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Our meeting will now come to order.
We had our subcommittee meeting a couple of days ago, and you'll see before you the 9th report of the subcommittee on agenda and procedure of the standing committee. This is pretty well what we recommend to our full committee. We'll just go over it briefly.
We talked about the study on the loss of Canadian citizenship, and we're recommending that we consider the draft report as the first item of business in the fall of 2007. We are informed by our analyst that she would have a copy of that report maybe within the next few weeks, mid-summer maybe. If you so desire, she can distribute that to us at that time, so we'll be able to look it over and have a heads-up and what have you for the meetings coming up.
Okay, we might as well wait for a few minutes and start again.
We just began a moment ago, and we're considering now the 9th report of the Subcommittee on Agenda and Procedure. We had our subcommittee meeting a couple of days ago, and you have the sheets in front of you that we've given out. The recommendation is that we'll consider the draft report and the loss of Canadian citizenship as the first item of business when we come back in the fall. We were mentioning a moment ago that the analyst informed me that she'll have a copy of it maybe mid-summer, so you can have a look at it and have a heads-up when we come back for consideration of it in the fall.
Also, the meetings regarding the study will be held outside the committee's usual meeting time. We won't eat up our usual committee meeting time. We'll do it outside of that, unless you want it otherwise, as the report says here.
I'll stop there for a moment. Is there any discussion on that part of the report, that we would have it as the first item of business? This is what the steering committee is recommending, that when we come back that will be number one on the list, and we'll have meetings outside of the usual meeting time. Is everyone pretty well okay with that?
Mr. Batters.
Chair, I just wanted to add that when we first agreed to do the work on citizenship in this Parliament, we did agree to do that as an extra subject outside the regular meetings of the committee, partly in recognition of the amount of time we spent on citizenship issues in the last Parliament, to the exclusion of any issues related to immigration, almost entirely at the request of the government of the day. Promises were made that if we did that work, there would be citizenship legislation forthcoming. Unfortunately, that didn't happen.
I'd like to maintain that commitment to do it as an extra topic. We're facing the same situation in which we have legislation promised for the fall. We'll see if that promise comes through. I hope it does. I would like to maintain the commitment to do this as an extra piece of work, and get on with our immigration agenda, on which there are a lot of topics for us to deal with in the fall.
So I speak in favour of maintaining it as an extra subject.
I was just going to reiterate the point that Mr. Siksay talked about. When we were initially putting through our schedule of work, one of the issues was lost Canadian citizenship, and we agreed that we would be dealing with that outside of our normal work.
The only other point I would add is the fact that a lot of these individuals, a lot of these Canadians who lost their citizenship, are aging. It behooves us as a committee to expedite the discussions on this issue while they're still with us.
In addition, there are a lot of issues that we need to deal with in the immigration file, and the two days a week that we meet aren't enough to deal with all of the issues, so we have to go into these extra meetings.
So I'd be in favour of them.
Covering as many bases as we can would be great, it's important, but if we're going to travel to all these cities, you might want to expand and have one-hour hearings on undocumented workers and then you might want to invite other people. For example, if we were to go to Montreal, there are people there who are affected by the Iraqi refugees and there could be people affected by these foreign credentials. So you might want to invite other people. If you're going to be there for the morning, you can stagger the meetings: an hour and a half on undocumented workers, half an hour on something else, and then an hour on something else.
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Mr. Chair, I was essentially going to make an amendment. Is that the appropriate way—to propose an amendment?
It would read that in relation to its study on undocumented and temporary foreign workers, the points system, Iraqi refugees, and immigration consultants—so all of the issues that we have coming up that we've agreed to—we travel to Vancouver, British Columbia; Whistler, British Columbia. We'd add in the Montreal area, Quebec, something like that, and then add “plus Atlantic Canada”, so that we leave it open. And we'd make the dates from October 15 to October 26—so a two-week period to fit all of that in.
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I think at that point you should seriously look at hitting every area. We even had calls from the Northwest Territories the last time we travelled, saying that they wanted us up there, and we turned them down.
Also, what we're doing is raising the flag around the whole issue, and it's great that people would want us there.
I wonder, Mr. Clerk, if you would look up the invitation that we had from the Northwest Territories and circulate it, because I kind of felt bad that we ended up ignoring them. If people want the parliamentary committee, we should go.
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The members opposite are passionate about where we go. I think you'd better settle on where you want to go and give the clerk that direction, so we have that direction.
From our perspective, Mr. Komarnicki's and mine, we definitely want Saskatchewan to be covered; and Winnipeg, we've decided, should be covered. You can debate where to go in Saskatchewan. Probably the further south—
Ed's riding is Estevan. Madame Faille seems supportive of Moose Jaw, where we have a tonne of foreign workers. We have a huge beef plant there, a packing plant there, and there are also a number of trucking outfits. Moose Jaw is only 45 minutes outside of Regina. It has a lovely mineral spa and.... Pardon me?
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And there's a great hockey team in Moose Jaw.
Madame Faille, I'm liking you more and more by the minute.
Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, would be very welcoming. And talk about getting some press coverage. I tend to agree with Mr. Telegdi: if you go to Toronto, it may be like a tree falling in the forest; if you go to Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, it's a big event.
Anyway, I think we do have to go to Saskatchewan and we have to go to Manitoba. I'll defer to your judgment as to whether you want to have one meeting in Toronto or in Scarborough and Mississauga. It's not for me to decide. That's not my area.
