Derek Lee

[Family Homes on Reserves and Matrimonial Interests or Rights Act, May 13th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the member has spotted what might be interpreted as an apparent lack of interest on the part of the government in passing the bill, but there was a time when the member and I sat on that side of the House, on the government side, and there are occasions when a government believes the bill is perfect in every way and does not believe it is necessary to put up members to speak and delay the passage of the bill.

The opposition often takes a slightly different perspective on it and, for all kinds of reasons, wants to make constructive comment on the bill. I have tried to do that here today. I know the next speaker will do the same.

I should point out that earlier today we actually did get another bill passed in this same first nations envelope, so the government is probably feeling fairly good about that.

[Family Homes on Reserves and Matrimonial Interests or Rights Act, May 13th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, that is really a cogent question. I cannot speak for my party, but most of us could endorse a concept of federal assistance with funding to assist the first nations to develop.

I do not think we would put an actual amount in the bill, and if we do not put an actual amount in the bill, then we would have the question of how much and then it is sort of left with the government. I do not think I would want to oppose a provision in the bill that put on the government a statutory obligation in some fashion, either firm or flexible or something in between, to assist financially in the development of the transition as requested by the first nations women.

[Family Homes on Reserves and Matrimonial Interests or Rights Act, May 13th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, my feeling is that while we might look upon this proposed statute as a bridge, allowing time for aboriginal communities or first nations communities to actually enact the rules they want in their various communities, it is probably a fact that they will not all get around to it over time. In the absence of really clear, enforceable rules among the first nations, we have problems of lack of clarity and inconsistency, and we have charter problems.

I like what the bill offers in terms of saying to first nations, “Take this and run with it and we will help you do it”. However, for those who never get around to it, the provisions in the bill will govern. I can understand why aboriginal women's groups might be cautious about this. In a sense I am guessing because I have not met with any in the last little while.

However, if there is an aboriginal female on reserve and she looks at the tribal council and she looks at all the guys running the show, she might not feel that comfortable having these guys make up a bunch of rules. A lot of the women might prefer the legislative template and infrastructure that exists in the provinces.

However, women do not have access to those. Also, provincial legislation and federal legislation is not in any way nuanced to deal with the circumstances of the first nations women. They have their own history and culture.

This law has been developed, using current existing legislative norms and matrimonial law norms from across the country. Those women may say that it is great for us in urban Canada, but they have their own thing. This bill does not hit the nail on the head and they need more time, or something. I have respect for that.

On the constitutional side, we are making the best of a very complex basket weave situation here where the provinces just do not, because of our constitutional history, have any jurisdiction involving these matters on reserves. It might be a lot simpler if they did, but if that were to be the case, we would have to have the first nations on the reserve fully plugged into an accountable legislature, and electing people to the legislature. We just have not developed that yet.

I am not sure what the first nations want in that regard, but I sure do not want to propose something that they do not want. What they have now is what they have, and I would like to have members of Parliament work with them and help them develop what they want. However, in the interim, we have this one size fits all with an opt out for first nations who want to customize their own lives in this regard.

[Family Homes on Reserves and Matrimonial Interests or Rights Act, May 13th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to follow the member, my colleague from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca. He has used the phrase carpe diem. I want to use the phrase fidelitas in arduis, which is Latin for strength and determination in adversity.

My friend from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca will be the only person in the House who knows what I am talking about. That is actually the motto of our high school. This past weekend he and I attended the 50th anniversary dinner for Neil McNeil High School in Toronto. This is not the subject of my intervention, but I wanted to mention that.

We are dealing with a statute that will be making a major change in the legislative foundation law that governs our first nations. While one can see the reason why the House and the government are dealing with the legislation, one also has to acknowledge that we would rather, as a Parliament, not have to legislate for our first nations. The best of all possible worlds would be that our first nations would themselves be in a position continually to deal with the personal law matters of their members on their reserves.

Throughout the wide breadth of the country, that is in fact the case. The tribal councils on all the reserves handle pretty well most of the daily needs, legally, of the reserve, albeit under the infrastructure of the century old Indian Act, which they complain, and which most members of Parliament will agree, is a bit too old and decrepit as a statute to govern the modern circumstance.

