Immigration And Refugee Board  Colleagues, I would urge all of us in our statements under Standing Order 31 to be very judicious in our choice of words as we are coming very close to attacking one another as members. I would appeal to all of you to look at the statements that you are making and please see to it that the statements that are being made do not engage in personal attack.

Immigration Act  Then he will just say: "I am a refugee".

Immigration Act  It is relevant to note the proposed immigration levels for 1995. In Canada the total immigrant and refugee intake is proposed to be 190,000 to 215,000 of which Quebec is only going to take 40,000. That is relatively interesting because if I divide 40,000 into 200,000 for a percentage it comes out to significantly smaller than the number that were accepted.

Immigration Act  How are you going to fulfil Canada's international obligations in the area of political asylum? Canada signed a convention. Do you think that we can refuse to receive refugees in order to do away with immigration or criminality problems? How are you going to solve the problem? Are you going to keep on lowering the number of immigrants you accept, while the birth rate continues to go down?

Immigration Act  She will be deported in the next few days but her husband, who assaulted her, will stay here because he is remarried to a Canadian woman, and has thus acquired permananent resident status. Is this the kind of tolerance toward immigrants and refugees that the Liberal Party of Canada is talking about? In September 1993, in Montreal, the Deputy Prime Minister promised that no female victim of violence would be deported if the Liberals were elected.

Immigration Act  Madam Speaker, it is now February 7 and the Liberals have been in power since October 26, 1993. There are existing provisions in the Immigration Act dealing with refugees and the enforcement of these provisions to deal with people who come into Canada and commit crimes, and people who come into Canada through the use of devious means. These provisions have been in existence since the Liberals were elected in 1993.

Immigration Act  As the hon. member has said, I think he will find his constituents will not be happy if he does not support a bill that will address such things as refugee claimants who have committed serious crimes being denied access to Canada. The member keeps calling out to me to answer the question. The question I think he put to me is how will we enforce it.

Petitions  The undersigned petitioners humbly pray and call upon Parliament to reduce immigration to the previous average level of one-half of 1 per cent of the population, or about 150,000 per year, with a basic intake of not less than 50 per cent of the total composed of carefully selected, skilled workers required by the Canadian economy and that our refugee acceptance rate be brought into line with the average of other asylum destination countries. I concur with this petition.

Immigration Act  At any rate I want to say that if the hon. member can answer these questions, I would like to hear an answer instead of the nonsense that has been put forth about immigrants and refugees in this country from this member.

Immigration Act  Many times I have been before the refugee board. I have appeared before it many times. Heaven knows I never thought I would find myself in the position-

Immigration Act  Madam Speaker, I am appalled that some members take the matter so lightly. They make the accusation that 24,000 new Canadian immigrants or refugees who are waiting to be processed are criminals and that 30 people are not enough to investigate them. Now they turn around and try to defend themselves which is indefensible. The other point that the member made earlier was that one did not have to be in Ottawa to know in which direction the government is going.

Immigration Act  I am sure he knows that of the 24,000, not all of them are criminals. Some of these people are missing papers or documentation. One cannot call 24,000 refugees waiting for papers to be in order as criminals and ask them to be investigated. Can he clarify those two points for me? I would appreciate it.

Immigration Act  First, with regard to his contention that we are in conflict with the Geneva convention I can only say that I believe the hon. member was there, as I was, when the United Nations High Commission for Refugees' representatives came to the committee, were questioned on that and did not agree with him. The government does not think it is in contravention of the Geneva rules and neither does the UN.

Immigration Act  There are other groups that accused the government of breaking sections 7, 11 and 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as well as numerous international conventions dealing with refugee treatment, torture, execution and war zones. I do not have to quote the sections because they have already been quoted by people who know more about the law than I do, and the hon. member too, I might add.

Immigration Act  We have in fact brought forward some of those amendments. I stated one: In order to be ineligible for refugee status an individual would have to be convicted of a crime punishable by 10 years or more in prison. It must be deemed a serious threat to public safety. I think that was brought up because in Bill C-44 we did not stress that it was 10 years or more in prison.