Evidence of meeting #35 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 41st Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was detention.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Tilson
Okay. Good.
Well, go ahead, Ms. Sitsabaiesan. You still have a few seconds left.
Conservative
NDP
Rathika Sitsabaiesan NDP Scarborough—Rouge River, ON
I raised my own point of order, Mr. Chair, because I didn't hear Mr. Dykstra raise a point of order. I just heard him start yelling in the committee meeting.
Conservative
NDP
Rathika Sitsabaiesan NDP Scarborough—Rouge River, ON
Okay.
I'll just give the time to you to respond.
Lawyer, As an Individual
I think your phrase “mixed signals” is right. I would agree with that. I think what we're getting is mixed signals.
What I would encourage the government to do is to give a consistent signal, with everything moving in the same direction.
Conservative
Conservative
Chungsen Leung Conservative Willowdale, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My concern deals with the medical aspect.
Dr. Rashid, you probably experienced SARS in 2003. It's probably at that time where it was necessary to contain people in a safe environment. What I'm suggesting to you is that if there's a mass arrival of refugees, it is our responsibility to first of all identify their documentation and then to at least medically screen them to make sure they do not cause some pandemic in our society. I think that is only fair to safeguard the health and welfare of Canadians.
Now, for that reason, if we have to go through a whole lot of, let's say, illegal arrivals on a mass basis, then it is not possible to separate those who are genuine refugees versus those who aren't, because they all have to be detained in order to clear that medical process.
Would you not agree with that?
Medical Doctor, Crossroads Clinic, Women's College Hospital
I assume what you're getting at is the immigrant health exam.
Liberal
Jim Karygiannis Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
Thank you, Chair.
I'm totally confused as to SARS and the question that is put, because with SARS we never confined people to a jail situation or a holding tank situation. I want, for the record, to be perfectly clear that with SARS people were asked to voluntarily put themselves into their houses. There was absolutely, categorically, no sense that these people, as soon as they got off the plane, were to be detained.
Liberal
Jim Karygiannis Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
I want to make that perfectly clear, and I want my colleague to make a clarification on it.
Conservative
Chungsen Leung Conservative Willowdale, ON
Your point is well taken.
I just want to turn the question to you. Do we not need a central point to at least have some clarification that these people do not bring a pandemic into this country?
Medical Doctor, Crossroads Clinic, Women's College Hospital
As far as I know, and again this is not my area of expertise, there is something called an immigrant health exam, which people get before they migrate here. People who arrive through other means get an immigrant health exam once they put in their refugee claim. If you're a visitor who comes for less than six months, you don't have an immigrant health exam.
The idea of immigration being a control on infectious disease probably is not the way the current scenario is laid out. It perhaps wouldn't even be very effective. If so, what we would be doing is targeting the 500 million people who are coming through Canada for short visits, because I think the risk of infectious disease extends across the globe, and—
Conservative
Chungsen Leung Conservative Willowdale, ON
You're correct, but in the current situation, if...[Technical difficulty—Editor]
