Debates of April 3rd, 2008

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-50, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 26, 2008 and to enact provisions to preserve the fiscal plan set out in that budget, be read the second time and referred to a committee, and of the amendment.

Budget Implementation Act, 2008

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, things have quietened down a bit now and I am happy to participate and offer my comments on Bill C-50, the budget implementation bill.

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Pickering—Scarborough East.

Imitation is often mentioned as the highest form of flattery, so Canadians are now experiencing a strange sense of déjà vu with the minority Conservative government's 2008 budget.

It seems that the Conservatives lack any ideas of their own and instead have decided to present a watered down version of our Liberal policies.

Perhaps if the finance minister was not so busy bashing his home province and my home province of Ontario, he would have had more time to come up with more original policies, some of his own policies, rather than recycling ours and trying to pass them off as new policies.

Some of the many excellent Liberal initiatives that the finance minister repackaged are: making the gas tax transfer permanent, as we had committed to in February 2007; providing direct support to the auto sector, as we called for in January 2008; creating jobs and improving public transit through additional investments in infrastructure, as we called for in February 2008; providing funding to hire more police, as we committed to in March 2007; reversing some of the Conservatives previous cuts to university granting councils and the indirect costs of research programs, which would have grown substantially under the Liberal economic update of 2005; replacing some of the funding from the Liberal 2005 update for student grants; and modernizing the Canada student loans program.

That is quite a list of Liberal accomplishments. I could go on further with more Liberal achievements and more of our exceptional policies, but I will go back to minority Conservative government's budget implementation bill.

I am glad the Conservatives really and truly appreciated those policies and those ideas that we had and went forward to implement them because they could see they were very good policies as well.

I certainly would have preferred it if the Conservatives had not already spent the cupboard bare with their previous budgets and fall economic and fiscal updates, leaving a razor thin surplus to protect Canada's economy should it continue to falter.

The next six months will be very important in Canada's economy and we can only hope that Canada will come through this without finding ourselves back in a deficit position again.

All the Conservatives are looking for is a boost in their poll numbers, continuing to demonstrate to Canadians what their priorities are. By focusing on the election that it is so desperate for, the government has again showed its incredible shortsightedness and total lack of ability to build our great nation.

Everything is built on polls and more polls. There is no planning for next week because everything is being done on the fly. The Conservatives have wasted a major opportunity to address Canada's infrastructure deficit by not acting on the Liberal proposal to use $7 billion of this year's debt paydown to fund infrastructure projects across the country. The investment of that $7 billion in infrastructure across Canada could clearly have protected us against what many of us fear is a possible recession here in Canada.

Nevertheless, we did not vote against this budget as there was nothing in the budget that warrants an election that Canadians clearly do not want, particularly at such a difficult time for the Canadian economy.

People that I speak to tell us to be patient and give it more time and that they are watching what everybody is doing. Clearly the polls are showing that because frankly nobody is going up and nobody is going down.

However, now that the minority Conservative government has very sneakily slipped legislative changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act into the budget implementation bill, it really gives us cause for concern.

These changes would give the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration unilateral authority to determine priorities for the processing of immigration application requests. These measures could potentially reduce the number of new immigration applications that the federal government accepts each year, particularly in the number of family class applications.

All of us need to be concerned about family reunification, as well as the whole issue of filling the needs through our skilled trades and economic requirements.

We have never seen any compassion from the government and I am certainly not expecting it to start now by exercising humanitarian and compassionate grounds on any application, but I am also appalled at the Conservative approach of shutting the door on immigrants by simply reducing the number of applications the federal government accepts.

Does it really think this is an appropriate way to address the immigration inventory? This bill puts far too much discretionary power into the hands of the minister to cherry-pick the type immigrants that the Conservative Party would like to enter Canada.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada's mission is to build a stronger Canada. Let me read the mission statement for Citizenship and Immigration Canada. It states:

Developing and implementing policies, programs and services that:

Facilitate the arrival of persons and their integration to Canada in a way that maximizes their contribution to the country while protecting the health, safety and security of Canadians;

Maintain Canada’s humanitarian tradition by protecting refugees and persons in need of protection; and

Enhance the values and promote the rights and responsibilities of Canadian citizenship.

That is a very important mission statement and I am not sure the minister has had time to read that herself. Perhaps the immigration minister should take a few minutes to try to familiarize herself with that because the mission statement very much clarifies and illustrates exactly what Canada is all about.

Possibly she is too busy selecting what immigrant she is going to fast track as she moves forward or perhaps she shares the view of the Prime Minister when he wrote in the 1988 Reform Party platform that immigration should not “radically or suddenly alter the ethnic makeup of Canada”.

