Debates of Oct. 28th, 2010

Preventing Human Smugglers From Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, what concerns me is that virtually every member of the Conservatives who have spoken to the bill have talked about refugees as being the smugglers and somehow they are the ones who put public safety at risk.

The member does not even give the facts about the bill and about the detention periods. It is after one year of detention and then it goes every six months thereafter. However, he is using the Immigration and Refugee Board.

Does the member believe that when we have detention periods that long, many of those refugees being children, that there are consequences and impacts on those children and those families of being in detention for such long periods of time?

[Rob Clarke, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

I think our generosity, Madam Speaker, speaks for itself, allowing people to come into Canada, to immigrate legally.

Between April 1, 2005 and March 31, 2010, there have been 21 human smuggling convictions under section 117(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. This number has been confirmed by the Public Prosecution Services of Canada. While there have been a number of successful convictions of migrant smuggling in Canada, there is more to do. It is important to continually strengthen our laws to ensure we have the tools necessary to hold the offenders accountable.

We are talking about organized crime and trying to keep our streets safer for all Canadians.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Madam Speaker, I want to go back to my colleague's personal experience of 18 years as an RCMP officer.

Since I have been a member of Parliament, one thing I have seen is any time we talk about mandatory minimum sentences for criminals, no matter what the crime, we just get a tremendous amount of push back, a lot of stalling and walls are always put up. There seems to be a real aversion for some opposition members to mandatory minimum sentences.

As a law enforcement officer, what did he find was the experience when people knew that if they committed a crime there would be a consequence? In this case we are talking about human smugglers and about people who want to come to Canada illegally. Could he comment on what kind of impact that makes?

[Rob Clarke, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Madam Speaker, going back into my policing history, I remember one community in which I was patrolling. We talk about deterrence and the proper utilization of criminal laws. which this government and past governments have brought forward in the Criminal Code of Canada.

I was patrolling around in a northern community of about 1,500 people. Crime and alcohol abuse was rampant in the community. It was almost to a point where the community was screaming for more visible policing on the streets.

We listened to the people's concerns about trying to protect their homes and their streets. What we did was a visible policing policy, being on the street, enforcing those laws and deterring the criminals from committing offences. If a person was out walking around and was found committing a crime, he or she was arrested and detained. In one year alone we had a 40% decrease in criminal complaints. That is because the laws are there to prevent people from committing those crimes.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to participate in the debate today on Bill C-49, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act and the Marine Transportation Security Act. In the tradition of the government, it has given it a nickname, the Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act.

Once again, as has been the case with all of the nicknames that it has come up with, it is a very misleading nickname because this bill really affects refugees far more than it will ever affect those who engage in human smuggling.

It is unfortunate with this bill that we have seen a real setback in the kind of progress we have made in this Parliament on immigration and refugee issues. We had a great example of co-operation, of cross-party co-operation, and government and opposition co-operation, with Bill C-11, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, which passed unanimously in this House back in June. That was a place where the government introduced a bill to address issues it saw with the refugee determination process in Canada, in an attempt to make it more efficient, to speed it up and to address some of the problems existing in that process.

The opposition had trouble with that bill, but because there was an openness to dealing with the questions that the opposition had, a better bill was created. Unanimity was found, a rare thing in this minority Parliament, and I was hopeful about that kind of process. We saw, in one of the few occasions since it has come to power in the last two Parliaments, the government's willingness to actually work with others to craft a better bill, and that is what we ended up with.

Now we are set back with Bill C-49, which takes us back and tries to reopen some of the issues that the government apparently resolved back in Bill C-11. It is trying to reopen some of the issues on which it forged a compromise with the opposition parties back in the spring in this place.

That is very troubling. It seems that when we do the job that Canadians sent us here to do, to talk to each other, to do the things that are best for Canadians, when we finally have that opportunity, the government wants to turn its back on that development in a very dramatic way by reintroducing another bill that reforms a piece of legislation we just dealt with in June.

[An hon. member]

It isn't even in effect yet.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

It has not even been proclaimed yet, as one of my colleagues points out.

This is really problematic and a very sad day that we are here to do this.

