Mr. Speaker, first let me thank the member for Fundy—Royal for being very unselfish in sharing his time with me today.
I am very honoured to take part in the third reading of Bill C-11, the new immigration act. I have said to the House before that as a third generation immigrant to this country, I am very privileged to be here, and that includes the 44 other members in the House who are also Canadians by choice. I believe we are all very thankful that this country has taken us in.
Unfortunately we still have a long way to go. A new immigration bill is long overdue. The bill is called an act respecting immigration to Canada and the granting of refugee protection to persons who are displaced, persecuted or in danger. Unfortunately the contents of the bill do not reflect the title.
Also at this time I want to thank my deputy critic, the member for Blackstrap, for her due diligence and hard work as we travelled throughout the country seeking public information.
I also want to thank the members of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, members from all sides of the House, for their tremendous co-operative spirit, which was demonstrated throughout all stages of Bill C-11. There is no doubt that we as a committee wanted what was best for this country in our attempt to write the immigration laws for the next decade.
I want to thank the capable chairman of the committee, the member for London North Centre, for his relatively non-partisan approach. I believe he has not forgotten that he, like I, immigrated to this country in the 1950s as a young child.
Also at this time I need to thank the clerks and the parliamentary support staff for all the hard work they displayed in keeping us organized and moving.
We have heard from all sides of the House about how important immigration is and how immigration built this country. Immigrants have been coming to Canada since the 1500s and they have shaped this country. Canadians from all walks of life can relate in some manner to the immigrants who came to Canada seeking a better life.
The manner in which Canada welcomed these newcomers was not always friendly. In my brief intervention here I would like to quote from a book called Whence They Came: Deportation from Canada , written by Barbara Roberts. The foreword was written by Irving Abella in 1988 and I believe this is a good time to reflect on our history of immigration in Canada. Mr. Abella states:
Canada is a peculiar nation. Peopled by immigrants, it is a country, paradoxically, which hates immigration. Every single public opinion survey over the past fifty years indicates that most Canadians—including by the way, most immigrants themselves—do not want any substantial increase in the number of people admitted to this country. This attitude may surprise Canadians, but historically it should not.
It is one of our great national myths that Canada has a long history of welcoming refugees and dissidents, of always being in the forefront in accepting the world's oppressed and dispossessed, of being receptive and hospitable to wave after waves of immigrants.
We Canadians like to think that racism and bigotry are European or American in origin and play little part in our history, tradition or psyche. We see ours as a country of vast open spaces and limitless potential which has always been open and available to the proverbial huddled masses yearning to be free.
Yet as the recent history in Canadian literature has shown, the Canadian record is one of which we ought not be proud. Our treatment of our native people as well as our abysmal history in admitting blacks, Chinese, Japanese, Indians, and during the 1930s and 1940s Jews, should lay to rest the myth of our liberalism and enlightenment on matters of race and immigration.
Let us face facts For most of our history Canadian immigration laws were racist and exclusionary. We knew precisely what kind of people we wanted, and how to keep out those we didn't. Until the 1960s our immigration policies divided the world into two - the “preferred” races who were always welcome in Canada and the “non-preferred” who rarely were. The former were of British and European stock; the latter included almost everybody else.
The central problem of Canadian immigration policy is that for most of our history we did not have one. Since 1867 the country has had precisely four immigration acts. Nor has there ever been in Canada—neither now nor in the past—any clearly articulated national consensus about what immigration should be or what it would be. Except for one constant—its discriminatory aspects—our policies have had little consistency.
Even today when we look at 1% as the target, we still do not know why we use that as a target.
The integrity of Canada's immigration system is determined by processes that are used to determine who would be allowed to immigrate to Canada and under what conditions they would be allowed to reside in the country. It is essential that the checks and balances be in place to ensure that decisions are just, because no system can ever be perfect.
Enforcement of immigration laws can and does have severe consequences. It causes a separation of parents from children, spouses from one another and individuals from a country that was their home. To ensure that Canada has a balanced immigration system, Canadians need a process that is responsible, compassionate, equitable and fair.
Bill C-11 fails to preserve the process that is necessary for ensuring reliable and just decision making for immigrants and refugees to this country. The bill strips away the progress that Canada has made in creating review processes that help bring balance to our national immigration policy. Some of these come down to seemingly simple procedural issues but are critical for the administration of a fair and just immigration system.
The Canadian Alliance cannot support Bill C-11. It just goes against the values of being Canadian. I thank the member for Fundy—Royal for sharing his time with me.