Pat Martin

[Transportation, June 6th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, in keeping with this government's feckless approach to all things environmental, the President of the Treasury Board has refused to authorize a scheme to allow public servants to access their bus passes through a payroll deduction. I thought we wanted more people to leave their cars at home and protect the environment. The government should be leading by example in supporting mass transit.

In view of the fact that it is environmental week and Clean Air Day, will the minister reverse her position today and encourage employees to use their payroll deductions to buy transit passes?

[Immigration And Refugee Protection Act, June 4th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I am glad to add our remarks to this set of amendments regarding Bill C-11. I understand that these amendments deal specifically with refugee issues.

I am happy to take part in this debate for the simple reason that my riding of Winnipeg Centre is the part of Winnipeg where most people who are deemed as refugees or most newcomers seem to settle. The core area or downtown area of Winnipeg seems to be the place where they can find affordable housing and access to reasonable settlement services that help them get their start in Canada.

I am proud Canada plays an active role around the world in providing safe refuge to those who seek sanctuary, whether they have to flee religious persecution, political persecution or whatever their reason may be. There is a certain spirit of generosity I believe that most Canadians share in reaching out to those who need the safe sanctuary of Canada. Other speakers have mentioned groups that are playing a particularly active role which enables these people to leave their troubled homelands and to come to Canada.

Certainly there are church groups within my riding that work day and night to try to sponsor refugees and refugee families. They do fundraising, but their activism does not stop in terms of financial contributions. They also do a lot of follow through. They actually stay with the refugee or refugee family to help them to break into mainstream Canadian culture, to get them over the hurdles and barriers which exist when newcomers come to Canada, to help them find work and get fully integrated. Some of the church groups in Winnipeg do a wonderful job.

I want to make special mention of an organization. It is the Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Council found on Edmonton Street in my riding. I work closely with this organization because it is charged with the responsibility of administering the settlement services that are offered to refugees in Winnipeg. I cannot say enough about the dedication of these individuals. The people there work in conditions that we would all find very taxing. It is an under-resourced organization. I believe it does an awful lot with very little. Its budget has been cut back in recent years in terms of stable core funding, of which we have been very critical.

We believe that we are getting incredibly good value for our dollar by adequate funding to organizations like this because they do so much to alleviate the load from the department officials who would otherwise have to deliver and administer these settlement services. I would speak very forcefully of the restoration of levels of funding to organizations like the Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Council.

They were very vocal and active through Bill C-31 and Bill C-11 in pointing out some of the shortcomings of those bills or putting forth very solid recommendations on how these bills could be improved, not just in the refugee area, but also in areas of family sponsorship.

Even though I know we are on the subject of refugees right now, I want to make a point that I did not get a chance to make under earlier motions. Using the low income cutoff for family sponsorship is fundamentally wrong. It is a flawed way of putting a line in the sand. It does not do the city of Winnipeg any service because large cities like it are lumped into the same category. In other words, if people want to sponsor one of their family members, they have to be at a certain level of family income to undertake that sponsorship.

The family income arrived at is the same in Winnipeg as it is in Toronto, Vancouver or other major cities. I could demonstrate quite easily that the cost of living is a great deal lower in the city of Winnipeg. The cost of housing is about one-quarter of what it is in the city of Toronto. We should not be held to the same standard when it comes to the reunification of families or the sponsorship of families.

Some might think that failed sponsorships put some sort of burden on municipalities in terms of social welfare costs. I can provide some figures from the Manitoba Immigration Interfaith Council. Out of 13,700 welfare claimants in the city of Winnipeg, only 11 of those were actually the result of failed family sponsorships in immigrations. Eleven out of 13,000 is not an undue burden on our city. Those who think that could come about are simply not working with the actual facts.

Another group that has been very active in the advocacy for refugees is of course the Canadian Council for Refugees. They came before the committee for Bill C-31 and again for Bill C-11 with some very thoughtful recommendations on how the bill could be more fair in its treatment of the refugee determination and admissibility of permanent residents. I would encourage government to revisit the brief from the Canadian Council for Refugees. I do not think there is a single organization in this country that is as authoritative on this issue or has worked as diligently to try and develop standards for managing the refugee influx into this country.

It was one of the council's recommendations that brought in the whole subject of gender analysis and how necessary it was that we use that screen for any legislation introduced by parliament. I am very glad the member for Winnipeg North Centre managed to convince the committee that we needed to undertake a comprehensive gender analysis in legislation of this type.

