You mentioned a couple of issues that the committee had made recommendations on, one of them being the moratorium on deportation of undocumented workers. The other one was having the immigration appeal division implemented. That's something this committee, over the years, has spent a lot of time talking about and has made motions on. Obviously, it got ignored by the powers that be--be the ministers at the time Liberal or Conservative.
One of the arguments used in the past about implementing the immigration appeal division was that the backlog was too high--once they dealt with the backlog, they would implement it.
A couple of years ago the backlog was under control and was at its lowest number. This past year, because of the failure of the minister to appoint a full complement of IRB members--missing something like one-third--the backlogs went to a record level, and they're growing.
We've created a crisis at the Immigration and Refugee Board. As much as the committee jumps up and down about it and makes noises, we manage to get ignored by the ministers. But I dare say that in most cases it's the bureaucracy, because the ministers really don't know how to run the department. They rely too heavily on the bureaucracy.
The changes proposed in Bill C-50 will give almost absolute control to the bureaucracy. When you give the minister power, let's not kid ourselves, it's not the minister who's going to do it, it's the bureaucrats. So we have the bureaucrats having created a crisis with undocumented workers by changing the point system and having the various ministers go along with it. Now we have the same situation applying to the backlog of refugees. Of course, Bill C-50 would ultimately finalize their control.
My question, my challenge to you is that you're really going to have to go forth in your community--and it has to happen across the country--and expose this plan around Bill C-50 . We need to have big debates, and people need to be made aware. I don't want to see this turn into immigrant bashing, which is what I sense coming from this government. We have to have the debate across Canada. Ultimately, if I had my way, we'd bring down the government over it. But first of all we need to have that debate.
My challenge to you is to make people in your community as aware as you possibly can. If we don't do that, like I said, we're giving de facto control to the bureaucracy.
Are there any comments?