Kevin Lamoureux

[Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act, May 17th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, would the member be able to provide some comment in regard to the two ships, the Sun Sea and the Ocean Lady, both of which landed on our shores a couple of years back? If this particular bill is passed, and we anticipate that it will be because there is a majority government, it would give the minister of immigration the power to retroactively classify those individuals who came to Canada on those two ships as irregulars, which would have a fairly significant impact on their future.

Would the member provide any comment with respect to the retroactivity of this particular bill?

[Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act, May 17th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the efforts that the member made in committee. I enjoyed listening to his questions. I thought they were good questions, well put and so forth.

I want to ask a different type of question that I have asked other members, and that is with regard to the safe country list. The member was at committee listening to all the presenters. I think he recognizes that Canada does need to establish a safe country list. All political parties support that, or at least the three main political parties support having a safe country list. Where we differ in our opinions is on the manner by which countries are placed onto that list.

Can the member recall anything in committee where the suggestion would have been made or implied that it would be better to have the minister determine what is a safe country, versus an advisory group or a panel? I thought an advisory group or a panel would have been better than having the minister himself do it. I think an amendment to re-establish what was previously agreed to would be well received if, in fact, that amendment were put here in the House or even possibly in the Senate.

[Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act, May 17th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the member made reference to the issue of mandatory detention and then alluded to the current system. What I have been saying for quite a while now is that we, meaning the immigration and citizenship committee, have been told that the current system of detention was actually working quite well. It was proven to be effective. It was holding people in detention for as long as was necessary to alleviate both public security and health concerns.

It raises the question of why the government would change something that appeared to be working quite well. It had nothing to do with the processing times that all parties are concerned about and everything to do with how to detain someone. That system seemed to work, so why would the government want to make that change at this time? What does the member suspect is the motivator?

[Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act, May 17th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, my question will be fairly specific. It is in regard to the minister's ability to indicate to a grouping of two or more that those individuals would be deemed an irregular arrival.

By that designation, they would be subjected to detention. They would have to try to prove their identity within fourteen days and, if they did not do that, then they would be in mandatory detention for at least another six months. I acknowledge that the government did give some leeway on the one-year mandatory detention, and that is a good thing. Obviously it did not go far enough.

Surely to goodness the minister realizes he is going to divide a parent from a child in some situations. In the long run that is not healthy for both parent and child. The long-term cost of doing that could be great, not only socially but economically.

How would the minister respond to that, which is a concern that was raised on numerous occasions in the committee?

[Citizenship and Immigration, May 17th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism has it wrong. He is the problem. He is the one causing the issues with regard to the backlog. That is the reality of it.

There is a two year freeze for parents, no more moms and dads because of that minister. Tens of thousands of skilled workers are being told “no more, hit the delete button”. That is how the Conservatives are getting rid of the backlog. It is a cruel policy that the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism is implementing.

Why has the Prime Minister appointed such a cruel immigration minister?

[Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act, May 17th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the member has sat through some of the immigration committee meetings, maybe all of them. I am not too sure exactly how many he was there for.

The issue of detention came up time and time again. At one time the Conservatives were proposing that it be mandatory for an entire year. What was made very clear was the fact that the current system of detention works. I am talking strictly the detention aspect of the bill. We had the ability to keep people in detention well over a year, indefinitely. Anyone who seemed to be a potential threat to our nation, whether it was security or health or whatever it might have been, was already there.

If the detention system was working well, why would the government want to change it?

[Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act, May 17th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, when we talk about the two-tier refugee system, maybe the best thing to do is provide a tangible example.

A family or group of four people fly into the Trudeau airport in Montreal. The minister would have the authority to say that they are irregular arrivals, which means they would go through a completely different stream and they would be treated completely differently than a group of four people at the Toronto international airport who are not deemed irregular arrivals.

Under that situation, the potential refugees in Montreal would be subjected to such things as detention or not being able to sponsor a child they might have left behind because they wanted to get out of the country quickly because of a threat of death or torture, for five years. It is going to keep the family apart. However, that group of four individuals who landed in Toronto would be able to sponsor because they were deemed as regular arrivals.

That is why it is very important for us to understand that there is going to be a distinction between those refugees who are deemed irregular arrivals and those who are not. That is where the concern comes in with regard to the 1951 UN convention.

[Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act, May 17th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's comments. I try to be consistent in the House, in committee and in my constituency. Consistency is important.

It is important to have an open mind so that when someone comes up with a good idea one is prepared to genuinely look at it, assess it and take action if it would improve the bill.

The presentation that my colleague referred to did make reference to the 15 days. However, there was a litany of other things that the individual presented. Members can access a full presentation on the issue. The United Nations has serious concerns with this legislation. I suspect, as a whole, it would have been much happier had there been a number of amendments recognizing some of the flaws in the legislation.

[Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act, May 17th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary reinforces why it is we have a two-tier system. We need to recognize that the people on the Sun Sea and the Ocean Lady will be deemed as irregular arrivals once this legislation passes. If we had applied that same principle to what the government wants today, that would have been applied to a ship that came from India, Europe or Vietnam. The government would have classified these individuals as irregulars. The moment they are branded as irregular arrivals, they will be treated differently from other refugees, which goes against the 1951 United Nations convention. That is something that was brought to the government's attention, even in committee.

