we're going to interpret this in a way that will be beneficial to the communities.”

Unfortunately, our communities are saying that they don't agree with your interpretation. They don't want to get rid of the democratic involvement of committees like the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. They want these things to be reviewed every time a decision is made. They don't want to see a decision in the Gazette afterwards and then have to shrug their shoulders and say, “Well, the minister made it; I'm sure she had great intentions.”

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

That's not what I said. I said that the ministry officials came here; you've said to this group that you didn't even read what she had to say and you want to do more research, even though the materials have been prepared and the ADM was here to respond to those questions. You're saying we need to have more discussions, but you haven't even listened to or met with the individual who is responsible for the department that has put this legislation together.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

We'll leave it at that, before it deteriorates any further. The time has gone.

Ms. Chow, the floor is yours.

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

I want to speak on two areas: EI and immigration. It's interesting that they do actually connect with each other.

With $54 billion, imagine the funds we could use to retrain workers who are unemployed in forestry, in manufacturing, in auto plants, in various areas of Quebec, older workers, young people who could get apprenticeship training. It's a phenomenal amount of money, and that dollar really belongs to the workers and the workers alone. It shouldn't be taken away.

It connects with the immigration piece, because what is happening is that we have more and more temporary foreign workers coming into this country and it's driving down the wages of ordinary Canadians. We are in fact seeing immigrant women, for example, earning 56¢ per dollar that is being earned by Canadian-born males. As more workers are not entitled to their EI benefits, as the jobs are paying less, as there are fewer manufacturing jobs, you are seeing more and more temporary foreign workers coming into Canada.

It is connected, and that is why tomorrow the NDP has an opposition day motion and we're going to spend the entire day in the House of Commons debating whether the House has lost confidence in this government, given that the government has failed to reform employment insurance to ensure that people who lose jobs are protected and trained. That's an area I wouldn't mind some comments on.

Since the last exchange, I thought I should ask Ms. Zerehi or Mr. Wong a question. Regarding temporary foreign workers or people with precarious status in Canada, if Bill C-50 generates more of those types of immigrants, would we see more people going underground and therefore have more people disappearing? The Auditor General said there were 41,000 so far. Will we get more people going underground, making it even harder for the Canada Border Services Agency to keep track of where the immigrants or undocumented workers are?

Perhaps Ms. Zerehi could answer the question.

[Sima Sahar Zerehi]

Clearly, that's exactly the connection that we are seeing. If we don't do something to fix the system at the front end, we're going to have more people falling through the cracks, and then we'll have to devote more resources at the back end.

Today we read a press release, issued by Minister Stockwell Day, complimenting CBSA for arresting undocumented workers in a factory outside of the Greater Toronto Area. What we're seeing is that at the same time as we're deporting workers, our country is speaking out again and again on the need for more labourers to come in to provide for those shortages of the workers that we're deporting. Definitely we need to see the connection here.

Bill C-50 is going to bring more temporary foreign workers into Canada for a two-year period. After that time, they're going to fall through the cracks again, and we're going to exacerbate the crisis of undocumented immigrants.