Debates of March 10th, 2016

Citizenship Act

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, during the Conservative government's 10 years in power, it brought in the most immigrants to this country ever—a lot more than the Liberals. The new Canadians became citizens in this country.

When Chrétien was the prime minister, immigration went down to 142,000 a year. Last year alone, in 2015, we brought in 282,000 immigrants to the country. I am proud of this.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for sharing his personal story. It is a little confounding why he would not identify with the reunification of families. However, my question is actually about being equal in the eyes of the law. Does the member not agree that all Canadians are equal before the law?

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the statement that a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian. At the same time, a terrorist is a terrorist is a terrorist. I would not want to live next door to Zakaria Amara, or anybody convicted for this sort of thing. We absolutely believe in the same system, with the exception of those people.

There is also another exception to the rule. If people commit fraud when filling out their immigration applications for Canada, they can also be removed with this new law.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his speech and for sharing his experience with us.

I was compelled by one particular part of what the hon. member spoke about, which is how as a new Canadian who could not speak the language, he was effectively held hostage by someone he worked with.

As we know, the bill speaks to the language requirements and increasing the age of those language requirements. I wonder if the hon. member could tell this House what other experiences the people he deals with in his community have had with respect to that issue.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will put it a couple of ways.

First, I probably have more people in my community than anyone else. I help people. Any time and every time that somebody comes my way, I am always helpful. It is unconditional. It does not matter where somebody lives.

With respect to the language issue, in the early days of my life in Canada, I could not speak the language. I was shy and I had a turban on my head. I came in the early days when it was, if I may say, an absolutely white Canada. I looked different. I could not speak the language. I could not buy a sandwich. My uncle, God bless his soul, forced me to learn English.

There were tons of Canadians with Irish backgrounds. I met one whose name was Toby Joyce. He was my next door neighbour. He made sure that I wrote two pages of English every single day. When he would come to see me, he would make me speak loudly, and he made me watch the news seven days a week. He said, “I want to hear five English words every single day from you.” I am proud of Toby Joyce and the many others. God bless his soul.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

Order. It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, Housing; the hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona, The Environment.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure today to be able to speak about Bill C-6. The government is committed to a Canada that is both diverse and inclusive. Canadians know and our government recognizes that historically we are strong because of our diversity, not in spite of it. The Prime Minister and the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship have been clear from the outset: flexibility and diversity are going to be crucial to our future as a country and in what we offer the world.

We want to encourage that diversity and take steps to ensure that the path to citizenship is a flexible and fair one, but also one that encourages all Canadians to take pride in being Canadian. Speaking to an audience at the Canadian High Commission in London shortly after taking office, the Prime Minister eloquently stated:

Compassion, acceptance, and trust; diversity and inclusion—these are the things that have made Canada strong and free. Not just in principle, but in practice.

Those of us who benefit from the many blessings of Canada’s diversity need to be strong and confident custodians of its character.

It s a strong feeling of attachment to Canada, and to those values of compassion, acceptance, and trust that we cherish, that encourages citizens to be strong and confident custodians of our national character.

Those who criticize the measures in Bill C-6 will say that the greater flexibility that these changes bring will diminish the attachment to Canada and our shared values, creating so-called citizens of convenience.

To be Canadian is a privilege and an honour. Few among us would deny that. Far from decreasing the value of Canadian citizenship, the measures in this bill foster greater attachment to our country. Bill C-6 fits in with the government's goal of ensuring that immigrants succeed in life and reunite their families in Canada.

The Citizenship Act includes and will continue to include a number of measures that help strengthen attachment to Canada, deter citizenship of convenience, ensure program integrity, and combat fraud. All Canadians should be treated equally, whether they are born in Canada, are naturalized, or hold citizenship in another county.

As the Prime Minister has said, “A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.”

Critics will likely also point to changes to the age range for language proficiency and citizenship knowledge testing as another way that attachment to Canada will be lessened. We believe in the importance of having adequate knowledge of one of Canada’s official languages and understanding the responsibilities and privileges associated with being a citizen of this country.

Adults aged 18 to 54 will still be required to provide evidence of their proficiency in English or French and to pass a citizenship test. However, the government understands that for younger and older applicants, this can be a barrier to citizenship. That is why Bill C-6 brings the age range for language and knowledge requirements back to 18 to 54. These changes will not put newcomers at a disadvantage.

