Debates of Dec. 11th, 2006

Citizenship and Immigration

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Joliette for his remarks and the generosity of spirit contained in those remarks. I too would put to him a similar sentiment in my riding of Winnipeg Centre which has a large Vietnamese population. In fact, the Saigon Centre is a residential complex that was built in the early 1980s to deal with the influx of people who came with this very group of refugees who were called the “boat people”.

One of my staff, Nguyan Vân, the immigration specialist for my office, comes from that background herself, although she and her family were stranded for two years in Hong Kong after having been boat people from Vietnam and were accepted into Canada as refugees even though they went to that safe third country first. They did not come directly from Vietnam.

I would argue that the only difference between this group of 125 people who remain from the original refugees and Nguyan Vân and her family is the difference between being sidelined or waylaid by two years or twenty years. It makes no difference. This is a job that is incomplete. This is a national project that Canada took on with great pride and with great purpose and it is left undone. There is a lingering element.

I would like to simply say, by way of a comment, that the people of the riding of Winnipeg Centre would welcome and could easily accommodate these 125 people in my riding alone. I would be honoured if we could find a way.

We know the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration has unlimited flexibility. He has discretionary powers that are worrisome sometimes. He could show the flexibility in the definition of refugee and we could open our arms to this remaining 125 people. As I say, the people of my riding would welcome them all. They could easily be accommodated in the riding of Winnipeg Centre.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for his question and comments. I share his sentiments because I was teaching at the Collège de Maisonneuve when that wave of refugees, the boat people, was accepted. At the college I taught many children from these families. From 1978 to 1981, the Vietnamese accounted for one-quarter of the refugees accepted in Canada every year.

It is now 30 years later, but we could very easily have taken them 25 or 30 years ago. It is just playing with words, and as the hon. member said, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration has the power under subsection 25(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to grant permanent residency on humanitarian grounds. According to this subsection, the minister:

may grant … permanent resident status or an exemption from any applicable criteria or obligation of this Act if the Minister is of the opinion that it is justified by humanitarian and compassionate considerations.

It seems to me that we have a case here that should not even need debating. Once again, I hope that the House will give unanimous consent and pass this motion.

[Penny Priddy, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, could the member shed some personal experience on the issue that we are discussing?

Many of the people in my community of Surrey who came here from Vietnam are the economic drivers in our community. They own restaurants, hair styling parlours and make investments in the community.

When people say that governments are inflexible, this is a perfect example of what makes people say it is inflexible. People can see this and understand these people who have been disenfranchised for so long.

I heard the government member say that the government did not have the resources. I wonder if the member could comment on, in his experience with the people from Vietnam, whether it would take great resources to bring those people to this country.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for her question.

We in Quebec have very strong ties with the Vietnamese community. I think that this was mentioned a little while ago.

Indochina was a French colony and some Vietnamese in the older generations still spoke French. In addition, many of the Vietnamese who settled here after the boat people tragedy integrated extremely well into Quebec society with its common language of French because they already had these roots. Vietnam is also in the international Francophonie.

I think, therefore, that we have an ideal opportunity here from all points of view to solve a humanitarian problem that has been dragging on, unfortunately, for far too long.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, Canada is a very big country and if we were to accept 1% of immigrants and refugees into our country, it could be as many as 330,000 people. This year the Conservative government set a target of only 260,000. In the mind the hon. member, I want to know whether, in a country so large, he sees any problem accepting 125 Vietnamese refugees who have been stateless for over 16 years.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for her question. We have indeed seen in the past that these Quebeckers and Canadians of Vietnamese origin integrate very easily into a society that welcomes them. They make a great contribution. That is very obvious.

As I was saying, I had an opportunity to teach some of the children of the boat people. They managed to adapt very quickly. In this regard, therefore, they were far from a burden on Canadian and Quebec society. It would actually be enriching to have them and this would simply be the completion of the openness that Canada and Quebec showed nearly 20 years ago now.

