Mr. Speaker, let me express my profound disappointment with the minister's incredibly partisan comments. Instead of trying to do something to make the situation better to improve the Citizenship Act, she is reading a speech prepared for her by her bureaucrats. She does not know what she is talking about.
A Conservative cabinet minister, who is the President of Treasury Board now, said in an electronic copy of Macleans magazine that the issue literally affected thousands of people in his Manitoba riding alone, which borders the United States.
I am profoundly disappointed that the minister would not talk to some of her own people. This has been the problem with the Department of Citizenship and Immigration. While the Liberals had a new minister every two years, the Conservatives have had a new minister every six months. Had the member for Calgary—Nose Hill, who actually knows something about citizenship and immigration, been the minister, we could have been working on reforming the citizenship and immigration department.
Let me quote John Reynolds, a former member from Sunshine Coast and the co-chair of the last election campaign. He said, “That's one department that needs a massive cleanup and we've got to straighten that mess out”. Another thing he said was, “Now it's happening. We don't know how many people there are, but maybe its up 100,000”. Here is another quote, “I remember one of the bureaucrats telling us in committee there could be as many as 200,000 of these people”.
The minister mentioned the figure of millions. I stood in the House often and said that every Canadian who was a naturalized Canadian under the Citizenship Act had their citizenship at risk. There are six million naturalized Canadians, and I am one of them. There are 40 members in the House who are naturalized Canadians. We will hear from the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, who will tell members her experience with this department.
Let us cut out the rhetoric. Let us stop pointing fingers. Let us get to work to solve this problem in a non-partisan fashion. What does she have to say about the quote from her colleague from Treasury Board, speaking about thousands in his riding alone?