Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre. Both he and I will be speaking to the bill. We want the House to know that at the next opportunity the NDP critic, the member for Winnipeg Centre, will be speaking in greater detail about some of our concerns about the bill and our general attitude toward it. Unfortunately he was unable to be here today.
There probably is not a more appropriate time for members of parliament to be debating amendments to Canada's immigration legislation than after a two week parliamentary recess. If other members' recesses have been anything like mine, I spent a fair amount of time meeting with people who have problems of one sort or another with immigration.
Over the course of the two weeks I met with a woman who fled Liberia on a moment's notice in the middle of conflict and in the middle of great confusion. She left behind some teenage children and is now trying to get them into the country but is having a very difficult time doing that.
I met with a young man who wants to get his pregnant wife in Romania to Canada before the baby is born in September. I met with people who applied for refugee status from Bangladesh and are scheduled to leave the country in spite of the fact that there appears to be documentation that was unavailable to the refugee board when it made its decision.
I met with a family from India who would like relatives to be able to come to Canada to attend a wedding. I met with another family who wanted relatives to come from Chile in order to attend a graduation. In both these cases the problem was visitors' visas and sometimes the very difficult process that attends people being able to get these visas. In these cases I know both families. They are long established members of their respective Sikh and Chilean communities. Yet they are having a difficult time getting someone to Canada to be present at these important family events.
These are just samples of the kinds of things MPs have to deal with all the time. It is very frustrating for us not to be able to immediately solve the problems people bring to our attention. Not all problems are solvable but some of them could be solvable if there were more resources dedicated to resolving them.
One of the messages I would like to leave with the minister and the government at this time is that the process for these things needs to be speeded up. It should not be speeded up in a way that makes it sloppy or unfair but it should be speeded up. It is a form of cruel and unusual punishment for a lot of people that they cannot get the kind of resolution to their problems as quickly as I think fairness would dictate.
I think of the many times I have met with people in my office for whom the refugee process has been very long and prolonged. People have been here for many years in some cases. What has happened often is that children have been born and the children are actually Canadians. The only country they know is Canada yet if the refugee process takes so long and in the end they fail, the children can actually be sent away from their country which is Canada. It is very important to deal with these matters expeditiously so that children particularly are not put in that position.
Those are some of the things I found particularly trying over the years as an MP. People find themselves in a lot of very difficult situations. I say it is trying for me, but of course it is much more trying for them. What is trying for me is that I cannot always do for them what I would like to do in the time they would like me to do it.
All this relates to the bill in the sense that as MPs we are dealing with people who are not in the country who are trying to get into the country by way of the rules. Nothing makes that interview more difficult in the constituency office than when people point to the fact that other people get into the country by breaking the rules. They say “We are trying to observe the rules and we are doing everything that is required of us but it takes forever”. Yet there are examples of illegal immigration which for obvious reasons people find quite frustrating.
The minister has said that the purpose of the bill is to close the back door to Canada while opening the front door wider. This is certainly a principle and an intention of the bill that we support. It is why we would like to see the bill go to committee and be examined more thoroughly.
The point had been made earlier about the fact that so much is left up to regulation. We do not know what those regulations will be. We do not know whether those regulations will in fact be consistent with the spirit of the bill. One of the things that might be looked at in committee is how much more can be specified in the bill so that less is left up to regulation.
We are concerned about the penalties with regard to people making refugee claims who have been convicted of an offence punishable by 10 years or more and have received a sentence of two or more years, something which I believe all Canadians support. We do not want an immigration system which allows criminals into the country. However, we must also take into account the fact that not all offences which are defined as criminal activity in all the countries from which people seek refugee status is in fact criminal activity. Sometimes the very thing that has made them a refugee is political activity.
In my opinion, one of the things to be worked on in committee is the need to be more articulate about what is a criminal offence in the strictest sense and what it means to be a criminal. What can sometimes be defined as criminal by a country that uses the criminal code of the country to inhibit, punish or intimidate political activity thereby creates the very refugees who are coming to Canada with this alleged criminal record. That is a concern we have about the bill and something which the committee could very well look at.
With respect to family reunification, I understand one of the other intentions of the bill is to broaden the notion of family reunification. That is certainly something I think all Canadians would support.
Again, referring to my own experience as an MP and I am sure that of many other members, many times we have had people in our offices who have one child remaining in a country but because the child is now 19 or because of making the mistake of getting married, the child no longer qualifies and cannot be reunited with the family. There are many ways in which the current family reunification rules need to be improved in order to address some of the anomalies that exist. I would certainly urge that.
I would also urge a more open and trusting attitude on the part of Immigration Canada toward people who are seeking visitors visas for relatives who are coming to attend special events, in particular when these applications are being made on behalf of families who have been in the country for a long time. I do not think that how long they have been here has all that much to do with it, but certainly it is a fact that many people who have been Canadian citizens for a long time and want people from their country of origin to attend special events are now finding that very difficult to do.
I would urge the minister to see what she could do about that. If that is not within the purview of the bill then perhaps she could find another way.