Justin Trudeau

[Situation in Haiti, December 13th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, the question I have for the parliamentary secretary is that in an emergency debate such as this, we are all of us presenting our opinions, our reflections and our concerns about a very important issue.

One of the things I was hoping to hear from the parliamentary secretary tonight in his speech, which was unfortunately cut short by him, was how exactly he feels Canadians can help in getting the Haitian people to regain their confidence in their own institutions, in their own government?

So much of their lives are taken up by international partners and international organizations that are providing, in many cases, the basic services that the state has not been able to provide, and I think one of the things we need to do going forward is to make Haitians once again believe that their own government, and therefore they themselves, will be capable of taking themselves forward through the 21st century.

I would like to hear from the parliamentary secretary on how he is hoping to achieve just that.

[Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, December 7th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I do not think this particular bill would have a tremendous impact on the number of people going to their members of Parliament for advice, help and knowledge. That is not what this bill would specifically address.

However, what I certainly hope this bill would be able to do is reduce the number of people who come to my office, worried and extremely troubled because they have spent an awful lot of money on someone who made them promises that he or she had no business making and actually gave them extremely bad advice that has hindered them in their process of immigrating to Canada, and sometimes gave them such bad advice that they ended up with a big red x that would bar them entirely from ever being able to immigrate to Canada, all because of the work of an unscrupulous immigration consultant.

While I am sure our MPs' offices will still be busy helping people through the process the way our offices are supposed to, as an interface between the federal government and our constituents, I certainly hope that the amount of people who have been hurt, harmed and devastated by unscrupulous immigration consultants would certainly decrease in terms of the cases we see in our offices.

[Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, December 7th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-35 at third reading. Everyone knows that our country was built on immigration. People came from all over the world to try to build a new life. In some ways, it was easier to come to Canada in the past. There was certainly less paperwork 100 or even 50 years ago. Now, the process is complicated and strict. We want to ensure that the people we welcome into Canada are the best and that they have a lot to offer to help build a good, strong society.

That is why it is so disheartening to have seen that, for so many years, there have been immigration consultants who have been taking advantage of vulnerable people who want to improve their lives, who want to travel across the seas to start a new life and instead end up defrauded and taken advantage of by unscrupulous consultants.

That is why the bill and various projects around cracking down on unscrupulous consultants have come through various committee studies and we finally arrive at this point where we are bringing forward a framework for the minister to pick a new, and hopefully more effective, governing body around immigration consultants.

As my hon. colleague mentioned, this was a model of co-operation among all parliamentarians. There was a clear desire on behalf of Canadians to see Parliament work together to create a more robust structure that was going to care for these vulnerable people, people looking for help in a very big decision and process, that of coming to Canada.

We agreed in principle across the House that something needed to be done. On this side, we are still a little bit worried that the establishment of the recommendation from the immigration committee upon which Bill C-35 was built, which talked about creating a stand-alone regulator, was not entirely followed and is instead still just done through regulations.

However, I think the intent of the bill is clear and the effectiveness of what we have in place will move forward to protecting Canadians.

The essential part of the bill is that it gives more power to go after people who are consulting and offering advice at the earliest stages of an application process. The larger scope of the bill will allow us to protect people even before they have submitted a firm application, which was an important loophole to close.

On the other issues we brought forward as amendments, the Liberal Party was pleased to present the amendment that actually doubled the fines to $20,000 for a summary conviction, and up to $100,000 from $50,000 for anyone convicted of being an unregistered immigration consultant.

There was an excellent discussion in committee around the role and the responsibilities of immigration consultants in Quebec.

We concluded that, without taking anything away from the federal government's power, any immigration consultant working in the province of Quebec who wants to recommend an immigration opportunity in Quebec must be familiar with the immigration system in that province. The primacy of the federal government in this area in maintained, but we recognize that in Quebec, it is extremely important to be able to speak French to interact with the Quebec government. In addition, the consultant must be familiar with the particularities of the process in Quebec to be able to give good advice to those who would like to become citizens of this country.

We also managed to get rid of the short title. In consultations, it came back time and time again from consultants that they were actually offended and felt that naming the bill around the problem, which is the crooked consultants, actually demeaned and belittled the work of legitimate consultants. So we depoliticized the short title of the bill, which was a victory.

In general, the bill puts forward more powers of accountability for, and better relationships between, the minister's office and the eventual regulator. It provides for the sharing of information.

Unfortunately, one of the concerns we have, which is beyond the scope of this bill, is that in our mind there are still not enough resources for the Canada Border Services Agency and the RCMP to go after those who are not registered consultants and are still operating as, as we call them, ghost consultants, without being qualified or being able to guarantee that they are offering proper services to these vulnerable people who want to emigrate to Canada.

Ultimately, Bill C-35 is just an initial step in allowing the minister to create a new governing body for immigration consultants. It provides a very general framework. It provides a few important key issues. However, push is going to come to shove in the coming months when the government and the minister actually settle on who is going to be the next governing body for immigration consultants.

We have to make sure that we do not just end up with the same problems once again. We have to make sure that there is going to be a strong governance framework around this new consultant body. We have to make sure, if we stick with the same organization that will be articulated in a new way, that the same problems do not come back. We have to make sure that if we have a new and completely different governing body than the one existing right now, we do not fall into the same old traps and have the same ineffectiveness and problems that we have right now.

