Mr. Speaker, I had a question for the parliamentary secretary, but I will have an opportunity to bring it up in my speech.
We need to thoroughly examine what we are talking about. Therefore, for the benefit of Canadians who are tuning in, scratching their heads and asking themselves what the parliamentarians are talking about, let me give a rundown of exactly the things we are discussing.
We are talking about an individual who comes to Canada on a visitor visa seeking a better life. We are talking about an individual who is in Canada maybe without status or with status. This individual meets a landed immigrant and/or a Canadian citizen. Then two individuals fall in love and get married. When they get married, they have a choice of being sponsored outside Canada from their homeland or sponsored within Canada under humanitarian and compassionate grounds.
In some instances, for individuals visiting Canada who do not require visitor visas to come to come to Canada, it is faster to be sponsored outside Canada. However, there are instances where individuals need visitor visas to enter Canada and it is a hardship for them to leave Canada, to be sponsored outside and then to be brought back into Canada by their spouses. Right now a spousal sponsorship outside Canada can take anywhere between six to eight months and other posts can take up to three years.
For example, Tamils coming from Sri Lanka face processing timelines of up to three and four years, which is three and four times as much as in other posts, and I have seen this happen. People who come from Sri Lanka as visitors, fall in love with Canadians and get married have two choices. They can go back to Sri Lanka and be sponsored by their spouses, which can take up to four years, or they can be sponsored inside Canada. If they are sponsored inside Canada and they are on status, then the sponsorship is done through the case processing centre in Vegreville. Vegreville then takes a look at the paperwork and if officials believe the bona fides of the marriage, they send it to the local Citizenship and Immigration centre office in order for them to land. If they have some serious doubts such as a person might be married before, there is a child, somebody is claiming refugee status, they send it to the local Citizenship and Immigration centre. That is where the problem arises.
In the local centre of Citizenship and Immigration waiting for an interview can take up to four years. Therefore, individuals sponsored by spouses, if they are in status in Canada and have a visitor visa, have to keep renewing their visitor visas for the next four years until they have an opportunity to go in front of immigration and present their cases. If for any reason they are not in status and claim refugee status, then they still have to linger in Canada for four years until their cases and interviews take place at the local Citizenship and Immigration centre.
This is where the problem starts, and it is twofold. First, if individuals are in status in Canada and for whatever reason Citizenship and Immigration decides it will not give an extension on their visitor visa, they become out of status. Second, if they have come to Canada, have claimed refugee status and get married in Canada, again they are not in status. On those two occasions, we have a spouse in Canada who could be removed from Canada and it does not allow the couple to set roots, to plan for their future, to have children and to carry on a life.
Let me examine a particular case I dealt with recently. A young lady came to Canada from China, from the province of Fujian, and claimed refugee status. That failed. She found a Canadian and they were married. However, CBSA, the Canada Border Services Agency, which is responsible for making the decision to remove people, decided that the woman needed to be removed. The decision to removed is no longer with Citizenship and Immigration, so it can say it is not responsible.
Let us look at the family. There is a three month old child. CBSA does not care that an applicant is waiting to have an interview. It is saying that the individual has to be removed. The mother is breastfeeding the child. When the mother is to be removed from Canada and sent to China, what will happen to little Kevin, who is three months old? CBSA has said the mother can take him with her. How in God's name can we send little Kevin, who is a Canadian citizen, to China? He has to get a visitor visa into China. If the mother is to be sponsored by the husband to come back, it could take a year and a half to two years. We will have a Canadian child in China, probably out of status over six or seven months, and we have separated the couple.
This is what is being faced in reality. We have Canadians who are marrying folks who are in Canada. Maybe their status runs out or maybe they claim refugee status. They are trying to start a family or they have a family. Then they go in front of CBSA. In this case, the CBSA officer bluntly told the couple to get a passport for little Kevin in order for them to remove the mother and for Kevin to go with her to China. The rights of this three-month-old Canadian are tossed out the window by a CBSA officer, who pretty well has absolutely no heart or feelings. He does not give a hoot about a three month old.
That is what we are facing with these existing difficulties. These are the people we are talking about.
There is another case I would like to discuss. A young individual came to Canada and claimed refugee status. He found a wife and they got married. She was three months pregnant when CBSA told him he had to go. He would either be removed or he could remove himself voluntarily, so he removed himself voluntarily. That was two years ago.
He is on his way back in the next few days. However, in the meantime, the child had his first birthday and the father was not here. He was not here to enjoy his son's first words. The father was not here to enjoy being called “papa”. The father was not here to be present at the birth of his child. We went to Citizenship and Immigration and explained the situation. We asked if it could expedite the case, but we were told no. It does not care. This was after he voluntarily removed himself.
We are talking about a young individual who found a wife. He got married. She was pregnant with a child. Why was he removed? Why was the family separated? The department should have done exactly what this motion calls for. If it is the first time individuals are sponsoring their spouses, they do not get removed until they have had their interviews at CIC, the local Citizenship and Immigration centre, and they are given work permits.
In the case of the individual who was sent back to China when his wife was pregnant, that would have fit perfectly. He would have stayed in Canada. He would have been given a work permit. He would have had an interview. There is no doubt that it was a bona fide marriage. There was a child involved. How can we tell a people that they were married out of convenience when there are children involved? Certainly, convenience does not include that sort of arrangement.
