Bill C-37 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Citizenship Act

This enactment amends the Citizenship Act in order to
(a) permit certain persons who lost their Canadian citizenship for specified reasons to have their citizenship restored from the time it was lost;
(b) permit certain persons who, born outside Canada to a Canadian parent, did not acquire Canadian citizenship for specified reasons to become Canadian citizens from the time of their birth;
(c) provide that certain persons born outside Canada to a Canadian parent who was himself or herself born outside Canada do not acquire Canadian citizenship; and
(d) provide for a grant of citizenship, on application, to persons who have always been stateless and meet other specified conditions.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

I have a letter here, and I think all committee members had this sent to them. As we've been doing these hearings—and they've taken a few meetings—members of the public have sent us information. Some of it is very helpful because it comes from Immigration Canada, so it has some content information.

This one is from the executive director, Denise Mildner, who is from Saskatchewan, the Evermore Centre. It provides data on the back end. I want to read it into the record and make reference to it, because it feeds into my next question. It says:

The voices of many parents have gone unheard. Since 2010, 13,791 children were born abroad and adopted by Canadian parents since bills C-14...and C-37...were passed.

That's going as far back as 2007.

Of these, 63% or 8,632 children were adopted through the Citizenship Stream. Unknowingly, by choosing this route, however, these children do not have the same rights as other Canadians and cannot pass on their citizenship. Regardless of which route was chosen, there should not exist any discriminatory laws against an internationally adopted child.

Does this amendment fix this particular situation, or does it address a different issue of just passing it on and the treatment of the children as Canadian children for the first-generation limit?

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

This amendment aims to address the second generation cut-off rule. Committee members will know that in 2009, under Bill C-37, the right for Canadians to pass their citizenship on to children born abroad was taken away. As a result, it has created a new class of lost Canadians. That's been extremely problematic. That was done back in 2009 by the Conservative government.

This amendment aims to restore that right to those individuals by establishing a connections test to Canada. I'm proposing that we establish the connections test in four ways. It says:

(i) the person has been physically present in Canada for at least 1,095 days,

(ii) the person has been registered as an elector or a future elector under the Canada Elections Act,

(iii) the person has studied at an elementary, secondary, post-secondary or vocational school in Canada, or

(iv) the person has been employed by the Government of Canada, or has been a representative or delegate of Canada, at an international organization, summit or forum.

I'm moving this amendment, Madam Chair, because I think it is important to recognize those lost Canadians. If they meet any one of those connections tests that I've highlighted, I think they should be able to have the right restored to them.

Madam Chair, at this point I'm just wondering if I should I read out the content of the amendment as it is drafted by the legislative council. Can I just say that I move NDP-1?

Citizenship and Immigration

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Madam Speaker, Bill C-37 was passed unanimously. Can we know why this bill, which has exactly the same objective, is being debated again in the House of Commons?

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

moved that the 15th report of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration presented on Tuesday, April 18, 2023, be concurred in.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to this important motion before the House, the concurrence motion.

What we are dealing with is essentially seeking authority from the House to expand the scope of Bill S-245. Bill S-245 is a Senate bill that is before the House to address the situation of those who are commonly known as “lost Canadians”. Bill S-245 would amend the Citizenship Act to allow Canadians who previously lost their citizenship due to the age 28 rule to regain their citizenship. The age 28 rule means that second-generation Canadians born abroad were subject to the laws of citizenship under the former section 8 of the Citizenship Act, which required them to apply to certify their citizenship before they turned 28 years old.

In 2009 the Conservatives repealed this section through Bill C-37. However, the legislation did not restore citizenship to those who lost their citizenship prior to 2009. This oversight created major problems for many Canadians, as they somehow could lose their citizenship status as they turned 28. Many of them actually did not even know that was the situation they were faced with. It was only when applying for their passport, for example, that they realized they had lost their citizenship.

Bill S-245 seeks to fix the age 28 rule. However, the rule does not address other situations where Canadians have lost their citizenship. The archaic provisions of the Citizenship Act have resulted in many other lost Canadians, and New Democrats seek to actually fix this problem.

Mr. Speaker, 14 years ago, Bill C-37 passed in this House and came into force, and as a result of that, many people lost their citizenship rights. In fact, it created a scenario where Canada's Citizenship Act, for this group of lost Canadians, in many ways was not charter-compliant. For decades some Canadians have found themselves even to be stateless due to a number of these archaic immigration laws.

In 2007, the UN's Refugees magazine listed Canada as one of the top offending countries for making its own people stateless. In 2009, as I mentioned, the Conservatives said that they were going to fix the lost Canadian issue with Bill C-37. Sadly, this did not happen. Worse still, the Conservatives created a brand new group of lost Canadians, and today we have an opportunity before us to fix that.

Bill S-245, the bill that was introduced by Senator Martin, is now before the committee for citizenship and immigration, and the bill aims to address this group of lost Canadians, lost due to the age 28 rule. I want to be very clear that the NDP wholeheartedly supports ensuring those who one day woke up and found themselves without Canadian status are made whole. This absolutely needs to be done. However, it is the NDP's strongest view that the scope of Bill S-245 is too narrow. The NDP wants to seize this opportunity to fix the lost Canadian issue once and for all.

Currently, there is a large group of Canadians who are deemed to be second-class citizens, due to the Conservatives' first-generation cut-off rule brought on by the Harper administration in 2009. Bill C-37 ended the extension of citizenship to second-generations born abroad. By stripping their right to pass on citizenship to their children if they were born outside of Canada, the Canadian government has caused undue hardship to many families. For some, it means separating children from parents. Some even find themselves stateless.

I spoke with Patrick Chandler. He is a Canadian who, while born abroad, spent most of his life in Canada. As an adult, he worked abroad, married someone from another country and had children. He was later offered a job in British Columbia. When he moved back to Canada, he had to leave his wife and children behind because he could not pass on his citizenship to his children. He had to go through an arduous process to finally reunite with them a year later.

There are many families being impacted in this way, and it is wrong. We should not put Canadians in those kinds of situations, yet here we are and that is what they have to suffer through. There are many families being impacted.

Another family faced with this situation is the family of Emma Kenyon. In fact, Emma lived here in Canada, as did her husband. However, they worked abroad and they met abroad. They had a child abroad. That child is stateless because neither Emma nor her husband has status in that country. They are now in a situation where they have a stateless child born to a Canadian. This is so wrong, and we need to fix this problem. Immigration officials said to them at the time that, before their child was born, they had a choice. They could actually travel back to Canada and have their child be born in Canada.

This, of course, did not make any sense. It was during the COVID period, when, basically, it was unsafe for her to travel. If Emma did travel back to Canada, she would be without a family doctor or a gynecologist to care for her pregnancy. None of that made any sense, but that is what she was told to do. Of course, she did not risk the birth of her child in that situation. She did not risk her own health either. As a result, her child was born abroad and is now in a stateless situation. It should never have been this way.

Families are so frustrated with these archaic immigration laws, especially with the stripping of the rights of immigrants having children born abroad. Those rights were stripped because of the Conservatives’ Bill C-37. Families are now taking the government to court to address this inequity. The Conservatives deemed first-generation Canadians born abroad to be less worthy and less Canadian, even though many had grown up in Canada. The implications are so serious that people are taking the government to court.

At the citizenship and immigration committee, when the opportunity arises, I will be moving amendments to ensure that this does not happen to anyone else. The NDP amendments would ensure that first-generation, born-abroad Canadians would have the right to pass on their citizenship rights to their children based on a connections test. They would also retroactively restore citizenship to persons who have not been recognized as citizens since the second-generation cut-off rule was enacted in 2009.

The same principles would apply to adoptees as well. We need to make sure that individuals and families that adopt children are not going to be caught in this bad situation. For those who do not wish to have citizenship conferred upon them, upon notification to the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, these changes would not apply to them.

This will mean that people like Patrick, whom I mentioned, and people like Emma and her family would not have to suffer the challenges they face as a result of Bill C-37’s stripping of their rights.

In addition to the amendments related to the first-generation cut-off rule, I will also be moving amendments to symbolically recognize those who died before citizenship was conferred upon them. For example, many of Canada's war heroes fought and died for Canada. However, they were never recognized as Canadians. The NDP amendments would also honour them and recognize them as citizens, retroactive to birth.

The situation with what I call “war heroes” is this. The first Governor General of Canada, in 1867, right after Confederation, said that Canadians were a new “nationality”. However, according to Canada's immigration laws, Canadian citizenship did not exist prior to January 1, 1947. That means that no soldiers who fought and died for Canada in battles like Vimy Ridge or D-Day are deemed to be Canadians.

Bill C-37 was supposed to fix this, but it did not happen. Don Chapman, who has fought for so long on the issue of lost Canadians and trying to rectify those concerns, indicated that “the government has confirmed they're leaving out all the war dead [pre-1947]. So, the war dead in Canada were really just British. We might as well just scratch the Maple Leaf off their headstones.”

Symbolically recognizing those who fought for Canada and ensuring that they are recognized as citizens would have zero implications, no legal consequence whatsoever or liability for the government. It is really a strictly symbolic gesture, and it is an important one, especially for family members of loved ones who fought and died for Canada. I see some of these family members on Remembrance Day every year. Many veterans went to war and fought for Canada, and never came back. We should remember them as Canadians.

Beyond this, there are a couple of other categories of lost Canadians, who, due to one of the discriminatory rules, such as the gender discrimination rule that existed in Canada, were not recognized as citizens. The NDP's amendments would aim to fix that as well. Suffice it to say, there are long lists of people who have been hurt by this set of rules, and successive governments have said they would fix it. However, it never came to be. Now we have a chance to actually do that work. It is important we do that work now.

I fear that the Conservatives would not support this effort. At committee, when the senator and the sponsor of the bill were before us at committee to talk about this bill, the Conservatives indicated they wanted to just ensure the bill would be left as is and address only the 28-year rule, not deal with the other categories of lost Canadians. To me, that is wrong. Their argument is that it is too complicated, that we do not have time and that if the matter goes back before the Senate, then an election might be called and the bill might just die. That is, of course, if the Conservatives want that to happen.

We could actually work together, collaboratively, to say that we are going to fix this problem once and for all, for lost Canadians. We want to make sure that people like Emma Kenyon, whose child was born stateless, would never be in that situation. We could actually make that happen by amending the bill.

I know that Conservative members, even their leader, would say that they support the immigrant community and that they are there for them. If they are there for them, first, I would say that Bill C-37 should never have stripped of their rights the immigrants who became Canadians, such as myself. If I had a child born abroad, my child should have citizenship conferred upon them. The Conservatives took that away. We have a chance today to fix that, to say that immigrants, such as myself, would be able to have the same rights as those who were born in Canada, and be able to pass on their citizenship rights to their children born abroad.

To be sure that there is a connection between individuals like that, we could put forward a connections test, such as, for example, having been in Canada for 1,095 days. This happens to be the same number of days required, through the Citizenship Act, for people getting their citizenship. We could put in provisions like that to ensure there is a clear connection between them and Canada. There is no reason to say that we are not going to do any of this and that we are just going to strip them of their rights and not recognize them. Let us fix this once and for all.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

When I hear some of the comments from the opposition, not necessarily relating to the motion that Madam Kwan brought forward, I can't sit back and take this because I have the institutional memory, particularly, of the regressive immigration policies that Conservatives brought in when they were in power. I can talk about those regressive policies for months and can write books on those. Let me talk about a few of the things that were raised on the other side.

