Thank you very much.
Good morning to all members of the committee and all those who are witness to these proceedings.
I recently travelled to Europe with my sweetheart and visited the grave of one of her relatives who died at Passchendaele in Belgium. It's very emotional seeing the name of a relative on a tombstone, especially when so far from home. There are many others there too, and many among them are Chinese workers brought in to dig graves for the fallen. They dug well into 1919 to bury the dead.
I start with this because Canada at that time did not treat the Chinese particularly well, especially by today's standards. Yet despite this, the Chinese are buried in the same graveyard. Despite all of the things that generation did wrong by today's standards, when the time came, they did the most honourable thing possible: they all rest together.
I see myself as a quiet Canadian. By that I mean I work to take care of my family, I volunteer in my community, and run my small business with hopes of employing more people in the future. My volunteer activities have caused me to be here before you today, because I'm the past president of the board of directors of the Victoria Immigrant and Refugee Centre Society in the city of Victoria, British Columbia.
It's a small organization of approximately 30 full-time staff with a budget of $2 million a year. I was a very involved president. I know business and learned the somewhat arcane business of the Canadian immigration and refugee system at the street level. It works despite itself. Our funding came from more than a dozen sources and it consumed 20% to 30% of the staff's time applying for and administering all of these programs. Simply put, it needs a bit of improving.
I've been following the debate in my current role as a quiet Canadian in a quiet city. Canada is a generous country to the point that some see us as simple and often take advantage. Simple is a country that takes care of everybody, regardless of whether or not they're Canadian.
The Canada Health Act of 1984 guarantees access to emergency health care regardless of nationality. We get many visitors who are sick and show up in Canadian emergency rooms. We treat them, no questions asked. Then we try to get compensated for what it costs us to treat them. Being generous is not inexpensive.
Which brings us to today and the question of refugees, at least that's the reason I was asked to come. The Sun Sea was brought into my home town of Victoria. The first thing that Canada did was to ensure that they were physically safe and then to get them any medical attention that they needed, as well as food, clothing, and a clean place to sleep. Yes, they were detained, but they were not denied entry. Our country took care of them.
As reported in The Toronto Star on August 21, 2010 by Petti Fong, three in five Canadians believe that the ship should have been turned back. Yet the government did the honourable thing despite public opinion at the time.
Bill C-31 is partly a debate about the detail of our refugee system, partly a response to the public's desire to stop large groups of illegal refugees from taking advantage of our generosity. The devil, as always, is in the details. Let us remember that nobody is attempting here, in my opinion, to stop refugees from coming to Canada. Proportionately we take more than most countries.
We want to stop the organized trafficking of refugees using Canada as a target of their activities because of our international reputation as a simple country. This uses scarce Canadian resources that are better utilized getting the horrendous backlog of legitimate immigration applicants—800,000 and counting I believe—processed, letting those poor, quiet people waiting patiently in other countries know whether the answer is yes or no to being allowed to come to Canada.
Like our forefathers who ensured that the Chinese labourers rested with the fallen Canadian soldiers, I want to ensure that we continue our national generosity of taking care of all refugees who come to our shores, while placing reasonable restrictions on how quickly they become Canadians based on their method of arrival. We owe it to all Canadians, past and present, to continue quietly building this simple country we call home.
Thank you.