Because you are not stating the reasons.
The immigration minister has had all sorts of opportunities to make changes to immigration that make sense and that are honest but he will not do it. He has had every opportunity to save the Canadian taxpayers a huge amount of money through immigration reform. He did not do it. He would not. He does not have what it takes. If the minister wanted to save money for the taxpayer, he would have saved literally hundreds of millions of
dollars by taking some advice from the Reform Party on refugee determination in Canada.
A month ago, we released our proactive proposals for refugee determination. Those proposals, if enacted, would ensure that the refugee system was more fair to genuine refugees. That was our first goal. The proposal would have ensured that the system was more fair to the taxpayer by cutting back on legal aid and social services for people who had been refused as refugees and were appealing.
We proposed that the Immigration and Refugee Board, that $80 million a year hotbed of patronage, pork and foolish decision making be abolished. We proposed that a refugee determination system, which presently costs $1 billion or more a year to determine a handful of claims, be fundamentally restructured to reduce the number of bogus claims. Accept more genuine refugees from abroad. Doing so would have saved the taxpayers millions of dollars, but the minister would not hear of it.
Here is a short list of some other costs the immigration minister has been afraid to deal with. The total cost of the department has gone up from $581 million to $592 million. Do you call that cost cutting? The corporate service budget has increased from $33 million to an unbelievable $78 million. Is that the minister's idea of government efficiency, to double the budget in one year?
The cost of failed sponsorship is $700 million. Welfare for refugees as estimated in the Vancouver Sun a few days ago is $600 million. Teaching English or French and other settlement services for new immigrants costs $450 million. Quebec's gold plated immigration settlement program costs $90 million. No adjustments are made there at all, one year after another.
On top of all that the justice department will spend an additional $11.6 million on immigration and refugee cases. The Federal Court will spend an additional $11.9 million on handling refugee cases. The RCMP will have to allocate an additional $2.3 million to clean up the messes made by lousy immigration policies. There is $60 million in legal aid.
Of course, there was last year's stupid expenditures: $2,000 for a pizza party hosted by the minister; $2,000 for bookmarks with the minister's photo on them; $100,000 for office furniture for one member in the IRB; another $100,000 for a golden handshake to get rid of that member.
In light of all of these numbers, the increased user fees are just a drop in the bucket. Until this government and this immigration minister come to terms with the fact that Canada's immigration and refugee programs are so lax, so broad, so inefficient and so ridiculously generous as to cost Canadians up to $3 billion a year to accept and settle refugees and immigrants, we are just wasting time.
The government is tilting at windmills. If this government really wants to fix the immigration budget it should not jack up fees before it gets on top of the real problem: Liberal immigration policy. That is the problem.
I say to the people of Canada, to the media, to interested observers of Canada's immigration system around the world, that before they congratulate the finance minister and the immigration minister for taking tough action to fix a tough problem, before this back slapping gets too intense, tell me what is wrong with this picture.
A refugee claimant has just been paid $1,000. Now he sits before an $85,000 a year patronage appointee. Each hour of hearing and preparation time is being run up as a profit by his legal aid attorney. His acceptance is virtually guaranteed since the IRB is little more than an $80 million a year rubber stamp. If he is sick, there are no worries, he has a health card.
In the extremely unlikely event that he is found not to be a refugee, there are no worries. He will just ring up a few more hours for his legal aid attorney, appeal to the taxpayer funded courts, get another hearing before another $85,000 a year IRB member. After this charade has been carried on for three years, the minister gives him an automatic amnesty. It is not a bad deal for $975. Most of us would not even get inside the courtroom door for $975. The refugee claimant and his lawyer can tie up our courts for three years.
This is no exaggeration. Members may not like the illustration. They do not like it because they know it is true. The most tragic aspect of that scenario is that all the time this charade is being played out at the taxpayers' expense, the UN tells us that the most genuine refugees from overseas are being systematically ignored by countries like Canada. Refugees we could process more easily and far more cheaply are being ignored. These are genuine refugees.
People may start realizing now how much of an opportunity there was in 1995 to really rethink government and make fundamental changes. They will realize what a golden opportunity there was to make things work better. Then they will wake up to what was not done and they will be sorely disappointed.