Loyola Hearn

[Immigration And Refugee Protection Act, June 4th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the speaker from the Bloc Party expressing concerns about a number of the amendments shows that if members in this hon. House have so many concerns about the legislation, undoubtedly there are a number of flaws in it.

I want to concentrate on clause 64 and the amendment suggested to it. Perhaps first we should ask what does Bill C-11 do in relation to appeals for permanent residents?

Bill C-11 as it is denies an appeal for permanent residents if they are subject of a report under section 44. Permanent residents can be deported without an appeal or without consideration of their circumstances as a result of a single criminal sentence.

I know it is hard sometimes for people to have patience. We say that people who come into the country should live by the laws and rules of the country. If they do not and they break the law, then they should be expected to pay the price. However, every court in the land has an appeal process. It is only fair that, regardless of how serious perhaps the offence is, at least the person should have the right to an appeal, because no one ever knows what might come up in the appeals process that will throw an entirely different light upon the case itself.

Even if they have lived here since infancy or whether they have been here for 20, 30 or 50 years, immigration officers will be solely responsible for making the decision as to whether deportation of these permanent residents is appropriate. Again, it is an awful onus or pressure to put on immigration officers of having the sole responsibility of deciding whether or not these people should be deported.

Once that decision is made, the wheels of enforcement turn and there is no review of that officer's discretionary decision. For all the talk from the department that these decisions are taken seriously, that they are serious decisions and that there will be safeguards to prevent inappropriate deportation for long term residents, the legislation provides no such safeguard at all.

We are reminded sometimes of the statement “I am from government, trust me”. That is basically what is being said here, that we should not worry about it because there will be no problem. If the legislation does not give any protection, then I am afraid we are depending, as is said, on a rotten stick.

When the department speaks of an adjudicator making a tribunal decision and the subsequent possibility of judicial review, it is only with respect to whether the permanent resident has the necessary conviction and sentence. There is no jurisdiction for the tribunal or the federal court to look behind the decision to proceed with enforcement. That is what has been lost by taking away the appeal jurisdiction, one of the most fundamentally important parts of Bill C-11.

While it may be necessary to remove individuals since they have reneged on the responsibilities that come with having status in Canada, we must for reasons of fundamental justice give them a real appeal opportunity. That is what the amendment asks. Despite the fact that once they cross that line they know what lies ahead, they should in all fairness have at least an appeal.

I believe in 1985 the Singh case set out the importance of the oral appeal and said that people should not be deprived of the rights to have their case heard. Canada prides itself on being a land not only that accepts immigrants. In fact, our country has been built because of people who have come from all over the world, settled here and have contributed so much. We also realize there are people who come here, break the law and must pay the consequence. Being the fair and honest government that we are, the type of free country where we feel everyone is equal, the least we could do for someone is to give him or her an appeal.

What the amendment suggests in this case is that the appeal rights shall be given to all permanent resident who have maintained permanent resident status for a three year period before being subject of report under section 44. The three year period is chosen in order to be consistent with the length of time one must be a permanent resident before applying for Canadian citizenship. Therefore, if within that three year period someone breaks the law, he or she then should at least have the right to an oral appeal.

There is a lot of good stuff in the bill, like most bills, but there are also some weaknesses. In passing legislation that is going to determine how we will treat immigrants coming to the country and how we treat immigrants who will be deported from the country, the least we should do is make sure the legislation is proper and that laws and rules apply in the spirit of the type of country Canada really is.

[Immigration And Refugee Protection Act, June 1st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about two sets of objectives. One set of objectives relates to immigration and the other relates to refugees. Some clauses in the bill in relation to the objectives are laudable, but when we go beyond the statement of objectives and get into the meat of the bill, we, like our friends who just spoke, have concerns.

Some of the objectives would permit Canada to pursue the maximum social, cultural and economic benefits of immigration. Who can argue with that? All of us in the House could be considered immigrants to Canada at one time or another. In my case, my ancestors on both sides came from another island called Ireland. They settled in Newfoundland about 150 to 200 years ago. Many of the people who lived in the area in which I live came from the same place.

Those people came to Canada when Newfoundland was not a part of the country. Canada joined us in 1949. They came here to settle in different communities and fish, because at that time they could make a living. Today we would not refer to it as a living. I guess we would refer to it as an existence, but sometimes we do not know the difference. As somebody once told me, we did not know we were poor until somebody told us. I guess that is it when we start comparing standards. It depends on how much we have and how well we deal with it. In those days people dealt with their lot very well.

