Thank you.
The U.K. and the United States have five-year requirements. Other countries in Europe have even longer requirements. Australia has a four-year requirement, which will be the same as ours if and when Bill C-24 becomes law. So we are absolutely in the right ballpark.
In my contact with Canadians, the strongest proponents of this four-year residency requirement are newcomers themselves. They see some of the abuse, and they saw it in recent decades. They want to have that sense of knowledge, that direct experience, and be well oriented in Canada as a society. That does take time. Four years is a reasonable amount of time. In fact 45% of those applying for citizenship already spent four years or more here before they applied.