Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Rosemount—Petite-Patrie for his comment that sometimes the numbers do not reflect reality.
He used the example of the boat people on the west coast over the last couple of years. When we look at the real numbers, there were approximately 600 refugees that came via the boat route. When we look at the big picture, we had about 24,000 refugees enter during that same time period. Therefore sometimes the reporting is out of balance. That is the way I would put it.
Another good example occurred during the last federal election. I do not need to tell members that one of our Canadian Alliance candidates by the name of Betty Granger made the statement “Asian invasion” in her comments in Winnipeg. I truly believe that it was taken out of context. I assure the House that comment was pretty common language, going back to the late seventies and early eighties when the economic class of Hong Kong were scrambling to leave that country for fear of the Communist takeover.
In my own family, my older sisters who are about 20 years older than I am did the same. They liquidated all their assets and brought all their money into Canada during that same time period. It made sense and people used the statement “Asian invasion” quite frequently during the late seventies and early eighties.
Unfortunately when it is taken out of context and in light of what happened in the last federal election it can be disastrous as results have shown. Unfortunately, again, a lack of balance in reporting, too focused on one way of looking at two simple words, creates a lot of problems. Worse still, it creates an image that Canada is not a tolerant society. I think that is the sad part about the events that occurred, because in large part we are a tolerant society and we do accept migrants from all over the world.
I wish to ask a question of the member for Rosemont—Petite-Patrie. He talked about supporting the people that come to this country. I believe that is a shortfall of the government. We need better planning. I looked at the history and I know that in the past we have had both voluntary and government programs that were sometimes piecemeal. What kinds of support programs are in place for integrating new Canadians into the province of Quebec?