Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to address this bill.
I find myself in an interesting position on this bill as I am Canadian born and raised and obviously a white male. I think one would say I am probably not the individual who might be the most experienced on an immigration bill, even though members of my own family came to this country as immigrants and settled in a rural location. They went through bankruptcy, drought and picked themselves up and success ensued.
Since I recognize my own inadequacies in this area and stand here as someone who was raised in Canada and has not experienced the hardship of immigration, I asked immigrants for their advice and help so I could better understand their circumstances.
Since I have been in Ottawa the immigrants I have been able to query the best and get the best advice from are the taxi drivers. I would like to title my little discourse here today as, "taxi tales". I have talked with taxi drivers from a number of different countries such as Lebanon, Iran and Afghanistan in the last week.
The member opposite says they are Canadians. They are recent, hard working immigrants. They are individuals whose opinions I value, although it is possible the member opposite would not.
I speak with them and ask their opinion of Canada as a place for immigrants to come. They speak glowingly of Canada. They speak of Canada as a place they value that gives them opportunities they did not have in their home countries. They speak of opportunities to work hard to advance and improve their lot, and give their children the opportunity to improve and use the educational opportunities Canada provides.
As recent immigrants to Canada, they tell me there are problems with our immigration system. I would ask members opposite to listen to what they say and not to what I say. As I have already said, I have not had those personal experiences.
A young man from Iran told me he came to Canada to work and he immediately looked for a job. He was told not to worry too much about finding a job because he could collect welfare. He said he did not come to Canada to collect welfare, but to find work immediately. He thinks Canadians are very foolish to very visibly offer the opportunity to go on welfare as soon as immigrants arrive here.
A fellow from Afghanistan who left a country in turmoil told me immigration must be acceptable to Canadians or immigration will fail. He made comments about those individuals breaking the rules who Bill C-44 is trying to go after.
Yesterday the minister said Canada wants to keep the porch light on. I agree. The porch light for immigration should be glowing bright and attracting immigrants to our country.
Bill C-44 is going after a very small group of people in our society. It is going after those individuals who have broken the rules.
Reformers say over and over again the whole premise of Bill C-44 will break down unless we have the ability to hold back those individuals coming in who are known criminals, or remove them if they have committed crimes. I am trying to say in the most reasoned way I can if we cannot deport it is no good to have a deportation order. If we cannot send those individuals
home there is no point in putting a flag up and saying deportation will happen.
Bill C-44 says a person who commits a serious crime will be deported after he or she is sentenced, but I say good luck. I have watched the task force the minister set up for this very purpose. He identified some 1,800 serious criminals in Canada who had deportation orders and his task force was designed to pursue and remove those individuals. The information I have is that 30 people have been deported from Canada through that task force. These criminals have not done insignificant crimes; they have committed major crimes.
Who do they seem to be able to deport? In my own riding a woman from the Philippines came here and married a Canadian farmer. Before she was able to process her documents to become a Canadian the farmer died. Because she did not understand and could not speak English very well she went over the time limit to report her husband's demise. She was deported. A self-supporting, law abiding, clean living, perfect immigrant was sent down the road back home. What do we do with those individuals who slit people from stem to stern? We cannot get a travel document so we keep them in Canada. Bill C-44 does not do what it was intended to do.
We say literature that could be used by individuals trying to stay in Canada inappropriately will be intercepted at the border. I say fat chance. One of my confreres went to the border not so long ago and sat with the border guards. He had not sat there very long when he saw seven transport trucks go by without stopping at the border. He asked why they had not stopped and was told the guards take down their licence numbers and put them into the computer because they do not have the people to enforce Canadian laws. So now we are going to intercept literature at the border and stop these inappropriate passports. I say fat chance.
We are going to prevent day parole. I listened to a member opposite say day parole for criminals would no longer be possible. That is a good step, but at the end of their sentences what do we do with them? We put them back out on the street. We cannot get travel documents.
