Brad Redekopp
Saskatoon West, Saskatchewan · Conservative · Canada
“Bill C-287. Introduction and first reading moved for leave to introduce Bill C-287, An Act to amend the National Research Council Act . He said: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to present my private member's bill, the housing cost transparency act. Canada is in a housing crisis.”
“These summaries would show what a proposal does, what housing is affected, who pays, what benefits are expected and what assumptions are being made. It would also improve governance, transparency, public registry information and annual reporting.”
“Even by 2030-31, there is still going to be a deficit of over $50 billion, by their own estimate. The Parliamentary Budget Officer, who is an officer appointed by the government, a person whom the government trusts, tells us it is going to be even worse than the government is saying; the government is actually not telling us the truth, th…”
“A car could be sold multiple times during its life, two, three, four times, and every single time, GST is charged, and the government makes money on that. We think that is unfair. The government should get the GST at the beginning, and that should be the end of it. I want to thank my colleague the member for Elgin—St.”
“The debt charges this year will be just about $60 billion. To put that into perspective, the amount of money the federal government gives to the provinces for health care is $55 billion, so we are actually spending more on interest than what the government gives for health care.”
“The Liberals do not want to have questions asked; they want to avoid all that. As they are spending hundreds of billions of dollars, it appears that they are evading accountability. That is not a good look, and Canadians can see that. The decisions that would be made in this bill would impact Canadians for decades.”
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“We need to have meaningful projects that actually create jobs and increase the wages and earnings of our people so Canadians can afford to feed themselves, clothe themselves, buy housing and live the way they are intended to.”
“Beef ribs are up 114%; beef strip loin is up 74%; beef top sirloin is up 62%; chicken breast is up 52%; a dozen eggs is up 54%; my wife's favourite, coffee, is up 76%; olive oil is up 120%; margarine is up 67%; cheddar cheese is up 59%; butter is up 57%; pasta is up 50%; and baby formula is up 71%. Baby formula is now almost always the most-stolen item in stores, because young moms and dads cannot afford to buy it. This is causing hardship for everyone. Parents should not be stressed about buying food for their kids. I cannot support the budget. Canadians need real solutions to handle the cost of living crisis they are seeing right now. They cannot afford the government and the moves it is making. We need to actually do things to increase the wages of our people.”
“In Saskatoon, 23,000 people use the food bank every month, which is up from roughly 17,000 per month in 2019. That is an increase of about 35% in five years. (1725) Christmas dinner is going to be more expensive for everyone right now. If we think about what makes a great time at Christmas, it is getting together with family and friends and eating turkey, stuffing, potatoes, carrots, ham, Brussels sprouts, pumpkin pie, perogies, sausages and all the wonderful things that really make that time a lot of fun. Brussels sprouts can't be right; scratch that. I will quickly go through a list of increases we see right now.”
“Even in Saskatoon, where housing is not as expensive as in Toronto or Vancouver, rent has gone up about 25% over the last five years. Instead of paying $1,000, people are paying $1,200 or $1,300. It is really crazy. At the same time, over the same period in the last three years, median incomes in Saskatoon have dropped, actually gone down, so while rent is going up, incomes are dropping, making it very difficult for people to make ends meet. With a 25% rent increase versus a 9% wage increase over a five-year period, it is very difficult. No one can buy clothes or groceries. Speaking of groceries, food inflation is running extremely high right now: 34% over five years. Food banks in Saskatchewan are now serving 55,000 people per month.”
“Whenever we buy something, we can think of the 5% GST that we pay going specifically to pay the interest on our debt. It is terrible. Speaking of the debt, in 2015, the total debt of the country was $600 billion, and by that I mean it took literally 150 years, the entire length of our confederation, to grow that debt to $600 billion. By the end of the time horizon five years from now, it will be at $1.6 trillion; it will have gone from $0.6 trillion to $1.6 trillion. That will be $1 trillion of debt added by the government if it continues for the five-year period. That is totally unbelievable and unconscionable. I want to talk a little about housing prices, because they have gone way up. They have climbed and are very expensive.”
