Debates of Sept. 24th, 2012

Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

Before we resume debate, it is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the member for Random—Burin—St. George's, agriculture and agri-food; the member for Guelph, agriculture and agri-food; the member for Windsor West, public safety.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this is my first opportunity to address you as Mr. Speaker. Congratulations on your appointment to the chair.

I appreciate the opportunity to raise my concerns regarding Bill C-43, which I hope will be addressed in further study at committee. New Democrats recognize the need for an efficient and responsive judicial apparatus for removing serious criminals who are not citizens. However, this bill seems to extend beyond this and effectively removes some of the required checks and balances within our immigration system.

I have a few concerns with the changes included in Bill C-43. Bill C-43 would concentrate more power in the hands of the minister, giving the minister new discretionary authority over the admissibility of temporary residents. It would relieve the minister of the responsibility to examine humanitarian circumstances and as well would change what would constitute serious criminality for the purpose of access to an appeal of a determination of inadmissibility.

Previously a conviction in Canada with a sentence of two years or more resulted in an automatic revocation of a permanent or temporary resident's right to an appeal at the Immigration Appeal Division. Bill C-43, however, would revoke the right to appeal inadmissibility when there would be a conviction of six months or more.

New Democrats have said time and again that we do not support closing the door to an appeal process as it is an essential component of checks and balances in our immigration system.

An appeal process allows officials to make determinations on an individual basis, weighing all the factors to determine if someone should or should not be deported. Further to this, with the government's tough on crime agenda, we have seen a whole slew of crimes receive a mandatory minimum sentence of more than six months. The change from two years to six months merits further study of the offences that would now be included in this.

This concentration of power in the hands of one minister is a trend we continue to see under the government and is a cautionary tale of the direction of our immigration system under a Conservative majority. Granting the minister the power to unilaterally prohibit a foreign national from becoming a temporary resident for up to 36 months based on public policy considerations is a vague and broad discretion.

The broad and far-reaching powers given to the minister in Bill C-43 seem to once again go too far and require balance. Additionally, there seems to be a double standard at play when it comes to ministerial authority. When convicted foreign criminal, Conrad Black wanted back in Canada, the minister claimed that the matter was handled independently, yet now he wants the power to deport criminals.

Across the country, immigration and health experts have been raising their concerns to the changes in the bill. There are concerns among advocates that the bill runs a risk of deporting offenders who arrive in Canada with their parents at a very young age. Despite Canada being the only home they know and grew up in, we would deport them to a country about which they may know nothing.

Moreover, professionals who work with immigrants and refugees have stated that this new federal legislation unfairly punishes the young and people with mental illness. Bill C-43 has been marketed exclusively on its intent to speed up deportations of serious multiple offenders. However, the devil is in the details and these details merit further study and expert opinion.

What I also find particularly troubling throughout the course of immigration changes the government has introduced is the language that the Conservative government continues to use when speaking about newcomers in our country.

When discussing Bill C-31, refugees who were fleeing war-torn countries to save their lives were continually referred to as “bogus” and “queue jumpers” in need of mandatory detention by the members opposite. Now under Bill C-43, permanent residents are referred as “foreigners”. This term is misleading and wide-sweeping, completely neglecting the fact that permanent residents have spent the majority of their lives in Canada, contributing to our communities and paying taxes.

The majority of newcomers to Canada are law-abiding citizens who do not commit crimes. Rather than introducing legislation that continues to demonize newcomers, where is the support for newcomers who follow the rules? Why is the government not spending more time ensuring that the majority of newcomers in Canada are being treated fairly and are not waiting three to five years to be reunited with their partners and children? We need a government that acts to help new Canadians reunite with their families and find work that matches their skill set.

The New Democrats look to work with the government to prevent non-citizens who commit serious crimes from abusing our appeals process without trampling on rights. We continue to stand with newcomers who want the government to focus on making our immigration system faster and fairer for the vast majority who do not commit crimes and follow the rules.

We can allow the systems currently in place, including our immigration tribunal and Canadian judiciary, to do their work or provide them with the necessary resources to do the job effectively rather than trivializing the judicial process and giving the minister the authority to arbitrarily make decisions. I should add, if the minister were serious about improving Canada's immigration and refugee system, he would stop appointing his friends to the Immigration and Refugee Board.

We could also do what the Auditor General has repeatedly recommended and make improvements to the current system and administration of the laws currently in place, including proper training, service standards and quality assurance checks.

Rather than continually portraying newcomers negatively, the government should focus on giving law enforcement the resources it needs to keep us safe from all criminals.

I spent the summer talking to constituents about community safety and social issues in Scarborough. What I heard from constituents were worries and concerns for the need for support and prevention strategies to keep our youth from turning to crime and actions from the federal government to keep our communities safe. At the end of the day, victims were concerned that crimes were being committed in their communities and steps were not being taken to prevent these crimes.

I hope the government will take the concerns raised by experts, myself and my colleagues on this side of the House seriously at the committee level and that it will listen to the experts' warnings about the impacts and consequences of the bill on people with the intention of improvements and upholding rights,.

