James Bezan

[Citizenship Act, September 15th, 2025]

Madam Speaker, if this is a filibuster, why is the member for Winnipeg North up talking? He always gets up in debate. This is actually my first chance to talk on Bill C-3, and we just got back. Let us try to work across the aisle here and see if we can make some headway.

I want to read some quotes about Canadians living abroad.

Sergio Karas, who is principal of Karas Immigration Law Professional Corporation, stated:

...many Canadians born abroad live in low-tax countries and regard Canada as an insurance policy if trouble ensues, but have no intention to pay exorbitant Canadian taxes.... Introducing tens of thousands of new citizens without a robust integration plan is reckless. Our social infrastructure is buckling, and health care is under severe pressure. The lack of a clear strategy for accommodating this potential population surge only heightens concerns.

We have to address those concerns first, before we open up citizenship to everybody around the world.

[Citizenship Act, September 15th, 2025]

Madam Speaker, it is indeed a pleasure to be back after our summer in our ridings. I know that all of us worked really hard seeing our constituents.

Throughout the summer, on top of meeting with constituents at the office and across the riding, I attended multiple fairs, festivals, parades and rodeos every weekend. It was just great to get out there and to see as many people as we did. I spent the last two weeks before coming back here meeting with municipal councils across our large riding of Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, and meeting with farmers. We talked about the challenges we have right now in the riding. I can tell my colleagues that a lot of things came up.

In coming back here, I am glad to see that one of our priorities as Conservatives will be to deal with the cost of living crisis that has been created by the Liberal government. We are going to deal with the jobless crisis that is particularly hitting youth, including in our riding, and deal with the crime crisis that continues to terrorize our communities right now because of the catch-and-release policy of both the previous Liberal government and the current government. It is the number one issue I am hearing about.

Of course, there are a lot of concerns about how immigration has been left to go without any strategy and plan to actually support Canada and our economy. As well, we need to plan ahead in how we deal with housing, education, health care and other social infrastructure we need in order to deal with the burdening cost of having a population that has boomed over the last 10 years because of unbridled immigration.

We are going to propose solutions for that as Conservatives. We are going to make sure that everybody can have a stronger paycheque so they can afford the higher costs. However, we want to look at how we can cut back on inflation and create more jobs.

We want to make sure our streets are safe. There is going to be a lot of legislation proposed by our Conservative Party that would make our communities and our streets safer and keep the criminals behind bars.

We are going to want to make sure that we secure our borders as well, by hitting the brakes on immigration and on anything that is suppressing local jobs and creating high youth unemployment, such as the temporary foreign worker program.

I am looking forward to when we table our Canadian sovereignty bill here in the House. It would open up Canada for business. It would create a pile of jobs, cut government taxes and improve the approval times of all major nation-building projects, not through creating bureaucracy but by cutting the red tape, regulations and bad legislation that came in under the Liberal government.

I am here to speak to Bill C-3. There is a reason why the government is doing this. There was a court decision that was made.

I was in the Harper government in 2009, when we had to deal with a crisis because of Canadians of convenience. We created the first-generation limit on citizenship to ensure that Canadians who claim citizenship have a direct connection to the country, and that they value that citizenship and plan to utilize it in a responsible manner. If somebody was born in Canada, went abroad and had a child, that child would still be a Canadian under the current legislation, under the first-generation limit, but the grandchildren would not be, without any direct connection. We are saying that Canadians have to have a direct tie, value Canadian citizenship and use it responsibly.

The Ontario Superior Court ruled it was unconstitutional and asked the government to put in place a way to fix it by June 2024. Here we are with a new deadline. It has been extended about four times by the government because it has not been able to get it done. The bill before us would have to pass by November 20, but there are things in the bill that we have to change.

There are things in the bill that we are very supportive of. We are supportive of the changes in the adoption section about children who are adopted from abroad. As soon as they are adopted, they would be considered to be Canadians, and their parents would be able to bring them home and start raising them.

I have heard heartbreaking stories in my riding over the years from constituents who have actually gone to adopt children from other countries. It took years to get them back into Canada because Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada put up roadblock after roadblock. This process would take away all the red tape and bureaucracy, allowing those children who are legally adopted abroad to come to Canada immediately with their parents and start their lives here. I applaud the government for doing this. It is something that Conservatives really support.

