Bill C-24 (Historical)

Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act

An Act to amend the Citizenship Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts

This enactment amends the Citizenship Act to, among other things, update eligibility requirements for Canadian citizenship, strengthen security and fraud provisions and amend provisions governing the processing of applications and the review of decisions.
Amendments to the eligibility requirements include
(a) clarifying the meaning of being resident in Canada;
(b) modifying the period during which a permanent resident must reside in Canada before they may apply for citizenship;
(c) expediting access to citizenship for persons who are serving in, or have served in, the Canadian Armed Forces;
(d) requiring that an applicant for citizenship demonstrate, in one of Canada’s official languages, knowledge of Canada and of the responsibilities and privileges of citizenship;
(e) specifying the age as of which an applicant for citizenship must demonstrate the knowledge referred to in paragraph (d) and must demonstrate an adequate knowledge of one of Canada’s official languages;
(f) requiring that an applicant meet any applicable requirement under the Income Tax Act to file a return of income;
(g) conferring citizenship on certain individuals and their descendants who may not have acquired citizenship under prior legislation;
(h) extending an exception to the first-generation limit to citizenship by descent to children born to or adopted abroad by parents who were themselves born to or adopted abroad by Crown servants; and
(i) requiring, for a grant of citizenship for an adopted person, that the adoption not have circumvented international adoption law.
Amendments to the security and fraud provisions include
(a) expanding the prohibition against granting citizenship to include persons who are charged outside Canada for an offence that, if committed in Canada, would constitute an indictable offence under an Act of Parliament or who are serving a sentence outside Canada for such an offence;
(b) expanding the prohibition against granting citizenship to include persons who, while they were permanent residents, engaged in certain actions contrary to the national interest of Canada, and permanently barring those persons from acquiring citizenship;
(c) aligning the grounds related to security and organized criminality on which a person may be denied citizenship with those grounds in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and extending the period during which a person is barred from acquiring citizenship on that basis;
(d) expanding the prohibition against granting citizenship to include persons who, in the course of their application, misrepresent material facts and prohibiting new applications by those persons for a specified period;
(e) increasing the period during which a person is barred from applying for citizenship after having been convicted of certain offences;
(f) increasing the maximum penalties for offences related to citizenship, including fraud and trafficking in documents of citizenship;
(g) providing for the regulation of citizenship consultants;
(h) establishing a hybrid model for revoking a person’s citizenship in which the Minister will decide the majority of cases and the Federal Court will decide the cases related to inadmissibility based on security grounds, on grounds of violating human or international rights or on grounds of organized criminality;
(i) increasing the period during which a person is barred from applying for citizenship after their citizenship has been revoked;
(j) providing for the revocation of citizenship of dual citizens who, while they were Canadian citizens, engaged in certain actions contrary to the national interest of Canada, and permanently barring these individuals from reacquiring citizenship; and
(k) authorizing regulations to be made respecting the disclosure of information.
Amendments to the provisions governing the processing of applications and the review of decisions include
(a) requiring that an application must be complete to be accepted for processing;
(b) expanding the grounds and period for the suspension of applications and providing for the circumstances in which applications may be treated as abandoned;
(c) limiting the role of citizenship judges in the decision-making process, subject to the Minister periodically exercising his or her power to continue the period of application of that limitation;
(d) giving the Minister the power to make regulations concerning the making and processing of applications;
(e) providing for the judicial review of any matter under the Act and permitting, in certain circumstances, further appeals to the Federal Court of Appeal; and
(f) transferring to the Minister the discretionary power to grant citizenship in special cases.
Finally, the enactment makes consequential amendments to the Federal Courts Act and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it has been very difficult to sit through that diatribe and to stop myself from heckling because I do not like to do anything like that. I want to be able to hear the points that are made.

However, one thing that absolutely fascinated me today was the minister's assertion that we have had days and nights of debate on this bill.

I want to put on record that the bill was last debated on February 27, for all of two hours. That is 120 minutes. Today we started debating at around 6:44 p.m. I do not see how that can be portrayed as days and nights of debate.

