Hon. Sean Fraser, P.C., M.P., Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship: Thank you so much for your question, and to you and Senator Jaffer for the advocacy on this particular issue. Frankly, though I don’t have notes in front of me, I would push them aside dramatically if I did and speak as a human being. It is an injustice to see someone who has had the state placed in charge of their care, who believes they are a citizen, who has grown up in our country and who has no ability as a child in care to have pursued citizenship themselves to face the kind of circumstance that you have outlined.

Frankly, I think we have some policy work to do to fully understand the proposed outcomes that are in the Senate public bill that you have identified. There is also a suite of other measures that are outside of my mandate letter commitment that I would like to consider for reforms when it comes to the rules around citizenship in Canada.

I do think I have more work to do to satisfy myself that a change to the rules will achieve their intended outcome.

I would like to address this because, at the end of the day, you are responsible not only for your own actions but, in my view, the instances where you witness an injustice and choose to stand by. I look forward to continuing our work on this. However, we have a bit of policy work left to do before we can identify the best path forward to ensure this kind of consequence doesn’t harm innocent children who are raised by the state in Canada.

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