(The House divided on Motion No. 84, which was negatived on the following division:)
House of Commons Hansard #344 of the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was animals.
House of Commons Hansard #344 of the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was animals.
Elections Modernization ActGovernment Orders
The Speaker Geoff Regan
I declare Motion No. 84 defeated.
The question is on Motion No. 115. Shall I dispense?
Elections Modernization ActGovernment Orders
Elections Modernization ActGovernment Orders
Karina Gould LiberalMinister of Democratic Institutions
moved that Bill C-76, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and other Acts and to make certain consequential amendments, as amended, be concurred in at report stage with a further amendment.
Elections Modernization ActGovernment Orders
The Speaker Geoff Regan
The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?
Elections Modernization ActGovernment Orders
Elections Modernization ActGovernment Orders
Elections Modernization ActGovernment Orders
Elections Modernization ActGovernment Orders
A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Mr. Speaker, in May I rose in the House to draw the minister's attention to the spousal sponsorship case of Mr. Baig and the inappropriate language used in a procedural fairness letter to “tease out a response”. The language was offensive and relied on ethnic stereotyping to question the legitimacy of a marriage.
I was glad to hear over the summer that the application had been approved and that refresher training was provided to the officers processing permanent resident applications in London. The minister acknowledged that “the lack of a clear explanation of the intent of the procedural fairness letter deserves to be acknowledged and addressed. The concern of the officer could have been expressed in a less abrupt manner by providing more context and I would like to assure you that steps have been taken to address this issue.”
I had hoped that we would no longer require debate on this subject. Unfortunately, it appears that similar practices continue within IRCC.
Jason Abrahamson, a Canadian citizen, married his wife Suhkpreet Kaur, who goes by the name Sooke, in India in 2016. After living together for some time in India, they applied for a visitor visa for Sooke to come to Canada. That application was rejected.
As members of this place know all too well, visitor visa rejections contain little to no information about why a negative decision was reached and are immensely frustrating for applicants as a result.
In February 2017, Jason had to return to Canada to go back to his job, leaving his new wife behind. In May 2017, they applied for Sooke to obtain permanent resident status through the spousal sponsorship program.
In the meantime, through visits to India, this new family was expecting their first child. Their healthy baby boy was born on October 21, 2017. In December 2017, just months after meeting his newborn son, Jason had to leave his family to come back to Canada to return to work. The application was in process for over 17 months before it seemed to start moving.
The couple responded to all lRCC requests as quickly as they could, including interviews that were required because IRCC officials believed that the wedding pictures were “staged”. A request for a special marriage certificate, with a 30-day deadline to respond, was made, all because Jason was not Sikh. That was despite having already submitted their marriage certificate signed by the Minister of External Affairs of India. IRCC staff suggested to Jason staff that this was because he was a “white boy”.
The delays caused medicals to expire and, at great travel expense and other costs, they had to be redone. A second visitor visa for Sooke was denied. The family spent over $10,000 in legal fees trying to deal with IRCC requests.
Thankfully, I found out just days ago that this application had finally been approved. However, once again we are dealing with inappropriate, intrusive and rude lines of questioning and accusations.
This is not the approach necessary to determining legitimacy of a relationship, and in the summer, the minister agreed with me on that. Why is this kind of approach continuing?
Immigration, Refugees and CitizenshipAdjournment Proceedings
Fredericton New Brunswick
Liberal
Matt DeCourcey LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Immigration
Madam Speaker, the hon. colleague knows that even in adjournment proceedings, privacy rules preclude me from speaking about particular cases, including the two cases she spoke about this evening.
However, she can rest assured, as can all Canadians, that reuniting families remains one of our government's top priorities. We are committed to reuniting families who are apart, and to easing the uncertainty of those who are together but who are waiting for their immigration status to be finalized.
When families are able to reunite and stay together, it vastly improves their integration into Canadian society, their economic outcomes and their ability to contribute to their communities and to Canadian society as a whole.
It did not serve either newcomers or Canadians well when, for too many years, far fewer family members were allowed into the country than had applied and not enough action was taken to reduce the growing backlog of applications.
Because of that, in December of 2016, our government announced improvements to Canada's spousal sponsorship application process in order to make it more efficient and easier for families to navigate. These changes included a new and improved spousal sponsorship application package to make it simpler and easier for sponsors and applicants to understand and use.
