Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you very much. I've prepared a 15-page brief, which I gather has been circulated to the committee. To start, I'll go through the recommendations at the end. I have seen the proposed amendments and they have been helpful. The brief makes 10 recommendations. The first is t

Citizenship and Immigration committee  What should be the minimum sentence, meaning the—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The amendment says sentenced to at least five years, in proposed paragraph 5(g), and for an equivalent offence it would also be five years—that's paragraph (c).

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The issue of what the minimum sentence should be is not an issue that B'nai Brith has taken a stand on. I noticed you referred in your preamble to the due process, and that's something we did address in the bill. I appreciate that there is a process. As you point out, there is

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Certainly people with dual citizenship would be in a different situation from people with single citizenship. They would become vulnerable to this type of revocation or deemed renunciation, which persons with single citizenship would not become subject to. I suppose it's true n

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The answer, in a word, is no, not in the bill itself.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. We propose the phrase for an exception where the conviction was imposed in disregard of international standards. That's recommendation 8. That phrase is drawn from the current Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. That phrase is found in section 97 of the act. The way th

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Exactly.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Of course one would hope that most dual citizens would not be involved in these types of acts, so I wouldn't say that every dual citizen is somehow tarred by this brush. But we are dealing with serious offences and they need to be treated seriously. Our first position, and what

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In the Canadian criminal jurisdiction for prosecution, the basic principle is territoriality, not personality. We would maintain an ability to prosecute.... I mean, we can prosecute foreigners who commit crimes in Canada. They don't have to be citizens of Canada. We can extradite

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Sure. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms has rights granted to citizens. Section 6, for instance, says that every citizen has the right to remain in Canada. As well, because the word “citizen” is embedded in the Constitution, it has constitutional significance. It is not necess

Citizenship and Immigration committee  —on the meaning of citizenship, which is different—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  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,

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I suppose all members of Parliament should be concerned at all times about that issue, absolutely. I would say that generally, when the government endorses a private member's bill, it would be useful to have a Justice charter scrutiny on it. Of course we have some whistle-blower

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you for asking me to be here today on behalf of B'nai Brith Canada. I'm going to talk only about the revocation provisions in the bill because B'nai Brith Canada has a lot of experience with them. The proposed changes to the Citizenship Act in this area are a mix of good