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

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

moved that Bill C-24, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, my thanks to all who are joining us for today's second reading debate on an important bill. I am delighted to rise today to speak to Bill C-24. the strengthening Canadian citizenship act. These are the first comprehensive reforms to our citizenship act in more than a generation, since 1977. Its aim is very clear. It is to strengthen and protect the value of Canadian citizenship. This was a commitment our government made in its most recent Speech from the Throne, and it is one that we are keeping with today's debate and by making this a legislative priority of our government.

As everyone knows, our government has transformed Canada's immigration system over the past eight years to better meet Canada's current needs and those of its economy and to ensure that it serves our national interests. Having done that, we must now improve the process for granting Canadian citizenship to qualified applicants. In Canada, the two go hand in hand. Immigrants want citizenship, and the quality of our immigration programs depends heavily on the quality and integrity of our citizenship program. We have to ensure that our policies and practices properly reflect the tremendous value of Canadian citizenship.

That is the reality that has driven this legislation, that has driven our thinking, that has driven the support that this government is receiving across the country for these reforms.

Canadians take enormous pride in their citizenship, an unprecedented pride.

[Devinder Shory]

Hear! Hear!

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

Mr. Speaker, I hear the member for Calgary Northeast endorsing that view. Canadians across this country are passionate about their citizenship as never before.

This government is passionate about the contribution of the member for Calgary Northeast to this bill. This has been the work of many hands, including those of my hon. colleague the member for West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country and many others who have been absolutely instrumental in weaving together the reforms that we are now presenting and debating.

Why is citizenship seen as being so important? What is citizenship in the 21st century? It is an ancient concept. Some have traced it back to biblical times, to the Holy Scripture. In many different countries some refer to the holy covenant that the people of Israel had with their God, a kind of contract between a whole people and a God that had given law, according to which those people felt obliged to live.

In ancient Greece, the concept of citizenship achieved a new level and a new recognition of the role of individuals in participating in the life of their cities, of their communities, of their political entities. It became clear even in the fourth and fifth century before the Christian era that true freedom, true human potential in all of its facets, could only be realized when people work together on the basis of laws, when no one person was the arbitrary master of others, that slavery was an inferior way of living, and that the freedom that underpins citizenship would be one of the primary aspirations of humanity, and so it remains today.

Citizenship is quite simply the opportunity to be at our best. It provides the opportunity to participate in institutions that have been handed down to us by generations over generations. It is a balance between the responsibilities that go with participation on the one hand, and the obligations and rights on the other hand. Citizenship is sharing in the civic life of a country, in the full sense of the word, not just holding a passport. It is not just coming every four years on voting day to mark one's ballot, although both of those are absolutely fundamental aspects of our citizenship.

Citizenship is participation in the fullest sense, participation in the needs of our neighbours, participation in voluntary organizations, participation in the economy and the economic excellence that a country like Canada has managed to achieve. These are the gains of freedom to which citizenship has opened the door over centuries, indeed millennia, and which have been achieved on a level in this country that we think is without parallel in the history of humanity.

What is Canadian citizenship? What is our version of this great global legacy to which so many aspire but few actually achieve in the highest sense; where freedom is a reality for individuals, including minorities?

In Canada, our citizenship has involved first nations and Inuit. It has involved their languages and culture, their love of the land.

This has involved the creation of institutions that date back to Cartier and Champlain, and to their colleague Mathieu da Costa, whom we honour during Black History Month every year in Canada. It goes back to the era of New France when people like Frontenac, La Salle and La Vérendrye set off to discover an entire continent. They were forging a vision of a country that inspires us to this day.

It is also a citizenship that as you know, Mr. Speaker, has striven to make institutions as representative as possible.

There was already a conseil souverain under the ancien régime at the time of Nouvelle-France, but we know that Canada was one of the first countries to establish assemblies in the two Canadas. In Nova Scotia, a representative assembly was established as far back as 1758, which was among the earliest in the British Empire.

Through the War of 1812, when those traditions were challenged and our numbers were augmented by those who had fled the United States decades earlier during the American Revolution and in the decades leading up to Confederation, we fought in this country to have not only assemblies and honest government, free of corruption; we also fought to have accountable, responsible government. It was citizens across this country, in cities, towns, rural areas, and urban centres who paved the pathway to Confederation. They underpinned that national policy. They brought us, strong and free, into the 20th century, when the story of a larger Canada, and a Canada that eventually adopted a Citizenship Act in 1947, begins.

It is a tremendously exciting legacy. It is one that we all have a responsibility to live up to in this day and age. It is one that we are seeking to renew and reinforce with this bill.

The bill has three highlights. First, it aims to reinforce the value of citizenship by strengthening that value and improving the efficiency of processing. It would also deter citizenships of convenience and the idea that the passport is all that it is about. It would deter the idea that Canadian citizenship could be, for some, a flag of convenience without the full participation of Canadian life that we know is so essential to the success of our country.

Secondly, it is about maintaining the integrity of citizenship. It is about combatting fraud, which we have to do across our programs as the challenge of fraud becomes more sophisticated throughout modern life. It is also about deterring disloyalty. There are those who would plant disastrous ideologies through the Internet, or through other forms of recruitment, and into the minds of our young people and turn them against Canada. We are pleased to be able to report that those are a very limited number in this country, but we want to deter that kind of behaviour altogether.

Finally, as always on this side of the House, we want to honour those who serve Canada. There are several measures in this bill that would do so.

I would like to begin by discussing, in more detail, ways to reinforce the value of citizenship. As I said, Canadian citizenship is considered extremely valuable around the world, and our policies must reflect and reinforce that value.

I do not think that all hon. members of the House understand just how desirable Canadian citizenship is to people around the world. Many people admire us, respect us and want to become immigrants and citizens.

Among the measures in Bill C-24 that will achieve that objective, I would like to point out changes to residency requirements for granting citizenship, in other words, the time period during which those seeking citizenship must be present in Canada before they may apply for it.

These changes will promote the integration of new immigrants by changing the residency requirement from three out of the four years preceding the application to four out of the six. The bill also clarifies that residency means physical a presence in Canada.

In other words, we would ask those who apply for Canadian citizenship to make that commitment explicitly and upfront, to be physically present in Canada not for three out of four years but for four out of six years. That is something we did not do before.

Canada's presence requirement will help newcomers better integrate into Canadian society. For people to understand Canada's social and cultural norms, they need to experience them. Nothing can replace experiencing our customs, landscape, institutions and communities first-hand.

I would like to add, before we get too far into this, that the rules would only apply after this law comes into force and after the necessary orders in council have been gazetted, changing the regulations in this respect. So anyone who is making an application to become a Canadian citizen now or for the foreseeable future as this bill moves through this House and the other place, will be treated under the current rules. I want to be absolutely explicit on that point.

As well, citizenship applicants would no longer be able to use the time they spent in Canada as non-permanent residents to meet the citizenship residence requirements. Again, this would reinforce the value of citizenship by requiring applicants to demonstrate a commitment to Canada through permanent residence. We do this for most permanent residents, so why should we not do it for all in a country where equality is such a highly prized principle, and a defensible principle in this case? Any move to part ways with that principle would risk confusing a situation that in the past has been confused and has led to abuse on a significant scale.

Another proposed measure relating to residence requirements would require applicants to declare, prior to obtaining citizenship, their intention to reside, something that I have already mentioned.

However, these are not the only measures in the bill that would reinforce the value of Canadian citizenship. A proposed amendment would require more citizenship applicants to meet the language and knowledge of Canada requirements.

We want to ensure that potential citizens can speak French or English when they apply for citizenship, which will enable them to become full-fledged members of Canadian society. We also want to ensure that they have adequate knowledge of our country.

Consequently, if Bill C-24 is passed, applicants aged 14 to 64 will have to meet language requirements and pass a knowledge test in one of our two official languages.

Right now, applicants aged 18 to 54 are required to meet language and knowledge requirements.

I must say that we are making this move because the language and knowledge requirements we have put in place so far have proven to be so successful and popular. They have actually increased the interest in and popularity of Canadian citizenship. All of those who come to this country understand how important it is to know the place they are living and to have some knowledge of the local languages, at least during their working years or high school years.

Second, a number of the measures in Bill C-24 will give us more effective tools for fighting citizenship fraud and, more broadly speaking, ensuring the integrity of our system.

Bill C-24 contains provisions that target unscrupulous citizenship consultants. Under these provisions, the government will have the ability to designate a regulatory body whose members would be authorized to act as citizenship consultants. Individuals not authorized to act as citizenship consultants or representatives will be charged with an offence, and the sentences will be harsher for fraud and false statements related to citizenship matters.

As we know, this reflects or mirrors in many ways a move that my hon. colleague, now the Minister of Employment and Social Development, made with regard to immigration consultants. It has had an extremely positive, felicitous effect. We trust that the same would happen for the smaller group of citizenship consultants.

Currently, the Citizenship Act bars applicants from citizenship when they have been charged with or convicted of an indictable offence in Canada, or if they are serving a sentence in Canada.

The provisions in Bill C-24 would expand criminal provisions to bar applicants for equivalent foreign convictions. No, we would not accept bogus foreign convictions. There would be a provision by which a person who had been falsely charged and convicted abroad by a repressive regime, an abusive regime, an autocratic regime, could still become a Canadian citizen on the basis of an administrative and, if necessary, judicial review here in Canada.

If passed, Bill C-24 would also streamline the process to revoke citizenship acquired by fraudulent means, leading to timelier revocation decisions while still ensuring legal recourse to individuals.

As well, measures in the bill would ensure that international adoption safeguards are met.

Finally, on the integrity and fraud front, dual citizens and permanent residents convicted of terrorism, high treason, treason, or certain spying offences, or who received a specified minimum sentence, would be similarly affected.

Let me emphasize. This is a matter that relates only to dual nationals or to those who are permanent residents seeking to become citizens.

However, there is the following aspect, unfortunately, to our global reality today. According to CSIS, 130 Canadians are fighting with extremists somewhere in the world, with terrorist groups that have been listed by Canada or that face listing by Canada, some 30 of them in Syria. There is a real question for us, and I think for most Canadians, about whether those Canadians, when they are dual nationals, have not literally breached their contract with Canada. This legislation, thanks to the hon. member for Calgary Northeast, would allow us to take action against them.

I almost passed over one of the most popular parts of the bill, the measures that would make the citizenship program more efficient and ensure that qualified applicants become citizens more quickly. These include a streamlined decision-making model that would reduce the duplication of work from a three-step to a one-step process, giving the government authority to define what constitutes a complete citizenship application, and ensuring a more uniform judicial review system for decisions under the Citizenship Act.

A third group of provisions in Bill C-24 will pay tribute to those who serve Canada. One of those provisions would extend the granting of citizenship to the children of persons born or adopted abroad whose parents were working for the Government of Canada or serving in the Canadian Armed Forces. Under another initiative, permanent residents who are serving in the Canadian Armed Forces would be granted citizenship sooner. The measures in the bill will allow the government to revoke the Canadian citizenship of people with dual citizenship who are members of an army or an organized armed group engaged in armed conflict with Canada.

In conclusion, I should mention the question of lost Canadians, those born before January 1, 1947, when the first Citizenship Act came into force, or, in the case of Newfoundland, before 1949, who have not so far been entitled to the benefits, privileges, and responsibilities of Canadian citizenship.

My colleague the minister of Minister of Employment and Social Development took the most important steps to right the grievous wrong that had been left unaddressed for decades. The bill would ensure that we take the final steps to make sure that the lost Canadians, the children of those who fought in World War II, those who were among the most committed to the defence and service of this country, enjoy all the benefits of Canadians, not just in the first generation but also in succeeding generations, as governed by the provisions of this law.

We are proud of the bill. We are proud to be presenting it on a day when His Highness the Aga Khan said in the House that Canada has among the highest activity of voluntary institutions and not-for-profit organizations in the world. We think that is proof of the value of Canadian citizenship, that is proof of the dynamism of our society, and those are the grounds for strengthening Canadian citizenship for a new century, for a new millennium.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the minister for his speech.

I think the intent of the bill, which is to strengthen citizenship, is commendable. However, Canadians and many experts are already concerned about and opposed to a number of aspects of this bill.

The minister knows that two main concerns have been raised. First, under this bill, the minister retains the right to grant or revoke citizenship without public knowledge or court approval. The other very worrisome aspect of the bill, and the subject of my question for the minister, is that a person with dual citizenship who is charged with terrorism outside of Canada and serving a number of years in prison could have their Canadian citizenship revoked.

That measure does not distinguish between someone who was charged and given a fair trial and someone who might be charged and thrown in prison, a victim of a system that cracks under political pressure, for example, or a person who did not receive a fair and legal trial.

Under this bill, citizenship can also be denied to persons accused of committing certain criminal offences, even if those charges were laid outside Canada. That supports the fear that Canada would recognize charges laid in some countries where the legal system is not immune to political pressure.

Is the minister aware of this shortcoming and would he be interested in changing these aspects of the bill to ensure that justice prevails?

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

Mr. Speaker, with all due respect for my colleague, we do not see any flaws in our bill.

In my speech, I forgot to mention that we are updating our Citizenship Act to reflect the type of measures we see in the corresponding legislation of our allies and NATO partners.

According to my information, Portugal is the only NATO member that cannot revoke citizenship in a serious case of disloyalty such as treason.

Consequently, we believe that the true flaw was the fact that Canada was just about the only country to not be able to revoke citizenship from dual citizens.

The courts will play a very important role in cases of treason, espionage or terrorism.

If the honourable member would carefully examine the bill, she would find that when a Canadian with dual citizenship becomes a member of an armed force engaged in an armed conflict with the Canadian Armed Forces, the government must provide a declaration indicating all the evidence we have and presents—

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Order. Moving on to questions and comments, the hon. member for Markham—Unionville.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the minister on his speech.

Coming from a very multicultural riding, one of the things I do not like about the bill and find particularly hard to take, and there is a list of them, is the decision to apply the language test to people in the age range of 55 to 64, who have previously been exempt.

Many of my constituents and many new Canadians across the country find it offensive because, depending on the country from which they come, they may not speak the Queen's English but may nevertheless be highly productive, loyal members of Canadian society and make many contributions, and whose children likely speak very good, if not perfect, English and whose grandchildren will speak perfect English.

Many new Canadians find offensive the imposition of a language test on older, or relatively older, people, a category that I belong to myself.

Why does the minister impose this rather stringent language test on people in the age range 55 to 64 simply because they do not speak the Queen's English, but are nevertheless highly productive, loyal members of this country?

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

Mr. Speaker, first, it is not the Queen's English; it is Canadian English and Canadian French that we are asking for. The Queen's English is an additional step any Canadian can take, but I myself have not yet made it to that lofty station.

Let us look at this. Why was it good enough for Liberal governments from 1977 to 1984 and then again from 1993 to 2005 to have the language requirements for this age group? There was only one year of a Liberal government when the age requirement was less, one year.

How many years did we have Liberal governments in the 20th century? We should talk about happier subjects.

It is fair to newcomers. We hear it from them. It is fair to Canadians that this minimum level of knowledge of our country and language be met. These are basic tools. They lead to better outcomes. According to our side of the House, 54 to 64 is not old. Those are the salad years for many people when they are in the prime of their careers.

We do find that a level 4 on a scale of 1 to 12 is an absolutely reasonable expectation. We will provide the settlement services and the language training for those who are not able to meet that standard.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Employment and Social Development and Minister for Multiculturalism]

Mr. Speaker, I commend the minister for his excellent speech and the very important reform that he has brought to Parliament.

Will he not agree with me that in fact it was the Liberal government of former prime minister Mackenzie King, in 1946, that introduced the Citizenship Act with a language requirement, which was extended in the fundamental citizenship reforms of the Trudeau government in this Parliament in the 1977 amendments that required, as the minister just said, language proficiency for Canadians between the ages of 18 and 65, and indeed that the member for Markham—Unionville ran for Parliament in the years 2000 and 2004 and served in this place for six years with the language requirement for citizenship exemption being above 65?

I was here with him, and I do not recall his ever raising this as an issue. I think the member is being a wee bit disingenuous.

Will the minister not agree with me that, on this matter of revocation from convicted terrorists and traitors, there is a misconception among some that citizenship is inalienable when in fact it is alienable, when in fact people can, under the law, renounce their citizenship, when it can be revoked if it has been obtained fraudulently?

Would he not agree with me that, when people go out and obtain the citizenship of another country, perhaps an enemy country of Canada, and engage in violent hostilities against Canada, perhaps violent treason, or join a terrorist organization that is in a form of warfare against Canada, these acts constitute a practical expression of disloyalty and a voluntary renunciation of their own citizenship?

Should we not take them at their word, rather than waiting for them to send in a form de jure revoking their own citizenship?

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

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the minister entirely.

Let us take the example of Afghanistan. There probably were cases—and when this bill is adopted we will have to document them—of Canadians of dual nationality who joined the Taliban or the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, for some time or other, which operates from Pakistan in Afghanistan, which was responsible for suicide bombings, and which was responsible for the death of a large number of our finest, our best young men and women who wore the uniform.

That does constitute a crime in our eyes. It is a terrorist organization, and so Canadians who join such a group would already face prosecution, whether they have only one citizenship or two citizenships. It is reasonable, not just in our country but in all free, democratic, self-respecting societies, those that have made the NATO alliance the success it is, to draw a limit.

Most of us receive our citizenship from our parents via birth in this country, and we are proud of that and no one can take it away from us. However, there are hundreds of thousands who become citizens every year and we have a responsibility, when there are cases of fraud, to investigate those and when necessary to revoke.

When there are extreme cases of disloyalty, we have a responsibility to look at the option of revoking citizenship when there is dual nationality. Of course we are not going to create a new class of stateless persons. It was a Conservative government that undertook that obligation in the early 1960s and we are proud to continue upholding it today.

On the other point the minister made, about the consistency of Liberals on citizenship and other matters, I think we have heard—

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

There seems to be great interest in the question that is before the House this afternoon, so in the time that is allowed for questions and comments I would certainly like to allow members some latitude, but if they could keep their interventions short, more members will be able to participate in this important part of debate.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Pierrefonds—Dollard.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-24, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

The NDP agrees that changes to the Citizenship Act are badly needed. This act has not been revised since 1977, and some elements of our Citizenship Act create injustices. The NDP has fought a long time to correct some of these injustices. I enthusiastically welcomed the news that the government was preparing a bill to amend the Citizenship Act.

There are a number of good elements in this bill that the NDP is happy to see. We would be happy to support some of these changes that have been needed for a long time. However, true to form, the Conservatives have introduced a bill that is over 50 pages long and that amends all kinds of things and affects several aspects of citizenship.

There are so many things in this bill. Some are very positive, while others are worrisome. Civil society organizations, legal experts and other Canadian experts have already expressed some legal and human rights concerns. The public is very upset about some aspects of this bill, and I hope to explain why certain parts of this bill are worrisome and very problematic.

First, I will talk about what I am happy to see in Bill C-24. The NDP certainly supports the fact that this bill resolves the issue of people whose citizenship has been dispossessed, the so-called lost Canadians. I would like to give a practical example to show why it is so important to address this injustice.

John is two years old. He lives in the Eastern Townships in Quebec. His father is Canadian and his father's father is Canadian. Is John Canadian? No, he is not. Little John is here in Canada and lives with his Canadian father, but has only a temporary visa that will expire in May. The family's situation is rather unstable. Why does John not have citizenship? It is because his father, who is a Canadian and was born to a Canadian father, was born outside the country while his father was serving in the Canadian Forces. Instead of being proud to have a grandfather who served in the Canadian Forces, John is being penalized because his grandfather was serving outside the country when his wife gave birth to their child.

This deprives little John of medicare and day care, which is an enormous burden for the family. Little John is not the only one in this unfair situation. In fact, there are approximately 80 lost Canadians. These people are often in a tragic situation that also adversely affects many people who are close to them. The NDP fought for a long time for the government to resolve these unfair situations. From critic to critic, MP to MP, from motions to news releases, the NDP fought this battle, and we are pleased to see that, today, justice will be served for these people who should already be Canadian.

The other positive aspect of this bill is the expedited access to citizenship for permanent residents who serve in the Canadian Armed Forces. In fact, this aspect, which the NDP already supported, is found in Bill C-425 from the last session. I would like to raise one issue, however. This bill will not affect hundreds or even dozens of people. It will affect only a few, perhaps five or 10. It is very rare for permanent residents to be accepted into the Canadian Forces. Usually, a person must already be Canadian to be accepted. Only in very exceptional cases are permanent residents allowed to serve in the Canadian Forces.

That being said, these people serve our country in an exemplary way. They meet important needs that only they can meet within our armed forces. In our opinion, it is therefore completely reasonable, acceptable and desirable to reward these individuals by expediting their access to Canadian citizenship, if they so desire.

The NDP also fought hard for the implementation of measures to train immigration consultants and to fight more effectively against fraudulent consultants. The hon. member for Trinity—Spadina spoke out loud and clear, as she called on the government to take action in this regard. In a news release made public in 2010, she called for the creation of a regulatory body to enforce the rules and protect the public. It was not until today that practical measures were proposed to better train immigration consultants. That is positive aspect of the bill, because many people are victims of immigration consultants who betray their trust—although most consultants are honest individuals. These are the good things I wanted to say about Bill C-24.

I would like to point out some parts of the bill that should be the subject of consultations with experts and the public because they are worrisome in some way or because people have differing opinions on them. The first is the longer term of Canadian residency required to obtain citizenship. The longer term is not necessarily a bad thing, and I understand the goal of it. It is a good idea to make sure that people with citizenship have lived in Canada for a certain period of time. This is good, but I also want to point out that this particular measure adds clarification that was not in the act before, making it very clear to people how many days they must reside in Canada before being eligible for Canadian citizenship. This measure makes sense.

However, we should talk about the ridiculously long processing time for citizenship applications. If the government is asking people to reside in Canada for a longer period of time, then it really must ensure that their applications are processed quickly and efficiently, which is what they might expect.

Increasing application fees is also a contentious issue. I will explain why. People certainly understand that the fees need to change. Fees for citizenship applications have not changed in several years. Now the processing fees will be higher than the fees people have to pay to submit their application.

However, why are these fees jumping from $200 to $400? What justifies that amount? So far, nobody has provided us with all of the information justifying that specific amount. Why not $50 more or $50 less? Does this amount really just cover the costs, or is it merely a way to get money from people who want citizenship? I would like a lot more information about that. If the government charges more, people are naturally going to expect better service.

This brings me back to the processing times, which are unacceptable. They have more than doubled under the Conservatives. Asking someone to pay more for a service is one thing, but providing a service that gets worse and worse is another. The government needs to make sure that higher fees go hand in hand with better service.

Furthermore, changing the age at which people must take the test in one of the official languages has upset many communities across the country. In the past, people aged 18 to 54 had to take the test in one of Canada's official languages. From now on, people aged 14 to 64 will have to do so.

I understand the importance of learning one of Canada's official languages. However, many people are worried. For instance, people aged 54 to 64 might have a harder time learning one of the official languages, studying for an exam or managing the related stress this could bring. Many people live within a community and could very easily get by in Canada without necessarily mastering a certain level of language. Such a change could cause a lot of stress, especially regarding the lower age limit at which people will have to take the test. Indeed, children as young as 14 will now have to take the test, and this could determine whether they get to become citizens or not.

What happens to a child who does not pass the test for some reason or another, while the rest of his or her family passes? Will that child be the only non-citizen in the family? Could this cause problems when the family wants to travel, for instance? Why impose a test with such serious consequences on children as young as 14, when we know that young people living here in Canada have to go to school in one of Canada's official languages and learn the language day in and day out? Why put that kind of pressure on a 14-year-old child? This is highly questionable. As I said, we had many discussions with a number of groups and individuals who all questioned this.

Another aspect worth debating that is upsetting people is the elimination of the use of the length of stay in Canada as a non-permanent resident. This measure is really troubling for many foreign students and temporary workers who have been in Canada for a few months, or even a few years, and who were planning on applying for citizenship in the near future. They now see that they might have to wait for many more years. This really changes their plans.

I have gotten a number of emails from my constituents and from people across Quebec and Canada. I think it is worth sharing some of them. For example, Abdoul Haseeb Awan said:

I chose and moved to Canada three years ago after being offered admission in world leading universities. I have won various prizes, grants and awards during the last three years. After graduating as Master in Engineering, I chose entrepreneurship. I was promised a PR status within 12 months, which took 19 months. [Yes, the delays are very long. I will have to wait] 2 more years for citizenship.

That person contributed, studied here, worked here, created jobs here, and does not understand why we would deny him consideration for the time he has lived and contributed in Canada.

Another example is an email from Andras Korinek. I will quote a few sentences from his email. He said:

The second issue I see with this bill is the new method of counting residence days. I personally came into Canada through a work permit and it took me 2 years to finally become a permanent resident. I think the intention of the bill to make sure applicants are supporting Canadian society and sharing Canadian values are honourable, however, the metrics used to measure this are flawed. I am contributing to Canada by working here and paying taxes. I have a Canadian spouse, Canadian friends, I joined a local sports team. I would like to be officially welcomed into Canadian society as a proud citizen.

One last example, though I have a lot of them, is from Sultan Ali Ahmed, a McGill University student, who arrived in August 2007. He says:

...there should be recognition given to students graduating from canadian universities, who were initially on study permits, started working after graduation and then applied for their PRs.

As members can see, many people are worried about seeing their plans change and are urging us to review this measure. This subject is worthy of an honest debate.

I would now like to talk about the elements that I do not even think are worthy of debate. I think they are extremely worrisome for several reasons. First, Bill C-24 increases the minister's discretionary power. Under this bill, the minister will now have the right to grant or revoke citizenship in special cases.

We have seen a lot of this from the Conservatives: using bills to grant themselves more discretionary powers. The NDP disagrees with this measure. This kind of discretionary power opens the door to turning our citizenship system into a political tool. The minister has said that he was not necessarily prepared to say to whom he would grant citizenship.

That a member of a political party could do such things behind closed doors is unacceptable. These are great powers. The citizenship process must be part of a system that people can trust because of its impartiality and transparency. I am very worried that by granting such powers to a minister we are moving in the opposite direction.

The bill raises another concern. According to the provisions of this bill, the minister can revoke citizenship—in the case of a dual citizen—when there is a suspicion of fraud. The key word here is “suspicion”. In fact, the minister has the power to revoke citizenship or to authorize a person to revoke it in his name if he is “satisfied on a balance of probabilities” that the person obtained citizenship fraudulently.

The problem is that the person will no longer be able to appear before an independent tribunal that would determine whether or not the allegations are true. That is important. A person with Canadian citizenship is a Canadian and should have access to a fair and just process under our justice system. It is worrisome in this case, and also in the case of someone who is accused of terrorism abroad and who must spend a few years in jail. Because of this charge, a person's citizenship can be revoked.

In a question to the minister, I mentioned earlier that the main concern in this case is that people can be accused of terrorism without having the right to a fair and just process in a country where the justice system is not immune to political pressure, for example.

We have already seen a number of such cases, even in Canada. People have been charged, spent several years in prison and then may have become heroes because they were imprisoned for political and partisan reasons. Someone behind me whispered the name of Nelson Mandela and, indeed, that could be one example. These are serious concerns.

In closing, this bill does not tackle the main problems with our citizenship system at present—the wait times and the backlog. The wait times are horrible. They have more than doubled under the Conservatives, who waited all these years before pretending to take an interest in the problem.

The government says that this bill will resolve the situation, but I am not so sure. Nothing in this bill can prove to us beyond a shadow of a doubt that there will be significant changes. On one hand, we are adjusting certain administrative measures to help the process run more smoothly or more quickly than before, but on the other, we are increasing the use of the residency questionnaire, which is extremely long to compile and analyze. Other criteria, such as a declaration of intent to live in Canada, are being added.

What is the point in making the system more efficient if we are asking the people who have to review the files to do extra work? How will that really help? People are fed up with being told to wait when they apply for citizenship and are entitled to it. They should get a response quickly and efficiently.

For a number of the reasons that I mentioned, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Toronto—Danforth:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word "That" and substituting the following:

this House decline to give second reading to Bill C-24, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, because it:

(a) does not provide an adequate solution for reducing citizenship application processing times, which have been steadily increasing;

(b) puts new significant powers in the hands of the Minister that will allow this government to politicize the granting of Canadian citizenship;

(c) gives the Minister the power to revoke citizenship, which will deny some Canadians access to a fair trial in Canada and will raise serious questions since Canadian law already includes mechanisms to punish those who engage in unlawful acts; and

(d) includes a declaration of intent to reside provision, which in fact gives officials the power to speculate on the intent of a citizenship applicant and then potentially deny citizenship based on this conjecture.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

The amendment is in order.

I recognize the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am intrigued by my hon. colleague's remarks. I have a few questions for her, which I think may lead her to reconsider the amendment she has just proposed.

First, is the member aware that we have a legal obligation to charge the fees for the full cost of the service we are giving?

Is the member aware that the people whose emails she cites, Andreas, Sultan Ali, and there was a third, may actually have faster service by the time this bill becomes law? The processing times would be reduced from where they are today to under one year by 2016, which would mean that the four-year residency requirements combined with a speedy processing time would make them Canadian citizens even faster than they would be under the status quo.

Is the member not aware that there are cases where revocation of citizenship, above all, for fraud, for plain and simple proven fraud, is something that Canadians want us to undertake on the necessary scale to deter the kinds of abuses we have seen?

Is the member not aware that by proposing these amendments, by opposing this bill, she is opposing the will of the vast majority of Canadians who want to see their citizenship protected?

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I always get a kick out of people who stand up and say that they know what the vast majority of Canadians want. Frankly, I am curious to know how the minister managed to poll the vast majority of Canadians.

That said, and this is odd, the arguments that the minister gave were in no way related to my objections to the bill. He knows that. He was there; he listened to my speech. I spent a lot of time talking about what I agree with and talking about elements of the bill that I understand. I am not necessarily opposed to increasing fees. On the contrary, I understand that fees need to be increased.

Can the minister give us more information about the reasons behind the $200 increase? Is that that the kind of increase that is required to cover fees?

