Richard Nadeau

[Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, March 2nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the Bloc Québécois supports Bill C-280, which seeks to create a refugee appeal division. The Bloc Québécois has asked repeatedly for such a body, and it is far from being the only one to have done so. Others include the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Committee against Torture, the Canadian Council for Refugees, the Canadian Bar Association, Amnesty international, the Civil Liberties Union, and the KAIROS group.

What is a refugee? The definition of a refugee or an asylum seeker has long been established in international conventions. For example, the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees was adopted by the United Nations in 1951. Under that convention, Canada cannot directly or indirectly return a person to a country where he will be persecuted. Article 1 of the convention defines the term “refugee” as follows:

—owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country;—

Furthermore, article 33 defines the responsibilities of governments with respect to the protection of refugees, and I quote:

No contracting state shall expel or return (“refouler”) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.

This definition is limited and applies only to political refugees, and not to those who have suffered a humanitarian crisis such as flooding or famine. Nevertheless, this constitutes a major legal obligation.

A proper appeal process for refugee claimants ought to have been put in place as soon as the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act took effect in June 2002.

This act includes three sections that create a refugee appeal division, to be administered by the Immigration and Refugee Board. Citizenship and Immigration briefly defines the refugee appeal division as follows:

The refugee appeal division will provide failed refugee claimants and the minister with the right to a paper appeal of a decision from the Immigration and Refugee Board.

Establishing the refugee appeal division is a matter of justice. The failure to do so allows a situation that is unfair to asylum seekers to continue. For four years now, the federal government has been stubbornly postponing the establishment of the refugee appeal division, as called for in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

The federal government claims that a safety net already exists, consisting of the opportunity to request a pre-removal risk assessment, a judicial review by the Federal Court, or permanent resident status on humanitarian grounds. Unlike a refugee appeals division, they do not offer any protection for refugees.

There are four reasons why the refugee appeal division should be established. These four reasons were presented by Mr. François Crépeau who teaches international law at the Université de Montréal. They were also cited in a report by the Canadian Council for Refugees.

The first reason is efficiency. A specialized appeal division for refugee matters can deal much more efficiently with unsuccessful claimants than the Federal Court, an application for pre-removal risk assessment or requests on humanitarian grounds. The refugee appeals division can do a better job of correcting errors of law and fact.

The second reason is consistency of the law. An appeal division deciding on the merits of the case is the only body able to ensure consistency of jurisprudence both in the analysis of facts and in the interpretations of legal concepts in the largest administrative tribunal in Canada.

In other words, an appeal mechanism helps the system to make decisions by establishing precedents that will be applied to lower court rulings when the facts are exactly the same.

The third reason has to do with justice. The decision to refuse refugee status has extremely serious consequences, including death, torture, detention, and so on. As in matters of criminal law, the right to appeal to a higher tribunal is essential for the proper administration of justice. Because human errors occur in any decision-making process, it should be normal to have an appeal process to offset the fact that decisions are made by a single person.

The fourth reason is political. By not establishing the refugee appeal division, the federal government is going against the will of Parliament and the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, which have called for such an appeal division.

We must never forget that when a person applies for refugee status, they are in a state of vulnerability and helplessness. They have left a situation where their life was in danger because of persecution. They arrive in a country where, in many cases, they do not understand the language, neither French nor English, and they are in a precarious economic situation, sometimes with only the shirt on their back.

Canada has a moral duty to make sure these people are treated with the utmost compassion.

Even though the refugee appeal division is included in the legislation, neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives have wanted to implement it.

Yet in April 2005, the Conservative Party released a report entitled “National Consultations on Canada's Immigration System”, containing the following recommendation:

The appeal process must be reviewed. There is no real appeal process. The refugee appeal division has to be set up. Decisions have to be made by more than one person.

The Conservatives were in favour of a refugee appeal division when they were in opposition. Now, they must keep their promise.

The refugee appeal division has no equivalent. A pre-removal risk assessment does not provide for a substantive review of the application. The Federal Court can conduct reviews of technical legal issues only; it cannot review the facts of a case.

