Hon. Senators: Hear, hear!

Hon. Yonah Martin (Deputy Leader of the Opposition): Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to Bill S-10, An Act to give effect to the Anishinabek Nation Governance Agreement, to amend the Sechelt Indian Band Self-Government Act and the Yukon First Nations Self-Government Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts.

As noted in the title, this bill has three purposes: one, to give effect to the Anishinabek Nation governance agreement; two, to amend the Sechelt Indian Band Self-Government Act; and, three, to amend the Yukon First Nations Self-Government Act. But the primary purpose is the first one, which is reflected in the choice of a short title of the bill, the “Anishinabek Nation Governance Agreement Act.”

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At the outset, I want to acknowledge that the process of restoring respectful nation-to-nation relationships with the First Nations of Canada has been, and continues to be, a lengthy and arduous process with Indigenous peoples of Canada. Recognizing their inherent right to self-determination and their need for support as they move out from under the Indian Act and transition to self-government is critical and ongoing.

The bill which we have before us today is the culmination of more than 20 years of work between numerous governments and the Anishinabek Nation. As noted on the Anishinabek Nation’s website, self-government negotiations between Anishinabek Nation and the government began in 1995, led to an agreement in principle in 2007 and concluded in 2019.

This agreement, and the bill which puts it into effect, is a testament to the diligence, persistence and patience of the Anishinaabe people. It also reflects the sincere desire of Canadians to see true and lasting reconciliation with our First Peoples from coast to coast to coast.

Although I stand in the role of the critic of this bill, I and the Conservative caucus support it wholeheartedly. We applaud the efforts of all those who have been involved in the negotiations and consultations over the last 20 years and pray the enactment of this bill will help to bring us closer to our common goal of reconciliation and restoration of jurisdiction.

Honourable senators, as I mentioned, this bill puts into effect the Anishinabek Nation Governance Agreement signed on April 6 of this year. It is a self-government agreement between Canada, the Anishinabek Nation and the First Nations that approved the agreement by vote.

The Anishinabek Nation represents 39 First Nations throughout the province of Ontario, from Golden Lake in the east, to Sarnia in the south to Thunder Bay and Lake Nipigon in the north. These nations have an approximate combined population of 65,000 citizens, about one third of the province of Ontario’s First Nation population.

Each of the 39 Anishinabek Nation communities decides for themselves whether they wish to ratify the Anishinabek Nation Governance Agreement or not using the ratification process set out in the agreement. Those who choose to approve the agreement will be able to make their own decisions about how their elections will be held, who their citizens are and how their governments will operate, as well as how best to protect and promote Anishinaabe language and culture. Once in effect, the parts of the Indian Act that deal with governance will no longer apply to the signatory Anishinabek First Nations. To date, six First Nations have completed the ratification process and are signatories to the agreement.

This is not the first self-government agreement negotiated with the Anishinabek Nation. In 2018, the parties concluded a self‑government agreement on education, which is now in effect for 23 Anishinabek First Nations in Ontario. This agreement builds on the previous one and is the next step towards the restoration of jurisdiction to the Anishinabek Nation over their own affairs, including governance, education, social services, jurisdiction, economic development and health.

In addition to giving effect to the Anishinabek Nation Governance Agreement, the legislation before us today also amends the Sechelt Indian Band Self-Government Act and the Yukon First Nations Self-Government Act. The Sechelt Indian Band Self-Government Act, which was passed in 1986 after 15 years of negotiation and consultation, was the first formal Aboriginal self-government arrangement in Canada. The act enabled the Sechelt Indian Band to exercise and maintain self‑governance on Sechelt lands and to regain control over and the administration of the resources and services available to its members.

Bill S-10 amends the preamble of the act and updates a number of terms contained in the act, including the name of the nation. This reflects the desires and the will of the Sechelt Nation and brings the legislation into line with ongoing developments. The amendment to the Yukon First Nations Self-Government Act is quite minor, removing a total of nine words from section 24 of the act in order to streamline the process of entering into agreements for the provision of funding to the First Nations covered by the act. There are also numerous consequential amendments which the bill makes to other acts to bring them into alignment with the changes.

