Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I will summarize what I've said. Obviously our witnesses' arguments are telling. They provided some clarity and clarification by sharing certain concerns and by discussing where problems may arise.
In fact, we truly believe that it is essential to pay significant attention to those comments. Obviously, in terms of what I have presented, we think it is important to consider all these guidelines I have presented, be they national guidelines under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms or international guidelines established by the UN or by other international conventions we have signed and ratified. It is essential that we put forward bills that take into consideration these warnings, if I may call them that, that must provide a democratic and fully responsible framework for the measures put forward in certain bills.
We have seen that the amendments proposed by the minister went beyond this initial bill and led us down a path where we are creating, as I said, differences between citizens in a country that, let's remember, is a land of immigration. We know that a lot of people flee their countries and choose to come to Canada and become Canadians so they can benefit from the democracy and freedoms offered by our great country. This bill will create two classes of citizens and, by the way, it will make a distinction between someone with sole citizenship and people with multiple citizenships. Those people may be at risk of losing their Canadian citizenship, even if they were born in Canada and have never been to the other country where they hold citizenship. Canadian citizenship must not be viewed as a driver's licence that could be taken away at any time.
I would also like to come back to what I was saying—I'm not sure if it was yesterday or earlier this morning, but that doesn't matter—about the decision by the Speaker of the House, in response to the question of privilege raised regarding the tabling of the committee's eighth report, which covers expanding the scope of Bill C-425.
The Speaker of the House ruled that the eighth report of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration was admissible, strictly speaking. However, he had significant reservations about broadening the scope of the bill. He referred to the absence of explicit jurisprudence in the matter and the dangers related to that.
Therefore, Bill C-425 cannot necessarily be amended in this manner, and we had to be very careful. However, the government does not seem willing to be careful, since it came back with this new motion requesting a 30-day extension to study Bill C-425 in order to broaden its scope.
Clearly, the fact that a private member's bill is being turned into a government bill does not respect the tradition that goes on in Parliament. If the minister wants to implement a legislative agenda, he should do it directly through a government bill, not through a private member's bill.
At the end of May, after their first setback from the chair, the government came back with a new motion presented in committee. This new manoeuvre is a big concern for us, Mr. Chair, because it leaves room for major slip-ups and it especially would set a precedent that might be damaging for the jurisprudence relating to how bills are handled by Canada's Parliament.
Mr. Chair, these practices that aim to bypass the customary procedures and processes are becoming particularly worrisome and require constant vigilance.
Let's go back over a few facts that deserve particular attention.
On March 21, the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism appeared before the committee. During his testimony, he literally dictated numerous amendments that broadened the scope of Bill C-425 considerably and radically changed the meaning of the initial version.
It should be noted that these amendments fit on two pages per official language, while the document tabled by the member for Calgary Northeast fit on a single page, including the French and English versions. Already, without even taking the time to read the proposed amendments, we can see by the number of pages that these amendments will really distort the bill in question which, itself, fit on only one page.
These amendments, which were the only ones proposed by the Conservatives, were then tabled by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration at the very end of the process of studying the bill. Therefore, the members of the committee were not able to ask witnesses about what could have become the very essence of the bill.
Let's remember that the legislative text tabled by the member for Calgary Northeast, in addition to being significantly broadened, was completely changed. In the end, less than 10% of the final document came from the initial bill. Even the title of the bill no longer had any purpose because the section on honouring the armed forces became purely secondary and was really swept aside. In fact, the amendments were no longer in line with honouring of the Canadian Forces.
That shows you just how imposing the amendments were, so imposing that the amendments proposed by the minister were rejected by the chair. Indeed, the chair had no choice but to reject the amendments. There was no other solution. The chair had to make that choice and say, pure and simple, that the amendments proposed by the minister could not be received. Since they went against the initial principle of the bill, they were deemed inadmissible by the chair of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.
As a result, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration had to table a report in the House. Mr. Chair, the report tabled by the government was quite worrisome. It requested that the scope of the bill be broadened to include aspects that had nothing to do with the Canadian Armed Forces, when that formed the very basis of Mr. Shory's bill.
Two related problems stem from that.
First of all, the minister has just skirted around the work done by the committee members by imposing his amendments on his parliamentary secretary and, obviously, the committee. Then—and this is the heart of the matter—the bill…