Younger applicants will acquire knowledge of Canada and official language capability through schooling. Older adults applying for citizenship will find support to be knowledgeable about Canada and to speak its official languages through a wide variety of services offered across the country. This flexibility will help children, their parents, and their grandparents achieve citizenship, an important step that will allow immigrants to gain a deeper sense of belonging to our society and to become more active citizens.

To foster attachment to Canada, we are also allowing time spent residing in Canada before becoming a permanent resident to count toward citizenship requirements.

The Citizenship Act would be amended so that each day within the five years preceding the citizenship application that the applicant was physically present as a temporary resident or protected person before becoming a permanent resident would count as a half-day toward meeting the physical presence requirement for citizenship, up to a maximum of one year.

Furthermore, each day of physical presence in Canada as a permanent resident will be counted as one day of physical presence for the purpose of obtaining citizenship.

In other words, an applicant could accumulate up to 365 days as a temporary resident or protected person and the remaining 730 days as a permanent resident in order to accumulate the1,095 days of physical presence required to become a Canadian citizen.

This acknowledges that post-secondary students who come to study in Canada choose to remain to pursue a career. If they do so, it is because they have developed an attachment to Canada, whether because of work, family, or opportunities. They have started to make a life for themselves in Canada, benefiting our society and the country as a whole.

We should acknowledge and reward them for choosing to make Canada their home. Their experience in Canada matters. Their choice to be here matters.

Once again, this is a matter of principle to our government. Canadians are proud of their country and our values. We welcome immigrants, and we help them settle, integrate, and succeed. That is our history, our present, and our future.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague on her defence of diversity and inclusion.

The fees associated with citizenship applications went up significantly under the Conservative regime, despite the poor service provided by the department.

I would have liked Bill C-6 to go even further. I have no doubt that my colleague has a great deal of compassion for the families who go through financial difficulties after they first arrive in Canada.

Does the member intend to ask the government to go even further with Bill C-6 and bring down these fees, which can easily surpass $1,000 per family, as well as the other fees related to documentation?

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for the question.

Of course, the issues of fees and funding related to newcomers are very important. That is why there are different programs to welcome newcomers.

The recent Syrian refugee program comes to mind. There has been some excellent collaboration between government services, the community, and the family members who are already here. Some important steps were taken to help these families get settled when they arrived in Canada, and I expect that that will remain our policy.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I will briefly go over the previous question and provide a bit of commentary.

We need to recognize that Bill C-6 would do a number of things. There is one in particular that I would like to focus on, and that is that we are proposing to lower the number of years to qualify for citizenship. That is a strong and positive thing.

With respect to the member's question, there are a number of citizenship problems that the Liberal government has to deal with. One of those problems is legislation, and that is what Bill C-6 is all about. A former question was asking about fees.

Another issue is the processing time for citizenship. The previous government increased processing times to over two years from under one year, and this involved individuals who actually qualified to become citizens and then had to put in an application.

This government has recognized that some people here are students and visitors. They can count that time.

We also have a budget coming up, and we might see more things dealing with other aspects of citizenship.

Would the member not agree that this government is taking the issue of citizenship to heart, that we are doing what we can to improve the system, and this legislation is just one step?

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question because it allows me to talk about my own immigration experience. Hold on, because it is not the same as the other stories we have heard here today.

My ancestors came from Ireland, as my grandmother liked to say, “before the famine”. They were prescient and saw that something was coming and said, “We have to get out of here” and they came to Canada. Luckily for us, they survived and were welcomed with open arms on the shores of Quebec by Quebeckers, despite not speaking the same language. There was an openness and generosity of all the different cultures and religious groups. We know of political leaders who went down to the docks to help the Irish who were dying of typhoid and cholera at the time.

This was the kind of generosity that my ancestors found, and this is the kind of generosity that we have here today.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured and very pleased to stand in the House today in March of 2016 to speak to Bill C-6, an act to amend the Citizenship Act and to make consequential amendments to another act.

