Mr. Speaker, I do not want to repeat everything that my colleague from Burnaby—Douglas has already said, but I would like to take a few minutes to look back.
In 1975, North Vietnam and South Vietnam were at war. That war created more than a million refugees around the world. Of that number, 500,000 were declared refugees by the UN. Some of those people went to the Philippines, while others went to countries such as the United States and Canada. Canada received the Nansen medal thanks to the actions of previous governments.
Now, there are not 200 people remaining in the Philippines, a country that does not want to accept them as immigrants. According to the figures I have, there are exactly 125 people who took or attempted to take refuge in the Philippines, plus 27 of their dependents. In all, that makes 152 people.
We are taking the time of this House, which represents the people of Canada, to have a discussion and show the Conservative government that these 200 people should be brought here to Canada, where we should welcome them with open arms. Why? They may not be refugees as defined in the Geneva Convention, as my colleague from Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock has said. I do not even want to discuss that. What is important is that these people are living in the Philippines at present and are stateless.
Do we, as Canadians, know what a stateless person is? A stateless person is a person without a country, without legal status, who has no recourse to justice anywhere in the world. A stateless person is someone who, when he or she has rights, does not really have rights. If a stateless person wants to go to hospital, he or she must pay. A stateless person is not entitled to the service that a person with a national status would receive.
His children cannot go to school because he cannot pay taxes. This stateless person cannot work because he does not have a work permit issued by the government of this country. He cannot vote. He cannot participate at all. He cannot make a contribution and integrate into life in this country. This refugee, this stateless person remains, and will always remain, on the fringes of society. The only thing he can see ahead of him is his death as a stateless person. The children of the stateless person also remain stateless. This lack of legal status is transferred from generation to generation.
As long as we are talking about refugees, let us also talk about stateless persons and the conditions they are living under in the Philippines. These people are rejected and abandoned. They work on the black market and do what they can to earn a living.
The opposition parties here in the House of Commons of Canada, decided to look at this issue and decided something needed to be done to bring these people here to Canada to join their friends and family. Let us not forget that this war ended in 1975. It has been almost 30 years. Let us not forget that these stateless persons, in the Philippines, are 30 years older than they were and therefore not so young. It is time for them to truly find a country to live in where they can become citizens.
In 1989, Canada thought it was a good idea to take in thousands of people from Vietnam and we won the Nansen medal for the role we played. What became of these Vietnamese refugees who came in small boats? They became Canadian citizens. They became integrated into society. They started businesses. They sent their children to school. Since I come from the Montreal area, I want to point out to hon. members that for many years, the children of these refugees went to French school in Montreal and elsewhere. They were at the top of their class, even in French, even though they did not speak a word of French when they arrived here.
These are people who work hard, who really slave. They became Canadian citizens and they too want to show what it is to be a citizen of Canada. They want to reach out to other people who could become citizens. I am not talking about 500,000 people but just the 125 who left Vietnam along with 27 dependents who are now with them. These are not enormous numbers.
The hon. member for Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock told us that Canada cannot take any more. I am sorry, but Canada is a big country, a rich country, and most of all, it has always been a generous country. I hope that it will remain a generous country thanks to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.
So there are still 152 people. What should the minister do? We are not asking him to break any Canadian laws. We are asking him to find a legal means of speaking out on behalf of Canada and showing the world once again that Canada has a soul, is generous, and is big and rich enough to take 152 people living now in the Philippines.
This is a humanitarian cause. We know that when people are refused refugee status in Canada, they can still ask the minister to be allowed to stay on humanitarian grounds.
I say to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration that these 152 people of Vietnamese origin have been in the Philippines for more than 30 years and want to come and settle here and become Canadians. Can the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration not find humanitarian grounds for accepting them and allowing them to come?
We are not asking the minister to do anything that is against the law, quite the contrary. We are asking him to study these cases in the Canadian spirit and in keeping with Canadian traditions.
That is why we on this side of the House support the motion that was introduced on the 140 Vietnamese refugees who are still stateless in the Philippines and want to come and settle in Canada. I hope very much that the House will pass this motion and put pressure on the minister. I even hope that the minister will not need this pressure and will say on his own and with great generosity that we can find humanitarian grounds for reaching out to these people and accepting them as soon as possible.