Yes, I'd be happy to speak on that.
One of the provisions in Bill C-50 is that humanitarian applications made from outside Canada may not be dealt with.
I have with me today pictures--cards, actually--sent by a little girl to her father. Her father is an excluded family member because her mother did not include him when she was being selected as a refugee to Canada. I'd just like the members of the committee to look at these pictures. Can you pass those over?
The only way that this girl can be reunited with her father in Canada--this little girl, a seven-year-old from a refugee camp in Kenya and a refugee from Ethiopia--is if on humanitarian grounds her father is allowed to come by a visa officer after applying from outside Canada. There's no appeal. We would've liked the old system, through which there was an appeal when there was an excluded family member due to misrepresentation, and the whole story could come out.
This is just one example of the terrible tragedy that happens when a family is broken up. Yes, the mother made a mistake, and she did it. We have explained why she did this. She did this believing totally that she was doing the right thing to get herself and her child to Canada.
I'm just saying that I think the immigration changes in Bill C-50, which allow for this kind of exclusion and will potentially mean that the minister doesn't even have to answer the humanitarian application--