Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-24 on citizenship and immigration.
It is no secret that I was born here to parents of Vietnamese origin. Immigration issues hit close to home and are often close to my heart.
This is not the first time that I have been disappointed in the government's actions, but I am particularly disappointed here. The government is not fixing the existing problem. There is a problem with wait times, and that is obvious. Since I was elected, one of the biggest files my constituency office has dealt with is immigration, whether we are talking about visas or citizenship applications.
I represent a very multicultural riding that works very well. My riding includes the city of Brossard, which is incredibly multicultural. On the weekend I watched a high school graduation ceremony. There were people from all over. It is extraordinary to see.
I would like to come back to the bill we are debating today, and I am going to start by talking about an aspect of the bill that is a bit more technical. My colleague from Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, who spoke before me, mentioned it. In our opinion, it is a very good example of how this government operates.
First of all, the government comes up with a bill that is unconstitutional and goes against the charter. That is not surprising coming from this government. I am talking more specifically about the fact that the government wants to be able to revoke citizenship in certain cases.
The government is giving the minister the power to revoke citizenship. Of course, we are talking about cases where the person in question has dual citizenship. The minister can revoke that individual's citizenship by saying that the person committed fraud or wrongdoing or that other situations warrant it.
The question is not whether the government can revoke citizenship or not, but the reasons for which it can do so. To be more specific, we are wondering how the government came up with the idea of revoking people's citizenship.
The fundamental problem is that the government is creating two classes of citizens: those who have dual citizenship and those who have only Canadian citizenship. For example, the government will not be able to revoke the citizenship of a person who does not have dual citizenship, but will be able to revoke the citizenship of someone who does.
In this case, what is worse is that the minister could say, based on a preponderance of evidence, that he is of the opinion that a person's citizenship should be revoked for such and such a reason. The problem is that there is no appeal process. There is no process whereby the courts can verify that decision at the federal level. The government is putting that power into the hands of the minister. This could lead to an excessive abuse of power. In fact, experts, lawyers and the Canadian Bar Association are opposed to this bill.
Earlier in the debate, the minister said that some people were opposed to this measure but that it was only a small group of lawyers. The minister dismissed the Canadian Bar Association out of hand. This clearly shows that the Conservatives believe that everyone who opposes their opinions is useless. The way the government treats the Supreme Court, among others, has become truly disgraceful.
I am going to come back to how this government operates, instead of solving a problem. There is the problem of the ever-growing wait times and the fact that the government decided to make cuts to immigration. Clearly, immigration is not a priority for this government.
I would like to remind all of my colleagues opposite, none of whom are likely to be listening, that Canada was created by immigration.
This is a personal issue for me because I am from an immigrant family. Thanks to family reunification, my family and I integrated well and now I am an MP. Family reunification is therefore very important to us. However, I heard comments from people on the other side of the House about how grandparents were a burden on society. There is a disconnect over there. They are losing sight of the human side of things. That scares me because this majority government does whatever it wants.
Even though we made recommendations and proposed amendments in committee, we do agree with some aspects of the bill. For example, we agree that some people, such as middlemen, are abusing the system and should be punished. However, in general, the Conservative government does not really want immigrants to feel welcome in Canada. It has made all kinds of promises about improving the system, but the truth is that it is bringing in temporary foreign workers. That is exactly why its management of this file has been criticized.
My family, my NDP colleagues and I all understand the importance of Canadian citizenship, and it is something that is quite obvious when we attend citizenship ceremonies. Having attended many of them, I know that the new citizens in my riding are very proud. However, the Conservatives prefer to give priority to temporary foreign workers, to the detriment of immigration and families who want to settle here and become part of society.
I would like to sincerely thank the hon. member for Pierrefonds—Dollard, our critic, and the hon. member for Saint-Lambert for their hard work on this. It shows how important we feel the human element is. The NDP is making this much effort perhaps because our caucus is made up of many nationalities and cultures, so we are very open-minded.
I know that some of my Conservative and Liberal colleagues understand because they also come from immigrant families. This is an important debate, yet those members are allowing the government to take this sort of action and push family reunification aside.
Processing times have nearly doubled. That is incredible. People are not advancing through the system. I have seen processing times increase with my own eyes since I was elected, and that was only three years ago. When we want to serve our constituents, we are sometimes faced with a system that is overloaded. The government is choosing not to find solutions or invest to integrate immigrants better and work with them better so that they settle here with their family and participate in Canada's economy as well.
When my parents came here, it really helped to have their family here, their brothers and sisters, who took care of us. It helped my parents find a job, get settled and move forward. I am disappointed that my Conservative colleagues are not on the right track.