Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak on my party's supply motion. In light of September 11, each one of the four points outlined in the motion is of the highest importance to all Canadians and our allies.
In my submission to the House today, I intend to address each point in the motion. It is obvious to Canadians and our neighbours that the time has come to do more than just consider a continental perimeter initiative. We need to take decisive action to ensure the security of our country and to protect our vital trading relationships.
Today's motion calls on the government to take four steps that the Canadian Alliance believes will go a long way toward ensuring that our country can make a significant contribution to the fight against terrorism on the home front as well as maintaining the healthy trading relationship we currently enjoy with the United States.
The first area that today's motion explores is not only to provide both immigration and customs officers with the training that is required but to also give them full officer status to allow them to detain and arrest suspected criminals at all points of entry.
It is obvious to most Canadians and to our American neighbours that the current safeguards on our front lines are substandard. I want to be very clear. This is not the fault of the hard working men and women who staff our borders. It is the government which refuses to give them the tools and training necessary to do the job properly.
I have been informed that at Pearson International Airport during peak arrival times in the primary customs inspection area, up to 25% of the staff are university students with little more than two weeks worth of training. The students are left with minimal supervision to make decisions as to who can enter the country and who must go on to secondary inspection.
It is incredible to me that in the wake of the events of September 11 and the claims of the government to have beefed up security, the students are still out there as our first line of defence. Even more shocking, I have learned that at some of our land border crossings there are students doing secondary customs inspection. This has to stop. If Canada expects the U.S. to take any of our border security measures seriously, we require qualified and highly trained people on our front lines and they must be given the powers they need to do the job. This is the type of initiative that would go a long way to better securing our borders.
This brings me to the issue of giving our front line officers the powers and tools to detain and arrest suspected criminals and terrorists. I will go back to the Pearson airport example. I have learned that if customs officers wants to detain or arrest a suspected criminal or terrorist, they may have to wait anywhere from 15 minutes to half an hour for police to respond to the call. A lot can happen in half an hour without the proper equipment or powers to do the job.
Not only are we putting Canadians at risk with the current practices, we are seriously jeopardizing the safety of our front line workers.
The next logical step is to examine our more remote border crossings. How long is the response time of police at those locations? It is an unenviable position in which the government places its front line border staff. More to the point, Canadian security is put to risk.
It is clear by the actions of the government that our front line customs officers are to be little more than duty and tax collectors. It would seem that the government, as evidenced by its inaction, is more interested in collecting the health minister's $10 duty on a carton of cigarettes than it is in identifying or arresting terrorists or serious criminals.
This brings me to the second point of today's motion. If the government is to take seriously the threat of terrorists and criminals breaching our borders and using Canada as a staging ground for their nefarious activities, we need to move the customs officers out of the tax collection agency and into law enforcement agencies.
It goes without saying that as long as the front line of defence at our borders is under the supervision of Revenue Canada then the emphasis will always be on tax collection and not security. Certainly I think the government would find that its customs officers would overwhelmingly support this type of move.
The next problem the government has failed to address properly is the practice of releasing spontaneous refugee claimants who appear without proper documentation before their identities are confirmed and before they have cleared proper health and security checks. All too often refugee claimants are released on the same day they arrive in Canada on a promise to appear before the Immigration and Refugee Board.
A few hours of questioning is clearly not enough to determine possible security threats and it certainly does not allow for proper health examinations. The truth of the matter is that it can takes weeks or months with the current resource shortfalls to properly determine the true identities of refugee claimants who arrive on our doorstep without documentation. Again it is a resource and training problem
Nobody is suggesting that we hold refugee claimants in detention for extended periods of time. What we are saying is that if the government were to commit the proper resources and determination methods, we could accept legitimate refugee claimants faster and protect Canadians and our U.S. neighbours from the unwanted dangerous elements.
We are saying that if the government were to commit the proper resources and determination methods, we could accept legitimate refugee claimants faster and protect Canadians and our U.S. neighbours from the unwanted dangerous elements.
Detention in this context is not inhumane. Detention upon entering a country, without any proof of identity or in some cases fabricated identities, should be expected. Most genuine refugee claimants would see this simply as one minor setback on the way to establishing a new life in Canada. If the claimant desires to be released from detention, the process does not have to be complicated, as many people making refugee claims in Canada come from a safe third country. At any time during their detention, the refugee claimant would be free to go back to that safe third country and make their claim from there.
With a real acceptance rate of nearly 60% of all refugee claims, Canada has become the asylum shoppers destination of choice. Canada's refugee system would be completely different if the government were to act on current laws and prescribe certain countries as safe third countries. This would drastically reduce the number of spontaneous refugee claimants in Canada and would go a long way toward increasing this country's security.
The majority of asylum seekers enter Canada through the United States. If Canada were to enter into an agreement with the United States alone, we could reduce the burden on our refugee determination system by more than one half.
Similarly, if we were to enter agreements with the European Union countries, we would also see a drastic reduction in the number of spontaneous refugee claims in Canada, thereby sending a message to the world that asylum shoppers need not put Canada on their list. That in turn would free up the resources to really help the most needy refugees and to do more work overseas by easing the pressure in the refugee camps. We could then offer truly destitute people the chance at a new life.
Many EU countries have already implemented the safe third country concept. It is long past time that Canada get on board and act on laws that are already on the books. It is not necessary for Canada to give up its sovereignty to accomplish the goal of a continental security perimeter. We simply need to look at what we can do to strengthen our current practices to ensure the safety and security of Canada and our U.S. neighbours. It is not a lot of ask.
I encourage all members of the House to vote in favour of today's motion because I believe that the steps which it encourages the government to take would make great headway in easing the legitimate fears and concerns of Canadians and Americans alike.