Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
This amendment again addresses the issues around statelessness that have been presented to the committee with respect to individuals who are not deemed to have a state they can claim and therefore are in a state of limbo, if you will.
This amendment seeks to rectify that. It states:
Despite any other provision of this Act, the Minister may, in his or her discretion, grant citizenship to any person to alleviate cases of statelessness or of special and unusual hardship or to reward services of an exceptional value to Canada.
To a degree, this is a more narrow approach to addressing the issue of statelessness than my previous amendment, but nonetheless it's one provision I'm hoping the committee members will support to rectify this problem.