Jack Harris

[Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act, October 4th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, if the language in the bill were clear, the principle would be that we want to ensure that criminals who should be deported get deported. On that I think we can all agree.

However, I am not sure that everyone in the House would agree that people who have spent 20 or 22 years of their 25 years in Canada and who, for mental health issues, have run afoul of addictions or may have been caught two, three or four times shoplifting and ended up with a sentence of six or nine months, should be sent back to Somalia or a country where they have never been to since they were two years old and with their family here. I do not think we would find a lot of agreement on the other side of the House for that. I think we would find some human compassion to say that it is a special case that deserves some consideration.

The problem is that the bill does not give that person any consideration, does not give the judge any discretion and there is no right of appeal. What is wrong with the bill is that it makes one category with respect to dangerous criminals too broad. If it is for dangerous criminals, then it should be made for dangerous criminals.

[Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act, October 4th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I find that the government and the members opposite are selective when it comes to organizations such as the ones the member mentioned because sometimes they support their legislation and sometimes they do not. When they do not support their legislation, such as the chiefs of police who did not support the Conservatives' destruction of the gun registry, the Conservatives' ignored them and treated them like dirt. They did not want them to come forward. They did not want to hear from them. They say that they did not know what they were talking about.

Let us leave those associations out of this and talk about the principles here. For the most part, this is not about foreign criminals who come to Canada to further their criminal activity. If that is what we are talking about, then the law should be able to deal with them. What the government has done here is that it has painted such broad categories that it is refusing to allow the rule of law, as we understand it, to apply to the people who have been in the country since they were two or three years old and whose lives and families are here. They may have made a mistake by committing a crime, for which they were sentenced to six months in jail, but they deserve the opportunity to be rehabilitated and not subjected to deportation to a country that is foreign to them and one that they have no knowledge of without having the opportunity to appeal. That is wrong.

[Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act, October 4th, 2012]

Bring it on, someone says. The Conservatives want to keep the courts and lawyers busy challenging their legislation. One would think they would desire to have legislation that meets the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, that does the job it is supposed to do.

A member from the opposite side raised another aspect of this a couple of times. My colleague from Parkdale—High Park has quite ably talked about the potential for arbitrary decisions and broad categories. There are broad categories in the bill but then the Conservatives mention specific examples and ask if we do no agree that this should happen.

The member for Brampton West said that his party wants to prohibit the entry of someone who promotes hatred and asks why do we not support a measure that would do exactly that. Well, it does not do exactly that. It says, in very broad language, that the minister would have the power to deny entry to anyone for 36 months if the minister is of the opinion that it is justified by public policy considerations.

It might have the effect of allowing that particular thing to happen as part of this broad category, but if what the Conservatives want to do is prevent people coming to Canada on a temporary visit to promote hatred, then they should say that they are going to give the minister the power to prevent people from coming to Canada to promote hatred. If they want to do exactly that, they should do exactly that. Public policy is a very broad consideration. There is that famous legal case in England that said that making decisions in the courts based on public policy considerations was an unruly horse. In other words, one could not control what would be contained under that consideration.

Public policy considerations are so broad that they give the minister almost absolute discretion. That is where we think this bill goes overboard. It gives too much discretion and arbitrary power to the minister. We want something that is flexible and something that will work to ensure we do not allow people into Canada who commit serious crimes, who are unworthy of continuing in Canada and who we would never allow to become citizens if they applied.

We are talking about criminals who have been convicted of significant offences. If they applied for citizenship, which they are entitled to do as permanent residents at a certain point, would they be given citizenship? The answer to that question is no, they would not be granted citizenship. Do we want to find ways that will force people who should be deported to be deported? Yes. If the appeal process is so long, ungainly and unruly that people can abuse it, we need to fix the appeal process, shorten the time limits and find a solution to the root of the problem. As one of my colleagues said, we do not need a sledgehammer to swat a fly. If a less restrictive measure can be used, in other words, one that does not affect so many other cases that it should not affect, then that is what should be used.

We are talking about the unfortunate arbitrariness that applies when we use these broad categories. When we take away the requirement of the minister to take into account humanitarian considerations and international rights violations, that removes the possibility of allowing someone to enter this country. It takes away the requirement of the minister to at least take that into consideration and say that we do not have to worry about that. This is a significant problem.

The risk that we run here is that we may be deporting offenders who may have been sentenced to six months or a year in jail, who arrived in Canada with their parents at a very young age and who may know nothing of the country to which they will be deported. By doing that, we would be leaving at risk people whose only country to which they have an attachment is Canada and they may have been in Canada for many years.

I will quote some of the comments that were made by a group of lawyers in Toronto last week who are active in immigration law. They are very familiar with the broad range of cases. They say that we are talking about many people in the African, Caribbean, Italian, Greek, Portuguese, English, Irish and Scottish communities who have not acquired Canadian citizenship despite the fact that they have been here for a long time. They say that the removal of the appeal process for those who have been sentenced to more than six months would be a terrible burden when their cases ought to be considered.

