Mr. Speaker, it was an Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruling, but I digress.
Lena Metlege Diab Liberal
This bill has received Royal Assent and is, or will soon become, law.
This is from the published bill. The Library of Parliament has also written a full legislative summary of the bill.
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.
All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.
Bill numbers are reused for different bills each new session. Perhaps you were looking for one of these other C-3s:
This is a computer-generated summary of the speeches below. Usually it’s accurate, but every now and then it’ll contain inaccuracies or total fabrications.
Bill C-3 amends the Citizenship Act to address inconsistencies regarding citizenship by descent for Canadians born abroad, requiring a substantial connection to Canada.
Liberal
Conservative
Bloc
Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London Centre, ON
Mr. Speaker, it was an Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruling, but I digress.
Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London Centre, ON
Mr. Speaker, he said, “Supreme Court”.
In any case, what is required is a law that is consistent with the charter. The cumulative test provides a substantial connection that meets the requirement set out by the court.
As for the Westminster system, I am glad the member has served on the student council at Queen's University. I congratulate him on that, but this is the House of Commons, and what is required is respect for the House of Commons. Report stage, yesterday, showed how this place actually works.
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Mr. Speaker, we are here today to debate a bill that was precipitated by the fact that the Liberals decided not to challenge a lower court ruling that would allow unfettered citizenship by descent and create untold citizens of convenience. The department does not even know how many.
We are now on the third reading of the bill after the government decided to gut amendments passed by the committee that would have required basic things like language, cumulative residency and security checks. After not challenging a court ruling, the Liberals gutted these amendments, which were common sense. Even The Globe and Mail said that the amendment we put in place was common sense and that the government should have accepted the Conservative and Bloc amendment regarding the residency requirement.
The parliamentary secretary's comments were rote and kind of feckless, frankly. I want to say why.
This bill deals, fundamentally, with the value of Canadian citizenship. The reason I cannot support the bill, particularly without those amendments, is that, without national identity, integration is impossible and the collapse of our country is inevitable. I want to lay out why we need to put more value on Canadian citizenship, why the bill so denigrates Canadian citizenship and why it is going to create citizens of convenience that some future parliament will have to deal with.
The bureaucrats who are listening in the lobby can mark my words: Future courts will be dealing with this. Future ministers will be looking at evacuations from some country. This bill would create citizenship of convenience. It would take away the notion of responsibility from citizenship. It would impact our country, absolutely, in the future.
What is Canada's national identity? Ahead of every election, I try to find the reason for running again in order to ground myself in that purpose. For all of us, of all political stripes, running is such an honourable thing to do but also comes with a cost to our families. I took my family to visit a visual art installation at the National Gallery that uses Thomas Tallis's Spem in Alium. It is a speaker set-up. We sat in the middle of the installation and I tried to explain to my family that this was why I was running. When our democratic institution of pluralism is upheld, Canada is a unique, beautiful thing in history. It has all these individual voices. They have disparate tones and disparate harmonies, but they come together and work together. They are greater than the sum of their parts. I encourage people to go and sit there if they ever want a moment of inspiration in terms of what our national identity can and should be.
In telling them that Cardiff's installation at the National Gallery still offers an accurate analogy for what Canada is today, I may have sold my children a bill of goods. Many in Canada would now describe our nation less as a melodically pluralistic counterpoint and more as a ghettoized cacophony. That sentiment flares up most often in discussions of skyrocketing immigration levels, especially regarding whether Canada can integrate all the people it has welcomed in the last five years.
Attempting to answer that question leads to even murkier waters. In 2025, what does integration into Canada mean, anyway? What is the value of Canadian citizenship? That ambiguity belies the actual problem. Canada's sense of national identify has been eroded by the government to the point of non-existence. Immigrants cannot be expected to integrate into something that is not there.
In recent decades, successive Liberal governments have used legislation and regulation like the piece in front of us today to segregate Canada along regional and ethnocultural lines. Thus, in 2025, our country Canada is perhaps most aptly described as lines on a map, home to tens of millions encouraged by their federal government to prioritize differences over similarities, to reject nationhood for globalism, to take from the country before giving back and to self-flagellate over historical feelings rather than build on the nation's strengths for future resilience.