We have a bill that is fundamentally flawed because, despite the protestations otherwise, it would create two levels of Canadian citizenship. Those born in Canada could be treated totally differently from other people born in Canada who just happen to have dual citizenship through their parents or grandparents, and this from a country that actually accepts dual citizenship.

Who has the minister been debating the bill with? It certainly has not been in this Parliament.

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it has been two days of debate at second reading in this place, so we could well say 48 hours, and I understand there have been 12 hours of debate in committee. We have been seized with the bill for a good long time. Many of its provisions have come before this House in other forms as private members' bills or as versions of various amendments that were proposed in minority government. The House is familiar with these provisions.

What has not changed is that the other side of the House simply does not care about some of the issues the bill tries to address. Canadians do care about them.

We are not surprised to hear skepticism about treason, joining another armed force, or terrorism. We are used to it from the debates on Afghanistan.

When I was in Kabul somewhere between the Canadian embassy and working for the United Nations, the hon. former leader of the opposition, Jack Layton, was saying that we should sit down with the Taliban, who at that time were killing Canadian soldiers.

That was a disgraceful moment for our politics.

It continues to be unfortunate that the NDP cannot bring itself to admit that terrorism is a real threat, that al Qaeda is still out there, and that Canada has an interest in deterring its youth and others from bringing those fights to our shores.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I will give the government credit in terms of its ability to cast spin. The Conservative government is very good at spin. Even if the facts get in the way, it does not bother the government. It will create or fabricate something to try to make it look good.

Let me give members an example. The government will create a crisis. It will say that there was a citizenship backlog crisis, and that is the reason it had to bring in the legislation.

In reality, before the Conservatives took office, the processing time for someone to get citizenship was less than a year, and that was at a time in which almost an additional $100 million was budgeted to reduce it and bring it down to six months or eight months. It was a significant contribution.

My question for the minister is related to the problem that has been created by the Conservatives. It now takes a minimum of two years to get citizenship. That is a minimum. Often it will go to five or six years.

My question for the minister is this: when does he anticipate that the average time to get citizenship will be no more than a year? That is where it was prior to the Conservatives taking government.

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will repeat for the member for Winnipeg North the facts of the matter. The waiting time now for a new application is 28 months. It is more than two years and it is unfortunate, but it is because Canadian citizenship has never been more popular. There have been 333,000 applications.

Why was there no backlog for citizenship under the Liberal government? It was because there were fewer applications. There was a lower naturalization rate. There were lower levels of immigration.

I was talking to a former Liberal minister a couple of days ago, who said the Liberals would set immigration levels that they could not even fill. They could not find enough people who wanted to come to this country, because the economic prospects of Canada relative to the United States and other countries were so much worse then than they are now.

Today we have no problem filling our immigration levels. We have more than enough demand. We have never had a higher naturalization rate. We have a backlog because we have been looking into residency fraud and asking questions of those who are clearly trying to disobey the rules.

We do not apologize for that, and the measures in this bill will bring us back to one-year processing by early 2016.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and for International Human Rights]

Mr. Speaker, one of the strongest human rights principles is to create all Canadian citizens equal, no matter what. That is the fundamental human rights situation. That is what I am concerned about in this bill, and I would like clarification on from my friend, the minister of citizenship. I agree very much with all of the other aspects that the minister has mentioned. I strongly support this bill except on this one condition, which is the fundamental right for a Canadian to be treated as a Canadian, no matter what.

When a Canadian citizen's citizenship is revoked, unless that citizenship was obtained fraudulently—and I can agree with revoking it for that reason—we are treating one Canadian differently from another Canadian, and in my opinion that is against a fundamental human rights provision. That is the area of my concern in relation to this bill.

I would like the minister to speak about how he would address this issue of this fundamental human rights principle that a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian. We do not talk about dual nationality. If a person has obtained a Canadian citizenship, it is then his legitimate right to be treated as a Canadian citizen. That is what I am asking my dear colleague.