Let us just do it and get on with other tragedies. There are too many of them, unfortunately, in this world.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Acadie—Bathurst, Employment Insurance; the hon. member for Trinity—Spadina, Citizenship and Immigration.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in joining this debate, I would like to respond to the member for Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock who spoke for the government.

Having been on the citizenship and immigration committee since 1998, I recognize speeches written by bureaucrats, who are exactly the people who wrote that speech. I refused to give some of those speeches when I was parliamentary secretary to the minister of citizenship immigration because I believed that as a member of Parliament I had an obligation to the House, as well as to my constituents, the country and my fellow members of Parliament.

The member made the comment that it was disingenuous for people on this side to criticize the government because we were in government before. The record will show that in previous Parliaments when the Liberals were in government, we supported settling this question about the Vietnamese boat people. I might also say to the member that the Conservatives also supported it.

When the bureaucrats came to the committee, Daniel Jean spoke to the committee and said that the government would try to deal with this. I remember the critic, the hon. member for Calgary—Nose Hill, saying the following:

Thank you, gentlemen, for your information to the committee.

The committee is pleased, I believe it's fair to say, with this reversal by the government of their long-standing objection to resettling these Vietnamese who were without status in the Philippines. However, the devil is always in the details, isn't it?

We are finding out that is the case. The point I want to make is that the Conservative members of the committee supported it, as did the Liberals, the New Democrats and the Bloc. There was general support in the committee to make this happen.

I have another issue I want to focus on. We often talk about cooperating with our allies or other folks to make things happen. We started off with 2,000 people who needed to be resettled. Australia, a smaller country than ours, took in 256 people. Our allies to the south took many more. The United Kingdom took some and Norway resettled some.

We are talking about a relatively small number but the significance of it is huge. It is huge because we would get to wrap up the adventure we began back in 1975 when we dealt with the Vietnamese boat people, as well as people from Cambodia and the Laotians. Canada did a very admirable job. It took in over 20% of all the Vietnamese boat people, Cambodians and Laotians who needed to be resettled. This is an opportunity for us to wrap it up. We are talking about 125 plus 27 who were born in the Philippines and who have a mixed heritage of Philippine and Vietnamese.

I have been here since 1998 and the only consistent thing has been the department's opposition to some of these issues.

The situation is fairly simple. The minister has all the power to make this happen. It does not take a lot. He can sign off on it very quickly. He could go through the criminality and health checks to satisfy himself that these people would meet those criteria. All it takes is a little political will.

Unfortunately, and this I find has been a problem, immigration and citizenship is not a big priority for the government. It had a very able candidate for the position in the member for Calgary—Nose Hill, who was their critic. She understood the department. The Conservatives also had a number of members, such as the member from Edmonton, who served on the committee for a long period of time. They had expertise to put in the position as minister.

The Prime Minister chose not to do that. He picked a member who had absolutely no exposure to citizenship and immigration issues. He may be a fine member, but he was put in charge of a department without any prior experience in the portfolio. The same thing is true for the position of parliamentary secretary.

We have the Prime Minister appointing people to the position of minister and parliamentary secretary, people who have no previous experience in the department. Why would the Prime Minister not give priority to something as important as citizenship and immigration, which affects so many Canadians in the country?

I want to get back to the 152 people about whom we are talking. There is absolutely no excuse. If the government had not changed the members of the government on the committee, the committee would not be parroting the line handed to them by the bureaucrats or by their whip. They would be still pushing to resettle this group of people, where we only have 152 people left out of a group of about 2,000.

Let me get back to the previous Liberal government when it dealt with this issue. I mentioned that the committee members, and the member for Burnaby—Douglas will know this, oftentimes did not go the way that the parliamentary secretary would have gone or the government might have wanted to go. The members on the committee used their best judgment upon hearing the evidence, keeping in mind they were parliamentarians. When we sit on committees, it is our job to hold the bureaucracy accountable as well as the government.

This is one area where I am sad to say the Conservative government has really been failing. If we check the minutes of the committee meetings and if we look at the voting pattern of the members on the government side, it is unanimously one position. We can tell this by the way the parliamentary secretary votes.