Applying for permanent resident status on humanitarian grounds can be extremely complicated for someone from another country who has no representation in Canada, and it is therefore difficult to claim that this is a substitute for the refugee appeal division.

For all these reasons, and many more besides, Bill C-280 on implementing a refugee appeal division must be adopted.

[Official Languages, March 2nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the Commissioner of Official Languages also said:

it is nearly impossible for a unilingual francophone to have a rewarding career in the Canadian Forces.

What is this government waiting for to call all our armed forces to order once and for all, and put an end to this shameful discrimination against francophones?

[Official Languages, March 2nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, in committee yesterday, the Commissioner of Official Languages said that the best a unilingual francophone could hope for in the armed forces is to be an infantry soldier at Valcartier.

How can the Minister for la Francophonie and Official Languages be satisfied with the proposed transformation model, when it is clearly possible for a unilingual anglophone to attain the rank of brigadier general?

[February 28th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I come back to what I said earlier. We are in the 140th year of the creation of the Dominion, in fact, of Canada as such. However, even after so many years, we recognize, we see and it is demonstrated once again that federal Canada provides the evidence that it still does not respect the rights of francophones in the armed forces.

Moreover, it allows the armed forces to avoid respecting the Official Languages Act. Indeed, instead of getting them to fill all bilingual positions with people who can adequately speak French and English, it finds a new way for the armed forces to avoid respecting this act.

Thus, by creating 277 units of unilingual English forces, 55 French units and 212 bilingual units, the assimilating Canadian state is dividing the armed forces in a ethnolinguistic way to once again diminish—

[February 28th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, since the Official Languages Act was passed in 1969, the armed forces have not met their obligation to properly train bilingual officers and to give French its rightful place.

Now the Minister for la Francophonie and Official Languages is backtracking on the bilingualism requirements for senior military officers. It is not right that the government, for too long now, has been allowing the armed forces to flout the provisions of the Official Languages Act, and even worse, that the requirements have been lowered for unilingual English officers being appointed to senior positions.

This throws the movement for francophone rights in the Canadian armed forces back 40 years.

In reality, only a francophone officer will be required to be bilingual. The armed forces have never been able to respect the Official Languages Act in their hierarchy. The Conservatives are now choosing to endorse a decline of French in the ranks of the military.

If the armed forces refuse to respect the spirit and the letter of the Official Languages Act, they are being unfair towards the francophones who have no choice but to learn English since senior anglophone officers are apparently incapable of learning even a bare minimum of French.

The Minister for la Francophonie and Official Languages and the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities misled this House by implying, on February 8 and 9, that Canada's new policy had been drafted after consultations with the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages, among others. However, the Commissioner of Official Languages, Graham Fraser, clearly stated on February 12 that this was not true. Mr. Fraser also criticized the time frame for implementing this new approach, saying that 2012 was too late.

With the new defence rules, the army will be even less bilingual than it is now. Yet even the current situation reflects the Canadian Forces' disrespect for francophones. In 2006, the office of the commissioner showed that the army nearly always violated the Official Languages Act when staffing bilingual positions. Between 39% and 44% of positions designated as bilingual were held by unilingual anglophones. This is unacceptable. It is a deficiency that needs to be pointed out again. The Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages has repeatedly made efforts to get the Canadian Forces to meet their obligations, yet they are shirking their responsibilities again.

With the new policy, not only will French be used less in the army, to the continuing detriment of francophones, but francophones will be ghettoized, according to retired lieutenant colonel Rémi Landry. Positions that, for demographic reasons, are located in Quebec and the national capital region will be French-language positions, and the rest of Canada will be for anglophones only.

Once again, Canada is snubbing French and giving priority to unilingual anglophones for promotion, at the expense of bilingual francophones. Yet we know that the Dominion of Canada was founded 140 years ago on the principle that English Canadians and French Canadians were always to enjoy equal language and cultural rights.

[Canada Labour Code, February 28th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, we should indeed vote in favour of Bill C-257, which prohibits the hiring of replacement workers.

