Mr. Speaker, this being my first opportunity to be on my feet for an extended time, I just want to take the opportunity to thank the great people of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry for giving me the honour of coming back to the House of Commons for a third time. I am extremely proud to serve as their federal member of Parliament. I want to welcome the residents of North Glengarry, who are new to the riding. It is going to be a little bit easier for the Speaker now to say Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry, without the “south” in there. We have reunited all of S, D and G, the city of Cornwall and Akwesasne.
I want to take the time while I have the floor to thank all of those who helped out in our recent campaign, from our campaign team, volunteers and door knockers to the thousands of people who took signs and, at the end of the day, those who marked and cast their ballot for me. It is something that I never take for granted and I am deeply grateful for.
I am grateful for my family and my close network of friends. I have a great big group of second mothers, as I call it, not only volunteers but family and a wonderful group of friends that support us in this unique work that we do and lifestyle that we have of, as I always say around home, getting our meals and miles in. I want to thank my family: my dad, Ed; my mum, Bea; my sister Jill; and my step-parents and step-siblings. I would be a little while listing the five stepsisters that I have, but I wanted to say how grateful I am for their love, encouragement and support.
I am pleased to rise today to add my contributions to the government's legislation, Bill C-3, an act to amend the Citizenship Act of 2025. This is not the first time we have seen a bill in this form. We have actually seen this as a Senate private member's bill in a much different form, one that I think would be much more beneficial. I will get into that in my comments here over the course of the next several minutes.
I want to start by talking about the value and the importance of citizenship in this country. One of my favourite things is when we get the list, on a monthly basis, from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, of individuals in our ridings who have recently obtained Canadian citizenship. It provides us an opportunity to send them a scroll of congratulations. One of the things my staff and I are proud of is not only signing each scroll and certificate but putting a passport application in there and letting them know that they can come to our office for service, making that connection.
One of the things we want to do is to show how proud we are of the value of Canadian citizenship. It is a privilege and an honour. We have people come back in, people I have met from all over the riding, in the community, both in Cornwall and S, D and G. They will come in and appreciate that scroll and show just how proud they are to be Canadian. It is an immense privilege to have the chance to do that.
Bill C-3 will do that in a few different ways. We agree with some measures and sections. There are others that we have some concerns about, and I will get into that. The bill is a recycled version of Bill C-71 from the last Parliament that was tabled by the Trudeau Liberals. Bill C-71 came out of a Conservative private member's bill from a wonderful senator of ours, Senator Yonah Martin, that was heavily amended, Bill S-245.
I want to say that the reason we are here is that in 2023, the Ontario Superior Court ruled that the first-generation limit was unconstitutional. The government chose, in this case, not to appeal it. It had the opportunity to appeal and test that in court, but it chose not to. Instead the government committed to changing the law. The court did say, and it is important in our discussions, and I am going to be talking about this, that the “substantial connection test” would be appropriate to ensure that these new citizens were actually connected to Canada. That is a major concern that we have.
Right now, the plan is a very poor test, frankly. The fact is that there is 1,095 nonconsecutive days, with no way to know how that is all done. Again, we talk about having a connection to Canada, that privilege of citizenship, that connection to Canada for an individual to have. It is certainly strained in the way the government has this written.
I want to start with some of the areas that Conservatives have found agreement on that need to be addressed. First is the provisions for adopted children. For myself, when reading about the legislation and our briefing notes and hearing other colleagues today speak about this from our side of the aisle, when it comes to the adoption of children and making it easier for Canadian parents and facilitating citizenship when they adopt children abroad, this issue is something that is worthy of merit and consideration in this legislation.
We need to make it easier in this country for parents to adopt, whether that is domestically or around the world. In this measure right now, the current process is a PR process, a permanent resident process, that parents have to go through and so forth. The bill would treat adopted children the same as natural born. I think that is a step in the right direction. When we talk about cutting red tape, this is one way we can do that, by making it easier for families to adopt. There are still a lot of processes to go through and a very stringent requirement for parents to do so, but when they adopt a child from another country and that adoption process is final, that is when they are treated the same as natural born and get that. It is an easier process as opposed to going through PR and that process, which can sometimes be complicated and difficult for families to navigate as they have gone through many other forms and processes already to go through the child custody and adoption process.
Conservatives have been on record on this before. My colleague from Saskatoon West has done a great job on this piece of legislation and on many of these topics already.
