Bill C-37 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Citizenship Act

This enactment amends the Citizenship Act in order to
(a) permit certain persons who lost their Canadian citizenship for specified reasons to have their citizenship restored from the time it was lost;
(b) permit certain persons who, born outside Canada to a Canadian parent, did not acquire Canadian citizenship for specified reasons to become Canadian citizens from the time of their birth;
(c) provide that certain persons born outside Canada to a Canadian parent who was himself or herself born outside Canada do not acquire Canadian citizenship; and
(d) provide for a grant of citizenship, on application, to persons who have always been stateless and meet other specified conditions.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

I have a letter here, and I think all committee members had this sent to them. As we've been doing these hearings—and they've taken a few meetings—members of the public have sent us information. Some of it is very helpful because it comes from Immigration Canada, so it has some content information.

This one is from the executive director, Denise Mildner, who is from Saskatchewan, the Evermore Centre. It provides data on the back end. I want to read it into the record and make reference to it, because it feeds into my next question. It says:

The voices of many parents have gone unheard. Since 2010, 13,791 children were born abroad and adopted by Canadian parents since bills C-14...and C-37...were passed.

That's going as far back as 2007.

Of these, 63% or 8,632 children were adopted through the Citizenship Stream. Unknowingly, by choosing this route, however, these children do not have the same rights as other Canadians and cannot pass on their citizenship. Regardless of which route was chosen, there should not exist any discriminatory laws against an internationally adopted child.

Does this amendment fix this particular situation, or does it address a different issue of just passing it on and the treatment of the children as Canadian children for the first-generation limit?

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

This amendment aims to address the second generation cut-off rule. Committee members will know that in 2009, under Bill C-37, the right for Canadians to pass their citizenship on to children born abroad was taken away. As a result, it has created a new class of lost Canadians. That's been extremely problematic. That was done back in 2009 by the Conservative government.

This amendment aims to restore that right to those individuals by establishing a connections test to Canada. I'm proposing that we establish the connections test in four ways. It says:

(i) the person has been physically present in Canada for at least 1,095 days,

(ii) the person has been registered as an elector or a future elector under the Canada Elections Act,

(iii) the person has studied at an elementary, secondary, post-secondary or vocational school in Canada, or

(iv) the person has been employed by the Government of Canada, or has been a representative or delegate of Canada, at an international organization, summit or forum.

I'm moving this amendment, Madam Chair, because I think it is important to recognize those lost Canadians. If they meet any one of those connections tests that I've highlighted, I think they should be able to have the right restored to them.

Madam Chair, at this point I'm just wondering if I should I read out the content of the amendment as it is drafted by the legislative council. Can I just say that I move NDP-1?

Citizenship and Immigration

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Madam Speaker, Bill C-37 was passed unanimously. Can we know why this bill, which has exactly the same objective, is being debated again in the House of Commons?

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

moved that the 15th report of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration presented on Tuesday, April 18, 2023, be concurred in.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to this important motion before the House, the concurrence motion.

What we are dealing with is essentially seeking authority from the House to expand the scope of Bill S-245. Bill S-245 is a Senate bill that is before the House to address the situation of those who are commonly known as “lost Canadians”. Bill S-245 would amend the Citizenship Act to allow Canadians who previously lost their citizenship due to the age 28 rule to regain their citizenship. The age 28 rule means that second-generation Canadians born abroad were subject to the laws of citizenship under the former section 8 of the Citizenship Act, which required them to apply to certify their citizenship before they turned 28 years old.

In 2009 the Conservatives repealed this section through Bill C-37. However, the legislation did not restore citizenship to those who lost their citizenship prior to 2009. This oversight created major problems for many Canadians, as they somehow could lose their citizenship status as they turned 28. Many of them actually did not even know that was the situation they were faced with. It was only when applying for their passport, for example, that they realized they had lost their citizenship.

Bill S-245 seeks to fix the age 28 rule. However, the rule does not address other situations where Canadians have lost their citizenship. The archaic provisions of the Citizenship Act have resulted in many other lost Canadians, and New Democrats seek to actually fix this problem.

Mr. Speaker, 14 years ago, Bill C-37 passed in this House and came into force, and as a result of that, many people lost their citizenship rights. In fact, it created a scenario where Canada's Citizenship Act, for this group of lost Canadians, in many ways was not charter-compliant. For decades some Canadians have found themselves even to be stateless due to a number of these archaic immigration laws.

