So V ote

Jun/12/23 7:51:42 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-245

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to the member's speech, and I find it a bit rich for the member to say that hybrid is problematic because of the issues around interpretation. I noted last week that, when we were doing votes in the House, many of the Conservative members were out in the lobby, just steps away from the chamber. Instead of coming in to do the vote, they were doing it through hybrid. Worse still, they were not using the proper headsets, hindering the ability of the interpreters to do interpretation. Even though the Speaker repeatedly told them to either give a thumbs up or thumbs down for their votes, they refused to listen and talked anyway without the proper headsets. Now they are saying that it is not working. The member talked about resources. I sit on the immigration committee. If we want to talk about wasting resources, do members know what the Conservatives did? They wasted 30 hours debating Bill S-245, on lost Canadians. so we could not get on with business. Talk about wasting resources. On the question of hybrid, I have to say this. One would think, the way the Conservatives are talking, that the only mechanism is to use Zoom to do our business, and that is not—

217 words

Hon. Michelle Rempel Garner

Apr/24/23 6:33:27 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-245

Madam Speaker, I would just note that, when the Liberal-NDP coalition was trying to shut me down on this, I was barely a minute into my speech. These members need to let me get to the point I am trying to make, instead of just trying to silence me, as the government is doing with its censorship bills. This is what we are dealing with here, being silenced. Instead of debating the budget, as we are supposed to be doing, the NDP put something forward called a concurrence motion. That is what we are debating right now. The concurrence motion is to deal with a very tricky bit of Liberal-NDP machinations, which is actually really harming people and delaying the help that Bill S-245 would provide. Instead of debating the budget, we are debating a concurrence motion on something that happened, and I want to break down what happened. Bill S-245 is an act to amend the Citizenship Act. It went through the Senate. It was introduced by Senator Yonah Martin to deal with a very narrow scope, dealing with something called “lost Canadians”. It was very narrow in scope, and because it was so narrow in scope, it sailed through the Senate, on the understanding that it would stay narrow and it would go through the Senate. It came to the immigration committee. What ended up happening was that, first of all, before moving this in the immigration committee, the member for Vancouver East went and did a press conference, pre-positioning herself to do this. The Liberal-NDP coalition got together and did two things. It moved a motion to extend amendments to the bill by 30 days, which delayed action for people who would have been impacted by the bill, and then it also moved a motion to extend the scope of the amendments that would be debated well past what was in the bill itself. For those who are watching who may not understand what this does, it allows members, in a private member's bill, which is supposed to be very narrow in scope, to put forward any amendment they want. What that does, in effect, and the reason why I do not think we should have done that, is forces the bill to go back to the Senate yet again. This is going to delay justice for the people who we had non-partisan, all-party agreement to deal with. That motion itself, to do what the NDP-Liberal coalition wanted to do, passed in the citizenship committee with its support. Even though it passed, it introduced this concurrence motion in the House of Commons today, and it is doing what? It is eating up time to debate the deficit budget issue because it doesn't want to talk about it. If it is saying, oh no, nobody should talk about this and then we go back to the budget, we actually gave it an opportunity to go back to debate. My colleague from Calgary Shepard rose to move a motion about an hour ago to move on from the debate, yet it voted against that. That is the agenda here. The agenda here is to curtail debate on the budget while it is supporting the passage of Liberal censorship bills Bill C-11 and Bill C-18. These are the types of tactics that we are going to see over and over and over again from this Liberal coalition because it does not want to stand up for what Canadians need, either in the budget or in Bill S-245. When the Liberal and the NDP coalition decided that it was going to delay the passage of the bill through the committee and delay justice for people who were in that bill, who we all support justice for, and open up the scope of the bill, it forgot one thing. It forgot that, if it opened up the scope of the bill for its one issue, which the senator and the Senate did not want because they agreed to sail it through on a small amendment, it forgot that maybe other people would want to put forward amendments too, such as me and my colleague from Calgary Shepard. It then had the audacity and the gall to stand in this place during this debate, which it did not need, and which it put forward to waste time on debate on the budget because it does not want to talk about how much deficit spending money it puts forward, which has caused an inflationary crisis in Canada, all while it is putting forward censorship bills. Because it does not want that debate to happen, it puts this debate forward. Now it is saying that it is because the Conservatives want to put forward amendments to the Citizenship Act. Well, guess what? What is good for the goose is good for the gander. If the NDP-Liberal coalition, which is supporting censorship bills Bill C-11 and Bill C-18 to shut down conversations in the Canadian public, are using a concurrence motion to shut down debate in the House of Commons, we are absolutely right that Conservatives will be putting forward motions beyond the scope of the bill. It is as simple as that. If the NDP-Liberal coalition wants a statutory review of the Citizenship Act, then let us giddy-up and do it. I have a lot of great ideas, which I will definitely be bringing forward. This does nothing to help the people who could have been helped if the NDP had just let this go. The other thing I can show is why we should not be delaying this bill and why the scope of the amendment should not be put through. It is not just because it delays justice for people within this bill; it is also because the NDP is propping up a government that has refused to do this in its own government legislation. If the government had actually wanted to do anything else, it has had nearly eight years to put forward, through its own government legislation, what my colleague from the NDP wants to do. The NDP is actually in a coalition with the government. I do not know if the NDP wants to go to an election, but I know the Liberals do not. Considering what the polling numbers show today, I do not think there are a lot of people on the Liberal backbench who would want to go to an election today. The NDP could be using that coalition agreement to say that, within a piece of government legislation, we need to do this. However, they do not actually have the leverage they claim to have over the government, so what they are trying to do is sneak through committee what they cannot get the government to do in the