Madam Speaker, I am rising today to join the debate on Bill C-35, establishing a Department of Citizenship and Immigration.
This bill also amends a number of acts: The Access to Information Act, the Department of Multiculturalism and Citizenship Act, the Employment and Immigration Commission Act, the Financial Administration Act, the Immigration Act, the Department of National Health and Welfare Act, the Privacy Act, the Public Service Compensation Act and the Salaries Act.
As you can see, Madam Speaker, it is a fairly complex piece of administrative legislation. The minister has just told us that it was his decision to transfer immigration from the former Department of Public Security to the Department of Citizenship and Immigration. The original switch was made arbitrarily by the Conservative Party in June 1993. We in the Bloc attacked that original Conservative decision, because it associated immigration and immigrants with criminal acts probably constitut-
ing attacks on the security of the state. We strongly opposed the decision by former Prime Minister Kim Campbell.
In light of the far-reaching re-organization by the new Liberal government, and of the bill's complexity, we would have preferred the government, and in particular the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, to provide us with a detailed document explaining the Bill.
We will vote against the bill at second reading, because it contains certain clauses that we cannot accept. For example, clause 4 provides that "the powers, duties and functions of the Minister extend to and include all matters over which Parliament has jurisdiction relating"-and I want to stress that word "relating"-"to citizenship and immigration".
This strikes us as too broad and too vague a provision. We would like the Minister's area of jurisdiction to be defined clearly and precisely. In any event, we want to avoid abuse of these powers by the Minister, and duplication of work done by other departments and government agencies.
Above all we want the minister to respect scrupulously the scope of the provinces' jurisdiction over immigration. We have already criticized the minister's intrusion into an area of Quebec jurisdiction, the orientation and training centres for immigrants. We will never permit the minister to interfere in education, which is exclusively a provincial responsibility.
Another major objection to this bill is found in clause 5, which specifies as follows: "The Minister, with the approval of the Governor in Council, may enter into agreements with any province, group of provinces or any agency thereof"-and I stress the word agency-" or with any foreign government or international organization, for the purpose of facilitating the formulation, coordination and implementation of policies and programs for which the Minister is responsible".
We do not agree that the word "agency" should be included in the Act. It is dangerous. The federal government must negotiate and sign agreements with the provincial governments responsible for these agencies. Using a word like that, the federal government could short-circuit the authority of the provinces, something we find unacceptable.
Another clause we cannot accept in its present form is clause 10, amending section 4 of the Multiculturalism and Citizenship Act; this clause reads as follows:
The powers, duties and functions of the Minister extend to and include all matters over which Parliament has jurisdiction relating to multiculturalism and Canadian identity.
As well, clause 11 adds the function of promoting the understanding of Canadian identity. This provision does not exist in the legislation now in force. Why does the government want to add it now, if not to block the rise of the sovereignist movement in Quebec? Furthermore, the respective responsibilities that the Department of Citizenship and Immigration and the Department of Canadian Heritage will have are not clearly delineated.
Madam Speaker, you are not unaware that Canadian unity is a subject that profoundly divides Quebec and English Canada, the government and the opposition. Why does the government want to include this controversial provision in a bill whose sole objective should be to provide a legal structure for the Department of Citizenship and Immigration?
We shall vote against this bill on second reading, and we want it to be referred to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration for consideration.
I take this opportunity to criticize the minister, once again, for launching his show on Canadian identity at a time when the Bloc Quebecois has elected two-thirds of MPs from Quebec, on the eve of a provincial election that the Parti québécois will win, and on the eve of a referendum to be held in 1995.
It is clear that the government organized these hasty and premature consultations on citizenship with the sole objective of blocking the battle by the people of Quebec. The review of the Citizenship Act was not in any sense a priority, either of the government party or of the opposition parties. A resolution to that effect and discussion at a recent convention of the Liberal Party of Canada held in Ottawa in May 1994 raised no interest among the delegates.
