Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to the report stage amendments to Bill C-11 which have been spoken to previously by other members of our Conservative caucus and addressed very thoroughly by our critic for immigration, the member for Fundy—Royal.
We are discussing something that, quite frankly, I am surprised we would be discussing in this time, place and century. I am referring to the deportation of Canadian citizens. I fail to understand the logic behind deporting an individual to the country they came from who has declined to take out Canadian citizenship even though that person has been in Canada for 25, 30, 40 or even 50 years.
I have many friends and family members who have been permanent residents of Canada for 25 or 30 years. They pay taxes and enjoy all the rights and privileges of a Canadian citizen except that they cannot hold public office. That is the only difference.
Somehow we will say that an individual, after residing in the country 30, 40 or 50 years, does not have the same rights as any other Canadian. Rather than sending them to prison for a criminal offence should they commit one, we would deport them to a country they may no longer have ties with. That is not what being Canadian is about. It is certainly not what I have always thought being Canadian is about.
Amendment and appeal rights would be given to all who have maintained permanent resident status for a three year period before being the subject of a report under clause 44. We have chosen a three year period to be consistent with the length of time one must be a permanent resident before applying for Canadian citizenship. That to me is a straightforward, plain speaking, very smart amendment to this piece of legislation.
We are not trying to be flippant or frivolous. We are not saying that one is given permanent resident status one day and deported the next. We are saying that someone who has been here for three years has some rights of citizenship even if he or she has not applied for citizenship status.
However it takes away from the issue of permanent residents who have been here for 20 years. There are not hundreds of them out there; there are thousands. I would dare say that there are hundreds of thousands. I do not expect that all of them will commit criminal offences. However should that happen, surely in this nation and at this period in our history we would not deport them to a country to which they no longer have ties.
What would Bill C-11 do? As it is, Bill C-11 would deny an appeal to permanent residents who are the subject of a report under clause 44, which I just mentioned. As a result of a single criminal sentencing, permanent residents could be deported without appeal and without consideration of their circumstances. I do not think anyone in this place is trying to justify criminal behaviour. However under the law as we embrace it every Canadian has a right to appeal.
I would further that by saying every permanent resident who has been here longer than three years has a right to appeal. It is a fundamental tenet of Canadian justice that if someone is accused of a crime or even sentenced for a crime then he or she has a right to appeal the judgment. I am not a lawyer and do not pretend to be. However that is a fundamental tenet of fair play and justice. We should surely be no stranger to that in the House.
This would include people who have lived here since infancy, which may be for 20, 30, 40 or 50 years. Immigration officers would be solely responsible for deciding whether deportation of permanent residents is appropriate. Many permanent residents have children who were born in Canada and are Canadian citizens even though the parents may not have obtained Canadian citizenship because, quite frankly, they do not need to. They can enjoy all the fruits and benefits of Canadian society except for and precluding the holding of public office.
Those are the rules as we have defined and made them. To say that people can be deported without the right of appeal because they have been sentenced to a crime is surely a mistake. Once the decision is made the wheels of enforcement turn and there is no review of the officer's discretionary decision.
For all the talk of the department that the decisions are taken seriously and that there will be safeguards to prevent the inappropriate deportation of long term residents, the legislation does not provide those safeguards. The legislation speaks of the possibility of safeguards but there is no safeguard.
I am amazed when the department speaks of an adjudicator making the tribunal decision and of the subsequent possibility of judicial review. It is only with respect to whether the permanent resident's conviction and sentence were proper. We are not appealing it. We are not taking a second look at it. We are asking if it is correct.
There is no jurisdiction for the tribunal or the federal court to look behind the decision to proceed with enforcement. What has been lost by taking away the appeal division's jurisdiction is one of the most fundamentally important parts of Bill C-11. While it may be necessary to remove individuals who renege on the responsibilities that come with having status in Canada, and specifically Canadian citizenship, for reasons of fundamental justice we need to give them a real opportunity to appeal.
That does not take away from the importance of recognizing that a country should have the ability to deport residents who are not citizens. However we need to take into account that there is a difference between someone who has been here three or four years and someone who has been here thirty or forty years. We need to rethink whether we are back in the days of Britain when they sent their convicts to Australia. Is that where we have gone?
Will deportation all of a sudden be one of the chief tenets of the Canadian justice system? Can we deport people because they have committed crimes? Let us take a look at what the crime is.