Honourable senators, it is not often that we stand in this chamber and speak with one voice, but on this bill I believe we are. Although the journey towards reconciliation and the restoration of First Peoples jurisdiction over their own affairs is a long one, it is one we must take, and we must take it together. Thank you.

Hon. Senators: Hear, hear.

(Pursuant to the order adopted by the Senate on December 7, 2021, to receive a Minister of the Crown, the Honourable Sean Fraser, P.C., M.P., Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, appeared before honourable senators during Question Period.)

The Hon. the Speaker: Honourable senators, when shall this bill be read the third time?

(On motion of Senator LaBoucane-Benson, bill referred to the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples.)

[Translation]

The Hon. the Speaker: Senator Moncion, I am sorry to have to interrupt you. You may use your remaining time when debate resumes.

The Hon. the Speaker: Excuse me, minister, could you hold for one moment, please. It appears that we’re having trouble with translation. We have a technical issue. My apologies, minister. We will come right back to you.

(The sitting of the Senate was suspended.)

(The sitting of the Senate was resumed.)

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Hon. Ratna Omidvar: Thank you, minister, for being here today. It’s good to hear about your successes. Everyone needs successes, and I want to congratulate you on them. However, I want to pivot our attention to the significant backlog of over 2 million people waiting in line for a response in every business stream of your department, from temporary work permits to renewals, to family sponsorships, to permanent residencies, to citizenship.

The complaint I hear most often is that there isn’t even communication with people waiting in line — not a peep. I want to ask you whether your government is making some effort to reach out to the customers — and I want to view them as customers — standing in line to let them know about the first response from you.

Hon. Percy E. Downe: Minister, thank you again for taking some questions. As reported in the P.E.I. Guardian newspaper, at 9 a.m. on September 11, 2021, a young woman walked into a Staples store in Charlottetown and spoke to an employee about buying a desk. After a discussion, she walked away and continued shopping in another aisle. She was followed by the employee and sexually assaulted. The employee was in Canada under a study permit issued by your department. The international student was charged and pleaded guilty to sexual assault.

It appears from the website of your department that only if you self-declare a criminal record on your application for a study permit is any confirmation of your police or court record required. Minister, is a criminal conviction background check conducted for all applicants for a study permit in Canada?

Hon. Sean Fraser, P.C., M.P., Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship: Thank you very much. Once again, if we’re going to identify the solution, I think we have to understand where the problem comes from. There are a couple of things going on that have created record demand in Canada’s immigration system at a time when our ability to supply services has been reduced primarily by the pandemic, but also by competing priorities, including the responses to both Afghanistan and Ukraine.

The numbers that we’re seeing now actually far exceed some of the numbers in your question, and when you seek to add thousands of staff over the last couple of years, it is still not enough to keep up with this short-term spike as a result of challenges related to the factors that I have just laid out.

Now, it’s not all negative news because, of course, we’re doing things to address these problems. I laid out some of the investments we have made that I won’t repeat. The big secret here is going to be to transform Canada’s immigration system into a digital one. We have a heavily paper-based system today. You can imagine somebody who has reached out to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and made a phone call will figure out that their paper is on the other side of the world. They call their MP, who reaches out to my office, who reaches out to a local office where somebody might actually have to pull out a physical piece of paper and then call everyone back in that chain to have the client receive an update on their case.

That’s unacceptable to me. I’m changing it. We have an $827‑million digital renovation of Canada’s immigration system under way. I mentioned the permanent residence case tracker available to family reunification previously. That’s going to give real-time information about a person’s case to them, so they not only will get good information, they won’t call Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, which will free up the resources so we can deal with other challenging situations where a person is seeking something more than just an update.

We will have 17 lines of business with the ability to take digital applications as soon as this summer. We are already seeing some of the results of the investments in citizenship pay dividends with increased processing and results.

[Translation]

Hon. Salma Ataullahjan: Minister Fraser, an Auditor General’s report in 2019 found that 1.2 million calls to your department’s call centre were prevented from reaching an agent. Regrettably, the situation has only become worse.

An answer to a written question on the Senate Order Paper shows that between April and December of last year, the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada call centre received over 2.6 million calls and 1.45 million of them were prevented from reaching the wait queue.

