Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, and in honour of the visit to Canada of the President of Latvia, Madame Freiberga, I am privileged to present a petition signed by over 720 concerned citizens, including members of the Latvian Canadian Cultural Centre.
The petitioners demand that parliament pass Motion No. 19, calling for the lifting of visitor visas for the following seven new EU member states: Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
These countries are EU members, with free movement within the EU. The same visa regime should apply to them as the other EU countries. With hundreds of thousands of Canadians with family ties to these countries, Canada's onerous visa regime is a throwback to the days of the Iron Curtain and should be changed.