Bill Siksay

[Act to authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, May 19th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, during the hon. member's speech he mentioned the summer career placement program and made a very good point about the importance of that program. It is very important to people in my riding where, every summer, students find employment and every summer, community agencies institute important programs. It is something on which the community depends.

In my riding the program took a 10% cut while in other ridings it took a 50% to 60% cut. This is something that came up, as far as I know, after the budget and it is something we need to correct because it is a very important program.

It has been an important program in rural areas to help stop rural depopulation. It was a way of bringing students back to communities for the summer. It was a very important part of maintaining populations in those communities.

I just want to ask the member what initiatives he might be prepared to take to work on that issue now that we know the problems with it.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2005, May 19th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, the member for Kelowna--Lake Country said that there were some good things in the government's budget Bill C-43 and that he was going to vote for it on balance because he thought it merited his support. However, I understand from what he has said this morning that later tonight he will vote against Bill C-48 which will ultimately cause the defeat of the government, or would work toward the defeat of the government. This would undo all of those good things that he was supporting a few minutes ago in the main budget bill.

What does the hon. member have against ensuring that there is more affordable housing in Canada that will help people who live in poverty, who need housing, and who spend way too much money on housing right now? This budget will benefit the economy. We all know that the housing industry is a key aspect of our economy.

What does he have against post-secondary education spending and helping students who need assistance to get the education that they need so they can participate in the economy? What does he have against public transit and helping the environment, and all of those kinds of things which will benefit both our economy and our society?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2005, May 19th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, toward the end of his speech the member said that he supported significant increases in spending for social programs, and I think he mentioned post-secondary education. I completely agree with him about that. It is something I campaigned on very seriously during the last federal election and it is something I found lacking in the government's budget and in this budget bill that we are debating this morning. That is why the members of the New Democratic Party worked so hard in this Parliament to see a significant increase in spending for post-secondary education. That is why our better balanced budget bill includes that spending.

Why can the member not support ensuring that students across Canada get that increased funding, especially when we have seen in Quebec recently an incredible mobilization of the student community fighting for better post-secondary education in the province of Quebec?Students all across Canada have been doing that and here is an opportunity to take advantage of it. Why will he not be supporting that later today?

[Conscientious Objection Act, May 19th, 2005]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-397, an act respecting conscientious objection to the use of taxes for military purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to introduce a private member's bill that would allow people who object on conscientious grounds to paying taxes for military purposes to have a prescribed percentage of their income tax diverted into a special account.

The bill would recognize the deeply held views, often related to deeply held religious convictions, of some Canadians that participating in any way in the activities of war and the accumulation of weapons sanctions and perpetuates killing and violence.

The bill would provide an important option for conscientious objection and would ensure that the tax dollars of those Canadians who hold these beliefs are spent for peaceful purposes.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Supply, May 18th, 2005]

Mr. Chair, I think it also has to do with the expectations that we raise among potential immigrants when we give them points for certain skills and education that are not fulfilled when they get to Canada, and also the promises we make about the possibilities of family reunification. Our policy needs to be in line with both those expectations and the promises we make that there is potential for reuniting with their families when they immigrate to Canada as skilled workers.

I want to ask about the private sponsorship program. We have heard tonight about refugee programs and how Canada is the envy of the world in refugee matters. Certainly the private sponsorship program has been one of those programs that has led to the reputation that Canada does have. In fact the United Nations Nansen medal was awarded to Canada largely because of the private sponsorship program.

There is a backlog of 12,000 applications in that program. The target is 3,000 to 4,000 a year. I do not think we met this in the past year. It is causing a lot of frustration among the potential sponsors in that program. These are people who are highly motivated to assist in refugee settlement and who are willing to take responsibility in an incredibly significant fashion to do that important work. It has been shown to be an incredibly successful way of ensuring the integration of refugees into Canadian society.

I wonder if the minister could explain what measures he is taking to end that backlog, especially given the fact that he has talked about how the number of refugees coming to Canada seems to be reduced, both by interdiction at airports overseas when people are moving toward Canada and also by the safe third country agreement.

It seems that we have managed to somehow reduce the number of refugees who have managed to get to Canada. Sometimes I think that the department and the minister seem to trumpet that as a good news story. I suspect for the people who are languishing in refugee camps or who are separated from family members who are still in refugee camps or in less than stellar situations, having fled conflict in the world, that interdiction and safe third country are not necessarily the best news stories around for them.

I am wondering what measures are being taken to ensure that the private sponsorship program continues to function and that the folks who are willing to participate in it get that opportunity soon.

[Supply, May 18th, 2005]

Mr. Chair, another one of the policy decisions we often hear about is that there should be a 60-40 split in terms of 60% for economic immigrants and 40% for family class and refugees.