In 2007, the UN's Refugees magazine listed Canada as one of the top offending countries for making its own people stateless. In 2009, as I mentioned, the Conservatives said that they were going to fix the lost Canadian issue with Bill C-37. Sadly, this did not happen. Worse still, the Conservatives created a brand new group of lost Canadians, and today we have an opportunity before us to fix that.

Bill S-245, the bill that was introduced by Senator Martin, is now before the committee for citizenship and immigration, and the bill aims to address this group of lost Canadians, lost due to the age 28 rule. I want to be very clear that the NDP wholeheartedly supports ensuring those who one day woke up and found themselves without Canadian status are made whole. This absolutely needs to be done. However, it is the NDP's strongest view that the scope of Bill S-245 is too narrow. The NDP wants to seize this opportunity to fix the lost Canadian issue once and for all.

Currently, there is a large group of Canadians who are deemed to be second-class citizens, due to the Conservatives' first-generation cut-off rule brought on by the Harper administration in 2009. Bill C-37 ended the extension of citizenship to second-generations born abroad. By stripping their right to pass on citizenship to their children if they were born outside of Canada, the Canadian government has caused undue hardship to many families. For some, it means separating children from parents. Some even find themselves stateless.

I spoke with Patrick Chandler. He is a Canadian who, while born abroad, spent most of his life in Canada. As an adult, he worked abroad, married someone from another country and had children. He was later offered a job in British Columbia. When he moved back to Canada, he had to leave his wife and children behind because he could not pass on his citizenship to his children. He had to go through an arduous process to finally reunite with them a year later.

There are many families being impacted in this way, and it is wrong. We should not put Canadians in those kinds of situations, yet here we are and that is what they have to suffer through. There are many families being impacted.

Another family faced with this situation is the family of Emma Kenyon. In fact, Emma lived here in Canada, as did her husband. However, they worked abroad and they met abroad. They had a child abroad. That child is stateless because neither Emma nor her husband has status in that country. They are now in a situation where they have a stateless child born to a Canadian. This is so wrong, and we need to fix this problem. Immigration officials said to them at the time that, before their child was born, they had a choice. They could actually travel back to Canada and have their child be born in Canada.

This, of course, did not make any sense. It was during the COVID period, when, basically, it was unsafe for her to travel. If Emma did travel back to Canada, she would be without a family doctor or a gynecologist to care for her pregnancy. None of that made any sense, but that is what she was told to do. Of course, she did not risk the birth of her child in that situation. She did not risk her own health either. As a result, her child was born abroad and is now in a stateless situation. It should never have been this way.

Families are so frustrated with these archaic immigration laws, especially with the stripping of the rights of immigrants having children born abroad. Those rights were stripped because of the Conservatives’ Bill C-37. Families are now taking the government to court to address this inequity. The Conservatives deemed first-generation Canadians born abroad to be less worthy and less Canadian, even though many had grown up in Canada. The implications are so serious that people are taking the government to court.

At the citizenship and immigration committee, when the opportunity arises, I will be moving amendments to ensure that this does not happen to anyone else. The NDP amendments would ensure that first-generation, born-abroad Canadians would have the right to pass on their citizenship rights to their children based on a connections test. They would also retroactively restore citizenship to persons who have not been recognized as citizens since the second-generation cut-off rule was enacted in 2009.

The same principles would apply to adoptees as well. We need to make sure that individuals and families that adopt children are not going to be caught in this bad situation. For those who do not wish to have citizenship conferred upon them, upon notification to the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, these changes would not apply to them.

This will mean that people like Patrick, whom I mentioned, and people like Emma and her family would not have to suffer the challenges they face as a result of Bill C-37’s stripping of their rights.

In addition to the amendments related to the first-generation cut-off rule, I will also be moving amendments to symbolically recognize those who died before citizenship was conferred upon them. For example, many of Canada's war heroes fought and died for Canada. However, they were never recognized as Canadians. The NDP amendments would also honour them and recognize them as citizens, retroactive to birth.