Approximately eight or nine years ago, I recall three or four separate major pieces of legislation were proposed to the House, which were very controversial. While some of the first nations across the country supported those bills, many did not. Many also regarded those statutory proposals as unwarranted interventions by Parliament in the first nations sphere of activity.

The problem Parliament and government has is that government has a constitutional obligation to manage or oversee what is called Indian affairs. It also has the contractual obligations of treaties and has ongoing societal development issues on the reserves involving our first nations. It is very difficult to do that under the auspices of a statute that is 100 years old.

It needs to be modernized. Therefore, if we all agreed on that, I suppose we would then move into the phase of developing modern laws for our first nations, ones that they have wanted. The difficulty is that there is not one first nation. Our first nations are as diverse as the rest of the world is. Each reserve, each tribe, each grouping has local traditions and languages. Therefore, it is very difficult for one Parliament, one legislature, to somehow embrace the whole scope of first nations activity and social development and come up with one set of laws that will govern.

I wanted to get that on the record because any member who speaks in here on these statutes I am sure will want to recognize the complexity of this and why we feel that government is compelled to do this at this point in history. We want to try to do it as best we can, but realize that at the end of the day, we expect and want our first nations to step up to the plate, wherever they can, and manage these issues.

The statute under consideration deals with matrimonial breakup, matrimonial property, domestic breakup, domestic property and also what happens in an estate at the time of death.

Up to now each first nation may have its own way of handling these things. For those who do not or do not do it effectively, there is the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. A lot of the people working there now are first nations peoples, but over history most of them were not. This resulted in the unsatisfactory circumstance of an administration attempting to administer laws and impose rules and regulate affairs on our reserves, when they might have been hundreds and thousands of miles apart and divided by culture and by language, which was very unsatisfactory.

The proposed statute realizes the significant need among our first nations for some clarity, to fill voids in the law. Most Canadians know they have access to laws that govern the breakup of a marriage or govern an estate at the time of a death. This is not the case with every first nation because provincial laws do not govern first nations. I suppose individuals on a reserve could voluntarily subscribe to those laws if they wished to enter into settlements, but those laws do not bind our first nations. The deal that the white man cut with our first nations centuries ago and in treaties was that our first nations people manage those things themselves.

Our Charter of Rights and Freedoms is supposed to be there for all Canadians. We are now finding that our legal infrastructure, in some cases, is not accessible by first nations on reserves. If the statute passes, I would like to think our first nations peoples will accept it as a reasonable attempt by Parliament, as a whole, to offer them a legal infrastructure that will allow for some regularization and to fill some of their needs.

There needs to be some consistency across the country and if not across the country, at least within a province. What happens in a family breakup on a reserve can be roughly consistent with what happens in a breakup elsewhere. If two people cannot solve the problem themselves, they have to go to a decision-maker. Who is the decision-maker? What rules will he or she use to decide on this? There has to be clarity and consistency. We have to fill the void. We are a country that thrives and relies on rule of law. We cannot have voids in our law and places in the country where there is the application of discretion, unregulated discretion, arbitrary decisions, or unfair decisions.

The best to expect would be that each couple involved, whether in a breakup or a death, would settle it without a dispute. That happens a percentage of the time, but a lot of the time it does not. We realize that.

Then the next best thing we could have is it could be settled on a first nation reserve, using the rules the first nation itself normally uses, rules that the first nations members themselves have embraced, accepted and are used to applying. That is probably a pretty good arrangement and one that would be consistent with our history and our rule of law, which includes the Constitution-based first nations entitlements.

However, we still may have the problem of inconsistency. If the rules on a particular reserve say that the chief makes the decision, the chief may make a decision that is conspicuously out of keeping with decisions made on other reserves or, for that matter, elsewhere in the province in question.

The statute deals with the family home and then with other matrimonial property. The matrimonial home is dealt with one way and that is how it is handled in most of our provinces, if not all now. The matrimonial property, the money, the heirlooms, the hand-me-downs, are handled separately from the family home.

