Routine Proceedings
With regard to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada: (a) broken down by country and year since 2015, how many Temporary Resident Visa applications have been (i) received, (ii) approved, (iii) refused, (iv) refused under 179(b); (b) which immigration streams use the Chinook tool for assessing applications; (c) at which stages in the application step is the Chinook tool used; (d) what measur…
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With regard to Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada (IRCC): (a) since January 1, 2020, how many applications have been (i) received, (ii) approved, (iii) rejected, (iv) are in inventory, broken down by month, stream (e.g. Home Child Care Provider, citizenship, etc.), and whether the application was inland or outland; (b) how many applications have passed eligibility, criminality and securit…
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With regard to the government’s response to the crisis in Afghanistan: (a) under the special measures for people in Afghanistan, broken down by month, how many people have (i) applied, (ii) been provided with a Canadian visa or confirmation of Canadian citizenship, (iii) received invitations to go to an airport, (iv) been approved to be a permanent resident; (b) under the special measures for Afgh…
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Mr. Speaker, Canada is faced with an affordable housing crisis. There is no question that those trying to get into the market and own a home for the first time are having a real tough go of it. We need to address that. One of the ways the NDP proposes to address that is through financialization, not treating housing as though it is a stock market. Beyond that, there is a whole spectrum of people e…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, the media reported a couple of days ago that we have the worst overdose deaths in Vancouver, in my community. The government has a choice to decriminalize small possession of drugs to save lives, along with instituting safe supply. Why is that not included in this bill, given the urgency of the situation all across the country?
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Madam Speaker, I listened to the debate, and it appeared that the Conservatives' approach to address the opioid crisis is a criminal justice approach. We in the NDP, and I hope on the government side as well, have a different perspective. If we really want to address the issue and save lives we must treat the issue as a health issue. Will the member call on his own government to decriminalize poss…
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Mr. Speaker, one thing that is clear with respect to the opioid crisis is that dead people do not detox. The Conservatives talk a lot about treatment, but we first have to make sure people stay alive. The best way to do that is to decriminalize possession and provide a safe supply. Would the member agree with that?
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I wish to raise this point of order. The comments made by the member for Regina—Lewvan are a misrepresentation of what my colleague the member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke said. We are all hon. members here. We are all hearing and listening carefully to the debate. It is inappropriate and I find it offensive that someone would get up in the House right after another person spoke and …
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Madam Speaker, the Auditor General released a damning report about the systemic failure of the Liberal government in ensuring temporary foreign workers are protected. Many workers tested positive for COVID-19 and some went home in a body bag. The government said that it would take immediate action, but inspections only got worse. Employers were found to be compliant with regulations even though th…
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Madam Speaker, the NDP would like to propose an amendment for the member's consideration. In the stipulation of providing federal lands available for residential development, one thing that needs to be made clear is that the residential development needs to be non-profit and co-operative housing in the permanent sense. It does not make sense, if the federal government is going to make land availab…
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Madam Speaker, the reality is that Canada is actually losing more affordable housing and social housing than it is creating. During the campaign, the Liberal government only committed to 20,000 units of non-profit affordable housing to be built and created. My question to the parliamentary secretary is this. Would she call on her own government to do what the NDP has been advocating for? That is t…
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Madam Speaker, is the member concerned at all about the fact that in the motion, it is not stipulated that when making federal lands available for residential development, they are to be for non-profit and social housing? Otherwise, that land could be made available for luxury condo developers, which I do not think is the purpose of what we are trying to do here.
