Libby Davies

[Petitions, June 5th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition is signed by residents who want to draw to our attention that Canadians support their public health care system and want to ensure every Canadian has the same access to high-quality health care services wherever they live.

[Petitions, June 5th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I have three petitions to present today, which I will do quickly.

The first petition is signed by residents who ask that the sexual preferences of people not be an instant refusal of the right to donate blood, bone marrow, and organs.

The petitioners request the Government of Canada to return the rights of any healthy Canadian to give the gift of blood, bone marrow, and organs to those in need.

[Health, June 4th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the government does not need to hold an online consultation to find out that the voluntary system is not working. All it needs to do is open a newspaper.

Today we see another story of hospitals in Quebec paying significantly more for the chemo drug Paclitaxel because there is a shortage of it.

The minister has said that if a voluntary system is not working, she will move to mandatory reporting. Will the minister finally acknowledge what we have been saying all along and now introduce mandatory reporting for drug shortages?

[Health, June 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, it is not only a jurisdictional question for the provinces and the territories; it is a federal issue as well. Commitments were made by the federal government.

Outcomes speak louder than words, and wait times, according to this report card, are not improving. In fact, Canadians are now paying a very high emotional, physical, and even financial cost for the long wait times. According to the report today, the cost to the economy of lengthy waits for just five procedures is $15 billion a year.

Why will the government not honour the commitments that were made and become an active partner in reducing wait times for Canadians?

[Health, June 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the minister's assurance rings very hollow when we consider that the Conservatives eliminated the funding specifically targeted at reducing wait times. It has gone.

The Wait Time Alliance report card reveals that Canadians are waiting far longer for emergency care than people in other comparable countries, and 4.4 billion Canadians have no family doctor. Instead of working with the provinces to address these challenges, the government has abandoned them.

Why will the minister not come to the table with the provinces and work with them to improve health care for Canadians?

[Sport, June 2nd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the facts are that the government had been investing $4.5 million a year for a number of years in Participaction, which is a very necessary and important program, but now, without any warning, the Conservatives have slashed over half of the Participaction budget.

Slashing funding at a time when only 5% of children meet the physical activity guidelines just does not make sense.

I would like to ask the Minister of Health how she can explain to Canadians that the government is slashing funding for a program that saves health care dollars and keeps people healthier. How can she explain that?

[Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act, May 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the member has identified a real problem in the bill, in that the bill would create two tiers of citizenship. That is unheard of in Canada. I do not know what kind of debate there has been out there in the community. I do not know if people are even aware that this is what the consequence of the bill would be.

We have yet to see whether it will contravene international conventions. As we see with so much of the legislation passed by the government, there are all kinds of legal challenges that have to take place because legislation is brought forward in such a narrow partisan way.

I feel that the whole notion of sound public policy is being eroded by the Conservative government. Bill C-24 is a very good example of that.

I thank the member because her comments are very relevant.

[Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act, May 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, we are here tonight to talk about what this bill means and what it would do.

In reading the bill, what is very clear is that it would confer extraordinary power on the minister to allow the minister, he or she, to revoke citizenship in certain circumstances. That is wrong. We believe it violates due process, that it is not done through the judiciary with independent tribunals. It has been strongly criticized and condemned by a number of organizations that have examined the bill.

Why does the minister think a minister alone should have that kind of power? It just seems so fundamentally wrong. I do not think the government has answered that question. Where is the accountability? We have not heard that tonight from the government.

[Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act, May 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I have to say at this late hour, that was a very fine example of Conservative self-glorification at its best. I would like to thank both the minister and the hon. member for the wonderful job they did of patting each other on the back regarding the most dreadful bill that we have had before this House.

Believe it or not, I can remember a day when the current government was in opposition. Those members would have been outraged that a bill, which was so important, had two hours of debate back in February and then today, for the 65th time, was put under a censure order so that we will just have debate tonight and then it moves on. This has become such a familiar pattern, but it really is very disturbing. I remember when Conservative members would have stood up in this House decrying the fact that the government of the day was doing this, yet here they are, worse than anybody has ever been.

I feel honoured to represent Vancouver East, a riding where immigration and new citizenship are very honoured. It is something that has built our communities, whether the Chinese Canadian, Japanese Canadian, or the Filipino Canadian community. There are people from all over the world. It is a working-class, hard-working riding. People have come from all over and built businesses. They have contributed to community services and have gone to school here.

I feel very proud to be part of a community that is very much built on immigration. It is a place where people feel very proud about being a Canadian citizen. Therefore, this issue of citizenship and what it means is an important subject in Canada. We are basically a country of new Canadians. Other than first nations, we are all newcomers. Some of us have been here for generations and some folks are here for the very first time. I myself come from a first-generation immigrant family and so I very much value the notion of what it means to be a Canadian citizen, which is all the more reason to look at Bill C-24 and go through it.

