Thank you, Mr. Chair.
To my colleagues in this room, oftentimes I think that when we get into parliamentary committees we can get into this sort of routine of witness testimony and what we've put together in committee business, but then something happens and that something can precipitate some very important work in parliamentary committees. I think that is at the heart of this motion today, which is why I speak in favour of it.
We're at a confluence of issues right now when it comes to refugee policy in Canada. We've seen the intake of tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in a very short period of time. We've seen a fundamental change to the immigration levels with regard to the intake of refugees. We are seeing a humanitarian crisis with regard to the migrant crisis in the Middle East, and there are some very weighty and serious questions related to Canada's role, which are not easy questions. They're easy questions to politicize, but they're not easy questions to answer.
These include things like how many refugees should Canada take in each year in terms of how much it costs us to actually provide proper integration programming to give people language skills and affordable housing so that the Canadian public can have long-term social licence to sustain high levels of refugees in such a way that refugees have a successful experience when they come here to Canada? That's not an easy question to answer. It's one that has been fastidiously avoided in this government over the last 18 months.
Now we have the issue of increased illegal border crossings, specifically along the Manitoba-U.S. border as well as at the Quebec-Vermont border. My colleague Ms. Kwan extrapolated the number as being 6,800 this year based on current figures. We have no idea what that's going to look like, because we've already heard claims of basically gang-related smuggling groups starting to organize. We don't know if that's going to mean human trafficking. We actually don't know anything.
Yet when we ask what the government's approach has been to this.... For me, this is not about partisanship. It's just that “wait and see” is not going to cut it on this issue for several reasons. First of all, if we are going to see an increased level of migrants coming through this border, what is the government going to do to support them when they get here? Are they part of the immigration levels? Have they already been thought about in that context? How does this impact processing for other streams of immigration claims? What does that mean for wait times and the whole issue of the safe third country agreement?
We have Ms. Kwan arguing very passionately and groups of people across the country arguing very passionately that we should suspend that, yet we have other people who are arguing or saying there are legal ways to come into the country. The illegal land-crossing component is a loophole or an oversight in that agreement. Perhaps we should seek, with the United States, to try to close that, because it's not in the best interests of our country. Who are we allowing into the country and under what circumstances? What does this mean for families along the border areas that are having refugees and illegal border-crossers coming and knocking on their doors?
Why hasn't the Prime Minister or the immigration minister called this for what it is? It is illegal and it's unsafe. Why hasn't the government said it is unsafe to do this, and not to do this? Why are we seeing romanticized pictures of people crossing fields in -30° weather? These are all issues that should be of import to a parliamentary committee.
I also want to look at some statistical factual data. My colleague has talked about the fact that many of these border crossings could be precipitated by the Trump administration. I'd like to see some quantitative evidence. Is the American system still working? Even though we've seen a change in the administration in the U.S., does the asylum claim system still function at an arm's-length, proper perspective? What do Canadian legal experts think of this? Is there evidence to show it is not working such that the safe third country agreement should be suspended, or should we be looking at an alternative approach there?
How much of an increase in resources does the RCMP or the CBSA need to deal with this? What sort of intelligence is the CBSA hearing in terms of how many more people we expect to see over the next year? Are we doing anything to deter this? How are we managing this? What sort of resources are we providing to Canadian families who are having to deal with this issue? What about the safety issues? I remember reading an article that was, I think, in the Winnipeg Free Press that talked about families who had been very surprised and very frightened to have people knocking at their doors in the middle of the night.
My colleague talks about it being very disorderly. I agree with her. This is not the right way to be doing things.
We have some serious, fundamentally difficult questions to discuss in terms of how, whether, and why Canada should maintain its high processing levels of refugee claims. That is exacerbated by the fact that we are seeing hundreds, and most likely thousands, of illegal border crossings in this country this year.
I just don't understand why the government has taken this “go along to get along” approach, because you're seeing colleagues from two very different ends of the political spectrum say we have a problem here and the problem is that we can't just go along to get along. We have to answer some tough questions in order for Canadians to avoid the populist rhetoric that Ms. Kwan mentioned. I agree with her.
The way we avoid that is by tackling these issues head-on, not by talking points in the House of Commons on this particular issue that say, “There's nothing to see here, folks.”
I just implore you. This committee can do something that resembles work by voting in favour of this motion. If the committee votes in favour of this, we will have done something that will be of benefit to this country.
By providing some recommendations across all party lines for the government to look at, I think Ms. Kwan has done a very good job of writing a very non-partisan, very open-ended motion that doesn't put the government in any sort of derogatory light. I really don't see any reason that the government would not support this motion.
With that, my comments are complete. I would certainly implore my colleagues to vote in favour of this motion.