As part of our commitment to enhancing client service, we have responded to feedback from applicants and have made additional improvements to the application package just last year.
All along the plan has been to improve the spousal sponsorship process, making it faster and easier for Canadians and permanent residents to reunite with their spouses or common-law partners.
Our government has done just that and it has yielded results. Over the past two years, we have made the spousal sponsorship process faster and easier. We met the commitment to reduce the backlog left to us by the Harper Conservatives of spousal sponsorship cases by 80% and shortened the process times from 26 months to less than a year.
Thanks to these changes, families, spouses and common-law partners who have been separated can now be reunited more quickly in Canada.
As well, our government continues to help applicants by making additional updates to the application guide and checklists. These updates help to process applications even more quickly and avoid unnecessary delays.
Canadians with a partner or a spouse who is abroad should not have to wait for years to have him or her immigrate. Nor should those who are in the country be uncertain of whether they will be allowed to stay. The bottom line is that we want newcomers to settle and immigrate into our communities, contribute to the economy and succeed.
Speeding up family reunification helps them to do that, and all Canadians benefit from it.
The changes our government has made to the spousal sponsorship program are helping to bring spouses and families together faster. Through these actions, we will continue to make Canada stronger both today and for our future. It is our genuine belief as a government that the economic success of our country is dependent on our ability to accept skilled workers and their families and that the cultural vibrancy of our country is only strengthened by newcomers who come and contribute to our communities.
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Madam Speaker, the parliamentary secretary completely misses my point. I raised those two examples to show the government what was going wrong with the system today. The issue here is how they are being dealt with and the inappropriateness of the language. The fact is that despite promises from the government to cease these practices and retrain processing officers these inappropriate practices continue.
What steps will the government take to ensure that it stops once and for all, not just for these two cases but for all applicants?
We can all understand the importance of ensuring that marriages are legitimate and not of convenience or coercion. We should also be able to agree that this can be determined in a respectful manner. That is what Canadians expect.
Matt DeCourcey Liberal Fredericton, NB
Madam Speaker, I did not misunderstand a thing. I started by stating that I would not be commenting on particular cases in front of the House, a principle I know my colleague understands and respects as well.
She indicated in her initial speech that the minister had addressed some of the concerns she previously had. As a matter of improving client service delivery in our department, the minister and the entire government are working feverishly to ensure that we are able to reunite families faster and that families are able to settle and contribute in communities across the country. We are doing that because we believe that immigration and family reunification through immigration is a key driver of economic success in our country and that the cultural vibrancy of our country is only enriched by the newcomers and their family members who come and settle in Canada.
François Choquette NDP Drummond, QC
Madam Speaker, I rise today to follow up on a question I asked on October 19 regarding the protection of the environment, which is a crucial social issue. There is also the fact that the Liberal government is constantly touting itself as the undisputed champion of the environment, when anyone can see that that is far from true. A real champion of the environment would never buy a pipeline.
In Paris, the Prime Minister said, “Canada is back”. However, once he returned to Canada, he said we would adopt the same greenhouse gas reduction targets as Stephen Harper's government did. These are extremely weak targets that will not enable us to do our share to hold climate warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
These revelations stunned many. The comments that the Prime Minister has made on television and in other media have been picked up by a number of stakeholders. Patrick Bonin of Greenpeace said that the Prime Minister's remarks on Tout le monde en parle almost made him sound like a climate change denier.
I will address these harsh comments from a very experienced environmentalist in a bit. I do think it is very important to point out that science tells us, as we saw in the latest IPCC report, that we can limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and we have the technology to do so, but that we must do much more than what the current government is doing.
I want to give some examples of people who are taking meaningful action my riding of Drummond. In the summer, the city of Drummondville consulted more than 2,400 residents about sustainable mobility. I want to congratulate John Husk, the municipal councillor for ward 5 and the chair of the Chantier sur le développement d'un plan de mobilité durable et de transport actif et collectif. This consultation will be used to develop an initial sustainable mobility plan for the city of Drummondville, which is projected to come out in September 2019. These are the kinds of actions that the Liberal government should be encouraging and supporting.
