Thanks for the question.
I hadn't actually thought about that in relation to this bill. The set of international documents that cover statelessness effectively say that individuals have—and this is the Universal Declaration on Human Rights—a right to nationality, and the right also not to be arbitrarily deprived of a nationality. That's typically been understood as a legal obligation to avoid statelessness. I think it's probably useful to have a conversation about the legal obligations that the Canadian government has towards individuals who are stateless on its territory.
Typically, at least in European states, the way that's evaluated is with respect to the set of connections that my colleague here indicated, which is associated with connections to the country. It's usually understood that if an individual has been born here or been mainly raised here, and they nevertheless seem to be stateless for some reason.... I suppose Deepan is the standard-bearer for this kind of case. In that case, he was claimed by the last government to be stateless. In fact, all of his formative years were in Canada. He was born here, not under diplomatic protection.
In those kinds of cases, it would be useful to make clear that Canada has an obligation to avoid statelessness by either granting citizenship to all people who are born on this territory or whose formative years were here.