Sadia Groguhé

[Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act, June 9th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question. Indeed, as far as the revocation of citizenship is concerned, this bill will definitely be challenged.

This is a classic example of two-tiered citizenship. If a person with dual citizenship has their citizenship revoked, they are at risk of becoming stateless. In other words, their country of origin might not take them back and they will be in limbo.

The revocation of citizenship, a power that will be concentrated in the hands of the minister, will constantly be appealed in court.

[Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act, June 9th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, this evening I rise to participate in the debate on a very important subject: Bill C-24.

Seventy-five months have passed since March 2008. During those 75 months, the current Conservative government has changed the citizenship processes, rules and regulations about once every three months on average.

Of course things change. Of course a government can recognize that it made a mistake. Of course the government can change its policy. However, when a government changes its mind every three months about an issue as serious as immigration, of course we are going to wonder whether it knows what it is doing.

This government is so incapable of understanding the implications of a situation, so incapable of understanding its options and looking for a lasting solution that will benefit Canadians that it frantically starts over every three months.

This government spends its time bashing the public service. That is its stock in trade. It keeps dumping on public servants' supposed inefficiency and making wholesale cuts to every budget in sight.

In his March report, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, whom the Conservatives continue to ignore because they cannot handle the truth, revealed that only two-fifths of the public service's goals were achieved in 2013.

How can we expect the right hand to know what the left hand is doing when the brain is AWOL? Either this government does not realize how absurd it is to change the rules every three months yet expect them to be useful, or it realizes exactly how absurd that is and is manipulating immigration rules purely to get votes.

Plainly put, the government's immigration policy is ineffective. Once the had their majority, the Conservatives imposed a moratorium on sponsoring parents and grandparents, they made family reunification harder, and they started punishing refugees. Then they gave us their masterpiece: they opened the floodgates to temporary foreign workers.

The result of this absurd and unjust policy was not long in coming. The Conservatives became mired in a historic scandal involving abuses of the temporary foreign worker program. Now they are fighting tooth and nail to get out of it, but they cannot find a way to solve the problem. This government could not care less about reality. It would rather make all of the issues political and attack the credibility of anyone who dares to contradict it.

How can we give such an irresponsible government the right to decide who should get citizenship and who should have it revoked at the minister's discretion? This is a clear case of feudal arbitrariness.

This bill raises some serious legal concerns. According to the bill's provisions, the minister could revoke the citizenship of someone who has supposedly committed fraud. The individual's citizenship could be revoked based on something the minister or one of his employees believes. It would be based on a balance of probabilities that the individual obtained his or her citizenship fraudulently. Simply put, it means that the minister will now have the power to strip someone of their citizenship based on a mere suspicion.

Even in a country with strict immigration laws such as the United States, any individual who is prosecuted for illegally obtaining citizenship has the right to plead his case in court. Every ruling can be appealed, and the individual is guaranteed due process.

From now on, under Bill C-24, none of that will exist in Canada. One word from the minister and someone can lose their citizenship. The decision cannot be appealed.

The icing on the cake is that the minister announced that he would not disclose the list of people to whom he will be so kind as to grant Canadian citizenship.

I want to remind the government, which cares so little about civil liberties, that in the legal system we inherited from Great Britain, such a process is labelled as being arbitrary.

I would also like to remind the government, which does not care, that prohibiting arbitrary government decisions is a fundamental principle set out in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It comes to us from British law, which in 1215, with the Magna Carta, and in 1679, with the principle of habeas corpus, made it clear that arbitrariness was a principle to fight against.

I want to warn the government about what it is doing. In addition to being completely immoral, the possibility that the minister can revoke or grant citizenship at his discretion goes against the underlying principles of our legal system.

Once again, the government should expect a long, bitter battle with the Supreme Court concerning one of its many unilateral decisions.

Everyone in the country recognizes the value of Canadian citizenship. There is no need to start such a battle on this subject. That is why we were hoping that this government would change its ways a little and consult the opposition in order to come to an agreement.

However, those hopes were in vain: the Conservative members of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration once again showed just how stubborn this government is by rejecting all of the amendments proposed in committee. We continued to hope in responsible people who believe that the government can and must change people's lives.

That is why we in the NDP strive to find a constructive solution to all of the problems confronting us, regardless of the circumstances. When it comes to immigration, this government's inadequacy has led to unacceptable delays in the processing of applications. We understand that these delays make applicants frustrated and bitter.

