Mr. Speaker, let me begin by complimenting the parliamentary secretary on his commitment to the work of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration and the co-operative spirit he always offers in the committee.
I reiterate the question I asked of the minister during question period regarding what he had said publicly in the newspapers:
—the minister of has said that the Sklarzyk family are queue jumpers, but the fact is that the family has been ordered deported due to a technical error. Meanwhile a suspected assassin, Rudy Pacificador, has been allowed to stay in the country for 14 years and still has not been deported.
Where are the fairness and compassion in her system when it allows a suspected assassin to be treated better than a family who has behaved in an exemplary fashion?
The bad news is that the family was deported back to Poland a couple of weekends ago. My role tonight is not to be their legal advocate. My role is to raise questions about the system and why the system operates the way it does.
First, why do we protect criminals over lawful citizens even though they do not have status as permanent residents but are certainly visitors to this country? Second, why is it that we create these problems for ourselves?
Let us examine the Sklarzyk case. They came here in 1994 with two children who had been born in Poland. The irony is that they came under a visitor's visa, but the fact is their visitor's visa was renewed three times. One would think this would give the Sklarzyks the wrong message about staying around here. After three renewals they disappeared. Ironically they disappeared to start a business and raise another family. They had two more children in this country.
After seven years all of a sudden the government takes an interest in thinking that they should be removed. For what cause? Was it because they were $50 short on their application fee? Their lawyer says they actually paid the application fee twice.
Meanwhile 15,000 people have written warrants for their deportation and we cannot even find them because we do not know where they are. However we knew where the poor Sklarzyk family was. They were in a business and raising their family like other immigrants who have come here for centuries.
Why do we pick on people like the Sklarzyks? Certainly they are a good example of the error we made in encouraging them to stay here. At the same time it shows that this county is not compassionate.
My question for the parliamentary secretary is this: why do we do what we do? It is a poor example to the world when Canada is supposed to be seen as a country that shows compassion.