Thank you, Mr. Chairperson and members of the committee. Welcome to Halifax.
My name is Kevin Wyman, and I am presenting on behalf of the Halifax Coalition Against Poverty.
HCAP is a direct action anti-poverty organization. In many cases, we're the people who are organizing demonstrations and protests and similar actions. But we did none of that to you today. We also provide a range of advocacy and education services to the population we represent.
Our purpose in coming here today is to add our voice to those of the many national, regional, and local organizations in support of people attempting to immigrate or seek refuge in this country. HCAP is also here to support the labour organizations that play such a vital role in debates concerning people in this country and around the world. I need to say up front, though, that we are here to support people. We reject those terms such as “illegal” and “non-status” when they are tagged onto people--they're abhorrent to us.
So there is no misunderstanding, we're not here to attempt to cajole the government. We're here to express our outrage. First, and most important, HCAP has sent me here today to say to that we demand the government withdraw the present amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
But there is more. We demand an immediate moratorium on the deportation of all people living in Canada who find themselves in peril with regard to their immigration or citizenship status. The second item isn't a very radical notion. If I'm not mistaken, this motion, or something very similar, was recommended by a previous standing committee. It was presented in Parliament, debated, and passed. Of course, something else happened to it after that.
This is hardly a complicated issue to us. We're all human beings after all. If people are vulnerable, they deserve our care and compassion first.
I'll move on to the next HCAP demand. We demand that a full, inclusive, and accessible regularization program be put in place. As luck would have it, once again it seemed that we had the support of the previous standing committee and Canada's Parliament. The problem, of course, is that that motion died with the dissolution of the House.
Allow me to provide a recap from our perspective. A standing committee on immigration made up of members of Parliament representing four parties recommended similar items. Parliament debated and passed two of the items we have presented here. And then the initiative died on what we and most Canadians would term a technicality. Admittedly, we don't understand the niceties of that, but it's not something strange for a citizen to say. Government then turns around, comes up with a different set of objectives, tucks those into a budget implementation bill, and we all have to do this all over again, under threat of an election this time because it's part of a confidence item. This is beginning to feel more like a hostage-taking than blackmail.
You might discern that we're already suspicious and angry. But aside from the contemptible process, what else is the government bringing upon us? The government is asking for new powers in the amendment. Some of those are arbitrary and dangerous--totalitarian even. You want the sole discretion to reject any worker, student, visitor, or permanent resident application, even if it meets the existing criteria. You want to arbitrarily issue instructions setting quotas on the category of persons who can enter Canada. You want to decide the order in which new applications are processed.
What does all this mean to us?
It means that an immigration system that used to be run according to known, predictable rules would be subject to ever-changing ministerial direction. The legislation would grant the minister the authority to issue instructions regarding the types of applications to be processed—be that skilled worker, family class, or job qualification—as often as he or she wished. In effect, individuals who meet Canada's already stringent entry criteria but aren't on the minister's priority list could effectively end up barred. They could reapply, but the same outcome would likely result, we maintain.
There's nothing in the conduct of this government initiative to date that would convince us to extend this level of trust. We tend to believe that adage about absolute power corrupting absolutely. Similar powers have given us some of the worst examples of discrimination and racism in Canada's history.
More than this, it's proposed that the minister shall examine a humanitarian and compassionate application from inside Canada, but “may” examine it—it should just go ahead and say “might”—if it originates from outside the country. In practice, our friends say, this will have a serious impact on one of the most frequent applications used in family reunification.
HCAP, admittedly, is not a service provider within the field being discussed. We are limited, then, as to the range and depth of the associated issues on which we feel comfortable commenting. Primarily, our concern is with the procedure employed by the government to get its way on these amendments. With respect to arbitrary powers assigned to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, any Canadian, surely, is qualified to be alarmed by the government's amendments in this regard.