Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member of the Bloc for his question. It is a very important one and I shall try to answer it.
It is clear that upon reading Bill C-18, which is now before us, many of us find ourselves asking the question: Is the bill, as the government would have us believe, intended to create a positive atmosphere for immigration or is it designed more to keep people out? That is one of the key questions that must be addressed.
As the member has said, this is the Liberal government's fourth attempt to change the 1977 act. There is an old saying, “If at first you don't succeed, try, try, again”. It begs the question: Has the government finally succeeded with this try? In our view, the answer is, no. We do not believe the government has succeeded with this bill. We are therefore opposed, at this point, to Bill C-18 and will be looking for some specific changes.
We would like to see the government address concerns pertaining to cabinet discretionary powers with respect to the powers to annul and refuse citizenship. That is very important. We believe that within the revocation process, which is referred now to the federal court, there are still questions about due process that apply around appeal, access to information and general definitions.
We are concerned about the role of citizenship judges. Although we support the idea of a set of criteria and an even-handed process in determining citizenship, this initiative in the bill would eliminate the humanizing element in the process and any discretion in recognizing complex or extenuating circumstances.
We think that judges, and this was pointed out in testimony to previous bills, have played an important role, in terms of triggering language lessons, the further study of Canada and its values, counselling for battered women and their children, and employment counselling. That role was possible because citizenship judges were involved intimately with the cases at hand. Will that kind of flexibility be still at play in the system?
The citizenship test itself is a problem and judges help to deal with the problems inherent in that examination. For example, of the 20 questions that are asked of every citizenship candidate 2 are mandatory. We could end up with the situation where 19 of the 20 questions are answered correctly but the person would fail because he or she could not answer one of the mandatory questions.
It would seem that if people could get 19 out of 20 answers right, they would have a pretty good idea about Canada and what this country stands for. There could be cultural issues at play in terms of failure to answer that one question. There could be trauma involved in terms of someone who might have escaped from persecution. There could be language barriers in terms of someone not being able to understand the finer parts of a question. There could be the fear of being in an interview and having an exam. There are all kinds of reasons. A judge offered at least a hope that person could still be retested and still become a Canadian citizen.
What we should be doing is in fact--