Has anybody figured out we should be paying more attention to getting travel documents for deported criminals rather than looking for other rules to put another bunch of deportees on our streets? We line them up one after another and end up with thousands more who cannot be deported. Does anybody think it would be more sensible to find travel documents? It is a simple solution. We have had lots of discussion on this topic and I do not think it is being heard.
I want to turn the focus a little. Reformers say it will not work if we continue to have an overflow of these individuals who should be deported. We think there should be a mechanism to actually deport if they are deportable. But at the other end with the open tap, what are we doing in our country? I want to switch focus by saying we are bringing in another group of individuals as immigrants and refugees who I do not think should come to Canada.
One example comes from a recent CBC radio article and involves a lesbian woman from Costa Rica whose sole reason for admission to Canada is the fact she is gay. I am sure Canadians sitting in lines waiting for social services would be interested in knowing that is one of the criteria that allows an individual to come into Canada as a refugee. She was being discriminated against in Costa Rica because of her sexual preference.
Another example is an HIV positive Polish refugee who is 25 years of age. His reason for admission into Canada was that he was being persecuted because of this HIV positive status. He was present in Canada for three years and living in Montreal on welfare of $670 per month. He could not work initially because his English was not up to par. His health now prevents him from working and he has no incentive to work. He does not feel good enough. His drug costs of $200 per month are free because he is on welfare.
I went over the transcript of why he came to Canada. "So you came here mostly to get proper medical care?" "Yes, quite right. In Canada they have proper medicine available ". "Do you think a lot of Canadians or many Canadians hearing your story might be angry? What would you say to Canadians who would say, `Why should we have to pay through our taxes for the medical care of all the people in the world who are HIV positive and come from countries where the health system is not prepared or equipped to deal with these cases?" The answer was: "It is a serious problem".
I thought this must be a very unusual case. Surely we cannot be accepting HIV positive people into Canada with that as the criteria. Surely that cannot not be true. I found out that one refugee advocate has had 30 cases exactly like this in the last two years. Three quarters of them were allowed to come into Canada.
What do the Canadian people think when they line up for our social services? What do the students in Canada think when they line up and cannot get into university? What do the individuals here think who have HIV positive problems and line up unable to access services? Do they think we should take on all the problems of the other countries of this world?
The member for Calgary Northeast put a bill in front of this House not so long ago suggesting HIV positivity would disallow admission to Canada along with tuberculosis, parasites, leprosy and the other reasons we say people should not come into Canada if it would add to our Canadian medical burdens. What happened to that bill? It was shot down in flames by the two
other parties in this House who told their constituents we have lots of resources in Canada so we can accept these people.
I am sorry. We should look after our own people first. As our resources shrink and we cannot look after our own, these individuals opposite will have to face that music.
Immigration is good for Canada when immigrants are skilled and able to converse and fit into our Canadian job situation quickly. When refugees come along we treat them with all the compassion we can muster.
Numbers must be flexible. Immigration cannot be static. When our economy does wonderfully well, the immigration numbers should rise. When our economy is struggling, immigration numbers should fall. Members who ask the taxi drivers who are recent immigrants those questions will hear them say: "I agree". I challenge them to do that. Talk to the recent immigrants. Ask them that question.
Members of the Bloc say they disagree with this bill on the other end of the scale and I say we have a great lesson to learn from those Quebec members.
Quebec has taken immigration and put it into a much clearer frame of reference than the rest of Canada has. Quebec has said that immigration must have specific goals for Quebec. Interestingly enough Quebec accepts fewer immigrants than the rest of Canada does. It puts criteria on those immigrants for language ability, for employability and those criteria allow them to be far more flexible as they look at Bill C-44.
I admire what those members have done. They are right in what they have done, 100 per cent on. Not everything that Bloc members say do I agree with, but the reason they are able to say this I agree with.
I repeat that immigration is important for Canada. It is a significant improvement for Canada. Bill C-44 starts out in all the right directions. However it misses the mark completely because we cannot remove those individuals who have done wrong here. We cannot send them where they belong. It is for that reason, and I cannot say it strongly enough, that Reformers will not support this.