Of course, if the minister is able to reduce wait times to under a year, that would be commendable. No one would object to that. However, the problem with this bill is that it does not prove to us that the Conservatives are going to make that happen.

It is difficult to believe that the Conservatives will reduce citizenship and immigration delays when we see their errors and failures in this area.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the hon. member on her speech.

I want to ask a question because I agree with her, not with the minister. My question is about the conversation that just took place. It seems to me that if the government wants to increase costs for those wishing to become citizens, it should start by improving efficiency. Under this government, wait times doubled between 2007 and 2010. In its own document, the government said that wait times have increased because it did not invest enough resources in the system. It is the government's fault. If it wants to increase costs, it needs to start by improving efficiency.

Right now, the government is just making pre-election promises. It is saying that efficiency will improve, but nothing is certain. Efficiency has gone downhill.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I completely agree with my colleague that efficiency has gone downhill under the Conservatives. People have had more than enough of the wait times, and that is understandable. It is rather strange that the government is making promises for after the next election. We have to wonder how much value those promises have.

I would also like to talk about fraud. The minister touched on that earlier. There is certainly fraud within our citizenship system, as there is in any system. However, a small minority of people abuse the system. How can we combat fraud without penalizing others? That is an important question. We must especially ask ourselves whether someone suspected of fraud should have the right to a fair trial. I believe the answer is yes. If the individual is formally charged, I agree with being able to revoke citizenship, but not as part of a discretionary power.

[Hélène LeBlanc, NDP, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Pierrefonds—Dollard for her excellent speech, for the way she is dealing with the citizenship and immigration file and for doing such a wonderful job of defending these issues.

Our ridings are next to each other, and both of our constituency offices deal with a lot of immigration cases. Wait times are far too long, as we have mentioned. I would like to hear more about what she thinks about the economic and social costs that these wait times have on Canadian society.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague. She is very active and always does so much for her constituents in LaSalle—Émard. Her work is always appreciated.

Some people who come to our offices have been waiting for a response to their citizenship application for three or four years. Is that any way to treat people? No. They have to fill out residency questionnaires, questionnaires that can be 50 to 200 pages long. They have to find documents anywhere from two to ten years old to convince people that their intentions are good. The government has to do what it has to do to ensure that our citizenship system is good, that it works for people and enables honest people to get their citizenship, but this bill goes way beyond that. It penalizes people and raises significant legal and human rights concerns.

[Maria Mourani, Independent, Ahuntsic, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend my colleague on her speech.

I am wondering if she shares my concern. It seems to me that there is an underlying philosophy or vision of citizenship to this bill that creates two categories of Canadians. Earlier, the minister spoke about terrorism. What do we do with a young person who is born in Quebec—who is not of French-Canadian or English-Canadian heritage but may be of Italian heritage, for example—who decides to get involved with a terrorist group? In comparison, what do we do with another young person who was not born in Canada—who arrived from Morocco, for example—who also has Canadian citizenship and joins a terrorist group? What do we do with them?

What concerns me the most is that in the citizenship philosophy put forward by the minister—with whom I have shared many experiences—there are good Canadians and bad Canadians, real citizens and fake citizens. For example, the minister would deny a Canadian child who was born in Quebec entry into Quebec or Canada if one of the child's parents is not Canadian. Children are dying in Syria because the minister seems to think that the parents are coming here just to give birth. It is clear that the minister feels there are different types of Canadians.

I would like to hear my colleague's thoughts on that.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for the question, which covered many aspects of the bill.

Unfortunately, I will not have enough time to address all of them. I know that my colleague is very familiar with the legal systems in Quebec and Canada. Experts have talked about cases where a child born in Canada to one Canadian parent can have another citizenship, because some countries will grant citizenship to a child when one parents is a citizen. If that child, who was born and raised here, is accused of one of the crimes listed in the bill, he or she might not have the option of receiving a sentence here in Canada, one that is delivered by our criminal justice system and considered fair in relation to the crime. That is troubling. We have a legal system in place.

I am not saying that fraudsters and criminals should not be punished. On the contrary, I agree with the principle whereby people who commit fraud or other crimes should be punished. They must be sentenced, but the question is, how and by whom? Should it be by this minister or by Canada's fair and equitable legal system?

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Lac-Saint-Louis, Health; the hon. member for Acadie—Bathurst, Rail Transportation.

Resuming debate. The hon. member for Markham—Unionville.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this bill. It is also gives me great pleasure to say that the Liberals will be opposing this bill because we believe that it is not good for Canada. It is bad for Canada. We are therefore pleased to vote against it. We are opposing this bill mainly because it will make it increasingly difficult to become a Canadian citizen.

The government has already put up barriers in terms of rising waiting times. Under this law there are more and more barriers to becoming a citizen, as I will describe in a few minutes in more detail, and we do not think this is good for Canada.

As is often the case with a large and complex bill, it is not that we dislike everything in the bill. In particular, we like the legislation for lost Canadians, whereby citizenship will be restored to lost Canadians born before 1947 and to first generations born abroad. We are very much in favour of this measure. If the government were to produce stand-alone legislation on this topic, we would vote for it. However, given that it is surrounded by other pollutants that we cannot support, we cannot support the bill in its entirety. We would like it if we could support a separate bill on lost Canadians. We would certainly be happy to support that.

There is a second item on which we are in agreement with the government in spirit. We do favour measures to enhance the loyalty of citizens to Canada and to combat the issue of citizens of convenience. However, we are not convinced that the measures the government has proposed in this area are terribly effective, and we would have alternative measures. We might favour those. We do not think the government's measures in this area will be effective. We think that more harm is done by the barriers it is raising for well-behaved people, who are not citizens of convenience but hard-working, loyal, potential Canadians who are barred by various artificial means set up by the government from becoming citizens of this country.

The way I would like to put it, to frame it in more general terms, is that immigration policy has to be a balance between welcome and vigilance. One has to be vigilant because there are always some bad apples. There will always be some citizens of convenience with phony marriages. There will be people who want to play the system and people who are fraudulent. There are a very small number of people in that category, and for that category, one requires vigilance.

The vast numbers of people who come to Canada, whether as immigrants, visitors, or citizenship applicants, are good people. They are law-abiding people and should be welcomed. Yes, we require vigilance for the small number of bad apples, but we must also welcome the vast majority who are good.

It is my contention that Canadian governments, from John Diefenbaker to Paul Martin, have put the main focus on welcoming. The primary task was to welcome people to Canada, to welcome them to become landed immigrants and citizens and visitors. There was some focus on the bad apples, but the primary emphasis and priority was to welcome the large numbers of good people who wanted to come here.

All of that has changed under the current government. There is very little welcome. It is almost all vigilance. What we hear government members talking about day after day is people cheating the system, people with phony marriages, people who are citizens of convenience, as if that is the whole universe of people coming to this country. We agree that there are some of that type. However, the government spends all of its time talking about the bad side and the vigilance and at no time about welcoming people, which is the broader and more important task. I think it has tilted the priorities away from the traditional Canadian approach that we saw all the way from John Diefenbaker to Paul Martin.

Let me just give the House two examples, taken from the time of John Diefenbaker. John Diefenbaker, as the House may recall, was a Progressive Conservative Prime Minister. The members on that side should approve of some of the things he did. I certainly do. I will mention two examples.

The first of these is the Hungarian revolution of 1956-57. Under John Diefenbaker, there was a huge blip in immigration because his government allowed in some 38,000 refugees from Hungary. That is a huge number, and I applaud it. I am glad that the minister is applauding too. The country in those days was half the size it is today, so that would be the equivalent of some 80,000 people today.

I am glad that the minister is applauding, because we were talking earlier about Sweden letting in 14,000 refugees from Syria permanently. He claimed they were temporary, but they were not. Canada has a miserable number of 1,300 Syrian refugees, and they are not even here yet, partly because he has not given the authorization to the community groups who want to bring in refugees. He applauds 38,000, which is very good, but he is struggling with 1,300 some 50 years later. However, that is a different topic.

The point I am making is this. Did those 38,000 immigrants, refugees from Hungary, all pass difficult language tests? I doubt it. They came pretty quickly. Did they have to wait years? Did they have to go through this barrier, that barrier, and the next barrier to come to this country? No, they got onto those ships pretty quickly and all 38,000 of them were here pretty quickly. They were also welcomed warmly when they came to this country.

We welcomed them under Mr. Diefenbaker, and that is good. There were probably a few bad apples in that 38,000, just as there are in the Canadian population at large. The current government would focus all its time on the few bad apples of those 38,000 Hungarian refugees, whereas the government of the day and our party would focus on the great good that all of those people and their children would do and have done for this country.

The second reason I would praise Mr. Diefenbaker is that there was a member of Parliament who was convicted of spying on Canada for the Soviet Union. He was not a Conservative or a Liberal. I think he was a communist, but he was a member of Parliament. In the process of that happening, his citizenship was taken away. Mr. Diefenbaker thought that was really bad. He thought that even a Canadian convicted of treason should not have his citizenship taken away, so he brought in a law that would not allow governments to take away individual citizenship.

That was Mr. Diefenbaker, a Progressive Conservative. He was a small-l liberal on these matters, and he was focusing on the welcome rather than on vigilance. The same story goes through to Pierre Trudeau, who invented the modern system of immigration and multiculturalism. I would praise Brian Mulroney as well, who was also open to immigration. He was welcoming and he did not spend all of his time talking about the bad apples. The same goes for Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin.

When we come to the current government, all of a sudden, the scales shift. Instead of welcoming people to this country, we spend all of our time talking about the small number of people who are not obeying the rules.

It works much better if we welcome newcomers with a smile, which we did, starting with Diefenbaker up until Martin, instead of welcoming them with a scowl, as the current government does. It is better to have “sunny ways”, as Wilfrid Laurier put it and as our leader recently quoted, rather than angry ways.

We welcomed people with a smile, from Diefenbaker to Trudeau, from Mulroney to Chrétien and Martin. With a smile, we had sunny ways. We had a smile for the newcomers. Now, under the Conservatives all they focus on is the negative side. So it is no longer sunny ways, but angry ways. That is not good for our country.

Why is it not good for the country to act in such a hostile manner? One reason is that we are trying to build Canada and, in order to do so, we have to welcome those who come here to live with us.

In one way or another, we are all descendants of immigrants and thus we must extend a warm welcome. It is not necessary to always be angry.

The economic aspect is another consideration. We are competing for immigrants with countries such as Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. We all have an aging population. We all need these immigrants. Consequently, if we give them a warm welcome, they will come to Canada instead of going to Australia or other countries. There are sound economic reasons for attracting these immigrants to our country.

My final point concerns the public's attitude. If the only thing the government says is that there are dishonest people who enter into fake marriages and do all these bad things, the public will start believing that these immigrants are bad and that they are criminals.

What the government is doing is sowing division, because it is always putting the emphasis on the bad side of immigrants, the cases where they do not obey the rules, and saying nothing about the much larger positive side. That gives ideas to Canadian people who hear the government talking about these immigrants, these visitors, as not to be trusted, that they might be really bad people. I think it sows division in this country.

My view is to let sunny ways rather than angry ways prevail. Greet the people with a smile instead of a scowl and do not put up these new barriers all the time.

Now I will come to the five new barriers that we do not like. We could call them the five new scowls provided by the Conservative Party to would-be citizens.

The first scowl is the fact that the Conservatives have doubled the processing times. The minister boasts that they will reduce those processing times at some point in the future, but over five long years they have doubled these processing times from 15 months to 31 months, and the reason they give is in the document. It does not talk about it being a Liberal system. They say explicitly that they did not put enough money into this system and that is why the waiting times, the processing times, have doubled.

That is the first scowl they have sent to would-be citizens: “Sorry, folks, instead of waiting 15 months like you did in 2007, you have to wait 31 months“, and sometimes it is way longer. I have constituents who wait way longer than 31 months. That is the first scowl, the first barrier.

The second one is this hostile provision about language. It was okay until now that people aged 15 to 54 did the test. Now the Conservatives are imposing a difficult language test on those aged 14 to 18 and 54 to 64. Why? It is because they want to create another barrier, another scowl. Why was it not okay for those aged 54 to 64 to speak okay English but not fantastic English and still make excellent contributions to this country, and for their children and their grandchildren to speak perfect English? It worked well before. They are loyal citizens. I know them very well, both citizens and landed immigrants.

The third point, another scowl, is regarding the people who come here as temporary foreign workers or as international students. It used to be the case that half of the time they had lived in this country as a student or a temporary foreign worker counted toward the time for citizenship. Now the government scowls at them again and grabs away that time and counts it for nothing. What is the point? Do the Conservatives want to deter these people? Do they want to send them to Australia? Do they not want them to come to Canada? There is no point, except malice, except wanting to scowl at them, instead of applying the sunny face of Liberals and perhaps even the NDP.

The fourth point is that people now have to stay here four out of six years instead of three out of four. That is another scowl. What makes one think that people will be more Canadian just because we make them stay an extra year? One more year is extra time to wait. It does not necessarily make people Canadian or deter citizens of convenience. It is just another nasty move by the Conservatives to make the barriers bigger against nice people who want to become citizens of our country.

Those are four bad things, four scowls, four angry gestures. I will mention one more, and this is one I have some sympathy with. I have perhaps been a little negative so far, but the four I have mentioned are all scowls, which I do not think add anything. There is some sense to the fifth, the idea of increased physical presence, that in four out of six years people should be here more than half the year, some 183 days. I have some sympathy with that because I have some concern with the phenomenon of citizens of convenience. I think it might be going a little far. Let us say that someone comes in as a landed immigrant, works for the Royal Bank—we can name any company—and that Canadian company then wants the person to work in the U.K., India, or wherever. That person as a Canadian could do it, but as a landed immigrant could not for more than a certain time.

I think there are some problems with the detailed specification there, but I would suggest another measure, which is more focused on the true bad behaviours and not hitting everyone. There will be many people coming to this country who are not citizens of convenience, but who, for some reason, their employers want them to work overseas and they want to spend some time there. It does not mean they are citizens of convenience. Therefore, everyone gets tarred by that brush.

Why not have strict residence requirements for health care? That would really target people who are citizens of convenience. I understand there was a court case heard by the B.C. Court of Appeal recently, which upheld the government position on that. To me, that is a more targeted approach to direct against potential citizens of convenience. We would hit them, but we would not hit everyone. A lot of the government measures are targeted at the bad people, but they hit all the good people as well and, therefore, are inefficient and unwelcoming. That is why I say they are not sunny ways but angry ways. We should welcome people with a smile and not with a scowl.

The Liberals will clearly vote against this bill. There are other problems to resolve when it comes to revoking an individual's citizenship. For example, what happens in the case of dual citizenship? I can think of at least two people with dual citizenship in the House: the Leader of the Opposition and my colleague and former leader of the Liberal Party, the member for Saint-Laurent—Cartierville. Would the minister have the power to revoke their citizenship and deport them? That is far too much power for a single person.

Someone who is born in Canada can also have dual citizenship, as is the case with the two members I mentioned. It is not limited to people who were not born in Canada.

The government's proposal does not provide for sufficient legal recourse. It gives one person far too much arbitrary power.

In summary, the main reason Liberals are opposing this bill is that we want to welcome people to our country. We want to smile when they come in and not frown. We want to make it less of a burden and have shorter waiting times for people to become a citizen, an economic immigrant, or a visitor. The whole Conservative system is drowning in increased waiting times, which typically have doubled, drowning in red tape. This bill is yet another example of adding more and more barriers against the honest people who, thank goodness for us, want to become citizens of Canada. I say we should welcome them, not frown at them.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is rather incredible to hear that question. The member talks of sunny ways, and then he goes on to make one of the most partisan speeches I have heard in any debate in this place.

Is this the new Liberal Party, a party of ogres, a party of scaremongers, a party that talks down the Canadian economy, that talks about doom and gloom when we have had the top job creation record in the G7 and are the only country in the G7 to have an AAA credit rating from all agencies and a positive outlook?

The Liberals will not acknowledge these simple facts. It is terrifying to think of how newcomers to Canada would choose to understand this stream of consciousness presentation.

Is the member opposite aware of some simple facts? Is he aware of the fact that this government has admitted to Canada, on average, over 40,000 more permanent residents than his government ever did? Is he aware that, under our government, we have had 1.4 million new Canadians become Canadian citizens?

Is the member aware that his government slashed immigration to its lowest levels in the late-20th century, in 1983-84 and then again in 1998-99? Is he aware that it was his government that brought in these language requirements and made the residency requirement, during the vast majority of their time in government in the 20th century, five years, which is actually more than is proposed in this bill?

Is the member aware of those simple facts? Is he aware of his utter hypocrisy?

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Before we go to the hon. member for Markham—Unionville, there were a couple of suggestions in there, characterizations, if you will, of other hon. members. When we enter into that kind of debate, it is not helpful. I would just ask hon. members to keep that in mind in the course of their remarks.

The hon. member for Markham—Unionville.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I actually find it quite amusing that he should accuse me of being partisan, and you accuse him of being partisan, and then the second part of his speech goes into a partisan rant.

Let me just respond, instead of being partisan, with a few statistics that come from the member's own government's statistics.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Stop scowling.

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

With a few tweaks.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Why are you scowling?

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Would he listen for just a second.

Since 2007, and I believe his government was in power then, waiting times have increased by 200% for family reunification immigrants, by 65% for live-in caregivers, by 55% for provincial nominees, by up to 113% for federal skilled workers, by 150% for visitor visas, and by 107% for citizen applications, and he says he is doing a good job.

Does the minister not know that time is of the essence when it comes to processing times for immigrants, for visitors, for citizens? His government has absolutely bungled it for eight long years.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my hon. colleague if he could comment on the new intent-to-reside test for citizenship, the whole idea that when people apply to become citizens, the government can assess whether they intend to reside in Canada.

Lorne Waldman is the current president of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers. He is very respected. He is one of my former students. He talks about how arbitrary that will be and how difficult that will be to assess. Then he asks if this will become the basis on which the minister can exercise his power to revoke citizenship if a person happens to leave the country too early for the liking of the minister.

I am wondering about the insecurity that would create for average citizens, not knowing whether they can leave five months from now, six months from now, or 18 months from now without being at risk of having their citizenship revoked, because somehow or other, retroactively, a minister might say that it showed that they did not intend to reside in Canada in the first place.

Does the member have any concerns?

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I also met the gentleman, and I read the article in which he said that. I can see the basis for concern. It speaks to the question of citizens of convenience. We want measures in place to deter that. I sympathize with that goal, in principle. However, with this specific measure, I agree that the minister could, in theory, take someone's citizenship away because he went to work overseas for a length of time, when he had previously stated his intent not to.

I do not always agree with the Conservatives, but I do not think it likely that a minister, even a Conservative minister, would do that. I do not take this risk that the professor raised too seriously.

However, there are a plethora of other reasons to oppose this bill, and we are opposing it without necessarily putting that point at the front and centre of our reasoning.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Markham—Unionville spoke a bit about the waiting times for people to get their citizenship. Being from the Montreal area, I know that the wait times there are easily four and sometimes up to five years. If person is not able to make the first appointment because of illness or some imprévu, as we say in French, it could go on and on. Some of these people have come here to become citizens.

I am wondering if my colleague has had any personal experience, being an MP from the Toronto area, where there are probably more immigrants waiting for their citizenship.

Second, what is my colleague's feeling about the fee, which is going to be increased. These are people who probably cannot afford to pay the fee. Sometimes they put off getting their citizenship, because they cannot afford the fee. How does the member feel about having an increase in the fee while having a decrease in services?

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, beginning with the fee, as I said to the minister, when the government has just bungled the job and doubled the waiting time, it is not the time to double the fee. That is totally unfair. Maybe if the minister halved the waiting time, as he has promised to do in some future period after the next election, that would be the time to raise the fee, but he should wait until he does it. He should not do it in advance on the basis of some promise that may or may not be realized. I agree that some of these people have a hard time paying the fee.

On the first question about people waiting for citizenship, it is a horror story. According to Statistics Canada, Markham happens to be the most multicultural community in the country, so 90% of my business is immigration related. We hear horror stories about people wanting to be reunited with their spouses, or grandparents wanting to come to the weddings of their grandchildren and being denied. Grandparent A is in exactly the same situation as grandparent B, yet one gets in and one does not, and nobody knows why.

For citizenship, some people have to fill out a form that adds two years to the wait time. The average is two and a half years, but it can be up to five years.

As I said in my speech, if the philosophy of the Conservatives is to scowl at newcomers, they do not care. If the Conservatives cared, they would have put money in between 2007 and 2012. The government would have put money in to prevent waiting times going from 16 months to 32 months, but it failed to do that. The government knew that it was causing waiting times to go up, and it neglected to put the required resources in. The government is utterly guilty of neglect.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Minister of State (Science and Technology]

Mr. Speaker, I want to pick up on this scowl-smile argument. Imagine, when we came into government, what expression was on the faces of more than 840,000 immigration candidates. It was a reflection of the backlog and the abject failure of the Liberal government, as it was then, on citizenship and immigration. It bottomed out when one of the last Liberal ministers of immigration on record appeared to have made decisions from the House of Lancaster, an entertainment bar in her riding.

It is funny that the same people, the members of the opposition, and particularly that member, are now accusing our smiling minister of wanting too much power. They are the same ones who asked the minister to exercise his power by stopping deportations, issuing visas, granting citizenships, and keeping criminals in Canada, and the list goes on.

Is the member saying that he wants to prevent giving citizenship to those who qualify for discretion?

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, speaking of smiles on faces, one reason the Conservatives had a great big smile on their faces when they became government was that we left them with a $13-billion surplus, but they were not able to manage that surplus.

[An. hon. member]

And it is still our fault.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Everything is always our fault, Mr. Speaker. We gave the Conservatives a $13-billion surplus, they spent so much money that they frittered away that surplus. Before the recession even started, they were running a deficit. It is no wonder they had a smile on their faces when they saw that great big surplus.

In terms of immigration waiting times, the department, in its wisdom, does not give us numbers before 2007. That is the earliest we can go. That is the very beginning of the Conservative period. As I quoted, with all of those numbers, back to the minister, family classification went up by 200%. Others went up 100%. That had nothing to do with the Liberals. That increase in waiting times by 100% was under the Conservative watch. So I think--

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Resuming debate. The hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to join this lively debate. However, before I do that, let me just say that I will be splitting my time with the hard-working member for Calgary Centre.

I am pleased to rise to discuss how our government plans to strengthen the value of Canadian citizenship.

Canadian citizenship is about far more than the right to carry a passport, as some might think, or to vote. Canadian citizenship is a commitment and forever a connection to our great country, Canada.

Citizenship defines who we are as Canadians, including our mutual responsibilities to one another, responsibilities such as respect for the rule of law, contributing to the well-being of the Canadian community, and protecting our heritage and our traditions. Citizenship means that we share a commitment to the values rooted in our history, values such as freedom, democracy, and the rule of law.

As a government, we believe that Canadian citizenship is truly something special and should be valued. We believe that is what Canadians want. However, there are those who attempt to attach a monetary cost to Canadian citizenship.

The strengthening Canadian citizen act, Bill C-24, would send a clear message to those who attempt to take advantage of our generous system.

Canadian citizenship never was, is not now, and never will be for sale. A Canadian passport is highly valued around the world. However, we will not stand by as people treat our passport as a commodity that can be traded or sold to the highest bidder.

Our government takes citizenship fraud very seriously. We are taking action to ensure that those who are convicted of citizenship fraud face the full force of the law. This is very important.

There are those who, for their financial advantage, prey on people who are legitimately wanting to become Canadian citizens. They fraudulently approach them with schemes. We would like to crack down on those people. We believe it is incumbent on our government, on any government, to do that to protect law-abiding residents, permanent residents, and citizens in our country.

As of October 2013, the RCMP was conducting fraud investigations involving more than 3,000 citizens and more than 5,000 permanent residents, a majority of them related to residence fraud.

This a serious issue, which is why we are bringing forward these changes to the Citizenship Act. These are individuals who create fake addresses, purchase fake phone lines, open ghost bank accounts, and draft false letters of employment in an attempt to show that they live in Canada. In reality, many of these individuals may have never set foot in Canada and probably live somewhere else in the world.

These practices demean and devalue what it means to be a Canadian citizen. The strengthening Canadian citizenship act introduced by our government would ensure that we are not only protecting the value of Canadian citizenship from those who would cheapen it but that we are also improving the citizenship system.

Unfortunately, there is a global industry of unscrupulous, unethical immigration and citizenship agents posing as bona fide consultants. These unscrupulous agents typically coach people to establish fake proof of residency in Canada in order to apply for and obtain our Canadian citizenship.

Do not just take it from me. Immigration lawyers like Raj Sharma also agree that this is a serious problem. He admitted:

...immigration fraud was rampant and you did see ghost consultants and unregulated consultants counsel individuals to embellish or exaggerate the time in Canada. Let's face it. The Canadian passport is an incredibly valuable commodity and individuals are willing to lie, cheat, and deceive us to obtain that benefit.

Currently, there are no tools in the toolbox to identify citizenship fraud upfront at the application stage. As a result, many applicants fall victim to crooked citizenship consultants. The strengthening Canadian citizenship act would change that. With our changes, applicants would have to declare on the citizenship application form whether they used an authorized consultant or representative. The key here is that the representative would have to be accredited and part of a regulatory body specified by the minister. This would put an end to crooked citizenship consultants.

Bill C-24 would increase the penalties for citizenship fraud to a maximum fine of $100,000 or up to five years in prison.

We are also taking action to strengthen the residence requirements for citizenship. There has been a lot of ambiguity over what it means to be physically present in Canada. Our government is taking out the guesswork and making it clear. Prospective Canadian citizens would need to be physically present in Canada in four out of the past six years. Respected lawyer Richard Kurland stated:

It makes it easier. For the very first time there is going to be a definition for “residence”. You'd think it would be in the law. It never has been. It is now 183 days in a year, four years on the previous six. So now you know in advance, using math, whether you're in or you're out.

Even Toronto Sun columnist Simon Kent agrees. As part of his comment, he said if people want to live in Canada, if they want to enjoy living in a free and prosperous country like Canada, they should spend time here, they should live here, and they should contribute to civil society. I know that sounds like something out of Politics 101, but it is basically saying to live here, enjoy the fruits of one's labour, pay one's taxes, show that one is committed. I think extending the period of permanent residency here from three to four years, or maybe even five years, before being able to take up citizenship is a fair and reasonable proposition.

This is a subject that is very close and dear to my heart; not only because I have the privilege of representing one of the most diverse communities in the country in my riding, the great riding of Richmond Hill, but also because I am very proud that my parents were immigrants to this country. They came here during John Diefenbaker's prime ministership in this House. They had to wait five years to get their citizenship. I remember because I was born and I was there. I remember how proud they were when they studied and they learned the language requirements they needed, and they went and wrote those tests and they spoke and obtained their Canadian citizenship. Let me tell members that I believe my parents are representative of the vast majority of Canadian citizens who have chosen this great country as their new home.

I heard with great attention what the critics from the opposition parties said, and I would be very happy to listen to and take any questions they might have.

In closing, I would just say this. The strengthening Canadian citizenship act demonstrates our government's commitment to ensuring new Canadians understand the value of citizenship. The changes would make it harder for those who wish to take advantage of our generous immigration system and would send a strong message. Canadian citizenship is not a right; it is a privilege for those who commit themselves to Canada, our way of life, our values, and our traditions.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his speech.

One thing worries me about today's debate, and this comes mainly from the minister. It appears that he is already jumping to conclusions by saying that we are opposed to making the citizenship system more effective or that we are against punishing people who cheat the system. He says this because in the bill, which is about 50 pages long, there are of course some measures that we agree with and some commendable intentions, but there are also other measures that are quite questionable and troubling, not only to the official opposition but also to many civil society groups and experts in the field.

When I asked the minister earlier if he would be willing to review some aspects of the bill, he said he did not see any shortcomings in the bill.

I would like to ask my colleague, who is a fellow member of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, if this means that there is no room for hearing from experts and taking their recommendations into account. If the minister sees absolutely no shortcomings in his bill, when many groups have already expressed their concerns, does that mean that there will be no room for amendments in committee? We often see this, and I hope that that will not be the case when this bill is examined by the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the minister said no such thing, nor did he allude to any such thing. The process in the House, and I think all members know, is that the bill will go to committee once it has passed second reading, and we will have an opportunity to study it at committee stage and hear experts. We cannot prejudge or preempt what the conclusions or decisions of the committee will be after it has an opportunity to study the bill at that stage.

One of the concerns the member opposite had was the fee. I do not know if she took the time actually to read the content of the bill, or at least investigate the reasons behind some of the things that are in the bill. She commented about our increasing the fee for Canadian citizenships. Had she done a little homework, she would have found out that it costs about $550 for a Canadian application today. We are taking the fee to a proportion of that. Is it not fair for Canadians to expect that the cost of that application should be borne by the person who is applying and not by taxpayers?

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the parliamentary secretary. I never had the chance to congratulate him here in the House for his nomination since he became parliamentary secretary.

I have just a quick question. At the beginning of his speech he was saying that the reason the bill is before the House is that there have been a lot of fraudulent applications, like people living outside the country, and people using false documents. I would think that would already be breaking the law and I am not sure why he would need this extra piece of legislation. I would think we would need an extra piece of legislation to help people who want to obtain their Canadian citizenship.

I previously asked my colleague from the Liberal Party about being a member from the Toronto area. This member is from the Toronto area. Does he not see cases where it is a huge problem getting Canadian citizenship with proper documents? Applicants are waiting for way too much time and are also waiting sometimes because the fee is too high. Can he comment on that?

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will point the member to the bill. The bill clearly puts forth some excellent points in dealing with the regulation of the whole citizenship and immigration consultant industry.

In the second part of his question, of course I am a member of Parliament from the Greater Toronto Area. He will be happy to hear this, I am sure. One of the things the bill does is streamline the decision making process for granting citizenship. We are going to have more people within the decision making body now, people who are experts, officers in citizenship and immigration. Once they obtain all of the proper information, they will be able to grant citizenship, whereas today, the authority for that only belongs to citizenship judges.

