Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with a Conservative friend across the way. I will let you guess which one.
Let me start by saying there is a need to have some clarity on the issue we are debating so that the individuals who are following the debate are perfectly clear about it. To explain the Conservative position versus the government position, I will give a hypothetical situation, using my family as an example. This is not true; I am using it as a hypothetical example.
Let us say I was born in Canada and now I live in Germany. It might be for economic reasons, I might be a member of the Canadian Forces or I might be a foreign diplomat. For whatever reason, I am living in Germany and I now have a child who was born in Germany. For the sake of argument, let us say that child's name is Cindy or Raymond. I do not want to show preference over my children, but I will call this child Raymond. I then come back to Canada. My son, who has been living in Germany, is a Canadian citizen. Nothing changes. He is a Canadian citizen.
If he decides to have a child, that child can only be deemed a Canadian citizen if my son has a substantial connection to Canada before his child is born. This means that my son, who was born in Germany, would have to have spent a minimum of 1,095 days in Canada. Coincidentally, for an immigrant who comes to Canada to qualify to be a citizen, they must have been a resident for 1,095 days, albeit over five years. That is where the 1,095 days comes from.
As long as Raymond spends a minimum of 1,095 days in Canada before he has a child, because he was not born in Canada, he would be able to show a substantial connection to Canada so that his child can be deemed a Canadian. For that three-year period, if he came to my cottage every summer or studied at a university, whatever it might be, his child would be deemed a Canadian citizen. His child, by the way, would be my grandchild.
Here is the difference between the Conservatives and the Liberals. The Conservatives will come up with all sorts of reasons why my potential grandchild should not be a Canadian citizen, even though my son had established a substantial connection to Canada. That is what they are saying. I do not think they fully understand this.
I want members to think of the thousands of Canadians who serve in our armed forces and the thousands of Canadians who have served in foreign affairs over the years, and those are just the public servants. This is not to mention private sector workers and so forth.
What we are trying to do is respond to an superior court decision that said we needed to go beyond the first generation. That is a direct response to previous Conservative legislation. I have heard Conservatives stand in their places today and indirectly, if not directly, make reference to the notwithstanding clause.