Upon hearing that statement, many of my colleagues will have a visceral reaction. That is good. How dare anyone question whether Canada still has a national identity. We are a multicultural nation based on the rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of worship, and equality of opportunity. Canada is the place where newcomers can retain their cultural identity while plugging into a sense of peaceful, pluralistic Canadian nationhood. That is the Canadian national identity, right? Well, it is not today, not after the Liberal government.
While that might be the prevailing romantic notion of Canadian identity held by some colleagues who have eroded it over the last decade, it is no longer accurate to describe it as reality, and admitting the truth is the first step in addressing the problem. For people requiring evidence, it abounds in our country's recent political history. Canada's political left has long led the global postnational movement, best described as the purposeful erosion of national identities in favour of supernational organizations and globalism.
Former Liberal prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau set Canada on a postnational course with the 1971 multiculturalism policy, which encouraged newcomers to retain their cultural differences rather than embrace a shared Canadian identity. The erosion of Canada's national identity was further normalized in the 1980s by the Liberal government's national energy program, which deepened economic divisions between western and central Canada.
The aftermath of the 1995 Quebec referendum further contributed to the erosion of Canadian national identity by entrenching exclusive Quebec nationalism. Then, in 2000, former Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien stated the following in a speech:
Canada has become a postnational, multicultural society. It contains the globe within its borders, and Canadians have learned that their two international languages and their diversity are a comparative advantage and a source of continuing creativity and innovation. Canadians are, by virtue of history and necessity, open to the world.
Former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper's government pumped the brakes on postnationalism during its tenure. On immigration, former prime minister Harper's government prioritized national identity with stricter language requirements for citizenship and a tougher citizenship exam. Regarding Quebec, it enshrined a key nationhood motion, which included the phrase “within a united Canada”.
Economically, Harper attempted to ease western alienation by bolstering Canada's natural resource industries. Culturally, Harper's government focused on heritage spending on platforming nation-building victories like the War of 1812.
However, all those reforms were reversed and far exceeded after former Liberal prime minister Justin Trudeau took office in 2015. Essayists discussing Trudeau Junior's famous 2015 postnationalism statement that “[t]here is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada,” often forget that he did not just say those words but that he also operationalized them through a decade of socialist-oriented, postnationalist policies, so much so that his fervent focus on abolishing Canadian national identity may be remembered as the most enduring aspect of his legacy.
On immigration, the Trudeau Liberals narrowed the age range for mandatory language requirements in citizenship applications, thus diminishing shared language roles in the Canadian identity for newcomers. They eliminated in-person citizenship oath requirements. They sought to erase references in the Canadian citizenship study guide to practices like female genital mutilation as abhorrent, arguably normalizing their importation into Canada.
They turned a blind eye to judicial rulings, allowing immigration status to factor into sentencing violent criminals, valuing the process of entry into the country over the responsibilities associated with citizenship. They allowed Canada's compassionate asylum system to be abused and made a mockery of. Thus we have the bill we have in front of us today.
The Trudeau Liberals have also normalized the practice of importation of conflicts from newcomers' countries of origin, rather than primarily encouraging the shedding of those quarrels in favour of a pluralistic, united Canadian identity rooted in western democratic values. This phenomenon is best exemplified by the Trudeau government's tolerance of diasporic lobby groups' influence in elections and in Canadian institutions while simultaneously turning a blind eye to groups who sought to plant international conflicts and even terrorist principles in Canadian soil. Despite clear evidence of rising foreign interference in elections, the Liberals have yet to implement a foreign agent registry.
The Trudeau Liberals have also prioritized cultural and ethnic differences over a shared ethos of equality in hiring and storytelling. For example, they embedded divisive, quasi-racist hiring policies into federal funding for educational institutions, they allowed Canada's publicly funded national broadcaster to consider abandoning objectivity for racialized narratives, and now they allocate news funding based on whether or not outlets sufficiently highlight ethnic, religious or other group differences.
