SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 336 - Sep/16/24

Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

Sep/16/24 12:57:04 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-71

Madam Speaker, I want to begin by thanking members in other parties, and in particular the Minister of Immigration for bringing Bill C-71 forward. The hon. member for Vancouver East has been tireless, as have many citizen champions, including, as mentioned by the minister, Don Chapman. The work to restore the rights to lost Canadians is urgent. With all due respect to the minister, I would like to repeat the question from the member for Vancouver East. When might we see this pass into law? It is obviously urgent that it be done as expeditiously as possible, through the House and the Senate.

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Hon. Marc Miller

Sep/16/24 12:57:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is probably a question best— Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Sep/16/24 12:57:45 p.m.
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The hon. minister has the floor. I would ask members to please hold their thoughts.

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Hon. Marc Miller

Sep/16/24 12:57:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as soon as possible, obviously. This question is best answered by the Conservative Party. A lot of us in the House would like to see it approved at all stages and get it enforced, so we can get these rights recognized by Canadians who are waiting, and have waited for a hell of a long time, to become citizens.

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Hon. Bardish Chagger (Waterloo, Lib.)

Sep/16/24 12:58:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I did shout out to the minister, because there seems to be a will to see this legislation advanced. I was yelling out to say that we should call the question. What is clear from the official opposition is that for the Conservative Party of Canada, whether under the current leader or under Prime Minister Harper, there has always been two classes of Canadians and a change that they made left certain Canadians behind. One of the reasons I ran for office was that the Conservatives never wanted people like myself to have their voices heard. I would ask the minister the following. What is it about the legislation and the constitutionality? We know that there have been a couple of rulings. On the comments of Don Chapman, I worked for the Hon. Andrew Telegdi when Don Chapman was leading this charge to ensure that their rights and their abilities were also advanced. It was important that it happen then but it did not, and here we are today. What is the importance of this legislation and is there a willingness to have the question called so we can see the legislation advance as quickly as possible?

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Hon. Marc Miller

Sep/16/24 12:59:19 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, this is fundamentally about rights. The court case that generated this is a pretty short one. I would invite members to take a quick read of it. One of the telling statements by the judge in the case was to highlight the fact that women, in particular, were unduly burdened as to where they would have to decide to have their child, failure of which to have them in Canada would result in the the individuals in question losing their citizenship. These are not faraway examples. My children were not born in Canada. Their next generation could possibly have been in jeopardy. Therefore, it hits home in a lot of ways. It is not about people who have never been to Canada. Obviously, this is about Canadian citizenship; it is not for all. There are tests to become a Canadian citizen. We know, or at least I and my department know, how important it is to ensure there are rigorous rules to decide who becomes a Canadian citizen or not. This is a question of rights, and the court case in question is about women's rights. As Don Chapman said, and as the court said, this will perhaps be the first time where the Citizenship Act is charter compliant when it comes to women.

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Mr. Tom Kmiec (Calgary Shepard, CPC)

Sep/16/24 1:00:37 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-245 Bill C-71 Bill C-37

