Mr. Chair, it is appropriate that I begin today by acknowledging that we are gathered here on the traditional lands of the Algonquin people, and also by thanking the minister and his team for the remarkable work he has done as minister since he took office in January 2016.
This is a very difficult conversation for me to listen to. It is very difficult because I have heard this debate before, and in fact I have carried the brunt of it for several years. I would even argue that I am here because I wanted to respond to this debate.
I want to put this in context. On August 31, 1983, my family took a plane from Ireland and landed here at Montreal's Mirabel Airport because we were unable to go to Sri Lanka, where my family is originally from. Based on the discussion we are hearing today, I would assume that this, too, would be irregular, illegal, and so on. I reflect on this because people do not do things or take extraordinary risks as refugees just because they want to. They do it because they have to.
As I hear the minister speak and respond to what are frankly some ridiculous questions, it should be shameful because, as members of Parliament, we have an obligation to understand what the law is, what our process is, and how our government works. If we are simply unable to understand the difference between IRCC and IRB, we should take some lessons or the party needs to do some extra classes so that members actually understand how our process works.
As I sat here, I heard heckling. I heard a number of members across the aisle say that these people are jumping the queue, that they are illegals. I do not know if they said “terrorists” today, but I know they did at one point.
I will take members back to 2009-10 in Canada. In October 2009, the Ocean Lady arrived in Vancouver with 76 Tamil refugees. The initial outrage from the Harper government at that time was that these were terrorists, queue jumpers, illegals. Again, a year later, in Esquimalt, Victoria, British Columbia, we saw a boatload of asylum seekers, refugees, who braved the Pacific, took extraordinary risks, and came ashore. In the weeks leading up to it, we saw the outrageous attacks on refugees, outrageous attacks on people who were fleeing persecution. They set the stage so that as people got off the boat they were immediately deemed to be illegals.
I invite my colleagues to look at the pictures that initially came out as a six-year-old and a baby and families got off the boat and were essentially targeted and named as terrorists. That is the type of conversation we are having here today. Let us have an adult conversation about this.
There are two systems in place. There is a system that looks at immigration. That is the IRCC. It is a system that ensures that people who are coming to Canada sponsored by family members, or as investors, or under student visas and so on are administered. They are vetted and screened, and their applications are processed. That is one stream.
The other stream is a refugee stream comprised of asylum seekers. They go to what is called the Immigration and Refugee Board. The IRB is an independent body that is charged with adjudicating actual decisions on whether someone meets the criteria of a refugee.
That is the system we have. It is two independent systems. There is a bit of overlap, but for the most part they are two independent systems. For us to stand here and complicate the two, look at one over the other and say that they are the same, is ridiculous.
It is even richer when members say that we are creating a queue. Many people may recall that in 2011 one of the knee-jerk responses of the Harper government to the boats that were coming was to essentially create a new law that set new timelines. People in the actual queue who were to be heard by the Immigration and Refugee Board went to the back of the line. There were close to 7,000 applicants, in fact. These are called legacy cases, and they are one of the legacies of the Harper government. Thankfully, since taking office, our government has addressed that, to the point where all those backlogged applications will be processed by the end of this year. They will be heard and they will be adjudicated.
We have a very strong, independent body called the Immigration and Refugee Board, which is the envy of the world. It was constantly underfunded by the previous government, and it lacked credible adjudicators. Now it stands as a beacon of hope around the world for refugee protection and adjudication. We should be very proud of that.
I have been working with people on the MV Sun Sea and the Ocean Lady for a number of years. I still monitor many of the cases that are going through the system. One thing that is very clear to me is the Harper government's complete failure to look at things in context, and that is the history we are hearing today. That is the history the questions point to. Do we want to choose refugees? Do we want to choose queue jumpers over family sponsorship, over family members of live-in caregivers, or over Ukrainian refugees? We cannot have this dichotomy. We can do both.
In Canada, what is very important for us as a government and as a people in 2018 is to understand what is happening around the world. There are 65 million displaced persons around the world, and 22.5 million of them are refugees. A country like Bangladesh took in 680,000 people in the last nine months alone. There is a grander context of refugees. As a country, Canada has done its part and continues to do its part, but, like other countries, we too need to do more.
With that, I would like to ask several questions of my colleagues here from IRCC.
First, I would like to ask the minister to clarify whether migration through non-ports of entry has had any impact on wait times in other immigration categories. Are asylum seekers jumping the refugee queue, as some members on the other side are suggesting?
