Debates of June 9th, 2014

Status of Women

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for her question. Many of the recommendations are centred around prevention. I would also like to add that measures need to be implemented and we need to acknowledge the reality of sexual harassment in federal workplaces. That is not happening right now because the government is not taking action.

In order to prevent harassment, we need to know where it is happening, what it looks like and in which department it is the most prevalent.

As I said, one aspect of prevention is changing the federal workplace culture. That includes increasing the number of women in managerial positions and positions of power. We know that can help change workplace culture.

Training programs also need to be improved. We heard that because of cuts, the federal government was trying to impose online training as opposed to in-person training. We feel that is unacceptable.

Many other measures were mentioned during the testimony we heard as part of the study. The federal government has decided to disregard these measures, which is disappointing. We hope that the government will look at them and take action as quickly as possible.

[Djaouida Sellah, NDP, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for a very good speech. I would also like to mention that we are on the same committee.

Various witnesses told us about a culture that tolerated harassment in the workplace. Women complained about it. Many witnesses said that the retaliation was worse than the sexual harassment itself. They gave us examples of retaliation that people might experience if they reported harassment. They might be ostracized, isolated in the workplace or transferred to another job outside of the organization. They might get sent on undesirable assignments or be demoted.

Is it not time for the government to show some leadership and take concrete action to eradicate this culture, especially considering that women are being encouraged to pursue positions of responsibility?

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague. It was a pleasure to work on this study with her and the other committee members. She is absolutely right: we need the government to show leadership so that we can change the culture and eradicate sexual harassment.

I am glad she raised a point that we heard about repeatedly during our study: retaliation can be the worst part.

We must learn from the examples people gave about departments that mishandled sexual harassment cases. We heard about people who had been harassed being punished, not those who did the harassing. That makes no sense. That has to change.

The RCMP harassment cases are shocking. Those who repeatedly committed sexual harassment were simply sent home for a few days or transferred to another posting. Unfortunately, there have been no punitive measures yet.

Over the past few months, we have started seeing some things that could deter people from sexually harassing co-workers. This is something concrete that we have to act on. We are asking the government to do so as soon as possible.

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

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to congratulate my colleague, our party's status of women critic, on her speech.

The study was originally supposed to be on sexual harassment in the RCMP. However, the committee completely transformed the study to instead focus on sexual harassment in the federal workplace.

What can my colleague tell us about this change of topic?

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question.

Our dissenting report starts off with that same observation. As the official opposition, we wanted to focus on sexual harassment in the RCMP, since this is a serious issue that has caused a lot of harm to women in the RCMP.

Canadians want the federal government to show some leadership. This is a spectacular example of how the government refused to show leadership and did everything it could to conduct a much broader study and avoid putting the focus on the RCMP.

It is even more shocking that we spent only one session hearing testimony from the RCMP. That is unacceptable, in light of how serious the problems are within the force. Worst of all, the committee did not make a single recommendation specifically about the RCMP.

It means nothing for the federal Conservative government to say that it supports our police officers if it does not take action and focus the study on cases of sexual harassment in the RCMP.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I move:

That the House do now proceed to the orders of the day.

[The Acting Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

The House has heard the terms of the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Acting Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

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

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Acting Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Acting Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And five or more members having risen:

Call in the members.

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

Vote #188

Committees of the House

[The Acting Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

I declare the motion carried.

The House resumed consideration of Bill C-24, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, as reported (with amendment) from the committee; and of the motions in Group No. 1.

Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this bill and to announce that the Liberals will be voting against it.

We do not like this bill at all, except for the part that deals with lost Canadians. We think that all of the other aspects of this bill are bad for Canada, so we will be voting against it.

There are two main aspects that we do not like at all. First, the Conservatives believe that the more difficult it is to get Canadian citizenship, the more valuable it is to be a Canadian. We do not think that makes sense. On the contrary, if we make it difficult for people to become citizens, they will go elsewhere, such as to Australia, the United Kingdom or the United States.

Otherwise, we in Canada are competing for people around the world with countries like Australia, the U.K., and the U.S. When the Conservatives erect barrier after barrier to make it harder for people to become citizens of this country, as they do in this bill, in no way does that increase the value of citizenship. Rather, what it does is turn people off of becoming citizens of Canada and induce them to become citizens elsewhere. Indeed, I would say this bill devalues Canadian citizenship, because while it makes it harder for newcomers to become citizens, it makes it easier for the minister to arbitrarily remove someone's Canadian citizenship. In that sense, it devalues our citizenship and makes it less durable against attack from a minister of the crown. The individual Canadian would have limited right to appeal to the courts.

