Evidence of meeting #70 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was chair.
A recording is available from Parliament.
8 p.m.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I have another item that I would like to move forward on, but I guess I should wait until this package is done first. Are there any other amendments after this?
8 p.m.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
No. When we're done with all the amendments, if I could get the floor....
8 p.m.
Some hon. members
Agreed.
8 p.m.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
I have a point of order, Madam Chair.
Just for process, don't we need a vote on clause 3?
8 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
No, we don't. I've checked with the legislative clerk.
Shall the bill as amended carry?
(Bill S-245 as amended agreed to: yeas 7; nays 4)
Mr. Kmiec.
8 p.m.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
I know the next question will be, “Shall the chair report the bill as amended to the House?” That is a debatable motion, is it not?
I'm just putting myself on the list.
8 p.m.
Liberal
June 6th, 2023 / 8:05 p.m.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
No, and I want to speak to that.
The reason it's still a no—despite the fact that we've had I don't know how many hours of debate to get to this point—is that I want to make very clear that both my position and the position of my caucus is that this was a bill where the sponsor came here and distinctly said where the tracks were to go, in her view. I reiterated and spoke to her again during the clause-by-clause consideration.... I just want to make sure it is understood that we were opposed to the expansion of the scope of the bill and the votes that were held then. We did not want to go beyond the original scope. It was a very narrow support and help for a certain group of lost Canadians that we were trying to address.
Expanding the scope then led to our side thinking of things we have heard from constituents and stakeholder groups and from witnesses before the committee on important amendments that could be made.
I then said in the House during the debate on the tabled reports from this committee, when concurrence was moved, that we would consider this a statutory review. We tried to demonstrate that this would be what we consider a statutory review of the Citizenship Act. Therefore, we would make amendments that we thought were necessary or important or that addressed concerns we heard in different communities.
Again, we showed some goodwill. We voted for some of the amendments, such as the improvements in language that the department brought forward and said needed to be done—the difference between Bill S-230 and Bill S-245 and the difference in language that needed to be brought forward. We decided that, yes, we would vote in favour of that.
There were measures in there to make sure that adopted children would be treated equally to children born in Canada and children naturalized in Canada. We supported those as well.
We did not support the substantial connection test being only 1,095 days, and we suggested it should be successive or continuous days. We thought that it could have been toughened up with some prohibitions on persons who have been convicted for crimes with two years plus a day. It would have strengthened the bill. We could then have voted for a substantial connection clause, especially if it had added more days.
I have to say, there was much unpleasantness in May, unfortunately, during those breach of privilege debates that we had to have at this committee. I will also remind you, Chair, and others at the committee, that I proposed a motion that would have seen us deal with amendments at the table by May 15—for other parties to submit them—now that the scope had been expanded.
I know that this was a long and arduous process. However, I think we've learned more about the Citizenship Act than any of us on this side and on that side probably knew. I have copious notes now, and I probably understand the Citizenship Act better than I ever wanted to. Now when somebody from my caucus comes has a question or a bright idea, I will use the content from this meeting to dissuade them from touching this act and making further amendments, because I realize how simple it is to lose entire groups of Canadians and make more lost Canadians in so doing.
I hope we also demonstrated the fact that we can be reasonable and can proceed to quick votes when necessary, when time is of the essence. We were making a point that the way May went down was, in my view, still not acceptable and that we all take this back to other committees that we may serve on so that this doesn't happen again.
When the sponsor of a bill asks that we not affect the contents of the bill, the substance, the scope and the principle, and that we leave it intact and have a simple up or down vote on whether we support the bill as is, it is a courtesy to our colleagues not to—what I will again call—vandalize their bill. I have used that language, and I will continue to use that language, I'm sure, at report stage, at third reading of the bill and then as it goes to the Senate.
The witness testimony that was heard at the Senate committee was that, if amendments were to be made, that would delay the passage of this bill and it should just be passed as the original. There was a certain gentleman who said that repeatedly. I have the witness testimony from that committee on Bill S-230 when it was being debated originally.
Now that there are amendments that are very likely to pass, this bill will likely go back to the Senate. That could be as late as perhaps the fall—late fall—or into the spring session, and who knows whether there will be an election then.
I am just laying out the concerns I have with the way this was done. This bill could have been passed way back in May. I am convinced of it. It could have been royally assented to and then we could have worked on a different piece of legislation, or a member could have tabled a different bill that could have been considered. That's not me, because I drew third from last in the private members' bill draw.
I will note, for the benefit of all of us, that senators seem to be able to legislate faster than members of Parliament. We get only one chance from one draw in each Parliament, while senators can keep drafting new bills and expediting them through the Senate, if they can convince their colleagues....
