Debates of May 9th, 2005

*Question No. 126

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as I said before, this has been a very difficult situation. I want to assure the hon. member that we are profoundly respectful of and thankful to the correctional officers for the work they do day in and day out.

We obviously do not want to have a situation where these honourable men and women are working in an environment without a contract. We certainly understand and respect the fact that they need to have some long term assurances that they will have a contract that is reasonable and meets their demands. We have an obligation, too, to make sure that the contract is going to be fair and reasonable to the taxpayer.

I fully believe that this situation can be resolved and resolved quickly. I know for a fact, because I have spoken to the minister responsible, that both groups are coming to the table to work this out diligently. All I can say is that with interventions from my hon. colleague across the way and from others, I think we will be able to encourage both sides to come to a resolution that is going to be workable forthwith.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, back on February 18, I asked a question of the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration around what Canada was doing to assist in the humanitarian project of resettling over 2,000 Vietnamese boat people who remain in the Philippines.

These refugees from the end of the Vietnam war, which was 16 or 17 years ago, have never been resettled to another country. They have no status in the Philippines and they have never been repatriated to Vietnam. A number of countries have taken some measures to resettle some of these folks. Australia, Norway and the United States have made plans to do that.

On February 18, the minister would not commit to participating in this humanitarian project.

There are 2,000 stateless Vietnamese boat people in the Philippines who have no legal rights. They are not allowed to work legally and their children are not allowed to go to school. They are in a very precarious situation there.

Organizations in Canada from the Vietnamese community, like SOSVietPhi and the Vietnamese Canadian Federation, raised this issue with the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration back in February. They also have been organizing in the community. They recently presented a petition with almost 27,000 signatures calling on the Canadian government to assist with this humanitarian project.

I think this shows an amazing adaptation to Canada by members of the Vietnamese community who know the generosity of spirit of Canada. They were beneficiaries of that back when the bulk of them were resettled at the end of the Vietnam war.

I need to acknowledge that the government has taken action since February 18, thanks to the pressure from the Vietnamese community and those of us who have raised the question here in the House and in committee, but more needs to be done.

The government has indicated it is willing to consider admitting up to 200 people who have family in Canada but there are actually around 500 who have relatives in Canada. The Vietnamese Canadian community is willing to do its part in terms of the resettlement but they would like to see a community sponsorship, not just family sponsorship. They would like that to be possible as part of this resettlement effort so the responsibilities can be shared more broadly.

We must also expedite the processing and arrival of these people and get them out of their precarious situation in the Philippines. We also need to expand the definition of the family to include adult married children, aunts, uncles and cousins. This is very important, especially for people who have gone through the dislocation of a major refugee movement and who have faced the death of many of their relatives as part of fleeing from Vietnam.

I would like to ask the government when it is willing to undertake these extra measures to address this humanitarian crisis.

I want to conclude by saying that I am concerned about the government's attitude to the situation of these stateless people. The government said that they were integrated into the community in the Philippines. The former minister actually reported that our mission in the Philippines confirms that, “The Vietnamese community has been integrated into the local community both socially and economically”.

Nothing could be further from reality. These people are stateless and they have no rights in the Philippines. They are not allowed to work. In fact, most of them make a living by being street vendors and are constantly harassed by the authorities because they do not have the legal right to even do that.

We need to move beyond this idea that somehow a stateless person can be integrated into the community to which they fled for some kind of safety. The government needs to address that issue as well.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Deputy Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for raising this important issue and for allowing me to highlight the government's strong commitment to family reunification.

As the hon. member has just indicated, Canada has agreed to accept those, among the 2,000 individuals in question, who can demonstrate they have close family ties in this country, which includes adult children, brothers, sisters, spouses, common law partners and dependent children. Parents and grandparents can already be sponsored as members of the family class, but now their applications will be expedited.

The hon. member will also know that Citizenship and Immigration Canada has worked very closely with SOSVietPhi to finalize a policy that will allow sponsored applicants to become permanent residents of Canada within the next 18 months. Potential sponsors have been asked to forward applications to sponsor their loved ones by December 31, 2005 at the latest.

Some cases may be more difficult than others to process and some applications may be completed faster, so the length of time it takes to get to Canada will vary from one case to the next. The hope is to finish processing all cases by the end of 2006.

The length of undertaking for adult children of a sponsor here in Canada has been set at three years. For everyone else, the length of undertaking is 10 years, which is the same for parents, grandparents and dependent children in some cases.

