Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
We wanted to talk about Bill C-50. We wanted to tour on it. We proposed a week ago Monday that we talk about it, and the Conservatives strenuously objected that it was not the purpose of this tour. I am glad to see they changed their mind on this issue.
We have a horrific problem. Under Bill C-50, the minister gets all the power. But don't kid yourselves--I've been here ten years on this committee, and we have had seven ministers--when you say the minister has the power, you say the bureaucrats have the power. The proposal as to what they're going to do—take an objective system and totally turn it on its head—is totally unacceptable in the kind of society we have built.
It reminds me of the time in our history when we brought in the Chinese to build the railway, and then of course, when the railway was built, we were going to get rid of them. We're doing the same kind of thing with temporary foreign workers who are low-skilled and who come here indentured, and the problems go on and on.
I know you have a great deal of expertise on the issue of undocumented workers; I have worked with some of you folks in the past on that. The reality is that we had a point system that was changed, that essentially barred people the economy needs. It drove the need for undocumented workers. It drove the demand. You said 500,000. I think that is probably the correct figure versus the 200,000.
Essentially it's the result of the screw-up by the bureaucracy, because it wasn't the minister who changed the point system; it was the bureaucrats who changed the point system. The ministers allowed it to happen because they didn't know any better.
We've really got to come to terms with the undocumented workers, because we're spending resources, which should be spent on processing, rounding these people up and getting them out of the country. The regularization was being put in place. Had the previous government not fallen, we would have dealt with that issue.
This government comes in and listens to the mantra of the bureaucrats, which is “We don't reward cheaters”, and then proceeds to spend good money to get rid of undocumented workers when we could be regularizing them. They already fit. We see the ones who are being deported getting booted out of the country. And then what do we do? We spend a lot of money to bring them back again. This doesn't make any sense. I think we really need to have political will around it. It will take education, because the bureaucrats will repeat the mantra, “We're not going to reward cheaters”. It was the bureaucratic screw-up that caused the demand for those undocumented workers.
We're going to come back and debate Bill C-50, because I think it so significantly alters the whole characteristics of what we finally got to, having an objective system that is not racist, that does not allow the government to differentiate, and goes back to the dark period of our history, if you will.
Comments?