Mr. Speaker, I am always the first to congratulate the government, whichever government, when it makes life easier for the people who come here to Canada.
As far as citizenship legislation is concerned, it is true that the Liberals have worked on it a great deal. I arrived in this House in 1997 and we worked on a new bill on citizenship. Our thoughts in the Liberal Party were that this legislation needed a complete overhaul.
However, every time—I know this from experience—we wanted to move forward, there was an election and we had to start the legislative process all over again.
If the parliamentary secretary truly thinks that this bill will move forward, then I will be the first to congratulate him. I am waiting with bated breath. I hope that his government will not trigger an election any time soon or otherwise we will be faced yet again with the possibility of having citizenship legislation that goes nowhere. That has been our experience for 13 years.
As far as the points system is concerned, the needs are changing. I have dealt with this points system with the Government of Quebec, and I have been working with the Government of Canada as well. The system has to change to meet the needs not just of each province, but of each region. We started this system, as I clearly indicated in my speech, with the Government of Quebec. It continued and ensured that Quebec could have access to a bank of francophone candidates to help the francophone majority continue its work in that province.
I would like very much—but I am not seeing this—for this system to help francophone minorities outside Quebec, whether in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, British Columbia or in the Atlantic provinces. This system has to be able to help them increase the number of immigrants and help their communities continue to preserve their language and culture.