Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to discuss Bill C-63 for the simple reason that nothing has ever given me more pleasure in an official capacity than to go down to citizenship court and shake the hands and congratulate people who have just received Canadian citizenship.
Part of my life and part of my studies have been dealing with citizenship in itself. I come from a part of Canada, a part of Saskatchewan, that enjoyed the benefits of massive citizenship and immigration, as the two are inseparable, from the spilling over from the Dakotas. At that time Canada adopted for itself, almost word for word, the American homestead act and these people moved to Canada and became citizens.
I have visitors here visiting me in Ottawa whose grandparents, if we go back far enough, came from France across the peninsula, the thumb, as they call it in Michigan, on into part of Saskatchewan. The remarkable thing about all this citizenship is when one goes through that great era, the last best west, I served as a justice for 25 years and I do not remember one single case of any of these gallant people ever becoming involved with the law or criminal activity.
I am also very proud to stand here and say that I have three adopted part Chinese sisters. If one takes their heritage and go back, they too were proud of their Canadian citizenship.
Speaking of particular roles of citizenship, in my lifetime I was always involved before I came to this institution in working with people. I have, up until the last few years, never once heard in the rural areas of my province of those people who came to this country and took citizenship, as the Chinese did, in any town that I worked, and there were a good many of them, ever becoming involved in a defamation of Canadians or their new country.
Maybe we should look at the past and ask ourselves what we were doing right then. We are not proud of our record in some cases of what we did to immigrants from Ukraine. By the way, the Ukrainian people are still the second largest ethnic group in Saskatchewan. We are not proud of what we did in World War I when we deprived them of citizenship and pushed them way up in Alberta and let them lose their land and virtually starve to death. We are not proud of that but it happened.
We are also not proud of what we did to the Chinese when they came here to get their citizenship. They worked on the railways and got less than average pay. When one died on the railway they just pushed him into the grade and covered him up. There was not even a decent burial.
Citizenship has to mean more than what it has meant in the last 25 years in Canada. We cannot be proud, as my hon. colleagues have mentioned, that at any one time we can have 16,000 to 20,000 illegal immigrants in Canada and the fact is that about 80% of them will stay here. Surrounding this court of citizenship, Canadians know what it is like. Canadians see it as a massive corruptive unit. Let us hope that this changes for good.
What steps will we look back at to see how we brought hardworking people to this country who contributed greatly to this country?
Today when I know of people I have assisted coming in 35 years ago and I try to get some of their family in, I get such reports as “Don't bother going to your MP. There is a good Liberal lawyer and he will pull the strings a lot faster”. This is a fact and a terrible thing but it happens.
Last week when I was home I was confronted by individuals who asked me how I was getting along with this case. They told me they had word that if they went to see a certain lawyer downtown he could speed the thing up.
Are we going to take legislation like this and, pardon the pun, liberalize it to that extent? I do not have too many immigrants coming. They are all leaving now. What happened here? What happens when we face a situation in this country where the majority of the people who are apprehended and with charges were illegal immigrants? Many of those people are still here. I believe we ought to exercise more care.
If Bill C-63 does just what I hope it will, then we will be going back to the golden era of the last best west days when we brought in people who had no criminal records. They had the ability to survive and work. They were welcomed in Canada and they made outstanding citizens. In the immigration and citizenship record in Canada, while I know many to come in have been fine people, we have opened the gates and many of those people are still here and will not be deported. While we do that we are denying at least 10 people I know who are hardworking, dedicated people, relatives here, and I am having one heck of a job getting them into Canada. Let us hope this bill changes that.
Above all, if we are to have a deep meaning for the oath, which the hon. gentleman talked about, things have to change in this department from the past five years.
How does this bill reverse the terrible records of this department in the last 25 years? What steps are being taken now to prevent illegal immigrants coming to this country? What steps are being taken to speed up the deportation of these people? These are the questions which Canadians want an answer to and I do not see the bill answering those questions. I wish I did but I do not.
We need to bring back some sanity to the immigration and citizenship portfolio. We need to truly look at bringing people to Canada who brought the same honour and glory of the last best west. These people are still with us. Some of the ancestors of these people sit in the House but we never had to deport one of that area that I remember. I wish I could say the same thing for the past 10, 15 or 25 years.