Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Oct. 2nd, 2025

[Michael Ma, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

The following questions are for Dr. Bonner.

You published a study in May of this year, entitled “Repairing the fray”, in which you investigated Canada's immigration policy. On page 18, you wrote, “Nearly 60 percent of Canadians of all backgrounds now claim that newcomers do not share Canadian values and that they fail to integrate themselves within Canadian society.”

Do you feel that this lack of integration could be addressed with Bill C-3's substantial connection test, by adding, firstly, a language proficiency test in either English or French, and secondly, a citizenship test requirement?

[Michael Bonner]

The answer is yes and no.

In principle, I think something needs to be done about the problems you cite there. Those aren't numbers that I made up. Those are from reputable polling firms, as you can find in the footnotes to my study. I would be very surprised if that number had not in fact risen.

Those sorts of safeguards—not only cultural, but also economic integration—need to be built into the immigration system in general, not just into one bill. It is also a philosophy that the country as a whole ought to adopt.

If you look at the context of that statistic you cite there, the context is the idea that there is nothing into which to integrate. The theory is that there is a kind of cultural void in Canada and therefore it doesn't require any kind of effort to acculturate anyone, or there are no particular values, no particular principles. That was a refrain that was often heard over the past decade. I think Canadians know that isn't true.

So yes, we should do that, but that must be a philosophy adopted into the immigration system—our attitude to citizenship and our attitude to the country as a whole.

[Michael Ma, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you.

On that same page, you wrote, “More and more [newcomers] are leaving, having formed no permanent connection[s] to the country, and moving on to other economic opportunities abroad.”

Further, you cited a study that found that “25 percent of all immigrants will leave within 25 years and a little over a third of them will do so within the first five years.” You place special emphasis on noting that, among those who leave, “48 percent are economic immigrants.”

Do you feel that the lack of connection to Canada could be addressed through Bill C-3's “substantial connection” test, by adding a longer residency requirement?

[Michael Bonner]

Yes. In general, I think that should be done for citizenship policy.

The economic immigration statistic that you mention goes back, if I remember correctly, to a study—not one that I did, but one that I reference—called “The Leaky Bucket”, a very memorable title.

I interpret that to be actually quite an alarming fact. Economic immigrants are chosen because they wish to invest here. They have offers of jobs already. The skills and so forth that they bring, or the level of education and skills training brought to the country, are those that we need. They're vital to us.

If they are leaving, I think that speaks to a very serious problem that we need to address and look into. Part of the problem is undoubtedly connected with that feeling of scarcity and of strain on infrastructure that we have all felt—especially people of my generation—over recent years. Certainly, I think more could be done to retain the highly skilled and well-trained people who wish to come here and integrate, and the fact that we don't is a problem.

Again, some sort of solution needs to be found. Yes, it may be wise to build it into Bill C-3, but it must be built into the immigration system in general.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dzerowicz]

Thank you, Mr. Bonner.

Thank you, Mr. Ma.

Our next questioner is Mr. Fragiskatos for five minutes.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all of you for being here.

Mr. Chapman, you made the point in this meeting and your testimony that the issue before us is not one of immigration. It's about citizenship. Thank you for making that clear. I think it reminds us of why we're here with respect to Bill C-3.

Earlier today, we heard a lot about “chain migration”. I had to check: I felt like I was in another country, listening to a particular president who loves that phrase. I think you can pick up on what I'm talking about there.

Without digressing, I want you to go back and talk about this from a fairness perspective and also, in looking at Bill C-3, as putting forward a set of measures that would ensure consistency in our citizenship law.

[Don Chapman]

The citizenship law has never been terribly consistent, and IRCC is consistently inconsistent, so it's been a real problem. Again, there are at least 15 categories of lost Canadians. Most have been fixed.

I've been fighting it all my life. I was six years old when Canada took away my citizenship, and I've never heard any argument other than what's coming out of here, that I'm trying to immigrate back to my own country and so forth. I always found that very insulting. I was born a Canadian citizen, and these people have a constitutional right to citizenship, not a constitutional right to immigrate—anybody can immigrate. If we're talking about chain immigration, there's one way that anybody can come to Canada and get in. Just have your baby born on Canadian soil. That's jus soli. Anybody who's not a Canadian can arrive and have a baby, and that's it, you're in.

Fair has to be equal on both sides. If we're going to go with 1,095 days for immigrants, we have to go with 1,095 days for lost Canadians. Here's the problem with the consecutive. I was an airline pilot. I left the country for two weeks every month. I could never in 40 years have gotten the consecutive. That's out. Naturalized Canadians don't have to do consecutive. On top of that, they have two other ways they can prove their substantial connection. That is not true for lost Canadians. We just have to make it equal.