I just think there's a certain measure of unfairness that now has been built up in our system, whereby members of Parliament get to legislate less quickly and less easily than senators can, and senators don't have an elected mandate from the public to push the bill, so they push.... Nevertheless, they are nominated and they are appointed by the Governor General upon the advice of the Prime Minister, so they can do work like this, like Bill S‑245.
I just want to lay that out, because I've seen a few articles using the F-word and people know how much I love that word, because I've used it at other committees. It's not the one you think. It's the “filibuster” word. We have not done that. We have asked questions to wonder about the contents of the Citizenship Act and the impact on different groups of lost Canadians. We also had structural amendments that we wanted to do on the Citizenship Act, which we have proposed and laid before the committee. Unfortunately, none of our amendments passed even though I heard that some of them were.... The content was quite good and could form part of future private members' bills that any member can pick up and reuse. I just want to make sure that members remember that and also that the vice-chair of this committee and I can be merciful when we want to be merciful and allow things to continue and proceed to business.
Madam Chair, there is a group of hopeful Canadians out there—international students who really need our time and our efforts—and I really hope that this committee is going to do that, but with the state of this bill right now, I know that I'm going to have a very tough time presenting this to my caucus to convince them that we got something in it. There's nothing in here that I can really point to, nothing to convince them that this bill is the same substance as it was before it came to this committee intact. That is a concern to me. This might happen to any one of us with our bills in the future—where the content might be deleted and replaced with things that we don't agree with—but it looks silly when you're the sponsor of a bill and you're whining to have to either vote against it or against your colleague's bill just because the content has been drastically changed from the original.
I want to put that on the record, because I'm sure there will be journalists who will want to refer to this, and I would want to refer to it, too, and send them the clip. That way, it can answer all of their questions on our feelings and thoughts on the process up until this point.
Thank you, Chair.
8:10 p.m.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
I echo my colleague's comments. I won't repeat them ad nauseam, particularly on how there were good amendments in this process, as my colleague Mr. Kmiec said, on strengthening the language and also with regard to adoption.
Colleagues, I want to emphasize that this is an exercise on how not to approach private members' legislation for a reason, and if the government members find themselves on this side of the table, on what happened here, you do not want to be part of that. I'll tell you why.
The government has had eight years to propose the types of amendments in here and they chose not to—number one—and the scope that was proposed in here was so beyond the original private member's bill that it really should have been government legislation or another private member's bill, but what happened was that the committee—the NDP and the Liberals—decided to override the Standing Orders and the procedures on how we dispose of and dispense with private members' legislation to expand the scope, because that didn't happen.
What happens to my colleagues, particularly in the government party, then, is that as legislators you're sitting here and dealing with amendments that are really significant, that we haven't had witness testimony to and, as well, that we haven't had departments testify to.
The other concern I want to re-emphasize in the deliberations on this bill and why it was so important to scrutinize these amendments is the leaks that happened and the breach of privilege. I understand that there are passionate stakeholders on this, but they're not elected officials. They may have opinions on this issue, but they're not representing the hundreds of thousands of people who we represent. Therefore, there should have been decorum and due process put in place, and due process wasn't followed in this instance.
We came into this all in agreement on passing this bill expeditiously, as it was in the Senate. My sense is that this is not going to be the case when it inevitably returns to the other place. I think that's unfortunate. I think what's happened here is that this is now a piece of legislation that is going to likely...not at my request or anything, but it's going to face more scrutiny and more holdups, probably because a couple of well-intentioned people thought they could break the rules and play fast and loose with the rules. That's really unfortunate because the substance either should have been in a government bill or not taken this way.
For those people who are listening, if that happens, it's because the rules weren't followed and the original deal and the original spirit of this bill were broken by an overreach. I find that really disappointing, and I think it has potentially negative outcomes for a lot of people, so I also echo my comments of my colleagues that this should not be reported.
Thank you.
8:15 p.m.
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I just want to remind everybody that the original intent of Senator Yonah Martin, when she put this bill forward, was to try to avoid the problems that had happened in the past. In the past, this bill—a very much similar bill—had come forward.
As we know there are different categories of lost Canadians. Each category of lost Canadians requires a certain correction or a fix or repair to the Citizenship Act in order to bring those lost Canadians back in as Canadians. Each of them stands on their own. It's very complicated. It's very complex. The act is actually very complicated, as my colleague Tom has said. It's very difficult to understand. I thank, very much, our officials for providing that knowledge because it's very hard to understand how this affects that and everything.
When there is a bill that changes that, it's very complex. When you try to solve one, two, three or four different problems, you end up with that many chunks of words, of amendments, to the act that all impact different parts of the act. It gets very complicated. Lots of questions have to be asked. It's not something that's simple to do. It takes a lot of time, first of all, just to draft it and to get it written properly. Then it takes a lot of time here to deal with it.
