Honourable senators, I rise late tonight to speak to Bill S-8, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, to make consequential amendments to other Acts and to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations.

Bill S-8 amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, or IRPA, for the stated purpose of better linking government sanctions with authorities related to immigration enforcement and access to Canada by foreign nationals who may be from sanctioned regimes.

The bill aligns IRPA with the Special Economic Measures Act, or SEMA, to ensure all foreign nationals subject to sanctions under the SEMA will also be inadmissible to Canada. This means that foreign nationals subject to sanctions for any reason under the SEMA will also be inadmissible to Canada.

I will address one aspect of this bill in my remarks tonight and ask why it has taken this bill more than a year to move through the parliamentary process, despite the fact that it has had unanimous support.

The bill was introduced in the Senate over a year ago. It was supported by the Conservative Party in both the Senate and the House. It was not opposed by any other party in the House. It seems to have had no opposition from any senator. In short, colleagues, this bill has never had any opposition at all from anyone.

When he spoke to the bill last year, Senator Harder said, “Legislative measures are required on an urgent basis to align the IRPA sanctions inadmissibility regime with that of SEMA.” Senator Harder said that the bill should be passed into law as quickly as possible.

To be fair to Senator Harder, the bill actually did pass through the Senate in less than 30 days. That included debate at all stages in this chamber and also allowed us to hear testimony from witnesses at our Foreign Affairs Committee.

But for the past year, Bill S-8 has sat in the House. The Minister of Public Safety, who is the sponsor of this bill, spoke to the bill in the other place last year. He said the following:

Legislative amendments are required on an urgent basis to align the IRPA sanctions inadmissibility regime clearly with that of SEMA. . . .

Now more than ever, we must move to align the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act sanctions regime with the regime under the Special Economic Measures Act.

The senators have agreed to adopt the motion and, to quote Senator Omidvar, have marked this bill as “super urgent”. I urge members to review Bill S-8 with the same sense of urgency. . . .

This legislation and these amendments would provide a clear and strong message that the Government of Canada’s comprehensive sanctions framework has meaningful and direct consequences, not only from an economic perspective, but from an immigration and access to Canada perspective as well. Doing so would allow us to stand up for human rights both here and abroad.

Colleagues, those words were spoken six months after the Senate had passed Bill S-8. And here we are now, another six months later, and we are still dealing with this bill.

So we have heard words like “urgent” and even “super urgent” in the initial remarks on this bill. But what do they mean?

I am honestly not sure that they mean much when we have a government bill, a bill that the government declares is a priority, a bill that has unanimous support, and yet it takes more than a year to move the bill through the legislative process. In light of what we know about this particular minister, I am honestly not sure that any words he says mean anything at all.

The minister claimed that Bill S-8 was needed to send:

 . . . a clear and strong message that the Government of Canada’s comprehensive sanctions framework has meaningful and direct consequences . . . . Doing so would allow us to stand up for human rights both here and abroad.

And then, after uttering those words, he let the bill languish. I can only repeat what I just said: The bill had unanimous support.

I am sure that when Senator Harder said a year ago that the bill was urgent, he believed that and he was sincere in that assertion. And yet here we are a year later.

The measures enacted in this bill certainly seem to be important in that they relate to inadmissibility issues, not only with respect to sanctioned Russian nationals who may be implicated in the invasion of Ukraine but also in relation to sanctioned nationals from countries like Myanmar, South Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, North Korea and Iran.

Bill S-8 is described by the government as urgent in order to close a gap in the law, that is to ensure that sanctioned individuals are clearly inadmissible to Canada.

But as witnesses before our Foreign Affairs Committee told us over a year ago, fewer than 1% of more than 2,000 sanctioned individuals have ever even applied to enter Canada, and all of them did so from abroad. None appear to have actually entered Canada, even under existing laws.

So what does that leave us with? I regret to say that, as is the case with so much of what the government does, we are seeing the predominance of style over substance.

As I said one year ago when I last spoke on this bill in the chamber, I will support the bill. The Conservative caucus supports the bill. Every senator in this chamber, I believe, will support the bill. Every party in the House of Commons supported the bill.

However, this bill should not have languished for a year, and its unnecessary delay is another example of the amateurish legislative management of this government.

So let’s now move this to a vote and do what should have been done a year ago and finally pass this bill.

Thank you, honourable senators.