Using the budget implementation bill is an outrageous way to deliver promises made by the Reform Party 20 years ago. Immigration reforms should simply not be buried in a budget implementation bill.

If the government wants to table these changes, it should put them forward as a separate piece of legislation that can be studied by the appropriate House of Commons standing committee, as any other critical piece of legislation would be.

If Parliament is to work effectively for all Canadians, regardless of the fact that we are in a minority situation, we must have a full and honest debate on all critical issues, certainly including immigration reform.

I consider immigration to be critically important. It is a part of moving Canada forward. It is very important that we have an immigration system in Canada that will help to build our country in a positive way. I believe that requires all of us, not in a partisan approach, to sit down in a committee, maybe a special legislative committee if the government does not want to send it to the current citizenship and immigration committee. We need to have an opportunity to fully debate the reforms that the minister is talking about.

There are areas that I am sure we would all agree on to move forward and there are other areas that possibly we would not but on something as important as immigration in Canada, I do not believe we should be doing it while it is buried in a budget bill.

It has been suggested that we are having a debate today but it is not. We are dealing with a budget implementation bill. We need to spend many hours going over exactly what it is the minister wants to achieve. It should be done in a non-partisan manner at either a special legislative committee or in some other manner, where people with experience in dealing with immigration files could come forward. We could work together to bring forward some reforms to the immigration bill that would benefit all Canadians and not simply be done in a partisan manner in a budget implementation bill.

That is not the way we do things in Canada. I do not believe it is the way that we can build a country any more than I believe we should be pitting one province against another. I continue to see the politics of division happening across the way by the government. It is pitting communities against each other and provinces against each other. That is not the way to build a nation.

While the government is so busy throwing the “nation” word around, clearly that is not how to build a country. I call on the government to work much more cooperatively with us as we try to move our great country forward.

Many other issues were mentioned earlier, things that Liberals are concerned about. Picking and choosing who comes to Canada is not the Canadian way, nor is it the way that we should be moving things forward.

I want to thank the House for allowing me the opportunity to comment on Bill C-50. There are many issues in the legislation, but the immigration one concerns us on this side of the House a lot as we move forward to build a strong country together.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member for her comments with respect to some of the statements that were made by the deputy leader of the Liberal Party, the member for Etobicoke—Lakeshore. He said that when it comes to immigration, his party did not get it done. The Liberals had 13 years in government with six immigration ministers. The member herself was a minister.

The member for Etobicoke Centre said on September 14, 2004, during a CBC interview:

I'm almost reaching the point where I believe that our whole immigration system has become dysfunctional. That in fact it's at the point of being broken.

The member herself indicated that it does not make sense for us to be continually taking names when the reality is that we need to change the system, make it more flexible, more responsible.

Does she not agree that change is necessary because the system was not working the way it had been structured under the previous 13 years? Does she not agree that it requires a legislative change? This bill will go to committee and she can add her thoughts to it then. The total portion of the amendment is about two pages and is not difficult to understand.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

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.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, does that mean you are going to vote against the bill because all these issues are that important? We are proposing an amendment that would take all of that out, so are you going to vote with us and against the government's bill? Is that what the Liberals are going to do?

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

The hon. member for Outremont knows that the Speaker cannot vote. I cannot imagine that he was addressing his comment to me. I think he meant to address the hon. member for York West. The next time, of course, he will direct his remarks through the chair. I cannot vote.

The hon. member for York West.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this is an extremely important issue and it is not one that we should be pushing politics and trying to play games with.

If the NDP members really cared about the country they would be working with everyone to try to make things change and make some improvements. All they are interested in is trying to do showcasing and trying to shame and push people around.

We on this side of the House will do what we need to do when the time is right and when it is in the best interest of Canada.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for York West for her extremely important and enlightening comments in her capacity as former minister of immigration and a very diligent member of Parliament on this file. She continues to remind us that it is extremely important for us to declare to Canadians why these changes are being made on the fly through a legislative piece that was brought back as a ways and means motion, a motion that I would suggest really is about covering the Conservative agenda with respect to important legislation.

Mr. Speaker, it is critical that you be in the chair today because I am on my feet not only because of this bill but because of what the bill is attempting to do.

The will of the House of Commons was expressed very clearly on March 5 of this year. This was after a ruling that you, Mr. Speaker, made some two years ago, but which was obviously lost on Conservative members, including the Minister of Finance. He assumed that once a bill was votable that it might have an impact with respect to lessening of tax that he should not consider this, not just once but in two separate budgets. He completely and utterly ignored and threw away prudent fiscal understanding of the implications of various bills which should have been routine and instead worked with several other people to try to suggest that my bill, Bill C-253, which would give a chance for families to save in a very real way, to save for post-secondary education, by making RESPs income tax deductible and completely forgot the principle of the importance of a decision made by the House.

