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Context: House Hansard - 183 - Apr/24/23

Mr. Tom Kmiec (Calgary Shepard, CPC)

Apr/24/23 4:05:10 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for moving concurrence on a report during a meeting of the immigration committee right now to discuss a draft report on a different matter. At committee, when there was a discussion on this on the public record, I had moved an amendment that suggested we give ourselves more time to consider new amendments and give the clerk enough time to provide us these amendments in both official languages so we could consider the expansion of the scope of what that would involve. Why did the member vote against it and why she did not want to have all the amendments presented that would be out of scope beyond the original intent of the bill?

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Context: House Hansard - 183 - Apr/24/23

Mr. Tom Kmiec

Apr/24/23 4:06:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is a response that would make sense if the amendments were all in scope. Some amendments turned out not to be in scope, and that is what members of the Conservative Party saw. This was a Senate bill that came from Senator Yonah Martin, a Conservative senator who had discussed this matter with members of the Conservative caucus. Therefore, we did not need to make amendments to the bill, because we agreed with the intent of Senator Yonah Martin, for a very fixed group of lost Canadians, to expedite a bill through the Senate and the House of Commons. The Senate was kind enough to do it without committee review, and what is happening right now at committee and with this concurrence report is that we are going far beyond what the senator intended with the original bill. Why did the member want to abridge the process and basically vandalize Senator Yonah Martin's original intent for the bill, which would have expedited fixing a problem for a certain group of lost Canadians? There was always the opportunity to present new legislation, whether it be government legislation, a new Senate bill or even a private member's bill that could have come from the member. Why were those options not considered?

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Context: House Hansard - 183 - Apr/24/23

Mr. Tom Kmiec (Calgary Shepard, CPC)

Apr/24/23 4:30:36 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-245

Mr. Speaker, I do not have a specific question for the member. It is more of a commentary on what I heard her read to the House to provide the perspective of her party. I will mention to those listening at home that the member is a parliamentary secretary. The government has known for almost eight years that there were these different groups of lost Canadians. There is always the ability to table government legislation, and I think we will find that a lot of members of this House are willing to consider plugging holes in legislation. That is exactly what Senator Yonah Martin has been doing in two Parliaments. She was able to convince the Senate to move Bill S-230 through the Senate with one committee hearing to consider the exact same bill we have today, Bill S-245. She was able to do so because she is widely considered to be a non-partisan member and widely considered to be well informed on the subject of the Citizenship Act. Members at that committee voted against my amendment to suggest, if we are going to go beyond the scope, that we give ourselves more time to consider what groups of lost Canadians we could consider and what different situations lost Canadians might find themselves in. I will tell the parliamentary secretary that the Liberal benches voted against my amendment to the motion that brings us here today to debate this concurrence report. This is about process. We do not know when the next election will come in a minority Parliament, and it very well could be that lost Canadians will have to wait again for another Parliament before this particular group of lost Canadians will have their citizenship restored to them, as it should be. This is not a question about whether it is the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do. It is about process. We have a bill and an opportunity to fix something for a particular group of Canadians. We all agree on that, and by doing this, the bill will be sent back to the Senate, and the Senate will thereafter make further considerations and call more witnesses to the committee. That is simply the legislative process. I know that is difficult for the government to understand. I know it is difficult to have such a thin legislative agenda. However, this situation could have been avoided.

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Context: House Hansard - 183 - Apr/24/23

Mr. Tom Kmiec

Apr/24/23 4:38:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the member could perhaps answer the following question: Since we know that Bill S-230 passed in the previous Parliament and was debated at Senate committee, where witnesses came forward from a government department, why has the government not acted on this? It has been over two years that it has known there are several groups of lost Canadians affected. Why has the government not tabled government legislation through the House of Commons, or starting in the Senate, that would have closed up all these different situations for them? The government did not act when it should have; instead, it waited for a senator on the Conservative benches to fix a problem that the Liberals admit exists. Why did this occur?

