Mr. Speaker, let me begin my response by saying how important immigration is to Canada. To continually find ways to improve our legislation should be on the top of the list for all of us in the House.
The reason 800,000 people are on lists is because many of those people are no longer alive, or many of them no longer want to come to Canada for different reasons, or many of them were fleeing countries because of economic issues but some of those countries are now in a much better state.
It is not a question of our immigration system not working. Many people want to come to Canada. We need to look at how we are handling application forms. Our current system does not allow us to say no. We have to take all applications as they come in. There are a variety of things that could be done by regulation.
All of us have an interest in seeing our immigration system to be the best that it can be. That is a natural interest for all of us. If that is the case, then why are we trying to sneak reforms into our immigration system through a budget implementation bill? Why is the issue not going to a special legislative committee?
If we do not want Bill C-50 to go to the current citizenship and immigration committee, then we all have to agree to is to send it to a special committee where we could spend a month or six or seven weeks going over it to make sure that it is the best that it can be. Why would we be afraid to debate it?
We have lots of opportunity to work together on this bill, but we cannot do that by sending it as part of a budget bill to the finance committee. It is irresponsible to send it there and expect finance committee members to suddenly become experts on immigration issues. We all know the complexity of the issues in and around immigration. I remind the House how important it is for us to do this right.
If there are going to be reforms, then let us do the reforms. The bill should be sent to committee so we can all work on it together.