I can give it a try, Mr. Chairman.
To go back to one of the points the minister made initially, you have to start from the premise that most of the people who seem to be affected by these difficulties are likely Canadians who have lost their proof of that citizenship. I understand that for many of these people this is frustrating, but in many ways it's no different from the situation I am in. If I apply for a passport, I have to find a way of proving I was born in Canada. As it turns out, I was born in Quebec, and one of Mr. Gravel's colleagues gave me a baptismal certificate. That's no longer valid, so I got a certificate of birth from the authorities in Quebec.
So it is an administrative process to prove that you're already a Canadian.
The second broad category encompasses those who either were or could have been Canadians. For instance, with border babies, if they were registered within the two years provided by the statute, they were Canadians from the moment they were born. If they were not registered, either within the two years or the somewhat longer period provided by the statute, we have to find a way to make them Canadians. That was in part my answer to Monsieur Gravel. There is no other provision in the law short of the regular process. They are in Canada, they are permanent residents, and they apply. The minister has indicated that in those cases, she's prepared to use her extraordinary powers under subsection 5(4) to short-circuit the process and make it happen much faster.
For other circumstances, such as the Mennonite marriages, or people who lost their citizenship because their parents abjured their Canadian citizenship and therefore they lost theirs, I come back again to what the minister said. It's very difficult to develop a neat little chart saying there were six categories, nor more no less. What we're trying to do is that if there's a substantive connection with Canada, we'll make recommendations to the minister that she use her authority under subsection 5(4).
The difficulty of course arises with those cases where we're going to have to decide, if over the course of the last 30 years the person has been in Canada three months, whether that is a substantial connection or not. It's a conversation we started having with the minister. But in most of the cases we've had so far, people have been in Canada for a long time and in those cases we're able to make the recommendation to the minister.