Certainly, from time to time.... We had COVID. We brought in a policy to have the citizenship ceremonies at home. Certainly, I would love to have them in person. On the other hand, I was able to join one of the families, who were very happy to have it at home because the whole family was there. I still remember the name of the person—Sushil Kumar. His family invited me, and we really enjoyed having that ceremony at home. At least they had the option.

On the other hand, I do agree that there is always the off chance of fraud, as well. When we have online tests, it happens in every test. Certainly there are pros and cons on that particular thing.

On the issue of agriculture and farm labour that came up. I remember, I wasn't even elected at that time. It was the year 2003 or 2004 when Joseph Volpe was the minister of HRSDC. There was a pilot project that came in to help the farmers bring in workers from Mexico. I can tell you that he did it overnight. When I approached him—because people from British Columbia approached me, the farmers—I went to him and we brought in that pilot project. That project is very successful now across Canada.

I can talk about the parents and grandparents who were mentioned here. The regressive policies of the Conservatives almost tried to shut down the parents and grandparents—5,000 applications. They lowered the age of a dependent child from 22 years to 18 years so that the families didn't even qualify. I can tell you that I take pride in the Liberals here. When the government took over.... If you look at the past records, since 2015, if you take the average, Madam Chair, we accepted an average of 20,000 applications—four times more than the Conservatives. Not only that, but we've brought up the age of the dependent child from 18 to 22 years, so that more people can participate in those applications and more families can come here.

It doesn't stop there. I can talk about Bill C-37. That was their creation as well. They should have thought at the time that they were leaving many Canadians out of the Canadian citizenship we are talking about today. We need to talk today about whether that was a well-thought-out process in 2009.

When it comes to immigration, I don't think there's any government other than the Liberal government that has done more to bring in the people.

On the agriculture workers, I agree with Madam Rempel Garner that we have to have opportunities for agriculture workers to move from temporary permits or work permits to permanent residency. When we created 90,000 openings, out of that, I still remember, 40,000 were reserved for students and then 30,000 were for those from an agriculture worker to a professional—people who were in the agriculture industry could then become permanent residents—and 20,000 were for health care workers. At every opportunity the Liberals got, they worked hard and diligently to bring in immigration policies that are good for small businesses, good for Canada and good for Canadian families.

Look at the numbers. I still remember when I first was elected in 2006. If I look at the numbers then, it was in the area of 200,000. Now, we are bringing in half a million in 2025. Why? It's to help farmers, to help small businesses and to help families. I could go on forever, but I know the officials are here.

I will have to stop here, but at some other point we can have a good conversation on immigration policy.

Thank you.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I will just make some very short comments.

Suffice to say that there is no political partisan agenda here. The agenda here is to try to address the lost Canadians who are, indeed, suffering right now and whose families have been faced with forced separation and all kinds of challenges. I don't think that's what this committee wants to see happen to the community, in the broader community. That's what's happening right now, just to be clear.

As it happens, today is the 14th anniversary of Bill C-37's coming into force and effect, thereby stripping first-generation citizens of the right to pass on citizenship to their children and subsequent generations. We have people here today who presented as witnesses in the last round and who are gravely concerned. What I have heard from the senator, from Conservative friends of mine, from Liberal friends of mine and from Bloc friends of mine is that people want to address the lost Canadians issue. We have an opportunity to do that, and that's exactly what this is. We can seize that opportunity to see if we can make whole the family members who are suffering as a result of that.

I am hearing some threats related to it, but, from my perspective, I'm here to try to get a job done, and my motivation here is the people who are suffering. I know many of them. They have contacted me. They have written to me. I have spoken with them. I have met with them. I feel that it's my job to do my level best.

I understand that this is out of scope. Throughout the entire committee stage when we had witnesses before us, including officials, I asked questions about things being out of scope. I'm motivated to see if we can actually do something that is unusual—not for partisan reasons but for the public good.

I hope committee members will vote in support of this motion. Let's see if we can get the job done.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I'm now going to move a second motion, a copy of which has been sent to the clerk, also in both French and English.

The motion is as follows:

That, the committee report the following to the House: that the Committee recommends to the House that it be granted the power during its consideration of Bill S-245, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (granting citizenship to certain Canadians), to expand the scope of the Bill such that the provisions of the bill be not limited to an application to retain his or her citizenship under section 8 as it is read before April 17, 2009.

Madam Chair, we've had extensive discussion about this, particularly with witnesses who came before us. As we know, there are many categories of lost Canadians. Bill S-245 currently deals with the category of lost Canadians pertaining to the 28-year-old age rule. However, it leaves out many other categories of lost Canadians. Most notably, the current situations are such that many families are faced with forced separation because of the first-generation cut-off rule that came about with Bill C-37 back in 2009.

We've heard from witnesses who urged us—the committee, the government—to make amendments to this bill, which would be out of scope for this bill, to address those lost Canadians. There are other categories as well for which we can get into the details when we get to the clause-by-clause, but in order for that to be considered, this motion is required.

I'm therefore moving this motion so that we can follow the procedure absolutely, as has been advised to me by the head clerk and the legislative clerk sitting at the table, to make sure that we do not end up in a bad situation with this effort.

To that end, I hope committee members will support this motion I've put forward.

[Don Chapman]

The first thing I'll say is that I learned from the woman behind me, Meili Faille, that Quebeckers, French Canadians, understand the book de famille more than the English side. They understand what it's like to be stripped of their identities and culture, and that's exactly what we're doing with the lost Canadians.

As far as Nicole Girard's comments saying we're going to create new lost Canadians, no, I don't agree with that. The argument that they're going to.... What the gentleman from the the Canadian Bar Association just referred to was that we're going to give them retroactive citizenship, which takes away their ability or their right to say they were born in Canada—like being in a citizenship ceremony. The government didn't seem to have a problem doing that with Bill C-37, because that's exactly what it did to children of lost Canadians who were naturalized. They were deemed to be born in Canada, and then the government retroactively took that right away.

He also made reference to the Supreme Court decision in Benner v. Canada, which was about women's rights and criminality, both of them. What the government did was freeze into law that gender discrimination, so that today women have fewer rights than men to confer citizenship.

This is devastating, and to be really honest with you, I want all of this done. I wanted it done 10 years ago, 20 years ago. I lost my citizenship in 1961, and I've been fighting ever since. I was an airline pilot. I would not leave people behind, and I won't do it now, because we're going to keep fighting. In all honesty, this a choice and the bureaucrats have made the choice to deliberately leave people out. They've been doing this for decades. This is just a matter of sitting down, really checking this out and talking. We can fix this very easily.

There are a lot of people. Pre-1947, the Chinese were considered to be stateless registered aliens. They were not; they were citizens. The government is still, to this day, saying citizenship began on January 1, 1947. Most people do not realize that Mackenzie King stripped the Japanese of their citizenship in 1946 and deported them. Minister Hajdu, just a year ago, announced that the government is going to give citizenship back to those people who enfranchised before 1946. There are huge ramifications.

It's not a small group of people. It's a million to two million people. When Bill C-37 passed, since then, there have been about 20,000 people who have had claims, even though there are a million to two million people. For all these reasons of derivative claims, it's not going to happen.

Thank you for what you're doing. It's very important to fix this bill.

Citizenship Act

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Madam Speaker, on behalf of the people of my riding of Calgary Shepard, I am pleased to speak to Bill S‑245. It is always a great honour and privilege for me to be able to speak on behalf of Canadian citizens.

I am not like everyone else in the House. Like 23% or 24% of Canadians, I am an immigrant to this country. I was just talking about that with my colleague, the member for Calgary Forest Lawn, who was born in Dubai.

As someone born in Poland, Canadian citizenship is extremely important to me. Canada is not only my homeland, but it is also the country that accepted my father, my mother, my brother and me when our country of origin, where I was born, did not want us. My father was a member of Solidarnosc. He was a worker, a labourer, an engineer for the Gdansk shipyards when Poland was communist. My father left Poland in 1983 to come to Canada, and it was Canada that offered him the opportunity to stay. He started working at a shipyard in Sorel. It was in Sorel, where I lived with my father in 1985, that I learned French.

Poland let us leave the country, but it did not let us take our passports with us, because the Polish workers at the Gdansk shipyard, the Lenin shipyard, and their families were not allowed to return to that country. As I said, Canadian citizenship represents my homeland as well as the great honour of becoming Canadian in 1989. Now I have the great honour of representing my constituents as a Polish immigrant to this wonderful country that has given us so many opportunities.

I must admit that I did not know a lot about the so-called lost Canadians, the people who lost the Canadian citizenship they had at birth or did not qualify for citizenship even though they should have been entitled to it by virtue of their presence in Canada. That is the result of a whole raft of laws and attitudes, and many MPs have talked about this and debated it since 1945. The laws changed again in the 1970s. Finally, along came Bill C‑37, passed by a Conservative government that wanted to solve the problem for good and reduce the number of lost Canadians as much as possible.

Despite the many bills that have been introduced to reform the legislation in this century and the last, despite the fact that parliamentarians studied this issue and were meant to receive witnesses to explain to them how these things happened, despite the fact that the government has tried to change the legislation several times to ensure that this does not happen, no one noticed that there would be a gap of 50 or so months during which there would still be lost Canadians.

Where are we at today?

I would like to thank Senator Yonah Martin, herself an immigrant from Korea, who sponsored this bill in the Senate. In the House of Commons, it was sponsored by the member for Calgary Forest Lawn. It is Senator Martin who proposed this bill to try to fix this problem for lost Canadians. Apparently, there are hundreds of Canadians in a situation that I would describe as extremely shameful, despite the fact that parts of the legislation have been changed over the past 100 years. Several different governments have tried to fix this legislative problem.

Before, the problem was that Canadians born outside the country to Canadian parents had until their 28th birthday to notify the Canadian government that they wanted to retain their citizenship. However, there was no form or simple way to confirm this with the government. It was not easy to do.

Even within the Conservative caucus, our colleague, the member for Souris—Moose Mountain, would have been one of those lost Canadians, had it not been for his father tipping him off. I do not know how his father knew that Parliament was amending the Citizenship Act, but the amendments could have made him one of those lost Canadians.

In debate, the member for Souris—Moose Mountain said that he would be forever grateful to his parents who made sure to let him know, otherwise he would not have been able to serve in the House of Commons and represent the people of his riding in Saskatchewan.

This is the second time that we have tried to fill this legislative void by introducing Bill S‑245. I greatly admire author Franz Kafka. We have here the perfect example of a Kafkaesque or bureaucratic government that creates problems for ordinary citizens. This great German author who penned The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, The Trial, The Castle and Amerika, spoke about these major organizations that have far too many rules and far too many people trying to enforce them and about how an ordinary citizen can end up before them for making a mistake they were not even aware of.

Many people have lost their citizenship this way. However, those people can be proud because there are many parliamentarians, including Senator Yonah Martin, who are working to ensure this legislative void is filled.

We are now debating this bill to try to correct the error in Bill C‑37, which was introduced and debated in 2009 and 2011, if memory serves.

At the time, Bill C‑37 sought to amend the Citizenship Act to address this legislative gap. The period covered by the bill was approximately 50 months for second-generation Canadians. I am a first-generation Canadian. My children were all born in Calgary and are first-generation Canadians because they were all born in Canada. There was a legislative gap for Canadians who were born abroad to Canadian parents during those 50 months between February 15, 1967, and April 16, 1981. These Canadians were to inform the government before their 28th birthday if they wished to keep their citizenship.