Bill C-49 is a piece of legislation that is extremely unfair to refugees. We just listened to a speech from a Conservative member that had a completely confused understanding of what it was to be a refugee or a refugee claimant in Canada. The member seemed to believe that all of these people were criminals or potential criminals and talked about them in that way. Nothing could be further from the truth, and even in the situation where a refugee claimant may lose that determination, I would think there are very few, if any, of those people who any Canadian would reasonably define as a criminal. It is very sad that this kind of confusion can exist on the Conservative bench amongst government party members about the intent or the need for this piece of legislation. That is a very serious confusion and misleads Canadians about the situation of refugees and refugee claimants in Canada.

Even if we look at the situations that seem to have given occasion to this particular bill, the arrival of the boats on Canada's west coast with largely Tamil refugees, that is not a fair descriptor yet. Many of the people who have arrived in Canada in boats, recently and in past years, have had successful refugee determination cases. They were not criminals. They were not queue-jumpers. They were in fact refugees, as determined by the established process here in Canada. That characterization of them is false and misleading, and it is very sad that it continues to be promulgated.

Bill C-49 is a deeply flawed bill and deeply unfair to refugees. It does not honour Canada's obligations under our own equality law, under the charter, or under international law. It is a sad departure from Canada being, in 1986, a country that was honoured by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees with the Nansen Medal for its refugee work as one of the outstanding countries in the world in terms of refugee resettlement and support for refugees. This is a far step from that point in our past history.

This bill would deprive refugees of an independent review. Because it moves to the detention system, which we have largely avoided in Canadian refugee determination and Canadian refugee law, it goes to the expensive alternative of detention. Detention is hugely expensive when compared to the value of a refugee claimant living in the community while his or her case is being determined. This is a serious departure.

The reality is that the bill, despite all the bravado about it, would really not do much about human smuggling. More Canadian laws are not going to catch human smugglers, the people who organize the kinds of things that the government is apparently concerned about.

Mandatory minimum sentences are ineffectual in most criminal situations and I cannot imagine how in this circumstance there is even any hope of them being any kind of deterrence. The only reason we would have a mandatory minimum sentence is for the deterrent value. I think they are almost useless. I doubt that any of the criminal organizations that the government says are out there organizing and switching from arms shipments to human shipments are writing memos to the people they work with saying, “Beware. Canada has just introduced a mandatory minimum sentence for human smuggling”. Mandatory minimums are not going to stop any of those people. They are not even an issue. They are not even a consideration in those circumstances. In this case, a mandatory minimum sentence would be completely ineffectual. This is one of the places where it would be least effective anywhere in criminal law.

Overwhelmingly, mandatory minimum sentences are ineffective throughout most aspects of criminal law. It is a government fantasy to think that they would somehow address the human smuggling situation.

Refugees are usually people who are in desperate circumstances. One of the criteria for determining whether people are refugees is if they fear for their life in their country of origin, if they have been persecuted and are seeking safety. It is our duty to receive those people and make a determination about their case.

In Bill C-11, we made decisions about how to expedite that process. It was taking too long in some cases. The Conservatives did not help the speed of the refugee determination process by their actions when they became government, by the fact that they would not reappoint anybody to the immigration and refugee appeal boards. The backlog increased because of their refusal to reappoint anybody that the previous Liberal government had appointed. They were slow making their own appointment. The Conservatives are directly responsible for the backlog that exists in refugee determination in Canada right now.

But we did take some extra measures to make sure that it was a more effective process in Bill C-11. We did take measures to ensure that when someone is determined not to be a refugee that they are removed from Canada. I have always said that a key aspect of our immigration and refugee policy had to be an effective removals policy as well. If we are going to have any respect for our refugee and immigration regime, that has to be an effective part. There has been a real experience that it is one place where we have fallen down in terms of enforcing immigration law in the past.

I want to talk about some of the specific aspects of this legislation.

I really believe that Bill C-49 punishes refugees. My remarks are drawing fairly heavily on the work of the Canadian Council for Refugees, in whom I have incredible confidence. This is an umbrella organization of almost every refugee- and immigrant-serving organization in Canada. It does excellent and detailed work on immigration and refugee policy and speaks loud and clear for the people it serves from coast to coast to coast in Canada. Whenever I speak on immigration and refugee matters, I draw heavily on its work.

Bill C-49 has been presented as legislation that would target smugglers, but in fact most of the legislation would not target smugglers but refugees and changes the circumstance for refugees. I think the previous Liberal member did a count and said there are 12 sections of the bill that deal with refugees and only five sections that deal with smugglers. So it really is an unbalanced piece of legislation in that sense.

