Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I listened with interest to Mr. Devolin's comments and questions to the witnesses who are here today, and I share your frustration as well. As a new member of this committee--I've only been sitting on this committee for 14 months, which may seem like a short period of time, but we've gone through two ministers for citizenship and immigration in those 14 months, and more to come. I think Mr. Chapman hit the nail on the head: it's a question of leadership from the minister's level. We've got this so-called “new Canadian government”. Well, it might be a new government, but it's the same old bureaucracy that they're taking direction from. Based on the testimony I've heard, it's the bureaucracy that runs the show here. The minister is just the yes person or the yes woman at the top.
If you go back into the records and check the work this committee has done, the committee has done great work over the last number of years to deal with citizenship and to deal with putting forward a new act. Both of these Conservative ministers have said, “We don't want to see any new act; we don't want to deal with that. That's not a priority to us.” The current minister, Diane Finley, is even questioning how many people this entails. I think she said something like, “There are only 450 lost Canadians in Canada; we can deal with it on a piecemeal basis, one at a time.” Well, based on the testimony we've seen, the number is upwards of hundreds of thousands of people. It's going to require changes in the law and legislative adaptation to deal with it.
I think we agree, it's not a partisan issue. The system is broken and we need to try to fix it. The longer it takes for the minister to realize that he or she has to answer to the committee and answer to the Canadian citizens, we're still going to be spinning our wheels talking about this in another 12 months.
In the last budget, before this Conservative government's budget, we had set aside $20 million to deal with a new Citizenship Act. That $20 million was cut out of the last budget. I'd be interested to see--and I hope it will--if the budget we're going to see tomorrow will reinstate the $20 million so that we can have a new Citizenship Act that will deal with this.
Quickly, then, my question is to Ms. Francis on due process. What are your thoughts and comments about the current lack of due process as you see it and the rights to a hearing?