Gerard Kennedy

C-11++ a New Refugee Law?

Apparently, Conservative Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has a different bottom line on his refugee reform bill after all. After having his “last, best, take-it-or-leave-it” offer rejected by the Liberal Party last Thursday, the Minister blinked and moved the yardsticks much closer to fair territory.

Liberals had taken Kenney at face value when he indicated openness to negotiation, despite his well deserved reputation for unremitting partisanship, in order to compel him to carry out a real fix to refugee law reform. Harper and Kenney had increased the backlog of refugees by 300% in just four years to 60,000 people languishing for up to four years (largely by making adjudicator posts vacant while they filled them with partisan Conservatives). The first version of the proposed new law would actually have at once made the backlog worse and the system more unjust, according to every independent expert opinion.

The basic question guiding Liberals was how to protect human rights for some of the world’s most vulnerable people seeking Canada’s protection, while at the same time making our system more practical and humane. Kenney’s offer last week fell significantly short.

Now, safeguards seem to have been obtained to protect against the worst aspects of the design and several useful elements such as an appeal mechanism and a smarter return policy for persons rejected would come into place.

Liberals can improve the rest after the next election.

Should someone be imprisoned for sharing the views of most Canadians on the Iraq War? That is the question being posed in part by my Bill C-440, soon to be considered at second reading in the House of Commons.

Parliament has voted twice to let Iraq war resisters from the United States stay in Canada. Now the Federal Court of Appeal has added its voice to the debate.

According to a schedule fixed by Ottawa, federal stimulus funding for municipal infrastructure works is to disappear in less than eight months

The federal Liberal infrastructure critic says a new report on the stimulus program proves the Conservative government, not Canadian municipalities, is to blame for a delay that will leave many projects unfinished by March 31.