The Government of Canada believes that of the many newcomers it brings to Canada, families represent both an anchor and a source of strength for the future. They also represent the strongest possible foundation for the health and prosperity of any community or nation.

We therefore need to ensure that the family class remains a vibrant and integral component of Canada's immigration program. This is what we have done in the past and it is what we are doing now.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I think we need a further expansion of the family class. As I mentioned, the folks who have gone through the kind of refugee dislocation that the Vietnamese boat people went through, the people who faced the significant incident of death while they were fleeing from the Philippines, have seen their families and the sort of nuclear family arrangement completely altered, if they even have that kind of definition of family in their culture.

Therefore, we need to expand it even further to include aunts, uncles and cousins and ensure that those people can come to Canada.

Expediting the processing is good, but we are taking years to assist refugees often in getting them out of the precarious and vulnerable situations in which they find themselves. We find that not just with the Vietnamese boat people in the Philippines but with other refugees, the families of refugees who are here in Canada.

We need to move to ensure that the processing times for all those people are reduced significantly so they are removed from situations of vulnerability and danger, where their children's education is disrupted, where the health circumstances are not great and where their personal security is threatened.

We need to do more to expedite the processing of all those kinds of applications.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I have heard it said that Canada should have acted faster to resolve this issue. I would like to point out, however, that neither the international community nor the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees considered the Vietnamese population in the Philippines to be in need of protection through resettlement.

Nevertheless, the Government of Canada recently agreed to help by creating a special family reunification policy under section 25 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act for which approximately 56 Vietnamese and their family members will be eligible to apply. This represents around 200 people.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada has been working very closely with members of the Vietnamese community to identify eligible family members as well as to finalize certain elements of the policy. While the policy has been finalized, there is still a lot of work to do.

We need to determine who is eligible to come to Canada and then verify the relationship with their Canadian or permanent resident sponsor. We also need to verify and ensure that the applicant is admissible on criminality, security and medical grounds. Surely this approach is the most fair, balanced and practical way to proceed.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is fitting that I rise today to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Holland and the role of Canadian veterans. The Canadian veterans still strike a chord of appreciation in the hearts of the Dutch people. On behalf of Canadian veterans and their families, in this debate it should be made absolutely certain that their sacrifices, immortalized in campaigns like the liberation of Holland, are not ignored by the government.

As Canadians who have been following this issue know, originally I brought forward the case of the soldiers who had been injured in the line of duty while serving with Joint Task Force 2, JTF2, Canada's anti-terrorism unit. It is only through efforts such as this that benefits earned are paid to deserving recipients.

As a consequence of the attention that was directed to that issue, I was subsequently contacted by other individuals who, as veterans of the Canadian armed forces, participated in secret experiments or were involved in some other covert operations which should have qualified them for access to veterans' disability and pension benefits. It was with shock that I listened to the representative of the government deny the existence of these veterans who have been refused disability pensions. Even more incredible was when the government went on to say that no individuals had stepped forward with claims.

Canadians have heard this allegation before. For 60 years Canadian veterans from World War II who had been involved in the secret testing of chemical weapons were denied disability pensions for their injuries. The federal government tried to pretend these veterans did not exist.

It is important to quote from the report of former military ombudsman André Marin regarding the 60-year battle of Canadian veterans to receive recognition for injuries obtained as a consequence of being used as human guinea pigs during experiments involving chemical agents. He said:

Delay is no excuse.

There can be no confidence that those eligible applied when they were eligible.The threat of prosecution inhibited some from coming forward, for fear that even a pension application predicated on injuries suffered from experimentation would be an infringement of the Official Secrets Act, leading to years in prison.... It has been close to 60 years since these events, and putting a man on a pension now in the waning years of his life, while he was deprived of that pension for decades, is a paltry response.

Moreover, pensions have been denied to some because of the veil of secrecy shrouding these events. The dearth of dependable information continues to frustrate efforts to use the pension solution. Claims have literally been frustrated by the government's self-inflicted inability to validate those claims, an inability caused by the absence of any timely, official acknowledgement; the absence of lists of test subjects; and the failure, intentional or not, to document the medical files of the soldiers.

After reading the report of the ombudsman on the 60-year wait of World War II veterans to be recognized for their injuries, the Canadian public can understand why the minister of defence has moved to censor the work of the ombudsman as an independent advocate for military personnel. The new ombudsman preferred to resign than be subjected to that level of interference.

Rather than interfering with the work of the military ombudsman, the government should be moving to protect the independence of that office from political interference.