An example which was pointed out was the need to allow women a second hearing in terms of being turned down as a refugee. Sometimes the circumstances that qualify them as a refugee are not easy for them to make public. In the initial application some information may be held back for any number of cultural reasons or personal safety reasons. If this information needs to be heard or needs to be introduced, it would have to be introduced at a second refugee hearing. That is being contemplated now through the hard work of those of the committee.

I want to thank the Canadian Council for Refugees for being the one to really push that issue and the members of the committee for seeing fit to make that one of the priorities.

Another gender issue I would like to point out also has to do with the family reunification. As we do this comprehensive gender analysis I hope this comes forward. In terms of sponsoring other family members women are disadvantaged in that regard as well. Given that there is this income threshold by virtue of which a person is allowed to sponsor or not sponsor another family member, given that women earn only 66% of what men do on average across the country, women or households led by women are less able to sponsor family members than households where the male is the bread winner.

I would suggest this is another amendment that needs to be introduced in the interests of fairness. In the interest of people's chartered rights, this issue needs to be addressed. I would hope the gender analysis that is undertaken is sensitive to that issue now that we have put it on the record.

Another organization that has been influential in advocating on behalf of refugees is the Maytree Foundation in Toronto. The organization has put forward some of the best prepared material on the subject. It was satisfied that there was some recognition of the issues it raised.

The foundation advises that that Bill C-11 includes some positive, but also some negative measures relating to refugee protection in Canada. It speaks to the issue of identity documents. There are times when personal documentation is extremely difficult to access when people flee their homeland under persecution, often in the dead of night. There are places in the world that if refugees need the documents we demand they have to make application for those documents. Then they become flight suspects. When prospective refugees make application to get their marriage licence or birth certificate from the city hall or agency, the spotlight shines on them and they may in fact not be able to get them.

I am honoured to raise the names of the organizations of the Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Council in Winnipeg, the Maytree Foundation, the Canadian Council for Refugees, and the contributions they have made.

[The Act Of Incorporation Of The Conference Of Mennonites In Canada, June 4th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, as a member of parliament from Winnipeg, Manitoba, I too would like to take this opportunity to add my support for Bill S-25. I am very pleased to hear of the level of co-operation and good will from all parties in the speeches we heard to date.

I will briefly point out that my riding of Winnipeg Centre is home to quite a large Mennonite population. It has been my very good fortune to get to know many of the activists in the Mennonite faith in my neighbourhood and in the area.

I will add some comments on how impressed I have been with the level of commitment Mennonite people in my riding have shown to issues such as building a sense of community, social justice, goodwill on a number of levels and certainly a sense of personal sacrifice. The Mennonite people feel very strongly that their faith in their day to day lives must be integrated to the point where I believe the social gospel really is the overwhelming motivating influence.

If Bill S-25, as has been said, would enable Mennonites to restructure their administrative side so they could be more effective in the work that they do, then it is incumbent upon us to support it without any hesitation.

One of the things that I have been most impressed about is meeting anti-war activists, pacifists in the truest sense of the Mennonite faith. As recently as this month, I received a number of letters at my offices from people of the Mennonite faith pointing out that they did not choose to pay income tax that would be put toward military development. They did the mathematics which showed that if 6% or 7% of the total budget goes to the military, they would withhold that amount of money from their income tax. They would not give it to the government to spend on those things.

It is a longstanding gesture in the pacifist anti-war movement and I have nothing but admiration for those who make that comment with their spending power, with their taxation dollars. I believe it becomes an administrative nuisance, certainly for Revenue Canada, but it is the type of peaceful demonstration that very clearly puts their point of view front and centre.

To speak briefly on the work that they do in my immediate area, I have said many times that the riding of Winnipeg Centre is an area of great need, it being the core area of Winnipeg. The Mennonite activists, to their credit, have actually targeted this part of my city to move into deliberately in order to try to elevate the standard of the neighbourhoods in that area.

There are middle class people, be they teachers, nurses or whatever, who could afford to live out in the suburbs where it might be safer and more pleasant and where there would be more access to services, but they consciously choose as a group, en masse, to move into an area of the greatest need and therefore bring the stability of their two parent families and well educated children with them to elevate the overall standard of the neighbourhood. That in itself is a level of civic duty that we do not really see. When people go beyond making a donation to a charitable organization, when they actually alter their own personal lives to do what is right for their home community, I think there is nothing more admirable.

Others have pointed out that they have personal contact with the Mennonite faith. My family as well has integrated with the Mennonite community in that I have cousins, uncles and aunts in the Schroeder family from the Portage area. Even though I was raised as a Catholic, not as a Mennonite, I did gain a great deal of personal knowledge about the Mennonite faith by virtue of our shared family issues.

