Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thanks for being here today, Madam Minister.
This is an interesting issue because of the people it affects. We've seen the anecdotal stories in the media and we've heard a bit about some of them this morning.
About a year and a half ago, someone who was having a problem came to my constituency office. He was a lost Canadian. He was born in Ontario, moved to Australia in the 1960s when he was in his twenties, and played hockey in Australia. They wanted him to play on their Olympic team in 1968, so they rushed through citizenship for him. It was his understanding that it didn't affect his Canadian citizenship.
Anyway, he played in the 1968 Olympics and lived in Australia for ten years. He then moved back to Canada and has been here for thirty years. He married a Canadian woman and recently decided that he should get a passport to make it easier to travel back and forth to the United States. Instead of using his Ontario birth certificate, he thought he should get a Canadian passport, only to discover that he in fact wasn't a Canadian citizen any more.
When he came to my office, he had been advised by an immigration lawyer that he should get his wife to sponsor him as Canadian citizen. He pointed out that his wife was actually an immigrant. Someone who was born in another country was actually going to be sponsoring him to become a Canadian citizen. His proof of ID was his Ontario birth certificate.
There's also another group that I've been dealing with. I have a lot of retired people in my riding, and I've had a significant number of war brides come forward in the past couple of years. It seems odd that fifty or sixty years later, people are dealing with the citizenship issue. I think it is the change in the rules to enter the United States that has precipitated this issue, but these citizenship problems are long-standing issues that are coming to light now as people are coming in to get passports.
I think you said earlier that for people who think they're Canadian citizens or people who are going through this process, there won't be any interruption to their benefits, to their Canada Pension Plan or old age security. I can appreciate that some older people might be nervous about dealing with an important issue like this, because they would think they're getting their assistance now and don't want to upset the apple cart.
Can you clarify for Canadians, whether they're lost Canadians or whether they're long-time permanent residents who want to go through this process to become Canadian citizens, that by bringing themselves to light, they're not going to lose benefits?