Madam Speaker, let me say to members of the House that the debate is not over. The debate has just started. The issue is that the government can put the bill through and probably will, but the debate has started across the country within groups of Canadians who are citizens by choice.
I talk to them about this issue. I am already getting some complaints from members on this side. They are not very happy. We have started a petition which is addressed to the House of Commons. We will come back here with many petitions. I also have a website set up under www.telegdi.org.
In the next year we will be having an election. I said to all my colleagues in the House that before they vote on the report stage amendments they should think of people close to them who were not born in this country.
They should ask themselves if they would want them to have the due process of law with the right to appeal. Would they want them to have that right? Do they not believe it is the courts rather than politicians who are in the best position to make that determination?” I tell all my colleagues that they will be asked those questions. Maybe at that point in time they will get it.
I have received many calls from people across Canada. I think it is proper to put some of those communications on record. The first one I received was from the Aboriginal People's Commission of British Columbia which wrote to the Prime Minister with copies to members of the citizenship and immigration committees as follows:
The Aboriginal People's Commission of British Columbia has grave concerns regarding the revocation of citizenship sections of the proposed Citizenship Act, Bill C-16.
As members of Nations throughout Canada who trace their ancestry to the creation of this land, we feel our generational acceptance, welcoming and assistance to immigrants to our respective homelands gives particular weight to our deliberations and conclusions. We therefore respectfully submit the following motion passed unanimously by the Executive of the Aboriginal People's Commission in B.C. at our May 25, 2000 meeting:
“That we call upon Parliament to amend the proposed Citizenship Act to guarantee that the courts, not politicians, will decide revocation of citizenship, and;
That there is a provision for appeals from a decision of the Federal Court Trial Division to the Federal Court of Appeal and/or the Supreme Court of Canada, with the leave of those courts, in both existing and new cases involving revocation of citizenship”.
As descendants of the First People of this land who welcomed and aided the ancestors of a majority of Canadian, and as Liberals we pray that you will guide your members to revisit the clauses in Bill C-16 with the same spirit and hope that founded this Country.
That was signed by Kim Recalma-Clutesi, president of the Aboriginal People's Commission of British Columbia.
I have already received communications from the Liberal Party of Nanaimo—Alberni saying similar things. It is signed by Mr. Joe Dodd, a Canadian citizen by choice. I have further received communications from other Liberal members out west who say that like me they are immigrants. The idea of not having the right to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada if their citizenship were challenged is, to say the least, frightening. They are dismayed and disappointed that the government would take such a step. No doubt this decision will haunt the Liberals in the next election.
The amount of information I get goes on and on and on. I can tell members that this issue will not die with the passing of this act because we are entering the new millennium with second class citizens in this country.
One communication I received, and I have received numerous, was from people who were in concentration camps and had been deported from their countries. Members should think about a Sikh Hindu living in Pakistan. Many of them were deported to India. They came here from there. Members should think about all the displaced persons after the war. They were shuffled out of various countries in the world and came to this country. They take their citizenship rights very seriously.
Part of my mother's family moved from Germany to Hungary about 500 years ago. My natural father was Hungarian. My stepfather who adopted my brother and I was born in May 1919. He is a Jew. The day he was born Hungary was passed over to Romania because of the Versailles Treaty so he had a jump in his citizenship. Surviving for a Jew in Transylvania in Nazi occupied Europe was a horror, but survive he did. Since he was a Jew he could not attend university in Romania. He went to the University of Paris where he obtained a degree in architecture and town planning.
He changed his name. I only found this out a couple of years ago because I do not have a whole lot of family. I received an e-mail from Texas giving the same last name as mine and wanting to know if we were related. I quite excitedly phoned him to talk to him about it. Then he told me the story. He changed his name because he wanted to survive Nazi dominated Europe.
My sister, who is in the gallery with us today, did not know that she was part Jewish until she was 12 years old. We came out of Hungary as refugees. We stayed in a refugee camp for Jews because of the anti-Semitism that existed.
On my mother's side they suffered terribly under Soviet occupation, as did my father. Things happened in Europe that were just horrid. If there is any person who is guilty of war crimes or crime against humanity, I want to be right there to make sure he or she is brought to justice. It is wrong for us to exclude more than five million Canadians from the benefits of the charter of rights and freedoms or the due process of law in defending something that is very valuable to them such as their citizenship. It is something that will change.
