Madam Speaker, it gives me pleasure to talk about an issue that is very important to Canadians and to Canada, the idea of citizenship and immigration, and to reiterate some of the thoughts that my colleagues have expressed when it comes to the proposed changes. I also want to talk about how strongly we feel about citizenship and immigration.
We are basically in agreement with the government on Motions Nos. 3, 4 and 5 in Group No. 2. When it comes to giving rights to citizens in this country, and once they obtain citizenship, they should be treated equally, as my colleague just mentioned. Specifically we cannot take those rights that are given to Canadians once they receive citizenship lightly. They have to be taken very seriously and treated equally.
Before I carry on in addressing these particular motions pertaining to the bill, I want to congratulate my hon. colleague from Lakeland who is our immigration critic. He has worked tirelessly to make sure that the Liberals are kept accountable, that our immigration system works as best as it can, that people from across the country give their feedback on the changes we are debating and that there is the most involvement possible. I know my colleagues would agree that immigration and citizenship is something we should all take an interest in. We should not take it lightly. It is very important to take a moment to congratulate him. He has worked tirelessly on the bill and on the changes that have been proposed.
As I said, the official opposition wants to support these particular motions. As two of my colleagues mentioned in this round of debate, currently the proposed legislation does not provide individuals who have been granted Canadian citizenship full access to the legal system if their right to citizenship is challenged, that is due to misrepresentation or fraud or any of the particular cases where someone's citizenship can come up for question.
From what I understand, during the course of the committee hearings department officials insisted that this clause was not of serious concern. However, the issue caused great concern to members of the committee and a vast majority of the witnesses. I started out by saying when citizenship is granted to any Canadian we have to make sure their rights are treated equally if any possibility of suspicion or misrepresentation comes up surrounding the granting of their citizenship.
We cannot just have the minister being able to revoke that citizenship without any discretion. That is the big concern we have with this part of the bill and the motions put forward. We are happy to see that the Liberals as well realize this in this part of the debate and do not want to leave that kind of blatant discretion in the hands of the minister, but instead allow the proper legal channels to work in the case of suspicion of anyone's citizenship or any fraudulent activity when it comes to citizenship.
The alliance agrees that once citizenship is granted, it must be assumed to be genuine because hopefully the person who has obtained the citizenship has gone through the proper channels to obtain that citizenship. The revocation of citizenship is not something to be taken lightly and must be done only under complete and thorough scrutiny by the Canadian legal system. That is the point of these motions. We have to go through the proper channels. There cannot be the blatant ability for any person, or any minister for that matter, to revoke someone's citizenship unless the person has been proven guilty.
The only thing I found a little odd during the course of reviewing the committee hearings and especially in raising this point of debate is that during the course of the committee hearings my colleague from Lakeland tabled an amendment which was very similar to the two Liberal amendments. I think it is in clause 17. There were a few Liberal members on the committee who wanted to support that but in the end for some reason it was voted down. That is unfortunate.
I will take a moment to review what is being done on committees. I sit on the environment committee and I often want to see a sense of co-operation and collaboration. If there is any member on the committee who brings forward an amendment to government legislation to make it better, one would think the government would support it and still take credit for it anyway.
It seems to me that the partisanship in this place gets to be too much to handle for all of us. We forget that we are here to make legislation better for Canadians, not just to make ourselves look good. I think that is why most members of parliament got involved in the business they are in.
It would be nice once in a while to see the initiatives of the opposition when it comes to making legislation better supported by committee members and especially by the government. A committee is supposed to be a non-partisan effort to make legislation better. I have seen in many cases during my short experience here sitting on committees that that very rarely happens. In the case of my hon. colleague from Lakeland, his amendments, which are almost identical to the motions, were voted down at the committee level, which unfortunately was not a good thing.
Now that we see that these amendments are virtually the same, we want to support these amendments. As I said we do feel, and my hon. colleague from Lakeland attempted to bring this before the committee, that these amendments will help to protect citizens who are under suspicion of having fraudulent citizenship. They will protect those people who are innocent but are under the suspicion of having fraudulent citizenship. It will take the discretion out of the hands of the minister.
If we put this part of the bill into perspective of how many revocations of citizenship there are in the overall scheme, I think there is usually fewer than one per year. It is not something that happens very frequently, thank goodness. At least on that level citizens of Canada can rest assured that when citizenship is given to them, it is something that is taken seriously. However, in the problems which do come up from time to time, if there is suspicion of any fraudulent activity when it comes to citizenship, people can rest assured that their rights will be protected. The equality of all citizens and Canadians will be taken very seriously.