Bring it on, someone says. The Conservatives want to keep the courts and lawyers busy challenging their legislation. One would think they would desire to have legislation that meets the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, that does the job it is supposed to do.
A member from the opposite side raised another aspect of this a couple of times. My colleague from Parkdale—High Park has quite ably talked about the potential for arbitrary decisions and broad categories. There are broad categories in the bill but then the Conservatives mention specific examples and ask if we do no agree that this should happen.
The member for Brampton West said that his party wants to prohibit the entry of someone who promotes hatred and asks why do we not support a measure that would do exactly that. Well, it does not do exactly that. It says, in very broad language, that the minister would have the power to deny entry to anyone for 36 months if the minister is of the opinion that it is justified by public policy considerations.
It might have the effect of allowing that particular thing to happen as part of this broad category, but if what the Conservatives want to do is prevent people coming to Canada on a temporary visit to promote hatred, then they should say that they are going to give the minister the power to prevent people from coming to Canada to promote hatred. If they want to do exactly that, they should do exactly that. Public policy is a very broad consideration. There is that famous legal case in England that said that making decisions in the courts based on public policy considerations was an unruly horse. In other words, one could not control what would be contained under that consideration.
Public policy considerations are so broad that they give the minister almost absolute discretion. That is where we think this bill goes overboard. It gives too much discretion and arbitrary power to the minister. We want something that is flexible and something that will work to ensure we do not allow people into Canada who commit serious crimes, who are unworthy of continuing in Canada and who we would never allow to become citizens if they applied.
We are talking about criminals who have been convicted of significant offences. If they applied for citizenship, which they are entitled to do as permanent residents at a certain point, would they be given citizenship? The answer to that question is no, they would not be granted citizenship. Do we want to find ways that will force people who should be deported to be deported? Yes. If the appeal process is so long, ungainly and unruly that people can abuse it, we need to fix the appeal process, shorten the time limits and find a solution to the root of the problem. As one of my colleagues said, we do not need a sledgehammer to swat a fly. If a less restrictive measure can be used, in other words, one that does not affect so many other cases that it should not affect, then that is what should be used.
We are talking about the unfortunate arbitrariness that applies when we use these broad categories. When we take away the requirement of the minister to take into account humanitarian considerations and international rights violations, that removes the possibility of allowing someone to enter this country. It takes away the requirement of the minister to at least take that into consideration and say that we do not have to worry about that. This is a significant problem.
The risk that we run here is that we may be deporting offenders who may have been sentenced to six months or a year in jail, who arrived in Canada with their parents at a very young age and who may know nothing of the country to which they will be deported. By doing that, we would be leaving at risk people whose only country to which they have an attachment is Canada and they may have been in Canada for many years.
I will quote some of the comments that were made by a group of lawyers in Toronto last week who are active in immigration law. They are very familiar with the broad range of cases. They say that we are talking about many people in the African, Caribbean, Italian, Greek, Portuguese, English, Irish and Scottish communities who have not acquired Canadian citizenship despite the fact that they have been here for a long time. They say that the removal of the appeal process for those who have been sentenced to more than six months would be a terrible burden when their cases ought to be considered.
First offenders who have been here for 15 or 20 years and are incarcerated learn things. They improve their lives. People can go to jail for six months for shoplifting if they do it often enough. Perhaps they are drug addicts and need rehabilitation. Those people would be treated as the dross of society and sent to some potential far corner of the world where God knows what will happen to them. This is the kind of thing we are opposed to. We support the bill in principle in terms of doing what it should do but want to see it substantially improved in committee.