“Yes, it is going to come down a bit over the five-year period that is in the budget that was presented, but it will come down to $57 billion, which is still significantly higher than the $36 billion, which in turn is significantly higher than any numbers we have ever had before. If we add all that up over the six-year time horizon that is in the budget document, it is $360 billion of deficits over just six years. If we look at the interest payments on that, we see that right now they are at about $53 billion a year. It climbs up to $76 billion five years from now. If we add that up, it is $382 billion in six years, just in interest. That is money thrown away, given to bankers. It is the same amount of money that we spend on health care and the same amount of money that all of us pay in GST.”
“They want money to be loaned and flowing, and I think that is exactly what we are getting from the Prime Minister right now. Let us look at the numbers. The deficit from the previous prime minister, Trudeau, which we all thought was crazy big, was $36 billion. That was a huge number, especially compared to previous deficits, at least in normal times. Of course during COVID it was a bit different. Everybody talks about Stephen Harper's having to run some small deficits. He got panned for a $10-billion deficit. We are talking $36 billion. The new Prime Minister has no problem doubling that to $78 billion. The deficit is massive.”
“That is great, and I would never deny that to somebody in Canada, but honestly it is not a generational, massive, amazing, incredible thing. It is just a very small amount, but every little bit helps. The budget also has the largest deficit we have had outside COVID, $78 billion, while there is a cost of living crisis in Saskatoon and right across this country that is very real. First I want to talk about debt. This is a very serious problem in our country. The amount of debt being racked up is really unconscionable. I think some Canadians, in the last election, thought they were getting a good money manager, a banker, somebody who really knew how to handle money. Remember that a banker's main job is to make money, and by that I mean physically print money. They actually make money.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to rise in the House and speak on behalf of the citizens of Saskatoon West, the greatest riding in all of Canada, I have to say. I know there are other members who may not quite agree with me, especially the one sitting beside me, but I am very proud to represent Saskatoon as a whole and Saskatoon West specifically. We are talking about the budget today, and I have to say that the budget implementation act is a very large document. It is an omnibus bill of 600-plus pages, with all kinds of things in it. I can say right off the start that I will not be supporting the budget. It is not that there are not a few good things in the budget. There is a small tax cut, and that is always good, but as the Parliamentary Budget Officer said, it will amount to about $280 a year for the average family in Canada.”
“Mr. Speaker, when the new Minister of Culture was the immigration minister, he said, “I don’t see a world in which we lower [immigration targets].... Whether we revise them upwards or not is something that I have to look at. But certainly I don’t think [we will]...lower them”. Then in 2024 he made history by allowing nearly 500,000 permanent residents into the country, the highest number ever in a single year. Today we are in a national housing crisis, emergency rooms are overflowing, and we are in a youth jobs crisis. How does the current immigration minister feel about holding the bag for a Trudeau-era guy who just got promoted for making a big mess? Some hon. members: Oh, oh!”
“Mr. Speaker, this bill would reduce taxes for people, yes. We have already heard it is probably like $20 a month, so it is not a really big deal. If this government was truly serious about saving money and saving taxpayer money, I wonder if the member would consider changing the federal interim health benefits that asylum seekers get when they are denied asylum in Canada but are trying to stay on by appealing that decision. I mean benefits like vision care, urgent dental care and dental exams, dentures, nursing visits and emergency ambulances. Of course they would get basic health coverage, which we would agree with, but these extra benefits that asylum seekers who have been told to leave the country get are a way this government could save a significant amount of money and pass those savings on to Canadian citizens.”