I want to start by congratulating the government on bringing forward this legislation. It is long overdue. It is thoughtful and very important to Canadians. It undoes what every thoughtful Canadian and, more importantly, most new Canadians in the country regarded as regressive changes made to citizenship by the previous Conservative government.

I find that we often do not support each other enough across the aisle in the House when legislation or proposals are introduced that are helpful. We tend to criticize each other and find fault, but while the bill is not perfect—and I will speak to a few items that I hope the government would be open to amending—I want to congratulate it on tabling the legislation and say that the vast majority of Canadians will receive this legislation very well.

I want to talk about citizenship for a moment, broadly speaking. Citizenship is extremely important to Canadians. I do not think there is a person in the country who does not deeply value and profoundly treasure the fact that we are lucky enough to be Canadian citizens in this world. This citizenship is cherished not only by those fortunate enough to be born on Canadian soil but also equally by those who have come to Canada, who may have been born in another nation.

In my riding of Vancouver Kingsway I have one of the most multicultural ridings in Canada. We are home to one of the highest percentage of new Canadians of any riding in the country. Whether people came from Sri Lanka, India, the Philippines, China, or anywhere else in the world, when they reside in Vancouver Kingsway, and I would dare say in all of my colleagues' ridings in the country, they are incredibly proud of the citizenship they have been permitted to acquire in our country.

I must say as well that Canada does not have an unblemished record when it comes to citizenship. In fact, the record on citizenship in our country has been checkered with discrimination, racism, and sexism. Last week, I was fortunate enough to tour the Canadian Chinese military museum. I saw artifacts of soldiers of Chinese descent who fought in World War II. They were born in our country, fought for our country, and had certificates issued to them at birth that said they were not considered Canadian citizens because of their race.

Prior to 1947, children born to Canadian fathers and non-Canadian mothers were treated better and differently than children born to Canadian mothers and foreign-born fathers. There was gender discrimination in that as well.

Citizenship has long been precarious. In fairness, this applies equally to Liberal governments of the past as well as Conservative governments. For the Liberals, between 1947 and 1976, citizenship could be revoked for issues like treason or acts of war. Then of course the Conservatives brought in their infamous citizenship legislation that once again made citizenship precarious for Canadians, where it could be revoked for treason or terrorism. Both parties have introduced measures in the past that made citizenship revocable in our country, based on the medieval concept of banishment. That is something I am very happy to see the bill remove from the legislation.

Before I go further, there has been a litany of issues since 1947. There were problems with citizenship that still exist to this day that we need to address. The legislation goes a long way in addressing and fixing these problems.

Citizenship, of course, raises important considerations. What criteria ought to exist in order to acquire it? Are there any circumstances in which it is appropriate for a citizen, once granted citizenship, to lose it? These are important considerations that engage every member of the House. I will talk about this in a moment.

I want to talk about the legislation introduced by the previous Conservative government, which this legislation very properly attempts to fix. The Conservatives essentially made citizenship harder to acquire and easier to lose. They increased the language requirements for people coming here.

[Some hon. members]

Nonsense.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I hear “nonsense” coming from the Conservatives. They should read their own legislation. I will give them an example.

It used to be that someone coming to this country had to pass a language test if they were between the ages of 18 and 54. The Conservatives extended that and said that people wanting to get citizenship in this country would have to pass a language test between the ages of 14 and 17 and between the ages of 55 and 65, making it harder for young people and seniors, many of whom were the parents of their sponsors in this country, to acquire citizenship purely because they might not have been able to speak English or French. The Conservatives did that.

They made Canadians wait longer, in fact between four and six years after being a permanent resident to acquire citizenship. They made it easier to strip citizens of citizenship and, in fact, in some cases even without a hearing. The Conservatives created two tiers of citizens, where someone born in this country who had dual citizenship could be deported and stripped of their citizenship for committing a crime, but a Canadian who was born here and did not have dual citizenship could not. The result was two tiers of citizens.

The Conservatives brought in a medieval concept of banishment in which if someone committed a crime, albeit a very serious crime, the Conservatives' response, like that of a medieval king, was that “You're banished from the kingdom, away with you”, instead of the modern notion of a democratic state in which, if someone commits a serious crime, we deal with them in the justice system properly and not by taking away their citizenship.

The Conservatives increased the cost of citizenship, in some cases making it cost a family of four more than $1,000 to apply for citizenship.

