Evidence of meeting #58 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was going.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
Good afternoon, everybody. I call this meeting to order.
Welcome to meeting number 58 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.
Today, pursuant to the order of reference of Thursday, June 23, 2023, the committee will resume consideration of Bill S-245, an act to amend the Citizenship Act regarding the granting of citizenship to certain Canadians.
Ms. Kwan, you have the floor.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I'm happy to see everybody back after a constituency break of two weeks.
Related to Bill S-245, given the tight timeline of the requirement for the bill to be reported back to the House, I'm going to move the following motion, Madam Chair, a copy of which, in both French and English, has been sent to the clerk for distribution to the committee members. That motion reads as follows:
That, pursuant to Standing Order 97.1, the committee request an extension of thirty (30) sitting days to consider Bill S-245, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (granting citizenship to certain Canadians), referred to the committee on Wednesday, November 16, 2022, to give the Bill the consideration it requires and that the Chair present this request to the House.
Madam Chair, as indicated, we're kind of a little bit down to the wire here with the timeline. To ensure that the committee has the opportunity to do all the necessary work related to this bill, I therefore move this motion.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
Thank you, Ms. Kwan.
Ms. Kwan has moved a motion to request an extension regarding Bill S-245.
Go ahead, Mr. Dhaliwal.
Liberal
Sukh Dhaliwal Liberal Surrey—Newton, BC
We're not experts, but at times Madam Kwan brings in a really good perspective. I think it's a good idea to support her and move forward with the meeting.
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
Just so I understand, Ms. Kwan is asking to extend the time to consider this bill by 30 days. Is that correct?
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Essentially, yes. It extends the time because there's a timeline for us to report it back to the House, and this is to extend that timeline to report it back to the House by 30 days.
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
This is a process question. This is new to me. I haven't done this one before.
Can the committee just unilaterally say that? Do we have to report that to the House? Is there something the House has to do in return? How does that work exactly?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
Thank you, Mr. Redekopp.
If we request an extension because we cannot report back on the consideration of the bill, we request an extension. If the motion passes in the committee, I will present that to the House and then the House will consider it.
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
You present it to the House and then the House has to consider it and vote on it. Is that correct?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
Yes. Here's an explanation on that:
If a committee feels it will not be able to complete its consideration of a private Member’s public bill referred to it within 60 sitting days, it may request an extension of 30 further sitting days. Only one extension may be sought. As soon as a committee report requesting an extension is presented, a motion to concur in the report is deemed to have been moved and seconded. No debate takes place, as the motion is deemed put to a vote right away and the vote is deferred until the next Wednesday sitting.
Go ahead, Mr. Redekopp.
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
Do we know when 30 sitting days...? That's a long time from now. Can we do less than 30, or does it have to be 30?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
We can request a maximum of 30 days. We cannot request more than 30 days.
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
Has someone done the math on when that is, the 30 sitting days?
Liberal
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
It does not have to be the full 30 days. If we complete this work before the 30 days, we can, but it's up to 30 days. That's the maximum timeline for which you can ask for this extension.
This is the standard language, which Madam Chair just read out. That's why it reflects that.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
Okay. We'll go to the vote on Madam Kwan's motion.
(Motion agreed to: yeas 11, nays 0)
The motion is adopted that we will request an extension of 30 days.
Ms. Kwan.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I'm now going to move a second motion, a copy of which has been sent to the clerk, also in both French and English.
The motion is as follows:
That, the committee report the following to the House: that the Committee recommends to the House that it be granted the power during its consideration of Bill S-245, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (granting citizenship to certain Canadians), to expand the scope of the Bill such that the provisions of the bill be not limited to an application to retain his or her citizenship under section 8 as it is read before April 17, 2009.
Madam Chair, we've had extensive discussion about this, particularly with witnesses who came before us. As we know, there are many categories of lost Canadians. Bill S-245 currently deals with the category of lost Canadians pertaining to the 28-year-old age rule. However, it leaves out many other categories of lost Canadians. Most notably, the current situations are such that many families are faced with forced separation because of the first-generation cut-off rule that came about with Bill C-37 back in 2009.
We've heard from witnesses who urged us—the committee, the government—to make amendments to this bill, which would be out of scope for this bill, to address those lost Canadians. There are other categories as well for which we can get into the details when we get to the clause-by-clause, but in order for that to be considered, this motion is required.
I'm therefore moving this motion so that we can follow the procedure absolutely, as has been advised to me by the head clerk and the legislative clerk sitting at the table, to make sure that we do not end up in a bad situation with this effort.
To that end, I hope committee members will support this motion I've put forward.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
I'm obviously going to be the bearer of bad news. I think it is a bad idea to expand the scope on a private member's bill coming from the Senate, and I'll explain why.
