Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak to this piece of legislation this evening here in the House.

After 10 years of the tired Liberal government, our immigration system is broken. I say that somewhat with a heavy heart because I look across at my colleagues and I know they like to be referred to as a new government. It is anything but new. What the Liberals have done is they have played musical chairs with their front bench. Most of them are the same people, just in different positions. The same goes for the parliamentary secretaries; they are the same people.

The system is broken, obviously for even a better reason than just them playing their musical chairs. Over the past 10 years of the Trudeau Liberals, because that is who they are, they have had seven ministers of citizenship and immigration. I am sure that is a historic first if we look back in the history of Parliament. They have had seven. Basically, they have not been able to find a competent person to handle the file, which has resulted in the dilemma we have today.

They often refer to the previous Conservative government with the great former prime minister Stephen Harper. We had a plan. I am the former parliamentary secretary to the minister of citizenship and immigration in the Harper government. We had a plan.

Our plan was predicated on the following: 65% of newcomers coming to Canada would have to come through our economic streams. This would be someone who had some working knowledge of either of the two official languages of the country and had a skill or a profession, something they could do where they could contribute to their families and to Canadian society from day one when they arrived in Canada. We had understandably set aside 25% for family reunifications, recognizing the importance of keeping families together, and we had set aside 10% for compassionate streams such as asylum seekers and refugees.

In all of that, we had a reasonable and sustainable number of people we would welcome into Canada on an annual basis. In came the Trudeau Liberals, these Liberals we are now facing across the aisle in their third minority government in a row, and out goes this plan and in comes helter-skelter, as far as managing the entire immigration file is concerned.

Today's asylum backlog, for example, stands at over 280,000 people as of March 31 of just this year, which translates to a four-year wait for asylum backlog. These are people who are waiting to get a response. Almost 29,000 people have failed to appear for their removal proceedings, and they cannot be located in the country, because there is no system in place for that to happen.

This is what happens when we have no plan, no control and no semblance of organization on how we should manage a ministry of the Crown. The government planned to cap study permits in 2024, and then blew right past their cap by over 30,000 people. In fact, in 2024, if we add all the streams together, over a million people came to Canada at a time when we have a housing crisis, we have a job crisis, our young people cannot find work and there are 1,500 encampments just in the province of Ontario alone. People cannot find a place to live.

I would argue that when we welcome people to our country, we should provide them with opportunities, opportunities like my parents had when they came here from Greece. When they came here, they worked hard. They got a good paycheque, which afforded them the opportunity to buy a home and grow their family.

Those opportunities and that Canadian dream, under these Liberals, have gone completely out the window. These Liberals have eroded the trust in our immigration system, and under their watch, wait times for application processing is completely out of control. Now, they want to add to the chaos.

I believe being a Canadian citizen is one of the greatest privileges one can have. Canadians died for the rights and privileges afforded to our citizens. Some of us may take that for granted on a daily basis, but 66,000 brave men lost their lives in the First World War, 44,000 brave soldiers lost their lives in the Second World War, 516 people lost their lives in the Korean effort, another 159 people lost their lives in Afghanistan and 29 in Cyprus and other efforts around the world. They lost their lives for those rights and privileges that we have today, and we need to take that seriously.

We have a responsibility, when we bestow that Canadian citizenship, that huge privilege, on somebody. It means something. We do not water that down.

Canadians have the right to vote. I would argue that people who have a right to vote should have contributed or contribute to this country, as many of our families do and as Canadians do from coast to coast to coast on a daily basis.

Now, Bill C-3, the bill we are discussing, weakens Canadian citizenship by eliminating that first-generation limit, allowing parents born abroad to pass citizenship to their children born abroad, generation after generation, as long as one parent has spent 1,095 non-consecutive days in Canada prior to the birth of the child. That does not mean 1,095 days in the last five years, which is the standard today for a permanent resident to become a Canadian citizen. It is just 1,095 days in their life.