In the previous Parliament, when the Liberals were in government, the parliamentary secretary did not dominate the committee in terms of speaking time. The time then was shared by all the members. Now we have a parliamentary secretary who essentially dominates the speaking time on behalf of the government. Instead of allowing committees to work, we have a situation where the government line is put out and pushed. This inhibits the committee from doing its job either holding the government or the bureaucracy accountable. That is unfortunate.

The Vietnamese Canadian community is a very viable one in Canada. One of the real pleasures one gets being in committee is hearing presentations from Canadians from across the country. We all have members of the Vietnamese Canadian community in our ridings. My colleague from Winnipeg said that he would like to have them all go to his riding.

When we travelled across the country and talked on the issue of immigration and citizenship, one of the things we heard, universally, was that we needed more immigrants. When we were in the Maritimes, we heard that undocumented workers seemed to be a problem to the government, that it was trying to get rid of them on a daily basis. They wanted them to relocate there because they were desperate for people to settle in their communities. Canadians have recognized that immigration population growth leads to more economic activity and prosperity. This has not been happening.

As I mentioned, we have a very viable Vietnamese community. I hope it keeps pushing this issue in the communities. Governments being unresponsive and making decisions of this type have to be held accountable.

When I came here in 1993 as a new member of Parliament, I sat on the government side of the House and Reform Party members sat on the other side. They said that they came here because they wanted to do what was right by their constituents. They said that they wanted to vote the way their constituents instructed them to vote. Sadly, that bit of innovation has disappeared. We now have the Conservative Party and members vote the way they are told. If they dare vote their conscience, or for that matter vote as instructed by their constituents, they quickly find themselves out the door. I think the public is fast becoming aware of this flip-flop.

The reality is we are dealing with a small issue here. We are talking about 152 people and wrapping up the whole Vietnam boat experience, which was a traumatic event in many of our lives. We could also give closure to those Canadians of Vietnamese background who went through that experience. They see that the people in the Philippines are suffering. They are stateless and cannot settle anywhere. They are often harassed by the police. They are shaken down for bribes.

For the psychological well-being of our Vietnamese Canadian community, we need to wrap this up. We need to do our part with the United States, the United Kingdom, Norway and Australia. Right now we are not doing that. It will not take any great deal of work on the part of the government to make this happen. The minister could very easily sign one piece of paper saying we want these people. This is exactly what we should be doing. We should be wrapping this up if we want to maintain our reputation.

In 1975 we did great work with the boat people and the Vietnamese community. We did it because the Canadian public in many ways demanded that we do it. About this time 50 years ago, the Hungarian revolution wound down and people were displaced. They went to Austria. It was the reaction of Canadians that drove the government to action.

We have to recapture the spirit of those times because, ultimately, not that many things have to divide us when it comes to humanitarian activity. I think we would find overwhelming consensus across the country that people would want to see this chapter closed, that they would want those people to be given an opportunity to come to Canada and, as I said, close the book on that chapter. It would not take very much at all.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the member opposite and his plea on behalf of refugees. From personal experience from the seventies, we worked personally with dozens of refugees who came to Canada at that time. Many church groups sponsored these refugees and cared for their needs. I had the privilege of caring for many of the dental needs that presented themselves at that time. Canada is a generous country and Canadians are generous people. I think we all want to see refugees looked after.

A couple of questions were raised as the member spoke, and I wonder if he could address them.

First, he says there are 152 people. That seems like a small enough number that we could easily absorb. During the time the member's government was in office, why did the minister not finish the job and get it done, as he said?

Second, how many applications have been received for private sponsorships of these people, those who we are discussing today?

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my understanding is there are always more people ready to provide private sponsorships than there are refugees who are allowed into the country. This has been a problem over the years. The community said that they would come forward and they would deal with the sponsorship on those.

I am glad that the member asked that question because we really have to push the government, and he is in the governing party, to ensure that we meet the numbers. We only do about half of what we could in terms of the number of sponsorship groups out there.

The other issue is about the previous government starting on it, but it not finishing it. However, if we were still government, our members would be pushing very hard to ensure that was done.

