Bill C-3

An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (2025)

This enactment amends the Citizenship Act to, among other things,
(a) ensure that citizenship by descent is conferred on all persons who were born outside Canada before the coming into force of this enactment to a parent who was a citizen;
(b) confer citizenship by descent on persons born outside Canada after the first generation, on or after the coming into force of this enactment, to a parent who is a citizen and who had a substantial connection to Canada before the person’s birth;
(c) allow citizenship to be granted under section 5.1 of that Act to all persons born outside Canada who were adopted before the coming into force of this enactment by a parent who was a citizen;
(d) allow citizenship to be granted under section 5.1 of that Act to persons born outside Canada who are adopted on or after the coming into force of this enactment by a parent who is a citizen and who had a substantial connection to Canada before the person’s adoption;
(e) restore citizenship to persons who lost their citizenship because they did not make an application to retain it under the former section 8 of that Act or because they made an application under that section that was not approved; and
(f) allow certain persons who become citizens as a result of the coming into force of this enactment to access a simplified process to renounce their citizenship.

Citizenship Act

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it was an Ontario Superior Court judge who ruled that the existing law was unconstitutional.

I think that we should also consider the opinions of other judges who have ruled on constitutional issues since then. We should not rely on a single judge from a single court, namely the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. Perhaps we should also consider the opinions of other judges who are more familiar with constitutional law.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, we have heard repeatedly, both inside the House and outside, how the Liberal government has broken the immigration system and not just Canadians' trust, but our ability to serve new Canadians. Through my office, I found out that getting an initial work permit or an extension has gone from 60 days to 210 days. Spousal applications for people already here in Canada used to be one year. Now the service standard is about three years. Family reunification is now over four years.

I am wondering if my colleague would comment on the changes the government is making without even knowing how many new people will be affected and how the current wait times will be affected.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I have an office in Calgary that is well known for its casework in immigration, and that casework in immigration is becoming more and more backlogged. The speculation on that is that the government is, pardon my phrase, ragging the puck so it does not have to deal with these issues. It can just drag things out, and hopefully people will eventually get the hint and move on. There are very few ways it can deal with the number of excess files it has at this point in time.

I think it is going to continue to be that way. The Liberals are going to continue to bluster and will not be able to meet their own targets. How are they going to meet the timelines? The expected timelines are being extended all the time, and the government is outside its targeted guidelines repeatedly. This is something members of Parliament have to continue to give feedback on and—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, John Nater]

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Winnipeg North.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, the reality of the situation is that when Pierre Poilievre sat in the Conservative caucus with Stephen Harper, they cancelled the ability for someone to sponsor a mother, a father or a grandparent. They cancelled it and did not allow people to do that. They also hit the delete button on the skilled worker employment program, literally deleting hundreds of thousands of people in the system even though they spent thousands of dollars individually to get into the system.

The member makes reference to the waiting time for marriages, which is not three years, but I can tell him that under Stephen Harper, it was up to six years. If I were provided the time, I could assure the member that the immigration system today is better. We finally have a new Prime Minister who is committed to not only improving the system, but ensuring the long-term stability of the program.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, that member continually brings up what happened 15 years ago, and then he spouts it off as if it is actually fact. He talks about reality. I am not sure that member recognizes reality. He talks about “cancel and delete”, yet we talk about the number of Canadians who were brought in during the Stephen Harper years. It increased substantially, and that member does not really seem to want to grasp that.

Every government has challenges with this file. Until the Justin Trudeau government, our immigration system was renowned as professional around the world. It no longer is, and that is for a reason. The Liberals messed it up.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, under the Trudeau government, there was indeed some abuse in terms of migration, and Quebec paid the heaviest price. Most of the temporary migrants who were entering the country and putting pressure on the system came to Quebec. The federal government owes Quebec a considerable debt, but we are never going to get that money back.

There is a general consensus on the bill before us. We had these debates in the previous Parliament. Why are my Conservative colleagues being so stubborn about keeping this bill from being passed?