House. To people who are watching and are impacted by this bill, I say that the Liberals delayed the passage of the bill because they did not understand what they were doing. That is brutal. It is terrible. I cannot believe it. I cannot believe they would not do what we all agreed to do in a non-partisan way, as the Senate did, which is to get Bill S-245 through. Today, we are debating the concurrence motion and the substance of the motion, and we are using House of Commons time that we could have used to debate the budget. The Liberals moved this concurrence motion even though the bill has already passed through the immigration committee. They actually ate up hours of critical, precious House debate time, which we could have used to talk about the budget. This is a path to ruin that the government, the Liberal-NDP coalition, put us on by inflationary, deficit spending in the budget bill. That is critical. People cannot eat. People in Vancouver, the member's home riding, are eating out of dumpsters because of the inflation crisis and the affordable housing crisis. Today, she moved a motion that would essentially cut off debate on the budget today, even though it has already passed through the House of Commons. If my colleague wants to open up the scope of the bill so that it is going to have to go back to the Senate anyway, through her actions, not mine or those of any of my Conservative colleagues, then we will be putting forward other amendments as well. One of the amendments I would like to put forward, given that we are now reviewing the citizenship bill, has to do with the fact that the Liberals said they were going to do away with the need to have in-person citizenship ceremonies. This is something that has received wide, cross-party condemnation. I have an opinion piece published in the Toronto Star on April 10. The title is “I'm horrified by the suggestion of cancelling in-person citizenship ceremonies”. It goes through quotes from non-partisan people, including Adrienne Clarkson, a former governor general; a Syrian refugee; and others who are saying the government should not be doing away with the requirement for in-person citizenship ceremonies. I would like to amend the Citizenship Act to ensure that, rather than doing away with the ceremonies because the government cannot figure out how to get services to where people want them, the government would actually be required to make sure new Canadians have the right and the ability to go to an in-person ceremony, take the oath with fellow new Canadians and be welcomed into the Canadian family in such a glorious way, instead of doing what it is doing now. Members in this place have used up precious House time. I am speaking here because members of the Liberal-NDP coalition voted against a motion to end debate on this and move forward. They gave me an opportunity to speak. For once, instead of speaking on Bill C-11 or Bill C-18, the censorship bill, I am, they are darn right, going to speak in this place. I am certainly also going to be putting forward amendments. I do not know if they have forgotten how this place works or have forgotten that each of us has our own individual rights to work within the process that they put forward. They stand up and say that one person can put forward an amendment that is completely out of scope, but they are going to use that to justify delaying justice for the people in the bill and use that to delay debate on the government's inflationary budget deficit crisis bill. Therefore, yes, I am going to put forward amendments that make sense for my constituents. My constituency is a diverse community in north central Calgary where the Citizenship Act matters. If the member for Vancouver East is going to use her Liberal-NDP coalition position to try to get the Liberal government to extend the scope of the bill and, in doing so, delay justice for people, while delaying debate on the budget, then yes, I am going to be putting forward amendments to amend the Citizenship Act. To the people and stakeholders watching this, this bill could have been through our committee already. It could have been sailing through the House. However, what is the Liberal-NDP coalition doing? Instead of the government putting forward its own legislation to address any additional issues, the NDP is proposing a motion to extend this by another 30 days, plus have a statutory review of the Citizenship Act. It is plus, plus, plus. They did not think through the process. I am sure that when they were talking to stakeholders, they did not talk to them and were not honest with them about what could or might happen if this path were undertaken. If I had been meeting with those stakeholders, I would have said that this is something we need to lobby the government for in different legislation, because the senator who put it forward in a private member's bill had agreement among her peers on a narrowly defined scope in the bill in order to get it through and get justice for people. If we do what the member for Vancouver East is suggesting, we would delay it for another 30 days. Then it would probably have to go back through the Senate. The Senate takes a lot of time to look at things. Then it would have to come back here again. That would be months and months of delay, when it could have been done maybe before June. Now we do not know when it is going to be done. That is why I opposed the approach in committee. Frankly, it is why I oppose using all this time in the House to continue a debate that the NDP-Liberal coalition settled at the immigration committee, an unwise course of action, only to vote against it. They just voted, an hour ago, against moving forward. Also, as we saw at the start of this debate, time after time my colleagues were getting interrupted by points of order, with members saying we should not be allowed to raise the issue of the budget. Absolutely we should be able to raise the issue of the budget, after the NDP-Liberal coalition voted against a Conservative motion that would allow us to move forward to debate the budget. However, here we are, and if members have given me the opportunity to speak by not moving on that, absolutely I am going to speak about it. Of course, the Liberal-NDP coalition does not want to talk about that inflationary budget, that big, expensive nothing burger that would cost Canadians more, that would lead to food inflation and that is not addressing the core issues facing this country, because it is an embarrassment. They do not want an election because they are all afraid of losing their seats. Canadians are on to them, just as I am on to them right now. I am tired of this. I am tired of these games. We did not need to have this debate in the House. This could have gone forward to the immigration committee. What we have done, in effect, is delay justice for the people in Bill S-245, delay debate on the budget and, in doing so, delay justice for all Canadians, who are dumpster diving in Vancouver East to eat and who continue to not be able to afford places to live. This is a hard truth. It is an inconvenient truth for everybody in this place. However, it is time coalition members are confronted with it. There are consequences for the actions of the coalition and its backroom dealings. They lead us into places like this, where they make mistakes on parliamentary procedures and where they do not explain the implications of their actions to stakeholders who are advocating for change in this bill. Again, the government could have done this.