It is a warning to us all that some of the concerns raised by experts during the study of Bill C-31 are already being realized. Thanks to Bill C-31, all refugee claimants are now banned from applying for a pre-removal risk assessment within one year of receiving a negative answer on their claim. This assessment is used as a second chance to consider whether it is truly safe to send a rejected claimant back to his or her country of origin.

Last week, we learned of a woman from Iran who could face deportation despite new evidence proving that she faces an adultery charge that could, under sharia law, result in her being stoned to death. Although her lawyer obtained new documents to speak to her refugee claim, because of the changes included in Bill C-31, this new evidence cannot be considered by the Canada Border Service Agency officials because of the one-year rule.

I recall hearing this very concern raised, that new evidence can come to light during this one-year period, during the Bill C-31 study at committee. Unfortunately, this concern, along with many others, fell on the deaf ears of our government and were left unaddressed.

I hope that this is not repeated during the study of Bill C-43 in committee, but rather that we listen to the experts and work together to prevent non-citizens who commit serious crimes from abusing our appeals process while upholding our Canadian values.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to take up the issue of citizenship because it is about priorities.

If we follow the way in which the minister has handled this file since he announced it back in June, he tries to give the impression that if people land in Canada they should hurry up and get their citizenship. He has made it very clear that this is a top priority, even though there is actually a very small percentage of people who would be affected by it.

On the other hand, and this is where the issue of priorities comes up, we have 100,000-plus individuals who are in the system waiting for their citizenship. They have now been waiting a year and a half to two years in order to get their citizenship because they feel good about being here in Canada.

I wonder if the member would comment on that particular priority. The bill is all about citizenship and yet we have a minister who is dragging his feet in terms of getting people their citizenship. Does she see some irony there?

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Winnipeg North sat on the immigration committee with me when we studied the backlogs within Citizenship and Immigration Canada. He is right when he says that many permanent residents in Canada are waiting an extra year, two years or even three years in order to have their citizenship applications processed once they have gone through the test.

It is quite ironic that the minister now wants to take on arbitrary powers to deport more people in Canada who are contributing to our communities, to their economic viability, as well as their vibrancy. These people want to become permanent Canadian citizens and yet they do not have the ability to do so as they wait two, three, however many number of years.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we on our side have enormous concerns about the gradual increase in powers that ministers on that side want for themselves. They talk a line about accessibility, oversight and transparency but they do not walk the walk.

Does it concern my hon. colleague that we have a government that likes $16 orange juice, nice limousine rides and free bungee cords off helicopters? Is she concerned that more and more we are seeing ministers in the government trying to get as much power with as little transparency as possible?

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Davenport hit the nail on the head when he said that the ministers seem to want more powers for themselves and take them away from the systems we have created in Canada that have kept our country safe and preserved our Canadian values over many years.

What is sad is that, when government legislation is introduced, we see ministers wanting more discretion for themselves. They are making a mockery of our judiciary when they say that our boards, tribunals and justice system as they are cannot get the job done and that one lone minister needs to have all the powers and will get it done right away. It is wrong to say that experts and the judiciary cannot get the job done.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have noticed that, as we have gone through this debate, we on this side of the House seem to be the only party interested in what is going on. I have not heard a lot of questions or comments from the other side.

Bill C-43 is called the faster removal of foreign criminals act. The minister himself suggested that the bill would make it possible for legitimate visitors and immigrants to get better treatment. This bill may do that in a tiny way but it would not do it for the majority of well-meaning and non-criminal persons currently in Canada or those who want to come to Canada who are being treated with the slowest process since God made molasses. It is an incredibly slow process.

I have the privilege of representing the riding of York South--Weston which has an immigrant population of well over 50% and well over half live in apartment buildings. That is one of the reasons that my riding is a magnet for refugees and those refugees will be the ones facing the worst time of their lives as a result of the government's new applications. These refugees will find it more difficult to become Canadian citizens because it will be harder for them to reach all of the required thresholds. They will also find it more difficult to sponsor family members once they do become citizens.

The minister suggested that lessening the rules against spies would make it so much easier for persons to come to Canada and stay in Canada. If individuals spied against Canada or Canada's interests, they would not be considered a spy if they were spying for some other country or in some other country. Reading between the lines, it may be that the government is also adding industrial spying to that, although it is hard to tell. I am assuming that would make it easier for the tens of thousands of people who come to Canada, I say tongue-in-cheek, because that is clearly not a big problem.

The minister also suggested that if one member of a group does not meet the criteria, for medical reasons or otherwise, the whole group would be turned down. I agree that that is an excellent use of this legislation. That would actually cause some people to come to Canada who were otherwise be turned down. However, as I will tell members later, there are far more people being turned down for temporary visas without any reason. This is only a small part of the big problem.

The minister also suggested that the Minister of Public Safety could offer relief in some cases. Again, this another tiny piece of the puzzle.

The parliamentary secretary made it clear in his comments that the government's objective is to reduce the backlog of problems created by people coming to this country, and he referred specifically to the backlog that affected temporary foreign workers and the backlog that affected permanent skilled workers taking jobs that are not being filled by Canadians.

Missing from both of those objectives is the huge backlog of family reunification applications. There are probably hundreds of thousands of backlogged cases, some of which will take as many as 14 years from application to reunification because of the delays in processing and because there are not enough people working for the minister to get these things done. We have examples.