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have enormous respect for my hon. colleague, but on that logic there would be unequal treatment under the current law, because someone who came to this country and was naturalized as a Canadian citizen but had not in fact resided for three years and then saw his or her citizenship revoked because of residency fraud would be treated unequally, differently from me, since my citizenship cannot be revoked because I am Canadian by descent.

Does the member seriously think that we should stop revoking citizenship in cases where we find it to have been obtained fraudulently just to be able to treat everyone equally?

With all due respect, citizenship is a creation of this place. It was created by a law in this place 100 years ago. It was reinforced in 1947. The rules were changed again in 1977. There have always been rules for obtaining and for losing Canadian citizenship.

Terrorism, espionage, and other grave forms of disloyalty to this country constitute very serious crimes. I think my hon. colleague will agree with me that these are very serious crimes, and our position has not changed. The punishment for committing these acts will be severe, and in cases of dual nationals under this bill, it will be in the same way that all of our NATO allies have such provisions.

It was only Pierre Trudeau who prevented us from having these provisions earlier. I think the only NATO ally that does not have these provisions is Portugal. The NDP may prefer the Portuguese model. António Guterres was a very good former prime minister of Portugal, but he did not change this measure. He did not bring Portugal into the mainstream.

We are going into the mainstream. Citizenship has its obligations, and if a dual national commits these crimes, that person will lose Canadian citizenship. That is fair.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, that was a rant from the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. That was not really a speech full of any facts. I wonder whether the minister has borrowed his facts from Kijiji because we have seen that before with the Minister of Employment and Social Development with regard to the temporary foreign worker issue. However, I will leave that for today and speak to the bill.

There are quite a few holes in the bill. One of my constituents said that the holes were big enough to drive a truck through. I will try to lay it out and I would ask members to pay attention, because there may not be that many holes to drive a truck through. Maybe we could make some sensible changes to improve the legislation.

I am pleased to stand in the House today on behalf of my constituents from Surrey North to address Bill C-24, which intends to strengthen the Citizenship Act.

We in the official opposition, along with many experts and Canadians from across the country, are very concerned about a number of aspects in the bill.

We agree that changes to the Citizenship Act are greatly necessary and long overdue. This act has not been revised since 1977 and some elements of Bill C-24 would create clear injustices.

In addition, Canadians continue to face ridiculously wait times for citizenship applications.

Even though some changes are necessary, the bill is another example of the Conservative government's use of power to make secretive, arbitrary decisions by cabinet ministers.

I will first speak to a couple of good things in the bill. There are not a lot, because as I have pointed out, we could drive a big truck through the many holes in the bill.

I will be splitting my time with the member for La Pointe-de-l'Île, Mr. Speaker.

The bill would do a couple of things that I do agree with and they should have been addressed a long time ago. The issue of so-called lost Canadians is addressed in the bill. The NDP has fought hard for many years to get this matter resolved. We are happy the Conservatives are bringing this forward as a result of pressure from the opposition.

The other positive aspect of Bill C-24 is the part dealing with expedited access to citizenship for permanent residents who serve in the armed forces, which the NDP supported in the last session with Bill C-425. However, for a bill that is over 50 pages long, it completely fails to accomplish what it is supposedly intended to do.

Instead of addressing the current problems, Bill C-24 would arbitrarily attribute more unnecessary powers to the minister, prolong naturalization, treat many Canadians like second-class citizens and create more injustices.

Our citizenship and immigration system is flawed. We need a bill that would actually strengthen Canadian citizenship, not one that is not even constitutional. I say that because we have heard from many experts. We have heard from the Canadian Bar Association and from lawyers. They point out the unconstitutionality of many parts of the bill, and yet the Conservatives are not willing to hear all of that.

I pointed to some of the good points of the bill and now I would like to take a look at some of the points that are really worrisome. Let us take a look at the aspect of intent to reside.

Basically, under Bill C-24, if granted citizenship, a person must declare his or her “intent to reside”. The goal of this provision is to ensure Canada's expectation that new citizens live and work in the country after completing naturalization. However, this change would empower officials to speculate on an applicant's future intentions. It portrays the image of immigrants as deserving of suspicion and mistrust, and also treats naturalized immigrants as second-class citizens.