2523 words

Apr/24/23 6:08:40 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-245

Madam Speaker, I just heard the member say again that he is in support of ensuring the lost Canadians issue is addressed. The Conservatives say that, and I hope it is actually true. If it is true, we have an opportunity to do it. It is a rare moment when all the parties in this House say they want to do this, and we can seize this opportunity to make those necessary amendments, through Bill S-245, and also indicate to the Senate that this is the direction we want to go. I believe Senator Yonah Martin, who has done this work and put this bill before us, would support it if the Conservative members would join the NDP, the Bloc and the Liberals to say that we need to go out of scope to address the lost Canadians issue once and for all, particularly because of the first-generation rule cut-off the Conservatives brought in, which hurt so many families and which we need to get rid of.

170 words

Mr. Brad Redekopp (Saskatoon West, CPC)

Apr/24/23 5:58:50 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-245

Madam Speaker, I want to start by letting you know that I am going to be splitting my time with the member for Calgary Nose Hill. I am here to talk about Bill S-245. It is not something I planned to do today, and I am sure most members in the House had not planned on doing this, but here we are, and I want to make sure that people are clear on what it is we are talking about. This is a private member's bill that has come from the other place, the Senate. Senators, just like members of Parliament, are able to produce legislation called private members' bills, so this is the legislation that has come from Senator Yonah Martin from the other place. It is her intention and her idea. It is something that she wants to see done. That is what we are talking about here. It is now in the House and we are working with it. The subject of this is the “lost Canadians”. We have heard many different explanations of this, but many people may not quite understand what that is. Essentially, our Citizenship Act has some flaws in it that cause certain people to either lose their citizenship or to not get it in the first place. They create these little categories of people who, through no fault of their own, do not have access to Canadian citizenship. There have been attempts over the years to fix some of these problems. Many of them have been fixed over the years, but there are still some groups of people who are still considered lost Canadians and are not being treated the way they should be, as they are unable to receive Canadian citizenship status. Over the years, there have been bills brought attempting to plug those holes and fix those gaps to ensure that those people who deserve to be Canadian citizens are, and this bill is one of them. There is a particular group of people, a fairly clearly defined group of people, that it seeks to remedy. It is not trying to fix everybody, and that was part of the point initially. I also want to mention that often times when we think about people who are not citizens of Canada, we immediately think of immigrants. This does not necessarily mean immigrants. There are in fact many people who would not consider themselves immigrants who fit into these categories of lost Canadians. They are just Canadians who do not have their citizenship. There are different categories of these. Part of the point here is that trying to catch them all, and fix all of the holes in the legislation in one shot, is very difficult. It has been attempted over the years and, so far, it has been unsuccessful. We believe that a better approach is to target a very specific area, a specific group of people who are lost, and at least fix those, and then if there are more holes, we would fix those holes, rather than trying to do everything at once. This is a simple bill to fix one of those groups. This is the same as Bill S-230. In a previous Parliament, the bill was studied in the Senate. It went to committee, was looked at carefully, and was sent here to the House to be worked on. Then an election happened, so that legislation never saw the light of day. Therefore, the attempt to rectify the citizenship situation of those lost Canadians failed. It failed because it did not get through the process in time before an election was called. That is very significant because right now we are in another minority Parliament, which means an election can happen at any time, so we do not have a lot of time. Time is not our friend in this case; we need to move to pass these bills quickly. The same senator, Yonah Martin, has now put forward the same bill, Bill S-245, which has also gone through the Senate. This time in the other place it was not reviewed or studied because it was exactly the same as the previous legislation. Therefore, the Senate decided to fast-track it, move it through the other place and then to the House here so that we could deal with it. That is where it is now. It is here in the House and we are dealing with it now. I just want to mention this with respect to the sponsor of the bill, Senator Yonah Martin. She was able to get it through the last Parliament. It took a lot of work and effort to bring everybody together to agree on things, but she was able to get it as far as it got. Unfortunately, it was not far enough. However, she was able to get it here quicker, which is a testament to her ability to work across party lines and with other people in the Senate, because she knew that time was the enemy and the biggest problem that the bill faced. The assumption that went along with that, as she got it to this House, was that it was the same bill as last time. From the Senate's perspective, this bill is the same one that it studied before and therefore it did not need to study it again. That is important and we should remember that. Why are we here today? We are studying this bill at committee. We are getting very close to the end. There has been a lot of debate and talk about it. We have heard many witnesses speak to this bill. Indeed, there are many groups of people who represent these groups of lost Canadians, because there are numerous groups of lost Canadians. Everybody wants to solve this problem. The Conservatives want to fix this problem, as do the Liberals and all of the other parties. However, we want to fix it; we do not just want to talk about it. We do not want to study it to death, but fix it. We were able to get a lot of testimony and hear a lot of things to understand what the scope is and how it is going to work. So people understand, what happened toward the end of this process is this. With respect to private members' bills, we have to stay within the scope of the bill. We cannot add things that go beyond the original intent of what, in this case, Yonah Martin had. There must be some ideas out there to do that, to go beyond the scope of this bill, because the government and the NDP teamed up together to bring this to the House now so that it can authorize the committee to go beyond the scope of the bill. That is what we are here talking about today. This is really significant, because the originator of the bill, in this case Yonah Martin, had an intent for this bill. She came to committee and spoke about the bill and what her intent was. She was specifically asked if she would allow for amendments to the bill that would expand its scope. She was very clear on that. She said that she was willing to accept amendments that would clarify the bill, but she was not willing to accept amendments that would expand it. The reason she said that was very simple and makes a lot of sense. Why would she accept amendments to clarify the bill? She wants the bill to be successful. She wants to plug that hole for this group of lost Canadians once and for all, so in her mind, if her words were not quite correct and somebody had a better idea to make those words a bit better, she was all ears and willing to do that. It only makes sense, because we want to get the wording correct. We have an army of lawyers in this place who are able to interpret our laws and statutes who I am sure had ideas and suggestions to clarify those things. Why did she not want to expand its scope? It is very clear. She knows that if the scope gets expanded it creates a whole new pathway for this bill. First, it goes beyond what she had intended, which makes it more complicated, which means more work and more understanding is required. It goes from a simple one-page bill to a multi-page bill that has implications on all kinds of things. Most significantly, should it come through the House and be amended and expanded in scope, then it ends up back in the other place. Why did it pass through the other place very quickly? Because it was the same bill that had been studied in the previous Parliament. It had been looked at and studied in the Senate. The senators had their chance to talk about it and tweak it. That had all been done. The only reason they expedited it through this time was because it was exactly the same as the last time. If we put two and two together, if it goes back to the other place having been changed, what is going to happen? The senators would say that it is not the same bill and would want to know what happened. Senator Martin would have to explain that it has changed and grown in scope and they would say that they need to study the bill and that it is going to committee to be studied. With the way timelines work around here, we would be adding months to the process. The enemy of this bill is time, so we would clearly be doing exactly the opposite of what we should be doing, which is adding time to this bill. We would be adding complexity to it, which means it would have to be studied at committee and looked at again. At the end of the day, there could be an election. We all know that an election could happen at any time. It could happen over this issue today. I heard members saying that might happen, so we never know what could happen. We never know what the day is going to bring. Time is the enemy of this bill, and this process would be adding a lot of time to it. That is the whole point of why Senator Martin wanted this to be done. As I close, I want to highlight two things. First, we are all in support of fixing these problems for lost Canadians. There are no members on either side of the House who do not want to fix this law and correct the problem there. That is a given. Second, we oppose the idea of the government taking a private member's bill, expanding it and putting things in there that were never intended to be there by the member who raised the bill. That is something we are very concerned about. We do not want to set a precedent. We do not want to allow the government to come in and pull up someone's bill and do that. It was great to speak in the House today.