The situation with what I call “war heroes” is this. The first Governor General of Canada, in 1867, right after Confederation, said that Canadians were a new “nationality”. However, according to Canada's immigration laws, Canadian citizenship did not exist prior to January 1, 1947. That means that no soldiers who fought and died for Canada in battles like Vimy Ridge or D-Day are deemed to be Canadians.

Bill C-37 was supposed to fix this, but it did not happen. Don Chapman, who has fought for so long on the issue of lost Canadians and trying to rectify those concerns, indicated that “the government has confirmed they're leaving out all the war dead [pre-1947]. So, the war dead in Canada were really just British. We might as well just scratch the Maple Leaf off their headstones.”

Symbolically recognizing those who fought for Canada and ensuring that they are recognized as citizens would have zero implications, no legal consequence whatsoever or liability for the government. It is really a strictly symbolic gesture, and it is an important one, especially for family members of loved ones who fought and died for Canada. I see some of these family members on Remembrance Day every year. Many veterans went to war and fought for Canada, and never came back. We should remember them as Canadians.

Beyond this, there are a couple of other categories of lost Canadians, who, due to one of the discriminatory rules, such as the gender discrimination rule that existed in Canada, were not recognized as citizens. The NDP's amendments would aim to fix that as well. Suffice it to say, there are long lists of people who have been hurt by this set of rules, and successive governments have said they would fix it. However, it never came to be. Now we have a chance to actually do that work. It is important we do that work now.

I fear that the Conservatives would not support this effort. At committee, when the senator and the sponsor of the bill were before us at committee to talk about this bill, the Conservatives indicated they wanted to just ensure the bill would be left as is and address only the 28-year rule, not deal with the other categories of lost Canadians. To me, that is wrong. Their argument is that it is too complicated, that we do not have time and that if the matter goes back before the Senate, then an election might be called and the bill might just die. That is, of course, if the Conservatives want that to happen.

We could actually work together, collaboratively, to say that we are going to fix this problem once and for all, for lost Canadians. We want to make sure that people like Emma Kenyon, whose child was born stateless, would never be in that situation. We could actually make that happen by amending the bill.

I know that Conservative members, even their leader, would say that they support the immigrant community and that they are there for them. If they are there for them, first, I would say that Bill C-37 should never have stripped of their rights the immigrants who became Canadians, such as myself. If I had a child born abroad, my child should have citizenship conferred upon them. The Conservatives took that away. We have a chance today to fix that, to say that immigrants, such as myself, would be able to have the same rights as those who were born in Canada, and be able to pass on their citizenship rights to their children born abroad.

To be sure that there is a connection between individuals like that, we could put forward a connections test, such as, for example, having been in Canada for 1,095 days. This happens to be the same number of days required, through the Citizenship Act, for people getting their citizenship. We could put in provisions like that to ensure there is a clear connection between them and Canada. There is no reason to say that we are not going to do any of this and that we are just going to strip them of their rights and not recognize them. Let us fix this once and for all.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

When I hear some of the comments from the opposition, not necessarily relating to the motion that Madam Kwan brought forward, I can't sit back and take this because I have the institutional memory, particularly, of the regressive immigration policies that Conservatives brought in when they were in power. I can talk about those regressive policies for months and can write books on those. Let me talk about a few of the things that were raised on the other side.

Certainly, from time to time.... We had COVID. We brought in a policy to have the citizenship ceremonies at home. Certainly, I would love to have them in person. On the other hand, I was able to join one of the families, who were very happy to have it at home because the whole family was there. I still remember the name of the person—Sushil Kumar. His family invited me, and we really enjoyed having that ceremony at home. At least they had the option.

On the other hand, I do agree that there is always the off chance of fraud, as well. When we have online tests, it happens in every test. Certainly there are pros and cons on that particular thing.

On the issue of agriculture and farm labour that came up. I remember, I wasn't even elected at that time. It was the year 2003 or 2004 when Joseph Volpe was the minister of HRSDC. There was a pilot project that came in to help the farmers bring in workers from Mexico. I can tell you that he did it overnight. When I approached him—because people from British Columbia approached me, the farmers—I went to him and we brought in that pilot project. That project is very successful now across Canada.

