Thank you.
Dear honourable members of the committee, we are extremely thankful for the opportunity to make selected comments on subclause 3(1) of the bill that eliminates subparagraph 5(1)(c)(i) of the current Citizenship Act by taking away pre-permanent resident time counting toward the citizenship application.
First, I would like to introduce myself and my colleague. My name is Taisia Shcherbakova. I have been in Canada for 10 years and I am currently a permanent resident. Under the current citizenship and immigration law, I will be eligible to apply for citizenship in less than 100 days.
I am here together with my colleague, Maria Smirnoff, who has been a Canadian citizen since 1998. Together we represent Pre-PR Time Counts, which has received support from thousands of Canadians through our online petition as well as vast media coverage.
The proposed legislation concerns us as a group in the following three ways. First, it diminishes the value of economic and social contributions made to Canada by international students and temporary foreign workers. Second, it actually favours immigrants without Canadian experience. Third, it puts Canada at a competitive disadvantage relative to its peer countries.
Let us now elaborate on each of these three points.
What differentiates international students and temporary foreign workers from other immigrants is that they are not newcomers to Canada. They have already established strong economic and social ties within the country by graduating from Canadian universities or working in Canadian companies, owning properties, paying taxes, and in other words, they have become fully Canadianized, as described by Honourable Francis Muldoon, a respected Canadian immigration judge, even prior to becoming Canadian permanent residents.