1885 words

Ms. Jenny Kwan

Apr/24/23 5:55:18 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-245

Madam Speaker, I want to go back to the comment about Don Chapman. Don Chapman came to committee and said very clearly that he wanted to see the scope of Bill S-245 be expanded to incorporate amendments for lost Canadians and the first-generation cut-off rule the Conservatives brought in be rectified so that the families of lost Canadians would not be lost anymore and be supported through this process. The Conservatives say they support what Don Chapman would like to see done. Would they then pass this expansion of scope request in this House and not filibuster the work that needs to be done at committee?

109 words

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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All Topics

Apr/24/23 4:33:45 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-245

Mr. Speaker, a situation with the cut-off rule for first-generation born Canadians has been in place for 14 years now, and many families have suffered during this period. It is true that the government could have brought in legislation to make that change, but that has not happened. With that being said, we now have an opportunity before us through a Senate bill, Bill S-245, to fix the lost Canadian rules once and for all. If we all care about this issue as we say we do, should we not then seize this opportunity to expand the scope of the bill, fix the lost Canadian community that has not been addressed in this bill and fix those issues once and for all?

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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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Ms. Ya'ara Saks

Apr/24/23 4:28:35 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-245

Mr. Speaker, to wrap up my comments, I will share the last thoughts of the stakeholder who wrote to the committee. She said: If you can see us as the Canadians we are then I believe this issue can be dealt with more clearly. This cannot be an issue where members let their views, beliefs or desires regarding immigration cloud an issue that is very clearly about citizenship policy.... We are Canadians since birth looking to return home, not immigrants desiring to move to a new country. We may be lost, but we are proud and hopeful. See us for who we are so that you may help us. Kindest Regards, Jennifer Johnnes. I think the words speak for themselves and show how deeply painful the subject of lost Canadians is and how traumatic it is for them. I would add that the amendments in 2009, in essentially creating a situation where families would be separated, where they could not be reunited and where almost a two-tier system of who is Canadian has been created, is something we should be addressing. While Senator Yonah Martin may have put this bill forward with one intention, I think it is a unique opportunity for us to correct the path to make sure everyone who is eligible for Canadian citizenship by birthright, by the right of their parents and by the right of their families to raise their children here or their desire as Canadians to raise their children here is contemplated. We must take this up with the utmost urgency. I humbly ask members of the House to consider the importance of expanding Bill S-245 so that it can be improved and ultimately better meet its objective of addressing more lost Canadians.

