Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to participate in this morning's debate on the Liberal opposition day motion on immigration policy.
I have to say that I am a little disappointed in the Liberals' motion. It is a very vague motion. It does not give any specific suggestions about what the Liberals would do to fix the problems in our immigration system. I wish that the Liberals had been a little more specific and that we might have been able to pin them down and hold them accountable for some of their ideas in this debate, but I welcome the opportunity to highlight immigration policy and the need for improvements to our immigration system.
Other people mentioned the frequent changes in ministers at the head of the Department of Citizenship and Immigration. I have been here since 2004 and there have been four different ministers of immigration, two under the last Liberal government and now two under the current Conservative government. That is a real problem for immigration policy. That is a real problem for leadership of this department that is so crucial to Canada, both socially and economically.
I think it is high time we did something to change the political sensibilities around this ministry. For too long it has been considered the dog job of cabinet, the cabinet job that nobody really wants. I think it is such a crucial job and is so important in the lives of so many Canadians that it is time we had ministers who are keen about this area of policy, who are interested in it, and who are interested in asserting political control over the bureaucracy in the department.
The situation of immigrants in Canada today is a very serious one. We know there is a significant prosperity gap for new immigrants. A recent Statistics Canada report indicated that new immigrants are today 3.2 times more likely to live in poverty than people born in Canada.
That is a huge problem for Canada. New immigrants should not have to live in poverty. Living a decent life should not be one of the things they have to give up when they come to Canada. They should not have to give up the dream of living a better life here in Canada, but that is definitely the experience of way too many immigrants in Canada.
This has not changed significantly for over than a decade. Through most of the 1990s, new immigrants were 3.5 times more likely to live in poverty.
The prosperity gap facing immigrants is something that we absolutely must address if we are going to have a successful immigration program and continue to entice people to come to Canada, and we also must address it just for plain fairness and justice reasons.
There is also increasing frustration among immigrants to Canada. I think this is a promise gap that we have here in Canada. We make promises to immigrants when we encourage them to apply to come to Canada. We tell them about how important their contributions are to Canada and how they will be welcomed in Canada. In our immigration application system, we give them points for their work experience and their education, validating that work experience and education, telling them through that process that it is important and is something that Canada values.
When they get to Canada, they find out that this is often not the case, that their work experience and their credentials from their education in their countries of origin are just not recognized here in Canada. That problem has gone on for far too long. I think it is a significant promise gap that we have with regard to new Canadians. We cannot afford to let that go on, because it is going to affect Canada's ability to attract immigrants in the future.
Those are some very general comments. Now I want to be very specific about what issues the NDP would take on in the area of immigration and citizenship policy. I want to be very specific and give concrete examples of what we in this corner of the House would do on these important policy areas.
The first thing I want to talk about is the need for a new Canadian citizenship act. We have heard how there were three attempts by the former Liberal government to update the immigration act, which has not been changed since 1977. Unfortunately, these attempts never got the priority they needed from the previous government to actually make it through the House of Commons. They all died on the order paper.
In the last Parliament, members of the citizenship and immigration committee heard from both ministers that if we worked on suggestions for a new citizenship act they would bring that act in. Neither of them did it. The committee prepared several reports on citizenship policy and I think made some excellent suggestions. We held cross-country hearings on the issue of citizenship. We diligently did the work we were asked to do. We made it the priority for the committee in the last Parliament, but unfortunately those ideas were not taken up.
Unfortunately, the new Conservative government is also refusing to bring forward a new citizenship act. In fact, it cut the budget money for the development of that act, the $20 million that was set aside. The new minister, again sounding like previous Liberal ministers, just this past week at committee said that if the committee did more work on suggestions for changes to the citizenship act, she would entertain them. We have done that work. It is on the record. The minister has access to it.
We need to look at issues like revocation of citizenship, which is important to new Canadians, who feel that, unlike people born in Canada, their citizenship can be revoked.
We need to look at the issue of lost Canadians, people who have a deep attachment to Canada, many of whom have lived in Canada all their lives but who do not have Canadian citizenship because of some quirk of the citizenship laws or a quirk in the way they were administered. That needs to be fixed legislatively. It is okay to deal with them as individual one-on-one problems, but there is no appeal of a decision that turns down citizenship after that kind of individual attention by the minister and her officials.
We need to look at the oath of citizenship, which should probably mention Canada. I think that would be a good thing, and we perhaps should talk about the charter and its importance in our society.
All of those things need to be in that new citizenship act.