“Madam Speaker, I think my colleague's question points to a broader problem on the other side of the aisle in the government, and that is a lack of creativity and a lack of ability to create good legislation. We can see that in the current legislation. This is a carbon copy of Bill C-71 , which was a carbon copy of the highly modified Senate bill that came to the House prior to that. There is not one bit of difference between Bill C-71 from the last Parliament and Bill C-3 in this Parliament. There was no thought put into it. The new minister just took it and ran with it. There was no consideration given to some of the limitations raised in the previous discussions and debate. It is clear that the government does not know what it is doing when it comes to immigration.”
“It is very sad to see the Liberal government just throw language away, not make it part of the bill and not consider it important.”
“Madam Speaker, the member is absolutely correct. The Bloc members at our committee were very co-operative and helpful with creating good amendments, particularly around the issues of language and knowledge of Canada. This was the work of the committee. This work was delegated to the committee by the House. The Bloc members had very good responses and reasons for why we want to protect language. Of course, we want to make sure those in our country understand one of our two official languages, be it English or French. This is critical to making sure that we are able to put a value on citizenship, that we are able to define what it means to be Canadian and what Canadian values are. Language is probably core to that issue.”
“There is a lack of ability to create a system that actually works for the people who are here and that benefits them, as well as all of Canada.”
“Madam Speaker, there is so much to talk about in that question. I will talk about the Ukrainian people, and I would frame it a certain way. Right now, we can imagine that the member opposite had a temporary permit to work in Canada and was worried about the fact that it was going to expire in, let us say, two months. The government is not very good at renewing permits. Anyone who has worked in the system knows this. Basically, the government is telling these people they can be here because they have a temporary permit, but they have to trust the government to get the permit renewed. It does not happen in a timely manner. These people are living with stress. There needs to be a better solution than just throwing them into Canada to fend for themselves, without giving them the proper documentation. This is the problem with the government.”
“I am also very curious about how we are going to see spending come in at a “generational” level, as the government likes to say. To me, that is generational debt. We are giving generational debt to our children. The system is broken. The bill would devalue the value of citizenship. It would create a chain migration system that I believe is wrong. I would encourage people in the House to vote against this. This is not something that would help our country, and the government could have done a far better job creating legislation that would stand up to the courts, that would protect Canadians and that would restore and protect the value of citizenship.”
“They have a lot of people working for them, as we know. There are hundreds of thousands of people working for the government, yet they cannot figure out how many people this would have an impact on. One thing I want to note is that, in the last year's levels plan, it showed that our non-permanent, temporary resident population was going to come down to 5% in 2026, so I am very curious to see how that number is reflected today. Are we going to hit the 5% number for 2026? I would remind the government that 2026 is a couple of months from now. I think we are well over 7% now, so I would say the plans made a year ago are probably not going to happen, if I were a gambling man. I am just curious about what we are going to see from that.”
“It is hard to believe, but it is true. It actually says 10-plus years of wait time for some of these categories. In the briefing notes that were given to the immigration minister when she became minister in the spring, it said, in some cases, over 50 years, which is absolutely ridiculous. It just further proves how broken our system is. That brings me to today, which is budget day. We are going to hear about the levels plan, which tells how many people the government hopes and intends to let into this country. One thing I want to point out is that we have asked numerous times, and the government is unable to provide a number of people who would become citizens through the legislation. They defer the question. They do not seem to know, which does not give me much confidence that they actually know what they are doing.”
“Certainly, it is important for us to focus newcomers in our country on skills and requirements that we have in our country, so the newcomers who come here are able not only to work and succeed but actually to add great value to our country. That has been the history of immigration in Canada for years and years. That is not happening right now. However, there is one category that we should always try to do, and that is to help people when we can. We can only help so much, but we should still be doing that. There have been cases with Ukrainians, for example, or with Hong Kongers who have been invited to come to our country. They are now here, but the government is not providing a way for them to actually become citizens. It is really quite ridiculous, so we end up with wait times, and we can go and see it on the website.”