I can talk about the parents and grandparents who were mentioned here. The regressive policies of the Conservatives almost tried to shut down the parents and grandparents—5,000 applications. They lowered the age of a dependent child from 22 years to 18 years so that the families didn't even qualify. I can tell you that I take pride in the Liberals here. When the government took over.... If you look at the past records, since 2015, if you take the average, Madam Chair, we accepted an average of 20,000 applications—four times more than the Conservatives. Not only that, but we've brought up the age of the dependent child from 18 to 22 years, so that more people can participate in those applications and more families can come here.

It doesn't stop there. I can talk about Bill C-37. That was their creation as well. They should have thought at the time that they were leaving many Canadians out of the Canadian citizenship we are talking about today. We need to talk today about whether that was a well-thought-out process in 2009.

When it comes to immigration, I don't think there's any government other than the Liberal government that has done more to bring in the people.

On the agriculture workers, I agree with Madam Rempel Garner that we have to have opportunities for agriculture workers to move from temporary permits or work permits to permanent residency. When we created 90,000 openings, out of that, I still remember, 40,000 were reserved for students and then 30,000 were for those from an agriculture worker to a professional—people who were in the agriculture industry could then become permanent residents—and 20,000 were for health care workers. At every opportunity the Liberals got, they worked hard and diligently to bring in immigration policies that are good for small businesses, good for Canada and good for Canadian families.

Look at the numbers. I still remember when I first was elected in 2006. If I look at the numbers then, it was in the area of 200,000. Now, we are bringing in half a million in 2025. Why? It's to help farmers, to help small businesses and to help families. I could go on forever, but I know the officials are here.

I will have to stop here, but at some other point we can have a good conversation on immigration policy.

Thank you.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I will just make some very short comments.

Suffice to say that there is no political partisan agenda here. The agenda here is to try to address the lost Canadians who are, indeed, suffering right now and whose families have been faced with forced separation and all kinds of challenges. I don't think that's what this committee wants to see happen to the community, in the broader community. That's what's happening right now, just to be clear.

As it happens, today is the 14th anniversary of Bill C-37's coming into force and effect, thereby stripping first-generation citizens of the right to pass on citizenship to their children and subsequent generations. We have people here today who presented as witnesses in the last round and who are gravely concerned. What I have heard from the senator, from Conservative friends of mine, from Liberal friends of mine and from Bloc friends of mine is that people want to address the lost Canadians issue. We have an opportunity to do that, and that's exactly what this is. We can seize that opportunity to see if we can make whole the family members who are suffering as a result of that.

I am hearing some threats related to it, but, from my perspective, I'm here to try to get a job done, and my motivation here is the people who are suffering. I know many of them. They have contacted me. They have written to me. I have spoken with them. I have met with them. I feel that it's my job to do my level best.

I understand that this is out of scope. Throughout the entire committee stage when we had witnesses before us, including officials, I asked questions about things being out of scope. I'm motivated to see if we can actually do something that is unusual—not for partisan reasons but for the public good.

I hope committee members will vote in support of this motion. Let's see if we can get the job done.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I'm now going to move a second motion, a copy of which has been sent to the clerk, also in both French and English.

The motion is as follows:

That, the committee report the following to the House: that the Committee recommends to the House that it be granted the power during its consideration of Bill S-245, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (granting citizenship to certain Canadians), to expand the scope of the Bill such that the provisions of the bill be not limited to an application to retain his or her citizenship under section 8 as it is read before April 17, 2009.

Madam Chair, we've had extensive discussion about this, particularly with witnesses who came before us. As we know, there are many categories of lost Canadians. Bill S-245 currently deals with the category of lost Canadians pertaining to the 28-year-old age rule. However, it leaves out many other categories of lost Canadians. Most notably, the current situations are such that many families are faced with forced separation because of the first-generation cut-off rule that came about with Bill C-37 back in 2009.

We've heard from witnesses who urged us—the committee, the government—to make amendments to this bill, which would be out of scope for this bill, to address those lost Canadians. There are other categories as well for which we can get into the details when we get to the clause-by-clause, but in order for that to be considered, this motion is required.

I'm therefore moving this motion so that we can follow the procedure absolutely, as has been advised to me by the head clerk and the legislative clerk sitting at the table, to make sure that we do not end up in a bad situation with this effort.

To that end, I hope committee members will support this motion I've put forward.

[Don Chapman]

The first thing I'll say is that I learned from the woman behind me, Meili Faille, that Quebeckers, French Canadians, understand the book de famille more than the English side. They understand what it's like to be stripped of their identities and culture, and that's exactly what we're doing with the lost Canadians.