I have received from veterans copies of letters from Liberal ministers basically calling the veterans liars and denying they ever existed. Veterans have stepped forward and the government has refused to listen.

A Canadian veteran of the Korean war wrote to me to share his efforts for recognition and treatment of injuries sustained in the line of duty. In his case the veteran served as special forces with the RCAF when the official position of the federal government is that there were no RCAF in Korea. While the government was denying his presence there, his original papers under theatre of war state “Korea”, and he has the appropriate Korean and UN medals.

Thanks to the pensions versus secrecy conflict, the government maintains it cannot find this individual's appropriate medical records. The government then refers to the centre that was created in 1999, OSISS, as the panacea to all veterans' pension problems. The minister knows that there are statutory and regulatory limitations to what that centre can do. It is misleading to veterans and members of the Canadian public to suggest otherwise.

It is not unusual for the government to be in a state of denial even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It is still in a state of denial over the forgotten victims of hepatitis C.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence]

Mr. Speaker, I have repeatedly said to the member that if there is a single veteran who has come to her attention who has not been taken care of, she should pass that information across to me or to the Minister of Defence and we will deal with it. Otherwise, the individual can call the office for disabled veterans, which we started a few years ago, and it will deal with their issues.

How many people have come forward? How many individuals has that member presented to me or the minister? Exactly zero.

We have to deal with the truth. Let me talk about the truth and the facts about the group she has mentioned.

Back in the 1940s to the 1970s, chemical testing was done on the personnel of the Canadian Forces with their consent, and that is important to know. They knew exactly what they were getting into and they did it with their consent.

In order to compensate those individuals, in 2004 is we set up a program worth $50 million and each individual received $25,000 as an ex gratia payment for the work that they had done.

Of all the claims we have had, we have cleared out 700 of them and those individuals have received that payment. In addition that does not affect the pensions to which they are entitled. This is over and beyond them. It is an ex gratia payment for the work and for the sacrifice they made during that testing between the 1940s and the 1970s.

As I have said to the hon. member across the way, and I have said it to the public, if there are any other people who engaged in the chemical weapons testing and if they have not been dealt with properly or not been dealt with at all, they should let me, as the parliamentary secretary, or the minister know, and the member across the way can do the same. We will deal with their issues. There is no way we want to see these people not dealt with in a fair and honourable fashion. They have given so much to our country. It is our debt that we owe to them.

In response to that, the Minister of Veterans Affairs introduced two weeks ago the biggest change in veterans' benefits packages in the last 40 years. It deals with health care, extended benefits, occupation, employment, help for the disabled if they are employed, help to our veterans, if they are not disabled, for employment and preferential hiring practices in the public service for those veterans.

The average veteran leaving after extended service is 36. That is very young. We want to ensure that those individuals have the tools, the training and the ability to become employed in the future.

That Veterans affairs benefits package, and much of that came from the veterans in my riding of Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, has gone into produce this national package that. A senator who was recently nominated and who was a general said that this package should go through forthwith.

I would urge the hon. member to encourage her colleagues to pass this legislation as quickly as possible for our veterans.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary still does not get it. We are talking about recent soldiers who have been subjected to experimentation. They are so afraid of being subjected to the Official Secrets Act.

The Minister of Health makes outrageous accusations about health care, but when it comes to Ontario Liberal friends who insist on making soldiers and the RCMP pay for medical services they are prohibited to pay or use by the Canada Health Act, the same self-serving minister is silent.

The fact that the Prime Minister's personal doctor operates private clinics means nothing to that government.

Even more unfortunate is when a member of the other place is used to attack the official opposition over the issue of veterans' benefits when it is clear that his political inexperience has been used to allow him to be an unwitting political pawn in the political games that a Prime Minister who dithers on veterans' benefits is only too prepared to play.

In this Year of the Veteran and the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Holland, we owe it to all veterans to provide the very best in medical care our nation has to offer.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we agree on one thing, and that is we owe our veterans the best that we have to offer. That is why I will lay down a challenge to the member who posed the question.

I lay down to her and her party that they pass the Veterans Affairs benefits package that not even her own party could criticize. The benefits package deals with the issues about which she is talking. We have put out the solutions for health care, for extended benefits, for the things our veterans should be receiving. Those are in that package. I beseech the hon. member across the way to pass the legislation for our veterans this week. We owe it to them. They have given so much to our country. Pass that legislation. It is good for Canada. It is good for the veterans.

[The Deputy Speaker]

The motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m. pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).

(The House adjourned at 6:58 p.m.)