Meili Faille

[Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, May 28th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to conclude this hour of debate on third reading. This is not the first time I have spoken about the Refugee Appeal Division. It is necessary, and it is the cornerstone of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, or IRPA.

It took a bill introduced by my colleague from Laval to finally get the appeal division implemented. Around us here, among our colleagues in this House, there are many who have openly supported the creation of the appeal division, and I want to thank them warmly.

Since I came to Parliament in 2004, I have worked constantly with refugees and immigrants in Quebec and Canada. The Refugee Appeal Division is an important piece that was missing from the legislation, and that absence is currently hurting people who are among the most disadvantaged among us. We know the consequences of the decisions that are made, and that, when mistakes are made, they are not necessarily corrected. I would therefore like to take this opportunity to thank my colleague from Laval for joining me in standing up for the rights of refugees, with conviction and without wavering.

Over the five years that have followed the passage of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Bloc Québécois has called attention to the injustices and inconsistencies in the area of immigration and refugee protection. The Bloc Québécois has also stood up for the interests of Quebec in this area. By failing to implement the appeal division, the government has made a mockery of refugee law. The Bloc Québécois has done everything possible to put an end to this injustice and used every means at its disposal to do that.

Canada is recognized as having one of the most generous systems in the world. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the UNHCR, in fact points to Canada's reputation as a leader in the humanitarian cause. On the other hand, the High Commissioner for Refugees believes, and has long been saying, that to add credibility to our system we need to have an appeal division in the refugee determination process. We need to be sure, once and for all, that the legislation that has done so much harm to so many refugees will be fixed and we need to be able to have an appeal on the merits. This procedure would allow for inconsistencies to be remedied as early as possible in the decision-making process.

It is not always possible to understand the intentions of the government, which has obstinately refused to set up the Refugee Appeal Division. We have numerous international organizations behind us. Amnesty International is urging Canada to set up the Refugee Appeal Division. The UN Committee against Torture has criticized the fact that there is no appeal division and has called for major changes. After the esteemed international organizations, we have organizations such as Rights and Democracy and the provincial governments, including the Quebec government. We can also include refugee advocacy groups like the Canadian Council for Refugees, the Centre for Faith and Justice, KAIROS, the Canadian and Quebec bar associations, immigrant service agencies like OCASI and TCRI, and the thousands of people who have signed the petitions presented in this House for more than five years. What is the Conservative government waiting for? The list goes on; it includes numerous professors and experts in international law and justice, including François Crépeau, the professor to whom my colleague in the NDP referred.

The Bloc Québécois had to introduce a bill asking for the implementation of the sections of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act dealing with the Refugee Appeal Division. This is ironical. I am proud that the Bloc Québécois took this initiative. We asked and demanded several times that this appeal division be implemented and, given the unwillingness and stubbornness of successive governments, we had no other choice than to introduce this bill so the debate would take place once and for all.

We believe that the in-depth changes concerning protection are urgent and necessary. These changes will not happen easily or quickly, but they must happen. Concrete and immediate action must be taken. We must start right now, especially since this will be a lengthy process.

Members will agree that a long trip can only start with a first step. The Refugee Appeal Division is this first step that we are seeking.

I take this opportunity to thank all the organizations that appeared before the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration and which provided us with the information and some wise advice. Their expertise and know-how are now duly recognized and they provided us with precious input. Thanks to them, we managed to convince several colleagues from other political parties in the House of Commons. All these people came here to remind us on many occasions that Canada's humanitarian tradition has long been a model for many countries, and they asked us to maintain it.

Consequently, I take this opportunity to salute them and to pay tribute to them today. The Conservatives, who now form a minority government, have done everything in their power to obstruct the passing of this bill. They flipped-flopped on this file and this is unacceptable. In the past, they supported the implementation of the appeal division when they were in opposition and also took part in an unanimous motion by the committee. This, among other things, was part of their platform.

In getting at the issue, I think that we must remember that deciding whether an individual is or is not a refugee is probably one of the most difficult decisions there is and everybody recognizes this. It is also a terrible decision to have to make since a serious mistake in the determination could cause an individual to be deported back to their country of origin, where they could suffer unfortunate consequences, be threatened or even killed. That is why we have been demanding for so long that Canada, like all other countries, adopt a determination mechanism that would allow the review of decisions, and that is the Refugee Appeal Division.

The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, the IRB, has been going through the worst crisis of its existence since the Conservatives have come to power. Besides advocating a return to a partisan board members selection process, they voluntarily put up roadblocks and created the present crisis because more than one third of IRB commissioner positions are now vacant. These people are necessary to make important and crucial decisions for people.

The backlog increases by 1,000 cases every month because the government is improvising on such an important issue. The government must correct the situation. The Conservatives have a moral responsibility to do so. I ask the hon. members to support Bill C-280. The rights of the refugees are at stake.