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That's been tabled in the House already. I think there needs to be some amendment to that, so that it's clear who that dissenting opinion is from. I don't think it serves the committee well to have that stand when it's not indicated who it's from.
The other concern I had, Chair, is this. I want to raise my concern about the difficulty this committee has had in arranging representatives from the department to appear before it on several issues, on the issue of a briefing on Bill C-57 and a briefing on temporary foreign workers and undocumented workers. My understanding is that the clerk has been trying to arrange this for almost a month, I believe. I don't think it's out of line to say it's been that long.
Even today the clerk was asked to try to arrange it for today's meeting, and it still hasn't happened. I don't understand why that would be. It seems to me that if the government is interested in seeing Bill C-57 move ahead, they might have ensured that representatives of the department were prepared to give us that briefing. And I also don't understand why the government wouldn't be prepared to have officials brief us about temporary foreign workers and undocumented workers.
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Can we deal with this first, and then we'll talk about the briefing books and where we are on that?
I think the suggestion is that we wait until fall. We'll have a steering committee meeting. Quite naturally, we'll have briefings on , and we'll have a steering committee meeting to determine the number of meetings and witnesses who might be called in that regard. That's the suggestion, and I think it's a good one.
All in favour of that?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
The Chair: Did you have something else?
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As I've said before and as I've said often enough, immigration has been, is, and will continue to be the lifeblood of Canada. Certainly we're involved in a committee and in a department that have both helped build this country and will continue to do so.
The real significance of the Hungarian exodus being handled by Canada was that Canada was never as generous to anybody as they were in 1956, following the 1956 revolution. There were various reasons for it. The main one—considered black and white—was that you had the Soviet communist state versus a small country such as Hungary. But the drive to make the politicians act really came from the public opinion of the day. It really did. It came from the people, from Canadians themselves, reaching out. To some extent, there was competition between the federal and provincial governments, particularly the federal government and the Ontario government, on how they could do more.
The really nice thing about it is that in many ways it paved the way for the other refugee movements—the boat people, the refugees from Africa, from Bosnia-Herzegovina—and really put Canada at the forefront.
I often think how fortunate my family was to end up in this country. I sort of wonder if, in today's climate.... If I want to look at a country that resembles Hungary and resembles the circumstance we dealt with, it would be the Russian suppression of Chechnya right now. It's safe to say that the Chechens aren't getting anything like the reception we got.
Overall, then, it was a very good experience for the Hungarians, and it was a very good experience for, I think, the whole process of how we deal with refugees in Canada.
When I get passionate about the workings of the committee, as I tend to do, I guess I do so because I knew oppression. I knew what oppression meant. I knew what it was to be reported on at any time by the secret police and hauled in front of officials. If you were lucky, it was your school officials. If you were unlucky, it would be down in the jails. There is a jail in Hungary that still stands—very close to the Canadian embassy—where most of the torture used to go on. Torture was a very regular occurrence.
If you ever get a chance to go to Budapest, I invite you to visit the terror museum. They have a uniform there, a flip-side uniform, if you will. On one side you have the Nazi uniform and on the other side you have the Soviet uniform. It's quite a museum. It just shows you that it really doesn't make much difference if it's communist terror or fascist terror. It gives the history of oppression in the country.
So when I get excited about the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, I do it because I think it's so fundamental to us. When I was going through the determination of trying to decide which way to go after 9/11, at the end of the day I had to remember where I came from. I had to remember that the most efficient instrument of terror has always been, and will continue to be, the state. Those are things that we all have to stand on guard for.
As we go into the summer recess, let me recommend a couple of books you might want to read.
One is Refugee Sandwich, by Peter Showler. It will really give you an understanding of why we need a refugee appeal division.
Another is War Brides, by Melynda Jarratt. It was just released a couple of days ago.
Another important one is Voices of the Left Behind . This is something we haven't even touched on. One of the people who visited me in my office on Friday discovered her father 11 years ago. He lives in Cambridge. She was an illegitimate child left behind in Holland. She reunited with her father 11 years ago, and it was very fortunate for her father that she did that, because she was the only one he really had left.
Somehow we have to deal with some of those issues as well.
I hope you get a chance to read that stuff. I hope you get to reflect on what's happening in Chechnya, because the oppression is horrible. It's not dissimilar to what happened to the Hungarians, but in our case, because of lucky circumstances and the split between the east and the west, we probably got the Cadillac treatment.
All in all, we live in a great country. I think we can be very proud of the way we reflect the world and how we interrelate and model ourselves. I think we have a real opportunity to help the rest of the world, particularly the countries that are badly off, get into the same kind of situation as we are in.
Those are all of my comments.
I'm sorry that all of you guys have to be here. I'm very pleased—
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No, no. I'm sure the committee would want to congratulate you, Andrew, on that milestone. Fifty years is very significant. Obviously you're very proud of your citizenship here in this country. You've made a great contribution to the country. Not only through this committee but through the House of Commons generally, you've made a great contribution, and it's our good fortune to have you as a member of the committee and as a citizen of the country. We congratulate you.
Some hon. members: Hear, hear!
The Chair: Did I see a final hand going up somewhere, or should we call this meeting to an end?
I want to thank all of you for your great work on the committee over the last year. Hopefully we'll all have a chance to unwind and get the sharp edges off our personalities and all the rest of it during the summer by having a few barbecues here and there.
If I've been sharp today at times, I apologize to the committee.