We in the Liberal Party believe that we should reduce the barriers to citizenship and welcome people to this country, whereas the Conservatives would erect more barriers. Instead of welcoming newcomers with a smile, they welcome newcomers with a scowl and force them to climb all of these hurdles to achieve citizenship.

If we look at the hurdles, we see that most of them make very little sense. I would like to name a few.

First of all, until now international students have been able to claim 50% of their time as students as credit toward becoming citizens. Under this bill, the Conservatives would make that amount zero. This is foolish in the extreme. We are encouraging international students to go elsewhere. Who are better candidates to be citizens of Canada than students, who by definition are educated, have experience in this country, and presumably speak English or French? They are giving students a kick in the pants when instead we should be welcoming them to our country.

Second, they impose language tests on older newcomers. Up until now, beyond age 54, one did not have to pass a difficult language test. Now one does if one is between the ages of 54 and 65. We believe this is unnecessary. We believe many loyal Canadians who have come here and become citizens speak less than perfect English as older citizens, but I have no doubt their children and grandchildren will speak perfect English or French. We do not think that the imperfect French of the older generation has been any impediment to becoming good citizens and contributors to this country.

The third barrier, also inappropriate, is that the Conservatives have increased the length of time that people have to be residents. They have tightened the definition of “resident” so as not to allow any more time spent abroad if, for example, the person is working for a Canadian company.

In all these ways, the government has increased the barriers or the difficulties in becoming a citizen. We believe this is bad for this country, particularly in the world of 2014, when we have an aging population and are competing with many different countries around the world for new citizens.

Finally, as if that were not enough, they have increased the wait time for becoming a citizen from 16 months to 31 months, which is double, and for many people it is even longer than that.

None of these aspects of the bill are positive for this country.

For that reason, we in the Liberal Party are very pleased to vote against this bill.

The second component of our objection is, in one sense, even more serious. What I have just said is serious enough: we compete for immigrants, we need immigrants, we want to welcome immigrants. However, the second part has to do with infringing upon the Constitution by passing laws that many lawyers agree would be unconstitutional and would not be able to stand a test in the Supreme Court.

I have a letter here. I might not have too much time, but I will read a bit of it:

...removal may occur despite the fact that they have not, do not, nor wish to apply for dual nationality. A Canadian-born citizen may be removed and wake up to landing in a country which may not recognize the dual nationality and thus become stateless.

The letter, from lawyers Messrs. Galati, Slansky, and Azevedo, representing the Constitutional Rights Centre, goes on to say:

...the Federal Parliament has absolutely no constitutional authority over the citizenship of persons born in Canada, but only over “Aliens and Naturalization”.

It adds:

This aspect of C-24, in its seismic shift from the historical and constitutional understanding of the citizenship of those born in Canada, should be referred to the Supreme Court of Canada...and not simply passed through Parliament....

It concludes that:

The Constitutional Rights Centre Inc. intends to take every judicial proceeding possible against Bill C-24.

In the good old days, governments assured themselves that a bill was constitutional before passing it through Parliament. Under the current government, bill after bill seems to go through Parliament with no assurance that it is constitutional, and indeed with assurances from well-reputed lawyers that it is not.

We object in principle to the arbitrary removal of citizenship from individuals for reasons that are highly questionable and to the very limited opportunity for the individual to appeal to the courts against that removal of citizenship. We object to the onus of proof regarding dual citizenship being placed not upon the government to prove that the person is a dual citizen but upon the individual to prove that he or she is not. That also is wrong.

For all of these reasons, we and many legions of lawyers across this country are convinced that the bill would fail the test of the Constitution, and well should it fail that test, because it would do things that are inconsistent with not only the Constitution of Canada but also with the spirit of this country as developed over many decades of our history.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the bill is very long and, as the member mentioned, some measures are worse than others.

Could my colleague talk about the omnibus nature of this bill? This does not allow opposition members to fully debate this bill, which contains a number of measures that affect potential new Canadians.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a matter of both content and procedure. I indicated that we do not like the content of this bill at all.

