Mr. Speaker, first, the member points out the issue surrounding some of the ministers. If a minister in any other government had performed as abysmally as the Minister of National Defence had by conveniently forgetting or concealing what he knew at that period of time, there would have been a call to cabinet and to the Prime Minister to change the rules to ensure that ministers had to report and inform their cabinet colleagues and the Prime Minister more quickly of these types of things.
Instead, the Prime Minister has said that the rules should be changed to make it easier for ministers to not inform cabinet and the Prime Minister. We seem to be going in the other direction. If we do not want someone saying that a minister has made a mistake we will make it almost impossible to make a mistake. We will lower the bar and then ministers can limbo under the bar. This is really awful.
In terms of the immigration issues, Canadians have significant concerns about the flaws within our immigration system. Those concerns exist along with a sense of genuine pride about the degree to which immigration has helped build this country and the multicultural mosaic of Canada for which we are all so proud. What Canadians want is an immigration system that works again and is not a threat to national security. The immigration policy and the execution of the immigration policy could be addressed in this legislation without reducing civil liberties, rights and freedoms.
What is interesting is that the government claims it wants to protect the civil liberties and rights of people seeking refuge in Canada yet this legislation actually reduces the civil liberties and rights of Canadians.
The government ought to focus on making the existing rules work, enforcing the existing rules and providing the resources necessary to enforce these rules.
If the goal of the legislation is simply to further reduce the role of parliament and strengthen cabinet's grip over power and that of the Prime Minister's over the levers, why does the government not just say so and say that it is further emasculating and disemboweling parliament. Instead, the government sneakily provides this type of legislation and purports to use this sort of legislation to strengthen security measures when we all know at the end of the day that this is another power grab designed to reduce parliament and strengthen the power of cabinet and the Prime Minister's Office.