Evidence of meeting #41 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was citizen.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Blair Wilson Liberal West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC
I'm ready. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much for your testimony here today--
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Barry Devolin Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
First of all, thanks to all the witnesses for being here today. That includes the witnesses who were here in the first round.
I don't know how to.... This is a crazy situation. As I sit here listening to this, I find many of these different stories to be emotionally compelling in terms of how this has happened. But I'm a pretty rational person, so whenever I hear a compelling story on one side, I always think there must be some reason on the other side, there must be some reason this hasn't been dealt with. I haven't heard that reason yet. Cost containment, I think, is often used in terms of extending rights or privileges--the notion that somehow, by doing something, it would cost a lot of money.
Ms. Vermeersch, I think that was the comment you heard.
Coming from me, this might sound like an odd question, but as I cast around, looking for some reason why this hasn't been dealt with.... And it's not a partisan issue. This problem has been around for a while. Governments have come and gone. Gosh, since I've been here--a period of less than three years--there have been about five ministers of citizenship and immigration from different parties, and yet no one has dealt with it.
I'd like to ask you, particularly those of you who've been more professionally or more broadly involved with the issue--Professor Francis, or Don, or others--what you actually see as the reason why this hasn't been dealt with to this point.
12:50 p.m.
Lost Canadian Organization
Are you asking me? I'd be happy to answer.
First off, you're being very Canadian. The Americans will look at you and say, “What in hell has the government done to you?” But the Canadians will look at you and say, “What have you done to deserve this?”
The answer is very simple: legislators have failed for 60 years to write good laws. In one sense, as much as I've fought the bureaucracy, I'm going to make an argument that the bureaucracy has followed the laws as written. So we need to write good laws. That's why we have to get this done right. We need the legislators, you people, to step up and say this is well thought out, we're pushing this through, and this is what we're going to do. Then the bureaucrats can follow good legislation.
12:50 p.m.
MOSAIC
I agree with that, but I also think that behind these issues is fear. There is the fear that there are people lurking out there who want to be Canadians but who shouldn't be Canadians. There is this incredible fear that can't be put in words. It's just a general fear that if we close this loophole, there will be some lurking people, not the people we want, who will apply under the same loophole and say, “We should be Canadians too”.
So I believe there is this general fear.
12:50 p.m.
Lost Canadian Organization
I think you're right. Agreed. But I don't think the fear is justified.
12:50 p.m.
MOSAIC
Absolutely, and I should add that. It's not justified. They aren't lurking out there.
12:50 p.m.
Lost Canadian Organization
When we passed Bill S-2, the fear was that these 85,000 people in the United States who were lost Canadians would come rushing across the border. The number of people who actually applied was under 200.
12:50 p.m.
Dominion Vice-President, Royal Canadian Legion
Comrade Chairman, I have two points I'd like to elaborate on.
We did speak about the registration of birth abroad, and about it not being in vogue any more. I think the problem would be solved if that were grandfathered in. If those certificates that were given out in days gone by were grandfathered in, there would be no trouble starting a new legislation. But when they throw them out and say they're no longer valid, I think that causes the problem.
On the humourous side, I see the $75 they're asking people to pay now as being a little bit like the Molson Canadian commercial. If I pay my $75, I'm allowed a sign that says “I am Canadian”. You have to pay to advertise. You should not have to do that.
Thank you, Comrade Chairman.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Barry Devolin Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
I have one other comment.
Canada needs immigrants. I think we all know that. We are working, as a government, as a Parliament, as a committee, on ways to ensure that we have people coming to Canada. As we all get older, we're going to need people to look after us. We're not reproducing ourselves fast enough to do that. To me, that is the second absurdity of the situation. At a time when we actually need immigrants to come to Canada, there are people who have what sound like pretty good claims--i.e., they've lived here for 57 of their 60 years.
So I hope somebody somewhere reads this and reacts to that.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
Blair Wilson Liberal West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I listened with interest to Mr. Devolin's comments and questions to the witnesses who are here today, and I share your frustration as well. As a new member of this committee--I've only been sitting on this committee for 14 months, which may seem like a short period of time, but we've gone through two ministers for citizenship and immigration in those 14 months, and more to come. I think Mr. Chapman hit the nail on the head: it's a question of leadership from the minister's level. We've got this so-called “new Canadian government”. Well, it might be a new government, but it's the same old bureaucracy that they're taking direction from. Based on the testimony I've heard, it's the bureaucracy that runs the show here. The minister is just the yes person or the yes woman at the top.
If you go back into the records and check the work this committee has done, the committee has done great work over the last number of years to deal with citizenship and to deal with putting forward a new act. Both of these Conservative ministers have said, “We don't want to see any new act; we don't want to deal with that. That's not a priority to us.” The current minister, Diane Finley, is even questioning how many people this entails. I think she said something like, “There are only 450 lost Canadians in Canada; we can deal with it on a piecemeal basis, one at a time.” Well, based on the testimony we've seen, the number is upwards of hundreds of thousands of people. It's going to require changes in the law and legislative adaptation to deal with it.
