John McCallum

[Community of Cold Lake, October 27th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commend the community of Cold Lake, Alberta, for its display of humanity after a community mosque was vandalized last Friday. Residents and Canadian Armed Forces members in uniform went to the mosque to show their support and clean up after the vandalism.

We cannot allow the tragic events of last week to compromise the ideas that we as Canadians hold dear. I can think of no better rebuttal to this act of vandalism than the compassionate action of the residents of Cold Lake. The message sent by these residents reflects a core human value: “Love your neighbour”. We are never stronger than when we are united in love and solidarity.

[Citizenship and Immigration, October 21st, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, in the past, all governments have matched the contributions of charity to assist with natural disasters. Given the unprecedented refugee crisis in Syria and Iraq, will the government adopt a similar approach and match the funds raised by organizations that are struggling to bring refugees to Canada?

The government can make taxpayer dollars go a lot further if it matches the private sector. Why will the government not do this to help thousands of desperate refugees?

[Military Contribution Against ISIL, October 7th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I would say that in its totality, the refugee policy of the government has been extremely poor. We have seen the total number of refugees, both government assisted and in total, go down. Within that terrible record, the Iraq case is perhaps a small shining light in an otherwise dismal picture, because certainly, the record on refugees from Syria has been really terrible. Syria, for many months now, has probably been, arguably, the world's worst refugee crisis in many decades.

The government's record on that one has been really pathetic. That is why I am suggesting that as part of our non-combat proposal, a major effort to bring in more refugees from that region would be a good idea, but it is not something Conservatives seem to be prepared to listen to.

[Military Contribution Against ISIL, October 7th, 2014]

I do not know the answer to that question, Mr. Speaker. I am not the critic in this area, so I will have to leave that to the critic to respond to.

[Military Contribution Against ISIL, October 7th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, in terms of the hon. member's opening comments, I know he relied on PMO talking points today, but he has to have gone back 10 years to find the leader of the opposition's talking points at the time. Ninety per cent of what the member said about what transpired back then is false.

We are very comfortable with our position on this mission today. What they have in common is that in each case, Canada was determined to make a major contribution. In this particular case, we choose to focus on non-combat. The previous time, when I was defence minister, it was not even a combat mission. It was an ISAF security-maintaining mission in Kabul. The two are not at all comparable. In my case, it was a security-maintaining mission, and today we are talking about a very severe combat mission.

[Military Contribution Against ISIL, October 7th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Scarborough—Guildwood.

As members have heard before, the Liberal Party is desirous that Canada plays a substantial role in this war but, for reasons I will explain, we are not in favour of a combat role. Therefore, we do not support the government motion.

Before getting into the reasons for that position, on the subject of Iraq in general, I do not think we can trust the judgment of the Prime Minister.

I say that because I remember that in 2003, Mr. Chrétien's government said that Canada would not help the Americans invade Iraq. I remember it well because I was the defence minister at the time. More than ten years ago, the Prime Minister was completely in favour of going to war against Iraq.

The Prime Minister in those days in 2003 went so far as to write a letter to the Wall Street Journal denouncing the position of the Canadian government to not join in the invasion of Iraq led by George Bush at the time. He was so rabidly in favour of war at that time. If we flash forward more than 10 years, he is rabidly in favour of war again.

It is true that the circumstances of the two occasions are dramatically different, but the fact that the Prime Minister was rabidly for war in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, when history has shown that was a terrible decision and indeed the root of many of the problems today can be laid at that misguided invasion, leads one to the conclusion that if he was wrong then, one has no trust that he will necessarily be right the second time.

That is one reason why the Liberal party really does not trust the judgment of the Prime Minister on this issue, and that is why we came to our own conclusion. Our own conclusion is that yes, the situation is entirely different, yes, ISIL is evil, and I do not use that word lightly, and has to be combatted, and yes, Canada should play a major role in that struggle against ISIL.

However, the war has more than one dimension. A part of the war involves fighter jets and another part of the war involves assistance for those on the ground who are suffering untold horrors as we speak. Therefore, as important as dropping the bombs is the need to assist those people, to provide humanitarian support, to provide medical support, to provide refuge for those people as refugees in our country, possibly also to provide non-combat military support in terms of reconnaissance, transport or things of this nature.

One side of this war is not more important than the other side, but in our judgment, the capabilities of Canada, the comparative advantage of Canada favours us on the non-combat side in this war. We know that a number of countries have already lined up to take part in air strikes, but there are less resources being applied to the humanitarian side of the war. We therefore believe that is where Canada can add the most value added and make the greatest contribution to a solution in that troubled region.

I note the government says that it can do both. That is like a millionaire saying to a pauper, “We can both have the fruits of this world”. The millionaire has a whole lot more fruits than the pauper. The point is that the government's military contribution to the war will cost in the hundreds of millions of dollars. We do not know exactly how much. The Conservatives have not told us. However, I know a bombing mission of that kind would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Yesterday, the Conservatives announced with great fanfare a humanitarian gesture, which is a few million dollars.

We can do both, but we are putting virtually all the eggs, in terms of money, on the combat side and very little, in comparison, on the other side. The Liberal position is that we want Canada to have a major effort, which means putting significant resources into the humanitarian side, something roughly equivalent to what would be spent on the combat side.

I will give the House one example, which came up in question period today. The government's record on refugees since coming to office has been abysmal. The number of refugees in total under the Conservatives' watch has dropped by 33%. The number of government-assisted refugees has dropped by 23%. Those are the ones it controls directly.

It takes money to bring in refugees. Our position is that the government should invest money in the staff and resources required to process refugees more rapidly so that we could bring in much larger numbers from Syria and Iraq and other places in that region. The government's record in that area has been dismal.

