Bill Siksay

[Conscientious Objection Act, June 22nd, 2006]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-348, An Act respecting conscientious objection to the use of taxes for military purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to again introduce a private member's bill which would allow Canadians who object on conscientious or religious grounds to paying taxes for military purposes to have a prescribed percentage of their income tax diverted into a special conscientious objector account.

The bill would recognize the deeply held views often related to deeply held religious convictions of some Canadians that participating in any way in the activities of war and the accumulation of weapons sanctions and perpetuates killing and violence. The bill would provide an important option for conscientious objection and ensure that the tax dollars of those Canadians who hold these beliefs are spent for peaceful purposes.

A particular feature of the bill is that the regulation should be developed in consultation with organizations including the Canadian Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, the Quakers; the Conference of Mennonites in Canada; Conscience Canada; Mennonite Central Committee Canada; and Nos impôts pour la paix.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Refugees, June 20th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, today is World Refugee Day, a good day to note concerns about Canada's refugee program.

The refugee appeal division still has to be implemented. Justice demands a merit based appeal. The government should obey the law.

Refugees continue to seek sanctuary in churches. The government must solve these particular situations that drive religious communities to this difficult step.

A time limit must be imposed so that failed refugees from countries to which a moratorium has been placed on deportations do not have their lives put on hold indefinitely.

Application fees charged to in-Canada refugees must be eliminated.

Canada must review the safe third country agreement with the U.S. The number of refugee arrivals at our land borders has been cut in half and many question the fairness of the hearing that some receive in the U.S.

The private sponsorship program, the basis for our international reputation on refugee issues, is backlogged and must be revived. Canadians remain ready to do their part and the government must respond.

Refugee issues demand our attention. World Refugee Day would be a good day for the government to announce action on these issues.

[Canadian Human Rights Act, June 19th, 2006]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-326, An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act (gender identity).

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to table a private member's bill which would add gender identity or gender expression to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination in the Canadian Human Rights Act, adding explicit protection for transgender and transsexual Canadians from discrimination in all areas of federal jurisdiction.

Trans Canadians face significant prejudice in their daily lives, whether it is job discrimination, access to housing and public services, especially health care, problems with identity documents, difficulties with law enforcements officials, a high suicide rate or the increased likelihood that they will be victims of violence. The situation trans peoples face demands our attention.

The bill would give trans Canadians direct access to the protections provided for in the Canadian Human Rights Act , which they so urgently need.

This should be a non-partisan issue. I would encourage the government to take the initiative to add gender identity or expression in the Human Rights Act. I would be prepared to work with any member from any corner of the House who is willing to give this legislation priority in their private member's legislation time.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Business of Supply, June 15th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, that is the billion dollar question. There is lots of money when it comes to tax cuts for wealthy people and for corporations in Canada, but there is nothing for program spending for the people who really need it. We have worked long and hard in this corner of the House to bring a balance to that kind of economic planning.

Instead of estimating the cost of programs, let us estimate the cost of not having these programs. We know the cost that existed in our society when we did not have medicare. Seniors in particular know that cost because most of them were around and remember the days when they had to worry about how they would pay for medical coverage, when they had to worry about whether or not they would receive medical treatment when they were ill, whether or not they could afford it. They know what that was like and what a difference that program made in the lives of all Canadians.

They know what a difference it made when Canadians got together to collectively work to solve those kinds of problems. Some of that impetus has been lost. The political will to seek those collective solutions has been lost. We have the political will in this corner and perhaps there is some of that will in some of the other corners of the House, but we need to get that back on the agenda and make sure that the important programs, like the ones we are talking about in this initiative today, such as home care, pharmacare and dental care are implemented. We need to make sure that our medicare system is working.

Those are important priorities that we need to work on together as Canadians to make sure that everyone is able to live a full and high quality life here in Canada.

[Business of Supply, June 15th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, in B.C. there is an ombudsperson's office but not exclusively with jurisdiction over seniors issues. Seniors in British Columbia have told us in the NDP that more resources are needed for advocacy work, that the kind of measures we are talking about in today's motion are needed.

Not every province has reached the exalted and inspired state that Quebec has for instance. There is still a real need to have an advocacy role in the areas where the federal government is involved in providing programs and services for seniors, where it is failing seniors in Canada. That is what the motion talks about.