The vagueness in this provision will severely create travel restrictions. International mobility will be imperative. It allows Canadians to study abroad, see their families and become globally aware. If Bill C-24 passes, naturalized citizens will lose this fundamental right.

Citizens who travel abroad for honest reasons may face losing their citizenship because they misrepresented their intention to reside in Canada when they were granted citizenship.

The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration could revoke citizenship under the false pretence of fraud. There would be no appeal, no hearing and no public knowledge of this, which brings me to another concern, and that is the powers of the minister. The bill would grant the minister more powers.

Bill C-24 would place unnecessary powers in the hands of the minister. If the bill is passed, the minister will have the authority to grant or revoke citizenship without public knowledge or any form of judicial process.

I am really worried about this aspect of the bill, because the minister will get to decide whether to revoke somebody's citizenship. There is no process, no hearing and the public will not even know about it. That is really worrisome.

Peter Edelmann, a Vancouver immigration lawyer who sits on the executive of the Canadian Bar Association, said:

What’s happening here is they’re proposing that citizens could lose their citizenship on a paper-based process with no hearing at all and no independent tribunal--forget about going in front of a judge to make the decision; you may not get to speak to or even see the officer...

This is clearly unconstitutional. The Canadian Bar Association is saying this, yet the government is not listening to some of the top lawyers in the country who point to the unconstitutionality of this power grab by the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.

It is not surprising to me, because I have been here a number of years now, that the Conservatives are using bills to grant themselves more discretionary powers. We have seen this in many other bills in the House where they are consolidating the power.

A Conservative member is chirping at me, Mr. Speaker. I ask you to ask those members to pay attention and maybe they will learn one or two things, oppose the bill and actually work for Canadians rather than chirping away when another member is speaking.

The Conservatives love power, even if it is at the cost of Canadian democracy and justice. By giving the minister these new powers, Canada is taking a step backward and opening the doors to decisions that are subjective and politically motivated.

Instead of providing solutions to the issues Canadians face every day, the Conservatives are using the legislative process to give themselves even more power than they already have. Unfortunately, they are not worried about the process because they have a so-called small majority, and they are ramming these changes through.

There are many other issues I could discuss such as the unconstitutionality of a number of things in the bill. There are fees and language testing issues. It seems that the only consultations the Conservatives have done in drafting the bill is among themselves or they have gone to Kijiji, as they have done before. We see time and time again Conservatives are not willing to take any sort of advice from neither the opposition, nor from the experts who testified before committees.

Along with my NDP colleagues, I will continue to fight for a fair, efficient, transparent and accountable immigration system. I urge the Conservatives to stop battering democracy and start listening to Canadians.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to pick up on the member's comments in regard to English language testing. This is very new where the government has made a decision on two issues. One is expanding the numbers of individuals who will now have to get English language testing to qualify for citizenship. I am curious to know the motivation for the younger and older age groups.

Also, there is the requirement to have IELTS testing done. It costs a significant amount of money to get the testing done and it will also disqualify a number of people from getting citizenship because of the new requirements.

It does not seem to me that the system was broken in the first place. People were quite able to integrate into Canadian society. Would the member comment on what he believes might have been the motivation for making those changes?

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the only motivation I can see, and the minister could answer this, is ideological.

I want to share a personal story. I came to this country in 1980 and I hardly spoke a word of English, yet I am a very proud Canadian today to be standing in the House. My mother was 50 years old when she came to this country and she hardly spoke any English, yet today she is a proud Canadian and a proud Canadian of a member of Parliament.

I do not see why we need to expand what is already there. I only see ideological reasons, which the Conservatives try to feed to their base.

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, first, does the member opposite think it is ideological to want to eliminate abuse from the citizenship program? Second, can we agree in the House tonight that the measures in the bill would not create conditions of statelessness? They will not.

The revocation of citizenship will take place for dual nationals only. The other measures in the bill do not create statelessness. We have taken very seriously our obligations under the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.