Refugees, in this bill, including refugee children, would be mandatorily detained for a year without the possibility of an independent review and denied family reunification and the right to travel for over five years under the terms of this legislation. These are very serious restrictions. Mandatory detention is something that we have not used extensively in Canada and I think it would be a real departure from the success of our refugee legislation.

Many people believe that under Bill C-49 refugees could easily be victimized three times: first, by the people who were persecuting them in their country of origin; second, by smugglers who are often the unscrupulous people they have to use to escape their persecution; and finally, by an unfair process here in Canada. This is totally contrary to what we should be doing. We should be seeking to reduce the victimization of refugees and of people who have been persecuted and who fear for their lives in their countries of origin. The bill would only add to that victimization, unfortunately.

As I mentioned earlier, this legislation seems to violate Canada's commitments under international law and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Convention on the Rights of the Child is another one that is in play here and is of great concern. The Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the refugee convention, is another important international commitment that Canada has made. I think under all of those international agreements and also under the charter there will be challenges to this legislation, because in one way or another it is problematic. When we look at the Convention on the Rights of the Child, for instance, a delay in family reunification is an incredible violation of the rights of a refugee child. If a parent is here in Canada making a refugee claim, if the possibility of reunification for that child is delayed by five years, it is a very serious problem for that child and I think a very serious violation of that child's rights.

The most serious aspect of Bill C-49 is that it would create in our refugee legislation two classes of refugees: one class that is designated by the minister based on their mode of arrival, who would have different treatment compared to other refugees who land on our shores in Canada, who arrive in Canada by some other means. I think this is a clearly discriminatory provision.

In fact, it goes back on the commitments that we thought we had received from the government when the negotiation happened around Bill C-11, the Balanced Refugee Reform Act. In that legislation, there was also an attempt to establish two classes of refugees and to have a designation system. It was based on the country of origin, on what were considered safe countries that could produce refugees and countries that were not considered safe, and we know that it is almost an impossible designation to make.

So in negotiations with the government we got that changed and we did away with that classification of refugees that was a key part of the previous bill, Bill C-11.

Now the government, in this bill, is trying to reintroduce that kind of designation system. This time, it is not based on the country of origin of the refugee but on how that refugee got to Canada, on his or her mode of arrival. I think that is just trying to get it back in when we thought we had dealt with that issue very clearly in the previous negotiations, in the previous legislation.

I think, too, the discretion that is afforded the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration in making these designations would be way off the scale. It would be too much. It would go way too far in allowing an individual minister the ability to make these decisions about who would be this designated refugee who loses some of the rights established under Canadian law for refugee determination. I think if there is any reason to have serious questions about this legislation, it is because of the establishment of these two classes of refugees and because of the incredible amount of discretion that it would afford the minister.

There are places for discretion for ministers of citizenship and immigration around humanitarian and compassionate considerations, for instance, because refugee and immigration cases are often reflections of people's very complex lives and that is a place where there needs to be some discretion for a minister, especially in this portfolio. However, I do not believe that allowing a minister to designate who is a first-class refugee and who is a second-class refugee or a no-class refugee is an appropriate addition to our immigration and refugee law in Canada. It is a very serious problem.

This bill, as we has mentioned, talks about mandatory detention of people who are designated by the minister as second-class refugees. There is mandatory detention without independent review. This kind of arbitrary detention is likely contrary to the charter and international law. Children will also be detained under this proposal. Unless they are accepted as refugees or released on discretionary grounds by the minister based upon exceptional circumstances, designated persons will remain in detention for a minimum of one year before having access to a review of their decisions. There are examples in Canadian law where that kind of process has been shown to be in contradiction of the charter.

The bill also talks about mandatory conditions being imposed upon release and for persons to be indefinitely detained beyond 12 months without the possibility of release if the minister is of the opinion that their identities have not been established. These measures seriously deprive people of liberty, without the opportunity for an independent tribunal to review whether they are necessary to their particular situations or to their particular cases.

The bill also denies refugee claimants in the designated class the right to appeal a negative refugee decision to the Immigration and Refugee Board's Refugee Appeal Division. It is frustrating to no end to have to be debating the need for a Refugee Appeal Division yet again in the House of Commons. The Refugee Appeal Division, an appeal of the decision of the Immigration and Refugee Appeal Board on a specific refugee case, was part of the new Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that came into effect in 2001. In fact, with the Liberal government of the day, the establishment of the Refugee Appeal Division was a compromise, worked out with all the parties in the House, that garnered support for that legislation.