First offenders who have been here for 15 or 20 years and are incarcerated learn things. They improve their lives. People can go to jail for six months for shoplifting if they do it often enough. Perhaps they are drug addicts and need rehabilitation. Those people would be treated as the dross of society and sent to some potential far corner of the world where God knows what will happen to them. This is the kind of thing we are opposed to. We support the bill in principle in terms of doing what it should do but want to see it substantially improved in committee.

[Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act, October 4th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak today to Bill C-43. It is legislation that deserves consideration but, like much that comes from the government, it has significant flaws.

When members on the other side talk about the bill and ask us whether we want criminals who should be deported to get deported, the answer to that rhetorical question is yes. No one is opposed to that. That is why we are actually supporting the bill in principle. Certain people who come to Canada, commit violent crimes, abuse the appeal process and who manage to stay here for many years ought to be deported.

Therefore, the answer to the rhetorical question of whether criminals who should be deported get deported, is absolutely yes. Is this the way to do it? Are the measures in the bill balanced, fair and reasonable and do they comply with the rule of law?

The government claims that Canada is a champion of the rule of law throughout the world. Is it reasonable for a rule of law to have such a broad category that says that anyone who may get a six month sentence for a first offence, after having been in the country for 15, 20 or 25 years and having been here since he or she was a child or an infant, should get deported to his or her so-called home? The home of someone who has been here since the age of 2 and is now 25 is Canada. The fact is that for the 1.5 million people who are here as permanent residents, who have been granted the right to live here as permanent residents and have the right to obtain citizenship once they apply, this is their home.

The member for Winnipeg North talked about a person being convicted of growing six marijuana plants. That person is treated as a serious criminal and is subject to deportation to the country of his or her birth without any right of appeal. I do not think that complies with the rule of law. In fact, a number of lawyers who have talked about this suggested that this would not pass with the courts and that it would face a challenge under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

[Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act, October 4th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, would the member for Surrey North like to comment on the fact that this legislation talks about foreign criminals? Members opposite talk about foreign criminals as people who come to Canada and commit crimes so therefore they should be sent back “home”.

A lot of people who are in Canada as permanent residents came here when they were one, two or three years old. They could be here for high school. They could be spending all of their lives here. Their home is actually Canada. If they come to a place where we promote the rule of law, we would expect the right of appeal, et cetera to be available to them. If they commit a crime and they get six months or more, they are entitled to the rehabilitation provided by the penal system.

Does my colleague think they can be considered foreigners who should be sent back home? Is that a realistic way to look at our immigration policy on how we should treat people who come to our country?

[Petitions, October 4th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to present a number of petitions, all to the same effect, asking that the Government of Canada reverse its decision to close the Canadian Coast Guard's maritime rescue sub-centre in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, reinstate its staff and restore its full services.

The petitioners are from St. John's and other parts in and around my riding. However, it is noteworthy that there are also a number of signatories from other provinces of Canada including British Columbia, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Manitoba, and from Prince George, B.C., and Ottawa, calling upon the government to reverse its decision and noting that this rescue base in the Newfoundland and Labrador region has the highest portion of distress instances in Canada and that 600 lives per year have been saved. Each year, 18 lives are lost on average. This is extremely important to these petitioners.

[Food Safety, October 3rd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I just heard the member say that the government is not in the business of speculating on the health of Canadians. I was just at an event at a very significant hotel here in Ottawa tonight and it was serving beef. I guess if the Minister of Agriculture were there and were asked whether it was inspected or not, he would say, “I don't know and I don't care”.

Is that the standard by which the government determines how the health of Canadians is looked after by food inspection?

[National Defence, October 3rd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, on the chopping block were mental health research jobs, long-term military health planning, the accreditation program, training for military doctors and much more. It is no wonder the Surgeon General pressed the panic button. It is his professional duty and obligation to offer the best health services to soldiers. He felt it was urgent to intervene because the Conservatives' reckless cuts had what he called a profound impact and threatened the very services he had to deliver.

Do the Conservatives now acknowledge that their irresponsible cuts threaten the health and safety of Canadian Forces members?

[Business of Supply, October 2nd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I want to refer to some of the items that were in the 2010 motion that was unanimously agreed to. Members from the Conservative Party supported the amendments to the act that would clarify that a goal of the act would be to encourage foreign investment that brings in new capital, creates new jobs, transfers new technology to the country, increases Canadian based research and development, contributes to sustainable economic development and improves the lives of Canadian workers and their communities, not foreign investment motivated simply by a desire to gain control of a strategic Canadian resource.

Members opposite supported that motion in 2010 but that notion seems to be absent from any of the debates of the members opposite today. I wonder if the member knows why that is and why he thinks the government is not living up to the support that it gave to Jack Layton's motion in 2010.

[National Defence, September 27th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, it is not just the rising costs of the F-35 that the government cannot keep track of. It is also the equipment to be used by the special forces. The chief of review services has said that in one unit alone, between $8 million and $10 million in equipment has gone missing. The government has known about this for years, but no action was taken.

Could the minister tell us if this equipment has been found and how many millions of dollars in other equipment has also gone missing?