Very well, Mr. Chair.
So I was saying that two related problems stem from this fact.
First of all, the minister just circumvented the work done by the committee members by imposing his amendments on his parliamentary secretary and on the committee. Then—and this is the heart of the matter—the bill of the member for Calgary Northeast practically disappeared because of government amendments.
As a result, we cannot really speak about a private member's bill. Rather we are interpreting it as a government bill. This practice is another attack by the Conservatives of parliamentary institutions. What is worrisome about all of this is that suddenly our work is focused on a false content. Let me explain.
These meetings, which took place over two months, were not really about the actual content of the bill. The real bill is the minister's imposing amendments to the bill of the member for Calgary Northeast.
Given that the Parliamentary Secretary took so long to share written amendments imposed by the minister, we weren't able to question witnesses about the minister's amendments. We were not really able to do our work. And mostly, the amended version of the bill would not have been a private member's bill, but a government bill. That hijacks the process and, above all, limits the scope of our work as members of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.
Moreover, on May 21, 2013, the Speaker of the House ruled on a point of order raised by the hon. member for Toronto-Centre regarding this report, as I said previously. Although the Speaker found it admissible, the report's content gave rise to a number of questions and, above all, a number of reservations. By that very fact, we are in a position to insist on the fact that permission to broaden the scope of the bill can hardly be granted and we must be able to examine these aspects much more thoroughly. This is a whole different ball game, and we cannot go forward with a bill with a scope that has been broadened and no longer resembles its initial version, which had an objective of honouring the Canadian Forces.
We also note that, as I said earlier, there are considerations that highlight the amendments we are considering with respect to broadening the bill. The initial bill was aimed at reducing the wait time by one year for granting citizenship to any permanent resident who is a member of the Canadian Forces and who has signed a minimum three-year contract and completed basic training. If we were considering just that, this bill could be passed by unanimous consent. We would have had no need to debate it because it is a completely commendable proposal. However, complications arose after the statements of the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism who, in proposing these amendments, tried to change the bill to revoke citizenship.
There is an essential and important difference between a private member's bill, like the one we have here, and a government bill. A distinction must be made between these two types of bill, which are extremely different. Government bills must receive constitutional approval by the Minister of Justice, in accordance with the Department of Justice Act.
In other words, when measures like this are presented for a private member's bill, we circumvent the long-standing process that enables us to determine whether legislative processes are consistent with the Constitution of Canada. If we are in a position to do these evaluations, we can determine whether there is a litigation risk when a bill is proposed and implemented. These risks must be assessed and taken into account by the Department of Justice, which leads us to wonder whether this bill, as some witnesses mentioned, is constitutional or whether there is a litigation risk. Those were the questions we asked ourselves beforehand.
In simple terms, section 10 of the Citizenship Act already sets out a process for revoking citizenship. The process states that should a person obtain citizenship through fraud, false representation…