Olivia Chow Demands Fairness for All Refugees in Parliament

    Ms. Olivia Chow (Trinity—Spadina, NDP):

Mr. Speaker, New Democrats have long pushed for fast and fair refugee reform, but fairness means all refugees should have the right to appeal.

    Instead, the minister is asking this House to give him total and absolute power to deny refugee claimants equal rights. That is dangerous and arrogant.

    Does the minister honestly believe he has the right to pick and choose which groups should become second-class refugees?

 

Hon. Jason Kenney (Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, no, I do not and nor do the balanced reforms suggest that.

    What we have done is to deliver a new refugee appeal division and faster protection for bona fide refugees. They will not have to wait for a year and a half. They will be getting protection within 60 days. There will be faster removal of false claimants. There will no longer be five years of gaming the system, they will be out within a year. There will be public service decision-makers, a significant backlog reduction, and more resettled refugees from abroad, more support for those refugees to get integrated.

    The NDP asked for all of these things. Can they not take yes, for once, as an answer?

 

Ms. Olivia Chow (Trinity—Spadina, NDP):

Mr. Speaker, every person who faces persecution should be treated equally no matter which country they come from.

    The United Nations high commissioner for refugees said that people do flee persecution from democratic countries. The consequences for this flawed and unfair refugee reform could be imprisonment, torture and even death.

    How can the minister ask us this House to support a bill that can result in such tragic consequences?

 

Hon. Jason Kenney (Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, let us make sure that we do not get carried away with the kind of demagoguery that we are hearing here.

 The reality is that we are adding a full complete appeal division. This balanced reform will exceed Canada’s legal obligations under the Charter of Rights and the relevant UN conventions, and it includes a tool to deal with spikes in unfounded claims from democratic countries. According to the UN high commissioner, there are indeed safe countries of origin.

     There are indeed countries in which there is a presumption that refugee claims will probably not be as strong as in other countries, which is the reason why modern western liberal democracies like Denmark, Finland, Sweden, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, the Netherlands have all adopted—

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