However, this wasted time also translates into economic losses. Economic immigrants who knock on our door to come work in Canada may very well turn to other host countries because of the long wait times for their application to be processed. They will then be helping to build economies other than ours.

When the government announced its intention to reduce backlogs, we applauded this commendable intention. However, we reminded the Conservatives that they themselves had created the conditions leading to these delays by making systematic budget cuts throughout the public service. Since 2009, the average time to process an application has more than doubled, going from 15 to 31 months. Since the NDP will have to fix the Conservatives' many mistakes when it forms the next government, we might as well start now.

In order to make processing times reasonable, this government is proposing to merely simplify the process for handling applications by getting rid of the middle man. This is another example of the Conservatives' wishful thinking and simplistic announcements. They were unable to deal with the backlog by putting $44 million on the table as part of the economic action plan, and now they think they will be able to do so by introducing administrative mini-measures. Given these circumstances, why is the government once again making amendments to Canada's immigration system?

In truth, there is only one explanation for the government turning a blind eye to the negative consequences of this legislation: it does not care about the consequences. This government is only interested in how to make itself look good. That is the foundation of its policy. This government does not care about the best interests of Canadians. It is pandering to its voter base. This government is not showing its determination. It is showing its stubbornness. This government does not take action. It acts out.

[Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act, June 9th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to congratulate my colleague on her speech.

I would like to remind members that this bill was introduced in 2013 as a private member's bill and it contained the same provisions.

To the NDP and all members in the House, citizenship is extremely valuable. We must acknowledge the importance attributed to citizenship. We need not give further proof of that.

However, this bill would make it possible to revoke citizenship, which has given rise to major legal concerns. Furthermore, there is a real concentration of additional powers in the hands of the minister, including the power to revoke and grant citizenship.

Could my colleague elaborate on that?

[Committees of the House, June 9th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to congratulate my colleague, our party's status of women critic, on her speech.

The study was originally supposed to be on sexual harassment in the RCMP. However, the committee completely transformed the study to instead focus on sexual harassment in the federal workplace.

What can my colleague tell us about this change of topic?

[Employment, June 2nd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, we are not talking about a shortage of skilled labour. The unemployment rate in Prince Edward Island is 11%, and the Conservatives are approving temporary foreign worker permits for McDonald's, Burger King, Domino's Pizza, and Cora.

That is not how an economy should be managed. It is resulting in higher unemployment and the abuse of temporary foreign workers.

Will the minister finally commit to launching an independent investigation to get to the bottom of this?

[Social Development, May 30th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, federal budget cuts have affected many adult literacy organizations. The cuts are hurting adult job-seekers with literacy problems, especially within minority language communities.

The Centre de documentation sur l'éducation des adultes et la condition féminine de Québec, Quebec's information centre on adult education and the status of women, will lose $400,000. Montreal's Centre for Literacy and the Réseau pour le développement de l'alphabétisme et des compétences, the literacy and skills development network, will likely suffer the same fate.

Why is the minister cutting funding from organizations that are doing extraordinary work to improve adult literacy?

[Prohibiting Cluster Munitions Act, May 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her question.

I think that improving the bill means removing clause 11, purely and simply. If we really want to respect the spirit and the letter of the convention, that is what we have to do. We still have an opportunity to do it, and I encourage the government to take this path.

[Prohibiting Cluster Munitions Act, May 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his question. It is very clear that signing the convention was necessary and important. At that time, we took a step in the right direction.

Today, we want to ratify the convention by means of Bill C-6. My colleague mentioned clause 11. In this regard, the fact that our soldiers will themselves be complicit one way or another in using cluster munitions is a notable and disastrous step backwards. It will do nothing to reduce the number of deaths or to prevent children from playing with cluster munitions and being killed, maimed or wounded.

[Prohibiting Cluster Munitions Act, May 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

We are quite obviously in favour of a complete and total ban on cluster munitions. If we consider wars in history and the very recent war in Afghanistan, they should serve as a reminder that we can truly build a peaceful future for our children. We will not move in that direction by acting in this manner and passing bills such as Bill C-6.

[Prohibiting Cluster Munitions Act, May 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, this evening we are considering a bill sponsored by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bill C-6, An Act to implement the Convention on Cluster Munitions. I have a few preliminary remarks to make before commenting specifically on it.

This week, we have been sitting late into the evening to debate in haste bills that the Conservative government wants to push through. However, this bill was introduced in the House on December 6, 2012. The Conservatives then took six months to bring it to the debate stage. Once that was done, they imposed time allocation on us to limit debate, and now they have started up again with the same bill one year later.