Also, I support the proposed section in Bill C-3 with regard to lost Canadians. The issue of lost Canadians has to be rectified. A lot of people who were born here from 1977 to 1981, over roughly 50 months, had Commonwealth citizenship but could no longer claim Canadian citizenship. That happened in my riding as well. Constituents have come to my office saying they do not have citizenship, they cannot get a passport, they cannot get access to health care and they do not have the ability to travel or vote. The inherent rights of citizenship have been taken away from individuals who have lived, worked and paid taxes here their entire lives. Yes, Conservatives support this proposed section of the bill and want to see it passed quickly. Twenty thousand Canadians potentially fall under the lost Canadians mandate.

The problem we are dealing with is trying to address the issue of Canadians of convenience, which we have witnessed going back to 2006 and which we tried to rectify in 2009. The courts claimed it was unconstitutional, and now the government is coming forward with a very weak substantive connection test for people who want to inherit Canadian citizenship. To claim Canadian citizenship, people have to stay in Canada for only 1,095 days, or roughly three years. If someone is born to those who have Canadian citizenship, that person can claim it; then their children will automatically get to claim citizenship as well, although they may have never lived in Canada. This creates a problem with multi-generational Canadians who have never lived in Canada and never, ever called it home.

I will give an example. About 20% of Canadians living abroad live in the United States. They move there because they want to pay lower taxes; they do not like the situation in Canada. It has been happening for generations. They move to the United States, they work in the United States and they take on U.S. citizenship, but they maintain their Canadian citizenship. If their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren come back to Canada every year to holiday in my riding, along beautiful Lake Winnipeg or Lake Manitoba, because they have a cottage there, their children can stay there for three weeks of the year. Since this is not consecutive and can be spread out over time, at the age of 52, they can come back and claim citizenship. Then, if they have substantive health challenges going forward, they will get access to our health care system without ever paying a dime of tax or anything to Canada.

As well, once they hit age 65, they can move back to Canada without ever paying any taxes up to that point in time and start participating in GIS and OAS, our old age pension system. Twenty per cent of Canadians living abroad are in the United States, and this will also apply to them along with anyone else. This could potentially include tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people who want to claim this right of citizenship, because of this erroneous proposed section in Bill C-3.

This would create two new major administrative burdens on the Government of Canada that it will have to deal with, including new proof of citizenship applications for issuing passports and a new process for the substantive connection test that has to happen. The Parliamentary Budget Officer says that in the first five years, it is going to cost at least $21 million. We know it would also undermine the value of Canadian citizenship.

Conservatives believe in strong, fair and meaningful Canadian citizenship that we can all be proud of. We talk about a two-tier system. Those of us who are born here get to enjoy the benefits, and then there are those who claim Canadian citizenship by working here, living here, connecting here and raising their families here. Now we are going to make it easy for others to come who have no connection to this country in any way, shape or form. Let us stop the two-tier immigration system that Bill C-3 would start and support the amendments that the Conservatives are bringing forward.

[Strong Borders Act, June 18th, 2025]

Mr. Speaker, the Canadian Coast Guard does play an important role. If the Liberals were going to move it over to National Defence and start transitioning it to be a paramilitary organization to actually be able to do interdictions and border security, I would be very supportive of that.

However, right now, I just want to know if this is anything that means anything in National Defence, or is this just more creative accounting by the Liberals, taking expenditures out of other departments, ramming them under National Defence like they have for the last seven years, and trying to say that is how we are going to reach 2%?

This does not increase the capabilities and operational readiness of the Canadian Armed Forces in any way, shape or form. We actually need to see investment in the kinetic equipment that is so desperately needed, like new planes, tanks, LAVs and ships. The Liberals are dragging their feet every time they step up; they fail to make a difference.

[Strong Borders Act, June 18th, 2025]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome the member to the national defence committee with me. We are both serving as vice-chairs on the national defence committee.

I know there has been much debate about how the Liberals have failed on the border, how they ignored illegal migration, like we saw at Roxham Road and Emerson, Manitoba. They welcomed everybody with open arms rather than actually trying to fix the third party agreement. It took them seven years before they finally fixed the third party agreement with the United States so that this type of illegal migration would stop.

We are back in a similar situation. They waited until Donald Trump started yelling at Canada, especially under Justin Trudeau, to do something about the border to act. They have had a decade here, and have completely ignored it. Either they ran out of ideas or they are just completely incompetent.

[Strong Borders Act, June 18th, 2025]

Mr. Speaker, what I am commenting on is that the government plans on moving the Coast Guard under the direction of the Minister of National Defence without actually talking about how they are going to make it a security agency, which it is not; it is a civilian organization.

