Mr. Speaker, before I continue my speech, I shall, if I may, pay tribute to ex-Premier of Quebec Robert Bourassa, who died today.
I arrived from Chile in Montreal with my family in 1974, when he headed the Quebec government. I had fled a dictatorship and immediately realized he was a great democrat, who showed a great deal of respect for dissenting opinions. He was also very open to ethnic communities. I want to pay tribute to his courage in politics and in dealing with his terrible illness. I also want to extend my condolences to the Bourassa family.
On June 4 this year, I put a question to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration about the government's plans to eliminate the citizenship rights of children born in Canada of parents who are not citizens. I said that a measure of this kind would be a direct attack on the children of claimants of refugee status or persons already recognized as refugees by Canada.
In an interview published in the Toronto Star last May, the minister suggested that Canada might remove the automatic right to citizenship of children born on Canadian territory. This statement aroused a great deal of criticism, especially from the Canadian Council of Refugees. One hundred and eight organizations wrote to the minister to express their objections.
These organizations included the Public Service Alliance of Canada, the Bureau de la Communauté chrétienne des Haïtiens de Montréal, the TCA, the Collectif des femmes immigrantes du Québec, the Canadian Action Committee on the Status of Women, the Canadian Labour Congress, the Canadian Jewish Congress, the Canadian Hispanic Congress, the Canadian Ethnocultural Council, the Canadian Arab Federation, the Jesuit Refugee Service, the Table de concertation de Montréal des organismes au service des réfugiés, the Vancouver Refugee Council, the Vigil Toronto Refugee Assistance Organization, and so forth.
Under current legislation, except for the children of foreign diplomats, anyone born on Canadian soil automatically becomes a Canadian citizen. Most nations adhere to the jus soli or law of the soil principle and grant citizenship to anyone born within their borders. Most countries, including Canada, also recognize they have an obligation to reduce the number of stateless people.
Until now, Canada has granted citizenship to the Canadian-born children of refugee claimants. The jus soli or law of the soil therefore represents a basic principle in the definition of citizenship in Canada and reflects the values of Canada and Quebec in this area.
During the consultations carried out in 1994 by the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, of which I am a vice-chairman, I asked departmental officials to provide us with statistics on the number of children born to persons who were not Canadian citizens. They were unable to give us exact figures. All they could say was that approximately 400 children were in this situation. The problem therefore is really not of such a magnitude as to require a legislative amendment and changes to a basic principle-