Mr. John Nunziata (York South-Weston):

Mr. Speaker, my petition deals with section 745 of the Criminal Code. It is signed by approximately 1,000 people.

Under section 745 of the Criminal Code, convicted murderers are allowed to apply for a reduction in the number of years they are required to serve before becoming eligible for parole. Those convicted of first degree murder, for example, and sentenced to at least 25 years in prison, can have that 25-year period reduced to somewhere between 15 and 25 years.

The 1,000 people who have signed this petition are calling upon Parliament to rescind section 745 of the Criminal Code so that those convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to a period of incarceration of 15 to 25 years would not be eligible to reduce their parole eligibility.

Mr. Jim Edwards (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):

Mr. Speaker, I would ask that all questions be allowed to stand.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):

Agreed?

Agreed.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):

I wish to inform the House that because of the ministerial statement, Government Orders will be extended today by 31 minutes beginning at 1 p.m., in accordance with Standing Order 33(2)(a).

Hon. Gerald S. Merrithew (for the Minister of Employment and Immigration) moved

that Bill C-86, an act to amend the Immigration Act and other acts in consequence thereof, be read the third time and passed.

Mr. Allmand:

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. This is the third reading stage of the bill. It is usual for the minister or another minister to introduce the debate at third reading and give us reasons why we should support the bill. I do not see the minister here and I do not see anybody else here to move the debate.

Mr. Edwards:

Mr. Speaker, on the same point of order, I appreciate my hon. friend drawing that fact to the House's attention. I am informed that the minister is on his way. There was apparently a delay that was not anticipated. I am sure he regrets the inconvenience to the House, but he will be with us momentarily.

I believe that the House may be disposed to giving the minister an opportunity to arrive as I am informed that he is fleet of foot. He has just demonstrated that, Mr. Speaker. Again I want to thank my hon. friend from NDG for raising the point.

Hon. Bernard Valcourt (Minister of Employment and Immigration):

Mr. Speaker, I had to rush to the House to address my colleagues on Bill C-86.

It has been five months since we introduced Bill C-86 and since then the bill has been subjected to intense, detailed and exhaustive scrutiny by members of the legislative committee, by the Senate committee in its pre-study of the bill, by hundreds of individuals and organizations representing Canadians from all walks of life, and through their briefs, representations and presentations by members on both sides of the House at report stage.

With the exception of the behaviour that we saw last night by a party in this House, I have been impressed time and time again by the constructive co-operation demonstrated by everyone involved in the passage of this

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bill. Members of the legislative and Senate committees have repeatedly demonstrated a deep appreciation of what immigration means to this country and a genuine concern to ensure that the measures proposed by Bill C-86 are fair, practical and in the best interests of Canada.

I have followed with particular interest the work of the Senate committee which submitted a pre-study report that showed considerable care and deliberation. The Senate pre-study report concentrated on proposed amendments relating to refugee status determination and drew heavily upon the testimony of the first chair of the Immigration and Refugee Board, Mr. Fairweather, and Mr. Chefeke, the former Canadian representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

It is clear that members of the committee listened carefully to the testimony and raised in their pre-study report issues that have been in the forefront of the debate on this very important legislation. I commend them for it. I have not always agreed with what members have said about the bill, but I would like to say that I respect their views. I value the work they have done. This has clearly been an effective legislative process. Bill C-86 has been improved by that process.

What is remarkable is that on issues so often the subject of conflicting and polarized opinion, there has been enough common ground in most cases to work out reasonable amendments to the bill.

I had the chance to hear what the Liberal immigration critic, the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace, had to say about the legislative committee and the government amendments. If I can quote him, the member said that there is no doubt this committee has worked better than most committees of which he has been a member and the government listened to reasonable arguments in many cases.

There is widespread agreement that Bill C-86 responds to a real need for change and that it is based on sound principles. Few would disagree that change is necessary if we are to manage immigration effectively and fairly in a changing world.

The effectiveness of our immigration and refugee system is being severely tested by mounting international

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and domestic pressures. This is a fact of life. Our current Immigration Act was developed 16 years ago with the experiences of the 1960s and the 1970s as sign posts for the future. In some respects, those were simpler times. It was easier to manage the immigrant selection system and abuses of our program were less pervasive.

The fact is, it is becoming increasingly difficult to meet those objectives in the world of the 90s using the tools of the 70s.

That is why we need Bill C-86. Last June I indicated my commitment and the government's commitment to remain open to constructive amendments to Bill C-86 provided that they did not compromise the principles on which it is based. Let me state those principles once again.

First, and there can be no compromise here, Bill C-86 must preserve the integrity, compassion and humanitarian values of our immigration and refugee programs. Second, our immigration program must continue to serve the best interests of Canada and all Canadians. Third, the proposals must result in better management and control of all aspects of our immigration and refugee programs.

In accordance with those principles, Bill C-86 provides for improvements in three main areas. First, we will be able to make a better selection of candidates for immigration in Canada thanks to a better monitoring and management of categories and numbers of immigrants.

Thus, immigration will continue to contribute to the development of our society and to our economic prosperity in all regions of Canada. Second, we will be able to better protect the Canadian society through more stringent enforcement and control mechanisms in order to preserve the integrity of our programs and protect Canadians against those who take advantage of our programs and break our laws. Third, we will further streamline the refugee determination system in order to improve the effectiveness of an excellent program-recognized as such throughout the world-with fair decisions rendered more quickly.

Those are the three main principles underlying Bill C-86.

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It is clear that the majority of Canadians recognize the need for changes to the old Immigration Act and the majority agree that the focus of Bill C-86 is right. The focus is right; effective selection and management of the immigration program, better protection against criminals and terrorists and a fair, streamlined refugee determination system.