In this corner of the House, we would also eliminate fees for an initial citizenship application. There should be no financial barrier to becoming a Canadian citizen. Unfortunately, as we know already, new immigrants often live below the poverty line. We know that many new immigrants cannot afford the application fees to take their full place in Canadian society. No one should have to put off making that important decision because they cannot afford the fee for an application. We would eliminate the fee for an initial citizenship application. I am pleased that in the last Parliament the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration agreed with that suggestion.
We would completely eliminate the right of landing fee that is charged to immigrants. When this fee was instituted back in the 1990s by the Liberal government, we saw it then as a head tax, a tax on new immigrants, a tax on people who need every penny they have access to as they are settling in Canada. These are some of the people who can least afford to pay a special levy or a special tax.
We opposed that fee when it was introduced and we have constantly called for its complete elimination. The Conservatives took a half measure. They reduced it by half, but if a $975 fee is wrong, a $475 fee is wrong, as would a $100 fee be wrong, and we call for its complete elimination.
Today again we heard about the importance of the recognition of international credentials. What a huge brain waste this represents to Canada. What a huge economic loss it is for Canada. What a huge spiritual loss it is for many new Canadians who are not allowed to practice the profession to which they feel called and for which they have been trained and have great experience in.
This has been tossed around. It has gone back and forth and up and down for years. We used to hear from the Liberals about how complicated this issue was. They would go on about all of the federal government departments, of which I think 14 are involved, and about how all the provinces and multiple departments in provincial governments have an interest, as do all the professional associations and unions and all the post-secondary educational institutions.
It is true that there are a lot of people who have an interest in this, but that does not absolve us from the responsibility of taking an appropriate initiative to help with the recognition of international credentials. There is no excuse for putting that off.
The Conservatives, to their credit, put some money toward this in the budget. Unfortunately we cannot give them full credit, because we have not seen any action on it yet. It is still being promised again and again. Just this past week, the minister used that same Liberal answer about the incredible complexity of the issue to excuse why no action has yet been taken on dealing with the important issue of the recognition of international credentials.
The NDP has put forward a seven point specific program about what an agency to deal with international credentials should look like and what its responsibilities should be. That work was done largely by my colleague from Trinity—Spadina. I would invite anyone interested in this issue to visit her website and take a look, because it is a very important and specific proposal on the issue of recognizing international credentials.
This is also an issue that contributes to the prosperity gap of new Canadians. If one is a trained professional, a doctor or an engineer for example, and ends up driving a taxi or working in a convenience store, one will suffer a real prosperity gap between potential income and what can be earned in those kinds of jobs. This is something that we have delayed for far too long. We need to take very specific measures on it, and we have made these kinds of specific proposals.
Another issue that has faced many immigrants is the definition of family in the current Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. Unfortunately, it does not cover the range of important relationships that are part of Canadian families today. It does not recognize the diversity of family relationships of many people from different cultural backgrounds and more Eurocentric family configurations.
New Democrats have been proposing a solution to that for a number of years. We call it our once in a lifetime bill, whereby once in a lifetime a Canadian citizen or permanent resident could sponsor someone outside the current definition of family. We think this is a helpful solution. It is a helpful suggestion that would make it possible for families to be reunited here in Canada and for the important people in families to come to Canada. I am glad the NDP member for Parkdale—High Park has reintroduced that important legislation in this Parliament. It would be a small measure toward recognizing the importance of families and immigrant families here in Canada.
We heard this morning again about the need to implement the provisions of the current Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, passed by this Parliament in 2001, regarding the refugee appeal division. It is unbelievable that the Liberal government before this and the current Conservative government can refuse to act to implement the current immigration law. I think that shows contempt for Parliament. It is a very serious matter. We need that measure of fairness. It is not expensive. No one thinks that implementing this is going to bankrupt the department or the government. It is a very cheap measure considering what justice and fairness it involves.
It came out of a compromise during discussion on the new Immigration and Refugee Protection Act when the IRB panels were reduced from two members to one. Everyone agreed that some measure of appeal was necessary against a decision made by only one person. That was when the paper screening process, the refugee appeal division, was added to the legislation. So there is especially no excuse for not implementing this when it came out of this kind of discussion and this kind of compromise on legislation in this chamber. There is no excuse. It is sad that we are debating a piece of legislation from the Bloc, a bill to implement provisions of a bill that was already passed. How ironic is that? How unnecessary is that?
Also on the issue of refugee policy, the private sponsorship program needs to be reaffirmed. This is the program that has brought Canada world recognition for its refugee policy. This is the program for which Canada was awarded the Nansen Medal by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees back in the 1980s. This is the program whereby small groups of grassroots Canadians take responsibility for refugee settlement. There is no better program. This is a program that saves the government money because individual Canadians take on the financial responsibility for refugee families. It involves community members in resettlement work. The program guarantees successful settlement of refugees into our communities.
