44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 17, 2024 10:00AM
- Sep/17/24 1:25:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I too would like to congratulate my colleague and friend's father for making a wonderful decision. Canada has benefited greatly by that decision to come to Canada and make it their family home.
As the leader of the government in the House at one point, the member is very familiar with procedures. Yesterday my concern was that the only way we are going to get this bill to committee, it appeared, was if we use time allocation. I am wondering if my friend can provide her thoughts about looking for an opposition party to assist in advancing this legislation.
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- Sep/17/24 1:26:23 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I really enjoy and have a lot of respect for this place. I hope it does not come down to having to use these kinds of tools.
We are hearing that the Conservatives want to propose amendments. They have even tried to suggest them on the floor of the Commons to see if others might want to entertain them. All parties said, yes, they wanted to go to committee and debate those amendments, so it seems there is a willingness. The Bloc seems to support this going to committee and seeing what needs to happen to improve it. The Bloc has been clear.
This is not a partisan issue. This is an issue of Canadian citizenship and values, something we should all hold near and dear to our hearts. The NDP has been very clear. It tried to advance a motion to pass it at all stages or even get it to committee. It has been doing that work in this House, as well as at committee.
I would say to the member that I think the majority of members want to see this advance. Canadians should observe who is abusing the public purse. They are being paid by the public purse, but they do not want to do the work, all more—
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- Sep/17/24 1:27:32 p.m.
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We have time for a brief question.
The hon. member for Calgary Shepard.
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Madam Speaker, I want to remind the member that when the original first-generation limit was introduced in Canada in Bill C-37, all parties, including the Liberal Party of Canada, the NDP, the Bloc and the Conservatives, unanimously voted twice on it, on February 7, 2008, and February 15, 2008. Australia, the United Kingdom and America all have similar types of legislation that offer a first-generation limit.
I will remind the member that in the Superior Court decision in Bjorkquist, it was found charter non-compliant because the government was found to have committed, in administrative cases involving section 5 grants of citizenship, a 50% error rate. It is the Liberals' fault it was found charter non-compliant.
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- Sep/17/24 1:28:23 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have been quite forthright in saying this is about Canadian citizenship. We can all work together to ensure that we are protecting Canadian citizenship.
Let us look at the Conservative approach. Right away, the fingers come out. It is a pointing game. It is somebody's problem. The member might have been here or might not have been here, but what he does not realize is my grandfather came to this country. I was born and raised in this country and I have a lot of regard for this place and our rights and freedoms.
The member is yelling at me like Conservatives do at women all the time. Perhaps if a man had put forward the motion, they would have accepted it, but God forbid a woman does.
At that time, former prime minister Harper was very clear. He basically told all members in this place that if they did not support this, nothing would happen. That was the Conservative way then; it remains the Conservative way now. Canadians should be watching.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise today on Bill C-71, an act to amend the Citizenship Act. I will be splitting my time with the most hon. member for Durham.
“Broken immigration policy, dangerous loopholes”: Somewhere between abject incompetence or willful malice, these five words summarize this reckless bill. It would tragically add to an already reckless NDP-Liberal immigration policy that destroys lives and breaks apart the cohesion of Canada. It proposes granting citizenship to individuals born abroad with at least one Canadian parent who has spent 1,095 days in Canada without requiring those days to be consecutive or ensuring basic criminal record checks. The Liberals have failed to disclose how many people would gain citizenship under the legislation or how they plan on tackling the existing immigration backlog with the extra pressure that Bill C-71 would create.
Under this Prime Minister, our immigration system has become a revolving door for exploitation. Criminals and con artists take advantage while hard-working Canadians and newcomers pay the price. Over these past nine years, it is remarkable how badly this Prime Minister has failed Canadians and newcomers.
How did we get here? The answer, regrettably, is ignorance. These NDP-Liberals have always believed they know best, arrogantly so, even when the facts tell a different story. To understand the damage, let us look at their inheritance in 2015. In 2015, we were the envy of the world: a balanced budget; a roaring economy; an expanding middle class; low crime; and the most successful immigration policy in the world. Housing was affordable. When our common-sense Conservative leader was Minister of Housing, the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment was $1,172. Today that has doubled.
