Madam Speaker, I take it from the question that she, like myself, has run into cases where constituents assume that they are Canadian and then find out down the road, when they are an adult, that they are not because their parents did not put them on their application. There needs to be some provision for that.
I would suggest that a child in that case has more right to be a Canadian citizen than the child of a foreigner who comes to Canada, gives birth to that child and then takes the baby out of the country at four days old, never to live in Canada. A child raised in Canada from the age of whatever, whether the child is two months old or even six years old, who went to school, went to university, got jobs and worked in and contributed to Canada, has a far greater right to be a Canadian than a child who was merely born here.
I would certainly support an amendment acknowledging that there might be some other things we would want to work into it to ensure that there are some definitions regarding how that would be handled.
However I am interested as to why it would only be landed status and not Canadian citizenship, if it could be proved that he or she was brought over as a child and the parents were both Canadian citizens. I would argue that probably there should be some allowance for that child to become a Canadian citizen rather than just have permanent status.