Mr. Speaker, for the third day in a row it is a pleasure for me to present a petition on the same subject. This is from residents of Burlington, Hamilton, St. Catharines, Kitchener and Waterloo, Ontario, in addition to Calgary, Alberta.
These citizens wish to draw the attention of the House to the fact that on average about 2,000 children are adopted from other countries and brought to Canada by Canadian families each year. Whereas biological children of Canadians citizens born abroad receive automatic Canadian citizenship, those adopted from foreign countries do not.
Therefore, 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.