Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Timmins—James Bay spoke well and forcefully on some of the concerns he has about the budget and how it will affect his region and Canadians in general.
With our amendments to the implementation of Bill C-50, we have tried to put in front of Canadians exactly what is in the bill. It is important to recall that initially when the budget was put forward, Canadians found it was a bit thin, in terms of content, and that was remarked in the media certainly. This particularly had to do with the fact that the government had announced in its fall fiscal update over $50 billion in corporate tax cuts scheduled over the next couple of years. I think the government will regret that in the future, particularly when we look at the tight times in the economy. By the time it got to budget, there was not a lot of material to work with because it had essentially stripped the cupboard bare.
When the budget was introduced, people were looking at little finesses in it. Much to the people's surprise they found, I think, on page 106, of a document consisting of approximately 134 pages, the changes to the immigration act. Talk about non sequitur. The government has taken something that is absolutely critical, something that is the foundation of the future of Canada, and that is important facets of our immigration system, and has hidden them in the budget. We have been proud as Canadians to have had a fairly progressive immigration system.
What is so distressing about this is the government either is trying to be strategic to get this thing through and hope that no one will notice or it honestly does not understand how to make policy and where policy belongs in its formation.
If it were a case of trying to pull a fast one, the government clearly did not get away with it. If it were a case of the government wanting to take immigration changes and put them into the framework of the Department of Finance, hopefully it learned the lesson that it was not appropriate.
I will give the example of what happened when I brought forward the proposed changes to my community.
Soon after the budget was announced and it was discovered that the government was trying to pull a fast one, or maybe make policy through the Department of Finance, and either way we look at it, it is the wrong direction, in my opinion, I brought forward the proposed changes to members of my community. I called all the people who worked with immigrant communities, the Catholic immigration service in Ottawa, the OCISO, a wonderful group that deals with issues of resettlement, language training and foreign credential recognition, et cetera, the Jewish family services, which does an excellent job with integration and supporting newcomers, as well as other groups and individuals. I explained to them the proposed changes. The first question was, “Why didn't the government consult us?” I did not have an answer for them because the government did not consult anyone on the bill.
It was more than passing strange that the government would bring in such aggressive changes to the immigration act without consulting anyone. In fact, all it did was come up with this idea, its own brain trust, and popped it into the budget bill, the details of which I will get into in a minute.
However, let us stop right there and consider this. The government brings in these very aggressive changes to the immigration act without consulting the people who work day in and day out to ensure the people who are affected by issues of immigration and settlement will be represented. Many of them are volunteers and they do it because they care about immigration and settlement and want to ensure it is done right and done responsibly. It is more than bizarre. It begs the question, what is it the government is trying to achieve?
If we look at the provisions within the immigration changes that are in Bill C-50 and why we are proposing these amendments, we will find the direction of the government on immigration. The government wants to ensure the ability of the government to bring in temporary workers so that they can be used, and I use that word deliberately, for a short period of time and then get them out of the country.
We only have to hear the stories of people presently working in the tar sands, people who are working in agriculture in British Columbia and other places, people who are working in mining, to know that these jobs are extremely dangerous. They are ones that require robust health and safety provisions. They should have fair wages. What the government has been able to do is meet the needs, not of new Canadians, but of fairly substantive economic interests in this country that will benefit from cheap labour. They will benefit from the fact that the government will bring in people quickly, use them up and then not have them stay around much longer.
What is so distressing is that the government wants to make these changes, just after the government did what I believe is the right thing. We on this side of the House applauded the government when it actually made amends and apologized for the Chinese head tax. I remember well the speeches by members on both sides of the House, by the leaders and the Prime Minister. It was a good day for Canada. I remember going to the Yangtze restaurant in Ottawa's Chinatown. We had a great celebration party. I believe you attended that, Mr. Speaker, and I think you spoke in Cantonese. It was a great day.
It saddens me and it saddens the community in general that soon after that acknowledgement and apology, the government is replicating in the 21st century what was done in the 18th century, which is to bring in temporary workers simply to use them, and when it is finished with them to send them back. That is the problem with Bill C-50.
We have to consider what we could have done. Everyone would argue that we should deal with the backlog in the immigration system. People who work in immigration settlement will tell us to put more resources overseas to make sure that when people apply for landed immigrant status and go through the points system, they know exactly what the situation is going to be when they come to Canada. They will tell us to make sure that rather than having just websites, there be actual human resources deployed overseas to help people with the process. They will tell us to ensure that when people are applying for landed immigrant status, they have all of their background documents in place and to support them in doing that. That would shorten the time period. On the other side of the equation, we have to make sure that here in Canada we have the requisite resources to ensure that we can streamline the system.
As an aside, it is interesting that when the Minister of Immigration brought forward these proposals, strangely enough in Bill C-50, as this is the budget bill, she said that the government had made great progress in streamlining the application process. She said that the department was able to process 40% more of the applications. She said that on the one hand, but on the other hand, she said that the system is so bungled up and has such weight on it that extreme changes have to be made.
It does not balance to say on one hand that her department is making this great progress, lauding herself and her ministry, and on the other hand that things are so grave and awful that we have to make these extreme changes to centralize power in the minister's office. When we look at Bill C-50 and we look at this kind of doublespeak of the government, one has to look at what the government is trying to achieve here. It seems that the government is trying to achieve a fast one, as I said before.
In the end, these amendments we have put forward should be passed so we can make sure we have a fair system for all.