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Thursday, September 30, 1999

How warm our welcome?
Debating Canada's immigration policy in the wake of this summer's migrants


National Post


NDP: Pat Martin


LIBERALS: Dennis Mills


BLOC: Bernard Bigras


REFORM: Leon Benoit


CONSERVATIVES: David Price

With the arrival on the shores of British Columbia of 600 Chinese refugee claimants this summer, Canada's immigration and refugee system has come under fire. Critics of the current system, led by the Reform party, have demanded a federal government crackdown on human smuggling into Canada. A National Post poll this month showed the push for immigration reform is backed by a majority of Canadians, two-thirds of whom believe the current system does not work. Elinor Caplan, the Immigration Minister, has rejected calls by Preston Manning, the Reform leader, to eliminate illegal immigrants' right to appeal deportation orders. Ms. Caplan said she will not override the Charter of Rights, but promised to increase the power of authorities to detain claimants, a move that would speed up the process. Receiving the Chinese migrants has cost the federal government more than $2-million so far.

Giles Gherson, National Post political editor: Today's topic is the nation's policy towards immigration and refugees, an issue that received a lot of attention this summer. Now let's be clear at the outset that illegal immigration is different from legal immigration, but in many ways the two come together with the incredible wave of migration taking place across the globe.

Bernard Bigras, Rosemont (Bloc Quebecois): This summer the arrival of a number of boatloads of illegal Chinese refugees again raised the issue of our reception of people who travel to Canada and then claim refugee status. These events highlighted the weaknesses in our procedure for handling refugee claims, and underlined the need for an immediate response from the Liberal government. These weaknesses are: Confusion about the division of the role and responsibility among all those involved; second, the infrastructure of the co-ordination and the control is inefficient; and of course there is an unacceptable backlog in processing claims. The delay is currently more than one year, which is intolerable.

Leon Benoit, Lakeland (Reform): I think immigration is for Canada, and Canadians, so why haven't Canadians been asked what they want in terms of immigration? From listening to Canadians I've heard that they do favour independent immigration. Certainly, they want people that are going to very quickly become independent after they come to Canada and add to our economy very quickly. I've heard that Canadians want genuine refugees and right now are concerned that in fact too many people are being accepted as refugees who should be applying under the independent categories. And they favour reuniting families. And quite frankly none of this system is working to focus on these people. Family reunification often takes two to three years or more, independent immigrants ... I've talked to businesses people who want or desperately need a certain skill or expertise and the process to get people into the country to fill that void is just too slow. So clearly the system is not working the way I believe that Canadians want it to work.

Pat Martin, Winnipeg-Centre (NDP): I think that asking: ''Are the rules too lax?'' is really putting the cart before the horse. We can't deal with the subject of are the rules of admission too strict until we make up our mind -- How big do we want Canada to be? We have to have that debate first and then set realistic targets and then craft our rules in a way to meet those targets. Wilfrid Laurier said, ''we should be a country of a 100 million people,'' and Trudeau said, ''we should be 50 million by the year 2000,'' yet current immigration policy is crafted to keep people out, not welcome them in. So to answer your question, if our goal is to keep the people out of this country, and to keep the population stagnant, then the rules are just right. But if we accept that immigration is an engine for economic growth, and we want to encourage more growth, then the rules are too strict and we need to eliminate barriers like the racist head tax.

David Price, Compton-Stanstead (Conservative): Well, what we're looking at here first of all is the B.C. case this summer, and I think we should really look at that situation. We've called back the immigration committee to sit so that we could have the minister of immigration called to account. Because we want to see what's happening with our coast guard, our RCMP and our Department of National Defence. Do they have the manpower and the funding to deal with the situation? And we've also written to the minister and suggested that we would support a toughening of our existing legislation. Now what we've proposed as amendments to the Immigration Act is to allow protective custody for refugee claimants -- especially those with no ID, and in the B.C. case, the ones in danger of being kidnapped by criminal elements. And we also want the earliest possible criminal prosecution to take care of those smugglers and also to lengthen the minimum prison terms and increase the fines for the traffickers. And something we proposed in 1987 is an amendment to the Immigration Act to allow Canadian authorities to turn back vessels at sea, before they reach shore, of course provided that the safety of the passengers has been assured.

Dennis Mills, Broadview-Greenwood (Liberal): Well first of all it seems that there's a broad consensus here on a number of issues, but the one that seems to get the most consensus, and I will be a part of it, is that the Department of Immigration is simply not working. And this started essentially 10 or 12 years ago, when we started with drastic, radical cuts to the Department of Immigration. The backlog in some offices (abroad) is three, four and five years before applicants are considered. Because of this backlog, we have created what I would call a ''phony refugee'' status system in Canada. Eighty percent of my time as a Member of Parliament in downtown Toronto is dealing with immigration cases that mostly relate to refugee status, when a great number of those people simply came here and claimed that status because our system was broken abroad, and we could not look after it. And what we now have in Canada is a backlog upwards of two and three years, and it doesn't matter whether you're an opposition parliamentarian or a government parliamentarian, no matter how hard you try to get the department rebuilt with public servants, we just can't get it done.

Mr. Bigras: It's not a revelation, you know. In March, 1997, the auditor-general concluded all that. I hope that in the Throne Speech we're going to have a new orientation. I think it's very important to have a major reform of immigration, and I think it's time to renovate the Immigration Act.