Madam Speaker, I am glad to be the first member of the official opposition to rise for Bill C-71. After hearing the minister speak, it tells me that he came here unprepared to deal with the substance of the legislation that he himself tabled in this House. First of all, I will debunk a bunch of things that were said that are incorrect. They are not true. If we look at the record, as I said in my question, on February 15 and February 7, 2008, in the original debate on Bill C-37 on the first-generation limit that introduced the rules that existed between 2009 and the end of 2023, when the Ontario Superior Court ruled that there were two charter violations, the Liberals voted for it, supporting a motion to move forward with the legislation at the next stage. They did not do that once such that we could perhaps say they were not paying attention, but they did it twice. They accepted the logic of it. Not only did they accept the logic of it, but there is a report from the 2005 immigration committee that recommended putting something like a first-generation limit rule in legislation. In 2005, former prime minister Paul Martin was in charge, which means there was a minority government and a majority on the committee decided to push forward that recommendation. It was then adopted in 2007 by Diane Finley, the immigration minister at the time. The ridiculous claim that we on this side are taking away rights or that rights are being taken away is absolutely false. All Liberals supported it. In fact, even the NDP supported the motion at the time. There are some members sitting here today who were in their seats at the time they supported the Bill C-37 motion, not once but twice. Let us start with that. Nobody would lose their citizenship through this legislation. That is not what we are talking about. The Conservatives believe that everybody has a right, if they meet the rules, to apply for citizenship, but new rules would be created for citizenship by descent with a substantive connection clause that a judge said was necessary. We disagree with how the substantive connection test is created and what the rules for it are. That is a substantive reason to oppose this legislation at second reading, something that all other parties knew about because, as the minister mentioned, we were going through this during the Bill S-245 debate. I think I have shown that this is not anything new. Other parties supported the first-generation limit at the time. They were all onside to push through Bill C-37. Our belief is that naturalized Canadians like me are treated exactly the same in the Citizenship Act and the law as Canadians who were born here. My children were born here and I am a naturalized Canadian. We are considered generation zero for the purposes of current legislation. I am not the only one saying that. It is a judge saying that. In paragraph 9, he said, “gen zero: the applicants belonging to gen zero are Canadian-born citizens who had children abroad, or naturalized Canadian citizens who had children abroad after their naturalization, and whose children acquired Canadian citizenship automatically by descent.” We are really talking about grandkids. The critical question that government officials have been incapable of answering is about sound logistical planning, the words the minister used just now. As sound logistical planning indicates, when we are passing legislation and proposing it to the House, members in the House should know how many people would be affected by it and how many people would be included, because this is about grandkids who are born abroad to parents who were abroad when they get citizenship by descent. That is the critical question here, and the Liberals have not been able to answer it. They have not been able to answer how many people this would apply to. With all the benefits we give out to Canadian citizens, which Parliament has voted on, such as transfer payments, the ability to travel on a Canadian passport, one of the strongest passports in the world, and the ability to be evacuated from certain countries when there are issues and problems overseas, as we saw during the pandemic, we would think the government would take the summer to do its homework. However, the minister did not do his homework. Instead, he came here to accuse the Conservatives and anybody who disagreed with him and, frankly, did not even read the record from 2008 to know how his own party voted. The Liberals were in support of the same rule that the Superior Court in Ontario found for two reasons is not charter-compliant. That should have resulted in an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. On a matter as important as the Citizenship Act, I would have liked to see the government appeal it. The minister refused to explain to the House why he did not seek that appeal, why he chose not to go forward with it. As found later in the ruling, which I am going to read from partially because I think it is important, one of the reasons that the legislation was found not to be charter-compliant is the bureaucratic incompetence at the immigration department. That is entirely on the back of the minister. He is responsible for the logistical planning, which are his words, to make sure there is no backlog, that applications have the correct information in them and that officials are held accountable. I am going to read from sections 263 to 265 of the ruling, which are different parts. The judge noted: On cross-examination he testified that his source for this information were various unnamed IRCC case managers. However, the information Mr. Milord obtained from these case managers was replete with inaccuracies. With respect to Ms. Maruyama, these include misidentifying the year Ms. Maruyama’s father was naturalized as a Canadian citizen, Ms. Maruyama’s mother’s citizenship, the reason for rejection of Ms. Maruyama’s children’s application for permanent residency.... There were also errors in Mr. Milord’s evidence about how Mr. Chandler’s child acquired Irish citizenship. Paragraph 264 states: I note that in addition to these errors, at the outset of the hearing, I was advised that Mr. Burgess had been told that his child, QR— This is to hide the identity of minors. —had been granted permanent residency or citizenship status. However, counsel for Mr. Burgess was unable to confirm exactly what was going on, because in the mail, the Burgess family had received citizenship documents pertaining to someone else entirely, unrelated to the family or this application. In paragraph 265, the judge found in a very small sampling that there was an error rate of 50% in these particular case files. I