The member should go forward in caucus, raise this issue and try to push the minister and the Prime Minister by saying this is something that he would like to wrap up. Hopefully that will happen. I know the member was involved in this whole movement on the Vietnamese refugees, as were all the communities. It would be nice if we could wrap this up, make it happen and win one for the refugees instead of the bureaucrats.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is worth noting that we are not having some academic exercise here. If the will of Parliament means anything, as of tomorrow, we will have a vote on this issue. I predict, given the speeches I have heard, that the majority of the members of Parliament present will approve these 125 people, that they will be deemed or classed whatever is necessary for our refugee laws and rules to apply to them and be welcomed into our country. It would be a wonderful thing, as we enter into this holiday season. What better expression of goodwill could there be than for us to tap into the spirit of generosity that led to our acceptance of the original waves early on and to conclude that sentiment by finishing the job with this 125 remaining people?

My only comment is, and I think my colleague will agree, the members of the government side said that they were already doing a great deal for refugees in welcoming roughly 35,000 this year. Would my colleague from Kitchener agree that the vast majority of those are not really refugees from camps? The vast majority are those who find their way to our shores one way or another, free of persecution. They come here in a way that is not managed in any meaningful way. We only get about 8,000 to 10,000 per year who are languishing in refugee camps and waiting their turn to be welcomed into the welcoming countries.

Would my colleague agree that we are doing very little in actual managed intake of refugees internationally and that this 125 would not push us over some threshold of what we could tolerate?

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Certainly, Mr. Speaker, I agree with the member that we can do that, and we can do a lot more. One of the problems we have, and which we do not talk about when we talk about refugees and immigration, is that we are not doing it just to be charitable or just to be nice. The fact of the matter is that immigration is the economic lifeblood of this country. It has been in the past and it helped build the country, and it is going to continue to be in the future.

I see a time when we will not be getting all the numbers that we think we can because we are in competition with other countries. We are going to find out that some of the practices we now have will impair our future ability to meet targets. We are going to lose out to other countries, particularly for the ones we really go after, because those other countries do a much better job of attracting immigrants.

The fact of the matter is that refugees contribute to this country. These folks could be absorbed very quickly into the economy. It just does not make any sense in terms of the amount of time we have spent debating this issue. We should have made it happen a long time ago, but this is an opportunity, and I hope the government listens.

As for the 152 people, I love the comparison to the Christmas season. I think it would be a wonderful gift, wrapping up this story of the Vietnamese boat people and giving a real present to the Vietnamese Canadian community in terms of a victory that they so richly deserve, and we would all win.

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, there have been discussions among all the parties and I think if you seek it you would find unanimous consent for the following motion:

That, when debate ends on the motion currently being debated, that is, concurrence in the sixth report of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, the question be deemed put and the vote deferred to tomorrow, Tuesday, December 12, after oral questions.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The House has heard the terms of the motion. Is the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

(Motion agreed to)

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to return for just a moment to a point that was made earlier in terms of the 152 people to whom we would like to open our borders. Certainly my heart says yes, we should open our border, but considering that the member was sort of denigrating the officials in the department for having a stand on some of these issues, someone needs to make an evaluation as to whether or not these people are refugees. The UN High Commissioner has indicated that these people are not facing persecution or many of the factors that qualify people for refugee status.

Is the hon. member prepared to look into the eyes of those people who are not going to be allowed to come in and who are currently experiencing persecution? We know there is a large waiting list, and we are not even able to meet that at this point. Could the member respond to that?

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. member is talking about an artificial number in terms of the number of refugees we accept. We can accept a lot more than we are accepting. There are tens of thousands of variants that can happen within our immigration package, in our total numbers. It is the same as the situation with the refugee numbers.

I thought it was unfair of the member previously in trying to compare the misery of various groups. I am essentially saying that really it would cost us very little. We could do it very quickly, and very quickly the refugees would be contributing to the Canadian economy, making our communities stronger economically and socially.