I was in Esquimalt last weekend with some of my colleagues. One of the main issues that was raised in discussion with me and others was the need for advocacy. A lot of the advocacy that happens now is informal. It is a kind of peer counselling association, which is very important, where one senior helps another.

People in the city of Victoria and the greater Victoria region are trying to raise that up a notch to have paid advocates. Their role would be to work with seniors to make sure that they take advantage of the programming that is out there and to help them lobby for improvements to those services. That is another level which does not exist in British Columbia and which is very important.

They were enthused about the idea of a federal seniors advocate who would work on those kinds of programs. The seniors advocate would be part of the federal government structure and would always have his or her eye on seniors programming, the programs that exist, the programs that need to exist. The seniors advocate would work with members in the seniors community to make sure that took place.

[Business of Supply, June 15th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure to take part in this debate today on seniors' issues. I want to thank my colleague from Hamilton Mountain for all the work she has done to bring this before the House today.

It is a very appropriate way to mark Elder Abuse Awareness Day, which we spoke of earlier today during the debate. We know this is one of the hidden problems that seniors face. Anything we can do to bring attention to the problem of elder abuse in our communities and in our families is very important.

I also want to acknowledge my colleague from Windsor West and the work he has done over the years. As well, I want to acknowledge a former NDP member of Parliament, Michelle Dockrill, for the work she did in this area. I know the member for Windsor West, when he visited my constituency to talk about the seniors' charter idea of the NDP, also credited a former member of his staff, Katy Kydd Wright, for the work she did on this important issue. I want to acknowledge the staff contribution to this as well.

The idea of the motion today emerged out of a long series of consultations from coast to coast to coast in Canada, including one that I hosted with my colleague from Burnaby—New Westminster. The member for Windsor West came to a meeting in our constituencies to talk about the main issues facing seniors. The member for Burnaby—New Westminster and I had quite a number of seniors' organizations from our constituency represented at that meeting, groups like COSCO, the Council of Senior Citizens' Organizations, the Network of Burnaby Seniors, representatives from the great senior centres in the city of Burnaby, Confederation, Bonsor, Cameron and Edmonds and also people from organizations like the North Burnaby Retired Society.

They came together to talk about the key issues facing seniors and about ways that we could get those issues on the agenda of Parliament and on the agenda of the government. One of the main things we discussed, an idea to which they contributed, was the proposal for a seniors' charter. Meetings like that helped develop the idea before the House today.

I want to mention what is in the motion. The motion calls for:

(a) creating a Seniors Charter that recognizes older Canadians as creative, active and valued members of our society, and that this Charter shall enshrine the right of every senior living in Canada to the following: (i) income security, through protected pensions and indexed public income support that provides a reasonable state of economic welfare; (ii) housing, through secure accessible, and affordable housing; (iii) wellness, though health promotion and preventative care; (iv) health care, through secure, public, accessible, universal health care including primary care, dental care, homecare, palliative and geriatric care, and pharmacare; (v) self-development, through lifelong access to affordable recreation, education and training, (vi) government services, through timely access to all federal government services and programs, including family re-unification.

The folks in my riding, who got together to discuss this proposal, thought all of those were absolutely fundamental to the quality of life of seniors in Canada. I am proud they are before the House today as part of the seniors' charter idea.

We have also included something very important to ensure that seniors' rights, the charter principles, are promoted and that seniors can access those rights. We have done that by creating a seniors advocate. The seniors advocate, according to the motion, will have the following responsibilities:

(i) conduct public education and awareness initiatives on the rights of seniors; (ii) ensure that all new or revised policies and programs affecting seniors receive public input from older persons; (iii) require that all new policies and programs affecting seniors are announced with specific timelines for implementation; (iv) act as an Ombudsman for seniors with respect to all government services and programs making recommendations as appropriate and...publish and report annually to Parliament on government policies and programs affecting seniors, including the effectiveness of federal funding related to the needs of older persons.

The seniors advocate is an important measure of accountability. It would go hand in hand with the seniors charter. It will ensure that we are not just giving lip service to these ideas, but that we are actually making progress and keeping the affairs, the concerns and the needs of seniors before Parliament. It is a very comprehensive motion in that regard and I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak in support of it.

