Mr. Speaker, all of us have heard about discrimination in the wages and the earning power of immigrants, but there is misinformation in the public at the same time. If we go back in the history of Canada, everyone would agree that Canada is a country of immigrants. They worked hard. They were the architects of the county. They built the Canada of today that we are proud of.
I will blame the government to some extent. For the last 132 years only two parties have been governing the country, the Liberals and the Tories. In a way they are to be blamed. Let me give an example.
In my view there is institutionalized discrimination by the Liberals against economically poor countries. Let me talk about the immigration fee which we call a head tax. The head tax of $1,500 per person is a small amount in economically developed countries. People in other parts of the world are living on a couple of dollars a day, or even less in some economically backward countries. These people will never get a chance to come to Canada because $1,500 to them is a huge amount. This is institutionalized discrimination by the government.
We should hire people based on merit. We should not hyphenate people or go into ethnicity and other lines which divide us. I believe the lines which define us are probably the lines which confine us. All people should be treated based on their ability, their merit, their qualifications and their experience, rather than on ethnicity or the country they came from. Those things should not be a subject of the 21st century.