Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you very much for coming here today.
The stories we are hearing today are extremely moving and powerful. It's really incumbent on us, as parliamentarians, to accept our responsibility in recognizing first that the problem exists. Many parliamentarians have, but that's not enough on its own. We need to act as well to fix the problems.
Those were unintended consequences of the legislation at the time, but having said that, we need to fix them. In order to do this there has to be a fundamental change, a long-term process, a legislative change, but in the meantime many of you and many who are not here today are caught in limbo and we need to have a short-term solution. I believe the short-term solution should not be on an ad hoc basis and should not be left up to politicians or ministers or whoever is in power or any other politicians. We need to set up a process that clearly articulates what the parameters are and corrects the individual problems or lost citizenship.
I also want to call on bureaucrats who are listening and watching or reading this transcript to pay an extreme level of attention and sensitivity to this issue and to treat it with delicacy and care.
It's very hard to say anything except that this has to be fixed. It must be fixed.
I'm just curious to know—and in my opinion it's irrelevant how many people are affected—if any of you have indication of how many people are involved.