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Context: House Hansard - 183 - Apr/24/23

Mr. Tom Kmiec (Calgary Shepard, CPC)

Apr/24/23 4:41:31 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-245

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to be joining the debate on this bill. I want to begin by thanking my constituents again for returning me to Parliament to serve them, to speak on their behalf and to bring the voice of Calgarians here to Ottawa, to our national Parliament. Every day, I think about how lucky each and every one of us is, all 338 of us, to be able to represent constituents in the House of Commons and work on their behalf. I also want to start by saying that I am a Canadian who was born overseas; I happen to be one of those who were naturalized back in 1989. I was able to share that story when I was doing outreach activities on the Island of Montreal. I also talked to many new Canadians about their experiences of coming to Canada. I reminded them all the time that anyone could become a member of Parliament if they make the effort, tell the truth and have the work ethic and dedication. Representing people in this country in a legislative body is a great privilege, and we should never forget that. I want to go over a few points very quickly, just to give an outline of the trouble I have with what is happening today with this concurrence of a report coming out of the immigration committee. There is the issue of timing and how we have come to this point, where the vote would now be necessary. I want to talk about the mover of this Senate bill, Senator Yonah Martin of British Columbia. I want to talk about Senate Bill S-230, the original piece of legislation, and how Bill S-245 is basically the exact same bill. I also want to speak briefly to process. This is not an issue related to the substance. I think many people agree on the substance; of course, Conservatives agree because this is a Conservative legislative initiative. It is very simple to understand why Conservatives, for example, would not do something like move amendments to a bill being proposed by a Conservative. It is because we all agree with it. We went before our caucus. We had a presentation. Of course we agree with it; it is a Conservative senator proposing a Conservative idea. That idea is the rightful restoration of Canadian citizenship to a particular group of Canadians, and we are talking about a small group that is affected. The bill is very simple. It is all on one page. It is a simple idea that would address a specific group. This does not mean that others do not have a case for it to be restored. There is a legislative case for it to be done. However, this particular bill has been in the works in two minority Parliaments now to try to fix it. As we know, minority Parliaments are unpredictable, despite there being an NDP-Liberal coalition. Here, we have a government and an opposition party, and we do not know where one begins and the other one ends. We do not know when there could be an election; that would wipe out all the legislative initiatives being considered by the House and by the Senate. That is exactly what happened to Bill S-230. When the election was called on August 15, 2021, it wiped out all the legislative initiatives that were under way back then. Bill S-230, dealing with these lost Canadians, had already gone through the Senate. It had one meeting of consideration, with expert testimony being provided by government officials; this was useful in understanding that the contents of the legislation were correct and would in fact fix the situation that we are facing. We heard new testimony and new consideration on Bill S-245. The timing is the issue that I am hung up on. I do not know when an election could come. I want to expedite a bill like this, with no changes, in order to consider new legislation. The House is always free to do that. Any member of the House or any senator could table a private member's bill. In fact, senators can now legislate faster than we can, which I think is wrong. I hope some government members would agree with me on that. It is a separate legislative idea. Maybe there could be changes to the Standing Orders someday. I know there is at least one member from Winnipeg who would agree with me that members of the House of Commons should be the ones legislating the most often, and senators should not do so as often or as quickly. Now we have a lottery system, and the Speaker drew the numbers. I am going to remind the Deputy Speaker of this, because I think I drew third from last when he was doing the draw. I really think there should have been a recount. I see another member from Montreal, from one of my alma maters, Concordia, saying that she drew a much better number than I did. Timing is an issue in this matter. This is a group of lost Canadians who could have their citizenship restored. They would be made whole. If we made no amendments to the bill, once passed through the House of Commons, it would receive royal assent from the Governor General and be made law. Any amendments we make at committee would then return to the House, and any report stage amendments would delay the passage of the bill. The bill could then go again for another set of reviews. I am sure that senators, when they agreed to pass this bill on an expeditious basis, were passing the original bill, Bill S-230. They were passing a bill they had already considered and debated. They are going to consider the debate that took place in the House. They are going to review why, for example, government officials before the committee in the House of Commons provided different information than some other government officials, though some of them were the same, at the Senate committee two years ago. They will wonder why the advice was slightly different and why they now have a problem with some of the wording in Bill S-245. They say it does not address the issue as well. When I looked at the titles of these government officials, they are the exact same positions. Some people have been promoted and some have moved to different positions. I am sure senators will review the bill. That would be months of extra waiting. As the Senate considers the bill, it will have more witnesses come before the Senate committee, and then with whatever potential amendments the Senate might have, it will send the bill back to the House of Commons. I know I am supposed to call it “the other place”, but I feel Canadians at home should