Mr. Speaker, my colleague was at the committee stage when we went over many of these issues. He has a good understanding of the legislation before us.
Creating a two-tiered system for refugees, I would argue, goes against the way we have built our country. We have built our country on immigrants and refugees coming from different parts of the world, and we have had a nation-building scheme. Now, with this legislation, the government is going to decide, not based on the merits of a person's claim, but by how they arrive in our country or by the numbers they arrive in, and it is going to designate them irregular. Not only then does it have the potential to keep them in detention, jail, for a year, but after that, for five years, they will not be given any kind of a status that would allow them to have their family members join them. We know that once one applies, it can take anything up to six or seven years after that, so families will be separated. This is from a government that says its base is about building strong families. For whom?