Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House once again to urge the government to take action on the ongoing discrimination in Canada's immigration system against individuals with disabilities. Paragraph 38(1)(c) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act allows for the rejection of an entire family of applicants if one individual has a disability or medical condition that officials believe could put “excessive demand on [Canada's] health or social services”.
Witnesses who appeared before the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration confirmed that the numbers provided to assess excessive demand are arbitrary, inaccurate, and do not take into account the potential contributions of the disabled person and/or the family unit. This paragraph of the act has been explicitly and repeatedly recognized by parliamentarians, committee witnesses, and the Minister of Immigration himself as enabling discrimination against individuals with disabilities.
In fact, during the recent Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration study of this provision, the member for Surrey Centre stated:
I would say that initially I thought it was a good policy, because that would perhaps be a big burden on Canadians, but then I looked back—and I don't want to equate it to this—and it's no different from the slave trade, in which only those selected as the strongest and the most able-bodied were brought from Africa. It's not that that whole policy is good at all, but I'm saying it is akin to discriminating when we're picking only people who are healthy, fully functioning, with no intellectual disabilities and no physical disabilities.
The member for Surrey Centre also stated:
As you can tell, almost all of us have an inclination that this policy is discriminatory. We already can see that even within immigration there's a two-tiered policy.
The member for St. John's East, in an exchange with the minister, said:
I must say that at this point in time I do not see how raising the threshold and excluding fewer people changes the fact that excluding anyone is prima facie discriminatory and violates Canadian values.
The parliamentary secretary, in the House, when I asked him this question, said, “The excessive-demand provision is indeed an outdated policy”. He also said, “From a principled perspective, the current excessive-demand policy simply does not align with our country’s values on the inclusion of persons with disabilities in Canadian society.”
However, widespread recognition of this blatantly discriminatory policy has instilled no sense of urgency from the government to rectify the issue. The government has been consulting on this policy since October 2016, even though this provision is a textbook case of discrimination, one that has affected the lives of hundreds of immigrants who are good enough to work but not good enough to stay if their loved ones are affected by a disability.
That foot-dragging is both irresponsible and an insult to people like Mercedes Benitez and Monica Mateo. These women came to Canada under the live-in caregiver program and have cared for our children and seniors. After years of waiting to be reunited with their families, because one of their children has a developmental disability, they are now being discriminated against. These families deserve to be treated with respect and dignity.
Will the government commit to taking my private member's bill, Bill C-398, turn it into a government bill, and repeal paragraph 38(1)(c) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act?