Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Minister, I've been listening to you, and you really indict the department--It's really dysfunctional. You just mentioned that it's unacceptable that incomes of the new wave of immigrants are 32% lower. Well, I put it to you, one of the reasons they're lower is when you have doctors coming from overseas and they end up driving taxis, obviously that's not going to give them the income they should have, and the same with all the other professionals.
The point system is out of whack, and I can't repeat it strongly enough for you, Minister. Ministers come and go; the only people who go faster probably are the deputy ministers. I can't underline it enough: that was a horrific policy decision, and it was driven by the bureaucracy, unfortunately, rubber-stamped by the minister, who had no more experience than you do, and that's the problem.
We talk about accountability. I really wish we could have the minister and the committee and the MPs holding the bureaucracy accountable. One of the ways we could do it, Minister, is we could try to chase down who drove the decisions, the advice on various policy options that were inevitably taken up by the government. Who was responsible--who drove the change to the point system? It certainly wasn't parliamentarians who drove the impediment to lost Canadians. That was a strong Conservative policy in the last Parliament. It was sponsored by Senator Kinsella and Mr. Reynolds from the Conservative Party.
And the list goes on. Right now, we're celebrating war brides who are going off to Halifax's Pier 21, celebrating 60 years of the war brides. We have Remembrance Day coming up when we honour our veterans. Yet, Minister, your department--and you approved it--is appealing the decision on Joe Taylor, son of a war bride, son of a Canadian veteran who fought for this country in the Second World War. You are challenging his citizenship, which was wrongfully taken from him, the courts have ruled. And of course you got rid of the court challenges program.
Minister, I really appreciated you when you used to be a great finance critic, whether it was for the Reform or the Alliance or the Conservative Party, because you knew what you were talking about; you really did. It's not just you, Minister; let's see, you have one, two, three, four, five, six ministers coming through, five of whom have come through on my watch.
We all recognize Senator Roméo Dallaire is a great Canadian, was a great army person. When he was dealing with the case of Joe Taylor he was asked what he thought was behind the decision to appeal his case. I'm not sure if you saw the clip, but he called the decision absolutely nonsensical.
Now, this is a man who worked in the big system, worked within the bureaucracy, knows what he's talking about, and he said there's a term called “bureaucratic terroris”--that's the gang in the middle of the system that has this power trip of authority, and interprets things not for the benefit of the citizen but for the benefit of the government. That is not their duty. Their duty is to make sure the government is complying with the laws in order to help citizens.
Now, Minister, getting back to it, I wish you'd do an audit to look at some of the bad decisions that have been made. I hate to say it, but they came from the bureaucracy. Try to find out who made those recommendations. Work more with the committee when the committee goes across the country and gets reports on questions you want to know, and use it.