As far as Nicole Girard's comments saying we're going to create new lost Canadians, no, I don't agree with that. The argument that they're going to.... What the gentleman from the the Canadian Bar Association just referred to was that we're going to give them retroactive citizenship, which takes away their ability or their right to say they were born in Canada—like being in a citizenship ceremony. The government didn't seem to have a problem doing that with Bill C-37, because that's exactly what it did to children of lost Canadians who were naturalized. They were deemed to be born in Canada, and then the government retroactively took that right away.

He also made reference to the Supreme Court decision in Benner v. Canada, which was about women's rights and criminality, both of them. What the government did was freeze into law that gender discrimination, so that today women have fewer rights than men to confer citizenship.

This is devastating, and to be really honest with you, I want all of this done. I wanted it done 10 years ago, 20 years ago. I lost my citizenship in 1961, and I've been fighting ever since. I was an airline pilot. I would not leave people behind, and I won't do it now, because we're going to keep fighting. In all honesty, this a choice and the bureaucrats have made the choice to deliberately leave people out. They've been doing this for decades. This is just a matter of sitting down, really checking this out and talking. We can fix this very easily.

There are a lot of people. Pre-1947, the Chinese were considered to be stateless registered aliens. They were not; they were citizens. The government is still, to this day, saying citizenship began on January 1, 1947. Most people do not realize that Mackenzie King stripped the Japanese of their citizenship in 1946 and deported them. Minister Hajdu, just a year ago, announced that the government is going to give citizenship back to those people who enfranchised before 1946. There are huge ramifications.

It's not a small group of people. It's a million to two million people. When Bill C-37 passed, since then, there have been about 20,000 people who have had claims, even though there are a million to two million people. For all these reasons of derivative claims, it's not going to happen.

Thank you for what you're doing. It's very important to fix this bill.

Citizenship Act

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Madam Speaker, on behalf of the people of my riding of Calgary Shepard, I am pleased to speak to Bill S‑245. It is always a great honour and privilege for me to be able to speak on behalf of Canadian citizens.

I am not like everyone else in the House. Like 23% or 24% of Canadians, I am an immigrant to this country. I was just talking about that with my colleague, the member for Calgary Forest Lawn, who was born in Dubai.

As someone born in Poland, Canadian citizenship is extremely important to me. Canada is not only my homeland, but it is also the country that accepted my father, my mother, my brother and me when our country of origin, where I was born, did not want us. My father was a member of Solidarnosc. He was a worker, a labourer, an engineer for the Gdansk shipyards when Poland was communist. My father left Poland in 1983 to come to Canada, and it was Canada that offered him the opportunity to stay. He started working at a shipyard in Sorel. It was in Sorel, where I lived with my father in 1985, that I learned French.

Poland let us leave the country, but it did not let us take our passports with us, because the Polish workers at the Gdansk shipyard, the Lenin shipyard, and their families were not allowed to return to that country. As I said, Canadian citizenship represents my homeland as well as the great honour of becoming Canadian in 1989. Now I have the great honour of representing my constituents as a Polish immigrant to this wonderful country that has given us so many opportunities.

I must admit that I did not know a lot about the so-called lost Canadians, the people who lost the Canadian citizenship they had at birth or did not qualify for citizenship even though they should have been entitled to it by virtue of their presence in Canada. That is the result of a whole raft of laws and attitudes, and many MPs have talked about this and debated it since 1945. The laws changed again in the 1970s. Finally, along came Bill C‑37, passed by a Conservative government that wanted to solve the problem for good and reduce the number of lost Canadians as much as possible.

Despite the many bills that have been introduced to reform the legislation in this century and the last, despite the fact that parliamentarians studied this issue and were meant to receive witnesses to explain to them how these things happened, despite the fact that the government has tried to change the legislation several times to ensure that this does not happen, no one noticed that there would be a gap of 50 or so months during which there would still be lost Canadians.

Where are we at today?

I would like to thank Senator Yonah Martin, herself an immigrant from Korea, who sponsored this bill in the Senate. In the House of Commons, it was sponsored by the member for Calgary Forest Lawn. It is Senator Martin who proposed this bill to try to fix this problem for lost Canadians. Apparently, there are hundreds of Canadians in a situation that I would describe as extremely shameful, despite the fact that parts of the legislation have been changed over the past 100 years. Several different governments have tried to fix this legislative problem.

