Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Welcome, Mr. Saul.
Let me say I concur with you wholeheartedly, as I'm sure the committee does, that the thing you're promoting, citizen engagement and citizen involvement, is exemplified by Mr. Chapman. We all look forward to going to his citizenship ceremony, where what was taken away will be properly restored.
As much as we are promoting the concept of citizenship and involvement, I think it's also important for us to get our Citizenship Act right so it really reflects what you're talking about. One of the concerns I have had, having worked on this file since 1998, is paying attention to Canada's history and some of the things that happened—the Asian exclusion act, internments, colour barriers to immigration—and making sure we get things right.
In terms of our citizenship, we have a policy that I think is best described in The Economist as “Lost in Kafkaland”, where we do not recognize religious marriages of Mennonites, and we have the problem, as much as we want to honour soldiers, that we do not recognize the birthright of their offspring—and the list goes on and on. Kafkaland is a very apt definition of it.
One of the problems we have had over the last thirteen and a half years is that we have had eight Ministers of Citizenship and Immigration. Under the Liberals, on average every two years we had a new minister, and under the Conservatives now we have two in one year. So it really becomes a problem, and it's in desperate need of a fix.
To me, the commonality we have as Canadians, given that we represent everybody from the world, is our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which I think evolved from some of the hardships that were suffered by various waves of Canadians coming to Canada.
To have a Citizenship Act—the first Citizenship Act—that is 60 years old this year, to have a Charter of Rights that is now 25 years old, and to have an act that doesn't comply with the charter, which has been so ruled by one federal court, with indications along those lines by other federal courts, is really hard for me, as a Canadian by choice, to fathom. It seems to me we have to bring those things into compliance. We should be doing it this year and celebrating the fact that it is the 60th anniversary of citizenship, that this is the 25th anniversary of the charter. I think the time has come to bring them together.
I might recommend to you a book by Barbara Ann Roberts. I'm not sure if you've read it. It's called Whence They Came.