Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time today with my colleague from Nanaimo—Ladysmith.

As we debate Bill C-3 today, we go back to the basics of what it means to be Canadian. We are not a postnational state, as my colleagues across the aisle would love us to believe. Canadians exist from coast to coast to coast. There are a great variety of experiences that make up our Canadian identity, but they are bounded within our great landmass. Canadian citizenship means something. It has weight in this world. For it to continue to have weight, there must be a cost. Nothing that is free continues to have any worth, any weight or any merit.

The Conservatives want nothing more than to preserve and increase the value of Canadian citizenship. We value and respect what it means to be a Canadian. The basic cost that Conservatives want to maintain in the price of Canadian citizenship is for there to be a continued connection to Canada. Unfortunately, my dear colleagues across the aisle do not value their peers who live coast to coast to coast. My most esteemed colleagues across the aisle would rather cheapen the value of our Canadian identity by siding with Canadians of convenience.

Let me repeat that concept one more time but more slowly: Canadians of convenience. Are these our brothers and sisters in arms? When push comes to shove in our fracturing global order, can we count on these Canadians of convenience to advance our national interests alongside us, or are they just people who would love to have a Canadian passport?

Bill C-3 would cheapen what it means to be a Canadian, and it would extend citizenship by descent beyond the first generation. In 2009, we, the Conservatives, enforced a first-generation limit. However, under Bill C-3, any person born abroad to a Canadian citizen who has also been born abroad would receive Canadian citizenship. In other words, the children of children born outside of Canada would be considered Canadian.

Before we critique this, it is important to note that the Liberals have made a conditional requirement of what they call a “substantial connection”. This requirement would allow parents to pass Canadian citizenship onto their children generation after generation as long as one parent spends only 1,095 non-consecutive days in Canada prior to the birth of the child.

That is just three years of non-consecutive time in Canada, and there is no need for a criminal record check. Merely three years of non-consecutive time is absolutely too low a standard to establish anyone as a fellow Canadian. At the absolute minimum, the three years should be consecutive and there should be a criminal record check. Without these absolute minimum standards, there can be no progress on this bill.

The goal of the Conservatives is simple: We want to foster generations of Canadians with a national spirit and who feel themselves to be truly Canadian. There is no way to do this unless they live here with us as fellow Canadians for some degree of time. This is why their presence in Canada has to be sustained and consecutive so that they live, learn and work beside their fellow Canadians.

If Bill C-3 passes in its current state, how is it fair to legitimate immigrants who spend years building lives here, from coast to coast to coast, when the Liberal government is ready to give citizenship to people who have never even lived in Canada for a sustained period? The government has cheapened what it means to be Canadian. We will all suffer for it.

With that established, let us quickly address what Bill C-3 could be, if it was precise and focused. The core historical problem we should be addressing is what has been framed as “lost Canadians”. These are people who either had Canadian citizenship and lost it, or thought they were entitled to Canadian citizenship but never received it. This was the original issue Conservatives gave support for and for which we will continue to give support. Historically, citizenship has been revoked due to issues like restrictions on dual citizenship or a child not being registered after being born abroad.

Section 8 of the Citizenship Act says all individuals born abroad to Canadian parents after February 14, 1977, had to apply to reinstate their Canadian citizenship before they turned 28 years old. In short, Conservatives wanted to restore citizenship to individuals who had lost it due to non-application for retention or application rejections under the former Citizenship Act, section 8. Some individuals lost citizenship at the age of 28. These generally included people born as the second generation abroad between February 15, 1977, and April 16, 1981, who turned 28. This was also the original content of Conservative Senator Yonah Martin's private member's bill, Bill S-245, which plays a more direct role in addressing concerns about the first-generation rule.

What I want to emphasize is how specific the problem was and how tailored the solution could be. What we have instead, with Bill C-3, is the use of this originally narrow problem of lost Canadians to spearhead broad, sweeping changes to the fundamentals of Canadian citizenship. Conservatives truly, fully support the provisions that relate to lost Canadians, but we cannot allow the pretext of solving the lost Canadians issue to lead to a sweeping change in what it means to be Canadian.

With this little historical background out of the way, let us return to considering Bill C-3 as a whole. The debate on Bill C-3 boils down to one simple question: What does it mean to be a Canadian? Ultimately, do we truly value what it means to live from coast to coast to coast, or does place have no meaning?

I have often heard culture defined as a way of life, and a way of life is something learned by doing, learned beside people who are doing it. In this way, citizenship is like a trade, and it requires apprenticeship. To apprentice as a Canadian, one must live in Canada beside Canadians and learn a way of life over several consecutive years.

However, in the current state of Bill C-3, the Liberals want to serve Canadians of convenience who hold Canadian citizenship but live abroad and do not participate in Canadian society. Bill C-3 serves Canadians of convenience, but does it serve Canadians?

Only common-sense Conservatives will restore order to immigration and citizenship. We will restore integrity to citizenship by tightening requirements, because this is how we preserve the value of what it means to be Canadian.

Michael Ma

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