These were the Conservative notions of citizenship.

When listening to the former immigration minister in the House last night talk about things like democracy, I thought there is no government in Canada over the last decades that I can remember that did more to damage democracy in this country than the previous Conservative one. They prorogued Parliament to avoid votes they knew they would lose. Talk about disrespecting democracy. They brought in closure to limit debate in the House a record number of times, more than any other government in the history of Canada. They changed the Elections Act to restrict Canadians' access to exercise their vote. Therefore, to hear the former minister of immigration lecture members on democracy was the height of irony. He talked about extremism. Again, in my lifetime of watching Parliament in this place, the Conservative government did more to foster extremism, division, and regional enmity than any other government in history.

I am really happy to see the current government make changes that I think restore the notion of citizenship that the vast majority of Canadians have come to cherish in this land.

I want to talk about what the bill does. It removes the ability to revoke citizenship on national interest grounds. I think that is important. If a Canadian citizen commits treason, or spies on Canada, or fights for a different armed forces across country, no Canadian and no member in this chamber would countenance that. The proper penalty for that, though, is to send them to a Canadian jail and make them pay their price to Canada, but do not strip their citizenship and create two tiers of citizens.

The bill also removes the obligation for a new citizen to declare their intent to reside in Canada. The former Conservative minister of immigration made a big deal out of that too. Canadians have the right to move and live where they want in this world. In the modern global world, that is what Canadians do.

The bill would restore the length of time that a permanent resident must actually be present in Canada. It restores the counting of pre-Canada time before someone is a permanent resident for the purpose of their acquiring citizenship. It removes the language and knowledge examinations and puts those back to between the ages of 18 and 55, as they should be.

This legislation is good because it respects citizenship and makes it easier for Canadians to acquire that citizenship they care so deeply about. It brings back fair process for Canadians. I am proud to stand in the House and congratulate the government for moving bill, and I will probably vote for this legislation.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague opposite on an eloquent recap of what is being presented in the bill. I had the honour to stand this morning and speak to one of the issues that I think is one of the best moves contained in the bill, and that is the renewal of half credit for international students who come to study at our world-class universities.

In the riding I have the honour to represent, I boast of two such universities, one of which, St. Thomas University, a small liberal arts leader, brings in hundreds of international students every year, who sometimes travel to Ottawa to see what is going on in Parliament above and beyond contributing to the broader community. Some of these students wish to stay in the community of Fredericton afterwards and continue to contribute to our socioeconomic wealth. I see it as a huge benefit in a place like New Brunswick that has an aging population.

Could my colleague comment on the contribution that international students can make to the other coast of Canada.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I wholly concur with my hon. colleague's point in that regard.

I can give a real life example. One of my constituency assistants, Wei Qiao Zhang, came to our country as a student. His wife is actually doing a Ph.D. in law at UBC in her third language, by the way. He came here to do a degree in philosophy at the University of Toronto. When he came to apply for citizenship, the previous legislation would have allowed him to count the time he spent in the country, or a portion of it, prior to becoming a permanent resident toward the time allocation to become a Canadian citizen. The Conservatives brought in legislation that eliminated this time.

Here is a young man who made a commitment to this country, who had been in the country 10 years and who wanted to count part of that committed time toward his citizenship, but would not have been allowed to have done so by the Conservatives.

This legislation restores that balance, as it properly should do. It does give credit to those young people who are students who come to our country and decide to make a commitment.

That is another advantage of this legislation and I congratulate the government on restoring that.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby South, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as always, I very much enjoy listening to my colleague speak. He is one of the best speakers in the House and I hope to hear more from him over the next little while.

What does my hon. friend think the reception will be in his riding concerning the bill? Are there things his constituents will look for in terms of improvement as we get to committee stage, if we are lucky to get that far?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

That is an excellent question, Mr. Speaker, and is high praise indeed coming from my hon. colleague from Burnaby South who is, I think, certainly one of the most eloquent speakers as well in the House.

The reception will be fantastic. I already know, through doing casework in my riding, how damaging and how worrying the previous Conservative legislation was to many people in our riding who wanted to get citizenship.

