Well, I would like to have seen Diane...because she certainly knew this portfolio.
The courts are the wrong places to fix this. It becomes a barnacle. The minute you have one decision, it affects another, and you have results you don't expect. The Benner decision was odd. It went to the Supreme Court of Canada. In essence they ruled that the 1947 Citizenship Act was blatantly discriminatory, thus granting the effect of citizenship to foreign-born children of a Canadian parent. Therefore, had I been born outside of Canada, today I would be Canadian and so would my children. But I was born in Canada, so I was passed over.
When I brought that little anomaly to the attention of the Senate, every senator's head in the room was going up and down as if saying this doesn't make any sense. Seven days later, the then acting director general of Citizenship and Immigration, Patricia Birkett, said they were going to throw out the Benner decision effective August 14, 2004. That brought in all of these other lost provisions. It didn't work, and that's why we have all these different groups.
By the way, I do know the numbers. I know the numbers very well on how many people are lost Canadians. Why? Canada's leading statistician on this, Dr. Barry Edmonston--he's coming before this committee--has worked with CIC before. He's a PhD. He has been at the University of Toronto, Simon Fraser University, and he's currently at the University of Victoria. He knows the statistics, and he has shared them with me. So I do know the numbers.