This is something that needs to be clearly identified. It needs to describe how this would count towards the NATO 2%, when the Coast Guard currently has no capabilities to provide that security apparatus. If they are going to now start putting either RCMP and/or National Defence personnel on board and arm up those ships, then we are talking about something completely different and we need to understand what that is.

[Strong Borders Act, June 18th, 2025]

Mr. Speaker, it is indeed an honour to rise in this place, thanks to the support of the great people of Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, many of whom I have been hearing from on Bill C-2.

I will be splitting my time with the member for Edmonton Griesbach.

Conservatives have always supported toughening up our borders, and making sure that we are not just securing our borders, but protecting communities and upholding the rights of Canadians. In the last election campaign, we fought very hard, laying out a message on how to make sure we secure our borders, and that would include adding more border agents. We need at least a couple of thousand more border agents to properly police the border, and not just at ports of entry, which is all Bill C-2 would do. We want to make sure that they have the power to police the entire border, whether we are looking at illegal immigration, people who are trying to run fentanyl and other illicit drugs into our country or human trafficking. We often see illegal guns coming across the border. Of course, the bill before us does not address this in its entirety, and that is why I have some concerns.

We need to make sure that our borders are secure. In the campaign, our leader, Pierre Poilievre, talked about installing greater border surveillance, including the use of drones and towers, and more high-powered scanners at land crossings and seaports to ensure that everything that is coming into this country is looked at. This way, we would know whether there is contraband being smuggled into this country, especially the ingredients to make fentanyl and other opioids, which are creating so much tragedy in our communities and on our streets. This is really a sad part that is impacting so many families. We also need to make sure that we are scanning things leaving this country as well, but nothing in the bill addresses that. The illegal export of stolen vehicles has to stop, which means containers need to be scanned, both coming in and going out, but, again, there is nothing on that in the bill.

We are concerned that Bill C-2 does not address the issue of tracking the departures of those who are in Canada and need to leave. If they fail to meet their dates, then we are going to see that they are staying Canada illegally, and they need to be deported immediately.

The bill would do nothing to toughen up penalties for repeat violent offenders. We are talking about stopping human trafficking, gun smuggling and fentanyl as the main reasons to thicken up our borders and secure them. However, the Liberals continue to support soft-on-crime policies, like making sure that repeat violent offenders have access to catch-and-release bail policies. We believe in jail, not bail, and the Liberals continue to have their multiple murder discounts on sentencing.

This is a big bill, over 130 pages, and that in itself makes it an omnibus bill. We know that Liberals have been scrambling since the election to finally take some Conservative policies and put them in their own policies. We will continue to support things that make Canada safer and more secure, but we do have a lot of concerns about how the Liberals continue to have catch-and-release bills, like Bill C-75, and in the last Parliament, Bill C-5. We want to go after gun smugglers, but the Liberals still erroneously vilify law-abiding firearms owners in this country instead of going after the criminals who are smuggling guns and increasing the penalties for gun smugglers, which they actually reduced in Bill C-5. We want to make sure that we are actually addressing that issue.

Another issue with the bill that I am hearing about is the concern we just heard in the previous question, which is that Canada Post would be given the ability to open mail without the proper charter-protected rights that would happen with judicial oversight and warrants. This is clear in the bill, as we were just talking about, in section 41 on page 12, “The Corporation may open any mail if it has reasonable grounds to suspect that...”, and then it lists those reasons, which include drug smuggling. That should be done under the authority of a warrant; Canada Post cannot just start opening up mail.

I am hearing from my constituents that they are concerned about part 11, which would limit the amount of cash deposits to $10,000. That impacts those in the agriculture community who want to use cash because they have curbside sales or farmers markets where maybe they are selling livestock or processed meats, vegetables or other types of horticultural crops out of their yards and collecting cash from that. A strawberry U-pick will collect over $10,000 cash easily in a day. Cash is still legal tender. There are ways we can still enforce the money laundering and terrorist financing rules in this country without going after people legitimately collecting cash in their day-to-day business activities. That was about part 4 on Canada Post and part 11 on farm gate sales.

I want to spend a little bit of time on other parts of this bill. In part 14 and part 16, the bill talks about the erosion of privacy rights and civil liberties of Canadians, which I have been hearing about from my constituents. They have been emailing and messaging me on social media. We need to address that.

In my last four minutes, I want to talk about part 5. Part 5 would amend the Oceans Act to provide coast guard services. It would include activities related to security and authorize the responsible minister to collect, analyze and disclose information and intelligence. It provides the power for “The Minister, or any other member of the King’s Privy Council for Canada designated by the Governor in Council for the purposes of this section”. This is where we are hearing about the transfer of the Canadian Coast Guard from Fisheries and Oceans Canada to the administrative powers of the Minister of National Defence. That was announced by the Prime Minister and the Minister of National Defence has talked about it. We have heard from the chief of the defence staff and the vice chief of the defence staff on what that is going to look like.