A woman wants to sponsor her husband but it is taking an unusual amount of time for the application to be processed. The background check is taking a long time to complete. The couple has been repeatedly asked to wait until a security background is completed, which means they have had to file several sets of medicals at their own expense. The application for sponsorship was forwarded in 2008, four years ago.

Another individual tried to sponsor his parents starting in 2007. They have now had three medicals because they keep expiring because it is taking so long.

Where is the government on trying to figure out how to make these things faster? The Conservatives are talking about getting criminals out faster, but they are not talking about getting deserving sponsored immigrants into the country faster.

Another person has been sponsoring his parents and siblings since 2003. We are now talking nine years. They have now gone through three medicals and they have had their third police clearance done because they keep expiring. In the meantime, the father has passed away. That is what happens when the system takes too long: people die in other countries as a result.

A woman, a convention refugee, who applied for permanent residence, also included her 11-year-old son in her application. Her son is alone in Nigeria. Immigration officials have said, “Too bad, there is a 24-month wait to process her application”.

Another individual has been sponsoring parents and one dependent sister since 2008 and is still waiting. The list goes on and on, and this is but a small sampling of those we have heard about in my office. There are hundreds more in my office, and I have only been there since last year, who have run afoul of the system. We are having to tell them that it takes 14 years, 10 years or nine years, and their parents or their grandparents will die before the application goes through.

Then there is the backlog in skilled worker applications that the minister talked about. Yet with the stroke of a pen the minister actually got rid of hundreds of thousands of skilled worker applications and forced them all to apply again. How is that speeding anything in our system? We are talking about speeding the removal of foreign criminals, but we are not doing anything to speed up the process for legitimate people who want to come to this country and provide a skilled, valued service to this country.

I have one applicant who has been trying to come to Canada for five years. He made the application before the “stroke of the pen” issue. At the time he applied, the language requirement was less stringent than it is today. He has studied and worked in the United States. He taught in the United States, so obviously his English is good but somehow he failed the English test that was given to him out of Cambridge University in England.

Why we are giving British tests for Canadian English is beyond me. To a person who is not a native-born speaker, it may be difficult. He found it difficult. He missed by one point. He is a doctor. We need doctors. He is actually certified to practise in this country. He wants to bring his wife with him, who is also a doctor, and his daughter, who is in medical school. They cannot come because he fell short by one point because the language requirement was no good. The skilled worker application has its flaws too.

As for temporary foreign workers, the other side keeps crowing about the many jobs they have created. How many of them are filled by temporary foreign workers? There are over 300,000 jobs currently filled by temporary foreign workers. They are temporary, so that is in the last two years. Since the last recession ended or whenever the economic meltdown happened under the Conservative watch, over 300,000 of those supposed new jobs they have created are actually being filled by temporary foreign workers.

Now, with a stroke of the pen, the minister has decided those foreign workers can be paid 15% less than their Canadian counterparts, so it will be even easier for an employer to say they cannot find anybody because the employer is offering 15% less than the going rate. People are not taking the jobs, so the employer wants to hire foreigners.

We have temporary foreign workers flying planes in this country. We do not have a shortage of airline pilots in this country, but we have temporary foreign workers working for some airlines.

There is something wrong with this system. It would appear to be a part of the Conservative economic action plan to drive down wages in this country through the use of temporary foreign workers at 15% reductions, through the use of reductions in EI that force people to take wages at 30% lower rates than they earned before, and by doing all this, the Conservative can then say, “Hey, our economic action plan is working. We are improving Canadians' productivity. We are getting more out of them for less”.

That is not what Canadians want. Canadians do not want to be working for less money, to have their standard of living eroded by the government. They want real action on the economy and they do not want it through the use of temporary foreign workers, which the parliamentary secretary referred to as a good thing.

We also have a whole bunch of issues with the PRRA system, the pre-removal risk assessment. I have a couple of examples here. We have an individual who is being deported to Spain. His mother is a refugee in Canada who has finalized her refugee status and is actually allowed to stay in Canada. She was born in Peru. He was born in Spain as a result of her being raped. Now he is being deported back to Spain because he was not covered by her refugee application. He is 12 years old. He knows no one in Spain. Spain is the last place he wants to go because it was the source of a lot of pain for his family. What government does this to people?

Now the new rules would be: no entitlement to a PRRA because we do not want to do that anymore.

These are examples of how the system is not working. We are tinkering on the edges with something that might appeal to the Conservative base across the way because it has to do with law and order. It might appeal to the baser instincts of some individuals in the Conservative base, because they can tout it as law and order. However, it is such a small part of the overall problem of immigration in our country that it is difficult to imagine that so much time and effort is being spent on this kind of thing instead of on the real problems that face immigrants in our country, instead of on the real problems that face those who are already here and those who should be here as a result of sponsorship applications. Those delays in the sponsorship applications are costing lives. People are dying in other countries.

The minister also mentioned in his speech this afternoon that he is spending lots more money on immigrant settlement services. He mentioned a figure of $35 million. Well, it sure is not happening in my riding. My riding has seen cut after cut in immigrant settlement services to the point where some organizations have folded altogether. Is that because we have fewer immigrants coming to my riding? No, there are lots coming to the riding. In fact, there are two apartment buildings that are now full of Roma refugees in the last two years, so much so that the superintendent has had to go out and hire a Hungarian translator because he cannot communicate with these people. They are coming to the riding in great numbers but the services that they are asking for keep disappearing.

