Citizenship and Immigration Committee on June 5th, 2023

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

With respect, Madam Chair, this is not out of scope because I'm speaking to the issue of the scope of the bill, what's been done to the bill and why it should not be reported back to the House. It should not be reported back to the House because it goes far beyond the original intent of the author and the sponsor of the bill. She has made that clear to this committee.

I think that, as part of understanding and discussing whether this bill should be reported back, it's totally appropriate to look at the areas where the government expanded the scope of this bill and chose this route to change, in my view, the very nature of the bill versus the government's option to bring in its own bill, which it chose not to do. In this process, it rejected a number of important improvements.

Since it broadened the scope of the bill, it had an opportunity, with some amendments, to talk about and expand the issue of the process one goes through, a citizenship process and oath, which is incredibly important. It's not just some sort of bureaucratic paperwork type of thing where you can say, “We have a backlog that's doubled under our government, so we'll just try to figure out ways to speed it up, make it all virtual, take the magic out of that most important day in a person's life and have them just sit at home on a computer and swear in, if the technology works.” These things could have been addressed, as well, since the government chose to go at it, but it chose to not continue to look at ways to make sure that it is required that these most significant ceremonies be done in person, that it be known publicly when the ceremonies are done, or that members of Parliament be invited to all of those, members of Parliament who have managed to go to those very moving ceremonies.

That's not possible when it's done in a virtual situation. The people may not even be in the same city—the citizen court judge and the individual being sworn in. It diminishes and cheapens the process. If the government felt that this was the way to go, then it surely proved it through this process.

The main issue is this: Why did it not take the opportunity that the government has to create its own legislation and draft it specifically into what the government needed? That is a process. I was taught how to do it.

My colleague Mr. Redekopp talked about the law of unintended consequences. In fact, the deputy minister I was referring to earlier, Arthur Kroeger, with whom I worked in employment and immigration—he was our deputy minister—taught me about the legislative planning process and how the primary job of drafting legislation of the department is to figure out the law of unintended consequences. Every piece of legislation has those things you're trying to do, but it also has impacts on things that you necessarily cannot anticipate.

We spent, on that case, on a bill that changed the Employment Insurance Act—or Unemployment Insurance Act, as it was known then—a year working on scenarios of unintended consequences to the bill. That's why you don't come at the last minute into a private member's bill and try to insert things that are beyond the scope of the bill, in my view again, without doing all the proper work in advance. It could take a year or two years—this government has had eight years to do it—to think of all the unintended consequences and how they will impact people, how people will do things and react to the law in ways that you did not expect. That takes a lot of work and due diligence.

I don't think amending a private member's bill shows that the government had much forethought in how to go forward with a comprehensive review of the Citizenship Act and ensure that it achieved everything that it wanted to achieve. In this case, since it was opened, as we've said, we proposed a number of things that the government chose to ignore. The original author may now see the bill delayed extensively because we have one or two weeks left in the House before the summer break.

Of course, there are a lot of rumours about things that might happen during the summer, as there always are, including possible prorogation.

[An hon. member]

It could be a cabinet shuffle.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

It could be a cabinet shuffle, as well. It seems pretty evident there's going to be a cabinet shuffle.

On the issue of going forward and the time left for the Senate to deal with the amendments of this bill, it's highly unlikely this is going to make it through in time. Who knows what the fall will bring? It could be a Speech from the Throne and whatever electoral fortunes we may face.

As a result of all of this, the bill could have been through the system with a quick resolution and passage through the House, as we've done.... I sit on the industry committee as well. We passed three private member's bills through our committee in the space of one month, because we all worked together and the government didn't make major changes. They made minor legal changes to make sure those bills complied with CUSMA.

In this case, the substantive changes—changing the nature of the bill—are causing this to end up in a legislative loop, which means the lost citizens may, yet again, get let down by this Parliament not addressing their needs. This process takes years.

I would ask the government whether they could clearly rethink their approach, go back to the drawing table, agree with us that the bill should not be reported back and come back with a proper piece of legislation that does the things they want. They can leave this bill alone or make the choice, at further stages in the House, to correct the mistakes they've made by expanding this bill.

Again, we haven't thought through.... I don't think the government has thought through all the changes these amendments will make. I would ask the chair not to report this back to the House, so the government can do its homework in the proper way by introducing a proper bill and fixing the things the government wants to fix in the Citizenship Act.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you, Mr. Perkins.

