Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Jonquière for his very appropriate intervention. I wanted to share my time with the member for Shefford, who will certainly have a lot to say about the bill as well.
As I was saying, Bill C‑3 applies equally to everyone. It applies to anyone who has obtained citizenship by birth or naturalization, whether or not they are an immigrant or, like me, someone who was born here and whose family has been citizens for several generations. The bill will also apply to me. If I decide to leave Canada to live elsewhere and my descendants do not return to live here, this bill will apply to them just as it would apply to any other immigrant.
The notion that these proposals are anti-immigrant is simply wrong. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the discussion we are having today. I would like to clarify this, as it is creating some confusion, given that what we are discussing is citizenship. Immigrants are people coming into the country, and emigrants are those leaving the country. This bill does not apply to immigrants, it applies to emigrants. That is the difference. An emigrant leaves the country and will no longer be living here. The purpose of this bill is to define the criteria that should be applied for granting citizenship to the descendants of people who have left the country. This applies to everyone, regardless of religion, skin colour or any other personal characteristics, with no distinction as to race, ancestry or anything else. It is equal for everyone, without exception.
As for the current state of the law, it already allows two things. Firstly, people who leave the country keep their citizenship. If a person has citizenship and goes to live somewhere else, unless they no longer want it and give it up, they do not lose their citizenship because they went to live somewhere else. This has always been the case. Secondly, the law as it now stands allows citizenship to be passed on to the first generation born and living outside the country. If I leave the country to go and live abroad and I have children, I can pass my citizenship down to my children. That is the law as it currently stands.
Today, we are discussing the possibility of expanding that right so that not only the first generation of persons born abroad, but also the second and subsequent generations, may obtain Canadian citizenship. We are having this debate because the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled that the current law is too restrictive. In the court's view, the first-generation limit on citizenship is unconstitutional. The Liberals had a choice: They could challenge the ruling, or they could accept it and amend the law. The Liberals chose not to challenge that ruling. What they said, indirectly, is that they were in agreement with the court's ruling.
The court also decided to give Parliament six months to define what constitutes a substantial connection with Canada. Everyone knows what happened over the past few months. There was an election, and it took longer because of that. The new deadline is November 20, just a few weeks from now. What will happen if Parliament does not comply? Since the judge ruled it is unconstitutional, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruling would become the law if there is no challenge to the ruling. Thus, the current rule setting out the first-generation limit on citizenship by descent would no longer exist. There would no longer be any limits on citizenship by descent. This means that it would be unlimited until the end of time, even 100 years, 1,000 years or as much as 10,000 years from now, and even if it involves the descendants of the descendants of people who no longer live here. They would still get citizenship. That appears to be the Ontario Superior Court of Justice's view, unless the government intervenes to counter it.
Today, we are debating Bill C-3, which is actually the very same as Bill C-71. It is a carbon copy of the former bill. Although a bill was introduced prior to the election, an election was called before we could resolve the matter. What we are examining now is basically an ultimatum from the government and, indirectly, from the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. This is partly because an election was called, but it is also because if we choose not to define the conditions under which a citizen born outside Canada qualifies for citizenship, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruling will apply by default. The onus is on us, and the government is asking that we support the bill before us.
When we examined this bill, the first question that came to mind for the Bloc Québécois was this: What criterion does the government wish to impose? The criterion it wishes to impose is based on the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, which states that a person must have resided in Canada for 1,095 days. A descendant of a Canadian citizen would therefore have to have resided in Canada for 1,095 days, the equivalent of three years. The government itself admitted that it looked to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act when it established this criterion.
We thought that sounded a bit lenient, but we decided we would do our homework by studying the bill, asking questions and sending the bill to committee. At committee, we heard from witnesses, including the Parliamentary Budget Officer. We asked questions, such as how many people would be affected by Bill C-3, how many more citizens the bill would create, and how many more people would be entitled to vote. The government side told us that they did not know, but that there would not be very many, a hundred, perhaps a thousand. The government had no figures to give us. We were being asked to vote on a bill without knowing what the repercussions of the bill would be. That basically sums it up.
We asked the question again. The Parliamentary Budget Officer seemed to have done a bit of work on the topic, because he estimated that the bill could affect 150,000 people. That is not an insignificant number. It is not a handful of individuals or even a few hundred. It is a lot of people. Let me also be clear that in the event of an international conflict, those 150,000 people who do not live here would need us to charter planes to go and get them. As Canadian citizens, those people would have to be defended and looked after. That also means 150,000 people who could potentially obtain a passport, as well as the right to vote. On that subject, we might ask ourselves this: In which riding would these people be allowed to vote? No one knows. However, we do know that there are a number of ridings where the results are often very close. We saw that in the last election. Some ridings are won by a whisker. The government would like us to meekly agree and let this bill go through as easily as a letter goes through the mail, as the saying goes in Quebec, although these days, it is no secret that the mail does not go through all the time, especially during an election.
For the Bloc Québécois, this simply did not work. We believe that citizenship is not a prize to be given out in a box of cereal or handed out like candy on Halloween. We believe it should be taken seriously, so we proposed some amendments. Knowledge of French or English should be a basic requirement. It seems logical to me that citizenship should not be given to someone who does not speak the language of the country. We agree with the 1,095 days, but for immigrants, it is 1,095 days over a period of five years. Why not apply the same requirement in this case, since the government took inspiration from this criterion for its bill? Also, why should there not be an assessment to check whether the person poses a threat to national security? Why should there not be an annual report tabled in Parliament about how many people obtained citizenship under this law?
All of these are proposals that we wanted to put forward. Unfortunately, the government teamed up with the NDP and dismissed them out of hand. It was so insulting of the government to act that way. We are disappointed that the reasonable proposals we put forward in good faith were rejected like that.
