Madam Speaker, I am delighted to have the last five minutes to wrap up. I thank all members who spoke to my motion. I could have been blown over with a kiss when the member for Kitchener—Waterloo, from the governing party, admitted that there was a problem and acknowledged that something must be done.
He did say that I had anticipated something the government was already doing. I look forward to that. I have been waiting six years for legislation to deal with it. I have been calling for action on this matter not just since this summer but for six years. I encourage him to carry on beyond what he said into taking some action and bringing it about very quickly.
The Bloc MP for Rosemont generally supported the concept. He expressed some concern about minimum sentences, but a motion is just meant to indicate what issue is being dealt with so that a committee can work on the details. I would be glad to work with members from all parties at committee.
The member for Winnipeg Centre, the NDP representative in this debate, quite shocked me. I will be sending out a press release to his constituents tomorrow. I just cannot believe what he said. He said that only 500 people came in over the summer and that was no problem. We are not only talking about those 500. They amount to only 2%.
Clearly the debate is not focused on the people coming in as much as on the people smugglers. We have all focused on that. We all support accepting refugees into our country. That is not the issue. Why is the hon. member trying to make that the issue? He is the kind of member who makes me ashamed because he attaches labels to political parties and to individual politicians for strictly partisan reasons instead of dealing with the issue. It is very disappointing.
He basically said that we should open up our borders for anyone who wants to come. There are 1.2 billion Chinese alone and I am sure a couple of hundred million would love to come to our country. I wonder if Canadians support his stand in that regard. I doubt it very much. He ought to listen to the NDP government in British Columbia and what his own colleagues say about it. They say something entirely different.
The Progressive Conservative member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough talked about the human tragedy, the seriousness of the problem, and said that he supports the motion. I appreciate that.
I acknowledge up front that imposing minimum sentences is only a small part of the solution to the problem. A large part of the problem is that those who are smuggled into our country by human smugglers end up going through our refugee determination system, and that is a disaster. I will just throw out a few statistics to demonstrate that, because I think Canadians ought to know them.
Canada has become a favourite destination of people smugglers because in fact our acceptance rate for refugees is in effect 80%. I will explain that in a minute. In the United States it is 17%, Germany 7%.
Of course Canada is going to be a prime destination if they are planning to have people go through our refugee system, which is what they do. Many may be smuggled in unknown to us. That is a distinct possibility. We found out this summer and in the past that it happens on a regular basis. Certainly immigration officials told me that they may catch 3% of those who come in illegally through our airports, most with the help of people smugglers. They are smaller numbers at a time but far more overall. It is the same across the borders.
In our refugee determination system the acceptance rate is high. That is not the formal acceptance rate. If we ask the government, it will say 44%. Last year there were 23,838 people who claimed for refugee status inside Canada and 6,200 withdrew. Only 5,000 are known to have left the country and 13,000 were actually accepted as refugees. That is the 44% the government talks about. That means that 5,000 out of the 24,000 have actually left the country as far as anyone in the immigration system knows. That means we have an effective acceptance rate for refugees of about 79%.
If we want to look at solving the problem of people smuggling, we have to put in place the minimum sentences I am proposing in the motion. We should go far beyond that and fix the refugee determination system which has failed Canadians so dramatically. It has failed refugees because we are not getting people who are clearly refugees from camps overseas in the numbers that we should. Our system is failing us because of those who apply inside the country.
Let us start by fixing that. Then let us put these minimum sentences in place as soon as we can. Let us work at both of these things together. If we do that, we have made progress.