My colleagues here tonight and I are very concerned about the bill. Listening to the debate from the Conservative members, I feel as if we are in different worlds. Maybe we identify some of the same problems, but from two different worlds.

In the Conservative world, everything is good or evil. If anyone dares to speak about the rule of law or due process, somehow means that one is in favour of terrorists or criminal behaviour. I mean, it is so juvenile it is sort of pathetic. One would want to see the level of debate in this House be a little more thoughtful, but that is what it has come down to.

Of course, in the NDP, like anybody else, we are very concerned about terrorists and criminal acts, but the question that we are looking at tonight with Bill C-24 when we identify these problems is: how do we respond to them? How do we deal with them?

When we look at the bill, the conclusion that I come to is that basically Conservatives hold themselves above the law. Bill C-24 lays out a process whereby there are extraordinary powers conferred upon a minister to revoke citizenship in certain instances based on suspicion, without any regard to due process, without any regard to independent tribunals or court process. The government really does see itself as the final arbiter.

We believe that is fundamentally wrong, which is why we feel so concerned about the bill. Not only is it being rushed through, but this premise in the bill of affixing problems that have been identified is so suspicious in the power that it confers on an individual. Again, it is a familiar pattern that we have seen on numerous occasions with different legislation.

In the NDP, we do believe in the rule of law. We do believe in the legitimate role of Parliament to debate, to investigate, and to improve legislation. That is what we are here to do.

That is what we are here to do. That is what we are elected to do by our constituents. However, we see more and more legislation rushed through Parliament and rushed through committee, sometimes at all stages, through closure, censure, and time allocation. As I said earlier, we have seen it tonight for the 65th time, and it really does make a mockery of what debate and investigation of legislation should be in the House of Commons.

I feel a sense of dismay tonight, even at this late hour. I am sure we are all tired because we have had a long, busy day, but there is a compelling argument that makes us want to take this on again and again and respond to the absolutely irrational arguments being put forward on the government side.

I heard the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration say earlier in the debate that NDP was fearmongering, yet when we look at the bill and the powers that the minister would have, there is a sense of fear over what the consequences of this bill would be. When we look at the expert organizations in this field and the concerns they have expressed—and I certainly hope they will be heard in committee—surely we see that there has to be a rational debate about whether this bill tips the balance and goes to an extreme in conferring on the minister such extraordinary powers to revoke citizenship.

I do not want two-tiered citizenship in this country. There are other countries that have that kind of regime. That is something that Canada should stay away from. A Canadian citizen is a Canadian citizen. If a person has gone through the process of becoming a citizen, that is good, and then citizenship becomes a right.

There are also responsibilities, and if there is wrongdoing, then we have provisions in this country—I think it is called the Criminal Code—that allow for a process to be enacted, for due process to happen, and for people to be prosecuted and jailed if necessary. We have that system in place, but in reading this bill, one would think that none of it existed.

I find it really quite extraordinary that we are dealing with a bill that would in effect allow the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to act as prosecutor, judge, and enforcer. To me, that is simply wrong. We have a separation of powers in this country for a very good reason. We have a balance of powers in terms of a legislature with regard to the execution and enforcement of the law. There is a reason we have those checks and balances, so the legislation before us is very disturbing.

There is no question that there are issues in the bill that need to be dealt with, such as the issue of the lost Canadians. That is a long-standing issue that has needed to be addressed. I am glad that it is being addressed, but it is being smothered in this bill by other provisions, particularly the revocation of citizenship, which I think is very offensive.

There is also the question of why some of the real concerns we have about our immigration system are not being addressed. Many members tonight spoke about the issue of the backlog, the fact that there are over 300,000 people still waiting and that it takes an extraordinarily long time for applications to be processed. The Conservatives have promised and failed on many occasions to rectify that problem. We have not seen it happen, and it is not rectified in this bill.

If we look at an issue like family reunification, which is very important in terms of citizenship and immigration, we see that it is not dealt with at all; in fact, to the contrary, all of the measures we have seen from the government have actually narrowed family reunification and made it a lot more difficult.

At the end of the day, Bill C-24 is a bad bill. There might be some good provisions in it, but overall, the powers that it would confer upon the minister are unnecessary. They are not needed. They are powers that would cause problems in the long term.

I am very proud that New Democrats have been standing tonight to debate this bill and expose how fundamentally flawed it is. It will go to committee, and we will do our utmost to ensure that there are witnesses and that there are amendments. We can only hope that members of the House will be willing to consider amendments to make sure this bill is improved.

[Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act, May 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my colleague from Vancouver South on the other side of the House and her comments on this bill. I find it very curious that Conservative members are so intent on saying that Canadians must obey and uphold the law, yet they create legislation that would put a minister above the law. This is one of the really offensive parts of this bill.

Could the member explain to us and Canadians how it is that her party feels that it is acceptable to bypass judicial due process in revoking citizenship? Why should so much power be conferred on the minister solely to do that without a judicial process?