Andrew Telegdi

[April 30th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I must shake my head when I listen to the speech from the member on the government side because she is essentially saying that if there were a dispute with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, that the decision should be made by Parliament.

That is a dangerous statement to make when we look at the history of this country and its abuse of minority rights. We have had many abuses, and the member referred to a number of them, such as the Asian Exclusion Act, the Chinese head tax, the internment of Ukrainians, the policy of none-is-too-many for the Jews and a racial discrimination policy for immigration.

The point is that the Constitution of Canada is very clear. It says that the Constitution of Canada is the supreme law of Canada and any law that is inconsistent with the provision of the Constitution is, to the extent of the inconsistency is of no force or effect. That is section 52 of the Constitution of Canada.

The courts are the interpreters of the Constitution, not the Parliament of Canada. The member is essentially saying that she is against the court challenges program because she does not want the courts to decide on minority rights.

I find that very dangerous because her speech was written by officials of the government, her governing party, exposing their neo-con ideology. They are saying that they essentially want to ride roughshod over the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Constitution of Canada. We cannot go to court to challenge something that is unconstitutional if we do not have the money. The court challenges program levelled the playing field so that a person would actually have the resources to fight for their rights which affect so many Canadians.

What the member has been saying is that we should ignore the Constitution.

[Court Challenges Program, April 17th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, as we celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms today, we must not forget that the charter belongs to the people of Canada and not to the governments.

It is regrettable that today, archaic laws that do not comply with the charter continue to deny justice and the right of citizenship to hundreds of thousands of Canadians. It is a travesty that the government refuses to eliminate legislation that denies Canadians their rights.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin stated, “many Canadian men and women find themselves unable, mainly for financial reasons, to access the Canadian justice system”.

The court challenges program provided Canadians with the means to challenge laws or legislation. Its elimination by this neo-conservative government is a denial of charter rights for most Canadians.

It is shameful that on the 25th anniversary of the charter the government believes that justice in Canada depends on the size of one's pocketbook and not on the merit of one's case.

[The Budget, March 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I first want to say that the rule we have is that we do not make mention of a member's presence or absence in the House. The fact is that I was accused by the other member of not having talked to the regional chairman, although I do not know how he could possibly know that. However, I did point out that I had an encounter with the regional chairman on Friday because we had this good news announcement that was happening. Granted it did not have any federal dollars attached to it. A member on the other side stood up and said that I was not in the House. It was totally out of order for him to make mention that I was not in the House and that is who you should direct your commentary to, Mr. Speaker.

The member talks about voting against the budget because we must vote against the budget. I would like to tell the member that the cost of this budget and the cancellation of the programs that I mentioned previously far outweigh anything that this particular budget does.

Further, I made a comment about there being some money for research in this budget and I said that I welcomed that, but the granting councils did not receive enough money in terms of inflation. I said that we should be ensuring that inflation is covered for the granting council because that is the price of our productivity.

In terms of trying to somehow portray this side of the House as being under the grips of a dictator, I would remind the House that when the minister of intergovernmental affairs resigned as minister because he disagreed with the Conservatives' stand on Quebec as a nation, he was not able to stand in this House and vote against that motion.

I have been in the situation where I had to vote my conscience and I have had to vote against my own government even though I was parliamentary secretary for a particular portfolio. I voted against the anti-terrorism bill and the Immigration Act. I do not need lectures, particularly from the member for Cambridge telling me to vote against the government when he has never defied a whipped vote.

Maybe the members on that side of the House need to take some lessons from this side of the House. We did not run this place like a dictatorship, which is what they are doing on the other side. Perhaps they could think back to their Reform days when they used to stand in the House and say that they represent their constituents and that if their constituents instruct them to vote against the government or against our party, they will do so.

I do not need any lectures from the member for Cambridge.

[The Budget, March 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for pointing out the rules to the member because he clearly does not understand them.

The regional government spent five million of local taxpayer dollars on day care because of the savage cuts the government made to day care. It also had to pick up the EnerGuide evaluation component of the program, an important program for the environment and one which that member's party trashed.

In terms of safer communities, we have one of the safest communities in the Waterloo region. The Community Safety and Crime Prevention Council brings various groups together, such as the leaders of the community, the police, the courts, the mayors, the school boards, the service clubs and community volunteers, who work on crime prevention. Its response to crime is not the same as the Conservative Party's response to crime. It recognizes that the Association of Chiefs of Police has called for fighting crime through social development. It also says that more police officers, more jail guards and more jails will not make our communities safer but that they will be less safe.

I quote the response of the Chamber of Commerce in our area as to what it had to say about the budget. It was disappointed.

