Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 30th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, sir.

Mr. Menegakis has the floor.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you again to our witnesses for appearing before us today and for your informative testimony.

I'm going to make a few comments and ask a couple of questions. We've heard from the witnesses today, both in the first session and in this session now, some commentary on the residency requirement and language requirements and the application of those potentially moving forward when this bill is passed by Parliament.

On the issue of residency requirement, a question came from a member of Parliament to a witness in this committee, asking, “I am a naturalized Canadian, basically, and if I wanted to leave the country and take my Ph.D. studies for five years outside the country, could my citizenship be revoked?” Nothing in this bill would prevent any Canadian citizen, naturalized or otherwise, from leaving to study in the United States or somewhere else around the world for fear of their citizenship being revoked. There is no such thing written in any clause in this bill, and it would be a tremendous stretch for someone to suggest, whether the person were a legal expert or not, that yes, it could be applied in the case where somebody left the country and decided to do a Ph.D. at Columbia University in New York. You became a Canadian citizen 15 years ago; we're not going to revoke your citizenship.

It is just so out there, so far-stretched, that I think we have to be very cautious when we're reviewing this bill—all of us here on the committee, and certainly all parliamentarians—that we don't use extreme examples that have no basis in law or no basis in substance for determining how we move forward in our assessment of this bill.

On the question of language requirements, I have this now back to the necessary residency requirement going from three years to four of the last six years and achieving a level of language requirement, and the language requirement age changing from 18 to 54 to 14 to 64.

We firmly believe that allowing more time in Canada for all aspiring Canadians to develop language skills will give them a better opportunity. They will be more integrated into Canadian society, and it will give a better opportunity to have much more potential for successful outcomes moving forward, and what we want for newcomers coming to Canada is for them to succeed. We want them to do well and we want them to have every tool at their disposal moving forward as Canadian citizens, and that's the spirit in which Bill C-24 was drafted, and that certainly is the intent of the bill.

I believe it was Mr. Collacott who said that it is in line with, in fact, even more generous than some of our peer countries around the world in terms of their requirements for residency and language. There is no country that we could point to that we would consider a peer country that would have only a three-year requirement for residency, and then you automatically can apply for Canadian citizenship.

I want to talk about a few things in the bill because mention has been made on the backlog of Canadian citizenship. I believe one witness we heard over the course of the discourse here said that the backlog has been created over the last few years because we're focusing more on fraud. Well, let's just be abundantly clear about that. If we need to take more time to do due diligence to ensure there is no fraud in the system and that only law-abiding people want to become citizens of our country, we are going to do that, and 90% of our applications get processed, and there is no issue.

If we're going to focus on that 10% to make sure that only people who are in the same bracket as those 90% can come into Canada and become Canadian citizens, then that's exactly what we're going to do. We want law-abiding citizens coming into Canada. We certainly don't want anybody who's perpetrated fraud in any way, shape, or form. If they have, then they're not welcome to come here.

In addition to that, I might add, the best way for someone not to have their citizenship revoked is not to commit the crime. It's very easy. It's very simple. One of the witnesses exercised the option of pointing to the names of the people sitting around the table at one point, and said that, look at the names around the table, she could be talking about us. Well, guess what, none of the people around this table are perpetrating crimes. We're not worried about being kicked out.

My name is Menegakis. It's clearly not a native Canadian name. My parents came here from Greece. If I don't perpetrate the crime, my citizenship is not going to be revoked, nor is my children's or anybody else's in my family. That is the best way to avoid having it revoked.

Let's just go back a little bit to reality here. I have one question.

Do I have any time left here?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You have less than a minute.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

I'm going to ask this question of Mr. Collacott.

Mr. Collacott, we're going from a three-step to a one-step process in decision-making regarding citizenship. Can you comment on that, please?

[Martin Collacott]

Yes. I think that makes a lot of sense. As I said in my presentation, it's a priority that we reduce the backlog and reduce waiting time. There will still be, I think, a provision for some kind of an appeal to the Federal Court in complicated cases. But I think the government has found that the vast majority or a large majority of cases could be dealt with expeditiously and effectively through the one-step process. I find this a rather sensible solution, which doesn't exclude some system of appeal in more complex cases.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Mr. Collacott.

Ms. Sitsabaiesan.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses who are here with us today.

Ms. Douglas, you mentioned in your presentation that “citizenship is a status from which rights derive”. That's very, very true. Thank you for saying that, because it is so true, and I think sometimes we forget this.

You mentioned that the intent to reside creates two tiers of citizenship, naturalized Canadians and born Canadians. You spoke specifically about mobility rights and about how mobility rights of naturalized Canadians come under question.

Can you expand a little bit on that?

I know that the Canadian Bar Association, in the brief they sent us, also spoke about that. We didn't get a chance to talk about it, so I'd like you, if you could, to expand a little bit on it.

[Debbie Douglas]

That has been one of our biggest issues. By having naturalized citizens take an oath swearing to reside in Canada, any movement away from that subjects them, we believe, to charges of fraud. They can be told that they lied to become a Canadian citizen, and now they've left the country, whether to study or, as we have found in our experience, as many folks are doing, to return to their country of origin to take care of parents and grandparents. As I said in my remarks, we have made it more and more difficult for families here in Canada to reunite with their parents and grandparents. We have a 5,000 per year quota, in terms of applications as well as all of the things that you, as parliamentarians, know about. We believe that expecting naturalized Canadians to swear to reside in Canada when Canadian-born Canadians do not have to do that creates two tiers of citizenship. I absolutely agree with my colleagues from the Bar Association who, when they spoke before, talked about this not surviving a section 15 challenge.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Thank you.