The bill is nowhere near dead. As we know, the bill is before the other House and is now at second reading there. I hope it is given the equal consideration and time it takes to have an important piece of legislation passed.

It seems to me that when we are talking about the future of this country we may have differences of opinions as to how this country ought to be led and how it ought to be managed but the one thing we cannot disagree with are some of the imperatives.

Students face an incredible amount of debt. Over 50% of students right now face incredible crippling debts as they leave post-secondary education, long before they are able to pay any type of debt down. It is difficult enough for them to try to find a job.

In 10 years from now we know that the average cost of education, with four years in residence, will be $100,000. Given the average income of families, I do not see how it will be possible under the current regime to have a situation where so many people will not have access to the skills that come with higher education and the training that the global economy demands in order for Canada to remain competitive. It is a reality that we all as members of Parliament agree with.

I have spoken to several members of the Conservative Party who over the years supported this bill. Dare I say that they probably voted against the bill at the final reading, although the will of the House was expressed in much greater numbers, because they were jealous? They knew this was a policy that was good for the future of this country.

I have letter after letter and members of the House on all sides received letters from their constituents asking them time and time again to not kill the bill.

I am pleased to report that those rumours of the death of my bill, which were pronounced in some of the media and greatly exaggerated in some editorials, were only rumours. The same editorials also suggested, and I am hoping some of those editorialists are listening to this, that the bill was passed by stealth, that it required a royal recommendation. I will not benefit the author of several stories in one particular paper, but it was someone who actually thought that what had been done here by parliamentarians was tantamount to what happened in 1840, which is why Lord Durham had to be brought in.

There was no revolution here. There was instead a recognition and understanding that in a minority Parliament, in a setting where Canadians expect more from their parliamentarians, members of Parliament, backbench members of Parliament of all parties worked deliberatively, not for a day, not for a week, not for a month and not through gamesmanship, but over two years to ensure that a piece of legislation on RESP deductibility would in fact be put forward.

I am speaking today to the fact that the bill, far from being killed, is the subject of Bill C-50, which I will refer to as the killer-hunter bill proposed by the Minister of Finance.

The Minister of Finance's own riding of Whitby—Oshawa is one that I represented and I know that the Minister of Finance will know that this is so popular an issue if this is in fact going to be an election issue, which it could very well be. I know full well that it is something that I am prepared to take to the door of his riding, a riding I once represented. I can tell the House that anyone who has families, anyone who has children, anyone who wants to live the dream of this country will know that this legislation is not only timely it is supportable.

A decision made by this House of Commons, by these members of Parliament in the majority, is simply thrown away because someone has suggested that somehow it will put the country into fiscal danger.

Who put us there?

The Minister of Finance has an obligation, quite apart from his pathetic critique of the bill on RESP deductibility, which many of his members support, to explain to Canadians how it is that he took a $13.2 billion surplus and blew it away overnight.

The member from British Columbia is looking this way.

What happens if we have another forest fire in that region of the country or floods in Quebec? What if we have a national disaster of some proportion that will cost us several hundred million dollars?

When we see that amount of money that could potentially put the country at risk, we have put ourselves in a very precarious financial situation and we have not planned for the future.

We know that south of the border the federal reserve chair, Mr. Bernanke, is suggesting that we are teetering on a recession. There is no doubt that there are implications for my province and for provinces across the country. This government did not plan. It had no plan. It is extinguishing the hopes and aspirations of young people to get access to a better job, to pay the kind of taxes, to grow the kind of country and to recognize that with an aging population we need to get this right and we need to get it right now.

This bill is not the be all end all. The bill that I proposed on the RESP, which this bill, Bill C-50, proposes to kill at some point down the road, is in fact decidedly a bill that is designed to use the issue of confidence before anything that the government disagrees with.

Yes, the hon. members will probably ask us whether we will be supporting this or not. That is still a few months off, perhaps even a few weeks off, but the one thing that is clear is the idea with respect to the RESP bill is something that we cannot ignore.

I am glad to hear the NDP members cat howling in the corner but they supported this bill. They have stood, and I applaud them for doing that, to support this bill because of its importance. The Bloc also supported this bill.

They know full well that it is very important for the future of our country that students have the opportunity to get an education regardless of cost. We also have an opportunity to help the provinces, which will give students more money to invest in their futures and to go on to universities, colleges or apprenticeships.

We must not fail the next generation. Universities that want to increase their capacity for investing in infrastructure, human and physical, will not need to go cap in hand to the provinces and say that they want to raise tuition fees. There is a greater certainty now that this vehicle addresses what ordinary average families have been looking for.

