Madam Speaker, one of the reasons I wanted to correct the reference to William Lyon Mackenzie King was that he was the prime minister who put innocent Italians in jail, and I wanted to make sure that was recognized as being a legacy of a Liberal prime minister, not a Conservative prime minister.
With respect to this, I find it troubling that somehow we are supposed to be proud of the fact in this country that our laws have allowed individuals to seek out vulnerable people, treat them terribly, risk their lives coming over here and sell them a bill of goods that somehow they can come in this fashion, be smuggled in, pay $25,000 and spend the rest of their lives trying to work that off to a criminal syndicate. Somehow we are supposed to be proud of that in this country. Are we not supposed to do whatever we can to ensure that real refugees come to this country and that they are treated properly and with respect?
Now, specifically in the bill, in proposed paragraph (3.2) it talks about the penalties with respect to people who commit human smuggling. It states that if:
(i) the person, in committing the offence, endangered the life or safety of, or caused bodily harm or death to, any of the persons with respect to whom the offence was committed, and
(ii) the commission of the offence was for profit, or was for the benefit of, at the direction of or in association with a criminal organization or terrorist group
a minimum penalty would be 10 years.
Surely the hon. member could agree that people who commit this type of crime should not be treated with kid gloves, that they should be put in jail, that we should do everything in our power to ensure that these human smugglers pay a steep price and that our focus should be on the people who want to come to this country properly and who demand and need the help of Canada as they have for so many years in the past.