Mr. Speaker, I am pleased the member for Willowdale says the government is open to certain additional changes, but I agree with my friend from Vancouver East. We had every reason to hope that there would be more in Bill C-6 to undo the damage of Bill C-24.

I certainly will support the bill. I am grateful the amendments were made by the Senate. It improved the bill over what left this place to go to the other place.

As we continue to try to repair the damage done by the previous government, can we do more to address the issue for refugees, particularly those who are facing deportation? I asked the hon. minister this question and he said that there were adequate means for people to protest and to appeal. I have not found them adequate. People who pose no threat to Canada are being deported and do not have an adequate opportunity to defend themselves or stay in our country.

Ali Ehsassi – Willowdale, ON

Mr. Speaker, as I stated previously, under both ministers of this government, we have seen energetic leadership. It would be fair to say that on a monthly basis we see concerted efforts to improve our immigration system.

As Bill C-6 was being contemplated, I recall that the question of revocation of citizenship did arise. On numerous occasions, the then minister of immigration stated that he was open to considering procedural safeguards that could be brought in to strengthen the integrity of our immigration system.

This is a government that recognizes full well the merits of immigration and how it enriches our country. Going forward, I have no doubt there will be more changes to come.

The post Question on protecting people from unjust and unnecessary deportation appeared first on Elizabeth May.

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.

The post Citizenship and Immigration appeared first on Elizabeth May.

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.

The post Citizenship and Immigration appeared first on Elizabeth May.

The post Weekly Review – Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration – Meeting #76 appeared first on Elizabeth May.

My question relates to agriculture. I asked a farmer in my riding if he was using the temporary foreign worker program and he said, “No, I hire all local kids.” I said that I keep hearing that local kids will not work on farms. He said, “They will if you pay them a decent wage.”

I think the issue is how we price the work that is being done and I would like to ask my friend from Mississauga—Streetsville if we should not be willing to pay Canadian workers enough to live in Canada.

Brad Butt: Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the farmer from the member’s riding of Saanich—Gulf Islands. I think that is spectacular. I have also met with employers in my riding who are having difficulty under the temporary foreign worker program getting labour market opinions approved because they are not offering the appropriate wages and are actually being denied because they are not offering the right wage levels that are commensurate with Canadian wages. My answer to those employers is they have to follow the rules. If the rules are to pay a Canadian decent wage to a temporary foreign worker just like they pay a Canadian worker, that is what the rule should be.

The post Opposition Motion – Temporary Foreign Worker Program appeared first on Elizabeth May.

Is there not some possibility that we can study whether there is something wrong with the idea of bringing people here to work at lower wages than what Canadians will accept? We are undercutting the whole job market for Canadians. We are filling jobs that could be filled by Canadians. We are also creating downward pressure on Canadian wages by even imagining that we should bring people to Canada, give them no rights, and have them work for cheaper wages.

Hedy Fry: Mr. Speaker, the member asked a very good question.

I want to point out to the hon. member that this program has been going on for quite a while, but it is now being abused. The program stipulated that temporary foreign workers had to be protected. They had to work at the same wage as a Canadian would be paid to do that job, and they had to obey the labour practices and the laws of the province with regard to the labour market. This was very clear.

It is only under the Conservative government that temporary foreign workers have been exploited and treated as indentured labour. This is something new, and that is why we want to get to the bottom of what is going on. We want to see the data. We want to see how many people have been exploiting and misusing the program. The Conservative government does not seem to care one way or the other. Let us not throw the baby out with the bath water. The program is important for productivity where the Canadian workforce does not have the skills and where there are jobs Canadians do not wish to do. It has always been there to help us be productive and meet our needs.

The ability of a temporary foreign worker to be fast-forwarded to become a citizen of this country and get permanent resident status was an important part of the program. The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration has decided that he does not want that anymore. He just wants people to come in and go out, back and forth. He does not want to give them the ability to come here and have a chance for a better life.

The post Opposition Motion – Temporary Foreign Worker Program appeared first on Elizabeth May.

We do need immigration to Canada. We do need people coming from around the world to enrich our society. In the past, those people had rights. Once they were living in Canada, working in Canada, they could access those rights.

I want to put for the member for Brampton West a specific example. In the case of the XL beef plant, a large part of the workforce, I understand, was temporary foreign workers, largely from Senegal.

In that plant, one worker on the line was required to handle 300 carcasses an hour and was supposed to clean his or her knife between each piece of work he or she did. Had those been Canadian workers, I believe they would have said to the boss that they could not clean their knives between each job they had to cut up a carcass and that they could not do 300 carcasses an hour and keep up with the workload.

However, because they knew if they complained, the temporary foreign workers might find themselves on the first plane back to Senegal, we ended up having the E. coli scandal that threatened the health of the Canadian beef sector.

I ask my friend whether we can look at the larger question. Do we want to encourage a program in which we ask people to come to Canada who have no rights, no rights to complain, no rights to do a good job, no rights to seek the protections of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms? Also, do we not want to give those jobs to Canadians first?

Kyle Seeback: Mr. Speaker, I will reiterate what I said earlier. Of course these jobs should be for Canadians. As I said in my speech, the temporary foreign worker program is for absolute and acute labour shortages. The program is not designed for foreign workers to come in and take the jobs of Canadians.

With respect to allegations of what is going on in the workplace, all businesses in our country are governed by many pieces of legislation that govern what goes on in the workplace.

In Ontario, there is the Workplace Safety Act and there is the Employment Act, which regulates the amount of hours people have to work and the working conditions. All those pieces of legislation are for the benefit of whatever worker is in the country. If those things are going on, there are remedies for those workers, whether they are Canadian workers or temporary foreign workers.

The post Opposition Motion – Temporary Foreign Worker Program appeared first on Elizabeth May.

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.

The post Weekly Review – Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration appeared first on Elizabeth May.

I would like to pay a brief moment of tribute to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration as the only minister I know of in the current cabinet who shows up for every debate on all of his bills and answers all the questions. It is quite extraordinary.

However, I do not believe it is in the interest of democracy to continue to limit debate and impose time allocation.

I briefly want to note these words of former Speaker John Fraser from 1989, which were cited in the Speaker’s ruling of December 12 last year in the House, “We are a parliamentary democracy, not a so-called executive democracy, nor a so-called administrative democracy”.

In a real parliamentary democracy, we have full debates. It is not delay; it is called democracy.

The post Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act (Bill C-43) appeared first on Elizabeth May.

The amendments I put forward are substantive, detailed, precise. They go toward creating balance of probability considerations for a minister to consider. They go toward providing more criteria around the minister’s discretion.

Nowhere could anyone read my amendments and think that the goal was to keep dangerous foreign criminals in Canada. Also, the assertion, which I am sure she did not write herself but came from the PMO in some talking point, that people on this side of the House do not care about victims, is deeply offensive.

[TtIT60fJ0og]

Roxanne James: Mr. Speaker, I apologize to the member opposite if I missed the Green Party in my speech. Unfortunately, as the member knows, the Green Party does not have official status in this House, having only one seat, and is not actually a member of the immigration committee.

Having said that, I would like to point out that this particular legislation actually goes to three different directions. It makes it easier for the government to remove dangerous foreign criminals. It makes it harder for those who pose a risk to Canada to enter Canada. Importantly, a point which is left out of a lot of the questions asked by the opposition, including the party of the one person in the corner, is it actually removes the barriers for genuine visitors who want to come to Canada and expedites that process. That is important also to note.

The post Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act (Bill C-43) appeared first on Elizabeth May.