[Chinese Exclusion Act, May 14th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, today we are celebrating an important anniversary in the history of the Chinese community.

I join with the hon. member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie and leader of the Bloc Québécois and with the other members of the House of Commons to commemorate this day, which marks the abolition of the Chinese Immigration Act, which required a security deposit from people wanting to come to Canada. Sixty years ago, the government made history by abolishing discriminatory measures based on race.

Today, we remember that between 1923 and 1947, people of Chinese origin were treated a lot more harshly than others. The government intentionally stopped Chinese immigration after having taken $23 million from the Chinese people. At that time, people of Chinese origin had to endure being separated from their families and could not become Canadian citizens. It goes without saying that forcing those people to live far from their wives and children was a totally exaggerated and inhumane measure.

When we read the papers from that time, including those from Quebec, we can see that the difficulties of the Chinese community were already recognized. The problem was much worse in British Columbia, where the great majority of people of Chinese origin had settled.

On behalf of the Bloc Québécois and myself, I would like to recognize the hard work of the people who pleaded for history to finally be corrected here, in this House, on behalf of the victims. Without them, without their exemplary dedication to this cause for many years, nothing would have been possible.

Several of them are here today and I salute them. They were relentless in the pursuit of justice. We should pay tribute, once again, to the memory of all those who could never be reunited.

Since the apologies that were made last June, the community has started to turn the page on this sad chapter in the history of Canada. It has celebrated this announcement as a great victory for the future of the community. However, we deplore the fact that the government has not provided a symbolic compensation to direct descendants. Yet, last June, the parliamentary secretary had not closed the doors to such a possibility.

Has everything been settled? It goes without saying that we have to learn from these events to ensure that history does not repeat itself. The memory of the victims and the great injustices that were committed must inspire our daily thoughts as parliamentarians and leaders in our communities and help us to make better, fairer and more humane decisions.

Several members of the Chinese community are still having difficulty talking to their children about this. This action from another era was extreme and had severe consequences.

Such discriminatory acts should never happen again. We carry this great responsibility. It is a matter of justice.

[Petitions, April 25th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, 30 years after the immoral war in Vietnam, Canada must make a moral choice to give refuge to people who refuse to be accomplices in the American war in Iraq. I have the honour to table a petition with a thousand signatures of people in my region who are calling on the Department of Citizenship and Immigration to review its policy on war objectors and allow them to obtain refugee status in Canada.

[Benamer Benatta, April 19th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, even though the FBI cleared him of all terrorist links three months after he was incarcerated, this man spent 58 months in prison for no reason, trapped in a maze of procedures that have been severely criticized by human rights defence organizations and a United Nations committee.

How can the government justify Canada's flagrant failure to comply with UN agreements on the rights of refugees?

[Benamer Benatta, April 19th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Benamer Benatta, an Algerian national seeking refugee status, spent nearly five years in a prison in the United States after being handed over without cause following the events of September 11, 2001.

How can the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration justify these actions, which look very much like racial profiling, on the part of the Canadian government?

[Petitions, April 16th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to table a petition on behalf of the Canadian Council for Refugees and the Civil Liberties Union. Both organizations have clearly demonstrated the limits of granting the permanent residency to all persons from countries under moratorium, such as Afghanistan, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Rwanda and Zimbabwe.

The petitioners say that it is totally inhuman to keep people in legal limbo for years, considering the results obtained when humanitarian criteria are applied.

[Immigration and Refugee Board, March 2nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives are hardly ones to talk. They are the ones who appointed their political organizers' wives.

Instead of trying to stack the selection board, does the minister not think she should accept the board's recommendations so that the Immigration and Refugee Board can do its job properly and clear up the backlog?

[Immigration and Refugee Board, March 2nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, even though 52 out of 156 positions are still vacant, the government is continuing to systematically reject candidates proposed by the selection board to fill immigration commissioner positions. As a result, the backlog, which was heavy to begin with, is getting heavier.

Will the Minister of Immigration abandon her ideological approach and show a little more empathy for the thousands of people who are waiting for their files to be processed by filling the 52 vacancies?

[Citizenship and Immigration, March 1st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the government can keep on saying that it does not want to appoint people who share its ideology to be immigration board members, but the numbers speak for themselves.

How does the government explain that it is refusing to appoint new board members, despite the fact that the selection board has given her dozens of recommendations and that 52 out of the 156 positions are still vacant?

[Citizenship and Immigration, March 1st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, Nick Summers, one of the members of the advisory panel for appointments of immigration board members who has resigned, stated:

We were told by people in the government that the Minister did not like the makeup of our panel and that we were not submitting the names to him that he wanted to see.

How can the government explain its desire to go back to appointing people who think like it rather than basing those appointments on competence alone?