Madam Speaker, I enjoy being recognized as the member for Ottawa Centre, because those are the great people who have given me the opportunity to serve them in this place. As always, every single day it is an honour to represent my community.
I am thrilled to speak on Bill S-245. I heard the comments of members who spoke on it and I too speak in support of the bill. I am a proud Canadian and very much like my friend from Calgary Shepard, I was not born in Canada. I came from a country where my parents were also politically persecuted and had to find a new place to live where they could live freely. My family and I came to Canada in 1988 and one of the greatest attractions of Canada was the rights and freedoms that are protected in Canada, especially by virtue of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, an incredibly important constitutional document that protects all of our rights.
I will be honest in saying that I stand here today with a heavy heart as a Canadian citizen, one day after, in my home province of Ontario, those rights were taken away from hard-working education workers by the invocation of the notwithstanding clause in back-to-work legislation by the provincial government, led by Premier Doug Ford. That is not the country my parents wanted to come to, where rights, in such a cavalier manner, could be taken away by the majority members of a Parliament. Rights are sacrosanct. They should always be protected. That is what makes us truly Canadian.
I want to give a big shout-out to all education workers across the province of Ontario who are picketing right now, demanding that their rights be restored so that there can be collective bargaining in a good-faith manner with the government, so that they can be in classrooms and so that all children can be in classrooms getting the best education they deserve from our system.
Bill S-245 is an important bill. As I mentioned earlier, I am supportive of the bill, but it really deals with a very small segment of “lost Canadians”, as has been described by other members, through the age 28 rule. There are many other new classifications of what I would say are lost Canadians as a result of changes that were made to the Citizenship Act in 2009.
The one that is really close to my heart, the one that I have heard about from quite a few constituents, is the rule that says that a child born outside of Canada after April of 2009 to a parent who is a Canadian citizen is not a Canadian citizen at birth if their parent was born outside of Canada and inherited their own citizenship because one of their parents was Canadian at the time of their birth. Imagine that. For example, I was not born in Canada but I became a Canadian citizen. If I became a parent again and that child was born outside of Canada, that child would not be entitled to Canadian citizenship. That creates a whole new set of lost Canadians, and it is something that we need to really look at and consider. That speaks to the first-generation limit that has been created in the Citizenship Act.
I want to tell a quick story, because I think it really brings into perspective what we are talking about. This is a story about somebody I know quite well, a close friend of mine who is a Canadian citizen. Her parents immigrated to Canada, became Canadian citizens, lived here, went to school here, worked here and just before this friend of mine was born, her mother went to her home country of Tunisia so she could have the support of her parents when she gave birth. This friend of mine was born outside of Canada in Tunisia.
However, in a matter of weeks, they came back to Canada, where their home was. Of course, my friend is a Canadian citizen. She lived here, went to law school here in Ottawa, worked here, and then, eventually, as many Canadians do, decided to go and work abroad.
She went to Europe. She went to England, where she got a legal job and where she met her future partner and got married. They live in France now and, in 2013 and, I believe, 2015, she had two daughters.
Unfortunately, although she is a Canadian citizen, she is unable to pass her Canadian citizenship to her two daughters, who were born after April 2009. In my view, that is a lost Canadian generation.
It is a first-generation limit that really needs to be addressed. I am sure that if we looked around in our respective communities, we would find many people in the same position. It is a situation that creates an unequal model of Canadian citizenship. Really, in essence, we are saying that a Canadian is not a Canadian by virtue of where they are born.
It is really of paramount importance, even now, because so many people who become Canadian citizens are immigrants. They are coming from different parts of the world. I am really excited that the Minister of Immigration, just a few days ago, announced that we will be bringing, by 2025, about 500,000 people per year into Canada, which is absolutely necessary. We are a big country with a small population base. We are growing, and we need more people.
All of those people who will come as immigrants to Canada are born somewhere else, and many of them may end up, after becoming Canadian citizens, living somewhere outside Canada. They may have families there and may want, of course, to come back to Canada. We need to make sure those children, who are born of parents who were born outside Canada, remain Canadian citizens.
It is creating an unequal model of Canadian citizenship and Canadian identity that needs to be resolved. It is also, arguably, a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, by virtue of sections 15 and 6 of the charter.
By having this rule in place and not rectifying it, we are also marginalizing women, in particular, who are Canadian citizens who may not have been born in Canada. Many of these women go outside Canada for professional reasons, because they want to work in different parts of the world, which is fantastic, because we Canadians are known to travel the world, to live in other parts of the world and to contribute to the well-being of this great planet that we are part of.
By having this rule, though, we are basically asking these women to put their careers on hold and come back to Canada in order to have children.
I really want to say that Bill S-245 is a step in the right direction, but it is only resolving a very small part of the problem. There are some other glaring holes in the Citizenship Act by virtue of the first-generation limit rule.
We need to look at those rules in a holistic manner so we can truly give expression to the idea that “a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian”, which I fundamentally believe is one of the greatest strengths of Canada. Our diversity and our inclusive society exist because we have this really well-defined pathway to citizenship. When people come to Canada as immigrants, they come fully knowing that if they meet certain rules and requirements, they will have the opportunity to become Canadian citizens and contribute fully to this great country.
We undermine their capacity and we treat them unequally if we have different rules by virtue of, as an immigrant, where they were born. That is something we need to rectify. I look forward to working with members in the chamber to fix these rules so that, truly, a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.
