Chris Alexander

[Citizenship and Immigration, June 4th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, again I have to correct the record because of the misunderstanding that the leader of the third party is seeking to propagate.

The Canadian experience class was created in 2008 by this government. It targets explicitly those working and studying in Canada already. That is an innovation of our government.

We have also expanded the provincial nominee program that converts those working or studying here into immigrants.

None of that happened under Liberal governments over many long years of darkness and neglect. It was on a much smaller scale. We are cleaning up their mess—

[Citizenship and Immigration, June 4th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, as the member should know, as the leader of the third party should know, as a result of eight years of reform by this government, backlogs are smaller, economic immigration has never been stronger, and we are accepting the highest levels of sustained immigration in Canadian history.

I am proud to report that, last year 44,000 of those economic immigrants to Canada were coming precisely from those groups that the member opposite mentions: temporary foreign workers and students. That is a record number. It is about seven times what it was under the Liberals.

[Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act, May 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, we had to wait until midnight to be accused of sedition on this side. It must be the witching hour.

I would like to express sympathy to the member opposite for the difficulty he clearly faced in the immigration system. We are aware that separation of family members causes stress. We are working very hard to reduce backlogs to try to make sure that families can be together as quickly as possible. We have made a lot of progress in that direction.

In our earlier exchange about the Constitution versus laws, my point was that the Constitution is not sufficient to provide for the rule of law in our country. We have a Constitution, yes. We have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. They are important, but we need laws, like the law on citizenship, and we need revisions and modernizations of those laws to tell us what the rules are to make sure that our country is well governed in every sphere. That is why we sit in the House of Commons.

Some of his colleagues were implying that it is enough simply to have the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and that it is all we need to define our citizenship. That is not the case, and it is not the case in other countries.

Is the hon. member really implying, though, that there should be revocation of citizenship for citizenship fraud, yet not for cases as serious as sedition, like treason, espionage, and terrorism? In fact, they are much more serious crimes.

[Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act, May 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, from the remarks of the member for Vancouver East, it is very clear what the fundamental difference is between us and the opposition on this bill.

The NDP believes that it can somehow be coherent, that it can somehow be consonant with Canadian citizenship to have someone be convicted of terrorism and retain their citizenship. We respectfully disagree.

Gross acts of disloyalty deserve to result in penalties under the Criminal Code, but also the revocation of citizenship when statelessness is not a result. Many other countries agree with us, all of our allies in NATO, except one.

Could the member opposite cite one example of revocation of citizenship for citizenship fraud that was done improperly or that was unfounded? Has she seen any case where the power and duty to revoke under the law has not been implemented properly by the government or others? Will the member come clean with Canadians and admit that when there are cases of revocation for terrorism, or espionage or treason, there will be judicial supervision and involvement? That is required under the bill.

[Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act, May 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my hon. colleague from York Centre for the best speech I have heard tonight on the issues of fraud and disloyalty to Canada and how they affect our citizenship programs.

I am very proud to be on a government side in the House that is not only saying the right things and explaining in detail why this bill should move forward but is also showing how democracy works by disagreeing with one another. I am very proud of the member for Calgary Southeast and his huge contribution to shaping this bill. I am also proud that the member for Calgary East, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, took a different opinion on one aspect of the bill. That is the strength of this side. We are able to express our own views. We are able to differ and yet come together behind an important piece of legislation like this.

Could the member for York Centre please remind the House why it is so important to point out to Canadians how vulnerable the system has been to fraud and how important it is to fight terrorism, when basically, all the opposition has done tonight is defend spies, traitors, and terrorists?

[Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act, May 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for La Pointe-de-l'Île has just misled Canadians by claiming that there is no oversight over the revocation of citizenship.

Has she ever heard of the Federal Court and the Supreme Court? Why is the hon. member saying that we are privatizing citizenship by talking about it here in the House of Commons, where citizenship was created?

Citizenship was not created as a result of the charter or the Supreme Court. We had citizenship long before those institutions existed. We created Canadian citizenship through legislation, and we can legislate again to change the rules.

Is the hon. member prepared to admit that? Is she also prepared to admit what is really happening with applications to sponsor parents and grandparents? There is no moratorium. We processed 20,000 applications this year and more than 50,000 in 2012-13.