This was not by accident. It was intentional. It took hard work by a Conservative government that cared about the prosperity of all Canadians and that cared about ensuring that newcomers succeeded. Our immigration system was structured to ensure newcomers contributed to our economy and that by working hard and playing by the rules, the Canadian dream was theirs to realize. That promise is now broken.
NDP-Liberals ignored the principle of Chesterton's fence. That is, never tear down a fence until you understand why it was put up in the first place. Within 18 months, they tore down each fence put in place to protect our system. They increased the number of temporary foreign workers while scrapping measures to ensure Canadians had the first opportunity for jobs. They watered down language and citizenship knowledge requirements, exempting anyone under 18 and everyone over 54. They arbitrarily ramped up permanent resident targets to 300,000 a year without considering the impact on everyone's housing needs.
Today, housing prices have doubled; international students are packed into inhumane conditions, at times eight people to a small apartment, or worse, homeless under bridges; suicides are rampant; and housing builds have not kept pace with population growth. Last year alone, over 1.2 million people were added to the population, while Canada only built a third of the housing needed for those people to live.
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation reports that we need 5.8 million new homes to restore affordability, but we are building fewer homes than we did in the 1970s, with housing starts on the decline. Nobody believes the government's so-called targets, and hundreds of thousands of human beings are paying the price. Instead of firing those responsible, the Prime Minister rewards them. The same person who lost track of one million people as Minister of Immigration is now in charge of fixing the housing hell he helped create.
The rule of law has been shattered. Since 2015, violent crime has surged by 50%, and reports this summer reveal that the NDP-Liberal government has granted both citizenship and student visas to known terrorists. Take Ahmed Eldidi, who slipped by two national security screenings before being rewarded citizenship in May. He appeared in an ISIS terror snuff video, cutting a victim into pieces in 2015. Only at the 11th hour, with allied intervention, was the RCMP tipped off to his attempt to conduct an ISIS terror attack on Canadian soil. What did our Minister of Public Safety have to say? He said that this is the way the investigative and national security system should work. No, it is not.
Then we learned that another terrorist, Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, was awarded a student visa. Khan was plotting what he called “the largest attack on U.S. soil since 9/11”, a large-scale attack on Jews in Brooklyn.
This is not just limited to two cases. Communities across our country are subject to attacks and crime in their places of worship, their schools, their businesses and their homes. Almost daily here at home, mobs are on the march, threatening individuals' dignity and freedom.
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Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I regret to interrupt. I miss the member being closer, but I am glad to see him and welcome him back.
This is a really important conversation on citizenship. I recognize the member wants to talk about immigration. I waited patiently with hope that he would come back to it. I really believe that we need to debate Bill C-71 and that we stay focused on the topic. Therefore, I would challenge him on relevance.
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- Sep/17/24 1:35:39 p.m.
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Yes. I hear other members trying to speak over the hon. member who is speaking. I would ask them to hold off.
As the hon. member knows, there is some latitude when individuals are making speeches. The matter that is before the House does talk about immigration, but it is specific to a certain degree. I am sure the hon. member will bring it back to that.
The hon. member for Calgary Heritage.
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- Sep/17/24 1:36:10 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am grateful for the commercial break.
Almost daily here at home, mobs are on the march, threatening individuals' dignity and freedom. How are Canadians supposed to trust the NDP-Liberals with our safety and national security? How are newcomers, who want to work hard and raise a family here, supposed to have faith in the incompetent government's immigration policy? The Canadian dream is broken.
Skilled immigrants who came here in search of a better life are stuck in low-wage jobs, unable to work in their trained professions because of bureaucratic red tape. If one wants a doctor they must call an Uber. Medical professionals are being denied from serving backed-up patients. There are 10 million Canadians who will soon be without access to primary care and the caregivers they need are ironically a two-minute wait away. StatsCan recently found that 15% of immigrants leave Canada within 20 years of arrival, many because they cannot find jobs in their trained professions. International students are exploited by diploma-mill colleges and sold fake degrees and false promises of employment, residency and citizenship.
