Chris Alexander

[Citizenship and Immigration, June 12th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, that is a strange question coming from that party, which opposed our measures to improve the integrity and strengthen the value of Canadian citizenship.

We have taken action to revoke citizenship for misrepresentation, for fraud, based on due process, based on investigations under the law, and we will continue to do so.

What is scandalous is that that party continues to oppose the idea that dual nationals should have their citizenship revoked. That provision is now enforced, thanks to this government, when they are convicted for terrorism.

That is what Canadians want, and the NDP has always refused it.

[Citizenship and Immigration, June 11th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, those are the most outrageous untruths I have yet to hear in this place. This is the only party in this Parliament that is taking action to protect Muslims and other Canadians from the threat of terrorism.

I would invite that member to apologize for decades of racism by his party under Mackenzie King, blocking South Asians from coming to this country, blocking East Asians from coming to this country, blocking Caribbeans from coming to this country.

There was also the injustice of backlogs under the Trudeau regime and the Chrétien era. It is that party that has been the racist party in this Parliament over decades.

[Citizenship and Immigration, June 11th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, of course that is not what I said, and if the hon. member wishes to repeat those remarks outside of this chamber, we will have a reckoning with him on the facts of this matter.

The real question is this. Why will the Liberal Party not tell the truth about its sorry record on immigration over decades and its inability and unwillingness to do anything to face up to the real threat of terrorism in this day and age?

Liberals have done nothing to strengthen our measures to fight terrorism, to cancel passports, to take action against ISIL.

[Citizenship and Immigration, June 10th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, yes, it is true, anyone who holds a Canadian visa must meet all of the visa requirements.

We will continue to uphold Canada's laws.

[Citizenship and Immigration, June 9th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, if I understand correctly, the hon. member thinks it is silly to reform the immigration system. It is silly to have doubled the number of foreign students in Canada. It is silly to have given over a million visitor visas to people wanting to visit Canada for legitimate reasons from around the world, most of them 10-year, multiple entry visas. That never existed under the Liberal Party of Canada.

These reforms were opposed every step of the way by the Liberal Party of Canada. The Liberal Party of Canada is against large-scale immigration and good service for immigrants and visitors to Canada. It is clear now that it is willful—

[Citizenship and Immigration, June 9th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, that is absolutely nonsense. The number of visitor visas has never been higher. Citizenship applications are being processed within about a year. Iraq and Syrian refugees are being processed within record times. Sponsored spouses are receiving their work permits within months. Under the express entry, economic immigrants are being processed within weeks or months.

None of that happened under the Liberals. All of that has been opposed by the Liberals, because they are wedded to backlogs, to political influence and to abuse in the immigration system.

That member and the Liberal Party of Canada have become the anti-immigration party.

[Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act, June 9th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately the hon. member used a word that she should apply to herself. If members do not support this bill, we cannot protect a woman who is facing deportation to Togo, where she will be the victim of a forced marriage. This bill would help strengthen protections for a woman in such a situation—let us take a hypothetical example—because anyone who facilitates a forced marriage would face consequences and criminal sanctions. That is not the case right now. A generous and sound immigration system will make an independent ruling in the case that the hon. member is referring to. However, the NDP is saying that we should leave the door open and leave women and girls vulnerable to being forcibly removed to faraway countries where they will be the victims of forced or even underage marriages. The most important aspect of this bill has to do with forced marriage.

The hon. member is demonstrating her ignorance of the bill. She has not studied it. She does not understand what is happening in Canada, where there is no minimum age for marriage other than in Quebec. Why would the hon. member want to have a minimum age of 16 in Quebec, but not in Ontario, the province where I was born? There are so many contradictions on the other side of the House, and they are so impossible to understand that I think even more Canadians are encouraging and urging us to take action to make this bill a Canadian law as quickly as possible.

[Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act, June 9th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, once again, the NDP shows its utter disregard for the real interests of women and girls and in really protecting women and girls.

The member opposite has just shown she has very little idea of what is going on in her home province.

Polygamy is happening in Canada. It is happening in Bountiful, British Columbia. We are proud that the first prosecutions for that crime in Bountiful took place under our government. They have not yet resulted in convictions. We hope they will.

The member is naive if she thinks that those in polygamist relationships are not still coming to this country through misrepresentation, through the weakness of our immigration system, which she would have us make weaker still.

The member has not read the story of the Shafia family that left Afghanistan in 1992. Mohammad Shafia married Rona Mohammad, who was unable to have children. In 1980 he took Tooba Yahya to be his second wife in a polygamist marriage. When the family immigrated to Canada, Rona was presented as an aunt.

