I have one constituent whose wife, who came from Australia, had been waiting for quite a long time for her permanent residency. In fact, it was to the point where she was exactly nine months pregnant. Immigration Canada told her she had to get back to Australia. Medically, it was not safe for her to fly at that time.

We hear heart-wrenching, horrible cases all the time, even in my riding which is not particularly ethnically diverse. These cases take up most of my constituency staff’s time.

It would be an inefficiency to make this system so extremely arbitrary and so extremely unfriendly to family reunification and to new Canadians who want to live here. I would ask my friend for her comments.

Hedy Fry: Mr. Speaker, indeed, Vancouver Centre has large new immigrant populations that have been coming from eastern Europe, from parts of Africa, from Latin America, and we see this. I have one staff member in my constituency office and that is all he does. We have watched the number of cases triple and quadruple since the government came to power and most notably within the last three years.

The stories really are heart-rending. Canada is becoming known as a country with no compassion. It used to be that we were a country of compassion. It has become a country in which people feel we are not fair, that we want to keep certain people out and we want to bring certain people in.

I do not think this will not bode well for us as we try to increase trade with certain countries that today are down, but tomorrow will be up. Even if we looked at it from a purely pragmatic and economic point of view, that ability to trade with other countries depends on how they view us.

Do they see us as that kind of gentler nation? Do they see us as that compassionate nation? Why do people want to come here? It was because of the reputation that Canada had as a place where people had opportunity, they could grow and they could be anything they wanted to be. They could bring their families and put down roots. They could be the prime minister, a minister or anything they wanted to be.

This Canada is fast losing that reputation. It is very sad. I came here because I believed in this country, and I am finding myself feeling extremely sad about what is happening.

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These people in their applications asking for family members to visit have made it clear that family members have jobs in their home country, have other family and have no intention of staying in Canada. They merely want to come to Canada for a visit to see their relatives. I do not understand the heartlessness behind these decisions.

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This week, the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration continued studying its draft report entitled: “Standing on Guard for Thee: Ensuring that Canada’s Immigration System is Secure”. The committee agreed that the draft report, as amended, be adopted, and that the Committee append to its report dissenting and/or supplementary opinions from each political party, provided that they are no more than 7 pages in length and be submitted electronically, in both official languages, to the Clerk of the Committee within 48 hours of passing of the report by the Committee.

All Meetings were head In Camera.

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On November 5^th, the committee heard testimony from immigration lawyers Barbara Jackman, Robin Seligman, and David Mantas, who argued that Bill C-43’s removal of appeal mechanisms for permanent residents, especially on the grounds of humanitarian compassion, eradicated the only venue in which these individuals had in shedding light on the context of their criminality, and the only forum they had in discussing the effects deportation could have on their well-being. Testimony was also heard from Lorne Waldman and Angus Grant of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, who argued that other legislative innovations could have done a better job in removing foreign criminals from Canada than Bill C-43. A point of contention for both individuals was the issue of ministerial waivers, and the effects that CSIS policies of not recording deportation interviews could have on the ability of lawyers to mediate factual disputes between clients and officers. Additional testimony was also heard from Martin Collacott of the Centre for Immigration Policy Reform, who suggested that while Bill C-43 removes appeal mechanisms for permanent residents sentenced to 6 months or more in jail, the bill does not prevent these individuals from asking judges to take their citizenship status into consideration during sentencing.

On November 7^th, the committee heard testimony from representatives of the Canadian Bar Association, who argued that Bill C-43 was a piece of legislation that had not gone through the public consultation process required  in designing laws sufficient in dealing with the problems of the immigration system. As a result, the bill – especially the provisions which grant ministerial waivers, removes appeal mechanisms, and changes the misrepresentation bar from two to five years – represents a patchwork of poorly designed policies that are unaccountable, unregulated and un-Canadian. Testimony was also heard from immigration lawyer Reynaldo Reis Visarra Jr. Pagtakhan, who argued that while Bill C-43’s denial of appeal for permanent residents is a provision that should be supported, its 5-year ban on misrepresentation, and its granting of ministerial waivers are provisions needing amendment or removal. Additional Testimony was also heard from Rivka Augenfeld and Richard Goldman of Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes, who suggested that Bill C-43 demonstrates a pattern of “exclusionary” activities by the government, who no longer cares about the activities of the immigrant prior to migration, but is now more concerned with who these individuals associate with. The organization believes that this change in priority has expanded the scope of criminality in Canada and has unfairly labelled individuals as inadmissible.