There is a backlog of 10,000 or 12,000 applications for the program. This means that groups of Canadians ready to receive a refugee, highly motivated Canadians, are not being allowed to take on that responsibility. It is not like there are no refugees waiting around the world to be resettled in Canada. The Canadians waiting to do this work will look for other opportunities if this volunteer possibility is not available for them. We cannot afford to lose this program. Everyone in the House stands up and talks about how Canada is recognized around the world for its refugee work and it is largely on the back of this particular program.
To have people in the public service tell people who work these programs, who run these programs, that it is being used as a backdoor for family reunification applications is completely unacceptable. We need to restore the integrity of this program and get rid of the backlog, and ensure that grassroots Canadians can take their place in this important work of refugee resettlement.
In this corner of the House we agree that we need special measures for persons fleeing militarism and who for reasons of conscience refuse to participate in illegal or unjust wars. The current example before us are people who served in the American armed forces who are refusing to serve in the war in Iraq. This is a war that Canada took a very clear position on. It refused to participate in it and now people who have also made that decision of conscience are seeking sanctuary in Canada after refusing further service in the American armed forces.
I have a motion on the order paper for a special program that would allow these people, after two years, to become permanent residents in Canada. Canada needs to take a stand against militarism, not unlike the one we took during the Vietnam war when many Americans who protested that war and service in the American armed forces found sanctuary in Canada.
We also need, and a motion is on the order paper, to eliminate the application fee for refugees whose status is determined in Canada. They should not have to pay the application fee for permanent residence. We do not make refugees, who are determined outside of Canada, pay this fee given that refugees are again some of the people who are most financially disadvantaged and often live in poverty. These are some of the people who can least afford to pay an application fee which should be eliminated immediately.
On the question of visitor visas, too many Canadians are refused the ability to have a family visit for an important occasion because relatives overseas are turned down for visitor visas. We need to ensure that there is a process in place that ensures that those important family occasions are able to take place and that people can come for a funeral, birth of a child or a wedding. It is absolutely unconscionable that Canadians would be denied the presence of family members from other countries for those kinds of important occasions.
We need to increase the processing capacity at Citizenship and Immigration Canada to ensure that the backlog goes down. That department took one of the hardest hits in the 1990s when the Liberals were doing their gutting. Immigration and environment were the two departments that took the most significant cuts and those have never been restored in all the time since then.
With the issue of temporary foreign workers, we need a program that ensures that Canadians have first crack at jobs here in Canada no matter where they live in Canada, and that foreign workers are not brought in until we can be assured that Canadians are not available to do those jobs. When we bring in foreign workers, we must ensure that they have the same rate of pay, the same wage standards, and the same employment standards that Canadians would expect on the job.
Unfortunately, the requirements to ensure that have not been put in place. We cannot allow temporary foreign workers to be exploited for their labour in Canada as has too often been the case in recent years and months.
We also need a greater emphasis on family reunification. We know that this is one of the key aspects of our immigration program. It has been for many years. We always talk about the needs of family reunification, the needs of the Canadian economy, the needs of nation building, and the needs of protection of people in danger when we talk about our immigration and refugee policy. Unfortunately, family reunification seems to have dropped off the radar. The Conservative ministers do not use that mantra. They do not use the family reunification piece of that.
Those are some of the things that we in this corner would do and to that end I would like to move an amendment to the Liberal motion.
The amendment reads that the motion be amended by adding the following after the word “government”: which should immediately remedy this situation by undertaking measures including introducing a new Citizenship Act, eliminating fees for initial citizenship applications, completely eliminating the right of landing fee charged to immigrants, immediately instituting an agency for the recognition of international credentials, changing the definition of family in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to better represent the reality of diverse family relationships, immediately implementing the Refugee Appeal Division as provided for in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, reaffirming the commitment to the private sponsorship program for refugees, instituting special measures for persons fleeing militarism and who for reasons of conscience refuse to participate in illegal or unjust wars, eliminating the application fee for refugees whose status is determined in Canada and for refugees who have experienced domestic violence, ensuring the issuance of visitor visas to allow overseas family members to attend important family occasions in Canada, increasing the processing capacity at Citizenship and Immigration Canada to significantly reduce the application backlog, ensuring temporary foreign workers do not fill jobs for which Canadians are available and that these workers enjoy employment conditions and wages at the established Canadian standard, and placing a greater emphasis on family reunification.