Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues for their encouragement. I am very pleased today to have the opportunity to comment on this very important bill.
I would like to start by stating some principles. First, I agree that an efficient judicial system is needed so that we can deport serious criminals who are not Canadian citizens. This is a principle on which everyone here is in agreement. No one has a problem with it.
Another point on which almost everyone is in agreement—at least, I hope so—is that it has to be done fairly, humanely, justly and intelligently. And therein lies the problem. I will give a few examples. We want fairness, but one of the problems with this bill is that, once again, it broadens the minister's discretionary power. This is the trademark of the Conservative government. We have to wonder what discretionary power the Conservatives will give to the minister next.
I will not go back over the details of these measures because several of my colleagues spoke about them earlier. The real problem is this trend of giving more discretionary power to the minister.
That is what happened with the list of safe and unsafe countries to which refugees can be deported. Once more, the minister was given more discretionary power instead of calling on a panel of experts. That is dangerous. I do not know why the government wants to put its own minister in a situation like that. In international negotiations, other countries will put pressure on the minister to remove them from the list of unsafe countries. The minister will no longer even be able to point to the fact that an independent body draws up the list.
The government is always giving itself more discretionary power while reducing the flexibility that judges have. That is a problem because the minister exercises those discretionary powers behind closed doors. The minister makes the decisions; we do not know the details and we have no information. Conversely, when a judge renders a decision, the information is public; it is much more open. Reducing judges' flexibility and giving ministers more discretionary power compromises the transparency of the process. My fear is that fairness will be affected as well.
According to the bill as drafted, the minister is not even required to take humanitarian circumstances into account. Need I say more? This bill lacks compassion.
With respect to simple natural justice, the right to appeal for crimes where the sentence is longer than six months is being removed, whereas previously an individual could not appeal when the sentence was longer than two years. This issue needs to be considered in a broader context. On the one hand, harsher minimum sentences are being imposed, and judges cannot reduce those sentences based on the specific circumstances of the case. On the other, the period beyond which an individual does not have the right to appeal is being reduced from two years to six months.
To fully understand what this means, we need to stop and think about specific cases. I am trying to imagine a young Vietnamese boy who came to Canada when he was seven or eight years old and who started going to school and playing hockey with his friends. Now he is 19. He goes to CEGEP. At some point, he does something stupid. I am not saying that it is right, but he does something stupid. Under the new legislation and under the new regime, it does not have to be a huge mistake. He gets six months in prison. He is deported. He does not have the right to appeal. He is sent back, without his parents, to a country where he knows no one, where he may no longer have any family and where he barely speaks the language. Is it fair and humane to treat people like that? I am not so sure.
We have to be smart about this. Let me provide an example that is based on comments made by Ottawa lawyer Michael Bossin. He says that under this new bill, a judge no longer has the discretionary power to take into account the nature of the crime and the context in which it is committed. That is important. A judge no longer has the right to make his own ruling based on what he sees. A judge will not be able to look at the context in which the offence was committed and take into account, for instance, the possible mental illness of refugees or permanent residents from war-torn countries. Mr. Bossin said that in many cases, those people committed crimes when they were not being treated for their mental illness.
The government recently made cuts to refugee health care. Organizations such as RIVO, in my riding, provided psychological care to refugees from war-torn countries and refugees who were tortured or suffered other atrocities. It provided psychological counselling to prevent refugees from going off the rails and becoming criminals. These services are being cut, which hinders prevention. At the same time, cases of mental illness will not be taken into account. Nonetheless, refugees who are provided with these services can often turn their lives around.
Speaking of being smart about this, it should be noted that there is a lack of data and basic information. We are being asked to speak to this without having all the basic information on the annual number of cases, the seriousness of the cases, etc.
I want to point out that the government, in fact, is trying to punish everyone because of a handful of problem cases. That is what the Conservatives always do when it comes to refugees and immigrants. The striking thing about this bill is that its title refers to foreign criminals, as though permanent residents were foreigners. They are not all foreigners.
There was a well-known case in Quebec recently. A Portuguese man had permanent residence status and had been living in Quebec for 35 years. He was married and had children and a house. I would not call someone like that a foreigner. I would call him a non-citizen, a permanent resident, but not a foreigner. I have a good friend originally from England who just got married. He has a job and a circle of friends. He volunteers. To me, he is not a foreigner. I have a real problem with the short title of this bill.
As usual, the Conservatives are being stubborn and inflexible. They are being inflexible towards others, because they themselves always have discretionary power. There is no rigidity for them.
More importantly, they are refusing to attack certain known sources of the problem and are slashing health care spending for refugees and refusing to work on what we can do to better integrate immigrants, who have so much to offer to Canadian society.