As I said, there is hope, because we all agree that a Canadian is a Canadian and has the right to Canadian citizenship. It is a source of great pride and a great honour and privilege to be able to say that I am Canadian and always will be. In any event, that is my hope, unless the government makes another legislative mistake in the future and something happens to those of us who received their citizenship in 1989. I am hoping it will not happen, but one never knows.

In this bill, I think that Senator Yonah Martin found the right words to legislate on this issue. I have sponsored many bills in the House and I have had to talk to the jurilinguists and lawyers who work in the House to find the right words to achieve a goal. Sometimes, the problem is finding the right words and the right dates in order to ensure that legislative voids are properly filled while addressing the initial problem we sought to solve by introducing legislation in the House.

I thank Senator Yonah Martin, but also all of the other members and senators who worked hard on this bill. I am thinking of the former Speaker of the Senate, Noël Kinsella, and of former senators David Tkachuk and Art Eggleton, who worked hard to ensure that these Canadians get their citizenship.

During debates in the House, I always share a Yiddish proverb. Today's is this: “When you sweep the house, you find everything.” I hope that this legislation will make it possible for us to find all of the lost Canadians so that they can get their citizenship.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

moved that Bill S-245, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (granting citizenship to certain Canadians), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill S-245, an act to amend the Citizenship Act (granting citizenship to certain Canadians).

I want to thank the hon. senator from British Columbia, Yonah Martin, who brought forward this important bill. She introduced this originally as Bill S-230 in the last Parliament in the other place to address the lost Canadians whose citizenship was revoked without their knowledge and without warning simply because of the wording in the Citizenship Act.

I am excited to hear from the member for Souris—Moose Mountain, who will be sharing his experience of almost being a lost Canadian. If he chooses to do so, maybe he can share a picture of the card he carries around.

While Bill S-230 passed unanimously through the other place in the 43rd Parliament, the unnecessary and selfish election of 2021 killed the bill before it could get to first reading here. That is why I was happy and hopeful to see it pass unanimously once again in the Senate and reach second reading here in this place.

I want to thank Senator Martin for her continued work on this file, along with former Senate Speaker the hon. Noël Kinsella and former senators David Tkachuk and Art Eggleton, as well as Mr. Don Chapman. He has worked tirelessly with our colleagues in the other place to advocate for lost Canadians and this much-needed change to the Citizenship Act.

Canadians who lost their status or become stateless because of these changes to the act are Canadians in every way except technically under the law. They pay their taxes, contribute to their communities and uphold the values of what it means to live in our beautiful country.

From 1947 to 1977, the law of the land was that children born abroad received citizenship only if their parents registered them within two years of their birth. In addition, their parents must have also given birth to them in wedlock, with at least one of the parents being a Canadian.

In 1977, the then government introduced a new Citizenship Act, changing the law so that children born abroad on or after February 14, 1977, received their Canadian citizenship if one of their parents was a Canadian citizen, regardless of their marital status. However, if the Canadian parent was also born abroad, a child had until turning 28 to apply to keep their citizenship. If they did not, it would be taken away.

When the law passed in 1977, the government made no effort to inform Canadians affected by this change. No form was published, no instructions were given on how someone could reaffirm their citizenship and no one affected was told that this requirement even existed.

Finally, in 2009, Bill C-37 was brought in by the Conservative government to make changes to the Citizenship Act to rectify past mistakes. When it came into effect, the rules for citizenship changed for people born outside Canada to Canadian parents who were not already Canadian citizens. The changes saw the age 28 rule repealed, and Canadians caught up in the rule previously who had not yet reached that age were grandfathered into the amended law. However, the wording of Bill C-37 created an unfortunate gap for a small group of Canadians who were born between 1977 and 1981. Those who turned 28 before Bill C-37 became law in 2009 were also excluded.

In the committee review of this bill at the Senate's social affairs committee, senators asked IRCC officials how this could take place, what was being done to inform those who did not know they were lost and why the government was not being proactive in finding them. The answer from the IRCC officials was, “It’s fair to say that given the small number of applications...we are not out looking for Lost Canadians.” In reality, IRCC relies on lost Canadians to figure out they were stripped of their citizenship due to bureaucracy and paperwork.

Some lost Canadians knew about the change and either applied to keep their Canadian citizenship or let it lapse. These are Canadians who in many cases were raised here, who grew up attending school here and who have worked here their whole adult lives. These are Canadians who started families in this country and paid their taxes on time, but for one small change to the wording of the Citizenship Act, they lost their Canadian citizenship. When they turned 28, there was no letter from Citizenship and Immigration Canada and there was no warning. It was just gone.

All of us in this place know that Canadian citizenship is not identified by each person as one tangible idea. On the contrary, it is deeply personal to each of us. It makes up our identity and sense of belonging to a broader idea. For my community and me, Canadian citizenship is a goal. It is a marker for achieving the Canadian dream.

Being an immigrant myself and coming to Canada when I was five, I experienced first-hand the journey to achieving citizenship. My family grew up economically in poverty, lining up in the rain for low-income bus passes and having both parents working jobs just to survive. My family always had that goal to reach for Canadian citizenship. I saw my parents work themselves to the bone for my family. Because of their hard work, my brother, sister and I are where we are today. We achieved our dream of Canadian citizenship after having to work hard day and night, coming from little and knowing that the road is not easy. However, we know that the blood, sweat and tears we experienced on that journey were worth it. We are Canadian citizens.

That is why, standing here as a member of Parliament, I cannot imagine what it would be like to lose one's citizenship arbitrarily, especially for those who worked hard and even served in uniform for this country, to one day lose something they believed so much in. This is not just an issue for the many people this bill would help to reinstate citizenship to; it is an issue for all of us. As Canadians and representatives of Canadians, it is our responsibility to help preserve what it means to be a citizen of this country and fundamentally what it means to be a Canadian.

I ask my fellow colleagues to do the right thing and support this bill to reinstate citizenship for lost Canadians.

[Mary-Ann Hubers]

There's nothing in Bill C-6 that talks about the first-generation limit, but there is in the law a first-generation limit that applies to children born abroad to a Canadian citizen. There were a number of reforms done that gave citizenship back to lost Canadians. The first one was in Bill C-37 in 2009. Then there were additional changes in Bill C-24 that gave citizenship back or gave it for the first time to a number of other lost Canadians. There were a number of individuals who were fixed by those provisions.

For those who are impacted now in terms of being themselves first generation born abroad, and they have a child abroad who's therefore not eligible for citizenship by descent, there are some avenues available to them. For example, they can sponsor that child for a permanent residence to Canada. If the child is stateless because they don't have access to any other citizenship, there's a grant in the Citizenship Act for stateless children of Canadians.

[David Matas]

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, BillC-18, and BillC-37, which have some good suggestions in them that we like. We've proposed that some of them be incorporated in here.

It's of some concern to us that all these proposed amendments—which would change the revocation process, which is not working now—are put aside, and instead we have this bill. There are some good things in the bill, and we support many of the components of it, but because it's a private member's bill—and this is a point your colleague Irwin Cotler has mentioned—it doesn't go through Justice charter scrutiny the way government bills do.

To answer specifically, yes, there's a charter right of citizenship, which is not limited necessarily to the way citizenship is defined in the Citizenship Act. It's open to anybody who loses their citizenship to say that this is a violation of their charter right to citizenship, regardless of what the Citizenship Act says.

I can't tell you whether a charter challenge like that is going to succeed or not, but it's certainly potentially there.

[Rénald Gilbert]

You mean Bill C-37. The first Bill C-37, because there is a second that is—

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

Fine. My colleague Mr. Wrzesnewskyj talked about the privilege of citizenship and how to limit its extension. We already had that debate in this committee, and we know it is always very difficult to determine who should be given this privilege and who should not.

I remember very well that, at the time, when we were studying the former Bill C-37 on citizenship, the officials had told us that the place of birth was the simplest and easiest to apply criteria, and that it covered the largest number of cases. That is why it is the general criteria which is used in our legislation to extend citizenship. It is the criteria you used in your bill.

Nevertheless, we still need to define a whole list of exceptions to cover as many situations as possible.

I would like to take advantage of your presence to have a more thorough discussion about citizenship.

Is the place of birth still the most relevant criteria to determine the attachment of an individual to Canada?

In my opinion, if we started to question this premise, we could see things in a totally different light. On the one hand, you have people who were born in Canada—some cases have been reported in the media—and who come to Canada like tourists, to give birth and then they leave for 18 years. Later, their children come to Canada for postsecondary education. These people have no ties in Canada.

On the other hand, you might have people who have always lived in Canada and who happen to give birth abroad, quite accidentally—some of them live along the American border, and the ambulance may have driven them to an American hospital—, and these people cannot extend their citizenship to their child if he or she is born abroad.

In this day and age, when people are travelling everywhere around the world, shouldn't we start to think about determining citizenship according to the number of years an individual or his parents have lived in Canada, rather than apply stupidly the place of birth criteria?

[Joe Preston, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Madam Speaker, I rise to address Bill C-467 which was brought forward by the hon. member for Vancouver South.

As all members of the House are aware, this private member's bill stems from the passage in the 39th Parliament of Bill C-37, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act. Bill C-467 calls upon the government to treat children born or adopted overseas by Crown servants, including Canadian Forces personnel, as children born in Canada, such that they would be able to pass citizenship on to any children they may have or adopt outside of Canada.

The government supports the intention of Bill C-467, although we are concerned about some unintended consequences. Our success as a country is no accident but a result of an abiding belief in values such as liberty, human dignity and freedom of conscience and where harmony is the rule rather than the exception. We are an open and tolerant society, renowned for our respects for democracy and for the freedoms that come with that. We celebrate our different cultural traditions but not at the expense of sharing common Canadian ones.

That is fundamental. We need to preserve the value of Canadian citizenship along with an abiding connection to our past and to one another, where citizenship means more than access to a convenient passport.

Within the past three years, the government has passed significant laws that would correct flaws in citizenship legislation. Bill C-14 and Bill C-37 reflect clear and bold reaffirmations of our values and the principles that define us as a country.

Under the old rules, it was possible for Canadians to pass on their citizenship to endless generations born outside of Canada. To protect the value of Canadian citizenship for the future, the new law under Bill C-37 put a limit on citizenship by descent to one generation born outside of Canada, similar to the rules in other countries like the United Kingdom and New Zealand.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, it is rather unexpected that I rise today to speak to Bill C-467.

At the outset, I want to say that I listened with great care to the speech from the mover of the bill, as well as the member for Trinity—Spadina. Clearly, we are in favour of this bill and certainly willing to get the bill to committee, but as the member for Trinity—Spadina pointed out, there are some improvements that we would like in the bill.

Bill C-37 came into effect in April of 2009 and out of that whole process there are still gaps in the legislation. The fact of the matter is that this bill would not deal with all of the gaps that the member for Trinity—Spadina outlined so eloquently in her speech.

Having said that, this is certainly a positive move by the member for Vancouver South. I missed the initial period for questions but wanted to ask him whether this bill would apply to members of the reserve forces in Canada.

When we look at the summary of the bill, it refers to the enactment providing that children born abroad to, or adopted abroad by, a citizen employed outside Canada in or with the Canadian armed forces, the federal public administration or the public service of a province be considered like a child born in Canada. The bill mentions the Canadian armed forces.

In some cases, reserve members are not covered by measures covering the armed forces in general. I was unable to ask the mover that question.