At the same time, concerns have been expressed about how specific provisions of Bill C-86 might work in practice. That is fair. I have listened to those concerns carefully. In many cases, most notably they have been with respect to the role of the senior immigration officer. Anyone who looks at how we do our work will see that those concerns are simply unfounded.

I am surprised at the lack of foundation because our experience as a country, as a people in Canada and the work of this department is surely not what sparks this unfounded concern. It has to be something else.

In most cases, as I said, there were legitimate concerns. There have been cases where the legislative concerns have been expressed and also cases where ambiguity could be cleared up. The government has responded, as recognized by the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace, to those concerns in a responsible and reasonable manner.

Amendments were brought forward to clarify, answer and otherwise improve Bill C-86. To name a few examples, methods have been found to continue to hold refugee hearings in camera. It was not there. It was a concern. It was looked at, considered, and taking the views of the many witnesses and the members of the committee, we brought about that change.

Ministerial oversight of section 46.01(c)(e) and 53.1 of the act will be maintained. It was not there. Reporting requirements for changes to the annual immigration plan have been enhanced and measures to more precisely target criminally inadmissible provisions have been adopted. These changes are a direct result of testimony presented to the legislative committee, recommendations in the Senate, a pre-study report and the comments of other interested Canadians. However, none of the amendments alters the basic goals and principles of Bill C-86. Indeed, I believe that these amendments help to achieve these goals.

The fundamental objectives of our immigration program, either social, humanitarian or economic, are very important.

As a government, we strongly believe that the majority of Canadians share those objectives. We should all be pleased that the legislative review process has identified ways to make Bill C-86 even more effective in achieving these shared goals.

The purpose of this bill is to ensure that Canada maintain an immigration and refugee program that is fair, balanced and effective, an immigration program that can operate in the demanding conditions of the world today, a world which many people simply want us to ignore, but we cannot with the trust that people have given us ignore that reality. That is what Bill C-86 is all about, reality.

I think that the majority of Canadians share these objectives. We should all be pleased that this process has identified ways to make Bill C-86 more effective in achieving these shared goals.

It will give the men and women who deliver Canada's immigration program the tools they need to meet these challenges.

It will ensure, at a time when countries all over the world are facing growing demands to cut back on immigration, that Canada can maintain its tradition as a welcoming, compassionate nation, ready and able to help those in need. It will ensure that at a time when growing numbers of people around the world are seeking to circumvent or abuse immigration programs, Canadians will be protected. That is important. It will ensure that those who wish to come to Canada and those who seek refuge in Canada can expect timely, fair and compassionate treatment.

Before I finish, there is one more point I wish to make. It has been clear since Bill C-86 was first introduced more than five months ago that certain members opposite had little criticism to offer about the substance of the bill. In fact, both opposition critics who are here today praised different parts of the bill. Last night, the NDP abandoned any pretension that it wished to attack the bill itself. Instead, it attacked the process.

November 24, 1992

The NDP tried to introduce gridlock government to Canada. Some time today I expect that attack on process to begin anew. I expect the hon. member for Trinity- Spadina or another member of his party to try and suggest that this bill is being rammed through without due regard to the parliamentary process. That was the premise of the circus last night.

That simply is not true. I am not saying that in a partisan way. I am just asking members to look at the facts. Bill C-86 was introduced more than five months ago. Since then, an all-party legislative committee has spent some 61 hours studying the bill. Most bills in this place receive between 20 and 40 hours of study, fully one-third less than Bill C-86. In fact, of the 73 bills passed by this Parliament since May 1991, I am only aware of two other bills out of 73 that have been studied longer by a committee.

During the study of Bill C-86, more than 110 witnesses from all across Canada, coast to coast to coast, appeared before the committee. Still more witnesses appeared before the Senate committee. By the time third reading is completed today, this bill will have been debated in this House for more than 20 hours. Again, this is well above the average.

When you hear people say that this bill needs more study, think about the facts: Sixty-one hours of committee study; 110 witnesses; a Senate pre-study and more than 20 hours of parliamentary debate.

The record is clear. There has been an exhaustive debate and study of Bill C-86. It is a good piece of legislation. It will ensure that immigration continues to contribute as it has for more than 125 years to the social and economic well-being of Canada and of Canadians. Canadians expect as much. I urge all members of the House, on whatever side, to join in passing this bill.

Hon. Warren Allmand (Notre-Dame-de-Grace):

Mr. Speaker, as I said on other interventions with respect to this bill, this bill represents the most extensive amendments to our immigration laws since 1976-77. It is a bill of 128 clauses, comprising 113 pages.

When the bill was tabled on June 16, which by the way was during the last week of the sittings before we adjourned for the summer, it was brought on for debate after two days. In the committee the minister said that it took him and his officials eight months to prepare this

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bill. We all know that he has a large number of experts and officials to help him in such matters. Yet, when he put the bill before the House, a long and complicated bill as I just mentioned, he gave the opposition two days to examine the bill before it was brought on for debate. We were expected on second reading of that bill to speak intelligently about the bill without having really an opportunity to examine it properly.

We were not the only ones. Although I have specialized in immigration to a certain extent and while my colleague from Spadina has specialized in immigration, it was still extremely difficult if not impossible to examine this bill properly in the two days before we started second reading debate. We consulted with immigration lawyers, NGOs and other groups that work full time in this area. They had no time to do it either, so we could not seek their advice.

My point is this. All this pious talk by the government from time to time on parliamentary reform and respect for Parliament and respect for democracy is really a pile of nonsense. Once it brought the bill on for second reading debate in June, as I say two days after the bill was tabled, it immediately introduced time allocation and allowed only one and a half days of debate at second reading.

I give credit to the legislative committee, chaired by the hon. member for Lethbridge, who I think did an excellent job. I see him entering the House. I congratulate him. He was fair. He took a reasonable approach in the committee and agreed to the extension of hearings beyond what was originally planned. He gave, I thought, a good hearing to those people who wanted to be heard. I also give credit to the chief government spokesman, the hon. member for St. John's East, who also took a fair and reasonable approach in the committee. It was principally because of these two members that we were able to get some improvements in committee.