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I apologize to my colleague because I was going to respond in French. However, he used the word “stubborn”, so I think I am going to have to respond in English.

Our job here is as His Majesty's loyal opposition. Members know that. There are gross holes in this legislation and the member knows that. He knows what happened at Roxham Road, and he knows how the Quebec government had to twist the federal government's arm after three years of Roxham Road in order to stop the flow of people who were just taking advantage of that slippage, where the border is not a border but the border is where there is an office with a border. That is ridiculous. That is a judge who does not know what they are doing. That is a government that does not know how to address a dumb situation.

Something we need to address here going forward, very clearly, is proper legislation, and this is anything but proper legislation. I do not think it is being stubborn for us to do the work that Canadians expect of us in order to get good legislation passed in the House.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Mr. Speaker, we have been unable to get a number from the government today of how many people this might impact. We have the PBO number. It was 115,000 people, so it is at least that many people or it could be more. What are the ways in which that many new citizens might impact Canada when it comes to the work that needs to be done in the bureaucracy and the cost to Canadians for things like old age security and other things?

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague asked me that question because I am often focused on this country's economy. The number that the PBO came up with is about $20.4 million per year in additional administration costs to get this program across, if it is approved in this way. That escalates going forward, of course, and that means more cost to Canadians. We can think about that as it continues down, with children upon children upon children. Eventually, we are going to have to deal with this, and the sooner the better.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak to this piece of legislation this evening here in the House.

After 10 years of the tired Liberal government, our immigration system is broken. I say that somewhat with a heavy heart because I look across at my colleagues and I know they like to be referred to as a new government. It is anything but new. What the Liberals have done is they have played musical chairs with their front bench. Most of them are the same people, just in different positions. The same goes for the parliamentary secretaries; they are the same people.

The system is broken, obviously for even a better reason than just them playing their musical chairs. Over the past 10 years of the Trudeau Liberals, because that is who they are, they have had seven ministers of citizenship and immigration. I am sure that is a historic first if we look back in the history of Parliament. They have had seven. Basically, they have not been able to find a competent person to handle the file, which has resulted in the dilemma we have today.

They often refer to the previous Conservative government with the great former prime minister Stephen Harper. We had a plan. I am the former parliamentary secretary to the minister of citizenship and immigration in the Harper government. We had a plan.

Our plan was predicated on the following: 65% of newcomers coming to Canada would have to come through our economic streams. This would be someone who had some working knowledge of either of the two official languages of the country and had a skill or a profession, something they could do where they could contribute to their families and to Canadian society from day one when they arrived in Canada. We had understandably set aside 25% for family reunifications, recognizing the importance of keeping families together, and we had set aside 10% for compassionate streams such as asylum seekers and refugees.

In all of that, we had a reasonable and sustainable number of people we would welcome into Canada on an annual basis. In came the Trudeau Liberals, these Liberals we are now facing across the aisle in their third minority government in a row, and out goes this plan and in comes helter-skelter, as far as managing the entire immigration file is concerned.

Today's asylum backlog, for example, stands at over 280,000 people as of March 31 of just this year, which translates to a four-year wait for asylum backlog. These are people who are waiting to get a response. Almost 29,000 people have failed to appear for their removal proceedings, and they cannot be located in the country, because there is no system in place for that to happen.

This is what happens when we have no plan, no control and no semblance of organization on how we should manage a ministry of the Crown. The government planned to cap study permits in 2024, and then blew right past their cap by over 30,000 people. In fact, in 2024, if we add all the streams together, over a million people came to Canada at a time when we have a housing crisis, we have a job crisis, our young people cannot find work and there are 1,500 encampments just in the province of Ontario alone. People cannot find a place to live.

I would argue that when we welcome people to our country, we should provide them with opportunities, opportunities like my parents had when they came here from Greece. When they came here, they worked hard. They got a good paycheque, which afforded them the opportunity to buy a home and grow their family.

Those opportunities and that Canadian dream, under these Liberals, have gone completely out the window. These Liberals have eroded the trust in our immigration system, and under their watch, wait times for application processing is completely out of control. Now, they want to add to the chaos.