In one fell swoop, with this particular legislation, the Minister of Finance and the House leader crafted a bill to try to kill this. We can talk about the gamesmanship today, but what we have is an attempt at vandalizing and compromising the future of this nation.

We have a higher obligation to serve the interests of our constituents and to help somehow, in some way, to build a stronger nation, a stronger nation where people can get access to the kind of opportunities that this generation, many of us, have been blessed with.

Previous members who have come here have always tried to build a better House and to find ways in which we can come together to find more creative means to ensuring Canada can meet the challenges of tomorrow.

I am saying this because if we were to sit down and talk to grandparents, parents and people in our communities who are struggling day in and day out to make ends meet, we would hear that there is a real and effective understanding of what they are trying to do, which is to achieve a better future for their children.

I would implore the Conservative Party, which has quietly said that it loves this bill, to actually take the time to consider what it has done. It has actually tried to reverse a position taken only a month ago by this Parliament which is widely popular with Canadians.

There will be critics either way but I would ask the Conservative Party to reconsider what it has done because I think it is in everyone's interest, partisanship aside, to ensure that good legislation, whether it is passed by backbenchers or passed by the government, does in fact have the ability to proceed.

I call on all members to work together cooperatively. This is for our future, for our children and for our Canada.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I think that some of the people who have been listening to this debate might have a little bit of trouble following so I will try to put things in perspective.

The member who just spoke did back a bill on registered education savings plans. We in the NDP did indeed vote for it but it would not have been our first choice of a way of proceeding because we think it is important to help all families. I come from a family of 10 children. An education savings plan would not have helped a lot because there was nothing to put aside. There was no tax deduction to be had. Thanks to Quebec's excellent loans and bursaries program, I and almost all my brothers and sisters went through university.

However, the member is right. The Conservatives are undoing a bill adopted in the House. However, if the member really wants this bill to go through, he must vote with us against the Conservatives. The Liberals are the official opposition. It is very simple.

He said before that he was imploring the government. I would just say to my good friends in the Liberal Party that for the sake of their role as the official opposition, they must get off their knees. They do not need to implore anybody. They are here to vote and represent the people in their riding. They should have the guts to do it.

Your colleague just spoke before about--

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

Order, please. I would remind hon. members not to lapse into the second person.

The hon. member for Pickering—Scarborough East.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I did not hear a question but I do understand the member's passion. However, I want the member's passion to be focused in a way that is the best way to achieve a very good piece of legislation. I can appreciate the fact that he is trying to make a political point but I also understand the same member supported this bill. I agree with him. We do need to find a way to get this bill through. The tactics of today will not diminish the importance of this legislation.

I can tell the hon. member, having grown up in a family of 10 and having 5 children of my own, I know how difficult it is, having struggled to put myself through university when my parents were not capable of looking after my interests.

What is important is for all us as members of Parliament to recognize very clearly that in this legislation we can use some of the savings that is there to ensure that students whose parents do pay taxes or cannot pay taxes, that we improve the child learning account from the savings that would otherwise accrue from the existing system which no longer works.

The hon. member asked how I will vote and I think he knows how I will vote on this.

I am saying this because, beyond the cut and thrust of politics and beyond the cut and thrust of question period, Canadians will judge all of us as to how we were able to appropriate this bill, how we stood for what we believed in and, most important, I will have no difficulty, if the hon. member heard my speech, taking this battle to the Minister of Finance and to his colleagues. I need the hon. member's help to do that.

Appreciating that the member was not here in the last Parliament, but if he is concerned about how the Conservatives got elected, his party may want to ask why it ruined the Liberal Party in terms of its own background and in terms of the things that we put forward for Canadians.

I would ask the hon. member, in the spirit of goodwill and in the spirit of the future of this country, to stand up for his constituents.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we have just seen a political pretzel act unparalleled in this House. We have a member standing and actually working with his Liberal caucus to kill a bill that he was promoting a few weeks before and trying to explain that all on CPAC as people watch the deliberations in this House this afternoon. It is absolutely absurd what the Liberals are trying to do in the House. They are voting for the bill that kills what the member was promoting a few weeks ago.

Unabashedly, the Liberals are now standing, wrapped up like pretzels, trying to explain why they are killing a bill that a few weeks ago they supported and why they are supporting the government that is killing that bill. It is absolutely absurd.

I can only ask one question. When will the Liberals actually show some backbone and vote against the government on something?

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, what is good about being a member of the New Democratic Party with 29 members is that they never need to worry about being responsible. They never need to worry about being government because we saw what happened in the province of Ontario when that did happen.

