Thanks for mentioning that.
The residency requirement was five years, until 1977. The five-year requirement was put in place back in 1914—one hundred years ago this month, actually—by another Conservative government, and it served us well over that long period.
My view is that the reduction to three years, and then this inattention to abuse, really did cheapen Canadian citizenship. It really did fail to fully express the value that it has, and that's why we're moving back to four years out of six to ensure that the attachment, that sense of belonging, that experience of Canada that only physical presence here can provide, is really there.
The other sad chapter, as you know, Mr. Leung, from the decades after 1977, was that there was little done under Liberal governments to deal with people who were present here only through a post office box, who literally dissimulated their residency in Canada. I'm not talking here about small numbers. We're talking about thousands of people confirmed to have done so, perhaps tens of thousands over the decades. That will no longer be possible and that's what Canadians expect, because across all our immigration and citizenship programs there is zero tolerance for abuse from Canadians or from any of us.