Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. friend for his very interesting speech.
It is always good to have Bill 101 kids who speak both languages and live in western Canada.
I appreciate his family's story. I also want to introduce a Yiddish proverb, which is, “Does it make a difference to the turkey if it is slaughtered for Passover or for Purim? No, because a turkey is still a turkey”, in the same way a Canadian is still a Canadian.
When we look at the issue with respect to citizenship, I fully understand there are different perspectives to this. We have every reason to think badly of people who tear up their Canadian passports or burn them. There is no doubt about it. However, we all know that a Canadian citizen who is purely and only a Canadian citizen cannot lose his or her citizenship for any of the acts that the law provides for, which essentially created two classes of Canadians: one who had dual citizenship and could lose that citizenship and another who could not. In the United States, as the member knows, this would be thrown out on equal protection grounds.
Does the member recognize that we cannot, through international treaties, remove Canadian citizenship from a Canadian who is solely a Canadian citizen on these grounds? Does the member not agree that on equal protection grounds we should not remove citizenship for anybody for these acts?