I have two people on the speaking list.

I will suspend the meeting for a minute and come back.

The meeting is suspended.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I call the meeting back to order.

Next, I have Ms. Rempel Garner on the list.

Go ahead, Ms. Rempel Garner.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Thanks.

Briefly, Madam Chair, I want to point out, in response to Ms. Kwan's comments, that we didn't have the opportunity to hear from Senator Martin on the assertions Ms. Kwan made because of the way the bill was dispensed with in the motion that was passed, which opened up the scope. We didn't have an opportunity for witnesses. That's exactly why we have these rules.

We have a colleague here making assertions about a colleague from the other place, when she did not have the opportunity to come here. I would ask that her motives, or whatever she said or didn't say, not be put on the record or considered to be on the record, given that we didn't have the opportunity to question her.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. Kmiec.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

There were just a couple of points made by Ms. Kwan. There was a short point about the intentions or the views of Senator Yonah Martin. It's commendable that the member reached out to our colleague from the Senate when the bill was tabled and that she met with Senator Yonah Martin and that she said her views had changed between then and now, at some point.

That's not comparable to us. We sit with our Senate colleagues in all of our meetings. I know that's different from the case for most caucuses, but our senators are involved in everything we do, with regular reports in caucus. They listen to the whole debate and they get to participate in it. They are equal members in our national caucus.

I should know. I chaired the national caucuses of the Conservative Party during the pandemic as well as a little before that and a little after that. Her views did not change. I thought she was very clear, when she came before the committee on Bill S-245, which was taken through the Senate so quickly, that there was a common understanding among senators that the substance of the bill was the same as that of Bill S-230.

That's why Senator Martin was able to convince her Senate colleagues to expedite the bill and to convince our caucus that the substance had not changed and that, therefore, this bill should be pushed through because it was essentially the same as before.

You can't interpret every conversation you have as a permission slip for any action to be taken. I did follow up and I have followed up repeatedly with the senator in question and also with the House of Commons sponsor of the bill, who was my predecessor on this committee, about their intentions concerning the contents of the bill.

At this final stage of the bill, I just want to ensure that we have a common understanding of how we got to this point with some of the work we have done and where we agreed on certain amendments to be passed. Again, having one-off discussions doesn't compare to being in the same caucus room. I know it's different for certain caucuses that don't have senators who sit with them regularly, but in this case we do, and I believe we've reflected what was Senator Martin's understanding when she testified at this committee as a witness. Also, we have been able to speak to her continually about stakeholder relations, the contents of the bill and certain amendments to be considered.

As my colleague Mr. Perkins said, when all of us are drafting bills, the tighter a bill and the simpler it is, the more likely you are to get consensus from more people. When bills are changed at committee stage—and it happens, and I agree. I'm sure if there is another IRPA bill or maybe the government will have a bill to amend the Citizenship Act at some point or a modernization bill, as they like to call it, there will be amendments made by the committee that may result in our having to return to our caucuses to get a review or to get agreement on them. That is how my caucus works. When a bill is substantively modified, seriously amended as this Bill S-245 will be, it should be reported back to the House and it will require us to go back to caucus.

We have a caucus meeting tomorrow. I think all of us have caucus meetings tomorrow, so I was wondering, Madam Chair, whether you would be willing to perhaps suspend the meeting, and I could take it back to my caucus, and we would meet tomorrow at 3:30. I could therefore get direction tomorrow morning from my caucus team and the Senate caucus members on the Conservative side as well, and I could come back to the committee. We could either expedite it or we could maybe reconsider it, but I would hope we could expedite it. I hope my caucus would give me very clear direction.

That is how we work. We have a consent system. We have caucus advisory committees, and I don't think that's a big revelation to anybody out there, but there is a substantial amount of consultation that every shadow minister has to do on their file and every sponsor of a private member's bill or a Senate bill has to do.

The substance has changed. The scope is much beyond that of the original version that came to this committee. On at least one of those matters—the adoption clauses—we did agree with them, and I'll stand by those votes. I thought we voted wisely to expand it there.

I think that would perhaps be better for us, because it is late and I know this committee met extensively on Monday. I was not here on Monday. Forgive me for that. It was my oldest son's junior high graduation, and that's one of those things you can't miss, especially when it's your first one who is graduating. I could not miss that, so I was present for that.

That would be my suggestion and perhaps you could take it under advisement.

I'll stop there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you, Mr. Kmiec.