Why is she saying things that are not true?

[Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act, May 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, first, does the member opposite think it is ideological to want to eliminate abuse from the citizenship program? Second, can we agree in the House tonight that the measures in the bill would not create conditions of statelessness? They will not.

The revocation of citizenship will take place for dual nationals only. The other measures in the bill do not create statelessness. We have taken very seriously our obligations under the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.

Will the member opposite agree that because we are protecting the citizenship of all those affected by the bill, we will ensure that they are nationals of a country? We are doing much better than, for instance, Pierre Trudeau did. When he recognized the People's Republic of China, once upon a time, he suddenly created a class of stateless people in our country who had the citizenship of the Republic of China. This was under a Liberal government that was a state party to the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.

Would the member agree that our system is better than Trudeau's?

[Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act, May 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I have enormous respect for my hon. colleague, but on that logic there would be unequal treatment under the current law, because someone who came to this country and was naturalized as a Canadian citizen but had not in fact resided for three years and then saw his or her citizenship revoked because of residency fraud would be treated unequally, differently from me, since my citizenship cannot be revoked because I am Canadian by descent.

Does the member seriously think that we should stop revoking citizenship in cases where we find it to have been obtained fraudulently just to be able to treat everyone equally?

With all due respect, citizenship is a creation of this place. It was created by a law in this place 100 years ago. It was reinforced in 1947. The rules were changed again in 1977. There have always been rules for obtaining and for losing Canadian citizenship.

Terrorism, espionage, and other grave forms of disloyalty to this country constitute very serious crimes. I think my hon. colleague will agree with me that these are very serious crimes, and our position has not changed. The punishment for committing these acts will be severe, and in cases of dual nationals under this bill, it will be in the same way that all of our NATO allies have such provisions.

It was only Pierre Trudeau who prevented us from having these provisions earlier. I think the only NATO ally that does not have these provisions is Portugal. The NDP may prefer the Portuguese model. António Guterres was a very good former prime minister of Portugal, but he did not change this measure. He did not bring Portugal into the mainstream.

We are going into the mainstream. Citizenship has its obligations, and if a dual national commits these crimes, that person will lose Canadian citizenship. That is fair.

[Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act, May 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I will repeat for the member for Winnipeg North the facts of the matter. The waiting time now for a new application is 28 months. It is more than two years and it is unfortunate, but it is because Canadian citizenship has never been more popular. There have been 333,000 applications.

Why was there no backlog for citizenship under the Liberal government? It was because there were fewer applications. There was a lower naturalization rate. There were lower levels of immigration.

I was talking to a former Liberal minister a couple of days ago, who said the Liberals would set immigration levels that they could not even fill. They could not find enough people who wanted to come to this country, because the economic prospects of Canada relative to the United States and other countries were so much worse then than they are now.

Today we have no problem filling our immigration levels. We have more than enough demand. We have never had a higher naturalization rate. We have a backlog because we have been looking into residency fraud and asking questions of those who are clearly trying to disobey the rules.

We do not apologize for that, and the measures in this bill will bring us back to one-year processing by early 2016.

[Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act, May 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, it has been two days of debate at second reading in this place, so we could well say 48 hours, and I understand there have been 12 hours of debate in committee. We have been seized with the bill for a good long time. Many of its provisions have come before this House in other forms as private members' bills or as versions of various amendments that were proposed in minority government. The House is familiar with these provisions.

What has not changed is that the other side of the House simply does not care about some of the issues the bill tries to address. Canadians do care about them.

We are not surprised to hear skepticism about treason, joining another armed force, or terrorism. We are used to it from the debates on Afghanistan.

When I was in Kabul somewhere between the Canadian embassy and working for the United Nations, the hon. former leader of the opposition, Jack Layton, was saying that we should sit down with the Taliban, who at that time were killing Canadian soldiers.

That was a disgraceful moment for our politics.

It continues to be unfortunate that the NDP cannot bring itself to admit that terrorism is a real threat, that al Qaeda is still out there, and that Canada has an interest in deterring its youth and others from bringing those fights to our shores.