Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to the group of motions which would amend the refugee portion of the new immigration bill.
I have to say that I agree a lot with what the member from the governing party said earlier. However one thing I have found is that what the government says and what is in its legislation is often completely different, and that is the case with the legislation today.
I think everyone would agree that what Canada wants to do with our immigration and refugee system is to make the immigration system work better than it does now for people who we want to attract to this country. Our system has failed miserably in that regard and the changes in the legislation will not fix that up.
I think most Canadians would agree that, when it comes to the refugee system, changes need to be made that would not only allow genuine refugees to be accepted in this country but that we would be able to offer refuge to genuine refugees in other parts of the world living in camps, sometimes for years and years, and those who are identified by the United Nations as genuine refugees.
The system we have now will not do that and the new legislation will not fix it. A very high percentage of people who have been accepted as refugees right now are not in fact refugees by the United Nations' definition or by this government's own definition which is broader than the United Nations' definition.
Canadians also want a much faster process in terms of reuniting families. When someone has been accepted to this country as a refugee or through the independent immigrant stream and they have dependants, a spouse, parents or grandparents, when they want to reunite their families our system fails miserably in a number of cases. Every member of parliament knows about that because we have cases in our offices.
In the case of a family reunification, which one would think would take less than a year certainly, sometimes it is three to four years later and the accepted refugee is still trying to be reunited with family members. That is not Canadians want. I suggest that there are not many in the House who would support anything much different. I think that is widely supported by members from all political parties.
Here we are today at report stage of Bill C-11 talking about the changes to the refugee system. What is in the bill now before these amendments certainly will make our refugee system work better in terms of accepting genuine refugees and keeping out those who are not genuine refugees. The system that is meant to work for those who are not genuine refugees is in the other part of the bill dealing with immigration.
The amendments, quite frankly, will not improve the bill enough to make it good legislation, although some would certainly help in that regard. It is pretty sad, after talking about this new bill, that it is the government's second or third attempt at it. It has been years now since the government brought forth its first effort to reform the Immigration Act. The legislation, which I will speak to tomorrow in a more general way, or whenever it comes back to the House for third reading, will not fix the immigration system.
I would like to say as well that the auditor general made something very clear in his last report and in the report 10 years ago when he said that even if the legislation were fixed to make it a good act that it would not solve the problems this government has in immigration. It would not fix it because many of the problems are in administration and this act would not change that administration.
That is the other thing I think Canadians should not forget. Even if this were a good piece of legislation that would bring forth a brand new act, even if that were the case, which it is not for the reasons I have outlined already, it still would not fix the problems in our immigration and refugee system because administration is a big part of the problem and this would do nothing to help improve administration.
Here we are after all these years, about four years since the government first brought forth the legislation, and the government's own member, the speaker before me, is standing and explaining what he wants from the piece of legislation. He knows in his heart that the bill clearly does not give what he wants in a new immigration act.
Here we are, all these years later, facing a situation where, if this legislation is to pass, which I hope it does not, we will be stuck with an immigration act that will not work for Canadians. It will not work for genuine refugees. It will not work for people who we desperately need in this country and who come through the independent categories. It will not work for family reunification in cases where we are genuinely talking about family reunification.
What has this four years done? What good has it brought? What would the new act do to help Canadians? In certain narrow areas it would make things better. In a broad way it would make things worse. While some of the amendments in this grouping would help if they were passed, we know that the government will pass only what it wants. We know that because that is the way things work around here. Should it pass—it has failed before—we will end up with a bill, after all of this, that just simply will not do what it is intended to do.
I would encourage Canadians to listen to members of the governing party when they are talking about what they want from an immigration system and to compare that to what the new act would deliver should this legislation pass. They will find the two just do not match whatsoever. What that means is that government members themselves know that this piece of legislation will not deliver what the government says it should deliver. It certainly will not deliver what the opposition says it should deliver.
I know my time is almost up so I will just leave my comments at that. I look forward to speaking on third reading whenever that may come up. I would not be at all disappointed if it never comes up.