Mr. Speaker, that counts as one of the least helpful, misinformed and frankly arrogant speeches I have heard out of dozens offered in this place over the course of two Parliaments on the issue of asylum reform.
When I say arrogance I mean, for example, that the member speaks about ignoring the witnesses because she only seems to give any plausibility to the witnesses of the ideological left who agree with her position. She gives no credence whatsoever to the many witnesses who testified in favour of this bill and its many provisions.
There are two things I find most disturbing, though, about that speech.
The first is her hyperbolic and demagogic rhetoric suggesting that this bill represents a killing of our tradition of refugee protection. Will she not recognize that the government is actually increasing by 20% the number of resettled refugees we accept, so we would be the largest recipient of resettled refugees per capita in the world? Does she characterize that as killing our tradition? Will she not recognize that these reforms would create for the first time ever a full fact-based appeal, which has never before existed in our system, which would benefit the vast majority of failed asylum claimants? Does she think that is killing our tradition of refugee protection?
The second is this. What does she propose to do to stop human smugglers from targeting Canada? She has not said a single word that would be a constructive idea to deter people from committing to pay $40,000 to $50,000 a year to a bunch of gangsters to come to Canada illegally and dangerously. Is her idea to do nothing?