However, I really have a problem when we start comparing misery over here with misery over there. The fact of the matter is that the problem has been solved to a large extent. There were 2,000 to start with. That number is down to 150. Other countries did their part. This gives us an opportunity to do our part, close the chapter on that particular experience and continue to work with the refugees we can take in.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to advise you that I will be sharing my time with the member for Trinity—Spadina.

If I may take a moment to be personal about this issue, it was in 1979 when my mother was the mayor of Ottawa that she engaged with our community here in Ottawa to seek to have the number of Vietnamese refugees in Ottawa increased from what was a paltry number to 4,000. Just to give members an indication, at that time, the number Canada had identified for Vietnamese boat people refugees was 8,000. She said she thought Ottawa could take at least 4,000 and she engaged with this community to do just that.

It was quite a time. I was a teenager living at home. It was a very interesting time. Our phone number was listed in the public directory and not everyone saw this as a positive idea at the time. In fact, I remember picking up the phone numerous times when people were giving feedback to my mother and saying that they did not think it was a good idea. They thought those people would take jobs away from others. They thought they did not deserve to be here, et cetera.

However, our community rose above that. At the time, the debate was about how many we could take. As my mother will say to anyone who tells her that this was an amazing thing she did, she will say, very simply, “No, I didn't do it. The community here in Ottawa did”.

What happened was that in the spring of 1979 my mother and father were in a small town outside Ottawa for meetings. It was awful weather and they spent the evening watching TV and seeing the absolute horror that many of these boat people were suffering, subject to pirates on the sea and living in absolute vulnerability of the worst kind. My mother and father, having a long history of working for social justice in the Catholic church, looked at each other and said, “There is something we have to do. What can we do?” Upon their return, they phoned various friends in the community and in faith communities and said that they thought they could organize something to open up our community to the Vietnamese.

That is what happened. When we travel down Bank Street today we find ourselves at Frank Clair Stadium at Lansdowne Park. My mother and father opened it up and invited all the members of the community to come in, sign up and sponsor the Vietnamese. That is exactly what happened. Within hours, the people of Ottawa filled that quota.

A very interesting thing happened. Once my mother had gone forward to the media with the challenge that Ottawa was providing to the federal government, she got a call the very next day from the mayor of Calgary, who said that Calgary could do better than that and would take 5,000. This kind of thing went on right across the country. What happened in the end was that we went from having planned to have 8,000 Vietnamese to having 50,000 within a matter of weeks

The government of the day was a Conservative government. That bears repeating because what we have in front of us today is a simple challenge to honour the history of all of those Canadians who opened up their doors, their hearts and their minds to the Vietnamese at the time and said, “We welcome you”.

All we are asking today is that we finish that and that the 152 people who right now are languishing in the Philippines are going to be welcome in this country. That is all we are asking. They are refugees. They did not go to the Philippines because they were on holidays. They went to the Philippines because they were leaving a war-torn country. They were left on the sea.

I do not accept and Canadians do not accept this semantic debate around whether they are refugees or not. They left their country because they are refugees. Those members did not accept that when they were on committee. That party did not accept it then. They should not accept it now. We must honour the lives and the memories of those people and the people living in Canada who opened up their doors, their minds and their hearts.

When we look at this motion, we see that it is very simple. It asks that we do what the United States, Australia and Norway have done, and simply open our doors, our minds and our hearts for 125 people. It does not mean that we are going to change the manner in which all refugees are looked at. It simply means that we acknowledge there is a nuance here. That is exactly what the Americans did. That is exactly what the people of Australia did through their government. That is exactly what Norway did.

Friends of mine from the Vietnamese community, such as Mr. Can Le, a pioneer in helping people come to Ottawa, often ask me what happened in Parliament today and what the members and the government say when we ask that 152 people come here from the Philippines to finish off what we started in this community. Mr. Can Le was here as a Vietnamese refugee, but came earlier, as an immigrant, and opened his door to his fellow Vietnamese.