I believe being a Canadian citizen is one of the greatest privileges one can have. Canadians died for the rights and privileges afforded to our citizens. Some of us may take that for granted on a daily basis, but 66,000 brave men lost their lives in the First World War, 44,000 brave soldiers lost their lives in the Second World War, 516 people lost their lives in the Korean effort, another 159 people lost their lives in Afghanistan and 29 in Cyprus and other efforts around the world. They lost their lives for those rights and privileges that we have today, and we need to take that seriously.

We have a responsibility, when we bestow that Canadian citizenship, that huge privilege, on somebody. It means something. We do not water that down.

Canadians have the right to vote. I would argue that people who have a right to vote should have contributed or contribute to this country, as many of our families do and as Canadians do from coast to coast to coast on a daily basis.

Now, Bill C-3, the bill we are discussing, weakens Canadian citizenship by eliminating that first-generation limit, allowing parents born abroad to pass citizenship to their children born abroad, generation after generation, as long as one parent has spent 1,095 non-consecutive days in Canada prior to the birth of the child. That does not mean 1,095 days in the last five years, which is the standard today for a permanent resident to become a Canadian citizen. It is just 1,095 days in their life.

A student who came to Canada, studied, spent three years here, obtained a Canadian citizenship, left the country and grew a family somewhere else can bestow that citizenship to their child born in that country, in perpetuity, to grandchildren and so forth, without ever having lived another day in our country. That does not make sense to Canadians who worked hard to earn that right of citizenship.

Like many colleagues in the House, I have attended citizenship ceremonies. What a huge privilege it was and what an emotional experience it was for me to be there because it brought me back to thoughts of my parents when they came to this country. It is always meaningful for the people who are being bestowed with citizenship on that day. There is nothing more emotional for me in speeches that I have given on the subject, than that day when a citizenship judge affords me the opportunity to say a few words. My closing comment, when I look at the crowd of 30, 40 or sometimes 50 people obtaining Canadian citizenship that day, are, “Welcome to the Canadian family”, knowing very well that those folks had come here, worked hard, done all of the right things, waited their time and earned the right and privilege of Canadian citizenship.

We should not look at this legislation without considering the importance and the value of Canadian citizenship. The government has not completed a cost analysis, nor has it told Canadians the number of new citizens that Bill C-3 would create or the cost to taxpayers, especially in health care, pensions and so forth. When we ask Liberals the questions, they say that they do not know, that they are not certain and that they cannot put a number on it.

Any other time, the Liberals would look at the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report and recite those numbers with glee. This time, the Liberals have conveniently decided they are not going to refer, at all, to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who has said that this is going to affect some 115,000 people, at the very least, and initially cost Canadians $21 million. Why the Liberals are choosing to ignore the Parliamentary Budget Officer's analysis is perplexing, to say the least. I am sure the Speaker is having difficulty understanding the reasons why as well, because no reasonable person could come up with a logical answer to that question.

Worse, there would be no criminal check required for new citizens. The government requires criminal background checks for other immigration processes, so why would it not want to do that for this stream of people who they are suggesting come in through Bill C-3. It makes no sense. I would argue that a primary responsibility of a responsible government of any country is the safety and the security of its citizens.

Canadian families need to know that when they take their children to school, to a shopping mall, to a community centre or to a park, the people walking beside them have been properly vetted and are law-abiding residents and citizens of this country. However, the bill does not provide for that background check.

Not vetting individuals coming into the country raises a lot of questions, but it is in line with the Liberals' soft-on-crime policies that we have seen over the years. The Liberals appear really comfortable with potentially allowing people convicted of serious crimes such as rape, murder and terrorism to gain citizenship and have the opportunity to be in our communities. As bizarre as that sounds, if I were a Liberal member of Parliament, God forbid, I would ask, “Why would I not want to do a background check on people coming into the country?”