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Madam Speaker, I am delighted to enter into this debate. As members may know, housing is one of my deepest passions. I got into electoral politics back in 1993. Why? Because the federal Liberal government cancelled the national affordable housing program at that time. I was working as a community legal advocate in the Downtown Eastside. I was absolutely devastated because I saw first-hand what it …
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Madam Speaker, my thanks to the member for her kind words. There are many, many factors impacting home ownership. There is no question that there is a hot housing market and that people cannot afford to get into owning a home. Some of those issues tie into people flipping land, such as the Liberal member for Vancouver Granville, who actually, prior to the election, would not even answer the questi…
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Madam Speaker, it is true that the amount of land that is available is not to the tune the Conservatives have suggested. Having said that, it does not mean to say there is no land available. What we should and could do, of course, is look and see what land is available and then make it available to the non-profit sector to develop affordable social and co-operative housing. I am not here to get ma…
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Madam Speaker, I know New Democrats will always fight for safe, secure and affordable housing for all, and we strongly believe adequate housing is a fundamental basic right. That is why my colleague—
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Madam Speaker, the member waxed eloquently about how his government was doing such a great job in addressing the housing crisis. I wonder if the member knows that the Parliamentary Budget Officer, just prior to the election, indicated that under the Liberals' watch Canada lost over 180,000 units of social housing because the federal government did not provide the necessary subsidies or renew their…
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Madam Speaker, I hope that the two members had some fun with their theatrics. The reality, of course, is that there are a great many people across the country who need safe, secure, affordable housing: people who right now, at this moment, are homeless in the snow in the dead of winter. I noted that, in this motion from the Conservatives, there was no mention whatsoever of the need for an urban, r…
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Madam Speaker, the member talks as though she really supports affordable housing and those who are homeless, but given the trajectory in which we are going with the government's national affordable housing initiative, we are not going to meet the targets. We will not end homelessness. Given that perspective, would the member support what the NDP is calling for, which is the injection of 500,000 un…
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Madam Chair, I hope that does not take away from my time allocation.
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Chair, families are waiting two to three years for their application to be processed. At the rate in which things are going, it is going to take three years to process and get us back to pre-pandemic levels to clear the backlog. A number of caregivers have passed Canadian nursing exams and have met all licensing requirements to practise, but are unable to do so because of employer-specific w…
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Madam Chair, as the minister knows, normally a new immigration level plan is tabled every November and there is not one this year. There is a huge backlog in the immigration system with every stream. When does the minister anticipate we will get back to pre-pandemic levels?
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Madam Chair, will the government increase the number of sponsorship agreement holders?
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Madam Chair, the minister is not answering any of my questions. She keeps on reciting the message box, but not answering any of the questions. Canadians are extremely generous even during these difficult times. Many want to privately sponsor refugees to Canada, so will the government increase the number of sponsorship agreement holders?
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Madam Chair, these are fairly straight-up questions for the minister. I do not know why she is avoiding answering any of them. Can the minister tell us if the current immigration levels can accommodate the 40,000 Afghan refugee target?
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Madam Chair, have any of the caps on refugee admissions been met this year?
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Madam Chair, that is not even one-tenth of what the government said it would bring in. Have the cabinet approved the 40,000 target that has been announced?
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Madam Chair, the minister is refusing to answer or even touch on any of the issues that I am asking of her. Has the cabinet approved the 40,000 Afghan refugee target announced by the Prime Minister?
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Madam Chair, again, the minister did not answer the question. Many Afghan interpreters and their families, human rights activists, women and girls are in a dire situation as they are not able to secure visas, or renew passports or other travel documents. Will the Canadian government provide temporary travel documents to these individuals including a TRP?
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Madam Chair, that was not the question. It was about refugee determination. I know that the minister did not answer the question. Either she does not know the answer or she is refusing to answer it. My next question is this. If they are not able to obtain a refugee determination from the UNHCR, they will not be able to seek refugee status from Canada. How can they then get to safety?
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Madam Chair, will the minister waive the refugee determination requirements for Afghan refugees as the government has done for the Syrian refugee initiative?
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Madam Chair, I will be splitting my time with my colleague, the member for Nunavut. I will be asking questions of the minister without preamble. Will the minister waive the refugee determination requirements for Afghan refugees as the government has done for the Syrian refugee initiative?
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Madam Chair, November is usually when the new immigration levels plan is released. This year, no immigration levels plan has been made public. When will the immigration levels plan be made available?
Read full speech →Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, food bank use in Canada climbed 20% with the pandemic and topped 1.3 million monthly visits. It is the largest increase since the 2008 recession. With the clawback of the GIS and the Canada child benefit, and the elimination of COVID emergency benefits, food banks face further increases in demand. Food banks alone do not solve hunger. They are a symptom of the root problem of poverty.…
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Madam Speaker, my question for the parliamentary secretary is this. Would the government be willing to waive the refugee determination requirement for Afghan refugees, as it has done under the Syrian refugee initiative?
