Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Winnipeg North for his hard work in this area. I have had the privilege and pleasure of sitting on committee with him for a period of time.
He raises an excellent issue. Let us look at citizenship. Obviously this bill deals with the removal of permanent residents. There is a further level of protection that people get once they obtain citizenship.
Let us isolate this one factor of how long it takes to get citizenship. The government finds it acceptable and believes there is no need to table legislation to speed up or provide administrative improvements to a process where it takes two years to get citizenship.
Let us imagine this were the private sector and someone went to a business to purchase a good or service and was told, yes, they would be provided with it but to come back in two years. Ten storey apartment buildings are built in two years, whereas this is simply about getting a piece of paper.
The government sits back with this kind of incompetent administrative inefficiency in place and is fooling no one. Canadians deserve better than this. If someone wants to be a Canadian citizen, we should be expediting and facilitating that process. There is no reason it should not be granted promptly, like it once was in this country.