Thank you, Madam Chair.
I hate to break it to Mr. Ali, but he's wrong. I know he's wrong, because he would just lean over to Ms. Lalonde, who signed off on an order paper question and answer. These are official documents of the government. For the staff who may want to go look it up, it's order paper question 1258 that was tabled in February of this year, 2023. It's all of the citizenship ceremonies held in 2022.
It's true that they still have them. I'm pretty sure that they're all during Citizenship Week. When you look at the number of in-person ceremonies, you see that there were 157. For virtual-only, there were 3,552. We're not saying there are no ceremonies; we're saying that 3,552 virtual-only ceremonies, which is the option being pushed in emails being sent out to people eligible to be new citizens, should not be happening. That's a big ratio. That is almost a 95% to 5% ratio. They even have hybrid ceremonies, but there were only 33 of them.
This is an official document provided to Parliament, so it has to be true, because you can't lie to Parliament. You have to provide factual information. This was signed off in February. It's order paper question 1258. I read everything. I have the data here. It does show that the department is preferencing virtual ceremonies and pushing them on persons who are eligible to be new citizens of Canada.
I don't think anybody here can review the transcripts and the blues and say it's zero. Zero is not the case. I've heard people speak passionately about their parents' experiences and their experiences. I was always interested to hear. I was hoping Mr. Dhaliwal would tell us when he got it. Maybe if we had that citizenship card, he could show it to us and we could trade cards maybe at some point and just look at them.
This is a huge difference between the two. That is a huge disparity. The department is pushing people to do virtual ceremonies. I understand. It's cheaper. It's a virtual link. It's a lot easier to manage them.
I chaired the Conservative caucus during the pandemic. The reason we all moved onto Zoom was that our caucus moved to Zoom, and we were asking for House of Commons services and the cybersecurity people to allow us to use Zoom with a server in Canada, but now it's being pushed everywhere all across government. The default setting should be in-person ceremonies. If another member wants to move a subamendment to this to offer it in cases where there are compassionate grounds, I think we can be absolutely convinced on compassionate grounds, if a person is in a hospital or if a person has a minimum wage job. I think Ms. Kwan raised an excellent point.
My mother worked as a residential cleaner her entire life. She was a commercial cleaner and residential cleaner, cleaning people's homes. There are people who work hour to hour on wages, and it's hard to take time off.
At the same time, why can't the department do citizenship ceremonies after the regular work hours of people? They're salaried employees. Why can't we maybe hire students through the Canada summer jobs program to do these ceremonies during the summer, when typically work hours are a bit shorter for many—not for all, but for many—and we could do them then.
These are the official government numbers for 2022. I didn't even go further. I probably should file an OPQ, an Order Paper question, to ask where these in-person ceremonies were held and when, and whether they were all done during Citizenship Week. Maybe they were done in certain ridings but not others. I did not get an invitation to a citizenship ceremony in my riding that I'm aware of.
That is a huge discrepancy in the numbers. I can tell you that I've seen these emails being sent to those who have passed the citizenship test and are eligible, and they're being pushed in one direction. We're pushing back on their behalf. We're pushing back because the default should be in-person ceremonies.
If another member here has a wording for a subamendment.... As I've said before, I'm not burdened with a legal background or a legal education. If there is wording that would be useful here in order to word it correctly in French and English that on compassionate grounds we could give persons a chance to do it virtually, or maybe in a hybrid format so that they could see it done in a format where they're really part of the ceremony, I think that would be okay.
Thank you, Madam Chair.