Desperate people turn to fraudulent claims of refuge, knowing the NDP-Liberals have loosened the very restrictions that protect Canadians. For what? How many destroyed lives need to be sacrificed at the altar of this horrific incompetence or actual malice? In some ways, they know exactly what they are doing. They have used the chaos of their own broken immigration system to their partisan advantage, turning a blind eye to the international students who were bussed in to vote in Liberal nominations, like they did in Don Valley North. When criticized, they clutch their pearls and decry racism. Shame on them. What is racist is pitting refugee against refugee, pitting one group against another, shilling up desperate people for cheap jobs to kowtow to corporate interests, pandering to mobs that do not share universal values and obsessively trafficking in racial identity rather than individual dignity.
Canadians at home are not surprised by the broken state of our immigration system under the NDP-Liberals. They are devastated by the division they now bear witness to after nine years of this abuse. After nine long years of this nonsense, every Canadian knows the reality. Housing is broken. The rule of law is broken. Citizenship is broken. The Canadian dream is broken. Canadians who have worked hard their entire lives are watching their country be torn apart while new Canadians who came here with hope are discovering the dream they were promised has gone up in smoke. Families are struggling to keep a roof over their heads. Newcomers are denied their potential, while terrorists are given the welcome mat. It was not like this before the nine years of the current Prime Minister, and it will not be like this after he is gone.
Canada is one of the oldest democracies on planet Earth. We are not some postnational project; we are a promise, and ours is a promise to keep amid the gathering darkness of broken immigration, broken dreams of common citizenship, crime, chaos, drugs and disorder that roam across our streets. We will restore the promise. We will be the light. Ours is a country where it does not matter what one's name is or where one comes from, but what one can do. It is a land where if one works hard and plays by the rules, one could earn a good living, raise a family and own a home. With freedom comes a responsibility to uphold those freedoms for all. Our freedom finds expression through the rule of law and a democracy that is to shape those very laws. Ours is a promise to keep for Canadians and newcomers alike that we will never give in, never back down and never surrender to the forces that would break us.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate that you did try to remind me and the member why we were here, and the fact that the member did not actually talk about Canadian citizenship.
It is important for us to come back to Bill C-71 and to understand that, under the amendments under Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his government, for Canadians serving in the Canadian Forces who had their babies on a Canadian Forces base abroad, those children had their citizenships stripped from them. How are those children not Canadians when their parents are serving in the Canadian forces, proud Canadians? We really need to come back to this legislation.
I recognize and hear the concerns that the member is raising on other matters. We should discuss and debate them. The Conservatives spent the morning talking about some concurrence motion, and I am sure they will do it again tomorrow. However, right now, let us debate Bill C-71. Let us get our points on the record and then let us get to the vote so we can get the bill to committee and get this legislation either passed or not. Members can vote.
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- Sep/17/24 1:41:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, in her previous interventions, the member had described a situation where her family, her grandparents had come from abroad. My family also came from abroad in the late 1960s.
The glorious thing about Canada is the diversity of our ideas. For many people across the way, for the NDP-Liberals, they think of diversity as multicoloured perspectives of the same ideological disposition.
In a Canada that is prosperous and free, we value freedom of debate. We value the freedom that every Canadian of every background can stand in the chamber and speak with strength to the issue of our citizenship and our immigration. Our citizenship is what unites us. Our democracy and the rule of law is at the core of who are, and it is this tradition that my constituents have advised me to uphold in the chamber today on this debate.
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Madam Speaker, I listened to the member's speech. I wonder if he actually realizes that, under Bill C-71, what we are talking about is restoring the rights of Canadians that were taken away unconstitutionally by the Conservatives 15 years ago. This is what we are talking about. We are talking about Canadians having lost that right. The courts have said that it is a violation of their charter rights and mobility rights. I wonder if the member understands that.
