Mr. Speaker, the common-sense amendments that the Conservatives and the Bloc so carefully crafted at committee to improve Bill C-3 are being undone by my postnationalist colleagues across the aisle.
The Liberals do not believe in Canada because they do not believe in our borders. They believe in a two-tiered immigration system, where citizenship by naturalization within our borders has harder requirements than citizenship by descent outside of our borders does. They believe in distributing the privileges of Canadian citizenship abroad while offloading the costs and duties of citizenship to those who live coast to coast to coast. They believe that Canadians of convenience should be able to wear the team Canada jersey without ever putting in time on our ice. They are people who want to be in the team photo without being a team player.
Let me remind the House of how this entire situation first began.
The phrase “Canadians of convenience” emerged after 2006, when, during the Lebanon war, the Canadian government evacuated 15,000 Lebanese Canadians at the cost of $94 million to Canadian taxpayers. They were evacuated beginning in July 2006, and by September of the same year, 7,000 of those evacuees had returned to Lebanon. This was the central reason the Harper government took action to initiate the first-generation limit several years later.
Let us make this definition very clear: Canadians of convenience, as grounded in our 2006 example, are those who hold Canadian citizenship but live abroad and do not participate in Canadian society. They view Canada as an insurance policy when a crisis emerges, but never pay into our system. They are passport holders who merely parachute back into Canada when they need assistance. They wear team Canada’s jersey, but they have never played with us.
Conservatives are in full support of all measures needed to specifically address the lost Canadians situation. However, lost Canadians must understand that they have been used as a Trojan Horse by the postnationalist Liberals.
The first-order effect of the original Bill C-3 would directly help lost Canadians. The second-order effect of Bill C-3 in its original form would have indirectly created over 100,000 Canadians of convenience. This is why the Bloc and the Conservatives united to create common-sense amendments that would lessen the impacts of Bill C-3’s second-order effects.
Let us discuss the common-sense amendments that were crafted in committee. Might I add, these were crafted by recognized opposition parties through a committee, where committees are central to the parliamentary process. Our legitimate parliamentary work is being opposed by team orange, which has been stripped of official party status.
I will only entertain this tangent once, but I do question the legitimacy of an unofficial party challenging the parliamentary work of recognized parties in committees. What are the optics of this? Why bother having parliamentary committees if all voted resolutions are ignored? I digress, so I will get back to the amendments.
The goal of our amendments was simply to harmonize the requirements of citizenship by descent with those of citizenship by naturalization within Canada. Is it too much to ask for a harmonized system with universal standards? What we achieved in the amendments would strengthen the substantial connection test, while adding quality control reporting responsibilities for the presiding minister.
One, we amended the three-year presence in Canada to be achieved within a five-year timeline. This would allow some flexibility while ensuring some level of intensity. With any more flexibility, we must seriously ask if we are talking about a path to citizenship or mere tourism.
Two, we added requirements about language proficiencies, citizenship knowledge and security checks. It is not a high bar to demand proficiency in one of our official languages. It is not a high bar to demand a prospective Canadian citizen should understand the responsibilities and privileges of Canadian citizenship. We expect much more of someone getting their driver’s license. It is not a high bar to demand a security assessment, but it is a high bar for Canadians of convenience who would like to wear team Canada’s jersey without being a team player on our national rink.
Finally, the Bloc and the Conservatives added reporting requirements for the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship. The first reporting requirement would be the number of citizenships granted by the enactment of Bill C-3. The second reporting requirement would be security screening exemptions. Essentially, the first stream of data would be to understand how Bill C-3 is performing, and the second would be to keep an eye on potential security threats. If we have the best interests of Canadians in mind, these reporting requirements are not just logical but absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, these reporting requirements are too high a bar if the goal is to obfuscate operational metrics while being soft on crime.
Taken together, our amendments make the substantial connection test of Bill C-3 functionally substantial in practice and not just in words. Of course, there is nothing more substantial than what citizenship by naturalization requires of those understanding its process. What these amendments achieve is the addition of a certain cost to the process of earning Canadian citizenship, a cost to reflect the value we hold in being Canadian.
I would like to wrap up my comments with a topic that has been the central but unspoken theme of Bill C-3, which is the value of Canadian citizenship. Every Canadian citizen is like a voting shareholder in a corporation. The shareholders have elected the Liberals to be the operating officers on the assumption they would be prioritizing the values of what it means to be Canadian shareholders. Instead, they have weaponized a promise to reinstate lost shareholders as a Trojan Horse to dilute every existing share by issuing new tranches of passive shareholders of convenience.
All the Bloc and the Conservatives are asking is that this new tranche of shares being issued under Bill C-3 meet the same standards as those governing employees who earned sweat equity by contributing to our corporation. When the Liberals, as the acting officers of our corporation, and the consultants on team orange, who are no longer legitimate members of the board, decide that Bill C-3 tranches of shares should be issued without the parity vesting and work we require of sweat equity earners, I have only one question: Are they fulfilling their fiduciary duty to our existing base of shareholders?