Before, the problem was that Canadians born outside the country to Canadian parents had until their 28th birthday to notify the Canadian government that they wanted to retain their citizenship. However, there was no form or simple way to confirm this with the government. It was not easy to do.

Even within the Conservative caucus, our colleague, the member for Souris—Moose Mountain, would have been one of those lost Canadians, had it not been for his father tipping him off. I do not know how his father knew that Parliament was amending the Citizenship Act, but the amendments could have made him one of those lost Canadians.

In debate, the member for Souris—Moose Mountain said that he would be forever grateful to his parents who made sure to let him know, otherwise he would not have been able to serve in the House of Commons and represent the people of his riding in Saskatchewan.

This is the second time that we have tried to fill this legislative void by introducing Bill S‑245. I greatly admire author Franz Kafka. We have here the perfect example of a Kafkaesque or bureaucratic government that creates problems for ordinary citizens. This great German author who penned The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, The Trial, The Castle and Amerika, spoke about these major organizations that have far too many rules and far too many people trying to enforce them and about how an ordinary citizen can end up before them for making a mistake they were not even aware of.

Many people have lost their citizenship this way. However, those people can be proud because there are many parliamentarians, including Senator Yonah Martin, who are working to ensure this legislative void is filled.

We are now debating this bill to try to correct the error in Bill C‑37, which was introduced and debated in 2009 and 2011, if memory serves.

At the time, Bill C‑37 sought to amend the Citizenship Act to address this legislative gap. The period covered by the bill was approximately 50 months for second-generation Canadians. I am a first-generation Canadian. My children were all born in Calgary and are first-generation Canadians because they were all born in Canada. There was a legislative gap for Canadians who were born abroad to Canadian parents during those 50 months between February 15, 1967, and April 16, 1981. These Canadians were to inform the government before their 28th birthday if they wished to keep their citizenship.

As I said, there is hope, because we all agree that a Canadian is a Canadian and has the right to Canadian citizenship. It is a source of great pride and a great honour and privilege to be able to say that I am Canadian and always will be. In any event, that is my hope, unless the government makes another legislative mistake in the future and something happens to those of us who received their citizenship in 1989. I am hoping it will not happen, but one never knows.

In this bill, I think that Senator Yonah Martin found the right words to legislate on this issue. I have sponsored many bills in the House and I have had to talk to the jurilinguists and lawyers who work in the House to find the right words to achieve a goal. Sometimes, the problem is finding the right words and the right dates in order to ensure that legislative voids are properly filled while addressing the initial problem we sought to solve by introducing legislation in the House.

I thank Senator Yonah Martin, but also all of the other members and senators who worked hard on this bill. I am thinking of the former Speaker of the Senate, Noël Kinsella, and of former senators David Tkachuk and Art Eggleton, who worked hard to ensure that these Canadians get their citizenship.

During debates in the House, I always share a Yiddish proverb. Today's is this: “When you sweep the house, you find everything.” I hope that this legislation will make it possible for us to find all of the lost Canadians so that they can get their citizenship.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

moved that Bill S-245, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (granting citizenship to certain Canadians), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill S-245, an act to amend the Citizenship Act (granting citizenship to certain Canadians).

I want to thank the hon. senator from British Columbia, Yonah Martin, who brought forward this important bill. She introduced this originally as Bill S-230 in the last Parliament in the other place to address the lost Canadians whose citizenship was revoked without their knowledge and without warning simply because of the wording in the Citizenship Act.

I am excited to hear from the member for Souris—Moose Mountain, who will be sharing his experience of almost being a lost Canadian. If he chooses to do so, maybe he can share a picture of the card he carries around.

While Bill S-230 passed unanimously through the other place in the 43rd Parliament, the unnecessary and selfish election of 2021 killed the bill before it could get to first reading here. That is why I was happy and hopeful to see it pass unanimously once again in the Senate and reach second reading here in this place.

I want to thank Senator Martin for her continued work on this file, along with former Senate Speaker the hon. Noël Kinsella and former senators David Tkachuk and Art Eggleton, as well as Mr. Don Chapman. He has worked tirelessly with our colleagues in the other place to advocate for lost Canadians and this much-needed change to the Citizenship Act.

