Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Salaberry—Suroît.
She will certainly not say this about herself, so I want to take this opportunity to congratulate her on the work she is doing in her community on the refugee file. As the NDP's public safety critic, I have had the opportunity to work with her and, unlike the Conservative members, she sits down with people on the front lines, such as border services officers or representatives from the municipalities grappling with this issue. I congratulate her on that. I think that her fair-minded approach is a good example of how best to represent our constituents and to manage an extremely difficult situation.
Before I go on and talk some more about the situation of immigrants, I would like to thank the border services officers at the Canada Border Services Agency, the RCMP, the police, the Sûreté du Québec, the non-profit organizations, and the community organizations in the regions and municipalities. Unlike the federal government, they have all been working on the ground. Border services officers and the RCMP fall under federal jurisdiction, but these men and women have worked hard despite the rain and the fact that their government does not have a plan. I would like to take this opportunity today to commend and thank them. This is a very difficult situation to deal with.
I would like to provide a little background on this situation. In January 2017, when Trump took office and was inaugurated as the President of the United States, the member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie, the member for Vancouver East, and I told the government in the foyer of the House of Commons to take into account the fact that, with the arrival of spring just a few months after Trump officially took office, we would see the consequences of having a racist president that was not shy about using cultural communities to score political points.
We warned the government numerous times to take that into account. We requested an emergency debate in the House on the situation so that we could talk more about what we were hearing from municipalities, border services unions, and Canadians. The government, however, did nothing.
That should come as no surprise. I asked this question last year at a joint meeting of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration and the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, but of course, I did not get a satisfactory answer. I pointed out that when Mr. Trump visited Minnesota, which shares a border with Manitoba, he talked about Somalis and problems associated with the Somali community in that state. It just so happened that, afterward, people from the Somali community crossed the U.S.-Manitoba border. When Mr. Trump said he would end the moratorium on deporting Haitians who had been through major disasters like earthquakes, Haitians came to Quebec to join their families. That was no coincidence. There is a direct link between what happened and what Mr. Trump said. To suggest otherwise would be an attempt to kiss up—my apologies for using that expression—in hopes of resolving all kinds of issues that, frankly, are far from being resolved, such as NAFTA and U.S. tariffs. We can see how well that strategy has worked.
Despite everything, our officials have not been able to take a stand. When I said these things to my colleagues, I was thinking about a CBC program where Jean Chrétien talked about his decision to stay out of the Iraq war. Canadian business people approached him and said that it was a disaster and that Canada would pay the price, because the Americans would no longer want to do business with them, since we were not supporting the U.S. in that war. Mr. Chrétien said he would not change his mind and told them to let him know if they suffered any consequences. As he wryly pointed out in the interview, about 15 years later, he was still waiting for their complaints. Obviously, there were no negative repercussions, because countries are capable of expressing opinions and criticizing the behaviour of other heads of state without burning any bridges or ruining any relationships with their most important partners. That is what this government has been unable to do.
Not only did the government not denounce this, but it did not listen to the NDP in January 2017, over a year ago now, when we noticed that the situation was becoming strained. We saw it last summer. I remember meeting a journalist at the Quartier DIX30 centre, not far from home in Chambly. The journalist had just returned from the Stanstead border crossing. He had just filed a story and said that the situation was completely insane. We talked about the situation. We made the same request again. I said in a public forum that we were calling on the government for a plan, we were calling for help for the Government of Quebec, for the municipalities, for the community organizations, and for the border officers who had come to our offices to say that they were fed up.
Now we are getting back into this debate just as the weather is improving, and I am proud to say, as I have said many times throughout my speech, that the NDP has been on this issue from the start. Before anyone was talking about it, we knew that this was a problem and we wanted to deal with it.
It is quite the opposite for the Conservatives, who come here with a motion designed to spread fear instead of truly solving the problems and giving Quebec the money it is owed, offering assistance to those fleeing hatred in the United States, and providing help to the CBSA. The only thing the Conservatives had to offer these people when they were in power was cuts, and we are still suffering the consequences.
The NDP has concrete solutions that do not require a war of words or an attempt to pit communities against each other. We support Quebec. We want to give the CBSA the resources that its officers need to do their jobs. We are calling for the suspension of the safe third country agreement, since the United States, in its current state, is no longer a safe country for people fleeing violence, hatred, and all kinds of terrible situations around the world.
We are calling for the agreement to be suspended in order to make it easier for such people to cross the border in an orderly and regular manner, if I may say it that way. It would make things easier not only for the people who work at the border, but for the people crossing the border, since their lives are in danger when they try to cross the border irregularly. They are not doing this for fun. They are facing very real hardships. However, there was a party in power for 10 years that did nothing to advance any immigration or public safety issues, in spite of its never-ending overheated rhetoric. Now, that party has moved a motion that, although we agree with certain aspects of it, does not really help fix the situation.
The solution is what the NDP has been saying from the beginning. It is to address all of these elements, to help these communities, to do what the member for Salaberry—Suroît did, or what the union did, namely meet with members and explain what is really happening on the ground. It is to do as the Government of Quebec did and ask for help, and to do as organizations have always done, I might add, even in the face of widespread austerity, and offer assistance despite being stretched beyond their limit, because it is the right thing to do. We are not here to pass judgment. We must help everyone. Everyone is shouting for help, and the government is turning a blind eye. The only solution for some people is to spread even more doubt and fear regarding this situation. Instead, we need to talk about real solutions, as the NDP has been doing for over a year now.
If we look south of the border, with President Trump, it is clear that the situation is not getting better. This government keeps spouting hollow words, blaming the previous government, and pinning everything on a bogeyman by the name of Stephen Harper. They are no longer in power, so for crying out loud, the Liberals need to realize that they are the ones in power and that Mr. Trump has been in power since the November 2016 election and his installation in January 2017. None of that is a surprise to anyone except, apparently, the federal government.
Today, we oppose the motion because we have seen one Conservative failure after another for close to 10 years. Nevertheless, we will keep asking the government for a real plan, just as my colleagues have done, as my colleagues from Quebec have been doing for weeks by supporting Quebec's demands, and as my colleague from Vancouver East did when she talked about the importance of protecting refugees. There is no need for heated rhetoric. What we need to do is stand up to a president who says dangerous things and stand up for the men and women in these dangerous situations, be they first responders at the border or people seeking a better life here.