know that this might delay and potentially kill the bill. The bill may not become law if this does not get done. How did we get to this particular situation? We have a terrific vice-chair on the immigration committee, the member for Saskatoon West, who has been negotiating with the other parties in good faith. It is what I hope the government is doing during the public service strike by PSAC and at their negotiations at the table. The member has been negotiating in good faith and providing information to other parties, such as what our voting position is, what our concerns are and what type of subamendments we would consider. We were considering some amendments that would strengthen some of the ideas we had heard and had talked about before the committee. The motion that was passed at committee, over our objections, broadens the scope beyond section 8 amendments to Bill S-245. The way I interpreted the motion was that it would mean anything in Bill S-245, the Citizenship Act, and that would be concurred in on a vote in the House of Commons. This sounds to me like a statutory review of Bill S-245, so anything in the Citizenship Act could be done. There are many things I have heard in my travels across Canada in meeting with both new Canadians and people from families that have lived in Canada for generations. They have issues with the Citizenship Act, such as how citizenship ceremonies are organized, and whether they are done in person or virtually, at a click. Some of those are also around the rules of specific lost Canadians. Is it right to put citizenship ceremonies on certain holidays, which were maybe not as major 40 years ago? Those are all issues that members should be mindful of. When reading this motion, and I am not burdened by a legal education so I read it like a layman would read it, with the words as they are, and it says that it would go beyond section 8, which means that anything else in the Citizenship Act should be eligible for an amendment. We have an opportunity to help lost Canadians. We also have an opportunity to ensure there are no future lost Canadians, who might have missed a citizenship ceremony because of a holiday, travel or any number of other reasons. We have come here because other parties have not been forthcoming in explaining their position. At committee, I moved a very reasonable amendment that would have provided more time for to consider new out-of-scope amendments. We have no in-scope amendments because we agreed with the contents of the bill. It would have been good to have more time on out-of-scope amendments, and then we could have provided the amendments. We could have all had time to consider them within our caucuses. That is what our side does. We have a fulsome debate in our caucus where our members of Parliament and senators come to an agreement on different amendments that we might consider, especially if they are major amendments, such as this seems to be, a statutory review of the Citizenship Act. We can now take a moment to talk about the mover of this bill, Senator Yonah Martin. I think many members of the House of Commons, and I hope of the other place, the Senate, would say that she is a very non-partisan member, a member who is able to work with all members, regardless of political affiliations, on any number of issues. She has a big heart for the Korean-Canadian community and for the battle of Kapyong. She is mindful to remind us of the battle of Kapyong and how important it is to Canadians of Korean heritage every single year. She has been of huge assistance not only to Conservatives, but also to Canadians of Korean heritage all over Canada, by connecting them with their civic officials, with Canadian political and civic life, and with community organizations. She has a bill, which she successfully negotiated through the Senate with no amendments. That is unusual. For many of us, when we put together private members' bills or motions, there is always that potential for amendments to come forward that we were not aware of, or were not considering. This is a member who, at committee, specifically asked that we not make amendments because of the timing issue I mentioned right at the beginning. This is why I want to bring it up. She specifically said, when asked, that she did not want an expansion of the scope of the bill if it would delay the bill. That is what would happen here. There would be a delay of the bill. She offered a solution, which was new pieces of legislation. The government can always table government legislation to help these Canadians, which they have identified through our witness process, through the submissions the committee received. That would be entirely okay. We could consider the merits. The House of Commons has expedited bills in the past. We just did it last week. Portions of the budget were expedited through the House of Commons. It is possible to do these things, especially when there is consensus and we work collaboratively, which I heard a parliamentary secretary talk about. Many members on that committee will agree that our vice-chair and the Conservatives work collaboratively. We were doing that when this was moved. We were working on a draft report in a committee, and at the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration no less. We are more than happy to do that. The immigration committee has done a lot of work exactly in that manner, collaboratively, by everybody being upfront about the positions they will be taking and the concerns we have with amendments and different policy issues, as well as where we are coming from. That is another one. I wanted to make sure I brought up Bill S-230, which was the original version of the bill, in the previous Parliament, because I want to highlight the fact that, the committee on Bill S-230 in the Senate had one meeting to consider the details of the bill. We are going to be adding on basically new sections on lost Canadians. What I have found about the Citizenship Act, and I know many members will agree, especially those on the immigration committee, is how complicated it is. It is easy to make a mistake on dates, years, months, days and specific words, where we could have individuals lose their ability to pass on their citizenship to their children or grandchildren or not be able to retain it in cases of marriage. I was born in Communist Poland, a country I always say does not exist anymore. It is a footnote in history. As a Canadian who was not born here, I know that the