Rick Borotsik

[International Boundary Waters Treaty Act, June 4th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, members of the Progressive Conservative Party will be voting yes to the motion.

[Division No. 115, June 4th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, members of the Progressive Conservative Party vote against the motion.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

[Division No. 119, June 4th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the PC members will vote in favour of the motion.

[Division No. 111, June 4th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, members of the Progressive Conservative Party vote in favour of this motion.

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

Mr. Speaker, members of the PC Party vote yes to the motion.

[Proceeds Of Crime (Money Laundering) Act, June 4th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, members of the Progressive Conservative Party vote yes on this motion.

[Patent Act, June 4th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, members of the Progressive Conservative Party vote yes to the motion.

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

Madam Speaker, it is once again a pleasure to rise on the grouping of three of the amendments that have been put forward on Bill C-11. I would like to again congratulate the member for Fundy—Royal, who has put his heart and soul into this piece of legislation, Bill C-11, and who has in Group No. 3 one of the amendments we are talking about today.

When the member for Mississauga West talked about his particular issues on Bill C-11, he did not quite focus on the amendments in Group No. 3. He talked about other benefits of the legislation. However, he should have been here when we talked about the first and second groupings of the amendments. He probably could have talked more passionately and certainly more knowledgeably to those amendments instead of just talking to the bill in general.

However, on Group No. 3 the member for Fundy—Royal has put forward Motion No. 10. I believe it was the member for Mississauga West who tried to get across to members of the House the importance and the urgency of being able to deal with the status of a refugee who is coming to our shores.

We Canadians too often take for granted what it is that we have in this great country of ours. Sometimes we do not think of the challenges this globe presents to the majority of people away from our own country. It was mentioned that in refugee camps all around this globe there are people who legitimately have fear and concern for their own safety and the safety of their children, their spouses and their families. It is those people we are focusing on in this grouping of amendments.

When people make application as refugees in this country, there are some who do so illegitimately and there are systems in place to ferret out those applications, to certainly not allow in those who are not persecuted and do not have fear for their own lives and the lives of their families in their country of origin. In some cases mistakes are made and some get through the process.

For the most part, as was mentioned by the member for Winnipeg Centre, the people who do come to our shores and apply as refugees do so legitimately. As was mentioned, there are some examples, but very few examples, of those who try to circumvent the system. That is what we are talking about here: legitimate refugees coming forward to this country, not only to attempt get refugee status, landed status, but ultimately to get citizenship status in our country.

We talked earlier about how the majority of the refugees who come to our shores and to this country do, through the process, become contributing members to this society. These refugees do contribute, not only to our social systems but to our economic systems. In fact, we as a country depend not only on the immigration side of this piece of legislation but also on the refugee side for the people who come into this country and become Canadian citizens and exist thus far.

I would read a quote to the House. It simply says “A truly humanitarian country is judged not by how it treats the most privileged, but rather on how it protects the disadvantaged. Immigrants and refugees are among the most marginalized and the least powerful by virtue of their status and the circumstances upon which they arrived in this country”. Truer words could not be spoken.

They are the people for whom we in the House must put together a piece of legislation that will protect them. We must protect not only the immigrants who apply but also the refugees.

There are three amendments in this grouping, two from the Bloc. The first one from the Bloc, Motion No. 9, would add new clause 95.1 after clause 95, which deals with the conferral of refugee protection. This new clause states:

The Minister shall assume the social and medical costs of refugee claimants as of the ninetieth day after the day of the claim and until a decision is made in respect of that claim.

I said earlier that there are refugees leaving their country in circumstances that unfortunately we as Canadians cannot even relate to. They are being persecuted and their families are being persecuted. It could be a matter of life and death, so when they come to our country they do not necessarily have all the necessary papers. They do not necessarily have all the identification. They do not have all the paper trail that Canadians would normally take for granted. They do not have the birth certificate, the driver's licence, the medical insurance card. They are coming to our country with nothing except themselves and their families, looking for a place that they can call home and that they can contribute to.

When they come here, as the Bloc has identified, when they do not have all of these documents, they sometimes find themselves in limbo. It is hard to be able to find out who they are in this big, wonderful world of ours and where they are coming from. We have to see whether they have legitimate refugee status.

In the meantime, the Bloc has suggested that after the 90th day the department should be responsible for the social and medical needs of a refugee. That is laudable and certainly can be supported by our party. Given the opportunity to think about this logically, it would also mean that the government could say that there is now some urgency to work toward a better timeline and timeframe to ensure that these applications are dealt with in a timely fashion. Our party will be supporting Motion No. 9.

Motion No. 12, as I understand it, is a technical motion. It simply adds the word “maximum” to the clause. We will be supporting Motion No. 12.

In Group No. 3, the motion that speaks to the bill is Motion No. 10, which was put forward by the member for Fundy—Royal. There were a couple of issues with respect to Motion No. 10. The amendment would refer a claim to the refugee protection division. It would not necessarily be done in all cases but where there was a new determination.

However, there are two caveats: First, where the relevant circumstances of the claimant have changed since a previous determination, and that is very important, the claim could then be referred to the refugee protection division for a new determination; and second, where specific circumstances prevented part of the evidence from being presented during a previous determination. We have talked briefly about that.