I want to pick up on the point that Bill C-31 would tarnish Canada's leadership role in the whole area of refugees. For many years, Canada has been a leader when it comes to the development of refugee policies. Countries throughout the world have looked to Canada as a model and to see how they might be able to emulate it.

What became quite apparent at the committee level after listening to presenter after presenter was that this would tarnish our reputation. One of the primary reasons for that was the establishment of the two-tier refugee, better known as the irregular arrival versus the other form of arrival, and the consequences of that. For example, as with the Sun Sea and the Ocean Lady, people left their country because they were scared of being tortured or possibly killed, or whatever the reason might have been. They would be victimized once again by being put into a detention centre and then, because they would be labelled as irregulars, even if they were classified shortly thereafter as being bona fide refugees, they would not be able to sponsor their children or their spouse for at least five years, unlike other refugees. To me and everyone else except the Conservative members of the committee that is a two-tier system.

The Conservatives talked a lot about the importance of mandatory detention. I will concede that they did change their minds once we were at the committee stage, and I applaud them on doing that, but we need to look at the reality of it. The current system related to detentions works. Canada Border Services presented at the committee. We already have the ability to do what is proposed in this bill in terms of being able to keep people in detention centres. That aspect of the system is not broken. The government has made that up in order to bring in what it had originally called “the anti-smuggling bill”. That is the one for which the Prime Minister and the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism stepped on the back of a ship to give the impression that we were being invaded by refugees. That aspect of the legislation does not need to be fixed. It works and yet the government is prepared to tarnish our reputation in order to have a photo op and create a false impression with Canadians.

As I said, the Conservatives did back down at the committee stage and changed their mind. Now they are saying that there will be a 14 day review, which is great. We support that idea. However, after that it is a long six months. We suggested that, at the very least, there should be some sort of review every 28 days. They call it judicial overview.

We should not have to keep people in detention if there is no need to keep them in detention. However, for some reason the Conservatives believe they should, at a huge cost. I am not just talking about the dollar figure. I am also talking about the social cost of it.

The government likes to think it is about families and yet it wants to lock up parents of children who will be put into foster care facilities. Better yet, the government is saying that people will have a choice, the choice being that they can take their eight-year-old son with them to jail so they can still be together. What kind of a dilemma is that? As a parent, my choice is that I can either take my eight-year-old child with me into a jail or a detention centre or I can have my child separated from me and living in a foster care facility. One does not need to be a psychiatrist to understand that will cause all sorts of social issues going forward after the matter has been resolved.

There is the issue of age. We moved amendment after amendment to try to deal with the recognition that there is a difference between 16 and 18 years of age.

At the end of the day, we believe the minister is now saying that he is the one to decide. Not only can he tell who is a regular or irregular arrival, he wants to be able to say what is a safe country and what is not. One had better not be on that safe country list because it will be a whole lot more difficult. People had better come with a lot of paperwork and have it filed, and know who they will be recruiting to represent them because they will not have very much time to get their case together in order to adequately represent themselves.

How many advocates, groups and individuals, whether they were lawyers or lay people who came before the committee, said that was not enough time? The government is not allowing individuals the opportunity to make and state their cases.

We in the Liberal Party want a process that will not only be fast but we want the other “f” word also: fair. That seems to have escaped the government. It does not seem to recognize the importance of fairness in the system. That has been lost on the minister.

We talked at great lengths in regard to the safe country list. We do not believe for a moment that the minister should have the responsibility of designation. We believe there are people who are much better equipped to determine which country should be deemed a safe country. That is why, in previous legislation, when there was a minority Conservative government, there was a consensus. Even the current Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism acknowledged back then that it was good legislation and it made sense.

What did that legislation say? It said that there would be an advisory panel of professionals, of people who had an understanding of human rights and so forth. Those individuals would be the ones to identify those countries around the world that could be deemed as being safe.

We were hopeful that was something on which the government would have been open to amendments. When the government said that it was open to amendments, we went into the committee stage in anticipation that would, in fact, be the case. The government made some amendments that came out of its own party but there was nothing in terms of recognizing the advisory committee, even though all political parties agreed to that previously and it would have improved the legislation.

The Liberal Party put forward numerous amendments. The Green Party picked up on a number of those amendments. We had hoped to give the government a second chance by getting it to support those amendments.

We do not support the bill as a whole because we believe the government has really dropped the ball on this reform package. We recognize the importance of speeding up the process but we also believe that there needs to be fairness, judicial overview and ministerial accountability and that is missing in this bill.

[Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act, May 17th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I have a very specific question for the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration with regard to this whole idea of the two-tiered refugee system.

There is a retroactive portion in the bill that, if passed, means that the individuals who arrived on the Sun Sea or the Ocean Lady could be subjected to Bill C-31, which means that, if and when they acquire refugee status, the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism gets to decide whether they will be able to sponsor a family member shortly after being recognized as legitimate refugees.

Is the parliamentary secretary prepared to give a guarantee to the House that the individuals who arrived on the Sun Sea and the Ocean Lady will not be subjected to this legislation?