Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 6th, 2008

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

Thank you all very much. I found your presentations most interesting. I wasn't able to attend the initial meetings, because I was not yet a member of this Committee. I have only been Bloc Québécois critic in this area for several weeks. It's a very interesting issue and, like you, I am anxious to see the bill referred to Committee. In fact, we already made it clear to the government that we were prepared to cooperate, if the process had to be expedited at the House, to avoid stretching out debate unnecessarily, and to make it possible to get the bill into Committee very quickly. I hope the other parties will do the same, because this is very important. I think we can pass it quickly. If the government tables the bill in the House for second reading, all the parties will surely agree to act on it very quickly, so that that step doesn't take forever and we can get it to Committee quickly. I hope that will be the case.

I thought I understood you to say that you had all read the Committee's unanimous report on this. I would like each one of you to tell me whether the bill we are currently reviewing, which has been tabled in Parliament, abides by the spirit of the unanimous report presented by this Committee?

[Don Chapman]

Yes. I'm very pleased. I would like to see this legislation go forward. Everybody—lawyers, attorneys, everybody I've talked to, scholars—is saying we should pass this legislation, and go forward with it as is.

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

Madam?

[Melynda Jarratt]

Yes, I agree as well. It's as Bill said, perfection is the enemy of the good. It's not perfect, but I certainly need to see this pass. I can't take it anymore. It's just too much sorrow and sadness and upset. I agree with it.

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

I am going to interrupt you. You presented your views earlier. I understand that you want the bill to pass.

Mr. Janzen, I would like to know whether you think this bill resolves the issues that were raised in the Committee's unanimous report, or whether there are fundamental differences between the report and the bill currently under review.

[William Janzen]

No, there are not major discrepancies. There are some details that one could pick up on, but this is totally compatible with that report and picks up the main thrusts of it. That's why we support it.

Could I take a very short minute to respond to a question that was raised earlier about the second and third generations?

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

We will come back to this, because there will be other turns.

Mr. Chapman, you lost your Canadian citizenship because your parents, or one of your parents, emigrated to the United States.

[Don Chapman]

Yes.

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

I would like to be given a very brief explanation of the process whereby the Canadian war brides lost their citizenship. The same thing occurred with the Mennonites. What caused the problem?

[Melynda Jarratt]

Okay. This is the history.

The Canadian war brides who came to this country believed that they had been given citizenship by virtue of every statement that had been given to them, and every document in the years between 1942 and 1946. They came here, were handed documents saying, welcome to Canada, you're a citizen, and the children as well. They believed that they were citizens, but then the Citizenship Act was introduced on July 1, 1946, came into effect on January 1, 1947, and it changed the status, and they had to apply for citizenship. If they were in the country on January 1, 1947, they were deemed to be Canadian citizens.

The thing is that in the case of Senator Roméo Dallaire, for example, he was out of the country on his 24th birthday, so he found out, because he went and applied for his passport, that in fact he had not filled out a little form and had lost his citizenship. You're new to the story, but essentially what happened is that they didn't fill out forms and they lost their citizenship.

In the case of war brides today, like the one who was told at the border two and a half months ago, what happens is that.... Not every person in this world travels abroad. There are lot of poor people out there who live in little rural communities, like in my province—I live in a very rural province, in Doaktown—or little towns of 5,000, 2,000, or 1,500 people. Going back to Europe was out of their reach economically because their families were gone and they didn't have the money. Here they are, they're 82 or 83 years old, and for the first time in their life maybe they have a chance to go back home to Britain, and they go and apply for a passport and find out they didn't fill out the form.

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

The women we are talking about are women who married soldiers…

[Melynda Jarratt]

Yes, exactly.

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

… while they were serving overseas.

[Melynda Jarratt]

They are war brides.

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

Mr. Janzen.

[William Janzen]

Thank you.

The case of the Mennonites is that there were in the last century a number of Mennonites, several thousand, who moved to Latin America for religious reasons. Some of them became very poor there, and they would really like to come back, so they have applied for citizenship. And there are tens of thousands, maybe 50,000 in southern areas of Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta, and other parts.

I'll give you a little story. One of them called me a few weeks ago. He has been living in Canada for more than a decade, he owns a construction company in Calgary, runs it, and he said, I heard that I may have lost my citizenship, is that true? I asked him how old he was, and he said he was 30 years old and was born outside of Canada. I asked him if his parents were born outside of Canada. He said yes, they were, and then he told me a story. He said, somewhere I heard that there was a question and I went to the local citizenship and immigration office several times, showed them my certificate, and asked if I needed to do something so that I could remain a citizen, and I was told no, you're okay. But now you're telling me that I'm not okay. I said, you're right, I'm terribly sorry, but that is the way it is.