A student who came to Canada, studied, spent three years here, obtained a Canadian citizenship, left the country and grew a family somewhere else can bestow that citizenship to their child born in that country, in perpetuity, to grandchildren and so forth, without ever having lived another day in our country. That does not make sense to Canadians who worked hard to earn that right of citizenship.

Like many colleagues in the House, I have attended citizenship ceremonies. What a huge privilege it was and what an emotional experience it was for me to be there because it brought me back to thoughts of my parents when they came to this country. It is always meaningful for the people who are being bestowed with citizenship on that day. There is nothing more emotional for me in speeches that I have given on the subject, than that day when a citizenship judge affords me the opportunity to say a few words. My closing comment, when I look at the crowd of 30, 40 or sometimes 50 people obtaining Canadian citizenship that day, are, “Welcome to the Canadian family”, knowing very well that those folks had come here, worked hard, done all of the right things, waited their time and earned the right and privilege of Canadian citizenship.

We should not look at this legislation without considering the importance and the value of Canadian citizenship. The government has not completed a cost analysis, nor has it told Canadians the number of new citizens that Bill C-3 would create or the cost to taxpayers, especially in health care, pensions and so forth. When we ask Liberals the questions, they say that they do not know, that they are not certain and that they cannot put a number on it.

Any other time, the Liberals would look at the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report and recite those numbers with glee. This time, the Liberals have conveniently decided they are not going to refer, at all, to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who has said that this is going to affect some 115,000 people, at the very least, and initially cost Canadians $21 million. Why the Liberals are choosing to ignore the Parliamentary Budget Officer's analysis is perplexing, to say the least. I am sure the Speaker is having difficulty understanding the reasons why as well, because no reasonable person could come up with a logical answer to that question.

Worse, there would be no criminal check required for new citizens. The government requires criminal background checks for other immigration processes, so why would it not want to do that for this stream of people who they are suggesting come in through Bill C-3. It makes no sense. I would argue that a primary responsibility of a responsible government of any country is the safety and the security of its citizens.

Canadian families need to know that when they take their children to school, to a shopping mall, to a community centre or to a park, the people walking beside them have been properly vetted and are law-abiding residents and citizens of this country. However, the bill does not provide for that background check.

Not vetting individuals coming into the country raises a lot of questions, but it is in line with the Liberals' soft-on-crime policies that we have seen over the years. The Liberals appear really comfortable with potentially allowing people convicted of serious crimes such as rape, murder and terrorism to gain citizenship and have the opportunity to be in our communities. As bizarre as that sounds, if I were a Liberal member of Parliament, God forbid, I would ask, “Why would I not want to do a background check on people coming into the country?”

A 30-year-old who has never lived here before but is the son of somebody who has been out of the country would find out that the Liberals have passed a bill, and they could automatically become a Canadian citizen. They could come to Canada as a Canadian citizen with no background check. That is amazing. That does not make sense to me, and I can assure members that it does not make sense to my constituents of Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill. I represent one of the more diverse communities in the country, and I am positive it does not make sense to Canadians anywhere in this beautiful country of ours.

The people I feel most for are the immigrants who went through the traditional immigration processes. These immigrants went through vetting, proved they had a connection to Canada and did the hard work to acquire the privileges and rights bestowed upon them as Canadian citizens. Under the bill before us, their citizenship would become weaker.

To summarize some of these points, the government cannot tell us how many new citizens the bill would create. It cannot tell us the cost. Of course, the Liberals do not want to talk about cost. They recently put through a throne speech and have decided to spend half a trillion dollars without presenting a budget in Parliament so we can debate and discuss it.

Speaking of debating and discussing, I have heard Liberal members come up to the microphone, stand up in their spot and tell us that if we have amendments to Bill C-3, we should bring them to committee. They appear to be saying that they are amenable to looking at some reasonable amendments to the bill. Well, we can be forgiven for questioning the veracity and, really, the honesty of those comments because of a previous rendition of the bill. This is not a new bill. The Liberals purport to be a new government, but this is a cut-and-paste bill. This is Bill C-71 cut and pasted into Bill C-3.