Rather than enlisting newcomers to help strengthen a cohesive national identity, such as by constructively addressing the nation's historic injustices while simultaneously celebrating its positive achievements, the Trudeau Liberals actively erased symbols of shared historic Canadian identity from public view. They redesigned the Canadian passport to replace images of Canadian national heroes like Terry Fox with inert objects like a wheelbarrow. They supported activities that established the Canadian flag as a symbol of shame as opposed to a representation of patriotism. They worked to erase Canada's founders from places of prominence.
Thus, Canada's political left has profoundly succeeded in transforming Canada into a postnational non-nation, free from the trappings of cohesive national identity.
People who might argue that this was a good thing are very wrong. What Justin Trudeau overlooked in his Liberal government's zealous pursuit of postnationalism is that his father's multicultural vision could thrive only under robust western democratic institutions. Without a government's prioritizing, above all else and especially over partisan ideology, the safeguarding of principles like freedom of speech, secularism and the equality of opportunity, multiculturalism will inevitably destroy a peaceful and democratic nation.
The proof is in the pudding. Today in Canada, after decades of postnational identity's destroying policies, less than half of Canadian youth say they would fight for our country. This marks a startling shift from generations ago, when Canadians fought in great wars for what seemed to be immutable freedoms. Diasporic conflicts now erupt on Canadian streets, hate crimes against ethnic and religious groups have surged and the once-strong Canadian consensus on immigration has been solidly broken by the government.
If Canadians want to reverse the pluralism-destroying course that Liberal postnationalism has set us on, every member of the House, regardless of political stripe, must acknowledge that postnationalism has eroded Canada's national identity to the point of non-existence. That state of affairs is likely the biggest threat to our sovereignty today; no other nation is. History proves this conclusion correct.
For a civilization to survive the test of history, it needs some sort of cohesive shared identity; without it, collapse occurs. There are even examples to be found within Canada's own evolution in the 20th century. In the early 1900s, a Canadian national identity had taken root in spite of high levels of immigration; it was forged in the crucibles of battlefields like Vimy Ridge, where people of many backgrounds fought together as Canadians, united by the shared values of democracy, rule of law, bilingualism and loyalty to the Crown. To be Canadian then was to embrace English or French as a primary language, respect parliamentary institutions and demonstrate civic duty through collective efforts in war and in nation-building.
Fast-forward to today. Our domestic efforts have failed to build critical national infrastructure and have allowed our military to atrophy to the point of near non-functionality. Our foreign policy rewards the tactics of terrorist organizations and abandons western allies in times of crisis.
Logic dictates that if the Liberal government continues eroding the western democratic values that once but arguably no longer underpin Canada's rapidly disappearing pluralistic national identity, freedom of speech, freedom of worship, and equality in the application of the rule of law, then collapse is what should be expected of Canada's once-vaunted pluralism.
People looking for a remedy from the Liberal Prime Minister who sits here today will be disappointed, as evidenced by the fact that he put forward a bill like the one that is before the House and then gutted amendments on things like language requirements.
The Prime Minister has long been an adherent to the World Economic Forum's globalist brand of postnationalism, and the best definition of Canada's national identity he managed to muster was that we are not the United States. His new Minister of Canadian Identity managed an arguably worse response, offering pithiness like “I won't stand here and pretend that I can tell you what [a] Canadian...is or should be.”
It is telling that neither of them could define Canadian identity as rooted in shared respect for things like the rule of western-based law, freedom of speech, freedom of worship, and equality of opportunity. Nor could they talk about the supremacy of this place and the fact that we here, who represent all the Canadians in this country and abroad, have the right to challenge court rulings and to set law; that is a core part of what we do to strengthen Canadian national identity.
The reality for the current Liberal Prime Minister is that his government must reverse the many changes his predecessor made under the Liberals' aggressive postnational doctrine, in order to rebuild Canada's national identity, prevent pluralism's collapse and retain Canadian sovereignty.
How can we talk about things that are in the national interest if the government cannot define what the national interest is? If the current Liberal Prime Minister fails, the effect will be the same as if he were to tip over the art installation in the National Gallery I spoke about, a shameful and purposeful squandering of an intricate and delicate masterpiece. That is why I stand here and oppose the bill.
There should be no citizens of convenience. If somebody is to be a citizen of this country, they should be able to speak one of Canada's official languages. They should have a clear and demonstrated ability to understand that the responsibility of Canadian citizenship is to uphold our democratic institutions. How can we measure that? We can do so through a citizenship test, but the Liberals gutted that amendment we made at committee.
