Hon. Marty Klyne: Yes, I have a question, if the senator will take one.

Hon. Ratna Omidvar: Would Senator Plett take a question, please?

Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): With respect, honourable colleague, the government does not agree that the measures that remain in place are unnecessary. At such time as the government determines that the health and safety of Canadians and those who travel in our airspace no longer requires them, they will be dealt with.

Hon. Senators: Agreed.

(Motion agreed to and bill read third time and passed.)

(At 5:33 p.m., the Senate was continued until tomorrow at 2 p.m.)

Senator Plett: I don’t want to contradict myself here, because I don’t think it should go to a committee. I guess if I were to lose that fight and that argument, my first suggestion would be that it go to the Legal Committee, which is probably the busiest committee we have.

The Hon. the Speaker: Is leave granted, honourable senators?

The Hon. the Speaker pro tempore: Do you have a question, senator?

Hon. Yonah Martin (Deputy Leader of the Opposition) moved second reading of Bill S-245, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (granting citizenship to certain Canadians).

She said: Honourable senators, I’m honoured to once again sponsor and speak to Bill S-245, formerly Bill S-230, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (granting citizenship to certain Canadians).

In the last parliamentary session, Bill S-230 was adopted in the Senate following debate and a thorough study at the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology. The bill was unanimously supported and sent to the House of Commons but died on the Order Paper when the election was called.

As I said previously for Bill S-230, this current bill, Bill S-245, will address a specific gap in the Citizenship Act to capture a small group of Canadians who have lost their Canadian citizenship or became stateless because of changes to policy.

Many of these individuals were raised in Canada from a young age. Though they were born abroad, some came to Canada at a young age, as infants, in some cases. They went to school in Canada. They raised their families in Canada. They worked and paid taxes in Canada, and yet, they turned 28 without knowing that their citizenship would be stripped from them because of the change in policy to the Citizenship Act of 1977 that required Canadians born abroad to apply to retain their citizenship when they turned 28. As previously explained, this age-28 rule was passed, then forgotten. Those who did not apply to retain their citizenship before their twenty-eighth birthday subsequently became “lost Canadians” on their twenty-eighth birthday.

Bill C-37 of 2008, which repealed the age-28 provision and grandfathered all those Canadians who had not yet turned 28 to be included in the policy change, left out a small group of Canadians who had already turned 28, specifically those born in the 50-month window between February 15, 1977, to April 16, 1981. This small cohort of lost Canadians is the group for whom this bill was brought forward in this Parliament once again.

With the passage of S-245, we can reinstate this last cohort of “lost Canadians” affected by the age-28 rule and ensure that they are given the rights and opportunities that they deserve, as do all Canadians across our great nation.

I would like to thank Senator Omidvar for once again being the critic of this important bill and working in collaboration with me and tireless advocates like Don Chapman on such an important issue.

Honourable senators, I ask you to support this bill once again and, rather than send it to committee, that we expedite this bill straight to third reading and to the House of Commons, as we did earlier in this current Parliament with other familiar bills that also died on the Order Paper in the other house, namely Bill S-202, An Act to amend the Parliament of Canada Act (Parliamentary Visual Artist Laureate); Bill S-214, An Act to establish International Mother Language Day; Bill S-216, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act (use of resources of a registered charity); and Bill S-223, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (trafficking in human organs).

After Senator Omidvar speaks, I will seek leave to expedite this bill in support of the “lost Canadians,” who have been waiting far too long for this bill to become law. Thank you.

The Hon. the Speaker: Is it your pleasure, honourable senators, to adopt the motion?

Senator Miville-Dechêne: Yes.

Senator Plett: In there somewhere, I suppose, you touched on the answer to my question. Of course, over the decades and decades that you are talking about, the majority of those decades we had Liberal governments.

Leader, when Canadian homeowners are considering what to do with their house, they don’t have the luxury of six years and three quarters of a million dollars to spend to perhaps make a decision one day. When taxpayers are footing the bill, however, it’s easy for this government — and we see this time and again — to spend unlimited time and unlimited money to develop a renovation plan.

Leader, these plans have been under development since 2016. How much longer — please, leader, not whose fault is it — does this NDP-Liberal government expect it will take before it comes to a decision on 24 Sussex? Will a decision come this year, next year, or are we going to have to wait for another government?

Hon. Frances Lankin: Senator Bellemare, I very much support the intent of what you are doing. I believe that in many areas it is important to have the players at the table, and certainly with respect to EI where these are employer and employee funds. It is critical that they have a major role. This may not be a fair question, but I wonder if you have had an opportunity to look at Division 32 of the Budget Implementation Act, which deals with the establishment of the direction for an executive head to report only to the head of the Canada Employment Insurance Commission and not the tripartite body. It is a concern to many. It was Senator Yussuff who raised concern and is working on it the hardest in our chamber. I wonder if you share those concerns, and in light of where you intend to go, if we need to look at Division 32 in more depth.

(1720)

Senator Bellemare: Absolutely, Senator Lankin. This is an example where there is no sensitivity for the social partners, because at the beginning the social partner had the oversight of the appeal mechanism. I can tell you that both the union side and the employer side had a lot of problems with this Division 32, section 5 of Bill C-19. I can assure you of that.