“By the way, the people whom I talked to who are the most upset about this system are the actual newcomers who used the system the way it was intended to be used, who waited the time they had to wait and filled out the paperwork that they had to fill out, as opposed to those who came into our country through a backdoor system. Of course, the government, in its infinite wisdom, not only endorsed this method but built infrastructure and instructed the police to welcome people. It is such a strange thing, to say, “Sorry, you cannot cross here, but welcome to Canada” and help them carry their bags in. It was ridiculous. Ultimately, that is part of our broken system. The other thing I wanted to highlight is what is called our humanitarian and compassionate category.”
“That leads me to our broken immigration system. We have a broken system in Canada. I know the Liberals do not like to talk about Canada's being broken, because it just reveals everything they have done to our country in the last 10 years. However, by any objective measure at all, Canada's immigration system is a mess. In fact, it has become a bit of a joke in the world, and it is an embarrassment, to be frank. The asylum system is one good example. We had this infamous tweet that has been mentioned many times, by Justin Trudeau; it said, “#WelcomeToCanada”. Of course, that started an avalanche of people coming into our country, wanting to get into our country through Roxham Road. That is a good example, in which they were not using normal processes and not using the same system that every other newcomer to our country has followed.”
“The Liberals are not at all into transparency. They do not want anything that is done by them to be known by Canadians. As a result, when this amended bill came back to the House, the government, with the help of the NDP, undid those changes. (1200) Therefore, here we are with devalued citizenship again, with citizens of convenience. These are people who do not live in Canada but realize that, through a loophole, they can actually claim citizenship, because their parents spent a random 1,095 days in Canada. These are going to create future problems for future governments, for future ministers and for the people of Canada in the future. The bill would further make sure that Canada's immigration system remains a joke. I neglected to mention that I am going to be splitting my time with the member for Elgin—St. Thomas—London South .”
“What we proposed was to tighten those conditions even further to make it 1,095 days, which is three years, within a five-year period. That would show a substantial connection to Canada. If someone has spent three out of five years in Canada, that is a substantial connection. We also want to make sure that an older person coming into the country speaks one of the two languages, is not a criminal and understands what it means to be Canadian. These are not unreasonable things; they are just further conditions to what the Liberal government has already proposed. The other thing that I find quite telling is that we proposed and passed at committee, with the help of the Bloc, the requirement for the government to report to Parliament the number of citizens created by this method. Of course the government refused to do that.”
“We would not ensure that people who attain citizenship through this method can speak one of the languages and are not criminals, which are basic things. The Liberals have said that this is not about that; it is about automatically getting citizenship. The reality is that what the Liberals have proposed has a condition, which is that people have to have spent 1,095 days in Canada as a parent before the birth of the child. There is a condition there, so it is not automatic citizenship; they are not deemed to be a citizen automatically. If a parent not born in Canada has a child not born in Canada, that child would not automatically be a citizen under the new legislation. There is a condition there, which is that it has to be at least 1,095 days.”
“It is about people not born in Canada getting citizenship and having children who are not born in Canada, never even living in Canada but having a very loose connection to Canada, and then passing on that citizenship to generation after generation after generation. We tweaked it a bit and tried to make it better, and that is what came back to the House. That was defeated by the NDP and the Liberal government, the NDP-Liberal coalition that still seems to be alive and well. Now we are back to the original text of the bill, which in my view is not good. The reason I do not think it is good is that in the bill that we are debating today, the original text of Bill C-3 , we would hand out citizenship and lower the value of citizenship. We would create a situation of chain migration.”
“I did not agree with it, and the federal government had every right to appeal that ruling, clarify it and try to get something that was more in line with what Canadians want. We see that all the time; for example, we see it with Bill C-12 , which is also before the House right now. The government has had warnings that the powers it is putting in Bill C-12 would be likely to be challenged constitutionally and are likely to fail, yet the government does not want to promote legislation that would be good and ultimately pass. Instead, the Liberals are throwing it to the courts and letting the courts tell them what to do. That is completely wrong. What we, as a committee, attempted to do was to clean this up a bit. Bill C-3 is really about chain migration.”