I represent a riding that, probably more than any other, demonstrates the importance of investing in education and in research and development. All one needs to do is to look at the community. We have the University of Waterloo, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary, Wilfrid Laurier University and Conestoga College, some of which I share with the member for Cambridge, seeing as a school of architecture is down there.

What my community dramatically demonstrates is that when we invest in education and in research and development a huge amount of wealth is created, which is clearly what happened in our region. To the extent that investments were made in education I say that is good, but to the extent that funding for the granting council did not match inflation, that is bad.

The biggest thing that bothers me about the budget was very well stated in a headline in Macleans, “Next time, perhaps, a vision for the future”. The budget really has no vision for the future. If we were to look at vision, we should be looking at things like early childhood education, which was slashed by the Conservative government, and the Kelowna accord, which was slashed by the government, that would have brought our first nations out of a cycle of poverty. The Kelowna accord would have allowed all governments, territorial, provincial and federal, to make progress on that file. We only need to look at what happened to Kyoto? The budget has no vision on those things.

I will specifically mention something good in the budget. The Perimeter Institute received $50 million. The previous Liberal government gave money to the Perimeter Institute. The provincial government gave two grants, one to Perimeter Institute for $50 million and one to IQC, the Institute for Quantum Computing, for $50 million. Unfortunately, the Conservative government did not see the wisdom of giving money to the Institute for Quantum Computing. If we solve the puzzle of the quantum, then we will be at the forefront of the next revolution, the kind of which mankind has not seen. It really takes investment in those kinds of things to make that happen.

[The Budget, March 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel.

It is quite fortunate that I get to stand and speak after my colleague from the other side, the member for Cambridge, as we share the same region.

He made a comment that he spoke to the regional chairman and I did not. I do not know how he could make such a comment when the fact of the matter is I spoke to the regional chairman on Friday. Many of the people in the community, local politicians, federal politicians and provincial politicians were present. The reason we gathered at regional headquarters was the announcement that there is going to be an upgrade of highway 7 connecting Kitchener and Guelph. Of course the reason the hon. member on the other side was not there is that it was an announcement of provincial moneys by the provincial Liberal minister of transport with no help from the federal government.

I can tell the member once again that regional council--

[The Budget, March 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, let me just say that the Greater Kitchener Waterloo Chamber of Commerce said that the government came up short on infrastructure funding and offered no funds to Waterloo region's light rail. As well, it did not reduce the employment insurance surplus. On the whole it is disappointed and notes that the Tories are ramping up spending.

In terms of crime prevention, let me say to the member that in the Waterloo region we have the best crime prevention program in Canada. What he speaks about is totally contrary to what the chief of police in the Waterloo region has to say, what the regional chairman in the Waterloo region has to say, what the school boards in the Waterloo region have to say, and the list goes on.

The region of Waterloo had to spend $5 million extra out of property tax dollars on day care because the government slashed day care. It also had to pick up the cost of the EnerGuide program to do the evaluation because of what has not been done by the government.

What is the member doing to stand up for the people of the Waterloo region, for regional government, for the police on the questions I have raised?

[Citizenship and Immigration, March 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, it is abysmal that the minister is satisfied with a piecemeal and reactionary approach to protecting Canadian citizens.

Why has the minister minimized the impact of the issue, played favourites, failed to proactively seek out those who remain unaware that their citizenship status has been affected and ignored demands to undertake a full review of Canada's Citizenship Act?

[Citizenship and Immigration, March 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, despite the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration's claims that only 450 Canadians have lost their Canadian citizenship due to arcane citizenship laws, in reality the number could be upwards of 200,000 individuals, whose lives potentially could be devastated by this injustice.

Will the minister admit that she has downplayed the magnitude of this issue and misled Canadians and will she take immediate steps to review the Citizenship Act to better protect Canadian citizenship in the future?

[Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, March 2nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I will note that the member for Fleetwood—Port Kells is on the citizenship and immigration committee. She and I had the occasion to tour the country in 2005, when we did a cross-Canada tour on citizenship and immigration matters.

I have been on the citizenship and immigration committee since 1998. I have been parliamentary secretary, chair of the committee and vice-chair of the committee. I have always tried very hard to take a non-partisan role because I believe that immigrants and refugees are the lifeblood of this country. The issue should be one where all the parties should work together and we should keep partisanship out of it as much as possible.

I have disagreed with my ministers at various times. In fact, I resigned as parliamentary secretary to the minister of citizenship and immigration in 2000 because I disagreed with her profoundly on the Citizenship Act.

I mentioned that we travelled the country. We travelled the country in 2003 as well. At the time, the member for Calgary—Nose Hill, who was the critic for the Alliance Party, had intimate knowledge of citizenship and immigration matters. When the Liberals lost the last election and the Conservatives formed the government, I hoped, along with the other critics, that she, being the most knowledgeable person on that side of the House on these issues, would be appointed as minister because the department faced many challenges. That did not happen.

