Meili Faille

[Minister of Public Works and Government Services, January 30th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, Michael Fortier, an unelected minister, does not hesitate to give lessons in democracy to the elected members of this House, which is quite surprising given that he refused to run in the recent byelection in Quebec.

He is perverting democracy by implying that he is elected, opening campaign offices in my riding and making government announcements in the company of Conservative candidates.

This is the same Michael Fortier, the Minister of Public Works and Government Services, whose office is currently embroiled in allegations of political interference, as we learned yesterday.

These are just a few examples of how this government pays lip service to the idea of democracy, which it blithely uses for blatantly partisan purposes.

[Criminal Code, January 29th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, this is my first time speaking since our return from the break. I am pleased to rise today to ask my hon. colleague a question about this file. In the short time I had in my riding during the holiday season, I learned about some citizens who discovered that their credit files had been changed because someone had used their identity inappropriately and fraudulently. As a result, our citizens want to see measures to punish and discourage the use of documents for committing fraud. Many of our citizens are concerned about identity theft.

In the United States, there is another piece of legislation with several provisions aimed at reducing these cases of identity theft. One such provision is intended to help the victims of fraud to re-establish their credit rating.

Can my colleague give us more information about this issue? I know the Bloc Québécois has analyzed the various systems that exist, particularly in France and the United States.

I would also like him to come back to the strategy proposed by the government that involves finding a solution to the issue of identity theft through the Criminal Code. During the May 8, 2007 meeting of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, we heard some information, or rather some recommendations from Jennifer Stoddart, who proposed modifications to proceedings on the civil side. I would like to hear my colleague expand on this.

[Unborn Victims of Crime Act, December 13th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-484. I will start by saying that, as a woman, I would have never believed that I would still be here fighting for the rights of women. It has been a fierce battle, waged by so many women before me.

The Conservatives, with this bill, are implicitly trying to achieve an objective, that is, restrict the right to abortion. I will explain.

With this bill, the Conservatives hope to add a new offence to the Criminal Code. This bill proposes that an individual who directly or indirectly, causes the death of a child during birth or at any stage of development before birth while committing or attempting to commit an offence against the mother of the child, who the person knows or ought to know is pregnant—is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for life and to a minimum punishment of imprisonment for a term of 10 years if the person means to cause the child’s death...

Basically, a person who assaults a pregnant woman and causes the death of the fetus could be charged with murder. As the member said, this bill would introduce a new offence. The text of the bill provides that the pregnant woman herself can be charged with causing the death of the fetus inside her. Clearly, the battle for women's rights is not yet won. The bill clearly states that in cases of a crime committed against an unborn child, a fetus, a person cannot use the defence that the child was not a human being.

Gestation of the unborn child begins with conception and ends with birth. Case law has confirmed that an unborn child is not a legal person. I understand that such a clause can apply at the moment of birth, when the fetus becomes a human being. It is something else entirely to grant these rights to an unborn child, a fetus, when it is not a separate entity from its mother.

The Conservatives are trying to make substantial changes to the Criminal Code's definition of a child, which is quite specific. Section 223 of the Criminal Code states that:

223.(1) A child becomes a human being within the meaning of this Act when it has completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother, whether or not

(a) it has breathed;

(b) it has an independent circulation; or

(c) the navel string is severed.

I am sure you will agree that the government is making a surreptitious attempt to deprive women of their freedom of choice regarding abortion.

After attacking the right to abortion by questioning the medical necessity of that procedure, the government is now attacking that right by attempting to recognize the rights of the fetus. It seems that this bill was devised to set a precedent for recognizing the fetus' right to life and thereby restrict the right to abortion and perhaps even abolish it completely.

It is up to women to decide. They have their own reasons for their choices. This is a pro-life bill that is trying to hide behind the concept of the unborn child. This bill opens the door to limiting women's power to be free and to make the choices they have the right to make.

I was recently reading some surveys and responses to surveys. We learned that the Conservative member for Edmonton—Sherwood Park, who describes himself as pro-life, had said in response to a survey conducted by the Campaign Life Coalition for the 2006 federal election that he considered that human life began at conception. In 1997, he responded that if he was elected, he would work to remove abortion from the services covered by the Canada Health Act. He is not the first Conservative member to have said that. There are also rumours going around about a committee being formed here in the House with both Conservative and Liberal members.

The previous bill the Conservatives introduced was similar, but was deemed unconstitutional. A few changes have been made to it, but the objective is the same. The Conservatives' determination is an indirect threat to women's rights, and that threat is evident in the member's remarks.

He is trying to do indirectly what he would like to do directly.

No one is happy about an abortion. It is not something anyone wishes for. But women must be able to make that choice, for any number of reasons. Women are entitled to have their decision honoured. It is a difficult decision they do not take lightly. Women fought long and hard to win the right to abortion.

