Thank you, Madam Chair.
The Australian Citizenship Act of 2007, subsection 33(7) reads: The Minister must not approve the person renouncing his or her Australian citizenship unless the Minister is satisfied that the person: (a) is a national or citizen of a foreign country immediately before the Minister's decision on the application; or (b) will, if the Minister approves the application, become a national or citizen of a foreign country immediately after the approval.
So in Australia, another country we like to compare ourselves with, one cannot voluntarily give up Australian citizenship unless, before the minister approves—of course, through the official forms, format, and processes that they have, and I'm not going to talk about those—the person can clearly demonstrate to the minister that they have already received citizenship of another country or will receive citizenship of another country as soon as the minister signs that application or declaration or form or whatever it's actually called, and approves that application for renunciation of citizenship.
With the voluntary renunciation of citizenship in Australia, the prevention of statelessness is clear. We want to make sure—and I'm going to keep hammering this home—that Canada is not in contravention of the convention that we are signatory to. We signed the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.
As legislators, as people who have been given the responsibility to ensure that we are doing our due diligence, we in this committee who provide advice to the other members in the House need to ensure that we are not giving them wrong advice, and that we are listening to the advice that has already been presented to us by witnesses.
We don't need to hear more from witnesses on this topic, because it's clear that if we continue with Bill C-425, we will be creating stateless people in this country. We don't want to do that. This has already been made clear to us by witnesses, Madam Chair. That's why we don't need to study this bill further. This bill has been studied. It's a private member's bill and it has received the due process that is warranted, based on the schedule that the government members of this committee set as to when we would study this bill in this committee.
The evidence I'm presenting to you—and I have much more to present to you, Madam Chair—is very clear. We have heard much testimony, and it is clear that we don't need to study this bill further. That's why, Madam Chair, I will continue presenting evidence to you that will demonstrate to you further that we don't need to study this bill any further.