We have a 6% cut at Access Alliance; a 4.2% at COSTI, which caused a layoff; a 10% cut at the Learning Enrichment Foundation. Midaynta lost all of its funding, $400,000. It has closed up. York Weston Community Services Centre lost $800,000. It closed, with twelve and a half people laid off. Languages that are no longer helped in this riding are Dinka, Nuer, Spanish, Arabic, French, Kiswahili, Russian, Farsi, Dari and Somali.

York Weston Community Services Centre was urged the previous year to sign a long-term lease. It did. The government said the organization was good for it and that it should sign the five-year lease. It signed it and then all of its budget was cut, some $800,000 gone. Northwood Neighbourhood Services lost $378,000, which caused the layoff of five settlement workers and admin staff. That is 100% of its Citizenship and Immigration Canada funds. It gets money from other places, so it is only 30% of its overall budget.

These things are happening in my riding. For the minister to tell us, bold-faced, that he is spending more on settlement services is just crazy. Community Action Resource Centre lost $305,000, which was 40% of its budget. It lost all of the federal funding. It still has some provincial funding, but it has lost 12 staff. It has caused layoffs in my riding, which is already a riding with a huge unemployment problem.

The Vietnamese Women's Association lost $30,000 in Citizenship and Immigration Canada funding. Access Alliance lost $300,000. Toronto District School Board's newcomer services for youth lost 100% of its funding and the program was closed.

There actually are many more but I am going to run out of time if I read them all. The point is that the government is single-mindedly focused on the wrong problem. There is a problem with settlement services in the riding. There is a problem with immigration systems into the riding. There is a problem with the family sponsorship system and with too many temporary foreign workers being allowed to come to this country and take jobs that would otherwise be filled by Canadians.

Rather than focusing on those problems, the government is going to speed up the removal of a handful of criminals, and not necessarily even the right criminals. Because of the cuts to the immigrant settlement funding we now have employers in the riding telling us that it is making it difficult for them to employ the skilled immigrants coming into the country under skilled worker applications because they do not have the necessary fail-safes and backup mechanisms and training to learn how to live in Canada. Those things are not there any more.

Employers are coming to my office and saying it is a problem for them as employers. They are saying that they cannot be as productive or efficient as employers because although these people have great skills to do the jobs, they are not getting along in Canada because the settlement services are just not there. Maybe we need some Conservatives to actually listen to these employers and hear the fact that cutting settlement services was not a good thing. Cutting the settlement services also makes it difficult for the children of these recent immigrants.

I have a huge Somali community in my riding, again because my riding is a place where it is easy for refugees to come because the rents are so cheap and the riding is full of low-income housing. Those Somali refugees have been here for maybe as long as 20 years. It has been 42 years since there was an election in Somalia. The country just had an election this month and a new president was elected. There was a big party celebrating that because they are hopeful that maybe Somalia will turn itself around.

However, the problem is this. We have the tragedy of six Somali youth this summer who were tragically murdered in what we can only assume was some kind of gangland problem, but it raises the spectre of what happens to those disaffected Somali youth when their settlement services are gone, when they have no hope, no job, no help from the government, when the services that even the ministry of public safety had have been cut? There have been cuts and more cuts and these kids have no hope. Some of them turn to crime as a result. What is going to happen to those kids who get a six-month or longer sentence and who are 18 years of age and have been in Canada 17 of those 18 years but are still Somali? They are going to get deported to a country that is war-torn, that really has no government, that is unsafe and where they have no family. That is just wrong.

I said earlier that the wrong people are perhaps going to be deported and I would point to those Somali youth in that regard. With just one bad occurrence they will have a record, but are now going to have an even bigger problem. If the sentence is six months or more, they will get kicked out of the country without their family.

Yet as I said to the minister earlier, Conrad Black is still here and although the crime he committed in the U.S. could apparently have been punished by a 14-year sentence here in Canada, he is still here. It tells us that there seems to be a double standard. There seems to be a system that if someone is just stealing money from ordinary Canadians through some kind of fraudulent system, that is okay and the person can come back.

I also want to comment because Todd Baylis Boulevard is in my riding and was named after the Todd Baylis who was killed. We in the NDP will do anything we can to make sure that kind of thing does not happen again. We are not opposed to the part of the bill that would prevent a criminal being left in this country long enough to be able to commit crimes of a violent nature, nor would we ever be. However, we want to make sure that it is done in a way that is fair and honest and does not rest so much power in the hands of one or two ministers.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, as the government tries to give Canadians the impression through Bill C-43 that there are all these foreign criminals here who have to be dealt with, there is also a great deal of concern that we maybe also need to look at the other side when the member talks about the issue of priorities. There are immigrants who are exploited by immigration consultants and employment agencies and we do not necessarily hear of the same sorts of actions by the government in trying to deal with them.

Over the weekend I met an unfortunate person who was a live-in caregiver. In her situation, she was the victim of an employer who had been using his authority for purposes of sexual exploitation. She is fearful of how this will impact her as someone who wants ultimately to be a landed immigrant here in Canada.

