Mr. Speaker, the irony of the hearings was that the majority, probably over 90%, of the more than 150 stakeholders were in opposition to the bill. Obviously there is something wrong with the bill.
It is impossible to travel throughout the country and spend two weeks in Ottawa listening to Canadians voice their opinions of the bill. Over 200 amendments were put in the committee on a clause by clause basis and the majority, again I would say over 90%, were rejected. Some of them were very rational and reasonable. The government accepted a few, but not a lot was done with them.
I will illustrate that the one area which needed to be clarified was the whole issue of foreign nationals and permanent residents. The member on the government side suggested we should perhaps go back to the old business of landed immigrant status. If people land they are landed and have status. That is a very rational approach. I wish the government had listened to its own member.
Unfortunately permanent residents still risk losing their status when they leave the country. Because permanent resident and foreign national intermingle at times, the government made it worse. It put the words permanent resident alongside the words foreign national throughout the bill. The government could have done a lot of things to improve the bill but did not.