With regard to the procedure, I agree with my colleague. It leaves much to be desired since we have not had much time to debate the bill. Since the government is rushing Parliament, we have only a few hours to debate this bill. As a result, hundreds of legal experts who would like to share their opinions have not had much opportunity to do so.

Both the content of this bill and the procedure surrounding it are inadequate.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure the member is aware that there has been a significant jump in the time involved for processing an application for citizenship. I can recall when Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was in power the citizenship process would take roughly 12 months once a person had qualified. It now takes close to 28 months, well over two years, to process an application.

It seems to me that this legislation would change the way in which an application is processed but if the government had the political will to speed up the process, the legislation would not be required in the first place. People should not have to wait more than two years to acquire citizenship. That is being generous, especially if we look at those who meet the residency requirement where it could go well beyond four or five years.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I do agree with my hon. colleague. The average processing time is now 31 months, which is two and a half years. It used to be just over one year. These are the government's own numbers.

I should add that it could add a lot more time for some individuals who have to fill out the residency questionnaire, and it is a rather arbitrary and mysterious process by which it is decided who has to fill out the questionnaire and who does not, and we do not know according to what criteria. That is another element that can impose a huge burden on individuals in terms of the time it takes.

This is a general problem across the board. We are looking at a doubling of citizenship wait times but if we look at processing time for all components of immigration, whether it is family class, parents, grandparents, children, spouses, economic immigrants, provincial nominee programs, visitors, and citizenship applicants, all have experienced dramatic, sometimes two or three times higher, processing times under the Conservative government. Perhaps departments have been starved of funds, perhaps the government does not care, perhaps it has erected new bureaucracies, we do not know all of the reasons, but across the board it is totally unacceptable. This case of doubling wait times for new citizens is terrible but it is just typical of what the government has done across the board.

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Markham—Unionville was on CBC recently. He was being skeptical about the government's promise to reduce the processing time from upward of 36 months to under one year. He went on to say that it was just in time for an election year.

Is he really that cynical?

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, perhaps I lack the idealism of some of my NDP colleagues, so perhaps I should simply take the government at its word.

In general, members of the NDP and the Liberals, and I dare say a good chunk of the Conservatives themselves, would be skeptical at some of the more daring promises of the Conservatives when waiting times have gone up egregiously for seven years. Are they suddenly going to plummet in the one year before the election? My colleagues can believe that if they will, but I suggest it would be dangerous to indulge in such beliefs.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am rising in opposition to the piece of legislation that is here before us today, an act to amend the Citizenship Act and to make consequential amendments to other acts.

Just as other pieces of legislation are seen in the House, the Conservative government has a knack for taking a few things that we can really support and, instead of moving them ahead and getting consensus on them, throwing them in with aspects that we absolutely cannot support. That what is we have in the citizenship bill.

There are bits in here that I have really been pressing on the ministers and the government to change. One of the bits that I really want to acknowledge is that, at long last, the “lost Canadians” issue has been addressed. This issue was addressed previously because the NDP pushed so hard to get it addressed, but it left out those who were born before 1947, people who served on behalf of Canada in wars but were not given citizenship. That right has been addressed. I would like to acknowledge the work done by Don Chapman and others, who carried on and put in an incredible amount of hours to see this injustice righted. I am glad to see that.

I am also glad to see in this bill that tougher measures would be taken against fraudulent immigration consultants. They absolutely should be, and I am really pleased to see this. I am so proud of an ex-colleague of mine, the former member of Parliament for Trinity—Spadina, who put in a lot of work on this file and really pushed to get something done about the fraudulent consultants. Let me tell members that not all immigration consultants are fraudulent, but where we are hearing of abuse, it is quite grotesque.

There are other little bits in here about fines for fraud from the current fine of $1,000 to $100,000. We are fine with that. However, there are bits in this bill that I absolutely cannot support. One of those is the process by which this piece of legislation has landed in the House.

I know that members are going to be shocked at this. Did they know that this piece of legislation, after it came through second reading and was sent to the committee stage, never heard any witnesses? The committee never heard any expert testimony. Instead, the Conservatives used their majority at committee to move straight into clause-by-clause study.