think for many of us in our constituency offices in our ridings, about 80% to 90% of the work is immigration case files. I hope members will agree with me that we find them replete with errors time and time again. It was because of errors on the bureaucratic side by the minister and the department he runs and is responsible and accountable for that the judge found there were charter violations. That is not a problem with the original idea that the Liberal Party of Canada supported. I am going to repeat that to them: They supported it not once by accident but twice. They knew exactly what they were doing at the time. The minister talked about the substantive connection test without referring to it directly, saying that there would be a three-year naturalization limit. That is an incomplete statement. It is an incomplete answer. The suggestion to use the same rule that we have for permanent residency is found in three out of five applications for permanent residency to Canada. I do not think that is enough, and I made that case at the immigration committee during the Bill S-245 debate. The reason I do not believe it is enough is the way it is going to be calculated. The rule would be applied if the parent of a child can demonstrate 1,095 non-consecutive days in Canada at any time before the birth of the child. If someone is having children later in life, they would have more time to prove the 1,095 days to pass on their citizenship by descent. If they ever travelled back to Canada, they could obviously give birth to their children in Canada. As a Canadian by descent, they could do that here, and they would have birthright citizenship, just as my children did when they were born in Calgary. All four of them were born in Calgary. For the 1,095 days, we proposed to make them consecutive so that someone could prove a substantial connection to Canada. The Conservatives agreed at committee that three years seemed like a reasonable amount. If someone went through a K-to-12 system or went to school for a few years and then their parents left Canada for whatever reason, such as for work opportunities or take a year off, three years consecutively would be a good demonstration of a substantial connection to Canada. That was voted down by the Liberals. In fact, they voted down nearly all of our amendments. We proposed over 40 of them, and let it not be said that we are unreasonable. We actually voted with the Liberals on 10 of their amendments. We said that we could see the wisdom of them. There are sections in Bill C-71 that we agree with, like treating adopted children of Canadians equally to those who are naturalized or born Canadians. That seems like a reasonable thing to do. For the faster revocation rules for citizenship, if someone does not want their citizenship and wants to give it up, we agree that there should be a simpler process. The example the minister gave is incomplete. The best example to give would be members serving in the Australian Parliament, who cannot be dual citizens. That is directly in their constitution. Certain members here might have Canadian citizenship eligibility by descent, and we do not want to make them ineligible. In my case, I am a dual citizen. I am a citizen of Canada by naturalization and a citizen of the Republic of Poland by birth. They would charge me about $565 to give up my citizenship, and I am not giving up one red cent for that. There are still some red cents in circulation, and I will not pay one red cent to the republic to give up my citizenship. The application is entirely in Polish as well. Our rules for individuals to renounce their citizenship if they do not want it would be much simpler. I find it interesting that the minister did not even know that about his own legislation. We also support another important part, which was in the original Senate bill, Bill S-245. It came from our colleague on the Conservative side, Senator Yonah Martin, who wanted to address 50 months of lost Canadians between 1977 and 1981. We agreed. That is why the legislation came here. At the time, we asked if we could pass it quickly enough to look after the section 8 lost Canadians. We agreed that they should have their citizenship restored because they missed the cut-off date. In fact, one of our members from Saskatchewan almost became one of those lost Canadians. He only found out within a few months that he needed to apply to maintain his citizenship. We agree with the principle that this group of Canadians should have their citizenship restored and protected. The other changes the government is proposing are not what I would call proper logistical planning, to use the minister's term. Why should we believe that the minister is capable of managing the new applications that would result from people seeking their proof of citizenship documents? That is why I asked how many people there would be and how many resources would be needed to process them. Are they in the thousands, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands? Are there more than that? That would be a huge burden on the department. Back in September 2022, the former minister announced that we would have all digital applications. The claim was made at committee, in both public and private, that it would help to reduce the backlog of immigration applications. It has not done that. We are still at over two million backlogged applications in the system, and some of the wait times are just as long if not longer than they used to be for some of the major PR programs. I will read a few of the headlines about this from different commentators and immigration consultants. The first one, by Sergio R. Karas, is from Law360 Canada: “Bill C-71 depreciates Canadian citizenship”. Here is another: “First reading: How the Liberals keep dropping the barriers on who can become a Canadian”. This is by Jamie Sarkonak: “Liberals water down citizenship for grandkids of convenience Canadians”. “Government bill will allow Canadians to pass citizenship rights to kids born abroad” is a Canadian Press article. Here is another one, from Brian Lilley: “Trudeau Liberals making moves to cheapen Canadian citizenship”. Another says, “Canada Introduces New Bill to Restore Citizenship by Descent”. We should go into the provisions on the substantial connection test, about which I have, again, a lot of concerns. At committee, we proposed a change to make it 1,095 consecutive days.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Sep/16/24 1:14:19 p.m.
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I am sorry to interrupt the member. The hon. member for Thérèse-De Blainville is rising on a point of order.