As one component of our non-combat, substantial proposal for a Canadian contribution, we would propose that significant resources be devoted to beefing up the resources in our immigration department so that we would be able to admit a substantial number of refugees.

Listening to the minister in question period today, my sense was that he did not display a great deal of enthusiasm for that proposition. While the Conservatives say they can do both, combat and humanitarian, it is clear from their body language and from the dollars involved and from just about everything they say that their heart, if that is the right term, is truly in the military mission, and only a few little trinkets are left over for the humanitarian side.

We in the Liberal Party think that the great bulk, indeed all, of our effort should be on the humanitarian side in terms of medical help, humanitarian help, absorbing refugees, providing transit, and all those other issues that are crucial to this war effort in its entirety. I for one do not think Canada's role would in any way be diminished or reduced because we in the Liberal Party chose to focus our efforts on that side of the war rather than on the combat side of the war.

[Citizenship and Immigration, October 7th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, that is not the whole story.

Under the Conservative government, government-approved refugees, which it controls directly, are down by 22%. The Conservatives do not care about refugees.

In the middle of this global crisis, the Liberal Party, as part of its ISIL proposal, would pay money to source refugees so that we could admit many more into this country.

Will the Conservatives do the same thing? Will they invest the money to process refugees from these regions who desperately need to come to Canada?

[Citizenship and Immigration, October 7th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, since this government came to power, the number of refugees admitted to Canada has dropped by 33%. This government has never made refugees a priority. The world is currently facing a serious refugee crisis. Will the minister change his priorities and promise that future refugees from Iraq and Syria will find the protection they need in Canada?

[Citizenship and Immigration, October 6th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, we heard today that a government internal report had said that staff cuts have been a big factor behind slow-paced refugee settlement.

I would ask the minister to do something unusual for him. Instead of glorifying in past alleged successes, will he please focus on the future and tell us how, in the future, his department will have resources that are adequate to deal with this growing number of refugees from countries like Syria and Iraq? Please focus on the future.

[Service Canada Mandate Expansion Act, October 2nd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to support the bill put forward by my colleague from Guelph.

I do not usually use the word brilliant, but in some sense I think this is a brilliant bill, brilliant in its simplicity. Simplicity is not a bad thing. Often the best things in life are simple and sometimes when somebody proposes a new idea that is simple, people will say that it is obvious, or they will ask why it was not done before. This legislation has those two characteristics. Why have we not had one-stop shopping of this kind for many years? Why did we not think of that before? Maybe someone has thought of it before, but it is new to me, and it would be an excellent addition to Canadian law.

The points have been made that the person whose loved one has just died is not in a happy state, to put it mildly, and the prospect of having to make a substantial number of calls to government bureaucracies to answer different questions about the death of one's wife, or husband or whomever is not a happy prospect. Given the cutbacks, the prospect of being on a 1-800 line and having to wait forever to even get any answer at all is not a happy thought. Therefore, the possibility of just going to one place and having experts there who know exactly how to do it would relieve a huge amount of stress and anxiety from those who are the least able to be in such positions of stress.

In my opinion, this is a great bill because when someone loses a family member, he or she is not prepared to telephone all the government bureaucracies to share the information with public servants.

If all of that can happen in one fell swoop, it is better for everyone.

As my colleague has suggested, there are subsidiary benefits, which are definitely secondary to the primary one of helping individual Canadians. However, it could save the government money. It could save lawyers and estates from money going down the wrong paths. It could make it less likely that there would be issues of overpayment, and so on.

I was pleased with the government's response. If we could work in such a collegial way on other things as the way we worked on this bill, this would be a better place. That would be perhaps hoping too much, but I think the parliamentary secretary's response in tone was excellent, co-operative, and collegial.

The devil is in the details and I will certainly defer to my colleague from Guelph as to whether what he is proposing is precisely right. As far as I know, everyone in the House is on the same page and in favour, and we should all work together to make this happen in the most efficient and effective manner.

Having blossomed forth on how collegial we are, let me turn to a slightly different issue, which is perhaps a little less collegial.

In an ideal world, we should have one-stop shopping for both federal and provincial government agencies because no doubt, when an individual dies, the successor has to contact provincial governments, even municipal governments, as well as the federal government. If we could have one-stop shopping for all three levels of government, what a wonderful world this would be.

I remember back in the late days of the Liberal government that I had some involvement with Service Canada, which we were promoting as a new agency. Our idea at the time was to begin at the federal level but then to work with provincial governments and try to do what I just described, which is one-stop shopping across levels of government.

Maybe if a Liberal government were still in power, we would be there today and were that the case, my colleague might have been able to introduce a bill that would go to all levels of government. I am not sure we would have reached municipalities even eight years later, but we might have at least incorporated provinces and then it would be even easier for the loved ones of someone who died.

Unfortunately, Service Canada has gone in the wrong direction. We hear all the time about people being stuck forever on 1-800 numbers wanting employment insurance and things of that nature. Therefore, the service has not blossomed forth to include at least two levels of government, but rather, seems to have become more and more difficult to administer for just this one level of government.

I suppose that is a challenge for the future, but I think in the longer term maybe the hon. member, in a few years time, perhaps after there is a government of a different stripe to put this thing in order, will be able to provide amendments to his bill that would extend it to include not just the federal government but provincial governments as well.

That is a longer term proposition. For the moment, we, of all parties, should be pleased at this very important and major first step toward one-stop shopping for the benefit of the loved ones of those who have died.

There is so much consensus on this that I need not take up my full 10 minutes. My colleague from Charlottetown has explained extremely clearly as to what the benefits are, so I do not want to belabour the point.