Inside the House of Commons, we should be talking about other areas of concern that negatively impact those people who are being exploited. That priority does not seem to be there for the government. Would the member comment on that, given that he was talking about the exploitation—

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

Order, please.

The hon. member for York South—Weston.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member is absolutely right and I believe there has been serious criticism levelled at the government recently over the abuse that is possible, particularly of temporary foreign workers. Their living conditions and standards can be abusive, and we in this country should not abide any system whereby anyone here is exploited, abused or ill-treated by an employer or by anyone else.

That is just as much a crime as allowing a criminal to stay here. We should be focusing on all of the systemic problems within our immigration system, not just the ones that score cheap points with a Conservative base. That is what we should be looking at. We should be doing this completely, not just in bits and pieces aimed at allowing the government to call this a law and order issue.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague knows very well the real-life ramifications of the wrong-headed direction of the government as it pertains to immigrants, new Canadians and refugees. We on our side have declared frequently and openly that in cases of violent crimes we want to ensure that non-Canadians who commit them are subject to the heavy hand of the law.

However, we are concerned that there are immigrant families, new Canadians, who have grave concerns about the government's ability to understand the complexity and nuances of the reality that is Canada today. This piece of legislation does not give them any confidence that the government understands that the world is much more complex than the Pleasantville, faux reality that it seems to live in every single day.

Could my hon. colleague expand a bit more on the family, human dimension of some of these misguided policies of the government?

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the family dimension is by far the most compelling part of what I see first-hand.

Generally speaking, when an immigrant with a problem comes into my office, he or she comes with two or three children and a story that would break one's heart. They come for a sympathetic ear, but they are also looking for me to turn that sympathy into action on the part of the government. All too often that is not possible, probably 90%, 95%, 99% of the time. These are tragic stories of people who, in many cases, for no reason whatsoever have run afoul of a system that is not working but broken.

I will give members an example. A woman had taken maternity leave and was sponsoring her husband to come here from another country. She had a really good job and took maternity leave. She was then in a car accident a month later. Because she had taken maternity leave and had used up her EI, she no longer qualified for EI. Her employer kept her job for her. However, she did not have enough money for food. As she and her baby needed to eat, she went to the welfare office. The welfare office then told immigration, which then said, “You're no longer qualified to sponsor your husband”.

That is the kind of loophole that results from EI and immigration problems and causes a Catch-22, which I see in my office all the time. These are the kind of problems that we should be looking at fixing.

I agree that we should make it possible for the government to remove foreign criminals. I always thought that it already did have that ability. If it is telling us that there is a lengthy appeal process that violent criminals should not have access to, maybe the government is right.

However, that is not exactly what the bill says. I think we need to expand the scope of what we do and look at all the problems that we face in the immigration world.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we have talked about the sentencing of criminals being lessened from two years to six months. However, that is based upon the fact it would be for a dual procedure offence. Some of the dual procedure offences that are in the Criminal Code include sexual assault, sexual exploitation, fraud and robbery. That is based upon whether the Crown and/or the defence want to proceed by indictment or the dual procedure. Therefore, if we go by dual procedure and go down to a summary conviction of six months, it does not lessen the fact that the act is just as serious as it would be under indictment.

Would the member agree that even though a person may be convicted of sexual assault and only get a six-month sentence, he or she is not deserving of this type of application through this bill?

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a mug's game to try to second-guess which six-month crimes and under which circumstances we should be deciding to deport people for. That is essentially what we would be doing, as we would be kicking them out the country.

The example the member gave may very well be an example of a person who should not have the right of appeal, who should be in fact told “Okay, once your six month sentence is up, you're being deported. Here is the plane ticket and you are out of the country”, although I should add that we do not give way plane tickets any more, but we make them buy the tickets themselves.

It is difficult for me to start to guess what crimes people have committed can be used by this legislation.

The example was given earlier of a person who happens to grow six pot plants. I know of such a person who grows them for his mother who has multiple sclerosis. It is not trafficking because he is giving them away, but he happens to grow six. Luckily, he has not been caught. If he had been caught, it would a minimum six-month sentence. With a six-month sentence, that person, if he were not from Canada, would be deported automatically for trying to do good.

That is the kind of nuance that is missing from the bill. As described by my colleague from Newton—North Delta, it is hitting a fly with a sledgehammer. There are very few people who are causing trouble for the system and yet we are using an enormous bill to try to get at them.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I think all of us as members of Parliament can relate many heartbreaking stories about what is going on in the immigration system. However, I want to ask the member a question about Bill C-43.

I asked one of his colleagues about the lack of ministerial discretion to make an exception on compassionate grounds. It is limited only to where a child is directly affected. However, there is sweeping discretion that is quite mind-boggling in clause 8, which states:

The minister may, on the Minister's own initiative, declare that a foreign national...may not become a temporary resident if the Minister is of the opinion that it is justified by public policy considerations.

Public policy considerations are not defined.

The member's speech, of course, spoke to deporting people. What about refusing to allow someone to become a permanent resident with no real criteria being applied?

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have to agree with the member that the discretion in that circumstance is very strangely put.