The proposed law itself begins by setting out some basic definitions. While to the layman, they will read as a very complex thing, what it actually tries to do is encourage first nations to adopt their own rules and laws. If first nations do that, this proposed statute will enable them and assist them to do it. In so doing, it imposes a regime of verification, which is really Parliament's attempt to ensure that when the first nations develop these codification of laws governing these issues, that they are in the ballpark and compliant with our charter and with prevailing norms in terms of matrimonial settlements.

We all realize there has to be some flexibility. As much as in theory, a first nations chief might have the ability to pick between two sometime common law spouses. At the end of the day, it will not be fair if those decisions are made and are way out of keeping with prevailing legal norms. All citizens of Canada, including members of first nations, are entitled to the benefits of the charter, which includes rule of law, some certainly and fairness as to how their lives are sorted out when there is a dispute like this.

Clause 7 of the statute sets out a mechanism that allows for the first nations to write some of their own laws and rules. It is noteworthy that in so doing, Parliament in this statute so far, and I have not sensed a will to change it, has decided that the delegation of that ability to make rules, which from a Canadian statutory point, is a delegation to the first nation. However, under first nations perspective, they might not see it as a delegation at all. First nations might say, no, that it is their right to make these laws, that we cannot delegate anything to them that they do not already have the right to do as first nations because the white man and the Queen said that they could do it that way 100 or 150 years ago, or whenever it was.

In the statutes it is described as a kind of a delegation of law making authority, but it also says that this delegation of law making authority is not a statutory instrument. It is not a statutory instrument that would fall under the normal delegation of rule making powers that we often use around here.

If Parliament delegates the authority to a minister to make regulations, those regulations are scrutinized by Parliament and our courts of law. In this statute, when we delegate our way to the first nations, those are not statutory instruments and they will not be scrutinized or treated as statutory instruments.

My own tendency, as a legislator, is to say no, we better not delegate anything without the ability to scrutinize and check it. At the end of the day, out of respect for our first nations, we do this. We say they have the rule making authority and we are not going to oversee and scrutinize it like we do all of our other legislation. We respect their right and need to make those rules and laws. We will help them do it with the verification process, but we are not going to interpose and tell them how to do everything and scrutinize the way we do our other laws.

I want to reference an existing problem included in this. Most members will not be aware that there have been two reports presented to this House from the Standing Joint Committee for Scrutiny of Regulations that reported to the House serious problems with the Indian estates regulations.

As l pointed out, this bill covers the breakdown of a marriage in death, but what happens to the property? Prior to this, under the Indian Act, the government had already encountered problems in dealing with matrimonial property and general property on the death of a first nations member. In most cases, it was pretty clear and members of the first nation knew exactly what was to happen when the individual passed away. But in the modern world with all the changes going on things began to go a bit askew.

I will give an example where a male would get married and maybe the marriage would last for a couple of years and then he would take a common-law wife after that. Perhaps he and the common-law spouse would live together for 20 years and the old marriage was way in the past, but still in existence. Let us say the individual were to pass away. Who, in law, would the spouse be who would be entitled to take the property of the diseased male? And it can work the other way too. But it was very unclear, if the local chief or tribal council did not have that organized, and it was really complicated as to who was going to get the property.

Under the Indian Act, where there was some power to do this, the government decided to adopt regulations. The regulations permitted the minister to make the decision about which spouse and which set of kids inherited the property of the deceased first nations member. Wherever there was a big problem, it seemed to work except for one thing. The government actually never had the power in law to make those regulations.

So, those regulations have been impugned and while we have not struck them down, there are many decisions of ministers deciding to entitle group A and not group B, when group B may have actually had the legal entitlement. There are unresolved cases out there and I give credit to the aboriginal community and the people involved in those matters for acceding to the purported use of power by the Indian Act administration.

This act, unfortunately, does not resolve those regulations. We asked the government to include in this bill a provision that would settle and say that all those old decisions are legal and binding. The government did not take that advice. That provision is not included in here, so there are still some issues outstanding in theory.

Having put that on the record, I will stop there.

