Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to address the budget once again in the House. I congratulate my colleagues on this side of the House for articulating a number of issues we wanted changed in the budget. In many cases we did not achieve the changes but in any event we brought the issues to the focus of the nation.
I will talk a bit about a number of things that were not provided for in the budget. Tomorrow is the anniversary of the commitment of the Liberal government to a national sex offender registry, a commitment it did not undertake at all. It misled the whole country into believing we would have a national sex offender registry. A motion was placed before the House last May indicating unanimous consent by all opposition parties and the government that we would have a national sex offender registry. It is important for people to know that the government said it would complete a national sex offender registry by January 30, 2002. That is tomorrow.
The disheartening thing about this is that out of frustration with the federal government's failure to work on a national sex offender registry the government of Ontario implemented one of its own. Ontario is the first government with a 90% compliance rate on that. The other 10% consists of people who have left Ontario for other regions. The province almost has a virtual compliance rate. Some charges and convictions will occur for one or two people who have not complied.
Here we go once again with commitments. What does a commitment mean to a government that says it has all these things in the budget and will fix us up? That is not the case at all. The whole national sex offender registry was an important issue to the House last year. We have not said much about it because we thought it would be developed. However the government has reneged on its position.
It takes legislation to implement such a registry. This government has neither drafted legislation nor talked about it in any of its committees. On May 12, knowing full well that all it had to do was lie to the country and to members of parliament and get away with it, that is exactly what the government did. Anyone who believes the things the government puts in the budget will actually happen is not facing reality. The government does not intend to fulfill its promises.
There have been things in the budget about immigration. The country's immigration problems go far beyond what the government is portraying to the people of Canada.
I have been involved with a number of deportations of criminals from Canada. Recently three individuals were a case in point for the failure of the government in its refugee system. One individual I had been trying to get out of the country was ordered removed from Canada on May 25, 1999. The government ordered him removed in 1999. He is still here. Another individual was denied refugee status by the Immigration and Refugee Board on September 25, 2000. He did not exercise his right to appeal but is still here in Canada. Another individual whose case I had been working on was denied refugee status by the Immigration and Refugee Board in Calgary in March 2000. It was his second attempt to get refugee status in Canada. The file has apparently been transferred back to Vancouver for enforcement.
Why do I bring these cases up? The three individuals are unwanted in the country. They have failed in their refugee claims but are still in Canada. I asked the Immigration and Refugee Board for information. I asked what it had done and when it would remove them. The board would not tell me even though I was an intervener in all three cases. The reason the government gives for not telling me about the three individuals is that there is no evidence that disclosure in the public interest outweighs the obligation to respect the privacy of clients. It says disclosure in cases of this nature could set an inappropriate precedent.
What is not mentioned in the budget about immigration and refugee issues is that the government gives much more standing to the privacy of undesirable individuals ordered out of the country than to an intervener's right to know whether they have been removed.
Let us think about that for a minute. I know more about these people than I think they know about themselves. Each of them is undesirable in the country. I have fought the cases by myself in refugee boards. All I get from the bureaucracy is that it cannot tell me what happens after I have fought a case. It can only tell me if someone has failed a claim. It says it cannot tell me if someone has been removed from the country because it would violate the individual's privacy.
I have never heard such an absurd bunch of rubbish in all my life. This is from a country that proposes to look after the security of the nation as one of its highest priorities. It is rubbish. These people should not be in Canada. All the information I have says they are in Canada but the department of immigration will not tell me because it sees it as a violation of the rights of individuals who do not deserve to be in the country anyway.
Not much has been said in the budget about the prison system. I have been speaking about the prison system for nine years to the point where I am getting sick and tired of it. It is boondoggle after boondoggle. It is high time we had a public inquiry about how to fix the system.
I could go on and talk about a litany of errors in the prison system. I will explain a few of them, many of which I have been involved with. They go back from the golf courses at Ferndale prison to bringing in Colin Thatcher's horse to prison so he can ride it. They go into the latest foolish and irresponsible move to satisfy prisoners in Saskatchewan on New Year's Eve by giving them pizza and porno movies. Letting inmates, sex offenders, in a prison in Saskatchewan--