Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to support Bill C-49, legislation that would protect the integrity of our immigration and refugee protection programs while also keeping our streets and communities safe for all Canadians.
I have listened with great interest to the comments of several hon. members and I appreciate this opportunity to set the record straight on a number of fronts.
Some have suggested that the legislation before us today goes too far. They have suggested that it might put so-called legitimate refugees in harm's way or somehow run counter to our international obligation to provide a safe haven for those individuals who are legitimate refugees.
This view is apparently not shared by several experts in the field, including Benjamin Perrin, an associate professor at the University of British Columbia's Faculty of Law and a Faculty Fellow at Liu Institute for Global Issues.
In a recent interview with CTV, Mr. Perrin was asked whether he felt that the tougher measures that our government was proposing to combat human smugglers may close an option for refugees seeking asylum. I would like to read his reply at length since it underlies our government's actions to strengthen Canada's immigration and refugee protection programs, as well as the bill before us today.
Mr. Perrin told CTV that he feels it is “incredibly dangerous that some organizations who claim they want to support refugees are in fact defending migrant smugglers”.
He went on to say that if Canada wants to increase the opportunities for refugees to come here, there were legitimate ways of doing it. He noted that the United Nations works with Canada to implement group processing. Canadians can be assured that people coming through a UN-certified refugee camp are, first, legitimate refugees and, second, they do not have a criminal or terrorist history.
Mr. Perrin added that, “If Canada wants to assist genuine refugees, then we should do it through co-operating and helping men, women and children come from long-term refugee camps to Canada rather than trying to be apologists for migrant smugglers”. What this expert is saying is that advocates for the status quo are nothing more than apologists for human smugglers.
Another expert in the field is Martin Collacott. Mr. Collacott is a counterterrorism analyst and a former Canadian high commissioner to Sri Lanka. With the indulgence of the House, I will directly quote Mr. Collacott who noted that Canada does accept a reasonable number of refugees each year but that the current system “is being massively exploited at great expense to Canadians at the present time”.
Some may find that acceptable but I do not and neither does our government nor a majority of Canadians.
Canadians want us to help those in need. They want us to maintain our humanitarian traditions and provide a safe haven for genuine refugees. This is what our government is doing through legislation such as the balanced refugee reform act, which would increase the number of resettled refugees by 20%, or 2,500 refugees per year.
What Canadians do not want is for Canada to become a prime destination for human smuggling operations and a place targeted by queue jumpers or those who wish to abuse our immigration system, as proponents of the status quo and opponents of the legislation before us today would suggest.
Bill C-49 would prevent human smugglers from abusing our immigration system while ensuring that Canada continues to maintain its humanitarian traditions and our international commitments to help legitimate refugees. It would do this in several ways.
Under the preventing human smugglers from abusing Canada's immigration system act, our government would crack down on human smuggling by: enabling the Minister of Public Safety to designate irregular arrivals and make those involved subject to the act's measures; making it easier to prosecute human smugglers; imposing mandatory minimum prison sentences on convicted smugglers; and holding shipowners and operators to account for use of their ships in human smuggling operations.
Under the amendments our government is proposing, we are also helping to ensure the safety and security of our streets and communities by establishing the mandatory detention of designated foreign nationals for up to one year or until a positive decision by the Immigration and Refugee Board, whichever comes sooner, in order to allow for the determination of identity, admissibility and illegal activity.
Furthermore, our government is also reducing the attraction of coming to Canada by way of a human smuggling operation by ensuring the health benefits participants receive are not more generous than those received by the Canadian public and enhancing the ability to terminate the protected person status of those who demonstrate that they are not in legitimate need of Canada's protection.
In addition, our government is detecting and deterring human smuggling overseas in several ways. We have appointed a special adviser on human smuggling and illegal migration. We are also conducting diplomatic outreach and partnering with other affected nations as well as co-operating with multilateral bodies such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
The amendments our government is proposing are indeed tough, but they are fair. They are fair to Canadians and they are fair to those who play by the rules. The truth is that Canada's refugee resettlement program is one of the most generous in the developed world. Each year Canada resettles 10,000 to 12,000 refugees through its government assisted and privately sponsored refugee programs.
Globally, countries with resettlement programs resettle about 100,000 refugees from abroad each year, which means that Canada takes one out of every 10 refugees resettled. These refugees often spend many years, sometimes decades, in squalid refugee camps or urban slums in order to escape to Canada. Patiently they wait for a chance to immigrate to Canada legally.
As of October 2, 2010, there were more than 42,000 applications for refugee resettlement waiting in Canadian immigration offices around the world. Each of these applications represents a person or a family waiting to come to Canada. These refugees choose to wait for the chance to come to Canada legally rather than pay human smugglers to help them jump the queue. The Government of Canada appreciates their respect of our laws. In the fullness of time, that patience will be rewarded for many with a letter from Citizenship and Immigration Canada welcoming them to the Canadian family.
It is unfair to those seeking to come to Canada through legitimate legal means when others pay human smugglers to help jump our immigration queue. When this happens, Canada's immigration system becomes less fair and less balanced.
With this in mind, I urge all hon. members to support the legislation before us today so that Canada can continue to protect the integrity of our immigration and refugee programs and help legitimate refugees in need of sanctuary.