Canadians who lost their status or become stateless because of these changes to the act are Canadians in every way except technically under the law. They pay their taxes, contribute to their communities and uphold the values of what it means to live in our beautiful country.

From 1947 to 1977, the law of the land was that children born abroad received citizenship only if their parents registered them within two years of their birth. In addition, their parents must have also given birth to them in wedlock, with at least one of the parents being a Canadian.

In 1977, the then government introduced a new Citizenship Act, changing the law so that children born abroad on or after February 14, 1977, received their Canadian citizenship if one of their parents was a Canadian citizen, regardless of their marital status. However, if the Canadian parent was also born abroad, a child had until turning 28 to apply to keep their citizenship. If they did not, it would be taken away.

When the law passed in 1977, the government made no effort to inform Canadians affected by this change. No form was published, no instructions were given on how someone could reaffirm their citizenship and no one affected was told that this requirement even existed.

Finally, in 2009, Bill C-37 was brought in by the Conservative government to make changes to the Citizenship Act to rectify past mistakes. When it came into effect, the rules for citizenship changed for people born outside Canada to Canadian parents who were not already Canadian citizens. The changes saw the age 28 rule repealed, and Canadians caught up in the rule previously who had not yet reached that age were grandfathered into the amended law. However, the wording of Bill C-37 created an unfortunate gap for a small group of Canadians who were born between 1977 and 1981. Those who turned 28 before Bill C-37 became law in 2009 were also excluded.

In the committee review of this bill at the Senate's social affairs committee, senators asked IRCC officials how this could take place, what was being done to inform those who did not know they were lost and why the government was not being proactive in finding them. The answer from the IRCC officials was, “It’s fair to say that given the small number of applications...we are not out looking for Lost Canadians.” In reality, IRCC relies on lost Canadians to figure out they were stripped of their citizenship due to bureaucracy and paperwork.

Some lost Canadians knew about the change and either applied to keep their Canadian citizenship or let it lapse. These are Canadians who in many cases were raised here, who grew up attending school here and who have worked here their whole adult lives. These are Canadians who started families in this country and paid their taxes on time, but for one small change to the wording of the Citizenship Act, they lost their Canadian citizenship. When they turned 28, there was no letter from Citizenship and Immigration Canada and there was no warning. It was just gone.

All of us in this place know that Canadian citizenship is not identified by each person as one tangible idea. On the contrary, it is deeply personal to each of us. It makes up our identity and sense of belonging to a broader idea. For my community and me, Canadian citizenship is a goal. It is a marker for achieving the Canadian dream.

Being an immigrant myself and coming to Canada when I was five, I experienced first-hand the journey to achieving citizenship. My family grew up economically in poverty, lining up in the rain for low-income bus passes and having both parents working jobs just to survive. My family always had that goal to reach for Canadian citizenship. I saw my parents work themselves to the bone for my family. Because of their hard work, my brother, sister and I are where we are today. We achieved our dream of Canadian citizenship after having to work hard day and night, coming from little and knowing that the road is not easy. However, we know that the blood, sweat and tears we experienced on that journey were worth it. We are Canadian citizens.

That is why, standing here as a member of Parliament, I cannot imagine what it would be like to lose one's citizenship arbitrarily, especially for those who worked hard and even served in uniform for this country, to one day lose something they believed so much in. This is not just an issue for the many people this bill would help to reinstate citizenship to; it is an issue for all of us. As Canadians and representatives of Canadians, it is our responsibility to help preserve what it means to be a citizen of this country and fundamentally what it means to be a Canadian.

I ask my fellow colleagues to do the right thing and support this bill to reinstate citizenship for lost Canadians.

[Mary-Ann Hubers]

There's nothing in Bill C-6 that talks about the first-generation limit, but there is in the law a first-generation limit that applies to children born abroad to a Canadian citizen. There were a number of reforms done that gave citizenship back to lost Canadians. The first one was in Bill C-37 in 2009. Then there were additional changes in Bill C-24 that gave citizenship back or gave it for the first time to a number of other lost Canadians. There were a number of individuals who were fixed by those provisions.