However, today it is entirely different when people come to our country. We have an immense country. We just have to fly over it and look out the airplane window at the open spaces. I quite often think about that, having flown over places such as India where the population is so dense that there are very few open spaces any more. Even when we fly into mainstream Europe or over England, we can see that almost every inch of the land is cultured and cultivated. Then we fly over Canada and see what a difference there is and how people who live elsewhere in the world in crowded conditions could appreciate our openness, our fresh air and what we have to offer.

We do have a tremendous amount to offer, particularly in the development of the great resources in our country, if only government regulations would let us develop these resources for the benefit of the people without throwing in a lot of red tape and political jargon.

One of the concerns I have heard raised just recently by people who have immigrated to our country was that as new groups come in, new people who are perhaps not familiar with our customs and language, they are having a problem finding suitable employment. In a lot of cases they are not aware of the customs and do not speak the language very well. They find it very hard to get by the different industrial concerns, particularly in our large cities.

That raises a major concern. First, I suppose it is idealistic to say there should be a crash preparatory course, something like a premarital course, for people coming to our country. Quite often people come not because they want to but because they need to depending on the conditions they leave behind.

When people come to Canada I do not know how well we are prepared to make sure that they fit into our society, that they are accepted and that they are nursed along so they can establish themselves without basically being rejected because they do not fit into the mainstream.

In our larger centres we have groups who are not brought into the mainstream and cannot find employment because of where they came from, the language they speak or whatever reason. There is a tendency for younger people in such groups to do what our own young people do when they are kept not active: get into trouble.

Some of the concerns raised in larger cities about such groups are not raised simply because there is an innate, built-in reason for them to rebel against society. It is because they do not fit into the new society in which they find themselves. The onus is on us not only to welcome people into the country but to make sure we have provisions in place to deal with them when they come here.

We talk about enriching and strengthening the social and cultural fabric of Canadian society while respecting the federal and bilingual character of Canada. It is an extremely important objective. The people who come here from all over the world add to the culture of our country. They add to the strength of our country. They all bring much with them and make a contribution.

We can look around the House on an ordinary day and see members who represent different districts in the country. Looking at the backgrounds of members we realize that they come from all over this great world. We are now living in Canada and are all Canadians. It does not matter what our backgrounds are. All of us in our own way have contributed to the growth of this great country.

One of the concerns is in relation to the second part, respecting the federal and bilingual characters of the country. One of the things we must realize is that when people come to Canada they ask to be Canadians. If people have problems where they come from, if they leave countries because of oppression, persecution, social conditions or whatever reason and choose Canada, as so many do, they must be encouraged as immigrants to make sure they are now part of this great country we call Canada. Quite often it means having to leave behind habits, customs and so on, but that is the choice people make when they come here.

Canada is a bilingual country whether or not we all accept it. A lot of people may say that is insignificant. However those of us who move throughout the country realize that the two founding nations are still extremely strong. The two languages are extremely strong and are the accepted languages of the country. We should make sure we know them and can communicate quite well in them.

We also must keep in mind that people who come to our country might find it hard to adapt. That again is where it is great to have objectives, but if we do not provide for the implementation of the objectives then people who come here will have no way of coping with what we require.

Again in relation to refugees, many people come here because they are forced to. Again, these are things we must deal with. The objectives are tremendous. The implementations in many cases are weak and that is what we must work on collectively.

[Energy Industry, June 1st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the minister because I agree with him. I wish to ask him if he is now prepared to exercise the same power to let Newfoundland and Labrador electricity be transported through Quebec to United States markets without Newfoundland being charged exorbitant wheeling fees.

[Energy Industry, June 1st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, my question is also for the Deputy Prime Minister. Premier Klein of Alberta originally indicated that his provincial government might interfere with the transportation of oil and gas from the north through Alberta to United States markets.

He has since said that the federal government holds the hammer when it comes to such issues. Will the Deputy Prime Minister clarify whether or not the federal government has such jurisdiction?

[Kanesatake Interim Land Base Governance Act, June 1st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I was intrigued with the answer the member just gave my colleague. She mentioned two things.

First, she talked about closeness of vote, that a majority is a majority. However, as the member knows, there are times when we say a majority is not a majority. The people of Quebec certainly would argue that, and there are other issues we discover within leadership races and major decisions, where people look at the majority in relation to the problem. I wonder if there is something there that should be looked at.