There were improvements in the committee. After what we said in the opposition within the first few weeks after the bill was tabled, criticisms that we raised and then were raised by the witnesses time after time when they came before the committee, the committee finally accepted the soundness of the arguments that were being made and made some changes. For example, as pointed out by the minister, it changed the provisions

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with respect to public hearings. The bill provided that hearings on refugee cases would be public. Nearly all the witnesses said that was wrong, that it would put the family of the applicant in jeopardy, that it could put him or her in jeopardy. Therefore, the government changed that. It has now gone back to the old rule, which is that hearings before the refugee board will be, by general rule, in camera and only in public by exception. That was one change that was made.

The committee also changed the very harsh detention procedures that were provided for in the bill. The bill provided that once a person was put in detention for an immigration question, there would only be a review every 30 days. That was a waste of government resources and harsh and unreasonable with respect to these immigrants.

I must point out that immigration detention is not for people who are charged with criminal offences. They would go into the regular court system. This is for people who have not committed criminal offences but for one reason or another are deemed to require detention because they may not appear for hearings or whatever.

In any case, the government agreed to an amendment on that. It also agreed to amend the provisions with respect to fingerprints. All those fingerprints will now be destroyed once the immigrant becomes a Canadian citizen.

To a certain extent the provisions on inadmissibility with respect to terrorism and criminality were changed to make them more reasonable. Changes were also made with respect to the permanent residence card.

Certain changes were made in committee and those changes improved the bill. On the whole, the committee worked well. There were only seven members of this House on the committee: four government members, two members from the Liberal Party, and one member of the New Democratic Party, and this is a House of 295 members.

There are a lot of members in this House who are concerned with immigration and refugee matters. The place where they can get involved is during the debate in this House. As I said, the government only allowed one and a half days at second reading on that debate.

Yesterday, it provided for only one and a half days' debate at report stage with 86 amendments to deal with and has also curtailed the time for third reading, the debate in which we are now involved, to one day.

In this House we will only have a total of four days and those days have already been cut back. Yesterday we lost a lot of time because of the voting on the closure procedure. We lost about an hour. Today we lost more time because of the statements that were made. Although there is an attempt to make part of that up, it is not going to make up the total time.

Here we have an extremely important bill, the most extensive bill on immigration since 1976, on an issue that is causing problems all over the world, in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, the United States and Italy, with the mass movement of peoples and we are only spending a very limited amount of time discussing it.

It is not just the question of involving the members of this House in an issue they are all very concerned with. It also involves the general public. Although the press is allowed to come in and report the committee's work, very little reporting is done of those legislative committees, whereas the proceedings of this House are televised and the general public, not just the experts and the NGOs, can be informed with respect to debate. If the debate only goes on for a few days, there is not much chance to deeply penetrate public opinion on these issues.

I talked about the importance of the issues and why it was necessary that we debate these things at greater length in this House. Experts tell us that the population of the world will increase by three billion people in the next 30 years, by three billion people. That is going to impact on all countries in the world. Right now we have 20 million refugees in the world as a result of civil war, tribal conflict, totalitarian oppressive regimes, drought, hunger and so on, for many reasons.

That is going to increase and we have to give attention in our public policy formulation to these issues. It is not just a question of bringing a bill before the House and ramming it through in a few days. If we intend to develop our immigration policy wisely we need to spend some time on it. How are we going to deal with this vast increase in population in the world? What kind of rules are we going to have? How are we going to balance order with humanity? I do not think we have done that in this

November 24, 1992

debate which is being rammed through in an obscene manner.

We in the Liberal Party have always agreed with a dynamic immigration policy but we also believe controls are needed. The doors cannot be wide open. The flow into our country has to be controlled or else the country will lose the good things which attract people to it. A program of assisting people to integrate into the Canadian way of life is needed. Our party treasures the valuable role immigrants and refugees have played in this country. The greatest eras of prosperity in this country have followed the great waves of immigration, whether it was on the prairies, or in the big cities of Ontario or Quebec. We have had the greatest eras of prosperity following great waves of immigration and some of the controversy which took place with respect to some of them completely disappeared after a few years.

I recall in the 1950s when I was at McGill University that because of the Hungarian revolution against the communist regime, over 30,000 people fled Hungary and came to this country. They are all well settled today. They and their children are doing an outstanding job as Canadians. It is the same with the Czechs who came in a similar situation and the Chileans and the Ugandan Asians and so on. They have all contributed greatly to this country.

As I have said, some improvements were made in Bill C-86 in committee but many of the offensive provisions remain and because of that, the bill is still badly flawed.

Despite those amendments this bill will still make it more difficult for law-abiding, hard-working immigrants to enter Canada. It still puts barriers in the way of legitimate refugees. As a matter of fact, very little was done to deal with that issue in the committee or in the report stage yesterday.

The bill opens the door to inequity and capriciousness in the selection of immigrants and it suspends traditional legal safeguards which are customary in Canada. For example, it provides for deportations without hearings. It provides for the suspension of rights through retroactive provisions. Throughout the entire bill there is an emphasis on enforcement as opposed to fairness and humanitarian values.

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Finally, Bill C-86 transfers a lot of matters which are presently in the law and are subject to the control of the House of Commons and Parliament to the minister and his officials who can now change the law by regulation and Order in Council. There has been a massive transfer of authority from Parliament to officials and the minister in this bill and that leaves the whole process open to abuse. We never know from year to year what kind of government we are going to have or what kind of minister we are going to have. We could have a very good minister who believes in fairness and who may use these provisions with wisdom, but we could also have a minister who would not.

