Madam Speaker, I am, like all members of the House who are not of indigenous background, the child of immigrants. We are all either immigrants ourselves, the children of immigrants or the grandchildren of immigrants. This is where I fit in.
My grandparents came to Canada, and my grandmother came from a place called Bialystok in Poland. She was a Jew. Bialystok had, at the time she left with her parents in 1914, 10,000 people, and the majority, about 70%, were Jewish. When my mother returned to Bialystok in the 1970s, of course, a few things had happened, including the Holocaust and then several decades of Communist rule.
There were no longer enough Jews in that town to form a minyan, which is a 10-man group of people to conduct prayers at the beginning of Sabbath. It is our good fortune that our family was not there because 95% of the Jews were killed. My mother obviously would not have survived that. I am someone who is half Jewish, and it is questionable, depending on which part of Europe one was in, whether I would be have been considered someone slated for extermination or not. This thought crosses my mind when I consider what could have happened.
My grandfather was born in a place called Odobesti, Romania. While 90% of Romanian Jews were killed, Odobesti was far enough into the foothills of the Transylvanian Alps that it was overlooked. When my mother went there in the 1970s, she met with some people from the Jewish community who were able to describe the situation.
I say all of this by way of saying that Canada is the land of hope. It was then for people who were leaving prosecution. In the case of my great-grandfather, who led his family out of Bialystok, he was not trying to escape the Nazis, who did not exist yet. He was trying to escape conscription to the czar's army at the beginning of World War I. My great-grandfather bought a passport from a neighbour, which was obviously an illegal transaction. His family name was Tauber, but the name of the neighbour from whom he purchased the passport was Chaiton. For the rest of their lives, they were known as the Chaiton family.
I say this by way of saying that, even those who come here under conditions that might not meet with what we consider full respect for all laws of all jurisdictions are, nonetheless, often good citizens, and they are welcome here.
If I go to my father's side of the family, who came from Ireland and Scotland, their tale is a little different. They were staying within the British Empire when they migrated, but they had to leave their families and know they would never see them again.
The immigrants who come here today, fresh from, typically now, Asia or Africa, and sometimes Latin America, also, over and over, demonstrate a deep respect and love for this country. They understand in a way that those of us who are born here can forget, unless we are reflecting on the history of our own ancestors. They understand what an extraordinary gift Canadian citizenship is and what an extraordinary thing it is to become a part of this welcoming community.
This is the theme of the concerns we in the opposition are expressing with this legislation. We do not think it is inappropriate to respond to a court ruling, although I do want to return to that theme in a second because the government acted precipitantly in this manner, but we do think it is reasonable to apply a nuanced view to accept that the government‘s first draft might not be absolute perfection and that it is worth considering the ideas others, and other parties, are putting forward in the House of Commons.
Let me just talk for a moment about the way in which the government has handled this legislation. It responded to a ruling of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, which was handed down on December 19, 2023. As one of my colleagues noted a little earlier in this debate, a deadline was attached for compliance to that ruling by the judge, and a variety of exigencies, including the recent election, nine months ago now, had the effect of pushing back that date. This was a ruling of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, not of the Supreme Court of Canada. I think we should understand that there is a distinction between rulings of lower courts and of the Supreme Court of Canada.
When the Supreme Court rules, it, of course, has nine members. Sometimes they sit en banc, which means all of them together. Sometimes there is an odd-numbered panel of seven. This allows for something very important to happen. Multiple opinions can be expressed, including dissenting opinions. For the question that is before the court, the simple question of whether party A is right or if party B is right, and which of these two interpretations of the law is right on that specific, narrow question, the majority rule prevails, but there are opinions, both of the majority and of any dissenting minority.
There can be more than one dissenting opinion that is filed. We can have seriatim dissents. In fact, we can have seriatim opinions in favour of the narrow point in question, with different reasoning. The reasoning is what is actually valuable. The reasoning is what pushes forward a more nuanced, intelligent and thorough comprehension of the common law or, in the case of constitutional interpretation, the development of our understanding of that statute. It is a really important concept.
That is why we have the Supreme Court. It is why our higher courts have more members than our lower courts, because higher courts are the ones where judicial reasoning is of particular importance, as it lays that ongoing and ever-building framework of improvement in our understanding of how our laws work and how our Constitution ought to be applied.
It is not with any sense of disrespect that I point out that the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, in its ruling, was the ruling of a single judge, one judge, with neither dissenting opinions from other judges, nor concurring opinions, for that matter. It would have been appropriate, I believe, for the government to have made an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada in order to get the reasoning of a larger number of justices. We would not have seen the introduction of new facts. We do not in an appeal case, typically. We would have seen a review of what might be errors in judgment or errors in the understanding of the precedents. That is where the value lies. I think that it was regrettable that the government made the decision to not let this go to the Supreme Court.
Having said that, the government did not take the matter the Supreme Court. It took it to Parliament. It introduced Bill C-3. The bill essentially removes the first-generation limit, introduced by former prime minister Harper's government back in 2009, a model which, with variations, exists for many counties around the world. I talked at length about my mother's side of the family. My father's side of the family comes from Ireland.
Ireland applies a limit. My great-grandfather came from Ireland. His son and his grandson, my dad, would be eligible for Irish passports. I am not, which I frankly regret a little, but it is the way it is. Even if my father had gotten his Irish passport, which he thought about doing, I would not have qualified. That is a reasonable limit. My affection for Ireland is significant. My actual connection to the country is very limited. It is a reasonable limit to place.
There are other countries that do something different. Some countries never get rid of citizenship rights but they are typically countries that do not have that combination of people leaving and people coming from elsewhere, at least to the same degree. Malta, for example, extends it. There are very few people who have immigrated to Malta, although there are many Maltese immigrants. It is a significantly different situation.
The common-sense way in which the opposition parties have proposed to deal with some of this is by proposing a series of amendments. They proposed a change to the residency requirement. The parent applying for Canadian citizenship, who is the descendant of those who have left Canada, should be able to demonstrate a consecutive physical presence in Canada for the same time frame as a naturalized citizen. I think that this is a very reasonable rule for extending, effectively, a form of inherited citizenship to their children and grandchildren.
Other amendments include a citizenship test requirement, similar to what one would face if one was a new immigrant to Canada, and a security screening, to make sure that one has not broken the laws, not the kind of law I mentioned with my great-grandfather but the kind of law that we see with individuals who have committed violent criminal acts in other countries.
I think, as well, that our suggested amendments regarding transparency for the ministry would be very helpful, for a minister to report to Parliament on the number of citizenships granted under the terms of the bill every year. That would be a very helpful thing to see. Likewise, a reporting requirement on revealing security screening exemptions would also be something that should be considered by the government.
