Mr. Speaker, I rise today, not just as the member of Parliament for Richmond Hill South, but as a representative of one of the ridings with the highest concentration of first-generation and second-generation Canadians, where close to 90% of residents are either immigrants to Canada themselves or have parents who were immigrants to Canada.

This is not just a statistic. It is the lived experience of my constituents. These are families that came to this country with nothing but hope, a Canadian promise and a work ethic. These are people who took jobs that kept this country running, in engineering, nursing homes or small businesses. These are people who waited years, followed every rule, got an education, trained, recertified for jobs, studied for their citizenship exams, paid their taxes, paid their dues and did everything right.

In my riding, many new Canadians came here fleeing war, political persecution or economic hardship. They are people who sacrificed everything just to give their children a chance at a better life.

Many of them came from places, such as Iran, where dissidents are jailed for speaking freely by a brutal totalitarian regime. Others came from Hong Kong, where democracy and freedom are eroding. Some came from China to seek a better life for their children. Still others arrived from post-war Europe with little more than the clothes in their suitcases. These people did not just arrive here with a passport offered to them. They built the foundations of Canada with their bare hands. They all came here to build a better life, and they made Canada stronger in the process. When they finally swore the oath to become Canadian citizens, it meant something. It was a moment they longed for, a moment they dreamt about, and a moment of immense pride and earned belonging.

While the Liberals have spent the last 10 years erasing the very heritage that defines who we are as a country, they are now turning the page and undermining what it means to be a Canadian citizen.

When the Liberal government tabled Bill C-3, a bill that offers automatic Canadian citizenship to people who have never stepped foot in this country, never paid taxes here, never even expressed a desire to live here, and never even sang O Canada under our proud flag, I could not stay silent.

This bill sends a clear message to my constituents in Richmond Hill South. Their hard work, their patience, their loyalty to this country means less than someone else's paperwork and bloodline. This bill does not fix the system the Liberals broke. It deepens the unfairness. It makes a mockery of the sacrifices made by immigrants who paid their dues. It is yet another example of a Liberal government that is more concerned with global virtue signalling than with actually standing up for the people who built this country.

Let us talk about fairness, because that is what this debate is really about. Across this country, there are millions of immigrants who came to Canada legally. They followed the rules, waited patiently in line and built their lives here, working long hours, raising families, paying taxes and volunteering in their communities.

Many of them have been here for years, contributing more to Canada than most people, yet they still cannot get their citizenship finalized. I have personally experienced this as a member of Parliament for Richmond Hill South. Having only been elected for less than two months, my constituency office has received hundreds and hundreds of immigration case files already.

I have met many new Canadians who are more engaged in their communities than most Liberal politicians, yet they are stuck in the limbo because of a backlog, bureaucratic red tape and a system broken by Liberals that treats them like a statistic.

Now, this same Liberal government wants to give away Canadian citizenship like it is some kind of souvenir. Bill C-3 would grant citizenship automatically to people born abroad, even if they have never been to Canada, never contributed to our economy, never served under our flag, never celebrated our heritage and never even intended to live here.

How is that fair? How do we tell someone who has been working in Canada for years, building a life, contributing to the economy, paying taxes and sometimes even raising Canadian-born children, that they must continue to wait, jump through hoops, navigate a system broken by the Liberals, while someone born abroad who has never set foot here is handed citizenship automatically by the Liberal government, without question?

It is offensive. It is elitist. It sounds like an idea that came straight from Davos at the World Economic Forum. More importantly, it does not embody the Canadian promise.

This is just the Liberal way, which is to erase our heritage, mock hard-working immigrants and reward those with connections, global privilege and the right bloodline, while ignoring the working-class immigrants who have done the real work of building this country.

This is the same Liberal government that has thrown open the borders to criminals crossing into our country illegally but that forces honest immigrants to spend years waiting for a fair hearing. This is not compassion. This is not about justice. This is political theatre, a feel-good vanity bill from a Liberal government obsessed with symbolism and blinded to the reality facing new Canadians on the ground.

Even more alarming is that the bill would eliminate the first-generation limit but would open the door to granting citizenship to those born abroad if just one parent had spent 1,095 days in Canada over their lifetime, even nonconsecutively, which is three years spread out however they like. There are no requirements for criminal background checks, understanding or experience of what it means to be Canadian or demonstrated commitment to this country; it is just a rubber stamp. This makes a mockery of the standards that immigrants have spent years trying to meet.

Conservatives believe in something different. We believe that citizenship is a badge of belonging, not a trinket that is passed around. We believe it should be earned by those who commit to this country, who uphold our values, who are loyal to Canada and who are proud to call Canada home, not handed out based on convenience. We stand with the people who work hard, follow the law and contribute to our communities; these are people who are too often forgotten by the Liberal government and betrayed by a system that favours the global elite over the Canadian worker. While the Liberals reward inherited privilege, Conservatives will fight for those who invest in Canada, not those who treat it like it is a backup plan.

Let us talk about what the bill gets fundamentally wrong about the very meaning of Canadian citizenship. One of the most troubling aspects of Bill C-3 is that it continues to treat Canadian citizenship as a trophy that is passed on rather than a civic privilege tied to commitment, values and contribution. This is a profoundly elitist and out-of-touch view of what it means to be Canadian. Canada is not a bloodline. It is not an accident of birth. Canada is a country a person believes in, a country they build, a country they choose and a country that should choose them because of their loyalty and their commitment to its success.

What is even more concerning is that no real ties to Canada would be required if the Liberal legislation passed. The bill proposes a vague substantial connection test, a standard so loose that it opens the door to granting citizenship to people who may have no or only minimal or even symbolic interaction with Canada, subject to the broad discretion of unelected bureaucrats. Multi-generational foreign residents could potentially claim Canadian citizenship without ever having lived here, worked here or embraced the values we hold dear. That is not a recipe for national cohesion; it is a recipe for chaos. However, under Bill C-3, someone who happens to be born abroad to a Canadian citizen and who has not lived in Canada for decades would get a free pass, while someone who volunteers in their community, pays taxes, works hard, celebrates our heritage and raises children in Canada is left waiting. It is wrong; it is backwards, and it cheapens the value of citizenship.

Bill C-3 says that citizenship is about bloodlines. Conservatives say citizenship is about belonging, contribution, allegiance and shared values. The Liberal government wants to create a system where privilege and ancestry matter more than action and values. That is not the Canada our parents and grandparents built, and it is not the Canada we should leave to the next generation.

There is more at stake here than just principle, because there is also the cost of it. With automatic citizenship comes automatic obligations, including the duty to protect and evacuate citizens during international emergencies. We saw the staggering cost of deploying consular services and evacuation operations during a crisis in Lebanon. If Bill C-3 is passed, we may be on the hook to rescue and bring into Canada and provide those services to individuals who have never even lived in Canada and who may have no actual connection to this country beyond mere paperwork.

Canada must never become a country that values someone's last name more than their loyalty to this country. The worst part is that the Liberal government admits it does not even know how many people this would apply to. There are no numbers, no data and no accountability. It is just another open-ended promise with Canadian taxpayers left to foot the bill. This is not irresponsible; it is reckless. It reeks of the same people who cannot be bothered to table a budget.

I will end with this: Conservatives will always stand up for strong families, for people who are loyal to this country, for the people who built this country and who are still doing so, including the hard-working immigrants of Richmond Hill South. They will fight for fairness, for hard work, for earned citizenship and for a Canada that puts Canadian citizens and our heritage first.

Vincent Ho