When he asks me what we did here, I want to say to him that we voted unanimously to pass this motion to make sure that the end of this piece of history is not regarded in dismay because we were not imaginative enough to do something about it. I want us to be able to say that we rose to the occasion just like we did in 1979 in this community and this country and we showed the world what we are all about. I encourage all members to pass this motion and to do it unanimously.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Ottawa Centre for putting the argument so clearly before the House of Commons. I would ask him to elaborate somewhat on a point made by my colleague from Kitchener—Waterloo in saying that we are not asking Canada for any great sacrifice here. In fact, it is to our benefit when people choose to come to Canada. We rarely meet our immigration quotas. We fall short of even our own immigration targets. I should use the word “targets“, not quotas. We want 1% or 310,000 per year. That would be optimal. We rarely get 250,000 newcomers to Canada.

I know the answer for my own riding of Winnipeg Centre: I would welcome those 125 or 152 Vietnamese all coming to my riding. Could he see the economic benefit of perhaps a share of them going to Ottawa Centre as well?

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, a little competition is a good thing. I would want to take all 152, but I am willing to share and I may see the member halfway. In terms of the economic viability of my community of Ottawa Centre if the Vietnamese refugees had not come here, my riding, the community of Ottawa Centre, and centretown would be less well off. If we were to tour Somerset Street and in and around that community, we would find people who have created their own small businesses. We would find people who are presently working in the public service, making sure that we have decent and very well supported public services. We will have to take a tour of that area soon.

Not only is this proposal something that will benefit and enhance our community, it is indeed something that has already been done. It is a proven project. That is why I cannot understand why we would not continue on. I know that to a person the members of the Vietnamese community would welcome the 152 people, so it is not a question of whether there is a place for them to go or of resources that are needed. The resources are here: they are the citizens within our country.

[John Baird, Conservative, President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the speech by the member for Ottawa Centre. I want to echo it, in that the immigration from Vietnam to the region of Ottawa-Carleton, as it was then, has been a great benefit to this country. It is something that has affected the face of this country.

What made the Vietnamese immigration so positive was the great community effort, whether it was church groups, businesses or service clubs that would take in families. One member of the club or the church would help the kids get settled in school. Another would help get the families set up in an apartment. Another would help get the parents enrolled in English as a second language training. It took that great community support to come together. The member's mother, then the mayor of Ottawa, Marion Dewar, had a lot to do with that.

What we have to do with our immigration settlement is try to provide seed money in support so we can have more of that. One of the things in which Ontario has been disadvantaged is that we have not had our fair share of immigration settlement dollars. I was very pleased to see that in the budget this year a government has finally, instead of talking about it, begun to establish some fairness. Hopefully we will see much better settlement of immigrants in the province of Ontario, immigrants who can enjoy what immigrants in other provinces have.

That was a good speech by the member for Ottawa Centre.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I wish we would have seen the money from the present budget. I understand there is a bit of a logjam between the two levels of government. Moreover, I think the experience of my mother, Marion Dewar, with the Vietnamese boat people suggests that we need to never ever take our eyes off the details and the importance of supporting those agencies which quite frankly, we get for next to nothing in terms of the money we put in and what we get back.

Finally, I am encouraged to hear my colleague's comments. I hope that he supports the motion that will be put in front of the House tomorrow. It would be a wonderful thing to see unanimity on this motion.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in my riding of Trinity--Spadina we are home to thousands of immigrants and refugees, people who have come from around the world to contribute to Canada and make this country a better place. Among the refugees, now citizens of Canada, are some of the original Vietnamese boat people who began coming here 25 years ago when Canada opened its doors.

In fact, I have a long history with them. I was a fine arts student and did not really know much about going to rallies, petitioning or anything. In 1979 there was a member of Parliament, Dan Heap, who with a group of people organized a big demonstration in a park in Toronto's Chinatown. It was pouring rain. It was my first political demonstration to ask the Canadian government to accept these Vietnamese boat people.

I certainly had my start in political life by working with Vietnamese boat people. After I graduated I became a counsellor assisting some of these refugees to settle in Canada. It was not a hard job at all because they settled very easily.