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Ms. Ya'ara Saks (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development, Lib.)

Apr/24/23 4:13:35 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-245

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be here today to speak to the motion to concur in the 15th report of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, with regard to expanding the scope of Bill S-245, which seeks to address lost Canadians. While the bill is well intended in its aim to address the remaining lost Canadians, as drafted, it falls short of correcting what I see as the key challenges on this file. As a matter of fact, it is something that I spoke to in our first debate on this bill when it came to the House. Before outlining the concerns that I have with Bill S-245 as written, I will briefly touch on the circumstances that led to the emergence of lost Canadians. The requirements and complexities of the first Canadian Citizenship Act of 1947, and former provisions of the current Citizenship Act, created cohorts of people who lost or never had citizenship status. They are referred to as “lost Canadians”. To address this issue, changes to citizenship laws that came into force in 2009 and 2015 restored status or gave citizenship for the first time to the majority of lost Canadians. Before the 2009 amendments, people born abroad beyond the first generation, that is, born abroad to a Canadian parent who was also born abroad, were considered Canadian citizens at birth, but only until they turned 28 years old. This is sometimes referred to, as my colleague mentioned previously, as the “28-year rule”. If these individuals did not apply to retain their citizenship before they turned 28, they would automatically lose it. Some people were not even aware they had to meet these requirements and lost their citizenship unknowingly. These people who lost their citizenship because of this rule are often referred to as “the last cohort of the lost Canadians”. Since we began this debate in the chamber, many of them have written to me and other members of the immigration committee. To prevent future losses, the age 28 rule was repealed in 2009. At the same time, the law was changed to establish a clear first-generation limit to the right of automatic citizenship by descent. This means that, today, children born outside Canada to a Canadian parent are Canadian citizens from birth if they have a parent who is either born in Canada or naturalized as a Canadian citizen. Unlike the former retention provisions of the Citizenship Act, those children do not need to do anything to keep their Canadian citizenship. Those born in the second or subsequent generations abroad do not automatically become Canadians at birth. This first-generation limit is firm on who does or does not have a claim to citizenship by descent. I would like to lean into this with a personal experience I have had with this, with my own two daughters. As is well known, I am a citizen of two countries, born Canadian but raised in Israel. At a certain point in my early adulthood, I chose to return to Israel to be with my family there. I got married and had my eldest daughter. She was born there, and upon her birth I applied for Canadian citizenship for her. Subsequently, we returned to Canada, in approximately 2008, and my second daughter was born here in Toronto, where we live today, in York Centre. She also obviously has Canadian citizenship, having been born here. However, if my eldest daughter chooses for some reason to live elsewhere in the world, such as in Israel, where she is currently living this year, and if she has children, my grandchildren will not be Canadian, even though she has lived here the majority of her life. Although her core ties to Canada are clear and well committed to, she has lost the ability to confer that citizenship onto her children as a result of the Bill C-37 change that was made under the Harper government in 2009. Ironically, if my younger daughter, who was born here, were to have children abroad, they would automatically be Canadian, as she would be able to bestow upon them what I was able to bestow upon her. Herein lie some of the problems we have been discussing as colleagues in this House. I can appreciate the work of Senator Martin in wanting to narrow it down to a specific group of individuals, but, frankly, as my colleague from the Bloc said, this is about dignity, compassion, and a sense of heritage and connection that is being stripped away from many, so I will continue to talk about this. There are many people who are born abroad or adopted from abroad to a Canadian parent beyond the first generation. These individuals are not citizens, but still feel they have a very close tie to Canada, just like my daughter does, and also see themselves as lost Canadians. Currently, these individuals can only become Canadian citizens by going through the immigration process. That is to say, they must first qualify and then apply to become permanent residents. Then after the required time, they must apply to become citizens. In some specialized cases, people born abroad in the second generation are eligible to apply for a grant of citizenship, but only in exceptional circumstances. Turning back to Bill S-245, though it is well-intentioned as written, it does not address some of the remaining lost Canadians. Bill S-245 is targeting only the lost Canadians who lost citizenship because of the age 28 rule for those who were born abroad after the first generation and had already turned 28 years old and lost their citizenship before the law changed in 2009. The bill as written excludes people who applied to retain citizenship but were refused. This is an issue because those who never applies to keep their citizenship would have their citizenship restored by the bill as written, while those who took steps to retain their citizenship but were refused would not benefit from this bill. Recognizing that the age 28 rule was problematic for all, it is my hope that the committee will consider amendments to restore the citizenship status of all those impacted by the former age 28 rule, which has since been repealed. The committee heard compelling testimony from witnesses that precisely highlighted the problem with excluding one of the cohorts impacted by the age 28 rule. As I understand it, the committee for immigration also received dozens of written submissions from stakeholders both inside and outside of Canada. As a matter of fact, some of those stakeholders have also written to me in light of my previous interventions in the chamber on this matter. It would seem that there were many people watching Bill S-245 closely, like me, as parents. What is interesting is that almost all of the written submissions point out the challenges that exist for people born abroad in the second generation or beyond. Given the call from stakeholders, I feel strongly