If the bill passes through the House—and I hope all members see the light and pass it, because it really is excellent legislation—it would speed up the process from a three-step process to a one-step process. Those people coming into our offices would obtain their citizenship in under a year, as opposed to waiting the length of time they are waiting now.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me to be here to rise to speak in support of Bill C-24, which really does demonstrate our government's commitment to strengthening the value of Canadian citizenship.

Canadian citizenship, as every one of us in the House knows, is among the most valued citizenships in the world and the bill would ensure that it remains that way.

First, let me be clear. We want newcomers to come to Canada. We need them to grow this country, as Canada has throughout its great history. They are the nation builders of today and the nation builders of tomorrow. The question is how we get there.

We have accepted 1.4 million new citizens to Canada since the Conservatives were elected in 2006. That is an unprecedented number that puts Canada among the top countries among our peers. That is a lot of people, and we welcome them.

We also believe we should help to prepare those people, those newcomers, in the very best way we can, so they can succeed here. Enter Bill C-24. It is in all of our best interests to do that.

What does this really mean on the ground? There are three things it means.

First of all, it means we want newcomers to bond with their new home. We want them to feel they are part of Canada. We believe they should have a strong attachment to this country by having a significant Canadian experience before they become citizens. Hence, that means adding one year, going from three years to four years' residency, or actually 1,460 days now, before they can become a citizen.

Second, we require that they, yes, actually be present here in Canada while they are building that understanding of Canadian values and way of life.

Third, to help our newcomers integrate, we believe they should know one of our official languages. It seems reasonable to most people. This will help our newcomers to succeed and it will help Canada to succeed by opening its doors to them.

Gillian Smith of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship works extensively with Canada's newcomers, and she said she has found overwhelming support among them for these kinds of changes. Our newest citizens report that the measures that actually help them to foster their connections and attachment with Canada have had the most positive effect on their integration.

Their sense of belonging comes in large measure from actually experiencing Canada first-hand, its people, nature, culture, heritage, and yes, its cold winters, its hockey, its Tim Hortons, and all of that which goes along with being a Canadian. This is where our connections with each other really develop.

An understanding of one of our official languages and a deeper knowledge of these kinds of values and traditions help newcomers become active members of Canadian society a lot sooner. This will assist them on their path to seize the opportunities that are the reason they are coming to Canada, and that is what we want.

Our government's proposed changes would also expand the ages for citizenship applicants who are required to demonstrate this kind of language proficiency, as well as take the knowledge test. Currently, it is from ages 18 to 54. It would go from ages 14 to 64.

There are critics who will say that these moves to strengthen the residency and language requirements would make it harder to become a Canadian citizen. We believe that people who really wish to hold the coveted Canadian passport, to call Canada their home, will achieve these requirements. Something valued is something that really is worth working for.

In the past, it has not always been that way. I point to immigration lawyer Raj Sharma, who told my friend Doug Dirks, the host of CBC Calgary's The Homestretch, that “basically, an eight-year-old with a crayon could have passed the previous knowledge test to become a Canadian citizen...”. That is actually what he said. This is one very busy immigration lawyer.

This is something we do not take lightly. By strengthening the residency and knowledge requirements, we are making sure new citizens are both more committed and fully prepared to actually take up life here in Canada. This is balancing rights and responsibilities.

The Aga Khan was here in this House today, and he spoke about this very thing. He talked about a healthy civil society, and he said that Canada accepted a major wave of Ismailis in the 1970s during the brutal Idi Amin era. The Aga Khan placed Canada first among all in creating a pluralistic society. However, in building a healthy civil society, the Aga Khan said what that takes is balancing rights and responsibilities. That is exactly what the act would do for new citizens.

Author Nick Noorani expressed a similar sentiment on CBC Radio a while back when he said it is not becoming more difficult, it is putting in place checks and balances.

He also said he is a very proud Canadian and believes that anyone who wants to become a Canadian should follow certain rules and regulations. For instance, he said, for people who have misused the system, the government is now putting a premium on Canadian citizenship, as well it should be.

To come back to the residency requirement, it would only include time that the person spends in Canada as a permanent resident, which has not always been the case. In the past, the rules were a little fuzzy and often taken advantage of by unscrupulous people. We are making them crystal clear. Newcomers who are coming to build Canada expect and want to be contributors, and this would give them more time to establish themselves here.

My own son-in-law would be affected by these proposed changes. He would have to spend an extra year in Canada to get citizenship, and that is okay. Canadian citizenship is something worth working for.

This is what Canadians rightly expect. They welcome newcomers as citizens and full members of our Canadian family, but not people who want to hold a citizenship of convenience as a backup plan while they live and work somewhere else.

However, there will be exceptions. Applicants who are outside of Canada because they are accompanying either their Canadian spouse or parent who is employed in the Canadian Armed Forces, or as a servant of the Crown, could still qualify for citizenship. This is to prevent residents from being penalized for their family's service abroad for Canada. We are honouring those who serve Canada, and showing our gratitude for those who put their lives on hold in service to our country.

Canadian citizenship is an honour and a privilege. It comes not only with rights, but with responsibilities. Immigrants understand that. They are very proud to fulfill these responsibilities. In fact, over 85% of permanent residents who have gone on to become citizens support these initiatives.

In 2012, more than 110,000 people became proud Canadian citizens. This year alone, we held 1,722 citizenship ceremonies from coast to coast to coast.

One of my favourite things to do as a member Parliament is to preside over citizenship ceremonies. They are heartwarming and even tear-jerking. As a Canadian, I feel honoured that these people have chosen Canada and are taking a pledge to become part of the Canadian family. They have often undergone great hardship to come to Canada, but it has been worth it because of the value of Canadian citizenship that this act underscores.

These people want to come and contribute to our economy. Many have come to Canada for security for their home and family under the rule of law. They are overwhelmingly pleased with these changes because, again, they value Canadian citizenship. They believe that it should only be granted to people like them who live and play by the rules.

We have to continue to ensure that this is the Canada we are protecting and preserving for all of us into the future. The strengthening Canadian citizenship act would enhance the value and integrity of our Canadian citizenship and would ensure that it is going to be valued just as much by future generations.

We are accepting unprecedented numbers of immigrants, and earlier I mentioned it has been 1.4 million people since 2006. We are ranked as the top among our peer countries in this.

The strengthening Canadian citizenship act that we are very proud to be putting forward today is a necessary measure. It is supported by newcomers to Canada. It will ensure that we can continue to keep the doors to Canada open, create this pluralistic society that the Aga Khan talked about and that all of us are proud of, and ensure that newcomers are in the very best position to succeed when they come to Canada.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

The member for Calgary Centre will have five minutes of questions and comments when we resume debate on this bill.

It being 5:30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.

Bill C-24—Time Allocation Motion

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

moved:

That, in relation to Bill C-24, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, not more than one further sitting day shall be allotted to the second reading stage of the Bill; and

That, 15 minutes before the expiry of the time provided for Government Orders on the day allotted to the consideration of the second reading stage of the said Bill, any proceedings before the House shall be interrupted, if required for the purpose of this Order, and, in turn, every question necessary for the disposal of the said stage of the Bill shall be put forthwith and successively, without further debate or amendment.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Pursuant to Standing Order 67.1, there will now be a 30-minute question period. As has been the case at other times where the House has considered these questions, we like to limit members' interventions to around a minute so that enough members will have the opportunity to participate. In addition, this is another reminder that the 30-minute question period is primarily intended for opposition members to question the government on the proposal that it has before the House.

We will proceed with questions. The hon. opposition House leader.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, 65 times we have had closure and time allocation. That is the deplorable record of the government. Back when Conservatives were trying to replace the former corrupt Liberal government, they said they were going to do things differently. They were not going to ram bad legislation through the House but would actually take the time to consider amendments from the opposition. We all remember that. That is what the Conservatives used to say.

Now, a few years later, the government has a deplorable record: it has used closure and time allocation 65 times. The public has a number of concerns about this controversial bill, which makes it even more deplorable that the government is doing this yet again.

The government does not want to show openness in the House. It simply wants to impose its law, regardless of the consequences. We all know what kinds of consequences these controversial bills have. The bills are so badly botched that the government is forced to introduce new bills to fix the problems. Furthermore, the Supreme Court has systematically rejected bills introduced by this government. This has happened four times in the past few weeks.

My question for my colleague is very simple: why is the government imposing a closure and time allocation motion for the 65th time, especially on such a controversial bill?

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

Mr. Speaker, we are doing it because we have a responsibility to Canadians, a responsibility to do what we promised we would do.

This overhaul of citizenship legislation has been on our agenda for years. We promised it during the last election campaign, in various throne speeches, particularly the most recent one, and in our budgets. Now it is time for action.

Canadians care deeply about their citizenship. They understand that it is very valuable and that problems in the existing law need to be fixed.

The law was last updated in 1977 under Prime Minister Trudeau's Liberal government. Many problems, such as abuses and processing delays, have surfaced since then.

If we do not take action and make this bill the law of the land, tens of thousands of permanent residents who want to become citizens will suffer. The opposition is not taking their interests into account.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, we have the government of the day that continues to want to use time allocation. It uses time allocation more than any other government in the history of Canada. It is abuse. It is so sad to see. We have that on the one hand.

Then we have the official opposition, the New Democrats, who do not even want to sit in the evenings. They voted against having those extra hours so we could have more debate.

We have legislation, such as the bill that is being proposed here, that generally needs to be debated extensively, and the government is trying to prevent that debate from taking place by bringing in closure.

Then we have New Democrats who, even though they agree with legislation, the simplest of legislation, want to invoke and pressure government to have time allocation.

The question I have for the government House leader is this. Why are the NDP and the Conservatives unable to sit down with the Liberals and work out a legislative timeframe that would allow for adequate debate on the important pieces of legislation that Canadians need to see legitimately debated at second reading?

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

Mr. Speaker, there has been abuse. There has been a problem. Under our current Citizenship Act, last amended under a Liberal government in a thorough-going way in 1977, the door was open to people who claimed residence in this country, in relatively large numbers, but whose physical presence in the country was never checked. That is the kind of abuse Liberal governments left behind them, decade after decade, and this government is moving to correct, because Canadians attach importance to their citizenship. They want to see the rules followed. New Canadians want it. Canadians who have achieved citizenship by descent want it. People aspiring to citizenship today, making the sacrifices to go through the “Discover Canada” guide and to learn our official languages to the level required, want these rules to be followed. That is what the bill would do.

We have already had 36 hours of debate in this House. We will have many more hours of debate tonight, thanks to the willingness of this government to put its shoulder to the wheel and to work for the benefit of Canadians. That has allowed all sides of this bill to be considered. It has been pre-studied in committee. We are making progress, and we will make more tonight.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my constituents are shocked. They are angry. I do not know why the current government does not buy an entire warehouse of duct tape and just tape every single mouth in this House. It is ridiculous that we are actually debating something so fundamental as what citizenship is and means in a modern democratic country. It is unbelievable.

My Liberal friend should probably check the record. It has been very clear from the beginning. We said we had no problems with working. The point is that they got into bed with the government in order to keep us from actually moving motions. How democratic is that? It is incredible.

My question is the following. Is my hon. colleague, who I know is well intentioned and for whom I have a lot of respect, not capable of recognizing that something as fundamental as citizenship, something that concerns Canadians so much, here and abroad, should be properly discussed by this august chamber?

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

Mr. Speaker, we strongly agree. It can and should be properly discussed. It has been discussed for dozens of hours. It will be discussed for further hours, this evening. It will be considered carefully in committee.

However, there is urgency to passing these measures, which we announced years ago in speeches from the throne and in budgets and for which Canadians sent us here with a strong mandate to bring into law, to bring into effect, because for us on this side who are in government it is very clear what Canadians' expectations are.

Last year was the biggest year ever for applications to become citizens: 330,000-plus permanent residents applied to become citizens. Our production of new citizens, of new awards of citizenship this year, has been unprecedented: 75,000 in the first three months. We are going to carry that pace forward.

However, we cannot meet Canadians' expectations and we cannot start to bring processing times down without the measures in the bill. They are urgently needed. That is why this debate, this fulsome debate, which has carried on for 36 hours, needs to continue tonight and come to a conclusion in due course.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Marleau and Montpetit's historical perspective on closure is that the closure rule has been the subject of scrutiny and discussion on numerous occasions. In December 1957, the new Diefenbaker government placed a notice of motion on the order paper to repeal the closure rule, but the motion was never debated. In July 1960, the government thought about giving it to committee to look at the closure procedure. Then the Liberals of the 1970s again considered the desirability of repealing the closure rule, but they did not report it on either. Basically, no action has been taken on repealing this awful measure that was used only a handful of times for half a century. There was reluctance to apply the closure rule. It only started in 1913.

My question to the minister is simple. Does he actually believe in cutting off debate through this use of the closure tool, or like the Conservatives and Liberals of the past, would he at least consider repealing the idea of closure in debates?

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

Mr. Speaker, I would correct the hon. member. This is not a closure motion; this is a time allocation motion. We are debating a measure that has been amply debated. Aspects of it were debated under different guises as private members' business, and aspects of it have been debated in different forms in previous amendments to the Citizenship Act.

These issues are familiar to Canadians, but what would this bill accomplish? First, it would underline and reinforce the value of Canadian citizenship, which all Canadians consider incredibly important. It would speed up processing. If we get this bill passed quickly, it would benefit tens of thousands of those waiting for their citizenships to be processed. It would also honour those who served Canada and circumscribe those cases in which citizenship can be revoked for gross acts of disloyalty. These are all measures that are very popular in this country, that are very much needed, that we have amply debated in this place, and that we want to move forward with this bill.

[Bal Gosal, Conservative, Minister of State (Sport)]

Mr. Speaker, this bill has been debated in committee and in the House. It is a very important piece of legislation for citizenship. I would like to ask the minister if he can tell us what he is hearing from Canadians out there about this bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, we are hearing from Canadians from all walks of life, in all parts of the country, about how much importance they attach to their citizenship and how much they want to see it protected, its value enhanced, and its integrity assured—the integrity of the process that brings people to this country first as immigrants, second as permanent residents, and then allows them to become citizens in unprecedented numbers these days.

These are the things this bill would do. It would help us to prevent the kind of fraud that, unfortunately, has prevailed in the system to a significant degree for decades, thanks to Liberal neglect. I have not heard in one single speech from the NDP, the official opposition in this place, that abuse has occurred. Many of the NDP speeches seem to be cookie cutter copies of one or the other. None of them has acknowledged the fact that there was abuse, that people have committed residency fraud in seeking to acquire citizenship in this country. New Democrats complain about the lack of debate, but they refuse to see and describe the reality as it is.

This bill is urgently needed, and Canadians want it because it would put citizenship on firmer foundations than ever and reflect the value that Canadians attach to one of their greatest possessions.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have a simple question for the minister. I am sure he knows he was mistaken when he said that we had debated this bill for 36 hours. I would like to remind him that Bill C-24 was debated for just a few hours by just five members: a Liberal, a New Democrat and three Conservatives, if I remember correctly. If I am wrong about that, he can set the record straight.

That means that only five out of 308 MPs, or just 2%, have been able to speak to this bill. That means that 2% of Canadians have been able to express their views on a very important bill about the basic tenets of Canadian citizenship.

I would therefore like to ask the minister a simple question: what percentage of Canadians would have to have an opportunity to speak to this bill for the debate to be democratic?

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

Mr. Speaker, every Canadian has the right to have a say in this debate and many did. They sent us letters and emails to share their point of view on this bill.

The vast majority of them are in favour of the measures in this bill. We are listening to the NDP and the Liberals. If they have something new to say about this bill, then we want to hear it. However, we keep hearing the same things, the same baseless accusations and a refusal to acknowledge past abuses. If the NDP and the Liberals have anything new to add to this debate, then this evening is the time to do it because there are still a few hours of debate remaining.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to join with my colleagues in expressing extreme concern about having time allocation and limiting the amount of debate for the 65th time in the House by the Conservative government. It is a shocking disregard for democratic debate and for the very reason we are sent here, which is to voice the views of our constituents, which is to examine fully the issues before the House prior to voting on legislation, and hopefully, through the voicing of those views and through that democratic debate, to influence one or more speakers and come up with a result that is in the best interests of all Canadians.

I want to use my question to express the views of some experts in my community of Parkdale—High Park. I am referring to the Inter-Clinic Immigration Working Group and Parkdale Community Legal Services, who offer services for the community on immigration issues. In a brief to the immigration committee they said, in their expert view:

In the final result, the longer the residency requirement, the more people we have residing, working, and paying taxes here without the full benefit of full civic participation.

They are especially concerned in this regard about temporary foreign workers. They are saying that prolonging the requirement prior to citizenship would weaken Canada as a nation. It would not strengthen it.

If the minister believes so fundamentally that his government is right, that there is serious abuse, and that it would strengthen Canada as a nation, why would he oppose full democratic debate on this? Let us hear some examples. Let us hear some stories. We will present our stories. Let us get everything on the table for Canadians.

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

Mr. Speaker, we do agree that this legislation is urgent and that it needs to move forward. We do agree that it needs debate. We invite the opposition tonight to give us some perspectives that we have not had until now. I am not sure if the member opposite was agreeing that there has been abuse in this program in the past. I am not sure if she is agreeing that there are measures in the bill that would address that abuse, that would prevent residency fraud in the future.

What is clear is that we can and will act for Canadians on the basis of the mandate we have, in the interests of a citizenship that serves a strong immigration program, that serves a strong Canadian economy. We need to do these things because we need to be more efficient now, not at the end of this year and not next year. We need to be more efficient in awarding citizenship to hundreds of thousands of Canadians who have earned it, who deserve it, who have applied for it, and who have qualified for it.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I wish we could be having the kind of conversation that would reflect the honesty of what is going on in this place, which would mean that I was not addressing my question through the Speaker to the hon. Minister of Citizenship and Immigration but to the puppet masters in the various leaders' offices who have decided that the House is going through the charade of late night sittings until midnight in the absence of the kind of trust and political consensus we should have been building in this place to allow us to avoid long debates on bills on which we completely agree, such as Bill C-17, to get it to committee and not take up our time in speeches, and allow us to have the kind of debate that this particular bill really requires.

If we had the kind of respect across the House that should be the job of all parliamentarians, we would not be sitting until midnight in a farcical exercise to prove we are working hard, because we are not going to be working smart by the end. I know what happened last June when we worked every night until midnight. Late night sittings do not advance the kind of parliamentary performance that our voters deserve.

I do not know if my hon. colleague would agree with me, but would it not be better if the House leaders were able to work together so we could focus our time deservedly on this bill and move up the passage of the ones on which we all agree?

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

Mr. Speaker, this place, this House has done some of its best work over the decades and over the centuries in these hours, the evening hours, when there is important business to do on behalf of the Canadian people.

That is why we are here. That is why we have this mandate. That is why we are prepared to work through the night. That is why we do it without complaint and with enthusiasm.

If we look back 100 years ago to the debate that really first gave us the concept of Canadian citizenship under a Conservative government in 1914, we see that long before there was a citizenship act, there was a naturalization act which talked about citizenship for the first time.

We had the Hon. R. B. Bennett and Prime Minister Borden speaking to these issues. They dealt with that bill at second reading in one day. Believe me, it was fewer hours than we will have invested here in this House today.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, when many of us first arrived in 2011, we witnessed an argument around time allocation from the government that went something like, “Well, we debated this bill in the last Parliament, so there is no point in talking about it now”.

I do not know where the minister is getting his numbers of 30-odd hours of debate when we have only had two hours, but I will tell the House about some other numbers that the minister is not talking about. When he talks about fraud, he says that we have not acknowledged fraud in the system. That is untrue; we have acknowledged that there is some. What the minister has not acknowledged is to what degree his department is concerned about fraud.

We have 325,000 applicants in the queue. Of those applicants, the RCMP is investigating 5,000 for potential fraud. That is—calculators out, folks—about 1.5%.

Now, of that 1.5%, some may have committed fraud. Some may have, but can the minister tell us how many? Is this truly the focus of this incredibly important and incredibly problematic bill?

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

Mr. Speaker, fortunately we do have the capacity to investigate cases of fraud already, and we do revoke citizenship when it is proven. That has been done in dozens of cases since 2011.

As the member says, there are 3,000—not 5,000 but 3,000—RCMP investigations under way. I am not going to speculate on how many of those will lead to a conclusion that fraud actually took place. That is the RCMP's job. However, there are very important measures in this bill to prevent fraud in the future, measures to make it impossible for applicants to mislead the authorities responsible for citizenship in my department about the time they have been physically present in Canada.

That is going to be extremely valuable for this program and for the value of citizenship. It will be welcomed by those who know this program and want to benefit from it across the country. Most of all, it will improve processing.

For Canadians, for those who have applied for citizenship, and for those who are here as permanent residents and will apply soon, the main benefit is that processing will be faster under this act. Anyone who delays the passage of this bill is actually disenfranchising many tens of thousands who urgently want that citizenship.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is very hard to sit here and listen to some of the rhetoric I have heard today.

We have a minister who says we have spent 30-plus hours debating a bill that this House has only studied or spoken on for two hours, and even though it has some of the elements of a bill that was previously debated, this bill has many other elements in it.

We have a minister who, instead of having a detailed and thorough debate on something as substantial as taking away somebody's citizenship, is putting more and more power into the hands of ministers, allowing them to become despotic and taking us away from parliamentary democracy.

What we have right now is a government that is using closure or time allocation for the 65th time. After only two hours of discussion on something that is going to fundamentally change what it means to be a citizen in this country, the government has the audacity to say it is now moving time allocation on this issue.

My question for the minister is this: where on earth did he get 30-plus hours of debate on this bill?

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

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite speaks in very alarming terms about despotism. I will tell the House what despotism is. It is any government, any parliament that refuses to take action when laws and rules are broken.

That way lies anarchy. That way lies poor service. That way lies an undermining of the rule of law, and in this bill we are determined to move against just those trends.

It is astonishing that critics, experienced members of Parliament on the other side, would refuse to acknowledge the basic benefits that the bill would bring by allowing us both to take action against fraud in the system and to process applications faster.

In my time in this House, I have not heard that member once acknowledge that there was abuse in the system, that there was residency fraud. She would do well, for the sake of her credibility—

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Questions. The hon. member for Vancouver Kingsway.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we need an element of decision-based evidence-making, and the bill is really a classic example of a solution in search of a problem.

Everybody knows that in any system there is some degree of manipulation and even some fraud, but the bill goes far beyond dealing with that: it makes it harder for someone to acquire citizenship. It increases residency requirements from three years to four years, it fails to count any time spent as a permanent resident, it increases the language requirements and now forces 15-year-olds and 64-year-olds to demonstrate proficiency in English where they did not have to before, and it triples the application fee. Those are the measures the government has taken. They have nothing to do with attacks on fraud.

The minister talked about fraud. I would like to know exactly what the data is behind the government's move to increase residency requirements. How many people in this country does he think have obtained their citizenship by residency fraud? Let him give us an idea of the scope of the problem to see if this is truly a case of a hammer smashing a pea.

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

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member demonstrates his lack of understanding of the bill in what he just said. He said that time as a permanent resident would not count toward citizenship, but that is exactly what would count under the bill.

The bill says that time when an individual is not a permanent resident would no longer count. It is much clearer to have one rule for all categories of permanent residents and to make it absolutely crystal clear what Canada expects, what Canadians expect, and what new Canadians who have become citizens expect from those who aspire to Canadian citizenship, which is that they reside here for four years out of six.

How many cases of fraud are there? We do not know. The RCMP is investigating 3,000. We have revoked citizenship for fraudulent acquisition thereof in dozens of cases in the last three years. We hope to get to the bottom of hundreds of cases in the months and years to come.

However, what is absolutely clear from the bill is that with the exit-entry records, we will be able to check in the future. With the new measures in the bill, residency fraud will become a thing of the past. All members should welcome that.

[Pierre Jacob, NDP, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind the minister that Bill C-24 is not on solid constitutional footing. It could run into challenges regarding section 15, in particular, and section 11 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Does he realize that?

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

Mr. Speaker, I am aware of the legal advice and review that the government requested concerning this bill. The chances of a constitutional challenge to this bill are low. In fact, it was assessed to be a slight risk.

We are confident that it is reasonable to insist that those who want to become Canadian citizens express their intention to do so. This will never undermine their right to free mobility or their rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It makes complete sense, when requiring that permanent residents spend a certain number of years here, to ask the people if they intend to reside in Canada.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

It is my duty to interrupt the proceedings at this time and put forthwith the question on the motion now before the House.

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

All those in favour of the motion will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And five or more members having risen:

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Vote #154

Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

I declare the motion carried.

I wish to inform the House that because of the proceedings on the time allocation motion government orders will be extended by 30 minutes.

It being 5:44 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.

The House resumed from February 27 consideration of the motion that Bill C-24, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee, and of the amendment.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

When this matter was last before the House, there were five minutes remaining for the hon. member for Calgary Centre.

Seeing as the member is not in the chamber, we will resume debate with the hon. member for Newton—North Delta.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak in opposition to this motion at second reading, Bill C-24, an act to amend the Citizenship Act and to make consequential amendments to other acts.

Today in this Parliament we witnessed, for the 65th time since I have been a member of Parliament, a government using the hammer of time allocation to shut off debate. I was in this House when the time allocation motion was discussed. I was so shocked to hear the minister say that we had over 30 hours of debate on this particular bill. Let me make it very clear. We have only had two hours of debate on this bill that has many components to it. From regulating immigration and citizenship consultants, to taking away citizenship, to qualifying for citizenship, all of those different components are in this bill, and yet the only time this Parliament will have time to discuss it is this evening. I am wondering what the rush is for the government. Why is it so afraid of legislation being debated? What does it want to hide?

Let me remind the House that there is a small part of this bill that is like déjà vu. It takes me back to last June when we were dealing with a private member's bill, and through it the government tried to bring about fundamental changes to citizenship in Canada. That was outside of the rules. Then it tried to change the rules. Of course it was not able to, because it was outside of the purview and the timing ran out. What has happened here is that two elements of that bill have been taken and thrown in with at least five other elements, and a whole new bill has been produced.

I heard the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration say today that we have spent over 30 hours discussing this. He must have been having discussions in a place other than Parliament, because I have gone back and checked and this bill has only had two hours of debate. Now we are going into an evening session until midnight and then the allocated time will run out and there will be a vote on it sometime tomorrow. Then it will go on to the next stage.

This is what is beginning to worry me. There seems to be a pattern. It is a pattern in which the government is using its majority to bully. It is using bullying tactics to rush through legislation that it does not want Canadians to find out too much about. It does not want Canadians to know what is really in this piece of legislation.

Let me be clear. There are two or three elements in this legislation that I support, but they are buried. That is typical of the Conservative government. It brings in omnibus legislation, which is legislation as thick as the telephone books for many of our communities across this beautiful country, and it has taken things that we know we need to take action on and buried them in with the worst elements of legislation that it knew were not only badly written but would have been open to all kinds of constitutional challenges; and it says it is trying to fix things.

I will be the first one to say that the immigration system needs to be reformed. The Liberals allowed long waiting periods, and that created backlogs. Some clarity and updating also needed to be done, but the minister has used that as an excuse and has broken the immigration system. He has taken it from one of nation-building to one of nation-dividing. That is a real concern.

Because of the new changes, family reunification is almost impossible right now. It is taking longer for spouses to get over here. As well, thousands of applications by skilled workers were shredded, even though they played by the rules we made, and now parents and grandparents have been turned into a lottery system. I agree that we do want the young and the brightest, but the young and the brightest have parents. They do not fall out of the sky.

Our immigration policy has gone from a nation-building policy to one in which the government sees itself as agents who provide temporary foreign workers at minimum wage so that big business can make huge profits. Vulnerable workers are being exploited, while Canadians who spend hundreds of hours looking for work cannot find it because the jobs they could do are being given away. The system is broken.

This legislation purports to fix citizenship, specifically the waiting list. I worked at a citizenship ceremony recently. The judge showed me a room full of files and told me it would take him a long time to get to those files. People have to wait over 31 months after their applications are in, and this is after they have met all criteria. During that time, these potential Canadian citizens are being denied their rights as well as access to many of their responsibilities.

There is nothing in this legislation that would expedite citizenship and get rid of the backlog. The government says it has invested extra money into getting rid of the backlog, but the lists have in fact become longer and the time period to obtain citizenship has become longer.

I am pleased to see that regulation of consultants is in the bill. We hear too many stories from coast to coast to coast of unscrupulous agents and consultants who are abusive toward vulnerable people in this situation. People are looking for help, and these unscrupulous agents make all kinds of promises and commitments. Then all kinds of money changes hands, so it is good to see that kind of regulation in the bill.

However, at the same time, this legislation has something in it that I find absolutely unacceptable.

I have to share with the House what citizenship means. I chose Canada to be my home. I came to Canada in 1975 as a young teacher, excited about exploring this beautiful country. I fell in love with it and decided this was where I wanted to stay and have my children and raise them, and I now also have grandchildren.

It was a very proud moment for me when I became a Canadian citizen. I can remember meeting the judge. He asked me a couple of questions. I was a social studies teacher, so he presumed I knew a lot of the background. We talked about what my experiences were like. I stood next to him and we had a lovely photograph taken. I had become a Canadian citizen. It was a very emotional time for me, because I take Canadian citizenship very seriously. I see it as an honour and a privilege.

Citizenship has to mean something. If we attend a citizenship ceremony here in Canada, we see people from all around the world with their eyes filling with tears as citizenship is bestowed on them.

Last Friday, which was May 23, 2014, was a very significant day in Canadian history, although members may not know it. It was the 100-year anniversary of the Komagata Maru. That is the ship that arrived in Vancouver harbour, where the racist policies of the day, passed by Parliament, prevented people from landing in the harbour. They were British subjects, because India was part of the British Empire at that time, but they were turned back. Some died en route. Some were shot once they got to India. Others faced many challenges.

On that day, as we were commemorating the 100-year anniversary, a man asked if he could speak. He went up to the mike and said, “After all these years living in Canada, I got my citizenship today, of all days”. He talked about what that citizenship meant to him. That is somebody who became a naturalized Canadian citizen, just as I am.