Last weekend, six members of the NDP caucus, all of us from British Columbia, visited the riding of Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca. We had the opportunity to have a round table discussion with representatives of seniors organizations from Esquimalt and the greater Victoria area. I was lucky enough to be part of a small group that included Bel Paul, Faye Kemmis, Phil Lyons, Clara Halber and Janette George, all whom are very active as individuals or in seniors organizations in the greater Victoria area. We had an interesting discussion about the concerns and needs of seniors. The group mentioned the things they were working on to improve the lives of their fellow senior citizens.

Some of issues that came out of this group discussion were obvious ones. They are ones we hear about all the time, but have not done enough to address them. Health care was a key one. Emergency care was another. Concerns were brought up about privatized hospital services, the need for long term care beds, home care, pharmacare, preventative care, enforcement of the Canada Health Act and how we hold provinces accountable for the services provided and how federal money is spent. All these issues are included in the seniors charter.

The group also raised other issues such as seniors abuse and the difficulty seniors face in accessing information from the government, especially when it is only provided by phone. Pension income, especially women's pension income was raised. My colleague from London—Fanshawe addressed that. Housing for low income seniors was another issue raised by this group. They also mentioned the need for a guaranteed liveable income as opposed to a guaranteed annual income or some other measures. Concern was raised about Internet access for seniors, since it is such an important communication and organizing tool as well as a key source of information.

The group also talked about the need for advocates for seniors at the local level. An interesting project in the greater Victoria area is underway at the present time in this regard, which merits our attention.

Lots of important ideas came out of the meeting. I am proud to say that the motion before us would go some way toward ensuring that these issues are firmly on the government's agenda.

I want to talk specifically about immigration issues and the concerns around family reunification. There is a huge backlog in parental and grandparental applications in our immigration system. Right now there are over 108,000 applications. We are violating a promise we made to immigrants when they came to Canada. We promised them that they could sponsor their parents and their grandparents to come to Canada. We are not doing very well on that promise. It is taking over 37 months to process an application. Even at the optimum, it will take five to six years to deal with the backlog, although some estimates have it up to 10 years. This is a major concern.

We have a serious problem facing us with respect to this backlog, and the Conservatives have not announced a plan on how to deal with it. They cancelled the pre-election promise that the Liberals made of $700 million to be put toward the backlog. That would have reduced the backlog only slightly. Now we have a backlog of 108,000 parental and grandparental applications and almost 825,000 applications in the system. This is completely unacceptable to those families who take their obligations to their parents and grandparents seriously.

Family reunification has always been a hallmark of our immigration system. Unfortunately, the new minister is leaving that out of his overview of the immigration system. He did not talk about family reunification, when he listed the key aspects of our immigration program. This is a very serious issue. We have to be relentless in ensuring that family reunification and parental and grandparental reunification are priorities of the government.

The issue of the old age pension and new immigrants is also extremely important. New immigrants have to wait 10 years before they become eligible for the old age pension. This puts many of them at hardship. Even after they become Canadian citizens, they are still not eligible until that 10 year threshold. This is unacceptable and it needs to be addressed.

If British people immigrate to the United States, they get an upgraded pension from the British government. If they immigrate to Canada, they are not eligible for this. Canada has to pursue this with the British government to ensure that these people receive a liveable benefit to help them lead the quality of life we all want for them and expect for them.

Many issues need to be on the government agenda, particularly immigration. I suspect I might have a bit more time to conclude my remarks after question period.

[Business of Supply, June 15th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, last Saturday six members of the B.C. NDP federal caucus visited the riding of Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca. One of the things we did was to meet with seniors organizations. One of the people I met was Mrs. Janette George of the Retired Teachers' Association of the greater Victoria area. One of the key things that she wanted to raise was the question of elder abuse.

We know that today is Elder Abuse Awareness Day. My colleague from Hamilton Mountain raised that in the House yesterday and called on the government to proclaim elder abuse as a federal awareness day.

The folks from the Retired Teachers' Association noted that seniors were vulnerable to all kinds of abuse from outside and inside their families, by family members, by spouses, by institutions and the mental health system. There is often pressure to move them out of their homes and into institutions. Some of the services to help with this are really lacking. Something like the seniors help line has a long waiting time and often the services provided are from individuals, not necessarily from groups. This was a real area that they wanted to see the government show some leadership.

I am wondering if my colleague could comment on that.