For those who are impacted now in terms of being themselves first generation born abroad, and they have a child abroad who's therefore not eligible for citizenship by descent, there are some avenues available to them. For example, they can sponsor that child for a permanent residence to Canada. If the child is stateless because they don't have access to any other citizenship, there's a grant in the Citizenship Act for stateless children of Canadians.

[David Matas]

I was interested in your comments about the process, which relates to your question. I'll try to connect the two.

There's been a long history—over 10 years now—of various governments introducing amendments to the Citizenship Act to deal with revocation, for example, Bill C-16, BillC-18, and BillC-37, which have some good suggestions in them that we like. We've proposed that some of them be incorporated in here.

It's of some concern to us that all these proposed amendments—which would change the revocation process, which is not working now—are put aside, and instead we have this bill. There are some good things in the bill, and we support many of the components of it, but because it's a private member's bill—and this is a point your colleague Irwin Cotler has mentioned—it doesn't go through Justice charter scrutiny the way government bills do.

To answer specifically, yes, there's a charter right of citizenship, which is not limited necessarily to the way citizenship is defined in the Citizenship Act. It's open to anybody who loses their citizenship to say that this is a violation of their charter right to citizenship, regardless of what the Citizenship Act says.

I can't tell you whether a charter challenge like that is going to succeed or not, but it's certainly potentially there.

[Rénald Gilbert]

You mean Bill C-37. The first Bill C-37, because there is a second that is—

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Fine. My colleague Mr. Wrzesnewskyj talked about the privilege of citizenship and how to limit its extension. We already had that debate in this committee, and we know it is always very difficult to determine who should be given this privilege and who should not.

I remember very well that, at the time, when we were studying the former Bill C-37 on citizenship, the officials had told us that the place of birth was the simplest and easiest to apply criteria, and that it covered the largest number of cases. That is why it is the general criteria which is used in our legislation to extend citizenship. It is the criteria you used in your bill.

Nevertheless, we still need to define a whole list of exceptions to cover as many situations as possible.

I would like to take advantage of your presence to have a more thorough discussion about citizenship.

Is the place of birth still the most relevant criteria to determine the attachment of an individual to Canada?

In my opinion, if we started to question this premise, we could see things in a totally different light. On the one hand, you have people who were born in Canada—some cases have been reported in the media—and who come to Canada like tourists, to give birth and then they leave for 18 years. Later, their children come to Canada for postsecondary education. These people have no ties in Canada.

On the other hand, you might have people who have always lived in Canada and who happen to give birth abroad, quite accidentally—some of them live along the American border, and the ambulance may have driven them to an American hospital—, and these people cannot extend their citizenship to their child if he or she is born abroad.

In this day and age, when people are travelling everywhere around the world, shouldn't we start to think about determining citizenship according to the number of years an individual or his parents have lived in Canada, rather than apply stupidly the place of birth criteria?

[Joe Preston, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Madam Speaker, I rise to address Bill C-467 which was brought forward by the hon. member for Vancouver South.

As all members of the House are aware, this private member's bill stems from the passage in the 39th Parliament of Bill C-37, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act. Bill C-467 calls upon the government to treat children born or adopted overseas by Crown servants, including Canadian Forces personnel, as children born in Canada, such that they would be able to pass citizenship on to any children they may have or adopt outside of Canada.

The government supports the intention of Bill C-467, although we are concerned about some unintended consequences. Our success as a country is no accident but a result of an abiding belief in values such as liberty, human dignity and freedom of conscience and where harmony is the rule rather than the exception. We are an open and tolerant society, renowned for our respects for democracy and for the freedoms that come with that. We celebrate our different cultural traditions but not at the expense of sharing common Canadian ones.

That is fundamental. We need to preserve the value of Canadian citizenship along with an abiding connection to our past and to one another, where citizenship means more than access to a convenient passport.

Within the past three years, the government has passed significant laws that would correct flaws in citizenship legislation. Bill C-14 and Bill C-37 reflect clear and bold reaffirmations of our values and the principles that define us as a country.

Under the old rules, it was possible for Canadians to pass on their citizenship to endless generations born outside of Canada. To protect the value of Canadian citizenship for the future, the new law under Bill C-37 put a limit on citizenship by descent to one generation born outside of Canada, similar to the rules in other countries like the United Kingdom and New Zealand.