Mr. Chair, I have a point of order.
My colleague is giving a lengthy opinion about the motion, and my name was mentioned a couple of times in her speech. I just want to make sure that my privilege has not been violated, so I want to clarify on the record the points that were made with reference to where my name was mentioned.
On the first point, the issue of an amendment was raised. An amendment was moved with respect to Bill C-6 to ensure that there would be due process for people whose citizenship would be revoked because of misrepresentation or fraud.
I feel very strongly that people should have the right to due process and to appeal that process. My amendment to Bill C-6 was to restore that process, which I fully support. However, my amendment was not supported and was ruled out of order, so I just want to state clearly in reference to that what my position is, which is to absolutely support a process for appeal that takes into consideration humanitarian and compassionate reasons and extenuating circumstances.
As I understand it, through the Senate there is an amendment to Bill C-6 that brings back an iteration of due process embedded in that. When and if that comes before the House of Commons, if the government decides to bring that forward, to be clear, that's something I do support. That's my view on that.
Again, I just want to clarify to make sure that my privilege has not been violated. My second point is on my view on appeals with respect to bad actors in the consulting industry.
Absolutely, when we were talking about the study that we had embarked on, we heard a lot of witnesses who talked about abuses in the system. We heard that there are consultants, ghost consultants or otherwise, who sometimes provide misinformation about their client's application, and sometimes that misinformation is provided unbeknownst to the applicant. They don't even know about it, but when that happens, it is actually the applicant who is penalized for that.
Hence, I would say that an appeal process is absolutely critical, because they need the opportunity to say, “Actually, that's misrepresentation that was put forward for me, unbeknownst to me.” This may be because they are not familiar with the system, because they don't really know how the process works, or because they have language difficulties. It could be for a whole variety of reasons. On that point, it is absolutely essential that we have an appeal system in place.
Mr. Chair, I want to make it clear where I stand on that. It is not the applicant who should be penalized for that. It is the bad consultants who should take the hit on that, and right now our system fails at that, which is what our previous study was all about.