Debates of May 28th, 2014

Bill C-24—Time Allocation Motion

[Bal Gosal, Conservative, Minister of State (Sport)]

Mr. Speaker, this bill has been debated in committee and in the House. It is a very important piece of legislation for citizenship. I would like to ask the minister if he can tell us what he is hearing from Canadians out there about this bill.

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we are hearing from Canadians from all walks of life, in all parts of the country, about how much importance they attach to their citizenship and how much they want to see it protected, its value enhanced, and its integrity assured—the integrity of the process that brings people to this country first as immigrants, second as permanent residents, and then allows them to become citizens in unprecedented numbers these days.

These are the things this bill would do. It would help us to prevent the kind of fraud that, unfortunately, has prevailed in the system to a significant degree for decades, thanks to Liberal neglect. I have not heard in one single speech from the NDP, the official opposition in this place, that abuse has occurred. Many of the NDP speeches seem to be cookie cutter copies of one or the other. None of them has acknowledged the fact that there was abuse, that people have committed residency fraud in seeking to acquire citizenship in this country. New Democrats complain about the lack of debate, but they refuse to see and describe the reality as it is.

This bill is urgently needed, and Canadians want it because it would put citizenship on firmer foundations than ever and reflect the value that Canadians attach to one of their greatest possessions.

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a simple question for the minister. I am sure he knows he was mistaken when he said that we had debated this bill for 36 hours. I would like to remind him that Bill C-24 was debated for just a few hours by just five members: a Liberal, a New Democrat and three Conservatives, if I remember correctly. If I am wrong about that, he can set the record straight.

That means that only five out of 308 MPs, or just 2%, have been able to speak to this bill. That means that 2% of Canadians have been able to express their views on a very important bill about the basic tenets of Canadian citizenship.

I would therefore like to ask the minister a simple question: what percentage of Canadians would have to have an opportunity to speak to this bill for the debate to be democratic?

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, every Canadian has the right to have a say in this debate and many did. They sent us letters and emails to share their point of view on this bill.

The vast majority of them are in favour of the measures in this bill. We are listening to the NDP and the Liberals. If they have something new to say about this bill, then we want to hear it. However, we keep hearing the same things, the same baseless accusations and a refusal to acknowledge past abuses. If the NDP and the Liberals have anything new to add to this debate, then this evening is the time to do it because there are still a few hours of debate remaining.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to join with my colleagues in expressing extreme concern about having time allocation and limiting the amount of debate for the 65th time in the House by the Conservative government. It is a shocking disregard for democratic debate and for the very reason we are sent here, which is to voice the views of our constituents, which is to examine fully the issues before the House prior to voting on legislation, and hopefully, through the voicing of those views and through that democratic debate, to influence one or more speakers and come up with a result that is in the best interests of all Canadians.

I want to use my question to express the views of some experts in my community of Parkdale—High Park. I am referring to the Inter-Clinic Immigration Working Group and Parkdale Community Legal Services, who offer services for the community on immigration issues. In a brief to the immigration committee they said, in their expert view:

In the final result, the longer the residency requirement, the more people we have residing, working, and paying taxes here without the full benefit of full civic participation.

They are especially concerned in this regard about temporary foreign workers. They are saying that prolonging the requirement prior to citizenship would weaken Canada as a nation. It would not strengthen it.

If the minister believes so fundamentally that his government is right, that there is serious abuse, and that it would strengthen Canada as a nation, why would he oppose full democratic debate on this? Let us hear some examples. Let us hear some stories. We will present our stories. Let us get everything on the table for Canadians.

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we do agree that this legislation is urgent and that it needs to move forward. We do agree that it needs debate. We invite the opposition tonight to give us some perspectives that we have not had until now. I am not sure if the member opposite was agreeing that there has been abuse in this program in the past. I am not sure if she is agreeing that there are measures in the bill that would address that abuse, that would prevent residency fraud in the future.

What is clear is that we can and will act for Canadians on the basis of the mandate we have, in the interests of a citizenship that serves a strong immigration program, that serves a strong Canadian economy. We need to do these things because we need to be more efficient now, not at the end of this year and not next year. We need to be more efficient in awarding citizenship to hundreds of thousands of Canadians who have earned it, who deserve it, who have applied for it, and who have qualified for it.

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

Mr. Speaker, I wish we could be having the kind of conversation that would reflect the honesty of what is going on in this place, which would mean that I was not addressing my question through the Speaker to the hon. Minister of Citizenship and Immigration but to the puppet masters in the various leaders' offices who have decided that the House is going through the charade of late night sittings until midnight in the absence of the kind of trust and political consensus we should have been building in this place to allow us to avoid long debates on bills on which we completely agree, such as Bill C-17, to get it to committee and not take up our time in speeches, and allow us to have the kind of debate that this particular bill really requires.

If we had the kind of respect across the House that should be the job of all parliamentarians, we would not be sitting until midnight in a farcical exercise to prove we are working hard, because we are not going to be working smart by the end. I know what happened last June when we worked every night until midnight. Late night sittings do not advance the kind of parliamentary performance that our voters deserve.

I do not know if my hon. colleague would agree with me, but would it not be better if the House leaders were able to work together so we could focus our time deservedly on this bill and move up the passage of the ones on which we all agree?

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this place, this House has done some of its best work over the decades and over the centuries in these hours, the evening hours, when there is important business to do on behalf of the Canadian people.

That is why we are here. That is why we have this mandate. That is why we are prepared to work through the night. That is why we do it without complaint and with enthusiasm.

If we look back 100 years ago to the debate that really first gave us the concept of Canadian citizenship under a Conservative government in 1914, we see that long before there was a citizenship act, there was a naturalization act which talked about citizenship for the first time.