Second, she mentioned concerns with the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs and the Indian Act. Yesterday the committee heard the legal advisor to the national chief, Mr. Mercredi, express devout concerns about how aboriginals were being treated, and rightly so, regarding a lack of consultation and involvement. I would appreciate the member's views on those issues.

[Income Tax Act, May 30th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, the question we are to debate this evening is one I asked of the Minister of Finance about the equalization process, especially as it affects the Atlantic provinces and in my particular my province of Newfoundland.

When I raised the question it was shortly after the Minister of Finance had met with the provincial ministers of finance in Halifax. The indication given by the press was that he had said he would not look at the equalization process.

The minister in responding said that was not the case, that he was always ready and willing to keep looking at the equalization process and that there was more money going into equalization today than ever before. To that I say whoop-de-do because as our budgets increase undoubtedly more money will go into the various programs.

The minister failed to mention the $10 billion capped equalization fund. This past year the cap has been taken off and hopefully taken off for good. It is like a baseball cap in the wind: throw it away and let it blow away and go from there. It will give the provinces at least some extra funding at a time when funding was reduced significantly percentage-wise in relation to their total budget over the years.

The main part of the question I was asking in relation to equalization was that the clawback provisions be disregarded completely for provinces that were developing new resources. The provinces could hold on to the new royalties from these resources to build up infrastructure so that they could get on their feet economically and start being contributing partners in Confederation.

What happens right now in places like Newfoundland and Nova Scotia where they are developing the rich oilfields off their coasts? From every dollar they make Ottawa takes back 75 cents or 80 cents. In some cases as they develop new, rich mineral finds Ottawa claws back up to 90%.

If a person works and makes $100 and on the way home someone takes $90 away, it will be difficult for the person to step up in society, to be a contributing partner. We see examples of that with people who receive social assistance from governments. They try to find employment and when they do they make a few dollars, only to find that whatever they make on the one hand is taken off their cheque on the other. They are no further ahead and they give up in despair. That does not help them financially, socially, emotionally or in any other way.

It is the same way with the provinces. Our poor provinces will always be poor unless Ottawa plays a part in letting them use their own money and not Ottawa money to get on their feet.

I said to the minister that a precedent had already been set. When Alberta came under the equalization program for a period of approximately eight years it received equalization as well as held on to its full royalties. The minister said that Alberta was subjected to the clawback and that I was wrong. I was not wrong. For a period of eight years Alberta received equalization payments while holding on to its royalties.

Basically the point the minister did not address was how we were to make the country better. We could make it a better country by making all provinces contributing partners. We could do that if the government changed the financial arrangements under which we now operate.

[Proportional Representation, May 29th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, my issue is with the Minister of Human Resources Development. We were discussing the summer career placement program. This year the minister changed the rules of hiring under the program as it relates to municipalities.

Until this year all non-profit sector groups could take on students for the summer and it would not cost them anything. The private sector would pay 50% of the wages. Municipalities would pay the benefits, which would be a very small amount, but generally they received practically full funding to hire students.

This year for some reason the minister decided that municipalities would be lumped in the same category as the private sector. They in turn would pay half the wages of the students who would be hired during the summer by the municipality or any agency directly connected with the municipality.

When I asked the minister why she did it, she basically said that it made sense because she could spread the money a lot further. Instead of a municipality getting full funding for one student, it could hire two students because it was contributing half their wages.

That sounds very laudable. It would give more students the opportunity to receive employment for the summer. However the minister is forgetting that many municipalities throughout the country are in no position at all to pay the cost of hiring anybody.

The smaller municipalities in particular have been subjected to downloading from the federal government to the provincial governments and eventually to the municipal governments, to the degree that many of them cannot afford to pay for the basic services they provide right now and are in deficit positions.

Many small communities in rural Canada are trying to balance their budgets by cutting back on services such as picking up garbage and providing street lights. Consequently they have no extra funding to hire students or anybody else, as I mentioned, during the summer or at any time.

This means that many municipalities are taken off the hiring list entirely. It did not solve any problem. It created a big one. In many smaller communities the most responsible body, the best organized body, is the municipality. Supervision and organization of programs are usually done better by municipalities than some of the other agencies.

This year in smaller communities in particular, and even in larger ones, other non-profit groups have to pick up the slack and hire the students. Nobody wins. The municipalities lose. That is why we ask the minister to change her mind, to allow the municipalities to hire students and to pay the full funding to them to do that.

[Division No. 104, May 28th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, my question was for the minister responsible for the environment. We talked about infrastructure funding especially as it relates to the cleanup of St. John's harbour.

