Mr. Chair, I think as the minister explained earlier, the intent behind this is to look at that time as permanent resident as your time toward citizenship. The time that you have decided to become a permanent resident of Canada, you have embarked on a journey that we hope will lead to citizenship. It's that time that you've made that decision to stay in Canada as a permanent resident that should count toward that time as citizenship.
As the member indicated, the numbers of international students have been growing, but quite a small percentage of those students stay in Canada. I think the number of people who had applied some of their time as a temporary resident to their citizenship application is quite low. I think Mr. Orr indicated this earlier. It's less than 15%. I think it's about 13%.
The other point I would make is on comparators with other countries. For example, the U.S. doesn't include any of your time as a temporary resident toward your citizenship. That would have to be permanent resident time as well. That's consistent with some of our comparator countries.