Mr. Speaker, the government has at last halted deportations of Haitian citizens and refugees because of the violent crisis that has been raging for months in Haiti. That does not make up for the many years during which it treated Haitians without status as numbers.
The Bloc has been calling on the government to regularize their status for the past five years. Three months ago, as the crisis was escalating, we asked the government to suspend deportations. It refused. For the past three months, Ottawa has been deporting families to a country rocked by violence. On Thursday, a father and his 11-year-old daughter were arrested and deported in the midst of a full-blown crisis.
The government has finally woken up, but the Haitian community is wondering when deportations will resume. The least the government can do is issue a moratorium for as long as the situation in Haiti remains unsafe.