Mr. Chair, I wasn't aware that votes on clauses were supposed to be preceded by lengthy speeches of one's views, but since the NDP has given such a rendition, I will say a few words. I will be brief, perhaps as fitting for a member of the third party to not be too long.
Basically my objections to clause 3 come in two parts.
One, it is likely unconstitutional. The lawyers have told us that, particularly with respect to intent to reside. There are two options. Either it is meaningless, which would be the case for the version presented by the minister, where he says it's totally irrelevant the minute the person becomes a citizen, in which case it's probably not unconstitutional, but neither does it mean anything—it's totally redundant—or, in the interpretation of the minister's officials and most of the lawyers that we heard from, it is indeed likely to be unconstitutional. On either of those grounds, it should be opposed.
The second and arguably more fundamental point is that
we disagree with the government's assumption that, the more difficult it is to obtain a citizenship, the more valuable that citizenship becomes. No logical argument confirms that premise.
There's no evidence to think that the more you erect barriers to citizenship, the more valuable that citizenship becomes. We have no evidence that if people have to wait for years and do incredible feats to become a citizen, they will subsequently become better citizens than if they didn't have to do those things.
Indeed, I would say the opposite. When you give the minister dictatorial powers to remove a Canadian citizenship, you rather devalue the citizenship. You reduce the value of the citizenship because it can be so arbitrarily taken away. You reduce its value rather than increase its value as a consequence of this bill.
The erection of all these multiple barriers impedes the flow of people to become citizens. It's a disincentive for them to come to Canada and an incentive for them to go to Australia, the U.K., or the U.S.
Whether one is talking about barriers on language tests, barriers to totally exclude time spent here by international students as any kind of credit, the intent to reside provision, or the increasingly rigid definition of residency, not to the mention the doubling of the waiting time to become a citizen, all of these things are barriers that are central to this clause which will favour other countries that are trying to obtain good-quality immigrants and will work to the detriment of Canada.
I think there's good reason to oppose this clause.
That is my brief statement on this subject.