There are a bunch of reasons each one of us should be worried about this. You open a door for any private member's bill, by any member, that reaches a committee to have this done to it, even after that member testified and expressly asked that the bill not have its scope amended.
That member of the Senate, Senator Yonah Martin, was very reasonable. She said, if there are language tweaks that need to be done and changes that need to be done for her intent to be captured, which is this two years of lost Canadians, to have their particular issue fixed, that was part of the deal she reached with her Senate colleagues in order to expedite the bill through the Senate and to the House of Commons. This bill did not receive another round of reviews at the Senate. It was expedited to the House of Commons, thanks to the understanding that it was tight in scope and had been already reviewed by the Senate in a previous Parliament. Therefore, when it got here, it got to us without the Senate having looked at it again.
Regarding the intent and scope of the bill, that member, before this committee, said repeatedly under questioning that she wanted it kept to her original intent and for the scope not to be expanded. The warning to all of us, and to all of you here, is that this could happen to any of you. Any of you who are so fortunate to have a private member's bill pass at second reading and come before a committee could have members come here and either deconstruct or vandalize your private member's bill with other things that were not your original intent.
I'm an originalist. I would like to keep the intent of the person, even if I disagree with their purpose. I have seen private members' bills before committees from Liberal members, from the Bloc and from the NDP that I disagreed with, and at no point did I ever think it was wise to go into a bill and insert things that a member expressly told me they did not want to see inside it. That's just, I think, good parliamentarianism. I want to be respectful of my colleagues, even those in other political parties and senators, whom I don't often talk to in that other place. The intent in their bill, once it passes to a certain stage of legislation, I want to keep it intact and have a straight up or down vote on the original intent and scope of the bill.
What's going to happen here is that, if you vote for this, it may happen to some of your private members' bills or Senate bills from your side of the House or from an affiliation with a Senate group that you feel particularly strong about. It might be me who comes to a future committee to sub in and be the one who leads that type of—I'm going to call it—vandalism of the original legislative intent of a legislator.
For those of you who have been here for quite a long time and who are sometimes nodding with me in agreement, you have seen this happen. I do not like it when it happens, because I think it is a bad idea. We have an opportunity here to pass this piece of legislation before a potential election in a minority Parliament where we don't know what will happen.
This type of scope expansion on a private Senate bill is going to leave the senators reviewing it at a committee. They're going to do it. They're going to see whether the original intent was kept or not. If they do a single amendment, they're going to send it back to the House and ping-pong it between our two chambers. It's very likely that those lost Canadians, whom Senator Yonah Martin wanted to help with a straightforward, very precise, focused bill, won't be helped. Then we'll be back to the starting point once again after another Parliament, and who knows what that parliamentary makeup may be.
The government, if it wanted to today, could table a piece of legislation and address whatever concerns there are. Members of the recognized New Democratic Party and members of the Bloc could do the same thing as well. They could propose a piece of legislation and come to parliamentarians, and we could see whether an agreement could be reached to expedite the bill and to have it go through a different process. All of those things could be done.
I'm just warning you: Expansions of the scope of a bill are a bad idea, especially when they're done expressly against the intent of the senator, who came before this committee, and the House of Commons sponsor did as well, and said expressly that it was not the purpose of the bill.
I don't know what types of expansions are being considered beyond the scope. I know there's been some debate over what those could be. However, members are free to table-drop amendments that are not submitted through the clerk for consideration, but there could be other ones that could be table-dropped once you expand the scope of the bill.
I'm warning you that I think it is a bad idea. I also think it is interesting that I wasn't given a heads-up ahead of time with ample time to consider whether this was a wise thing to do and to reach out to our caucus members who have an interest in the contents of the bill on whether it should be done. I have, from the beginning, been very clear and very direct. I don't like scope expansions. I try not to play games. I really try to limit those as best I possibly can. I am not perfect. Nothing is perfect in this world, but I think you had perfection in the way this bill was presented to you.
Many of the amendments that were submitted to the clerk—I can't mention them until we are considering them—we are absolutely willing to support because they keep the original intent of the mover. Therefore, we support them. That's the principle I'm applying here.
If you vandalize this bill, I will show up to other committees of your colleagues' bills and I will personally deliver the same type of treatment you're about to mete out to Senator Yonah Martin, who has been nothing but willing to work with stakeholders, with people and with all of us—government side and members of the other opposition parties as well.
I think you'll agree with me that Senator Yonah Martin is not a very partisan member of the Senate. She takes her work on behalf of constituents in British Columbia very seriously. She takes her work seriously as a legislator, and I hope we would honour her by not expanding the scope of the bill beyond her original intent.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
Thank you, Mr. Kmiec.
Seeing no further debate....
Go ahead, Mr. Redekopp.
