Sharon Hayes

[The Budget, March 10th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to comment certainly on what the hon. member has said.

You say that I have no substantiation in that I repeated something in the paper. The substantiation I have is that it is in the paper. The public perception is there. What are we going to do about it? I would challenge you on your substantiation of the numbers that are now used for the immigration policy. There is no basis for those numbers in the world, except Canada, or in proven studies.

[The Budget, March 10th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his comments and questions. Actually I am getting a mixed message from the member as well.

As we look at the immigrants who do come to this country, the thrust of my talk and feeling is we need to give them opportunity when they arrive here, as well as provide opportunity for Canadians who are here already. That should be our bottom line.

I did not say anything about a 1 per cent immigration rate before this time but that is our target. I think we agree with that as the established government target.

There are no studies indicating that 1 per cent is where we should be at. What I do see though and I referred to this in my speech are the surfacing problems. In today's Globe and Mail over one-half of Canadians perceive we are accepting too many immigrants. That tells me there is a perception problem which needs to be addressed.

Why is that perception there? The immigrants that do come to this country tend to come to three urban centres. They come to places that are already stressed. They come to places where jobs are not available. They come to expectations we cannot provide because we have not been able to assess how we are going to accommodate these people.

The hon. member has admitted in his question the reasons our immigration policies are what they are. The government wants to provide pension funds because of its own mismanagement of funds in the past. Those pension funds will not be there if present trends continue. Is it fair to the immigrants if we bring in the possibility of reduced employment, fewer jobs for the Canadian population?

I would agree that immigrants are necessary and immigration is a positive force in our country if it is done wisely. Where is the proven wisdom in our present policy? That is what we need to challenge.

[The Budget, March 10th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the whip of the Reform Party, I would like to advise the House that pursuant to Standing Order 43 our speakers on this motion will be dividing their time.

I am more than pleased to address an area of concern that is very real to Canadians. Last week I spent time in my riding of Port Moody-Coquitlam, the first extended opportunity I had to meet with individuals and groups since the budget was introduced. I was met with three main areas of concern, two of which I would like to touch on today.

The first topic is the budget. The other is immigration. Both deal in very real terms with the concern of ordinary Canadians about the future directions and opportunities of Canada.

Most Canadians view the budget of February 1994 as a stop-gap measure, an attempt, however feeble, at holding the line on the deficit and yet it has not done too much damage in their own backyard. Predictably those whose livelihoods have been directly affected through base closures or wage freezes or other means are angry. Others who have watched our nation's economy closely through the last several decades are angry.

I put to it the House that this budget is a failure and that all Canadians should be angry.

Canada's debt and deficit situation is now at a point at which it is affecting every individual and every business through exorbitant taxation. Every personal paycheque is slashed by taxes and reduced buying power. Our debt load of over half a trillion

dollars, among the largest per capita debt of the industrialized world, will destroy trade, jobs and our standard of living.

The deputy finance minister admitted yesterday that the tax burden on individual Canadians and corporations is higher in Canada than in any other major industrial power except France. One-third of every dollar we pay in taxes disappears to debt servicing. Those moneys are not there for our country's needs.

Allow me to illustrate. Every second eats up $1,300 in debt interest payment, enough to employ two Canadians for a week. In six seconds you could feed a family of four for a year. In the 10 minutes I have for this speech the debt will have increased by $780,000. It will take an average Canadian 20 years to earn that much.

Remember, this money is not owed just to ourselves as some may like to think. It is a fact that our largest export as a nation is Canadian dollars owed to foreign lenders each year.

Yet with this budget government spending for the coming year has actually increased by $2 billion. As with so many previous budgets there will supposedly always be more revenues, better economic conditions to bring our debt problems in order. Not so then and not so now.

The problem is too severe to be left to the future because it is that future that will inherit not the promises but the crushing load of today's inability to face the problem. Spending must be reduced and Canadians must be prepared to face the problem squarely and honestly.