I think the member from Winnipeg commented earlier on the unbelievable length of time it had taken, under the Conservatives, for someone to acquire citizenship. People are waiting years. That means no Canadian passport. That means an individual is unable to vote in our country. I will be looking to see if the government can speed that up.

In terms of changes, there are problems with the bill that I would hope the government looks to amend. One of them is that the bill still gives the power to the minister to revoke citizenship, based on a paper review with no judicial hearing. There is still a prohibition on citizenship for people charged with a criminal offence abroad. Also, it still provides the minister the discretion to privately grant citizenship to individuals.

I hope the Liberal government would be open to reasoned amendments in this regard, to make a good bill even stronger.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, as I have indicated in the past, it is always a pleasure to address the House on what I believe are important issues. Bill C-6 is a very important issue.

I spoke against Bill C-24, which was passed not long ago under the Conservative government. I felt fairly passionate about the fact that the government was taking the issue of citizenship in the wrong direction. Today we have a bill before us that would rectify a number of wrongs that the previous government put in place.

I want to pick up on the point of my colleague from the NDP. I appreciate his comments and support of this bill, recognizing the importance of citizenship and that we get it right. Citizenship is very important. It is something in which we have a vested interest. In the Liberal caucus, it is an issue about which we are all very passionate. We look to the current Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship to be progressive in making the changes that are so badly needed to fix the system, and it goes beyond the legislation before us today.

A few weeks ago, the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship addressed the House and made reference to the processing times for citizenship. It is a serious issue. It was not that long ago, a number of months, when the Conservatives allowed the processing of a citizenship to go far beyond two years. We should keep in it perspective that this is after someone technically qualifies to get citizenship. He or she has to then put in an application requesting it. People are putting in their applications today and having to wait a minimum of two years. The actual percentage is a guesstimate, but it was closer to two and half or three years, and 15% plus were waiting four to six years, depending on whether they required their residency calculator to kick in while spot checks were being done. Those are unbelievable processing times.

The minister has been very straightforward and transparent in saying that the government wants to deal with this processing time. We recognize the desire of people who call Canada their home. They have taken interest in our great country, are productive while they are here, and contribute to our lifestyle in a very real and tangible way. We want them to take on the responsibility of being citizens, and they have a desire to become citizens. I was pleased when the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship said that we would be reducing the processing time.

Now we are debating a bill that is yet another step in the right direction to deal with citizenship. For example, the legislation would change what the Conservatives put in place, which was that in order to qualify to be citizens, people had to have lived in Canada for at least four years out of the most recent six. It used to be three out of five years. This legislation would bring it back to the way it was.

There was no demand to change it in the first place. I was the critic for immigration a number of years ago. I sat in committee and no one talked about it. Why the Conservative government made that decision is beyond me. In fact, a Conservative MP introduced a private member's bill to reduce the amount of time required for citizenship for individuals who chose to join the Canadian Forces. That member received a great deal of sympathy from members on all sides of the House. Therefore, I was somewhat taken aback when the government made this decision.

Another very smart move in the legislation is the recognition of the valuable contributions of people who come to Canada to work and to study. I believe Canadians are quite passionate about this. We recognize those valuable contributions made by individuals who make those sacrifices, often leaving family abroad to come to Canada, to get money, to get that job, to fill a void in the Canadian economy. We are talking about significant numbers of people.

As the immigration critic a few years back, I used to argue that if people were good enough to work in Canada, they were good enough to stay in Canada. There was overwhelming support for statements of that nature. There needs to be criteria, and the criteria will be there. I believe we will see more on that front.

However, the legislation recognizes those students and those workers. For example, someone who has been working in Canada for two years will be able to take one of those years and apply it to the three of five years. That is a progressive move recognizes the valuable contributions these workers have made.

When we look at the student component, these incredible young people have made a commitment to further their education in Canada. Why should we not allow them the opportunity to get their citizenship a little earlier? I would challenge the Conservatives to answer some of those questions about why they made those changes.

There was no demand. No one was coming to the table saying that we needed to make those changes. We have heard a great deal about the whole issue around terrorists, and why we would accept the two-tier system as proposed by the Conservatives proposed when in government.

Let there be no doubt. Under Bill C-24, the Conservatives created a two-tiered citizenship system. They said that if people had dual citizenships, they could lose their Canadian citizenship. If they did not have dual citizenship, then they could not.