Sadly, even though we won the Refugee Appeal Division in an important appeal in the refugee process, the Liberal government of the day and subsequent Conservative governments never put it in place. It was passed and was part of the law but was never implemented. This was a serious problem. We even had private members' legislation, committee reports and other motions that called upon the government to actually implement the established law of the land but to no avail.

Recently, in the debate on Bill C-11, again we thought we had won a victory where finally the Refugee Appeal Division, this important appeal of a negative refugee decision, would be implemented. However, now we see that the government is proposing, in Bill C-49, to remove that again. We think we have it but we do not implement it. We think we have it again and now we are going to limit it.

Every organization has said that this is an important aspect of refugee law and that it needs to be here in Canada. International organizations have commented that Canada needed to have this level of appeal, that Canada needed to uphold its existing refugee act, and that this was a crucial piece of what we should be about in our refugee laws. I am really disappointed that the government has again moved to limit the Refugee Appeal Division.

Family reunification is an issue. I mentioned the issue of blocking families from being reunited for five years and the issue of refugee integration into the community. This slows that process down, and that has been one of the successes of Canadian immigration law. We have moved new immigrants and refugees into positions of participation in society, of feeling that they belong in Canada, that they are valued members of the community, better than any other country, and yet here again in this legislation we are putting forward barriers to doing that, and we do that at our peril. We are turning our backs on what we have proven works and what other countries agree have worked.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage]

Madam Speaker, to be quite honest, I am dismayed with a number of the comments made by the member.

As a person whose family is not far removed from being new Canadians, I think all Canadians, including myself, are very proud of Canada's very giving and gracious immigration system. I think immigrants have added so much to Canada and I know that is speaking from my own family's history.

This past summer I was inundated with people from my riding, including new Canadians, who felt that what we were seeing was an egregious violation of Canada's very open immigration and very open refugee laws. We must respond to it.

It appears that what the member is suggesting is that Canada's immigration laws should be behest to some unknown international community that thinks it should be something other than what the government feels it should be. It also appears that the member is suggesting that the people in my riding, the thousands of people who objected to what we saw this summer, apparently are not prepared to help people in need. I reject that entire line of dogma from the member.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am dismayed with the member as well. If he is dismayed with me, I can be dismayed right back to him.

I wonder if he engaged any of those constituents in a discussion of what the actual refugee process is in Canada and what has happened in previous occasions when boats have landed on Canadian shores of people who risked their lives to escape persecution, who went through the refugee determination process and who have largely been found to be refugees.

I do not think people in my riding want me to turn my back or us in this place to turn our back on legitimate refugees, on people who have had their lives at risk in their country of origin. No one in my riding wants us to do that. They want us to find a process that tests those cases. They do not want us to have bogus refugees in Canada. I do not want bogus refugees here either. I said that if a person is a bogus refugee then we should have a removal process that works. I said that we have had governments that did not have that process working in the past.

This is not a question about lack of respect for our immigration law. This is a question about respecting the immigration law that we have and respecting the refugee process that we have as well.

We have a good process and we should let it work. We have a process that if the government had appointed the people to do the work, and had not let the refugee system fall into disrepute because of its own partisan considerations, we would have a system that was functioning effectively.

When the Conservatives came to power, the Immigration and Refugee Board had almost eliminated its backlog. That took a lot of hard work and determination by the folks who were involved in that organization. When the Conservatives came to power and refused to reappoint members of the board, it dramatically increased the backlog. That was irresponsible.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, when the hon. member referenced Bill C-11, which passed the House with the support of all parties and all members of Parliament, he referenced it in an interesting way. We worked collectively on that bill and we passed a bill that we all thought was pretty good. Were we 100% happy? No one was absolutely happy but we thought it was good.

All of sudden, this bill gets dropped on us out of the blue that seems to go back on that sort of consensual collective way that we were able to arrive at results. The result of dropping a bill without any consultation with other parties are issues that were raised.

My goodness, have we ever allowed for the incarceration of children for one year in detention centres in Canada? What are we thinking of doing here? How can we separate families for five years? The people who are determined to be refugees, we will not allow them to travel back to their country to bring to Canada the rest of their families who also are in harm's way as refugees in camps, perhaps. Even though they have been determined as refugees, we will not allow them landed status, so they cannot bring over their families.

We will have sometimes husbands, wives and children of determined refugees in harm's way. Could the hon. member tell us if Canada has ever treated some of the most vulnerable on the planet in that manner?