This issue has dogged us for quite a number of years. Having been a provincial member for 23 years now, issues have come up where people have found, perhaps accidentally, that they did not have Canadian citizenship. It came to a head, as we know, around 9/11 when the Americans started to tighten up on their rules of access to the United States, and people had to produce passports and prove citizenship. A number of people could not do that. There were some very well publicized cases, as members know.

Another question I wanted to ask the member was whether he had an idea as to how many people would be affected by this particular bill. The member for Trinity—Spadina pointed out that there are perhaps 2.8 million people, I believe she said, living abroad. There are people working in our missions, working for NGOs, and many working for multinational corporations.

As a matter of fact, it becomes almost a lifetime occupation for some people to spend all of their working lives being transferred around the world and spending very little time in Canada until perhaps their retirement years. During that time, it is quite conceivable that children will be born outside of Canada and at a certain point will be found to be stateless.

The member for Trinity—Spadina talked about Senator Munson, with whom I had the pleasure of travelling to Washington recently, indicating that in his case he could potentially be in a situation where a grandchild of his would be a stateless person. Clearly, we have to look at this whole area and err on the side of inclusiveness, including all people who could potentially be affected by this type of legislation.

One only has to look back three years ago when we debated Bill C-37 in the House. I read through some of the speeches of the day and some of the background.

We are not talking about a really simple issue here. This is a very complicated issue. The average person is not going to while away the hours and days becoming an expert in immigration law. I would think that in some cases one would have to be a lawyer to sort through some of this stuff and to really understand it.

One of the previous members talked earlier about Bill C-37, the bill to amend the Immigration Act, which was introduced in the House and received first reading on December 10, 2007, the whole purpose of which was to address the issue of the so-called lost Canadians, the people who lost their citizenship through no fault of their own when they were mere babies.

These people thought of themselves as Canadians. They wished to participate in Canadian society, but either ceased to be citizens or never were Canadian citizens in the first place for various legal reasons. There were different reasons by and large in each one of the cases and each case presented a very compelling reason. Even the Prime Minister was involved in one of the cases to try to resolve the issue. In many cases these individuals were not even aware that they were not Canadian citizens until they applied for a certificate of Canadian citizenship or other documentation.

It might surprise some to know, and I was informed of this a few years ago, that even today a very small percentage of the population actually flies on an airplane. I forget what the actual number was but only 13% or 15% of people have actually flown but that number must be much higher now. A very large number of people in our society have not had occasion to board an airplane and fly to other countries. If an individual has no reason to travel, he or she would have no reason to consider asking for documentation. Only when a life event happens are people forced to get citizenship documentation and sometimes find out they are not able to get it.

It would be interesting for people watching today to know that there are at least four distinct legal groups of lost Canadians. The first group is made up of naturalized Canadians, those who subsequently lived outside the country for more than 10 years prior to 1967. The second group is made up of people born abroad to a Canadian parent before the current Citizenship Act came into effect on February 15, 1977. How is someone supposed to remember all of these facts, particularly if that individual happened to be born abroad?

The third group is made up of people who lost their citizenship between January 1, 1947 and February 14, 1977 because they or a parent acquired the citizenship of another country. The fourth group is made up of the second and subsequent generation of Canadians born abroad since the current Citizenship Act came into effect on February 15, 1977. As the member for Trinity—Spadina pointed out, we are talking about 2.8 million people living abroad.

I understand that my time is almost nigh. Suffice it to say that we support the bill and are prepared to send it on to committee.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to add my voice to the debate on Bill C-467, which calls on the government to treat children born or adopted overseas by Crown servants, including Canadian Forces personnel, as children born in Canada. That would mean making it possible to pass citizenship on to any children they may have or adopt outside Canada.

As my hon. colleague has said, the government supports the intention of Bill C-467, although we do have some concerns that the bill as drafted would not achieve its intended objective and would have unintended consequences.

Members who studied the issue of lost citizenship in the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration know full well that citizenship is not something to take lightly or for granted. Studies and witness testimony over the issue led to us to the conclusion that legislation governing citizenship is by no means perfect and that we should truly appreciate the value of our Canadian citizenship.

Members will recall that in order to protect the value of citizenship and ensure that it could not be passed on to endless generations, Bill C-37 in the 39th Parliament introduced a first generation limit to citizenship. The limit is there to ensure that Canadians would have a connection to Canada. Bill C-37 also created an exception to this new first generation limit. The exception means that children born outside Canada to Crown servants are also citizens.

Without this exception to the fist generation limit, children of Crown servants would not be able to pass on citizenship to any children they may have or adopt abroad. This means that as long as a Canadian citizen is a Crown servant working abroad, any children the Canadian citizen has or adopts abroad are Canadian.

Generation after generation of parents working abroad as Crown servants are able to pass Canadian citizenship on to their children, but let us say Anna has a child while working as a Crown servant in England. Her child, Nicholas, is Canadian. When Nicholas grows up, if he decides to work as a Crown servant in India, any child he has or adopts while working as a Crown servant there would be Canadian, but if Nicholas decides he does not want to work as a Crown servant, his child, in other words Anna's grandchild, would not be Canadian. We aim to change that.

Since early 2009 the government has heard from Crown servants and organizations representing them that it is unfair to penalize these children as a direct result of their parents' service to Canada. I absolutely sympathize with the need to recognize that Canadian families serving Canada abroad have a strong connection to Canada and should not be penalized for their service.

I agree with my colleagues that the private member's bill before us today is certainly well intentioned. After all, it proposes to treat children born or adopted abroad by Crown servants the same as children born in Canada so that they could pass on citizenship to any children they may have or adopt overseas.

As I have said, the bill does have some problems. For example, under this bill, children of Crown servants could not pass on citizenship to any children they may have or adopt abroad. Children of the original Crown servant working abroad who were born abroad to a Canadian parent would no longer have access to citizenship.

Children adopted by Crown servants who were born or naturalized in Canada would become citizens automatically without regard to the international obligations and requirements that aim to protect the best interests of the child, for example, to prevent child trafficking. Bill C-467 would propose to confer citizenship automatically to children adopted abroad by Crown servants who were born or naturalized in Canada.

The current act already allows anyone who is born abroad and adopted by a Canadian parent who was born in Canada, whether or not that parent is a Crown servant, to apply for a grant of citizenship. The criteria for such a grant respects international obligations that are there to protect the best interests of the child and that respect the provincial jurisdictions on adoptions.

Nevertheless, I am confident that we can achieve the intent of this private member's bill if we expanded the current exception that exists in the current act, so that children of Crown servants, including Canadian Forces personnel, like children born in Canada, would be able to pass citizenship on to any children they have or adopt outside Canada.

I recommend that, by addressing these concerns together, this bill could have a positive impact on the children of Crown servants, including our military serving abroad.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am very happy to have seconded this bill because it goes some way toward solving some problems that were created as a result of the adoption of Bill C-37 which came into effect in April 2009. Law making is sometimes extremely complicated and there are unintended consequences and we are seeing some here at different levels.

The first level which Bill C-467 presented by my colleague from Vancouver South addresses is the most urgent and most obvious one. It is the fact that people who have had children while serving their country abroad and whose children are now having children of their own, those children cannot be Canadian citizens. That is nonsense. The riding which I have the honour of representing is in Ottawa. One would expect there would be a number of people living in my riding and throughout the city who have served our country abroad in the Department of Foreign Affairs, for instance, and who are now in this situation.

I know two ambassadors who have had children while serving abroad. In the first case, one of his sons is now working in the private sector in a bank in Paris. He and his wife are going to have their third child. The first two children, from the same father and mother, are Canadian citizens, but the third one, if the child is born in Paris, will not be a Canadian citizen if born there. The third grandchild of the man who served his country abroad, born from the same parents, cannot be a Canadian citizen. It is nonsense. Another well-known ambassador who served this country with great distinction has a daughter in Great Britain who cannot have children who will be Canadian citizens.

That is the first obvious unintended consequence of Bill C-37 that has to be fixed. I applaud my colleague's initiative. I hope that even if the government seems to have some hesitation about some technicalities it is concerned with, that we can see our way to at least adopting that.

The second level of complication was brought up by the member for Trinity—Spadina and I concur with her. Canada as a trading nation has to consider going beyond this bill. I have legislation on the books, Bill C-443, which addresses that. It deals with the fact that there are a number of Canadian citizens working abroad, for the United Nations or its agencies and for NGOs, and heaven knows, we fund them through CIDA. These are honourable, respected NGOs such as Médecins Sans Frontières. A number of them are associated with religious groups. A number of Canadians are serving the interests of their country through these organizations and they are going to get caught in the same situation.

That is the second level of complication that I hope we will address some day. I hope the government is paying attention to this. Whether we can do it through amendments to this piece of legislation or not remains to be seen.

The third one is the very dramatic situation where we will be creating stateless children. That can be an incredibly complicated situation for anyone.

These are some of the unintended consequences of the legislation that came into effect last year which I believe have to be addressed. The first one is being addressed through the legislation proposed by my colleague from Vancouver South and I hope we will see fit to pass it quickly.

[Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am speaking today about Bill C-467 because I believe that it will correct a legislative error.

When the Citizenship Act was amended in 2008 through Bill C-37, the principle of restricting the transmission of citizenship by descent was included to ensure that Canadian citizenship was not passed on in perpetuity.

But in wanting to create an exception to restricting the transmission of citizenship for our military and officials who are overseas on a mission, we complicated matters. We created an exception to the citizenship exception that had just been passed. The goal was to maintain privileges for our citizens who have children overseas. However, as is often the case when a law is created or amended, unanticipated problems or gaps surfaced in the legislation.

Bill C-467 would remove the exception to the exception that was created and propose a new category of citizens in order to make the Citizenship Act fairer.

The law, in its present form allows our military and officials, who were themselves born abroad, to transmit their citizenship to any children they have when they are on a mission. However, rather than being considered citizens in good standing as though they were born here, these children have the status of Canadians born abroad, which does not allow them, in turn, to transmit their citizenship.

Bill C-467 would make these children full-fledged citizens with the same rights and privileges as the children of the military and officials born here and posted here.

When the government amended the Citizenship Act to restrict the transmission of citizenship, it maintained that the provision would ensure that Canadian citizenship is not transmitted indefinitely to individuals who have no ties to Canada. Although I believe that there should be nuances in this rule, I agree with the general principle.

Given the employee-employer relationship of these two parties, it is obvious to me that, for this category of citizens, their right to citizenship does not have to be proven because it is explicit. Consequently, their children should be considered as though they were born here—even if they were born abroad—just like children adopted from abroad, who now have this recognition.

That is exactly what the member for Vancouver South wants to achieve with this bill.

Here is a simple example to illustrate what I am talking about. I was born in Vietnam and adopted in 1974. I now have a Quebec birth certificate, which is my legal identification in Quebec. However, when I renew my passport, I have to send my Canadian citizenship card, not my Quebec birth certificate, as do all people born in Quebec.

I was adopted in 1974, long before the law was changed to allow children adopted from other countries to obtain citizenship upon arriving in Canada. If I were a member of the armed forces, any grandchildren of mine born abroad would be stateless. That situation is unacceptable.

In this case, my Bloc Québécois colleague, the member for Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, has five children, including one born abroad when he was Quebec's delegate general in Japan. That child will not have the same status as his four children born here.

This is an example that illustrates the need for this bill. The current citizenship criteria, which are essentially based on birthplace, seem to me to be outdated in these cases, just like the discrimination against parents who adopted children abroad in my time. The flaws in the system should be corrected by the bill my colleague has introduced.

With globalization and international labour mobility, more and more government employees, members of the military and other people will be going abroad to work.

