Mr. Speaker, once again, I am pleased to speak here today.
This debate is somewhat surreal. I am standing here yet, given the nature of the debate, I feel as though I am somewhere up in the stratosphere, floating in a space shuttle.
We know how Liberals think. Liberals have a switch with two positions: “off” and “on”. They think one thing on Monday, switch to “off” that evening and then to “on” the next day. Then they think something else the following day. They might be in favour of a carbon tax before the election but against it afterwards. What these people do is win elections. They win them by changing their ideas and opinions and by having no values.
I have proof. Yesterday, we were supposed to debate Bill C‑3, but a committee report on ethics came in. We have a Prime Minister who holds shares in more than 900 companies. We know that when Canada subsidizes Westinghouse small modular reactors to increase production in the oil sands, the Prime Minister gets rich. We know that when he abolishes the digital services tax, even though he has a blind trust, he is lining his own pockets. These were legitimate questions.
A report came in from a committee. The illustrious member for Winnipeg North told us, yesterday and all afternoon, that we should be debating Bill C‑3 instead and that the House of Commons is not a place for debate. He told us that we were wasting our time here and that we should let committees do their work, because committees are good, members study the issues there and do good work, and we should not be debating that in the House. The Liberal switch flipped to the “off” position yesterday, and they went to bed.
They woke up the next morning and the reset button switched to the “on” position. They told us that the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration studied Bill C‑3, that it heard from witnesses, like the minister and the Parliamentary Budget Officer, and that there are amendments that do not distort the bill, that are in order and that fulfill the court's requirements.
Today, we are being told that all the committee's work can be torn down. That is the typical Liberal way. They never debate on the substance of the issue. They attack, insult and irritate people, and address substantive issues as little as possible. That is exactly what we are seeing today, and yet we are being told that we are the ones acting in bad faith.
One member even claimed that the Conservatives were treating her child like a terrorist because of these amendments, which are clear. The parliamentary secretary went to study abroad, outside Canada. In her lifetime, over a five-year continuous period, she very likely spent 1,095 consecutive days in Canada. In any case, she has been eligible since the election. Upon their return, the child would have to take a test if he or she is of age. Actually, I wonder if the child was not a minor and if, in the case that had the parliamentary secretary all worked up, any of these amendments applied. Most likely, none of them did. Now she says that her child is being treated like a terrorist.
The member for Bourassa says that we are against immigration. We need rules when it comes to immigration. There are borders. There are rules. It would only be fair if second- and third-generation children had to meet the same requirements for naturalization, but now we are once again being labelled anti-immigration racists.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons says that we are living on another planet. I would like him to say which one.
Since this debate began, not a single Liberal has been able to explain why they oppose these amendments. There were Bloc members and Conservative members. People came prepared to debate. It has been substantive. We have the right to disagree. Those folks over there cannot say why they oppose the amendments.
We have a problem because the work was done in committee. An assessment had to be done. Here is the timeline of events. A court told us that we could not systematically deprive the children of Canadians born abroad of their citizenship. Then the Ontario Superior Court of Justice said that rules were needed, and clear rules at that. The Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration got to work and decided that it would establish clear rules.
What did the committee members do? They figured they would just apply rules similar to the ones imposed on naturalized Canadians. Is the parliamentary secretary across the way, the one playing with her notes, is she saying that we are calling naturalized people terrorists? Is she saying that she opposes immigration rules for naturalized individuals, like my wife, for example? These are low-level debates. We need not take these things personally.
Things were not great in committee. Our job as opposition parliamentarians is to keep the government in check, so we ask questions. The first question was whether Bill C‑3, in its original form, affected very many people and whether it might allow a bunch of people to apply for citizenship without ever having set foot in Canada. The minister said that that was impossible to estimate.
The minister arrived at committee unprepared. She did not know her bill. She did not know her numbers. The minister seemed to think that her inability to estimate something meant that it was impossible to estimate. If she is unable to build a space shuttle on her own, then space shuttles do not exist. That is how she thinks. The Parliamentary Budget Officer came and told us that this would affect 115,000 people. Economists certainly understand that these things can be estimated. This would affect between 80,000 and 300,000 people with a large confidence interval. The Parliamentary Budget Officer told us honestly that it was at least 80,000, but it could be as many as 300,000.
The committee members therefore decided that they would apply rules that are already agreed upon in Canada. If we allow people to have spent 1,095 days of their entire life in Canada without requiring those to be consecutive, that means that a 50-year-old person could have spent their three weeks of vacation here their entire life, without ever having worked or made a significant contribution to the Canadian economy, and the unamended version of the bill would apply to them. Canada is not a summer camp, so it stands to reason that people should be required to have lived here for 1,095 consecutive days.
Proposed amendments called for a background check, as is required for naturalization, and an official language test in French or English. We would prefer French in Quebec, but we are still in Canada. These rules do not even apply to children under the age of 18. To suggest that a Canadian could go study in the United States, have a child there, come back here and leave their child at the border is straight-up disinformation. Could it be that people did not read the bill before coming here to call us names?
What the Ontario Superior Court said in its ruling was that a person born abroad to Canadian parents had to have a substantial connection to Canada and that their parents had to have a substantial connection to Canada. “Substantial” is the operative word for citizenship to be passed on. The question that the committee members then asked themselves was: what is a substantial connection? The court asked for clarity. The court said that not everyone can be rejected outright. The committee therefore put forward the same definition as for naturalized persons. How does it logically occur to a legislator that substantial connection for a person born abroad who comes to Canada is now defined, but that this definition of a substantial connection no longer has any value if the parents of the person born abroad also lived abroad for a long time?
I, for one, believe that these amendments make sense. They are consistent. They align the criteria required by the court with the Citizenship Act, which governs the naturalization process. Saying that we are racist, against immigration, no longer interested in having people study abroad, and depriving the children of Canadian diplomats of their Canadian citizenship is like rejecting the Citizenship Act itself. I think that these amendments make sense, are consistent with the superior court ruling, and need to be passed.