Mr. Speaker, thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to Bill C-3. I will be splitting my time with the member for London West.
I stand here proudly as the member for Ottawa Centre and somebody who has gone through the immigration process, somebody who is a very proud Canadian, somebody who has taken the oath of citizenship and actually has participated in hundreds of citizenship ceremonies, because I once ran an organization called the Institute for Canadian Citizenship. I come to this debate with both a personal experience on this issue, a lived experience as a proud Canadian, and also a professional and legal understanding.
I think it is extremely important for Canadians, who may be listening intently to this debate, to understand what issue we are trying to resolve and how we got around to having this issue. This issue comes from a problem that was created by the Harper government, a problem that did not exist except for the fact that the Harper government, at a moment in time when it was all into taking away people's rights and was really interested in multiple classes of citizens, chose to bring a piece of legislation that took away the right of Canadian citizens to pass their citizenship on to their children.
This was at the same time, by the way, when the Harper government was doing things like the niqab ban, which was also struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional, against the charter. This was at the same time when the Harper government tried to introduce a snitch line so that people could snitch on their neighbours if they felt that their values did not meet “Canadian values”, however we define that. Canadians, in the 2015 election, took care of that by saying that it is not our Canadian values to rat on our neighbours.
That is the history of this bill. I am hearing my Conservative colleagues, the hon. members on the other side, try to spin this thing left, right and centre, but the fact of the matter is that Bill C-3 exists in its current incarnation because the Harper government brought an unconstitutional piece of law that now the courts right here in the province of Ontario have deemed in violation of the charter. The government is simply fixing a problem the Conservatives created. I find it a bit rich, at times, when they are trying to ascribe some sort of blame to the government side, which is just trying to clean up the mess that the Conservatives left behind.
I do want to get into the substantive element as to why this legislation is important and why it is drafted in the manner it is. The Conservatives are trying to make the argument that the floodgates will open and millions of people out of nowhere will automatically become Canadian citizens, when they do not have any data to support whether that assertion is even close to true. Let us not try to obscure this debate by making arguments that may not even have a basis.
Let me give a precise example of a person I know whom I have been trying to help. This is a person I have known, personally, for a long time, who has been impacted by the unconstitutional—