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Madam Speaker, I am sorry, but the fact is that the Liberal government has promised this for four years and it has not delivered. It is not even in the throne speech. He mentioned the need for a “for indigenous, by indigenous” urban, rural and northern housing strategy. The measures that the minister mentioned just now will not provide support to indigenous peoples in core need. That is the realit…
Read full speech →Adjournment Proceedings
Madam Speaker, my riding of Vancouver East has the third largest urban indigenous community in the country. We also had the largest homeless encampment in this country. That encampment has now been taken down, but people are still homeless on the streets and I see tents everywhere. The winter months are here; it is wet and it is cold. The most glaring omission from the national housing strategy wa…
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Mr. Speaker, it is absolutely costing lives, because people cannot get to safety. The government made an announcement saying it would bring 40,000 refugees from Afghanistan, knowing that the refugee determination process does not enable them to get to safety and knowing they cannot get the documentation to get to safety. All of that is just words. It is meaningless and costing lives.
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Mr. Speaker, given this is my first full speech in the House, I would like to take the opportunity to thank the people of Vancouver East for sending me back here, to bring their voices to the House of Commons. I often look at this place as this place of the people and it is absolutely essential for us to do our jobs and bring our constituents' voices here, represent their needs and drive change. W…
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Mr. Speaker, I am a little more than fairly interested in the refugee file. I am deeply interested in the refugee file, because that is what we need to do. Humanitarian action is required. On the issue of a special committee, the advantage of a special committee is that it would bring a number of different departments and ministries together to get the job done, because so far it is not working. T…
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Mr. Speaker, I have to say that action from the Canadian government to support people and get them to safety is absolutely essential and urgent. It is not premature. In fact I would argue that it is late in the day for us to get going on this. This should have been done before the election. It should have been done even with the prior administration. The Conservatives created a program from 2009 t…
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Madam Speaker, I believe we all want to help the Afghans who have been stranded and need to get to safety. There are some measures the Canadian government can undertake, including, for example, waiving the refugee determination requirement, so that people who cannot access the UNHCR offices would be able to get refugee status to get to safety. Another measure would be waiving the requirements for …
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Madam Speaker, I met with an individual who told me this situation. They have family members in Afghanistan who worked for the previous government in the area of biometrics. After the Taliban took over, it visited workers in those departments and tried to force them to give them access to that biometrics information. It wanted to see both who was in the system, so as to target them, and those who …
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Madam Speaker, some of the messages the member read out are not dissimilar to the ones I have received. The messages from IRCC and GAC in response really shocked me, because essentially they were stock answers that told people to please go away. They did not provide a resolution or an approach for how they could get to safety. Many people who received documentation from the government were not rec…
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Madam Speaker, the truth of the matter is that this problem has been escalated between successive governments. The Harper administration, from 2009 to 2011, did offer an immigration stream for Afghan interpreters. However, with that program there were very specific requirements. First, they had to have served 12 months before they could qualify for that measure, and second, it applied only if they…
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Madam Speaker, I would like to extend a big thanks to all the military men and women here in Canada who put their lives at risk every day to protect us. With respect to the Afghan mission and the people left behind, we are in a situation where many people are in desperate straits. However, there are a number of measures the government can take to address this issue. I wonder whether the Conservati…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Madam Speaker, the Liberal government has failed to meet even one-tenth of the commitment of protecting Afghan refugees. The Liberals' continued insistence on layers of red tape has left tens of thousands of Afghans fleeing the Taliban unable to get to safety. With each passing day, Afghan collaborators, human rights advocates, judges, women and girls face heightened risks. Will the Liberals simpl…
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the member on his maiden speech. He talked a lot about co-op housing and calls himself a co-op housing kid. I am delighted to hear that. The situation with housing is this. The CMHC used to deliver co-op and social housing and was really good at it, but this was gutted because in 1993 the federal Liberal government cancelled the national affordable housing program. As a…
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Madam Speaker, the government recognizes there is a great need in terms of health emergencies. Right now, we have an overdose crisis in my riding of Vancouver East. More people are dying from overdoses than they are dying from the pandemic. Will the member work with the NDP and support our call to decriminalize and ensure that there is a safe supply so we can save lives?
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