In Canada we do not differentiate those who are born in other countries and come to this country and choose to make Canada their home because, as we know, except for our aboriginal people, most of us became Canadian citizens that way.

However, what we are seeing here in this legislation would change what citizenship means, and not just for those who are born overseas and come here and become naturalized citizens. I think it is on this aspect that Canadians need to pay close attention to what the current government is doing. This legislation, if passed as is, would mean that the minister—not the courts, not anybody else—could take away citizenship from somebody who was born in Canada. Their family could have been here for a couple of generations, but they could still have citizenship taken away from them if they have a dual citizenship.

As members know, dual citizenship is not limited to a few people in this country. There are many Canadians who have dual citizenship, and—

[Bal Gosal, Conservative, Bramalea—Gore—Malton, ON]

Are you Canadian or not?

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

Mr. Speaker, I wish my colleagues would learn to listen. I am a Canadian. I am a proud Canadian, and in this country it is the law of this land that allows one to hold dual citizenship.

However, what the government is trying to do with the bill would actually change what citizenship is, because even for someone born in Canada, the government would give the minister the ability to take that citizenship away. I think it behooves each and every one of us to pay very special attention to this provision, because we are talking about potentially taking away citizenship from people who may never have been to another country, who were born here, and who have lived here all their lives.

By the way, I am not blaming just the Conservatives. The party at the far end started this trend because it was too chicken to publicly debate the changes it was making to immigration. It vested more power into the hands of the ministers so they could make changes behind closed doors and not have to go out and explain them to Canadians. The scary part is that we have seen the current government, a government on steroids, increase that power in the hands of the ministers, whether it comes to refugee situations or otherwise. In this case the bill asks Parliament to give the minister the power to take away somebody's citizenship, and it would not have to be based upon any sound evidence. It could be based upon suspicion.

There is no judicial hearing or anywhere that a person can go to tackle that. Someone's citizenship can be taken away based on suspicion. It is that scary. What is more scary is that kind of power will be given to some of the ministers I see sitting across the aisle from me. That, I will tell the minister, should scare Canadians from coast to coast to coast.

In Canada we are proud that whether people are naturalized or whether they are born here, once they are Canadian citizens, they have the same rights and the same responsibilities. However, under this legislation we are going to take one group of Canadians and hold them to a totally different bar. They could not only have their citizenship stripped away but would then have to leave the country, based on the whims of whom? It would not be based on any trial or anything like that, but in any case we should not be using citizenship as a tool, as part of a judicial system.

Let me be clear: if anybody gets his or her citizenship in a fraudulent manner, there is already a mechanism to have that person's citizenship taken away. If anybody has lied or deliberately used fraud in order to get citizenship, of course he or she should have his or her citizenship taken away.

We are not talking about that here. We are talking about somebody born in Canada, maybe someone born just down Wellington Street or in my riding at the local hospital in Surrey. I would say that Canadians would suddenly be feeling a bit worried, because what does citizenship mean if the minister can take it away based on suspicion, et cetera?

I read a quote by the new minister of immigration and I kept thinking that a minister would not say that. Here is the quote: “Citizenship is not an inalienable birthright.” If one is born a Canadian citizen, surely that is his or her birthright. That is how people gain their citizenship, unless they have been naturalized, in which case they have the same rights and privileges.

Here is something from the U.S. Our government always likes to quote some of the governments it likes some of the time. This is with respect to the U.S. Supreme Court. It is a quote by Lorne Waldman, the president of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, on February 5, 2014. He states:

The US Supreme Court got it right over 50 years ago when it said that citizenship is not a licence that the government can revoke for misbehaviour. As Canadians, we make our citizenship feeble and fragile if we let government Ministers seize the power to extinguish it.

As I said, there are some parts to this bill that we would be pleased to support if they were separated into different components. On the other hand, there are parts of this bill that give us fundamental concern. I know the government has an allergy to experts and expert opinions, but expert after expert has said that this legislation will be open to constitutional and charter challenges.

It is too late to plead for a more in-depth debate, but when the bill gets to the committee stage, let us at least hope that we will have a wholesome debate and that the Conservatives will accept the amendments we will take to that stage.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments from the member. I take somewhat of an exception to her shots at the Liberal Party, especially when we look at the history of immigration to Canada. Many would acknowledge that Canada has been a wonderful, generous country towards immigrants. Ultimately, through immigration, we have built one of the greatest nations in the world. We have been ranked fairly high by the United Nations as one of the best countries in the world to live. A great deal of recognition likely goes to individuals like Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Jean Chrétien, and good solid sound immigration programs.

Having said that, no doubt there is a need for periodic modification. What we have witnessed over the last couple of years has been somewhat disappointing.

Could the member provide further comment? I was in the committee with the member when we had an awkward member from the Conservative Party bring forward a private member's bill that was actually being hijacked by the government, which had a totally different agenda.

Part of that agenda has now been brought into this legislation. Could the member comment?

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

Mr. Speaker, my colleague and I were at the immigration committee last year when we dealt with the precursor of parts of this bill. I could see that there was some real danger in the direction the government was going. I stand by my words that some of the power we have seen being delegated to ministers is causing me major concern. It is allowing major changes to be made to immigration and, in this case, even to take away citizenship on a suspicion, so to speak.

I do not think we want to have that kind of despotic power put into the hands of ministers. We live in a parliamentary democracy, and we need to be debating issues right here. It is time that the immigration committee got back to looking at immigration policies that would be nation building, not ones based on the fear that everybody is a terrorist.

We are getting to the stage where we are not doing Canadians any favours.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I find this bill very disturbing and for many of the reasons that the member has already outlined in terms of the notion that citizenship can be held as a discretionary privilege in the hands of any particular political administration.

As I look at this bill, one of the areas that I think is most troubling is if the minister is of a reasonable belief that individuals have a second citizenship, they can lose their Canadian citizenship. There is a very real risk that other commentators have noted that we could create, basically, statelessness for people we have decided to exile.

It is a very unusual bill in that it is unprecedented. If there are people we believe deserve punishment, we can put them in Canadian jails. If they are Canadian citizens, they should experience Canadian punishments. The notion that they would be deprived of Canadian citizenship, even people who were born in Canada, is a rather slippery slope of depriving the most fundamental aspects of what citizenship means.

Does the member think that I am right, that we might actually have a circumstance where someone ends up stateless?

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

Mr. Speaker, the original private member's bill would have led to statelessness because it did not specify where there was dual citizenship.

In this bill, it could happen. In many cases people who are thought to have dual citizenship may not.

I have heard my Conservative colleagues yell across the way that it is all about holding people to account for treachery or treasonous activities. Nobody in the NDP has said that wayward or treasonous citizens must not be held to account. Absolutely, they must be held to account.

We still believe in the judicial system. Even the most egregious crime, no matter what it is, demands fair and equal treatment under the law. This legislation would confer different levels of citizenship on different citizens. Individuals born in Canada could find themselves being removed from Canada after they have lost their citizenship. To me, that just seems bizarre. Somebody else who is born in Canada would not be facing the same kind of double jeopardy.

This just seems wrong. It does not even pass the common sense test.

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the concerns of my colleague from Newton—North Delta are well-founded. The government would certainly benefit from paying close attention to the matters she brought forward. If I could just elaborate a little bit more, we could be in a situation where, on simple suspicion of fraud, a person could have his or her citizenship revoked.

That kind of power seems excessive, especially, as the member mentioned herself, we already procedures to prove fraud and for people to be penalized and suffer the consequences of fraud where they are found guilty of it, but here we are talking about simple suspicion.

The minister himself has been quoted as saying that citizenship is a mutual responsibility. Surely the responsibility of the state would be to make sure the person's rights are safeguarded, that there would be due process and rule of law.

I would like to hear comments from the member. Does she find that the process that is being proposed here is leading to a situation of lawlessness, where the minister is taking upon himself to be judge and jury without due process? Without the benefits of the whole process, individuals can lose their citizenship and quite possibly end up stateless.

We need to have a better understanding of the rule of law in this country, and the bill seems to be going in the wrong direction.

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

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague is one of our most hard working members of Parliament in this assembly.

What we have here is, as another colleague summed it up, a solution in search of a problem. This is what the government wants to do and then it has gone backwards and asks how it can justify it. I do not see where the justification is.

Right now there is a mechanism to remove permanent residents because they are not Canadian citizens yet. There is a mechanism for a Canadian citizen who has achieved that through fraud, once proven, to have that citizenship taken away.

What are we saying when we tell people who were born in Canada or who have become citizens through naturalization that they will now be held to a different standard than another person who was born in Canada or another person who becomes a naturalized Canadian? What is it saying? It is creating a two-tiered citizenship. That is fundamentally wrong. It is the responsibility of the state. The state owes some responsibility to citizens as well.

In this case, I feel that what the minister and the government want to do is shunt that individual off somewhere, when that individual is a Canadian citizen.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary for Multiculturalism]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my colleague, the member for St. Catharines.

I am very pleased and privileged to have this opportunity to add my voice in support of Bill C-24, the government's legislation that would strengthen the value of Canadian citizenship. Let me also say that it is a privilege to be a Canadian citizen and to be able to rise in the House to speak. I first came to this country as an international student in 1968, but I was made a stateless citizen in 1971 when Canada chose to change its recognition from the Republic of China to the People's Republic of China. Due to the generosity of the Canadian immigration system, I was able to apply for my permanent resident status and subsequently became a citizen in 1976.

Let me address some of the issues in the new citizenship act. As we know, Canadian citizenship is highly valued around the world. The fact that more than 85% of eligible permanent residents go on to become citizens is a testament to this. Last year, this translated into nearly 129,000 new Canadians citizens from no fewer than 219 countries, a 14% increase over 2012 numbers. We can all take pride in the value of our citizenship and in our high naturalization rate. Unfortunately, because Canadian citizenship is so valuable, some people are prepared to lie or cheat in order to qualify. For example, they may break our citizenship law by pretending to be living in Canada when they are living abroad. In fact, more than 85% of Canadian citizenship fraud involves falsifying residency. In many cases, permanent residents have used the services of immigration consultants who fraudulently establish evidence of residence in Canada while living abroad most, if not all, of the time.

Ongoing large-scale fraud investigations have identified more than 3,000 citizens and 5,000 permanent residents linked to major investigations, the majority of them related to residents. In addition, nearly 2,000 individuals linked to these investigations have either abandoned or withdrawn their citizenship applications. Individuals who seek to obtain Canadian citizenship fraudulently have no real attachment to Canada. They want citizenship for no other reason than to obtain the many benefits associated with Canadian citizenship or purely for financial gain.

Right now, applicants must reside in Canada for three out of the previous four years before being eligible to apply for citizenship. The major fault with the current citizenship requirements is that “residence” is not defined under the current Citizenship Act. As a result, it is currently possible for someone to become a Canadian citizen even if he or she has spent little time actually living in Canada.

Under the changes we propose, the rules around resident requirements would be strengthened so that adults applying for citizenship would have to be physically present in Canada. We would also lengthen the residency requirement to four years out of the previous six years, with a specific requirement to reside in Canada for a minimum of 183 days during at least four of the six qualifying years.

In his testimony before the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, Martin Collacott, a former Canadian diplomat and spokesman for the Centre for Immigration Policy Reform, said:

...I think newcomers will value their citizenship more if they know it is not something that can be acquired quickly or without meeting certain standards.

He added:

I strongly support the provisions of Bill C-24 aimed at ensuring that residency requirements are actually met, particularly in view of evidence that thousands of people have obtained their citizenship fraudulently by claiming they had spent time in Canada when they had not.

The proposed residency requirement in Bill C-24 would be consistent with the Income Tax Act, which says that those in Canada for less than 183 days with no other attachment to Canada are considered non-residents for income tax purposes. Unlike the majority of Canadians, non-residents are generally only required to pay taxes on their Canadian-sourced income. By better aligning the residency requirement for citizenship with the residency rules under the Income Tax Act, it would help to further strengthen the value of Canadian citizenship. Coupled with the new residency requirement, it would also strengthen the permanent residence attachment to Canada.

Immigration lawyer Richard Kurland, in a recent appearance before the standing committee, said the following:

For the first time, we have a pragmatic, transparent threshold to access Canadian citizenship. That is long overdue.

We obviously agree. I would add that these amendments to the Canadian Citizenship Act are also important because the physical presence in Canada assists with permanent residents' final integration into society.

A longer residence period would enable newcomers to develop a stronger connection to Canada. Furthermore, creating a clear and longer physical presence requirement would help deter citizens of convenience. Those individuals become citizens purely for the convenience of having a Canadian passport and to access the full range of taxpayer-funded benefits that come with this status, without any intention of contributing to Canada or even residing here.

In other words, they regard their Canadian citizenship primarily as little more than an insurance policy, to quote Mr. Collacott.

Of course in order to support their admission to Canadian society, citizens must first have an adequate knowledge of one of our official languages. As Mr. Collacott has said, the basic command of one of Canada's official languages is an essential skill for newcomers who are going to be able to contribute to society and the economy, as well as be able to realize their own dreams and aspirations as immigrants.

The government also believes that citizens must have knowledge about our country as well as the responsibility and privileges of Canadian citizenship, as this knowledge is essential to a new citizen's civic participation. This is why the amendments contained in Bill C-24 would also expand the age group who must first show proof of their language proficiency and take a citizenship knowledge test. We would expand the current age group from 18 to 54 years old, to 14 to 64 years old.

This would provide incentive for more individuals to acquire official language proficiency and civic knowledge, thus improving their integration. It would also ensure that more newcomers are better prepared to assume the responsibility of citizenship.

Lengthening the residency requirement and expanding the group that must meet knowledge and language requirements would ensure that more new citizens are better prepared for full participation in all aspects of Canadian life.

As I have said, these changes would also help deter citizenship of convenience. Taken together, the amendments in Bill C-24 would preserve and protect the value of Canadian citizenship both today and in the future by ensuring Canadians have a real, rather than a tenuous or non-existent, connection to Canada.

In his testimony before the standing committee, Shimon Fogel, chief executive officer of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, said his organization appreciates the steps taken by Bill C-24 to promote strong ties to Canada and buy-in to core Canadian values. He also added that the introduction of more robust residency requirements including physical presence to qualify for citizenship is particularly well received.

Canadian citizenship is highly valued around the world and, with this balanced set of reforms, the government is taking steps to ensure that it stays that way.

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to my colleague's speech. He certainly raised some valid points, especially the fact that Canadian citizenship is highly valued. People around the world have a deep respect for Canada and Canadian citizenship.

That said, the temporary foreign worker program has shown us that it seems to be very difficult to become a Canadian citizen. It seems to be more and more difficult to obtain Canadian citizenship. The government seems to want to tighten the rules and no longer grant citizenship, or do so less frequently. Instead, the government wants to exploit foreign workers and use them as cheap labour in Canada. We have seen this on many occasions. The examples we have seen of the temporary foreign worker program in Canada show that it is used as a tool to lower the value of the worker on the labour market.

Since we are talking about the granting of citizenship, we should perhaps also talk about valuing workers in Canada. In my opinion, if someone can work, they should also have the right to vote.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

Mr. Speaker, what we need to appreciate is that citizenship itself is a privilege. To be a citizen or to be a landed immigrant to work in Canada is itself a privilege. Then we also need to be clear that we have to separate those who come here on a temporary basis from those who are here with an intention to say. Those who are here with an intention to stay, if they fulfill the residency requirements, will be granted citizenship.

One of the responsibilities of being a Canadian citizen is the ability to have some sort of civic participation. With most of our elections being somewhere between every four years and every five years, I feel it is necessary for a person to have actually physically experienced that period of time in Canada in that civic participation.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the member could provide some comment about what rationale was used when no longer recognizing workers to the degree they are recognized under the current law. Now people can work in Canada on a temporary visa and can have worked in Canada for a couple of years, and ultimately, when people land in Canada, a portion of that time period would go toward their citizenship time requirements.

It assisted individuals who were working and contributing to Canada in a very real and tangible way. As a bit of a reward for that, they did not have to wait as long as others to qualify for citizenship.

What is the rationale? Why would that be taken away from those who are here as temporary workers?

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there is a difference. Let me share my personal experience on this with him. When I first came to Canada as an international student in 1968 and graduated in 1972, I was prepared to pursue my postgraduate education either in Europe or in the United States. There was not that intent to reside in Canada or to stay in Canada. It was not until I subsequently obtained permanent residency that I decided to stay in Canada.

Therefore, when people are here on a work visa or under temporary status, there is no guarantee that they have the intention to stay. When we hear the intention or the voluntary desire that people profess to want to be a Canadian, that is the time when we should start counting their intention to be a Canadian citizen and their contribution to society.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage]

Mr. Speaker, I am certainly pleased to follow my colleague, who did such a good job describing and talking about the Citizenship Act and the changes we would make through Bill C-24. I would like to add my part to the point of how our government is planning to strengthen the value of Canadian citizenship.

Canada's 37-year-old Citizenship Act is in need of serious reforms. Its original purpose, of course, was to ensure we had individuals who worked through the process of becoming Canadian citizens and followed through on the legislation and regulation that was put forward at that time.

Indeed, the reforms today are here to work toward stopping the abuse of our immigration system and to put an end to the dubious folks who actually cheapen our citizenship by having zero connection or attachment to our country.

It is clear that our government takes the value of Canadian citizenship seriously. That is why we see this bill here before us today.

Citizenship defines who we are as Canadians, but it comes with certain responsibilities, like respect for the rule of law, contributing to the well-being of our communities, supporting ourselves and our families, and protecting our country.

Citizenship also means that we share a commitment to the values that are rooted in our history, values like peace, freedom, human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. Canadian citizenship is about more than the right to carry a passport. It is about the complete entity of what it is to be a Canadian citizen.

Citizens need to have an ongoing connection to their country, and in this particular case, an ongoing connection to our country of Canada.

As a government and as Canadians, we believe citizenship is truly something special.

When asked, Canadians across this country—especially those who have acquired, or recently acquired, Canadian citizenship—will say how special it is to actually achieve that end and that goal.

We cannot and do not attach a price to citizenship. Unfortunately there are those who would attempt to attach some form of monetary cost to Canadian citizenship.

The changes found in this legislation would be a real step in the fight against attempts to defraud the Canadian citizenship program and to defraud Canadian citizens of what is truly a remarkable feat once one achieves that citizenship.

It is unfortunate, but citizenship fraud is a serious issue in our country. The Government of Canada's investigation into residence fraud continues to grow, with nearly 11,000 individuals potentially implicated in lying to apply for citizenship or to maintain their permanent resident status. These are individuals who were most likely trying to establish the residency requirements for citizenship when they were actually living abroad. These practices demean and devalue what it is to be a Canadian and what it is to achieve Canadian citizenship.

The legislation before us would amend the Citizenship Act to ensure that, not only are we protecting the value of Canadian citizenship against those who would cheapen it, but we are also enhancing and building upon it.

Here is how we are proposing to do that. First and foremost, our citizenship program officers do not currently have the tools to determine if a consultant has been involved with an application for citizenship. We propose to change that and to require that applicants who use a representative when they apply for citizenship use only an authorized representative.

Changes to the Citizenship Act would give the minister the ability to designate a body to regulate and enforce citizenship consultant conduct. These changes would mirror recent changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

It was just a couple or three years ago that we passed that new legislation in which a regulatory body within the Ministry of Citizenship would actually oversee and ensure that only consultants who were licensed through the ministry, who were approved through the ministry, and who actually met the guidelines were able to represent both individuals attempting to achieve refugee status, in the case of our refugee act, and individuals attempting to achieve citizenship and who are applying for it through this new act.

In regulating consultants, we would offer a level of protection to newcomers that they do not have at the moment.

We have all heard stories and talk within our constituency offices and our ridings from those who come in to our office to sit down with us and explain how they have simply and very clearly been ripped off. They have been led down the garden path to believe they can achieve citizenship if only they pay $1,000, $5,000 or $10,000 to this individual who does not have a reputation of being able to achieve that end and who is not licensed to work within the province of Ontario.

The amendments would also bring the penalty for committing citizenship fraud in line with the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. They would increase the penalties for citizenship fraud to a maximum of a $100,000 fine, or up to five years in prison, or both.

The second part of this is we are taking action to strengthen the residence requirements for citizenship. My colleague spoke about that briefly in his remarks as well. Currently the Citizenship Act does not define what “residence” actually means. The act does not say or deem what “residence” or “resident requirements” actually mean when people are applying for and working through the process of citizenship.

Under the current act, prospective Canadians apply for citizenship and are simply required to have resided in Canada for three of the past four years. Our proposed amendment to the act is to stipulate that prospective Canadians would need to be physically present in Canada. This is important, because physical presence in Canada helps newcomers to integrate and establish a sense of belonging and attachment to Canada.

However, it is more than that. It is also about the ability for those individuals to learn what it is to become a Canadian, to learn about our history, to learn about our geography and what happens in the east or west of our country, what happens in Ontario and Quebec, and the fact that we have two official languages. It gives those individuals the length and the breadth of understanding, and the ability to know that when they achieve Canadian citizenship, it is because they earned it and because they understand it.

We will, however, include an exception for applicants who are outside of Canada because they are accompanying either their Canadian spouse or parent who is employed in the Canadian Armed Forces or as a crown servant. This is to prevent these permanent residents from being penalized simply because of their family's service abroad for our country.

It is an issue that we missed in the former bill, Bill C-37, which passed unanimously. I hope this citizenship bill will also pass unanimously. The former bill, Bill C-37, did not cover this instance where an individual had a spouse, parent or child employed in the Canadian Armed Forces. It would not have given those people the ability to achieve citizenship, so we will ensure it is in this act. We also want to lengthen the current residence requirements and require prospective Canadians to be physically present in Canada for four out of the six last years.

The Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration had the opportunity to hear key testimony on the bill. Organizations such as the Centre for Immigration Policy Reform and Immigrants For Canada as well as several immigration lawyers all agreed that extending the residence requirements would strengthen the attachment that individuals would have to Canada and that when they received that Canadian citizenship, it would enhance their ability as a Canadian.

Immigration lawyer, Mr. Reis Pagtakhan, noted that the longer an individual lived in Canada, the greater the connection would be. He accurately stated:

Citizenship bestows rights and protections many foreign nationals do not have. As Canadian citizens, they can vote and seek elected office, so it is important that they participate in Canadian life before they become citizens.

I could not agree more. Newcomers should have a deep understanding of Canada's culture and society before they apply for citizenship. We believe Canada has a strong identity, and this bill would build on that sense of nation.

Finally, as part of their applications, applicants would also be asked whether they intended to reside in Canada. If an applicant had no intention to reside in our country after they obtained citizenship, or if the government obtained information to this effect, they would not be eligible for that citizenship.

Our citizenship is highly valued around the world. Canadian citizenship is an honour and a privilege. It comes not only with rights, but it comes with responsibilities. The bill would reinforce that, build on it and take that 37 years since we have worked on the act and make it that much stronger and that much better. It would close a loop that should have been closed a long time ago.

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, some parts of the parliamentary secretary's comments were enlightening, but a lot of it was, in my opinion, quite terrifying.

He spoke of fraud, that the bill would address individuals who tried to exploit people who were trying to immigrate to Canada by charging them vast sums of money to get to our country. I do not see how revoking someone's citizenship in Canada is going to stop someone overseas from exploiting a person overseas. The question really is how do we protect Canadians in Canada.

He mentioned that there would be new residency requirements. The person would have to abide by an intent to reside in Canada for four years. The Canada Revenue Agency, notoriously, cannot define intent when it comes to residency, so how does he think the immigration department will do any better?

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Mr. Speaker, let me just give the member the example of how we achieved the Refugee Protection Act. Consultants must now be licensed. They must be approved. They must work through that process. They are known within the ministry. The minute there is an attempt to take advantage as a consultants the individuals would now have the opportunity to go to the ministry, inform the regulatory body of what happened and an investigation would begin immediately. That has never happened when we have pursued the issue of Canadian citizenship and the ability for those to achieve it through fraudulent means.

If the member takes a look and reviews how successful it has been over the past few years with respect to the refugee legislative changes we have made, he will see that this is a strong supporting mechanism that has worked, and it will work within the framework of our citizenship changes as well.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, every year Canada benefits immensely from students from all over the world who come to study at our universities, colleges and many private institutions. In many ways they come to Canada because they believe they might have an opportunity to ultimately land in Canada. At least a fair percentage of them come to Canada believing and hoping that this will happen. For many of them it will materialize. They will ultimately land in Canada.

My question for the former parliamentary secretary to the minister of immigration is this. Why has the government decided to recognize students who have been studying in Canada, but not allow those students to use a portion of the time they are in Canada as a way to meet the requirement of being here for a certain period of time to get their citizenship? Why not allow those students to use a portion of the time they were here while studying under a temporary student visa as a way to provide incentive and encouragement? After all, they have made a significant contribution even before they have applied to land in Canada. Why take that away from them?

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we have not taken that away from them. In fact, we have introduced a process, and he is very familiar with it, that students from other countries who come to study in Canada have an opportunity to seek out permanent residency upon their graduation. Permanent residency is a first step for them to reach that citizenship.

However, let us be clear. Canadian citizenship should be at value, at a potential height, that is not only respected but honoured. If individuals come to our country with every intention of studying or working here on a temporary visa and their intentions are to go back to their country of origin, we will honour that. We have the individual having the visa. We have the individual who is allowed to work here and he or she returns home.

However, when it comes to Canadian citizenship, if this is the value that individuals want to achieve, the ability to have Canadian citizenship, then giving up four years of their lives to live here directly on the soil of our country to earn that citizenship, I challenge you to find one person, one Canadian citizen in our country who would not say “That seems pretty fair to me”.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Before resuming debate, I would like to remind all hon. members to direct their comments to the Chair rather than directly to their colleagues.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for London—Fanshawe.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Scarborough—Rouge River.

With the exception of our first nations brothers and sisters, all of us in the chamber are newcomers to this country, every one of us, and we should be very aware of that reality when we start to bandy about and talk about citizenship. My own family came from places across the world.

My husband is from Holland, one grandmother was from the United States, a grandfather was from England, and my paternal grandfather was from Italy. In the case of my paternal grandfather, there are various stories about the reason for his departure from Italy. Some say poverty. I am inclined to believe it had something to do with him smoking under the police station veranda and accidentally causing a fire that made his departure essential. No matter what the reason, all who came here came for a better life. They came to make a new beginning, and that is what makes this bill so very important. That is also what makes it so very important to get Bill C-24 right.

Bill C-24 is an attempt to amend the Citizenship Act. It causes, at least on this side of the House, some great concerns regarding the fairness and constitutionality of the changes suggested by the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. Everyone agrees that Canadian citizenship is something of enormous value. It is sought after around the world. However, what we do not want to see is any approach that plays politics with the issue, a situation that we have seen all too often from the government.

The Conservatives have a track record of politicizing issues for partisan gain. They also have a history of violently denouncing anyone who dares to contradict or disagree with them, including public servants like Linda Keen, Richard Colvin, Kevin Page, Pat Strogran, Munir Sheikh, Marc Mayrand, environmental groups, scientists, unions and international NGOs. How can the government be trusted with the power to decide, with no reference to courts or appeals processes, who should have their citizenships revoked and who should be secretly granted citizenship?

Some of the changes to the Citizenship Act would address deficiencies in the current system, and they should be applauded. With respect to the bill, it is high time that the issue of the lost Canadians was addressed. This is an absurdly unfair situation that has gone on far too long. The bill would allow for individuals to finally obtain Canadian citizenship, individuals who were born before the first Canadian citizenship act took effect. This would also extend to their children born outside of Canada in the first generation, this citizenship that is their right.

Despite this positive amendment, though, other parts of the bill are, as I said, profoundly concerning. For example, the question of revoking citizenship has raised significant legal concerns and we are always worried about proposals to concentrate more power in the hands of the minister. Under the provisions of the bill, the minister may revoke citizenship if he or any staffer he authorizes is satisfied on the balance of probabilities. Staffers are not elected, they are not responsible to Canadians, and yet they may be granted the authority to say that an individual has obtained citizenship by fraud.

Until now, such cases have all typically gone through the courts and cabinet. It would not be the case anymore. Again, the judicial process would be sidestepped. Are the Conservatives telling Canadians that they do not believe we have a reliable judiciary? Well, maybe just Supreme Court judges.

This aspect poses serious issues to the extent that the minister would have the power to revoke a person's citizenship solely based on suspicion, without an independent tribunal to rule on the veracity of the allegations. Does no one on the government benches understand how terrifyingly dangerous this is? Many organizations, including the Canadian Bar Association and the United Nations Children's Fund, have also expressed a concern over this and many other of the bill's provisions, and they have offered several amendments that could strengthen the bill.

One of the major problems that we have addressed with this bill is the broad discretionary powers granted to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, especially when dealing with revocation of citizens with dual citizenship. This is extremely concerning. Canadian law has already established procedures by which to punish individuals who commit unlawful acts. It is unnecessary to grant these powers to the minister. Ministers come and go. The judicial system is the one constant, but this bill would take the Federal Court out of the equation except in very limited circumstances. Awarding this much power to the minister is, as I said, dangerous and, in a matter as serious as citizenship, a fair and impartial decision-maker must be maintained.

The Canadian Bar Association believes that because revocation of citizenship is such a serious matter, a statutory tribunal like the immigration appeal division should have jurisdiction to consider the validity of the minister's decision to revoke citizenship. This provision to allow the minister such power would create a two-tier citizenship system where some Canadians would have their citizenship revoked and others would be punished by the criminal system for the same offence. The new revocation procedures are apparently related to a citizen's loyalty to Canada. However, it is unclear why only dual citizens should be so targeted. Do the Conservatives think dual citizens are less loyal than other Canadians? We have to step back from this and make a very clear statement that all Canadians should be treated fairly and equally. The Canadian Bar Association also warns that this process is likely unconstitutional and warrants serious additional review. Many of the revocation processes are quite simply discriminatory and retroactive.