The reasons are simple. The Canada Labour Code does not, unfortunately, fully cover the rights of workers when they negotiate during a labour dispute, whether it is a lockout or a strike. Anti-scab legislation is indispensable, because it allows for civilized negotiations between employers and workers. It removes all the tension that may exist during a strike, when people cross picket lines. This is something that no one wants to experience, and this is what we want to avoid, among other things, by passing anti-scab legislation. The idea is to make negotiations more human, more civilized during a labour dispute.

When we voted at second reading, Bill C-257, the anti-scab legislation, was supported by 20 Conservative members, 70 Liberal members, and by all NDP and Bloc Québécois members. We are confident that other members will join this large group, because it is essential to understand that our purpose here is to improve negotiating conditions during labour disputes.

Without this protection, workers could find themselves at a disadvantage. Indeed, an employer who is not governed by an anti-scab law can hire replacement workers, scabs, thus creating an imbalance. Workers then find themselves negotiating with a boss who continues to make profits, while they have no income. This is indeed what happens during a legal labour dispute.

As I said earlier, Bill C-257 seeks to reduce violence on the picket lines. It promotes a fair balance during negotiations between employers and workers.

Such an act exists in two provinces, that is in the Quebec nation and in British Columbia. In the Quebec nation particularly, such legislation has helped improve negotiations. This is not science fiction. We are not talking about the bogeyman, who comes from the Jonquière-Alma region, and who is telling us that the end of the world is near because, all of a sudden, there is an anti-scab law in Canada. I will get back to this later on.

What is also magical about this legislation—and this will make everyone happy—is that it does not involve any additional costs to the government.

This legislation has existed for 14 years in British Columbia and 30 years in Quebec, in these two jurisdictions, and there has been no movement to scrap it. No one has led movements to get rid of this legislation that allows for civilized negotiations and labour relations during a work stoppage. I will give the example of Quebec because that is a part of the country I know well.

When the legislation passed by the Parti Québécois government in 1977 came into force in 1978, it helped, as I was saying previously, civilize labour relations.

Better still—an interesting observation—when the government of Robert Bourassa was elected in 1985 and returned to power, scrapping the legislation was out of the question. At the time, under the Liberal government, Mr. Bourassa had been approached to scrap the anti-scab legislation. He said—I will paraphrase because I do not have his exact words—that it was out of the question because the direction given to labour negotiations by the anti-scab legislation had brought unprecedented social peace to labour relations in Quebec.

I am talking about a Péquiste, René Lévesque, and a federalist, one Robert Bourassa. All the other governments that followed, those lead by Daniel Johnson, Pierre-Marc Johnson, Jacques Parizeau, Bernard Landry and currently Jean Charest, who is also a Conservative Liberal, have never backed down on this.

We hear the words of Canada's current Minister of Labour, who voted in favour of an anti-scab bill on November 5, 1990, when he was an MP in a Conservative government. At the time, he thought it was an excellent bill for all the reasons I just mentioned.

We have to have the mindset that we are working together here to ensure the protection of every party to a work relationship—managers, unions, employers and employees. Parties have to be on equal footing in negotiations—those who are on strike or were locked out and those who locked them out or are facing a situation where the company is shut down because of a strike. That speeds things up.

The Minister of Labour's fear campaigns and apocalyptic announcements are baseless. He should never forget what really goes on in the workplace. People who are directly involved appeared before the committees and proved through simple logic that the situation has improved for negotiations that take place during labour disputes.

That is contrary to everything we have heard from the Minister of Labour who, I repeat, on November 5, 1990, as a Progressive Conservative member of Brian Mulroney's government, voted for a bill like this one.

The current bill does not stop management from maintaining company activities, including the production of goods and the provision of services, nor from using employees to take necessary measures in order to avoid serious damage to a company's assets during a labour dispute. There are provisions in Bill C-257, to allay all fears and to ensure that this bill is effective and responds to everyone involved in talks on both sides of the negotiating table.

We have already mentioned the benefits in terms of fewer work days lost thanks to the framework a replacement workers bill can provide as opposed to a situation where there is no such bill. This is a time saver because it speeds up negotiations. It makes the parties sit down face to face and negotiate faster to reach a solution that works.

