Mr. Speaker, during question period on February 20, I asked the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration the following question:
Mr. Speaker, it costs $45 a day for a government member to rent a car. However, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration preferred to spend $6,200 for a limousine with a uniformed driver.
When will the minister stop her excessive spending of taxpayers' money? And above all, when will she restore the $20 million she slashed from our immigration system?
In his answer, the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform completely ignored my question.
The government's mantra has always been to slash and burn to the detriment of Canadians on fixed incomes and to the detriment of seniors.
Often, it is to the detriment of new arrivals whose credentials are not recognized in Canada. As a result, they cannot begin their lives in our country because this government reneged on its promise to allocate $18 million in the 2007 budget to look after foreign credential recognition.
Although this government would like us to think that it is helping seniors, that is not the case. Let us not forget that it was the Conservatives who tried to de-index old age pensions.
The government refuses to listen to information from Canada's own census data which shows that about 115,000 people living in Canada who thought they were Canadians, it turns out that they may not be after all. For example, we are talking about the children of military personnel born abroad.
When demographer, Barry Edmondston, a sociologist at the University of Victoria, appeared before the standing committee he said that the problem touches more than a few dozen Canadians, although the minister would have us believe it is only a mere 450 people. According to Edmondston, there may even be about 85,000 people in other countries who may not know they have lost their Canadian citizenship.
Instead of taking a holistic and proactive approach to resolving these issues and preventing any future problems or occurrences, the minister has said that she prefers to deal with cases on an individual basis. Unfortunately, a reactionary approach will not resolve this issue.
Instead of putting the money back in the budget to review the legislation and overhaul the act, the minister insists that her department must apply the law as it is written and will not envisage a revision of the legislation.
During her recent testimony at the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, the minister said:
Overhauling the Act is a major, major effort and quite frankly, it's more than we could take on to help these people at this point in time.
This is just not acceptable. Today, I am asking the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration—who I see is absent—to start by implementing a communications strategy with ads and public service announcements in print and electronic media to inform Canadians that they could lose their citizenship. The strategy should include a major campaign about the toll-free information line so that more people can get the information. This telephone communications strategy must be made available to people both in Canada and abroad.
Once again, I am asking the minister, who is not here tonight, to put the $20 million back into her budget to update the Citizenship Act and take proactive measures to find—