Minister, let me repeat that for you. In less than a year, almost 1.5 million calls were dropped, including calls from Canadian citizens, permanent residents and foreign nationals, some of whom are in desperate situations around the world and need your government’s help.

Minister, is that acceptable to you? Service has gone from bad to worse. Can you share with us what you are doing to fix it?

Hon. Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu: Minister, I asked your colleague, the Honourable Marie-Claude Bibeau, a question on June 2 about the troubling issue of the labour shortage, particularly in Quebec, where this problem seems to be having a serious impact on the economy. One reason for this shortage is the basically unacceptable amount of time it is taking your department to process visa applications, as well as the equally unacceptable wait times. It can take more than a year to get a work visa from Immigration Canada.

Minister, we know that the backlog of applications at the department is in the millions. According to some media reports, we are talking about 2 million pending applications across all categories. Can you tell us how many work permit applications are pending and what you plan to do to fix these unacceptable delays, which are having a negative impact on the Quebec economy?

Senator Housakos: — or was Minister Gould throwing you under the bus for your mismanagement?

The Hon. the Speaker: Thank you, senator. Your time has expired.

Hon. Jean-Guy Dagenais: Minister, just this morning, the Journal de Montréal reported that an individual accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Georgia fled the United States and has been living in Canada since 2018. He entered Canada via the infamous Roxham Road and claimed refugee status. Four years later, this criminal is still taking advantage of our system and is fighting in court, at our expense, to avoid being sent back to the United States.

Minister, how do you explain how this man is still in Canada after four years of legal battles? Also, can you tell us how many known criminals have taken advantage of Roxham Road to hide in Canada and how many have been deported?

[English]

Hon. Pierre J. Dalphond: Thank you for being here today, minister. We’ve heard a lot of questions about work visa backlogs. The wait can be up to 13 months, but we need to shorten these wait times if Canada is to remain competitive.

What would be your ideal target for processing foreign worker applications? Four months, five months? What measures have been implemented to achieve the target processing time that the department has set or that we should set?

[English]

Hon. Kim Pate: Thank you, Minister Fraser, for joining us. As you know, too many children who come to Canada as immigrants and refugees can end up in the care of the state through no fault of their own. That means the state becomes their parent, and it can be a very quick slide from child welfare into the criminal legal system, which is where they often find out for the first time that they are not citizens. Only unrelenting advocacy and last-minute interventions by the government have currently been accessible to prevent such deportations.

Minister, what does your government intend to do to stop these children from falling through the cracks? Will you commit to the solutions found in Senator Jaffer’s Bill S-235 that could help protect these vulnerable people?

The Hon. the Speaker: Are honourable senators ready for the question?

Hon. Percy E. Downe: Minister, in my first question to you I asked if a criminal conviction background check is conducted for all applicants for a study permit in Canada. Obviously, the answer is no.

In the case I mentioned earlier in which an international student sexually assaulted a young woman, he pleaded guilty and received a conditional discharge rather than a criminal conviction. Thus, he would not have to leave Canada before completing his studies at the University of Prince Edward Island.

Since this was not the first case involving someone on a study permit who committed a sexual assault but didn’t receive a criminal conviction, Islanders are wondering if the threat of deportation and therefore having to leave their studies is being used as a “get out of jail free card.”

The woman has paid a high price for the sexual assault. She quit her job, suffers panic attacks and is fearful of being in stores and near strangers, while the international student gets to finish his degree.

Minister, for the safety of all Canadians, why is it not mandatory that all applicants for study permits — rather than merely the ones who mention a criminal record on their applications — be required to pass a criminal background check prior to the study permit being issued?

The Hon. the Speaker: Honourable senators, we welcome today the Honourable Sean Fraser, P.C., M.P., Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, to ask questions relating to his ministerial responsibilities.

Pursuant to the order adopted by the Senate on December 7, 2021, senators do not need to stand. Questions are limited to one minute and responses to one and a half minutes. The reading clerk will stand 10 seconds before the expiry of these times. Question Period will last one hour.

On behalf of all senators, minister, welcome to the Senate of Canada.