As we all saw in today's question period, and we have realized in recent years, it's very important to distinguish between the two different broad categories of status that non-Canadian citizens can have here. One is temporary resident status and the other is permanent resident status. We are saying that the time that will count toward citizenship is permanent resident status. We don't want those lines to be blurred. It has been very unclear up until now what qualifies. A lot of people who were here as students didn't know they could apply at that time. That seemed to us to be unfair. The new measures will make it much clearer, and also will strengthen the residency link that we want new Canadian citizens to have. We want them to have been here for four years as permanent residents, not as temporary residents who can come and go.
On April 28th, 2014. See this statement in context.