The other thing I would like to point out is the development work that they have done in the Mennonite communities of Winkler, Altona and Morden in Manitoba. This part of Manitoba is actually the most stable and prosperous part of the province now, due in no small part to the entrepreneurial skills and industrialization of the area brought about by the Mennonite people. It was otherwise just an agricultural community. They started small businesses and small manufacturing such as the wood manufacturing industry in Manitoba. The largest single private sector company in Manitoba is Palliser Furniture, which is the largest wood products manufacturer in all of Canada.

I just wanted to take this opportunity as a member of parliament from Manitoba and from Winnipeg to add my enthusiastic support for the bill. If it helps the Mennonite community in the structuring of the good work it does, we should certainly be foursquare in their corner on this.

One of the other services the Mennonite community has brought to us in the province of Manitoba is the mediation and conciliation service they offer through their church. Whenever there is an issue like two neighbours arguing over a fence, they have the option of taking it to the mediation service offered by the Mennonite church rather than going to litigation. It has been and continues to be of very great value.

I am very proud to be part of this. Bill S-25 is one of those things that we should be able to do as a cleanup at the end of parliament, with multiparty support and easy passage.

[Immigration And Refugee Protection Act, June 1st, 2001]

I do not think that is very flattering. It is unparliamentary at the very least. I will continue anyway. I have fairly thick skin.

The member for Winnipeg North Centre has done an admiral job at the committee to try to move amendments and improve some of the shortcomings in the bill. One of the significant changes that she put forward, which was in fact passed, was having a gender analysis done of the bill.

This is something that should happen automatically. It is in keeping with federal government policy since 1995 that for new legislation an adequate gender analysis should be conducted to review whether there is a disproportionate impact of any piece of legislation we might undertake, to review whether it affects women differently.

We succeeded in that. We had that amendment passed and I think it will improve the bill, because there are issues. When we talk about family reunification and about income requirements to sponsor family members, there is a gender factor. As we know, women make 66% of what men make. If a person's ability to sponsor a family member is to be tied to their income, then certainly we must have some sensitivity in that regard.

The one thing not addressed in the amendments at the committee stage is a shortcoming we have pointed out many times, that is, there was no mention of eliminating the right of landing fee, which we believe is one of the biggest barriers to attracting new Canadians to our shores. We have been calling for its eradication ever since it was introduced by the Liberal government, to tell the truth. We finally convinced the government to eliminate the right of landing fee for refugees, but it still stands to this day for other classes of new Canadians. In fact, we are also calling for the elimination of the administration fees that are still being charged to refugees. We were not successful in that, but we will continue in our campaign to have those charges and fees eradicated.

We also pointed out a number of shortcomings in the bill. One of the flaws we pointed out and wanted to change is that too much in this bill is left to the regulations. We were very concerned that members of the House and members of the committee would have very little input into the drafting of the regulations. It was the member for Winnipeg North Centre who moved agreement at the committee stage that the regulations would in fact be put before parliament for approval. This is huge. This is a really innovative change.

Again, I compliment the member for Winnipeg North Centre for having the foresight to bring that forward, because it was glaringly obvious to all of us who read the bill that a lot of the details that will affect the day to day operation of the immigration department will be found in the regulations and not in the act. As members of parliament we want some ability to have some say in how those regulations are crafted. With the bill, they would come before the House of Commons.

There is another thing that should have been cleared up. I appeal to the minister and the department to address it, even after Bill C-11 passes. There is very little in the former act or in Bill C-31 or Bill C-11 that helps to clear up the definitions of terrorists, criminal activity, what level of criminal we are trying to bar from entry to the country and what sort of membership and what kind of terrorist organization one must have taken part in to be barred on those grounds. The bill is very vague. It leaves far too much to the discretion of officers who may have varying ideas of how this is to be implemented.

We pointed out that if we are too absolute in barring people who may have taken part in or may have been members of terrorist agencies, if we are too strict in our enforcement of this, we could be barring people like Nelson Mandela, who was a member of the ANC, which was called a terrorist organization. Now it is called the government of the day, but at the time it was a terrorist organization that took up arms to fight for freedom.

Surely this is not the intention that the architects who drafted the bill had in mind, but it is one of the byproducts of being negligent by not being very clear about what we are seeking to achieve when we try to bar people who may have been involved in some kind of terrorist activity at some point in their lives.

