Jim Karygiannis

[Citizenship and Immigration, February 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, some Canadians are learning that they are in danger of losing, or have lost, their citizenship.

At committee, the minister stated that approximately 450 individuals had come to their attention. The President of the Treasury Board is reported as indicating there could be as many as 2,000 alone in his riding. Statistics Canada indicates there are over 50,000. A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.

Will the minister admit that she has absolutely no idea how many Canadians are in this situation? Will she also admit that she has no plan to deal with these Canadians? Will the minister admit that she has absolutely no clue in what she is doing?

[Anti-terrorism Act, February 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure if my colleague said he was from the Conservative, Reform or Alliance Party, CRAP. I was really confused.

However, terrorism is still among us. I stated in my opening speech that we needed to fight terrorism wherever we can. However, we have to do away with draconian measures.

[Anti-terrorism Act, February 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the three detainees are not given any privileges and/or rights. The institution was built in April of 2006 and the individuals were moved in 2006. If they have a complaint, there is nowhere to address it. There is no ombudsman to address these complaints.

The committee unanimously agreed. Unfortunately some Conservative members were not present the second time the committee visited and passed a motion that a correctional investigative ombudsman be appointed. If the hon. member has not bothered to read the report, I suggest he talk to his colleagues who sit in that committee.

[Anti-terrorism Act, February 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I want to tell my colleagues in the Conservative Party, who sometimes seem not to have anything between their ears, that Canada is made up of four pillars.

It is made up of the two founding people, the French and the English. It is made up of the aboriginals, and it is made up of another pillar that holds the whole table together. It holds the whole house together, and these are the immigrants, the people who have recently come to Canada in the last 30, 40 and 50 years.

Every group that comes somehow gets paintbrushed and tainted. Do we forget the incarceration of the Ukrainians? Do we forget the incarceration of the Japanese and the Italians? Do we forget, recently, the incarceration and the way that we are dealing with the Arab community? Certainly not. However, the Conservative Party does not seem to understand, so let me leave them some words of wisdom.

There are four words that certainly the Conservative Party does not want to listen to and this is why I have been heckled by members opposite. Those four words are very simple.

Respect one's neighbour as an equal. Respect the guy down the street as a Canadian. Accept individuals as part of this great country. Celebrate our diversities and embrace our common future, and when we put those four words together, respect, accept, celebrate and embrace, and take the first letters of those words, it spells race.

One of the things that we on this side of the House never forgot is that we are all part of the human race, and this is why this legislation has to be sunsetted. Unfortunately, that side of the House, the Conservative Party, is supporting legislation that is very draconian. It comes down to the fundamental issue of wanting to support its reform agenda by pitting one Canadian against another Canadian.

[Anti-terrorism Act, February 26th, 2007]

Which part of that do you not understand? Which part of that do you want to debate?

[Anti-terrorism Act, February 26th, 2007]

Did we forget what the government did with the Lebanese? No, we did not. Did we forget how members of the Conservative Party pitted one Canadian against the other Canadian? Did we forget when members of the Conservative Party said, “Those people who are Canadians may be Canadians by convenience and we should leave them behind”. Let me reassure the member opposite that a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.

[Anti-terrorism Act, February 26th, 2007]

For the members across who are making some noise, I had an exchange with the minister, and it certainly can be read in Hansard. I questioned him on how he was willing to use a paintbrush and call the whole Tamil community terrorists, how children were being affected who were going to school and being asked by their schoolmates if they were terrorists. It sort of went in one ear and out the other of the former leader of the opposition.

Now he is the Minister of Public Safety and certainly the government has listed the LTTE, but it has done absolutely nothing to reassure Tamil Canadians in my community of Scarborough that they are not being targeted. It has done absolutely nothing to reassure Canadians who could have been under scrutiny, be it people from Lebanon who associate themselves with Hezbollah, or all kinds of people who are Canadians first and foremost. These organizations are the ones we are looking at and the government has done absolutely nothing.

Yes indeed, this issue will be an election issue. Let us not fool anybody. Let us not for 30 seconds forget that the Conservative Party has deep roots in the reform party, and the roots of the reform party are very simple: pit one Canadian against another Canadian. One is Caucasian, one is African--

[Anti-terrorism Act, February 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague, the member for Kitchener—Waterloo, for allowing me to share his time.

The legislation with the sunset clauses that we are discussing today came into being right after 9/11. There was a need for reaction. We were getting pressure from all sides. The government of the United States was certainly pointing a finger at Canada and saying the terrorists had come from Canada. Later on it came out that this was not the case. Plane after plane of individuals flying to North America had come to seek warmth in Canada. Planes were landing on our tarmacs. I do not even remember the President of the United States, Mr. Bush, thanking Canada for what we did for our cousins to the south.