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Blainville

The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Sep/16/24 1:15:13 p.m.
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We were having problems with the interpretation, but I am told that everything is working properly now. The hon. member was reading titles and mentioned the Prime Minister's name. I would ask him to say “Prime Minister” as opposed to his name.

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Mr. Tom Kmiec

Sep/16/24 1:15:13 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-71

Madam Speaker, forgive me for the error of reading the Prime Minister's name into the record. Thank you for reproaching me for doing so. I see that I have about six minutes left to address the backlog of applications at the Department of Citizenship and Immigration. We always forget that it is the Department of Citizenship and Immigration. These are two matters we are dealing with at the same time. If we look at the backlog in the department, we see that it is over two million applications. At the same time, the minister insists that he knows what he is doing. He spends far too much time on Twitter, or X, fighting with anonymous users and others and taking cheap shots at other politicians who disagree with him. That is what he is doing instead of managing his department. On the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, we often see a number of issues. There is a one-, two- or three-year backlog. Sometimes it could even take five, six or seven years. These applications should be easy to process in the allotted time. Let us talk about the commission that is responsible for asylum claims. This is an excellent example of what happened in this country under this government and this minister in particular. Today, the department has a backlog of more than 220,000 asylum claims. More than 300,000 applications are on hold, and the waiting period is three and a half years before a file is reviewed and an answer is given. There is a backlog of 220,000 applications. In 2016, an estimate published online indicated that there was a backlog of 17,000 applications. Under the Liberals, the backlog in the asylum management system went from 17,000 to 220,000, with more than 100,000 applications currently being processed. Some 220,000 people are waiting. These people came to Canada through another immigration program or crossed at Roxham Road. They applied for asylum, for refugee status. One would have thought that the government would have allocated enough resources to manage the number of people in the system in order to protect their rights. That is what the minister says. Every year, the numbers grow. I have them here. In 2022, when the minister took office, there was a backlog of 70,223 applications. In 2023, the backlog was up to 156,023 applications. In July 2024, it was 218,593 applications. Today I received an answer to an access to information request, which I read very closely. It states that almost 18% of people who request an answer to their asylum claim are international students. Their applications are now part of the department's backlog. When the minister is talking about not knowing the numbers so that he could not respond to the question, this is critical to how immigration and citizenship and refugee systems are managed in Canada. The minister does not know the impact of his own legislation. It greatly worries me that he is not aware of the details. We Conservatives had a private member's bill, which was proposed from the Senate side, that offered to fix section 8 regarding lost Canadians. For those 50 months, we were on side. We proposed substantive amendments, once the scope of amendments was expanded, to the substantive connection test, and we proposed to introduce what I think was the most critical requirement, which was to have a police record check, to actually do a security record check. That was one amendment, I will say, that the Liberals voted against, with their allies in the NDP, at committee. We have now seen, over the last six to 12 months, many security issues with different types of visa applicants who have been approved and who have come to Canada. I think the security of Canadians is incredibly important. The integrity of our citizenship system is critical. I do not trust the minister. I do not trust the Liberal Party. I do not trust its ally in the NDP, either, that it would be able to manage the new flow of applications because it just does not know how many people would be eligible, through Bill C-71, for citizenship by descent. As the judge found in his own ruling, the reasons for charter non-compliance were not that there was an overall violation of it but that there was incompetence of the minister and the bureaucracy, which failed to provide accurate information. There were 50% errors in applications being processed: dates were wrong; names were wrong; and some even received a citizenship document for someone who was not even related to the same family. Those are serious errors in administration that the minister should have had fixed. Therefore, we will be opposing this piece of legislation. We will then propose amendments. We are going to put forward amendments at committee to try to fix the legislation, and if we can fix it, then we will revise our position. I think that if we can fix it by providing the substantive connection test, the 1,095 or more consecutive days, we can come to some type of agreement on what Canadians expect. Also, a security record check is an absolute requirement. We already have chaos in the immigration system. The immigration minister and the government he is part of have destroyed the consensus in Canada that immigration is a great thing. I think it is a great thing, but I was sad to see so many Canadians come up to me during door knocking and at town halls to say that they do not agree with it anymore. Therefore, because we cannot trust the Liberals with something as important as our citizenship, we are going to vote against them.

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Ms. Louise Chabot

Sep/16/24 1:15:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we cannot hear the French interpretation.

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Hon. Bardish Chagger (Waterloo, Lib.)

Sep/16/24 1:21:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I found it really fascinating listening to that member's comments. It is interesting that, in Canada, we have an elected House, so Canadians get to choose who they vote for. However, we also have an independent judicial process, and that independent court ruled the Harper legislation unconstitutional on multiple grounds. The member, rather than actually respecting our independent court processes, is suggesting that the government should have appealed that decision rather than give Canadians their rights. Members of the Conservative Party today, no different from those under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, believe that they can pick and choose Canadians' rights. It was wrong then, and it is wrong now. I would like to understand from the member, when he challenges the substantive clause, why he believes a second-generation born abroad should need to do the substantive clause, yet people born prior to that should not. Why does he believe he has the ability to determine who should be a Canadian and who does not have the right to be a Canadian?

