That was the second bill I did with Senator Martin. Up until two days before the testimony, Senator Martin was all in for amendments. That changed. It was almost like she got an edict from the party to say “no more amendments”, because she had been all in.
It was also interesting that Mr. Poilievre's office sent an email, which I have a copy of, saying that he was all in for Bill S-245. They weren't in for the amendments, and I can't help but look at the sincerity of those amendments. One of them was that there would not be any citizenship ceremonies on Yom Kippur. Today's Yom Kippur. We can have meetings on this day. I didn't think it was sincere.
They brought up the same issues of security, language and so forth, which brings me to Finley Weinberger. He got a letter saying that he had to put forth a citizenship knowledge test for language and so forth. Finley had just turned two years old. Again, this is not about anything to do with that. The courts have ruled that, going back to 1997, this is an issue about fairness, about the courts, about the rule of law and the charter. No party gets a choice here. This is what the law says.
If we talk about confidence in the system, we have to talk about confidence in the citizenship system and confidence in the court. This is not an immigration issue, period.