Mr. Speaker, refugee laws have the ability to define a nation and sometimes it is not obvious until decades later.
Had the former prime minister of Canada, Mackenzie King, eased up on the refugee laws at the time, several hundred thousand Jews might have been saved from the Nazis.
Hiding behind the argument of the national self-interest of Canada, then immigration minister Thomas Crerar, with his official Fred Blair, barred Jews from entering Canada. Mr. Blair said it was “for the reason that coming out of the maelstrom of war, some of them are liable to go on the rocks”--he was talking about refugees--“and when they become public charges, we have to keep them for the balance of their lives”.
Between 1933 and 1945 the United States under Roosevelt accepted 200,000 Jewish refugees. England accepted 70,000. Bolivia, a relatively poor country, accepted 14,000. Sadly and shamefully, Canada, a rich and vast country, accepted only 5,000 Jewish refugees.
Even the young Pierre Elliott Trudeau, in an election rally in November 1942, stated that he feared “the peaceful invasion of immigrants more than the armed invasion of the enemy”, an obvious reference to Jews.
It was only when the Jewish community through the People's Committee Against Anti-Semitism protest action that Canada began to ease its refugee policies. The people's committee sent a delegation to Ottawa representing 10,000 Canadian Jews and met with minister Crerar. Because of the huge and sustained outcry, finally in 1944, 450 Jewish refugees were allowed into Canada.
By 1945, the 972 very highly skilled, professional male refugees who had been in jail since 1940 were finally released from jail and became a professional pool of musicians, teachers, artists, writers, theologians and scientists.
Why do I bring up the history? Because establishing a fair and humane refugee policy is very difficult. Oftentimes doing the right thing is not necessarily the most popular thing to do and any mistakes made can result in beatings, torture, jail, and sometimes death.
There is an important lesson to be learned from that dark chapter of our history. We have to work with the people who are most affected, people who work with refugees, and then the government laws and policy will be perfected.
Today, in these difficult times, many refugees have to leave their countries because they suffer persecution. Last year, 43.3 million people faced persecution because of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. They were forcibly displaced worldwide. This is the highest number of people uprooted by conflict and persecution since the mid-1990s and represents more than our country's population. If Canada makes a mistake and we end up turning away some of these people, it could be a matter of life and death.
That is why we must learn from that dark history and provide fast and safe entry for genuine refugee claimants and turn away those who are trying to exploit Canada's system.
New Democrats have always supported the creation of a fast, fair and effective refugee system. When this bill was first presented, we said we feared that no country is truly free from any form of persecution, whether it is hate crimes directed toward gays and lesbians, and transsexual people, or a woman fleeing domestic violence, genital mutilation, or an honour killing. Those countries may be democratic but they are not safe.
We are very pleased that people from those countries will now have the same rights of appeal. They will have the rights for humanitarian and compassionate consideration and the right to counsel.
That is why we are extremely glad that we are fast-tracking Bill C-11. We are compressing the timeline for report stage and third reading into one afternoon to give the bill fast passage so that the bill can become law, hopefully by the end of this month, or maybe even before the end of this month.
Allowing people to have humanitarian and compassionate consideration is critically important. Sometimes refugees may not know whether they belong in the refugee stream or the humanitarian stream. This is now built in and it is protected.
There are also extremely important regulations coming with the bill. We look forward to seeing them come into force. We are looking forward to the hiring of close to 100 refugee protection officers to clear the backlog. I believe there are over 60,000 claimants who have been waiting in limbo for close to four years for a decision. The Canada Border Services Agency's computer system will be upgraded. Those who are ordered to leave the country will be tracked by CBSA so they could be asked to leave Canada without Canada losing track of them.
New Democrats presented over 20 recommendations during the discussion at the citizenship and immigration committee. We would have preferred to see some other changes. For example, in the beginning we were quite uncomfortable with the interview process because the personal interview forms would no longer be used. We were worried about the cost of the humanitarian and compassionate application fees of over $500. We were worried that new information may not be able to be submitted to the refugee appeal division.
We were also worried that if countries had a last minute change and if refugees were deported to those countries, without the pre-removal assessment review, the refugees could face real problems when they returned home.
We also wanted all the clauses to come into force at the same time and that there be a built-in evaluation process. However, in the spirit of working together and of making compromises to make a better bill, I withdrew my recommendations in support of the humanitarian and compassionate grounds consideration, and allowing appeals for all refugee claimants and making sure that all claimants have a right to counsel. Those are things that we believe are extremely important.
Did we get everything that we wanted? No, however, it is a bill that is far more balanced. We believe when it becomes law, it will be worthy of celebration because at long last we will see the implementation of the refugee appeal division.
I want to thank people for the hundreds and hundreds of submissions that we received at committee. People took the time to write about the kind of changes they wanted to see. We heard from refugees themselves. It was extremely brave for them to describe their experiences and how happy and safe they feel now that they are in Canada.
We also heard from passionate refugee advocates who described their work with refugees and urged the committee members to we pass a bill that was balanced, fair and fast. They organized public meetings in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and many other parts of Canada and allowed people to speak out.
Our committee could not travel because we did not have the time, but we were able to hear from quite a large number of people through the Internet and video conferencing. Because of their wisdom, their persistence and their insistence that democracy means calling their member of Parliament when a bill needs to be improved, they did call us. I understand that a lot of members of Parliament received submissions, calls and visitations from people who have worked with refugees or refugees themselves.
That, in itself, was extremely precious because at the end of the day, when we come together collectively, whether we are refugees, refugee advocates, immigrants, organizations, members of Parliament, critics, the minister and his staff or public officials, the key component is that we must listen to each other and work together because we do want, collectively, the same thing, which is a fair and fast refugee determination process.
I hope that passing this law will mean that we will not repeat the tragic past of many years ago when we saw 907 refugees on board the St. Louis being sent away which resulted in half of them perishing. That is a lesson that we need to remind ourselves of over and over again as we talk about refugees and immigration issues because we do not want that terrible history to repeat itself. Canada is really a safe haven for many people seeking to make their homes in Canada and today, because we are passing a balanced, fair and fast refugee process, we have a lot to celebrate together.