[Questions on the Order Paper, May 2nd, 2008]

Does the government intend to be guided by Bill C-81, An Act to establish the National Security Committee of Parliamentarians, which was introduced during the first session of the 38th Parliament, and introduce a bill which would provide for a form of parliamentary scrutiny or review of security and intelligence matters and for the protection of classified information made available for that purpose and, if so, when will the government do so?

[Criminal Code, April 11th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I express my congratulations to the member opposite for introducing this bill.

Strangely, he has exhorted his colleagues in the House to be non-partisan in their approach and I distinctly heard two of his colleagues asking what I regard as very partisan loaded questions. I have to say that I am sorry I am quickly losing enthusiasm for the substance of the issue here as his colleagues continue to snipe and turn this into a partisan matter. The member laughs, but what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If the member is going to urge non-partisanship, I hope his colleagues will see it the same way, because this is a private member's bill and it is not going to go too far if the member is going to import partisanship.

I will not waste more time on this, but I will note that the bill is clearly not government policy. If it had been government policy, it could have been made a part of Bill C-2 or one of the other Criminal Code amendment bills that passed through the House earlier in this Parliament.

The bill, as the member has explained, purports to provide more focus in the code on the problem of the use of knives in crimes, but it also travels into the field of corrections and parole, beyond the knife issue. That is taking on a rather large piece of public policy. I know the member sees the need for it, but I am actually in the House here urging some caution as the member attempts to adapt public policy and law to respond to one particular set of circumstances, as sad as they were.

There is hardly a member of the House who has not had to respond to the impacts of a criminal act somewhere across the country and I do not for a moment diminish the kinds of difficulties that there are out there. However, in reality our country has always had crime, and I am probably not wrong in predicting that there will be always be crimes and people who are misguided and that there will be victims. I am not discounting those circumstances, but it is a reality that we have to live with every day in the House.

As for the bill itself, I want to spend a couple of minutes focusing on what the bill tries to do, because the question as to whether I will support it as a private member will hinge on that.

It seems to me that it is not terribly misguided to focus on concealed weapons, but in this particular case, the section we are dealing with is not just about knives. It is about any concealed weapon, any concealed prohibited device or prohibited ammunition. Therefore, let us be fair here in recognizing that the penalties the member urges in amending the code will apply not just to knives but also to prohibited ammunition or a prohibited device that on its own might not be as lethal as a knife could be.

The member has gone to the extent of imposing a regime involving a mandatory minimum sentence. In the first case, it would be a 90 day sentence. However, this is not the first time that members opposite have urged the House to impose mandatory minimum sentences. In fact, we have adopted a statute here in this Parliament that extends mandatory minimum sentencing for a number of firearm offences.

I would have thought that if the government and the Department of Justice felt further tweaking of the sentencing involving mandatory minimum sentences was needed, it would have included these types of provisions in the government bill, but it did not. I am not discounting the sincerity and enthusiasm of the member in proposing this, but I just want to reiterate that it could have been dealt with as a government bill. It was not. There must have been a good reason for that. I will just leave those reasons unanswered.

In providing for sentencing, this House and previous governments going back many years, way beyond 13, have attempted to construct Criminal Code and sentencing provisions which fit the times, in this case our times, the time of the millennium.

The last time the House did this was in about 1995. We thought we had it right. We thought the sentencing provisions suited the times. It was quite a massive revision. Placing these principles in the code was something that had not happened in Canada. These principles had been generated actually by the courts prior to that.

With respect to the principles of sentencing, the objectives include, and there are just six: the denunciation of unlawful conduct; deterrence; separating offenders from society; assisting and rehabilitating offenders; providing reparations for harm done to victims or the community; and promotion of a sense of responsibility in offenders and acknowledgement of the harm done to victims and the community. There was a special reference to the abuse of children under 18 years of age. There is a fundamental principle which is called proportionality. A sentence must be proportionate to the gravity of the offence and the degree of responsibility of the offender. That principle also is articulated in our Constitution.

There are other sentencing principles with respect to things which aggravate an offence. I will not go through the whole list. There are a half dozen of them. Most of them are self-evident, things that aggravate the offence. There are several other principles.