A 30-year-old who has never lived here before but is the son of somebody who has been out of the country would find out that the Liberals have passed a bill, and they could automatically become a Canadian citizen. They could come to Canada as a Canadian citizen with no background check. That is amazing. That does not make sense to me, and I can assure members that it does not make sense to my constituents of Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill. I represent one of the more diverse communities in the country, and I am positive it does not make sense to Canadians anywhere in this beautiful country of ours.

The people I feel most for are the immigrants who went through the traditional immigration processes. These immigrants went through vetting, proved they had a connection to Canada and did the hard work to acquire the privileges and rights bestowed upon them as Canadian citizens. Under the bill before us, their citizenship would become weaker.

To summarize some of these points, the government cannot tell us how many new citizens the bill would create. It cannot tell us the cost. Of course, the Liberals do not want to talk about cost. They recently put through a throne speech and have decided to spend half a trillion dollars without presenting a budget in Parliament so we can debate and discuss it.

Speaking of debating and discussing, I have heard Liberal members come up to the microphone, stand up in their spot and tell us that if we have amendments to Bill C-3, we should bring them to committee. They appear to be saying that they are amenable to looking at some reasonable amendments to the bill. Well, we can be forgiven for questioning the veracity and, really, the honesty of those comments because of a previous rendition of the bill. This is not a new bill. The Liberals purport to be a new government, but this is a cut-and-paste bill. This is Bill C-71 cut and pasted into Bill C-3.

To new members of Parliament elected on all sides of the House, the Liberals are saying, “Never mind, just take our word for it. It's good because we discussed it in the previous Parliament.” That makes no sense because that legislation died when Parliament was stopped and then reached its end of life to go into an election. Members of Parliament should have a right to review it.

When one of those previous renditions, Bill S-245, came up for debate, there were no fewer than 40 amendments moved by Conservative members, all of which the Liberal-NDP coalition of the day voted against. They did not want to consider any one of the 40, and now they want us to look at this bill and say, “We'll take it to committee and consider it, and thank you for allowing us to present some amendments.” Well, we know the record of my dear friends across the aisle on amendments, and we know how much consideration they will give them.

Current citizens who were born in Canada or immigrants who went through other processes to become citizens would definitely have their citizenships weakened with this proposed legislation. There is no plan to process the new applications in an already backlogged, broken system, and the government does not know the scale of the impact or, if they do know, are not willing to share it with Parliament. The question is simply this: Why are the Liberals doing this? Quite frankly, I am not surprised.

Over the last 10 years, the Liberals have continuously weakened Canada's immigration system and how we are perceived on the world stage. It is completely irresponsible to allow hundreds of thousands of immigrants into Canada, given the current challenges in the housing market. In fact, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the OECD, in its May 2025 report, linked record immigration to worsening housing affordability. We know what that means in all of our communities across the country, irrespective of whether people want to stand up in this place and try to defend that somehow.

Taxpayers have spent billions of dollars housing asylum seekers in hotels. The CMHC, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, acknowledges that we need some 3.5 million more homes by 2030 to provide shelter for people who are already here. Here we are wanting to add to that, with a number we do not know. The government is not telling us. It is adding hundreds of thousands of new people into a housing market that is already undersupplied, overpriced and unfair to all who are trying to afford housing, especially our young people who have done everything right and cannot afford to buy a home in the community they grew up and would love to grow a family in.

The job picture also looks a lot less rosy. Our youth cannot land entry-level jobs. Youth unemployment is at 20% in some parts of the country. Unemployment rose to 7% overall in May, the highest rate since the pandemic. Forecasts show that Canada may shed another 100,000 jobs by the fall. The government is adding hundreds of thousands of new people into a job market that is already at its weakest point in years. It is simply reckless.

The Liberal government must create an environment in which new immigrants and Canadians can succeed. That is not happening currently. I have heard stories from my riding in which immigrants who came here 10 years ago are now considering leaving Canada, because the promise they were made has been broken by the Liberal government.