Moreover, the Bloc Québécois has long been calling on the government to introduce exit controls for non-citizens, but the Conservatives have consistently refused. They recognize the problem, but refuse to take action.

Clearly, Bill C-467 does not correct the whole problem, because it only focuses on government employees. I feel we are going to have to take a much broader approach and review the principle of restricting transmission of citizenship by descent.

We support this amendment, but I want to say that this bill will not completely fix the flaw in the current Citizenship Act.

However, it does give vital recognition to people working for the government abroad.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to address Bill C-467, brought forward by the hon. member for Vancouver South.

This private member's bill stems from the passage, in the 39th Parliament, of Bill C-37, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act. Bill C-467 calls on the government to treat children born to or adopted overseas by Crown servants, including Canadian Forces personnel and federal and provincial public servants, as children born in Canada such that they would be able to pass citizenship on to any children they may have or adopt outside Canada.

First of all, I would like to commend the member for Vancouver South for his commitment to this issue, and I would like all hon. members to know that the government supports the intention of Bill C-467. However, we have some technical concerns with the bill in its current form, as it does not achieve its intended objective and would have, as the member points out, some unintended consequences.

Nevertheless, I am confident that we can address these concerns together, with the co-operation of our parliamentary colleagues. The bill will have a positive impact on the children of Crown servants and our military serving abroad.

I would like to share with my hon. colleagues a very brief overview of Bill C-37 and the reasons that led us, as a government, to restore citizenship to lost Canadians and to include a clear limit on citizenship by descent.

Members of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration will recall many witnesses who testified three years ago this spring as they shared their love for this country as proud citizens. They shared their dismay and their frustration when they described how it felt to discover that their citizenship was not, in fact, recognized by the law.

The public outcry was enormous, and that is why the government corrected the legislation. When Bill C-37 came into effect a year ago, it restored or gave citizenship to most people who were known as lost Canadians. Changes to the law restored or granted citizenship to the vast majority of those who lost or did not have it due to outdated provisions in previous legislation.

The changes meant that people who became citizens when the first Citizenship Act came into force in 1947, and people born or naturalized in Canada after 1947 and subsequently lost their citizenship, would reacquire their citizenship unless they formally renounced it or had it revoked because of fraud. Foreign-born persons adopted by Canadians between January 1, 1947 and February 15, 1977 would also be eligible to apply for citizenship. Complex rules that required some citizens by descent to take steps to apply to keep their citizenship were simply eliminated.

The new law also set a limit on citizenship by descent to the first generation born abroad. That was done to uphold the value of Canadian citizenship by requiring a real and concrete connection to Canada.

Hon. members will also recall debate of Bill C-14 in 2007 and the steps Canadians adopting foreign-born children had to take before their children could become Canadian citizens.

International adoption is a complex process, as we all know, involving many layers of approval by both provincial and territorial governments in Canada and by the federal government of the country where the child lives. In many cases, adoptions must meet the requirements of the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption.

With the passage of Bill C-14, parents of foreign-born adopted children were able to apply directly for citizenship for those children without first having to go through the steps of applying for permanent resident status. It was a clear and bold reaffirmation of the values and principles that define our identity, our country, and the notion of the Canadian family.

The goal of fixing imperfect legislation with the passage of Bill C-37 and Bill C-14 was essentially to simplify the complex rules on Canadian citizenship.

The private member's bill before us today is certainly well intentioned, and we once again praise the member for Vancouver South for his constructive efforts. In the coming weeks, we look forward to addressing the technical issues that would otherwise prevent this bill from achieving its rightful objective.

The government recognizes the commitment and sacrifices that Crown servants and their families posted abroad make to this country.

I am sure that hon. members would also agree that any children born to Crown servants working abroad should not be penalized by not being able to pass on citizenship to any children they may have or they may adopt abroad as a direct result of their parents' service to this country.

Furthermore, there is absolutely no question that Crown servants abroad, including our military, have a connection to this country and we are confident that the changes proposed by Bill C-467 are consistent with the intent of Bill C-37.

There are a few issues with this bill that need to be examined. For example, the bill attempts to extend access to citizenship to the grandchildren of Crown servants by adding a new provision for children born abroad or adopted by Crown servants.

At the same time, it proposes to repeal a section of the act that currently allows all children born to a Crown servant outside Canada to be Canadians, regardless of the generation in which they were born outside Canada.

Similarly, right now, anyone born abroad or adopted by a Canadian parent who was born in Canada, whether or not that parent is a Crown servant, may apply for a grant of citizenship. The criteria for such a grant respect international obligations that are there to protect the best interests of the child and that respect the provincial jurisdiction on adoptions. Under Bill C-467 as it stands now, children adopted by Crown servants would no longer have to apply for a grant of citizenship, which could indeed be problematic.

Nevertheless, I am sure that all members would agree that the bill has a worthwhile objective and that, as Canadians, we should support our Crown servants posted abroad, especially and including military families, and recognize their sacrifice, their commitment and their strong connection to Canada.

That is why I am confident the intent of Bill C-467 can be achieved by expanding the current exception that exists under the law to ensure that the children of Crown servants, including Canadian Forces personnel, like children born in Canada, would be able to pass citizenship on to any children they have or adopt outside our country.

To ensure that the good intentions of Bill C-467 are achieved, I look forward to working co-operatively in the coming weeks with the member for Vancouver South, and all members, toward some constructive amendments.

We have a committee that is currently working on Bill C-11, the balanced refugee reform act. We are working our way through it. As members know, it is never easy at committee to come to a consensus on absolutely everything. I believe that bill is going to come back to this House, is going to be supported and is going to be passed. For the first time in decades we will have strong and positive change to our refugee act.

At the same time, I think the committee, with all four parties represented there, can come to some common agreement on the bill. The member has a critic who certainly has an open ear and a colleague who has an open ear to ensuring that we do what is right at committee.

I anticipate that we can do the same with this bill. I look forward to the day the member has the opportunity to present at committee and work with us on what I think will be amendments, necessary amendments nonetheless, that would ensure there are no unintended consequences with respect to this bill and the impact it would have on Canadians born abroad.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Madam Speaker, I just want to get some clarification on the end part of the mover's statement.

For us, the intent of this private member's bill is important. Going to committee obviously means that there will be some amendments made to the bill to move it back to the House for third reading. I really would like him to clarify that the intent of Bill C-37, which was enacted a couple of years ago, is something he supports and that this private member's bill actually gets at an area that we need to pay attention to and obviously make an addition to. That is the scope of his bill, and that is what he would like to have come to committee. It is based on nothing outside of that.

Citizenship and Immigration

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship]

Mr. Speaker, the member does herself a disservice with that kind of demagoguery.

This government, Parliament and the Liberal Party adopted Bill C-37 in the last Parliament to correct the Citizenship Act to welcome back to Canadian citizenship hundreds of thousands of lost Canadians.

It eliminated discrimination in the 1947 act on grounds of gender, which is why Don Chapman said that it ends 140 years of discrimination against women and children.

If the hon. member is against the changes that were made, why did her party support them without amendment?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship]

Mr. Speaker, we dealt with that during the last session of Parliament. We introduced Bill C-37, which received the support of all opposition parties and eliminated the discrimination previously found in the Citizenship Act.

This is what Don Chapman, spokesperson for Lost Canadians, had to say about it:

“This ends today”, the introduction of that bill, “140 years of discrimination against women and children on Canadian citizenship”.

I should add that, when the Liberals were in power, they did nothing to resolve the lost Canadians issue. They supported the solution set out in the bill during the last session of Parliament.

Support Measures for Adoptive Parents

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to be in the House today to speak about this important issue, Motion M-386.

The challenges that face adoptive parents are not often discussed. This means their struggles often go unnoticed and uncorrected by this country's legislative bodies.

This motion, though it does not offer any solutions to these struggles, does draw attention to the situation adoptive parents find themselves in and as a result, allows for more discussion on what measures are in place and which measures are lacking.

The motion tabled by the hon. member for Essex calls for:

--the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development, and the Status of Persons with Disabilities be instructed to examine current federal support measures that are available to adoptive parents and their adopted children, recognizing and respecting provincial and territorial jurisdictions in this regard and, following completion of its study, report back to the House with its findings.

Though the motion's ultimate goal can be achieved through other means, it does not detract us from its purpose, to take stock of what resources are currently available for adoptive parents and find out where there is a lack of support.

Let us now look at some of the challenges facing adoptive parent families.

This past summer was devastating for many adoptive families across Canada, and my riding of Sudbury was no exception.

When Imagine Adoption made its bankruptcy announcement on July 14, over 500 families were thrown into limbo. Imagine Adoption is a federal adoption agency registered with the Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services and a registered non-profit agency.

When the bankruptcy was announced, Imagine Adoption closed its doors and its accounts were frozen, leaving hundreds of families financially and emotionally devastated. The adoption agency is now only a closed website that redirects families to the bankruptcy trustee's website where parents can read about the group's restructuring plans.

Constituents of mine, who I met numerous times, were in the middle of adopting a child from Ethiopia when the news hit of Imagine's bankruptcy. With no adoption agency to turn to, the two of them were left to navigate the highly complex bureaucratic channels in Ontario and with the High Commission in Nairobi to find out where their paperwork was, what stage the visas were at, and what representative was dealing with their file in Ethiopia.

In this person's own words, “This turn of events has left those of us with files in waiting full of dread that our files will be pulled and our spot in the queue lost; this is to say nothing of the absolute fear being experienced by those families who have actually been matched with their child”.

This couple are not the only constituents who have contacted me on this issue. I have heard from numerous families that were also concerned.

These Sudburians understand that adoptive parents face tough challenges, not to mention a remarkably complex approval process and uncertainty levels when dealing with adoption cases overseas.

This is why we need to look into what resources are available for these parents. Moreover, this is why we need to take action now to help those who are still in limbo, still waiting for their families to be complete.

The challenges facing adoptive parents are not news to New Democrats. Rather, we have been listening, listening to the biggest concerns raised by adoptive parents and doing what we can to make their lives better.

I would like to touch on the good work that two of my colleagues are doing on this issue, the first initiative from my colleague from Burnaby—New Westminster and the second from my caucus member from Trinity—Spadina.

In January of this year, my caucus member from Burnaby—New Westminster introduced Bill C-413, An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act and the Canada Labour Code (extension of benefit period for adoptive parents).

If passed, this bill would amend the Employment Insurance Act and the Canada Labour Code to ensure that an adoptive parent is entitled to the same number of weeks of leave as the biological mother of a newborn child.

Under the current employment insurance program, adoptive parents are given 35 weeks of paid leave and a further 15 weeks of unpaid leave afterwards. Only birth mothers are able to take an additional 15 weeks of maternity leave.

This inequality between birth parents and adoptive parents received national attention in January of 2008, when the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear an appeal by an adoptive mother from British Columbia, Patti Tomasson, who was fighting for the same maternity leave benefits as birth mothers. Ms. Tomasson applied for maternity leave after she adopted her two daughters, Sarah, who is now eight, and Hannah, who is now four.

The Supreme Court was upholding an August 2007 decision by the Federal Court of Appeal that ruled Ms. Tomasson did not qualify for maternity benefits because she did not undergo the psychological experience of pregnancy and childbirth. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court of Canada was upholding antiquated laws, laws that need to be reviewed and revised in order to be fair to both birth and adoptive parents.

Adoptive parents like Ms.Tomasson need the extra leave to bond with their children. Recent studies of adoptive parents have shown that many would have liked to have the extra 15 weeks in order to help them better support their children.