With this bill, the Conservatives are trying, in a roundabout way, to attack those rights by making dangerous statements or by attempting to give legal personality to the fetus. They are separating the fetus from the mother and rewriting the legal definition of the child. That is what they are trying to do with this bill.

Women have a fundamental right to interrupt a pregnancy. It is a way of exerting control over their lives and their living conditions. This bill challenges women's rights. The courts have repeatedly had to rule on the right of the fetus and the possibility of restraining the conduct of the mother in order to protect the child's right to be born. In every case, the Supreme Court has refused to invade the privacy of pregnant women and limit their right to freedom and independence.

This was the case in Tremblay v. Daigle, in which a father sought an injunction to prevent the mother from having an abortion, claiming that the fetus had a right to life. The Supreme Court once again ruled that only human beings have constitutional rights and that these rights start at the time of live birth. The Court also rejected the father's claim that he had rights over the fetus as a father. The Court determined that the father could not obtain an injunction to prevent the pregnant mother from exercising her constitutional right to choose to have an abortion.

With all due respect to the members, the consensus in society is clear and was evident during the last election campaign. The Leader of the Conservative Party himself made a commitment not to reopen the abortion debate. The measure proposed in Bill C-484 goes against that commitment. The House will obviously have to look at this issue and women will have a decision to make come election time. It is clear that the lobbies who subscribe to moral and social conservatism are hard at work in the back rooms of Ottawa. We need to be vigilant. Putting an initial restriction on abortion opens the door to a whole series of other restrictions.

With respect to the rights of the fetus, there is already a large body of case law arguing that the fetus is not a human being. I think that the mistake in this bill is to try to change the definition of a child. The law is clear on the definition of a human being.

I urge the House not to support this bill, which opens the door to the criminalization of abortion. There is a hidden objective in this bill to prevent a woman from choosing whether or not to have a child.

[Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, December 12th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Bill C-394. This enactment would allow a Canadian citizen or permanent resident to sponsor, once in their lifetime, a relative who is not a member of the family class.

I would like to thank the member for Parkdale—High Park for raising this issue in response to repeated requests that we receive as members of Parliament when we meet citizens who wish to be reunited with family members. Their frustration on discovering that they cannot be reunited is evident. Moreover, those who already have a case in process tell us that they, too, experience frustration and exasperation when they find out how long they will have to wait before the government processes their case.

The Bloc Québécois believes that family is of vital importance. That is why we have always supported policies that help families. That applies to immigration too. This issue deserves a close look. I am very glad that one of our colleagues has opened the debate on this issue in the House. I think that the questions that will be raised and the discussion they will lead to will prove useful.

Canada has a moral obligation to do whatever it can to reunite families. We will therefore support the principles underlying this bill.

We would like this bill to go through a preliminary consultation process during meetings of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. We want to be sure that we understand the consequences of this bill on the immigration program.

The government will probably want to maintain the 60:40 balance between economic class immigration—business people, independent workers and skilled workers—and family class and refugee immigration.

I represent the riding of Vaudreuil-Soulanges in Quebec. The number of immigrants in my riding is growing. Lots of people come to my office to ask me to help them sponsor a relative. I am sure that other ridings in Quebec are experiencing the same thing.

We would like to hear about what happened from 1988 to 1993, when the Conservatives in power at the time changed the sponsorship rules by expanding the family class. I think it found itself in a situation in which it did not have the ability to process all the files of everyone who took advantage of this legislative change. We should remember the backlog that existed at a number of immigration offices abroad. At that time, different programs in the public service were experiencing major budget cuts and immigration was no exception.

Now, maybe the federal government has the means, but that is not the case for all the provinces. It is true that there are big challenges to integrating immigrants, but that does not prevent this bill from moving forward and at least continuing somewhat, so that it can be considered in committee.

Although the list of people who can be sponsored under the family class was expanded a few years ago, Canada's regulations concerning immigration and refugees are still quite limited in their definition of family members. Unfortunately, efforts in recent years have not solved the problem of wait times.

It may be time to expand the family class. I believe that an in-depth review in committee will allow us to better assess the mechanisms and resources that will be needed if Parliament passes this bill.

Canada certainly has to be able to control its immigration and set some limits. The limit here is allowing someone, once in their lifetime, to sponsor a relative. I think the hon. member was trying to limit massive immigration of relatives, but I wonder if she is taking the right approach.

There are so many problems to resolve in our immigration system. Certain mechanisms and principles distort the real objectives of immigration. Insufficient resources are a major problem across the board in immigration.

The consideration of a bill like this will at least force a debate and keep the pressure on the government for adequate funding to provide proper settlement services for those we take in, while not ignoring our humanitarian duty and compassion.

We need to bring meaning back to the expression “human compassion”, far too often rendered meaningless by acts that are not consistent with the family reunification programs.

The social costs of prolonged periods of separation must not be forgotten in our decision.