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- Sep/17/24 1:42:51 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my understanding is that this was a debate that was unanimously agreed to in this chamber.
Our issue is with the performative announcements that the NDP-Liberals make when it comes to our immigration plans. Without ever having a plan to deal with an overburdened immigration system, they once again present performative ideas as to how they are going to meet their targets.
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- Sep/17/24 1:43:16 p.m.
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I understand that these are passionate discussions, but I want to remind members that there are rules within the House, and when someone else has the floor we should not be interrupting them.
Questions and comments, the hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader.
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- Sep/17/24 1:43:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, contrary to the false impression that the member tried to get on the record, Canada is not broken. Canada is, in fact, the best country in the world to live in and call home. That is the reality. Only the Conservative mentality and that far-right MEGA element goes around the country to give the false impression that Canada is broken.
The Conservative Party of Canada continues to play a destructive force on the floor of the House of Commons. The Conservatives do not want anything to pass. My question specifically is: Why will they not allow this legislation to at least go to committee, given that the Superior Court of Ontario has said that the law is unconstitutional and that it has to change?
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- Sep/17/24 1:44:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the inheritance that these NDP-Liberals had when they arrived in office was an envy of the world. Across the left and the right, our immigration policy was the envy of the world. Around the world, people looked at how Canada had managed its immigration levels, its housing, its health and its economy. This is an issue in which the NDP-Liberals, over nine years, have sown wanton division across our country and irresponsible government, which is a mixture of absolute ignorance or willful malice. I think it is somewhere between both.
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Madam Speaker, I rise in the House today to oppose Bill C-71. I do so wanting to recognize the context that our country finds itself in right now.
Immigration levels are too high. We are now approaching an average of 1.5 million people coming into the country per year. The reason we know that is too high is because population growth is now outpacing the job market. It is outpacing the housing market. It is also outpacing investment in social services like hospitals, schools and child care facilities. The quality of life for the average Canadian is in decline because of the stress being placed on our local economies and on public services. This is a sentiment held not just by people who may have been in Canada for many generations, but also by people who are immigrants themselves, children of immigrants and grandchildren of immigrants.
When we review Bill C-71, the ultimate question we need to ask ourselves is if this is a logical, reasonable, common-sense approach to citizenship and immigration, or is this is a continuation of an approach that has been in place for years now that is actually harming the quality of life for all people in the country, regardless of their backgrounds.
To advance a common-sense approach to immigration, I would put forward a three-part standard that we can evaluate Bill C-71 against.
The first question that any person would ask is how many people would be entering the country under Bill C-71. It is a very reasonable question, one that I imagine any Canadian would ask. It would be imperative for the government advancing this legislation to have an answer to. Unfortunately, we have tried our best to get specific numbers from the Liberal government on this legislation, and we have not gotten that number. We do not know how many more people would be entering the country under Bill C-71. Given the existing constraints we have, that is a very important question for the people of Canada to have an answer to.
The second part of this test, as my colleague, the member for Calgary Heritage mentioned, would be criminal background checks. Any Canadian, whether he or she just got here or has been here for a long time, would say it is common sense to do criminal background checks on who enters the country. It should be a no-brainer for anyone to agree to, yet, we have been advocating for the provision of mandatory criminal background checks in Bill C-71 without the support from the Liberal government or their allies in the NDP and the Bloc Québécois.
We are asking very clearly why proper vetting is not done before granting citizenship to people who do not live in our country and are only being granted citizenship through a weak and watered-down substantial connection test. The question becomes, why would anyone be surprised by this? We have seen example after example of the Liberal government not prioritizing criminal background checks in existing immigration policy.
We have seen examples just this summer of the Liberal government admitting into the country someone who is an alleged ISIS terrorist, granting that person citizenship while he plotted a terrorist attack on Toronto, the biggest city in the country. We have seen an example of the Liberal government granting a student visa in another incident to someone who planned a terrorist attack on New York City. It is on brand for the Liberal government to not be concerned about criminal background checks, and this is yet another instance of where Bill C-71 fails to meet a common-sense standard for appropriate immigration and citizenship policy.
