One way we aim to do this is by a slightly longer residency requirement. As you know, Mr. Menegakis, and as other members of the committee know, before 1977 there was a five-year residency requirement, and indeed for many peer countries it remains so. We went down to three years.
As I mentioned in a quotation in my opening remarks, it became obvious to many observers that there was abuse even of the three-year requirement. In other words, people received citizenship, not just a few people, but hundreds, even thousands—and investigations are now under way—without actually spending that time here. We have heard from new Canadians, Canadian citizens across the board, that there is no substitute for that direct experience of Canada, so the residency requirement will go from three years to four years, out of a total of six. There's still flexibility for those who have global businesses, have global lives, have other parts of their family outside the country, but we expect those four years to be fulfilled. We also expect new Canadians who seek to acquire citizenship to meet basic, predictable knowledge tests of language ability, English and French, or French, ideally both, and a knowledge test about Canada. The “Discover Canada” guide has proven to be extremely popular. New Canadians who use it are extremely successful in gaining that knowledge and showing it in the exam.
We're also strengthening the value of Canadian citizenship by going back to this issue, once again, of lost Canadians and making sure that we haven't missed any of those who really deserve to have Canadian citizenship from the beginning when the first act was passed in 1947.