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House Hansard - 336

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 16, 2024 11:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 336 - Sep/16/24
Mr. Tom Kmiec
  • Sep/16/24 1:15:13 p.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-71 
Madam Speaker, forgive me for the error of reading the Prime Minister's name into the record. Thank you for reproaching me for doing so. I see that I have about six minutes left to address the backlog of applications at the Department of Citizenship and Immigration. We always forget that it is the Department of Citizenship and Immigration. These are two matters we are dealing with at the same time. If we look at the backlog in the department, we see that it is over two million applications. At the same time, the minister insists that he knows what he is doing. He spends far too much time on Twitter, or X, fighting with anonymous users and others and taking cheap shots at other politicians who disagree with him. That is what he is doing instead of managing his department. On the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, we often see a number of issues. There is a one-, two- or three-year backlog. Sometimes it could even take five, six or seven years. These applications should be easy to process in the allotted time. Let us talk about the commission that is responsible for asylum claims. This is an excellent example of what happened in this country under this government and this minister in particular. Today, the department has a backlog of more than 220,000 asylum claims. More than 300,000 applications are on hold, and the waiting period is three and a half years before a file is reviewed and an answer is given. There is a backlog of 220,000 applications. In 2016, an estimate published online indicated that there was a backlog of 17,000 applications. Under the Liberals, the backlog in the asylum management system went from 17,000 to 220,000, with more than 100,000 applications currently being processed. Some 220,000 people are waiting. These people came to Canada through another immigration program or crossed at Roxham Road. They applied for asylum, for refugee status. One would have thought that the government would have allocated enough resources to manage the number of people in the system in order to protect their rights. That is what the minister says. Every year, the numbers grow. I have them here. In 2022, when the minister took office, there was a backlog of 70,223 applications. In 2023, the backlog was up to 156,023 applications. In July 2024, it was 218,593 applications. Today I received an answer to an access to information request, which I read very closely. It states that almost 18% of people who request an answer to their asylum claim are international students. Their applications are now part of the department's backlog. When the minister is talking about not knowing the numbers so that he could not respond to the question, this is critical to how immigration and citizenship and refugee systems are managed in Canada. The minister does not know the impact of his own legislation. It greatly worries me that he is not aware of the details. We Conservatives had a private member's bill, which was proposed from the Senate side, that offered to fix section 8 regarding lost Canadians. For those 50 months, we were on side. We proposed substantive amendments, once the scope of amendments was expanded, to the substantive connection test, and we proposed to introduce what I think was the most critical requirement, which was to have a police record check, to actually do a security record check. That was one amendment, I will say, that the Liberals voted against, with their allies in the NDP, at committee. We have now seen, over the last six to 12 months, many security issues with different types of visa applicants who have been approved and who have come to Canada. I think the security of Canadians is incredibly important. The integrity of our citizenship system is critical. I do not trust the minister. I do not trust the Liberal Party. I do not trust its ally in the NDP, either, that it would be able to manage the new flow of applications because it just does not know how many people would be eligible, through Bill C-71, for citizenship by descent. As the judge found in his own ruling, the reasons for charter non-compliance were not that there was an overall violation of it but that there was incompetence of the minister and the bureaucracy, which failed to provide accurate information. There were 50% errors in applications being processed: dates were wrong; names were wrong; and some even received a citizenship document for someone who was not even related to the same family. Those are serious errors in administration that the minister should have had fixed. Therefore, we will be opposing this piece of legislation. We will then propose amendments. We are going to put forward amendments at committee to try to fix the legislation, and if we can fix it, then we will revise our position. I think that if we can fix it by providing the substantive connection test, the 1,095 or more consecutive days, we can come to some type of agreement on what Canadians expect. Also, a security record check is an absolute requirement. We already have chaos in the immigration system. The immigration minister and the government he is part of have destroyed the consensus in Canada that immigration is a great thing. I think it is a great thing, but I was sad to see so many Canadians come up to me during door knocking and at town halls to say that they do not agree with it anymore. Therefore, because we cannot trust the Liberals with something as important as our citizenship, we are going to vote against them.
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