The minister should on the other hand concern himself with the solution to concrete, more immediate and pressing problems such as the backlog of more than 220,000 requests made by permanent residents who often have to wait several years before getting their citizenship and Canadian passport.
We also denounce the minister's intention to close the Citizenship Office on Saint-Denis Street, at the corner of Beaubien Street, in Montréal, and his decision to transfer and centralize visa functions in Ontario and Alberta.
In addition to citizenship, the new department is also responsible for immigration, a matter of shared jurisdiction between the federal government and the provinces ever since Confederation, in 1867, pursuant to section 95 of the British North America Act.
Canada, then a country of 3 million inhabitants, adopted its first immigration act in 1869. On June 25, we will be commemorating, as the minister said earlier, the 125th anniversary of this first act and of the first Canadian programs in this area.
I would like to pay tribute, here, to the 12 million newcomers who have since arrived in Canada. Together with the First Nations and the two founding nations, they have build this country. They continue to arrive from all parts of the world to
participate and contribute to Canada's and Québec's economic, political, cultural and social development.
As an immigrant myself for the last 20 years and as critic for the Bloc Quebecois in matters of citizenship and immigration, I want them to know that my party and myself greatly value their precious contribution to the building of this country.
We believe jurisdiction in immigration matters should belong exclusively to Québec. Québec must be able to exercize all powers in this area in order to maintain its demographic weight and its survival as a distinct society and as the only French-speaking state in North America. Québec has always claimed this jurisdiction and you know, Madam Speaker, that today it has its own department, the ministère des Relations internationales, des Communautés culturelles et de l'Immigration.
Québec has made progress, but insufficient progress compared to what is at stake. Since 1971, Canada and Québec have signed several agreements on immigration. In 1971, the Cloutier-Lang agreements were signed; in 1975, the Bienvenue-Andras agreements.
The third and most important is the Couture-Cullen agreement which was signed in 1978 under the Parti québécois government. The agreement signed in February 1991 by ministers McDougall and Gagnon-Tremblay increases and clarifies Québec's powers in the field of immigration. According to that agreement, Québec has the right to select the independent immigrants who wish to settle in the province.
Apart from selecting immigrants, Québec looks after their integration and determines the immigration levels for the province. The francization of immigrants is the responsibility of the COFIs.
According to this agreement, Canada remains responsible for national standards and objectives concerning immigration, the admission of immigrants and the control of visitors related to criminality, health and security as well as the administrative handling of requests and the physical admission at the various entry points.
Québec is therefore exclusively responsible for the selection, reception and integration of immigrants destined for the province. As for the immigration levels, the federal government must, before April 30 of each year, inform Québec of the options under study concerning future levels of immigration by category of immigrants.
For its part, Québec must, before June 30 of each year, that is in a couple of weeks, inform Canada of the number of immigrants, also by category, which it expects to admit in the year or years to come.
I might add that the Immigration Act requires the minister to consult the provinces on demographic needs, labour-market issues and regional distribution.
One very important aspect of this agreement is the formal commitment on the part of the federal government to withdraw from reception services, linguistic and cultural integration, counselling and placement programs for immigrants.
The Government of Canada provides fair compensation to Quebec in respect of such services. The province was awarded financial compensation as follows: $75 million for 1991-92; $82 million for 1992-93; $85 million for 1993-94 and $90 million for 1994-95. Any subsequent compensation levels will correspond to the basic amount of $90 million and will increase to keep pace with overall federal expenditures.
Getting back to my historical narrative, with an eye to industrializing the country and opening up the West, Canada recruited a vast pool of foreign labourers, primarily Chinese peasants. The Rockies were breached and East and West were united by the railway. This migration movement which lasted until World War II involved solely the Northern Hemisphere. Immigrants were British, Americans, Finns, Italians, Russians, Germans, Ukrainians, Jews, French and Polish.
