Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate on the Liberal Party's motion. As my Liberal colleague already said, our party's motion reads as follows:
That, in the opinion of the House, immigrants to Canada and persons seeking Canadian citizenship are poorly served by this government.
Before directly addressing this motion, I think it brings up the issue that persons seeking Canadian citizenship are poorly served by this government. I would also like to explain how this government serves Canadian citizens poorly as well. First of all, there is the matter of lost Canadians. These are people who had Canadian citizenship and who lost it through no fault of their own under the first Citizenship Act, which was passed in 1947 and remained in force until February 1977.
I stand before you as a Canadian who spent a month trying to confirm her Canadian citizenship, and who has had to live with the potential consequences of losing it. Fortunately, the registrar of Canadian citizenship finally informed me today that I do in fact have citizenship, and that I have never lost my citizenship in my 55 years of life.
The issue is that the current government has the power to fix this problem for hundreds and thousands of Canadians. The minister says there are only 450 cases—I believe that is the number she gave—but that only includes the cases she and her officials have identified. There are thousands of people who had every reason to believe they had their citizenship, but now with all the media attention they realize that this act, which was in force from 1947 to 1977, might have put their citizenship in jeopardy.
These people are afraid to contact Citizenship and Immigration Canada. They are afraid they might be informed that they have lost their citizenship through no fault of their own, having never desired to lose or renounce it.
There are other cases like that. Take Joe Taylor, for example, who is the son of a Canadian veteran. Because his biological mother was not a citizen and because his father and mother were not married when he was born, under the Citizenship Act of 1947, Joe Taylor was not entitled to Canadian citizenship. He only found out about this as an adult. When he asked that his citizenship be recognized, the government—and I must admit that my party was in power at the time—refused. He went to the Federal Court, which ruled in his favour and ordered the government to grant him citizenship.
Now the Conservatives are in power. Last September, they filed a motion with the Federal Court asking that the order to grant Joe Taylor citizenship be stayed so that the government could appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. Many Canadians are in the same position as Joe Taylor.
The people behind the 450 cases the minister referred to are those who took the courageous step of formally inquiring whether they have Canadian citizenship. If the answer was no, they asked the minister to use her extraordinary powers to grant it to them.
But there are hundreds and thousands of Canadians who have every reason to believe that they have lost their citizenship through no fault of their own or deliberate decision on their part. They are not registering, because they know that if they do, the government will tell them that they are not Canadian citizens.
The Liberal motion talks about this government, this new Conservative government that so proudly proclaims itself Canada's new government. But this new government is doing a poor job of serving not only the people who would like to have Canadian citizenship, but also the people who had every reason to believe they were Canadian citizens yet have lost that citizenship.
This government is doing a poor job of serving them. A simple amendment to the current Citizenship Act is all it would take to retroactively restore citizenship to all the people who have involuntarily lost it.
I cannot speak more passionately on this issue, having lived the ups and downs over the last month when questions of my own citizenship came to light. They initially came to light because people believed that because my father was a non-citizen, albeit I was born in Canada and my parents were legally wed at the time of my birth, that I did not have citizenship. However, it has been clarified that I am a citizen.
Doubts and questioning began. People believed that a provision in the 1947 Citizenship Act, which stated that anyone born in Canada but of a non-citizen at the time that act was in force who did not make a formal declaration of permanent domicile in Canada by their 28th birthday was not a Canadian citizen, applied to me.
I had to verify that. After some hesitation I was told that provision did not apply to me and that I was a citizen. Then the question of my dual citizenship began to solicit doubts on the part of third parties. In 1974, I married a permanent resident of Canada who had Italian citizenship. Under Italian citizenship law, I automatically gained Italian citizenship. I checked with Citizenship and Immigration Canada and I was told that I was not. I was then asked if I had renounced my Canadian citizenship and if had I put on an act to get that Italian citizen? I told them no. I was then told that by virtue of my marriage I was a citizen. I was then asked if I had ever applied for an Italian passport. Obviously, by asking that question it then put into doubt whether or not I was a citizen.
I had to ask the Italian consulate to search its archival material to determine the date that I had applied for an Italian passport. It was the only passport I ever had and it has been expired for a long time. That was January 17, 1977. I then had to call the registrar back and inform him of this. He then asked me if I had ever formally renounced my Canadian citizenship. I told him that I had not and that I never would. I told him that I was a Canadian first and foremost. He then informed me that he had just signed off on the letter confirming that I was a Canadian citizen and that I had never lost my citizenship.
However, even with that assurance, until I have the physical letter in my hand there will still be a certain level of anxiety. I can just imagine those thousands of Canadians who are now wondering if there is some arcane provision that existed in the 1947 Citizenship Act that may have removed their citizenship without their knowledge.
The Conservative government is not serving immigrants. It is not serving people who--