Mr. Speaker, as I promised yesterday, for the days and weeks ahead, at every opportunity I will be rising to present a petition on the following subject.
The petitioners call upon Parliament to immediately enact legislation to grant automatic citizenship to those minors adopted from other countries by Canadian citizens, with the citizenship being immediately granted upon the finalization of the adoption. They note that it is illogical and an inefficient use of federal resources to add these adopted infants and children to the tremendous backlog of citizenship applications that already exist.
This summer the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration promised to introduce legislation to grant automatic citizenship to children adopted from other countries. Therefore, they call upon him to do so as soon as possible and remove this undue burden from adoptive parents.
On behalf of these petitioners from St. Catharines, Orillia and Niagara Falls in Ontario, I hope that he would act expeditiously.