However, following World War II, decolonization and communication advances gave rise to new migratory flows, and these are likely to increase in the coming years.
In 1990, the United Nations Population Fund warned that the global population would increase by one billion during the decade of the nineties.
Most of this increase would occur in developing countries where the birth rates were highest. Many of those seeking to immigrate favour the more prosperous, less populated countries. Canada and Quebec rank high on their list because of their resources and wide open spaces.
Canada and especially Quebec are interested in taking in a considerable number of immigrants because of their low birth rates. Moreover, we also lose a part of our population to emigration. It is estimated that emigration levels represent one quarter of immigration levels. For example, during the 1980s, more people emigrated to Italy from Canada than vice versa.
Under the McDougall and Gagnon-Tremblay agreement, Quebec can receive a number of immigrant proportional to its demographic load, plus 5 per cent. This means that in theory, Quebec could receive 30 per cent of all immigrants admitted to Canada.
In fact, Quebec received 47,532 of the foreign nationals admitted to Canada in 1992, that is to say approximately 19.2 per cent, which is roughly equivalent to the average observed over the past five years, which was 19.1 per cent.
This debate on Bill C-35 leads us to take a brief look at this government service, the Department of Citizenship and Immigration, which is seeking to legalize its organization but has in fact already moved beyond the preliminary stage. And what we have before us is not very encouraging.
Because of timid, ambiguous and inconsistent policies, we cannot find out where the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration is going. He favours never-ending consultations and takes forever to make decisions. He enjoyed a period of grace, but it is over. He had raised some hope after the questionable, inefficient and at times inhuman management of the Conservatives. Today, his inconsistent policies are widely criticized, in particular by immigration lawyers, refugee advocacy groups, ethnic groups, government officials, and so on. You will probably find that out this evening in Montreal.
He has made public two reports he had commissioned himself, namely the Hathaway report and the Davis-Waldman report. Clear and specific recommendations were made, but the minister does not know what to do with them. He suspends deportations, but does not say what will happen to the 10,000 refugee status claimants whose applications were turned down by the Immigration and Refugee Board.
My office has received numerous inquiries on this subject and officials know as little as we do. Meanwhile, asylum seekers are left in limbo. Which files will re reviewed? By whom? When? Under what circumstances? No one knows.
Another example of inconsistency is this announcement made by the minister to the effect that potential refugees may be submitted to a lie detector test to prevent fraud, which is illegal as far as we are concerned. What a ridiculous idea!
The minister and immigration authorities sometimes show deep ignorance of the extremely dangerous political situation in some countries that refugee claimants come from and occasionally they show a lack of compassion as well. For example, take this case of a pregnant young woman who was deported on February 23, given sedatives without her consent and returned to her country of origin, Zaire, which is devastated by an insidious civil war. I said to the minister and I repeat: "Such a serious case deserves an independent inquiry because such behaviour is unworthy of a civilized society". Why does the minister refuse to order such an inquiry?
There is another area where mistrust is systematic. More and more people who do not have passports are required to go to the consulate or embassy of their country to get one, even though they are already recognized as refugees. You know, if a refugee has to go to the consulate or embassy of his home country, his life could be in danger, and especially the lives and safety of his family still in the home country.
Furthermore, I ask the minister to refer any new appointment of IRB commissioners to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. So far, this committee has reviewed no appointment, despite allegations of patronage in some cases.
Finally, I wish to denounce the minister's decision to hold consultations outside Parliament on immigration levels and policies for the next five years, at a cost of over $1 million.
The Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration should be responsible for these consultations, which are a priority for the Official Opposition and for public opinion in Canada and Quebec. All parties are represented on the committee-the government party, the Official Opposition and the Reform Party. This is not the case on the various working groups set up by the minister, from which the Bloc Quebecois is totally absent. It is not democratic to hold these consultations without the opposition being present.
For all these reasons, we will vote against Bill C-35.