Madam Chair, I'm happy to have an opportunity to speak to this motion. This motion asks for an extension of 30 days to study private member's Bill C-425, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (honouring the Canadian Armed Forces). Though its title refers to “honouring the Canadian Armed Forces”, we have learned through the 60 days of study we have already had on this bill that it is not really about honouring the armed forces. There is a small piece that honours some people who served in the armed forces, but there are other parts of the bill that go far beyond that.
I don't think at this point it is necessary for us as a committee to give that time extension as we've already spent the 60 days allotted for the study of a private member's bill in committee. As we know, a private member's bill has two hours of debate in the House at second reading stage. After second reading stage it is sent to committee for further study and to be reported back to the House.
When we did that study, we learned of the many flaws and the many different aspects in the bill, and I don't even know whether the sponsor of the bill intended them to be part of the nature of the original bill.
We know that many government members and the minister himself have spoken about the bill and have suggested amendments to it. We know that the government's amendment proposed changes to the private member's bill that made it something absolutely new, something very different. It changed the scope of the bill. The amendment proposed by the government members changed the bill dramatically. They knew it was flawed because of what was presented to us by all of the witnesses who came before the committee.
Let me go through some of the items that the witnesses and the government's own members identified as containing flaws, or some of the facets of this bill that they wanted to change, or that weren't appropriate, that may not have been in compliance with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, or may not have been in compliance with the Constitution. Whatever it may be, let's have a look at what our expert witnesses had to say, and let's have a little bit of a discussion about some of those things.
I'll just list a few for now, and I'll try to get through as many as I possibly can.
First of all, in the bill itself, the sponsor of the bill refers to “act of war”. Many have identified that this is not a term that Canadian law understands or recognizes. The sponsor spoke of “pathways to integration” and increasing pathways to integration for permanent residents and newer immigrants to this country. Issues of statelessness were introduced and outlined for committee members by many people.
The concept of revocation of one's citizenship, which is clearly part of the bill, was highlighted by many of the witnesses who appeared before us.
Another issue is that this bill casts the net far too wide. Too many people get caught up in this bill. Even the sponsor of the bill himself mentioned that he recognized that maybe some people were getting caught in the cracks of the legislation, for example, people who were child soldiers or people who had foreign convictions.
Another thing is that if this bill went forward, it would actually create multiple tiers of Canadian citizenship. I'll make sure to go through that as well in as much detail as I can to make sure that everyone has an opportunity to understand what our experts have told us.
Another topic that was brought forward is the concern that was raised about ministerial discretion and accountability. What we've seen with this current government, especially in immigration-related bills and others, is that more and more powers are being given to fewer and fewer people, so rather than have a tribunal or a group of experts make decisions on things, it's actually the one minister who has more and more discretion on many more topics.
Another problem that was identified was with respect to citizenship wait times and the government allowing queue jumping for asylum seekers and refugee claimants in this country. The government was very clear that it didn't want people to jump the queue, but when there's a citizenship wait time of years in this country, the government is trying to have people jump the queue.
One more topic that I will be touching on is how we can actually honour people who have served in our armed forces.
These are some of the topics, Madam Chair, that I will be delving into throughout my discourse.
Pardon me, Madam Chair. I think I just made a French-to-English bad translation. I used the French word instead of the English word.