Parliament must be in control of these things. We are the elected representatives of the people. There is a role for Orders in Council and while there is a role for regulation where things can be done by the government without consulting Parliament, I believe it has gone beyond that point in this bill.

I want to mention some of the things still in this bill that are wrong and are unacceptable. To begin with, one of the major criticisms of the bill is the new powers given to the senior immigration officer in dealing with refugees at the border. When I say at the border, I also mean at airports, points of entry and so on.

Under the present law, the law as it was before this bill, we had a two-stage hearing for the screening of refugees. The first stage was to decide on the credibility of the refugee's case and also whether the refugee was eligible to go on to the full hearing, the second stage. There was a lot of criticism about that first-stage hearing. It was felt that it wasted a lot of time, it prolonged the process unnecessarily, was costly and really was unnecessary because the overwhelming majority of cases that went to the first stage went on to the second stage in any event. While we wasted a lot of time with this first-stage hearing, it did not really screen out many individuals.

On the other hand, there was due process at that first stage. The refugee applicant had the right to an attorney, he was fully informed of his rights and he was protected in presenting his case at that first-stage hearing.

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The government has gone along with the proposal that the first-stage hearing should be abolished and in Bill C-86 has abolished the first-stage hearing. That is good. However, it has given some of the authority that was held by the officials at the first-stage hearing to a senior immigration officer who will now have the right to turn away refugee applicants without any hearing, without any representation by attorney, without any due process.

The refugee appears at the airport or the border claiming refugee status. The senior immigration officer can look at his documents and his papers and on the basis of five criteria that are written in the law can say: "I am sorry. You cannot come in. You cannot even get to the refugee board where you and your attorney can plead your case".

In effect, the government in this bill has put a barrier between the refugee applicant and his right to a fair hearing before the board. In doing that, it has not solved any problems. As a matter of fact, it has gone against the legal and justice traditions of this country in doing that.

The minister in his speech this morning has said that he listened to the concerns about the powers of the senior immigration officer at the border and he says they are unfounded. These criticisms do not simply come from members of Parliament, such as myself and the hon. member for Trinity-Spadina and others who participated in the committee. These criticisms come from lawyers and immigration experts who have worked in the immigration field for years. They say that these issues to be decided by the senior immigration officer are not simply black and white issues which can be decided by looking at documents. There are many grey areas where the applicant should have a right to explain and to plead his case.

But no, the government has not listened on this particular matter and has stuck to the provisions of the bill. We are going to have a bill, we are going to have a law if this continues to be rammed through, where a senior immigration officer, without any right for the refugee to be heard, will be able to turn away that refugee before he ever gets to the Immigration and Refugee Board, which is the board that is supposed to determine whether or not the person is a valid refugee.

There were estimates made before the committee that 45 to 50 per cent of the applicants could be turned away by the senior immigration officer at this first step without any right to be heard by the refugee board.

That is a very offensive provision. We had amendments in committee with respect to that, to change it or to do away with it. For example, I had an amendment which was similar to the recommendation in the report from the Senate. All were rejected. My amendment was to the effect and was four square with the Senate proposal that if the senior immigration officer felt that the refugee was not eligible, then that entire matter should be referred to the Immigration and Refugee Board where it would be examined as a preliminary issue before it examined the substance of his refugee claim. That would be fair because before the board is the full right of due process with the right of representation.

The minister this morning said that he respected and thought the Senate had a great report, but in effect he has refused to agree with most of the recommendations made by the Senate committee, which was chaired by a Conservative senator and has a majority of Conservative senators on the committee. I do not know what is going to happen when the bill goes to the Senate. It will be interesting to watch that. The Senate is going to get a bill that it criticized in many respects and asked for amendments in its pre-study. However, we will see what happens.

Another major issue that was raised by witnesses and was not changed by the government is the whole question of the split decision before the board in recognizing a refugee. Under the present law, when a refugee goes before the Immigration Refugee Board there are two members of the board present. In order to win the case, to be recognized as a refugee, a claimant only needs the positive vote of one of the two members of the board.

That was done by the government a few years ago because it felt the benefit of the doubt should be given to the refugee. Somebody fleeing from a situation of oppression, who has been persecuted because of politics, religion, ethnic origin, tribe or whatever, has their liberty in danger. They flee a country, come to Canada and claim refugee status. The law said that if one of the two members of the board could be convinced, the claimant would be accepted as a refugee.

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In this bill, the government has now made it mandatory in three areas where the refugee claimant will have to get the votes of both members of the board. It has not really explained why it has done that. Why is it necessary?

The government says the system worked well before the board yet it is changing the rules and requiring two votes in certain matters. We tried to change that in committee. Our amendments were turned down. We tried to change it again yesterday at report stage and it was turned down. One can only assume that the rule was put in simply to keep out more refugees.

One could understand if it was to keep out refugees who did not have a good case, but it is likely to keep out a lot of legitimate refugees. It will bring about unfairness among different individual refugees. Some will get in because they only need one vote. Some will be turned away because they need two votes.

I must say-immigration lawyers confirm this-that a lot of time will be spent before each board hearing deciding whether it is a case that requires two votes or one vote. There is a chance the backlog will be built up again with all this nonsense and this new, unfair provision.

We also attempted to amend the provisions on family members. The government says that in assessing an applicant for immigration, it will assess the entire family, including those who are not accompanying the immigrant to Canada. We feel that is not fair and it is not the traditional way. Only members of the family accompanying the parents or the principal members of the family should be assessed for admission. That amendment was turned down.

We tried to put criteria into the law which would guide the minister and the officials in the granting of visitors' visas, and it was turned down.

Members of Parliament in all parts of this House have had terrible horror cases where Canadians have tried to bring members of their families from their countries of origin as visitors to visit with them and they cannot get them in, even when these individuals have homes in their countries of origin. They have jobs, they have other members of their family, they have every intention of returning but they are systematically turned down.