The fact that the government put a bill forward after not challenging a lower-court ruling on something as vital as the value of Canadian citizenship and who should be eligible for that is bananas. It says that the Liberals do not give a rip about Canada's national identity, and it reconfirms the current Prime Minister's continuation of a postnational doctrine.
We have been in a period of time, especially with the trade situation we find ourselves in with our neighbours to the south, when the Prime Minister is talking about the need to have nation-building initiatives and whatnot, but he cannot even talk about what Canada's national identity is. The only thing I have heard the Prime Minister talk about with respect to that is the fact that we are not American. What are we, then?
There are very clear definitions of what it could mean to be Canadian, even in Canada's citizenship guide right now. There is not a cohesive definition, but certainly on this side of the House we could manage a definition that was rooted in pride, in democratic institutions and in how to maintain pluralism and multiculturalism through respect for the rule of law.
What we have seen with the Liberal government is the denigration of Canada's democratic institutions, the Supreme Court ruling this week on child pornography, and censorship bills that take away our ability to speak truth to power. These are all things that erode Canadian sovereignty and support postnationalism. There has never been a more important bill to oppose than this one.
For people who might have been affected by the small number of lost Canadians, there was a bill in front of the Senate years ago that would have addressed the issues, but the Liberals expanded the legislation far beyond the scope of what our colleague in the Senate tried to do. The minister already has powers to rectify circumstances of citizenship.
However, what the Liberals would do today in the bill before us, especially by gutting the amendments the Conservatives put forward, is entrench the sense of postnationalism in the country, further erase our national identity, erode our pluralism and further devalue Canadian citizenship.
Oftentimes in the House, we are tasked with the mundane details of program spending or of different types of policy, but we have to be tasked and seized with restoring Canada's national identity and with restoring and protecting the value of Canadian citizenship.
I implore colleagues to vote against the bill, to make the Liberals go back to the table and come forward with a bill that is narrow in scope. There are tools at their disposal that they could use to challenge court rulings, but they have chosen not to. The value of Canadian citizenship, our national identity, is worth something more than what is in front of us today, so I implore colleagues to vote against the bill, protect our heritage and protect the value of Canadian citizenship.
Kevin Lamoureux LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons
Mr. Speaker, I would suggest that the member get out into the community if she does not quite understand what our Canadian identity is all about. At the end of the day, this legislation would add value.
The member talks, and she has put a whole pile of stuff on the record. She talks about, for example, military spending and that we are not doing enough. Her leader actually went to 1%. We are bringing it to 2%, with a goal of hitting 5%. The member talks about not supporting allied countries. She and her Conservative Party voted against the Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement. She talks about infrastructure, and we are going to see massive investment in infrastructure, no doubt, in the budget. The Conservatives, true to form, will vote against that.
Does the member not have an ounce of respect for the democratic process that she—
Citizenship ActGovernment Orders
The Assistant Deputy Speaker John Nater
We need to provide time for a response.
The hon. member for Calgary Nose Hill has the floor.
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Mr. Speaker, I am so proud to stand here to reject Liberal postnationalism, to reject everything the Liberals have done to erode the value of citizenship and the value of our democratic institutions, and to fight. I will stand here to fight for what is right.
My colleague opposite has a lot of shame to wear for all the years he has stood by to actively help erode our national identity, our military and our national institutions. He stands up in here day after day to say, “It is okay the Liberals upheld this court ruling.” The Liberals have not even talked about the child pornography ruling.
I have been out in the community. I see a Canada that has been reft apart by levels of crime I have never seen before, by hunger, by loss of affordability and by a loss of a Canadian national dream. We need to restore that, and that is what Conservatives would do.
Mario Simard Bloc Jonquière, QC
Mr. Speaker, while I may have some disagreements with my colleague, I cannot help but agree—for the most part, of course—with what she said in her presentation on national identity.
In Quebec, the issue of collective identity is critical. A cornerstone of Quebec's collective identity includes the idea of secularism. How can we integrate migrants if we do not have a collective identity? It is absolutely impossible.