Congratulations to you on your son's graduation. I will be heading to my younger son's graduation next Tuesday at McMaster, and it will be the first one for us as a family because the elder one graduated during the pandemic when there were no graduations. He graduated from Ryerson. On Tuesday my husband and I are heading to McMaster for my son's graduation. He became a mechanical engineer.

I have two more people on the speaking list—Mr. Redekopp and then Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe.

Mr. Redekopp, go ahead.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm just curious. My colleague Mr. Kmiec asked you about suspending and resuming tomorrow. Is that something you would consider doing? That's just a quick question for you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Yes.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Okay. All right.

I wanted to address as well the changes made to this bill when we were starting to run into a time crunch in May. The committee requested of the House an extension of time, which I think was a reasonable request. Along with that request for an extension of time was also an extension to expand the scope.

I think this is one of the places we ran into trouble, as I've spoken to before. I just wanted to reiterate some of the implications, I guess, of that change to expand the scope. I've spoken about before, so I won't repeat, how it changed the direction of the bill from track A to track B. The other thing it did is that it opened the door to doing many different things to the bill. The government had their ideas on how they wanted to change the bill. The NDP had their ideas on how they wanted to change the bill. I think the Bloc just wanted to get past the bill. We had our own ideas of how we wanted to change the bill. By opening up the scope of the bill, we took it as a statutory review. I think essentially that's what was happening with the members of the government and the NDP as well.

By doing so, it really caused us to step back and say, “If we have the option and the ability to actually make changes in this legislation, this very complicated Citizenship Act, what are the things we've been hearing?” That's where we were able to go back to our offices, to constituents who had spoken with us and to stakeholders who had contacted us to really go through and look at those things that had been sort of on the priority list. Essentially, the question was, “If you could fix the Citizenship Act in one way, what would it be?” Out of that discussion came the suggestions we've made.

I think people need to understand that when this bill's scope was opened up, it presented an opportunity to fix multiple things that were wrong in the system. That's what the members of the government chose to do. That's what the NDP chose to do. That's what we chose to do. When we got to our amendments, that's what they were. They were sensible amendments that were drawn from the suggestions and thoughts that we and our constituents had so that we could improve and fix things. In the same vien, we didn't want to have any unintended consequences in those amendments, so we were careful to draft them in such a way that they wouldn't do that. The result of that was to have what we call the statutory review, which is essentially what was happening.

The other thing I wanted to touch on relates to that. It still could have gone easier than it did. My colleague Mr. Kmiec made a very reasonable proposal or motion: Given that we are expanding the scope, and given that we are expanding the time, let's have an extra two weeks—I think at that time it was two weeks—to submit the amendments we want to submit. Of course, that motion was not approved. Therefore, we were not able to do that. As a result, we had to take more time here. We had to provide our amendments one by one as we went, which made more work for the clerks and everybody around the table. If we had accepted that very reasonable motion by Mr. Kmiec back in May, we wouldn't have had this issue.

The other issue I want to touch on in that same line of thinking is the fact that there was a breach of privilege when an amendment that had been shared in confidence with members was actually shared outside this room and shared very explicitly and in a very detailed way with members of the public. That is another reason there was great hesitation to submit the amendments we had. It was the risk of those being put out there in the public. We weren't sure what was going on with the committee and who was supplying that information to others.

That was another reason this took longer than it needed to. There was a lack of trust, I think, in how that happened. I'm not sure we ever quite got to the bottom of that, but we need to ensure, number one, that it doesn't happen again. It's a disappointing thing that happened. Of course, it's a well-established principle of parliamentary privilege that certain things are allowable and certain things aren't, and that was one that wasn't.

I just wanted to add those things to the record, and some of the reasons we ended up where we did on this.

I'll leave it at that for the moment, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you, Mr. Redekopp.

Go ahead, Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I was just wondering whether we had the room until 9 p.m.

Is that the case, Madam Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Yes, we have the services available until nine.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

So there are five minutes left for the meeting, but when I raised my hand, there were 20 remaining.

Are we going to vote on the report to be tabled in the House or should we suspend the meeting and pick up where we left off tomorrow?

I don't think it's worth continuing the meeting. There's no point with only four minutes left.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I have one more person on the speaking list.

Go ahead, Mr. Perkins.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

This is a bit of a follow-up, if I could, to the beginning of Mr. Redekopp's question, which was a follow-up to Mr. Kmiec's question about suspending until tomorrow.