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We tried to change that, but the government refused. The government still has in this bill extremely wide provisions to block the admissibility of immigrants with respect to criminality and to subversion.

I want to make it clear that we in the Liberal Party are totally opposed to the admission to Canada of criminals, terrorists, subversives or people who engage in espionage. That was already in the law, but the government has put in new provisions which go too far.

For example, there is one provision that says that if people are found to be a threat to the security of Canada beyond terrorism, subversion and espionage, they can still be excluded. We asked the minister and the officials what sort of thing could be beyond terrorism, subversion and espionage. They cannot give us examples.

The criminal lawyers that appeared before the committee just could not imagine what might be a threat to the security of Canada other than those three things which are already in the law.

It is the same with the new provision which was directed supposedly against organized crime. We agree that people involved in organized crime should not be admitted to the country. The provision is written broadly. It states that: "If the officials have reasonable grounds to believe that a person belongs to an organization which might reasonably be involved in crime at some time-". The wording of the section keeps going on. As was pointed out in the debate yesterday, it could include somebody that worked for Exxon in the United States. That organization was convicted of an environmental offence a few years ago. Witness after witness tried to bring this to the attention of the government officials, said the clause should be narrowed, it should be made more specific, but they did not do that.

Great powers are also given to the minister and his officials in managing what are now called streams of immigration. They can retroactively change the rules with respect to certain streams that will be admitted and those that will not.

Somebody could proceed under the new rules of this bill quite considerably down the path to being accepted as a refugee and then the government could decide it was not going to accept any more refugees from that stream. It could suspend or cancel all those applications

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and take people from, let us say, another class, another and writing in English or French. It is going to make the stream altogether. decisions on paperwork.

There are other flaws in the bill. I have tried to highlight some of the more offensive sections but the bill is still seriously flawed. We look at the direction the government is moving from some of the things it has done in recent months.

Yesterday or last Friday the government announced it is moving over 200 immigration officials to Vegreville, Alberta. Vegreville is probably a very good rural Alberta town, but a town that is principally an agricultural centre. The government is going to set up a Canadian centre for immigration. This is where it is going to review immigration applications; not in Edmonton, Winnipeg or Vancouver, which are immigration centres, but in Vegreville.

The government is setting up this centre, which will review applications simply on a paper basis without any face to face interview with the immigration applicants. How inhumane can you get? Most of these immigrants cannot speak English or French. They cannot fill out the documents properly without assistance, yet they will have to fill out documents which will be sent to Vegreville. They may be accepted or turned down as immigrants without any face to face interview. Since they will be living in the big cities of Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Winnipeg and Edmonton, many of them will have no chance to get on the phone and ask: what happened to my application? One wonders about provisions such as this.

I have no objection to moving all kinds of government departments and parts of the government to Vegreville when it is appropriate to do so, but to move an immigration centre to a small community where there are not the community support services for immigration, probably very few if any immigration lawyers or centres for the assistance of immigrants, is inexplicable.

Even though everything is supposed to be done by paper there, I am sure as a member of Parliament and having dealt with immigration matters over the years, people will be phoning us and asking about their applications. It is stuck out in Vegreville.

In any case, this is the direction the government is moving. It is trying to deal with immigrants as faceless phantoms. Decisions will be made based on paperwork without any contact with these people who have a hard time not only speaking English and French but reading

Look at the way it handled the domestic worker issue. Most of our domestic workers come from Third World countries. The government put in a provision just this spring where applicants now must have grade 12 and a six month course to be a domestic worker. No consideration is given to the fact that the person might have been a very good caretaker of children for years and years. That will not count because in many of these countries, whether it is the Caribbean or Asia, they just do not have the opportunity to take six month courses in domestic work and many of them do not have an opportunity to go to grade 12.

On March 27 the government changed the family class regulations. Now it will only accept under family class people under 19, unless they are in school or they are handicapped.

I had an amendment yesterday on appointments to the board. I got a copy of a letter the other day from a member of the board who resigned, saying that the board was rampant with racism. This person said he was obliged to resign, that the way the work of the board was being carried on in Toronto was unacceptable to him and he wrote a letter to the Privy Council resigning.

I raise these issues because this bill is giving more and more authority to government and officials. The government tells us not to worry, everything will be done well, these officials will be well trained. There are many good officials, but the government has been cutting them back as well. They do not have the time, they are over-worked and over-burdened; their tempers get short sometimes.

We see what is happening already. The government introduced a special program with respect to Yugoslavia but only a small percentage of visas have been issued under that program. In effect, the program has not worked. Worse still, the government while announcing the special program for Yugoslavia, did not announce a similar program for a country that is even worse hit, Somalia.

I raise these issues because it indicates to us that it is not a good thing to pass a bill like this, which will give even more authority to officials and to Order in Council and to regulations and to the government, when they have shown us already the sorts of things they are doing. They made the decision to switch these 200 employees to

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Vegreville and set up this new immigration centre which will handle applications based on paper and not face to face interviews. They did not have to come to Parliament, they did that through just an administrative decision.

It is the same thing with the special programs for Yugoslavia and the one that does not exist for Somalia. I could go on.

The minister said this morning that this bill received more attention than any other bill that he can remember. It goes to show that he has a pretty short memory. He has only been in this House since this Conservative government came to power.

I must tell him that before this Conservative government was in power it was customary to give a much longer period of time to the examination of bills. As a matter of fact, when we in the Liberal Party were in government, if we had put an allocation of time on a bill it was considered a national shame. It was an outrage. Now this government does it systematically. Allocation of time and closure are provisions that are meant to deal with abuse by the opposition in filibustering bills.

I could understand if an opposition party decides to carry on systematic filibustering and opposition day after day after day. Then you bring in a closure motion or an allocation of time. But we do not even get a chance to make our first speech and the government rams in these time allocation rules on major, very extensive bills.