There are several quotes that came from the immigration committee, where we have been on the record on that. We stated, quote, we want to see adopted children have their citizenship respected in the same way. That means allowing them to pass it on without going through unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles. We have been on the record before in this House and at committee. We will continue to do that here in the House as we go through this part of the bill.
Another part of the bill we can support, for which I am going to give two positives, if I could, is restoring citizenship for lost Canadians. We deem that to be reasonable. I want to give, as I did earlier, kudos to our Conservative senator. There is a smaller number these days, but we have a wonderful Senate caucus over on the Conservative benches there. Senator Yonah Martin's bill, Bill S-245, was designed with a clear and narrow goal: to restore Canadian citizenship to a small cohort of lost Canadians. I would say her effort was non-partisan and targeted to remedy a situation that came up nearly 50 years ago in our country.
Conservatives supported that bill at every stage to ensure the Canadians who were unfairly left out of previous citizenship reforms, including those stripped of their citizenship at age 28 under section 8 of the act, could have justice and a fair process. However, the process went through the Senate, and it was a good part of the way through the House and committee. The NDP and the Liberals then hijacked it and made several significant changes, which is where we are at today, many of which are in the form of Bill C-3.
Conservatives have said that while we support the measures I just spoke about, we cannot support the bill in the current form, because there are several other issues of challenge. It dilutes the integrity of Canadian citizenship by automatically extending it to multiple generations. Several of my colleagues have mentioned this in their comments today and have asked Liberal members to provide a number. We are unable to substantiate the number of applicants and the impact this is going to have on immigration, IRCC and the department in this country. How many more will obtain Canadian citizenship through this? It will be countless as it goes on through generation after generation. There is no number to know that. We do not know the cost on services of obtaining passports. There could be old age security and guaranteed income supplement applications and eligibility that come from it. Some of it could be retro, depending on how all this goes, so it could be very difficult in that way. Therefore, I think that is a major issue we have that we need to discuss and to have further clarification on.
One of the challenges is not only the countless generations but also the minimal substantial connection test. I mentioned the 1,000 days the government has put in the legislation. One of the key challenges is that it is nonconsecutive. It goes back, at the end of the day, to the court ruling the government referenced, which said there is space and an opportunity for the legislation to come forward to have that substantial connection test. The government has chosen for it to be 1,000 nonconsecutive days.
Conservatives are on record as saying that it needs to be consecutive days. There needs to be a substantial test. That would be a fair way to make sure that the value of Canadian citizenship is maintained by a person's having a real, legitimate, tangible, long-term connection, at even 1,000 days, but a substantial connection at that point, to Canada in obtaining their Canadian citizenship.
There is another key aspect that Conservatives have raised about the current form of Bill C-3 and about Bill C-71. We also raised it during debate on Bill S-245, when it was gutted by the NDP and Liberals, and vastly expanded to what we see now. There is no requirement for a criminal record check to take place.
We talk about public safety in our country and the need to make sure we have a stringent immigration process, a fair, secure and safe immigration process. The fact that there would not be an obligation, it would not be mandatory, to have a criminal background check is completely inappropriate. Earlier, the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader made his comments and interventions about that. He kept saying that the Liberals are open to suggestions and to amendments. Conservatives have been on the record about some of the things we would do and what we want to do. The government has had multiple opportunities to correct the issue by putting it proactively in the bill and making a background criminal check a requirement.
That was debated in the last Parliament in Bill S-245. Conservatives did raise the issue, and we debated it substantially, while the Liberals veered in and around it. Bill C-71 was introduced under the Trudeau government as a piece of legislation, and now the same Liberal government has come back with Bill C-3, yet it has still not put it in. I can assure the House that my Conservative colleagues at the citizenship and immigration committee, if the bill does proceed to committee, will be advocating it. I am very confident that would be an amendment that would come forward.
My comment on this for Canadians is to make an observation about the lack of seriousness the Liberals have shown when it comes to public safety to ensure that Canadians who would be granted citizenship through this process are able to pass a criminal background check. The Liberals have had the opportunity to put this in. The fact that we have had to fight and fight for this, while the Liberals have continually obstructed it, says a lot about their lack of seriousness about it. We will continue to push the topic and continue to do all of this at committee, in debates here in the House, and so forth.
Another major aspect and concern, as I mentioned, is the cost of the bill, as well as the number of people who would be eligible and the countless generations. There are some unintended consequences that would happen if the flaws and issues that we see in the legislation are not addressed. A key part about this is that the numbers are very important when it comes to immigration. We have seen the Liberal government fail time and time again when it comes to the numbers in our immigration system.