that the committee should be empowered to at least consider solutions for some of the other people who consider themselves to be lost Canadians. This is the subject of today's debate. Does the House support the request from committee to expand the scope of the bill to see what could be done for the other lost Canadians? I think we must support this. My story with my daughters is really not unusual for many of the constituents I represent in York Centre whose children go back and forth between Israel and get married here or in the United States. The Jewish community has very close cross-border ties, and these families, like many Canadian families, sometimes have some fluidity due to faith, culture or language and have other strong connections. They are watching this closely as well. That is why I think we should be supporting this, because those who were born to a Canadian parent abroad beyond the first generation, including those adopted from abroad, are not Canadian citizens but feel they should be because they have a strong connection to Canada, similar to my older daughter. To address these other lost Canadians, the bill could be amended by introducing a pathway to citizenship for people in this exact situation. I was really disappointed to hear about the reaction by Conservative members when the motion to expand the scope of Bill S-245 was presented at committee. They are, of course, entitled to their opinion, but rather than give serious or substantive arguments about why the scope should or should not be expanded, some members took the opportunity to make threats about what they would do if the scope is expanded. This is actually very disappointing. The member for Calgary Nose Hill stated: ...do we really want to have the immigration committee all of a sudden drop into a broader review of the Citizenship Act? If we are opening up this bill beyond the scope of what is here right now, I will propose amendments that are well beyond the scope of this bill. There are a lot of things I would like to see changed in the Citizenship Act. I will come prepared with those things, and we will be debating them. I really take issue with this approach. I am not a member of the committee so I do not know what confidential amendments the members have already put on notice for the bill, but the Conservative member for Calgary Nose Hill absolutely does not have that information. We do know that. When she made these comments, she was fully aware of what members were going to propose. Furthermore, the member for Vancouver East was pretty clear in her comments on the motion that she was not trying to make changes to some completely unrelated section of the Citizenship Act. As a matter of fact, she said that today as well. It is quite something for a member to threaten to overwhelm committee processes by trying to propose amendments that are, in her words, “well beyond the scope”. I am disappointed, and it is unfortunate that the Conservatives are closed off to the urging they heard from stakeholders and that all members heard at committee from witnesses. I am not alone in having been put off by that fact, and I want to read into the record a communication that I understand was sent to committee members after the motion to expand the scope was moved at committee last Monday. I think it has a lot of meaning for all of us listening to this debate today. It says: Dear Members of the Citizenship and Immigration committee of the House of Commons, First I would like to thank the committee for taking the time to reflect on and discuss Bill S-245. Although the current language of the bill will have no effect on my status as a Lost Canadian, I am hopeful that this bill will help to pave the way for a path to citizenship for myself and others who are lost. My story is like that of many other Lost Canadians. I live a life unfairly exiled from the country that my mother lives in. She lives alone in Haida Gwaii, and as she grows older, I wonder how I should be able to care for her, when it is illegal for me to live in the same country as her. I will not at this time speak to the immense pain, suffering and grief I live with every day. I am not writing to you to tell you another story of a Lost Canadian. I am here instead, asking that the language you use while discussing Canadian citizenship be more sensitive and fair to those with ancestral ties to Canada. I do not believe it is the members intention to further marginalize those Canadians who have been stripped of their ties to Canada and it is for that reason that I make this plea to you all. Time and time again, when discussing citizenship and lost Canadians, House members use the words “immigrant” and “citizen” as if they are interchangeable. The intent of Bill S-245 has nothing to do with immigration, and everything to do with citizenship. As a Lost Canadian, when I am referred to in the same sentence as someone looking to immigrate I am astounded. I am heartbroken. Above all, I fear that if we are constantly grouped together with those individuals looking to immigrate to Canada, that we will never be seen for who we really are—individuals who have been unjustly stripped of our birthright to Canadian Citizenship. From an outside perspective it seems that the members inability to separate these two concepts—citizenship vs. immigration—while trying to address the issue being studied in bill S-245 is creating divisiveness over expanding the bill to make it fair and just for those of us who have been unfairly stripped of, or denied our birthright to Canadian citizenship.... It is disingenuine to speak of this as if it were an immigration issue. [Such language]...continues to reinforce the emotional damage and trauma we experience daily living in exile. It goes on: The intent of bill S-245 is to extend Canadian citizenship. To threaten amendments to Bill S-245 such as mandating in person citizenship ceremonies, is not only ridiculously out of scope for this bill, it is insulting to the masses of Lost Canadians simply looking to return home. I understand that the complexities surrounding this issue of Lost Canadians and second generation born abroad Canadians make the situation difficult to understand. But until the members of this committee, those with the most influence on legislation regarding citizenship can themselves make the distinction between “Citizenship” and “Immigration” there will be no clear path forward for those of us who are lost. So I beg of you. Lost Canadians are not immigrants. We are Canadians. The language used by the members should reflect that. The words spoken in this moment have much weight for those of us who are suffering. Please see us for who we are so that you may more fully open your minds and hearts, and let us in.... If you can see us as the Canadians we are then I believe this issue can be dealt with more clearly. This cannot be an issue where members let their views, beliefs or desires regarding—