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On October 29^th, the committee heard testimony from representatives of the Schizophrenia Society of Ontario and the Canadian Council for Refugees about the ways in which Bill C-43 exposed vulnerable immigrant groups to deportation without adequate recourse for appeal, or a substantive understanding of the contextual considerations which may have led to deportation. The committee also heard testimony from Julie Taub, an immigration lawyer, who applauded the expediency to which Bill C-43 proposed to remove foreign criminals from Canada.

On October, 31^st, the committee heard testimony from representatives of Amnesty International, who believed that Bill C-43, especially in its removal of appeal mechanisms for individuals facing deportation, prevented the administration of justice for immigrants, and voided Canada of its international legal obligations. Testimony was also heard from Tom Stamatakas of the Canadian Police Association and Sharon Rosenfeldt from Victims of Violence, who both believed that Bill C-43 would make Canadian communities safer. Additional testimony was also received from James Bissett of the Centre for Immigration Policy Reform, who advocated that Bill C-43 is long overdue and is a modest first step in combating the problems facing Canada’s immigration system.

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On Monday, October 15^th, the committee heard testimony from Jenny Jeanes, Program Coordinator of Action Réfugiés Montréal; Lutz Oette, Counsel of REDRESS; members of OCASI, Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants; and Angus Grant, as an individual. All the witnesses delved into critical questions about the effectiveness of the Canadian immigration system and the efficacy of screening in particular. While some claimed to have limited knowledge about the use of biometrics technology and electronic travel authority (ETA), most disapproved of the current use of biometrics technology. The Minutes of the meeting can be found here.

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I have been in most of the debates on Bill C-31 since it was tabled and also in the earlier debates on its predecessor, Bill C-4. What we have been hearing from the Conservatives is that this bill is necessary to end human smuggling. We hear a lot of cries about human smuggling. We hear that people are jumping the queue. We have heard a lot of allegations.

I have structured what I hope to say in the next 10 minutes by mentioning some of the things that are most frequently alleged here and providing some counterbalance. I think there are egregious parts of this legislation. I think it violates the charter and that future courts will find it to be illegal.

Let us just start with one that we hear all the time, the notion that there is queue jumping if refugee claimants come to Canada in some fashion that is different from the way normal immigration to Canada occurs. We must keep very clear in our minds the distinct and large difference between people who come to this country as immigrants, as my parents did, and people who come to this country as political refugees, people fearing for their very lives.

In this category there is no such thing as a queue jumper. There is no such thing as going to line up at an immigration office for Canada in some country, when people know that their lives are at risk and they flee with the clothes on their back. We need to keep these things very separate in our minds. Much of this bill deals with that latter category, people who are seeking refugee status in Canada.

Some people can fear for their lives when they come to Canada and their refugee claims may be rejected. That does not mean that the adjective “bogus” applies to their claims. Some people are rejected even though they have a legitimate fear of persecution. They do not make it through our process.

We like to think that our process has been, and still is, fair and generous. However, sometimes it has rejected people who really did need our protection. Let us be clear about that.

The vast majority of refugees in this world, and they number in the millions, never make it to an industrialized country. Most of the migration that occurs among those people who are refugees is from one developing country to another. That is the vast majority of claimants.

We have heard that this bill, because of its punitive nature towards people who arrive by ship or some other means of arrival deemed an “irregular entry”, one of the new terms that comes up in Bill C-31, will discourage so-called human smuggling. I have yet to hear any empirical evidence that that is the case.

I have taken some time since the bill was first tabled to try to find evidence, and what I have found is the absence of evidence. An expert analyst of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Alice Edwards, said:

Pragmatically, there is no empirical evidence that the prospect of being detained deters irregular migration, or discourages persons from seeking asylum. In fact, as the detention of migrants and asylum-seekers has increased in a number of countries, the number of individuals seeking to enter such territories has also risen, or has remained constant. Globally, migration has been increasing regardless of governmental policies on detention. Except in specific individual cases, detention is generally an extremely blunt instrument of government policy-making on immigration.

