Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-18 amending the Citizenship Act. I think that my colleague has raised a lot of questions and one of the issues that we are particularly concerned with is the adoption of children abroad.
According to the present rules, measures will have to be taken so that we have guarantees to that effect in the act and it will not be very expensive for the government to do so. We insist on it and anyway, I do not see how the government could bypass the Quebec civil code. However, our colleague from Laval West will certainly want to propose an amendment to remove any doubt.
At the present time, a child adopted abroad has to go through the whole process required of any immigrant, the medical examination and all the steps that follow. But it is also true that the process is quicker for a child and can take less time than for a regular resident. Except that in Quebec, a young child cannot be declared a Canadian citizen until the Quebec court of adoption has given its ruling under the Quebec Civil Code. We therefore find it extremely important that this element be taken into account in the act.
As far as the adoption of children abroad is concerned, many countries authorize the adoption of their children. In those countries, it works for a while and then it stops working. But each one of these countries has a specific process for the adoption of children. It might be a good idea for the government to study the issue in view of making things a little more uniform, of making things less complicated for parents and helping them understand what to expect when they deal with county x or country y , so that the process is clear for everybody.
It is important to mention that Canadian parents--and I myself am godmother to a young Canadian adopted in Russia--live under a cloud of uncertainty as long as they do not have the guarantee that their child will be granted Canadian citizenship.
So, it is important that, when that day comes, everything is settled and done as it is nowadays. It is probably better to grant Canadian citizenship to the child right away, but it is obvious that citizenship will not be immediately granted if it is not done under the Quebec Civil Code which is, as we all know, the most important element to establish that the child can really reside in Quebec and in Canada.
Let us now turn to the citizenship oath that can be found in an appendix to the 75 clause bill. It says, and I quote:
From this day forward, I pledge my loyalty and allegiance to Canada and Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada.
What I find amazing is that the summary, where the most important elements of the bill are listed, says that the Citizenship Act will amend some things and provide for a modern citizenship oath. I do not see what is modern about pledging allegiance to Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second, Queen ofCanada, who is celebrating this year her 50th anniversary as Her Majesty the Queen of Canada. I do not think that when one pledges allegiance to Her Majesty the Queen, one is keeping up with the times.
We should perhaps use another term or make sure Canadian citizens no longer have to take an oath of allegiance to something the Deputy Prime Minister considers archaic. This is either archaic or modern. You cannot have it both ways.
For once, I would support a motion by the Deputy Prime Minister, and I would do so with great pleasure. Should the Prime Minister decide to introduce a motion to the effect that, when the queen is replaced, Canada will no longer have a queen or a king, then we would be truly a sovereign country, something Pierre Elliott Trudeau wanted when he unilaterally patriated the constitution. He used to tell us it was high time Canada became independent and sovereign. If we want to be independent and sovereign, we should really do away with an archaic institution.
Like my colleague said, when I hear about the oath of allegiance in Canada, it calls up a number of memories. Before the last election, for example, the present Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, who was then the Secretary of State responsible for Amateur Sport, personally presided over a oath taking ceremony in Sherbrooke. We remember his statement well. He did not talk about an oath of allegiance to Canada. He asked these new citizens to remember which country had welcomed them, which country they were becoming a part of, and told them they should remember it on election day. He really went a bit too far.
If we want to talk about allegiance to Canada now, and if this is what the minister has in mind, it could also be a concern to take an oath of allegiance to Canada. However, the Bloc Quebecois is not opposed in theory to the idea of Canadian citizens taking an oath of allegiance to Canada, because some day we will want citizens to take an oath of allegiance to Quebec when have our own country. This is perfectly acceptable to us. Except that we would not want ministers or commissioners swearing in new citizens to wax on about democratic values and faithfully respecting the law and fulfilling the rights and obligations of Canadian citizenship.
I will not rehash what my colleague brought up earlier about what the minister, who was not even a member at the time, said in reference to our colleague, Osvaldo Nunez, an immigrant from Chile, a Canadian citizen at the time of the comments, whose country of origin was Chile. Members of the Bloc Quebecois have never attacked the origins of our colleagues, even though approximately one third of the members of this House were not born in Canada. For us, they are all Canadian citizens, and we have no problem with the fact that they may have been born in another country.
So, we spoke about adoption, and the oath of allegiance. I hope that this time around, there will not be any nasty surprises with this bill, because this is our third try at updating the Citizenship Act.
I have read the bill carefully. However, there is one thing that bothers me, and I will talk with my colleague to see if we might be able to introduce an amendment to the bill, to resolve the following matter.