In the case of this individual, remaining in Canada and establishing himself probably would have been less of a hardship for the wife. The child would have had his father with him. They probably would have bought a home and moved on. He probably would have continued at his business and the couple would have been successful. What did we do instead? We separated the family. His business went down the drain. Now, he coming back to Canada. He is going to see the child, who is now over a year old. He has his first birthday a couple of months ago. He has only ever seen his child in pictures. He has to realize that the only reason he is coming back to Canada is because of his child.
The onus is on us. The severity of the cases we are talking about, when we separate husbands and wives and they are apart for a couple of years after they are married because we have told them they have to go back, or when we go into places of work and remove the husband or the wife, who have a baby, or when we order a couple to get a passport for the child, a Canadian citizen, because we are about to deport the mother, I challenge anyone in the House to tell me our system works. The needed changes are well overdue. These changes must come in so we protect young Canadian families.
I hear the Conservative minister and the parliamentary secretary say that there are a number of bogus marriages. Yes, we will run across that, but at the end of the day, that will certainly take care of itself when they have their interviews, when the individuals go before an officer of immigration and try to dot their is and cross their ts that their marriages are bona fide, but they are not, then they will be removed. However, we need to address those overwhelming cases that we see day after day in the newspaper, where we have families being kicked out.
Let us look at what happens when a case is referred from a case processing centre in Vegreville to the local office. The local office will tell the individual not to send any representations and not to bother the office for the next 36 to 48 months. The couple is therefore at a standstill. The husband, if he is being sponsored by a Canadian wife, has absolutely no health care or work permit. It is the same with the wife if she is being sponsored by her husband. Not having any health care, if the couple decides to have a child in Canada, a little Canadian, the father has to cover the health cost of delivering the baby.
A delivery in Ontario, such as a delivery in my riding of Scarborough—Agincourt in Toronto, can cost up to $15,000. A married couple submits its paperwork and then the husband and wife are told they cannot do anything, that have to wait for four years. When the immigration officer is told that the wife is pregnant, how can it be questioned whether it is a bona fide marriage? The immigration officer will say it will not be called anything and they couple will have to wait until the case is dealt with in four years. If the husband and wife want to have children, that is up to them.
I have five daughters and I know the cost of bringing up children. However, imagine the cost of also having to pay for the delivery of the children? Some of us share the fact that we have children one after the other for a number of years. If individuals wait for four years and have two or three children, it will cost $45,000.
I worked on a case in my riding where the mother had two children and was sponsored by the husband. The case was being at the Scarborough Citizenship and Immigration office. The mother was pregnant again and the couple did not want to move. It got a little more hairy when there was a knock at the door. It was CBSA with a removal order. There are two Canadians involved. The mother is pregnant again and CBSA is there to remove her. Where is the reality? Where is the common sense?
We hear the parliamentary secretary say that it works, that we have checks and balances in place and the system works. That is totally false. The system does not work. There is case after case in our offices where there are bona fide marriages with children involved, and where CBSA and CIC take their sweet time. With CIC, if it goes to the local office, it is four years. It does not care if there are children, or if there are circumstances or if the husband has to go to work because the Canadian wife who sponsored him has already one or two children and has to stay at home to take care of them while the husband provides.
There is a husband who is being sponsored staying at home and cannot go to work. How would members of the House feel if they could not provide for their family? How would they feel if they had one or two children, their wife had just come out of the hospital and there was absolutely no income coming into the house? That is the tragedy.
This is why we are saying we should allow them to have a work permit. This is why we are saying that we should also move forward quickly to make sure that the female spouse has the opportunity to deliver children in Canada and the bearing of children is not a burden on a Canadian family. These are Canadians who have been born in Canada. These are Canadians and the CBSA officer is saying to the mother, “Get a passport for the child because you are going to be deported and we are going to send the Canadian child with you to China”.
Who are we deporting? Are we deporting the mother or are we sending into exile a young Canadian? Who are we hindering and who are we kiboshing? I will tell the House who we are doing it to. We are doing it to a child who is four or five months old, little Kevin. Once his mother goes, Kevin will have to follow his mother to China.
When Kevin goes to China or another country, he will be there as a visitor. If Kevin is sick and needs to go to the doctor, the local medical facilities will not take care of Kevin because he is not from that country. We are putting in harm's way a Canadian citizen who should have health care and all the other benefits. We are kicking him out of the country.
Imagine if little Kevin follows his mother, lives in China and becomes severely sick and he has been out of Canada for six months. The father then goes to China to bring the child back. OHIP in Ontario would say, “I am sorry, but the child has been out of the country for more than three months or six months. Therefore, the child is not entitled to health care”. How can we face a family when we separate them? How do we go about telling them that we stuck it to them?
We did not care about little Kevin. We did not care about the young man whom we separated from his wife and she had a child in Canada who is a year and a half old. Frankly, we just do not care. Why? Because maybe they are new immigrants. Why? Because maybe they do not fit the mould of the rest of us. Why? Because maybe we are xenophobic. I do not like to think that is the case. I hope it is not.
In order to make sure that we have a society that looks after families and we have a society that cares about the young ones and the young families, it is about time we stepped up to the plate and helped these young Canadians who found somebody they want to marry. Maybe the person is not in Canada, or maybe the person does not have status, or maybe the person has run out of status, but we have to take the responsibility in order to help them establish a family.
This is why it is very important to note that it mentions first time applicants only. I urge all my colleagues in the House to support this very important motion as we try to establish and build families and help young families grow with the rights and obligations that we have as Canadians and as the government.