Mr. Speaker, I want to first acknowledge that we are gathered here on the traditional lands of the Algonquin people. I would also like to pay my respects to the people of Toronto who were victimized about 24 hours ago.
I stand here with a very heavy heart, for my city is wounded today. The towering pride of Toronto, the CN Tower, by Lake Ontario, often seen as a symbol of our city, was dark last night. Our hearts ache with pain when we think of the 10 people who died and the 15 who were wounded. People from across six former boroughs of Toronto mourn together as one, as do Canadians from coast to coast to coast.
Yonge and Finch is a place I have frequented often. Some of my best friends live, work, and study there. My grade eight geography project was on this particular block of Yonge Street, which at the time comprised many rundown storefronts. The North York Civic Centre of today is vibrant and full of life and was bustling on a warm spring day like yesterday.
All across Canada, we mourn the senseless loss of lives. While we do not know the answers today to the many questions we may have, we can be sure that our law enforcement and emergency responders are doing everything they can to help. I want to thank them for their dedication and selfless deeds. Our police, fire service, paramedics, and hospitals have responded with a sense of duty and professionalism that we have often seen. We are so thankful for their efforts.
I have worked with Mayor Tory in many times of tragedy, and I know of no better leader to lead the city, to heal the wounds, and to make sure that we continue to live in a peaceful, united, and loving city. As a government, the Minister of Public Safety and the Prime Minister have extended the federal government's full support of the efforts undertaken by the City of Toronto and the Province of Ontario. I know that I speak for all of us in this House when I say that we will do whatever it takes to work through this tragedy as one nation.
Turning to the discussion at hand, the opposition motion proposed by the member for Calgary Nose Hill essentially calls upon our government to close our border, a border that has been open and free since 1812.
The Canada-U.S. border is the longest undefended border in the world, and while we have designated ports of entry where we can process those who come across, there are non-designated border points that can give rise to people seeking refuge through inland claims for asylum. We have seen recent increases in these numbers. In 2017, from February to December, we saw 18,149 people cross through irregular channels. We have early indications that people will continue to cross the border through irregular entry ports this year through the spring and summer months.
We obviously do not want people to come to Canada through these irregular border crossings, and we encourage orderly migration. We would much rather have people processed in a third country or through the UNHCR referral process. However, the nature of migration patterns in the world today and the desperation of those who are fleeing for safety and security means that Canada must do its part.
I will like to give members some information about refugees in the world today. There are 65.6 million forcibly displaced people; 22.5 million are refugees, and of this number, 17.2 million are UNHCR refugees. Only 189,300 refugees were resettled in 2016.
Our country has relatively few refugees compared to some of the world's developing countries. According to the World Refugee Council, despite the focus on refugees in Europe and North America, the UNHCR has reported that 84% of refugees worldwide are hosted by developing countries. Turkey has 2.9 million refugees; Lebanon, one million; Uganda, 940,000; and Bangladesh, close to one million. These are all developing countries, but they have not collapsed because of the massive number of refugees they face. In fact, they have stepped up to do their part in helping those who are most vulnerable and need assistance or who are fleeing war. The UN High Commission for Refugees in Canada has said that Canada is very well equipped to respond to this crisis.
I travelled to Cox's Bazar in January of this year, and I saw first-hand the incredible generosity of the people of Bangladesh. Bangladesh is an impoverished country in South Asia. It is now host to close to one million refugees from Rakhine State in Myanmar.
The world has responded in an incredible way to help those who are in need. Bangladesh in particular, in the last 30 years, has hosted anywhere from 100,000 to one million people. These numbers are repeated around the world, as many countries in the developing world are burdened with their unfair share of those who come to their borders.
Unlike what our friends opposite suggest and create Conservative sound bites with, this is not a crisis in Canada, and we must keep this in perspective. While we are dealing with a spike in irregular border crossers, we are not dealing with a calamity.
Our government has undertaken a number of initiatives to ensure that there are orderly border crossings. First, we have invested $173 million in further strengthening security operations at the border and in faster processing of asylum claims. This includes $74 million for faster decision-making on asylum claims at the Immigration and Refugee Board. We have worked with provinces and other partners to develop a national operations plan to manage possible scenarios to ensure that we are prepared for any fluctuations.
We have undertaken an extensive outreach campaign to reach potential migrant diaspora communities in the U.S. to ensure that they understand, under Canadian immigration laws, the consequences of crossing the border irregularly. We have established a task force on irregular migration that includes key federal and provincial partners. We have expanded processing capacity in Montreal to make eligibility decisions faster. We have established a faster process for issuing work permits to minimize reliance on social assistance, and we have cut processing times from three months to three weeks and have issued 13,000 work permits to asylum seekers in Quebec.
We are working with Quebec and Ontario to explore further options to allow asylum seekers to meet labour shortages as they await hearings for their asylum claims. We are continuously engaging the U.S. on issues to manage migration and our shared border.
I believe that the government is doing its part to address the temporary issue of increases in irregular arrivals. What we will not do is panic. We will not overreact, and we will not treat those who come to our borders as criminals.
Let me give an example. In 2009, 76 Tamils came to our shores fleeing persecution in Sri Lanka aboard the MV Ocean Lady. They landed in Vancouver. In 2010, 492 men, women, and children came on board the MV Sun Sea. Both boatloads of refugees fled violent armed conflict in Sri Lanka and had nowhere else to go. They took extraordinary risks and took their lives in their own hands, coming in decrepit boats to our western shores.
The previous Harper government reacted to this by targeting these refugees as illegals, terrorists, and undesirables. Every single one of those who arrived on those two boats was detained, most for well over three months and some for upwards of a year. I was astonished to see 49 young people, all under the age of 16, who came with their parents detained, essentially jailed, for weeks on end. The Burnaby youth detention centre housed these children, and many parents of the children as well. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called out Canada for its treatment of refugees in 2009-10, particularly for the detention of children.
The opposition would treat those who irregularly arrive at our borders seeking safety and refuge the same way they treat criminals. The question I have for them is this. Are we proposing to detain everyone who comes to our borders? If so, would we detain the children as well? Should we have armed personnel secure the borders and shoot those who come across? This is the day we have taken to address the issue of irregular arrivals in a reactionary way, not looking at the longer term and broader perspectives.
I want to conclude by saying that this weekend I was at the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, in Halifax, and I saw an exhibit called Refuge Canada. It is an exhibit that gives us the best and worst of Canadian immigration history. It gives examples of Ismailis landing in the 1970s, the Vietnamese boat people in the 1980s, and Syrians who resettled in the last two years.
There are also images of people from the Komagata Maru and the SS St. Louis, the Ocean Lady, and the MV Sun Sea, and they all speak of our difficult past.
The question for us today is what path we want to go on. Are we going toward a path where we will continue to be vigilant but still compassionate, or are we going toward a path where we close our borders and become part of a one-man island where we do not allow others in?