It’s another example of why social partners are important in those areas, and in training, too. For example, the government, some years ago, proposed the allocation for training. It was a very nice program, I thought, but it succeeded in creating unanimity against it on both sides, because it did not answer a need, and it did not take into account their reality.

(On motion of Senator Martin, debate adjourned.)

Senator Housakos: Senator Gold, to hear your government tell it, you would think that the ArriveCAN app is alleviating some of the pressures at these airports and, somehow, that your measures are contributing in a positive way. It’s actually adding to the delays. We continue to hear horror stories of its inefficiencies and ineffectiveness. Yet your government continues to make use of this app, making it mandatory and insisting that airlines deny boarding to passengers with right of entry into Canada.

Senator Gold, ArriveCAN — like the proof of vaccine requirements — was supposed to be a temporary measure. Is this still the case? Instead of cancelling flights for Canadians who have been waiting for two years to see loved ones or to get work done requiring necessary travel, does your government have a date for when they will be cancelling the ineffective use of this ArriveCAN app and your ineffective proof of vaccine requirements? What date will you take these unnecessary requirements down?

Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): Thank you for your question. Canadians are well served by the dedicated men and women of our foreign service, who work hard to promote our values and interests, including the Francophonie, abroad. The bilingual nature of our diplomacy and the presence of two official languages in our embassies, high commissions and missions abroad are also important. I have been assured that an announcement will be made in due course regarding the appointment of ambassadors.

[English]

Senator Klyne: I had a question in there, yes.

I just wonder if you understand that there are not two tiers. All zoos are welcome to apply for a licence, and the minister will attend to that.

So the issue here is that there is no two-tiered system, and I want to know if you were aware that all zoos are eligible to apply for a licence.

[Translation]

Hon. Marty Klyne: Thank you, Senator Boisvenu, for the awareness and for the call to action.

Honourable senators, I have just one question for you: Can you “bee-lieve” it?

Do you feel a buzz in the air? You are not imagining things. Friday is coming, and it’s World Bee Day. If you are not familiar with World Bee Day, it is a celebration that occurs annually on May 20, and its purpose is to celebrate and raise awareness of bees and other pollinators and the important role they play in our ecosystem.

As we all know, bees carry pollen from one flower to another, but they do much more than that. Bees aid in the production of fruits, seeds, nuts and, of course, honey. In fact, a 2015 study by the Senate’s highly regarded Standing Committee on Agriculture and Forestry noted that of the 100 crop species that provide 90% of the world’s food, over 70 are pollinated by bees. That gives you a sense of just how much we rely upon bees to help feed the world.

Unfortunately, bee populations across the globe are in decline. A combination of the overuse of pesticides, changing farming practices and higher temperatures associated with global warming have led to a sharp drop in bee populations.

This is a threat not just to the bees themselves, but to the crops we depend upon for everyday use. It is a global problem, and Canada must do more to reverse this trend. A sting from a bee may hurt, but the long decline of pollinating species will hurt us much more in the long run.

Honourable senators, when it comes to the protection of Canada’s bee population, it is all of our “beeswax.” We need to do more as a country to protect bees both here in Canada and across the world.

I call on the Government of Canada to do everything it can to promote the health and sustainability of Canada’s bee population, and I hope that everyone in this chamber will join me in celebrating World Bee Day on May 20. Thank you.

Senator Plett: I would suspect that there probably are. I think if we go back further, Senator Batters, there would have been an even larger percentage of them in the workforce when your grandfather — and it could have been my father then because you are much younger than me — were that age. For sure they were in the workforce. Many of them didn’t go past grade school, so I think the percentages certainly would have gone down.

Although I don’t have the exact numbers here, Senator Batters, I think even back then, with the percentage I gave you and people filing tax, it did not necessarily mean that they were full time in the workforce. They were in the workforce. Even today, my grandchildren I spoke about are in the workforce in the summertime, and they are in school when it is in session. I think you’re right, yes.

Senator Plett: I’m not sure who is the goose and who is the gander here, but let me try to answer.

I think, Senator McPhedran, that nowhere in my speech did I say I was speaking on behalf of the Conservative Party or Conservative caucus. I was speaking on behalf of myself and my opinion. I didn’t introduce any one of those pieces of legislation, so I stand by what I said.

I believe that legislation such as this, that deals with voting age or electoral processes, should originate in the other chamber, just as I do not support many other private member’s bills for similar reasons, not necessarily because I’m opposed to the objective.

Hon. Raymonde Gagné (Legislative Deputy to the Government Representative in the Senate): Honourable senators, I give notice that, at the next sitting of the Senate, I will move:

That, in accordance with rule 10-11(1), the Standing Senate Committee on Official Languages be authorized to examine the subject matter of Bill C-13, An Act to amend the Official Languages Act, to enact the Use of French in Federally Regulated Private Businesses Act and to make related amendments to other Acts, introduced in the House of Commons on March 1, 2022, in advance of the said bill coming before the Senate; and

That, for the purposes of this study, the committee be authorized to meet even though the Senate may then be sitting or adjourned, with the application of rules 12-18(1) and 12-18(2) being suspended in relation thereto.