—but it's a big deal, and we recognize that it's a big deal. I've had people respond back to me on the letter and the certificate because they're so proud of having become citizens of another country, so why wouldn't we do it in person?
My colleague, Michelle Rempel Garner, spoke passionately about this issue. There are so few things in Canada that are kind of a like a unique Canadian experience.
Any Canadian can go to a citizenship ceremony. There are festivals in Calgary, where the department in the past—prepandemic—held open-air, large-scale citizenship ceremonies. One of them, I think, was at Elliston Park. There's another one that happens in the north part of my riding. As some members know, I have the second-largest riding by population in Canada, and the largest riding by area in Calgary as well. It's a huge area.
There are lots of good places. You could do it in the open air. You could have citizens who were born here take the oath with others who were not. It's group participation. Usually there's a judge who gives a good speech or an explanation of what it means to become a citizen. Maybe they bring up a few famous Canadians who were naturalized citizens. It's something that brings us all together.
Again, I've never had a person come to my office and say, “Going in person is really inconvenient for me.”
There are enough resources in this department to do this. I want to raise the point that the Parliamentary Budget Officer raised when he did an analysis of this department's human resources. It has a number of people working for it. In the office's estimation, it was 65% too many people. I'm really paraphrasing it down to just a one-liner here, but it was 65% more than they needed to process the current backlog and workload they have.
Why is it that we can't make citizenship an equal priority to resettling refugees and to helping immigrants and newcomers? Why can't it be an equal task to make new citizens?
We make them through an in-person ceremony. They get to meet others who are becoming citizens of Canada. Maybe they strike up a friendship with people from a completely different part of the world. Maybe they have different traditions at home or a different language that they speak at the dinner table.
Why can't we make this one of the requirements?
There was witness testimony that citizenship ceremonies are important. Conservatives have several floor amendments that we want to push to make citizenship ceremonies in law and important, because I don't know the next time we'll do a statutory review or a complete review of the Citizenship Act. These come up so rarely. There are so few opportunities for members to do a private member's bill. This bill comes from the Senate.
As members know, I've done a disability tax credit bill and Rare Disease Day. I've done different motions in the House on different issues, but I drew a very low number. I think it was third from last, of all members in the House, so I will never get an opportunity in this Parliament to push for a change to the Citizenship Act. Had I been able to, this would have been the issue. It would be these in-person citizenship ceremonies. I implore members to vote for this.
I also want to quote something that the minister said on this subject during Citizenship Week. He said it had just passed, and they had over 13,000 people become citizens. Here's the statement I want to quote:
It was a great honour to participate in welcoming over 13,500 new members to our Canadian family. In fact, it is one of the best parts of my job. Citizenship Week 2023 has given me the chance to reflect on everything that being Canadian means: the freedom to live as our authentic selves, the connection to our natural world, and the opportunity to reach our full potential no matter where we came from. I am thankful every day to be Canadian, and I encourage everyone to reflect on what being Canadian means to them.
It goes on to say that the past year saw 364,000 new Canadian citizens.
Why can't they have in-person ceremonies? That should always be the default that is pushed. Actually, the government should prepare in anticipation. We prepare all the time to have all types of services provided in person at Service Canada desks, such as passport services. I know that there's an online digital portal for passport services being provided, but I think that applying for your passport, although important, especially for new citizens....
By the way, another process change the department should make is for the document of citizenship. That document should be provided at the end of the citizenship ceremony, not mailed to you afterward. They make them cut the PR card, and then people can't apply for the passport until they get that certificate. Why can't the department simply plan at certain times of the year to have IRCC and Service Canada offices open? Maybe you could even work it out with local Legions.
Make it part of the process. Make it an equal thing that we do. We do immigration, refugees and citizenship. I don't see why we can't do this. We put it into law as well. As parliamentarians, we tell the department what to do. I think that's entirely reasonable.
Thank you, Madam Chair.