As another parent, Heather Rowe, said:

The emotional time is as important as the physical," she says. "In fact, mothers who haven't given birth maybe need more time to envelop the child. As soon as you find out you've been approved you fall in love, but because you don't have the physical presence of the baby inside you, you don't start the physical bonding until you are actually holding the baby.

In fact, adoption professionals and researchers around the world identify a few of the issues as: post-adoption depression for the adoptive parents as a result of the adoption process; attachment and bonding from parent to child and child to parent; health issues or developmental issues; large barriers and cultural adjustment, as well as onerous adoption processes; and in the case of international adoption, issues of trauma, abuse, neglect or multiple foster care placements which make it difficult for the parents to build an immediate trust relationship with the child.

The bill introduced by the member for Burnaby—New Westminster would take these challenges into account by installing parity between adoptive and biological parents in this regard. The Adoption Council of Canada, a federally incorporated, charitable body, calls for the same measures to be taken.

Another worthy initiative that my caucus has put forward is Bill C-397, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (persons born abroad). As of April 17, the date Bill C-37, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act from the 39th Parliament came into effect, the children and grandchildren of Canadian expatriate and adoptive families have had their citizenship downgraded, or worse, stripped away.

Families who were recently able to pass on their Canadian citizenship for their born-abroad children have had such rights stripped away. Changes in citizenship and immigration law that were meant to restore citizenship to lost Canadians have instead created a new generation of lost Canadians.

The bill introduced by my caucus member for Trinity—Spadina would restore equality among all Canadians no matter where they were born and ensure the citizenship status of children and grandchildren of expatriated Canadians and adoptive families is not downgraded or outright stripped away. It would also treat citizenship in a manner that reflects and promotes Canada's economic, social, intellectual and humanitarian engagement with the world, and these initiatives are just a start.

I thank the hon. member for Essex for initiating this important conversation once again. I hope that in doing so, others begin to recognize the importance of updating our current laws to make life fairer for adoptive parents and their families.

[Rick Stewart]

Which bill are you referring to? The one on adoption or Bill C-37?

[Maurizio Bevilacqua, Liberal, Vaughan, ON]

Within the system, we have basically, in effect, that children adopted abroad by Canadian parents have been cut off from citizenship by descent. To really narrow it down, that's what we're talking about. In the system—and you know what I mean by that—where are you at right now in reference to Bill C-37? Is there a spirit in which you want to go and make some further amendments? Are you happy with this as it is now? Where are you at?

[Andrew Griffith]

One of the things that I think I mentioned earlier is that one of the challenges with Bill C-37 was that we didn't really know exactly how many people were out there to reach. So we truly tried to look at what was the most effective way to reach people when we didn't know the audience. Given that we didn't have that much money, we looked at low-cost ways to do that.

The flag piece was probably using YouTube and the video to generate interest and awareness. We used that to drive interest to our website, where we had specific information in terms of the provisions. We also did a lot of targeted media outreach. It was not only outreach in terms of Canadian media, but also, in particular, with U.S. media, because we know there is a very large expatriate Canadian population there.

If I remember correctly, we got a really good article in the Wall Street Journal and we discovered the number of hits on our website and YouTube spiked tremendously after that one. Apparently for one period of time, it was the most popular downloaded article on the Wall Street Journal. My brother even saw it.

That was the main way to do it. The other thing we tried to do is very much look at the networks of expatriates abroad through our missions abroad. In addition to working closely with our embassy in Washington, we also worked very closely with other heads of mission. Our deputy minister wrote to other heads of mission to inform and allow them to have sessions with their expatriates to help make that.

I think we did a number of things overall. The other element I'd like to highlight is that we also developed a wizard or a self-help tool on our website that is designed to allow people to ask the standard questions and to give them a sense of whether they are citizens or not. We tried a number of these efforts to try to reach as many people as possible.

I think the hit statistics, both in terms of YouTube and our website, have demonstrated that we've been reasonably successful in reaching people. Can we do more? Of course we can do more, but I think overall we did a fairly major effort to reach as many people as possible.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond, BC]

Anyway, can you also tell us more about all the work you've done in order to inform people about the changes caused by Bill C-37? There still seems to be some kind of misunderstanding by some people. Can you elaborate on that, please?

[Andrew Griffith]

Mr. Chair, in response to that question, obviously when we were developing Bill C-37 a number of consultations took place with a number of organizations that have appeared before this committee. All aspects of the bill were discussed during the process of looking at the bill. Of course, the actions of this committee in reviewing the bill also provided an opportunity for members of Parliament and witnesses to comment on the provisions of the bill. The pre-publication period, in terms of the actual detailed regulations related to the bill, also provided another opportunity for stakeholders to review the provisions of the bill and provide comments.

So in a nutshell, yes, there were certainly opportunities for people to provide comments on the different aspects of the bill. And those were also taken into account as the bill made its way through the process.

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

I would like to know whether this is simply an oversight in the legislation. When we passed Bill C-37, did we realize that under the legislation, naturalized individuals, including some of the children adopted abroad, could pass on their citizenship, even outside the country, but was it forgotten that children adopted abroad obtained their citizenship directly? Is the problem simply that no provision was made for these cases, that it is just a silly mistake, or is there a reason why children born abroad and adopted according to the conventional procedure can pass on their citizenship abroad, while children who obtain their citizenship directly cannot do so?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Good morning. Bonjour.

This is meeting number 23 of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, on Tuesday, June 16, 2009. The orders of the day include the review of the subject matter of Bill C-37, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act, enacted in the second session of the 39th Parliament.

We have three guests here before us today. Nicole Girard is the director of legislation and program policy, citizenship and multiculturalism branch. Welcome, Ms. Girard. Andrew Griffith is the director general of citizenship and multiculturalism branch. Good morning to you, sir. Finally, we have Rick Stewart, who has appeared before us in the past. He is the associate assistant deputy minister of operations.

Mr. Griffith, I understand you are going to make a brief presentation to us on this topic. You have up to 10 minutes. Thank you very much for coming, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You know, Mr. Shory, there is a fine line here. I'll let you continue for a little bit, but we are on Bill C-37.

[Andrew Bilski, Concerned adoptive parent, As an Individual]

Good morning.

I'm an adoptive parent and a past board member of the Children's Bridge Foundation, which is the charitable arm of Children's Bridge.

I'd like to thank the committee for the opportunity to speak here today on a subject that's very important to me, my family, and thousands of other Canadian families with adopted children from other countries.

Canada, of course, is a nation of immigrants. Haitian-born Michaëlle Jean came here as a child refugee some 40 years ago, and now serves as Canada's 27th Governor General. Countless other immigrants, whether famous or not, have made significant contributions to their adopted country. They've served in Parliament, started companies, taught in schools, created art, policed our streets, grown our food and infrastructure, and raised civic-minded families.

I too immigrated here from the United States in 1976. To me, Canada represented multiculturalism, equality, justice, multi-party democracy, progressive social policy, and a voice of reason in an increasingly hostile world. I worked as a journalist here for nearly 30 years, and in that time I have never regretted my decision to become part of this great country. But lately I have been troubled by some aspects of Bill C-37, which ostensibly and laudably restores citizenship rights to so-called lost Canadians, but also perhaps unintentionally creates two-tiered Canadian citizenship.

My Canadian-born wife, Pamela, and I have two daughters. Bridget, born in Toronto in 1990, who will be entering her second year at the University of Western Ontario this September, and Nina, born in Zhangjiagang, China, in 1998, who is a grade five student at Clinton Street Junior Public School in Toronto. Nina, thankfully, is not subject to Bill C-37, and has the same citizenship rights as her Canadian-born sister.

I'm here today to speak for the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of other children who will not be so fortunate.

When Canadians adopt internationally, they give their children their surname, their love, their emotional and financial support, and their citizenship. With the passage of Bill C-37, however, thousands of foreign adopted children become second-class citizens. Unlike their Canadian-born siblings and friends, they've been stripped of the right to pass on Canadian citizenship to their own children born or adopted abroad.

To make matters worse, this deplorable situation seems to hinge on the mere method by which these foreign adopted children acquire Canadian citizenship in the first place. One group of children who come to Canada on a permanent resident visa and subsequently obtain citizenship through naturalization are not subject to Bill C-37. In other words, they're considered first-class citizens with the rights that most of us here enjoy. However, a second group that acquires citizenship by grant through direct route, the most popular method since December 2007, are subject to Bill C-37. In other words, they become second-class citizens with no right to pass on their Canadian citizenship to future generations born or adopted abroad.

My question is, why? What possible reason could the framers of this bill have to distinguish between these two groups of adopted children? Commenting on the intent of the bill, Canada's Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, Jason Kenney, has stated that the government wants to limit the right of citizenship to “those people who have some kind of enduring presence or commitment to Canada”.

If so, what's the evidence that the second group of children, the foreign adopted ones who acquired citizenship through the direct route, will not have an enduring presence or commitment to Canada? Are they more likely than other Canadians, such as Liberal Party of Canada Leader Michael Ignatieff, to live abroad for vast periods of their lives? Are they less likely than other Canadians, such as the 40% or so who don't even both to vote in federal elections, to be committed to this country?

I'd like to remind the committee that many countries, including China, revoke the citizenship of a child upon foreign adoption. If these adopted children are not Canadian, then what are they? Their only national allegiance is to their adopted country.

I've come here today to respectfully ask you to right this injustice. In attempting to bolster the value of Canadian citizenship, Bill C-37 diminishes the rights of many foreign-adopted children. In so doing, it tarnishes Canada's international reputation as a champion of human rights.

[Sarah Pedersen, Acting Executive Director, Adoption Council of Canada]

Let me start by saying that the Adoption Council of Canada is the only national organization representing the voices of adoptees, birth parents, and adoptive families across the country. We're thankful to have been invited today and to have been asked to share our concerns about how Bill C-37 affects the citizenship rights of adoptees.

We're concerned with the unanticipated impact of Bill C-37 as set out in the regulations. The new law that came into effect on April 17, 2009, limits Canadian citizenship to the first generation born to Canadian parents living outside of Canada. This law was supposed to streamline and simplify the citizenship process for internationally adopted children. Instead, this legislation takes away citizenship rights for some of these children. Adoptive parents across Canada are concerned that these regulations create two types of citizens with different rights, those who are adopted being relegated to an inferior class of citizenship under the bill.

The law was originally drafted to prevent Canadians of convenience--i.e., families who pass on citizenship over several generations without ever living in Canada. However, in attempting to solve this problem the government has created regulations that are confusing and create inequities for internationally adopted children.

Douglas Chalk, executive director of the Sunrise Adoption Centre and member of the Adoption Council of Canada states, and I quote:

...the government has reduced the citizenship rights of some internationally adopted children, and effectively created a lesser class of citizenship for them. Was this really necessary? It feels like a sledgehammer was used to kill a flea.

Sandra Scarth, president of the Adoption Council of Canada, also notes, and I quote, that “the original intent of the legislation as we understood it was to simplify the citizenship process to treat children adopted abroad more equitably” rather than create yet another inequity.

What upsets adopting parents most is the notion that their children will have a lesser class of citizenship. In effect, this law discriminates against children adopted internationally. Adoptive parents do not want to feel that their children are second-class citizens. Adoptive parents in Canada are losing their tolerance for being discriminated against. Resentment at the inherent discrimination against adopting families, which is built into the EI legislation, has been simmering for the past decade. Now these families face a new law that discriminates against their children.

