Mr. Speaker, it is a great honour to present a petition today, the first of many I will present to the House, calling upon Parliament to immediately enact legislation to grant automatic citizenship to those minors adopted from other countries by Canadian citizens, with this citizenship being immediately granted upon the finalization of the adoption.
It is an illogical and inefficient use of federal resources to add these adopted infants and children to the tremendous backlog of citizenship applications yet to be processed. This summer, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration promised to introduce legislation to grant automatic citizenship to children adopted from other countries.
Therefore, on behalf of these petitioners from Victoria, Vancouver, Salmo, Castlegar and other communities in British Columbia, I call upon him to do so as soon as possible and remove this undue burden upon adoptive parents.