This was the whole point of why these bills have failed in the past. The process required, when you do that sort of thing, takes a long time. You can't just simply have a meeting, explain it and it all makes sense, and then everybody votes and it's done. It's not like that because there are so many pieces to this puzzle. They're all very complicated. They all need to be double-checked.
The whole reason we're here is that previous changes to the legislation had been made, and unknowingly, there were unintended consequences. Because proper due diligence wasn't done.... I'm sure the people who did it did their best, but they could have asked more questions because they obviously missed things. Those things then resulted in what we refer to as “lost Canadians”. Another way to refer to that is “unintended consequences” of a bill.
What has happened since then is that much more scrutiny is being put on citizenship changes for that very reason. We don't want to create new unintended consequences. Bills have failed in the past because they extend too long, they require too much study and, being in a minority situation, inevitably, we aren't able to go the full four years. Then an election happens, and that's the end of the bill. That has happened before.
That's why, when Senator Martin decided to bring this bill forward, she wanted to take a different approach. She was unhappy with the fact that this had failed. In fact, constituents who spoke with her relayed that concern: The approach hadn't worked, so a new approach was required. That's where her idea came for this. Let's just take one of these groups—one of the larger segments of this group of lost Canadians—and let's just try to fix one thing.
One thing that would be quite simple.... It's not that it would be simple. That's not putting it right. It's that it would be limited. The explanations, while complex, would be somewhat limited, so it wouldn't take eight meetings to figure it out. It could be done in one or two.
To that end, that's what she decided to do. It had the bonus effect of the same exact issue that had been talked about in the Senate before. To her advantage, the Senate didn't actually need to restudy it, because it had already studied exactly that thing. She was able to move it through the Senate very quickly, because the Senate agreed that, since there had been no changes to the original bill—the previously studied bill—it didn't need to restudy it. It agreed with Senator Martin to just pass it through the Senate to the House.
When it arrived at the House, what could have happened—what I have before described as track A—was that we could have brought it here. We could have asked the hard questions that needed to be asked on this particular group of lost Canadians. We would have been done by now, I guarantee it. As I said, even though the questions are complicated, and the answers are difficult to explain, it's a very limited segment of information that was required.
We would have had that information. We would have asked the questions we needed to. We would have made sure—and actually, the department had some good suggestions for wording and language changes to Senator Martin's bill that we agreed with—that the exact correct words were there, and there would be no further unintended consequences. That was all done.
That would have been completed. It would have been through this committee many weeks ago, and it would have been back to the House. All that would have been required for it to become law was a vote. It probably would have been the law of the land by now.
That was track A. That was the track we were on. That was the whole logic of what Ms. Martin had planned as a different approach to this problem and a different approach to this legislation actually getting through the system.
That was the plan. That's how it would have gone on track A. What really happened, as we know now, is that the government and the NDP got together and decided they wanted to try track B, which just so happens to be the same track that was tried before. We know what the result was before. The result before was that it didn't get through because it was too complicated. We had people tell us—and we know from the previous Senate testimony—that constituents said that, if this was going to get overly complicated, it would not pass in time, and they would rather have at least one piece of it dealt with, and then we could come back and deal with the others later. That was the testimony of people. That was the testimony of the sponsor of the bill. She specifically requested that we not expand this so as to slow it down. That was her main request—that we just leave the bill as it was so that we would not slow it down and not conflate different issues that would add time and cause this bill to fail again.
Unfortunately, that's the track we're on. Not only did it take longer for us to process and analyze all these issues here in this legislation and to make sure there were no unintended consequences, but the really sad part is that now it will eventually make its way back to the Senate because it's not in the same form it was when it was sent from that place.
What's very likely going to have to happen there is that the Senate will look at this and say that this is not what they agreed to. It's not the same thing, so they will ask what all the changes are. They are going to have to study this bill. The way the timing goes on these kinds of things, it's not something that will happen next week or tomorrow. This could take a long time before it actually gets the chance to be talked about in the Senate and referred to committees there. This will potentially add many months to this process.
This is the danger we spoke of at the very beginning of this process when, as my colleague Mr. Kmiec said, the bill was vandalized. We had warned about this, that besides taking longer to get through the House of Commons, it was going to be studied in great depth again at the Senate, and there would be many questions with potentially further amendments at the Senate that then would have to come back. It could have been done. Track A could have been done. With track B, there's a bunch of uncertainty. It's going to extend it for months, guaranteed. In this environment of a minority government, you never know when an election could be called. Should an election be called, all of this work will have been for naught and it will all get thrown out, and some future parliamentarian will have to address this and start this again.