I think we agree, it's not a partisan issue. The system is broken and we need to try to fix it. The longer it takes for the minister to realize that he or she has to answer to the committee and answer to the Canadian citizens, we're still going to be spinning our wheels talking about this in another 12 months.
In the last budget, before this Conservative government's budget, we had set aside $20 million to deal with a new Citizenship Act. That $20 million was cut out of the last budget. I'd be interested to see--and I hope it will--if the budget we're going to see tomorrow will reinstate the $20 million so that we can have a new Citizenship Act that will deal with this.
Quickly, then, my question is to Ms. Francis on due process. What are your thoughts and comments about the current lack of due process as you see it and the rights to a hearing?
12:55 p.m.
MOSAIC
I think it was appalling when I realized that in fact it's a bureaucratic decision. There is very little right to due process. In fact, people don't know they've lost their citizenship, so they're operating as if they're a citizen and they don't even know.... That's the first problem. You can be stripped behind your back; you can be making decisions that assume you're a citizen. It can deprive you of your livelihood. The number of decisions we make every day assuming we're citizens is amazing. Our lives depend on assuming we're citizens of this country. If it's stripped from behind us without us knowing, the implications are dire.
There has to be due process, absolutely. We should have all kinds of rights to first of all know that we're losing it, and the conditions under which we can lose it should be so laid out, and obviously they should be extreme conditions. We have all kinds of people who are born today in Canada that we don't like very much, necessarily, but we have to keep them. We shouldn't necessarily strip others of their citizenship for trivial reasons.
If we are going to have exceptions of fraud, and that's the only condition I see--certainly not somebody who is born here or born to Canadian parents; that's preposterous. We need due process. People need to know they've lost it, and they need the right to counsel, they need the right to appear at some level--I'm not a lawyer--before an accepted decision-maker, such as a judicial decision-maker, and the right to appeal. The consequence of losing it is so dire that we should make sure there are no injustices here. If people have to be stripped, there should be enormous process involved. I don't expect that this is going to be often. In fact, it took a long time for MOSAIC to convince me we should even have this provision. I think we should have one group of citizens in this country.
1 p.m.
Lost Canadian Organization
Mr. Wilson, in 1960, with the Canadian Bill of Rights, there were only two ways to lose your citizenship under due process: one, you had to have a hearing; and two, you had to be able, or voluntarily give it up. Under the Citizenship Act I was disabled, so I wasn't able to even have a hearing, and I never got a hearing.
What we're doing here is we're not even following the law as written. Yes, it's proper to have due process, but then you have to follow the law to make sure it's done.
In the Taylor case, Judge Martineau ruled that the Government of Canada is not only in violation of the 1960 Canadian Bill of Rights but is in violation of due process right now.
1 p.m.
A voice
And the charter.
1 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Norman Doyle
That pretty well wraps up our hearing for today.
I want to thank all of you for your presence here today. You've given us some very compelling reasons to deal with the issue very quickly.
We have a meeting scheduled on March 26 as well, so we'll see what happens after that with respect to any recommendations we might subsequently make to government on this issue.
Thank you very much.
I think we have a couple of minutes now for the witnesses to leave the table. We will then proceed with new business that the committee wants to deal with.
1:05 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Norman Doyle
Let's try to get our committee members back to the table, please. We have a motion to deal with.
Before I get into Mr. Karygiannis' motion, at tomorrow's meeting I just want to remind members that the committee will be back on the draft on detention centres. We'll be back doing that tomorrow, and the meeting will be held, as you're probably already aware, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Room 371, West Block. That's here.
We're going to have a steering committee meeting from 1 to 1:30, and that will be in Room 306, West Block. We'll be sitting through lunch, so of course we're going to ensure we have lunch provided for members.
If you didn't get it, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. tomorrow we continue our report on detention centres right here in room 371, West Block, and the steering committee meeting will immediately follow, or some time after will follow, a half hour after, from 1 to 1:30 p.m. in Room 306, West Block.
Now we deal with Mr. Karygiannis' motion that the committee proceed with and finalize the report, the study on detention centres and security certificates, and in the meantime call for testimony from the five guards at the Kingston immigration holding centre that were named in harassing detainees.
Discussion, and we'll go to Mr. Karygiannis.
1:10 p.m.
Liberal
Jim Karygiannis Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
Mr. Chair, when we went to Kingston for the second time, the detainees named five guards, and last week I think overwhelmingly this committee wanted to make sure that due process was done and that human rights were not violated.
In regard to the five individuals the detainees named, I think when we were going around last week, when we were in camera, there was support for this. I urge the members to make sure that these individuals the detainees mentioned are brought forward to the committee in order to testify as to the allegations that were made by the detainees when we were there last time.
1:10 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Norman Doyle
You've heard the motion. Is there any additional comment on the motion?
Mr. Telegdi first, and then I'll go to Mr. Siksay.
1:10 p.m.
Liberal
Andrew Telegdi Liberal Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
Mr. Chair, I wonder if it would be possible to split the motion.