Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'd like to point out that I am trying to bring out arguments here as to why this is an important amendment, and why this amendment was brought forward, and how it is there is a need for an amendment to this bill. It is contrary to the amendments that were brought forward in the past that were going to substantively modify the meaning of the bill. They were brought forward by a minister of the crown, which in my opinion puts into the question the very validity of this in fact being a private member's bill.
Certainly this bill will benefit from amendments. I think that's the whole point of bringing members' bills to committee. It's important that all members' bills have an opportunity to be heard. They certainly tend to benefit from the process of committee and the process of fulsome debate and also the process of having witnesses testify and possibly bring forward ideas for amendments.
The amendment on the table right now is one that's worth debating.
Certainly when it comes to a private member's bill being presented as it was to the subcommittee for that private member's bill, had there been a question of non-votability, had there been any suggestion that it in fact was a government bill, the subcommittee for that private member's bill would have had a difficult time continuing to consider that this bill was votable. It might have in fact deemed it to be non-votable, which would have changed the whole process.
I'll get back to that process in a moment, but the process would have brought this bill to an entirely new level, where the House of Commons itself would have had to determine whether or not this bill were actually votable. But it was deemed votable; it kept its votable status.
We're here now, and we have to debate whether the amendment that was proposed is actually going to be of benefit to this motion and whether it's going to be of benefit over the long haul to the democracy that we're in.
I want to point out that when this bill was debated in committee—and I was able to sit in on a couple of occasions and benefited from hearing the minister himself speak on this bill—the minister mentioned that he supported the bill and that he believed this bill would probably benefit from amendments, were they to be brought forward.
If I remember correctly, he brought forward ideas especially on the second part of this bill, which had to do with determining whether Canadian citizens could lose their citizenship if they were to engage in acts of war against the Canadian Armed Forces. That certainly led to a fairly important debate on the matter. That question is still being raised, and I would argue that it's not been completely exhausted as a matter of debate.
Certainly we heard from a number of witnesses at the committee who called into question whether that was actually an appropriate manner in which to remove citizenship from an individual. I won't go through all the witnesses who brought it up, but we can certainly go back to the testimony and point out that when it comes to removing citizenship without any apparent due process, that seems to be in opposition to the principles of fundamental justice that we tend to abide by in Canada, or at least I thought we did.
The other part of the bill, though—which I think is more a point of the bill—is to fast-track Canadian citizenship for members of the Canadian Armed Forces who do not yet have that citizenship. That's certainly an interesting proposal.
It doesn't affect very many people, as we heard in the committee. I was also present when we heard from Canadian Armed Forces officers who pointed out that it was either 14 or 17 people in a year who would actually benefit from that.