The Adoption Council of Canada is dismayed that the provisions of the Citizenship Act, which came into effect in April, create two-tiered citizenship. Our adopted children, Canadian citizens who will have lived almost their entire lives in Canada, will not have the same rights as other citizens born in Canada, even those in their very own family. They will not be able to pass on their Canadian citizenship to any of their children who may be born abroad.

The Adoption Council of Canada urges the government to rethink these provisions and find a solution that does not limit the rights of citizenship for internationally adopted children.

Thank you.

[Allan Nichols, Executive Director, Concerned Group Representative, Canadian Expat Association]

Good morning.

My name is Allan Nichols. I'm the executive director of the Canadian Expat Association. I'd like to thank the committee for inviting me to appear before you to speak about Bill C-37.

To place my comments in the proper context, I'd like to briefly tell you a bit about the Canadian Expat Association.

The association is a non-governmental, not-for-profit community linking all Canadians living abroad. Canadians can now connect through the association, regardless of where they work and live, wherever they are in the world. Since opening its doors in the summer of 2007, the Canadian Expat Association has offered opportunities for members, in both French and English, to play a key role in representing Canadian expats, who until now have had no collective voice.

The association provides a platform for Canadians so that they can have access to and network with established Canadian clubs and business organizations around the world. It provides Canadians with useful information and analysis to ease the transition when they move and live abroad or when they return home. It assists Canadian business organizations and NGOs in promoting their activities to Canadians around the world. It acts as an advocate, working in partnership with businesses, NGOs, and federal, provincial, and territorial governments to promote the value of Canadian expats and to highlight their cultural and economic contributions. The association works to develop and foster relationships and to build partnerships with these various actors.

The goal is to internationally promote Canada and its most valuable resource: its people. The association currently represents approximately 1,000 people and a number of leading Canadian businesses. Efforts are under way to actively build its membership and to expand its profile overseas and across Canada.

An estimated 2.7 million Canadians are living and working abroad, nearly 9% of the total population of Canada. In fact, billions of dollars in bilateral trade can be directly and indirectly attributed to these Canadian expats who are involved in businesses around the world. Canadian expats are recognized as being in some of the most successful and influential networks, and as a direct result of their efforts, Canada is benefiting economically, culturally, and politically.

Canadians living and working abroad are linguistically adept, culturally articulate, and internationally mobile. They represent all regions of Canada, and most still identify Canada as their home. The experiences, knowledge, and networks of contacts these Canadians bring back have great value and have a profound impact on the country and on the economy.

I would like to now focus my comments on Bill C-37. While the intention of the bill is to limit the granting of Canadian citizenship to those who may not have ties to this country, we feel that the bill can be improved upon so that Canadians with significant connections will still be recognized. Let me explain.

It is our understanding that the current bill potentially limits the freedom of Canadian citizens to pass on their heritage. As members of this committee are well aware, we live in a highly mobile world. Canadians are seeking and finding opportunities around the globe and are returning with significant skills and investment. However, these achievements could be limited if there were a possibility that future generations would not be eligible to claim their Canadian heritage.

Canadians who have children abroad now have to contend with the possibility that their grandchildren might not meet the requirements of Canadian citizenship. Let me give you an example. A person decides to work abroad and begins a new stage of life by starting a family. This person then returns and raises children in Canada. Those children grow up and are active individuals who contribute to Canadian society. However, the opportunities for those children could now be limited if they want to start their own families. The children, if born abroad, will not be granted Canadian citizenship.

While we agree with the intention of Bill C-37 to protect the value of Canadian citizenship, the example I have outlined is an unfortunate and unintended consequence. When approximately 2.7 million Canadians are living and working abroad and providing tangible benefits to Canada, it does not make economic or cultural sense to put a limit on the opportunities for future generations.

We would recommend as the solution what other countries have worked out. For instance, the United States and Australia have faced the same dilemma. Their solution was to establish a residency provision for those children born abroad. In essence, such provisions recognize de facto their established citizenship and do not take their birthplace into account when it comes to their own children. A solution such as this would satisfy the notion that these people have meaningful ties to Canada.

Once again, thank you for inviting me to Ottawa. I'd be glad to now answer any questions you may have.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

We have a piece of legislation...and I listened to the predicaments of Mr. Neal, Ms. Scott, and Mr. Gélinas. If you were to suggest how we could move forward in a stronger way with Bill C-37 in terms of addressing some of their concerns--and forgive me, this is the first time I've met or been introduced to the three of them--it sounds to me that whether it's for their daughter or for themselves, their wish and their passion is to have Canadian citizenship.

They believe that Bill C-37 gave them that opportunity. It doesn't sound as though anyone disagrees with the legislation but there is disagreement or concern around carrying out the interpretation of it. Do you have any suggestions as to how we could strengthen that from a ministry perspective?

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

When you spoke about gender-based discrimination, you said that these 71 people had been discriminated against because of the legislation of the day. Earlier legislation was discriminatory because it made a distinction between men and women, between children born out of wedlock and those born in wedlock. You also mentioned religion and other grounds. You were not talking about discrimination pursuant to the provisions of Bill C-37.

[Don Chapman]

Yes, there are 71 people. Subsection 5(4) grants pretty much that this goes away. There is one more problem. You now have created under Bill C-37 Canadian citizens with fewer rights than other Canadian citizens.

[Don Chapman]

Actually, the bill was a wonderful bill. We're not talking about the second generation born abroad. We're talking about the lost Canadian bill. That brought in hundreds of thousands of people. That was a wonderful bill.

We always had some people who didn't quite fit under Bill C-37. We were at 73 people. Two have died since then without citizenship, so we're down to 71. We were promised that these cases would be fixed and be done. So those cases were there when we testified beforehand. They're still on the books, despite the promises that they would be taken care of. So there aren't really now many people left. This could be cleared up very quickly.

Regarding the second generation born abroad, it was take it or leave it. We took it with the promise, again with the Senate, that a new Citizenship Act would be forthcoming, because the 1977 Citizenship Act has become a barnacled creature. It's growing new barnacles of new amendments all the time. It has seen its better day. It's time for a new Citizenship Act.

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

Basically, I was repeating what Ms. Mendes said. We must make a distinction between two things.

First of all, we have the issue of Canadians who lost their citizenship and who did not regain it after Bill C-37 was passed. Then we have the issue of second-generation Canadians who in your opinion were treated unfairly after this bill is passed.

I am the Bloc Québécois's spokesperson on citizenship and immigration. I joined this committee while it was considering Bill C-37. I am very familiar with the bill, although I do not know its entire history.

Our committee prepared a report that was adopted unanimously and that recommended exactly the same measures as those found in Bill C-37. Nearly all the witnesses who appeared before us said that the legislation had to be passed, that it was urgent. The bill was passed unanimously by all parties.

In your opinion, how was a bill that overlooked so many people able to get through all the stages without any resistance?

[Don Chapman]

They still have people who are stateless. The first second-generation born-abroad stateless person that we know of is coming up in Austria. Austria does not confer citizenship. I was behind the scenes in the implementation of this bill. We did not want the second-generation born-abroad issue attached to this bill, but it got attached, and it was take it or leave it. Now that it's there, the provision.... And the gentleman you'd want to call in, too, is a gentleman by the name of Mark Davidson. He's now a DG of another department, but Mark was in on this.

The issue was that if a child was born in a country that didn't confer citizenship, let's say, Greece, Japan, and so forth, Canada, or one of the countries, immediately would come in and give that child citizenship based on the United Nations Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. What came out was quite different. It's now saying that you bring your child back to Canada--and it becomes quite an issue to bring a stateless child across borders--the child will live in Canada for three years, and then the child can have citizenship.

Although, wait a minute, that's making the child an immigrant Canadian: this is completely contrary to the United Nations convention. It's totally wrong. Basically, if somebody, as in this case, is stateless, you can make them a citizen in three weeks. The Prime Minister proved that with the last remaining World War I veteran. End of story: it should be done right now.

There are major problems. Let's say, for instance, that we have a mother whose father happens to be elderly and living in the United States. The father is dying. This mother has a stateless child in Canada and can't leave the child to go take care of the father, because the child can't cross borders.

These are major problems and there are easy, easy, fixes. There are ways that were introduced into this bill to take care of this problem.

I have one last thing. One of the big things that was promised was that the Senate said, “If we agree to Bill C-37, you will give us a new citizenship act and start working on it”. It was promised and it has not come through.

[Naeem (Nick) Noorani]

Thank you.

On April 17, 2009, a new law amending the Citizenship Act came into effect granting Canadian citizenship to certain people who lost it due to lack of provisions in the act. The citizenship is automatic and retroactive to the day the person was born or lost citizenship, depending on the situation. The recognition of these lost Canadians as citizens is overdue, and reflects well on Canada’s humanitarian reputation and traditions.

The new act draws the line of what constitutes a lost Canadian at second- or later-born-generation Canadians. While such grandchildren and great grandchildren of Canadian citizens would no doubt like to hold onto their rights to citizenship, we must draw the line somewhere as to who is a Canadian. We demean what being Canadian means by giving this privilege to so-called citizens of convenience, who wish to benefit from Canadian citizenship without offering this country anything in return, unlike those who were born here, reside in this country, or choose it as their adopted homeland.

Louis LaFontaine, the great co-founder of the union that would eventually lead to our Confederation, had this to say about being Canadian when addressing his electors at Terrebonne in 1848:

Canada is the land of our ancestors. It is our country as it must be the adopted country of the different peoples which come from around the globe, to make their way into its vast forests to build their homes and place their hopes. Like us, their paramount desire must be the happiness and prosperity of Canada. This is the heritage which they should endeavour to transmit to their descendants in this young and hospitable country. Above all, their children must be like us, Canadians.

This historic statement clearly outlines that the requirement for being Canadian is to have the paramount desire for the happiness and prosperity of Canada, and this heritage should be transmitted to future generations. To me, Canadian citizenship is not a family heirloom that can be passed on indefinitely from generation to generation. It comes with a price tag that increases its intrinsic value.

The granting of Canadian citizenship allows the holder access to Canada’s social and economic benefits, and should parents of the second generations have no links to Canada, they should lose this privilege. Canada is not a convenient safe harbour for someone who has tenuous links to this country. We have to draw the line for the future of our country, and people who do not have a connection to Canada should not benefit from the advantages that citizenship brings.

What is talked about in whispers in dark corridors is the rampant abuse of our citizenship by those who really don’t care about our home and native land; people who several generations later claim a right that is so tenuous, but want Canada’s socio-economic advantages as a right. I do not wish to point out any particular group, but I guess we have all heard of this happening. This marriage of convenience must stop or it will drain our country of our economic strength.

I support Bill C-37 with some caveats. My concern is the several countries around the world that, in spite of the fact they employ Canadians as temporary labour, do not bestow statehood on newborns, resulting in a generation that could be stateless in principle. This would be more critical if both the parents were Canadians. The fact that they have Canadian ancestry should allow them to have Canadian citizenship. This is the humanitarian engagement and compassion that Canada is famous for around the world. In the United Kingdom, the Home Secretary may register a child of parents who are British by descent as a British citizen under discretionary provisions if the child is stateless. However, I have been given to understand by a CIC spokesperson that in such a case, the parents can apply for a grant that would allow the child to get Canadian residency.

As a contracting state to the United Nations Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, Canada should make efforts to ensure that the provisions for stateless would-be Canadians are clear and not cumbersome for officers making decisions on such cases. Uncertainty around this issue could lead to inefficiencies and backlogs in the courts on such decisions.

