Mr. Speaker, I want to pick up on the name of Bill C-43, which in part states “foreign criminals act”.
I pose this question because I know that the member is fairly knowledgeable about other legislation passed by this particular minister. In my opinion, it really sends a very negative message about Canada being a tolerant society and so forth.
What we are really talking about is permanent residents, the 1.5 million permanent residents. Here, it was interesting that the member referred to the issue of priorities. One of the areas that we really need to look at in this regard is the processing of citizenships. What happens nowadays is that we have permanent residents who apply for citizenship and are waiting longer than two years before being granted their citizenship.
Could the member comment on that aspect? I ask because it is related to permanent residents. On the one hand, the government seems to want to punish permanent residents and on the other hand it is completely ignoring the need to speed up the processing so that permanent resident can in fact become citizens.