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Context: House Hansard - 180 - Apr/19/23

Apr/24/23 3:48:04 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-245

moved that the 15th report of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration presented on Tuesday, April 18, 2023, be concurred in. She said: Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to this important motion before the House, the concurrence motion. What we are dealing with is essentially seeking authority from the House to expand the scope of Bill S-245. Bill S-245 is a Senate bill that is before the House to address the situation of those who are commonly known as “lost Canadians”. Bill S-245 would amend the Citizenship Act to allow Canadians who previously lost their citizenship due to the age 28 rule to regain their citizenship. The age 28 rule means that second-generation Canadians born abroad were subject to the laws of citizenship under the former section 8 of the Citizenship Act, which required them to apply to certify their citizenship before they turned 28 years old. In 2009 the Conservatives repealed this section through Bill C-37. However, the legislation did not restore citizenship to those who lost their citizenship prior to 2009. This oversight created major problems for many Canadians, as they somehow could lose their citizenship status as they turned 28. Many of them actually did not even know that was the situation they were faced with. It was only when applying for their passport, for example, that they realized they had lost their citizenship. Bill S-245 seeks to fix the age 28 rule. However, the rule does not address other situations where Canadians have lost their citizenship. The archaic provisions of the Citizenship Act have resulted in many other lost Canadians, and New Democrats seek to actually fix this problem. Mr. Speaker, 14 years ago, Bill C-37 passed in this House and came into force, and as a result of that, many people lost their citizenship rights. In fact, it created a scenario where Canada's Citizenship Act, for this group of lost Canadians, in many ways was not charter-compliant. For decades some Canadians have found themselves even to be stateless due to a number of these archaic immigration laws. In 2007, the UN's Refugees magazine listed Canada as one of the top offending countries for making its own people stateless. In 2009, as I mentioned, the Conservatives said that they were going to fix the lost Canadian issue with Bill C-37. Sadly, this did not happen. Worse still, the Conservatives created a brand new group of lost Canadians, and today we have an opportunity before us to fix that. Bill S-245, the bill that was introduced by Senator Martin, is now before the committee for citizenship and immigration, and the bill aims to address this group of lost Canadians, lost due to the age 28 rule. I want to be very clear that the NDP wholeheartedly supports ensuring those who one day woke up and found themselves without Canadian status are made whole. This absolutely needs to be done. However, it is the NDP's strongest view that the scope of Bill S-245 is too narrow. The NDP wants to seize this opportunity to fix the lost Canadian issue once and for all. Currently, there is a large group of Canadians who are deemed to be second-class citizens, due to the Conservatives' first-generation cut-off rule brought on by the Harper administration in 2009. Bill C-37 ended the extension of citizenship to second-generations born abroad. By stripping their right to pass on citizenship to their children if they were born outside of Canada, the Canadian government has caused undue hardship to many families. For some, it means separating children from parents. Some even find themselves stateless. I spoke with Patrick Chandler. He is a Canadian who, while born abroad, spent most of his life in Canada. As an adult, he worked abroad, married someone from another country and had children. He was later offered a job in British Columbia. When he moved back to Canada, he had to leave his wife and children behind because he could not pass on his citizenship to his children. He had to go through an arduous process to finally reunite with them a year later. There are many families being impacted in this way, and it is wrong. We should not put Canadians in those kinds of situations, yet here we are and that is what they have to suffer through. There are many families being impacted. Another family faced with this situation is the family of Emma Kenyon. In fact, Emma lived here in Canada, as did her husband. However, they worked abroad and they met abroad. They had a child abroad. That child is stateless because neither Emma nor her husband has status in that country. They are now in a situation where they have a stateless child born to a Canadian. This is so wrong, and we need to fix this problem. Immigration officials said to them at the time that, before their child was born, they had a choice. They could actually travel back to Canada and have their child be born in Canada. This, of course, did not make any sense. It was during the COVID period, when, basically, it was unsafe for her to travel. If Emma did travel back to Canada, she would be without a family doctor or a gynecologist to care for her pregnancy. None of that made any sense, but that is what she was told to do. Of course, she did not risk the birth of her child in that situation. She did not risk her own health either. As a result, her child was born abroad and is now in a stateless situation. It should never have been this way. Families are so frustrated with these archaic immigration laws, especially with the stripping of the rights of immigrants having children born abroad. Those rights were stripped because of the Conservatives’ Bill C-37. Families are now taking the government to court to address this inequity. The Conservatives deemed first-generation Canadians born abroad to be less worthy and less Canadian, even though many had grown up in Canada. The implications are so serious that people are taking the government to court. At the citizenship and immigration committee, when the opportunity arises, I will be moving amendments to ensure that this does not happen to anyone else. The NDP amendments would ensure that first-generation, born-abroad Canadians would have the right to pass on their citizenship rights to their children based on a connections test. They would also retroactively restore citizenship to persons who have not been recognized as citizens since the second-generation cut-off rule was enacted in 2009. The same principles would apply to adoptees as well. We need to make sure that individuals and families that adopt children are not going to be caught in this bad situation. For those who do not wish to have citizenship conferred upon them, upon notification to the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, these changes would not apply to them. This will mean that people like Patrick, whom I mentioned, and people like Emma and her family would not have to suffer the challenges they face as a result of Bill C-37’s stripping of their rights. In addition to the amendments related to the first-generation cut-off rule, I will also be moving amendments to symbolically recognize those who died before citizenship was conferred upon them. For example, many of Canada's war heroes fought and died for Canada. However, they were never recognized as Canadians. The NDP amendments would also honour them and recognize them as citizens, retroactive to birth. The situation with what I call “war heroes” is this. The first Governor General of Canada, in 1867, right after Confederation, said that Canadians were a new “nationality”. However, according to Canada's immigration laws, Canadian citizenship did not exist prior to January 1, 1947. That means that no soldiers who fought and died for Canada in battles like Vimy Ridge or D-Day are deemed to be Canadians. Bill C-37 was supposed to fix this, but it did not happen. Don Chapman, who has fought for so long on the issue of lost Canadians and trying to rectify those concerns, indicated that “the government has confirmed they're leaving out all the war dead [pre-1947]. So, the war dead in Canada were really just British. We might as well just scratch the Maple Leaf off their headstones.” Symbolically recognizing those who fought for Canada and ensuring that they are recognized as citizens would have zero implications, no legal consequence whatsoever or liability for the government. It is really a strictly symbolic gesture, and it is an important one, especially for family members of loved ones who fought and died for Canada. I see some of these family members on Remembrance Day every year. Many veterans went to war and fought for Canada, and never came back. We should remember them as Canadians. Beyond this, there are a couple of other categories of lost Canadians, who, due to one of the discriminatory rules, such as the gender discrimination rule that existed in Canada, were not recognized as citizens. The NDP's amendments would aim to fix that as well. Suffice it to say, there are long lists of people who have been hurt by this set of rules, and successive governments have said they would fix it. However, it never came to be. Now we have a chance to actually do that work. It is important we do that work now. I fear that the Conservatives would not support this effort. At committee, when the senator and the sponsor of the bill were before us at committee to talk about this bill, the Conservatives indicated they wanted to just ensure the bill would be left as is and address only the 28-year rule, not deal with the other categories of lost Canadians. To me, that is wrong. Their argument is that it is too complicated, that we do not have time and that if the matter goes back before the Senate, then an election might be called and the bill might just die. That is, of course, if the Conservatives want that to happen. We could actually work together, collaboratively, to say that we are going to fix this problem once and for all, for lost Canadians. We want to make sure that people like Emma Kenyon, whose child was born stateless, would never be in that situation. We could actually make that happen by amending the bill. I know that Conservative members, even their leader, would say that they support the immigrant community and that they are there for them. If they are there for them, first, I would say that Bill C-37 should never have stripped of their rights the immigrants who became Canadians, such as myself. If I had a child born abroad, my child should have citizenship conferred upon them. The Conservatives took that away. We have a chance today to fix that, to say that immigrants, such as myself, would be able to have the same rights as those who were born in Canada, and be able to pass on their citizenship rights to their children born abroad. To be sure that there is a connection between individuals like that, we could put forward a connections test, such as, for example, having been in Canada for 1,095 days. This happens to be the same number of days required, through the Citizenship Act, for people getting their citizenship. We could put in provisions like that to ensure there is a clear connection between them and Canada. There is no reason to say that we are not going to do any of this and that we are just going to strip them of their rights and not recognize them. Let us fix this once and for all.