That is the way it happened in his case. In that individual's case, he will be able to get a remedy because he has been in Canada for just over half his life and the minister is willing to use the discretion in subsection 5(4) of the act for people who have been in Canada for over half their lives. But there are many cases where people have been in Canada a little bit less than that, and it takes a huge process.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you, Mr. Janzen. I'm sorry to cut you off.

Ms. Chow.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Since 1987, successive governments have studied this problem over and over again. We've had the reports called “Citizenship '87 : Proud to Be Canadian”; “Canadian Citizenship: a Sense of Belonging”; another report called “Updating Canada's Citizenship Laws: Issues to be Addressed”; a fourth report, “Citizenship Revocation: a Question of Due Process and Respecting Charter Rights”; a fifth report, “Updating Canada's Citizenship Laws: It's Time”. And we had Bill C-63, Bill C-16, Bill C-18, Bill S-2, yes, and now Bill C-37.

With minister after minister, government after government, it did not get done. I've seen so many reports. I called out all the reports because, yes, I'm semi-new to this committee but I'm not new to this issue, because I worked for a member of Parliament in 1981, 1982, 1984. We've been talking about it since I started.

I don't know about you, but I am so tired of the delay. We've had this new government for two years, and yet we are at this stage. This morning I looked at the parliamentary schedule. Is Bill C-37 on the schedule? No, it's not on the schedule, and it's not on the books.

So I want to ask you one question. You should give us a deadline—the government, not necessarily us. I will pledge that the NDP will speed up that process, expedite it as much as possible. I will print out all the reports and all the bills that have gone through in the last 20 years and stack them up and maybe present them to you as a present of some kind. But give me a deadline. How long do we need to wait?

I just pulled out my schedule, my calendar. It is February 6. You should give the government a deadline as to what date it should come to second reading, how many days should get it through the House of Commons. We've debated this ad nauseam, many times. You've come here many times. So give us a date. When do you see this bill pass this committee, come back to the House and have it finished? Because it's not rocket science. We know what we're doing. We've studied it many times.

So don't mind me for the rant. It's just that I've looked through this and I've asked how many more bills are coming.

If it is true that we have another election, guess what. Even if it passes, we run out of time in the Senate. I can see that we're going to come back here again. Some of us may be back; some of us may not be back. I don't know. We're going to have another bill, C-whatever it is, and we will repeat this all over again two years later. Some of those people may not be alive anymore, and how many more people are going to be caught in this bureaucratic nightmare?

I'm sorry to rant, but give me an answer. I don't usually rant, but it's just unbelievable.

[Don Chapman]

Yes, it is. Again, it comes back to my daughter and me, and she's 21 years old. When she was a baby, I was trying to get this through. So I go way back before 1984.

I talked to the minister's office today, and they were saying they are happy to get this bill to the committee with priority. They say they could probably get it through in a matter of weeks. The problem will be this committee and whether they attach amendments or not, and that could delay it. We say just pass the bill. If they can get it here, I agree with you, pass the bill.

[William Janzen]

May I suggest, given that this involves war brides, that it would be a wonderful Valentine's Day gift.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

That's next week.

[Melynda Jarratt]

It's another historic day today, because today is the 62nd anniversary of the departure of the very first war bride ship in what they called Operation Daddy, which was the beginning of the war bride transport in 1946. Today is the 62nd anniversary of that.

Two years ago, when we had the 60th anniversary, I thought it was just a matter of weeks, months, whatever, when this was going to be sorted out, and here we are. Do you know how many have died since then? I have lost many war bride friends, and the children also are not getting any younger. They're getting ill and sickly too.

It is personal. It's very personal. It's very important. It would make a wonderful war bride Valentine's Day gift, and it would look great—I'm telling you—great, warm and fuzzy. There's nothing but good to come out of this for everybody, and why not? You can do it. You can start wars, all kinds of things, at the drop of a hat. Why can't you straighten this out? All of you together, work together, please, right away.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

You have a minute and a half left, Ms. Chow.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

I give it up to whoever wants to ask a question. I don't have any more questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Good, thank you very much.

They were very good points you made there.