A sentence should be similar to sentences imposed on similar offenders for similar offences committed in similar circumstances. Where consecutive sentences are imposed, the combined sentence should not be unduly long or harsh. An offender should not be deprived of liberty when less restrictive sanctions may be appropriate in the circumstances. All available sanctions other than imprisonment that are reasonable in the circumstances should be considered for all offenders. There are other provisions.

The point in my reading these is that these are very reasonable, rational provisions and principles that are used every day in our courts by judges who do the sentencing.

One of the members opposite during his remarks referred to this as judicial reform. This is not judicial reform. The judiciary does a very good job by all standards of measurement, domestically or internationally. We are not reforming the judiciary. Anything we do in here could reform the Criminal Code, could reform the way we handle corrections and conditional release, but we are not handling the judicial part. We give under law to our judges the discretion to sentence using the Criminal Code framework and the principles that I have just read.

By most measurements, things are operating fairly well. In the case at hand to which the member responded, and I have to acknowledge and congratulate him for responding to a constituent or constituents in this case, it is just the one case. I know there are hundreds and hundreds of other cases across the country. Bills actually have come through this House which in common parlance have borne the name of a particular victim, without mentioning any. I am not too sure that it is the right way to construct our sentencing and conditional release.

[Canada Marine Act, April 11th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I listened closely to the parliamentary secretary's comments and I suspect his exhortation to the House for support will be favourably received in most quarters. I have two questions.

Throughout the member's remarks and in previous debate I have heard words like “efficiency, flexibility and facilitation”, all of which probably add up to potential increased productivity for our port authorities and ports, period, whether there is a port authority present or not. Forgive me if I am wrong on this, but I did not hear the word “productivity” mentioned very much. That may or may not have been the case.

Has the ministry done any kind of a workup on productivity and does it plan to do one? This is always an issue for us in Canada as the productivity of our country is compared to other economic competitors.

Second, the member talked about flexibility for our port authorities but, as most of us know around here, from time to time our port authorities, which are federal instruments, can go rogue. They can cease to be good partners with their municipal and provincial counterparts or they can fail to be accountable. I recall the Hamilton Harbour Commission at one point having to do some somewhat serious accounting at one of our committees.

These port authorities can go rogue, can cease to be good partners, and can be empire building little entities in their federal instruments. Can the parliamentary secretary assure the House that within this legislation there are adequate measures to assure accountability by the port authorities and to make sure that they are good partners with our provinces and municipalities?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2008, April 9th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I hear the member talking about the backlog as if it is some kind of disease. I suggest to him that the backlog of 800,000 people is actually a huge asset in regard to immigrants wanting and waiting to come here. It is a two and a half year wait if we look at the average wait time for those 800,000 people. We take more immigrants per capita than any other country in the world. I am not so sure the member should be calling it a backlog. If we had no backlog, would the member not agree that we would be pulling our hair out and saying that our immigration program is an absolute failure?

Why do the member and his party not simply focus on the committee process? We cannot materially alter this bill here. We can defeat it in the House, but this is a budget implementation bill containing dozens and dozens of provisions and all kinds of financial provisions. We should try to fix this bill at the committee where the clause in question can actually be excised and not adopted. Is that not a better solution than the NDP proposal in this case?

[Points of Order, April 9th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I have a point of order I wish to make in relation to a private member's bill currently before the House in which it appears could be debated tomorrow. It is Bill C-505. My point of order concerns the constitutionality of the bill. Either the bill is totally unconstitutional or it is in the wrong form, and I will point out where I am coming from on that in my remarks.

It is my view that the bill should either not be debated and/or should be ordered discharged and dropped from the order paper for these reasons. I will read clause 2 of the bill. It says:

The Government of Canada’s multiculturalism policy does not apply in Quebec.

It is as simple as that.

I will also read section 27 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, part of our constitution under the Constitution Act, 1982. Section 27 reads:

This Charter shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians.

I want to point out, Mr. Speaker, as you know and most members know, private members' business in the House does not receive the scrutiny or check of the Department of Justice that all government bills must do under the Department of Justice Act. Since private members' business is not subject to Department of Justice scrutiny, it is entirely possible that some of the business that does come through might be constitutionally offside. In this case I believe it certainly is offside.