The last point I will make in terms of this standard is about its economic impact. We have asked for a mandatory comprehensive economic impact assessment so that the Liberal government would share with the people of Canada what the impact would be of admitting even more people, adding to population growth, into the country. What would the impact be through Bill C-71 on our hospitals, on our schools, on our child care facilities? What would the impact be on young Canadians who aspire to own a home and are pessimistic about whether that dream will ever come true because we are not building enough houses but we are adding more people?
What would happen to the job market, where we are seeing increases in employment, especially youth employment? Would contributing more people to the country have a negative effect on our young people's ability to get a job and start their careers?
This is what a common-sense approach to immigration and citizenship would be seeking to answer and yet with Bill C-71 we are very far from getting answers to these questions.
Many people hearing my words today may have some questions of their own. How did we get to this point? How did we get to a point where a Liberal government can advance legislation that so clearly does not respond to the context that our country is living in? How did we get to a point where we can walk into the House of Commons and have legislation put in front of us that does not address the specific concerns that many Canadians of all backgrounds have about our current immigration levels?
That is fundamentally the result of what has been a concerted effort to stifle debate and criticism of immigration policy in the country. For a long time now, daring to ask a question about how immigration policy affects Canada, daring to criticize the Liberal status quo on immigration has gotten us smeared, labelled, name-called, fingers pointed in our face, people questioning whether we have compassion or concern for people of all sorts of different backgrounds and cultures. The reality is that they can finger-point all they want. They can do all the name-calling they want. They can do all the smearing they like. The reality is that we have a very specific purpose when we enter the House of Commons, which is to ask the fundamental question of what is best for Canada.
In order to apply that lens to Bill C-71, we would need those three critical pieces of information. Number one, how many people are entering the country? Number two, are there appropriate vetting mechanisms in place and background checks? Number three, what is the impact that increasing the population even further will have on our economy?
By not answering these questions, I have a very hard time understanding how any member in the House can say that this legislation is complete and deserving of a vote. In my view, this has failed every single measure of a logical, reasonable, common-sense immigration and citizenship standard, and that is why we must oppose it.
Last, I will say is this. Whether it is immigration policy, housing, citizenship, whatever it might be, it is imperative that we put the Canadian people first, and I do believe that this is a window into how that is not being met. Every time we vote in here, every time we come in here and debate a matter of legislation or policy, we should have at the top of mind the Canadian taxpayer, the Canadian who voted for us to be here to represent our local communities and represent our interests. The immigration status quo in our country is not doing what is best for Canada. With this legislation we are seeing a very clear example of that.
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- Sep/17/24 1:53:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, this will be the second consecutive Conservative that has spoken in regard to the immigration system as a whole and has tried to give glorification to Stephen Harper, who was a disaster on immigration. What those members are glorifying is the fact that Stephen Harper, for example, cancelled the sponsoring of parents and grandparents. They literally deleted hundreds of thousands of people who were under the process of becoming permanent residents.
If we want to talk about cold immigration policies, we should go back to the Conservative years. What is important is the mixture of immigrants who are coming for permanent residence. We have annual targets that are set. That annual target is going to be coming out again. We will find that there is a great benefit through immigration to Canada. The Conservatives of late are trying to give the impression that it is us versus them. We should be proud of the diversity. Look at the immigration programs—
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- Sep/17/24 1:55:02 p.m.
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I do have to allow for other questions.
The hon. member for Durham.
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Madam Speaker, this is exactly what I am talking about. We have Canadians of all backgrounds concerned about the high immigration levels, the fact that population growth has outpaced jobs, housing and social services. Once again, the Liberals go back to their old and tired playbook, of trying to point fingers, smear and accuse us of not caring about people. I hear from my constituents all the time, constituents from all different racial, cultural and religious backgrounds. They are concerned about the strain that population growth is having on our quality of life. That is why it is important that we ask serious questions about Bill C-71.
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