[Citizenship Act, June 13th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Vaudreuil-Soulanges has raised an important point. I think all of us who have been working on questions of refugee rights in this Parliament have been very disappointed by the failure of the previous Liberal government and now the failure of the current government to implement the refugee appeal division. It is a legislated part of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. It is a small measure but one that every refugee and immigrant serving agency in Canada has been calling for because it will guarantee fairness.

It was a compromise when we debated that legislation in the House back in 2001. The government of the day wanted to move to see two-member immigration and refugee board panels reduced to one member. However, many concerns were raised about what would happen if a mistake were made in that circumstance, when there was no appeal on the merits of the actual case.

The compromise was to establish the refugee appeal division, which is a paper appeal. It would give a refugee claimant the opportunity to introduce new evidence, to introduce the facts of the case and to have the opportunity to see that case heard again and a real appeal heard. It is something that is absolutely necessary. We are concerned that those circumstance could arise again with this legislation.

The minister did mention this morning the situation of refugees in his more general remarks about immigration policy. I want to take this opportunity to mention that this morning I stood with a group of refugees and activists from the Parkdale neighbourhood in Toronto who were calling on the government to remove the fee for permanent resident applications that is charged to refugees whose case has been determined within Canada.

This fee of $550 is extremely onerous for people who have very meagre means for the most part in Canada. We know that many of the refugees who come to Canada and make a refugee claim live in poverty in our communities. We know they often do not have the best jobs in our communities and they are just scraping by. For many of them to gather the amount of money that is required to make a permanent residence application and to do it within the period required is extremely difficult.

When we have people who have been found to be refugees and who have shown that their lives are in danger in their country of origin, there should be no excuse for delaying their permanent resident status in Canada.

I think it is important that the government give urgent and serious consideration to removing the requirement of that fee for these people. This is s very important and it demands the government's immediate attention.

[Citizenship Act, June 13th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to continue my remarks on Bill C-14, the amendment to the Citizenship Act to facilitate citizenship for children adopted by Canadians overseas.

When I was last speaking, I mentioned that the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration had been working hard on the question of a revised Citizenship Act, on the necessary revisions that are required to the Citizenship Act, which has not been looked at since 1977.

Some of the things we had been talking about pertained to the whole question of revocation of citizenship. I had mentioned that the process for revoking citizenship should be a full judicial process. That is something the standing committee in the last Parliament felt very strongly about. The standing committee felt that there should be no provision in law for an administrative power to annul citizenship and that to revoke citizenship, false representation, fraud, or knowingly concealing material circumstances should be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in a criminal court. That was a very important standard that the standing committee wanted to hold up. It is something that is dramatically lacking in the current act.

That higher evidentiary standard is higher than the one that currently exists in the legislation. Right now it is not beyond a reasonable doubt. It is the lower standard of the balance of probabilities, the civil standard. The committee felt very strongly that this needed to be raised to the higher standard of beyond a reasonable doubt.

The committee also talked of the need for a review of the residency requirements for citizenship and that refugees should be able to count their residency from the time they make their claim, not from the date of a positive finding of that claim. Those are very significant issues for many people in Canada.

We need to have a standardization of the residency requirement. We need to honour the time that refugees have spent in Canada from the time of making their claim. That is very important. We want to facilitate the gaining of citizenship by refugee claimants. This would be one way of doing it, something that is not currently done in the act and one of the reasons that the standing committee believed there should be a review of the Citizenship Act.

The Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration also said that we needed to ensure that criminal proceedings against an applicant outside Canada could be taken into account in the same way that such proceedings in Canada are taken into account. Given the concerns that many people have about security clearances, security issues and criminal issues, this was seen as an important addition that should be made to the act.

There was a concern about citizenship court judges. The standing committee felt very strongly that they should be maintained. There have been attempts in recent years to get rid of citizenship court judges. I am pleased to see that the government has appointed some new citizenship court judges in jurisdictions where their services were urgently required, but we need to maintain that important position. I think the standing committee last year was very moved by the dedication of citizenship court judges to their important work and felt that they made a very important contribution that should be maintained in any future Citizenship Act.

There was also the matter of the citizenship oath. There is some sentiment in Canada that the oath does not appropriately reflect the reality of Canada today, that the stress on allegiance to the Queen may be something that needs to be looked at. There should be a question of looking at loyalty to Canada and stressing that in the oath as well, perhaps recognizing the importance of the Constitution and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the oath and establishing the kinds of relationships that new citizens have with their new country.