“We are all very curious to see whether there is any hope of restoring faith in our immigration system. I guess we will see that later today, potentially. Bill C-3 all started because there was a lower-court ruling that the existing second-generation limit was not proper. The core problem is that the current Liberal government chose not to appeal that ruling and instead just accepted the ruling as it was. It really reflects, in my view, something we have seen many times from the government, which is that rather than actually putting forth legislation and exerting Parliament's influence and power in this country to make laws and make the laws people want, the government tends to rely on what the courts say: What the courts say, they will just accept. That is what happened here. A lower court made a ruling.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to speak again in the House about this issue. Bill C-3 has been before the House a number of times already, so here we are talking about it again. One big reason that we are talking about this comes back to the fact that the immigration system has been messed up by the Liberals over the last 10 years. In the bill, Bill C-3 , in particular, we are talking about the value of citizenship. The bill would actually devalue citizenship. I want to chat this morning about that and how we are struggling with the way that the immigration system has been broken by the Liberal government. I remind people here, as we are all aware, that we are going to be seeing a budget later today, which will also give out the immigration-levels plan.”
“Mr. Speaker, every dollar the Liberal government spends comes out of the pockets of Canadians in the form of higher taxes and inflation. At CMHC, executives each received bonuses of $43,000. Even more ridiculously, Via Rail executives got $110,000 each. While the Liberals reward insiders, they are asking young Canadians to sacrifice more, driving many of them to food banks. In Saskatoon, food bank usage is up 49% over pre-COVID levels, with children accounting for 38% of those users. Instead of trying to cause a costly election on a costly budget, why not have an affordable budget for an affordable life?”
“The undersigned petitioners call for the government to do the following: one, reform the catch-and-release bail system to prevent dangerous repeat violent offenders from serving their sentences in the community; two, establish new indictable offences, reporting obligations and limitations on weapons possession for previous offenders who break conditions; and three, pass legislation in which an accused charged more than twice with certain indictable offences must be detained in custody while subject to summons, appearance notice or release order. I stand with the residents of Saskatoon West.”
“Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present a petition on behalf of citizens of Saskatoon West, particularly residents of Fairhaven, Meadowgreen, Parkridge and Confederation in Saskatoon who have faced significant challenges with crime. Violent crime was up 10% in 2024, with an increase in assault, murders and robberies. Saskatoon has had 14 homicides in 2024, an almost 15% increase over the number in 2023. Saskatoon residents feel unsafe in their houses and on the streets.”
“The government does not have the ability to think ahead, to anticipate difficulties or to see how someone with dishonest intentions might be able to take advantage of the situation or abuse the system it created. It is unable to see around corners, as some have said. In my opinion, this is a weak government producing weak legislation.”
“Mr. Speaker, trying to understand the reason and logic behind the Liberal government is something I have struggled with the entire six years I have been in Parliament. It is very difficult sometimes to understand the logic behind decisions. As I just said, the government does not know how many people this bill would affect, yet it is moving ahead with this legislation. It does not understand the potential number of people with criminal records who might come into the country using this new method of obtaining citizenship, yet it proceeds with this method. It does not understand the implications of not having language or the other things that we think are critical in this particular legislation.”
“It is pushing it forward, throwing its hands in the air and saying it hopes it is going to be a good piece of legislation. That is a very bad choice.”
“Mr. Speaker, my colleague referred to the member for Lac-Saint-Jean , who is a very good and diligent member of the committee. He does very good work and has been very helpful to the committee as a whole. He asked an excellent question. We and the member for Lac-Saint-Jean asked it of the government as well. We asked how many people this would impact, and the government is incapable of knowing the answer. That is a very scary thing, because if a government does not know the impact of a policy it is making, it is taking chances with something as sensitive and dear to Canadians as citizenship. We have a government that has no clue what impact this legislation would have and is unable to answer the most basic question of how many people would be impacted, yet it is moving ahead with this legislation.”
