Mr. Speaker, I thank everyone in the House tonight, and those across Canada who are taking part in this debate. It is important, it is historic, and it will have an impact on generations of new Canadians to come, on lost Canadians, and on those who have not benefited from the privileges of citizenship today unjustly. It means a great deal for all of us who take pride in our Canadian citizenship.
There is a coincidence that this debate should be happening now, because it was 100 years ago this month, on May 22, 1914, when a middle-aged R.B. Bennett, who was the member of Parliament for Calgary at the time, said the following:
If the benefits of our citizenship and participation in our future are, as I think they are, privileges so great that they cannot be measured or expressed...five years is not too long a term.
He went on to say:
...those who come after us bear the standard.... [and] cannot do that unless we do something to acquaint those who deserve to take on our citizenship with its benefits and privileges, and also with its responsibilities and obligations.
R.B. Bennett said that 100 years ago this month. That is how old Canadian citizenship is as a legal concept. I had not realized that it was entrenched in law by the House long before the 1947 Canadian Citizenship Act. This was part of the Naturalization Act of 1914, a historic step forward for our Canadian identity, for our rights as citizens, for our autonomy within a British empire, and for our accession to full nationhood, which of course, in that month of 1914, had not yet been formed in the crucible of World War I—