The challenge of integration is a challenge that Quebec must face. That is why we are trying to establish immigration guidelines. We want to ensure that migrants are integrated into society in French and that they respect the values of Quebec society, which include gender equality and secularism.
It is true that, within the Canadian framework, it is much more challenging to have this type of thinking. I would like my colleague to tell us more about the issue of integrating migrants in a context where we are told that a national identity does not exist.
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Mr. Speaker, I agree with my colleague that Canada needs to have a strong national identity that is clearly defined and supported in shared symbols by a government that rejects postnationalism, which the government has not done.
I want to talk about language because the government gutted a language requirement amendment from the bill, which the Bloc and the Conservatives worked on together. Briefly, my maiden name is Godin. I am speaking English in the House of Commons because of laws in Manitoba that prevented my family from being able to learn the language. My family history was robbed from me.
Part of my identity was robbed from me, and now we have a government that is rejecting that new citizens should have to learn one of Canada's official languages. It would further erode Canada's national identity. It would further erode the fact that we have two official languages in this country, and again, it would erode that principle of national identity, which Canadians need for newcomers to integrate into our shared social and economic—
Citizenship ActGovernment Orders
The Assistant Deputy Speaker John Nater
With questions and comments, the hon. member for Kildonan—St. Paul has the floor.
Raquel Dancho Conservative Kildonan—St. Paul, MB
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her incredible speech outlining how, since the 1970s, successive Liberal governments have worked very hard to dismantle a national identity in Canada and the obvious detriment that has caused in society.
My question for my colleague is in regard to what is happening through the courts with respect to those people who are not yet citizens in Canada, but are seeking to become citizens, and who then break the law. We are seeing concerning things that have been happening after 10 years of influence on our court system. We are seeing that, for them to become Canadian citizens, they are making excuses and having lighter sentences for people who are breaking Canadian laws. Can she comment on that?
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Mr. Speaker, Parliament is supreme. We have the right to make laws in this place. That is what parliamentarians need to re-embrace after a decade of Liberal governments acquiescing to the courts' nonsensical rulings, such as the ones they should have appealed that precipitated this bill and the Supreme Court ruling that said there should be no mandatory minimum sentences for child pornography. Across political stripes, we had Premier Wab Kinew of the NDP in Manitoba say this was a ridiculous ruling and the UCP premier in Alberta saying that the ruling needed to be appealed.
Part of Canada's national identity and protecting our pluralism has to be protecting Canada's democratic institutions, which includes the supremacy of Parliament. It includes our challenging court rulings. We have to get back to our roots in so many different ways to restore those ties that bind us together as Canadians and that allow a pluralism to flourish. If we do not do that, the collapse of the country is inevitable.
John-Paul Danko Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
Mr. Speaker, I am so sick and tired of this “Canada is broken” narrative from the Conservative party. I am a proud Canadian, as is everyone in my riding. My family tree goes back to Laura Secord and the United Empire Loyalists, and I grew up and lived in Hamilton, where the Battle of Stoney Creek was one of the defining battles that kept Canada Canadian and part of the British Empire, so I will not be lectured on Canadian identity by the Conservative Party of Canada.
My question is this: Do these Conservatives have no shame?
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Mr. Speaker, that is big talk from somebody who ran for a party that has pulled down all the statues of the leaders of our country. That is tough talk from a guy who ran for a party that was rooted in postnationalism and that supports disgusting rulings, such as no mandatory minimums for child pornography. Do they have no shame?
Those guys do not have any shame, but Conservatives will always fight for our country, for shared national identity, which is rooted in things like respect for the rule of law, for responsibilities associated with Canadian citizenship, for affordable budgets and for an affordable life. That is what we are fighting for, and I think my colleague opposite needs to check himself on the shame meter today.
Andréanne Larouche Bloc Shefford, QC
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Calgary Nose Hill for her speech. She and I participated in a few missions together as members of the Canadian Group of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. During those missions, we tried to explain who we are.
I want to go back to the committee's work. In her speech, my colleague talked about language. The Bloc and the Conservatives supported amendments concerning language. What are the consequences of those amendments being rejected? More importantly, immigrants must satisfy a language requirement, so why is that requirement not in this bill? Why were the amendments rejected?