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Mr. Tom Kmiec

Sep/16/24 1:22:51 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-71 Bill C-37

Madam Speaker, to the point I think the member was making, nobody would lose their citizenship through Bill C-71. There is no new person who would lose their citizenship. An hon. member: Oh, oh! Mr. Tom Kmiec: Madam Speaker, the member is heckling me now. If she would allow me, I will give a thoughtful answer, as best I can. Her own party voted for this legislation twice, back when it was Bill C-37, the first-generation limit— An hon. member: Oh, oh!

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Sep/16/24 1:23:17 p.m.
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The hon. member has had her opportunity to ask a question. I want to remind members that if they want to have other conversations, they should take it outside so as not to disturb the member who has the floor. On a point of order, the hon. member for Waterloo.

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Hon. Bardish Chagger

Sep/16/24 1:23:32 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I know that I do sometimes speak in the House when it is not my turn, but when I do not speak and I am given that credit, I do not appreciate it. In the case the member referred to, it was actually not me speaking.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Sep/16/24 1:23:47 p.m.
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I am sorry, but the hon. member was having a conversation with someone across the way. I would just ask her to step out and have that conversation, if she wishes to speak, because it does disrupt, as there is an echo in the House; therefore, we can hear what is going on at the other end. The hon. member for Calgary Shepard.

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Mr. Tom Kmiec

Sep/16/24 1:24:03 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-37

Madam Speaker, to continue what I was saying, when we had Bill C-37, the first-generation limit was introduced, and the Liberal Party of Canada voted in favour of those changes, twice. The Liberals cannot now claim that it is a charter violation and that they have changed their minds. They supported it then for the reasons they had, and I do not know exactly what those were, but they did, twice, so it was not a mistake. I believe that with this legislation, the key is what the impact would be on our citizenship system and our immigration system, and how many people it would impact. The minister is incapable of answering, and I think it is a critical question that Canadians need to know the answer to.

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Mr. Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe (Lac-Saint-Jean, BQ)

Sep/16/24 1:24:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Calgary Shepard. We get along very well, he and I. We are able to work together. I think we are both able to set aside partisanship and work on improving bills sent to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, on which we sit. I agree with some of the points my colleague made in his remarks, particularly when he said that the situation at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada is chaotic. This department is probably the most dysfunctional of all the federal government apparatus. On that point, I think we see eye to eye. When he talks about politicians who should stop being aggressive and insulting people on X, I agree with him. I think this is the right way to view things. Here again, I agree with my colleague. As for the bill itself, the only thing I have trouble understanding about the Conservative position, which I respect, by the way, is that my colleague plans to table amendments to improve the bill if and when it is sent to committee. My understanding is that we must solve this problem. We agree on the principle of the bill. Now, it is possible to improve the bill, so why would my colleague not vote in favour of sending it to committee? We will work on these amendments, and then we will vote yea or nay on the bill based on the amendments that will have been adopted.

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Mr. Tom Kmiec

Sep/16/24 1:26:01 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my Bloc Québécois colleague. We work together on the committee as much as we can. Sometimes we are on opposite sides, but I do not make it personal when we have differences of opinion or political differences. It happens. We are in different parties. People in our ridings voted for us because we belong to different parties. The problem is that the last time we studied this issue in committee, we put forward nearly 40 amendments to change various parts of the Citizenship Act, including requiring that the 1,095 days be consecutive. There was also the need to run security checks to be able to say, yes or no, whether any of the applications received by the department raised any national security concerns. The governing party, namely the Liberals, joined the NDP in voting against. For us, that was very important. We see the same thing happening in committee. We will vote against the bill at second reading.

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Ms. Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East, NDP)

Sep/16/24 1:27:12 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-245

Madam Speaker, the truth of the matter is that the Conservatives actually filibustered Bill S-245 for 30 hours at committee. Even after it had gone through the committee and had been referred back to the House at third reading, they traded down that bill in the order of precedence eight times so that we would not get to debate it at third reading in the House and vote on it. The leader of the official opposition's office wrote to family members who were concerned about their rights being taken away and about their constitutional rights being violated stating, “Conservatives will...preserve what it means to be a citizen of this country and fundamentally what it means to be a Canadian. Please be assured we will continue to support and advocate for this legislation to reach its third reading in the House of Commons.” That is in reference to Bill S-245. This is blatantly false. If that is the case, why did the member for Calgary Forest Lawn trade the bill on the order of precedence eight times so that it cannot come to the House for a third reading debate?

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