If the member opposite thinks that was the only such case, and that it is not still possible today without polygamy being listed as an inadmissibility in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, she is dead wrong.

Tooba, the second wife, allegedly said to Rona, “You are a slave. You are a servant.” She spoke these words to her not in Afghanistan, not in the UAE, not in Pakistan, but in Canada. Then on June 30, 2009, sisters Zainab, Sahar and Geeti Shafia, along with their stepmother Rona Amir, were found drowned in a submerged car in the Kingston Mills lock in eastern Ontario.

In that case and in any case involving murder in this country, it is still a legitimate defence for the perpetrator of a murder to stand in the court and say, “I had every right to do this because my wife called me names”, or “I had every right to do this because my wife disobeyed me”, or “I had every right to do this because the food she prepared was not adequate.” That is a legitimate defence under the defence of provocation in this country. It is, and members opposite are denying it. They do not know their stuff.

Under this bill, the defence of provocation would have to be itself an action that would have been indictable and punishable by five years of imprisonment.

We are going to end these absurdities. We are going to end this barbarism, whether the NDP or the Green Party, whose naivete is on full display today, like it or not.

[Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act, June 9th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, in the context of another debate, we could definitely talk about Zambia, Chad, the Central African Republic, Niger, and Bangladesh, countries that have among the highest rates of forced marriage in the world. Thanks to this member's efforts and to support across this side of the House, Canada has been a leader in speaking out and providing resources to end forced marriage around the world. The Hon. John Baird was obviously instrumental in that regard when he was minister of foreign affairs, but we need look no further than our neighbourhoods and constituencies to see these cases.

The members opposite who deny that this is important clearly have no direct experience of Canadians who are themselves victims of these barbaric practices. Samra Zafar, a constituent in the greater Toronto area, spoke in my constituency recently. She was forced into marriage at 16. There were years of abuse, leading to enormous suffering, health care problems, and mental anguish. There was violence on a sustained basis, every time she came home. She left that marriage and is now courageously speaking out about it. She is in a happy marriage she chose for herself, and she is a great advocate for these issues.

Kamal Dhillon, one of our witnesses before committee, had her jaw broken by her husband after a forced marriage.

Nasira Fazli, an Afghan immigrant to this country and a resident of Ajax, Ontario, was killed in July 2013. Her young son, Yasin Wafa, was 18 months old at the time of that killing. The only suspect in that case, which is still before the courts, was her husband at the time. She had sponsored her husband to come from Afghanistan. He had been in the country for only three years. Now he is facing murder charges.

Forced and early marriage leads to real catastrophes, real violence, in the lives of real Canadians. It is our duty in this House not to play politics with these issues, not to cite absurd procedural grounds for continuing this debate ad infinitum. We owe it to the women and girls of Canada and of the whole world to take action against barbaric practices. Canada must never be the home, must never be a place, where there is impunity for these practices.

I am ashamed that the parties opposite have an absolutely different view of this issue and would see us run out the clock on this session and maybe never come back to this issue, in a country where we still do not have a minimum age of marriage outside of the province of Quebec. They would really do well, the Green Party and the NDP, to rethink their position, because it is indefensible in the eyes of women and girls and in the eyes of all Canadians.

[Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act, June 9th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite has once again not done her homework. The defence of provocation has been used in murder cases. It has been used successfully to reduce a sought-after prosecution for murder to manslaughter, and it has been used on a number of occasions to call into question the actions of the perpetrators of murder and to say that the language used that provoked that action was actually some form of defence.

I cannot believe that this member would call for action, rightly, on missing and murdered aboriginal women. We are in favour of that action, and we are taking more action on that front than any government in Canadian history. We are the only party in this place determined to focus on action and not on more study. Yet the member will not take action to protect women and girls from forced marriage and early marriage, practices that are still taking place on a huge scale around the world and to some extent within Canada.

These issues have the support of Canadians. They have the support of women and girls. They have the support of newcomers to this country, because polygamy has been happening in this country. Without these rules, we will continue to face fraud and misrepresentation leading to the arrival of people in polygamous relationships to this country. Only through the actions in this bill will we start to make progress.

This is not a marginal issue. For it to be called election propaganda is downright offensive on a day when Human Rights Watch has just put out a report reminding us that 29% of girls in Bangladesh are married under the age of 15 and 2% are married under the age of 11. Canada still does not have a minimum age for marriage. We are raising it to 16, the minimum age for marriage in Quebec, which is not yet the case in any other province or territory.

This member will have to face the music on this issue. She is opposing basic standards of decency for women and girls across this country, and she should be ashamed of the question she just asked and her position on this issue, which is absolutely indefensible.