Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to be in the House today speaking to the bill before us.
Fundamentally, we are talking about Bill C-3, which is a chain migration bill. It is a bill that would allow parents who were not born in Canada to give their children who were not born in Canada citizenship forever and ever. From my perspective, that is not a good thing.
How did we get to this place? Originally, way back when, there was Bill S-245, which was meant to fix one simple thing: the issue of lost Canadians. Then there was a court ruling that happened in Ontario that the federal government chose not to appeal. The Liberals chose to allow the courts to establish the policy of the Government of Canada. I think they were too weak or too scared, I am not sure which, to actually make the policy themselves, so they just said, “Great, we'll do what the court asks.”
In my opinion, the Liberals should have appealed the ruling and should have made their own decision in terms of what they wanted in the legislation. However, they then introduced Bill C-71 in the last session and forgot about it. They did not act on it in any way, and now here we are with essentially the same bill.
As I said, Bill C-3 is chain migration bill; it would allow people to pass on citizenship to their children indefinitely, whether they were born in Canada or not. The Liberals have actually put one condition on this. They keep talking about the semantics of the kind of method by which people are getting their citizenship, but at the end of the day, it does not really matter; there is a condition, which is the 1,095 days that a person would have to be present in Canada, which we have heard about all day long here.
We are essentially saying that it is fine, but we want to tweak it a bit and add a couple more conditions, which is all this is. Really what we are arguing about in the House today is how many and which conditions. It is not zero conditions; there are some conditions. The government has proposed some, and we are proposing a few more.
We are proposing that we strengthen the connection test a little so that, yes, a person could be here 1,095 days, which do not have to be consecutive but would have to be within a five-year period. We are also proposing making sure that people have either English or French proficiency, that they know the country they are coming to by taking a citizenship test and that they do not have a criminal record.
These are things that we believe are very reasonable and very fair and that should be done. Of course at committee we were able to put forward these common-sense proposals. We received majority support with the help of the Bloc at committee to do this, but now the government, in its incessant desire to break everything, wants to change that again, so here we are now.
Members might ask what the risk is. We are talking about children and other people who probably have a connection, which is quite likely true in many cases. There are people who are very legitimate who are young, under the age of 15 or 16 years old and potentially under the age of five or 10 years. Certainly those people, generally speaking, would be legitimate claimants to citizenship, but we have a very weak system.
The government has broken our immigration system so badly. It has messed up when it comes to asylum and when it comes to losing control of the number of students coming into our country. Everybody knows that; the faults are well known and well documented. However, now we have a government that has completely broken our system, saying, “Trust us. We've got this. We know exactly what we are doing.” Well, pardon me if I do not trust the government and if I do not think it has got this, because I do not think it does.
We know that when there is a weak system, there are bad actors in the world who try to take advantage of things, which is exactly what would happen through the proposed system. That is why we proposed some amendments, and I will quickly go through them.
First is the time period. The government's first condition that it proposed was that parents would have to spend 1,095 days in Canada before the birth of a child. We think that is fine, except that we want to see a bit of a stronger connection test, because the days could be over quite a span of years. What we are proposing is that the 1,095 non-consecutive days happen within a five-year window. That is what we are proposing, and we think it is very reasonable.
Second, we believe that people who obtain citizenship through this method should be able to speak either French or English. It is a fairly simple requirement; it is not complicated. We require this of all other people who obtain citizenship in our country, so we feel that is a very reasonable request and quite necessary for having a good, solid life in Canada.
The third condition we think should be in the bill is a citizenship test. We need to make sure that the people who are coming to our country actually know about our country, because by definition, these are people who have potentially not spent any time in Canada. We need to know that they understand what it means to be in Canada and what their rights and responsibilities are, just like other people who come to our country.
Finally, the other condition we think is very reasonable and prudent is a security check. We want to make sure that people who are criminals in other countries do not automatically get citizenship in Canada. This seem like common sense. I do not understand why it is so complicated for the government to understand.
There could be person who has been convicted of crimes in other country and then realizes that their parents lived in Canada for 1,095 days before they were born, when their parents were in university or something like that, and who thinks they have a solution: Even though they are wanted for crimes in their own country, they will just go to Canada because their parents could pass on their citizenship. That is what we are trying to avoid, and a simple security check would prevent that from happening.
One other thing that we asked to be included, which I think is very reasonable, is a reporting mechanism so Parliament and therefore Canadians would know how many people were granted citizenship through this method.
I think these are very reasonable things to ask.
There is risk when people can manipulate and abuse a weak system to their advantage. The amendments that would essentially add a few more conditions to the one the Liberals already proposed would mitigate those risks, making the system a little less weak and potentially a little less risky.
One thing I also want to mention is that there would be many young people who would be affected by the legislation, those under the age of 16 years, as I said before. They should be able to fly through the requirements very easily: the time period, languages, the test of Canada and the security screening, which they may be exempt from. Right now we require that only of people who are between the ages of 18 and 54. There would actually be no burden on young people.
That gets back to my original point: We are not after the people who are coming here legitimately. We want to make sure that those people do get the citizenship they are owed. However, we want to make sure that people who do not deserve citizenship, those who are taking advantage of the system, would be subject to some checks, just to make sure we can control and know who is coming into our country.
I know that the NDP is very angry at voters for taking away its party status in the House. That has caused a lot of angst, I am sure, in its ranks and in its members. The member for Vancouver East was very much opposed to the changes made at committee without her being able to be there. I know that she spoke on Friday, and there are a couple of things that I want to make sure she understands.
The first is about consecutive days. The member mentioned that we are proposing that the condition needs to be consecutive days. It does not. It would be 1,095 days within a five-year period. We realize that people do need to have the opportunity to visit their home country for weddings, funerals or different events that happen, and that seems very reasonable. It is not consecutive days; it is just that within a five-year period, we feel there should be a substantial connection to Canada.
The other thing I want to mention briefly is the confusion about who is a visitor to our country. It is pretty clear. As a kid, I grew up in a lovely town on the eastern side of Saskatchewan called Yorkton. My grandparents lived on the exact opposite side of the province in a small town called Herbert, another lovely town in Saskatchewan. As a youth, I spent a lot of time in Herbert, Saskatchewan, but I always considered myself a visitor to Herbert; I never thought I was actually from Herbert or had any kind of substantial connection to Herbert. I grew up in Yorkton, and that was where I spent most of my time.
That is the principle we need to follow. People may have visited Canada a number of times, and that is fine. We welcome visitors. We love it when they spend their money in our country; it is amazing, but we also need to make sure that this does not imply in any way that it makes them entitled to become a citizen of this country. We have to be very clear on what "visitor" means and what it is.
We also have to be careful of the government we have and the now seventh immigration minister we have in the House. We have had seven immigration ministers in 10 years, who have not done their due diligence on bills like the one that is before us. The current minister just took the bill from the last Parliament, which was the bill from the previous one. They just bring the bills along without actually putting some thought and logic into what is going on. That is very dangerous, and we have be very careful of it.
What we are seeing right now is that the old NDP-Liberal coalition is back on. There is a budget coming up next week, and I think what is going on here is that in return for its support of the budget, the NDP has demanded that the Liberals support it on the amendments they want to this bill. That is where we are right now; the NDP-Liberal coalition lives on.
Citizenship has value. We need to make sure that we reinforce that and that we defend that.