Without any guidelines, without any indication of exactly what a public policy consideration is, one could imagine, certainly in a third world country, a gazillion different things that would be public policy considerations that would keep people from becoming Canadian citizens.

We are not a third world country, but the same problem exists in that there is no definition, no direction and no example given of what a public policy consideration is. It is a very scary prospect.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by saying that we share the government's concern about serious crimes committed by individuals who are not Canadian citizens.

As a result of this principle, we support this bill at second reading. However, we still have some concerns about this bill, which we feel casts too wide a net over immigrants.

I would like to use a simple analogy to explain the situation to Canadians watching today. When I was young, one of Greenpeace's big campaigns in the 1980s was to save the dolphins. The problem at the time was that tuna fishers were catching dolphins in their nets because the nets were too big. As a result of a campaign against this action and pressure on the processing companies, they changed their way of doing things. That is why we see the “Dolphin Friendly” logo on cans of tuna.

I hope that, as a result of the concerns we voice about this bill and the work done in committee, the Conservatives will make sensible changes to improve this bill so that it becomes “Immigrant Friendly.”

With this story, I want to illustrate two things: first, Bill C-43 is a big net, perhaps too big, and in our desire to catch criminals, innocent immigrants are going to get caught in this large net and get hurt in the process. We have some suggestions for improving this bill.

Like most Canadians, we are concerned about criminals and crime, but we want to proceed responsibly and not engage in demagoguery, as the members on the government side often do.

Before explaining what we want to improve, I would like to point out that the opposition's priorities are the economy and the quality of services, such as health care, provided to Canadians. It is sad to see the government fuel stereotypes by focusing on bills that target immigrants and establishing a link between criminal behaviour and immigration.

As many of my colleagues have mentioned, the vast majority of immigrants are honest. They work hard if we let them.

I would also like to mention that crime is a complex process. One of the causes of criminal behaviour is poverty, and not a person's country of origin.

We know that, historically, immigrants have often been targeted and seen as a threat to the well-being of a population during periods of economic crisis.

I hope that the government is not trying to fuel stereotypes. Crime is not really widespread in the immigrant communities, but the government is dwelling on the extreme cases. As we say in English:

It is just a few bad apples.

Keeping with my focus on the economy, I would like to address immigration and our economy and point out where the government's priorities should lie, in general, regarding immigration issues. Then, after talking about where the priorities should be, I would like to look at this particular piece of legislation and point out its useful elements and perhaps where some of the weaknesses lie.

The reason I would like to emphasize this, in a more general sense at first, is that criminality is so often the result of social marginalization and the economic difficulty of individuals and their communities. As I mentioned before, it is not linked to their country of origin or where they come from in the world but to much more complex factors, which I will get into.

First of all, instead of focusing on the few bad apples as the government has, the government should instead focus on the lost economic opportunities of our immigrant communities.

In a study by the University of Ottawa Research Group on the Economics of Immigration, the researchers found that if we found better ways to integrate our permanent residents, such as if their salary scale were similar to that of domestic labourers—in other words, if they were on a more even playing field with domestic workers—we would see a net increase in real GDP. We would also see better labour productivity and an improved federal fiscal balance. If the government is serious about the economy—and it says its priority is on the economy and jobs—focusing on those elements of our immigration system would offer far better benefits than putting the priority on the criminalization aspects of immigration law.

The study further found that immigration can help solve the issue of population aging. It was an interesting factoid in this research. We often hear from the government that OAS is not sustainable, which first of all, is patently false; we have shown the government at many stages that OAS is sustainable in the long term. Certainly, the immigration community could improve the sustainability of old age security. That was studied by this group just last year.

Instead of focusing on minority criminal elements, the government should instead use the power of the federal government for good, by doing such things as encouraging the benefits of employing immigrants in professional spheres, encouraging employers to be proactive by making arranged employment offers and using the federal government to help businesses find quality overseas labour, not to cut costs as it appears the government is doing by offering 15% less to workers but to improve the quality of our workforce.

If we emphasized that as an immigration policy and cast out a net in the world to catch the most qualified and brilliant people from other countries, enticed them to come here and enticed employers to start giving arranged employment offers to these people, we would see great benefits to our immigrant communities. It has been shown that immigrants with arranged employment offers earn 74% more than those who do not have them. There is a systemic problem of underemployment. The problem in the immigrant community of not being able to be employed to their full potential has serious economic effects and drags on our economy, which we could improve if we took action and leadership.

The government could improve funding to language programs. My colleague from York South—Weston pointed out many of the cuts made to settlement programs. Researchers and experts in the field know that language ability is one of the key factors in the full employability of permanent residents. If we improved funding to language programs offered by the provinces and gave guarantees and benchmarking, we would see net improvements. We have seen that the government is willing to offer piecemeal, half measures of giving loans to professionals wishing to improve their credentials in Canada. We believe the government is not doing enough to recognize fully the contributions that professionals trained abroad could offer to our country.

The Conservatives have talked a lot about this, but instead of focusing on this problem of recognizing foreign credentials, they choose to make these few bad apples a priority, the few criminals who have abused the system. If they are truly concerned about Canada's economy and it is truly their number one priority, as they say day in and day out, then they should look at the economic aspects of immigration, rather than the few criminals who cheat the system. As I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, my suspicion is that they are playing a political game and are being demagogic in their approach to immigration. I do not think their true priority is the economy. Rather, it is keeping their base close to them.

