Citizenship and Immigration committee  Sure. Over the past few years we've seen more than a 500% increase in the citizenship processing fee. The justification, of course, is that it will put money into the system to cover processing costs, so it's a money issue. But there are significant long-term problems with that.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We want to use all sorts of avenues to punish them, but it's a slippery slope, because we have a good criminal justice system here. It has procedural safeguards. When you put the criminal punishment on top of the immigration or citizenship punishment, you violate a lot of those p

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would just add that as a matter of principle, you're always questioning the significance of the consequences of taking away these rights. If those consequences are really material—and I would argue, in the case of citizenship as a meta-right, that they are really fundamental to

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Right. I would quickly add to my colleague's submissions that it's a seductive notion that they're criminals, they're bad people, and we want to punish them.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. I'll dive straight into the issues. Firstly, it's our position—and we support Mr. Green's eloquent arguments on this—that an overly rigid application of the physical residency test would leave otherwise deserving applicants unfairly barred from citizenship. We see the