This current situation demands that all areas of expenditure and human capital be addressed. That is why the budget debate is an ideal time to examine the issue of immigration.

On its own it has been relegated to an untouchable topic associated too easily with suspect motives and easy labels. Our financial and human resources must be opened up for close inspection in this area as well as others.

As the Globe and Mail stated on its 150th anniversary, the biggest story of the nineties will be whether we learn to live within our limits in a world already stressed by our excesses.

Our world has become a place of movement, of capital and humanity. Recent reports in the media remind us that the economic and migration issues are not ours alone.

Bosnia is one of almost 50 identifiable areas of civil war. Up to 22 million people in Africa will need emergency food this year. There are 20 million refugees worldwide, plus another 24 million people displaced inside their homelands. One-third of the world's labour force, more than 820 million people, is either not working or is living below a subsistence level.

This dilemma only intensifies as it becomes too apparent that there are no easy solutions. The 1991 Geneva Convention cannot adequately address these developments. International co-operation must be pursued quickly to deal with shared long term solutions.

Canada has one of the most generous immigration policies in the world. We accept more refugees as landed immigrants than any other nation in the world per capita. On February 2, 1994 the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration announced the target for this year's immigration level set at 250,000 or 1 per cent of our population. Per capita it is double that of Australia or the United States, the other two countries which receive the largest amounts of immigrants.

We pride ourselves on our humanitarian and multicultural policies. Yet according to a recent Vancouver Sun article recent studies on immigration demonstrated that federal planners cannot know for sure what impact these new arrivals will have on Canada. Reports and studies are mixed. Even the much quoted Canada Council report of 1991 recommends an immigration target of 1 per cent of population only after 25 years.

Historically, Canada's immigration rates have been erratic since the 1970s, ranging from a low of 84,000 in 1985 to more than 200,000 in the last three years. Typically, rates have reflected economic trends with numbers dropping in harder economic times. Historically, the largest flows have been in response to definite need as when record numbers came in the early 1900s to populate a vast western prairie.

Studies seem to indicate immigration has been economically neutral, neither helping nor hindering the economy to any large extent. That would seem to depend on the receiving conditions and the adaptability of the immigrants to the needs of the country. Both these factors have changed dramatically in the past few years.

Canada and Canadians are facing a tremendous economic challenge as we adjust to new world market conditions. Our debt puts us at a growing disadvantage. Domestically, new technologies demand major shifts in a struggling labour force. Jobs are no longer there not only for the untrained but neither for the student nor those in middle management careers.

The present unemployment rate is 11.4 per cent and much higher if we take into account those who no longer are looking or are underemployed. Add to this an immigration policy that will introduce 2.5 million new people in the next 10 years. More than half of the new arrivals coming as refugee or family class immigrants will not have the skills needed in the new economy.

The independent class of immigrants with job and language skills dropped from 54 per cent in 1954 to 27 per cent in 1992. The family reunification class increased at the same time by a similar amount. Immigrants who spoke no English or French used to be only 10 per cent of new arrivals. Last year that soared

to nearly half with over 100,000 of Canada's 250,000 immigrants with no official language capacity.

I saw a living example of such proportions in a Port Moody school last week. Fully half of the students in that school are in the ESL program stream. Students there take their seat in the classroom having arrived two or three days earlier in a brand new land surrounded by brand new sights and sounds.

Immigration decisions made here in Ottawa are being lived out in the burgeoning budget needs of local school boards and the stress of overworked teachers. Language training for new immigrants currently costs the Canadian taxpayers over $100 million a year.

The life and the blood of our nation are its people. Government can seek to prescribe remedies to all kinds of our country's ills through tinkering with this one factor. Will immigration really save our pensions? Will immigration save our dwindling revenues?