I have had many conversations with permanent residents in my riding and in other ridings, frankly. I have talked to an engineer who was trained abroad, and he spent up to two years looking for a job in his field. After landing, he was still searching for employment in the engineering field. We know Canada needs engineers in certain sectors, yet he could not find a job. This just should not be happening.

There are 1.5 million permanent residents who could contribute to our economic success if they were allowed to do so and if the government got behind them. Unfortunately, the government's priority seems to be looking at the criminal elements of our immigration community.

In a study, Bonikowska, Green and Riddell found that immigrants have more years of education and experience than Canadian-born individuals. Bastien, Bélanger and Ledent, in their study, found that having a degree from a western country increases the chances of finding a skilled job. There are some very complex questions that arise in these findings that I think the government should begin to tackle, to dismantle, but instead it is focusing on the criminal aspects of permanent residents, as I said.

To summarize, improving the economic situation of our permanent residents may actually decrease the rates of criminality, which are already incredibly low and not a serious demographic problem.

After addressing where our true priorities should lie, let us look at this particular piece of legislation and the positive and negative aspects of it.

I would like to start with the short title of the bill, faster removal of foreign criminals.

Certainly, people who have come to Canada as tourists and commit a crime, I would have no problem calling them foreign. If they are here on a trip and commit a crime, they are “foreigners”, in common parlance. However, someone who has undergone the years necessary to come to our country as a permanent resident, has undergone all the steps to acquire permanent residency, I would say is not a person who is foreign to us. I would never characterize such a person as a foreigner. Therefore, first of all, I take issue with the short title of the bill.

Someone who has been here for 20 years, does not take citizenship and screws up would be treated the same as someone who has been here for just one month. There is no discretion in the bill to differentiate these two individuals. I would be very uncomfortable treating these two people in the same fashion. That is something, if it comes up in committee, that I would urge the government side to tighten.

I do not think most Canadians would call somebody who has been here for 20 years a foreigner. I personally never use the term and I am uncomfortable with it. When I lived overseas, I was uncomfortable being called a foreigner. It immediately sets a distinction between somebody who belongs in the country and somebody who does not.

In the proposed section 22.1, the government's amendment would allow the minister to prevent someone from becoming a temporary resident if he feels it is justified by public policy considerations. That statement is much too vague. The English version of the bill uses “public policy” and the French version uses “intérêt public”. Those are not at all the same. There are nuances between the two. That statement is much too vague.

Legislators from all parties often base their decisions on morality. We often see in the immigration system that children are judged based on offences committed by their parents. We can find many examples in many moral systems where judging children for their parents' crimes is not a fair way of doing things.

It worries me that this bill gives the minister a new discretionary power to grant an exemption for a family member of a foreigner deemed inadmissible.

At the request of the individual or on the initiative of the minister, the minister may ignore the inadmissibility of a family member of someone who is inadmissible for reasons of security, human rights or international law violations, or organized crime, if he is satisfied that it is not contrary to the national interest.

National interest requires the minister to specifically take into account national security and public safety. Why not completely remove the section that concerns the children of the guilty party instead of giving the minister a discretionary power? Instead of giving the minister a discretionary power, the bill could state that children will not be found guilty like their parents.

What I agree with is that serious, violent criminals and war criminals should not receive a safe haven in Canada. That is why we are supporting the bill in principle at second reading. The principle of the bill is not misplaced, but it needs serious improvements.

Likewise, we believe that the priority should be placed on bettering the condition of the vast majority of law-abiding immigrants rather than targeting the tiny minority of law breakers. Maybe improving the condition of permanent residents would also have the effect of lessening the incidents of criminal activity, which is already very low, as I mentioned before.

We will be voting in support of this bill at second reading in order to clean up the sloppy elements of this obtusely written bill, because even though Maclean's may have named him the hardest working minister, something I do not deny, it obviously does not read his legislation and may confuse press conferences with hard work. Perhaps the minister should spend more time on the legislation and less time on the media prep for it.

Like the association of police chiefs, we think we need to close the loopholes in immigration legislation, and we support the principle of the bill. However, we believe the bill needs tightening up in committee.

In addition to the association of police chiefs, here are other validators of our position.

Mario Bellissimo, lawyer and executive member of the Canadian Bar Association, is one of the nation's top lawyers and part of an immigrant community that has often been tarred with the criminal epithet. He said referring to permanent residents as foreigners is misleading.

They are casting the net too wide... People make one mistake—even if it's a non-violent crime—they will be removed.

Furthermore, he thinks the bill reflects the government's lack of confidence in the immigration tribunal and the Canadian judiciary. We believe in the power of the Canadian judiciary and the tribunals to take care of these cases and to offer fair judgment. We do not believe that the minister necessarily needs discretionary powers.

As a member of Parliament, I personally help my constituents with the immigration process, but I have never once gone to the immigration minister to lobby a case that has already been dealt with by the judiciary and the tribunals. I simply have trust in the system. I believe in that system and I believe it needs support and leadership. However, taking the discretionary element away from the tribunals and judiciaries and giving it to the minister is not the right way to go.

