Mr. Speaker, I have enormous respect for my hon. colleague, but on that logic there would be unequal treatment under the current law, because someone who came to this country and was naturalized as a Canadian citizen but had not in fact resided for three years and then saw his or her citizenship revoked because of residency fraud would be treated unequally, differently from me, since my citizenship cannot be revoked because I am Canadian by descent.
Does the member seriously think that we should stop revoking citizenship in cases where we find it to have been obtained fraudulently just to be able to treat everyone equally?
With all due respect, citizenship is a creation of this place. It was created by a law in this place 100 years ago. It was reinforced in 1947. The rules were changed again in 1977. There have always been rules for obtaining and for losing Canadian citizenship.
Terrorism, espionage, and other grave forms of disloyalty to this country constitute very serious crimes. I think my hon. colleague will agree with me that these are very serious crimes, and our position has not changed. The punishment for committing these acts will be severe, and in cases of dual nationals under this bill, it will be in the same way that all of our NATO allies have such provisions.
It was only Pierre Trudeau who prevented us from having these provisions earlier. I think the only NATO ally that does not have these provisions is Portugal. The NDP may prefer the Portuguese model. António Guterres was a very good former prime minister of Portugal, but he did not change this measure. He did not bring Portugal into the mainstream.
We are going into the mainstream. Citizenship has its obligations, and if a dual national commits these crimes, that person will lose Canadian citizenship. That is fair.