Mr. Benoit: It sounds like we all agree that the system is broken, badly broken, now. We proposed several changes over the last six years, and I'm wondering why the government hasn't acted -- not one piece of legislation to solve this problem. Pat Martin said that Laurier and Trudeau had this vision of Canada having 100 million people ... I'd like to hear what Canadians see for Canada and immigration. I think it's time for a national referendum on the broad principles of immigration, and let Canadians have their say as to what they want from immigration. I think immigration is such an important issue and we do depend on immigration, certainly, to help build our economy -- this country's been built on immigration -- so why haven't Canadians ever really been given a say? Let's have a referendum held with the next election on the broad principles of immigration including numbers, including what we see for Canada in terms of population over the next 10, 20, 30 years. Until we do that, we can't possibly build the immigration system that Canadians want.

Mr. Martin: Well, I'd rather not focus on the narrow issue of the Chinese migrant boat people. It would be wrong for us to be shaping immigration policy based on what is really an anomaly of this current influx. I think that Western developed nations are going to be facing a day of reckoning soon when it comes to the mass movement of people. We've got this spectre of people sitting in a mud hut watching Mary Tyler Moore reruns on a colour TV, and hearing all about the West, and they're not going to be satisfied living in abject poverty for much longer. And they're going to do anything that they can to better themselves. So we better be ready for lots more.

Mr. Price: I definitely don't agree with a referendum. That's not the way to work. I think the (parliamentary) committee itself has done excellent work. Now, I'm new to the committee. But when I read the past reports, like the report that they did in June of 1998, that has some really good items in there. What I'm wondering is, how come this is not coming forward, why isn't a bill coming forward that has some of this material in it?

Mr. Mills: My greatest concern is the backlash in our community that is developing towards new immigrants coming to this country, and that makes me very nervous. The focus and attention on British Columbia over the summer was a specific example of where people started making broad, general statements about immigrants in general. We have to deal with this issue head on, in a constructive way and very quickly. Otherwise the backlash towards immigration by those who were immigrants themselves at one point in time is going to be huge.

Mr. Gherson: Apparently the Liberal caucus is looking at recommending some changes to the immigration minister, which would include putting a premium on immigrants who have university or college education rather than just skills acquired on the job. And this has prompted some reaction from immigration experts as to whether we should be trying to more strictly define the types of immigrants we ought to be seeking.

Mr. Bigras: That depends on the situation. If you are a refugee, we have no question about it. As for regular immigration, I think we have a system in Quebec where we have an accord with the federal government in which Quebec can select the immigrants. But for refugees, I think that it's important to put no condition, and certainly not about education.

Mr. Benoit: Education levels, and the documents showing that you have educational qualifications in a certain profession, are only a part of the problem. I have had a Greater Toronto Area immigration task force now for six months -- people from new immigrant communities because they're the people most commonly dealing with the system. And they say that education is only one consideration. Another very important consideration is an understanding of what's expected in the Canadian workplace, and making that leap from the workplace in another country to the workplace in Canada. We have to have the provinces more involved in the selection process, and we have to have business more involved in the selection process.

Mr. Gherson: Are you talking about tighter rules?

Mr. Benoit: I'm talking about having provinces identify their needs more, and giving business more direct input with the Immigration Department on choosing people they need. Right now, businesses are frustrated. They just can't get the people they need to fill the void that Canadians can't fill in their businesses.

Mr. Martin: Frankly, Leon is right in that regard. I can tell you I met with garment industry owners in Winnipeg and they have a shortage of 1,000 sewing machine operators. So they actually went out on a mission to hire people and they managed to find about 80 or 90 in China. The federal government has just now cancelled the work visas for these people on the fear that they might try and stay here after their work visas run out. Now why is that a problem? These people have jobs for them, and these are not sweatshops. These are good unionized workplaces with daycare centres. There's housing in the inner city of Winnipeg that I represent. There are houses sitting empty, schools that need to be repopulated. We want these people, we have jobs for them. And the Immigration Department cancelled visas on the grounds that they may try and stay in the country. What is wrong with that picture? I believe Canada is underpopulated.

Mr. Price: I agree with Pat totally, and a prime example of that is the problem faced by people from out of the country coming to university in Canada. The Immigration Department worries that these university graduates might want to stay in Canada. Yet that is what we are looking for. They come here, they get a taste of the country, they get to see the cultures, see how things work and decide, ''Gee this is a pretty good country. I'd like to stay.'' And they're giving them a hard time about it. That's really, really, unfortunate. Another thing: Leon's very right about the fact that the provinces should be more involved. Bernard mentioned that in Quebec we do have the only independent system, let's say, and it has worked very, very well. We've been able to tailor the immigrant population coming in to our needs in Quebec, reflecting the workforce and our cultural group, and I feel it is working much better.

Mr. Mills: Well, on the issue of skill shortages, I think that is almost scandalous. In the province of Ontario, specifically in the Greater Toronto Area, right now we have 100,000 unfilled construction jobs. Thank goodness that we are going through an economic boom right now, but it could be so much better if the department had the capacity to address those skill shortages. There are men and women, craftsmen and craftswomen from around the world that could come here and could enhance the economic activity that we're involved with right now in our country, but the department does not react to skill shortages. I do not support the notion of just bringing people here who are university educated, obviously, I would not oppose it ... I think we have to have a broader view in terms of the people that we accept, and I would say that if they can bring a skill to Canada -- I'm thinking specifically in the trades right now -- I think that we have to open our doors and welcome them, because we are in desperate need of them now, we're not training them.

Mr. Gherson: That's great. That brings us to a close, I certainly appreciate all of your participation, a lot of consensus.

Some honourable members: (laughter) That's unusual.




RELATED SITES:

(Each link opens a new window)

  • Citizenship and Immigration Canada

    The brand-new white paper on immigration policy

  • Statistics Canada: Immigration and Citizenship

    Statistics from the 1996 national census that look at where Canadians came from.

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