Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Welcome, Minister.
Last Friday at the Supreme Court, we all saw the celebration of an event that occurred on January 3, 1947. I might mention, as we celebrate the sixtieth year of citizenship, that a more appropriate way of celebrating would have been to bring it into compliance with the charter, which is 25 years old this year.
Clearly, the 1947 Citizenship Act was very discriminatory. We had the Supreme Court rule on it under the Benner case.
Getting back to the citizenship ceremony, it might have been enhanced had you invited Paul Martin, the former Prime Minister, to the ceremonies. It was his father who was the original architect of citizenship. Further, it would have been useful if members of the committee had been invited to the ceremony. We obviously have a great interest.
But getting to your numbers, you threw down a marker and said 450 people. I dare say, Minister, we're going to hold you to that number. When these hearings are finished, you will see there are tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of people.
On that, here we have Mr. John Reynolds, who worked on Bill S-2, saying he remembered one of the bureaucrats telling him in committee that there could be as many as 200,000 of these people. Well, big deal; we bring in supposedly 300,000 a year in immigration, refugees, and others. If you're a Canadian, wouldn't you like to straighten that out even quicker for somebody who has a birthright here?
Well, Minister, many people have been denied that right.
I direct you to the 1997 decision of the Supreme Court--the highest court in the land--that pertained to Benner. It ruled that you cannot discriminate on the basis of sexual discrimination, meaning whether you derived your citizenship from your father or from your mother. That was the Supreme Court.
That actually was applied by the department until 2004, when Patricia Birkett, registrar of Canadian citizenship at that time, called it a provisional decision. It was cancelled as of 2004.
Minister, how you can be appealing the Clark case, on the one hand...? One of the Clark brothers and a sister...and this is a family of four. Three of them had citizenship restored to them under subsection 5(4) of the act that you keep referring to, and the fourth one is going to court. We would like to know how that is going.
We want to know the number of cases handled by Citizenship that are before the courts. We also want to know the cost.
Madam Minister, you made some commentary about the Joe Taylor case. I'm going to pass some information on to you. Here's a picture of Mr. Taylor when he was a baby. He's a son of a Canadian veteran who fought for this country in the Second World War. I will also pass on a pamphlet that these people got when they landed on the ship. It says: As soon as the ship docks, Canadian immigration officials will come aboard. These men will complete the formalities for your entry into Canada, which automatically makes you a Canadian citizen.
Madam Minister, I think you would benefit from having that information.
Another specific question I have for you is under subsection 5(4). You said you gave out 33. Well, don't you think that instead of having a minister giving citizenship to those she feels she likes...? Isn't that political? Shouldn't this be in law?
We have a figure of 30,000 people from the Mennonite Central Committee. I have a memo--and Mr. Janzen will be in front of us--about 30,000 people pertaining to lost retention. Then we have a whole bunch for people who were married abroad in religious, not civil ceremonies. I asked you this question in the House. How can we discriminate against people being married in a church?
I'll leave the questioning at that, Mr. Chair.