“Mr. Speaker, I know the member for Winnipeg North is a master of words and likes to speak in all kinds of different ways, but the reality of this is really quite simple. We have a person who is not a Canadian and is obtaining Canadian citizenship one way or another. The member spoke about this method versus that method or another method. It does not really matter. The average Canadian does not understand that anyway, and I do not blame them, because it is a very complicated system. The reality is that you would have a person without citizenship who gets citizenship. The reality is that the government would impose a condition on that person. We are proposing adding a couple more conditions. That is all. It is a very simple thing, yet the government refuses to consider conditions of criminality, language and knowledge of the country.”
“What we are seeing right now is that the old NDP-Liberal coalition is back on. There is a budget coming up next week, and I think what is going on here is that in return for its support of the budget, the NDP has demanded that the Liberals support it on the amendments they want to this bill. That is where we are right now; the NDP-Liberal coalition lives on. Citizenship has value. We need to make sure that we reinforce that and that we defend that.”
“We love it when they spend their money in our country; it is amazing, but we also need to make sure that this does not imply in any way that it makes them entitled to become a citizen of this country. We have to be very clear on what "visitor" means and what it is. We also have to be careful of the government we have and the now seventh immigration minister we have in the House. We have had seven immigration ministers in 10 years, who have not done their due diligence on bills like the one that is before us. The current minister just took the bill from the last Parliament, which was the bill from the previous one. They just bring the bills along without actually putting some thought and logic into what is going on. That is very dangerous, and we have be very careful of it.”
“The other thing I want to mention briefly is the confusion about who is a visitor to our country. It is pretty clear. As a kid, I grew up in a lovely town on the eastern side of Saskatchewan called Yorkton. My grandparents lived on the exact opposite side of the province in a small town called Herbert, another lovely town in Saskatchewan. As a youth, I spent a lot of time in Herbert, Saskatchewan, but I always considered myself a visitor to Herbert; I never thought I was actually from Herbert or had any kind of substantial connection to Herbert. I grew up in Yorkton, and that was where I spent most of my time. That is the principle we need to follow. People may have visited Canada a number of times, and that is fine. We welcome visitors.”
“That has caused a lot of angst, I am sure, in its ranks and in its members. The member for Vancouver East was very much opposed to the changes made at committee without her being able to be there. I know that she spoke on Friday, and there are a couple of things that I want to make sure she understands. The first is about consecutive days. The member mentioned that we are proposing that the condition needs to be consecutive days. It does not. It would be 1,095 days within a five-year period. We realize that people do need to have the opportunity to visit their home country for weddings, funerals or different events that happen, and that seems very reasonable. It is not consecutive days; it is just that within a five-year period, we feel there should be a substantial connection to Canada.”
“They should be able to fly through the requirements very easily: the time period, languages, the test of Canada and the security screening, which they may be exempt from. Right now we require that only of people who are between the ages of 18 and 54. There would actually be no burden on young people. That gets back to my original point: We are not after the people who are coming here legitimately. We want to make sure that those people do get the citizenship they are owed. However, we want to make sure that people who do not deserve citizenship, those who are taking advantage of the system, would be subject to some checks, just to make sure we can control and know who is coming into our country. I know that the NDP is very angry at voters for taking away its party status in the House.”
“One other thing that we asked to be included, which I think is very reasonable, is a reporting mechanism so Parliament and therefore Canadians would know how many people were granted citizenship through this method. I think these are very reasonable things to ask. There is risk when people can manipulate and abuse a weak system to their advantage. The amendments that would essentially add a few more conditions to the one the Liberals already proposed would mitigate those risks, making the system a little less weak and potentially a little less risky. One thing I also want to mention is that there would be many young people who would be affected by the legislation, those under the age of 16 years, as I said before.”