The member said that he was prepared to throw away everything about his vote, which was on CPAC, supporting this bill in favour of making a political statement. I think that is regrettable. However, if that is what the New Democrat member believes, that is fine.

However, despite the catcalls and the heckling, it is their responsibility to ensure in the first instance that this legislation continues. Unless he has a crystal ball, he cannot predict the future.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have to catch my breath because we have just seen a political spectacle that is absolutely unbelievable, Liberals rising to kill their own legislation and trying to explain it. They are killing the legislation to save it. It is absolutely bizarre.

I am rising to speak to Bill C-50 which would kill what the Liberals were promoting a few weeks ago. I would like to comment on what the Conservative government is doing now that it has been given essentially a blank cheque by the leader of the Liberal Party to do whatever it wants to do in the House of Commons. We saw it with the SPP, the security prosperity partnership going on behind closed doors, allowed by the Liberals.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to point out that I am splitting my time with the member for Winnipeg North. She will be equally tender, I think, to members of the opposition who are being hypocritical.

We have seen with climate change the refusal to take any meaningful action on the environment supported by an appallingly weak Liberal leader. There is the tax cut agenda. Corporate tax cuts were just shovelled off the back of a truck, billions and billions of dollars, when there are crucial crying needs in Canadian communities from coast to coast to coast that are not being met, again supported by the Liberals.

Now we see with Bill C-50 that because the Conservatives have a functional majority, a blank cheque from the Liberal Party to do whatever they want, they have decided to tuck in to a budget bill substantial changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. They are substantial changes that are going to have an impact on communities throughout the country. They are doing it because of the acquiescence of the Liberal Party.

Normally a bill of this nature would be brought to the House of Commons. It would be debated if members of Parliament agreed that it should continue on. Very clearly in this case because the legislation is so appallingly bad, members would say no. But if there were agreement in principle on the legislation, it would go to committee for close scrutiny clause by clause so that we could be absolutely certain that the legislation actually did an effective job. Then it would come back to the House.

However, because the Liberal leader is so appallingly weak, the Conservatives just threw in this legislation and they are expecting the leader of the Liberal Party and every single Liberal member of Parliament, who even though in oral questions they will raise questions, are refusing to vote against the bill. The Conservative government is expecting that the Liberals are going to adopt the legislation. There will be no scrutiny. There will be no parliamentary hearings. There will be no scrutiny of substantial changes that turn back the clock on our immigration process.

We have already seen over the past decade what Liberal and Conservative cuts have done to our immigration system. In fact, in the last two years alone, the waiting lists have grown from 700,000 to 900,000 because the immigration system frankly has broken down. It is like a hospital; if we do not adequately fund it or bring in nurses and doctors, the system is not going to work.

The immigration system, I can say from personal experience representing Burnaby—New Westminster, has broken down. The system is not working in the interests of Canadian families. It is not working for new Canadians. Everyone in Canada is paying the cost of that negligence.

I represent a community where over 100 languages are spoken. It is the most diverse part of Canada. Indeed, it may be the most diverse part of the entire planet. Over 100 languages are spoken. There are substantial centres of faith, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, Hindu, Jewish, Baha'i and Hare Krishna. Throughout our community we have attracted people from all over the world. We have a substantial community of people of Chinese origin, from both mainland China and Taiwan and also Hong Kong, an Indo Canadian community from the Tamil south but also from the Punjab north of India.

Historically we have people from Scandinavia, England, France, Germany and eastern Europe as well. It is immigration, wave after wave, that has created our community. Issues about the immigration system and how those families abroad are treated are of fundamental importance to our community.

Now we have these amendments that have been thrown in by the Conservatives only because of Liberal acquiescence, only because of a lack of Liberal backbone that will mean profound changes and that the system will even get worse. What are the changes the Conservatives are proposing?

They are proposing changes that simply give new powers to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration in a system that is already dysfunctional, to simply make decisions on the minister's own around deciding, for example, the types of applications that are accepted and disposing of current immigration applications. That is important because the Conservatives have tried to pretend that they have dealt with the mess that was left by the previous Liberal government, but they have not.

As I mentioned earlier, the waiting lists have grown by 200,000 and only in two years. Now we see a political situation where the solution by the Conservatives will simply be to strike off those legitimate applications. They will simply do what they did with the softwood lumber sellout. The Conservatives killed the softwood industry in order to save it. We all remember the Minister of International Trade saying that essentially the softwood lumber agreement was going to save the softwood industry. What we have seen since is the death of thousands upon thousands of jobs and the closure of dozens upon dozens of mills across the country.

If that was the solution to the softwood lumber crisis, we can imagine what these Conservatives are going to do to the immigration system. They are simply going to erase applicants. These changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act permit them to do that.

