Mr. Speaker, it is my honour to participate in the debate on the concurrence motion presented by my colleague, the member for Trinity—Spadina. I thank her for the work she does day in and day out on the immigration committee and in the House, raising issues of importance to all of us, issues around a fundamental policy direction that is so important to our country's identity and to the future of it.
The motion before us has to do with the work of the immigration committee, dealing with a very specific situation, and that is when an individual in our country wants to marry or form a partnership with another person who does not have landed status. That relationship is then made to suffer by a mean-spirited, outdated rule that says the spouse, the partner, cannot work in the country and must either wait it out and not contribute to the economic viability of that person's family or else face deportation, or removal.
This is clearly an issue that gets at the very heart of who we are as a country and what it means. We have a policy that says that family reunification is the bedrock of this society. All of us believe that. We hear it day in and day out in this place.
Therefore, we want to ensure our policies reflect that fundamental belief that the family unit is respected, that we encourage families to come together to support one another, that we ensure the family is supported so every individual who is part of that unit has the emotional, economic and social backup and background required to fulfill their lifelong ambitions and make their unique contribution to our society today.
From our point of view, there is no place in our immigration policy for a punitive approach, which says “If you want to get married, you can't work here and you've got to go back home and wait it out”. Does that make sense, if we say that the bedrock of our society is family, that the bedrock of Canadian society is our multicultural fabric? We cannot have it both ways. We cannot on the one hand tout the beauties of this nation in terms of our ethnocultural diversity and then deny someone who is in love, who wants to form a permanent relationship with someone else, the right to stay here and make a living and not be removed.
It is not like this policy will cost a lot of money. It is will not hurt our society. It will not diminish anyone's contribution here now. It can only do the opposite. It enhances quality of life. It strengthens the family. It shows to the world that we are truly a humanitarian and compassionate nation open to people from around the world who want to come to our country and make a difference, who want to start a new life and use their talents to the fullest potential possible.
We are here today trying to advance something that the immigration committee has dealt with and to win the support of the government of the day to change this silly policy, a policy that stands in the way of family reunification, a policy that stands in the way of our belief that we gain strength from our diversity.
We have had a long, hard battle in this place to try to put family reunification to the top of the immigration agenda. Long before the Conservatives, we battled the Liberals. We tried every way we could to convince the Liberals, when they were in government, to change some of our immigration policies so we could actually show we were truly serious about family reunification and about progressive immigration.
Members will recall that many of us on this side of the House, in the New Democratic Party caucus, have advanced the idea time and time again of the once-in-a-lifetime policy. That is about family reunification. We said over and over again that the government should broaden the policy to allow immigrants to sponsor not only a family member who was part of that nice, neat, tight definition of family, which is mother, father, grandparents, children, but also sisters, brothers, uncles, aunts, nieces and nephews.
We proposed something that was very constructive and very reasonable. We did not say that we should open the family category up entirely forever and a day and see what happened. We said that we should do it carefully, slowly and cautiously and allow every immigrant in the country to sponsor, once in their lifetime, a member of their family who was not now part of the family definition. That was very reasonable.
It would not open the floodgates, as some of the Liberals tried to suggest it would. It would not bankrupt the country. It would simply be a way to strengthen family and to allow people to come to this country who would not otherwise be able to, thereby strengthening the economic fabric of our country and strengthening the foundation, the bedrock of our society, the family unit.
Here we are today debating something that should be self-evident, that should be automatically dealt with, but we are finding more resistance. Just like we found resistance from the Liberals year after year when they were in government, we are now facing resistance from a government that has once again adopted this very narrow approach to immigration, a very rigid approach which denies that fundamental notion of bringing family together and allowing people who are part of that family unit to contribute to the economy.
Why, in this time of economic difficulty, when we need people to fill a labour shortage, when we find it hard to in fact grow the economy, would we not encourage anyone who is here legitimately and wants to form a permanent relationship and a partnership to work? Why would we say that person cannot contribute economically? Those people can sit here and wait it out or they can go back home, where the wait is long, hard, trying and hurtful to the relationship and to the family unit.