I do not care what the official opposition benches say. The Conservatives created a two-tier system.

This legislation recognizes that a Canadian citizen is a Canadian citizen. All we need to do is look at the election results, because this issue was often referred to at the door. This bill would right a number of wrongs, as members of the Liberal Party and other parties have said.

This legislation is yet another step in what I believe is a move for real change, which the Prime Minister committed to during the last federal election. We are seeing those commitments materialized.

We believe that one of the greatest, if not the greatest, strengths we have in Canada is our diversity. If we capitalize on that diversity, Canada will continue to grow and prosper well into the future. There is so much potential here. We cannot underestimate the importance of immigration.

I was especially pleased when I heard the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship earlier today in question period. He made very positive statements about improving processing times for families and improving the number of immigrants. I believe I even heard him say that in 2016 Canada might receive the highest number of immigrants in its history.

We recognize that good, sound immigration policy that leads to citizenship and good citizens is the direction in which to take our country. We are a country of immigrants. Immigrants built our country. We need to have immigration to continue to prosper in the future. We in the Liberal Party recognize that and, as a government, we will put in sound policies to feed that growth. By feeding that growth, we will be building a healthier, stronger economy, and a better society for all of us.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby South, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the hon. member regarding situations where a minister may revoke somebody's citizenship. I realize this is still contained in the law. I understand that, if somebody has achieved citizenship through fraudulent means, that would be one circumstance. I am wondering if the member could give me an example of another circumstance, and why we need to keep this power in there at all.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I made some reference to putting in applications. It is important that we recognize, for people who want to immigrate to Canada, that there is an expectation that when they put in the application they are being honest on it. If in fact it is found out that they were not honest, there is a consequence to it. There will continue to be a consequence to those who intentionally provide misinformation that ultimately allows them to acquire their citizenship.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I do not mind raising this issue once again, about the importance of providing opportunities for international students who come to our communities to continue to help build these communities for years to come. Once again, I have many international students who arrive in the community of Fredericton who get involved on campus, get involved in the larger community, and can contribute so much to our entrepreneurial ecosystem in Fredericton and across New Brunswick.

I would ask my colleague to comment on what potential he sees through our re-instituting the part-time credit available to international students, as we help build a diverse and prosperous country.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Fredericton is right on, and I noticed that he has been a very strong advocate on that particular issue. I appreciate the comments and the question.

He is quite right. When we look at the value that is brought to Canada through international students, we only need to look at virtually any campus in Canada and we will see first-hand everything from providing the cost of facilities or adding revenue to the facilities to supporting the academic excellence that we see in many of the post-secondary facilities across this land. Many of our post-secondary facilities need international students to be able to maintain the type of quality programming that is currently in place. We are very dependent on international students.

Instead of being in fear, we should be looking at ways that we can reward. This particular bill actually would reward those international students by saying that, if they come to Canada, study, and ultimately land in Canada, we are going to count some of those years they spend in universities as part of their time so that they would be able to qualify for their citizenship that much earlier. I see that as good news, and I truly appreciate the question.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am a little disappointed to hear the hon. member make a defence of differential fees and say that the Canadian education system depends, for its funding, on extremely high differential fees as a proxy for not having enough funding from government, but that is for another day.

The question I would like to ask is this. A related issue that the former Conservative government dealt with was that it took away the right to vote in federal elections from Canadian citizens who have been out of the country for more than five years. We had people like actors and people working around the world who complained publicly that they could not vote because of that.

Will the member's government bring in legislation that would restore the ability for Canadian citizens to vote in Canadian elections, even if they have been out of the country for more than five years but they retain their Canadian citizenship? That is people like Donald Sutherland.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I believe that was the Fair Elections Act, which the previous government brought in.

We have a very ambitious electoral reform package, and we have a very competent and articulate minister who is open for ideas and thoughts. I would suggest, for the member, that he might want to share his concerns, as other members have done, in regard to the Elections Canada Act. I can assure the member that the minister is approaching it with an exceptionally open mind, looking for good ideas to make sure we have a democracy that is improved from the way it was when the previous government made changes that deprived some people of the opportunity to vote.