That raises another good question. If the government was so intent on making further amendments, why did it not just introduce a bill? It could have let this bill deal with this piece of the puzzle, let it go through and be done with it. The other changes the government wanted to make could have been introduced in another bill. It would have very much been within the scope of the immigration minister to do so. The government has the ability to control the agenda and to put bills through the House of Commons. This would be quite a logical and sensible way to do this so that we would both preserve what Ms. Martin had intended in hers and put the government changes through on their own bill. What the government has done is vandalize this bill.
We always have to remember that we as parliamentarians have few tools with which to legislate, but one of them is private members' bills. When we put forward a private member's bill, the intention is that we are communicating our idea, the thing we want to do, and we are putting that forward to Parliament to be voted on. When the government comes along and says essentially to delete everything and replace it with what they want, it's no longer our bill. I don't think any of us around this table or any of us in the House or the Senate wants that approach. We all want to retain the right to push through our legislation the way we envision it.
The government should not be able to take over our private member's bill, throw out what they want and put in what they want, but that's what has happened here. I think that's another significant abuse of a private member's bill. It's not something that we should think lightly about.
This has huge implications for precedents, as well, because if the government did it here, you can guarantee this case will be referred to in the future. They will talk about what happened at this committee and they will use it as a precedent to destroy some other future parliamentarian's bill. I can assure you that it is going to happen. It's very disappointing, and it's disappointing that I have to be a part of that, because it's not something I see as a good precedent in our country.
I am really disappointed—I guess that's the best way to put it—in the process that has happened here and in the way the government has taken this bill, put in these changes and, frankly, taken advantage of the private member's bill of a fellow parliamentarian, rather than doing the work it should have done on its own, which is produce its own bill to make the changes that the government wants to change.
That summarizes my thoughts on this. I'll allow someone else to speak on it.
Thanks, Madam Chair.
8:25 p.m.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I'll be very brief and say that when Bill S-245 was tabled, I had a chance to meet with Senator Martin. I indicated to her my intentions of expanding the bill beyond the scope it touched on.
The senator made it clear to me that as long as I had the minister's support, I would have her support as well. That, of course, changed at the last minute, because later on, I was advised that she would no longer be able to proceed with that out of respect for her Conservative parliamentarians.
Anyway, I just wanted to set the record straight on the process that I embarked on. We are where we are. We've gone through several rounds of this. I don't want to prolong this, but I want to get that on the record.
8:25 p.m.
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'm a relatively new member of Parliament—the class of 2021—so I've been learning the ropes over the last two years on the private member's bill process. While I'm 132nd on the list—
8:25 p.m.
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
That's better than Tom, too, I guess.
I've worked on a number of ideas I've had, though not in the space of the Citizenship Act. I've found it to be a challenge to work within the confines of the process and I'm learning, of course, that the narrower you make your idea, first of all, the more likely it is that you can actually get something drafted. Even getting something drafted seems to be a bit of a challenge if you are overly ambitious and try to fix a number of things at once. Then, of course, there's always a question of whether it is or is not a money issue.
In my case, I've been dealing with something about RRIFs, and whether or not that's deferred income or tax if they.... I won't bore you with all of that right now.
While I'm relatively new to this process as a member of Parliament, some people—at least one at the officials' table—know that I served some time in government as a staffer when I was much younger and had a lot more hair. In my twenties, during the Mulroney government, I worked with the minister. Back then, you went around with your minister through the departments for—
8:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
I'm sorry for interrupting, Mr. Perkins.
I would request that you please keep your comments to Bill S-245, such as whether the bill can be reported to the House as amended.
8:30 p.m.
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
Sure. I am doing that—in the context of the bill and whether or not the issues put forward by the author of the bill were respected by the process in expanding its scope. The role of the government in choosing when it should bring in its legislation and insert itself into, perhaps, minor technical corrections and wording—legalese—in a private member's bill versus what's been done to this bill.... It has, in my mind, changed the nature of the bill quite a lot.
When you're in government, as government members know on the other side, you see an area that needs addressing. This area of lost citizens has been something that has been around for a while, and it's clearly something the government could have taken—and should have taken—its own initiative on, to craft it in a way that was not trying to put a square peg in a round hole. Rather, draft it in a way the government could see would work and that would give them the time to set it up properly, change the act and set the systems and everything else up to understand and do the proper consultation in drafting the bill.
That process—I know from my time as a legislative assistant—can be arduous, but the government has been in power for eight years and has had lots of opportunity to do that.
8:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
You are going out of scope. Please keep your remarks to Bill S-245. Otherwise, I will have to cut you off.