Thank you, Chair.
Thank you for your testimony.
Thank you for your testimony. It's been very important for all of us to again hear, as we've heard so many times over the course of our study, just how passionately people feel about their Canadian citizenship and how important it is as part of their identity as people. I don't think parliamentarians—I don't think that perhaps governments—have appreciated the passion with which Canadians hold their citizenship. It seems strange. Maybe we're not known for being passionate about our Canadian citizenship, but it's clear, once we bump into someone questioning our citizenship, that it's there. It's so fundamental that people feel strongly about it.
Over the course of years we haven't dealt with the problems of our citizenship legislation in a way that meets the magnitude, the importance of this for average Canadians. As Ms. Cochrane said, average folks feel very passionately about their citizenship. It's such a fundamental issue to their identity.
I want to ask a couple of questions. I know we bump into this problem with the law, and you get the answer that you're not a citizen, and then there doesn't seem to be a lot of help concerning it from the departmental side. I think it's interesting that the Cochranes got referred to the support organization by the British High Commission and not by any Canadian.