As for being consecutive, Canadians—and part of the Bjorkquist case was section 6 of the charter on mobility rights. One of the members of this committee was married to an American and spent the COVID year down in Oklahoma. She would have lost her citizenship over that years ago.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London Centre, ON]

Okay, Mr. Chapman. I have only about a minute and a half left.

Can I ask you about what we've heard at committee about the number of those who would potentially become citizens? Can you add some nuance to that? I respect the work of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, but there's a number here of 100,000 plus. That is a number without a lot of context—which I'm not expecting from the PBO as it's not their job to provide that—but you have that particular context, I think, because you've written on this widely. You've appeared before committees in studies of previous iterations, of Bill C-71, for example, and other bills that have been before us in previous years.

Talk about the nuance of that, because I think committee members might be left with the impression that the door is being opened here to 100,000-plus people arriving into the country, when I think that's certainly not the case.

[Don Chapman]

Of course, again, the courts didn't put a number on it. One of the greatest cases would be The Advocate General for Scotland v. Romein. They did the same thing basically as C-3, but here's the point: Bill C-37 opened the door to a million people, maybe two million, and in the 16 years since that became effective, 20,000 people showed up at Canada's door to say they wanted to be Canadian. A lot of those people lived in Canada. We're talking maybe tens of thousands of Mennonites who already live here would now get their citizenship. They're probably part of that 115,000.

It's not just a matter of how many people there are. It's how many people are going to show up. Make no assumption that these are people who are going to be on social services. These are people who are contributing members of society. They already are; they just want to be legitimized.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London Centre, ON]

Many of them are already here—

[Don Chapman]

They are already here. Count at 115,000, 1% or 2%.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dzerowicz]

Thank you, Mr. Chapman. Thank you, Mr. Fragiskatos.

Now we have Monsieur Brunelle-Duceppe.

You have two and a half minutes.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

As legislators, we try to get as much information as possible. That's one of the reasons you're with us.

I want to come back to the number of people affected by the bill. You're talking about 115,000 people. I imagine it was complicated for you to develop an analysis grid to arrive at that figure. You've probably had different scenarios with a number of people higher or lower than that.

How did you come up with 115,000? Are you able to say whether there may be a lot more people affected or a lot fewer?

[Louis Perrault]

As I said earlier, our analysis is based mainly on a Statistics Canada study that provided three levels of estimates.

We took the one in the middle. One is lower, and their number is about half of ours. The other one is a little higher, one and a half times higher than ours. In the case of the Canadian diaspora that would be made up of citizens by descent, we used a figure of about two million people before reducing it first to one million people, or then increasing it to 3.4 million people. In short, we could cut our figure in half, multiply it by 1.5. That's the simplest way to explain our calculation. That's basically the range we used.

As for the number of people who will apply for citizenship, we made an assumption to arrive at our figure. We think it's reasonable. However, it could be lower or it could be higher.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

I imagine that people from the United States would be more likely to apply for citizenship.

[Louis Perrault]

It's probably for—

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

I don't think you gave us a country-by-country analysis.

[Louis Perrault]

No. To refine the estimate, maybe we could look at that, but right now—

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dzerowicz]

You have 15 seconds.

[Louis Perrault]

—we really took an aggregate number and applied our assumptions to arrive at the—

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

I tried.

Do you think it's reasonable for a minister to introduce a bill without being able to show how many people it would affect?

[Jason Jacques]

It's not for us to judge.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dzerowicz]

Thank you, Mr. Jacques.

Thank you, Mr. Brunelle‑Duceppe.

We have about five minutes left. If it's okay, maybe I'll give two minutes each to the Liberals, the Conservatives and the Bloc.

We are going to start with Mr. Davies.

[Fred Davies, Conservative, Niagara South, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. Bonner, I was struck by and interested in your comments at the beginning about the value of Canadian citizenship and what it means to be a Canadian citizen, as well as your commentary on the evolution of this sort of postnational philosophy that obviously has not gained the traction that it was...at the time.

I'm curious as to what you think of the provisions—or the lack of provisions—in this bill. For example, there's no language check, no test of citizenship, no knowledge...and no test of self-sustainability once you arrive in Canada. Also, as the minister said, you can have citizenship by cottages, by literally just staying in the country for 1,095 non-consecutive days.

What do you think that this overall philosophy and the approach in this bill mean to you in relation to the value of Canadian citizenship?

[Michael Bonner]

As I said in my opening remarks, I don't think there's a question as to whether or not there are some people who should have their citizenship restored to them. I don't know if anybody is actually debating that or suggesting that there's some reason to not do that. My concern is that, again, citizenship should count for more in general. The higher priority of the government and of the Canadian public should be to restore confidence in a citizenship policy and an immigration policy that are very often seen together, rather than to do sort of minor tinkering here and there.

Also, if Bill C-3 is gotten wrong and is open to abuse and this is seen in public, it will only add to the problem.