UNICEF has also weighed in. It argues that these changes could place vulnerable children at risk and leave them without sufficient protection. The potential revocation of a child's parent who is of dual citizenship could lead to family separation where the child is abandoned in Canada without a parent or legal guardian. Just some weeks ago I was in Geneva at the Inter-Parliamentary Union meeting. We discussed at length the issue of abandoned children, children in war-torn areas or children who had lost their parents, and what the world had to do in terms of ensuring these children were protected and safe because they were alone. And here we are in this country that is supposed to be democratic, that is supposed to have principles and mores, setting up a situation where a child could be abandoned. It is unspeakable. It is unbelievable. What have we come to?

Further, under these revocation procedures, it is possible for a child to be found to be or believed to be guilty of an act that warrants revocation. How absolutely absurd to treat a child as an adult. This is undermining international law. Children who are faced with these circumstances will not likely have any familial ties in their homeland and may not have the proper channels to fight any decisions that revoke their citizenship. They are children, and we are supposed to care about that and we are supposed to protect them. These potential situations can place children in situations where their lives and their futures are at serious risk. UNICEF suggests incorporating an amendment that would require children under the age of 18 to not be included in the assessment.

Canada has a proud record of high naturalization rates. We are among the highest in the OECD, and we should continue to encourage people to become new citizens rather than creating procedures that only make it more difficult for them to do so. These individuals have the potential to be the biggest asset that we have. They account for 67% of our annual population growth. It is imperative that we make the necessary changes to this bill so that our society can continue to flourish and benefit from new Canadian immigrants.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for her highly enlightening presentation.

I think that most, if not all, of us here in the House agree on the importance of Canadian citizenship. Before granting Canadian citizenship to someone, we must ensure that the criteria we are using are as objective as possible.

What does my colleague think about the idea in Bill C-24 that, from now on, there will be a declaration of intent to reside in the country?

Having an intention means opening the door to all kinds of speculation. For example, a person might say he intends to settle in Canada and remain here, but then he might be offered work outside the country a few months later. That happens to lots of Canadians. Would anyone doubt that person's intention when he said he planned to settle and reside in Canada?

I think that this criterion is not the kind of objective criterion we are looking for, and I would like to know what my colleague thinks about it.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, by way of answering, I have to tell the member about my experience in London.

I go to every citizenship court that I can and what I see there is incredible pride, tears of joy, and a real sense of how important it is to be part of this country. However, I can understand, and I tell this to these new Canadians, how terrifying it must be to come to a new country. They leave everything that they know behind: their family, friends, work, and the things they are familiar with that guide them through life. I admire their courage, but for some who come here, the decision to stay, no matter how intended they are in regard to staying, must sometimes give them pause. I understand where minds can be changed. Situations may be such that they cannot stay.

To have the Conservative government speculate and be so suspicious of everybody's motives troubles me very much. I think people come here with integrity, honesty, and a will to make a life here. If that does not work out, well, that is a situation that we have to accept. However, this kind of suspicious and negative treatment by the government over and over again is unspeakable.

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

Mr. Speaker, the member for London—Fanshawe has uttered so many incorrect claims that it is impossible to address them in a few seconds. She is wrong about children. She is wrong about the levels of proof required to revoke citizenship. She is wrong about the authority of the minister. She is wrong about the role of the judiciary in all of these tests.

My first questions is: why is she fearmongering in this case?

Why is the member trying to make this claim at a time when citizenship has never been more popular, at a time when Canadians have never been more law-abiding, more prepared to follow the rules, and insistent that the rules be followed? Why is she insisting somehow that we will base revocation on suspicion when neither in the law nor in regulation is that remotely possible? It has not been possible for years, and it certainly is not possible now.

Could the member for London—Fanshawe please tell us why she is fearmongering tonight?

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have to say that I am quite delighted by that question. It seems to me that in case after case, in situation after situation, in statute after statute, the current Conservative government has placed itself above the law.

Conservatives can talk about the law all they want, but let us think about the judiciary, for example. Let us think about Supreme Court justices. Let us think about laws that prove to be unconstitutional. Over and over again, they think they are above the law, and this particular bill is no different.

To underscore the fact that the Conservatives think they can do anything they want, I would just like to remind everyone about people who have come into disagreement with them: Linda Keen, Richard Colvin, Kevin Page, Pat Stogran, Munir Sheikh, Marc Mayrand. All of these people have had the misfortune to disagree.

Well, I am not fearmongering. I am disagreeing, and I am not afraid to do so.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am really grateful that I have the opportunity to speak to the bill before us today in the House because there are so many other bills that I wanted to speak to. The government consistently forced the ending of debate, whether it was through closure or time allocation. Its record now stands at 60. Even on this bill we are speaking under time allocation. I really wanted to do a full 20-minute speech, but now I do not have the time to do this.

In February, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration tabled Bill C-24. He stated that the bill and the changes within it are meant to actually reduce citizenship fraud, increase efficiency of the system, and reduce backlogs. He said that it would “protect the value of Canadian citizenship for those who have it while creating a faster and more efficient process for those applying to get it”. Yet the bill is not actually doing much of any of that.

I personally value my Canadian citizenship very much and I am sure everyone agrees overall that Canadian citizenship is something of enormous value to everyone. All Canadians value it very much. I do not want to see changes to our system at citizenship and immigration that play partisan politics with something that is so fundamentally important to so many.

I welcome some of the changes in the bill as it does address some long overdue deficiencies in our current system. However, many of the other changes proposed in the bill cause much concern and need significant amendments to ensure the protection of our valued Canadian citizenship.

In the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, of which I am a member, we have been doing a pre-study on the subject matter of the bill. We have had presentations and witnesses, but we have many more write to the committee hoping that they would be able to appear at committee when the bill is sent back to committee for actual study. Considering the fact that the Conservatives have now moved time allocation in the House on the debate, I am scared and nervous that we are not going to do a full study of the bill when it is sent to committee and that we are not going to be able to hear from more witnesses.

I want to list a couple of the organizations that have sent in requests to appear. These are not individual Canadians. Individual Canadians who want to make a presentation at committee should be able to. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees wants to make a presentation, but will not be able to. Amnesty International wants to make a presentation, but will probably not be able to. These are expert witnesses who want to speak at committee about the bill, but I am scared that we will not be able to do a proper study of the bill when it gets to committee.

A positive element of the bill is the issue of the lost Canadians. It is high time that this issue is addressed. It is an unfair situation that has gone on for far too long. We heard from the Canadian Council for Refugees and a couple of other witnesses who welcomed the measures to address the unfair exclusions from citizenship that have been allowed to go on for decades. They are, of course, the lost Canadians who are pre-1947 cases.

However, the council said that it regrets that there are no measures to address the unfair situations created by the 2009 amendments by the government to deny citizenship to the second generation born abroad. Canada is now creating a new set of lost Canadians and making some children who were born to Canadians stateless. We are signatories to the UN convention for the prevention of statelessness and this is what is happening.

Even though I said I am going to be speaking about good things, there is a sprinkle of bad even in the good.

Another good item in the bill is expedited citizenship for permanent residents who are currently serving in the Canadian Forces. When we did another study in the citizenship committee, I remember that a representative from the forces gave us actual statistics. He said it is about 15 people on average. What it would do is shorten the residency requirements from the new four-year requirement to three years for permanent residents who are serving in the armed forces. It is a great way to thank those people who are serving in the forces.

A third good thing is stricter rules for fraudulent immigration consultants. It is high time we finally regulated these immigration consultants. The NDP has been calling for the regulation of immigration consultants. We do not tolerate or condone any form of immigration fraud. We have pushed the government to develop tough legislation to crack down on the crooked immigration consultants. We have been supportive of anti-fraud measures. We would like to see increased resources for the RCMP and CBSA to continue to identify these fraudsters who are hurting a lot of citizens in Canada and are increasing the work in many of our MPs' offices, to be honest.

Now I am going to move on to the negative aspects of this bill. I do not have enough time left to go through the many bad things in this bill.

This bill would create far too many new barriers to citizenship. It would create a longer waiting period to qualify for citizenship. It would not actually give any value to pre-PR time spent in this country. UNICEF Canada has sent us a brief that says that we would be in contravention of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which we are a signatory.

There would be increased fees. Fees would double from $200 to $400. The language requirement right now is 18-54 years old for the language test, and Bill C-24 would change it to 14-64 years old.

Let me get into what UNICEF said about these actual changes. I know we do not have enough time for me to go through all the things I would like to say.

Bill C-24 proposes to amend subsection 5(2) of the Citizenship Act.... This shift in age requirements is problematic for immigrant and refugee children for a number of reasons. For instance, language and knowledge testing of children could lead to challenges with reuniting children with their families, and therefore could lead to the deprivation of the child's right to family reunification under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (article 10). This measure does not take into account the added stress that such testing may cause, or the children's ability to be able to be successful in test environments. In some cases, children may be still facing fear of authority, trauma from their home countries, and other experiences—depending on their individual life circumstances and migratory paths—that impair their capacity to successfully take such tests.

They go on.

I did not even touch on the fact that this bill would allow for the revocation of citizenship. The revocation would be based on the creation of two tiers of citizenship in this country.

My understanding is that one is either a Canadian citizen or not. There is no real in between. The government would create that in-between case. One would be a Canadian citizen with only Canadian citizenship or a Canadian citizen who had dual citizenship with another country or who the minister has reason to believe has dual citizenship. If that were the case, whether an individual actually had dual citizenship or wished to have it or if the minister believed the person might have another citizenship, the onus would now be on the individual to prove citizenship to the minister. The minister would have the discretion to revoke somebody's citizenship for committing a crime in another country or jurisdiction.

It just goes to show that there are so many things that are bad in this bill.

I really wish I had more time and that I was not speaking under time allocation so I could get through the other things I would like to talk about. Hopefully my colleagues will ask questions about the limitations and the values of people in Canada who are spending time as pre-permanent residents.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, I sat here and listened to the member's dissertation, and I have to say that I am pleased that there are a number of things in the bill she does like. However, I know that there is a particular aspect of the bill that is critically important in her riding of Scarborough—Rouge River, as it is in mine, because we are both from greater Toronto area ridings, which is a very multicultural part of the country.

The new bill proposes a new system. We would go from a three-step process to a one-step process for processing Canadian citizenship applications. That would reduce wait times from upwards of three years to less than a year. That would be very significant in our ridings.

I wonder if she could speak to how processing citizenship faster, as this bill proposes to do, would affect her constituents and her constituency work?

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member is a parliamentary secretary, and he is on the immigration committee. He has heard, just as I have, time after time and hour after hour, from witnesses who are experts in the community, including lawyers and front-line service agents as well as individuals who came to the committee who said the exact opposite. They said that processing would actually increase, and it would actually make it harder for people to become Canadian citizens.

The first piece is that people would now have to wait longer to qualify. The residency questionnaire that would be a new introduction would also make it more difficult for people to get their citizenship and it would take longer.

We know that the wait time for some people is already almost five years. Some people have been waiting almost five years for their citizenship applications to be processed under the Conservative government with its backlog.

The Canadian Council for Refugees says it would make people wait longer. That would undermine Canada's stated commitment to integrate newcomers into this country. That is what the government is trying to do. It is trying to undermine newcomers to this country in integrating well into our community.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, when it came time to look at the issue of revoking citizenship, if it had not been not for the United Nations policy that a country cannot make an individual stateless, the government would have had the ability to withdraw a person's citizenship, even if it made that person stateless. We need to acknowledge that point.

The member was quite right when she commented at the tail end of her speech. She made reference to two-tier citizenship. That is something we need to be very wary of. Why would the government establish two tiers? I suspect that we will see challenges that will go right to the Supreme Court.

I would like to ask the member if she would like to provide further comment on how the government would establish two-tier membership and how those with dual membership would be treated compared to individuals who had just Canadian citizenship.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is correct. A private member's bill a Conservative member brought forward actually did exactly what he suggested, and that was revoke people's citizenship and create a situation of statelessness. When that bill was studied in committee, we realized how poor it was, and the Conservatives decided to kill it. Of course, they changed it from the quality work the committee did. They amended that bill, put it into Bill C-24, and are now creating two tiers of Canadian citizenship.

The answer to his question is that there are people who have only Canadian citizenship, whether it is through birth or naturalization or from renouncing another citizenship they may have had. There are also people who have dual citizenship. What is happening is that people who have dual citizenship are now being discriminated against. Because they have dual citizenship, the minister in Canada has the opportunity to revoke their Canadian citizenship and send them to their home countries, whether they have ever been in those countries or not. They could have been born in Canada, and for whatever reason have access to another citizenship. The Canadian minister can now take away their Canadian citizenship, their country of birth, just because they might have a claim to another citizenship.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank everyone in the House tonight, and those across Canada who are taking part in this debate. It is important, it is historic, and it will have an impact on generations of new Canadians to come, on lost Canadians, and on those who have not benefited from the privileges of citizenship today unjustly. It means a great deal for all of us who take pride in our Canadian citizenship.

There is a coincidence that this debate should be happening now, because it was 100 years ago this month, on May 22, 1914, when a middle-aged R.B. Bennett, who was the member of Parliament for Calgary at the time, said the following:

If the benefits of our citizenship and participation in our future are, as I think they are, privileges so great that they cannot be measured or expressed...five years is not too long a term.

He went on to say:

...those who come after us bear the standard.... [and] cannot do that unless we do something to acquaint those who deserve to take on our citizenship with its benefits and privileges, and also with its responsibilities and obligations.

R.B. Bennett said that 100 years ago this month. That is how old Canadian citizenship is as a legal concept. I had not realized that it was entrenched in law by the House long before the 1947 Canadian Citizenship Act. This was part of the Naturalization Act of 1914, a historic step forward for our Canadian identity, for our rights as citizens, for our autonomy within a British empire, and for our accession to full nationhood, which of course, in that month of 1914, had not yet been formed in the crucible of World War I—

[An hon. member]

The Statute of Westminster.

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

—but would be soon after.

Members are reminding me about the Statute of Westminster and World War II, and so it went on to 1947 when our first citizenship act was passed. Canadian citizenship builds on a noble tradition.

It draws on the pride of French Canadians, those who settled and stayed in New France, who believed in the virtue of their system of government and the power of their institutions under the reign of Louis XIV.

It draws on the pride of first nations aboriginal peoples in their place on this land, on its lakes, on its rivers, in this physical space; the care they have always taken for these places; and the respect they have always shown for its natural heritage. It builds on centuries of belief that, as Bennett said, with the privileges of citizenship go the responsibilities. These are responsibilities that Canadians exercised in the War of 1812 and responsibilities that they exercised on a grand scale after that debate a hundred years ago, as Europe marched to war and Canada marched with it. It has evolved and changed in every generation. It has kept up with the times. It has been, in many respects, ahead of the times.

I just had the pleasure of meeting with the UN high commissioner for refugees, Antonio Guterres. Everyone has heard that he is here in Canada, travelling across the country, continuing to consider our country an example of the best behaviour in its treatment of asylum seekers and refugees. All of that generosity is based on the firm foundations of citizenship that we have and the foundations of our privileges and responsibilities as members of this society, those with the right to vote, those with the right to sit in this place, those with the right to carry that passport proudly around the world.

We on this side do not take the responsibility of citizenship lightly. We on this side, with the vast majority of Canadians, understand that, from 1977 to today, 37 years is a long time to go without a thorough root and branch reform and modernization of our institution of citizenship. That is why we are here tonight. That is why we have given days of debate to second reading in the House. We have given nights to this debate as well, in committee. That is why we continue to listen with interest to the other side, in the hope that we will hear something new and not just puppets on the other side somehow repeating the hopelessly misguided statements of the Canadian Bar Association or a couple of witnesses who came before committee who really do not understand what citizenship in Canada is today. We have not heard anything really original from the opposition so far. We look forward to hearing that. There is still time. There will be lots of us on this side of the House to listen.

In the meantime, let us remind ourselves what the bill would do. It would make our processing of citizenship more efficient. It would reinforce the value of citizenship. It would strengthen integrity and remove fraud from this program. It would protect and promote Canada's interests and values. For everyone in the House, because we all have constituents in our ridings who are new Canadians, immigrants, and permanent residents, what matters most is processing, in the short term.

Citizenship in our country has never been more popular than it is today. We have one of the highest naturalization rates in the world. It may be the highest in the world. At 86%, it is well beyond what Australia, the United States, the U.K., and other immigration countries have. It has gone up in our government's time in office, as we have raised the bar slightly in terms of knowledge and language requirements for citizenship in Canada, because we think there should be an attachment—

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I have heard the minister say that we have debated this bill for days and days. Could the minister tell us which days? As I recall, this is only for two hours.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

That is obviously not a point of order.

The minister has the floor.

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

Mr. Speaker, we are proud of the fact that, by increasing the value of Canadian citizenship, we have actually enticed more immigrants to this country and enticed more of those immigrants to want to become citizens. Last year there were 333,000 applications to become a Canadian citizen, a record unparalleled in Canadian history.

As a consequence, we have a backlog and it now takes two to three years to process a new application. That is too long. The measures in this bill would streamline decision-making and improve the ability to determine up front what constitutes a complete application; and provide a strengthened authority to abandon applications where applicants do not take the steps requested to provide information and appear before a hearing, where they have not taken on their responsibilities as citizens to get the job done. All of that would make a difference this year if we pass this bill into law, with the low scenario of 150,000-plus people becoming Canadian citizens if we filibustered this out, listened to every member on the other side repeat the same speeches, let them have their way and this debate went on for months; as it did not do in 1914. The debate then, which was in many ways even more historic as it was citizenship for the first time, went on for a day by my reading of the Debates. It was a good debate on all sides of the issue. The opposition members had their points. They were well informed.

If we were to let the opposition have its way, tens of thousands of new immigrants to this country would be denied their citizenship this year, because the measures in this bill would make processing more efficient this year, and it would make the difference between 150,000-plus or many tens of thousands more. That is what Canadians really deserve to know about the implications of this bill.

We have heard members opposite say that we are putting citizenship out of reach, that we are making it harder. We are talking about—

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

Order, please. On a point of order, the member for Scarborough—Rouge River.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I was waiting for a natural pause in the minister's speech. The minister was a little confused, it seemed, with the actual number of hours in here. I just want to say that it was on February 27—

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

Order, please. I have already ruled that is not a point of order.

The hon. minister has the floor.

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

Mr. Speaker, we are determined to make that processing happen, but we are also determined to continue to reinforce the value of Canadian citizenship to show that it is not just by being interested in Canada, by being domiciled in Canada, or by having visited Canada that one becomes a Canadian citizen.

There has always been a principle of residency in this country behind Canadian citizenship, since 1914 when the length of time in that bill was actually raised to five years. It stayed there for a good long time. It was reduced to three years under the Trudeau government of the 1970s. That was too little. It was not only a much shorter time than Australia, the U.K., the U.S., all of our peers, France, and other European countries have. Many of them have much longer periods, seven or ten years.

It was also a short period of time during which a select few of those who paid the right lawyers or paid the right crooked consultants were able to leave requirements unfulfilled. They pretended they were here for three years when, in fact, they were not. That cheapened Canadian citizenship. That undermined the value of Canadian citizenship. That made us, in some parts of the world, in terms of citizenship, a laughingstock.

It is this government that has done more than any in our history to clean up that abuse, abuse that began in 1977 under a flawed model of citizenship, and we are absolutely convinced that it is the right thing to do to require four out of six years of physical residency in this country, and to be able to check that people are actually here, to be able to avoid all of that paperwork, those banker's boxes of receipts and plane tickets that people used to have to bring with their citizenship applications. We would be able to do it electronically starting next year, and there would not be fraud associated with our residency requirement.

We would also clarify that residence means physical presence. We would ask prospective citizens not just to be physically present but to say up front that they intend to reside in Canada. It sounds reasonable that someone who is physically present in Canada for three, now four, years would actually have the intention of being here.

The opposition seems to think that people end up here by accident, that they do not intend to be here and that we should not ask them what they intend because they are here anyway. They kind of sleepwalk into Canada. That is the perspective of the Canadian Bar Association. That is the perspective of a few on the other side.

Would it curb their mobility rights? Absolutely not. For people who say they intend to reside in Canada and then decide to go somewhere else or marry someone else or accept a job offer somewhere else, their intent to reside in Canada ends. Their physical presence in Canada is curtailed. They would not qualify for Canadian citizenship at that point in their lives. So be it.

Their human rights, their rights under the Canadian charter, their rights as permanent residents would not be affected. They have just changed their plans. Anyone who pretends that this is interference, that this is an unfair burden on new Canadians, has not talked to any new immigrants lately. New immigrants are proud to say that they intend to reside here. They want to become citizens as quickly as possible.

Right now, already, it is not three years on average that people spend here; it is actually four years, on average, that the majority of new Canadians have spent here before they apply to be Canadian citizens. We are actually catching up with reality. It is actually something that Canadians want us to do to ensure that the connection, the integration, and the sense of belonging are strong, the way they should be among citizens who share political institutions, who share the burden of participating in this democracy together.

The third set of measures we have in this bill relates to citizenship fraud, combatting abuse of the citizenship process, among other reforms. I am glad to hear some on the opposition side say they are happy to see a regulatory body set to be designated for citizenship consultants.

There is a much larger of immigration consultants. We made a very successful effort to regulate them, to make sure that they are self-regulating and that the ones who were counselling people and guiding them down the wrong path toward residency fraud and all kinds of abuses would be left out of the game from now on. We made sure that people would get good, honest advice.

We have all heard cases in our constituency offices of people who spent large amounts of money in different parts of the world to supposedly come to Canada, but then the person disappeared or the advice was wrong or the application was only half filled in. We do not want our citizenship to be associated with that kind of advice. Under this measure, we would take another important step toward making sure that we are not.

We would also increase the penalty for committing citizenship fraud. We would streamline the revocation process and bar people whose citizenship was revoked because they obtained it fraudulently from reapplying for citizenship for 10 years. Did members know that? Did they know that those who obtained citizenship fraudulently and who had it revoked by cabinet could then reapply for citizenship? It was not considered a crime.

Criminals are inadmissible to Canada. They would be inadmissible as citizens under this bill, but we were still letting people who had committed citizenship fraud come back and be citizens. That would no longer happen.

We would also revoke Canadian citizenship from dual citizens who are members of an armed force or an organized armed group engaged in armed conflict against Canada. We would deny citizenship to permanent residents involved in the same actions. Dual citizens and permanent residents convicted of terrorism, high treason, treason, or spying offences would be similarly affected, depending on the sentence received.

Some on the other side, and the bar association again, like a bad Greek chorus, have said this would create two classes of citizenship. I mean no offence to the parliamentary secretary; I am talking about an ancient Greek chorus.

It is actually very simple, and everyone on the opposition benches would do well to understand the difference. People are citizens if they do not commit these crimes; if they commit the crimes, they are no longer citizens. That is the difference. There are not two classes of citizenship. We would not have citizens who have other nationalities in circumstances where these very grave acts of disloyalty to Canada are committed.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

But if they only have citizenship in Canada—

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

Mr. Speaker, I am being heckled by the Liberal Party again. It has been going on all day.

The Liberals used to stand by these kinds of principles. Their Citizenship Act, in 1947, made it possible to strip citizenship from those who committed treason, even if it made them stateless.

That was the Liberal Party when it stood up for Canadian citizenship, when it had been hardened by war, when it had solid people in its front bench, and when it was fiscally responsible. Today the Liberals joke about it, but let us be honest: Louis St. Laurent was quite fiscally responsible. It was a long time ago, before any of them were born.

The fact of the matter is that all of this went by the boards in 1977 when the Trudeau model came forward. Dual citizenship was allowed in Canada, and rightly so. We respect that. However, there was next to no penalty and next to no interest in whether people were loyal in these deep ways to Canada, to her institutions, and to her laws, and there were almost no consequences.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this was a time when the Liberal Party was somewhere between the superpowers in the Cold War, playing footsie with Moscow and not standing on the kinds of principles that Canadians like to stand on and have stood on for centuries.

This measure is reasonable. We would not create stateless people with this measure. It would not apply to those who have only Canadian citizenship, and anyone who wants it to not apply them can renounce their other citizenship.

If a dual national commits these crimes, they would be far fewer in number than the number of citizenships revoked for fraudulent intention.

This would be the right thing to do. It would send a powerful message. It would be a powerful deterrent telling those inside the country and outside that we are serious not only about the privileges and benefits of citizenship but also about the responsibilities, the accountability, and the example that we expect to be set by those who carry the passport, by those who vote in this country, and by those who are proud to call themselves Canadian citizens, as we have done for 100 years.

[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.

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

Mr. Speaker, to be honest, I am not sure that I followed my colleague's reasoning, but I see where he was going. This bill would create two classes of citizens, which I mentioned in my speech.

Richard Kurland, who testified in committee, said that there was a very big design flaw in paragraph 10(3)(a) of the bill. This paragraph states:

(3) Before revoking a person’s citizenship or renunciation of citizenship, the Minister shall provide the person with a written notice that specifies:

(a) the person’s right to make written representations;

That is not enough, because it means that if we want to revoke someone's refugee status, they have a right to a public hearing, but if we want to revoke someone's citizenship, they only have the right to make written representations. There are the two classes of citizens.

[Devinder Shory, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I would like to note that I will be sharing my time with the member for Vancouver South.

I am honoured to rise in the House tonight to speak to our government's Bill C-24, the strengthening Canadian citizenship act. This legislation would be the first major overhaul of the Citizenship Act in nearly a generation.

While Bill C-24 touches on a variety of areas, all of which would make important changes strengthening the integrity of the immigration system and preserving the value of Canadian citizenship, there are several areas I am particularly passionate to be speaking to tonight. Those areas of the bill encompass the entirety of my former private member's bill, Bill C-425. When I first introduced my bill, I gave the reasons for tabling that legislation. My intention was to reward permanent residents for their service in our Canadian Armed Forces and to underscore the immense value of Canadian citizenship by revoking it from those convicted of terrorism or treason.

I would like to extend my sincerest thanks to our hard-working Minister of Citizenship and Immigration and member for Ajax—Pickering for keeping those provisions of my bill alive by drafting them into Bill C-24. I would also like to thank each and every one of my current Conservative colleagues on the citizenship and immigration committee for their diligent work, and also those who have contributed long hours spent keeping these ideas alive in the face of unrelenting opposition filibustering last year.

I believe the importance of this legislation cannot be overstated. It is good news for new Canadians, good news for settled Canadians, and good news for those hoping to become Canadians, and I will tell members why.

Bill C-24 would honour our Canadian Armed Forces by fast-tracking citizenship by one year for permanent residents serving Canada in our military who have stated their intention to become citizens. As members know, service in the Canadian Armed Forces is unique. We call on our soldiers to make the ultimate sacrifice, to risk their lives in faraway places away from their families in some of the worst conditions imaginable, and they do it gladly. They are willing to lay their lives down for their fellow Canadians. That is what makes service in the Canadian Armed Forces unique and deserving of the highest possible respect.

Bill C-24 seeks not only to support these brave men and women but also to strengthen and defend the values they stand for and protect. To do this, we must act to address one of the biggest threats facing Canada today: terrorism. Bill C-24 would allow for the revocation of citizenship for any dual citizen who is convicted of a terrorism offence, treason, or waging war against the Canadian Armed Forces as part of an armed group. This measure would bring Canada into line with virtually every other western democratic nation that has similar revocation laws.

Strangely enough, the opposition Liberals and New Democrats continue to strongly oppose this measure. I know what I am about to say is not new, but it seems to me that those members on the other side of the House need to be reminded once again, perhaps again and again, that the Canadian public overwhelmingly supports revoking citizenship from convicted terrorists.

If the members were to survey their own supporters or Canadians in general, they would find the following, according to a national poll conducted by NRG: over 83% of Canadians from coast to coast to coast support the idea of stripping citizenship from convicted terrorists; of those, 80% of people who identified as NDP supporters support this measure; and, 87% of those who identified as Liberal supporters also support this measure. Also interesting to note is that among those who were polled, when it comes to those born in Canada versus those not born here, 83% of immigrants support stripping citizenship from convicted terrorists versus 82% of settled Canadians.

I would like to know why it is that the opposition Liberals and New Democrats continue to choose to ignore the will of Canadians and the international community.

Some people might be surprised by the last figure I gave, but as an immigrant myself, and as the member of Parliament for the hard-working riding of Calgary Northeast, the most diverse riding in the country, I know that new Canadians as well as settled Canadians understand the need for this measure.

Canadians understand that when a dual national willingly decides to radicalize and participate in terrorist crimes, to carry out bombings, to plot the murder of his or her fellow citizens, this is damaging to the value we attach to Canadian citizenship.

We cannot wait for the terrorists to submit an application to renounce their citizenship. We must read into their actions a deemed renunciation of that citizenship. This measure is entirely consistent with our sister jurisdictions among western democracies.

I have spoken to many ethnic organizations, groups, and constituents in my riding and across Canada. The overwhelming majority support revocation of citizenship for convicted terrorists.

For example, Salma Siddiqui, president of Muslim Canadian Congress, had this to say while testifying on my private member's bill on March 26, 2013:

Canadians who are opposed to the values of our society should not be allowed to abuse the privileges that come with holding Canadian citizenship. We must act to strip Canadian citizenship from those who seek to exploit it for violent and illegal activities.

She also conveyed similar thoughts recently when she appeared at the committee to discuss Bill C-24.

Just last night I read an article in the National Post. Fawzi Ayoub, a dual Lebanese Canadian, was recently killed fighting in a terrorist group in Syria. He was a senior member of the terrorist group Hezbollah.

In fact, he has been on the FBI's most wanted terrorist list since 2009. His crimes include attempting to enter Israel in order to carry out a terrorist bombing and attempting to hijack a passenger aircraft in Romania.

Ayoub lived in Toronto for several years and mused about returning to Canada one day. Just imagine, if he had returned to Canada, what might have happened.

This illustrates precisely why we need Bill C-24 to become law. Canadians are angry that terrorists are using Canadian citizenship simply as a convenient way to fly under the radar in order to commit terrorist acts. In doing so, they are eroding the value of Canadian citizenship.

Under the provisions of Bill C-24, those convicted of a serious terrorism offence in Canada or in jurisdictions Canada recognizes as having an equivalent judicial system would no longer be able to use a Canadian passport to facilitate their terrorist activities abroad.