There were all kinds of issues that the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration thought needed to be looked at in a review of the Citizenship Act.

The previous government kept telling us that it was on the verge of tabling legislation. It kept saying that it was almost ready to go and if we only gave it a little feedback, it would be ready to run with that legislation. Unfortunately we never saw it.

I suspect there is draft legislation hanging around in the department, perhaps even in a corner of the minister's office. I would encourage the new Conservative minister to look for it, to blow that pile of dust off of it, to see if it is something he can run with and introduce in the House. There are a number of citizenship issues that are very important and need attention, not just the important matter of adoption and the gaining of citizenship for adopted children.

Another issue that I feel very strongly about in the citizenship file is the whole question of the processing fee for citizenship applications. Unfortunately, the standing committee, in hearing testimony last year, heard of cases where people had to delay their application for citizenship because they could not afford the fee. That is a very serious situation. No one in Canada should be delayed or prevented from attaining citizenship merely because they cannot afford to pay the application fee.

Last year the standing committee said very strongly that the application fee for initial applications for Canadian citizenship should be eliminated. I hope the current government will take that under advisement. No one in Canada should be prevented from taking that step of becoming a citizen because they do not have the financial means to pay for the application. I hope the government will pay some attention to that recommendation.

Many issues in the Citizenship Act should be addressed and many would require a new Citizenship Act. I hope the Conservatives will expand their citizenship agenda beyond the relatively compact issue of adoption and citizenship and move on to a broader agenda around citizenship to update that important legislation.

I want to return to Bill C-14 and say that there was one area that the standing committee thought should be addressed with regard to a citizenship application for an adopted child and that was the case where it was refused. The standing committee, in its reports to the government and to the House last year, recommended that a full appeal on the facts and law should be permitted in federal court on any refusal of an application for citizenship for an adopted child. I know this is not part of the legislation. There is the opportunity to apply for leave to appeal at the federal court, but the standing committee believes that should be clearer and more direct in terms of a direct appeal to the federal court. That is one area where the legislation might be improved.

This is legislation that was long overdue. It would provide a measure of equity and fairness to adopted children and to their families and remove that spectre that many adoptive parents and their children have felt that they were somehow second-class citizens in Canada. The bill will finally address that at long last. I hope every party in the House wants this to receive the attention that it so richly deserves.

[Citizenship Act, June 13th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate today on Bill C-14, an act to amend the Citizenship Act regarding adoption.

As we have already heard, this is exactly the same bill as Bill C-76 that was introduced last November in the last Parliament. I want to commend the Conservative government for getting it on the agenda so soon. It is unfortunate that we did not get it on the agenda sooner in the last Parliament because it is a change in our citizenship law that many families have been awaiting for many years. It is one that has been proposed in the past, long before the Conservatives adopted it as their party policy. I wanted to correct the minister's assertion on that. This is something that has been around for many years and supported in many corners of the House. It is a good thing that it is finally on the agenda and hopefully we can expedite its passage so that adoptive foreign children have the same rights as children born to Canadians.

The bill would amend the Citizenship Act to allow a grant of citizenship to a child adopted by a Canadian. In this corner of the House we strongly support the bill. It would ensure that adoptive children are treated the same as biological children under the provisions of the Citizenship Act. In doing so, it will make citizenship automatic for adopted children as it is for children born to Canadians. Children who are eligible in this regard are eligible if the adoption took place after February 14, 1997, the date of the implementation of the current Citizenship Act.

This proposal has been supported by the courts. The federal court has said that the distinctions in law based on adoptive parentage violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and specifically section 15 on equality rights. The courts have said that the legislation needs to be updated and changed in light of the equality provisions of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. If the need was not there before, it clearly needs to be on our agenda now.

This points out what many adoptive parents and adoptive children have felt over the years, that they are somehow second-class citizens, that they and their families are somehow second-class because they were not afforded the same automatic citizenship that children born to Canadians were. I am glad we are finally getting around to righting that because when it comes to citizenship, there should be no distinctions. Everyone should feel like a first-class citizen and there should be no distinctions in categories of our citizenship. Any time someone feels that somehow their citizenship is less than someone else's, we need to look at that very carefully. This is one of those areas, so it is a good thing that we are moving to fix that.

