No, not quite, Mr. Speaker.. What I said was that is why one has to make sure it is seen to be fair, and then there would not be a comparison. If it is deemed to be fair, then nobody will make the comparison.
The issue is when it is isolated, when it is put in the hands of a minister who says he is fair, but it is still in the hands of a person not a system. That is part of the problem, when it looks as if it may be in the hands of a person.
What else is good in the bill? The fact that it will expedite citizenship for those who are landed or in the armed forces is a good thing. If they are willing to serve Canada, to go abroad, to put their lives in harm's way, I think there should be a reward for that. Expedited citizenship would be fair.
Then I would ask, on the other side, what about those temporary foreign workers who have been here for 10, 12, 15 years or more? If we decide at some point to put them on a path to citizenship, should we not count the time that they have been here?
I know workers in my area. I come from Niagara where agricultural workers come in. I know employers who have had the same employees for 20-plus years. If we finally grant them the opportunity to work towards citizenship, which I believe they should get, and most of the industry in this country says they should get, whether it is the horticultural industry, the meat-packing facilities, they believe that is the direction it should go.
These workers should be allowed a path to citizenship. Why should we then restart the clock when they have been here for 20 years? They work for 10 or 11 months a year and go home for vacation. They do not work for four months anymore. In the old days, workers used to come to Niagara and pick fruit for four months and then leave. Those days are gone.
There are temporary foreign workers in the agricultural sector, which is really not a temporary foreign worker program but a foreign worker program. By and large, it is a 10-month job. They live for ten months in Canada and go home for two months, wherever home happens to be. It is perhaps Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, or Jamaica.
If the government decides in its wisdom, as I think it should, to start that group of folks on a pathway to citizenship, why does the clock have to reset? Why can we not simply say that they have been here for 10 years? We would still have to look at some time and there would be things to work out, and the other requirements would still hold. The language provisions would be there. In most cases, the workers speak one of the two official languages in this country, especially those who have been here for 10 or 20 or more years. We actually would not see any of that.
Clearly, there are opportunities here for some things that work, but there are some things that do not work. I am a passionate Canadian. My father used to call the family five-dollar Canadians. I always used to wonder why. One day, when I was a little older, I asked him why he called us five-dollar Canadians. He said it was because he paid $5 for our cards.
He did not mean that we were only worth $5 or that our citizenship was only worth $5. When we got our citizenship cards, in the 1970s, if we wished to get one with our picture on it, which was a great ID, it cost $5. That is all it cost to get that card. I still have it, albeit I look a little younger in that picture.
Ultimately, it is and always will be about being equal under the law, being equal not only under the law but equal amongst all Canadians. For folks like me who are dual citizens, we take this seriously. It is a personal piece. It is almost a personal affront. I know that was not the intention. It is about making sure that bad folks do not do bad things.
Unfortunately in life bad folks do bad things. That is why we have jails. We lock bad folks up for doing bad things. Why should we discriminate or decide to change the rules for one group versus another group? Why do we not just simply say bad folks are bad folks? If they deserve to go to jail for doing things that are criminal and heinous, we should send them to jail.
However, there is a process for that called “the rule of law”. I know the government always talks about law and order. Let us use the rule of law, in all cases, and apply it equally to all of us, so that for those of us who have dual citizenship, it ends up being what it is.