关于C-38法案的辩论，2012年5月12日

Pandy

Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Winnipeg North, Lib.):

                               
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    Mr. Speaker, my understanding is that the NDP actually meant for this opposition day motion to deal with the budget bill, Bill C-38, so I want to bring up one thing which I think the government could have incorporated into the bill. It is related to immigration.


    In the budget the government is trying to hit the delete button on tens of thousands of individuals who have applied to come to Canada as skilled workers. That is a cruel policy. It is something that should have been brought to this House as a stand-alone amendment so that theMinister of Citizenship and Immigration and the government could be made fully aware, in detail, why this is a bad policy idea that should never have been incorporated into Bill C-38.


    Would the member comment on that aspect of Bill C-38?

Hon. Jason Kenney (Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, CPC):

                               
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    Mr. Speaker, a few moments ago the member for Winnipeg North characterized as heartless and cruel the efforts to finally move toward a fast immigration system which will allow us to admit qualified applicants for immigration within a matter of months rather than years, ensuring they have better employment prospects and get higher incomes, better linking newcomers to our labour market.


    Would the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands not agree with me that if anything was cruel, it was the former Liberal government's incompetent mismanagement of our immigration system, which left to this government in 2006 a backlog of nearly one million people waiting for up to eight years to immigrate to Canada? Would he not agree with me that was an example of terrible neglect of the immigration system on the part of the previous Liberal government?

Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Winnipeg North, Lib.):

                               
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    Mr. Speaker, I am interested in hearing the minister try to address this issue, in a somewhat fictitious way, I must say. The government, in fact, caused the backlog to hit the one million point. What the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism is doing is hitting the delete button, literally telling 100,000 people abroad that they can no longer come to Canada. Bill C-38 would do that. It is a cruel way of dealing with would-be immigrants.


    The member is trying to play the politics of that being a great minister when reality shows us quite differently. We have never seen a minister hit a delete button on backlogs. We have never seen a minister put an absolute two-year freeze on being able to sponsor parents. How is that fair? Why has the government has chosen this budget, Bill C-38, to go through the back door and—

Pandy

C-38包含一系列修改，其中还包含关于难民的一些法案，也有反对声音
Mr. Don Davies (Vancouver Kingsway, NDP):  
    Madam Speaker, a few short months ago, I rose in this House following the introduction Bill C-31, the so-called protecting Canada's immigration system act. I say “so-called” because it quickly became apparent that the bill would do little to protect Canada's immigration system. At that time, the entire immigration stakeholder community was shocked that the government was reversing the prudent measures of the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, and just months before that act was supposed to come into force.
    The bill has become a symbol of all that is wrong with the Conservative government. It was born out of fear, ideology and a complete distaste for evidence and input from opposition parties and stakeholders. In fact, the bill stands alone in its total lack of support from every conceivable part of the immigration community: churches, lawyers, pediatricians, settlement services, immigration consultants, immigrants and refugees themselves have all roundly condemned the bill as imbalanced, misguided and ineffective.
    The parts of the bill that deal with human smuggling came from a fearmongering political opportunism practised by the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism and the Minister of Public Safety following the arrival of two boats on our shores carrying bona fide refugees from war-torn Sri Lanka.
    The rest of the bill is simply a comprehensive dismantling of the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, which was passed with all-party support in the minority Parliament of 2010 in a spirit of co-operation and a mutual recognition that the system needed to be streamlined.
    Indeed, the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism praised that bill, saying the opposition amendments made our refugee determination system “fairer and faster”, words he now disavows and contradicts.
    The laundry list of things that are wrong with the bill is long and serious. They includes mandatory detention of refugees, including children; ministerial power to designate safe countries without any independent oversight; denial of appeal to designated refugee claimants, which is a fundamental part of natural justice; unacceptably short timelines for filing refugee claims, a measure that would lead to more rejections; and denying family reunification for over five years to many refugees.
    Ultimately the bill is about accepting fewer refugees. It goes against decades of tradition of welcoming the most vulnerable people in the world to our country. I think of the vibrant Vietnamese community in my riding of Vancouver Kingsway, almost all of whom came here on boats in the 1970s. I think also of the Jewish community, Somali Canadians, Roma. These groups, and others like them, embody the tradition of refugee resettlement in Canada, a tradition that the government is shunning.
    I would like to highlight how the bill was handled and what it says about the government.
    Once again, the bill illustrates the omnibus approach to legislation that we see repeatedly. Measures that on their own are distasteful to most Canadians are bundled together in one bill and rammed through Parliament.
    At committee, we heard from lawyers who spoke about how the bill would violate our Constitution. They spoke about how the bill would violate our international obligations. They detailed how the bill would mandate timelines that would be impossible to meet while protecting people's rights to a fair hearing at the same time.
    People on the front lines spoke about how the bill would further traumatize already traumatized people by imposing detention upon them and separating them from their families.
    We heard Roma Canadians talk about the real persecution they face and how insulting and misguided it is of the minister to constantly refer to European refugee claimants as “bogus”.
    Evidence of similar legislation from countries like Australia that shows that these types of policies just do not work was flatly ignored.
    People who work with refugees every day told us how the bill would hurt refugees, their families and our communities.
    Throughout the whole process, the government and the minister have ignored, belittled and chastised experts and stakeholders with a level of ignorance and arrogance that is unworthy of public office-holders.
    The bill remains punitive, mean-spirited and ineffective.
    Why is the government moving forward with Bill C-31?