Although we are in favour of the principle of this bill, we believe it poses some problems in terms of its application. Is the hon. member proposing an increase in the number of immigrants or more changes to the 60/40 ratio between economic class immigrants and family class immigrants? Will immigration targets vary within the current limits on the admissible number of immigrants or is the hon. member suggesting the limits be increased? If we maintain the current numbers and the current limits, what impact will this have on the already lengthy wait times? If we increase the number of files to process, is the department capable of absorbing the new workload? Considering the existing backlog in processing files, will this bill not make matters worse?

For now it would be important to look at whether this will have a significant impact on the ability of Quebec and Canada to integrate the people sponsored through this bill. There are other questions that need to be asked and these could be discussed in greater length during the next debate on this bill.

Not only is the protection of families a fundamental principle entrenched in international law, but the principle also appears in section 3 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. That section outlines the goals of the act and specifies that one of the goals is to ensure that families are reunited. We must not lose sight of that objective. It is from that perspective, I think, that the member introduced this bill. We must at least consider this bill, allow it to move forward and be studied in committee. We could then at least debate, once and for all, the shortcomings of the immigration system. We could identify its shortcomings and the opportunities presented.

In accordance with international human rights texts, the protection of families is a responsibility of the state. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights specifies that family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the state. In other words, the state, which is Canada, must do everything it can to support family reunification. This is in the legislation and, as parliamentarians, we must examine the matter and not completely dismiss the possibility of debating such an important issue.

The Bloc Québécois believes that some of the existing mechanisms facilitating family reunification need to be remedied. As many people already know, among other things, I am extremely involved in refugee files. When a family reunification file takes eight or nine years to resolve, that is completely unacceptable. That is an example of how the family reunification policy must be improved. We must examine and assess the possibility of expanding the category immediately, as I was saying earlier. We must work from that perspective and with an objective that is as open as possible to other family members, as set out in this bill.

[O'Connor Report, December 12th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, a year ago, the Commission of Inquiry into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar released its second report, entitled, “A New Review Mechanism for the RCMP's National Security Activities”.

Commissioner Dennis O'Connor came up with a series of recommendations for a new approach to reviewing the RCMP's national security activities. One year later, no significant progress has been made in implementing these important recommendations or developing an action plan for improving the review of national security activities.

The Conservative government is clearly lacking leadership in this area, as in many others, especially when we see how reckless it is about ensuring that the most basic rights are respected. We should be doing everything in our power to avoid another Arar affair, but the Conservatives are sitting around doing nothing about these fundamental issues.

[John Humphrey Freedom Award, December 7th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, Rights & Democracy presents the John Humphrey Freedom Award each year to an organization or individual from any country or region of the world, including Canada, for exceptional achievement in the promotion of human rights and democratic development.

This year's recipient of the award is Akbar Ganji, the celebrated Iranian journalist and dissident. Mr. Ganji, a staunch defender of human rights, is an inspiration and source of hope to his fellow Iranians. Mr. Ganji spent six years in prison for exposing rights abuses committed by the Iranian government. Throughout his detention, he continued to write, producing a series of influential political manifestos and open letters calling for the establishment of democracy.

My Bloc Québécois colleagues and I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to this strong advocate of human rights.

[Citizenship and Immigration, November 30th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, to prevent another case like that of Maher Arar from occurring, does the Minister of Foreign Affairs intend to negotiate a new agreement with the Americans in order to ensure that no refugee will be deported to his country of origin if there is a risk of torture?

[Citizenship and Immigration, November 30th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, a Federal Court ruling referring to the Maher Arar case has virtually nullified the safe third country agreement between Canada and the U.S. with respect to the treatment of refugees. According to this ruling, the Americans are contravening international conventions by not ensuring that the refugees they deport do not become victims of torture in their country of origin.

Given that this agreement would contravene the Canadian charter and international conventions that Canada has signed, does the minister intend to renegotiate the terms of the agreement?

[Citizenship and Immigration, November 23rd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the inaction on the part of the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration is responsible for the backlog at the IRB. When this government first came to power, the board had reduced the average processing time for refuge claims to 9.4 months. This year, there is a backlog of more than 12,000 files and the average processing time has jumped to 14.3 months. There are currently 43 vacant commissioner positions, which represents 34% of the total work force.

Is the minister aware that not enough of these positions are being filled and that the backlog will continue to grow?

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, November 22nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I would first like to congratulate my colleague for presenting the Bloc Québécois position so well. I wish to ask him a question.

Recently, in Quebec, in my riding, a young driver killed little Bianca, whose family lives in Île-Perrot. Citizens of the area mobilized to demand that the youth was incarcerated until the case was heard. However, as a youth, he had undertaken to appear in court.

I would like to hear what my colleague has to say about this case. I would like to know how the Bloc's position would help this youth. His companions, his friends, the people around him could also support him. Can the member tell us why it would be detrimental for his future for the government to make an example of this youth?