Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Everyone here is familiar with the proverb about the perfect being the enemy of the good, and this bill is good. Indeed, it's very good. It doesn't cover everything that we might wish it would cover, but the members of this committee have worked hard on these issues. They've submitted good reports, and the government has come forward with a bill that addresses far more than any piece of legislation hitherto has done.
It is tempting to put forth several suggestions for improvements, but I will refrain from doing that, because I want to emphasize the importance of the bill, and to express the strong hope that it can move through Parliament expeditiously and that it can be passed and adopted.
The main reason we strongly support this bill is that it will abolish the loss retention provision, which is section 8 in the current act. This provision states that if you are a second-generation born-abroad person, then you have citizenship until age 28. But before you turn 28, you have to go through a retention process. If you fail, then you cease to be a citizen at age 28.
We have never quarrelled with that principle: that second-generation people should be required to take some explicit steps if they want to remain Canadians. Our problem has been with the administrative confusion, because when this section came into force in 1977, the certificates of citizenship that were issued to people who came under it were identical to the certificates issued to people who did not come under it. Given that not nearly all second-generation born-abroad people came under it, there was a huge problem in identifying which second-generation born-abroad people do come under it.
The certificates looked exactly the same, so I could tell many stories of people going into citizenship offices with their certificates and saying, “Is it true that this certificate will cease to be valid when I turn 28?”, and the official looks at it and says, “It looks like it's perfectly valid to me.” And it does look like it's perfectly valid. Then they don't go through the retention process, and eventually they cease to be citizens when they turn 28.
There are other problems. Even people who know that they need to get a new certificate, they become confused with the word “retention”. Those of us who work on this issue all the time know that the term “getting a retention” is a little bit different from simply getting a new certificate. They go on to the Internet, they see an application form to apply for a new certificate, they apply for a new certificate, get a new certificate, and think they've met the retention requirement. They haven't. They need to fill in exactly the right form. So there's confusion.
We have not argued with the principle of the retention requirement, only with the confusion of administering it. But that confusion is so serious that we are very, very happy to see it abolished.
I'd like to give one more reason why it should be abolished, and that is--not from our perspective so much as from the perspective of Canadian society-- under the current law, as it stands, a person who's a second-generation born-abroad person may have a baby before turning 28. There's nothing unnatural about that. That baby is automatically a Canadian citizen until they turn 28. That baby has a child before their 28th birthday, so that baby is automatically a Canadian citizen until age 28. It can go on for an infinite number of generations. People can be Canadian citizens without ever developing any kind of connection with Canada. Surely it is in the interests of Canada not to allow citizenship to be cheapened so much in that way.
So for that reason also we are happy to see the loss retention provision abolished.
Some people will argue, well, what about the second-generation people? In reality, let's say, there's a family of first-generation people living outside of Canada and they have some children. Well, the children are second generation. That family, or even just one parent, can come to Canada at any time, as long as that child is a minor, and apply for permanent resident status quite easily and then get citizenship status. So it's not as if the door is absolutely closed to people who want to retain Canadian citizenship. It would not even take any more time than the current retention process would require. So we are willing to accept that as a trade-off. It involves a little more paperwork, but we think it's a reasonable way of dealing with it.
There are several other issues on which we could make suggestions for improvements, but I think given the time slot and my colleagues here, I will leave it at this, and if there's time later, I may return to some of these points.