Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-63. I am one of many Canadians who are very grateful that the hon. member for Wild Rose chose Canada as his home. Without members such as the member for Wild Rose we would certainly be further into a dictatorship than we already are now. I thank the hon. member for that.
I remind members of the House that I am from an agricultural background. Agriculture is very strong in my constituency. We all recognize, to put it politely, what load of fertilizer is when see it and smell it. When I look at the bill it certainly reminds me of that.
Some aspects of the bill go a very tiny way to addressing part of the problems in the country, but nowhere does it address the problems as it should. Whether or not members opposite like to admit it, they spent a great amount of time dealing with new citizens and the immigration laws in their daily work schedules. I want one of them to stand and deny this is true.
I have been a member in the House since 1993. Most of the concerns with regard to immigration and the downfall in citizenship come from first or second generation immigrants. They have an abundance of concerns about policy, where it is going and who we are letting into the country. They left their countries to come to Canada with great hope and expectations of creating a new life and new wealth for not only themselves but for their future generations.
Unfortunately they now live in a country where many live in fear because of immigration laws that allow the criminal element to come into the country, that allow the government to welcome them with open arms and give them the same rights as every Canadian citizen who has resided lawfully in Canada for their entire lives. Yet we have the criminal element coming into the country under the guise of some of the acts to create havoc.
People who have come to Canada to create a new life well recognize this. They had to put up with it in the countries they came from. This is one of the things they ran from to come here, and we are starting to embrace it here with open arms. That is just one aspect of what we have to look at.
Let us look at the blatant patronage aspect of the bill. One inclusion in the legislation is the continued tradition of so-called patronage appointments, namely citizenship commissioners. We do not have to be brain surgeons or rocket scientists to recognize exactly what the government means.