Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to rise to speak to this bill for the many reasons I spoke about it in this House in the last Parliament.
I have had the privilege of working with colleagues from all parties on committee specifically on this legislation, which impacts Canadian families. The spirit behind this bill is that Prime Minister Harper, in 2009, basically created a first-generation limit, creating a double system in immigration and causing children born outside of Canada to Canadian citizens to struggle to acquire their right to be Canadians.
First of all, Canada is built on institutions that uphold fairness, strengthen opportunity and provide certainty to its citizens, and today, as we are talking about Bill C-3, we have the opportunity to reinforce one of those foundational institutions, which is citizenship. I want to be clear that this bill addresses a gap between the intent of our laws and the lived reality of Canadian families. Specifically, it intends to restore the ability of Canadian citizens born abroad to pass their citizenship to their kids and grandchildren, ending a policy that left many Canadian families in limbo, unsure of whether their children would be recognized by the country they serve or contribute to and call home.
This is not an abstract policy fix. This is about restoring stability for military families that are posted overseas, for diplomatic corps who have represented Canada with dignity and integrity, and for the countless global Canadians who have lived and worked abroad while remaining firmly rooted in the values of our country.
Citizenship is not a transactional benefit. It is a covenant between the individual and the state, between generations, between past sacrifices and future potential. When we deny that link, we undermine the trust in our system and introduce a risk that erodes the social contract that underpins our democracy.
When families return home after years of service or work abroad, they should be able to resume their lives without bureaucracy clouding the future of their children. Bill C-3 would deliver that. It would provide clarity where there was confusion, fairness where there was inconsistency and continuity where there was disruption. It says to families that they are Canadian and their children are as well. That is not only the right decision; it is part of our foundation of rights, our charter rights.
Canadians work to pay taxes, contribute to our communities and are civically engaged. They raise their children to be Canadian. In the House earlier, I heard a number of members ask what really constitutes a deep connection to being Canadian. When a Canadian citizen has children, I am more than sure they pass Canadian values to their children regardless of where they find themselves in the world.
Having this conversation when a parent has a child and wants to return home means talking about bureaucracy, reaching out to IRCC and trying to figure out whom they can call, whether it is their member of Parliament or member of provincial Parliament. With that tier of bureaucracy, it is a very confusing system for Canadians who have served us and who, for different reasons, do not have Canadian citizenship.
This bill, in spirit, works to restore stability to help Canadians understand that it is their institutional right to be Canadians and not have the lawmakers of the country having that discussion. If Harper had not created this system, I do not think we would be having this conversation.
I will remind the many colleagues who have asked questions as if we are having this conversation for the first time that this is not the first time we have had this discussion. We have brought Canadian families who belong in the lost Canadian group to Parliament and told them we think it is important that we restore their citizenship. Here we are again having the discussion as if for the first time, questioning the many families that have struggled through this system wondering whether they belong as Canadians or not. We are having this debate today as if the work that has been done for the last number of years is not important, and that is not fair.
We need to protect Canadians, and we cannot afford to put them on pause due to legal technicalities that do not reflect modern mobility or the realities of a globalized world. As we build what we believe to be a fair Canada, we have to be fair to the men and women who have served our country and their children.
We have to be fair as well when we reach out to people to come here to talk to lawmakers and to engage in committees for a number of hours. My colleague from the Bloc Québécois mentioned earlier how many hours he spent listening to filibustering that happened on Bill C-71 when it was introduced in the House in the last Parliament. I can speak only to the last Parliament, because I was here. I was not here when the bill was first introduced, but in the last Parliament, I was here, and I saw the countless hours we spent filibustering, blocking conversations around whether or not Canadian families deserve to be Canadians.
They went through that. They withstood the long conversations. They listened to the banter. They listened to disagreements. They listened to people talk about them as if they were not humans and as if they were not in the room, to get to the end.
We got to the end. We brought the bill into the House. We passed it. It went to the Senate, and for parliamentary reasons, we are back at the bill again, and we are here to discuss it to make sure we can take it to committee, agree on amendments that make sense, and pass it quickly. The last thing we want to do is start conversations on whether or not people deserve to have Canadian citizenship restored.
Unfortunately, I have been here this morning and have listened to colleagues re-question. I have listened to colleagues who sat with me on committee and promised to those families that we would not do this again. They re-question instead of proposing amendments, instead of agreeing that we can send the bill to committee and work together on amending it in an appropriate way and in a fast manner that would actually stop the long delay of Canadian families going through limbo, where they do not know and are re-asking themselves whether they are valued Canadians.
I thought that we had settled that problem. I know that today's Chair was also on the committee. We settled the problem. We settled the issue of making Canadians question whether they belong. We settled the issue of having the banter and the debate that is politicized for Canadians, but here we are again.
I have listened to countless speeches in which people are putting those Canadians back into the debate of “Am I a valued Canadian?” I want to tell them that yes, they are a valued Canadian. I want to tell people like Don Chapman, who spent countless hours working with parliamentarians, working with committees and working with different members of our public service to make sure that we get to a place where lost Canadians are no longer considered lost and to where they are Canadians, as we all in the House believe that a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.
I am very happy to rise and to reassure the lost Canadian families, the many people who came to Parliament to speak to us and to ask us to make sure we pass the bill, that we are going to do that. We are not only going to make sure that we pass the bill; we will also work with all parties across the House to make sure that amendments make sense and that we do not have to put people through the limbo of questioning their value, of questioning whether they can even serve as Canadians and of questioning whether they are Canadian.