Mr. Speaker, one of the ironies with this piece of legislation is the fact that the government is trying to give the impression, by passing this proposed legislation, that it would be speeding up the process for citizenship once a person qualifies. The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration himself is saying that he hopes, through this legislation, to be able to get the processing of citizenship in just under a year. Well, it is very interesting to find out that prior to the Conservatives taking office, that was what the processing time was; it was right around that one-year mark.
It is interesting that the Conservatives created a crisis so that today the processing time is well in excess of one year, at about 28 months. In certain situations, I would guesstimate that about 20% could go as long as four or five years in order to process citizenship.
My question for the member is this: if the government was sincere in wanting to speed up the processing of citizenship, was legislative change actually necessary or would it have needed more of a political goodwill on behalf of the government?
Even though it is nice to see that it is in the legislation, political goodwill is what was really necessary.