Mary Clancy

[Immigration Act, February 6th, 1995]

Can you spell it? Probably not.

At any rate I want to say that if the hon. member can answer these questions, I would like to hear an answer instead of the nonsense that has been put forth about immigrants and refugees in this country from this member.

[Immigration Act, February 6th, 1995]

This time is for questions or comments. I can do either, and this is a comment.

I never ever believed that I would be in the position of defending Edmund Burke. It is a very difficult position for a Liberal to be in, to be defending Edmund Burke. I can only say that I studied Edmund Burke. Through his works I knew Edmund Burke. I would almost say in the sense one can be a friend of a literary person who lived 200 years before one that Edmund Burke was a friend of mine. To the hon. member for Fraser Valley East, through you, Madam Speaker, he is no Edmund Burke.

At any rate, the number of 24,000 deportees has been batted around ad nauseam in the House. I just wonder if the hon. member across the way has a scintilla of an idea as to how many of those 24,000 have criminal records. The answer is very few, but I am sure the hon. member does not wish to be distracted by fact.

May I also say that one should be careful in the realm of comment, with the greatest of respect to members on the other side, when talking about people who have not yet been tried in our criminal justice system, about guilt or innocence. The word alleged is a good word to throw around here. I am sure my colleague, the hon. member for Rosedale, who is on leave from the faculty of the University of Toronto Law School, would be happy to agree with me on that score. It is extremely unwise as legislators to throw around words about guilt or innocence before someone has been tried. If that were the case this legislature would not need to exist.

My colleague from Fraser Valley East said that he does not want us to spend any more money. That is admirable. As I understand it that is the Reform theory. Yet he thinks that we should be hiring all kinds of people to rush out and find these 24,000 people. Yes, they are under deportation. Yes, they should be out of the country. But, again, the vast majority of them are not criminals.

Does the hon. member understand how small a number of immigrants and refugees actually has criminal records, particularly when compared with born Canadians who have criminal records? Does the hon. member know the difference between immigrants and refugees? He tosses the two words around as if they were interchangeable. As my hon. colleague from Bourassa would agree with me, they are not the same. They are quite different.

I am glad my whip is here. He may have to bring me water because I may faint from the criminal level of lack of knowledge that has been evidenced here by people standing and declaiming about things they know absolutely nothing about.

[Immigration Act, February 6th, 1995]

Many times I have been before the refugee board. I have appeared before it many times. Heaven knows I never thought I would find myself in the position-

[Immigration Act, February 6th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I am overwhelmed at the extremely low level of knowledge with regard to the entire working of the immigration department shown by my charming and well meaning colleague across the way.

I would like to ask an absolute plethora of questions.

[Immigration Act, February 6th, 1995]

I think I have heard this line before.

[Immigration Act, February 6th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, sometimes one feels as if one is a voice howling in the wilderness. The hon. member knows, or at least he should know after a year and some time in the House and after a year and some time as the critic for immigration, that commenting on individual cases is neither proper nor appropriate. He knows I am not going to comment on a specific case.

What I am going to do is refer the hon. member yet again to the provisions of the bill that deal with the question of serious criminals, that deal with their removal. I remind the hon. member that a bill that is not yet passed can hardly be enforced. Let us get the bill passed so the kinds of criminals he is talking about can be dealt with expeditiously.

If we had the support of the third party on this bill, if they were so concerned with the whole question of criminality and the speedy removal of serious criminals, then perhaps they would support this bill instead of haranguing on issues that are not really on point.

[Immigration Act, February 6th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I am delighted to respond to the questions of the hon. member for Bourassa.

First, with regard to his contention that we are in conflict with the Geneva convention I can only say that I believe the hon. member was there, as I was, when the United Nations High Commission for Refugees' representatives came to the committee, were questioned on that and did not agree with him.

The government does not think it is in contravention of the Geneva rules and neither does the UN. Beyond that I am not quite sure where we should go. Perhaps the hon. member thinks we should run to the position of the Bloc. I can only say that I am not now nor have I ever been nor do I intend to be a member of the Bloc Quebecois.

With regard to co-operation on amendments, particularly on the amendment that the hon. member mentioned-I am going to try to say this as clearly and as succinctly as possible because this is something that a number of members on the other side in both parties do not seem to understand-the reason is that we are on opposite sides. We have different beliefs and different ways of achieving our ends.

