Mr. Chair, the figure that the minister just used was $50,000. He just touted $50,000 for LGBTQI refugees. The minister gave $149 million to the government of Quebec to deal with the Roxham Road crisis. He allocated $179 million in this budget to deal with the processing of paperwork of people who are coming from the United States of America, which is a safe country, illegally into Canada to claim asylum, and he just touted $50,000 for LGBTQI refugees.
However, the minister did not do two things. He did not say that he would extend the program that he cancelled in 2017 for gay Chechen men who have been in concentration camps, and he did not say that he would make the Rainbow RRAP program a regular program, which speaks comparatively to the billions of dollars that the government is throwing at the border instead of closing a loophole in the safe third country agreement, and he did not commit to that either. It is a question of priorities.
Canada should have a compassionate, fair immigration system. We should welcome refugees. We should ensure that this is done in a planned, orderly fashion so that we are supporting the world's most vulnerable. I cannot stand here in good conscience and support spending hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars, to facilitate an issue caused when people who have reached the United States of America are illegally entering this country to claim asylum, causing backlogs in the IRB and backlogs at homeless shelters in Toronto. We are now talking about shifting people and diverting people one way or the other, and it is not planned or orderly and it is not compassionate.
The minister stands up here to talk about $50,000 for a program to save people who legitimately are being tortured for their sexuality. He can stand up and talk about all of these platitudes, but when the rubber hits the road on prioritizing allocation of funding for the world's most vulnerable, the government continues to fail. It is a serious problem, because Canada should be looked at as a world leader in these issues.
I just hope that anybody listening tonight will understand that it is a failure in a broken system to talk about $50,000 or hundreds of millions of dollars to ignore a program that could be solved through smart legislation.
I want to say that I give up, but we are going to keep fighting for the people of Canada.