Mr. Speaker, the chair of the immigration section of the Canadian Bar Association is quoted in today's Toronto Star as saying this about the amendments proposed in this bill:
We fail to see why these are necessary to achieve the government's aims....The system should be transparent. It shouldn't operate by ministerial fiat. And that's what we're talking about here, a kind of decree system.
Worryingly, the minister is out of ideas and is trying to centralize power in her own office, just like the Prime Minister has done with his cabinet. This is the wrong approach. It is in complete opposition to Canadian values.
One thing is clear. The Conservative approach of shutting the door on immigrants by simply reducing the number of applications the federal government accepts is the wrong way to address the immigration backlog. The minister wants to have the sole power to say who gets--