I want to read as well subsection 52(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982. We are dealing with constitutional law here and this is bedrock law.

The Constitution of Canada is the supreme law of Canada, and any law that is inconsistent with the provisions of the Constitution is, to the extent of the inconsistency, of no force or effect.

I want to submit also that the federal government's multiculturalism policy and section 27 of the charter, which I just read, are now in law and in practice, flip sides of the same constitutional coin. In fact, the Canadian Multiculturalism Act recites the Canadian constitutional provision, section 27, right in the preamble, they are that connected.

In the House, by section 9 of the same Multiculturalism Act, the House is charged with permanently reviewing the operation of the act and that policy. The constitution is explicitly the foundation for that statute and the statute is the explicit manifestation of that constitutional provision.

A very real example of the constitutional application of multicultural policy beyond the framework of the statute itself is found in the ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Keegstra, [1990] 3 R.C.S. 697, wherein the Criminal Code hate crimes are ruled by the court to be a function of the application of section 27 of the charter, that is the multiculturalism section of the charter.

We have the Criminal Code application in Canada, that particular provision, being justified and being related to that provision of our constitution. The bill with which we are dealing purports to say that the multiculturalism policy does not apply in the province of Quebec.

I submit that clause 2 of the bill, which I read, is so inconsistent with section 27 of the constitutional charter that it cannot be sustained. It is unconstitutional and should not be considered for further debate or process. Either clause 2 of the bill should be struck or the entire bill should be struck.

A second possible response to the member's legislative initiative is that the bill is really a constitutional amendment providing for some kind of provincial exemption from the constitution. It is possible that is what the member has intended and he has submitted a bill to do that.

Members can propose amendments to our Constitution, but in this case a bill is not the proper form. Constitutional amendments are, by section 38 of the Constitution, accomplished by way of a resolution of both Houses, et cetera, not by a bill. Resolutions are described in Marleau and Montpetit, at page 794, footnote 184, if the Speaker needs a reference.

My conclusion is that Bill C-505, using the words I quoted, “purports to obstruct, to displace, or to undermine” section 27 of our charter based in the Constitution and must utterly fail, for those reasons, both in law and as to form. Either the bill or clause 2 on its own should be struck and an order discharging the House from further consideration should be made.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2008, April 3rd, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to engage in debate on this budget implementation bill.

Budget implementation bills are usually pretty complex and technical things at the best of times, and most Canadians will appreciate that this bill is of that nature. However, what has happened in this particular bill, for reasons that I do not think have been adequately explained in the House by the government, is that it has buried in the middle of this bill a provision dealing with the Immigration Act and it proposes changes to how the immigration flow is managed. I found that quite odd.

Someone here suggested that the proposals are secret. The government members have said that they are not secret, that they are right there in the bill that Parliament will have a chance to debate and pass.

The problem is that the provisions of the bill allow for the creation of what are called instructions that will be given by the minister. The perception is that it is those instructions, not the provisions of the bill, that will be “secret”; that the instructions will not be seen until they hit the street. They are supposed to be published in the Canada Gazette but we are not clear and even I as a member am not clear at this moment whether we are able to see all of the rules governing immigration.

I put a notice of motion for the production of papers on the order paper this week so I could see the Immigration Control Manual, a document that, unbelievably, has been revoked from the public. It is no longer available. I want to see this document but the Conservative government has pulled it from public access.

That is not transparent. That is operating by stealth. That is just a bit of a sidebar because the real issue here is what the government plans to do with these so-called instructions. This, by itself, is a departure.

It is true that under the Income Tax Act there is a provision that allows for the issuance of guidelines. However, I think taxpayers and most Canadians will appreciate that in the Income Tax Act there is a lot of complexity. A whole industry of tax lawyers is out there manoeuvring 25 hours a day to deal with the Income Tax Act in all its complexity. Therefore, we have accepted, in Parliament, that there can be guidelines issued by the minister.

However, in the Immigration Act, the government, quite a novel suggestion, has decided that it will create this category of instructions and they will simply be sent out.