Let us put ourselves in the position of a refugee claimant who might experience problems with language, education not quite at acceptable levels, or a fear of cultural differences, authority and bureaucrats. I do not believe there is anyone here who does not fear bureaucrats but when we put ourselves in the position of a refugee claimant this is all very difficult to comprehend. There are a number of things that could happen. There could simply be an omission of fact from the claimant because of the circumstance itself and how he or she deals with that kind of stress and pressure.

There is also the cultural issue, especially when a husband, wife and family make an application. There may be information that any one family member may not wish to bring out and put forward to an adjudicator for any number of reasons. It could have been a circumstance that happened previously that the wife may not want the husband to know about. These things do happen. In those cases it is necessary to allow for a new determination.

The last issue which the amendment deals and which I find is only logical is the fact that right now the law says there can only be one refugee claim per lifetime. If people come to our country and are granted refugee status, we believe they should have the opportunity to go back to their own country at some point in time. If they do so and find that the circumstances have exacerbated the problems, they cannot come back to this country and make a second claim. The amendment would stop that.

I congratulate the member for Fundy—Royal for all his work on this particular file. I know we will have an opportunity to speak to that at third reading.

[Infrastructure, June 4th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, we know that the infrastructure focus should be on water. We also know that the regional minister from Manitoba is seriously supporting a $12 million gift from the infrastructure program to a proposed privately owned arena in the city of Winnipeg.

Would the minister responsible for infrastructure please tell the House if she would prefer to have the dollars for infrastructure go to water projects or to arenas?

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

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure I rise to speak to Bill C-11. As the Chair can see by the interest of our party, this is a very serious issue with respect to immigration and the bill now before us. I am pleased to have the opportunity to echo some of the comments made by our critic from Fundy—Royal who has had the carriage of this bill, as well as others like the member for St. John's East.

Bill C-11 is a very important piece of legislation. As I mentioned earlier, my colleague from Fundy—Royal spoke to the salient points. However, it is important that we identify a couple of major issues in the legislation, which are necessary to bring forward because Canadians as a whole must recognize there are some deficiencies. The government itself has not seen fit to change some of those deficiencies in the legislation. Going forward with Bill C-11 as it is now is not going to resolve all of the issues with respect to immigration.

The first issue is with respect to the refugee status. We recognize it in the legislation. The refugee board itself will be reduced in numbers. There will be an adjudicator. Let us see this in proper perspective.

An individual from outside the boundaries of this great country of Canada who wishes to apply for refugee status makes a presentation, not to an adjudication board but simply to one person. That is not to say that the individual will not give full concentration to that one application, but a judgmental decision will be made. One person listening to an applicant in some instances may not hear the full story or may not be apprised of all the issues, may make a decision based upon the judgment of the day, and perhaps the applicant was not as forthcoming as that one individual should have been.

Mistakes can be made. At that point the applicant unfortunately has no further appeal process. The applicant is then told that he or she no longer can file for refugee status in Canada and must go back to the country of origin.

At that point in time the adjudicator in this particular case may be sending an individual back to a circumstance that may well be a matter of life and death. There are other countries in the world that do not appreciate human rights as much and as well as we do in this country. We are perhaps sentencing this particular individual to life or non-life at that point.

It is important that there be another appeal process aside from the adjudication itself. That appeal process is there but it is only a paper appeal. When a paper appeal and not a verbal appeal is made, it is forwarded to the department and we do not know who in the department will be making the final decision.

My party is suggesting that if we are to go through this process we should allow the applicant to make an appeal in person. We never know what types of information or omissions were not given initially to the adjudicator. It is now only one person, not a board of three as before. Let us have the opportunity to make a verbal appeal to the department. It is a simple change that our party feels would enhance the legislation.

My second point deals with the clause that suggests that if a crime is being committed or has been committed and an individual who has landed immigrant status is accused and sentenced for that crime, it is immediate that the individual must then be deported back to the country of origin.

Let us walk through this closely. We all know the process of immigration in this country. People from all over the world have an opportunity to come to Canada. Once they have been given landed immigrant status they have the opportunity to work, raise their families and educate their children. They contribute to the community and to the taxation system of the country. They can do that as a landed immigrant for as many years as they wish.

A landed immigrant can make an application to become a Canadian citizen after living in Canada for three years. If I were a landed immigrant I would make sure that after three years I would make such an application to become a citizen, but others do not. They decide for a lot of good reasons to simply retain their landed immigrant status. People could in fact be landed immigrants for 20 to 30 years and contribute to our society in any number of ways but should they be charged and convicted of a crime after 20 years they could be deported because they are not Canadian citizens.

Our party says that if a crime is committed there have to be consequences, but we also believe that after three years as a landed immigrant, which is the timeline that it would normally take to make an application to become a Canadian citizen, an individual should have the opportunity to appeal. We are simply talking about fairness and equality. People who have been here and in fact have been Canadian citizens in everything but name only should have the opportunity to appeal their case. We are talking about human beings. We are talking about people, families and children who should have rights when they come to our borders and want to become members of our society.

I speak with some passion to the immigration laws. I suspect most members in the House would be able to point to the fact that I would not be here if it were not for the immigration rules of this country when my grandfather immigrated here from another culture. If he had not been allowed to come to this country, I would not have had the opportunity to stand in the House today as a representative in the parliament of this great country.

I thank the House for allowing me to speak to Bill C-11. There should have been an opportunity to make it better. Our job as parliamentarians is to make bills better and to make the best legislation possible so the people who we serve have the best opportunities.