There are three amendments that all deal with the same issue. Currently, Canadian citizens are entitled to benefits during the course of their sponsorship agreement. Landed immigrants are not. In an effort to create equity, rather than entitling everybody to those benefits, we've now taken those entitlements away from Canadian citizens during the period of their sponsorship agreement. I moved that this be struck, even though I understand the department's hesitancy to expand the group of people who are entitled to the benefits. At a minimum, though, we should keep the status quo ante so that we're not actually diminishing the number of people who are accessing that benefit.
On February 27th, 2007. See this statement in context.