As the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration travelled across the country, it became increasingly apparent that there was also a divide in the happiness and ability to integrate between those two groups. The 60% of skilled immigrants are facing the terrible problems of foreign credential recognition. They were working in the fields that they got points for in the point system but are unable to work here in Canada. They are terribly frustrated and angry. We have heard from some immigrant agencies about the increasing anger and even the threat of violence in a lot of the situations where these agencies are working and how they have had to increase security precautions in their offices due to that.

At the same time we have heard the frustrations of families regarding family reunification even though we know that a lot of the people who enter Canada as part of family reunification are much happier. Families have been a great place to ensure quick integration. People are happy when they arrive here because they are being reunited with their families.

I want to ask the minister if there is any consideration being given to increasing the percentage of the split between family class and refugee immigration in recognition of the integration potential in that category and in the apparent greater happiness of the folks who immigrate under that category?

[Supply, May 18th, 2005]

Mr. Chair, one of the other statistics that we hear often when we deal with immigration issues is that by 2011, all new labour force growth in Canada will come solely from immigration and that by the mid 2020s, all population growth in Canada will come solely from immigration.

I am wondering if the minister can correlate those two figures together. Are our annual targets of 220,000 or 240,000 enough to meet the 2011 situation? Does he accept that 2011 situation as impending and 2011 is not that far off? If we were to change our policy and increase our capacity to process immigration, we would need to make those adjustments soon. What are the plans of the department in that regard?

[Supply, May 18th, 2005]

Mr. Chair, when the minister was talking about how proud he was to be a minister and how he had been a naturalized Canadian, I was reminded of the experience of Michael Starr, who was the first cabinet minister who was not from a French or British background in Canada. He was actually from my home town of Oshawa, Ontario. He was the minister of labour in the Diefenbaker government.

My family were immigrants to Canada. I know how proud they were of the fact that Mr. Starr was made a cabinet minister, the first immigrant cabinet minister in the sense of having a non-British or non-French background. It was indeed something that was very important to many people in Oshawa and across Canada.

We have often heard that the government is committed to an annual target for immigration of 1% of the population. We are still nowhere near that. We are almost 100,000 short of that almost every year. Yet, we keep hearing that number of 1% bandied around. Does the government have any intention of bringing in a recommendation that would get us toward its often stated target of 1% of the population for immigration?

[Supply, May 18th, 2005]

Mr. Chair, I am going to try out the opposition frontbench for this round of questioning and get the full experience of the House of Commons tonight.

A number of people have raised with the minister the question of a new Citizenship Act. We have seen three attempts by the government to bring in a new act. They were never given the kind of priority needed to actually make it through the process here in Parliament.

We have again had a request from the former minister to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration that if we had spent time working last fall on getting some recommendations to her, that there would be a new act forthcoming in February. We know that there was a change in leadership. The current minister took over and has yet to fulfill the promise, both of the Speech from The Throne and of the former minister, to introduce that legislation.

I know that there is a common expression on that side of promises made, promises kept. When is the minister going to stand and say, promise made, promise kept on the introduction of a new Citizenship Act?

[Supply, May 18th, 2005]

Mr. Chair, I hasten to add that there is another government department that is going through some extremely serious questions about a similar process in the Ontario region. There were major questions raised in the human resources department about a similar kind of process with similar kinds of problems that we have experienced in British Columbia. The minister probably knows a lot about that certain situation.

I have a couple of other questions about settlement. The minister raised the question of the new arrangement with Ontario that was recently announced. I think we all agree that it is good to spend more money on settlement services. We have been calling for that across the country for some time. Ontario certainly needed that assistance, but we are seeing great disparities now between the settlement services available across the country. Ontario has a great deal at the moment, but other provinces are not doing as well in that department.

When the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration was in Alberta, we heard how a lot of new immigrants to Alberta first landed in Ontario. Ontario got the settlement money that was available, but Alberta is doing the work because people end up in Alberta fairly quickly. It is a very unfair situation and is putting huge pressure on the agencies serving immigrants and refugees in Alberta. I am wondering if the minister has a proposal for dealing with that.

In British Columbia a recent report by Simon Fraser University looked at the settlement services and language training services. It showed that a full 47% of the money that the federal government sends to British Columbia for those services goes into general revenues in the province of British Columbia and that it does not go for the services to which it is directed. The provincial government claims that it goes into general revenues and is then spent by colleges for language services, but that is fee for service language instruction. My understanding is that is not what that money from the federal government is to go toward.

I am wondering what steps the minister will take to correct that situation in British Columbia and make sure that the money that is being sent by the federal government for those services is actually spent for those services in British Columbia.