Revocation is not a provision I hope to see used regularly. Ideally, it would never be used. However, Canadians are increasingly concerned about the threat of home-grown terrorism. Terrorism is closer to home than we may think. Radicalization is happening in places we least expect: our cities, towns, and neighbourhoods.

Our security services are sounding the alarm bells about the dangers of home-grown terrorism. CSIS has reported it is tracking at least 80 Canadians who have gone overseas to participate in terrorist activities.

They will return to Canada further radicalized and armed with knowledge of how to carry out terrorist activities. We cannot allow radical terrorist ideologies to thrive in Canada. We must condemn these dangerous practices and give them no safe place to hide and absolutely no legitimacy whatsoever.

If we allow terrorists to keep the Canadian citizenship they have abused, we are sending a message that our citizenship is not about shared values, freedom, democracy, the rule of law, or loyalty. It sends the message that our citizenship is simply an entitlement.

I believe Canadian citizenship is much more than a piece of paper used for identification purposes. It does represent our shared values, and its value is something we need to vigorously defend.

We must let Canadians know where their elected representatives stand. I implore members opposite to set aside their politics and join me to unanimously support Bill C-24.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened, again, to another speech filled with lots of rhetoric.

I am alarmed that we have such a small amount of time to debate this issue. I am wondering if the government has any idea how these measures would impact those folks who are already living in Canada.

For example, how many people would be affected by this bill in the short term and in the long term? More importantly, I am concerned about whether different ancestral groups be impacted differently. Would there be different impacts on people of different ethnic origins? Has the government done any study on that at all? If it has, could it please table those documents?

[Devinder Shory, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from the opposition for putting a vague question, not a specific one. To answer his question, absolutely, the bill would be applied to anyone and everyone who is a terrorist and is convicted of terrorism.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to go back to the member's private member's bill, Bill C-425, and ask the member to reflect on what he was proposing there. It was to ultimately allow for a landed immigrant who chose to join the Canadian Forces to wait two years instead of three years to qualify for citizenship. Would that principle apply with the current legislation? Would a member of the Canadian Forces who is a landed immigrant only require two years to be able to apply for citizenship? That is what his bill was all about last year.

[Devinder Shory, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

Mr. Speaker, in Bill C-425 it was very clearly said that those who would join the Canadian Armed Forces would be given credit for one year toward their residency requirement to be a Canadian citizen.

To answer his question, yes, it would be the same principle that would be applied. Those who serve in the Canadian Armed Forces and want Canadian citizenship would be given one year's credit toward that.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased that we are on the subject of the imaginary issue of people who are in the Armed Forces who are not Canadian citizens. I put it to the minister in committee and he was clear about this as well. Number one, to join the Canadian Armed Forces a condition precedent is that one is already a Canadian citizen. In rare circumstances, the Chief of the Defence Staff can appoint someone who is not a Canadian citizen to join if there is an urgent issue or a matter of national security.

I asked the minister in committee how many people this might apply to. Currently, it is about 13 individuals. I do not know if any of them seek Canadian citizenship. It seems to me this is most likely an expedient for theatres of war where allied forces, such as U.S. troops, might want to be contained within a Canadian regiment for some particular reason. However, it is certainly not an entire class of people. It is a very rare incident when anyone who is not already a Canadian citizen would be in our armed forces. It is very rare and only by specific and direct order of the Chief of the Defence Staff for a particular person in a particular situation.

Given that, I wonder why we have even included such a provision. Is it to mask the fact that so much of the bill is about stripping people's citizenship who would otherwise, as people born on Canadian soil, be citizens and punished under Canadian laws if we wished to punish them?

[Devinder Shory, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to correct the member. If she goes to the DND website, she will see that it says one can be either a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident of Canada with the intention of becoming a Canadian citizen. If she cannot find it, I would be happy to provide her the website.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to contribute to this debate on Bill C-24. I am pleased to know that implementing the measures in this bill would protect and strengthen the value of Canadian citizenship at home and abroad.

I have been fortunate to have travelled to many countries around the world, both as a private citizen prior to becoming elected and also as an MP for my great riding of Vancouver South. In each of the countries that I have had the opportunity to visit throughout the world, I am proud to say that as a Canadian citizen, I have been warmly welcomed, treated with respect and often with envy. This is because, as I am sure all of my hon. colleagues in this place would agree, we are extraordinarily fortunate to be Canadian citizens.

In fact, these people-to-people and real experiences show us time and again that when we share our citizenship with others, and as public opinion research confirms, there are millions of people across the globe, even in highly developed countries, who dream of becoming Canadian citizens. My own life experience and that of my family closely mirrors this fact. Both of my grandfathers came to Canada in the early 1900s, fulfilling their dreams of coming to Gam Saan, which translates from Cantonese to mean “Gold Mountain”. Even then, Canada was seen as a land of opportunity, freedom, and new life.

For over 140 years, Chinese immigrants have come to Canada, building communities, building the railroad, and contributing toward building Canada. These values of seizing opportunity, hard work, diligence, dignity, and respect are values that infuse Canada and embody the Canadian values that we all hold dear. I am proud to say that two generations later, I too was able to emigrate to Canada, learn English, and become a citizen at age 13.

Due to my life experiences as an immigrant, as a Canadian, and now as a legislator, I believe that it is our duty to continue to protect and strengthen the value and privileges of our citizenship and to ensure that its acquisition ensures knowledge of our country and the duty of necessary citizenship responsibilities that Canadian citizenship should confer. If we do not value and hold our citizenship dear to us, how then can we maintain our value to others around the world? After all, Canada has always stood for freedom, equality, and respect for the rule of law built around a model of compassion, care, and the great strength of our diversity.

We must, therefore, periodically update and set standards that are necessary to make our citizenship relevant, current, and reflective of the global world in which we live, thus enabling us to maintain its high value and respect wherever our citizens may go. Bill C-24 is such a bill. It takes an old, worn bill of 36 years and implements new standards that are required for a modern, first-class country that is Canada.

The Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration had the opportunity to listen to key testimony on this bill. Salma Siddiqui of the Coalition of Progressive Canadian Muslim Organizations had this to say:

I have heard concerns that Bill C-24 represents a knee-jerk reaction or that it serves a...political process. I disagree. Bill C-24 represents an assertion of the pride we hold in our values of an open, liberal democracy, where our freedoms are applied to all.

I could not agree more. We should all be grateful for our rights and freedoms in Canada, but we must also recognize that citizenship is about more than a legal status or just a title. It is also about the responsibilities that we all have in our country and to our communities.

In recent years, our government has taken a number of steps to strengthen the value of Canadian citizenship. Unlike the opposition, we will not a turn a blind eye to citizenship fraud and those who cheapen the value of Canadian citizenship. One important responsibility for anyone who wishes to acquire Canadian citizenship is to understand who Canadians are as a people, where we come from, and what values define us.

To help ensure that new citizens share a common understanding of Canada's history, traditions, and institutions, the government introduced a new citizenship study guide in 2009 called, “Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship”.

Citizenship applicants study this guide to learn about Canada and what Canadian citizenship means, and to prepare for their citizenship test. This was the first substantial update of Canada's citizenship guide in almost 15 years.

We are proud that “Discover Canada” contains meaningful information about Canadian history, important symbols, shared values, balanced rights and responsibilities, and critical institutions. It also imparts a better understanding of and appreciation for our country, and shares information about how Canada was founded in diversity.

The contents of this guide now form the basis of the new citizenship test, which asks applicants to demonstrate their understanding of the chief characteristics of Canadian history, geography, and our system of government. To pass the test, prospective citizens need to have knowledge of our country, which better prepares them to assume the obligations and responsibilities of being Canadian citizens and to join Canadians in celebrating what it means to be Canadian. Without this foundational knowledge, citizenship becomes meaningless, just another government form to fill out. After all, it is this knowledge of who we are and the shared celebration of it that make us the great nation that we are.

It is inspiring to learn that since its introduction in 2009, “Discover Canada” has proven to be massively popular, not only with newcomers to Canada, but also with established Canadian citizens. Hundreds of thousands of copies of this guide have been distributed across Canada. This demonstrates that Canadians have a real thirst for knowledge about our country.

Our government has also promoted a number of other measures that reinforce the value of Canadian citizenship. Of course, Bill C-24 is just the latest example of this, but it is not the only one. For example, in November 2012, our government implemented an assessment of the language abilities of new citizens to be standardized across Canada so that new citizens would have a basic language that they would need to communicate in emergency situations, to meet neighbours, or to conduct basic life skills. For decades, studies have clearly shown that the success of newcomers to Canada is directly correlated to their proficiency in either of Canada's official languages, French or English.

As Canada faces an aging population and we need more immigrants, we need to ensure that we attract immigrants who can be successful as soon as possible. The new language proficiency test at level 5 is very basic and would therefore ensure that our new citizens have the most important tool that they will need to succeed in Canada. That is the ability to communicate in one of our two official languages, enabling their full participation and success in Canadian society.

On May 12, the committee had the privilege of hearing the testimony of Paul Attia, from the organization Immigrants for Canada. He explained that language capabilities are essential not only for economic success, but also for integration. This is something that I have lived myself. He said:

Language is a unifier....Even on a values front and a cultural front, the mere fact that you have the capacity to turn to the person to your left or the person to your right and have a conversation with that person automatically creates a natural connection.

For myself, and for the many new citizens in my riding, we value sharing our diversity by using one of our unifying languages.

Canadian citizenship is more than a passport of convenience. It is a pledge of mutual responsibility and a shared commitment of values rooted in our history for our mutual future. This is why the measures in Bill C-24 are so important.

The bill before us today is another great example of the reforms that our government has introduced to strengthen and protect the value of Canadian citizenship. I urge my hon. colleagues to support these necessary measures and to ensure that Bill C-24 passes into law.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my colleague from Vancouver South on the other side of the House and her comments on this bill. I find it very curious that Conservative members are so intent on saying that Canadians must obey and uphold the law, yet they create legislation that would put a minister above the law. This is one of the really offensive parts of this bill.

Could the member explain to us and Canadians how it is that her party feels that it is acceptable to bypass judicial due process in revoking citizenship? Why should so much power be conferred on the minister solely to do that without a judicial process?

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Perhaps, Mr. Speaker, it is because my colleague has been here so long that she wants to uphold these old and antiquated processes.

The new law would bring forward a more streamlined process that would give the minister a more shortened ability to conduct his ruling. Therefore, the bill would update the law, as the member very well knows.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague the hon. member from Vancouver South for really hitting on the key points in Bill C-24, the strengthening Canadian citizenship act.

I was touched when she related some of her personal stories about her family coming here. She has worked tirelessly not only as a member of Parliament since her election to this place but before with many newcomers coming to Canada.

Does my colleague think that strengthening Canadian citizenship by asking newcomers to be better integrated into Canada by learning better one of the official two languages of the country, and spending an extra year here, four out of the last six years, would assist them in moving forward with their lives in this new country of theirs? Would that give them a better opportunity for more progressive outcomes in their lives moving forward?

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Mr. Speaker, some 25 years ago I led the working team that developed the language training program for across Canada. Level 5 at that time was developed but it was never implemented consistently across Canada. I am so pleased to see in Bill C-24 that it will be implemented consistently because newcomers need this level of language for emergency purposes and for life skills. We are not asking for university-level English whatsoever. We are asking for basic life skills.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have a fairly straightforward question for my colleague. Does she believe that the state has the right to take citizenship away from somebody who is born in Canada? Let me give her an example.

Let us say that she has people living in her riding from countries that Canada has a dual citizenship relationship with. There are two Canadian citizens, both born in her riding, one has dual citizenship but the other does not. Does she think it is fair that one should have his or her citizenship taken away because of this unjust legislation that targets and differentiates between citizens?

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite well knows that we are a signatory to the United Nations convention and therefore nobody can be rendered stateless. It is up to individuals to choose whether they want to renounce one citizenship or the other in choosing where they want to be.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure I to rise to address what I think is an important issue. I always enjoy the challenge of trying to hold the current government accountable on the immigration and citizenship file.

Over the last number of years, the current government, more than any other government that has preceded it, has been fantastic when it comes to Conservative spin. The Conservatives like to create a crisis and then try to fix the crisis. The whole area of citizenship, I believe, is a great example.

Let me expand on that. When the Conservatives took office a number of years ago, people had to wait a certain period of time to get their citizenship. After that period of time, they would put in the application. They would meet the criteria, put in the application, and roughly 12 months later, would have their citizenship. That is what it was prior to the current government taking office.

There might have been a certain percentage of cases that took over a year. There was some concern at the time. We wanted to address what appeared to be an increasing number of days to have them processed. At the time, the Paul Martin government allocated close to about $75 million in the budget to speed up the processing time so that people who had qualified for citizenship could anticipate waiting from eight to 12 months. That is the type of situation the current government took over. It was not more than 12 months for most cases, and there was a serious investment to reduce it to a more reasonable timeframe.

What has actually transpired? Ever since we have had the Conservative government, the waiting period for processing has become worse. Month by month, it has continued to grow. Today it is well over two years before--

[Wladyslaw Lizon]

No.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Yes, Mr. Speaker. It is well over two years, and I am being generous.

[Massimo Pacetti]

It's almost three years. Check the website.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, if we were to look into the residency issue, we would find that it is four years, and that is being generous. On many occasions, people are having to wait six years for processing.

However, if people put in their application today, they can anticipate that it will be at least two years before they are going to get their citizenship.

[Massimo Pacetti]

Thirty-one months.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thirty-one months is what the website says, Mr. Speaker. That is completely unacceptable. It is not justifiable. The Conservatives have made a crisis. What do they say? They say that they have legislation that is going to speed up the process.

When I posed the question to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, what did he say? He said that by 2016, because of this legislation, we are going to have a one-year processing time. Not only is the after the next election, but the Conservatives' goal, through legislation, is to try to get it to where it was when the Liberals were in government. That is their goal.

I think we should raise the bar a bit. It is 12 months, with new legislation.

Remember when the Liberal Party gave a financial commitment of close to $75 million? One would think the Conservatives would not have had a problem keeping it under 12 months. One questions why they made such a mess of it. Their priorities are all wrong is what I would argue.

What are the ramifications? We hear of the citizenship issue and the processing time. Let me give a couple of real examples that are taking place across this land, from coast to coast to coast. Oh yes, to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, these are real situations, and I am sure his office would be aware of them.

Imagine a landed immigrant who has been here for three, four, or five years, who has met all the requirements and is excited about becoming a citizen of Canada. He or she puts in an application but then finds out that they will be waiting two and a half or close to three years before being given citizenship.

I will use the example of the Philippines, a country I am very passionate about. For many of my constituents from the Philippines and India, particularly those two countries, I am constantly dealing with immigration-related issues, including citizenship.

There are many people across Canada who are in the queue for their citizenship and are anxiously waiting for it to arrive. It happens that they are using the passport from the their homeland country, whether Philippine or Indian. However, if that passport expires and they do not have citizenship, and they cannot get Canadian citizenship even though they are often more than qualified for it and have been waiting for more than a year—they are unable to travel outside of Canada unless they get the passport from the country of their birth renewed.

I get cases on an ongoing basis--

[An hon. member]

You're making me sympathetic for the minister.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Well, Mr. Speaker, I feel very sorry for the member who does not appreciate how many of our constituents are affected by the Conservative government's poor performance.

In reality, we end up with individuals who are not able to travel if an emergency were to occur, and this happens far more often than what some members might think. They are now put in a bind. Let us say there is a death in the family, and they have to travel back to the country of their birth, but they do not have a valid passport. They cannot get a Canadian passport, because they are waiting in queue.

[An hon. member]

Sure they can.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

No, Mr. Speaker, they cannot get a Canadian passport--

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

Order. There is just too much chatter in the House. I know you will all find it surprising, but I am having some difficulty hearing the member for Winnipeg North. Could we keep the chatter down please?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, people cannot get a Canadian passport until they get their Canadian citizenship, so if they are waiting for three years to get their citizenship and their country of birth passport has expired and they have an emergency and have to leave Canada, that means they are obligated to get the passport renewed by their country of birth. That is costing people time, money, and resources, because the government has not been able to reduce the processing period for citizenship. Those are the types of real issues people are having to deal with because the government has been negligent in terms of processing times for citizenship.

Another example is the provincial election in Ontario. Whether it is the provinces of Ontario, Quebec, or British Columbia, there have been tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of individuals who have not been able to vote in provincial elections, because the government has allowed the citizenship processing time to hit that two to three year mark. If the government had done its job and kept that processing time to 12 months or less, we would have had more Canadians participating in our democracy. There are hundreds of thousands of people who call Canada home and qualify for citizenship, and the government's priority has not been to try to get into the hands of those individuals their citizenship.

Even by the minister of immigration's own admission, this bill is designed to reduce the processing times. We did not need legislation to reduce the processing times. It might help, but we did not require the legislation to do it. What we require is that the minister and the government have the political will to reduce processing times for citizenship. Although the current minister of immigration would argue that we have a huge demand of 333,000, some of the lowest demands on the citizenship branch in the last 15 years were while the former minister of immigration, his colleague, was responsible for the department and the processing time was making its greatest jumps. Therefore, the argument the minister of immigration was using this evening is bogus. That is the reality.

The reason we have the legislation in the first place, the government and the minister of immigration will tell us, is that it is all about reducing processing times, at least in good part. I would argue that the minister has not. That is why I suggested at the beginning of my comments that what the government is good at doing is talking about fixing problems, when what it does not tell people is that the problems it needs to fix are the problems it has created. The biggest problem for the government is that it creates problems in immigration, whether it is the processing times for citizenship or issues relating to the temporary foreign worker program.

The Liberal Party did create the temporary foreign worker program, but the problem was created from that government. We did not have a problem. We did not have the calls that we have today.

When the Liberal Party was in government, the average was about—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Order, please. I want to remind members that there will be a question and comment period in just about five and a half minutes. If they could just hold off all their comments until then, I know the Chair would appreciate it. I am sure the member for Winnipeg North would appreciate it as well.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

I appreciate your intervention, Mr. Speaker. The point is that the government is constant in spreading misinformation. It created the problem within the temporary foreign worker program. That is why the Conservatives have had to make the changes today. They created the problems with the backlog in immigration. That is why they have to do things such as hit the delete button on the skilled worker program, which wiped out the applications of 300,000 skilled workers. The former minister of immigration created half of those in three months when he issued his ministerial instructions on the skilled worker program.

It is the government that has created the problems within immigration and there is no difference in this legislation. Why do I say this? Because I believe there are important issues that need to be dealt with in regard to immigration and the government has been unable to address many of those issues.

Let me give a good example of one that comes up every week at my constituency office. It is the issue of visiting visas. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of visiting visas that I believe ultimately should have, and could have, been approved if the government had done its work and improved the system.

I have a very difficult time when, for example, people are in a hospital on their deathbeds and they cannot get a sibling into Canada to visit them. These types of cases happen far too often. It is about priorities and the government has not been doing a job in addressing these priorities.

When I look at Bill C-24, it deals with the issue of citizenship, but it also deals with other issues that will have a fairly profound impact. We are establishing a two-tier citizenship. If the government were to take that aspect of the legislation out of Bill C-24 and have a free vote on the issue, I would suggest that it would not pass. I know there are a number of Conservative members of Parliament who are uncomfortable with the bill. We saw a sampling of that when a minister stood in his place and challenged the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration in regard to that very issue.

There are issues within citizenship such as the cash grab. When the government introduced the fact that it would bring in this legislation, it dropped the legislation and dropped the increase at the same time to the public. The Conservatives are going to increase the application fees. When we say 300,000 a year and get an extra $200-plus from each individual, we are talking about a significant cash grab.

When we say we have to get English language testing done, or IELS tests, who pays for that? What was the problem? Was there a huge outcry saying that we had to force people to get the IELS exams done? There will be a substantial cost for that.

The Conservatives are making it more difficult for individuals to acquire their citizenship. I do not understand it, and I have not heard the argument for that from the them. They seem to stand in their place and say that this bill is all about patriotism, about Canada and how wonderful it is to be a Canadian, and how proud we should be. That is their only justification for all of their increases and changes.

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have been listening to the member relating how many immigrants the Liberals had on their list and how many we had on our list. I have been in the House for 10 years. I was here when the Liberals were in power, and I was here well before the hon. member. When we took over in 2006, the Liberals had 800,000 people on their list. The prediction was it would take six years to get through that list.

At the moment, our list is 350,000, and if the bill is passed, we will get it done in two years.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member has an issue because he is listening to the Conservative spin.

I may not have been in the House of Commons for as long as the member, but I have been an elected official for over 20 years and I have been dealing with immigration and citizenship throughout that period.

Even as an MLA, I dealt with it. Manitoba excels in the provincial nominee program more than any other province per capita. I understand the way immigration works The absolutely worst increase to the backlog was when the former minister of immigration brought in the special ministerial instruction for skilled workers. Then the worst action ever taken against immigration is when that same minister hit the delete button on skilled worker program, deleting 300,000.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, this whole mess of backlogs was created by the Liberals first, then compounded by the Conservatives.

Let me tell the House how the Conservatives want to solve this. If an individual is on a waiting list to have surgery, the Conservatives say they want to reduce the waiting list, but we do not want anybody else getting on the waiting list. That is how they want to reduce the backlog.

I heard from many citizens, from England, Romania, Germany. Their concern is that if they are convicted in our country, they be deported back to where they migrated from.

Could the hon. member answer that question for me very clearly? Unfortunately the government is not answering the question.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, based on the legislation, if it passes as it is, in certain circumstances, those who are dual citizens will in fact be deported, because they will be stripped of their citizenship.

Let me get to the member's first comment, because he saw fit, as other New Democrats do, to take shots at the Liberals. I can tell the member that the worst increases in backlogs in the provincial nominee program, which is an immigration program in the province of Manitoba, occurred under the NDP administration. Even though the New Democrats have never been in office in Ottawa, they should at least attempt to try to give the impression that they would do better.

I can assure the member that when the Liberals were in government, the only area in which there was a lengthy backlog was in fact being improved upon, and that was through the parents. That is because we believe, as Liberals, that it is important to have a family class. We were very critical when the government of the day, the Conservatives, froze that program.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Winnipeg North mentioned the fact that he was having trouble getting visas, or some visas were not being accepted for family members who were sick or ill and wanted to have siblings come and visit them.

Our office in Montreal is aware of a lot of young immigrant families having children. In some cases both parents are working, or there is already more than one child, or the other spouse is probably working two or three jobs just to keep the family afloat. Therefore, there are a lot of requests to have the parents come over. Nine out of ten of these requests are refused.

I am not sure if the hon. member sees the same thing happening in his neck of the woods.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question. It gets right down to the issue at hand. There are some very important immigration issues we should be dealing with and the government has failed in dealing with them in a fashion.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

Name one.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member asks me to “name one”. There is the very issue that my colleague just mentioned. We have family members who are living abroad and want to come to Canada to visit, to support families, to provide care for their grandchildren, or to be in Canada while a sibling is dying, or to participate in a marriage of a child. There are numerous reasons.

It is amazing. We are not talking about hundreds. We are talking about thousands who are being denied that opportunity. In some cases what this is saying is that a brother will never be able to see his brother who is dying in the hospital. That is just wrong. These are the types of changes we need to push for, reforms of our visitors visas.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the hon. member's speech very carefully and I am quite confused. He is jumping all over the place. The issue of visitors visa are dealt with by the visa officers at the embassies. The rules are clear. They have a lot of discretionary power. It was no different when the Liberal government was in office. I do not think the rules have changed that much.

There was mention of the backlog. When I came to the country, over 28 years ago, the waiting period for applicants was six months. That was during a Conservative government. When the Liberals left office, over 800,000 people were waiting in line and the waiting time was anywhere from two to three years.

Is there a relation between the number of applications that you accept and the number of people who you admit to the country?

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

I would just remind colleagues to address their comments through the Chair, not directly at their colleagues in the House.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member throws numbers all over the place and at the end of the day my problem with government members on the whole backlog is that they are listening to the wrong person. They want to listen to the Minister of Immigration, believing that he is being straightforward and honest with them on it. The worst backlogs that were created were under the former minister of immigration. There were no higher backlogs. He created the highest in the history of our country. That is the reality. They might not like the reality, but that is it.

In regard to the visitors visas, I would strongly encourage us not to be content. The need for change is absolutely critical. I believe, as my colleague has pointed out, there are far too many that are being denied. We need to start doing more to ensure we have more families able to visit their family in Canada.

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

Mr. Speaker, under this legislation, could someone born in Canada have their citizenship taken away from them?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, my understanding is that if people are born in Canada and have dual citizenship, their citizenship could potentially be taken away. I could not say that as an absolute fact. All I know is, if someone is a dual citizen what has been implied is that the government could, under a certain situation, be able to take that citizenship away. What is a fact is a two-tier citizenship is being created.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague from Winnipeg North put forth some hypotheticals. One thing that has concerned a number of human rights organizations is whether this law would offend the Convention on the Rights of the Child? If a minor child whose parents lose citizenship and they have citizenship in another country, that child could be considered a potential dual citizen as well, even though born in Canada. Under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, that child must be given the opportunity to become a Canadian citizen if that is his or her choice.

I believe the bill could offend the convention. Does the hon. member for Winnipeg North have a view on this?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, at the end of the day this whole issue will ultimately end up in court. This is one of the issues that has been raised. I suspect it is only a question of time. What I have seen is that the government has brought in legislation that is not family-friendly. All we need to do is take a look at the fast removal of foreign criminals where the government would actually deport a father and leave a wife with two children in Canada. If I had more time, I would be able to expand, or if the government—

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Order, please. Resuming debate, the hon. member for Provencher.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to be splitting my time this evening with the member for South Shore—St. Margaret's, and I will be directing my comments to the residency requirements portion in Bill C-24.

I am grateful to have this opportunity to add my voice in support of Bill C-24. It is a long-overdue piece of legislation that would restore value to our Canadian citizenship after decades of neglect and abuse. The Liberals had 13 years to fix the Citizenship Act and did not do anything to crack down on citizens of convenience. This important piece of legislation would also deliver on the government's promise in the most recent Speech from the Throne to strengthen and protect the value of Canadian citizenship.

Canadians recognize the important role immigration has played in building our country throughout its history. Canadians welcome newcomers who wish to become citizens and contribute to the political, social, and economic life of this country. However, Canadians have little patience or tolerance for people who do not play by the rules.

We have all heard the stories about individuals who lie or cheat to become citizens of this great country. These people concoct schemes and pretend to be living in Canada but have no real intention of ever moving and planting roots here. Instead, they only wish to abuse the privileges of our citizenship, using their Canadian passports or citizenship whenever it is most convenient for them. This is something that must end. We must protect the value of our citizenship and take action against those who seek to cheapen it, to protect the system for those who use it properly and who play by the rules.

That is why we have introduced Bill C-24: legislative changes to the Citizenship Act that would strengthen the program and the value of citizenship by helping to ensure citizens have a real connection and commitment to Canada.

One big problem is the residence requirement for Canadian citizenship. Currently, adult applicants must reside in Canada for three out of the previous four years. However, residence is not defined in the act. As a result, it is possible under the current act for someone who has spent little time in Canada to become a citizen. Under proposed changes, the rules around citizenship residence requirements would be strengthened so that adults applying for citizenship would have to be physically present in Canada for a longer period: four years in the six years prior to applying for citizenship. In addition, applicants would also be required to be physically present in Canada for at least 183 days for four out of those six years. Not only is this common sense, but it also is important because physical presence in Canada assists with newcomer integration.

Let me read what Canadians have been saying about strengthening the residency requirement.

Immigration lawyer Raj Sharma said we do know that citizenship fraud has been rampant, especially out of certain places in Canada such as Montreal. He thinks that unilateral revocation for the purpose where there is fraud or identity fraud or other fraud is not necessarily a bad thing. We need to recognize that Canadian citizenship is a sought-after benefit or a commodity and certain unscrupulous individuals will lie or deceive to exaggerate their time in Canada.

Then there is also Simon Kent, a Toronto Sun columnist. He said he thinks a lot of people would say it is a reasonable expectation if they want to live in Canada. If they want to enjoy living in a free and prosperous country like Canada, they should spend time there and they should live and contribute according to civil society. While that sounds like something out of politics 101, basically saying living here, enjoying the fruits of one's labour, paying taxes, showing that one is committed, and extending the period of permanent residency here from three to four years or maybe even five years before one can take up citizenship is a very fair and reasonable proposition.

Nick Noorani, the managing partner of Prepare for Canada, said:

I congratulate the government on its changes Citizenship Act that combat residency fraud and ensure new Canadians have a stronger connection to Canada. With the changes announced today, processing times will be improved and new Canadians will be ready to fully participate in Canadian life.

Martin Collacott, with the Centre for Immigration Policy Reform and a former Canadian ambassador in Asia and the Middle East, comments:

The government's new citizenship legislation addresses a host of long overdue issues relating to the acquisition of citizenship. Its provisions, such as strengthening residency requirements for applicants, will increase the value and meaning of Canadian citizenship and will be warmly welcomed by both Canadians and newcomers serious about becoming full members of the Canadian family.

Then there is Gillian Smith, executive director and chief executive officer of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, who said:

Our organization works extensively with Canada's newest citizens who tell us that measures taken to foster their attachment and connection to Canada have a positive effect on their successful integration. New citizens' sense of belonging comes in large measure from experiencing Canada first-hand¾its people, nature, culture and heritage.

Shimon Fogel, from the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, commented:

We also support the introduction of measures to ensure that those who apply for Canadian citizenship actually intend to maintain a meaningful connection to Canada after taking the oath. The “intent to reside” provisions are an important element in this regard and could have a significant impact on reducing the problem of citizens of convenience.

Paul Attia, of Immigrants for Canada, says the following:

I am in favour, and the organization is in favour, of the longer requirement. You want to be able to have the person experience life in Canada and establish life here before he commits to citizenship. Citizenship is meant to say that you are a Canadian now.

It is clear that a longer residence period may allow newcomers to develop a stronger connection to Canada, while at the same time helping to deter citizens of convenience.

It would also ensure that the residence requirement is applied consistently. Creating a clear physical presence requirement would strengthen the legislative tools to deal with residence fraud.

Meanwhile, a six-year window to accumulate physical presence would provide more flexibility to accommodate applicants whose work or personal circumstances require regular travel outside Canada.

