Citizenship and Immigration committee  I can follow up and provide the information back to this committee.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We know how many have been granted.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  You have to meet the usual sponsorship requirements.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  You can sponsor the child while you're still overseas as long as you're demonstrating an attempt that you're going to move to Canada to take up permanent residence. In declaring that sponsorship intent, and in submitting a sponsorship application, even if the child is stateless and needs a travel document to be able to travel to Canada, we will issue a single-journey travel document to facilitate the travel to Canada, because the ultimate intent is clear.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  To the extent that they're guidelines, we are guided by three basic parameters and an overriding principle. The first one is that the individual lives in Canada or has lived in Canada for most of their life.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In Canada, the situation of individuals who were naturalized is the same as that of individuals born in Canada, whereas the situation of individuals who received a direct grant of citizenship abroad, in the case of an adoption, is entirely equivalent to that of Canadians born abroad.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There is a vagueness to the discretionary provision in order to allow flexibility to deal with whatever cases come forth.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's written down in guidelines that we give to our assessment officers, our citizenship officers, to those who are making these decisions. So do they live here now? Have they lived here most of their life? Have they had a reasonable but mistaken belief that they are Canadian or that they were Canadian, in fact?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  They're not retroactive to a time prior to the concept of citizenship coming into being. That's the first observation. The second observation is that for individuals who find themselves in those circumstances, there is the “special grant of citizenship” route. When the law can't address their issues or their needs, there is the discretionary grant of citizenship under subsection 5(4).

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I have two comments on this. The current law basically gives equal access to citizenship to children born outside of Canada on or after January 1, 1947, when the concept of Canadian citizenship came into being. It gives citizenship to those individuals irrespective of gender or marital status.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm not quite sure how else to answer the question, other than to say, put all the facts before us that the individual submits. They make their case, they lay out the facts of their case, they provide to us in writing an explanation of why they feel their case warrants exceptional consideration, why they feel they would undergo or endure an undue hardship if they followed the normal immigration process, and why they feel they have a particularly strong attachment to Canada, if you will.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I can give you a good example of the kinds of cases that we typically used the subsection 5(4) provision for, before the introduction and bringing into law of Bill C-37. We had a lot of cases where individuals, so-called border babies, lived in Canada, their families lived in Canada, but for whatever reason--the closest hospital may have been in the United States, across the border--the mother travelled to the United States to give birth.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you for your question. I think the person who are talking about is Jacqueline Scott, not Ms. Stewart.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  She testified before the committee last week. I trust the committee will understand that I cannot discuss individual cases. However, I can assure you that the decision was made on the basis of the unique circumstances of the case.

Status of Women committee  Perhaps I can add to that. The changes I spoke about, which we introduced in 2006 and 2007, we did through a combination of what we call ministerial instructions and the use of the discretionary provisions that are in the existing Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to make changes or put in place directions to our officers in the field for public policy reasons.