Mr. Speaker, rather than getting to the main portion of my speech I will make some references to quotes of various people. They are not the members in the House who have been exchanging comments back and forth, but people who are independent of the House.
The first one is Martin Collacott of the Centre For Immigration Policy Reform, while he was on the Roy Green Show, on June 23, 2012. He said:
What that means is that someone who we should be getting rid of immediately can stay for months and years, even decades by a whole series of appeals that they launch. And if you've been found guilty by a Canadian court, convicted and served time, surely that’s enough to say that you’re a danger to Canadian society.
This is not a question of due process. Due process has already happened. With respect to deportation and appeals, people have been convicted and they have appealed. That appeal period may have expired and they are perhaps spending time in jail.
He said that someone should not be given months and years of appeal to prevent their removal. Why would he say that? Many would say it is simply because what it does is allow them to continue to offend and commit crimes, so we have to look at the victims in Canadian society.
Tom Stamatakis, president of the Canadian Police Association, had this to say:
These are common sense solutions that are necessary to help our members protect their communities. The problem has become that the criminals we catch are becoming increasingly aware of ways to game the system, abusing processes that were put in place with the best of intentions.
While testifying before the immigration committee on October 31, 2012, he went on to say:
The issue for me as a front line officer and what I get from my members is this. I support fair process. It's obviously an important piece of our society and what Canada stands for, but you have to balance the rights of Canadians to live in their homes and not be afraid of being victimized against the rights of people who were convicted of serious criminal offences and whom we see all the time, particularly on the criminal side, continuing to commit offences while they're appealing. I say we shouldn't use Canadians as an experiment.
That is a good point.
Sharon Rosenfeldt of the Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime had this to say:
Cutting short foreign criminals’ opportunity for lengthy appeals will go a long way in minimizing and preventing the re-victimization of those innocent Canadians who are the victims of foreign offenders.
We are talking about those who have gone through due process, have been convicted and are to be deported. Then they go through another process, an appeal process. We had many examples cited here today where it has taken years and years to dispose of that case. Bill C-43 eliminates one aspect of that, to shorten the time and to get those people deported when they should be.
The fact is that most Canadians would support that kind of action. The opposition should do that when the bill comes up for the vote shortly.