Let me go to a letter that was sent to the Prime Minister of this country by a group of people in Australia who have had a lot of experience. Certainly it is true, as the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism has said, that other countries are going in a similar direction. It has failed there, it will fail here. This is a letter advising the Prime Minister of Canada not to go in the direction of Australia from the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre in Australia.

They refer to the fact that Australia is already learning some hard lessons about trying to discourage refugees by putting people in prison. Australia has abandoned its temporary protection visas because they found they were not working.

I will quote from their letter to our Prime Minister:

Contrary to popular belief, ‘tough’ immigration policies in the past have not succeeded as an effective deterrent: 

In 1999, less than 1000 ‘unauthorised arrivals’ applied for asylum, the year TPVs [temporary protection visas] were introduced. 

In 2001, when the policy was in full force, the arrivals rose to more than 4000. 

Under this policy, denying the right to refugees on TPVs to apply for family reunion pushed the wives and children of asylum seekers onto boats in an attempt to be reunited. 

In 2001 353 people drowned in the tragic SIEVX disaster while travelling by boat to Australia. 

Most of the 288 women and children aboard the SIEVX were family members of TPV holders already in Australia.

We have also been told that bringing in this bill would save money because people would be discouraged from coming here and our social safety net programs would not be available to refugees. I have asked several times in the House and I have yet to have one Conservative member of Parliament offer up a cost of this legislation. As far as I can find, it has not been costed.

Anyone, men, women, and children over 16 years of age, coming here by irregular entry would be put in detention. Minor children would likely be placed in detention as well because they would opt to stay with the mother rather than be placed far from their families in a foreign land.

Let us see what it has cost Australia. Australia maintains 19 immigration detention facilities. In the last year for which I could find costs, 2011, it was spending over $668 million on refugee detention. The Australian secretary in the department of immigration and citizenship remarked, and I do not know when we will hear this from the Canadian Minister of Citizenship, that “The cost of long-term detention and the case against the current system are compelling…. The cost to the taxpayer of detention is massive and the debt recovery virtually non-existent”.

We have heard that children would no longer be jailed, unlike the previous version of this legislation Bill C-4. We have been told that the change would allow children to go somewhere else, but we have not been told where. Under the international Convention on the Rights of the Child these children are defined as legally children. Sixteen to eighteen year olds would be jailed, their parents would be jailed, everyone would go to jail for up to a year if they arrived by irregular entry.

I just want to share what Australia has started doing. The Australian Human Rights Commission found that detention actually violated the Australian human rights provisions. It also was not working. In October 2010 the Australian government changed its tactics. It decided that it would begin to move a significant number of families with children into community detention. In other words, the Australian government is keeping track of anyone who arrives by irregular entry. These people are not essentially integrated into the community in the same way that they would be if they were allowed to work or move around freely. This community detention process has reduced costs. Placement in communities bridges visas and is essentially community detention but requires that the people involved report to someone, similar to parole, but they actually live in communities.

Lastly, we have been told that the bill would deal with people coming from the European Union. We have also been told that there is no reason for anyone to worry about the European Union. Since the bill was tabled, a Federal Court decision was tabled on February 22, 2012, in the case of Hercegi v. Canada. Mr. Justice Hughes of the Federal Court said clearly, “The evidence is overwhelming that Hungary is unable presently to provide adequate protection to its Roma citizens”.

I have one last court decision to refer to and that is Charkaoui v. Canada, 2007 in the Supreme Court of Canada. Madam Justice McLaughlin ruled that charter rights extend to foreign nationals. Charter violations are endemic to this act.

We must change this legislation in order to not violate Canadian values, Canadian law and the charter.

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On Tuesday (March 27^th), the Committee heard testimony from Minister Kenney that the main priority for his department during the last fiscal year was to eliminate the backlog of applications in the immigration system and the priority for the following year will be to introduce the biometrics program for all temporary resident visa applicants to ensure the continued integrity of our immigration system.

In the following weeks, the Committee will continue their study of enhancing security within Canada’s immigration system.

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