We know that the Canadian Coast Guard does not have interdiction capabilities. It is not a paramilitary organization; it is a civilian organization. It does not have guns on board. The ships have no defensive purposes at all. We must remember that the Coast Guard does search and rescue. It has a lot of scientific vessels that spend time studying our oceans. That is important and has to happen. It provides transit and transportation assistance by icebreaking in places like the St. Lawrence Seaway. That is all important work that the Coast Guard does. However, it is hard to make the argument that that is in the interest of national security or national defence.

This is just another exercise by the Liberals in creative accounting to move government spending from one department into National Defence without actually increasing the capabilities of the Canadian Armed Forces. They are not talking about changing the Coast Guard fleet to have them armed up. They are not talking about having the sailors and crew of the Canadian Coast Guard actually be trained up to use sidearms.

We know right now that if the Coast Guard comes across somebody smuggling contraband, such as illegal drugs, they have to call the RCMP to come on board to then do the interdiction of those vessels. It is the same thing if the Coast Guard were to see somebody illegally fishing. They would have to call conservation officers with Fisheries and Oceans to come on board to do the interdiction. They would also, if they come across somebody who entered our waters illegally, either because they are smuggling humans or they got lost, call Canada Border Services to come in to process those individuals and do the interdiction.

The Coast Guard has absolutely no policing powers or ability to do those interdictions on their own, and it is erroneous to think that the Coast Guard provides any type of security purposes underneath the NATO construct. I would just caution the government that if it is going to try to count all of the Coast Guard's budget under National Defence, then it has to change the organization so that it can provide those broader services that have been talked about. The bill talks about how the Coast Guard is going to “support departments, boards and agencies of the Government of Canada through the provision of ships, aircraft and other services; and" “security, including security patrols and the collection, analysis and disclosure of information or intelligence”.

The Coast Guard does not have that skill set right now. It does not have that ability. The government needs to come clean with Canadians. It needs to come clean with NATO and our allies to explain how it can take a civilian organization and decide this is something that really will improve our national security and our national defence, and will actually increase the lethality and kinetic power of the Canadian Armed Forces, which we know right now, after the last Liberal decade, have been broken by the Liberals.

[National Defence, June 18th, 2025]

Mr. Speaker, throwing money at the problem does not fix the problem. The facts show that the lost Liberal decade has reduced the capabilities needed by the armed forces to protect Canada today. Last year, the department said it would meet its targets this year, but now the Liberals have kicked the can down the road for another seven years before the operations of the armed forces will be up to standard.

Under Liberal watch, our armed forces simply do not have the tools they need to do the job to deal with today's growing threats. The Prime Minister's talk is cheap. Where is the plan?

[National Defence, June 18th, 2025]

Mr. Speaker, new reports from the Department of National Defence confirmed today that less than 50% of the equipment used by our armed forces is operational. Only 46% of our navy ships are seaworthy, and fewer than half of the land vehicles and aircraft needed by our army and air force are even serviceable.

While the Prime Minister makes grandiose claims of fixing the armed forces, the actual numbers tell a very different story. Money without results will not defend Canada's sovereignty. Why should anyone believe the Prime Minister when his own defence department contradicts his promises?

[Government Business No. 1—Proceedings on Bill C-5, June 16th, 2025]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-5 was just introduced in the House for debate on Friday. We have only had a few hours of debate on it already. The Liberals are up to their old tricks again, trying to ram through legislation without giving Parliament the opportunity to debate this bill. We know that it would not repeal the “no more pipelines” act or the “no more tankers” act. We know that it would not help with anything in resource development.

Why are the Liberals back to their old ways of shutting down debate and undermining democracy?

[National Defence, June 10th, 2025]

Mr. Speaker, unlike the Prime Minister, we actually delivered for our military. We bought five brand-new CF-17 Globemasters, new Hercules, new Leopard tanks and new Chinook helicopters. We delivered.

Instead, what we have here is an Auditor General report referencing her 2018 report on Canada's fighter jets. That report said the biggest obstacle to meeting operational requirements was a shortage of fighter pilots and technicians. Over the lost Liberal decade, the Liberals have worsened this capability gap through mismanagement and completely ignoring the Auditor General's recommendations.

The foreign affairs minister, who was responsible for the military back in 2018, is still in cabinet. Why is this?