We have heard from many of my colleagues, who have had numerous cases along these lines. I, too, have dealt with constituents who have come to me and said that they are about to be married, that they are engaged. They have said that it is a long wait while they go through the process, but they need to make a living, they want to contribute economically and be a part of Canadian society. However, they cannot afford to simply sit it out either in this country or back in their homeland.
We have people who have talent, skills, initiative and abilities, people who can make a difference to our communities, people who have much to offer, yet we tell them, even if they are engaged to be married or are part of a common law relationship, if they have not gone through all the hoops and waited all the years, they cannot work. We are saying is that the test should be the relationship and how serious it is. Is it real? There are many tests to determine that.
The Conservative government, just like the Liberal government before, will test all people who says they have been legitimately married. People are questioned time and time again about the legitimacy of their marriage and put through all kinds of hoops and obstacles, troubles and trials, just to prove they are legitimately married. We deal with that every day, especially with people who come from Punjab, where arranged marriages are the order of the day. Many times immigration officials question whether that marriage, that relationship, is genuine.
There are ways. Those couples have to go through all kinds of paperwork and have to demonstrate the absolute sincerity of their relationship and prove that there is a solid, firm basis upon which they come together. We can do that without preventing someone from contributing to the economy.
I think it is self-evident. It only makes sense, if we are serious about immigration, to do this.
The once-in-a-lifetime idea, which the Liberals quashed before the Conservatives came to power and which is still not one favoured by the government, is alive and well on our part. We will continue to push for this idea. It is fundamental to what we believe is important for our country, family being the bedrock of society and our belief that our country is only strengthened by our multicultural mosaic.
I regret some of the talk that has emerged of late, which suggests we should be more like the Americans, a melting pot of our societies as opposed to a mosaic. I come from a constituency that is one of the most diverse ethnocultural areas in the country. It is nothing but a place of strength for the community and for all of us. The richness that we get from that kind of diversity, the contribution that is made by Filipino Canadians, Sikh Canadians, Polish Canadians, Ukrainian Canadians, Portuguese Canadians, and the list goes on and on, cannot be measured in real terms because it far exceeds the enrichment to our society.
I hope the government is not pursuing this line of thinking too much. It would be absolutely wrong to deny our rich history. It should not build on this idea that we are a mosaic. We are not a melting pot.
On that basis, I also suggest the government finally do something the Liberals would not do, which is to allow for a proper appeal procedure for refugees. The Immigration Act was passed while the Liberals were in government. We tried to convince them to implement, at the same time that the legislation was proclaimed, an appeal for the refugee process. That was denied. To this day, we still do not have an appeal process for refugees coming to this country. What a violation of our understanding of human rights. What a backward notion that has been advanced by the Liberals, and now the Conservatives. I hope we can finally see the light of day and put in place a proper appeal procedure.
I might add, when the Liberals were in power and we were engaged in revamping our Immigration Act to bring it into the modern century, many pieces were left undone, many clauses were not changed. We had issues around the live-in caregiver policy. We raised concerns about the protection of live-in caregivers and nannies and the Liberals would not address it. Now the current government will not address it. We raised questions about the appeal process. We raised questions about the once-in-a-lifetime immigration proposal. We raised questions about ensuring that families with children with disabilities would not be barred from our country.
However, the Liberals refused to do anything about those very good ideas. They refused to adopt those amendments. As a result, they set the stage for the Conservatives to do what they are naturally inclined to do, and that is to be hard on immigrants, to be harsh in terms of their judgment, to deny people when they ought to be given some ability to come to this country.
Time and time again we have dealt with families that have been accepted here because of their economic contribution, but then they are turned away because one of their children has a disability. When we raised this with the Liberals a number of years ago, they told us not to worry, that it would never be used for that kind of approach. Look at what the Liberals have done. They have set the stage for a government that does not have the openness to a compassionate, humanitarian immigration policy and we are all now paying the consequences.
Instead of being a light in the world, instead of being a beacon of hope for immigrants and refugees around the world, we are now seen as becoming more and more hardline, restrictive and narrow in our approach, having lost our humanitarian compassion and tradition that is part of who we are as Canadians. I urge all members to support the motion and to get on with building a country that is founded and continues to grow on the basis of our pride in our ethnocultural diversity.