However, times have changed. Yes, terrorism is here. Osama bin Laden is said to still be alive. Things are a mess in many parts of the world, be it in the Horn of Africa, the Middle East, Iraq or Afghanistan. However, the need to have investigative tactics and to take people's civil liberties away, especially from our citizens, is something that I personally never favoured and find very hard to support, and I will tell members why.

I was born in a country where there were two extremes: the right and the left. People who were fighting for freedom against the Nazis during World War II, after the freedom fight was over, were branded as being communists and were labelled pretty close to being terrorists. Some of those individuals and part of that legacy remains with my family.

I remember hearing from my family members how they were incarcerated on islands. One of the techniques that was used to interrogate people was to put a man in a flour sack, put a cat in the same sack, and then dump the sack into the sea. The cat would panick and begin to scratch the individual. This would just demoralize the individual that was put into the water with the cat. Tactics such as those are still used in some countries.

We have seen what happened to Mr. Arar when we gave wrong information to the folks in the United States and he was sent to Syria, and certainly we apologized for it.

But there is still the situation today, although it is not as bad, of the three detainees, at what a lot of people and myself have called Guantanamo North. These are the three detainees that were detained under security certificates issued by the Liberal Party, and they certainly continue today.

However, whether those certificates are right or wrong or these people are tourists or not is not the question that I want to address. The question that I want to address is the way they are treated at Guantanamo North, Millhaven, or whatever we want to call it.

These individuals have had all their rights, their right to appeal, their right to speak, and their right to ask for privileges, taken away from them. They do not have a means of redress. If people come to a disagreement, they have an ombudsman they can go to.

At Correctional Service Canada we have what is called the Correctional Investigator. Although this individual is part of Correctional Service Canada, with a memorandum of understanding with Citizenship and Immigration and with CBSA, we still do not know who is looking after the detainees. The Correctional Investigator has absolutely no way of dealing with what they need. They had 20 issues that they wanted to deal with and all 20 issues were struck down. The citizenship and immigration committee members went to see them. As a matter of fact I, myself, went to see them three times. These individuals are on a hunger strike in order to address their needs and their complaints.

There must be a protocol in place, should we tomorrow have more detainees, on how we deal with them. Certainly, the current minister of CBSA is not willing to listen to this committee's requests, nor suggestions from members from both sides of the House. The Conservative Party wants to extend the clauses in the legislation that would be sunsetting.

I remember when the minister was the leader of the opposition, when it was the Alliance. I remember him taking a brush and painting all the Tamils in Canada, and came close to calling them terrorists in relationship to the LTTE.

[Request for Emergency Debate, February 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, just after Christmas we all received a letter at our offices from the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, a letter that informed us about section 8 of the Citizenship Act. The letter stated that some Canadians born outside Canada to Canadians could lose their citizenship if they did not reaffirm their citizenship by their twenty-eighth birthday. That affected a member of my family.

Wanting to get to the bottom of this, I immediately contacted the office of the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration asking for clarification. It took the office three days before I received an answer. I also have faxed the minister several recommendations to follow in order to deal with this urgent matter.

Reports were coming out that this situation could affect up to 50,000 Canadians, according to Statistics Canada. The minister, while testifying at committee last week, stated that only a few hundred Canadians are affected. The deputy minister also stated that the department has undertaken an aggressive advertising campaign to inform Canadians of this problem.

Today we had witnesses at committee, the so-called lost Canadians, who gave testimony showing facts opposite to those given by the minister. We were given testimony that the people born in Canada have lost their citizenship. These people are about to enter their retirement age, and we could find ourselves with hundreds of thousands more Canadians affected. As witness Barbara Porteous said this morning, this is only “the tip of the iceberg”. Hundreds of thousands of Canadians will be affected.

We are dealing with individuals who were born in Canada and also with children born to members of our military forces while serving abroad. We are denying citizenship to children born in Canada and to children born to Canadians outside Canada, children born to men and women fighting for our freedom in the theatres of war. These men and women gave their lives for Canada and to refuse their children the right to be Canadians is a shame and a despicable act.

When witnesses in committee were asked today if the House should hold an emergency debate, they unanimously answered yes. In view of the minister having failed to inform Canadians of this matter, the onus is upon us to advise Canadians that they have or may have lost their citizenship. On behalf of the hundreds of thousands of lost Canadians, and in memory of our men and women of the armed forces, we owe it to them to hold this emergency debate.

[Points of Order, February 20th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, during question period, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration said that if the member for Mississauga—Erindale had been in committee, he would have been able to hear the answer.

I know the minister was in committee. Was she able to see that the member for Mississauga—Erindale was in committee? First, is she saying he was or was not in committee? Second, can we indicate whether an individual was present in a committee?