They will also put in place queue jumping measures that simply are not in keeping with the impartial access system that we have, that allows the best of applicants from around the world to come to Canada.

There are also limits on humanitarian and compassionate categories. This is an extremely important element. This is perhaps the most egregious element of what the Conservatives are introducing with Liberal support. It is important to note that the Liberals and Conservatives are working together on this issue. They are simply giving the minister additional powers to deny visas to those who meet all the categories, the immigration criteria. This is no longer subject to legal appeal.

By putting in a budget bill a few lines on the immigration act what they are essentially doing is eliminating the legal avenue that people have when the immigration ministry screws up. It screws up enormously because of underfunding, because of Liberal cuts, because the Conservatives have simply not addressed fundamental management issues. They are not very good at management. They are only good at corporate tax cuts it seems. They have done nothing for the health care system, nothing for the lost manufacturing jobs. I could go on and on.

Essentially, the Conservative Prime Minister learned his administration from a book. He had never actually administered anything when he became the leader of the Conservative Party. As a result of that we can see how poorly they act in public administration.

If the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration and the ministry are incapable of handling appropriately a legitimate file, there is no longer any legal appeal on it. This is of fundamental importance. What the government is doing is removing that legal avenue when it screws up. I can say that not only in this area, but in a whole host of other areas there have been screw ups. For example, in the case work that I deal with in my riding with the Canada Revenue Agency, that agency makes mistakes. There has to be a legal appeal.

When the ability for individuals to go through the legal system when the government screws up is taken away, we are eliminating one of the fundamental rights of democracy. That is exactly what the government is doing here. It is eliminating that legal appeal.

These are not small changes. It is a testament to Liberal hypocrisy that even though the Liberals are speaking in this House against this bill, they are prepared to vote for it. They are prepared to give the Conservative government a blank cheque when it comes to these fundamental changes in the immigration system.

This bill is not going to improve our immigration system. This is not the prudent and smart approach of rebuilding the administration that was gutted under the previous Liberal government. This is essentially giving political direction to the Conservative government to eliminate folks the Conservatives do not like, to eliminate lists they do not like, and to ensure that there is no legal avenue for those who are appealing bad decisions by the government.

We would not want to see this in immigration. We would not want to see this with Revenue Canada. We would not want to see this in any sector of public life, because the reality is when government screws up, we need to have those legal methods of appeal.

That is just one of the very many reasons why the NDP, in this corner of the House, is not just going to be talking about this bill, but we are actually going to stand up as members of Parliament and we are going to vote against this budget bill when the time comes to vote for or against it. That is our responsibility.

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to tell my hon. friend that I think life would be pretty simple if we only had black and white film in our cameras, as clearly he is viewing many policies that come before this House.

I would dare say that we on the Liberal side feel that we are the party of immigrants. We are the party of the charter.

This issue could well be taken to committee, and I would encourage a vigorous debate so that Canadians can make their voices heard.

I do not think that anybody in this House would purport that we have a perfect immigration system. I happen to have an urban riding in Kitchener in the heart of the Waterloo region. It is one of the fastest growing, distinctly diverse communities in Canada. I deal with immigration cases all the time and I can say that the system is not perfect. I can say that the two per cent increase the government is suggesting, as it imbedded this important piece of legislation by stealth, yet again, in its budget bill, is very unacceptable.

However, to deny Canadians the ability to talk about how we could improve the system, whether the appeal system is appropriate and how we can deal with the backlog, I would agree with my hon. friend, I do not believe that this is the way to go. I do believe that we have a moment when we could have Canadians come to have a vigorous debate and we could improve this system.

Because he has black and white film in his camera, and it is either thumbs up or thumbs down, he is ready at this point just to say thumbs down, that he does not want to hear from Canadians, he does not want to take this opportunity to improve the immigration system. I would ask him what his party would purport to do to improve the waiting lists and the processing of immigrants to Canada.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I like the hon. member, I always have. She is trapped in this same disingenuous incapacity of the Liberal Party to stand for anything. I feel sorry for her, as I do for some of her colleagues who actually do believe in things, yet they are forced by their leader to acquiesce to anything the Conservative government presents. That is what we are debating here today.

Yes, we see it as an issue that we have to vote no on. That is why we have offered the amendment that simply removes that portion of the budget bill which the government, by stealth, inserted. If members from three corners of this House vote for the amendment, then that is simply removed from the budget bill. That is what the NDP has done. We have said, as has the Bloc, as has the Liberal Party, that this is bad. This is a bad initiative by the government, and so we have taken steps to stop that initiative.

