SoVote

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

Apr/24/23 3:14:56 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-27

The question is on the motion. Pursuant to Standing Order 69.1, the first question is on parts 1 and 2, including the schedule to clause 2 of the bill.

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The Speaker

Apr/24/23 3:28:02 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-27

I declare parts 1 and 2, including the schedule to clause 2, of the bill carried. The next question is on part 3 of the bill.

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The Speaker

Apr/24/23 3:40:13 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-27

I declare part 3 of the bill carried. The House has agreed to the entirety of Bill C-27, an act to enact the consumer privacy protection act, the personal information and data protection tribunal act and the artificial intelligence and data act and to make consequential and related amendments to other acts, at the second stage reading. Accordingly, the bill stands referred to the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.

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The Speaker

Apr/24/23 3:41:03 p.m.
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I wish to inform the House that, because of the deferred recorded divisions, Government Orders will be extended by 25 minutes.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Apr/24/23 3:41:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8)(a), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's responses to eight petitions. These returns will be tabled in an electronic format.

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Hon. John McKay (Scarborough—Guildwood, Lib.)

Apr/24/23 3:42:09 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the third report of the Standing Committee on National Defence, entitled “A Secure and Sovereign Arctic”. Prior to asking that the government respond, I want to compliment the committee on how well committee members worked together to arrive at this report.

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Mr. Ali Ehsassi (Willowdale, Lib.)

Apr/24/23 3:42:47 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-281

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 13th report of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development in relation to Bill C-281, an act to amend the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Act, the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act (Sergei Magnitsky Law), the Broadcasting Act and the Prohibiting Cluster Munitions Act. The committee has studied the bill and pursuant to Standing Order 97.1(1) requests a 30-day extension to consider it.

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The Speaker

Apr/24/23 3:43:20 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-281

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 26, at the expiry of the time provided for Oral Questions.

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Hon. Bardish Chagger (Waterloo, Lib.)

Apr/24/23 3:43:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, today, we celebrate Vaisakhi on the Hill. We had the final prayer of the Akhand Path that commenced on Saturday. This is the continuous recitation of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji. To all who celebrate, I want to wish them a happy Vaisakhi. With that, I would be honoured to present, in both official languages, the following reports of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs: the 34th, 35th, 36th and 37th reports of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. The committee is requesting an extension for the consideration of objections to the reports of the federal electoral boundaries commissions from Quebec, Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario. The committee is requesting that the deadline be extended to June 9. Mr. Speaker, you have responded to confirm that, if the House is not sitting when the reports come back, you will ensure that members receive those reports. That will help with the due diligence that was needed to have concurrence. Pursuant to Standing Orders 104 and 114, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 38th report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs regarding the membership of the committees of the House. To speed things up, I will do them all at once.

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Hon. Bardish Chagger (Waterloo, Lib.)

Apr/24/23 3:46:47 p.m.
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If the House gives its consent, I move that the 34th, 35th, 36th, 37th and 38th reports of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs be concurred in.

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The Speaker

Apr/24/23 3:47:06 p.m.
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All those opposed to the hon. member's moving the motion will please say nay. It is agreed. The House has heard the terms of the motion. All those opposed to the motion will please say nay.

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Ms. Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East, NDP)

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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Ms. Andréanne Larouche (Shefford, BQ)

Apr/24/23 4:03:55 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech. Ultimately, this bill is about dignity. The issue is simple. It aligns with action taken in 2005, 2009 and 2015. As such, it is the logical next step on the way to showing these people some humanity and restoring their immigrant status.

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Ms. Jenny Kwan

Apr/24/23 4:04:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank Bloc members for their kindness and understanding on the issue, because they are exactly right. Stripping immigrants of their right to pass on citizenship to their children born abroad is wrong. It creates a second class of citizens, and it is wrong. By doing that, we are breaking up families; families are being separated. Can members imagine a Canadian's child born abroad being stateless? That is the reality people are faced with, and it should not be that way.

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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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Ms. Jenny Kwan

Apr/24/23 4:05:42 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is because committee members had the time to do exactly that. That is exactly what I did. I tabled a bunch of amendments that I wanted to see adjusted and amended in this bill, worked with legislative counsel and tabled them with the committee's clerk in time for the deadline established for all committee members. The Conservatives, of course, could have done that, but they did not; they chose not to. However, that was their choice, not my choice. I did the work and met the deadline. All committee members could have done the same.

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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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Ms. Jenny Kwan

Apr/24/23 4:07:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, when Senator Yonah Martin intended to table this bill on addressing the age rule, the “28-year rule”, I did actually have conversations with the senator and indicated that it would be really important to address other lost Canadians as well. I know that Conservative members, including this member, have had conversations with people like Don Chapman and others to talk about the implication of leaving out the lost Canadians, Canadians such as Emma and others like her whose families have been broken apart because of this situation. Families need to leave their children behind because they do not have Canadian status. This is wrong and we need to fix this. Certainly, I raised this issue with the senator. I raised it with the Conservative members too, by the way. They seemed to be okay with it, and all of a sudden they are not okay with it. I am of course reminded of the fact that it was the Conservatives who took away those rights to begin with, and maybe they are sensitive to that. We should actually fix this problem and put the people's issues before us to make sure families that have been broken up and separated no longer need to face that situation. We should not do that. That is why I am moving these amendments, which would be out of scope. That is why I am seeking the House's authority so the committee can move forward in addressing amendments out of scope.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Apr/24/23 4:09:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to be consistent on the issue of concurrence reports that come up when we could be debating, in this case, budgetary measures. It is not to take away from the importance of the issue, but I do have a question more so of the principle of when a member wants to move forward amendments. For example, when one brings forward legislation, whether it is private members', a resolution or a government piece of legislation, there are rules in place to ensure the initial intent and scope are not being changed. In good part, this is because there is a great deal of consultation that has been done in advance from the department and the different stakeholders. I am wondering if my friend could provide her thoughts. When we look at changing the scope of things, it really dictates a different perspective that needs to be explored before any sort of quick decision. I would like her thoughts on that.

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Ms. Jenny Kwan

Apr/24/23 4:10:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, of course I have been working in collaboration with government members on this, including the minister's office, because the situation is such that the lost Canadians who are impacted by these rules are suffering. They are suffering to the point where people are in such distress. Can one imagine having a newborn baby to two Canadian parents who is stateless? That is the reality they are faced with. There were witnesses who came before committee, and the witnesses all said that we need to fix this. We need to make sure these lost Canadians are made whole. At committee, I was very open and forthcoming in indicating that this is what we need to do and that amendments need to be brought forward to address this. We then talked about some scenarios, about how these amendments could address some of these issues and what that could look like.

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