Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise today to speak to Bill C-6, an act to amend the Citizenship Act.
Before going any further, Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Vancouver Centre.
I am proud to speak in support of the bill. I am proud to do so as the son and grandson of first-generation Canadians, as a former public servant who fought against organized crime and terrorism, and now as a member of Parliament in the House, at the very heart of our democracy.
Make no mistake, Bill C-6 is very much about protecting our democracy. It is about showing respect for the generations of immigrants who helped build our country up from its very foundations. It is about protecting the pathways to citizenship for future new Canadians. It is very much about ensuring that equality of citizenship remains a right enshrined by the charter.
On this side of the House, we believe, as the Prime Minister has said, that Canada is strong not in spite of its diversity but because of it. The new policy measures introduced by our proposed legislation will safeguard this value through and through. This was a key promise during the election, and Canadians are right to expect that we would deliver on it.
Nevertheless, there are some on the side of the official opposition who object to the bill. In brief, they say that our proposed legislation will make Canadians less safe and it diminishes the value of Canadian citizenship. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the law passed by the party opposite drastically overreaches, introduces hierarchical classes of citizenship, does nothing to keep us safe, and does nothing to enhance the value of citizenship.
Let me highlight the flaws under the old Bill C-24.
Under the law as it stands, Canadians who are convicted of certain serious crimes, and yes, including terrorism, may be stripped of their citizenship, but only if they hold citizenship in another country or could hold citizenship in another country. Therefore, it is not just Canadians who are dual citizens, but also Canadians who could be dual citizens, whom the opposition considers less equal than others.
It is not just terrorism, either. In the latter stages of the last election, a number of leading voices from the opposition were calling to expand the list of offences which could trigger revocation. Therefore, when the member opposite asks for evidence and facts about the slippery slope, there it is. It is part of the public record. It is not hard to see why some on the other side of the aisle say these things. Who does not want to punish a murderer, let alone a terrorist, and who does not want to denounce those who denounce Canada by their violent actions, motivated by a twisted ideological purpose?
As we reflect on these questions, I think of my own experience in prosecuting terrorists. I worked on the Toronto 18, along with some of the finest public servants I have ever known. This case involved a plot to detonate bombs in Toronto and to wage an attack on Parliament Hill. It was a serious and complex case and alarming to the public.
One of the ringleaders of this conspiracy was Zakaria Amara. He was convicted. Some of my hon. colleagues across the way have referred to Mr. Amara frequently of late. This is because Mr. Amara was born in Jordan and was, thus, caught under the dual citizenship provisions of Bill C-24. Just weeks before election day, he received a letter from the then government by the then minister of citizenship and immigration that he would be moving to revoke his citizenship.
The opposition says that Mr. Amara is the only one who stands to win when we pass Bill C-6, as it will have the effect of reversing the revocation process and allow him to maintain his Canadian citizenship. Mr. Amara is no winner. Mr. Amara is a convicted terrorist and he is serving a life sentence. I helped put him and his co-conspirators behind bars, which is where he remains to this day. The only winner is the Canadian public that saw an individual convicted following a fair trial and due process.
Let us put aside the winners and losers rhetoric. The opposition goes on to argue that revoking Mr. Amara's citizenship and deporting him to Jordan or some other place will make Canada safer. They are wrong. Where is the logic in deporting a convicted terrorist from our soil to some other place, where Canada has a diminished capacity to prevent future terrorist activity and where the deportee would only have an increased capacity to continue to recruit, to radicalize, and potentially to return to do more harm to us should he choose to resume his agenda?
I challenge my friends across the way to come up with a credible answer to that question. I think they will find it difficult to do so.
Even looking at their own policies, one finds inconsistencies. For example, the Conservatives also sought to make it a crime for Canadians to travel to some of the very same regions to which they would banish domestic terrorists. How can they reconcile that for the average Canadian? They cannot. Indeed, not only would deporting convicted terrorists not keep Canadians safer, I fail to see how it would keep any of our friends or allies safer.
I want to spend my remaining time talking about one of the central focuses of Bill C-6, which is to uphold the equitable principle of Canadian citizenship.
Taken at its highest, the opposition argues that if we do not strip away citizenship from convicted dual citizens and those eligible to be dual citizens, we are somehow tainting citizenship for those citizens of the “old stock”, to quote one expression coined by the opposition party. The thrust of its position is that it undermines citizenship to allow a convicted terrorist to remain in our midst.
Let me be clear. We in the House are united in our resolve against terrorism. The Prime Minister has repeatedly said that terrorists belong behind bars. No one should ever doubt his resolve, nor that of the government, to confront any individual or any organization that would bring harm to our country and to see them brought to justice.
The previous government may not have liked to admit it, but all members, on all sides, take seriously our responsibility to keep our country safe. Bill C-6 would do just that. It would subject all criminals to the full force of Canadian law and the Canadian justice system. It would eliminate the former government's exception for those who hold, or could hold, citizenship in another country. It would mean that every Canadian, whether born here or naturalized, must obey the same laws or face the same consequences. It says that if people are convicted of terrorism in our country, they will go to prison in this country and they will stay there.
The opposition says that we should compromise the equality of our citizenship, but all it offers in return is a false promise of security.
Canadians have rejected the politics of division and fear. They have said, clearly, that there is no place in our laws for discrimination between those of us who were born here and those of us who were not. It now falls to us in the House, with this bill, to say the same.
My support of the bill is based upon the rule of law. My support of the bill is a vote of confidence for all the professionals who work in the law enforcement, intelligence, and corrections communities. My support of the bill is based upon the fundamental principle that it is the bedrock of who we are and the basic measure of what we share. A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.
To be clear, I do not begrudge the members opposite for being angry, or even afraid in the face of terrorism. Those are the basic human responses to seeing our laws broken and our freedoms abused. However, we must not allow our fears to erode the principles and values on which our country was founded: equality, fairness, and compassion.
We are better than the law that is now on our books. It does not make us safer, but it does make us less equal. That is why Bill C-6 must pass.