We could survey Canadians, and I am sure they would say a few things. I am sure they would say that they believe that in order to obtain Canadian citizenship through this process, it would not be unreasonable in Bill C-3 to add in a provision that would require a security background check. Most Canadians would say that would be common sense.
Most Canadians would think that if the government is going to introduce legislation that would have a major impact on the number of people eligible for citizenship, passports, services and all of that support, the government would have estimates on how many people would be impacted and what the cost would be to various departments and services. People would think the government would have all of that. It has refused to provide those numbers. Most Canadians would say that they would expect parliamentarians and the government to have that information on hand, available for public knowledge and discussion, when a piece of legislation like this is coming forth.
However, when it comes to numbers, we have seen so many times how the Liberal government has broken our immigration system with reckless numbers. We have seen them, and we know that the Liberals know they have created a failed and broken system after 10 years of being in office, because they are trying to rescind many of the decisions they made. They are now trying to make major changes to the temporary foreign worker program.
They provided over a million international students with permits, with zero plans for them to be housed safely in appropriate circumstances and with affordability. I have spoken to a large number of international students at St. Lawrence College in Cornwall and in my travels in Eastern Ontario and across the country. It has been incredible the number of frustrated international students who heard for years about the opportunity to study in Canada.
Under the Trudeau government and continuing under the current government, the Liberals keep missing their targets. Even after they have realized the issues they have made and tried to cap numbers, they broke the international student system. We heard stories in the GTA of six, eight or nine people staying in a two- or three-bedroom home and sometimes paying $1,000 or more each in rent. These are ridiculous prices. We have heard of international students having to go to food banks.
The reason I raise all of this is that the government and the Liberals, when it comes to our immigration system, in numbers and in a sustainable system, have failed Canadians, new Canadians and those immigrating to Canada, very, very deeply.
We have seen it with respect to permanent residency. Members do not have to take my word for it; the government has admitted it broke the immigration system when it comes to permanent residency, because now it has rescinded and it is attempting to cap the number of permanent residents admitted into Canada and approved every year.
The Liberals have made many changes. They have actually closed the group sponsorship for refugees, which I have been personally supportive of. They have shut that program down. I have done that as a Group of Five; we sponsored a Syrian refugee family. I gave up my house and went to live in my mom's basement for six months, believe it or not.
I was part of a Groups of Five sponsorship opportunity, where we came together as a community to help a family in need abroad. They are doing very well in Canada these days. Because the government has broken the immigration system, and asylum claimants and the whole refugee system are severely under strain, it had to cancel that program in order to try to get its numbers under control.
Now we find the government proposing legislation in Bill C-3, about which we are asking what the number would be, how many this would impact, and what the impact would be on government departments and the economy in our country. We do not know.
I can just see another issue coming of the government's being woefully unprepared for the very legislation it introduces. It just speaks again of virtue signalling on its part, of breaking our immigration system and not learning from those lessons. We continue to see it time and time again.
I will give the Liberals a little bit of a compliment, but I do not want them to take it the right way. They get an A for an announcement. I have never seen people do photo ops and announcements better than the Liberals. That is their compliment. They can get the banners. They get the best backdrops. They have the podium announcement. They have people cheering. They have the news release out. It looks great, and it sounds great, full of Liberal word salad.
However, what happens is that they get an A for an announcement and an F for follow-through. Look at their tax cut today. They talk about numbers. Their big tax cut never came to fruition. It is drastically, astronomically smaller than what they said it was going to be.
The Liberals are not good with numbers. They are not good with numbers on the budget. They will not table a budget this spring. They will not tell us what the deficit is. They broke our immigration system by having numbers get out of control. We have another piece of legislation dealing with citizenship and immigration, for which they do not know the cost, they do not know their numbers and they are not doing the math. Canadians have seen this after 10 years, on repeat, over and over and time and time again.
Conservatives have said that there are measures of the bill that we will support and that we have been on the record as supporting before. However, we have some serious concerns about several of the provisions that need to be addressed.
We cannot support citizenship by descent for countless generations, we need to change the test for a substantial connections test, and we need to make sure every applicant passes a criminal background check. These are common-sense things my Conservative colleagues and I will continue to advocate for, to make sure, at the end of the day, that anybody who comes to Canada and becomes a citizen has an amazing opportunity to afford a home, to get a good job, to get health care and to enjoy what so many of us have had: a great quality of life in this country.