I was extremely proud at that time. Canada's first foreign minister, who happened to be a woman at that time, was Flora MacDonald, a great Canadian humanitarian. Joe Clark was the prime minister of a minority government. We as Canadians had the courage to accept a large number of Vietnamese refugees.

How ashamed Joe Clark must be today of the Conservative minority government that abandoned the progressive name and the progressive principles that Flora MacDonald stood for. How ashamed they must be of the current Conservative foreign minister who was the last leader of the Progressive Conservative Party. I believe that it is a betrayal of a proud Canadian legacy.

Many years ago Canada proudly accepted Vietnamese boat people, or a great number of them, and it was a great act of humanitarianism. Those boat people have been grateful to Canada. In downtown Trinity-Spadina many businesses have been created by them. It is a vibrant community because of these immigrants. After Joe Clark's minority government, Liberal majorities and then Conservative majorities started to betray these principles. Instead of aspiring to greatness, we became gradually small minded. Instead of throwing open our doors to the world, we began to close them and we began narrow selections of smaller numbers of immigrants.

Under all of these successive Liberal governments our immigration and refugee system was neglected and it started failing Canada. It is failing us on economic grounds and it is failing us on humanitarian grounds.

However, we now have a chance to live up to our obligation to the last remaining boat people, to make good on that promise in which Canadians rejoiced in over 25 years ago. We had the support of all parties in the House, but the former Liberal government did not manage to take in the 500 people. It only took in a small number. Now the Conservative government seems to be hiding behind technicalities. It is defining refugees narrowly and indicating that because people put their lives on hold for close to a generation that they no longer qualify.

These people are stateless and have no rights. They had the expectation that Canada was serious when we opened our doors. They are now disappointed and over the last 16 years some of them have married Filipino spouses. The official argument was that these people would be able to apply for legal status in the Philippines. Thus, they would not be considered stateless, but under the Filipino law, the refugees came to the Philippines illegally and therefore would not be eligible for legal residents.

Therefore, these unfortunate people are caught between the laws of two countries. Some ask, why did these Vietnamese not return to their country of origin once they discovered it was so difficult to settle anywhere else?

Some would argue that refugees from other parts of the world also suffer and ask what makes these Vietnamese refugees so special. My question is, when did we start taking our shared sense of humanity so low? Instead of offering a helping hand, we start questioning which set of refugees suffer more than others and pondering why they did not return to where they came from. These people obviously left their country, leaving their belongings and families behind. They risked their lives and everything they had when they left their own country and some people say they were not really refugees.

It is easy for us, who live comfortably in Canada, to debate about the fate of these refugees and whether they are refugees or not. It is their lives we are talking about. It could be the lives of our forefathers and foremothers. They have survived all this time and still remain hopeful that somehow someone will hear their cries.

I believe that we absolutely have to take action. We have to find a way to bring these people to our country. Where is the national pride in denying the remaining boat people a home here? Where is the national pride in this pettiness of the definition? Surely it is time for Canada to show leadership as a great and good country, or is the current government more intent on spending money on military missions that may end up creating a whole new generation of refugees?

Let us keep our priorities straight. Let us hope that the House is unanimous in supporting this motion allowing the government to act positively.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague, the member for Trinity—Spadina, for recognizing the former member for her riding, Mr. Dan Heap, an NDP colleague who one could certainly count on to be at the front of this national issue.

The 1979 treatment of the Vietnamese boat people refugee crisis was probably a picture of Canada at its finest. It was one of its proudest moments in the way that my colleague, the member for Ottawa Centre, outlined how it became almost a competition between cities as to which could be more generous in the best possible spirit of international responsibility.

In the context of how we should view this opportunity and not as a nuisance or act of charity, there is great competition for immigration numbers around the world. We rarely meet our targets for immigration. Other countries know as well that immigration, being an engine for economic growth, is a net plus for all of us.

I have a question for the hon. member for Trinity—Spadina. Could we not encourage the government to see that this is not a nuisance and not charity? There is an enlightened self-interest associated with having 150 new easily integrated hard-working immigrants who would benefit our communities.