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.