We had the Hon. R. B. Bennett and Prime Minister Borden speaking to these issues. They dealt with that bill at second reading in one day. Believe me, it was fewer hours than we will have invested here in this House today.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, when many of us first arrived in 2011, we witnessed an argument around time allocation from the government that went something like, “Well, we debated this bill in the last Parliament, so there is no point in talking about it now”.

I do not know where the minister is getting his numbers of 30-odd hours of debate when we have only had two hours, but I will tell the House about some other numbers that the minister is not talking about. When he talks about fraud, he says that we have not acknowledged fraud in the system. That is untrue; we have acknowledged that there is some. What the minister has not acknowledged is to what degree his department is concerned about fraud.

We have 325,000 applicants in the queue. Of those applicants, the RCMP is investigating 5,000 for potential fraud. That is—calculators out, folks—about 1.5%.

Now, of that 1.5%, some may have committed fraud. Some may have, but can the minister tell us how many? Is this truly the focus of this incredibly important and incredibly problematic bill?

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, fortunately we do have the capacity to investigate cases of fraud already, and we do revoke citizenship when it is proven. That has been done in dozens of cases since 2011.

As the member says, there are 3,000—not 5,000 but 3,000—RCMP investigations under way. I am not going to speculate on how many of those will lead to a conclusion that fraud actually took place. That is the RCMP's job. However, there are very important measures in this bill to prevent fraud in the future, measures to make it impossible for applicants to mislead the authorities responsible for citizenship in my department about the time they have been physically present in Canada.

That is going to be extremely valuable for this program and for the value of citizenship. It will be welcomed by those who know this program and want to benefit from it across the country. Most of all, it will improve processing.

For Canadians, for those who have applied for citizenship, and for those who are here as permanent residents and will apply soon, the main benefit is that processing will be faster under this act. Anyone who delays the passage of this bill is actually disenfranchising many tens of thousands who urgently want that citizenship.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is very hard to sit here and listen to some of the rhetoric I have heard today.

We have a minister who says we have spent 30-plus hours debating a bill that this House has only studied or spoken on for two hours, and even though it has some of the elements of a bill that was previously debated, this bill has many other elements in it.

We have a minister who, instead of having a detailed and thorough debate on something as substantial as taking away somebody's citizenship, is putting more and more power into the hands of ministers, allowing them to become despotic and taking us away from parliamentary democracy.

What we have right now is a government that is using closure or time allocation for the 65th time. After only two hours of discussion on something that is going to fundamentally change what it means to be a citizen in this country, the government has the audacity to say it is now moving time allocation on this issue.

My question for the minister is this: where on earth did he get 30-plus hours of debate on this bill?

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite speaks in very alarming terms about despotism. I will tell the House what despotism is. It is any government, any parliament that refuses to take action when laws and rules are broken.

That way lies anarchy. That way lies poor service. That way lies an undermining of the rule of law, and in this bill we are determined to move against just those trends.

It is astonishing that critics, experienced members of Parliament on the other side, would refuse to acknowledge the basic benefits that the bill would bring by allowing us both to take action against fraud in the system and to process applications faster.

In my time in this House, I have not heard that member once acknowledge that there was abuse in the system, that there was residency fraud. She would do well, for the sake of her credibility—

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Questions. The hon. member for Vancouver Kingsway.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we need an element of decision-based evidence-making, and the bill is really a classic example of a solution in search of a problem.

Everybody knows that in any system there is some degree of manipulation and even some fraud, but the bill goes far beyond dealing with that: it makes it harder for someone to acquire citizenship. It increases residency requirements from three years to four years, it fails to count any time spent as a permanent resident, it increases the language requirements and now forces 15-year-olds and 64-year-olds to demonstrate proficiency in English where they did not have to before, and it triples the application fee. Those are the measures the government has taken. They have nothing to do with attacks on fraud.

The minister talked about fraud. I would like to know exactly what the data is behind the government's move to increase residency requirements. How many people in this country does he think have obtained their citizenship by residency fraud? Let him give us an idea of the scope of the problem to see if this is truly a case of a hammer smashing a pea.

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member demonstrates his lack of understanding of the bill in what he just said. He said that time as a permanent resident would not count toward citizenship, but that is exactly what would count under the bill.

The bill says that time when an individual is not a permanent resident would no longer count. It is much clearer to have one rule for all categories of permanent residents and to make it absolutely crystal clear what Canada expects, what Canadians expect, and what new Canadians who have become citizens expect from those who aspire to Canadian citizenship, which is that they reside here for four years out of six.

How many cases of fraud are there? We do not know. The RCMP is investigating 3,000. We have revoked citizenship for fraudulent acquisition thereof in dozens of cases in the last three years. We hope to get to the bottom of hundreds of cases in the months and years to come.

However, what is absolutely clear from the bill is that with the exit-entry records, we will be able to check in the future. With the new measures in the bill, residency fraud will become a thing of the past. All members should welcome that.

[Pierre Jacob, NDP, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind the minister that Bill C-24 is not on solid constitutional footing. It could run into challenges regarding section 15, in particular, and section 11 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Does he realize that?

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am aware of the legal advice and review that the government requested concerning this bill. The chances of a constitutional challenge to this bill are low. In fact, it was assessed to be a slight risk.

We are confident that it is reasonable to insist that those who want to become Canadian citizens express their intention to do so. This will never undermine their right to free mobility or their rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It makes complete sense, when requiring that permanent residents spend a certain number of years here, to ask the people if they intend to reside in Canada.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

It is my duty to interrupt the proceedings at this time and put forthwith the question on the motion now before the House.

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

All those in favour of the motion will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And five or more members having risen:

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Vote #154