Mr. Speaker, I wish to share with the House a story that I recently heard on CBC radio as I was driving through British Columbia.
It came on in late afternoon. A doctor was being interviewed by a CBC reporter, a doctor who I believe was working in Vancouver in an emergency ward in a major hospital. She was called into the emergency room to assist a young man who was having severe difficulties. The young man appeared to the doctor to be in good health. That is the way she related the story. However, he was having a great deal of difficulty breathing and she determined immediately that he needed mouth to mouth resuscitation or mouth to mouth assistance in breathing if he were to survive.
She had made some inquiries before going into the emergency room and found out that this fellow was a recent immigrant to Canada from Honduras and had only been in Canada for a very short time. I think it was in the neighbourhood of about six months. Naturally the doctor assumed that being a recent refugee Immigration Canada would have checked his health status and would have found anything that might have been wrong.
The doctor assumed wrong. Much to her horror she found out that she had made a terrible assumption because, as she later found out, this young refugee who was lying in a hospital emergency room, who looked and appeared to be healthy and who was a recent immigrant to Canada, only having been here a few months, was in fact a fellow who had full blown AIDS and active tuberculosis.
The doctor made a life and death decision and assisted or attempted to assist him with mouth to mouth resuscitation. She found out later the patient was infected with the AIDS virus and tuberculosis. She had herself checked out when she found out what the patient's medical history really was. Thankfully she did not acquire the AIDS virus, but she did test positive for tuberculosis and now she is very concerned she may develop that disease at some time in her life.
I know members opposite think it is funny, but I do not think most Canadians find it funny. Frankly I know the doctor involved did not find it funny at all.
How could it happen that a young fellow recently admitted to Canada as a refugee could be admitted to an emergency room and a doctor treating him not knowing his medical history? How could this individual be in Canada with these very serious diseases that he had obviously had for a long period of time and immigration not even check?
What the doctor discovered and what she related to radio listeners that day was that immigration does not routinely check immigrants for serious diseases as they are accepted into Canada. They do not check immigrants to Canada for contagious diseases. They do not put public safety as a first priority when accepting immigrants into Canada.
There is something very wrong when Canada does not take these kinds of precautions to protect its citizens. Our citizenship and immigration department is so caught up with optics, spin and being political correct that it is willing to jeopardize public safety for the sake of being seen as politically correct. This is apparently the case because I have in my hand an advertisement that was recently found in a foreign publication which I will read verbatim into the record: “Canadian immigration to Canada with the purchase of a Fleet rent a car franchise, total investment of $50,000 Canadian, approximately $30,000 U.S. You are guaranteed immigration to Canada even with a criminal record”.
This is an ad that was placed in a foreign publication. How can our immigration department be so obviously skewed and so incapable of doing its job that Canadians are recognizing that there is financial opportunities in attempting to entice criminals from other countries to come to Canada and guaranteeing them access to Canada if they have the ticket price to pay the $50,000 or $30,000 U.S.?
How can anyone watching the debate feel the government has as its first priority the public safety of Canadians? How can anybody watching this debate believe the government has its priorities in order? Refugees are not screened for serious illness and disease. There are ads to attract criminals into Canada. Canada needs to totally revamp its immigration policy and put as its first priority the health and safety of Canadians. In both these examples we see the government does not have its priorities right and it is not putting the health and safety of Canadians as its first priority.
The next priority the government should have with respect to immigration is to encourage immigrants who are ready, willing and able to make a positive contribution to our economy and to our country. Immigration has always been an extremely valuable and positive force in this country from its inception until now. I can speak with a bit of knowledge on this because I come from a community in northwest British Columbia, Kitimat. Kitimat was largely created during the 1950s when Alcan built a huge aluminum smelter and the community and the country at that time were accepting refugees from all over the world.
We had at that time people from Portugal, Italy, Germany and people from all over the world who came to our community. It was considered a melting pot. It was considered an exemplary community at that time. At that time we had an immigration policy that made sense. We had an immigration policy that looked to potential immigrants in terms of what kind of positive contribution they would be able and willing to make to our country.
Sadly the priorities of government have changed over time. Sadly we have a government that puts as its first—