We are on the government side. We have a majority. Frequently we are going to disagree with the Bloc on a number of issues, particularly those issues that go to the heart of what it is to be Canadian. We disagree as well most vociferously with the third party on practically everything.

Consequently I am not quite certain what the members of the opposition expect here. That is the point. They are the opposition. We are not supposed to agree.

I am quite happy to think that both parties are serving Her Majesty in the best way possible by being a loyal opposition and disagreeing with what we say. If we agreed, I would be worried.

[Immigration Act, February 6th, 1995]

Wait and see.

At any rate, the member for Cariboo-Chilcotin talked about this and I would like to say it is interesting that he used that against a government with a Prime Minister who enjoys an unprecedented rate of approval and popularity. I merely bring it up as an anomaly, clearly in the way the members opposite seem to deal with the realities of politics.

What I really want to talk about here today is again the question of a phrase that is often used in this House and is perhaps ill understood. The phrase I want to talk about is due process. I want to make it very clear that I ascribe to my Reform colleagues across the way the best of intentions when it comes to areas of criminal law and the protection of Canadian citizens, the protection of victims and the incredible need to ensure the very important concept of safety in our streets and in our homes. I want to make very clear to my colleagues across the way that the questions of safety for Canadians are very important.

The hon. member is whistling. I will talk to him later. I will finish my thought first.

At any rate, the whole question of due process is one that can be very frustrating, as we all know. Situations arise and the way the law works can often be mystifying, lengthy, unsatisfactory. To many people it creates a solution that on the face of it at the very least is unjust or appears to be unjust. It is a difficult concept to come to grips with.

If you look at the concept of due process and the development of English law under which our criminal law has developed you will know that it is a process that has been developing for well over 1,000 years. The courts in England developed it prior to the Magna Carta and the bill of rights and they worked along through these various times and ages, through the politics of monarchs to the politics of Parliament, until now when we have arrived at the last decade of the 20th century and they still are colossally imperfect.

I do not think anyone who deals with the criminal justice system in any of those countries that follow the English system of common law would disagree with that. They are colossally imperfect. While they are colossally imperfect, they tend to be better than anything else. The difficulty is that if you lift the rights for some you lift the rights for all.

I have a constituent with whom I discuss these matters quite frequently and we tend to disagree a lot. This constituent is very concerned with questions of public safety, as am I. He feels that our courts are too lax, give too much credence to the rights of the accused, and on and on.

Not too long ago he told me about his son who in his early twenties was pulled over because his car resembled a car that had been used in the commission of an offence. He was very upset that his son was stopped and put in the position of possibly being a suspect in a criminal offence. As it turned out for his son it came to nothing because his son was completely innocent in this case and went on his way. It was a frightening experience for the young man and a disturbing experience for the father.

I listened to that and I took it under advisement. A couple of weeks later when he called me and talked again about the accused having too many rights and the accused being allowed this and that, I reminded him of his concern about his son who had been stopped, who was completely innocent.

I reminded him that those safeguards that protected his son have to protect the guilty and the innocent alike or they will not work at all. We have to believe in the presumption of innocence and we have to practise the presumption of innocence. We have to practise fairness in the courts. We have to practise the independence of the judiciary and the independence of quasi-ju-

dicial bodies. There are lots of times that the decisions that are mounted are irritating and frustrating and downright wrong.

There is an old story in a book about judges that was published some years ago. A particularly narrow minded member of the judiciary was giving a barrister a very difficult time. Finally he said: "I can only advise you to take your petition to the Lord", to which the barrister responded: "Thank you very much, my Lord, but I will take it to the appeal court and probably will do a lot better".

At any rate, the point is that the freedom and the balance of the law sometimes tip too far one way or the other. What we attempt to do through legislation, what we attempt to do through the administration of justice in this country is to keep the balance as fair as possible. It does not always work.

When I was in law school a professor who is now teaching at the University of Victoria used to talk about something called the universal theory of rough justice which is not terribly satisfactory. His theory as a professor was that 80 per cent of the time justice gets done.

I can remember as first year law students we were horrified at this because that meant 20 per cent of the time justice did not get done. He explained to us that by and large it was a pretty good average. To this day that still frightens and horrifies me, that in 20 per cent of cases justice does not get done.