Currently an adoptive child must be sponsored for permanent residence by their adoptive parent. This process would be eliminated, and we all know what a lengthy process that can be. Unfortunately, it has proven problematic for many families, so it is good to be able to remove that bureaucratic impediment to the full participation of adoptive children in Canada. Now it will still be open to people and some lawyers have said that they would recommend to clients that they still go through the process of applying for permanent resident status for the child and then subsequently to that citizenship. That option would remain but under the new legislation it would not be required.

Under Bill C-14, the adoption must meet certain criteria, and four in particular: First, the adoption must be in the best interests of the child as defined by the Hague Convention on the protection of children in inter-country adoption. We wanted to ensure the provisions of the Hague Convention were upheld and the legislation does that.

The second thing is that a genuine relationship must be created between the parent and the child, which means the building of a family and the building of a parent and child relationship.

Third, it must have been done in accordance with the laws of the jurisdiction where the adoption took place and the laws of the country of residence of the child. All the laws of both the province in Canada where the adoption has taken place and the laws of the country of residence where the adoptive child was born and lives must be upheld.

Fourth, it must not have been entered into for the purposes of acquiring status or privilege in relationship to citizenship or immigration. It cannot be an adoption of convenience, an adoption that is intended to do some kind of end run around our citizenship laws.

It is a good thing that all of those criteria are included in the bill because we want to ensure this is about recognizing families, recognizing adoptions and recognizing the importance of adoptions for Canadian families.

The bill also includes specific recognition of Quebec's particular adoption process and, as we have heard already, that is a crucial part of this legislation.

The bill recognizes adult adoption if the adoptive parent acted as the person's parent before he or she was 18. We know that is also a crucial part of the legislation.

For all those reasons, we in the New Democratic Party support the bill.

I wish we would have had the opportunity to deal with this months ago. It is a shame that it came to the House so late in the last Parliament. It was almost an afterthought. It came in the dying days of the last House when so many promises had been made about citizenship. We heard, more often than not, on several occasions from ministers of the previous government, that there was an intent to go ahead with an overall revamping of the citizenship legislation, something that many of us felt was long overdue. We have not looked at our citizenship legislation since 1977.

We know the previous government tried to update the Citizenship Act three times with Bill C-63 in the 36th Parliament and, more recently, with Bill C-16 and Bill C-18. All of those died on the order paper because they were not given the appropriate priority nor the proper attention to working out the problems and dealing with the suggestions that were being made around them I should point out that both Bill C-16 and Bill C-18 would have addressed the issue of adoption and citizenship.

We could have dealt with this a long time ago if it had been given the appropriate priority by the Liberal government and if it had lived up to the priorities that it stated it had around citizenship legislation.

We are, again, looking at a very particular proposal around citizenship legislation with this bill. We need to move forward on that because families have waited too long.

It would be nice if the Conservatives' agenda were a bit broader than just this legislation but that is not to denigrate the importance of this legislation. Families and adoptive children are counting on it, but there are other citizenship issues that need to be addressed.

In the last Parliament, the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration urged the government at that time to move on the issue of adoption in two reports, one in November 2004 and one in October 2005. Therefore, the government is well aware of the standing committee's enthusiasm for dealing with this matter.

There was no excuse for delaying the legislation in the past and there should be no excuse for delaying the legislation now. We need to get this to committee, get it back to the House as soon as we can so it can go through the process and families can take advantage of this proposal.

I want to make a few comments about the broader citizenship agenda that I asked the minister about earlier. We need to ensure we have this overall review of citizenship legislation. The act, as I mentioned, was passed back in 1977, and there are many aspects of it that demand our attention. I think crucial in that is the whole revocation process, the whole process where someone's citizenship can be revoked. This is another one of those areas where people feel like they are being treated as second-class citizens.

Many new Canadians have said that because their citizenship can be revoked, unlike the citizenship of someone born in Canada, it makes them feel second class. They always feel like that possibility of challenge hangs of their head. That is not a good thing to have when it comes to citizenship. When we are trying to establish people's attachment to Canada and when the citizenship process is the appropriate process for doing that, we need to ensure it meets that standard of developing attachment for people who become citizens.

The Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, in a report to the House in the last Parliament, recommended that the charter should be fully applicable to the Citizenship Act. The committee recommended that the process for revoking citizenship should be a fully judicial--