Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the bill today in the House.
As most of our attention has been focused on the budget implementation plan, as it should be, we must not lose sight of the one area in the legislation that will ensure the long term economic goals we all have for this country, and that is the area of immigration.
Our economic survival will be nothing without the one resource that can transform Canada into a knowledge-based economy, and that resource is its people, the brightest, the best and, in the case of refugees, perhaps some of the most courteous and resourceful new Canadians we could ever have.
Most truly modern economies around the world understand that countries can no longer be gatekeepers at their borders, presuming that those who come in are somehow at the whim or the mercy of a government that deals with applications at a painfully slow pace, such a our present government.
We know that we must aggressively market our county and compete for a booming supply of skilled labour and knowledge workers around the world. We know that those who come here as refugees are the main actors and the authors of some of the greatest success stories in this country.
From gatekeepers to competitors in an international market, this is the reality but it is a reality that the government has yet to understand. The facts are there for all to see. Immigration from China is down 36% since the Conservatives came to power. Immigration from India is down 22% since the Conservatives came to power. Those countries are the two biggest markets for highly skilled, highly educated knowledge workers. The government has botched the file and let us lag behind the world in building the economy for the 21st century.
While I view the bill as having some glaring problems, I also know that we cannot keep up this painfully slow pace of immigration reform. More to the point, we need to move faster on the Refugee Appeal Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board.
I welcome the fact that at least we have something to work with at last but we need to take a very close look at all the fine print, we need a substantial review and we will, no doubt, need to make significant changes in the committee.
For all the talk that has come from the government in the last three years about caring about progressive reform, the reality is a very different thing. The reality is that the backlog of refugee claims has more than doubled since the Conservatives took office. It has more than doubled in three short years. It makes one think that they have the same management experts working in immigration as the ones who have so disastrously managed our economy.
The reality also is that the number of finalized claims has decreased by 50% under the Conservatives. Therefore, they essentially worked half as hard while they let the workload doubled. If we were running a business so inefficiently, we would wonder how we let this happen.
I can remember not too long ago when the government tried to claim that it knew how a business worked and that it knew what it was doing with the economy. Last year, when the real GDP growth was negative for two quarters, the only area that showed promise was the government, because it shovelled more than $300 million into increased spending for services.
The Prime Minister was essentially trying to create a better economic picture by throwing money at government programs. However, that is not the worst of it. That money only maintained levels of resources and services at best from department to department. For all its talk of tax breaks for Canadians, as we know, the government played fast and loose with numbers and blew our reserve fund completely, with nothing to show for it but the mess we are in now.
In the case of the processing of refugee claims, the government has actually increased the processing times to an average of 14 months and the average cost per claim has increased to almost $2,000. That is good money being thrown after bad service, but this is all part of the fundamental disconnect the government has between talk and action.
The government can talk a good game. It can claim that it is letting more newcomers into this country than ever before but when we see the real numbers, they show that the government slashed the number of permanent residents coming to our country by more than 50,000 in just a short two years.
The government says that it will address backlogs but ,as I said, the backlog has doubled. The backlog remains at troubling levels for all applicants. Actually, nothing has been done in three years. Nothing except that the Prime Minister tried to use backlogs as an excuse to reject whole categories of immigration applications. This is like saying, “I know we have done nothing but if you give me power”, power that should never be centralized and used for political gain, “I can fix it”.
Would we let the guy who crashed our car look under the hood to fix it? I will not. Does the government actually expect Canadians to reward incompetence? I do not think so.
I am only compelled to move this dialogue forward because the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act must have a comprehensive review in order to modernize it for the new realities,economic, social and geopolitical, that Canada now faces. However, we must ensure that every word is held to account in committee and that the necessary changes must be a part of any legislation going forward. There is no other way. There is no blank cheque, no sweeping powers and no new authority that can be proposed under the radar, as the government so frequently attempts to do.
A responsible government would provide more resources for application processing. It would provide more resources for immigration settlement. It would address the backlog of refugee claims rather than let them increase 100%.
However, until Canadians can truly get a government they deserve and rightfully expect, we must take what we have by way of proposed legislation and demand accountability or reject it otherwise.