Mr. Chair, my concern is how the department would be able to reach out to my daughter and the 368,000 other individuals who were born abroad and say, “Be careful, you're the first ones. Be careful that your offspring are not born abroad.” Can Mr. Davidson provide me with assurances that this would be done?
The other thing is that we put a sunset clause in this bill for three years and come back and revisit it after three years. I want assurances about the 368,000 after 1977, the 114,000 before 1977, as well as the numbers that we have extrapolated. Mr. Davidson could sit there and we could talk about numbers, but it could be a million people born abroad between 1997 and 2020. I want to have assurances that these people will be advised.
My child was born abroad. I wasn't advised of anything. How will my child know? These are children in child-bearing years. How will they know to come back to Canada quickly so that their babies--my grandkid tomorrow, my daughter's baby--will not be stuck in the lurch? How would the department move to have those assurances?
If they say they're going to do something, then I would recommend that we put a sunset clause on this bill, especially on the first generation, and that we revisit it in three years. That's fair to say, because if the department fails us in the first three years and they haven't done due diligence, as they hadn't done due diligence.... The minister and the deputy minister stood there and said, “We've advertised”, and they have to write a letter of apology. We asked for figures on how they advertised and we still haven't got them. So the department is not forthcoming with doing due diligence and respecting the work we're doing on this issue.
Twice we didn't get budgets and twice we didn't get anything. The only thing we got here was an ad, and when we asked for more, it wasn't forthcoming. We haven't received information we asked for.
I'm not sure how they have breached this committee's works, so I want to be reassured, or else I would move that we put a sunset clause on the bill for three years.