In terms of dealing with violent criminals and war criminals, we certainly agree with the approach of the government. That is why we would support this bill in principle at second reading, to give the government time to do its homework and tighten up the bill.

Just as the tuna canners of old created dolphin-friendly tuna, we hope the government will make this legislation permanent resident friendly.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration what I thought was a good question. I followed it up and suggested that the minister might even want to take note of it and possibly respond to it. I then asked a question of a New Democratic member, because we have not seen Conservative members asking questions or making presentations on Bill C-43. It is an important question and for whatever reason the minister has not been successful in answering it. I posed the question in some of the briefings that I received and again I did not receive an answer.

The question in essence goes back to the whole issue of a visitor's visa. Canadian Immigration officers around the world have the responsibility of deciding and distributing visitor visas to individuals who want to come to Canada for a visit. Now one of the requirements is that If a family member wants to come to Canada and another member of that family has been part of an organized gang, that person will be disqualified from coming to Canada.

Therefore, the question that I think stands to reason is this. Are immigration officers going to have the additional responsibility of reviewing this legislation and if implemented, and I have no doubt it will be, are significant resources going to be added to the immigration offices around the world? Is that not a fair question? Should the minister not answer that question before the bill goes to committee?

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

That is a fair question to ask, Mr. Speaker. The backlog faced by these officers is incredible. The whole system is glutted up right now.

I have mentioned for hon. members that our immigration system, our permanent residents and our economy are all interlinked. By improving our immigration system, we can also improve our economy. By looking at the links between these things, by decreasing the backlog, by making legislation that would make the system run more smoothly rather than focusing on the few bad apples as the government has done, we could improve our economy. If we focus on the positive aspects of our permanent residents, we could make economic improvements for our country.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by congratulating my colleague on his speech. Like him, I am of course worried about how immigrants have been demonized over the past few months. These people are being singled out and labelled as fraudsters who have come to exploit the system. Not only do I find that kind of discourse appalling, but it also stigmatizes part of our population.

I would like to come back to the minister's discretionary powers. We should point out that it is not clear that more discretion should be given to the minister. We do not believe that these powers will make the process any more equitable or fair. What are my colleague's thoughts on that?

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I know from first-hand experience that this government demonizes immigration. I am married to a Canadian citizen, but at one time, she was a permanent resident. I saw the entire process that she had to go through to become a Canadian citizen. I would like to paint a clear picture for Canadians: it is not easy to become a Canadian citizen. Many of my friends told me that, since I was Canadian, the fact that I married a foreigner would automatically make her a Canadian citizen. That is not how it works.

Instead of giving powers to the minister, we could improve the immigration system overall, which will not happen if we demonize immigrants. The government needs to show some leadership and introduce some smart initiatives in order to improve the entire immigration system.

[Hélène LeBlanc, NDP, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his speech, in which he raised some very important points.

We could all benefit from the human potential that newcomers bring to Canada, either with their personal characteristics or through their varied personal and professional experiences. My colleague described all this quite clearly in his speech.

In his view, how could we make it possible for all of Canadian society to benefit from the arrival of these newcomers?

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Mr. Speaker, underemployment among immigrants is a very serious problem, and there is a cost associated with it. Immigrants who have difficulty finding a job cost Canada $5.9 billion per year.

We all know a taxi driver with a medical or law degree. We have all met people who were professionals in their home country, but who work here in Canada as taxi drivers or as clerks at Tim Hortons or McDonald's. They are underemployed by our society.

After trying to improve this situation over the past six years, the Conservatives set up a modest loan program for professionals, but this is not enough. This issue must be taken seriously and concrete steps must be taken. The problem cannot be solved just by throwing money at it. We must provide funding for language programs and other similar courses, but we also have to change the mentality of Canadians. Programs that help Canadians appreciate immigrants are needed.

By playing political games, the Conservative Party is demonizing our immigrants; what the Conservatives should do is tell Canadians that immigrants can contribute even more to our society and that they can help our economy grow.

Instead of doing this, the government would rather criminalize immigrants and give Canadians the idea that immigrants are criminals.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask my colleague if he would agree with me that while some of what is in the bill is welcome in that it prevents an abuse of the system, the overall push by the Conservative government is in the wrong direction.

In fact, there are many bigger problems with our immigration system that need attention long before this does and we should see from the government ways to fix the length of time it takes to reunite families, the length of time it takes for people to become Canadian citizens and the irrationality of some of the deportation systems that exist. Would he agree with me on that?

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly would agree. When we make very concrete proposals, proposals that make good sense, the Conservatives start name-throwing at us. At one point, the Minister of Immigration characterized me as an anarchist, for instance, and said that I keep company with anarchists, even though I stand in this place, which obviously is not a den of anarchists at all.

I am also proud to say that I have read the text of Emma Goldman, Bakunin, Bookchin and that I have sympathies with some of these philosophers. I am not shy of the fact that I have read these books and I would much rather be someone who has read these thinkers than somebody who listens to the Paul Fromms and Doug Christies of the world.

When the minister claims things like the Canadian public wants the Sun Sea to be kept from our shores and others like that prevented, I wonder if the Canadians he is talking about are the Paul Fromms and the Doug Christies of Canada.