Mr. Speaker, before I speak to the amendments tabled under group one, I would like to thank the Bloc as well as the Reform Party for permitting the House to add to the list of motions the amendment that I will be speaking to later with respect to day parole and release.
Of the amendments in group one, the principal one is Motion No. 3. All others in group one are a consequence of MotionNo. 3.
The current situation is that when a person contravenes the Immigration Act on more than one ground, a senior immigration officer cannot issue a removal order and must go to an inquiry. We are not trying to seek more power for the immigration officer for the sake of power or we are not trying to seek to block the entry of legitimate immigrants or legitimate refugee claimants.
On the contrary, we are trying to apply some common sense and some efficiency to the system. For example, if an individual comes to the border and has an inappropriate visa or an inappropriate passport that individual is blocked from coming into the country. Or if an individual in the country has overstayed his or her visit, the immigration officer is permitted to ask that individual to be removed from Canada.
The complications under the current legislation come into play if the individual who has the wrong passport or the wrong visa also has a serious violation against the Immigration Act, let us say a conviction of some sort. Then the immigration officer, because of the serious allegation, cannot move out the individual based on the lesser one of the two violations. We are trying to correct this area in the legislation which, quite frankly, does not make sense.
If the person has two violations, one minor and one more serious, why can the immigration officer not move out the individual based on the lesser of the two offences? He could do so if the individual only had one minor charge.
Presently the senior immigration officer cannot move out the individual because of the serious charge. A serious charge requires an inquiry. We are attempting to clarify and render the system more efficient.
If there is a lesser contravention and a more serious contravention of the act we do not push an inquiry needlessly because, if the legislation would permit it, it would allow an officer to remove the individual on the lesser of two charges. Ultimately the serious charge would probably render the person removable anyway.