Because we made more than 40 amendments, Mr. Kmiec referred to our caucus process. That was one of the revelations here when I got elected. I thought the caucus part of the whole process would be two hours a week that I could never get back. It turned out that our process, anyway—I don't know how it is for the other caucuses—is a lot different from what I expected, in the sense that for any motion, issue, bill or private member's bill that goes before Parliament from this place or the other place, the shadow minister has to set up what we call a “caucus advisory committee”, which was referenced. I'm the shadow minister for industry.

It's basically inviting all your caucus members to a discussion on that issue to discuss the bill, the proposal and what the shadow minister may or may not think, and to also have a discussion about what we think our position should be. That discussion then goes through a type of cabinet process. We have shadow cabinet committees, which shadow ministers sit on for various areas—economic policy, social policy. The relevant shadow minister has to take that caucus input on that bill or legislation, as was the case for this one, to that shadow cabinet committee and have yet another discussion about the bill and what caucus recommended.

Sometimes that process reconfirms what the caucus advisory committee wants. Sometimes it modifies it or alters it. It then goes on to a meeting of our leadership team, which is the equivalent of the cabinet's P and P process, so it's like the cabinet committee process. I think it was Rona Ambrose, when she was leader, who set up this process for us, which we still follow.

As discussed at that committee meeting, that P and P process, not unlike the cabinet process, may choose to do something different or to ratify or alter something at that discussion. Then it goes to the full caucus, believe it or not. The shadow minister who presented it originally has to present it to all of the caucus. We then have a caucus discussion and debate about that recommendation and an actual vote. Everything we do goes through that process, including the vote.

When there is a substantial change to what we approved originally, whether it's a private member's bill, a motion or a government bill that happens through the committee process, as shadow ministers we're obligated to bring that back to the full caucus to have a discussion and debate about what we think the caucus and the team—this is a team sport, after all—should be doing.

Because the alterations to this bill are so significant, it would require us.... We're lucky, in that it's Tuesday. We've missed some of the other elements, but we all do have caucus tomorrow. Our shadow minister could make a presentation to caucus tomorrow morning on what has changed and get feedback from the caucus on the position for reporting back and the vote on what our position would be on reporting back to the House and going forward to third reading.

If I recall, Madam Chair, I think that while you may not have said it, you seemed to nod your head when Mr. Redekopp asked if you would consider suspending and following up on Mr. Kmiec's idea that we suspend and come back tomorrow, if possible, after the caucus process. That would mean after question period tomorrow we'd reconvene so that we could have, with our proper caucus of our 118 or so colleagues—I guess I'm not so good at math tonight—less those present, the input of those caucus colleagues and instructions that we could bring back to the table tomorrow, if that were possible.

Madam Chair, I would like to follow up on the two previous comments on whether that nodding was agreement so that we could adjourn until tomorrow—

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you, Mr. Perkins.

I still have people on the speakers list. We do not have the services available after 9 p.m. It is 9:02, so I will suspend the meeting.

Thank you to everyone for your patience.

The meeting is suspended.

[The meeting was suspended at 9:02 p.m., Tuesday, June 6, 2023]

[The meeting resumed at 7:24 p.m., Wednesday, June 7, 2023]

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I call the meeting to order.

We are resuming meeting number 70 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. We are continuing our study of Bill S-245.

When we left off, we were debating the question on whether the chair shall report the bill as amended to the House.

I have two people on the speaking list, Mr. Redekopp and Mr. Kmiec.

Mr. Redekopp.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm going to take a slightly different tactic tonight.

In the last few meetings, I started by trying to move my motion to talk about the Indian students. I think we all want to see some action on the Indian student issue, but I don't want to see it voted down another time. I think that would be bad.

What I would like to suggest, and maybe this is more of a point of order than anything, is that after we're done with Bill S-245—hopefully, tonight—we move to committee business, where we can consider that motion and other committee business, if it comes up.

I'm wondering whether we could have an agreement that we could do that, Madam Chair.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

That is automatic.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Mr. Dhaliwal, let me recognize you first.

We have to complete Bill S-245.

The meeting was suspended. We are resuming. Once we get through that, then we will proceed.

We need to get through Bill S-245. We have that legislation that is of importance. First we need to clear that.

After that, we can see where we can go.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

As long as the committee has the will to at least consider going to committee business...and just to show that we are willing, I would suggest that we proceed to a vote on this statement.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Do all members agree to that?