Bill C-43, which the government calls the Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act, passed through the immigration committee on Nov. 28, after more than a month of study, with two changes the government proposed. None of the opposition NDP’s nine amendments or the Liberals’ 13 were agreed to.
Of those accepted, one allowed more transparency in the reporting of the number of times the government decides to bar someone for public policy reasons, and why.
The other was a minor technical change to clarify part of the bill that was missed during its drafting, according to Rick Dykstra, the parliamentary secretary to the immigration minister.
The committee chair reported the committee’s changes back to the House and it’s now set to be debated there again starting on Dec. 6.
Mr. Dykstra said he hopes to see it pass the House by the time it rises on or before Dec. 14 for the winter break, and move to the Senate to finally be made law before the end of spring.
Transparency improved
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney introduced the bill at the end of June to deport non-citizens from Canada faster if they’ve been convicted of crimes.
In justifying the bill, he cited a number of cases of non-citizens who had committed a crime in Canada and were in the process of being deported when they went on to commit other crimes that were often very violent.
The opposition parties agreed they wanted to prevent such cases from happening again—but they still had problems with the bill.
The NDP voted at second reading to send it to committee to be studied and, in their view, fixed. The Liberals voted against it.
But with the government having rejected their proposed changes at committee, neither party is now ready to support it.
They don’t have to, though, as the Conservative majority can ensure it will easily pass the House and Senate.
Nevertheless, Jinny Sims and Kevin Lamoureux, the respective NDP and Liberal immigration critics, are planning to propose more changes now that the bill is back in the House. They can’t suggest exactly the same amendments they put forward to the committee, but the substance will likely be similar.
Ms. Sims said she has a serious concern about what she says is a lack of due process outlined in the bill. What Mr. Kenney has called delays, she says, are necessary checks and balances.
The bill could mean convicted foreigners have less access to appeal before being deported. Currently, eligible people can file an appeal to the arm’s-length Immigration and Refugee Board’s immigration appeal division if they were sentenced to less than two years in jail.
The bill would tighten the rules to prevent appeals unless a person is sentenced to less than six months in a Canadian jail. It would also limit appeals to some people convicted or who committed a crime outside Canada.
“We’re not saying that serious criminals should not be deported. What we’re saying is that they should have the right to appeal. And lowering the bar to six months is too wide,” Ms. Sims told Embassy in a Dec. 3 interview.
‘Public policy’
She also took issue with the new power the bill would give the immigration minister to bar someone from visiting Canada for three years because of “public policy considerations.”
Mr. Kenney, recognizing concerns about that part of the bill, came to testify before the committee on Oct. 24 armed with “proposed guidelines” he shared with the committee on the use of the new power.
They included limiting it to cases of people involved in promoting terrorism, violence, or criminal activity. They would also let the government bar a foreigner from Canada if they are a current or former member of a regime that Canada has imposed sanctions on.
Although she said she wasn’t completely satisfied with Mr. Kenney’s proposed criteria, Ms. Sims put forward his criteria to be added into the text of the bill. Members of the governing Conservative Party defeated her idea, as they said it wouldn’t give the minister enough flexibility and discretion. The government wants to see the criteria be put in regulations accompanying the bill that could be changed easier, if necessary.
Otherwise, said Mr. Dykstra in an interview, “We could be handcuffing any minister...whatever party, just based on how figurative and how literal the interpretation would be.”
But Ms. Sims said the criteria should really be set in stone in the bill.
“Regulations can be changed on the whim of the minister without any parliamentary oversight,” she said.
“And when you’re looking at excluding people from a country, there should be parliamentary oversight. Those criteria need to be in the legislation.”
While the government wouldn’t put the criteria in the bill itself, Conservative MP John Weston proposed that the bill be changed to include a line to require the immigration minister to table in their department’s annual report the number of times they used the new power, and what it was used for.
Mr. Dykstra said the government side heard the opposition’s concerns about transparency. He said the new banning power would not be used often.
Mr. Lamoureux called it a “pleasant surprise” but said it doesn’t make it a good bill worth passing.
Ms. Sims said it also doesn’t cut it.
Applicable to long-term residents
She and Mr. Lamoureux both also proposed amendments related to the fact that the bill could affect non-citizens even if they’d lived in Canada for many years and were essentially Canadians but without citizenship. They wanted the government to take these circumstances into account.
But Mr. Dykstra told the committee on Nov. 28: “I fail to understand why a person who has lived here for 30 or 40 years doesn’t feel it necessary to get Canadian citizenship.”
If a person wants to lead a life of crime, he said, they would be better off becoming a Canadian citizen.
Mr. Lamoureux also had concerns that the bill’s interpretation of a sentence takes into account conditional sentencing, where the offender serves their time in the community or under “house arrest.”
And he took issue with the bill’s title, which he found discriminatory.
This is the second big piece of legislation the House immigration committee has passed this year. The first, which deals with changing the refugee system, is to be largely implemented on Dec. 15, Mr. Kenney announced on Nov. 30.
The committee is now returning to a study on the immigration system’s security.
Original Article
Source: embassy news
Author: Kristen Shane
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