HANSARD: Debating Bill C-71 An Act to Amend the Citizenship Act

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his collaboration and co-operation at committee on Bill S-245. I was delighted to work with him and to see that he supported the NDP amendments. That is the right thing to do, to restore the rights of Canadians, the rights that the Conservatives took away.

I want to ask the member a question. He may not have been elected at that time, and neither was I, but to my understanding and to the knowledge of Don Chapman, who is an extremely knowledgeable guy on the lost Canadian file, when the Harper government brought in Bill C-37, it actually put forward an edict for all the parties that, if they did not support it in its entirety, it would take away the bill. That meant that the Conservatives were able to put a poison pill in that bill with the first-generation cut-off rule.

Would the member agree that is the wrong thing to do on an issue as important as people's basic fundamental rights?

Madam Speaker, I was not in fact elected at the time. However, Meili Faille, who was the Bloc Québécois member for Vaudreuil—Soulanges, worked on the file and knew Mr. Chapman very well. This is important.

We in the Bloc Québécois have a lot of expertise when it comes to Canadian citizenship. As I said, that will be useful when it comes time to work with Quebec citizenship.

Right now, I do not want to talk about what happened in the past. My colleague will understand why. Anyone watching the debate might be surprised to note that the Bloc Québécois is probably the only adult in the room right now. I am not badmouthing anyone. I do not want to cause friction with the other parties over a bill that I feel would be easy to work on if everyone did their part. I am not going to badmouth anyone.

I think that we could quite easily send it to committee, since we know that three parties so far will vote for it in principle. Then we will study the Conservatives' amendments.

I am willing to work with everyone here, because we in the Bloc Québécois are responsible people. When we study a bill, we set electioneering aside. We simply want what is best for the people who elected us to represent them.

Madam Speaker, the notwithstanding clause is back on the table.

As I was saying, there is a strange atmosphere in Parliament at the moment. I just gave a speech, but I am not sure whether my colleague was listening. When he asked his first question, however, he seemed to have understood my remarks to the House.

Earlier on, I said that when it comes to a bill like Bill C‑71, there should not be any mudslinging. That is basically what I said. As I said, we should work together, and most people are generally in agreement about Bill C‑71. In asking a question about my speech, my colleague was really trying to get in a dig at the official opposition. He did not understand what I was trying to say at all.

Here is what we want. It is Monday morning. Parliament has just resumed. Could we behave like responsible people, like parliamentarians representing the people of our ridings, without slinging any mud or setting any partisan parliamentary traps?

Madam Speaker, I am very happy to enter this debate on Bill C-71. Because the House will be getting ready for statements and question period, I will be interrupted in my speech, so I am going to put a few things on the public record.

To the member from the Bloc's point that this is not about partisanship, I think it is important to put on the public record the history of what happened with respect to lost Canadians. Members will know that, 15 years ago, the Conservatives brought in Bill C-37 for an act that was supposed to fix a lot of the lost Canadian issues. It did fix some of those issues, but in that process, the Conservatives also put a poisoned pill in the bill, which was the first-generation cut-off rule deeming those of the second generation who were born abroad would not be able to receive their citizenship from their parents. That was incorporated into Bill C-37.

At the time, I was not here, but those who watched that debate saw what happened. The Harper government was clear to say that, unless Bill C-37 passed in its entirety, the bill would die. They would get rid of it and kill it. That is information from Don Chapman, who is the king of experts on lost Canadian issues because he has dedicated his life to addressing this injustice. That is the knowledge that he brings to this floor by sharing with me what happened. That is why the NDP and the Liberals had to vote for it.

They voted for it because they had no choice. If they had not, what would it have meant? It would have meant that thousands upon thousands of Canadian World War II vets, along with tens of thousands of Canadian war brides and their children, would have gone to their graves disenfranchised from their own country. A 20-year-old war bride in 1946 would be 98 years old today. Most of the Canadian brides and their World War II soldier husbands are now dead. If they had not accepted the first generation cut-off limit under Bill C-37, all these folks would have died without citizenship, all because Harper would have killed Bill C-37.

That is the reality. That is why people were jammed to do that. Despite that, the critic for the NDP at the time, Olivia Chow, put this on the public record: “We could get this bill done very quickly and accommodate this element by doing something very simple, by just amending subclause 2(2), or actually taking it out of the bill, because right now it limits citizenship to the first generation born to, or adopted by, Canadian parents.”

The NDP tried to raise the issue, and Olivia said that we should get rid of the first-generation rule that the Conservatives brought in, but that was not allowed to take place because it was the poison pill that the Conservatives put in the bill. Otherwise, they would have taken away all of those rights for war veterans and the war brides. That is the reason, and that is the history.

Is this partisan politics? No, it is not, but it is an important part of the history to know what happened, where the lost Canadian issue stems from, why we are here and why the Superior Court has ruled that it is unconstitutional to take away those rights.

Click this link to read the Hansard:
https://openparliament.ca/debates/2024/9/16/jenny-kwan-1/?singlepage=1