Citizenship Act is something to be mindful of. All my kids were born in Calgary, so they are not affected directly for things like the first generation rule, but others are. I absolutely recognize that, but there is an opportunity to legislate. Another senator could put forward another Senate bill to address individuals, and we could again have an expedited debate to push it through the House if we could get to the terms and the words we all agree on. Like I said, in Bill S-245, there were government officials who came before the committee in a previous Parliament to say that this wording is the exact wording to address the issue the senator is concerned about. The same government officials, at least with the same titles from the same department, said it actually needs to be changed because it might not do what one says it would do. Now we are left with not knowing what types of amendments are going to be brought forward at the committee if this concurrence of the report passes of the motion that came out of the immigration committee. We just do not know. Nobody knows now what amendments will be brought forward, except for the mover of the amendment, who will be at the table behind closed doors, potentially in camera, considering these amendments. It will hopefully all be done in public. It is important to remember none of the parties will be obliged to provide any new amendments out of scope to be considered. Like I said, there are lots of different situations we could look at. I always have a Yiddish proverb to share. I was in Montreal at a synagogue on Saturday, a very observant one, and there is a great Yiddish proverb: Hope for miracles, but do not rely on one. It is unpronounceable for me in Yiddish, but it is indeed a good one. I always hope for miracles. I hope we can come to some type of consensus that this bill should be expedited in its current form. I want to vote for it the way it is right now, and I think those on my benches want to do the same thing. We want to help these lost Canadians and restore, rightfully, their citizenship. There is an opportunity to help others, and that is what I hope this place would be good at. I hope it would be able to come to a consensus on new pieces of legislation that address certain things. I am serving in my third Parliament, and I think this would set a bad precedent. To go into another member's bill, and over their objections, say that we are going to change their private member's bill or their Senate Bill, the idea they put forward, is a bad precedent. I know it has happened off and on in the past 10 to 20 years. In those particular cases, the individual members have brought it up to me that it should not have happened that way. I really believe that for members who have an idea that they are bringing forward, we should honour their requests and have a simple up or down vote. Even Senator Yonah Martin said that, if there are particular technical amendments to the way this legislation is worded that keep the intent and the principle she is trying to address, which is helping this particular group of lost Canadians have their citizenship regained, which is in the summary that is provided for the bill, and it uses the term “regain”, then she was okay with that. However, what we have talked about so far, and what I have heard from the parliamentary secretary and the member of the New Democrats, are things that are potentially far out of the scope of the original intent and principle of the bill. Here I have concerns. I have expressed those concerns. I have made forceful promises. I intend to keep my forceful promises. I have done so at other committees, which I have been on, whether it be at the PROC committee, where I remember serving with other members to ensure that the intent of motions and bills was retained. Members would have a straight up or down vote on particular subjects, and that made it very clear what we were voting for and against. Again, I see this as an opportunity. We do not know when the election could come. I do not want to send this back to the Senate. The Senate already has had its say on the matter. It has reviewed this piece of legislation. What I want to do is expedite this bill. I was ready to do that at the first meeting on Bill S-245. We could have maybe considered some particular amendments that were perhaps on the edge of what would be permissible. Looking to my vice-chair, I think it is fair to say that we were willing to consider them. We had that conversation with the Liberal benches, and we were forthcoming with what our ideas were, what our concerns were and where we wanted to go. My expectation was that we gave it due consideration. We had received valuable insight, information and ideas from Canadians, both overseas and here, who had expressed concerns with different groups of lost Canadians. We could have addressed those in other pieces of legislation, and then a senator could take up the case, or a member of any party could take up the case in a private member's bill, although probably not me, because, like I said, the Speaker drew me third from last, I believe. I still remember that, so I will probably not be one of those members. The House can work collaboratively. I will give another example. On bereavement leave, the Minister of Labour was kind enough to work with me before Christmas, and this was 2021, to insert part of my private members' bill on bereavement leave straight into Bill C-3 and then expedite it through the House. To the parliamentary secretary's saying that they were hoping we could work collaboratively, well, of course we can. There is even an example where we have done that. It was our shadow minister for labour at the time, the member for Parry Sound—Muskoka, who did it. It can be done, when people come in good faith at the negotiating table and we hammer out a deal. That deal was done before Christmas and Canadians in federal jurisdiction had bereavement leave provisions provided to them. Those types of situations can happen. I call them legislative miracles, getting back to my Yiddish proverb. Legislative miracles can happen when people want to make change. That was a private member's bill that likely would have never passed. It had drawn such a high number that it would not have been able to pass. I would not have been able to have the opportunity to have it debated. With that said, I have laid out my case of why we should vote down this report, and I move: That the House proceed to Presenting Petitions.