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Madam Speaker, as I said, this is an incredible departure from Canada's past practice in terms of the increased use of detention and it is a totally inappropriate direction for us to be going in.

The member raised the effects of detention on refugee children. I think what happened in Australia is a good example of that. Australia did a very significant study on the effects--

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Are you calling everyday Canadians bigots?

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member, but I would ask other members to take their conversations outside in the lobby please.

The hon. member can complete his answer.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

In Australia, a study was done by the Australian human rights commission, a parliamentary organization created by the Australian parliament, to look into the effects of detention on refugee children in Australia. Australia uses detention far more than Canada does and it uses it, I think, in a very troubling way. However, Australia has a different set of circumstances from what Canada has, so we need to consider that.

Australia held a national inquiry into children in immigration detention and it found all kinds of serious things. It found that the kind of traumatization that refugee children experienced was only exacerbated by continuing detention once they got to Australia. It found there were repeated breaches of human rights under Australian law. It is not only a very serious matter to detain children, but it is also a very serious matter to detain refugees once they arrive on our shores. Canada, to its credit, has avoided that. I do not think we can make the argument that we have not had a successful policy that has protected Canadians and has protected immigration policy in Canada.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, earlier today, I believe a government member said that about 65% of Canadians supported this legislation. Clearly the government has done polling and held focus groups on Bill C-49.

The bill would give the minister great powers that future ministers may not actually want. To that effect, what is the purpose of having an immigration system if the minister will be making all of the decisions? What happens if a ship of migrants arrives and it is populated by a group of people widely supported by the public? How will they be treated? Will they be treated in the same way as the current group of refugees are being treated? Will the government at that point take a poll and, if those refugees are supported by 65% of the population, will it somehow make a different decision and treat those refugees differently?

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Madam Speaker, that points out why we need a fair system in place. We need a single class of refugee so that any refugee arriving in Canada is treated the same way, equally and with fairness and justice. Giving too much discretion is a serious problem.

One of the aspects of the bill is to give the minister retroactive designation powers back to March 2009 to designate a special class of refugees who will be treated differently and who will have fewer rights in the system. That is a very troubling aspect of the bill. That retroactive power has to be gone because it is totally inappropriate. We should not go back that far and revisit cases that have already begun their process under the existing refugee law.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship]

Madam Speaker, the member said that this government created a huge refugee backlog at the IRB. In point of fact, when we came to office there was a backlog of 20,000 and then we received huge waves of claims that were about 20,000 more than the full capacity of the IRB to process.

Is the member really suggesting that when we get a year like two years ago with 38,000 asylum claimants, more than any other country in the world as a geographically remote country, 60% of which claims are rejected, that we do not have a problem with bogus asylum claimants taking advantage of Canada's generosity?

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Madam Speaker, I will say that the Conservatives created the mess by letting the number of appointments on the Immigration and Refugee Board lapse. That was a serious problem that they created. It was totally their own creation and it is something that should not have happened.

I am glad the minister qualified by saying geographically isolated country but that we have the largest number. People should listen very carefully to his words. Canada is not getting the same refugee numbers as many other countries because of our geographic--

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

Order, please. The hon. member for Papineau.

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

Madam Speaker, the arrival on Canadian shores of the latest two boats filled with Tamil refugee claimants has generated many concerns from the public. Opinion polls suggest that the vast majority of Canadians want future boats to be turned away and the Tamil refugee claimants to be deported for fear that our generous system is being exploited by criminal elements.

As always, the government has not missed the opportunity to turn public concerns into bad legislation that torques up the issue and promotes fear and misunderstanding in the hopes of electoral gain.

Bill C-49 is a terrible piece of legislation but a very effective announcement. It is effective because the government gets to talk about getting tough on vile human smugglers who criminally take advantage of extraordinarily vulnerable people fleeing persecution and oppression. It is always effective to be able to stand up and talk about defeating the evildoers while protecting the innocent and the just.

The problem is that is all this is, talk. This legislation actually does very little to go after the evildoers, and far from protecting the vulnerable, actually goes after and punishes asylum seekers.

Allow me to be very clear on one thing, Liberals and indeed members of all parties in this House are deeply committed and concerned with our capacity to crack down on human smugglers and protect the integrity of our refugee and immigration systems.