The bill also touches upon children who are adopted internationally. That is something very close to me and very dear to my heart. Back in 1993, my wife and I flew to Guatemala City, where we had the honour and the privilege of meeting our children for the first time. My family came together by something called the miracle of adoption. Therefore, I applaud that the bill recognizes that those children who come into the country will become Canadian citizens. Nothing felt more unwieldy to my wife and me when we arrived in Canada and had to wait a period of time before our infant children, a biological brother and sister, could become Canadian citizens. This bill will correct that, which I applaud.

As my colleagues on this side of the House have said previously, I am glad it is resolving the issue of lost Canadians as well.

It has been 10 years, and our immigration system is in shambles. The Liberals are welcoming hundreds of thousands of new immigrants in a housing crisis, a health care crisis and a deteriorating job market. What is worse, the basics, such as processing applications, are taking much longer, and backlogs continue to persist. The government promises to fix issues that continue to be broken. It is just not fulfilling its promises.

In the last minute I have, I want to say that it is just more of the same. The Liberals want to pass a bill that would add to that chaos, of course, cost taxpayers more and weaken everyone's citizenship.

Only common-sense Conservatives will restore order and integrity to our immigration and citizenship system by tightening requirements, clearing backlogs, streamlining processing, respecting the will of the folks who want to come to Canada through normal immigration channels, welcoming them and giving them every opportunity to succeed in our great country.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, at the tail end of his comments, the member talked about Conservatives having the ability to restore order. There was a great deal of disorder when I was the critic for immigration. I recall that the member and I were sitting around the table at the immigration committee, and I had the opportunity to highlight, in a previous question, some of that disorder.

However, there is good news for individuals following the debate. I would suggest two quick points.

One is this. The reason we are having the debate today is an Ontario Superior Court decision. That decision has to be respected sometime in November of this year, which means we have to pass some form of legislation.

The other aspect I would highlight is that our new Prime Minister, with the administration, has made it very clear that we are working toward sustainable immigration levels. That deals with both aspects.

I wonder if the member could provide his thoughts on the Superior Court decision.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I understand the need to present a new piece of legislation, but this is not a new piece; it is a cut and paste of the old piece. The member knows very well that this has gone through committee in the past, with both Bill C-71 and the Senate bill, Bill S-245. The member also knows very well that for us to consider legislation to fix what he is saying and address the issue of the court ruling, we need to fix this legislation.

With the way it is written, it is bad legislation. It needs to be fixed because we cannot give citizenship out in perpetuity with the excuse that somehow we have to address a court decision. Yes, there is a court decision, but even more important now is to ensure that we put in place a piece of legislation that would resolve the very issues we are talking about here today.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Mr. Speaker, much has been said about the impact of the immigration system on constituency offices, so before I ask my question, I would like to commend the invaluable Christiane Dupuis, who has helped constituents navigate the immigration process. Now she is now retiring. I want to extend my best wishes to dear Christiane on her retirement. I look forward to celebrating with her as the summer holidays approach. I want to thank her for helping the people who have chosen to settle in Granby and Shefford.

That being said, like my Conservative colleagues, I see problems with the immigration system. Nonetheless, we think Bill C‑3 is a step in the right direction for the Citizenship Act. Much more must be done, of course, including a complete review of the act.

Nonetheless, this was our fourth extension. The judge has set a new deadline for the fourth time: November 20. Has my colleague analyzed the impact of not complying with this decision from the Ontario Superior Court of Justice?

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate Christiane Dupuis for her good work in helping the member in her work. I wish her every success in her future endeavours.

It is important that we address the issue of the court decision. What we are saying here today is that we hope our colleagues in the Bloc and, quite frankly, in the Liberal Party will join us in ensuring that the piece of legislation we put through this House addresses the important issues we have raised here today.

We are going to be proposing amendments at committee, for sure, and we would like those amendments to be considered very seriously by our friends from the Bloc and our friends from the Liberal Party, because at the end of the day, we are here to provide good legislation that addresses issues and resolves problems for Canadians. We need to work together toward that. The government needs to listen to those amendments and come along with us as we implement them.