In the 20 years that I have been involved either as a lawyer or a legislator I have yet to see another system that works better. That is not to say that we do not constantly strive to refine the system that we have, but we do not refine that system by taking away rights. We refine that system by ensuring its fairness and its balance. We refine that system by refining the basic theory of due process and justice.

With regard to Bill C-44, we have listened over the past year or more to a variety of people telling us where we needed refinements, particularly with regard to the criminal justice system and immigrants, and we listened.

My hon. colleague from across the way made the statement that we did not listen to the people who came to us at the committee. I would like to say with the greatest of respect to that member, we did listen. We brought in 11 amendments that reflected the majority of concerns of the people who came before us.

One of the things that I have learned in six years in this House, and I think it may be the most important lesson one can learn as a legislator, is again the lesson of balance. We cannot go too far one way or the other way. That probably reflects my own political philosophy. It reflects the political philosophy of the party of which I am proud to be a member. It reflects the political philosophy and the response of the vast majority of Canadians.

To quote the former Prime Minister, Mr. Trudeau, those of us in the Liberal Party were the party of the radical middle, the party of the extreme centre. To paraphrase a poet, William Butler Yeats, the Irish poet, the centre cannot hold.

In Canadian politics and in the affairs of Canadians, particularly those matters that relate to the criminal justice system, to maintain fairness and to ensure justice the centre must hold. It is our responsibility on this side of the House to hold that centre.

I want to say a few words in particular about immigration in Canada. I want to say that it bears repeating over and over that every single one of us in this House, every citizen of this country is of immigrant stock. Even both our colleagues who come from the north and several other colleagues from Manitoba, those of our colleagues who belong to Canada's founding peoples, the aboriginals, will admit that their ancestors first came here across the land bridge from Asia 5,000 years ago. Everybody in this country came from somewhere else.

We are a nation of immigrants. If it were not for the Scots, the Irish, the English, the French, the Germans, the Italians, the Ukrainians, the Poles and on and on, all of the different groups that came here and chose Canada, we would be a poorer country. We would be a weaker country. We would be a less tolerant and less fair country.

The vertical mosaic that is Canada is an amazing experiment, a terrific example to the rest of the world. The response to the vertical mosaic from other countries is the response that the United Nations told us, that this is the best country in the world in which to live. Obviously that forms part of the reason for people choosing to come here, but it is also something that we must hold on to as legislators as we pass laws that will affect the citizens of this country, the people we are here to represent.

I have been very fortunate in the year and a month that I have been parliamentary secretary in immigration and citizenship to travel all over this country. I was in the riding of Calgary Northeast on Friday with the hon. member opposite, the immigration critic. I was there for a symposium on immigrant youth. There were 350 I believe-and my hon. colleague will correct me if I am wrong-places at this conference. They were all filled and there were 100 on the waiting list to meet and talk about the problems and concerns of young people who come to this country from other places.

At the opening ceremonies that the hon. member and I attended there were about 100 people, most of whom represented service organizations, NGOs, government levels, et cetera, all there because of their concern for immigrant youth to ensure that they settle into this country, to ensure that their needs are met. These things are increasingly important because we hear over and over again when so and so came 100 years ago we did not have settlement groups. No we did not. Of course we

also did not have small pox vaccinations and medicare. I hope we have improved to some degree on both of those things.

I note, Madam Speaker, that you are cutting me off in full flight. I have two minutes to go, so I had better wind up and talk a little bit about the specifics of Bill C-44.

The specifics of Bill C-44 are the response to a need. This morning the minister talked about the problems we dealt with, the rank insanity, if you will, of convicted criminals calling the immigration board to prisons to hear their stories on whether they should be granted status in Canada. Those problems will be dealt with by Bill C-44. Those problems will not be solved completely by the bill, but again we move forward to deal with each difficulty in the area as we see fit.

Bill C-44 is a strong and open response by the government to the problems evinced to us by the major players and stakeholders. We will deal with the bill and if further developments are necessary in the legislation, so too will we deal with those.

I support the bill and I adjure my colleagues on the other side to do the same thing.

[Immigration Act, February 6th, 1995]

I represent the people of Halifax and I have been re-elected.

[Immigration Act, February 6th, 1995]

We are all representatives, Madam Speaker, through you to that gentleman.