June 2010 Parliamentary Report
ECONOMY
Recent reports showed another net gain of jobs, this time 24,000 surpassing expectations. While this is good news, and confirms the success of Canada's Economic Action Plan, our Government continues to provide aid for Canadians to secure employment. For example, we are supporting an expansion of triOS College. This enhances Kitchener's downtown redevelopment and offers a broader array of career training options for Kitchener Centre and area residents.
We are also extending our commitment to the Working Centre's Skills Link programming which assists young people learning job skills. The Working Centre is an invaluable agency and makes a daily difference improving the lives of many.
Our Jobs and Economic Recovery Bill is expected to pass before Parliament rises for the summer.
G8/G20
Summits provide a unique opportunity for Canada to exercise its growing international leadership. We will focus on development, democracy, peace and security, including the extreme dangers of nuclear proliferation.
It is unprecedented for any nation to host back to back G8 and G20 summits. This results in a false appearance of inflated security costs. In fact, our costs are in line with past summit costs. A recent summit in Japan, for example, resulted in security costs of over $1.5 billion.
Security is not a matter of choice but of necessity. Remember that mere weeks ago an anarchist group firebombed a bank in our own Canadian capital and threatened similar action at the summits. This is an alarming example of extremist law-breaking by some Canadian "activists".
The world could choose to simply refuse to hold further summits in light of security costs. However, this would hand a victory to extremist activists. Also, Canadian adoption of such an approach would feed the self-fulfilling false story of those Canadians who take negative criticisms of Canadian policy abroad and then use their own criticisms to claim that Canadian policy isn't internationally acclaimed.
IMMIGRATION REFORM
Our Bill to assist genuine refugee claimants by dealing fairly but expediously with suspect claims has been widely received with cautious optimism. Canada received over 38,000 new refugee applications in 2008 alone. From 2006 to 2008 there was a 60% claims increase. There is a backlog of 60,000 cases and it takes an average of 4.5 years to exhaust all appeals. Ultimately 58% of all claims are rejected, abandoned or withdrawn. Waves of claimants from safe countries with robust human rights records are clogging the system. Consequently refugees in extreme peril suffer.
Minister Kenney's desire to enact these urgent reforms before the summer led him to accept a number of changes demanded by the Liberals' immigration critic and their leader. However there are now reports that Liberal caucus members are pressuring their leader to renege on this apparent agreement, putting the future of the reforms in doubt. If so, this would be another example of the dysfunction of the current minority Parliament.