Increasingly, we see the band-aids that must be applied to the serious side effects of these choices, whether it be the rising racial prejudice, immigration dependency on social services, perceived welfare abuse and criminal activity among new arrivals, or the stress in our education system.

It is time to go back and honestly review the doctor's prescription. Basic immigration policies and assumptions must be opened to re-examination.

Last week I met with representatives of a Chinese immigrant service organization. Their greatest concern was not in supporting the cultures of those they represent. Their role is to help give new arrivals the tools to make a new life in their new chosen home. For that they need more and more resources to meet the escalating demands of greater numbers and greater needs. They see their main goal as effectively integrating these new Canadians in a prosperous new country. Present immigration policies are ruining their effectiveness. Present economic policies are ruining their hope for a prosperous country.

We have a responsibility therefore to ask ourselves the following question: What drives government policy that invites record numbers and new classifications of new arrivals into an unpredictable future?

I urge all members of all parties of this House to be truly humanitarian and truly compassionate by giving our immigration policies a responsible scrutiny and careful assessment. As members of Parliament we are watchmen at the gate for those who live in this land as well as for those who will come to join us. We must therefore seek out those policies that are proven, which will strengthen and create opportunity and unity.

[Pensions, March 8th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, just as a reminder, the hon. minister's own colleague, the Minister of Finance, stated in a letter dated January 25, 1994 that he too recognized the association's desire for a prompt resolution and decision.

I would ask that the minister be specific as to when these armed forces pensioners can expect to have an answer and their plan implemented.

[Pensions, March 8th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, my question is for the President of the Treasury Board and was inspired by a large group of women and men, the Armed Forces Pensioners Association of Canada.

The issue facing them has been festering since October 1992. That issue is the stonewalling of their many attempts to gain approval from Treasury Board for a group dental plan paid for by payroll deductions. This will not cost taxpayers one cent but simply will allow these pensioners to have a better and more efficient system.

In the 50th anniversary year of D-Day, is the President of the Treasury Board prepared to implement this plan on behalf of those who have served our country so well in the Canadian Armed Forces?

[Immigration, February 14th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, not only in this case but in other cases we have seen a system problem. Canada's refugee system should act as a haven for genuine refugees, for people whose lives have been torn apart by war, famine and persecution.

Will the minister commit to proceed to overhaul the immigration and refugee system that seems to protect and harbour criminals at the expense of legitimate claimants?

[Immigration, February 14th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.

It has been reported in the Toronto Sun that a Mr. Henry James Halm, a convicted five time pedophile and member of the North American Man Boy Love Association has fled the U.S. to Canada. Mr. Halm has claimed refugee status in Canada and now must be put through our refugee determination process.

Will the minister promise today to exercise his ministerial authority and call a halt to this criminal's fraudulent refugee hearing? Will he immediately order the deportation of this sex offender?

[Immigration, February 3rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, has the minister consulted the other provinces in determining the new immigration level, especially in light of Quebec's decision to accept fewer immigrants?

[Immigration, February 3rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the minister of immigration.

The Government of Quebec has agreed to accept 40,000 immigrants this year, or about one-sixth of the total the minister has announced he will admit to Canada. Quebec has one-quarter of Canada's population. If we extrapolate the number of immigrants Quebec believes it can absorb, the national figure would be 160,000 immigrants.

Could the minister explain why the number of immigrants Quebec believes it can absorb differs to such a large degree from the number the minister thinks our country can absorb?

[Social Security System, February 3rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his comments.

I agree that the middle class is maintaining a burden of what is happening in the tax load of our country. We are losing our best brains, our best job producers because of poor economic policies here.

I would take it a step further. I would take it to the very root. This was mentioned by my colleague yesterday. The society that we live in has had the tendency to be dependent on government doing things for its members, whether that be federal, provincial or municipal. I would like to see our country becoming one where Canadians care about Canadians. Perhaps even at that lower level, as families and as communities we are able to address the needs especially in the social sector where they need to be addressed.