Also, the smuggling of people is a very top of mind issue. I have pointed out a number of times that sometimes smuggling of people is done for humanitarian reasons, in order to get people out of harm's way, to save their lives in many senses.

The underground railway through which American slaves were smuggled was a trafficking in human beings. When we talk about cracking down on smugglers, yes, we want to stop people from exploiting people and trading in human cargo but let us keep in mind that sometimes these actions take place for humanitarian reasons. Smuggling of people can be done with the best intentions of keeping people from harm.

I appreciate being able to add my remarks on Bill C-11. We will be voting against the motion as it stands.

[Immigration And Refugee Protection Act, June 1st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I think someone just called me a liar.

[Immigration And Refugee Protection Act, June 1st, 2001]

Again the Alliance Party is fond of trying to whip up this hysteria that our borders are an open sieve, that we are allowing criminals in and that we are some kind of sanctuary for every criminal element, gangster and terrorist in the world. This is what the Alliance Party would have us believe about immigration. I find it frustrating.

We are dealing with the bill as it stands now. Flawed as it is, we are talking to it. I am very proud of the member of parliament for Winnipeg North Centre, the new spokesperson.

[Immigration And Refugee Protection Act, June 1st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I thank you for giving me the opportunity to join in the debate on Group No. 1 at report stage of Bill C-11. As the former spokesperson for immigration issues for my party, I was very much involved in the development of Bill C-31, which as we know is now known as Bill C-11. It will make changes to the Immigration and Refugee Act.

As is well known, our party has been quite critical of the shortcomings of Bill C-11 and the former Bill C-31. We were very open in our criticisms. We disagreed with both the tone and the content of the bill in many ways. We felt the bill dealt far too much with enforcement issues. We felt that the whole immigration policy dealt far too much with enforcement. It dedicated much of our time and resources to keeping people out of the country rather than trying to attract people into the country. This is the type of tone or the type of content that we now see in Bill C-11.

We pointed out that much of the impetus or rationale behind this tone found its origin in an overreaction to the Chinese boat people who drifted up on the west coast of British Columbia. The public hysteria whipped up by the Reform Party and by the Canadian Alliance Party would have us believe that the country was under siege or being invaded in some irresponsible way.

Many of us remember the reaction of members of parliament from the Reform Party in British Columbia when those boats started arriving. They were saying: “Turn them around and send them back in these rusty old tubs. Who cares if they drown at sea? They do not deserve sanctuary on our shores. They do not even deserve to have a hearing to determine if they are actual refugees”.

There were press conferences in which Reform members were saying such things. They used what was really an anomaly of 600 people within a relatively short time arriving on our shores for their own political purposes. It was an anti-immigration stance.

I am very critical that somehow the ruling party, the Liberal Party, seems to have allowed itself to be pulled around by the nose on this issue. This is the attitude or reaction that we found more and more. All they want to talk about in the bill is enforcement: how to keep people out, how to keep our borders secure, and how to stop criminals from getting in.

[Petitions, June 1st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition is signed by many Canadians from right across the country who call upon the government to intervene and call upon Bell Canada to stop subcontracting its work to American subcontractors. The petitioners cite that this is motivated by corporate greed and costs Canadians jobs. Many Canadian operators are being laid off and Bell Canada services are now being provided by American subcontractors in the United States.

[Petitions, June 1st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions to present today.

The first petition is signed by many people in my riding who call upon the government to eliminate the right of landing fee of $975, otherwise known as the immigration head tax. The petitioners feel strongly that this is a barrier to immigration and that there is no room for this type of thing in a democracy that seeks to attract new Canadians.

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, May 29th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I listened with great interest to the member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough. I know he has a great deal of background on this issue, having been a crown prosecutor and having dealt with the very act that Bill C-7 seeks to amend.

I learned quite a bit from his speech. I would like him to elaborate a little further on one thing he raised. The old Juvenile Delinquents Act had some 30 odd sections. The Young Offenders Act had roughly 70 sections. This bill, which ostensibly seeks to clarify, streamline and make more accessible the Young Offenders Act, has 200 sections. What is even more worrisome is the omissions in the bill, which he pointed out.

How can we have a new act that deals with young offenders but fails to contemplate or mention things like gang activity or home invasions? The single most frightening thing for senior citizens today is the possibility that some thug will kick their doors in and invade their home while they are sitting watching television. This is a very genuine fear for Canadians. They want some specific mention of the seriousness of that crime.

Could the hon. member elaborate, not so much on what is worrisome in the act but on some of the glaring shortcomings or omissions, which he pointed out.