The minister's memory is extremely short. Yes, the process worked pretty well in committee on this bill, but it did not work well at all at second reading, at report stage or third reading. The time is extremely limited for the issues to be discussed and, as I pointed out, there are only seven members of this House in the committee, whereas there are 295 members in this House and many of them have something to say about immigration matters. Many of them come from constituencies with large immigration populations.

In conclusion let me say that Canadians want a controlled immigration policy, but they also want fairness, equity and humanity. This bill unfortunately will

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give us the opposite. I have to say that many provisions in this bill move in the opposite direction of fairness, the opposite direction of equity and the opposite direction of humanitarian considerations. I mentioned some of the examples.

The government says that the purpose of the bill is to allow it to better manage the immigration system. It certainly will do that but at a great cost with retroactive measures, with deportations without hearings, with the ability to switch, pick and choose streams of immigration; things that are not traditional in our system and not in the law at the present time.

Therefore, despite some improvements that were made in committee, this bill is still unacceptable and we will be voting against it at third reading today.

Mr. Dan Heap (TVinity-Spadina):

Mr. Speaker, in the 20 minutes I am given I wish mainly to reflect on what Bill C-86 means in the present world we live in.

First, I wish to reply to the minister when he said sarcastically that I withdrew yesterday from criticizing the bill and criticized only the hasty process by which this very large and complicated bill has been rammed through. I do criticize the process, as my colleague from Notre-Dame-de-Grace has, but the minister then hurried away in case he might hear an answer to his wisecrack.

What the minister said is clearly not true. The amendments that I proposed in the committee were nearly all rejected by the committee, especially the important ones. Likewise, the amendments I moved yesterday were all rejected by the Tories. The Tories in the committee and the Tories in the House stonewalled all the important amendments proposed either by the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace or by me.

Bill C-86 is very harmful, as has been said by a great many Canadians, including expert lawyers who have had a chance to get to understand what the bill does.

I fully agree with the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace in his criticisms of the bill, but since I have only half as much time allowed to me I will not repeat them in detail. However, I will simply review them in order to reflect on them because I want to ask why this bill has been driven so hastily and with so little openness to

November 24, 1992

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genuine criticism by this government. Why were so few substantial amendments accepted?

Some people have suggested it is the fear of the Reform Party in order to get back the votes of wandering Tories. Some people have suggested, and I think there is more to this, that it is a fear of immigrants, and I will come back to that.

The cabinet and the bureaucrats are insistent on establishing far greater control in their own hands of the immigration process, free from public knowledge, from public criticism and free from parliamentary criticism for the large part rather than emphasizing trying to give better service to Canadian citizens, residents, immigrants and refugees.

The Conservatives have reduced the chance for due process at the border, particularly in the matter of access to legal counsel. They have made permanent residents less secure. Some of them can now be removed without an inquiry. They have given less priority to family class and they have introduced a brand new, very rare principle of law called retroactivity. They can retroactively cancel immigration applications, investors' funds and work permits, and that threatens all people. It even threatens Canadian citizens when they try to apply to bring relatives here through sponsorship.

They can be very selective about it. They made higher immigration barriers such as the powers of the senior immigration officer to turn away probably a majority of the people without their having the oral hearing that the Supreme Court guaranteed.

There would be no second look in the refugee division when facts are brought out to show that the decision of the division previously was wrong. The power of the SIO to send people back to what the government is pleased to call a safe third country has a very important international meaning.

This safe third country provision, sending them back saying they should have made a refugee application somewhere else, is most significant because most refugee producing countries have no direct passage to Canada.

The safe third country rule can shut out, therefore, the big majority of claimants who have been coming in the last 10 or 20 years. It implicitly bars people who have darker skin than most Canadians.

Canada's policy on refugees has always been a bit ambiguous. After World War II there was the UN Declaration of Human Rights; I believe it is article 13 that said a person has the right to seek protection against his own government or her own government from a foreign state. Canada largely ignored that and still selected refugees mainly if it felt they would turn out to be useful economic immigrants.

In 1973 the convention refugee claimants from Uruguay and Chile and generally parts in the south started coming to Canada mainly from countries that had been invaded by U.S. investment, U.S. CIA operations and U.S. arms.

In Canada there was an intense controversy over Sikh refugee claimants which produced the same decision, guaranteeing an oral hearing to anyone in Canada who makes a refugee claim.

This was a human rights landmark in Canada's immigration process. It was a high point. Since then this government has been sliding in the other direction, especially since the end of the 1980s when the Soviet power collapsed and the cold war had ended. Without the communist threat Canada's principles of refugee policy began to veer uncertainly because previously they had emphasized automatically bringing in people who were fleeing from a communist country.

When a boatload of dark-skinned people landed illegally in Nova Scotia and the people welcomed them with tea and sandwiches, the Prime Minister and the then minister of immigration started worrying publicly about invasion. You would think they came ashore with machine guns or bazookas or something. All they came with were dark skins. Canada's policy began to waiver then.

I want to look quickly at post World War II migration patterns. They concern some other countries more than Canada but Canada is part of the North Atlantic bloc. Especially I want to look at the migration patterns of dark-skinned people to the United States, the chief world investor in the past four decades, including in those countries in the south which are sometimes called Third World countries.

Investing first began in industrialized agriculture in those countries, replacing subsistence farming with agribusiness, cash-cropping for export to the United States and northwestern Europe.

November 24, 1992

Investments were also developed in low-wage manufacturing, drawing the women from the farms, later the men, because they could not work effectively without their women to share the work on the farms. In the factories were produced exports for United States and northwest Europe.

An example is Santo Domingo. The United States invaded that in 1965 to prop up a military industrial coup. It was followed up with U.S. investments, sheltering some of the refugees in the U.S., and migration jumped 12 times, from 4,500 between 1955 and 1959 to 58,000 between 1965 and 1969.

