Mr. Chair, I don't want to repeat too many of the arguments that my colleague made, but I was just flipping through the bill and clause 3 is actually a giant clause. It's about five pages long. It touches many subject areas. It touches the residency requirement. We're talking about the physical presence of people since becoming a permanent resident before they can qualify for the citizenship application. It increases the presence to four years out of six years from three years, which is currently the requirement.
It talks about the eligibility, when a person becomes a permanent resident, the time to count, so the pre-PR time that I spoke about earlier. I will come back to that.
It also touches on tax returns and submitting tax returns.
It talks about the age and language requirements. It changes the age for the language requirement and the knowledge test. I've already spoken about the changing of the age, and how children are unfairly treated by this clause, but I didn't get a chance to speak about how older people in the community are also being unfairly treated. I don't have the study and the witness testimony in front of me to tell you off the top of my head, but there are many studies that show that later in life it is more difficult to acquire a language. Now the government is making it more difficult for people to qualify for their citizenship test based on increasing the age requirement for the language test.
Many changes have been requested and suggestions and recommendations have been made by many of our witnesses. Almost all of our witnesses who came before the committee at one point or another suggested a change to clause 3. Many of those changes were suggested by our expert witnesses, whether it's the Canadian Bar Association or OCASI, the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, or the Pre-PR Time Counts group, or local legal clinics.
I come from Toronto. The Metro Toronto Chinese and South Asian Legal Clinic mentioned the changes that they wanted to see happen. The South Asian Women's Centre, all of these organizations, and I know there's more, mentioned how they wanted to see these changes. We proposed these changes. Many of these changes were proposed by these community organizations, national boards like the Canadian Bar Association, and international organizations. Representatives of international organizations, like UNICEF and UNHCR, wanted to present before this committee but didn't have an opportunity. Amnesty International wanted to make a presentation before this committee, but didn't have an opportunity because the Conservative members on the committee didn't want to extend the time to see more witnesses.
We have local, small community organizations, provincial organizations like OCASI, national organizations like the Canadian Bar Association, and international organizations, all saying that this clause cannot be passed as is and needs to be amended. We proposed those reasonable propositions. We're not just opposing the Conservatives' proposals that they're bringing forward in this bill. We are making reasonable propositions that are sound, and are supported by multiple organizations and multiple levels of organizations, yet the Conservatives have shot down all of them.
In good conscience, I cannot support this clause as is without any amendments. Mr. Chair, this is one of the many reasons I will be opposing clause 3, because it's not amended at all.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.