That's exactly what the Bar Association mentioned in their brief, as well, that Canadian-born Canadians don't have that requirement. They don't have their feet basically shackled inside the country, whereas naturalized Canadians do.

You also spoke about the citizenship test and the language requirements. I know that OCASI works with newer immigrants, and you do a lot of servicing for them. I'm not sure if you have any studies that you can point the committee to with respect to older Canadians or elders in the community, because the age requirement is going up as well. Maybe you have statistics on your own clients, I don't know. With respect to language retention success for older individuals, do you have anything that you can point us to?

[Debbie Douglas]

I don't have a study I can quote you off the top of my head but I will gladly send information once I get back. But we do know—

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Send it to the clerk.

[Debbie Douglas]

Yes, we will. We do know that there are many refugees in particular, and many older refugee women, who have spent a generation in the camps and have had no access to formal education. Canada has granted them protection. We believe that they have as much right as anyone else to become citizens of this country. Expecting someone 60, 61, or 64 years old to not only learn the language, to be functional in English and French—and I think we all support wanting people to be able to participate in their communities and to be able to speak the language, which is very different from reaching a CLB 4, which Mr. Collacott, I know, thinks is too low a threshold—but to write formal tests, to be able to retain enough language to be able to write a citizenship test, we believe is unfair to older folks, particular those who have had no formal education.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Matas, I think you spoke about revocation mostly in your presentation. My question is with respect to proposed subsection 10(2), the changes that are in the new legislation with respect to revocation of citizenship for an individual who may have committed a crime of terrorism or treason in another country where they were charged in another country for such acts and they could have their Canadian citizenship revoked. It's very clearly articulated that it could be whether it was before or after this person was granted Canadian citizenship that they committed this and were charged in another country. I can rhyme off at least five countries off the top of my head whose judicial system I don't trust as a Canadian. How does it make sense that, in our law, we are putting into writing that we are essentially trusting that every other country in the world has a fair and free judicial system that is impartial from any type of influence? I know you're a lawyer. That's why I'm asking you this. Does this make sense? Is this what we should be doing? Then is it now up to bureaucrats to actually make that assessment of whether that other country's legal system is fair and whether we should accept it?

[David Matas]

Yes, in fact this was something I had addressed in my text. It's definitely a problem. Indeed, I don't see even that a standard is left for bureaucrats to assess. If you're convicted of one of these offences abroad then this means that you can lose your citizenship. Now, we heard from the previous question or statement that the member of Parliament said, don't commit the crime, you won't have a problem. But that's not the case with these offences because people do get convicted even though they don't commit the crime. It isn't just a mistake, which can happen even in Canada, it's intentional. I see all the time as you say—and I can name maybe even more than five countries where this happens—where people get labelled as terrorists and convicted of terrorism offences where all they have done is express peaceful opposition to the government in power. The labelling “conviction of terrorism” is a form of delegitimization of democratic opposition to tyrannical rule. It makes no sense at all to say you can lose Canadian citizenship because a tyrannical government abroad opposes your democratic opposition to their tyranny.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, sir.

Mr. McKay.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

I want to continue to pursue that line because I was thinking that in my lifetime we've gone from Irish terrorists to Tamil terrorists to Muslim terrorists, and a lot of these terrorist ideas have been, how shall we say, in the eye of the beholder. There's no Tamil in Sri Lanka who can access a fair justice system and yet there is a sense in which all Tamils in Sri Lanka are terrorists. So if a Canadian citizen, such as Rathika, travels—which she has—and participates in any form of protest movement, the government will label her as a terrorist. I'm not sure whether she is naturalized or was born here—

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

I'm a naturalized Canadian.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

But why should she be subject to, in effect, double jeopardy?

[David Matas]

Yes, if I may say so, in my view, this is a glaring defect in the bill and needs some form of remedy. The language is very simple, which can remedy it because it's found in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that already says the conviction has to be in conformity with international standards. You don't have to remove it, but just say “in conformity with international standards”. I say this because right now, it's just adding to or reinforcing oppression of....

Now of course, you name the Irish or the Tamils and so on, there are individual cases of terrorism and that's not the issue. The issue is that the opponents—I mean, very often in a context of civil war there's violence on both sides and there are supporters on both sides. We've developed a very broad notion of complicity and terrorism, which as long as you're kind of supportive, it's okay, especially when you're dealing with oppressive governments that really don't care whether you're involved in violence or not as long as you're kind of supporting the other side. To them, that's terrorism.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Even if you're in compliance with international standards, whatever that means, at any given time, there are no fair trials that happen in Sri Lanka.

[David Matas]

Exactly. Well, that's what international standards means. It means—

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

But can you actually overlay any “conviction” of Sri Lankan terrorism with a compliance with international standards when the state is a rogue state and has been condemned, rightly condemned in my judgment, by our own government?

[David Matas]

I acknowledge that some legal systems are legal systems in name only, where the judges are not independent; they take directions from the government. They may not even decide the cases in front of them; somebody else decides them. And for some of these systems, you have to question every single judgment in every single case because the system itself is not fair.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

It's not a big stretch to run through quite a raft of countries where the system of justice is a justice system in name only.

[David Matas]

Fair enough.