What I do not understand is why the Liberal Party will be voting against our amendment and supporting the Conservatives so that they can bring into play something that the Liberals have said they do not want. This is the hypocrisy which undeniably is something that is difficult to explain to any Canadian.

If the Liberal Party is opposed to what the Conservatives are doing on immigration, then they should vote for the NDP amendment and they should stop that initiative.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, I find it interesting that the member is opposed to the fact that we are going to increase the numbers and make the process quicker.

Last year Canada welcomed the highest number of newcomers in our history, 429,000-plus, surpassing the previous high in 1911.

Although the New Democrats object to the Liberals not voting, the NDP members vote consistently against everything because they know that it will not make a difference. They voted against the $1.3 billion in new settlement funding for newcomers in Canada. They voted against the Foreign Credentials Referral Office, something that was necessary, in the budget. They voted against cutting the $975 immigrant head tax. They will be voting against reducing immigration wait times.

Although they castigate the Liberals and say that they do not vote because they are afraid to, the NDP members know that they will not form government and they vote against everything. How can he justify voting against streamlining the system, bringing more people in quicker, faster and more efficiently?

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, quite simply, that is not what the Conservatives have done, and the member knows that full well. What we have actually seen is a bloated waiting list, from 700,000 to 900,000, over two years, as a result of Conservative inability to put in place public administration.

This is the problem. This is why the Conservative budget basically shovels tens of billions of dollars off the back of a truck to the wealthy corporate sector, which is the most profitable and has record profits. The only thing the Conservatives seem to be able to do is corporate tax cuts and—

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

Create jobs.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

—create temporary part time jobs. As the member well knows, two-thirds of Canadians are earning less now than they were a number of years ago and people are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet.

Conservatives are a one-note band. Corporate tax cuts is all they can do and that is the reality of their very poor public administration.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join in the debate, following my colleague from Burnaby—New Westminster, who has put on record a very eloquent speech on what is wrong with the budget implementation bill as well as what is so wrong with the Liberal positioning on the legislation and on the budget process.

You have taught us many things in the House, Mr. Speaker. You are the longest standing member in the House of Commons. You have always exemplified integrity, honesty and consistency. That is the example we all need to learn from today.

Today in the House, Mr. Speaker, you also mentioned the passing of a long-standing member of Parliament for the New Democratic Party, Mark Rose, who was also the chair of the NDP caucus. He was also a man of integrity. He is another example for the House, at a very critical time in the history of this nation when we are dealing with a government that is as meanspirited and cold-hearted as we could get and with an official opposition party that is so hypocritical, twisted and torn that it is making it impossible to provide any motive to Canadians for believing in the political process.

There is an old saying that we, as parents, have learned over the years, which is we have to say what we mean, mean what we say and do what we said we would do. I would ask the Liberals in the House today to find it within themselves—

[James Moore, Conservative, Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Who?

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Every single one of them.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

—even though there are none here, and I know I cannot comment on that. However, in the absence of Liberals in the House, I hope they are listening out in the lobby. They know they are sending a terrible message to Canadians. It does not matter what they stand for, it does not matter what they believe in, if they believe in anything, because their principles go out the window the first chance political expediency matters, the first chance they have an option to stand up for something they believe or worry about their backsides and their political future.

This is a time, especially around a budget, where we have to stand for something. We have been through this.

I was a cabinet minister and then an MLA in Manitoba. It was at a time when there was lots of turbulence when we were suddenly defeated in March of 1988 on a budget vote. We stood for something and did not back off our position, even though we knew the opposition Conservatives were gunning for an election. We did it even though we knew we had a loose cannon in our midst, who was edging for a cabinet position and did not want to support an NDP government unless he got his way. We also knew that when it came to being an opposition party in a minority parliament in Manitoba, and we were not in any position to fight an election, we had to choose if we would support a Conservative government, with regret and with qualifications, or would we run and hide.

We did not run and hide. That is the worst thing we can do in politics and the last thing that should be done in terms of Canadian life today. It tells Canadians that everything that is near and dear to our democratic system does not matter because principles can go out the window at a whim.

What the Liberals are doing is a great disservice to democracy in our country. We are not talking, as the member for Kitchener Centre has said, about grey areas of certain issues. We are talking about good versus bad, right versus wrong, evil versus heavenly good, whatever we want to say. We are talking about diametrically opposing ideas and we have to choose. We are faced with a Conservative government today that is absolutely squandering of our fiscal capacity in a way that will hurt the majority of Canadians, not for a short term but for many years to come. The government is killing our future because it is not investing a penny to save our health care system. It is not doing a thing for education or housing.

