Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'm one of those Canadian citizens who was naturalized. I did my ceremony back in 1989. I think I've said that before. I still have one of those old little citizenship cards. I still think the cards are better than the big certificates. I'm sorry if the department doesn't like them. I know those cards are probably tougher and more expensive to make, but they were handy. I was using mine for some videos we were making on Parliament Hill a few weeks ago, and I actually had the card in my hand. I wanted to show that they did used to exist. They used to have your picture on them. I'm eight in that picture, with way more hair, way more curly, too.
This amendment actually comes from ideas and witness testimony we heard here from the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, and Daniel Bernhard, who does incredible work to provide enhanced citizenship ceremonies. He understands this department has three names in it. It is the Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, and too often, especially on this committee, we forget we do citizenship. The point of immigration is citizenship.
I know we talk about filling workforce needs and labour market needs, and especially—and I care about this very much—helping people escape terrible conditions in other countries. These are all very good things we do. My father is very thankful that Canada allowed him to stay. My dad was a member of the Solidarity movement. He came to Canada when my grandfather was passing away of brain cancer in Toronto. He's buried in Toronto. My grandmother is buried in Toronto. This has been a great country for us.
I have never heard my father complain that he had to do an in-person citizenship ceremony. I've actually never had someone come to me and complain that it was a huge inconvenience to have to do an in-person citizenship ceremony. In fact, I've heard the opposite. I've had people come to me and say that they had to do a virtual ceremony and they tried to make it as meaningful as possible.
In the emails the department sends out, it pushes virtual ceremonies as the option. You have to click. That's what the department pushes. It's not obvious to anyone reading these emails that there is the other option of an in-person ceremony.
I've sometimes heard the argument made that this is how we can clear a backlog of citizenship ceremonies. Why not just assign more staff and more people? The Government of Canada has more properties than anybody else, I think, in Canada. There is double the staff there used to be, according to PowerPoint decks I have from the department on the number of staff. The Treasury Board Secretariat shows there are record numbers of staff in this department and we've doubled the funding of this department, but we can't do in-person citizenship ceremonies on a reasonable delay?
You can invite people. Why is it that cinemas can figure out how to fill their seats? Why is it that churches can figure out how to fill themselves? Why is it that private sector organizations can figure it out, but the Government of Canada can't?
As my colleague said, this is an opportunity for people from different backgrounds, different places, with different mother tongues. French and English are not my mother tongues. I still think in Polish and I try to translate in my head as fast as possible. It's a big deal. You get to meet people from other places of origin. I really think it should be mandatory to do it at an in-person citizenship ceremony. That should be the default setting.
The excuse that there is a backlog, and therefore it needs to be cleared by any means necessary, is not good enough. The department has been promoting, and it's in the budget as well, what's called “click citizenship”. That's what I'm calling it. It's just an attestation that you took the oath of citizenship.
I've been to these ceremonies. They're very meaningful for people. People take pictures at them. They like participating. They linger afterwards. RCMP and local police forces attend in their dress uniforms. It is truly, truly, a special event.
I was underage when I took my oath of citizenship, and I will admit to having been distracted because we were on a very high floor. Those of us of a certain vintage—I'll say Polish vintage—know that the tallest building in Poland, I think, was the Communist Party headquarters in Warsaw. I'm not from the capital originally. I'm from a place called Gdańsk.
This is why this is so important. I was distracted because it was a special day. My mom took the oath of citizenship. It was a big deal. Canada naturalizes more citizens, I think, than any other place in the world, but I'm happy to be corrected. It is a special time. People take pictures. They frame these pictures. They frame their certificates. There's a reason many members of Parliament send people congratulatory scrolls, and we send them those certificate holders, which have gotten incredibly expensive postpandemic and are a bit hit to our members' office budgets, if the whips and House leaders and the Board of Internal Economy are paying attention. I think the chair agrees with me that they are very expensive—