The reason why, in rule of law, we object to that is that we never get a chance to see them, review them, verify them or validate them. If the government had chosen to make regulations containing these instructions, then we could see them as regulations. They would be pre-published for consultation in the Canada Gazette, be adopted in the usual way and then would stand referred to the Standing Committee for Scrutiny of Regulations where they would be reviewed for legality and constitutionality.

The government has not even done that in this case. It has simply said that it will create a category of instructions that will simply be logged out there to all the immigration officers around the world and they will operate based on those instructions.

Many of us here in Parliament are concerned that these instructions will be arbitrary and may get into an area which has been fought for centuries by the Westminster Parliament, a category of executive branch activity we call the pretended power of dispensation. What that means is that Parliament will pass a law and then the King says that he will make a regulation under the law. The King then purports to grant an exemption, a dispensation from the law, from the regulation. Parliament has always told the King that he cannot do that because there is no power of dispensation and no power of exemption. Parliament has said that when it writes a law, it is the law for everybody.

What if the government begins to build into these instructions dispensations? In other words, one instruction says that ABC shall prevail, but the minister may exempt or an immigration officer may exempt. What if some of these exemptions involve receipt of political favours or giving of political favours or money, God forbid? It is a whole area where we do not want to go. The government is apparently authorizing this in this bill.

In fairness to the government, it says it is trying to fix this problem of backlog under the immigration act. The backlog is a bit of an issue, but I suggest to the House that the 800,000 person backlog is not such a bad thing. It is actually an asset.

If we had no backlog in our immigration program, we would say our immigration program was a failure. We have to have an inventory of immigrants coming here. The backlog is on average only two and a half years worth of immigrants. As other colleagues have pointed out, we need a strong, vibrant immigration program. We like to have a lineup. It is not just one lineup. The immigration queue or the 800,000 person backlog is about six lineups.

There is a special lineup for family class-spousal. That lineup only takes six months to a year. Then the rest of the family class, including parents, in some countries can go up to seven years.

Then we have skilled workers. Some of those skilled workers can take up to seven years. If the person is a skilled worker, provincial nominee class, that person can be here within months. Then we have investors, refugee class, humanitarian class and the inland processing.

All of these are different lineups. There is not one 800,000 person lineup out there. There are half a dozen at least. The average inventory wait is two and a half years, but I do say that having a family member having to wait seven years is far too long.

The reason why that has happened, of course, is that we have decided the policy as a country, that we want the intake every year to be balanced between economic class and family class: 60% economic class and that is skilled workers, investors, et cetera, and 40% family class. That is why each of our offices has to stream these lines, so that the intake of immigrants to Canada is 60% economic each year and 40% family class.

I do think we have to fix this. We do not want to raise unrealistic expectations that we can get rid of the backlog of 800,000 persons overnight. If we did that we would not have any inventory. We would not have anyone in the lineup. There would be no one coming.

What we have to do is to find a way to manage the longer lineups to ensure that people in them know how long is involved and that they are not unduly extended way beyond times. Some parents I have seen go from being in good health at age 63 and in seven years they are up to 70 years of age, and they fall into bad health and their immigration application is prejudiced as a result.

This is a problem we simply must deal with. I am not sure that by criticizing the backlog day in and day out that we do service to the immigration program the way it is.

I want to also talk about the importance of viewing the immigration backlog as a symptom of a positive immigration program.

I have heard words in this House that say that under the Conservative government the number of immigrants has been increased to the highest level, if not ever, at least in recent memory. I think that is a bit disingenuous. It is fairly clear from the numbers that the number of visas issued for immigrants over the last couple of years has been about the same as it was under the previous government.

Every year the immigration department issues about 250,000 to 275,000 immigration visas of all the classes I mentioned earlier: the family class, the skilled worker class, the investor class and the humanitarian class.

What the government has done in this case is it has taken the student visas which are not immigrant visas, and it has taken work visas which are not immigrant visas and it has added them in to say, “Look, we have got 400,000 immigrants”. That is not a fair figure. That is not a fair way to do it. It is misleading. If we are going to get increases in our immigration intake, let us get a real intake.

Mr. Speaker, you are signaling that I am near the end of my 11 minutes. I look forward to finishing the balance of my remarks at a later date.