It is just that it is apparent there is little in the new legislation that actually cracks down on smugglers. There are provisions the government is quite pleased with that provide for mandatory minimum sentences of up to 10 years, but those are very unlikely to be an effective deterrent given that smuggling already carries a potential life sentence.

There are some minor provisions against shipowners who disobey ministerial orders, but nothing that is truly likely to put a dent in the multi-million dollar human smuggling business. Indeed, many of the provisions will just drive up the cost to asylum seekers and put them on more dangerous sea routes.

Rather, most of the legislation's provisions are directed at trying to deter refugees themselves. Many of the provisions may be inconsistent with the charter. Others are in direct violation of our obligations under international law. All will cause great hardship to refugees who have come to Canada to seek protection.

The legislation represents a complete reversal and backtracking on Canada's proud humanitarian tradition toward refugees and the displaced.

This government bill would create two classes of refugees based on the means of transportation they use to get here. Consider this: our system assesses, questions and judges people to determine whether they are legitimate refugees, but they will be treated differently if the minister does not like the way they arrived in Canada. That has nothing to do with the refugees' merit. It is entirely arbitrary. These people are recognized as refugees because they have good reason to fear for their lives because of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinions. These are legitimate refugees, but because we do not like the way they arrived here, we subject them to harsh punishment that is no doubt unconstitutional and certainly violates our international obligations.

We cannot judge people on the basis of how they get here, because refugees use unorthodox means to reach their chosen land. In most cases, people have found unorthodox ways to get to Canada. The government judges these people on the basis of their country of origin. Designating people who arrive illegally means the government can judge anyone it wants.

In addition to keeping designated refugees locked up, the government would impose a five-year probation, during which time they would be forbidden from leaving Canada or from applying to sponsor other family members, who are most likely suffering. The government would also have the power to hold asylum seekers for up to a year.

The president of the Canadian Council for Refugees, Wanda Yamamoto, said:

Measures keeping some refugees longer in detention, denying them family reunification and restricting their freedom of movement are likely in violation of the Canadian Charter and of international human rights obligations. People who are forced to flee for their lives need to be offered asylum and a warm welcome, not punished.

That is what is so worrisome about this capacity to create two categories of refugees depending simply on whether or not the minister approves of the way they got here.

The thinking behind it, I assume, is that if people know that the minister might not approve of their way of coming here, they are not going to get in those leaky boats and risk their lives in a heavy crossing. But when we look at the pressures on them when they got on, and their willingness to shell out to criminal elements extraordinary amounts of money that they do not have, the suspicion that perhaps the minister will disapprove of them is not going to keep them away.

When we create two classes of refugees because we like their way of getting here or we do not like their way of getting here, we are creating divisions among the very people who are most vulnerable, people whose rights Canada has sworn to uphold and protect. It is a complete discarding of the Canadian principles of fairness and justice that have defined this country for decades.

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms states that everyone has the right not to be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned. Everyone has the right on arrest or detention to be informed promptly, to retain and instruct counsel without delay, and to have the validity of the detention determined by way of habeas corpus and to be released if the detention is not lawful.

On top of that, the fact that refugees would have no right to apply for permanent residence for five years after determination of their claim is inconsistent with the principle enunciated in article 34 of the UN Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees which provides that states must make every effort to expedite naturalization proceedings for people determined to be refugees. We are tossing international obligations and Canadian law to the wind with this bill.

The Geneva Convention states:

The Contracting States shall issue to refugees lawfully staying in their territory travel documents for the purpose of travel outside their territory...

That is fairly clear. Again, the proposed legislation goes against that by banning them from travel for up to five years. Even once they have been recognized as refugees, they have to wait until they become permanent residents to get travel documents.

The Geneva Convention also states that the contracting states, of which we are one:

...shall in particular make every effort to expedite naturalization proceedings and to reduce as far as possible the charges and costs of such proceedings.

That is one of the things Amnesty International recently declared in an open letter violates the rights of these refugees. It ignores the reality that many of these refugees who have a well-founded fear of persecution turn to smugglers for assistance because of desperation, because of a lack of other options, because of a lack of a willingness of their host government which is busy oppressing or maligning them to help them get to another country.

Neither a just society, nor the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, nor international agreements are safe from this government.

We have good reason to be very concerned about this bill. I—we—understand that the problem of human trafficking needs to be dealt with, but the Conservatives' approach lacks refinement, subtlety and respect for the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. They are classifying people not according to the dangers they face at home, but according to how they get to Canada. That is not the right way to do things.