To new members of Parliament elected on all sides of the House, the Liberals are saying, “Never mind, just take our word for it. It's good because we discussed it in the previous Parliament.” That makes no sense because that legislation died when Parliament was stopped and then reached its end of life to go into an election. Members of Parliament should have a right to review it.

When one of those previous renditions, Bill S-245, came up for debate, there were no fewer than 40 amendments moved by Conservative members, all of which the Liberal-NDP coalition of the day voted against. They did not want to consider any one of the 40, and now they want us to look at this bill and say, “We'll take it to committee and consider it, and thank you for allowing us to present some amendments.” Well, we know the record of my dear friends across the aisle on amendments, and we know how much consideration they will give them.

Current citizens who were born in Canada or immigrants who went through other processes to become citizens would definitely have their citizenships weakened with this proposed legislation. There is no plan to process the new applications in an already backlogged, broken system, and the government does not know the scale of the impact or, if they do know, are not willing to share it with Parliament. The question is simply this: Why are the Liberals doing this? Quite frankly, I am not surprised.

Over the last 10 years, the Liberals have continuously weakened Canada's immigration system and how we are perceived on the world stage. It is completely irresponsible to allow hundreds of thousands of immigrants into Canada, given the current challenges in the housing market. In fact, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the OECD, in its May 2025 report, linked record immigration to worsening housing affordability. We know what that means in all of our communities across the country, irrespective of whether people want to stand up in this place and try to defend that somehow.

Taxpayers have spent billions of dollars housing asylum seekers in hotels. The CMHC, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, acknowledges that we need some 3.5 million more homes by 2030 to provide shelter for people who are already here. Here we are wanting to add to that, with a number we do not know. The government is not telling us. It is adding hundreds of thousands of new people into a housing market that is already undersupplied, overpriced and unfair to all who are trying to afford housing, especially our young people who have done everything right and cannot afford to buy a home in the community they grew up and would love to grow a family in.

The job picture also looks a lot less rosy. Our youth cannot land entry-level jobs. Youth unemployment is at 20% in some parts of the country. Unemployment rose to 7% overall in May, the highest rate since the pandemic. Forecasts show that Canada may shed another 100,000 jobs by the fall. The government is adding hundreds of thousands of new people into a job market that is already at its weakest point in years. It is simply reckless.

The Liberal government must create an environment in which new immigrants and Canadians can succeed. That is not happening currently. I have heard stories from my riding in which immigrants who came here 10 years ago are now considering leaving Canada, because the promise they were made has been broken by the Liberal government.

The bill also touches upon children who are adopted internationally. That is something very close to me and very dear to my heart. Back in 1993, my wife and I flew to Guatemala City, where we had the honour and the privilege of meeting our children for the first time. My family came together by something called the miracle of adoption. Therefore, I applaud that the bill recognizes that those children who come into the country will become Canadian citizens. Nothing felt more unwieldy to my wife and me when we arrived in Canada and had to wait a period of time before our infant children, a biological brother and sister, could become Canadian citizens. This bill will correct that, which I applaud.

As my colleagues on this side of the House have said previously, I am glad it is resolving the issue of lost Canadians as well.

It has been 10 years, and our immigration system is in shambles. The Liberals are welcoming hundreds of thousands of new immigrants in a housing crisis, a health care crisis and a deteriorating job market. What is worse, the basics, such as processing applications, are taking much longer, and backlogs continue to persist. The government promises to fix issues that continue to be broken. It is just not fulfilling its promises.

In the last minute I have, I want to say that it is just more of the same. The Liberals want to pass a bill that would add to that chaos, of course, cost taxpayers more and weaken everyone's citizenship.

Only common-sense Conservatives will restore order and integrity to our immigration and citizenship system by tightening requirements, clearing backlogs, streamlining processing, respecting the will of the folks who want to come to Canada through normal immigration channels, welcoming them and giving them every opportunity to succeed in our great country.

Costas Menegakis