Madam Speaker, I wanted to take a few minutes to speak on this bill and perhaps in a peripheral way to raise an issue which should be of import to members of the House. I want to bring the following to the attention of members.
I see in the bill a provision whereby the effect of the proposed legislation would not apply to people who were less than 16 years of age when they came to Canada. That is an important issue and I want to talk about it a bit, particularly because I have a constituency case where such an incident occurred. It is roughly the following. I will change the ages ever so slightly to ensure that I respect the privacy of the constituent in question.
I was approached by the family of a constituent who came to Canada when he was two years old. He lived in this country and when he was an adult he committed a crime. The incident was something like a brawl in a bar and he was charged with assault causing bodily harm. It was very serious. The victim nearly died.
My constituent was incarcerated, served his time and was eventually released from jail. He was reintegrated into society and led a normal life. He found a job and so on. Three or four years later when everything was behind him, the authorities came knocking on his door to inform him that they were commencing procedures to deport him.
The difficulty is the following: The individual had never seen another country in his life. I am dealing with this case right now and I have brought it to the attention of the minister.
When we come across the easy cases, particularly in the popular press when some person has come to Canada, has abused the laws of this country and therefore, we should kick him or her out, it is of course generally a proposition I agree with. But it is not always that easy. The case I am bringing to the House today is to illustrate that sometimes it is a lot more complicated.
To take the example of someone who came to this country when very young, aged two, then that person is actually a product of Canada, if we can use that term. If that person has developed criminal tendencies, he or she certainly did not have them on arrival in Canada when less than two years old. That is the first proposition.
The second is, if that person is deported, deported to where? Any country is like any other, because the person has never been anywhere except Canada.
Third, if we as a society do not want other countries shipping their criminals here, why should we take ours and ship them elsewhere? I say ours because I consider someone who was only two when he came here to indeed be one of us.
I am taking up the House's time to explain this because the problem lies not in this bill but in the present statute.
I trust that when the parliamentary committee studies this initiative-and I congratulate my colleague from Cambridge for having presented it to the House-it will look at the entire problem at the same time.
I have just been speaking with a colleague who tells me that someone he knows very well has in fact defended cases similar to the one I have just described here in the House.
As a Canadian, as a parent and as a member of the House, my gut feeling is always that when someone commits a crime and is not a Canadian we should do our best to send them back. That is still generally true in what I believe.
I caution the House and invite colleagues, particularly those who sit on the committee, to think of the peripheral issues I have just raised because they are very real and they do affect many people.
I thank hon. members in advance for their study of the bill. I congratulate the member for having brought this issue to the attention of Parliament.