Crown servants who are permanent residents, as well as their spouses and children outside Canada, would be permitted to use time spent abroad in service to Canada for the purposes of meeting the residence requirement.

That said, under the proposed new requirements, all applicants would be able to accumulate absences of two years within the qualifying period. This should accommodate newcomers who have to travel outside of Canada for their work.

Another residence change concerns time applicants spend in Canada before becoming a permanent resident. Currently, a day that citizenship applicants spent in Canada before becoming permanent residents counts as a half-day of residence toward their citizenship application, up to a maximum of two years in Canada as non-permanent residents. Under the proposed changes, to further strengthen the residence requirement and create a level playing field for all citizenship applicants, applicants would no longer be able to use time spent in Canada as non-permanent residents to meet the citizenship residence requirement.

While it may take people who came to Canada as temporary foreign workers or foreign students a little longer to meet the residence requirement under the new rules, this change is designed to deepen their attachment to Canada.

In addition, to be eligible for a citizenship grant, an adult applicant would have to file a Canadian income tax return for four years out of the six years before they apply, if required to do so under the Income Tax Act.

Canadians are pleased with this requirement. Hard-working, tax-paying Canadians expect this from all permanent residents and Canadians. The message is clear: if they have a serious connection and attachment to Canada, they should show it. It is not hard to provide proof that they have filed their taxes. We all do it at least once a year.

Immigration lawyers like Richard Kurland have praised this new requirement, saying that until today many people have been able to get away with being resident for immigration citizenship purposes but not for tax purposes. That meant that they had the benefit of Canadian citizenship without the burden of filing Canadian income tax returns like everyone else.

Salma Siddiqui from the Coalition of Progressive Canadian Muslim Organizations has also applauded our government and said:

The requirement for citizenship applicants to file Canadian income tax is a step in the right direction, but does not go far enough. I believe that even after the grant of citizenship, Canadians living abroad should be asked to demonstrate that they have contributed taxes to avail themselves of public services subsidized by the Canadian taxpayer.

Payment of taxes is an important obligation of permanent residents and citizens. This new citizenship requirement would help to further strengthen the value of Canadian citizenship.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened closely to my colleague's speech.

There seem to be two sorts of principles he mentioned in his speech. Some of them are objective, number-based even, and some people will agree with them while others will not. However, they are easy enough for the majority of Canadian citizens to understand. On the other hand, some of the elements are very subjective and difficult to assess.

Can he tell me how to actually assess a person's intention to reside in Canada? How does the government intend to objectively measure someone's intention?

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I will continue, and I think my further comments will help to clarify that.

It is important to note that the new rules would not restrict the mobility rights of new citizens. They would be able to leave and return to the country just like other citizens. Rather, the purpose of the provision is to reinforce an expectation that citizenship is for those who intend to continue to reside in Canada. Once newcomers become citizens, they enjoy all the rights of citizenship common to all Canadians.

Let me be clear. New citizens have the same mobility rights as all Canadians. They can come and go as they please, but we must ensure that new citizens make a real connection to Canada, and that starts by actually living here.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for his interesting talk about the Citizenship Act and the changes.

I would like to ask the hon. member if he believes that these changes would affect Canadians who have perhaps tried to take advantage of the generosity of the system as it stands, whether the changes would benefit very many people in his riding, if he has heard stories from his constituents about their experiences, and if any of these changes, had they been implemented earlier, would have helped any of his constituents.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Mr. Speaker, in my riding there are many immigrants. It is actually a hub in southeastern Manitoba, with Russian-German immigrants and Filipinos. The feedback I am getting from the people in my office has indicated very clearly that the new requirements we would put in place would actually help to clarify what is required to become a citizen. They feel that it would not be onerous at all to increase the residency from three years to four years and that actually living in and being present in Canada for 183 days of the year seems to make a lot of sense. They say it would be very useful in clarifying what is required.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, on one hand, the Conservatives and the member are saying that Canadian experience counts, that people should live in this country long enough. On the other hand, they are not recognizing that when students come to this country, they may live here for three or four years, and yet this bill does not recognize the time spent here by those students.

How can the member say that Canadian experience counts and not include the very experience that students go through in our universities? They may want to apply for a PR card and that does not count toward their citizenship. Can the member comment on that?

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Mr. Speaker, currently, residence is not defined in the Citizenship Act and, as a result, it is possible under the current act for someone who has spent little time in Canada to be granted citizenship. The proposal to lengthen the requirement from three to four years out of six and to replace residence with a requirement for physical presence would mean that students who are in school in Canada are typically going to have to wait a little longer to become citizens in Canada.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-24, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee, and of the amendment.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Revenue and for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on debate this evening on Bill C-24. I have been listening to the debate. It has been a fairly animated and lively debate. This is second reading of the legislation and it is on fast-track and citizenship by descent. I rise today to speak in support of the proposed changes to the Canadian Citizenship Act that would strengthen the value of Canadian citizenship.

Since 2006, Canada has enjoyed the highest sustained levels of immigration in Canadian history, an average of 257,000 newcomers each year, and accordingly, the demand for citizenship has increased by 30%. Furthermore, Canada has the highest rate of naturalization in the world; 85% of eligible permanent residents become citizens.

Last year, Citizenship and Immigration Canada received more than 330,000 citizenship applications, the highest volume ever. Canadian citizenship is highly valued around the world and with the balanced set of reforms in Bill C-24, the government is taking steps to ensure that it stays that way.

Lengthier residency requirements and requiring more applicants to meet language and knowledge criteria would ensure new citizens will be active and contributing members of our communities and our economy. Since the first Canadian Citizenship Act of 1947, it has always been a requirement that new citizens have an adequate knowledge of Canada and of one of our official languages. The language level required is not changing and it is a basic level of English or French, sufficient for everyday communication.

Overall, these changes would mean that new citizens have a strong connection to Canada and are better prepared to assume the responsibilities of citizenship and become active members of Canadian society.

Canadians take great pride in our citizenship. We are taking action to further strengthen that pride and the value of Canadian citizenship with the first comprehensive reforms to the Citizenship Act since 1977. The strengthening Canadian citizenship act would deliver on our government's commitment to reduce backlogs and improve processing times while strengthening the integrity of Canadian citizenship.

Our Conservative government has welcomed over 1.4 million new citizens. That is a record to be commended. These new citizens come from all over the globe. Some of them come here for economic improvement and some of them are refugees who faced difficult times in their home country and have been forced to leave. Canada is a haven for these people and we are accepting more immigrants and more refugees than any other government in Canada ever has. Therefore, we need these changes to the Citizenship Act to modernize it, to allow that backlog to become smaller, and to streamline the process. That is what we are talking about here.

I have heard a lot of questions, and I am sure I will get some after I finish my own speech, saying something is wrong here, in section a, line 3, paragraph 7. We have been told that we have to make that change or the bill is no good, throw the whole thing out. This is the proverbial baby being thrown out with the bathwater.

At the end of the day, these changes are going to be brought in. We are going to streamline the system. We are going to make it faster and more efficient. All of us on both sides of the House have immigration files involving people who want to come to Canada, who want to contribute to our society. We are going to be able to move them through faster. However, we will see who votes in support of this legislation and who does not.

We want newcomers to be welcomed as full members of the Canadian family of citizens, fully contributing to our economy and our communities from coast to coast to coast. With Bill C-24 we propose to strengthen the rules around access to citizenship to ensure that they reflect its true value and that new citizens are better prepared for full participation in Canadian life.

More specifically, Bill C-24 will resolve the vast majority of the lost Canadian cases once and for all.

The Liberals claim to care about the lost Canadians, yet they did nothing to fix the problem of any cases of lost Canadians over 13 long years in their government. Our Conservative government will right a historical wrong by granting citizenship to children born abroad to Crown servants and will honour the service of permanent residents who serve in the Canadian Armed Forces by granting them quicker access to Canadian citizenship. In addition, members of the Canadian Armed Forces would have a fast-track access to citizenship through a reduced qualifying period as a way of recognizing their important contribution to Canada. The bill would ensure that children born outside Canada to, or adopted outside Canada by, a Canadian parent who was serving abroad as a Crown servant are able to pass on citizenship to children they may have or adopt outside Canada.

Members of the Canadian Armed Forces put their lives on the line in order to honour the interests and security of our country and protect the safety of our citizens. This legislation would accelerate citizenship for permanent residents serving in the Canadian Armed Forces. It would also provide for a grant of citizenship for individuals on exchange with the Canadian Armed Forces. Under the proposed changes to the Citizenship Act, those who have served for one year less than the residence requirement would be eligible to apply for a grant of citizenship. Once the new legislation comes into force, the residence requirement would be four years out of six, that is representing three years of service for the fast-track provision.Those who served in the qualifying period and have been released honourably would also be eligible for the fast-track to citizenship.

Generally speaking, Canadian citizenship is a requirement for enrolment in the Canadian Armed Forces, but permanent residence may also be employed in exceptional circumstances. The problem is that one's lack of citizenship gives rise to challenges related to security clearances and passport arrangements and can therefore make it difficult to deploy him or her for service abroad. The United States and Australia already have a similar fast-track mechanism for members of the military as a way of honouring their service and addressing deployment challenges.

Introducing a fast-track citizenship for permanent residents serving in and for individuals on exchange with the Canadian Armed Forces as proposed in Bill C-24 would honour their service to Canada and make their deployment abroad much easier.

Another advantage is that it could provide an incentive for newcomers to Canada to enlist in the Canadian Armed Forces.

Citizenship legislation is extremely complicated. Many of the amendments that came into force in 2009 were retroactive, adding another layer of complexity. Amendments are desirable under Bill C-24 to ensure that the law supports consistent implementation of the first generation limit to citizenship by descent and it does not bar access to eligible applicants.

Currently, the Citizenship Act contains an exception to the first generation limit for children born to or adopted by a parent who is a Crown servant. The exception means that children born outside of Canada to serving Crown servants, including military personnel, would always be Canadian at birth, irrespective of what generation they were born outside of Canada. However, these children are not able to pass on citizenship to any children they have or adopt outside Canada as a direct result of their parents' service to Canada. This includes children born prior to April 17, 2009, such as the nearly 4,000 children born between 1983 and 1994 at the Canadian Forces base in Lahr, Germany. Under the current law, these children are not able to pass on citizenship to the children born or adopted abroad.

The first generation limit creates distinctions between family members of Crown servants depending on where the parents were serving when the child was born. It also acts as a disincentive to serving outside Canada for persons of childbearing age and creates a disadvantage when compared to public servants serving in Canada.

For all these reasons, we propose to amend the Citizenship Act to ensure that children born or adopted outside Canada to serving crown servants, including military personnel, are able to pass on citizenship to any children they have or adopt outside Canada. It is that simple. It truly is.

We have this huge gap out there, from 1983 to 1994. Children born to Canadian parents serving in Lahr, Germany, were not Canadian citizens, even though they were born on a Canadian Forces base to Canadian parents. That is the lost generation. Somehow we have to correct that. The bill would do that.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if there has been any research done by the government as to how these measures would be impacting the Canadian population. I have a specific interest in whether there would be different impacts on different ancestral groups and whether groups with different ethnicities would perhaps be disproportionately affected by these new measures. If these studies have been done, perhaps they could be tabled for us to review, since we have such a short time for debate.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I think what we have to look at is that this is a bill that would be results driven. I think the hon. member would concur and agree with me that we have to improve the Citizenship Act. This would allow citizenship applications to be approved within a one-year timeframe. Canadian citizenship is valuable. We have more applications now, 330,000, than we have ever had before. We are processing them more quickly. However, we understand, as a government, that we have a responsibility to do a better job.

This would not penalize any one group of immigrants to Canada. It would not penalize any ethnic group. This would be a fairer, rules-based citizenship act that would treat all immigrants the same.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad my hon. colleague, the member for South Shore—St. Margaret's, spent so much of his speech focusing on one part of the bill that I really do support, and that is the part dealing with the issue of lost Canadians. It has taken too long. It has proven complex. I know that the previous minister of citizenship thought they had done the job, but it is an enormously complicated area. I know a lot of the remaining lost Canadians are grateful for that.

My concern, though, remains, and I have phrased it in the House before, that the bill is designed to do something that no previous piece of Canadian legislation has ever done, which is strip citizenship from someone born in Canada for offences committed that, everyone would agree, are abhorrent offences but for which Canadian law is perfectly adequate to mete out punishment in a Canadian prison.

I ask the hon. member if he is not worried that we are creating a slippery slope with two classes of citizenship for people born in Canada.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for that question, because it is a serious question. It is one that was struggled with in the last incarnation of the bill.

My understanding is that this part of the bill, and I am not an expert on the bill, is for dual citizens. It would only affect dual citizens who actually are citizens of Canada but are also citizens of another country in the world. If people in that class of individuals commit treason against this country, they cannot expect to keep Canadian citizenship. I think that is fair and understandable, and I think most Canadians would agree with that approach.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am particularly interested in the topic of backlogs, which my colleague talked about in his speech.

He said that the bill will ensure that applications are processed within 12 months. I have great respect for the hon. member, and I apologize for my skepticism, but I have to say that every time the government promises that the process will be sped up, it actually slows down. There are plenty of examples, such as employment insurance, but that is not what we are talking about.

What in the bill will ensure that applications are processed within 12 months and convince us that this is more than just lip service?

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

Mr. Speaker, again, I thank the hon. member for that question. I think that is a pertinent question.

My understanding is that we will be moving from the old system, where we had a three-step process, to a new system, where we will have a one-step process. Quite frankly, there will be more decision-making powers in the hands of the highly trained civil servants who will be looking at this aspect of the act.

It should allow us, and it may take a bit of time to put it in place, to go from a 22- or 23-month backlog to a 12-month process for applying for citizenship and having it granted, if one qualifies.

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Resuming debate. I would remind hon. members that, starting now, the length of speeches will be 10 minutes, not 20 minutes. Members should adjust the length of their speeches accordingly.

The hon. member for Trois-Rivières.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your announcing the bad news with a smile.

Since I will not have nearly enough time to get through all of the points I wanted to make to the House, I will take a few minutes to comment on this paradox: I consider myself lucky to have the opportunity to speak to Bill C-24. It should not be luck, though, it should be a right in the House of Commons. All MPs who want to talk about a bill should have the chance to do so, thereby reflecting the diversity of the citizens they represent. Unfortunately, we are bound by the 65th time allocation, which means that many members who wish to speak will not be able to. That is why I consider myself lucky in spite of it all. I will probably buy a lottery ticket when the House adjourns around midnight.

Let us get back to Bill C-24, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts. Canada is a land of immigrants. The founding peoples built a welcoming country where everyone can feel free to settle and contribute to the nation's prosperity while living our shared values. We are all, to varying degrees, immigrants. Some of our families go back generations, while others are relative newcomers. Canadian immigration laws are therefore an important part of our identity and even of our uniqueness as a country.

In 1947, the Canadian Citizenship Act created a distinction between “Canadian citizen” and “British subject”. It also specified that both Canadian citizens by birth and naturalized citizens were entitled to the same privileges and were subject to the same responsibilities and obligations. The laws were amended in 1977. On February 6, 2014, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration introduced Bill C-24, which would bring about a major overhaul of Canadian immigration laws.

Has the time come to change them? Is our immigration system still dysfunctional? Sometimes, yes. Some of the bill's proposed changes to the Citizenship Act have been a long time coming. They fix problems with the existing system and are very welcome. For example, one provision sets out stricter regulations for immigration consultants who sell fraudulent services at high prices, taking advantage of vulnerable refugees and people who want to immigrate.

I want to be very clear about this: we are urging the government to create strict laws to crack down on dishonest immigration consultants. We support measures that tackle fraud, such as giving the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canada Border Services Agency more resources to detect fraudsters.

However, some clauses really change the rules of the game and have to be denounced. Before getting into the details of some of the provisions of the bill, I would like to caution my colleagues on the government side. Citizenship and immigration policy must not be left in the hands of just anyone. This is an issue that directly affects the collective identity of Canadians and the fragile balance in our multicultural society. Please, let us not play petty politics with such a sensitive issue.

Given the recent election results in the European Union, for example, it would be presumptuous to believe that Canada will never have to deal with feelings of exclusion or xenophobia within its population. Let us not think we are any smarter than the other states that wanted to score political points with immigration issues.

On that point, I unfortunately find it hard to trust the current Conservative government for the following reasons. Citizenship is a matter of law and must be kept out of the hands of politicians as much as possible. The bill in fact proposes allowing politicians, more specifically the minister, to interfere in granting and revoking citizenship. We are seeing a leitmotif, a repeated approach in a number of Conservative bills, which seek to give the ministers more and more powers.

Bill C-24 seeks to give the minister many new powers, including the power to grant or revoke the citizenship of dual citizens.

The government has a strong tendency to create laws that concentrate power in the hands of ministers. This way of doing things is not good for democracy. There is no other way to say it.

The NDP does not want people to be exposed to the possibility that the minister will make arbitrary decisions about their case based on political motivations or suspicions rather than on evidence that could be put before a court.

If this bill is passed, I wonder whether the minister will have the courage to disclose the list of people to whom he is going to unilaterally grant citizenship and his reasons for doing so, of course. Unless he does, there will be reason for suspicion. We must have both transparency and the appearance of transparency.

The minister is no substitute for justice. Take for example, cases where people are granted citizenship as a result of fraud. Usually, it would be up to the courts to enforce the law. With this bill, the minister can act unilaterally. This is a serious abuse of political power and proof of the Conservatives' contempt for Canada's judiciary. Unfortunately, this is not the first time this has happened.

Why are we concerned about the recent amendments? The NDP is not systematically opposed to all the amendments and improvements proposed in this bill. However, unfortunately, we know what the Conservatives are up to.

Since March 2008, more than 25 major changes have been made to immigration-related procedures, rules, laws and regulations. More and more changes have been made since the Conservatives won a majority. Coincidence or ideology? I will let people decide for themselves.

Here are a few examples: the moratorium on sponsoring parents and grandparents, the approval of fewer family reunification applications, and the punishment of vulnerable refugees. The sweeping changes that the Conservatives have made to the Canadian immigration system have not made the system fairer or more effective.

As proof, I have many immigration files that I have worked on in my own riding of Trois-Rivières, a city with a population of 134,000. Before I was elected, I mistakenly believed that Trois-Rivières was rather homogenous. However, just a few weeks after I was elected, I discovered just how multicultural this riding really is, and since then, I have been constantly dealing with immigration files, even the simplest of which take a considerable amount of time to resolve.

Many organizations have raised concerns about several provisions of the bill. These are not political organizations, and the vast majority of them practise immigration and citizenship law and are very familiar with this legislation. Why then do these organizations seem so opposed to this new bill? They likely oppose it because it does not address the real problem.

The real problem with citizenship and immigration, the problem criticized by all the groups, is the inefficiency, or rather the slowness, of the system and the decision-making process. We have been debating this bill for a few hours in the House, and I have heard little to assure me that the measures proposed in this bill will effectively enable people waiting for responses to get them more quickly.

Unfortunately, this bill does not provide any real solutions that would reduce the ever-increasing number of delays and the citizenship application processing wait times.

There are currently 320,000 people—yes, 320,000—waiting for their applications to be processed. Right now, the processing wait time is approximately 31 months. In 2009 the wait time was 15 months. The government would have us believe that the minister can wave his magic wand and this wait time will drop to 12 months, but no one knows the details. There is a lot of uncertainty here.

The Conservatives have never managed to solve this problem. The backlog of applications and the processing times have doubled under their watch. Furthermore, cuts to the public service will most definitely not help resolve this problem. That is the most significant problem with our current immigration system. The Conservatives only seem to be taking this problem seriously in their rhetoric. In practice, we hear very little about concrete actions.

Let us now move on to the issue of integration. Arriving in our country and becoming established in our community are very important steps in the life of immigrants. This also represents an individual or family challenge that the government can facilitate. That way, we can make it easier for newcomers to integrate into our country and for all of us to live together.

However, one of the bill's provisions weakens the progressive integration and welcoming of families that arrive in Canada. If this bill is passed without amendment, citizenship applicants between the ages of 14 and 64 will henceforth have to pass a test assessing their knowledge of French or English. Previously, this applied to people between 18 and 54 years of age.

Let us be clear: this is not about questioning the importance of having immigrants speak either of the official languages or even both official languages. I am just wondering why the age at which candidates will have to take the test is changing from 18 to 14. I will go back to my teaching experience, which was not that long ago. When a student failed an exam, the first thing the teacher wanted to know was what he or she could have done to ensure the student's success.

The bill is not very clear about what will happen if the candidate fails the language test, which will be administered to children as young as 14 and to older adults, for whom learning a second or third language is much more difficult. What is more, the bill is mum on any assistance that might be provided to these people to ensure that they pass the language test.

The NDP contends that the backlogs are the biggest challenge when it comes to immigration. I talked about that earlier. The minister acknowledges that the wait times are increasing, but he is not proposing any real solutions to resolve the problem.

We are against this government adopting increasingly restrictive immigration measures, based on secret and arbitrary decisions made by the minister in cabinet.

[François Pilon, NDP, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague on a great speech.

Given the new powers that the minister would have if this bill were to pass, what are my colleague's thoughts on the following scenario? Two people come to the minister's office with identical cases, but one is a major Conservative Party backer and the other is a union boss, as they like to say. Would the two be treated the same way?

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Laval—Les Îles for his very good question.

The sad thing about my answer is that I cannot answer that question. Of course, I have an idea what the answer might be, and I definitely understand the concern he is expressing in his question.

The real answer is that we will never know why one person is granted citizenship while another has his citizenship revoked, because that will be a secret closely guarded by the minister's office.

This is a definite tendency for this government. It is giving more and more powers to ministers while making all of its decisions more and more secretively. This ends up making governance more and more obscure.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my esteemed colleague touched on a fundamental issue. The Conservative approach involves concentrating more and more power in the hands of fewer and fewer individuals.

To make good decisions, one must consult others and have all of the necessary information, but that is being neglected here. A minister does not necessarily have all of the tools to make good decisions.

It is a real shame that the Conservative government has chosen to defend itself by saying that it is tackling a problem created by the Liberals and that it will shorten the waiting list. I wonder if it is achieving that simply by eliminating people from the list. Their approach should be more compassionate. What does my colleague think?

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for Pontiac for his question.

In many areas, including this one, what works in theory does not work in practice. What the Conservatives are putting in place with their bills, which eventually become law, is not in synch with what MPs have to deal with in their constituency offices.

To date, I do not see anything in Bill C-24, other than the fine principles, to reassure me. It does not contain any measures that I can use as examples to tell my constituents that the Conservatives did their homework and that this bill should be passed quickly because it will finally provide a mechanism to quickly meet their demands. I do not see anything of the sort. My three years in Parliament tell me that I should not expect that it is going to happen.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, one of the things that concerns me in Bill C-24 is proposed section 10, which says that the act will make it so that the immigration minister can strip any Canadian of citizenship if the person is convicted of a terrorism offence, even if it happens to occur outside of Canada.

Right now Mohamed Fahmy, an Egyptian-Canadian journalist with Al Jazeera, has been detained in Cairo and has been charged with terrorism. It seems to me that this journalist could easily be caught up in this particular law.

This has been brought forward by the Canadian Bar Association, but earlier this evening the minister indicated he believed that the Canadian Bar Association was misguided.

Does the member think, given the situation regarding Mohamed Fahmy, that perhaps the minister may be wrong?

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, if I had to choose between the bar's opinion and the minister's, I would choose the bar's, if only because members of the bar got together and came to a clear consensus. The bill before us is steering us down the path my colleague referred to.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am really honoured to have this opportunity to speak in support of Bill C-24, which would help prevent fraud in the citizenship program. It would protect it from abuse and preserve its integrity.

Poll after poll suggests that people from around the world would choose Canada as the country they would most want to live in. Why not? We have the best quality of life. As former Prime Minister John Diefenbaker said:

I am a Canadian, a free Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship God in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind.

Canada stands as a model of how people of different cultures, ethnicities, religions, and beliefs can live and work together in peace, prosperity, and mutual respect. That is what it means to be Canadian.

Because Canadian citizenship is so valuable, many people are prepared to misrepresent facts to make it appear that they qualify for citizenship. For example, they may pretend to live in Canada, when in fact they are living abroad. Ongoing large-scale fraud investigations have identified more than 3,000 citizens and 5,000 permanent residents linked to major investigations, a majority of them related to residence. In addition, nearly 2,000 individuals linked to the citizenship fraud investigations have withdrawn their applications.

More than 85% of citizenship fraud involves falsifying residence. In typical cases, permanent residents have used the services of crooked consultants to circumvent the law to fraudulently establish evidence of residence in Canada while living abroad most, if not all, of the time.

Media reports in recent years have highlighted some of the actions taken to simulate residence in Canada. Some of the most common examples are creating home addresses by using the address of a friend or relative in Canada; paying a building owner to rent an address, usually by a consultant, or using a postal service outlet; purchasing telephones and having someone in Canada use them to create a record of incoming or outgoing calls; opening a bank account, maintaining a healthy balance, and giving the ATM access card to someone in Canada to perform regular in-Canada transactions on the account.

Canadians know that citizenship sits at the heart of our democratic institutions. The Canadian people expect their government to protect the integrity of the citizenship process. Even a small number of crooked consultants who facilitate this type of fraud represent a substantial problem, as this undermines the program and the integrity and value of Canadian citizenship. That is why Bill C-24 proposes measures to help combat fraud and to protect the citizenship program from further abuse.

In short, the strengthening Canadian citizenship act would give the government the legal authority to designate a regulatory body whose members would be authorized to act as consultants in citizenship matters. This would ensure that citizenship consultants were held to the same professional and ethical standards as immigration consultants and would help prevent fraud in the citizenship program.

Another serious issue is that the penalties for fraud in the current citizenship act have not increased since 1977 and are ineffective in deterring individuals from committing citizenship related offences, such as misrepresentation. The current penalty for citizenship fraud is a mere $1,000, the maximum fine, which is $4,000 in 2014 dollars, or one year in prison, or both.

We need to prevent fraudsters from becoming citizens, and the introduction of stiffer penalties would help deter people from committing citizenship fraud.

The proposed new penalty for fraud is a fine to a maximum of $100,000 or five years in prison,or both, which would modernize the penalty for fraud in the Citizenship Act. It would also be the same as the penalty for the equivalent offence under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, or IRPA, thereby bringing the citizenship program in line with the immigration program.

The proposed legislation would also add a provision to refuse an application for misrepresentation of material facts and to bar applicants who misrepresent such facts from reapplying for five years. This would help deter fraud and would also bring the Citizenship Act in line with the IRPA.

Revocation is an important tool to safeguard the value of Canadian citizenship and to protect the integrity of our citizenship program. Bill C-24 would streamline the process for the government to revoke citizenship from those who are discovered to have lied or cheated on their citizenship applications. This is important, because the current revocation process can be complex and cumbersome. It can also take an inordinate amount of time to take citizenship away from someone who should not have obtained Canadian citizenship in the first place. If we want to get serious about cracking down on those who seek to undermine the value of our citizenship, it is imperative that we be in a position to revoke their citizenship in a timely manner, as proposed under Bill C-24. Individuals who have had their citizenship revoked for fraud would also be barred from reapplying for 10 years following the revocation order, up from the current bar of five years.

Our government is concerned about the recent discovery of a dual national committing a terrorist act abroad. In cases where dual nationals commit gross acts of disloyalty, such as treason or terrorism or taking up arms against our Canadian Forces, they too will lose the privilege of Canadian citizenship. We all have an interest in sending a message to such misguided individuals. They are committing serious crimes, and their actions have consequences.

Let us not forget that it was our government that introduced the Combating Terrorism Act, which will make it a criminal offence to leave Canada to commit terrorist acts. Let me remind all Canadians watching at home right now and those here in the House that it was the NDP that voted against this important, overdue protective measure.

Our government also introduced the Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act to make it easier to remove dangerous foreign criminals and to make it harder for those who pose a risk to Canadians to come to the country. However, both the Liberals and the New Democrats opposed this bill, and they have said repeatedly that they believe terrorists should be able to stay in Canada under humanitarian and compassionate grounds. The NDP member of Parliament for Parkdale—High Park said her discussions in Lebanon a while back led her to believe:

....that it is just not helpful to label them [referring to Hezbollah] as a terrorist organization. If the political parties in Lebanon who may disagree with Hezbollah...can figure out a way to work with Hezbollah and try to get along internally, then perhaps we should take a cue from that.

The opposition members have the opportunity right now to correct their mistakes and support our government's proposals to protect Canadians from ruthless terrorists. If they do not support this bill, the New Democrats reaffirm that they are soft on terrorists and organizations like Hezbollah.

We already know the Liberal leader's admiration for dictatorships, making light of Russia's annexation of Crimea. Worst of all, he said, on the Iranian embassy closure here in Canada, “It's important to talk to each other and it's especially important to talk to regimes that you disagree with and that disagree with you to make sure that there is means of communication”.

This is the same Iranian regime that seeks nuclear weapons, that seeks the destruction of Israel, and that funds terrorist organizations around the world. It is the same regime that murdered Canadians such as Zahra Kazemi. This is the regime the Liberal Party wants to reward with diplomatic status and engage in communication with.

I just want to conclude by saying that it is imperative that the opposition parties rally themselves, rise above their own partisan interests, and do what is right for Canada and support Bill C-24.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am disappointed in my colleague. I thought he would have listened attentively to my speech and noted that the most important point is the constitutionality of the bill. My colleague surely recognizes that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms constitutes the foundation of our Canadian democracy and our beautiful country. I hope that he will support this first statement.

I would like to quote a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada on the revocation of citizenship:

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.

According to professor Macklin, the Supreme Court of Canada clearly stated that the revocation of Canadian citizenship is unconstitutional.

What does my colleague have to say about the Supreme Court ruling and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms?

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to her remarks earlier, but they did not make a whole lot of sense, so I am going to have to give her an answer she may not agree with but that she should be prepared to listen to in any event.