This, once again, goes to a trend that I have seen in the House. There is an allergy to data, an allergy to science, and an allergy to expert opinion. The Conservatives had already made up their mind. They did not need to be informed by experts of the dangers of some aspects of the bill, and maybe even be enlightened and accept some of the amendments that the opposition put forward. Why would they do that? Despite this, I have heard the minister stand in the House and say that they heard lots of testimony. They did a study in general, without having the legislation in front of them. No report of that study has been tabled in the House on this legislation, which has seven key components, and where we heard no expert witnesses. There are probably more components, but I have identified seven.

This is a bill that should cause every Canadian living in this country or overseas to be worried, because what we have in this bill, for the first time since Canadian citizenship was established, is a two-tiered citizenship for some. By the way, when people talk to me, they say, “Oh yes, it must only be two-tiered for people who were born in other countries.” Oh no, this bill would actually create two-tiered citizenship for those who were born in this country and those who became citizens through naturalization.

One of the things that has been truly amazing about Canadians and Canada's history is that we accepted a long time ago that a citizen is a citizen. If a citizen does something wrong, we have a penal system and there are consequences that the citizen has to bear.

Under this legislation, some people will be more citizen than others. I am talking about those who end up with dual citizenship.

By the way, I was shocked after I became an MP, when there was that income tax fiasco for many of my Canadian constituents who then found out that they were still American. They had thought they had let that go a long time ago, but apparently it is very difficult to let go of American citizenship. They found they had dual citizenship. I would say that there will be all kinds of people who do not even know they have dual citizenship, and yet they do through birth, through their parents. For example, my children have the right to dual citizenship from England. There are people who come from different countries. Historically, when we have accepted them into this country, we have said, “Yes, we accept dual citizenship.” Then, when they have their children, their children have that right to that dual citizenship.

We are not really debating dual citizenship or the pros and cons of that. What we are really looking at is what it means to have Canadian citizenship. What we are saying, as I said previously, for the first time in our history is that some citizens will have different rights than others.

I am not a lawyer and have never tried to pretend I am, but I could see that there could be some legitimate legal constitutional challenges with this. How could two Canadians who were born here or two Canadians who came here to this country be treated differently, just because one happens to have a dual nationality?

This bill takes components of the bill that the government tried to rush through this House under the guise of a private member's bill. When it did not get that, it brought it back here and threw in quite a few other components. It should really concern us.

As I said, I am still shaking my head that, here we are, a country that has been a country built through immigration, and the only people who can really say they were here long before the rest of us, first, second, third, fourth, fifth generation, are the aboriginal communities.

What we are seeing once again from the government that likes to spend a lot of money and resources wooing the immigrant community is it is sending a very different message through the legislation. It can be an attack on family reunification. We have a government that is always talking about the importance of family. At the same time, we say we want the young and the brightest from other countries. Of course we do.

However, the young and the brightest do not fall out of the sky. In many cases, they are coming from families where they may be the only child. Then we are saying to them that family reunification, the chance of their families ever coming to join them, has now been turned into a lottery system, and they just have to keep trying.

I do not think that is the way to build a country. I do not think that is the way we want to build our communities.

We also tried to address the long wait lists. We shredded applications for people who waited legitimately. We have shut the door on immigration in so many ways, and yet under the government, the floodgates have been opened for the temporary foreign worker program that has kept wages down at entry-level jobs and in the low-skilled sector. I would say there are abuses throughout that program that we are hearing about over and over again.

The government says it is going to address the lengthy wait lists for citizenship. I could more than pack this chamber with people who have been waiting and waiting. After they have qualified for citizenship, they could wait another 32 to 36 months to get their actual citizenship papers.

There is a little throw-in here for men and women who served in the armed forces. They are going to get to apply for their citizenship one year early. That sounds good on paper, and we support it. On the other hand, when a citizenship system is so backed up and people are waiting for years and years, it seems like a gift that is not really a gift, or a reward that is not really a reward.

As I was saying, once again, the government has tried to pull a sleight of hand by throwing in a few good things in this bill, and quite a bit that is not acceptable to the opposition.

[Jonathan Tremblay, NDP, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, who always gives such incredible speeches that are nuanced and balanced. I congratulate her.

When the bill was studied in committee, all the amendments were rejected. The Conservatives are also not rising to discuss this bill, defend it or answer questions. I have difficulty understanding why the Conservative government takes this tack when people want to improve the bill. The government, which has probably already made up its mind, does not want to listen at all and is letting things go. It is not allowing Canadians to contribute to the debate.

Can my colleague talk more about this?