Mr. Speaker, I always know when I am winning a debate and that is when my opponents completely mischaracterize my arguments as the member for Winnipeg Centre has just done.
Neither I nor any spokesman of the government have ever said that Canada is being flooded by massive waves of ships and unfounded refugee claimants. That is a complete mischaracterization of what we have said.
What we have said is that it is critical that we maintain the fairness and integrity of our immigration system and that large-scale human smuggling does represent a threat to the integrity and fairness of our system. It is a commercial transaction where people pay criminal gangs, that is what the smuggling syndicates are, large sums of money, committing in this case up to $50,000, to come to Canada ahead of the normal immigration queue.
Friends in the opposition say that there is no immigration queue. That is not true. The member just pointed out the fact that millions of people are waiting patiently for resettlement opportunities, who are designated convention refugees that at UNHCR camps around the world, some 12,000 of whom we accept.
The member has said that we are getting 11,000 refugee claimants per year. That is not so. Last year we got about 29,000 asylum claimants. Two years ago it was 38,000 asylum claimants. We are always in the top three industrialized countries in terms of the number of asylum claims filed, about 62% of which are determined to be unfounded.
I am just bringing some facts to the debate.
Does the member not agree that we should take reasonable measures that respect the charter and respect the UN convention on refugees that disincentivize people from paying smugglers to come here in this dangerous and illegal way?