[Official Languages, February 28th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, how could the Minister for la Francophonie and Official Languages and the Minister of National Defence have the gall to claim, during their testimony before the Standing Committee on Official Languages, that Commissioner Fraser had been consulted when the new policy was developed, when he says he was not consulted and he believes that 2012 is too long a time frame for implementing the changes?

[Official Languages, February 28th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the Commissioner of Official Languages, Graham Fraser, says that the new language system in place at National Defence was implemented because the previous approach failed, and he wonders, in this new context, what the chances are that a francophone soldier can work in his own language.

How can the Minister for la Francophonie and Official Languages go along with an approach that, instead of looking for ways to reach objectives, is lowering requirements?

[February 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I will continue the list I started earlier: Kevin Gaudet was an organizer for the current Prime Minister; Marni Elizabeth Larkin is a former Conservative candidate; Stanley Stanford Schumacher is a former Conservative MP; Keith William Donald Poulson is the former campaign director for the current Conservative member for Winnipeg South; and Margot Ballagh has close connections to the Conservative organization in Ontario. They were all appointed to the Canada Pension Plan Review Tribunal.

In light of all these Conservative appointments since April 2006, there is not a shadow of doubt that they are not keeping their word and that they are disregarding the Accountability Act. The right wing ideology they apply in the judicial appointment process is further evidence of that. And what are we to make of appointing a senator as a minister, who was not even elected? This happened at the beginning of this government.

[February 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak today about a question that was asked in this House about government appointments.

For years, the Conservatives criticized the Liberals' partisan appointments. Now that they are in power, the Conservatives are proving to be Liberal clones, constantly appointing friends of the party to government positions.

The recent appointment of Raminder Gill to the citizenship court is a good example. This Conservative candidate, who was defeated in 2006 in Mississauga-Streetsville, is leaving the way clear for the most recent Liberal defector to the Conservatives.

On March 23, 2006, the Prime Minister said this, “Political appointments and cronyism had eroded staff morale and damaged the public’s perception of the institution, which many suspected had become corrupt and a haven for patronage...Our new public appointments commission will...ensure that qualified people are appointed based on a fair process—”

Yet on February 12, 2007, we learned that 16 of the 33 judicial selection committee members appointed by the current government are affiliated in some way with the Conservative Party. For example, two of the appointees are Mark Bettens, a firefighter from Nova Scotia who is a twice-defeated Conservative candidate, and Johanne Desjardins, a graphic artist who used to work for a former Conservative minister.

There have been plenty more examples since April 2006. Jim Gouk, a former Conservative member, was appointed to the NAV Canada board of directors. Gwyn Morgan, a former Conservative backer, was appointed to the new Public Appointments Commission. Neil Leblanc, a former Nova Scotia Conservative minister, was named Consul General in Boston. Brian Richard Bell, a Conservative organizer in New Brunswick, was appointed to the New Brunswick Court of Queen's Bench. Kerry-Lynne Findlay, the Canadian Alliance candidate for Vancouver Quadra in 2000, was appointed to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. Jacques Léger, a former interim president of the Progressive Conservative Party, was given a judgeship in the Superior Court of Quebec. Hermel Vienneau, Bernard Lord's former chief of staff, was named vice-president of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. Barbara Hagerman, the wife of a Prince Edward Island Conservative backroom adviser, was named Lieutenant Governor. Alexander Sosna, a Conservative candidate in 1984, and Steven Glithero, a former Conservative Party president in Cambridge, were appointed to the Superior Court of Ontario. Howard Bruce, an Alliance candidate in 2000 and the Conservative candidate for Portneuf in 2004 and 2006, was appointed to the Transportation Appeal Tribunal of Canada. Eugene Rossiter, the former president of the Progressive Conservative Island Fund, was appointed to the Tax Court of Canada. Tung Chan, a registered CPC agent in Richmond, was appointed to the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. Loyola Sullivan, the Newfoundland co-president of the Prime Minister's leadership bid, was named Canada's ambassador for fisheries conservation.

Then there are Kirk Sisson, a former member of the Red Deer Conservative riding association, and John David Bruce McDonald, once the chief financial officer of the Alberta Reform Party, who were appointed to the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench.

I will continue later.