Thank you, Madam Chair.
It is a privilege for me to be able to speak to this motion that my colleague has brought forward on having in-person citizenship ceremonies.
I just want to add a few words to say that I'm luckier than Mr. Waugh. He was born in Saskatoon. I was born in Souris, Manitoba, which has some of the greatest farming areas in the country. We'll have that debate later, I'm sure.
Thank you, Madam Chair and colleagues, for your best wishes today.
Just 20 minutes before I came to this meeting today, I met a person who has been trying to get his wife and four-year-old daughter over here for most of the last four years. He had been running up against a brick wall to get here to Canada, perhaps because of the nature of the country he was coming from. I know I have had interventions with the minister himself. I don't know if any of my colleagues here today from CIMM have paid attention to this particular case.
We've talked around this table this morning about how happy the people are at the citizenship ceremonies when they can go in person and have that opportunity. I'm sympathetic to what Ms. Kwan just said, and maybe not everybody has the ability to do this in person, but I think they should be given the opportunity to do so.
In the situation I'm talking about this morning, after years of frustration working with this particular individual, whom I have been working with for a number of years now, I met him this morning. He said, “Larry, guess what? My wife is coming.” I thank the minister for the work he did to make sure this particular case was dealt with. If you want to talk about smiles, you couldn't wipe the smile off his face this morning with a paintbrush.
I just want to say that when the opportunity comes for his wife—they are married—and his daughter to be here, I'm quite sure I'll want to make a special attempt to be at the citizenship ceremony for his family.
We've all done thousands of Zoom calls during COVID, but this is post-COVID. We need to offer as many of these ceremonies as we can. I have had citizenship ceremonies now with at least three citizenship judges who have had the opportunity to do these ceremonies over the last almost 10 years that I've been a member of Parliament. It is a special ceremony.
We've held them in some of the most historic buildings. My colleague just talked about the pioneer centre in Saskatoon. I've been there myself as a child. I know the importance of that facility as a museum. We have the “Dome Building” in Brandon. It's one of the oldest historic buildings in southwest Manitoba. It's one of the last standing domed buildings that was built for the Dominion fairs of the 1880s to 1920s era. It is an extremely special place to hold a citizenship ceremony. I've been on CFB Shilo for citizenship ceremonies. I've been at the Winnipeg CN station—the old historic station that was the first in western Canada—when it was specifically set up for citizenship ceremonies. Many were held there.
We have these special ceremonies coming up in our region. Brandon in particular, which is half of the population of Brandon—Souris—the other half is completely rural areas, the small communities—has two major parades a year. One is the Travellers' Day Parade, which is coming up on June 10. The other is the Santa Claus parade. It was a pretty cold day at the end of November last year when that Santa Claus parade was on. Business people and other organizations make a special attempt to make sure they have floats and identification in those two parades. On one of the coldest days of November last year, I was proud to ride in that parade and watch the smiles on the faces of young families who definitely weren't born here in Canada in this cold weather. There were thousands and thousands of them lining the streets to take part in that. Many of them, I know, have had their citizenship ceremony because I, like Mr. Ali, have taken the opportunity to do a special event with each one of them in recognition of their citizenship.
I met a person in the airport the other day in Winnipeg when I was going back through, and he thanked me for the citizenship certificate that I'd given him three years ago. I had never met this individual personally before because, of course, three years ago was the middle of COVID, when he would have received it in a virtual ceremony.
Part of this responsibility that we have—and the responsibility we have is not a job—is to our citizens in Canada. Having been on the immigration committee for three or four years before this particular term on the citizenship committee, it's much more than just the work we do here on a daily basis; it's to make sure that we have as many permanent residents who have the opportunity to become citizens in Canada as we possibly can.
One of the terminologies we have here.... Many people have heard me say publicly that I'm not a big fan of the phrase “temporary foreign workers”, because what we want are Canadian citizens who are permanent residents who can work in jobs every day and have an opportunity to raise their families here alongside all the rest of us who had, as my colleagues have said, the privilege of being born in this country.
It is a bit of privilege for me to be able to see the smiles on these families' faces. I was particularly reminded of it coming to this meeting this morning. It was just a fluke that I ended up stopping at this person's business for a few moments, and I was greeted with this huge story he had. I congratulated him profusely for his success in being able to have his family come to Canada. I know that they will become Canadian citizens at the earliest opportunity.
I think that these special ceremonies should be used as much as they possibly can be in Canada. I know it because of the pride, but I'm not going to go into the details that my colleagues have already mentioned in regard to the happiness, the pride they take, the dressing up as a family, the pictures that they take and that they want, the little Canadian pins and the, in my case, little Manitoba pins that the provincial members give them and the local pins for the communities they're in. These may not mean much to some folks, but I know the people who they do mean a lot to, and they are those new Canadians who get these small tokens through a live citizenship ceremony.
I'll leave it at that, Madam Chair. I think it's just one of the most wonderful events, as my colleagues have said, that we can attend in Canada. I would certainly not want to lose the opportunity to do these in a live ceremony at any time in the future.
Thank you.