Mr. Speaker, I have three petitions today. The first one that I am pleased to table is a petition on behalf of hundreds of signatories in my riding of Hamilton Mountain who are concerned about the government's changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. The petitioners believe that these changes are deceptive, damaging and irreversible. They also do not believe that the changes will help to address the backlog of immigrants. Finally, they believe that the extraordinary power that this legislation gives to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration is dangerous and that it will deny Parliament its crucial role in setting immigration policy.
The petitioners, therefore, call on the Government of Canada to abandon the changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and to deal with the immigration backlog instead by increasing staffing at overseas visa offices, stopping the expansion of the temporary foreign workers category, and increasing Canada's immigration target to 1% of the Canadian population. It is a privilege to table this petition on their behalf.