Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Dec. 8th, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Ms. Chow.

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

I'm slightly confused. If the kid is born outside Canada to a second-generation mother but the father is born in Canada, the kid is okay--the kid is Canadian.

[Andrew Griffith]

Yes, as long as one parent—

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

As long as one of them...?

[Andrew Griffith]

Yes.

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

Okay. Thank you.

Do the people who adopted kids from Haiti know that if those adopted kids came in as Canadian citizens they would have been treated differently than if they had come in as landed immigrants? I ask because there is a problem there, right? It means that if an adopted child from Haiti came in as a Canadian citizen, then their kids, if they go back to Haiti and, for example, work there when they are grown up, they will be Canadian. But if they have a kid in Haiti, then that kid wouldn't be a Canadian. Do these parents know that?

I ask because it's about the second generation cut-off, right?

[Andrew Griffith]

I'm not sure. I think we'll have to get back to you on that in terms of what group came in under permanent residence versus what group came in under the direct grant of citizenship.

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

But they're treated differently. I was told by people who adopted that the second generation cut-off applies—

[Andrew Griffith]

No. The two different cases are obviously treated differently. What I don't have with me is information in terms of whether the kids who came in under Operation Stork came under the direct grant of citizenship provision or came in under a permanent residence one. But obviously if they did, there's an implication for the second generation.

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

Do most people adopting kids know that their kids should come in as landed immigrants, not as citizens, because then if they go back and work, they're in trouble?

[Andrew Griffith]

We do have information on our website that tries to provide information on that. We're trying to revise that information to make it friendlier to prospective parents of adopted children. We're even doing things like scenarios to help people—

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

Why not fix this little problem? Because I know that the first thing the Conservative government did when they came to power in 2006 was to listen to the Canadian parents who were saying that their kids coming in should be Canadian citizens. They fixed that. They changed the law. Everybody was happy because they had been pushing for that change for several years. It got changed, but the lost Canadians law caught all those people who thought they had won something and then discovered that their kids, if they have kids outside Canada, would not be Canadian. Quite a few of them are furious.

Why not fix this unintended problem so that all adopted kids, whether they came into Canada as landed immigrants or as Canadian citizens, will be treated equally in terms of going to their home country and having their kids there?

[Andrew Griffith]

Well, again, I think the original reason was the comparison in terms of being born abroad, whether born abroad to Canadian parents or foreign. We had to have that comparability. Of course, the government is still reviewing the adoption case, as we mentioned, in terms of I think the last report of the standing committee. So that's still under review.

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

Could you let us know whether those kids coming from Haiti through Operation Stork came in as Canadian citizens or as landed immigrants? I think there's a bit of confusion out there.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

That's undertaking number three.

Mr. Young.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

In your opening statement, you indicated that Bill C-467 does not do what it was proposed to do. Is that correct?

[Andrew Griffith]

That's correct.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

I've read this bill eight times. It's rather short, so it was easy to read eight times.

Could you maybe just say in plain language--so that I could explain it to my constituents in plain language--what it does not do? Why it doesn't do that?

[Andrew Griffith]

I'll ask my experts, who can explain it better than I can in terms of plain language.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Yes, somebody who didn't go to graduate school or something--somebody who can talk at a regular level.

[Nicole Girard]

I'll start. Then I'll invite my colleague Alain to add anything I've left out.

The bill is in fairly plain language, but the issue is that the first clause of the bill doesn't correspond to the objectives. It wouldn't enable the children born to crown servants abroad to pass on citizenship to the grandkids. That's the first thing.

In addition to that, the first clause of the bill would carry with it some unintended consequences that Mr. Griffith referred to in his opening remarks, in that it would not allow access to citizenship to the kids born abroad to crown servants whose parents were themselves born abroad, which would be problematic.

The third thing is that it would give citizenship automatically to the adopted kids of crown servants who are born or are naturalized in Canada, which isn't consistent with the current requirement to apply for a grant of citizenship in keeping with our international obligations and respecting provincial jurisdiction in these matters.

The issues are around the first clause of the bill and those problems are derived from the fact that they don't take account of the other relevant sections in the Citizenship Act.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Is it your impression that it's a drafting error or an omission or something like that?

[Nicole Girard]

That is correct.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Does Bill C-37 reflect the changes that would be needed to accomplish the same thing?

[Nicole Girard]

Yes.