“We want to make sure that people who are criminals in other countries do not automatically get citizenship in Canada. This seem like common sense. I do not understand why it is so complicated for the government to understand. There could be person who has been convicted of crimes in other country and then realizes that their parents lived in Canada for 1,095 days before they were born, when their parents were in university or something like that, and who thinks they have a solution: Even though they are wanted for crimes in their own country, they will just go to Canada because their parents could pass on their citizenship. That is what we are trying to avoid, and a simple security check would prevent that from happening.”
“It is a fairly simple requirement; it is not complicated. We require this of all other people who obtain citizenship in our country, so we feel that is a very reasonable request and quite necessary for having a good, solid life in Canada. The third condition we think should be in the bill is a citizenship test. We need to make sure that the people who are coming to our country actually know about our country, because by definition, these are people who have potentially not spent any time in Canada. We need to know that they understand what it means to be in Canada and what their rights and responsibilities are, just like other people who come to our country. (1320) Finally, the other condition we think is very reasonable and prudent is a security check.”
“We know that when there is a weak system, there are bad actors in the world who try to take advantage of things, which is exactly what would happen through the proposed system. That is why we proposed some amendments, and I will quickly go through them. First is the time period. The government's first condition that it proposed was that parents would have to spend 1,095 days in Canada before the birth of a child. We think that is fine, except that we want to see a bit of a stronger connection test, because the days could be over quite a span of years. What we are proposing is that the 1,095 non-consecutive days happen within a five-year window. That is what we are proposing, and we think it is very reasonable. Second, we believe that people who obtain citizenship through this method should be able to speak either French or English.”
“There are people who are very legitimate who are young, under the age of 15 or 16 years old and potentially under the age of five or 10 years. Certainly those people, generally speaking, would be legitimate claimants to citizenship, but we have a very weak system. The government has broken our immigration system so badly. It has messed up when it comes to asylum and when it comes to losing control of the number of students coming into our country. Everybody knows that; the faults are well known and well documented. However, now we have a government that has completely broken our system, saying, “Trust us. We've got this. We know exactly what we are doing.” Well, pardon me if I do not trust the government and if I do not think it has got this, because I do not think it does.”
“We are also proposing making sure that people have either English or French proficiency, that they know the country they are coming to by taking a citizenship test and that they do not have a criminal record. These are things that we believe are very reasonable and very fair and that should be done. Of course at committee we were able to put forward these common-sense proposals. We received majority support with the help of the Bloc at committee to do this, but now the government, in its incessant desire to break everything, wants to change that again, so here we are now. Members might ask what the risk is. We are talking about children and other people who probably have a connection, which is quite likely true in many cases.”
“They keep talking about the semantics of the kind of method by which people are getting their citizenship, but at the end of the day, it does not really matter; there is a condition, which is the 1,095 days that a person would have to be present in Canada, which we have heard about all day long here. We are essentially saying that it is fine, but we want to tweak it a bit and add a couple more conditions, which is all this is. Really what we are arguing about in the House today is how many and which conditions. It is not zero conditions; there are some conditions. The government has proposed some, and we are proposing a few more. We are proposing that we strengthen the connection test a little so that, yes, a person could be here 1,095 days, which do not have to be consecutive but would have to be within a five-year period.”
“I think they were too weak or too scared, I am not sure which, to actually make the policy themselves, so they just said, “Great, we'll do what the court asks.” In my opinion, the Liberals should have appealed the ruling and should have made their own decision in terms of what they wanted in the legislation. However, they then introduced Bill C-71 in the last session and forgot about it. They did not act on it in any way, and now here we are with essentially the same bill. As I said, Bill C-3 is chain migration bill; it would allow people to pass on citizenship to their children indefinitely, whether they were born in Canada or not. The Liberals have actually put one condition on this.”