The Tamil boatloads of 2009 and 2010 represented a new wave of boatloads of refugee claimants. The government's response to the first boat was relatively muted. There was not a tremendously strong public outcry against these refugee claimants.

However, well before the second boatload arrived, the public safety minister was already warning the Canadian public that the boat was filled with terrorists and criminals, before these people were evaluated, examined, interviewed, judged on their individual merits, as our obligations require us to do in the case of every single refugee.

This coming out against them soured public opinion against the claimants before they even arrived in Canada, and has produced a dramatic backlash. The effect of this short-sighted reaction has been to create a strong anti-refugee and anti-immigrant sentiment.

That is not typical of Canada. That is not typical of Canadians. We are a country that has consistently stood up open to immigrants, to refugees, and to drawing from around the world people who wish to come here, build a safe and secure life free from persecution. Now we are busy encouraging that persecution and hyping up the tensions between Canadians and potentially new Canadians.

It is extremely important that a Canadian government be responsible in how it defends our immigration and refugee system, how it makes Canadians understand that we are strong because of, not in spite of, diversity. Our differences are what define us and make us the flexible, open, confident, powerful country that we are in the process of becoming more and more every day.

The government needs to be much more responsible in how it chooses to elevate and enervate the Canadian public's level of debate on an issue such as this one.

It is important to mention that when the minister and the Prime Minister talk about making sure that the immigrants who go through the normal process do not get unfair treatment because of the queue jumpers, it is actual misinformation.

Let me share a secret that the government does not want anyone to know. There is no queue for refugees. There are no queue jumpers in the refugee system. We have a process around refugees. Anyone who comes to Canada and seeks asylum falls into an evaluation process that has nothing to do with the quotas we establish for refugees, family class immigrants, economic migrants. It has nothing to do with the legitimate immigration process, the queue and wait times.

A refugee is evaluated on the merits of his or her individual case. Unfortunately, as we have seen in the case of the American war deserters and many others, the government is choosing to interfere with the process in which refugee claimants are evaluated on the merits of their claim. The government is choosing to prejudge. It is choosing to frame the debate in such a way that people are blending immigrants and refugees. They are two very different things.

By stoking our fears and concerns and the frustrations of legitimate immigrants who have been here but who followed the queue, who see these people as queue jumpers because the government says they are queue jumpers, we are not serving Canada. We are not living up to our international responsibilities to be a fair and just country. We are falling by the wayside of the rights and principles for which Canada has always stood.

Instead of misinforming and holding press conferences in front of boats, we would have liked the government to consider an alternative approach.

The first and most obvious one, in the case of the Sri Lankan asylum seekers, is to aggressively pursue a peace settlement in Sri Lanka.

Tens of thousands of Tamils still remain detained in detention camps. The government is being investigated by the United Nations to see if crimes against humanity were committed by the government during the civil war. Tortures and disappearances unfortunately continue.

However, there is no doubt that there is a genuine opportunity for peace. The Tamil minority wants some form of autonomy. This can be addressed within a federal state. More and more Tamils are involved in the Sri Lankan government. There is an openness toward improving the relations between the Tamil community, the international community and the government.

We are making headway on that and Canada can play a role in helping shape that peace, in helping encourage that peace. We know what it is like to live within a country where there are distinct cultural, linguistic and religious identities and to make it work. We are living proof of that here in the House of Commons. We need to build on our capacity to work with international partners, to work with the UN. Unfortunately it is an area in which the government has not been particularly successful.

When we called upon the government to work with international partners, to cut off human smuggling, to decrease the likelihood and the possibility of engaging with human smugglers, to go after human smugglers, what did it do? The Conservatives went after them. They worked with local police forces. But instead of rounding up human smugglers they rounded up potential asylum seekers. That is not the kind of work we need to do if we are going to really crack down on human smuggling.

People have been talking about turning around boats. I am pleased that the government has not chosen in this bill to encourage the idea that we should turn these boats around before they land on our shores, because that is a violation of any number of international conventions and puts people who are extraordinarily vulnerable at tremendous risk.

Since the diversion of the ships is not legal, the only alternative is therefore to provide expeditious determination of refugee claims. It is well known that the most effective mechanism for deterring frivolous or irresponsible or unfounded claims and slowing down refugee movements is to subject persons to fair but expeditious determinations and to quickly deport persons whose claims are rejected. Unfortunately, Bill C-49 does not address that and does not encourage that.

