Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Chapman. The minister said that people born in Canada are Canadian citizens. Obviously you and tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people like you don't fall in that category.
One thing that has bothered me in terms of this government.... We had previous attempts at citizenship act...with Bill C-63, Bill C-16, Bill C-18, that we attempted to put through. In the last Parliament, at the invitation of two ministers, we produced three reports in this committee that would give guidance to the government on how to fix the Citizenship Act. We had a budget attached to that for the Citizenship Act. Had we not had the election when we did, I dare say Canada would have a new Citizenship Act right now.
Those recommendations--which were supported unanimously, I might add, by the Conservative members of the committee and in the House when the occasion arose--gave guidance to the government on how to fix the Citizenship Act.
Now, with the new government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in less than a year we've had two ministers of citizenship and immigration. Citizenship and Immigration is a difficult department. If you want to do nothing in a department, what you do is you put in a brand new minister. I quoted Mr. John Reynolds before, who made the comment that CIC is one department that needs a massive clean-up, and we have to straighten that mess out.
The problem is that the department is spending all sorts of money fighting court cases. They had the Benner case in 1997. It went to the Supreme Court. The Benner case was very clear. It gave direction that they cannot discriminate on the basis of whether it is the mother or father who has citizenship. The department ignored it. They have the Taylor case, where they're fighting against the son of a veteran who fought for this country in the Second World War to deny him his birthright. They ignored the ruling of Justice Luc Martineau. They have said they are going to the Federal Court of Appeal, and if that case is lost, they'll go to the Supreme Court. So essentially they're using taxpayers' money--after they eliminated the court program--to fight the sons of veterans from reclaiming their legitimate birthright.
Does this come down to the fact that when this government did not appoint Diane Ablonczy, who is the most knowledgeable person in the Conservative Party, as the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, they were really sending a signal that they're not interested in this issue, so let the bureaucrats keep running the department.?