Mr. Speaker, I am really grateful that I have the opportunity to speak to the bill before us today in the House because there are so many other bills that I wanted to speak to. The government consistently forced the ending of debate, whether it was through closure or time allocation. Its record now stands at 60. Even on this bill we are speaking under time allocation. I really wanted to do a full 20-minute speech, but now I do not have the time to do this.
In February, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration tabled Bill C-24. He stated that the bill and the changes within it are meant to actually reduce citizenship fraud, increase efficiency of the system, and reduce backlogs. He said that it would “protect the value of Canadian citizenship for those who have it while creating a faster and more efficient process for those applying to get it”. Yet the bill is not actually doing much of any of that.
I personally value my Canadian citizenship very much and I am sure everyone agrees overall that Canadian citizenship is something of enormous value to everyone. All Canadians value it very much. I do not want to see changes to our system at citizenship and immigration that play partisan politics with something that is so fundamentally important to so many.
I welcome some of the changes in the bill as it does address some long overdue deficiencies in our current system. However, many of the other changes proposed in the bill cause much concern and need significant amendments to ensure the protection of our valued Canadian citizenship.
In the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, of which I am a member, we have been doing a pre-study on the subject matter of the bill. We have had presentations and witnesses, but we have many more write to the committee hoping that they would be able to appear at committee when the bill is sent back to committee for actual study. Considering the fact that the Conservatives have now moved time allocation in the House on the debate, I am scared and nervous that we are not going to do a full study of the bill when it is sent to committee and that we are not going to be able to hear from more witnesses.
I want to list a couple of the organizations that have sent in requests to appear. These are not individual Canadians. Individual Canadians who want to make a presentation at committee should be able to. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees wants to make a presentation, but will not be able to. Amnesty International wants to make a presentation, but will probably not be able to. These are expert witnesses who want to speak at committee about the bill, but I am scared that we will not be able to do a proper study of the bill when it gets to committee.
A positive element of the bill is the issue of the lost Canadians. It is high time that this issue is addressed. It is an unfair situation that has gone on for far too long. We heard from the Canadian Council for Refugees and a couple of other witnesses who welcomed the measures to address the unfair exclusions from citizenship that have been allowed to go on for decades. They are, of course, the lost Canadians who are pre-1947 cases.
However, the council said that it regrets that there are no measures to address the unfair situations created by the 2009 amendments by the government to deny citizenship to the second generation born abroad. Canada is now creating a new set of lost Canadians and making some children who were born to Canadians stateless. We are signatories to the UN convention for the prevention of statelessness and this is what is happening.
Even though I said I am going to be speaking about good things, there is a sprinkle of bad even in the good.
Another good item in the bill is expedited citizenship for permanent residents who are currently serving in the Canadian Forces. When we did another study in the citizenship committee, I remember that a representative from the forces gave us actual statistics. He said it is about 15 people on average. What it would do is shorten the residency requirements from the new four-year requirement to three years for permanent residents who are serving in the armed forces. It is a great way to thank those people who are serving in the forces.
A third good thing is stricter rules for fraudulent immigration consultants. It is high time we finally regulated these immigration consultants. The NDP has been calling for the regulation of immigration consultants. We do not tolerate or condone any form of immigration fraud. We have pushed the government to develop tough legislation to crack down on the crooked immigration consultants. We have been supportive of anti-fraud measures. We would like to see increased resources for the RCMP and CBSA to continue to identify these fraudsters who are hurting a lot of citizens in Canada and are increasing the work in many of our MPs' offices, to be honest.
Now I am going to move on to the negative aspects of this bill. I do not have enough time left to go through the many bad things in this bill.
This bill would create far too many new barriers to citizenship. It would create a longer waiting period to qualify for citizenship. It would not actually give any value to pre-PR time spent in this country. UNICEF Canada has sent us a brief that says that we would be in contravention of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which we are a signatory.
There would be increased fees. Fees would double from $200 to $400. The language requirement right now is 18-54 years old for the language test, and Bill C-24 would change it to 14-64 years old.
Let me get into what UNICEF said about these actual changes. I know we do not have enough time for me to go through all the things I would like to say.
Bill C-24 proposes to amend subsection 5(2) of the Citizenship Act.... This shift in age requirements is problematic for immigrant and refugee children for a number of reasons. For instance, language and knowledge testing of children could lead to challenges with reuniting children with their families, and therefore could lead to the deprivation of the child's right to family reunification under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (article 10). This measure does not take into account the added stress that such testing may cause, or the children's ability to be able to be successful in test environments. In some cases, children may be still facing fear of authority, trauma from their home countries, and other experiences—depending on their individual life circumstances and migratory paths—that impair their capacity to successfully take such tests.
They go on.
I did not even touch on the fact that this bill would allow for the revocation of citizenship. The revocation would be based on the creation of two tiers of citizenship in this country.
My understanding is that one is either a Canadian citizen or not. There is no real in between. The government would create that in-between case. One would be a Canadian citizen with only Canadian citizenship or a Canadian citizen who had dual citizenship with another country or who the minister has reason to believe has dual citizenship. If that were the case, whether an individual actually had dual citizenship or wished to have it or if the minister believed the person might have another citizenship, the onus would now be on the individual to prove citizenship to the minister. The minister would have the discretion to revoke somebody's citizenship for committing a crime in another country or jurisdiction.
It just goes to show that there are so many things that are bad in this bill.
I really wish I had more time and that I was not speaking under time allocation so I could get through the other things I would like to talk about. Hopefully my colleagues will ask questions about the limitations and the values of people in Canada who are spending time as pre-permanent residents.