I know that when I finish tonight I will get a prepared response from the parliamentary secretary, but I will say that I am looking for answers to specific questions and I hope that the member in responding will answer my question and not give me the same diatribe that we got from the minister.

When we talk about funding for the cleanup of St. John's harbour we talk about the specific funds committed to by three parties: the municipalities, the provincial government and the federal government. This is something that has been discussed for years and has been promised every time there is talk about an election, as we saw the Minister of Industry promise when we had the election in November.

However, in fact, my colleague from St. John's East, who is sitting here with me, and I were supposed to be taken out of the political picture by two candidates who would, according to the Minister of Industry, help him deliver the funding for the cleanup of St. John's harbour.

The municipalities in the region and the provincial government have committed their share of the funding, one-third of the total amount each, the total amount being approximately $100 million. The federal government is supposed to have promised and committed the other one-third.

Every time the issue is raised the government says it gave its infrastructure funding to the province. That is not being truthful. The infrastructure funding given to the province was the regular program funding that all municipalities across the country have available to them.

Here we are talking about specific funding for a specific purpose. Everyone knew the intent when the original agreements were talked about. Let me ask the parliamentary secretary, when she responds, to tell us if the province has come asking for specific funding. If so, why has the government not delivered as the government originally promised to do?

[Fisheries, May 28th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans recently announced this year's total allowable catch quotas for Newfoundland northern shrimp. The minister stressed that Newfoundland and Labrador would receive 70% of these quotas. This is like saying that Saskatchewan could own 70% of its wheat or Alberta could own 70% of its oil.

This resource is a Newfoundland resource fished on Newfoundland's fishing grounds. When Newfoundland entered Confederation it brought the fishing grounds with it. This government looks upon them simply as the Grand Banks off or away from Newfoundland.

They are our wheat fields. The resources are our resources. They are the banks of Newfoundland. Newfoundlanders should be prime beneficiaries of any resource developed in that area.

[International Child Abduction, May 18th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am not going spend a great deal of time on this, but it is such an important issue. As has already been mentioned, it is a non-partisan issue, and we want to be on the record as supporting it.

All of us as parents and friends of those who have children realize how important it is to keep family units together. In a great country like Canada where the family is such an important unit, perhaps it is even more true than anywhere else.

When we think that families can be divided because one or other decides to leave and go back to his or her place of former residence, or perhaps just to take off and take one or more of the children, we all realize the impact it has on the family and on our community generally.

Our country, our government, should take whatever steps we can at an international level to ensure that other countries feel the same way as we do. In the agreements we sign we should make sure that in the event these happenings occur, which they should not, we can quickly move on them without having to see people go through devastating experiences. I am thinking of the book written by Betty Mahmoody, Not Without My Daughter . Those of us who have read it or seen the movie understand what that family went through. Certainly we all have our own examples.

Just a couple of years ago in the St. John's area a father took his three young children and disappeared. It is has been a couple of years. No one knows where they have gone, if they are still in the country or have left the country. It has had a devastating effect on the family and certainly on the community generally.

Canada is melting pot of nationalities. Because of that many of our younger people marry people who come from other countries and sometimes, if things do not work out, they leave. Occasionally they have taken the children, which has caused tremendous grief. It is interesting that in many of the cases where young people have been abducted security forces at airports have had concerns that something was wrong but did not have the proof or the authority to do anything about it.

Those of us who have travelled extensively over the years remember that the times when we went to airports and the first prominent people standing around were members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. It might be worth while asking if we have been too lax in airport security. I know we have good people checking our suitcases and frisking us. That is all wonderful, but many things go through airports that cannot be detected by a scanner, whether they be hand-held or otherwise.

Professional people understand and identify problems. Looking for signs is important. There is an old saying that forewarned is forearmed. Perhaps we could tighten up the security, even if it means having the RCMP again playing a prominent role at airports. The extra cost is very little in comparison with the grief caused to too many families. As I say, because of our international involvement and the type of country we have, we are susceptible to such things happening.

As we move ahead in this regard, it is not something we should only deal with if a meeting happens to be called somewhere along the line. It is an issue Canada should push and should keep pushing until we get everyone agreeing with us.

Many people agree with us. Sometimes the more people come together, the more others are embarrassed not to do so. Despite their own national concerns about family units and how they operate and whatever, surely there is no one anywhere in the world who would deny the right of children to be with their parents, certainly the ones most responsible for looking after them.

We certainly support the measure and ask the government to do everything in its power to make sure that abductions of Canada's children end.