The NDP should really learn to rise above its ideological blinders and do what is right for Canada. It takes the side of being soft on terrorists and terrorist organizations, and is on the side of those who would harm our Canadian Forces or those who would betray their own Canadian citizenship by taking up arms to fight in foreign lands.

These are the kinds of people the NDP chooses to support, rather than those hard-working people who come from all over the world to our great country of Canada. They come here for hope and opportunity. They come for opportunity for themselves, and more importantly, for their children. It is so important that these are the kind of people we embrace, these immigrants who embrace Canada.

We should not be supporting terrorists and those who seek to take up arms not only against those here in Canada but against our Canadian Forces abroad. The New Democrats should really be ashamed of themselves.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my hon. colleague from York Centre for the best speech I have heard tonight on the issues of fraud and disloyalty to Canada and how they affect our citizenship programs.

I am very proud to be on a government side in the House that is not only saying the right things and explaining in detail why this bill should move forward but is also showing how democracy works by disagreeing with one another. I am very proud of the member for Calgary Southeast and his huge contribution to shaping this bill. I am also proud that the member for Calgary East, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, took a different opinion on one aspect of the bill. That is the strength of this side. We are able to express our own views. We are able to differ and yet come together behind an important piece of legislation like this.

Could the member for York Centre please remind the House why it is so important to point out to Canadians how vulnerable the system has been to fraud and how important it is to fight terrorism, when basically, all the opposition has done tonight is defend spies, traitors, and terrorists?

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by saying that I want to thank the finest Minister of Citizenship and Immigration that Canada has ever had. He deserves all kinds of credit for the hard work that he has done, putting his heart and soul into Bill C-24 to make Canada a better country. We should all be proud of our Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.

Just let me say quickly—

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The member had 30 seconds and he used them on congratulating the minister, which I am sure the minister appreciates, but unfortunately there is not enough time to answer the question.

We will move on and resume debate with the hon. member for Vancouver East.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have to say at this late hour, that was a very fine example of Conservative self-glorification at its best. I would like to thank both the minister and the hon. member for the wonderful job they did of patting each other on the back regarding the most dreadful bill that we have had before this House.

Believe it or not, I can remember a day when the current government was in opposition. Those members would have been outraged that a bill, which was so important, had two hours of debate back in February and then today, for the 65th time, was put under a censure order so that we will just have debate tonight and then it moves on. This has become such a familiar pattern, but it really is very disturbing. I remember when Conservative members would have stood up in this House decrying the fact that the government of the day was doing this. Yet, here they are, worse than anybody has ever been.

I feel honoured to represent Vancouver East, a riding where immigration and new citizenship are very honoured. It is something that has built our communities, whether the Chinese Canadian, Japanese Canadian, or the Filipino Canadian community. There are people from all over the world. It is a working-class, hard-working riding. People have come from all over and built businesses. They have contributed to community services and have gone to school here.

I feel very proud to be part of a community that is very much built on immigration. It is a place where people feel very proud about being a Canadian citizen. Therefore, this issue of citizenship and what it means is an important subject in Canada. We are basically a country of new Canadians. Other than first nations, we are all newcomers. Some of us have been here for generations and some folks are here for the very first time. I myself come from a first-generation immigrant family and so I very much value the notion of what it means to be a Canadian citizen, which is all the more reason to look at Bill C-24 and go through it.

My colleagues here tonight and I are very concerned about the bill. Listening to the debate from the Conservative members, I feel as if we are in different worlds. Maybe we identify some of the same problems, but from two different worlds.

In the Conservative world, everything is good or evil. If anyone dares to speak about the rule of law or due process, somehow means that one is in favour of terrorists or criminal behaviour. I mean, it is so juvenile it is sort of pathetic. One would want to see the level of debate in this House be a little more thoughtful, but that is what it has come down to.

Of course, in the NDP, like anybody else, we are very concerned about terrorists and criminal acts, but the question that we are looking at tonight with Bill C-24 when we identify these problems is: how do we respond to them? How do we deal with them?

When we look at the bill, the conclusion that I come to is that basically Conservatives hold themselves above the law. Bill C-24 lays out a process whereby there are extraordinary powers conferred upon a minister to revoke citizenship in certain instances based on suspicion, without any regard to due process, without any regard to independent tribunals or court process. The government really does see itself as the final arbiter.

We believe that is fundamentally wrong, which is why we feel so concerned about the bill. Not only is it being rushed through, but this premise in the bill of affixing problems that have been identified is so suspicious in the power that it confers on an individual. Again, it is a familiar pattern that we have seen on numerous occasions with different legislation.

In the NDP, we do believe in the rule of law. We do believe in the legitimate role of Parliament to debate, to investigate, and to improve legislation. That is what we are here to do.

That is what we are here to do. That is what we are elected to do by our constituents. However, we see more and more legislation rushed through Parliament and rushed through committee, sometimes at all stages, through closure, censure, and time allocation. As I said earlier, we have seen it tonight for the 65th time, and it really does make a mockery of what debate and investigation of legislation should be in the House of Commons.

I feel a sense of dismay tonight, even at this late hour. I am sure we are all tired because we have had a long, busy day, but there is a compelling argument that makes us want to take this on again and again and respond to the absolutely irrational arguments being put forward on the government side.

I heard the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration say earlier in the debate that NDP was fearmongering, yet when we look at the bill and the powers that the minister would have, there is a sense of fear over what the consequences of this bill would be. When we look at the expert organizations in this field and the concerns they have expressed—and I certainly hope they will be heard in committee—surely we see that there has to be a rational debate about whether this bill tips the balance and goes to an extreme in conferring on the minister such extraordinary powers to revoke citizenship.

I do not want two-tiered citizenship in this country. There are other countries that have that kind of regime. That is something that Canada should stay away from. A Canadian citizen is a Canadian citizen. If a person has gone through the process of becoming a citizen, that is good, and then citizenship becomes a right.

There are also responsibilities, and if there is wrongdoing, then we have provisions in this country—I think it is called the Criminal Code—that allow for a process to be enacted, for due process to happen, and for people to be prosecuted and jailed if necessary. We have that system in place, but in reading this bill, one would think that none of it existed.

I find it really quite extraordinary that we are dealing with a bill that would in effect allow the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to act as prosecutor, judge, and enforcer. To me, that is simply wrong. We have a separation of powers in this country for a very good reason. We have a balance of powers in terms of a legislature with regard to the execution and enforcement of the law. There is a reason we have those checks and balances, so the legislation before us is very disturbing.

There is no question that there are issues in the bill that need to be dealt with, such as the issue of the lost Canadians. That is a long-standing issue that has needed to be addressed. I am glad that it is being addressed, but it is being smothered in this bill by other provisions, particularly the revocation of citizenship, which I think is very offensive.

There is also the question of why some of the real concerns we have about our immigration system are not being addressed. Many members tonight spoke about the issue of the backlog, the fact that there are over 300,000 people still waiting and that it takes an extraordinarily long time for applications to be processed. The Conservatives have promised and failed on many occasions to rectify that problem. We have not seen it happen, and it is not rectified in this bill.

If we look at an issue like family reunification, which is very important in terms of citizenship and immigration, we see that it is not dealt with at all; in fact, to the contrary, all of the measures we have seen from the government have actually narrowed family reunification and made it a lot more difficult.

At the end of the day, Bill C-24 is a bad bill. There might be some good provisions in it, but overall, the powers that it would confer upon the minister are unnecessary. They are not needed. They are powers that would cause problems in the long term.

I am very proud that New Democrats have been standing tonight to debate this bill and expose how fundamentally flawed it is. It will go to committee, and we will do our utmost to ensure that there are witnesses and that there are amendments. We can only hope that members of the House will be willing to consider amendments to make sure this bill is improved.

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

Mr. Speaker, from the remarks of the member for Vancouver East, it is very clear what the fundamental difference is between us and the opposition on this bill.

The NDP believes that it can somehow be coherent, that it can somehow be consonant with Canadian citizenship to have someone be convicted of terrorism and retain their citizenship. We respectfully disagree.

Gross acts of disloyalty deserve to result in penalties under the Criminal Code, but also the revocation of citizenship when statelessness is not a result. Many other countries agree with us, all of our allies in NATO, except one.

Could the member opposite cite one example of revocation of citizenship for citizenship fraud that was done improperly or that was unfounded? Has she seen any case where the power and duty to revoke under the law has not been implemented properly by the government or others? Will the member come clean with Canadians and admit that when there are cases of revocation for terrorism, or espionage or treason, there will be judicial supervision and involvement? That is required under the bill.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we are here tonight to talk about what this bill means and what it would do.

In reading the bill, what is very clear is that it would confer extraordinary power on the minister to allow the minister, he or she, to revoke citizenship in certain circumstances. That is wrong. We believe it violates due process, that it is not done through the judiciary with independent tribunals. It has been strongly criticized and condemned by a number of organizations that have examined the bill.

Why does the minister think a minister alone should have that kind of power? It just seems so fundamentally wrong. I do not think the government has answered that question. Where is the accountability? We have not heard that tonight from the government.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I share the concerns of the hon. member for Vancouver East.

There are some good elements of the bill. I appreciate the member for York Centre pointing out he is best minister we have ever had, although I do not know how the current Minister of Employment and Social Development feels about that. However, with all due respect to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, the bill represents a dangerous departure from fundamental understanding of what it means to be a citizen. It runs contrary to international commitments that Canada has made under the Convention on Statelessness and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It arguably also runs contrary to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in treating classes of Canadian citizens differently from each other.

I do not quarrel for one moment with what the minister says. If somebody obtains his or her Canadian citizenship by fraud, there are already ways in which that citizenship can be revoked because it was obtained fraudulently.

However, for Canadian citizens who arguably might or might not be dual citizens of another nation, to lose their citizenship from Canada is a dangerous and slippery slop.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member has identified a real problem in the bill, in that the bill would create two tiers of citizenship. That is unheard of in Canada. I do not know what kind of debate there has been out there in the community. I do not know if people are even aware that this is what the consequence of the bill would be.

We have yet to see whether it will contravene international conventions. As we see with so much of the legislation passed by the government, there are all kinds of legal challenges that have to take place because legislation is brought forward in such a narrow partisan way.

I feel that the whole notion of sound public policy is being eroded by the Conservative government. Bill C-24 is a very good example of that.

I thank the member because her comments are very relevant.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is indeed a great honour to be here this evening. We stand in a historic place and we look forward to a historic anniversary. Our 150th celebration as a nation is coming. If we look back 100 years from today, Prime Minister Borden was bringing in the Naturalization Act that precipitated the Citizenship Act of 1947, and here we are today, generations later, finally updating our Citizenship Act.

We stand in the name of great people. I am honoured to represent people from West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, people who really care about their citizenship, a varied population of different ethnic backgrounds and first nation backgrounds. They are people who cherish their citizenship.

I stand in the name of my father and my uncle. My late father was a prisoner of war in World War II. My late uncle, Smoky Smith, was the last surviving Victoria Cross holder. I am very proud this day, and I know that they would be very proud, considering what we are doing to protect the rights of Canadian citizens and ensuring the rights of a group that I am about to speak about, the lost Canadians.

I am proud to speak on behalf of my predecessor, the former member of Parliament for this riding, John Reynolds, who was an ardent advocate for the lost Canadians, for the people whose rights will be restored in Bill C-24. I am proud to speak on behalf of constituents who have worked for this day, including people like Don Chapman, who helped John Reynolds on his way to advocate for lost Canadians.

Given these personal connections, I am also very glad to speak on behalf of all Canadians who have been watching the evolution of this bill from coast to coast and who have waited with anticipation for us to do something truly historic.

The measures in Bill C-24 represent the first comprehensive reforms to the Citizenship Act in more than a generation, and they deserve the support of every member in this House. Canadian citizenship is central to our identity, values, and traditions and is a tremendous source of pride for all of us who are fortunate enough to have it.

Generations of Canadians have made great sacrifices to defend our way of life, to ensure that our country remains strong and free, and to guarantee the rights and responsibilities that come with citizenship. Among those Canadians are the people I have mentioned, and there are others, such as the people who have returned from Afghanistan so recently and those at that poignant ceremony that we celebrated, the Day of Honour. Those are the people who are watching this evening.

In short, Canadian citizenship is precious, and it should never be taken for granted. Its value must always be preserved and strengthened whenever possible. That is why Bill C-24 is such an important piece of legislation.

As I mentioned in my opening remarks, I would like to focus on one particular measure in this bill: the restoration of citizenship to those who are known as the lost Canadians.

Under the 1947 Canadian Citizenship Act, there were groups of people who were either not eligible for citizenship or who lost their citizenship for various reasons. They included people born outside Canada to a Canadian parent and people born in Canada who naturalized in another country. They were people who might have justifiably but erroneously thought they were Canadians. They were excluded because of outdated and inconsistent provisions in previous citizenship legislation. Those affected by these provisions became popularly known as “lost Canadians”.

Some lost Canadians spent many years of their lives believing in their hearts that they were Canadian citizens and publicly identified themselves as such. They did not realize that they did not actually have Canadian citizenship. In some cases, the bad news of their actual status came as a nasty surprise when, for example, they applied for a Canadian passport for the first time. Other lost Canadians spent many years yearning for the citizenship they felt would rightfully be theirs if not for outdated legal provisions.

This was a unique and unfortunate situation. I am sure all of us in this House can sympathize with the plight of these unlucky individuals.

Over time, many lost Canadians asked the Government of Canada to give them citizenship. Four and a half years ago, building on the advocacy of my predecessor John Reynolds and others, the government did just that. In 2009, significant changes to Canada's citizenship legislation were implemented. The changes restored citizenship or granted it for the first time to the vast majority of lost Canadians. The amendments reflected the seriousness with which our government takes the issue of people's citizenship.

On the day that law came into effect, most lost Canadians automatically obtained their citizenship retroactively, as of the date they lost their citizenship if they were former citizens, or as of the date of their birth.

Many of my hon. colleagues may remember the day in April 2009 when this law came into effect. There was a lot of media coverage of what was naturally a very happy story of these lost Canadians, so-called, returning home. In fact, a number of former lost Canadians showed up here on Parliament Hill that day, determined to celebrate the restoration of their citizenship and to apply for a Canadian passport at their earliest opportunity.

Our government resolved the vast majority of lost Canadian cases in 2009, and we are committed now to fix the remaining ones. The Liberals could have done this, but they failed to do so.

Although the 2009 legislation did cover the overwhelming majority of lost Canadians, there still remained a small number of people who did not benefit from those changes. The lost Canadians who would gain citizenship under the provisions of Bill C-24, the bill we see before us this evening, fall into three categories: people born or naturalized in Canada before 1947 who subsequently lost their British subject status and did not become Canadian citizens on January 1, 1947; second, British subjects ordinarily resident in Canada prior to 1947 who did not become citizens on January 1, 1947; and third, children born abroad in the first generation to any parent who was born, naturalized, or was a British subject ordinarily resident in Canada prior to 1947.

Here is what Bill Janzen, consultant for the Central Mennonite Committee said about Bill C-24:

I welcome the government's decision to include “Lost Canadians” in their changes to the Citizenship Act. The decision will improve the situation of people born outside of Canada who until now were deemed ineligible for Canadians citizenship....

For instance, someone who was born out of wedlock before 1947 to a Canadian father and a non-Canadian mother did not automatically gain Canadian citizenship when the 1947 law came into force. Neither did someone born in wedlock to a Canadian mother and a non-Canadian father.

It goes without saying that these, seen from our perspective today, are archaic provisions. There is why the measures in Bill C-24 pertaining to remaining lost Canadians are so timely and necessary.

In summary, these measures, measures that I have advocated for since becoming an MP, much of which time I was on the citizenship and immigration committee, would extend citizenship to more lost Canadians born before 1947 and their children born in the first generation outside Canada who did not benefit from the 2009 changes.

It is proposed to extend citizenship to these individuals retroactively to January 1, 1947, or to their date of birth if they were born after this date.

I urge all hon. members of this House to join me in supporting the passage of this bill in order to ensure that Canadian citizenship remains strong and that we can ensure these lost Canadians are welcome and remain a part of the Canadian family.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is important that the issue of lost Canadians be redressed. I would like to remind the member that there was a first stab at it in 2007 when a bill was adopted that dealt with the largest part of those now-called lost Canadians. Some were left behind. Addressing that problem is worthy business of the House.

The problem is that the bill does not just deal with lost Canadians; it deals with a lot more. We could have easily dealt with the lost Canadians as an independent bill, but we have not done that. We should have redressed that years ago. The fact that the bill in 2007 did not sufficiently address the problem is a problem from 2007, so the government now seven years later is fixing a problem that has been dragging on for many years.

Now, all of a sudden, after the government first presented this legislation in February, the Conservatives are in a massive hurry to pass it before the summer recess. I do not know why they could not have brought it back to the House long before today. Again, they tabled it the first time on February 27 and now they seem to be in the biggest hurry to pass it, send it to committee, and who knows how long it will spend in committee. I tend to think that it might not last very long in committee either.

We need to have a fulsome debate on the bill if only because we are talking about the possibility of removing citizenship. Adding citizenship to lost Canadians is a worthy cause. Removing citizenship, especially in a process that seems to lack a serious amount of due process, is questionable and may very well contravene international obligations.

I would like the member's comments on the revocation of citizenship that the bill would bring in, not just fixing a problem that unfortunately the government left standing for seven years.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is the hallmark of an optimist who will compliment a good deed and the hallmark of a pessimist who asks why it was not done earlier.

It is welcome news that my colleague across the way is basically saying that we are taking a good step by enacting these provisions to enfranchise the lost Canadians.

He also mentioned due process. There are at least two provisions in the bill. There will be a federal court review and there is a new level of court review through the Court of Appeal for anybody who is in the unfortunate position of having citizenship removed.

As a lawyer myself, I look at this and think that not only would we be securing the sacredness of citizenship with the bill, but we would be ensuring that people who ought to have their rights removed would have them removed only subject to due process.

[Gary Goodyear, Conservative, Minister of State (Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario)]

Mr. Speaker, I have enjoyed the debate this evening. It is quite robust.

Bill C-24 speaks to eliminating fraud within the system.

I am proud to say that my riding of Cambridge-North Dumfries has the largest Portuguese community in all of Canada. When I speak to these folks in the Portuguese community, they tell me they are very proud to be Canadians and they are proud of the ethical process that they went through to become hard-working citizens. My first job was on an asphalt crew with a bunch of Portuguese men who were a great influence in my life.

My feeling on the bill is that it works toward preventing fraud in the system, which these hard-working new Canadians want to see happen.

My question for the member is this. Should we not improve this system to enforce and improve the integrity of the system to deal with those who are committing fraud within the system?

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Mr. Speaker, there are several provisions in the bill that would increase the penalties for fraud and jail time. The penalties would be increased to $100,000 for fraud.

We know from investigations that there have been thousands of cases over the past years and only a minimal number of cases have been prosecuted. This is going to make Canadians feel that our citizenship is more secure.

There are other provisions in the legislation like the income tax provisions that will now be presented for the first time so that people who claim permanent residence and use it will have to present their taxes. This will ensure their connection to Canada.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to start off with a quote from Macbeth:

Good things of day begin to droop and drowse;
While night's black agents to their preys do rouse.
Thou marvell'st at my words: but hold thee still;
Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.

I would like to contend that the bill presented before us is a bill bad begun. It has grown from a rotten seed that was planted as the genesis of partisan ill will to drive a wedge between Canadians by a school alumnus of the minister from UTS, Mr. Garth Turner, who coined the term “Canadians of convenience” during the Lebanon crisis.

Although it might be a popularly held belief among many Canadians that some Canadians abuse their citizenship by leaving Canada, I would contend that this is not the case and that we have to defend the rights of every Canadian citizen. No matter where their origin, no matter their choice to leave, we have to, because it is in the law of this land.

There are perils in the tyranny of the majority.

Thoreau said:

...the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice...

I believe that is the case with this bill. I believe that it is a sign of political cowardice by the leadership on the other side of this House, and I would wish that one person would stand, as another minister did, and ask pertinent questions of their own government about why it is being politically cowardly about this issue.

I would like to clarify some facts made during the debate, particularly by the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. He was clearly wrong when he heckled out during one of the debates that we were arguing that they are creating a law above the law in trying to defend on this side the Constitution of this country. The minister stated that the Constitution is not a law.

The definition of a constitution, according to Merriam-Webster, is:

The basic principles and laws of a nation...that determine the powers and duties of the government and guarantee certain rights to the people in it.

Now, the minister should know from his father, Bruce Alexander, who served under Bill Davis, the Ontario premier who was responsible for the patriation of the 1982 Constitution, that the Constitution is in fact the highest law of the land and that it frames our whole nation and the way that the government should act. It frames limits for the government so that it does not abuse its majority.

Everyone knows that the current government has problems with aspects of the Constitution, particularly the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Now, there are two charter rights that go against this whole popular notion of Canadians of convenience. One of them is section 6, which states:

Every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in and leave Canada.

I would contend that the genesis of the bill is this whole popular idea of Canadians of convenience. There are no Canadians of convenience. If someone who is a Canadian citizen decides to leave, that is their fundamental right in this country.

The other one would be section 15, which outlines the principle of equality before the law, regardless of national origin. It does not matter if people are from China, France, the U.K., Turkey, or Lebanon. It does not matter where they have come from in the world; once they come here to Canada and become Canadian citizens, they are Canadian citizens, no matter what.

It is disappointing that this railing against the Constitution or the Charter of Rights and Freedoms comes from a man who has enjoyed a privileged life, a man whose father was a prominent lawyer who worked under someone who was arguably one of the greatest premiers in Canada, although I might disagree with that. He served under Bill Davis, who was responsible for the patriation of the 1982 Constitution with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which we know this side does not always agree with.

It is disappointing that the member cannot defend the highest law of the land, our Constitution. When one rails against the Constitution, there is a term for this. When one tries to subvert a constitution, there is a term for this and it is called sedition. It is seditious to try to subvert a country's constitution and to incite people to rebel against the highest law of the land. To sow divisions between Canadians is seditious behaviour.

I would argue that through presenting this particular law, Bill C-24, in the House it is sowing divisions among Canadians. It is attempting to subvert the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and it will end up having constitutional challenges that will entail costs for Canadian taxpayers. Every time there is a challenge to the Constitution, lawyers are hired. There are lots of costs involved and the government, which so much likes to defend the taxpayer, would in fact be footing the bill through the Canadian taxpayer in fighting all these cases that will arise out of this badly thought-out bill.

I would like to conclude by saying that I have a personal interest in this debate. I am the father of a dual citizen and I have been through this system. I have seen how it tears families apart and keeps families apart. I could not see my daughter for at least 12 to 13 months after she was born simply because of the immigration process and the length of time that it took to reunite families. I can tell everyone that this causes stress for families. It personally bothers me that my daughter who is a dual national would not have the same rights as I would.

Some future administration might decide that she is treasonous for whatever reason, because the concept of treason is there in history, say in the case of Brown v. Virginia, where a person wanted to abolish slavery. At the time if the majority does not agree with this person, the person is judged to be treasonous and hanged. Let us consider what we are doing here because sometimes the majority and the popular sentiment of a country is not always the right thing. It is not always the right thing that is being done. We have to look at this and consider it.

I would seriously ask the government to retract the bill. There are so many elements in it that are problematic. It is shooting off in all different directions. I think it has been badly thought out. It is a poorly thought-out bill that has its genesis in ill will of popular sentiment. I would ask the minister and the ministry to reconsider the bill because it will have serious effects on numerous Canadians.

There are good aspects in the bill. The part that is trying to rectify the problems with lost Canadians is one of the better aspects of the bill, but there are troubling aspects when we explore the concept of revoking citizenship, and not citizenship of someone born here, but citizenship of someone who has dual nationality.

That is a problem. When I look at my daughter, she is as Canadian as everyone in this room. She may not have been born on Canadian soil, but when she sings O Canada, when I see the pride she has in her country, I believe that she is 100% Canadian. If she left this country and spent 27 years such as the minister did outside of this country, whether it was serving Canada or serving another purpose, I believe that in her heart she would be Canadian. We should never remove citizenship from a Canadian citizen, no matter what.

We have recourse to justice for people who have committed crimes. I think it is an easy solution in the minds of the government to take away someone's citizenship. There are already judicial rules in place that make sure that if people have committed a crime, they are punished. We have a justice system that is robust and can deal with this.

It is disappointing that the government is using legislation to divide Canadians. I would contend that the bill would be seditious, because it would subvert the Constitution.

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

Mr. Speaker, we had to wait until midnight to be accused of sedition on this side. It must be the witching hour.

I would like to express sympathy to the member opposite for the difficulty he clearly faced in the immigration system. We are aware that separation of family members causes stress. We are working very hard to reduce backlogs to try to make sure that families can be together as quickly as possible. We have made a lot of progress in that direction.

In our earlier exchange about the Constitution versus laws, my point was that the Constitution is not sufficient to provide for the rule of law in our country. We have a Constitution, yes. We have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. They are important, but we need laws, like the law on citizenship, and we need revisions and modernizations of those laws to tell us what the rules are to make sure that our country is well governed in every sphere. That is why we sit in the House of Commons.

Some of his colleagues were implying that it is enough simply to have the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and that it is all we need to define our citizenship. That is not the case, and it is not the case in other countries.

Is the hon. member really implying, though, that there should be revocation of citizenship for citizenship fraud, yet not for cases as serious as sedition, like treason, espionage, and terrorism? In fact, they are much more serious crimes.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my contention is that we have a law. We have laws touching on treason and on terrorist acts. Our justice system is robust enough to deal with these acts. If Canadian citizens commit these acts, we should take them to the courts and punish them. They are citizens. As Canadian citizens, they have rights, and those rights have to be protected.

One has a right to a fair trial in our country. That is one of the rights. This is another problem that would be created by the bill, because it would put in jeopardy the whole notion of having a fair trial.

My question is for the minister. Does he not trust our justice system enough? Does he not think it is robust enough to punish criminals who have done criminal acts of espionage, treason, and terrorism?

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for a very impassioned speech. It was very well researched, with lots of literary references. I really appreciated that, being an English teacher.

Most of all, I wanted to say to him how much I appreciated that he shared his personal story on the difficulties he experienced. We have seen those reflected from coast to coast to coast, almost every one of us.

I live in Surrey in Newton—North Delta, one of the most diverse communities. My office often feels like the local hospital, where we do triage on immigration issues, and then we send people away feeling very frustrated. I actually have constituents who have been waiting 30 months, or four years, or as long as five years to get their spouses over. Sometimes the child, even after DNA tests are passed, is in kindergarten and grade 1 before the families are united.

However, what we are here to discuss today is really two-tiered citizenship, which my colleagues across the way have done everything they can to avoid talking about.

My question is very simple. If people are born in Canada or become naturalized and become Canadian citizens, under this legislation, could they have their citizenship stripped from them?

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is clear that for Canadians born here, citizenship cannot be stripped from them. For both, they can be stripped. It is not right. If people are Canadian citizens, they are Canadian citizens. They should not have their citizenship stripped from them. It is just not right.

I thank the member for highlighting my personal story. It was a bit too emotional to describe to the House, but yes, it is quite an ordeal to go through the immigration process and to try to be reunited with family members. From what I have heard anecdotally, as a member in this place, I have heard worse stories than what I experienced, as the member just said. I was lucky enough to understand the political system and went to the member for Vancouver East and requested her assistance in that case, and she did an excellent job.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to have the opportunity to add my voice to support Bill C-24, which would help prevent fraud and protect the citizenship program from abuse. Our Conservative government will not turn a blind eye to citizenship fraud and those who cheapen the value of Canadian citizenship.

Because Canadian citizenship is so valuable, many people are prepared to misrepresent facts to make it appear that they qualify. For example, they may pretend to live in Canada when they are really living abroad, often with the help of crooked citizenship consultants, those who would take money to help permanent residents circumvent the law and gain citizenship by fraudulent means.

As of October 2013, the RCMP had conducted investigations involving more than 3,000 citizens and more than 5,000 permanent residents. The majority of the investigations were related to residence. There are also reports that nearly 2,000 people linked to these investigations have withdrawn their citizenship applications.

Even the small number of crooked consultants who facilitate this type of fraud represents a substantial problem, as this undermines the program's integrity and the value of our citizenship. That is why this legislation would help combat fraud and protect the citizenship program from further abuse.

These measures include permitting only authorized representatives to represent individuals in citizenship matters, increasing penalties for fraud, refusing applicants because of misrepresentation at any point in the citizenship process, and barring them from reapplying for five years. This bill proposes to do this through several amendments to the Citizenship Act.

The current Citizenship Act does not include any means to regulate citizenship consultants. New provisions under Bill C-24 would allow the minister to designate a professional body authorized to represent individuals in citizenship matters. This means that the government could monitor and collect information concerning citizenship consultants, require applicants to declare the use of a consultant, and return applications from people using consultants who are not registered.

These changes would be in line with amendments introduced in 2010 to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, or the IRPA, to crack down on crooked immigration consultants.

I see that my time is wrapping up. I would just like mention one last item, if I might.

The current penalty for citizenship fraud is a mere $1,000 maximum fine or a one-year prison term; it would move to $100,000 or five years in prison. This is extremely appropriate in this matter.

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

It being 12:15 a.m., pursuant to an order made earlier today, it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the second reading stage of the bill now before the House.

The question is on the amendment. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the amendment?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

All those in favour of the amendment will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

In my opinion the nays have it.

Pursuant to an order made on Tuesday, May 27, 2014, the division stands deferred until Thursday May 29, 2014, at the expiry of the time provided for oral questions.

The hon. Minister of State for Western Economic Diversification is rising on a point of order.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Centre-North, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am wondering whether, if you sought it, you would find the unanimous consent of the House to see the clock at 12:30 a.m.

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

The House resumed from May 28 consideration of the motion that Bill C-24, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee, and of the amendment.

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Pursuant to an order made Tuesday, May 27, the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the amendment to the motion at second reading of Bill C-24.

(The House divided on the amendment, which was negatived on the following division:)

Vote #157

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

I declare the amendment defeated.

The next question is on the main motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

All those in favour will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And five or more members having risen:

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Vote #158

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

I declare the motion carried. Accordingly, this bill stands referred to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.

(Bill read the second time and referred to a committee)