The process of seeking the detention of refugee claimants, coupled with expedited hearings while providing them due process is an effective response to try to deter claims. In the case of the Sri Lankan Tamils, given the current situation, it may well be that some of the claimants will be accepted. However, all should be expeditious, fair determinations.

This, coupled with efforts to resolve the situation in Sri Lanka and with efforts to stem the flow of boats by working with governments in the region, is the most effective long-term response. It can be done without inflaming anti-immigrant feelings in Canada and in a manner that will ensure Canada complies with its obligations under international law and the charter.

Speaking of this legislation, there is something else that worries me. As we have heard speaker after speaker in the opposition get up and highlight all the real legal challenges and convention challenges with this bill, and as experts have come out time and time again with real concerns about this, the thing that really bugs me is that this legislation, which is filled with ineffective and illegal measures, was drafted by the good people in what is generally considered to be the best immigration ministry in the world.

Our fine bureaucrats put together this piece of legislation that is not worthy of the kind of work and the kind of balanced approach that was even available and visible in Bill C-11 that we passed unanimously in the House. That bill was supposed to balance and improve our process of evaluating refugees and providing fairness for refugees.

Under the guise of legislation to deter smugglers, or smuggling, the government has introduced broad changes to our refugee determination system and to the rights of persons recognized as refugees.

Let us be perfectly clear. There is very little in this legislation that is designed to crack down on smugglers. Instead, this legislation takes reprisals against the refugees who use those smugglers—

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member. I would ask all hon. members to take side conversations outside the House rather than shouting across to each other. Out of politeness and to maintain civil debate, I would ask that very respectfully.

The hon. member has one minute to complete his comments.

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

Madam Speaker, this ultimately is the kind of bill that is being presented here.

We have indicated that we have grave concerns about particular pieces of this legislation. The government has indicated that it is a very important piece of legislation. Canadians have indicated that they have real, founded concerns about human smuggling and its impact on our immigration and refugee system. Because of that, we are considering this bill. We are looking to see if there is anything in it that is salvageable. We are hopeful that we will be able to determine measures that will actually crack down on smugglers and be fair to refugees. So we are going to look at that.

Members heard me say this before and they will hear me say it again just about every time I get up in the House to speak about the government and the ineffective legislation it continually puts forward. Canadians deserve better and so does Canada.

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

Order, please. I ask hon. members on all sides of the House to be a little more respectful to those members who are speaking.

For questions and comments, we have five minutes before the top of the hour. The hon. Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship]

Madam Speaker, allow me to congratulate my colleague from Papineau on his appointment as the official opposition critic for immigration and citizenship. However to quote him, I do not really think that speech did anything to “enervate” this debate, or elevate it for that matter, because it was a heavy dose of demagoguery.

What I found most disturbing about that speech was the odious suggestion that Canadians who are concerned about this prima facie violation of the integrity of our immigration system, of our laws of the principle of fairness, are somehow “anti-immigrant”.

He has seen the same polls as I have. I am sure his constituents have the same view as most Canadians. Two-thirds of Canadians have told pollsters they think Canada should not even allow the boats to enter our territorial waters if they are carrying people being smuggled here illegally. Some 55% of Canadians say we should return even those who are deemed to be bona fide refugees.

I do not believe that two-thirds of Canadians are anti-immigrant, and in point of fact, new Canadians, those Canadians who were born abroad, feel more strongly about this violation of the integrity and fairness of our immigration system than native-born Canadians.

I would challenge him to be very careful before he casts aspersions on the motives of those who are open, who maintain support for the most generous immigration and refugee determination system in the world but believe it should actually be governed by the rule of law and the principle of fairness.

I would ask him this. Apart from giving speeches in Colombo and talking to other foreign governments, what concrete actions would the Liberal Party take to stop the smugglers from bringing people here illegally?

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am glad to defer to the hon. minister's expertise on demagoguery.

What is odious about this piece of legislation is that it is dividing Canadians into two Canadas. He is talking about new Canadians who have one particular perception of things and other Canadians who may not. As soon as we start distinguishing who is what type of Canadian, we are falling onto a slippery slope that, unfortunately, the government continually encourages when it blends the distinction between immigrants and refugees, when it talks about queue jumpers for refugees. It is being entirely irresponsible and it is not worthy of the minister who is responsible for upholding and defending the integrity and the respect for the law and convention of our immigration system.