moved:
Motion No. 15
That Bill C-44 be amended by deleting Clause 13.
Motion No. 16
That Bill C-44 be amended by deleting Clause 14.
Motion No. 17
That Bill C-44 be amended by deleting Clause 15.
Mr. Speaker, just a few days after his appointment as Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, the present minister said in an interview with La Presse that he wanted a system with as little political intervention as possible. He added that in the judicial system, for instance, there was no political intervention. Once a judgment was made, that was it. He also said that he wanted to reduce political intervention and felt that a stronger appeal mechanism would be the answer.
However, a year later, we have Bill C-44, which in our opinion does the exact opposite of what the minister said he wanted to do, in November 1993. This bill puts excessively centralized powers in the hands of the minister and his officials.
During the hearings of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, we heard this confirmed by many agencies. Bloc Quebecois amendments for deleting clauses 13 and 25 of Bill C-44 were supported by the Canadian bar association, the Canadian council for refugees, the Quebec immigration lawyers' association and the refugee lawyers association, for instance.
The present legislation allows permanent residents convicted of an offence for which a term of imprisonment of 10 years or more may be imposed to appeal to the Immigration Appeal Division. This appeal may be invoked to quash a deportation order or to stay execution of such an order on compassionate grounds.
Maintaining clauses 13 and 15 which reinforce the minister's powers of political intervention means that the minister and members of this House will be constantly asked to review immigration cases on compassionate grounds.
We are well aware of the pressures on elected representatives and especially on the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. Public opinion, exacerbated and conditioned by a few sensational cases and the media's coverage of then, and, of course, political pressure from countries we do not want to offend for commercial or economic reasons are just a few examples.
Because of these pressures, it is easy to imagine what kind of decisions will be made: decisions based on a set of subjective, unpredictable factors that will vary from case to case, despite
their similarities. Are we prepared to take that risk? Certainly not. The system already lacks credibility. Why make it worse?
We can expect another problem if the new legislation is not amended. As we know, immigration officials no longer meet clients in their offices and no longer answer telephone calls directly. Unfortunately, all processing of immigration files has been centralized, and regional offices are now an empty shell. To politicize the process will deprive immigrants and their relatives of the opportunity to talk with the officers in charge of making decisions which will be critical for them.
Moreover, as was pointed out in the Auditor General's report in 1990, the Davis-Waldman report and by many public servants, there is an obvious lack of training among immigration officers. This may seriously jeopardize the fairness of the process.
We cannot endorse this desire to centralize and politicize the immigration decision-making process .Decisions will be made behind closed doors. Generalists lacking the necessary training would make the decisions now made by specialists. There is no guarantee that, under these conditions, in similar cases, decisions will not be different and therefore inconsistent. Why trivialize these decisions by turning them into administrative decisions whereas, at the present time, they are quasi-judicial and based on case law with a proven track record?
Moreover, Bill C-44 proposes that the immigration minister become a new court and replace the IRB when it comes to the evaluation of risks. Thus the minister would become party to every case before the appeal division. Is it because he recently lost certain cases that the minister now wants to give himself new powers?
Moreover, under clause 14 of Bill C-44, the government wants to give the minister the right to appeal to the appeal division any decision made by an adjudicator. The current act provides for the minister to appeal only in two specific cases, when a person was found admissible or not deportable. None of the arguments presented by the government as to why the act should be amended to allow the minister to interfere with the decisions made by the adjudicator has convinced us.
The government is interfering with the whole process. There does not seem to be any more limit on the type of appeal the minister may launch against a decision made by an adjudicator. This is another blatant example of the minister interfering with and taking over the appeal division operations.
Let us make sure that the wishes expressed last year by the minister, and with which we totally agree, are respected. Let us minimize political interference in the immigration process. It is in the spirit and for that purpose that the official opposition has moved these amendments. Let the IRB Appeal Division do its job and keep the minister and bureaucrats out of this quasi-judicial process, which still needs to be improved.
For all these reasons, clause 13 and 15 should be eliminated and replaced by sections 70 and 77 of Bill C-86, now in force.