Denis Coderre

[Citizenship and Immigration, June 13th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, they have to do two things. First, they have to apologize, like the Deputy Prime Minister has said, and second, if they pass Bill C-55 they will not have that kind of problem. I can assure the House that information is placed on a network and not on hard disk, so, another scapegoat.

[Citizenship and Immigration, June 13th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, if the official opposition is so eager for security, why does it not pass Bill C-55? They should support Bill C-55 because there are some issues there.

Second, when that happened we reacted immediately and I can assure the Canadian people that there is no problem regarding security. They stole some information and some computers, but it was nothing relating to important information.

[Immigration, June 11th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the member of parliament is wrong. Not only did I agree with the recommendation of the committee by postponing it an extra three months, but we showed clearly not only that the new system is flexible but it is also based on fairness. I reject that question.

[Immigration, June 11th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, on the contrary, I never said that I rejected the idea of an appeal. It is a matter of implementation and effectiveness. The primary goal of this system is that it work.

I think that refugees have rights. Not only do they now have recourse to appeal mechanisms but, according to the United Nations, Canada's refugee protection system is even one of the best in the world. So let us be careful about the wording of questions.

[Health Care, June 11th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, first I want to congratulate the hon. member on her first question, a very eloquent one, in the House.

Just this morning, with the support of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, we tabled the new rules that will pave the way for a new immigration system that will work flawlessly.

That being said, there is still a lot of work to do. This is why I am pleased to announce to the hon. members of this House that the first federal-provincial-territorial conference on immigration will be held on October 15 and 16, in Winnipeg. We will then deal with the issue of equivalency, so as to solve this problem.

[Committees of the House, June 11th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 109, I have the honour to present today, in both official languages, the government's response to the third report of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, a report entitled “Building a Nation: the Regulations under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act”.

As well, pursuant to subsection 5(2) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, I am pleased to table draft immigration and refugee protection regulations.

[Refugees, June 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the member has it all wrong. Canada has its own refugee policy. Obviously, we are working in co-operation with all our partners, but we have our own policy.

Furthermore, we have a new act and regulations coming into force on June 28.

We want our priorities to be security and openness.

We will do it like they say, in the Canadian way.

[Refugees, June 6th, 2002]

Second, I think that the United Nations High Commission for Refugees said that Canada served as a model to others in its treatment of refugees.

I have already made a commitment to the Canadian Council for Refugees that we will have an appeal system in place in one year's time. For now, what we want is a system which is effective and which respects our international obligations.

[Refugees, June 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, first, on behalf of the government, I wish the member for Laval Centre a happy birthday.

[Immigration, June 5th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, security is one of our priorities. Of course sometimes we can have some problems. What I will mention, and I think it is important for the sake of the Canadian people, because there is another scapegoating here, is that when the documents were misplaced at the embassy we informed CIC headquarters that they were missing. At that time the visa numbers were cancelled. Later we found out that the documents were not tampered with and were in the secure area of the embassy to which only Canadians have access.

There was a mistake, we found it and we will make sure that it will not happen again.