Other groups are working to protect the environment in Drummond too. One of these is the Coalition pour une action citoyenne solidaire, or COACS, which plays an important environmental protection role in our community by raising awareness and doing hands-on work. I would like to salute two members in particular, Mélanie Daigneault and Alain D'Auteuil, who are doing an amazing job of raising public awareness in our community about the importance of taking immediate action on this issue.
Let me get back to the issue at hand. Here is what Patrick Bonin had to say:
He is implying that Canada is not in a position to play a lead role in the fight against climate change. Other countries around the world expect a rich industrialized nation like Canada, which is one of the biggest polluters per capita, to be a great leader, but it is falling far short of that expectation.
Here is my question. What will the Liberal government do to be a great leader?
Matt DeCourcey LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Immigration
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Drummond. I want to assure him, all members of the House and all Canadians watching on television that our government is determined to develop the abundant resources of our country in the right way, namely by investing significant amounts in clean technology and a greener future; by advancing reconciliation with indigenous peoples and strengthening environmental performance; and by moving forward with good resource projects, in a timely, responsible and transparent manner and with the confidence of Canadians and investors. That is what we have been working on since we took office in November 2015.
That is why we took a leadership role in forging the Paris Agreement on climate change.
That is why we quickly implemented an interim strategy for reviewing new resource projects already in the queue.
That is why we met with the provinces and territories and consulted indigenous leaders to draft the pan-Canadian framework on clean growth and climate change.
That is why we introduced Bill C-69.
That is why we are holding consultations on a framework to recognize and implement indigenous rights.
We want to build a Canada that works for everyone; a Canada that creates good jobs, grows our economy and expands our middle class; a Canada that develops its resources sustainably and competitively; a Canada that leads the global transition to a low-carbon economy.
The Trans Mountain expansion project has been part of that very vision. Part of our plan for using this time of transition to Canada's advantage is by building infrastructure we need to move our resources to new markets at fair prices, and using the revenues they generate to invest in our clean energy future. It is a matter of doing the hard work necessary to move forward in the right way.
That is why we are also following the direction provided by the Federal Court of Appeal on August 30 in its decision on the TMX project. We are doing so by instructing the National Energy Board to reconsider its recommendation and to take into account the environmental impacts of marine shipping related to this project. We are doing so by relaunching our government's phase three consultations with indigenous groups affected by this project.
Regarding the member's question about the future of the energy east project, I think he may be a bit confused. We cannot speak for TransCanada, the company which owns the project, nor can we make any guarantees on its behalf one way or the other.
What I can say, however, is that this government will always support good resource projects by creating good sustainable jobs in Quebec and across the country. That is how we will create an inclusive, sustainable and prosperous future for all Canadians.
François Choquette NDP Drummond, QC
Madam Speaker, as I said, in the most recent IPCC report, thousands of scientists indicated that we need to do a lot more and be a lot more ambitious.
I would like to once again quote the Radio-Canada article, which reads:
Patrick Bonin, head of Greenpeace Quebec's climate and energy campaign, believes that [the Prime Minister] lied on Sunday's episode of Tout le monde en parle when he said that Canada will meet the greenhouse gas reduction target it set for 2030. Bonin also believes that the Prime Minister's arguments to justify government support for the oil industry are “practically worthy of a climate change denier”.
I would like to end by quoting Patrick Bonin. He said:
By saying that there needs to be a transition period and that this is going to take time, [the Prime Minister] is denying science. The decision to put off taking action is practically worthy of a climate change denier. This is urgent and scientists are sounding the alarm.
My question is therefore very simple. If this transition is so important, why did the Prime Minister not say that he would put a stop to energy east and never come back to it?
Matt DeCourcey Liberal Fredericton, NB
Madam Speaker, first, I would remind our colleague that it is our government that is putting a price on pollution. That shows we have an ambitious plan to deal with climate change.
Second, the Trans Mountain expansion project represents a good investment for the future based on clean growth in Canada, period.
Third, as far as energy east is concerned, we do not own that project and we cannot comment on what that company is doing. However, if it helps, I can assure the hon. member for Drummond that this government will continue to support any resource development activity that reflects our vision that economic prosperity and environmental protection go hand in hand, while growing the economy to ensure the prosperity of all Canadians.