I am disappointed in my colleagues in the New Democratic Party. The New Democratic Party, its predecessor and the labour members of the Winnipeg council led the fight to stop massive deportations from the country for people who were not guilty of anything more of a crime than being unemployed during the depression or perhaps being involved in organized labour. The process is called D and D: denaturalize and then deport. We have done this to tens of thousands of Canadians.
The unveiling of the tomb of the unknown soldier yesterday represents so much that many immigrants to this country come to find. I read Mark Bonokoski's column the other day. He asked us to imagine who the person could be.
I do not know if members of the House know that we had soldiers in the first world war who were immigrants. They came back wounded to this country and needed care in hospitals. Many of them were deported because they were on relief. Let us think about it. Many soldiers that fought for this country in the first world war came back wounded and were deported because they needed relief and hospitalization. No wonder the veterans associations are very active in trying to stop these deportations.
I spoke about the dark period in our immigration history. I recommend that all my colleagues read the book Whence They Came written by Barbara Roberts which deals with deportation from Canada. It contains a wonderful foreword by Irving Abella He talks about how the department of immigration was controlled. He talks about a small group of government officials who desperately strove to send off offensive people operating to a large extent outside the control of parliament and the courts.
I have sympathy with what my colleagues are putting forth with regard to Bill C-16. It would have been a great millennium project to have had contests in communities and schools across the country to come up with an oath that we could truly call Canadian versus having it done in the shadows by bureaucrats and consultants.
This bill came out of the bureaucracy. If we think about it, it is trying to wrest back control. How? The citizenship court judges I know have done a fantastic job. I am thinking of Mr. Somerville, a present judge, and Lorna van Mossel, a former judge. The judges do a fantastic job but they are a problem to the bureaucracy. They are independent and the bureaucracy does not want too much independence given to judges.
The Liberal government got suckered when we came into this place in 1993. Sergio Marchi, the minister at the time decided to get rid of citizenship court judges. It was a big mistake. The judges were replaced by the downgraded position of commissioner. I suggested that perhaps they should be magistrates to give more pomp and ceremony to the office, but that was turned down. This was totally, completely, utterly driven by the bureaucracy, the same bureaucracy that has fought any meaningful answer to parliament and the courts.
Bill C-63 would not only take away the citizenship of the person who arrived here fraudulently, but also the citizenship of the person's dependants. Consider my case had that bill passed. My mother is dead so I do not know what anyone could find on her, but let us suppose that she arrived here fraudulently. At 54 years of age I could be deported. Think about that. My wife and daughter were born in Canada. They have no great inclination to go to Hungary, if Hungary would take me, German being part of my ancestry. Think about what this does to families. That was another area where the bureaucrats tried to extend their clutch.
Under clause 18 a person's citizenship can be annulled without an appearance before a judge. It is bogus and not right. Clauses 16 and 17 are a disgrace and I believe they bring our sense of justice in Canada into disrepute.
I am a Liberal and I am ashamed that my party, the party that brought Canada its charter of rights and freedoms, does not believe enough in citizens by choice to let them enjoy the protection of the charter of rights and freedoms for something that is so valuable to them.
I admired the Progressive Conservative Party particularly under John Diefenbaker and his bill of rights. I am surprised at how the party voted on this issue. I am greatly disappointed in the New Democrats. I am disappointed, because of my earlier comments, of how they have led the battle for social justice, to hear the member from Winnipeg, the party's critic, stand and defend the right not to have appeals.
I was at the committee to hear all the witnesses and I read and reread all their submissions. Every person said there needed to be a right to appeal. There needs to be a right to appeal because Canadian citizenship is important enough that we do not want to rely on one judge who is not infallible, one judge who is not judicially accountable. We certainly do not want revocation of citizenship to continue in the star chamber of cabinet where the people are not judges. The Prime Minister is not a judge; he is a lawyer, but he is not a judge.
Think about it. A refugee claimant in our country has the protection of the charter. A visitor to our country who commits a serious crime has the protection of due process all the way to the supreme court. But for Canadians by choice those options are not available. This will go into the streets. It will go across the country and many people will demand a change to this archaic and draconian law.
