Thank you very much.
As Donna already mentioned, I'm originally from Colombia. I've been here in Canada, particularly in Newfoundland, for six years and 22 days. I don't want to move to Alberta. I want to stay in Newfoundland and see my family grow.
First and foremost, I would like to thank Canada for the opportunity to be alive. If it wasn't for humanitarian and compassionate grounds, my family and I would have been dead six years ago, as many of my Colombian friends are. Thank you again, Canada, for the opportunity to be here.
I was accepted by Donna five years ago when I came to her office to ask for some help, to help my family to reunite. It was an unsuccessful effort. We couldn't do it because of the regulations and the changing of the immigration act in 2002 and so on. She decided to appoint me as a member of the board, so here I am trying to help as much as I can.
We, at the Refugee and Immigration Advisory Council and the Coalition on Richer Diversity, don't understand how this wonderful government of ours--and now I'm a citizen of Canada as well--spends so much time and effort looking outside for things when they are here in Canada. When my Colombian friends come to Newfoundland and Labrador, the first thing I say is, don't go away, this is a wonderful province, full of richness, full of opportunity. But you already said that, Mr. Komarnicki. We cannot retain people from abroad when we are losing our own Newfoundlanders.
When we started the Coalition on Richer Diversity, we were talking about retention, and the first question was, how do you intend to retain immigrants if the local people are going away?