Will the member opposite agree that because we are protecting the citizenship of all those affected by the bill, we will ensure that they are nationals of a country? We are doing much better than, for instance, Pierre Trudeau did. When he recognized the People's Republic of China, once upon a time, he suddenly created a class of stateless people in our country who had the citizenship of the Republic of China. This was under a Liberal government that was a state party to the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.

Would the member agree that our system is better than Trudeau's?

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think there is anyone in the House, any Canadian who would not want to fix the immigration system or stand here and say that we do not need to plug the holes where there are abuses of the system.

Usually we study the bill, but the Conservatives wanted to ram the bill through so they came up with studying the subject matter of the bill. We have been studying it at the immigration committee. All the lawyers from the Canadian Bar Association and many organizations from across the country say that we are creating a two-tier system where a naturalized Canadian citizen and naturally born Canadian citizens may be deported on behalf of the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. That is worrisome. Canadians should be worried about it. They should be questioning the integrity and ideology of the Conservative government.

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, my speech today is a casualty of time allocation. I was supposed to have the floor for 20 minutes, but thanks to the Conservatives, I will have only 10 minutes even though this is a very complex bill about a fundamental issue: Canadian citizenship. We have just a few hours to debate it in the House, and only a small percentage of members will have a chance to speak to it.

To begin, I would like to demonstrate how the Conservatives have, once again, adopted an ideological approach to the immigration system. I should point out that there is currently a moratorium on applications to sponsor a parent or grandparent. Fewer family reunifications are taking place. The Conservatives seem to think that is a quaint notion best discarded.

I remember one of the first speeches I gave in the House. It was on Bill C-4, which was about refugees. The Conservatives had made refugees their big issue. They punished refugee children by detaining them and punished vulnerable refugees by denying them the health care services they were entitled to. That illustrates the Conservatives' right-wing ideological approach to the immigration system.

I think it is important to point out that the bill will not solve any of the problems related to processing times. That is smoke and mirrors, because processing times are getting longer and longer. I know this because the people who come to my constituency office say that it can take two years, sometimes even longer. This bill will not help families, children, wives, husbands and grandparents reunite and become Canadian citizens. This is just smoke and mirrors. The Conservatives will not convince anyone that this bill will reduce processing times.

In my speech, I want to focus on two very important points, one of which is the constitutionality of the bill. I do not think the Conservatives have figured it out yet. Are they not tired of being turned down by the Supreme Court of Canada? This just goes to show how the Conservatives operate: they do as they please and could not care less about the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and our founding principles. They have no respect for Canadians, for democracy or for the parliamentary process.

The minister's ability to revoke citizenship creates two classes of citizens. One class for Canadians who have dual citizenship, and the other for Canadians who have only Canadian citizenship. For one offence, there are two different penalties. Why the discrimination? What is the ideology behind it? Simple, it is the Conservative ideology.

There are already mechanisms in place that do not fall under the minister's authority. Why is the minister being given the power to revoke someone's citizenship? Why is he being given the power to determine what penalty will apply in a given situation? That responsibility falls to a court, an independent organization, not a minister who is being told what to do by the Prime Minister's Office of a given party and a given government. I am not talking about the Conservative minister in particular, because another party could be in power. It is a discretionary power.

In a democracy like Canada, which is under rule of law, there must always be a court or a monitoring system in place to prevent the ruling party from making partisan decisions and using power for political reasons. That is fundamental. As it stands, no independent court can rule on the minister's decisions because the minister is being granted all the power.

It is of utmost importance to talk about the constitutional validity of revoking citizenship. In his speech, the minister said that it was possible to revoke citizenship after the Second World War, right up until 1977. At that time, the only ground for revoking citizenship was fraud.

I would like to ask the minister a question.

I would like the minister to tell me one thing. Would he like to turn the clock back to the days of World War II? Is that how far back he wants to go? It is 2014 and the Conservatives want to go back to World War II. Once again, we clearly see the Conservative ideology.

In committee, professor Audrey Macklin, the chair in human rights law at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, quoted the Supreme Court and asked the following question:

Can you revoke somebody's citizenship in order to punish them for what we'll call crimes against citizenship?