The Conservatives often accuse us of hypocrisy and wanting to delay legislation, but it is they who constantly diminish democracy by forcing Parliament’s hand. I would point out that we are on our 64th time allocation motion and the Conservatives have a majority. They therefore control the agenda.

In these circumstances, they have convened a botched debate on a bill as debatable as Bill C-6. Here we see all the consideration the Conservatives have for world affairs: they legislate hastily late at night before thinned ranks.

It is as though regulating the production and purchase of cluster munitions did not merit having the Conservatives devote a little more time to it. The reason for this haste is obvious: they have no desire to give Canadians any way of realizing that the bill before us serves no other purpose than to prevent the application of the convention is supposed to implement.

This legislative step backward will have definite consequences that everyone here must know in his or her soul and conscience before approving the principle of it. I can state right away that this backtracking from our desire to regulate cluster munitions will mean death, suffering and blood.

The Conservative members who speak after me will naturally say I am exaggerating. They will pretend they want to pass the bill precisely in order to prevent my prediction from coming true. However, we members of the NDP do not hide behind empty words. We do not call deregulation reform or a step backward progress. We look at the reality head-on.

I see the reality of cluster munitions and conventional weapons every time I visit the two Royal Canadian Legions in my riding. I encounter that reality every Remembrance Day. It is written in every wound of every veteran who lost an arm, a leg or a hand in combat. The reality of cluster munitions is terribly cruel.

These bombs were used for the first time during World War II. Since then, they have been used on all battlefields, including the most recent ones in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. These weapons were designed to disperse explosive submunitions over a small area.

Their effect is devastating. No one can escape. They cause indiscriminate harm to anyone and anything in their area. Their failure rate makes cluster munitions particularly dangerous for civilians: 30% do not explode when they hit the ground. They wait patiently for their victims, who continue to be maimed or killed years and even decades after the war has ended.

It is astounding that 98% of the victims of cluster munitions are civilians and 40% of them are children, a proportion that is heart-stopping. In addition to the wounds they cause, cluster munitions contaminate arable land, kill livestock and destroy shelters, permanently impeding economic recovery and development.

In keeping with its humanitarian tradition and its initiatives in terms of disarmament and conventional arms control, Canada signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions in 2008. In doing so, it made a commitment not to develop, produce, acquire, sell, stockpile, retain or transfer cluster munitions. By signing the convention, Canada also made a commitment to destroy all cluster munitions in its possession within eight years.

Canada’s signing of the convention committed it to providing assistance to the victims of cluster munitions and the other states parties to the convention. It was also to take all the necessary legislative measures to have the text adopted in its domestic law, which is why we are here this evening. At the time, we had underlined the signing of the convention as progress in keeping with Canada’s humanitarian tradition and duty.

If Bill C-6 were nothing but that, we would pass it with no hesitation. However, as it always does, the Conservative government has distorted the spirit of the law. The text it has put before us today reneges on the commitment it made yesterday. As always happens with the Conservatives, the devil is in the details. The details in this text are terrible. They include a loophole in the ban on using cluster munitions. The key word is “interoperability”. By including this word in the bill, even though we have signed the ban on cluster munitions, we could use them anyway. This means that the convention that we signed is undermined by the government’s action.

The testimony of those who negotiated the convention supports this view. The lead negotiator, Earl Turcotte, said in writing about this bill that “the proposed Canadian legislation is the worst of any country that has ratified or acceded to the convention, to date”. Former Australian prime minister Malcolm Fraser said it was “a pity the current Canadian government, in relation to cluster munitions, does not provide any real lead to the world. Its approach is timid, inadequate and regressive”.

Once again, Canada is content to be at the bottom of the class. That makes me sad for my country. However, experts, international figures and NDP members are not the only ones who are saying that this is a bad bill. On June 11, the defence minister at that time acknowledged that this was true. He said that the bill was not perfect and that it should be amended. It still has enormous deficiencies. It must be reviewed before it can be passed. I sincerely hope this will convince the Conservative members to listen for once to those who do not share their opinion rather than persisting in blindly passing anything and everything.

As for me, given the suffering of the victims of these abominable weapons, the destruction they cause and my duty toward humanity, I will refuse to support this bill, which, in its present form, contradicts and undermines the international treaty that it is supposed to implement and ratify.