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Context: House Hansard - 183 - Apr/24/23

Mr. Tom Kmiec

Apr/24/23 5:03:42 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, I have to ask for a recorded division then.

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Context: House Hansard - 183 - Apr/24/23

Mr. Tom Kmiec (Calgary Shepard, CPC)

Apr/24/23 5:49:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member misunderstood what the sponsor of the Senate bill had suggested at committee, which was that, while the principle is a good one and should be investigated further, there are different ways to regain Canadian citizenship. Someone could have a grant of citizenship; they could have citizenship by birth in Canada; and they could have citizenship passed on because they have a substantive connection to Canada, like parents or grandparents who are Canadian. There are situations in the Citizenship Act, because there are multiple versions of the Citizenship Act that have been changed over many decades. Every time we think we have plugged a hole, we usually create new exceptions, but the mover and sponsor of this Senate bill is very specific in that she was okay with changing the wording in her bill, and the current group of lost Canadians would be addressed. However, any new lost Canadians would have to be addressed in new legislation.

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Context: House Hansard - 183 - Apr/24/23

Mr. Tom Kmiec

Apr/24/23 5:51:15 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, of course, that is not what the member is talking about here. The member is talking about going procedurally against the wishes of the mover of a piece of legislation that has wide support in the Senate and that has broad support in the Conservative caucus as well. If she wanted to fix it 14 years ago, that particular member has had ample time to propose a private member's bill to address those issues or to convince the government, which she belongs to and is in the same caucus basically as a coalition, to do so. She could have done that at any time in the last decade-plus. Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

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Context: House Hansard - 183 - Apr/24/23

Mr. Tom Kmiec

Apr/24/23 5:52:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is the matter. That is the question. Senator Yonah Martin has been working with the particular gentleman the member referred to on this piece of legislation to address a particular group of lost Canadians who, we can all agree, have a very legitimate case for having their citizenship restored so they can regain their citizenship. As the member said, using exactly the right term, the Citizenship Act, because of the way it has been drafted over many decades, has become a Byzantine piece of legislation. Every single change that we make, dates that are changed or moved from one decade to the next, has a big impact. The first-generation rule that was introduced was meant to address a particular policy issue that existed at the time. I think we have to be mindful, when we make quick changes to legislation as important as the Citizenship Act, that it should be primarily done through government legislation. What we are talking about here is a small group of lost Canadians who need to have their citizenship restored quickly.

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Context: House Hansard - 183 - Apr/24/23

Mr. Tom Kmiec

Apr/24/23 5:54:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I entirely agree with the member. They are delaying debate on the budget implementation act, which is supposed to be the keynote piece of legislation of any government. It has all of its spending and policy measures in it. I would be embarrassed too if I was tabling a $40-billion deficit after promising $30 billion, which should be embarrassing as well, but is now $40 billion more, deficits as far as the eye can see, and now we have this concurrence debate that was started just as the immigration committee was sitting down to consider a report that is now going to be delaying further the debate of the budget implementation act. The situation could have been avoided. The parliamentary secretary who spoke in the House before me mentioned that we should work collaboratively. That is what we are looking forward to doing, but it did not happen because of the governing party.

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Context: House Hansard - 183 - Apr/24/23

Mr. Tom Kmiec

Apr/24/23 5:56:07 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member knows that when the committee was considering this particular motion that has now been brought to the House, I offered an amendment that would have given about two and a half more weeks for new amendments to be tabled before the committee, those amendments that would be out of scope. I will remind the member that she voted against my motion when we could have had those extra amendments that were out of scope to be considered. The NDP did not want to see what other potential amendments there would be. Conservatives had no amendments because we agree with the substance of this piece of legislation, with the words that were introduced by the Conservative member in the Senate, Senator Yonah Martin, who had worked with Don Chapman on this particular group of lost Canadians. She is saying accurately that Don Chapman would like it to be expanded to others, and that could be done in government legislation, in private members' bills or in other Senate bills.

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Context: House Hansard - 183 - Apr/24/23

Mr. Tom Kmiec

Apr/24/23 5:57:49 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands mentioned before how Byzantine parts of the Citizenship Act can be. It is difficult for me to answer that question from the member for Battle River—Crowfoot because it is just that complicated. There are so many exceptions, going back to 1977, of how different groups of Canadians are treated with respect to whether they can pass on their citizenship or they cannot pass it on and how we treat members in the military but also how we treat diplomats who work in the foreign service on behalf of Canadians. This is where we run into a great risk that this bill will not pass in this Parliament and it will be dropped off the Order Paper again because there will be another federal election called.

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