The Supreme Court was clear:

The social compact requires the citizen to obey the laws created by the democratic process. But it does not follow that failure to do so nullifies the citizen’s continued membership in the self-governing polity. Indeed, the remedy of imprisonment for a term rather than permanent exile implies our acceptance of continued membership in the social order.

Ms. Macklin then said:

In other words, the Supreme Court of Canada stated quite clearly that punishing somebody by depriving them of their constitutional rights, indeed, by denying them all constitutional rights and casting them out in the name of the social contract, is not constitutional. It isn't constitutional to deny somebody the right to vote, just in order to punish them. That's one right under [section 11 of] the [Canadian] charter [of Rights and Freedoms].

Therefore, depriving a person of their constitutional rights is unconstitutional.

How can the minister rise in the House today and grant himself powers that violate Canadians' fundamental rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms? If he cherishes his country, then he also cherishes fundamental rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

I would like to finish my speech by mentioning that section 11 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the right not to be punished twice for the same offence.

The list of crimes in Bill C-24 includes terrorism and treason, and sentences are imposed by an independent tribunal, not a minister. That is a punishment that must be imposed on a criminal, not the revocation of his citizenship.

I would like to reiterate that section 11 stipulates that a person cannot be punished twice for the same offence. As a result, under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the sanction imposed by an independent tribunal is the one that must prevail. The discretionary power that the minister is giving himself is not constitutional.

Patti Tamara Lenard, an assistant professor at the University of Ottawa's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, testified that:

...the bill grants the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration the discretion to revoke citizenship in too many cases. Currently, as written, the bill would give the minister discretion to revoke citizenship in cases of fraud, but there is no requirement...for a court to evaluate if fraud in fact did occur.

This bill gives the minister, who is not necessarily qualified and who is not an independent tribunal, the authority to determine what constitutes fraud.

What is more, there is no way to appeal that decision. There is no independent body to oversee the minister's decisions.

Once again, the Conservative government has decided to impose its right-wing ideology and give itself powers that violate Canadians' fundamental rights.

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for La Pointe-de-l'Île has just misled Canadians by claiming that there is no oversight over the revocation of citizenship.

Has she ever heard of the Federal Court and the Supreme Court? Why is the hon. member saying that we are privatizing citizenship by talking about it here in the House of Commons, where citizenship was created?

Citizenship was not created as a result of the charter or the Supreme Court. We had citizenship long before those institutions existed. We created Canadian citizenship through legislation, and we can legislate again to change the rules.

Is the hon. member prepared to admit that? Is she also prepared to admit what is really happening with applications to sponsor parents and grandparents? There is no moratorium. We processed 20,000 applications this year and more than 50,000 in 2012-13.

Why is she saying things that are not true?

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I respect the minister's nostalgia. He is remembering a time when there was unfortunately no Supreme Court or independent body to control the government. I can see that he would like to go back to such a time.

As I mentioned in my speech, the Supreme Court was clear:

But it does not follow that failure to do so nullifies the citizen’s continued membership in the self-governing polity.

The Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to revoke citizenship. It cannot be used as retribution.

If the minister is prepared to rise in the House and say that he is going to violate the principles and disregard the rulings of the Supreme Court, that is up to him. He is the one who has to look at himself in the mirror. However, my speech was clear: this bill is unconstitutional.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I believe it was June of last year when the government brought in legislation through a private member's bill, Bill C-425. We found out then that the government wanted to hijack that particular bill. I see the member across the way who was the sponsor of Bill C-425.

The government was prepared to hijack the bill by bringing in this whole revoking of citizenship and establishing a two-tier citizenship. That was when the bill ran into serious problems. It ultimately failed and was not able to get out of committee.

We need to recognize and be very clear that it was saying if one had Canadian citizenship, and no other citizenship, and committed a certain type of offence, it would be okay and one would be allowed to retain that citizenship. However, if one had dual citizenship, and the example I used back then was the leader of the official opposition who has dual citizenship, and if he committed the same sort of act, he would be deported and lose his citizenship.

I wonder if the member might want to comment on Bill C-425.