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Context: House Hansard - 179 - Apr/18/23

Apr/19/23 3:22:11 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill S-245

It being 3:21 p.m., pursuant to order made on Thursday, June 23, the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion to concur in the 14th report of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration concerning the extension of time to consider Bill S-245. Call in the members.

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Context: House Hansard - 179 - Apr/18/23

Apr/18/23 10:08:10 a.m.
Watch
Re: Bill S-245

Pursuant to Standing Order 97.1(3)(a), a motion to concur in the report is deemed moved, the question deemed put and a recorded division deemed demanded and deferred. Pursuant to order made on Thursday, June 23, 2022, the recorded division stands deferred until Wednesday, April 19, at the expiry of the time provided for Oral Questions.

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Mrs. Salma Zahid (Scarborough Centre, Lib.)

Apr/18/23 10:07:08 a.m.
Watch
Re: Bill S-245

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour of presenting, in both official languages, the following two reports of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. In relation to Bill S-245, an act to amend the Citizenship Act, granting citizenship to certain Canadians, I have the honour of presenting the 14th report. The committee has studied the bill and, pursuant to Standing Order 97.1(1), requests a 30-day extension to consider it. I also have the honour of presenting the 15th report. The committee has studied the bill and recommends to the House that it be granted the power during its consideration of Bill S-245, an act to amend the Citizenship Act, granting citizenship to certain Canadians, to expand the scope of the bill such that the provisions of the bill be not limited to an application to retain his or her citizenship under section 8 as it is read before April 17, 2009.

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Context: House Hansard - 128 - Nov/16/22

Context: House Hansard - 128 - Nov/16/22

Nov/16/22 3:29:17 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill S-245

I declare the motion carried. Accordingly, the bill stands referred to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.

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