On housing, when the budget came down, we asked if there was anything in the budget for it. It turns out there are $110 million for five pilot projects in centres across the country. That is it. It is designated for mental health issues. That is good, but it is a tiny piece of the puzzle when it comes to a huge problem in terms of housing and the problems facing people with mental illnesses.

The government just this week cut back funding for the Kali Shiva AIDS Services in Winnipeg. Why? Because it is an organization devoted to helping the homeless and other people who are in danger of harming others.

In Winnipeg we are trying to stop people from harming others and to help people to help themselves. What does the government do? It cuts back funding for the Kali Shiva AIDS Services because it is doing too much work on harm reduction. Can members believe that?

This follows the fact that the government will not invest in aboriginal housing. We just had a huge, devastating fire in Pukatawagan where three children died because of the terrible housing conditions on that reserve.

If the member for Kitchener Centre were still in the room, she would know that not too long ago hearings were held in her riding around pharmacare and access to drugs. She will know that adults in her city are crying because they have lost their jobs due to the cuts to the manufacturing sector. They have been left without any drug coverage.

This is not grey matter. This is not shades of wrong. This is wrong. This is evil. This is bad public policy. The Liberal Party should stand up and fight it just as we are, without regard for our political necks and our political future. We have to put our principles on the line.

When it comes to the whole immigration issue, people have to understand why we are so worried. We are worried because we have a government that says it will deal with a backlog to allow more economic immigrants in the country. In fact, the Conservatives have turned back people who have already been approved because they are needed to fill skills shortages and to meet the economic needs of our country. Why? Because they do not like something about the family. In the case to which I am referring, it is because a child in the family has a disability.

Is this the real intention of the government when it comes to changing the immigration policy? Is it in fact an ideological move on the part of Conservatives to shape the face of our country to exclude certain groups of people that they do not find acceptable, that they treat as second class citizens? What kind of message are we sending to people in our country, people who are living with disabilities? Are we are saying that they are not welcome if they have a disability, or that they are second class, that they do not matter and that they might as well be dead. When have we heard that before? That is what is so troubling about the government's agenda.

If the Conservatives were serious about opening our doors to people who have skills to bring then they would in fact ensure they would not turn their back on people who are approved under provincial nominee programs, as they have been in Manitoba. They would not turn those families back because their child has a disability. They would not turn them back because they come from the wrong part of the world. They would not turn them back because they have the energy and the fortitude to contribute something to our country. Then we would have a government willing to deal with the backlog that the Liberals created in a reasoned way. The problems we are dealing with now go back to a decade of Liberal neglect on a very important file.

About six years ago we dealt with major changes to the immigration bill. I was the NDP critic at the time. It was a flawed bill. As a result, we have flawed legislation before us today. We tried to amend it. The Liberals resisted every attempt to improve the bill. We presented, on our side alone, over 100 amendments to try to ensure that the economic class was improved so people could get here under a point system. We tried to document the backlog under Liberals and the waiting time of seven years or more for family sponsorships.

We tried to say that the government and this nation had no business denying people because they had a disability. We tried to suggest that there had to be due process and a refugee appeal process that made sense in this day and age. The Liberals refused each and every one of those amendments. Now, in fact, the Conservatives are doing exactly what they have every right to do, which is to take that legislation and apply it as the Liberals had intended.

We had a chance then and now we have another chance today to actually deal with this problem. The only way to seriously deal with this is for the House to support the NDP amendment to move this out of the budget bill. Let us make sure that we have, as the Liberals want, good debate and discussion at the committee around future immigration policy. Let us get on with the job at hand and reject the budget because it is bad news for Canada and for future generations.

[James Moore, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Works and Government Services and for the Pacific Gateway and the Vancouver-Whistler Olympics]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for my colleague. I have always respected her as a parliamentarian from Winnipeg who brings great passion to her values and to her constituents. That is always a great thing to see in the House of Commons.

However, I would just ask her about this, in the fairness of debate. She actually said at one point in her comments that Conservatives are taking their position on this bill because their message to new Canadians might be that they may as well just be dead. That is a little extreme. In essence that is what she said: cold-hearted and extremist. It is good enough in a democracy, I think, with clear-headed people of principle, to just disagree on the merits of the bill. We do not have to go to the extent of the name calling that we heard. It was kind of unfortunate.

I do have a question for my colleague. As a politician, I do admire someone who has a strategic sense of things. We hear the Liberals in question period and in their speeches here in the House just raising the temperature. They are thoroughly angry. They really do not like this bill. They really think it needs to be shut down. They really want it stopped, almost to the point where they are going to vote against it, but it is not quite that bad.

I would invite my colleague from the NDP to comment on the Liberals and their false rhetoric on this issue, where they are so angry and they are so opposed, but they really are not quite prepared to actually stand up and walk their talk.