In Haiti, U.S. investment in the 1970s for industrialized agriculture and manufacturing for exports to the U.S.A. and northwest Europe also coincided with mass immigration beginning to the United States. El Salvador had heavy U.S. investments in the 1970s, mingled with the 14 rich families there that monopolized the agriculture. They forced a mass exodus of former campesinos, farm owners, from the farms to farm day labour and industrial labour.

In the 1980s there was civil war by resistance of the people against a United States armed tyranny of the landowners. That caused massive emigration from that little country; from a country of five million people, almost 600,000 moved to the United States, illegally, but they are there as cheap labour.

There are examples of the same also with Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia and Thiwan. In the 1970s in all these countries there were massive flows of American investment with military collaboration and massive migration from those countries to the United States; 81 per cent of all Korean immigrants emigrated to the United States. Almost 100 per cent of Filipinos who emigrated went to the United States. The United States received 70 per cent of the Caribbean immigration but 100 per cent from Santo Domingo, as I mentioned before.

From Central America, the United States receives 19 per cent but from El Salvador, 52 per cent.

The pattern is that cheap labour, cheap land and cheap resources are invested by the United States for their super profits. They also bring about in return massive migration because at the same time the United States' market for low wage labour in the 1970s drew them to the United States.

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It is similar with Japan. It is expanding its investments into southeast Asia and the southwest Pacific. It has now drawn cheap labour from those countries in spite of its

2,000 years of racist exclusionism.

We also note that northern Europe during the 1970s invested heavily in north Africa, the Middle East and south Europe. It also brought cheap labour from those countries to northwestern Europe.

What does this mean for Canada's immigration policy? These are the countries with which Canada is a partner. Canada is part of this group of north Atlantic countries, mostly reflected in the North Atlantic Treaty, but also as a trade bloc and part of the ones that conquered and colonized the countries of the south.

For two to three decades these north Atlantic countries, including Canada, have invested and intervened politically and with armaments in the southern neighbours. The rich countries grew richer and the people of the poor countries grew poorer. While tens of billions of dollars net were taken each year by the north from the south, puppet governments with arms from the north suppressed the revolts of the people.

One instructive example is Arabia, which was partitioned after World War I and again after World War II. It was manipulated a couple of years ago into the gulf war so as to restore north Atlantic control over the oil resources there.

During the same decades, mass migration brought on cheap labour from the Caribbean, Africa, south Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific Islands to the United States and northwestern Europe. The northern economies are staggering badly, partly under the weight of the debt that the Third World cannot pay, a trade in dollars of debt that it cannot pay. The cost of policing it, providing arms and lending it the money to buy arms are all putting it further in debt. Now that our economy is staggering, we have racial conflicts breaking out against the visible minorities in many of the north Atlantic countries.

What I have attempted to suggest is an understanding of Canada's present situation in the world regarding immigration and refugees. Canada, as a north Atlantic country, is beginning to show fear of refugees. Canada talks about not being able to absorb all the refugees who might come here. That is quite true. Neither I nor

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anyone else says that we should take 20 million refugees. However, Canada and the other countries of the north Atlantic community are not seriously trying to deal in any other way with the problems that drove these refugees from their homes, whether they are strictly political problems or whether they are economic problems caused by ruin of the land through agribusiness, industrialized farming systems brought in by the north.

They do not offer a solution either by admitting them to Canada and other countries of the north or by enabling them to survive where they are. The money available to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees to sustain them in their camps or to help them to return is so small that they are in desperate physical condition.

Canada also seems to be showing fear of immigration. That is why there is this big emphasis in the bill on control. The cabinet and the bureaucrats must control the immigrants, the Canadian permanent residents and even Canadian citizens.

I have a question which I want to leave with this House and those who are listening. The question is: Will we let Canada sink into a fortress mentality? We have been increasing the arms budget. Once the Soviet Union is gone, we cannot justify helicopters for chasing Soviet subs, but we are buying them anyway. For what? For another Oka or perhaps for intervening again in the Middle East?

In fear we are arming ourselves more and more and it is a question of what for. Are we going to renew the kind of wars of conquest that were symbolized by Columbus 500 years ago this year, wars of the north, that is western Europe and north America, against the south? Will we recognize that we cannot do that again and even survive ourselves? The world is being ruined by wars. The world is being ruined by a greedy approach to agriculture and a greedy approach to manufacturing which produces, regardless of who can consume, regardless of who needs to consume, regardless of who gets a chance to consume, only for a high-priced market.

Will we recognize that we are in danger of ruining the planet we live on as well as destroying the people? Will we join with the people of what we call the Third World, people largely of the southern continents, Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, southern parts of Asia and the islands of the Pacific, as equals for the survival of all of us and listen to their needs which are vastly greater than ours because of the unequal trade relations we have enforced with our military for five centuries? Will we join with them as equal human beings for survival of the human race on the planet?

This is the question that Bill C-86 is bringing to the minds of several people. Canada does not have an independent world military system like the United States, Britain or France, or such as Germany or perhaps Japan would like to have if it changed its constitution.

We are not a big player on the world scene. That is one advantage we have because we are not committed, we are not locked into hundreds of military bases around the world. We are into a very few. We have not committed ourselves so deeply to the military domination of the world. We have a choice before us. We can work for a policy of peace and co-operation rather than domination and fear. We can begin that by re-examining our immigration policy, asking ourselves why we are afraid of refugees, why we are afraid of immigrants, why we do not provide, as our amendments ask to provide, even the right to legal counsel when a person is at the border and in danger of being turned away.

The government has said they can have legal counsel if it is available, but it will not do anything to make legal counsel available. The government has said: "We won't send anybody back to a country where he or she fears persecution", but it will not tell us how the person is to get from the border point to those who will decide that that person should not be sent home.

