Thank you.
Having listened to my predecessors, I am convinced once again that it's extremely unfortunate that the government has chosen to put so many diverse issues into one bill. I found the presentation by the actuaries association extremely interesting, and I think it would be extremely important to take heed of what he said. I would say the same of the presentation by the Cancer Society and by my friend from the C.D. Howe Institute as well.
In any event, having said that, I will address the issue that I know about. I don't know about actuarial issues but I do know about immigration law. I've practised it for 30 years.
I'd like to deal with the claim of the government that this has to do with the backlog. I hope by now it's abundantly clear that this legislation has nothing to do with the immigration backlog. It excludes the backlog from its application. If that's the case, the question arises: what are we going to do with this massive backlog?
I would suggest to you that first we have to understand how it came to be. It's only a backlog that was created in the last six years—900,000 in six years—because the law changed six years ago. How did we get to this massive backlog in six years? We got to it because, notwithstanding the fact that this government and the previous government had the tools in place to ensure that the backlog didn't grow--because they could have changed at any time the criteria--they stood by and allowed this massive backlog to exist. We now have a backlog, and this legislation won't do anything about it, so we have to ask ourselves why we are talking about the changes to the selection criteria if, in fact, we have 900,000 people waiting whose applications are going to have to be processed, which is equivalent to about six years' worth of applications in the backlog.
There has to be a strategy to deal with this backlog, and this legislation has nothing to do with that strategy. The minister has suggested that we need this legislation because we need to have more flexibility in order to determine who we select to come into Canada. As the speaker from the previous panel said, we already have that flexibility in place. The minister has the power to make political directions. One example is the provincial nominee program. There's nothing in the legislation that allows provincial nominee applicants to get priority processing over other applicants, but they get it because the minister directed her officials to process provincial nominee applications more quickly.
The minister can make any types of direction she likes, even dealing with occupations. I went to court two years ago and challenged the minister's authority to do this in the case of Vaziri. I lost. It was a case about processing sponsored applications, and I argued that the legislation said that parents and spouses had to be processed at the same time, and the only way the minister could give priority over spouses was through a regulation. The Federal Court said the minister had political power to direct processing of applications as she liked. That would apply to occupations, and it would apply to provincial nominees.
So the minister doesn't need that power through this legislation.
The minister has said that this legislation does not authorize her to interfere in individual applications. That may be her intent, but as immigration lawyers, we've learned many times that professions of intent are meaningless when you go to the Federal Court and the court looks at the wording. The wording, as it stands now, clearly allows the minister to interfere with individual applications. If the government is serious, they should introduce an amendment that expressly says she cannot do that.
I was at the citizenship and immigration committee before, and someone from the Bloc asked me if it would allow the minister to interfere with the power of Quebec to select immigrants. The answer is yes. The instructions that the minister can issue are unrestricted. Indeed, the minister could issue an instruction saying that all provincial applications are going to be given lower priority than others, or no priority, or whatever.
So that's extremely important for the people from all of the provinces to understand. And this gets to the question that was asked: what's the problem with this? If we have the power now, why do we need this legislation? Well, this legislation gives the minister the power to override any of the rules and regulations or even the agreements that exist between the provinces. It gives the minister extremely broad, unfettered discretion with respect to who gets into Canada, where there is absolutely no political accountability, and that, in my view, is a very serious problem.
The Conservatives came to power saying they believed there should be more participation by Parliament. What this legislation does, if it's passed, is basically undermine any participation by members of Parliament in any aspect of the immigration process, because anything that's debated can be undermined by instructions issued by the minister when Parliament isn't sitting, which wouldn't be subject to any debate. If this bill goes through before the end of this session and becomes law on June 30, on July 2 the minister could issue an instruction that could totally change all the rules under which applications are being processed, and Parliament wouldn't have an opportunity to discuss it until October.
This is extremely undemocratic, and undermines the role of Parliament in debating and discussing immigration policy. In my view, it's not correct that the minister will be politically accountable as a result of publication. She may ultimately be politically accountable, but by the time any debate occurs, months will have passed. So I would urge the committee to really defer a determination of this legislation because I think it's really ill-conceived, undemocratic.
My final point is that it sets a very negative precedent. If this legislation is allowed to pass, what is to prevent the Minister of Finance from being given powers to issue instructions about important matters? What is to prevent the Minister of the Environment from being given the same power, to override the regulations through some kind of administrative fiat? Ultimately we can give all the different ministers the powers to issue instructions, and then we don't need to have a Parliament, we just have ministers who issue instructions. It's an extremely dangerous precedent that is a further centralization of the power of government, and I think it's something that should be carefully considered before it's passed into law.
Thank you very much.