Thank you very much.
It's not going to come as a surprise to anybody around this table that the NDP is very, very concerned with the kind of speed with which we're going through this legislation. I don't know about the rest of my colleagues, but after hearing the hours and hours and days and days of testimony, there is a lot for us to review. It's not only the verbal testimony we heard, but the very thick briefs that were submitted. To read and digest all of that before we get into clause-by-clause, as you can imagine, all our brain cells need a little bit more time. That is why I brought that motion forward, or tried to, to say that we should suspend. It was not to say that we should never come back to it; it was to suspend.
New Democrats are concerned about the lack of time we're going to have. This was also eloquently stated by other witnesses, such as Peter Edelmann, from the National Immigration Law Section of the Canadian Bar Association. On May 1 he said: “What is of particular concern is the speed with which this complex legislation is being passed without the time to properly study it.” I really want to stress that: “without the time to properly study it”.
We're being asked to pass a bill on a very short timeline, and we don't know how many more unintentional consequences there will be. And they are in this bill. No one that I'm aware of has been able to study this bill in depth in terms of all of the unintended consequences. We simply haven't had time to study in depth this piece of legislation. Never mind not having studied the legislation, we've had witnesses—legal, community groups, refugees—who have come to present to us, and I don't think we've had adequate time to give all of that testimony due consideration either.
Notwithstanding that, there are key areas in this bill we have major concerns with, but as the official opposition we want to make things work. We are not here to try to slow things down. As a matter of fact, we can't wait to get to clause-by-clause, so I'm planning to keep my comments fairly brief. We do want to make things work. That's why we have submitted 20-plus amendments. We will be looking forward to seeing the amendments. We've seen them, actually, but we look forward to hearing the rationale. And if there are additional amendments from either the Liberals or the Conservatives, we will give them due consideration. We want to make this work for some of the most vulnerable people who are going to be arriving on our doorstep, and we want to ensure that they are granted due process.
Some of our key concerns have been highlighted and corroborated by many, many witnesses. I wish I had the time to read into the record all that they said, but we don't. These concerns include:
—The provision that gives the minister the power to hand-pick those countries he thinks are safe. This would do away with an independent panel of experts.
—The ability to detain refugee claimants for a year without review. Once again, that causes us major, major concern, because not only are we looking at contraventions of our international obligations, but of our own charter and constitution and habeas corpus.
—Measures to deny some refugees access to the new refugee appeal division, which, once again, is simply an anathema.
—A five-year mandatory wait for bona fide refugees to become permanent residents and reunite with their families.
Once again, I want to stress that one of the things we've often heard is about the security of Canadians, about protecting Canadians. Bill C-11, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, agreed to by the parties and praised by the current minister, actually addresses those concerns, because current legislation allows for identification and security checks to be done before people are released.
With all of that in mind, one of the things we are very, very committed to and want to appreciate is that there has been some movement from the minister. We saw a little bit of it in the clause, and from what he said today we're looking forward to more. We will be looking at his proposals closely at committee and taking them very seriously.
That said, we've also heard overwhelmingly from witnesses in the past two weeks that this bill is fundamentally flawed. Tweaking it is not going to fix it. This bill does nothing to prevent human smuggling, since our punitive measures for smuggling are already there. What it does is punish yet again the most vulnerable people arriving on our doorstep.
We have a bill in place that could actually become operational. We could take a look at Bill C-11 over a longer period, study it, and make sure that we do it right. It's in all our interests to make sure that we do all our legislation right. We will be looking at all of the measures. My colleague from the Liberal Party clearly articulated the concerns that we have expressed, and that witnesses have expressed as well. On this piece of legislation, we need to take a break. We need to suspend and make sure that we do it right.
I want to appeal to my colleagues across the way. Let's take a suspension, let's operationalize Bill C-11, and let's do this right.