Citizenship and Immigration Committee on June 19th, 2007

[Dave Batters, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

We should have had food again.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

There's no need for this meeting to deteriorate to this point. I'm just trying to get some information from the clerk here.

Did the departmental officials ever get back to us, stating that they had the request and why they had not complied with the request?

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

As a point of clarification, Chair, the departmental officials were ready to come to this committee on May 31. For whatever reason, this meeting was cancelled. Be it that you pulled the plug on it or we all pulled the plug on it, they didn't come here. The fact that the departmental officials were ready to come to this committee and spend two hours to brief us and give us information means that they had briefing books ready, they had their notes ready, they had their statistics ready, and they were ready to come and tell us. Therefore, somewhere in the department, there were departmental officials who had spent a lot of time putting all this stuff together, putting all their statistics together.

So today, to get any rhetoric that this is not available certainly is not something that flies. If somebody were to put in a freedom of information request, I'm sure Mr. Komarnicki would have egg on his face.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Order, please.

What I'm trying to determine here is, for Madame Faille's information and for the committee's information, whether or not we have this briefing material available to us and whether the officials had responded in any way that they had any materials that we—

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

They were prepared to come to the committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Would you please hang on, Mr. Karygiannis, and stop interrupting on so many occasions here? We're trying to get some information from the clerk to give to Madame Faille.

Do you have any additional information?

[The Clerk]

Not at this point in time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

So I guess what we're saying is that we want you to get back to the officials once again and reiterate the concerns of this committee and that we are requesting this information, demanding this information that they should have had available at the time the meeting got cancelled, and if there are any problems with making that information available to us now.... The committee is looking for it. The committee wants it, hopefully to have it over the summer months to study, and what have you.

Does that accurately reflect the wishes of the committee? Okay.

Madame Faille.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

I didn't want to quarrel about it. I'm talking about statistics from the past regarding the issue we will be discussing in the fall. The department should be ready. We could perhaps give it two weeks. I would like to have the material before July or August, because I'm going to be working on this particular topic over the summer.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

We're going to attempt to get that information for you, Madame Faille. We're directing the clerk to do just that.

Are there any further points to be made on this? Mr. Komarnicki.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Just the point that I made to the clerk, to identify what was requested and what was agreed to, so we know precisely what that was.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

I think we've given the clerk direction on this. I think the clerk knows what he has to do. I think Madame Faille is satisfied. So that's the end of that.

Is there any further business, new business?

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Chair, I think we should give our colleague Mr. Telegdi a minute or two to reflect on himself. Today marks his fiftieth anniversary of being in Canada, as a refugee or an individual who came in during the turmoil times of Hungary. I think we should give him a minute or two to say what Canada has meant to him, as well as what this committee has done for him.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

I'm certainly in favour of that. Are we all in favour of giving Mr. Telegdi a couple of minutes to do just that?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Mr. Telegdi.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

As I've said before and as I've said often enough, immigration has been, is, and will continue to be the lifeblood of Canada. Certainly we're involved in a committee and in a department that have both helped build this country and will continue to do so.

The real significance of the Hungarian exodus being handled by Canada was that Canada was never as generous to anybody as they were in 1956, following the 1956 revolution. There were various reasons for it. The main one—considered black and white—was that you had the Soviet communist state versus a small country such as Hungary. But the drive to make the politicians act really came from the public opinion of the day. It really did. It came from the people, from Canadians themselves, reaching out. To some extent, there was competition between the federal and provincial governments, particularly the federal government and the Ontario government, on how they could do more.

The really nice thing about it is that in many ways it paved the way for the other refugee movements—the boat people, the refugees from Africa, from Bosnia-Herzegovina—and really put Canada at the forefront.

I often think how fortunate my family was to end up in this country. I sort of wonder if, in today's climate.... If I want to look at a country that resembles Hungary and resembles the circumstance we dealt with, it would be the Russian suppression of Chechnya right now. It's safe to say that the Chechens aren't getting anything like the reception we got.

Overall, then, it was a very good experience for the Hungarians, and it was a very good experience for, I think, the whole process of how we deal with refugees in Canada.

When I get passionate about the workings of the committee, as I tend to do, I guess I do so because I knew oppression. I knew what oppression meant. I knew what it was to be reported on at any time by the secret police and hauled in front of officials. If you were lucky, it was your school officials. If you were unlucky, it would be down in the jails. There is a jail in Hungary that still stands—very close to the Canadian embassy—where most of the torture used to go on. Torture was a very regular occurrence.

If you ever get a chance to go to Budapest, I invite you to visit the terror museum. They have a uniform there, a flip-side uniform, if you will. On one side you have the Nazi uniform and on the other side you have the Soviet uniform. It's quite a museum. It just shows you that it really doesn't make much difference if it's communist terror or fascist terror. It gives the history of oppression in the country.

So when I get excited about the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, I do it because I think it's so fundamental to us. When I was going through the determination of trying to decide which way to go after 9/11, at the end of the day I had to remember where I came from. I had to remember that the most efficient instrument of terror has always been, and will continue to be, the state. Those are things that we all have to stand on guard for.

As we go into the summer recess, let me recommend a couple of books you might want to read.

One is Refugee Sandwich, by Peter Showler. It will really give you an understanding of why we need a refugee appeal division.

Another is War Brides, by Melynda Jarratt. It was just released a couple of days ago.

Another important one is Voices of the Left Behind . This is something we haven't even touched on. One of the people who visited me in my office on Friday discovered her father 11 years ago. He lives in Cambridge. She was an illegitimate child left behind in Holland. She reunited with her father 11 years ago, and it was very fortunate for her father that she did that, because she was the only one he really had left.

Somehow we have to deal with some of those issues as well.

I hope you get a chance to read that stuff. I hope you get to reflect on what's happening in Chechnya, because the oppression is horrible. It's not dissimilar to what happened to the Hungarians, but in our case, because of lucky circumstances and the split between the east and the west, we probably got the Cadillac treatment.

All in all, we live in a great country. I think we can be very proud of the way we reflect the world and how we interrelate and model ourselves. I think we have a real opportunity to help the rest of the world, particularly the countries that are badly off, get into the same kind of situation as we are in.

Those are all of my comments.

I'm sorry that all of you guys have to be here. I'm very pleased—

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

No, no. I'm sure the committee would want to congratulate you, Andrew, on that milestone. Fifty years is very significant. Obviously you're very proud of your citizenship here in this country. You've made a great contribution to the country. Not only through this committee but through the House of Commons generally, you've made a great contribution, and it's our good fortune to have you as a member of the committee and as a citizen of the country. We congratulate you.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear!

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Did I see a final hand going up somewhere, or should we call this meeting to an end?

I want to thank all of you for your great work on the committee over the last year. Hopefully we'll all have a chance to unwind and get the sharp edges off our personalities and all the rest of it during the summer by having a few barbecues here and there.

If I've been sharp today at times, I apologize to the committee.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

You're forgiven.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

That's great. We're all going with a good attitude. Hopefully we'll see each other in the fall and continue the very good work we are doing.

The meeting is adjourned.