We have had two ministers in less than year who have appointed to the position with no previous experience at all in terms of immigration and citizenship matters, which is not doing what is best for the country.

As I mentioned before, I try to take very a non-partisan approach. I very much appreciated the critic for the New Democratic Party and his perseverance on issues of human rights and civil liberties. I will say the same thing for the member from the Bloc who has been the critic on it.

Overall, probably the least partisan committee in Parliament was in the last Parliament. We put partisanship aside and worked on numerous reports that we hoped would be implemented. When the new government came in, that did not happen. We instead have too much partisanship in the committee, and I think it is to the detriment of Canadians.

The whole issue of the refugee determination system was set up under the Brian Mulroney Conservatives on the ruling of the Singh decision of the Supreme Court. Initially we used to have two board members who used to hear refugee cases. If one board member concurred with the applicant, just one out of two, then refugee status was granted.

In 2001 new legislation was put in place, the new Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. The two member board became a one member board. What was supposed to happen was the refugee appeal division was to be put in place, but that did not happen. I fought with my government to try to make that happen, which was the position of the opposition parties as well.

We are in the situation now that we have a one member board. If that person makes a mistake, the applicant is really out of luck.

I will use an example of one case that caused me a great deal of problem. It led me into a major confrontation with my minister at the time, to whom I was parliamentary secretary.

This situation involved a young woman who was living in the former state of Yugoslavia, Vojvodina. She had applied for refugee status. She was a reporter. She realized she could no longer read and report on the propaganda and lies of the regime at that time. When she came under threat, she fled for her life and came to Canada. She had the misfortune of going through a refugee hearing that consisted of only one panel member. She did not have very good legal advice and agreed to be heard by a panel of one board member.

What troubles me about the decision he wrote, when he turned her down for refugee status, was he did not believe there was a collusion among the media, the police and the government. That was his decision and his reasoning for turning down her refugee status.

We are talking about the former state of Yugoslavia. Milosevic was taken up before The Hague on war crimes and crimes against humanity. He was running a dictatorship. There was a member on the Refugee Board who did not understand that. He turned down her application and she very easily could have been sent back to her death. In fact, the thing I find very ironic is this. When she was to be sent back in October 1998, she would have arrived in Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia just two hours before NATO was to begin bombing.

Clearly that process did not work well. It shows the shortcomings of the system. The shortcoming was that qualified members were not being appointed. The other shortcoming was that the risk assessment and the humanitarian and compassionate grounds did not work.

I have mentioned that many of the appointments were partisan. That is exactly what they were. I invite members to read the chapter on the former prime minister in On the Take: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the Mulroney Conservative Years. That is an important point of reference for people to read. I think it will show how corrupt the whole system of appointments was. Wives, girlfriends, friends and people, who knew very little about the system, were appointed.

Something else has happened in the last week which has caused me even greater concern. In 2004 the Liberal government did something that was very good. The previous government stopped political appointments to the system, which was a very positive step. It was done under the leadership of Jean-Guy Fleury, the chairman of the Immigration and Refugee Board.

Unfortunately, Mr. Fleury tendered his resignation because he could not agree with the government's new policy where the minister, once again, would be involved in appointing members to the Refugee Board.

The Refugee Board deals with life and death matters, as I outlined before. Many people, who are wrongfully turned away, end up going back to torture or to their death. As members of Parliament, no decision making is more difficult than trying to deal with failed refugee claimants. When they are wrongfully turned down, their hope of finding refuge in our country is greatly diminished.

This is probably the most important assault on the Refugee Board that we have had. To turn back the clock, where once again politicians will be making appointments to the Refugee Board, is totally wrong.

Mr. Fleury is recognized country-wide, by all the groups that deal with refugee matters, for his outstanding leadership. I can only say that the road we are going down is terrible.

We will be having hearings at the citizenship and immigration committee on the issue of political interference in the Refugee Board and what happened to Mr. Fleury. Witnesses will be called before the committee. I can only ask members of Parliament and people watching to focus attention on this issue. If no attention is paid to it, people will be sent to countries where they will be subjected to torture, imprisonment and very well could well lose their lives. Canada is not about that.

As parliamentarians, we have an obligation to make some issues non-partisan, and this is one of them. We have to stand behind RAD, pass it and make our refugee determination system independent of political interference.

[Anti-terrorism Act, February 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, lawyers will argue about decisions rendered by the Supreme Court. One thing I do know is that it is still in effect for one year. I do know that if individuals miss a security certificate hearing where there is absolutely no representation for these people whose liberty is at stake, and who do not know about the charges against them, or who is giving evidence against them, that there is no testing of evidence whatsoever. Like I said, combine that with an investigative hearing and it is like a neutron bomb against civil liberties and human rights.