All the amendments that we put in order to have the good intentions expressed by the government put into action were met with saying: "Trust us. We wouldn't do anything unkind or unfair or unjust". Laws are not meant to put all that power solely into the hands of government, cabinet and officials. Laws are meant to be in the hands of all the elected representatives, such as all the members of Parliament. That is the main fault in this law and raises the question of what is this government afraid of.

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St,

November 24, 1992

Hon. Warren Allmand (Notre-Dame-de-Grace):

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague from Spadina for his remarks and also for the great contribution that he made throughout the work in committee, day in, day out, long days in which we worked together. I want to thank him.

In the minister's remarks, he said he thought that the pre-study report of the Senate was an excellent report. I was a bit surprised that he said that because he accepted very few of the recommendations of the Senate committee.

I am just looking at the Senate's report now. It made 14 recommendations. As far as I can see, the government only accepted two of them. It accepted the recommendation that hearings of the refugee division should be held in camera as a general rule. The government accepted that change. The Senate also said that the definition of terrorism should be redefined. The government did that.

Of all the other recommendations, and there are 14, that is really only two. For example, on safe third country, the Senate states that a precondition should be a treaty between Canada and the country, in which treaty it should be clear that that country adheres to the entire convention on the status of refugees, not just article 33. It also states that that country must have a refugee determination system that complies with Canadian principles of fundamental justice; in other words, it has to have a system more or less like our system where one has a hearing and so on.

The government did not accept any of those recommendations because the SIO is given all these powers. By the way, the Senate recommended that if the senior immigration officer should decide that a refugee was not eligible, the case should go to the Immigration and Refugee Board for a determination. That was a major recommendation. The government did not accept that.

The Senate said that the provision on the split on making a unanimous consideration on the board is wrong. It said that it should be reconsidered, that the split decision was unacceptable.

In any case, I want to ask the hon. member what he thought of the Senate report. Does he think that the government has really paid any attention to this report, despite the rhetoric of the minister in saying what a wonderful report it is?

Mr. Heap:

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for

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his question, as well as for his very kind remarks.

I wish to say that I benefited greatly by his experience when we were on the committee together, he having been in Parliament twice as long as I and having had a great deal of experience that I have not had. We gave the best possible representation that I can imagine on behalf of the people who wrote to us, phoned us, telegraphed us and presented briefs as well as those who came and spoke to us.

I do consider with him that the Senate report was very encouraging. It did not propose amendments because that would not be in order at that time. It did propose recommendations. I hope to see all its recommendations reappear as amendments. The only technical point I would disagree on with the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace is that the government did not redefine terrorism at the Senate's request.

Instead, after its request the government withdrew its proposed definition of terrorism. I do not really know whether we are better or worse off. We have an undefined word there and what it is going to mean, who it is going to exclude I do not know.

Certainly, I did not like the definition that the government had there. It would have excluded far too many people, but we do not have a good definition yet. The government just backed away.

The other proposals that the member refers to are certainly very necessary, such as for a safe third country. The member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace and I tried every way we could think of to get some recognition of the points that the Senate was making and got none at all.

Therefore, the minister is obviously speaking with his tongue in his cheek to put the best face on it possible when he says that the member and I were satisfied with the work of the committee. We were satisfied with the conduct of the committee. The conduct was fair and considerate but the decisions of the majority of the committee were very unfortunate.

Mr. Blaine A. Thacker (Lethbridge):

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to participate in this third reading debate on Bill C-86. Before I start I understand that due to the ministerial statement this morning, there is unanimous agreement to debate this bill through the lunch hour or at least into the lunch hour.

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I am wondering if the Chair would find if there is such unanimity.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):

Is there unanimous consent to extend debate until two o'clock?

Agreed.

Mr. Thacker:

Mr. Speaker, first of all I want to assure you and other members as well as any Canadians who may be watching today that the committee stage to Bill C-86 worked veiy well.

We sat throughout the summer months when other members were presumably at the cottage or the lake and we heard some 110 witnesses, some 48 of which were groups. We reviewed 116 briefs and 186 letters.

The result of that was some 102 amendments. I agree that a number of those were technical but about 70 of those amendments really flowed from the evidence and from the skill and expertise of the members who sat on that committee.

We came together and debated each of those clauses, clause by clause, and the collective judgment of the committee was that some 122 amendments, of which 70 flowed out of the evidence, should be made.

If I were the member for Trinity-Spadina or Notre-Dame-de-Grace or any of the government members, I would be immensely proud because it was not always that way that members of the opposition could substantially change the direction of a bill by canying the judgment as a question of logic and common sense.

Second, as the chairperson of that committee, I want to thank the committee members because they did work hard. We heard some 61 hours of evidence versus an average of around 30.1 note that the rules of the House for the most part are agreed to by all of the parties.

Canada's Parliament now really has about half of the legislative jurisdiction and yet we sit practically all year long. Contrast that with Britain and France and other unitary states where the Parliaments have to do all of the whole range of constitutional legislative authority. Bills like this in France and in Britain would very quickly go through a second reading stage; most parties agree to a two-hour debate in which the two or three parties present their views and then it goes off to a committee for an extended process. This committee worked very well.

I particularly want to state that the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace and the member for Trinity- Spadina, representing the two opposition parties, were both very fair minded in their questioning of witnesses. They brought out points that were unique and needed to be brought out and which often resulted in amendments. The government members-the member for La Prairie, the member for Red Deer, the member for Surrey-White Rock-worked very hard on this bill. We were led most ably by the parliamentary secretary, the member for St. John's East.

Committees cannot work unless you have a good parliamentary secretary with whom you can place calls to go back to the minister and fight with the minister and push the officials to get amendments through. The distinguished member for St. John's East did that on behalf of all of us and deserves plaudits which I am happy to share.