Madam Speaker, I am very disappointed to learn that we are limited to 10 minutes because we are finally on a subject that we can really engage in some necessary debate, on the matter of policy relating to immigration and refugee issues. After struggling through Bill C-16 endlessly, it now seems we have very scant opportunities to really debate issues of substance regarding immigration policy.
Having said that, I think it is a mistake to enter into any serious policy debate on the subject of immigration until we first answer the question, how big a country do we want? How big should Canada be? Why should we be setting policy if we do not even know what the goals are? This debate has never really taken place in any meaningful way in the country. Should Canada be 100 million people? Is there room for 200 million people or 50 million people?
Sir Wilfrid Laurier at the turn of the last century said Canada should be 100 million people by the year 2000. Frankly, given the birth rate and the demographics of the time, his statisticians and demographers were correct. Had we maintained the same birth rate in 1900 throughout the whole century, we would be at 100 million people today. He was correct, but things have changed. The birth rate has dropped dramatically.
Those are the two things we have to look at if we are serious about growing our population and moving our population forward. Birth rate and immigration are the two factors that demographers build into their models when they are trying to see what Canada will look like 10, 20 and 50 years from now.
At the current birth rate without any immigration, in 100 years time we would be a country of 18 million people. We are 32 million today and 100 years later we would be 18 million people. Cities like Minneapolis will be bigger than that 100 years from now. The computer models show that without immigration our population would shrink. It cannot afford to shrink if we are going to be competitive in the new global economy.
Having said that, obviously everyone in the House accepts that immigration is necessary for Canada for future economic growth, but how much? We have not had that debate. How can we set law and policy dealing with immigration if we do not know what our targets are, if we do not know what our goals should be?
I wanted to preface my remarks with an urgent call that we should be having an honest non-partisan debate about what we want Canada to look like in the coming years. It is very hard to say if Bill C-31 has any merits or if it meets our needs because we do not have any clear goal of what those needs are.
Some people have serious reservations about Bill C-31 and I share some of those feelings. I have heard it said that it really asks more questions than it gives answers because, as was pointed out by the previous speaker, it is just a framework document. All the meat and potatoes, all the guts, are going to be left to regulation.
Regulations are not things which are debated in the House. It is a dramatically undemocratic process to let us figure out what colour to paint the lunch room and let someone else do all the important decision making, like how fast the assembly line should go. I feel slighted that we are not going to be debating the issues of substance. That is all going to be within the regulations and within the purview of the minister and not within the purview of the House of Commons. We are very concerned about that.
The bill does contain a number of positive measures. The consolidation of all the protection related decisions in the Immigration and Refugee Board will be a positive move. Ultimately however, critics we are talking to are saying that by inconsistently applying human rights norms in some context and then violating them in others, the bill fails to demonstrate any underlying commitment to justice and to our international obligations in the various institutions like the United Nations.
On the negative side I want to point out that the bill demonstrates an unhealthy obsession with criminality without any safeguards to protect the wrongly accused. I believe this stems directly from the hysteria associated with six boatloads of illegal migrants who drifted up on the shores of British Columbia this summer.
I should point out that other countries are coping with this as well and coping with it in a more mature way. Australia had 88 boats of illegal migrants last year. We had six. It expects 150 this year, but we do not see the same hysteria or the same urge to crack down, get tough and change immigration laws and policies based on what is really an anomaly.
There is a saying that it is a poor sailor who sets his course by the lights of a passing ship. What happened last summer was lights of a passing ship, and here we are prepared to permanently change our whole immigration policy based on that. That worries me and it worries a lot of the people we have been talking to.
There are a number of issues I would like to go through. One of the things we have to deal with, and it is a necessary evil I suppose, is the penalties which have to be increased for the trafficking of humans. It is by international agreement more or less that all the countries of the world are starting to crack down on the illegal trafficking of human beings. It is one of the most reprehensible things going on in the world today. It is tantamount to slavery and bonded labour. These things cannot be tolerated in our country. Therefore we approve the increase in the penalties for illegally trafficking people and the exploitation that is often associated with it.
We draw a cautionary note however. I point out that in part of our history we were very proud of illegal trafficking and smuggling of human beings. We had the underground railroad which, breaking all the laws of the land, illegally smuggled slaves from the deep south and brought them to Canada. That is a part of our history we are very proud of.
All over the world there are modern day underground railways taking place where people are being delivered from persecution by people who are breaking the law to do it. I remind the architects of this legislation that we should not ignore the very real, courageous work that is going on in terms of smuggling people. Sometimes people are being smuggled out of danger to save their lives. There is a line we have to view there.
There is one thing I must mention. The bill makes reference to the best interests of the child. We believe that incorporating that language is a step in the right direction. It shows up at various points in the bill. But we do not believe it goes far enough. Canada has stipulated to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the language is far stronger within that convention. We believe that the language in the legislation should accurately reflect the language we are already bound to under the UN convention.
I must comment on the aspect of criminality. I have noted before that we are disappointed in how much the bill concentrates on this aspect. To bar anyone making a refugee claim who has ever been convicted of a “serious crime” is a terrible mistake. This is something we will call to be corrected.
Under this clause Nelson Mandela would not qualify for immigration into this country because he was convicted of what was thought to be a serious crime in his home country. He would not be allowed into this country. The government and the Liberals were fawning all over themselves to touch the hem of his garment when Nelson Mandela graced us with his presence and now they are passing legislation one year later which would effectively bar that same man from ever becoming a Canadian or even taking sanctuary in this country.
Let us think this through. There are some places with corrupt dictatorships where people are persecuted and put in prison for political ideology or any number of other reasons when they do not deserve to be. Those people should not be barred access to Canada if they seek refuge here because they may have committed crimes under a regime that we do not even agree with.
Along those same lines we should be very careful that when we do revoke citizenship or turn people away from this country we never ever send them back to places that are known for torture or where they run the risk of being tortured because again, we are stipulated to the United Nations convention on torture. We must make sure that our rules would never force such a thing to happen.
The last thing I will mention in my final minute is that this government is missing a valuable opportunity to do something about the racist head tax. The right of landing fee is absolutely racist. It is racist because it economically discriminates against those who come from third world developing nations and who are often people of colour. For those from West Germany it is not that hard to raise $975. For those from the Sudan it is three years income and is impossible. Therefore, whether by action or omission, we are inadvertently selecting people based on race. The head tax should be eliminated if we are to welcome people to this country.
I wish I had more time.