That is going to be where the opposition parties will watch closely what the government and the minister do and hopefully will engage and help shape the decision in such a way that people will truly be protected by this set of regulations governing immigration consultants.

The members of the committee worked together. We had differences and concerns that were hammered out. It was, as the parliamentary secretary has said, a model of co-operation and of trying to do right by Canadians on this important issue. It is something that I was very pleased to be able to be part of, and it is something that I know we can be proud of as parliamentarians, that on important issues, from time to time, we are able to work together.

I think the spirit of collegiality and co-operation is important and I certainly hope it extends to other bills and other issues on which we can find agreement in principle and not just tweak in committee but improve in committee, as my hon. colleague has said.

For all of these reasons, the Liberal Party is very happy to support Bill C-35 at third reading. We hope that it will be quickly passed by the other chamber so that Canadians will be protected when we have our new regulator for immigration consultants.

[Petitions, November 24th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I stand today on behalf of the Native Women's Shelter of Montreal and the 132 other community organizations across Canada with a petition to reinstate support for the community-based projects addressing the legacy of residential schools.

The petitioners call upon the Government of Canada to assist the Aboriginal Healing Foundation of Canada in supporting community-based projects nationwide, as per the foundation's mandate, and to make the $199 million promised in the 2010 budget available to the already established community-based projects currently addressing the legacy of residential schools.

These initiatives are about aboriginal communities helping aboriginal communities. They are important for the government to support.

[Haiti, November 22nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, $5 million for Haiti is great, but the government is sitting on $350 million in its coffers that has already been allocated to that country. That money is needed right away. It is time for the government to release all the funding it promised. Canadians and Haitians were expecting the government to help our friends in their time of need. This government has to stop stalling and react accordingly.

Will this government keep its word? What is it waiting for to release the funds and help Haiti?

[Haiti, November 22nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, nearly one year ago, Haiti was devastated by earthquake. Canadians responded with extraordinary generosity, and the government promised to double their contributions. Eight months later, our friends in Haiti have received barely a third of the money. The need is great, because the country is now in the grip of a cholera pandemic that has already killed more than 1,000 people and sent tens of thousands to hospital.

What is the government waiting for to respond to this crisis, and is it preparing to send the DART to Haiti?

[Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, November 18th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, today the Winnipeg Free Press admitted that it made a mistake in an editorial and a headline by making a false accusation about the Leader of the Opposition.

It is now perfectly clear that our leader was not playing political games. He called for a straight-up fight and a clear choice for the voters of Winnipeg North, and spoke only about Kevin Lamoureux, who brings to this byelection 18 years of commitment to his constituents.

However, that did not stop the Conservative Party from ramping up a campaign of misinformation based on these false headlines. Through statements in this House and emails from government MPs, the Conservatives yet again spread myth as if it were fact.

The government's conduct in this matter is calculated to divide communities based on a falsehood. It should be ashamed of itself. Now that the record has been corrected, it has an obligation to do the honourable thing and apologize to the people of Winnipeg North and to Canadians, who deserve better from their government. Anything less would be dishonourable.

[Media Literacy Week, November 3rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, Marshall McLuhan wrote, “New media are not just mechanical gimmicks for creating worlds of illusion, but new languages with new and unique powers of expression”.

This week we are celebrating the fifth annual Media Literacy Week.

Media literacy has evolved with the arrival of cyberspace. Are these new technologies enriching or impoverishing our culture, knowledge and sense of community? What challenges come with regulating a borderless medium like the Internet?

This year's theme deals with gender stereotypes in the media. Despite many accomplishments, sexist prejudices against women still exist in the media, so we need to constantly re-evaluate what we read, what we say and what we write. As public figures, we must be leaders in the fight against gender stereotypes.

The challenges surrounding media's transformative capacity is not something to fear, but to acknowledge, for as McLuhan also said, “We become what we behold. We shape our tool and then our tools shape us”.

[Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act, November 1st, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Party supported the budget because we believed a lot of what the Conservative government had to say. We had some concerns about some of the directions and some of the decisions that were taken within the budget, but we agreed that Canada needed to spend, to invest in things.

We have to establish something important. There is nothing inherently wrong with a deficit, with borrowing money, if we invest it wisely in a way that is going to give us returns, as individuals or as a society, a few years down the line. Our problem with this budget, as we have seen how it has unfolded, is that the partisanship involved in the decisions made and the focus on short-term, electorally pleasing expenditures rather than long-term investing in social infrastructure, for example, have left us weaker than we should be for the amount of money Canadians poured into stimulus to recover from this global recession.

[Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act, November 1st, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to note that the member represents a riding on the very west coast of the country, very far from my riding of Papineau, and the concerns faced by citizens in both of our ridings are very much the same.

The need for affordable housing in Papineau is greater than it has ever been before. It is the number one thing I hear of when I talk to low and middle income families, single mothers and aging seniors who are worried about keeping a roof over their heads as the months and years go by. The fact that Canada does not have a national housing strategy is a real shame.

There is another area that that impacts as well. I recently spoke with a number of experts in immigration, and in resettlement and integration, in my capacity as immigration critic for the Liberal Party, and two elements that came back that would help new arrivals the greatest were a national housing strategy, giving them opportunities to settle and contribute from a point of stability, and a national strategy on public transit, on which we also do not have a pan-Canadian outlook.

I thank the member for bringing up that point, and I agree with him on the need for a national housing strategy.