The bill also states that government workers and Canadian Forces personnel are exempted from the second-generation clause. I propose that this be extended to people working with Canadian non-profit organizations, and charities like the Red Cross.

[Don Chapman]

Thank you.

We're going back to the year 1868, when the first form of Canadian identity came into play. It was called the Canadian Nationals Act. It was written by the British, and almost all British colonies had the same language. This is the language that we're working on today: “married women, minors, lunatics, and idiots, shall be classified under the same disability for their national status”.

Now, I want you to remember that citizenship didn't actually begin until January 1, 1947. It was the first time that women had the right of citizenship, but they had less rights than men.

You're seeing this with Mr. Neal and all of these cases of major gender discrimination, things that have been through the Supreme Court of Canada and are currently being ignored by the citizenship minister. These were unanimous Supreme Court decisions, saying that you can't do this—and we're doing it. In the case of Mr. Neal, his mother was not recognized as a Canadian for 44 years.

In testimony before the Senate five years ago, I mentioned the Benner case, which was Benner v. Canada. I mention this case in particular because it dealt with gender discrimination.

It said that the 1947 Citizenship Act was blatantly discriminatory and contrary to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and that all foreign-born children of a Canadian parent had the right of Canadian citizenship. What was being done was that Canadian women could not pass citizenship on to their children, while Canadian men could. That is what happened to Mr. Neal.

So I made the comment that, based on the Benner decision, a unanimous Supreme Court decision that said all foreign-born children of a Canadian parent had the right of citizenship, therefore, had I been born outside of Canada, I would be a Canadian and so would my children. Every senator sat scratching their head, saying, “This makes no sense, because now we're discriminating against Canadian-born children.”

A week after I made that testimony, Patricia Birkett, acting director general of Citizenship and Immigration Canada, came to the Senate. She said they were terminating the Supreme Court decision.

That's something that's really interesting to me. For five years, you've gone completely contrary to the Supreme Court.

There was another court case, Babcock v. Canada, that came in after this. They upheld the Supreme Court decision.

At the same time, we have major gender discrimination going on today. So not only was he denied citizenship, but now his daughter is being denied citizenship based on gender. Jacquie's case is based on gender. Marcel was born in Canada to a Canadian mother and a U.S. father.

Now, we can go back to gender discrimination. The mother of Joseph Volpe, who was immigration minister, was stripped of her status because she married an Italian. That used to be the law. If we go around this table, I can tell you that in the 1940s, Asians, Indo, and native aboriginals couldn't vote in this country. There were a lot of bad laws, and we're operating right now with one.

Bill C-37 is a wonderful bill. I'm sorry I don't have the time to go into it. I'm the head guy behind this bill. I know all the ins and outs. I know where you have to go and how you can correct this bill, very simply, for second generations born abroad and everything else, but we don't have the time go into it.

Right now, this government and, in particular, this immigration minister, are not doing justice to the reputation of this country.

This magazine is two years old. It's the Refugees magazine. It comes from the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. It talks about the strange, hidden world of the stateless and the countries that make their people stateless. And every country in here is a third world country, except for this country, dead centre, called Canada. Did you know they compared Canada's human rights record with that of Zimbabwe, Vietnam, and Bangladesh?

We are the lost Canadians, and there are 10,000 of us. The Department of Homeland Security just came out and said there were 240,000 of us just in the U.S.—and that doesn't count the children produced by lost Canadians, or the children of children.

We know as a fact that there are upwards of 200,000 just in Canada. Marlene Jennings—I see her name over there--got questioned on whether she was a Canadian, and, I can tell you, probably she was not. She took out an Italian passport in January of 1977. That would cancel her citizenship.

What Ken was trying to say is that there are two little girls here, cousins. His daughter is being denied citizenship because his daughter's connection is through his mother, a woman. The cousin is being welcomed into Canada because the connection is through a man.

Marcel Gélinas was born in Canada in 1922. As I say, he took, if you will, his father's identity. The United States gave him citizenship. He didn't know this. He was a soldier in World War II. Although he happened to be in the United States, he went to war. He didn't care; he just signed up and went to war and fought. Apparently, today they're denying him citizenship, based on the fact, saying “You're not Canadian”.

This man, Guy Vallière, died just two or three months ago. He was a Canadian soldier born in Canada. He fought for Canada, and he was denied citizenship. He died disenfranchised from his own country, despite the fact that on camera with the CBC on April 10, just over a year ago, Diane Finley said we will grant subsection 5(4) citizenship grants to all these lost Canadians. She said, “It is the right thing to do for the right reasons.”

We have Jacquie, who's about to go to judicial review against the Government of Canada. Yet we have the Conservative government saying that in the Taylor case, which is the exact copy of Jacquie's case—we've already won it, and ended up settling before a Supreme Court decision—it would cost tens of billions of Canadian taxpayer dollars to settle this case. She's about to go to judicial review.

I've tried to meet with this minister; he won't call me. I tried to call Mr. Dykstra; no return phone calls.

I'm an airline pilot. We go into accident investigation, such as Air France's, as to why something happened. The minister or Mr. Dykstra need to meet with me. We can fix this in a matter of weeks.

One person, and only one person, was granted a subsection 5(4) citizenship grant as promised, and that was the last remaining World War I veteran. The reason he got it is that I met with one of the leaders...the former leader of the opposition, at the time the Conservatives, and he went to the Prime Minister and said, “This could really hurt us”, because, see, the Prime Minister took a lot of flak for not flying the flag at half-mast over Parliament when soldiers died.

Well, the last remaining World War I soldier is an American. He left Canada in 1920. When Bill C-37 was passed, so that this man would have a state funeral, there were 90,000 signatures from the Dominion Institute.

To make sure this would not be a black mark, with a Prime Minister saying we cannot give this man a state funeral, they did every bit of paperwork in 21 days.

In the meantime, we have 71 people remaining, of whom 65 were the wrong religion, so they were denied citizenship based on the religion. We were promised that these people would get in. I'm here to hold you accountable, to say, “Come on, folks.”

If you ever want the real history of this bill, I've been at it since I was 18, and I'm going to be turning 55. I am the guy behind this. I have worked with ministers all over the place in this, and I have never worked with a minister of this low quality.

[Ken Neal, As an Individual]

Good morning. My name is Ken Neal, from Portland, Oregon. I'm here today to testify on behalf of my daughter, Casey, who is two years old. It was just a bit too much of a flight for her to make today.

I'm a very large proponent of the second generation of Bill C-37. I'm the first generation. My mom was recognized years after she was moved and stripped of her citizenship unrightfully. She has recently been brought back as a Canadian citizen, and my citizenship is going to be recognized by Bill C-37, on which there aren't forms yet.

That leaves my daughter out in the cold. Because she's second generation, Bill C-37 doesn't quite fit. Yet, under my uncle, who has a daughter and a granddaughter, the granddaughter is recognized--because of gender discrimination, we believe.The father can pass down citizenship through the family, and yet the mother cannot. I'm on my mother's side, and therefore I cannot pass it down.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Good morning.

This is the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, meeting 22, Thursday, June 11, 2009. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we are undertaking a review of the subject matter of Bill C-37, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act, enacted in the second session of the 39th Parliament.

We have quite a few witnesses before us today. We have a number who are present and one who is going to be giving testimony from Vancouver via the telephone.

We have Mr. Don Chapman before us of the Lost Canadian Organization. We have several individuals--Jacqueline Scott, Marcel Gélinas, and Ken Neal. We have, from Vancouver, Nick Noorani, who is the publisher of Canadian Immigrant magazine.

I must say that I haven't had one of those where we are communicating by telephone, but we'll do our best. I hope that will work okay.

Ladies and gentlemen who are witnesses, you each have five minutes to make a presentation. Then members of the committee will ask you questions.

We will start off with Mr. Neal.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

I will in the fullness of time, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

Then back again, once five years didn't happen, four years didn't happen, three years didn't happen, and 180 days didn't happen, he actually went to two years again. And in his words, “Therefore, I would like to move that we enclose in here a parliamentary review...to come back to committee two years from today”. Again, the committee turned you down at that time.

Here is something I thought was important, because as I was reading some of the Hansard of this and familiarizing myself with Bill C-37--and again, Mr. Chair, if you'll indulge me--I'll quote from the Hon. Andrew Telegdi:

I have listened to Lucienne Robillard, and she was committed. I have listened to Elinor Caplan, who sat on this committee, and she was committed. I listened to Denis Coderre; he was on this committee and he was committed. I listened to Judy Sgro; she was on this committee, she was a minister, and she was committed. I listened to Mr. Volpe, and he was a minister, and he was committed.

But nobody ever got the job done. Apparently it was our government and our ministers who actually got the job done on Bill C-37, with the unanimous support of the members who sat on this committee last year. It seemed to have proceeded through Parliament very quickly, I noted, in trying to reference some of the information, some of the debates back at that time. It sailed through Parliament quite quickly.

So I'm confused as to why we would review a bill that hasn't even come into effect and is not scheduled to come into effect until April 17. Now you're asking the committee to review something before it has come into effect. You've been all over the map with respect to when you want it reviewed. You've gone from 180 days to five years to three years to two years to now, wanting it done before we've even had a chance to see the bill come into effect.

What I'm suggesting is that with all the evidence and all the good work that was done--and it was done by many of the same members who sat on this committee the last time--I noted that many of the members, who were actually the members opposite, particularly those who served on this committee at the time, were very congratulatory of all the hard work they had done to bring this bill forward. And the representatives from the department also were extraordinarily complimentary to the members who had worked so hard in crafting a bill that was so good, in bringing forward something that was unanimously supported by all the members, including Mr. Karygiannis.

I would suggest, Mr. Chair, that we might want to have the bill come into effect first. We might want to give it some time, and then from there.... And I'm not suggesting anything, because I may not be on this committee in the years ahead and I won't suggest what the committee works on two, three, four, or five years from now. But perhaps we should give it some time so the committee can digest what has happened after the bill comes into effect. I think that would be a better use of the committee's time as opposed to undertaking a review of what was a superb piece of legislation spearheaded by the former Minister Finley and unanimously supported by the members opposite and brought through the House of Commons and through the Senate very quickly. I think that after the 17th, when this comes into effect and people have the opportunity to see how this legislation will help many Canadians, we could at that point, four years from now but certainly not at this time, undertake a review then, Mr. Chair.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm sorry, but I'm just a bit confused. I know this bill apparently doesn't come into effect until April 17, 2009, so I did avail myself of some of the committee Hansard from the last time this came up, which was last year. It seems like we've gone down this road before with the member. It was passed unanimously at this committee. Many of the members opposite actually praised Bill C-37. I believe that at the time Mr. Telegdi discussed a whole litany of previous Liberal ministers who hadn't done anything with respect to addressing the lost Canadians issue.

More importantly, I know we also talked about this, and Mr. Karygiannis did bring forward a number of recommendations at the time with respect to review, which were actually turned down by the committee. They've truly been all over the map on this one.

If you'll just indulge me, in the committee Hansard of last year, he asked, “Can we have a parliamentary review of the bill in four years...?” I believe it was turned down. He then asked for a review in three years. He didn't get that. Then he changed his mind again and put forward a motion that a parliamentary review happen within five years of the adoption of the bill, which was turned down. Then there was a motion for a parliamentary review of this legislation, again within five years, and also for a sunset clause to be added, which again was turned down.

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

Bill C-37 is what we're talking about. Bill C-37 talks about granting of citizenship, and I remember Mr. Karygiannis—

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Last year at about this time we wrapped up Bill C-37, the granting of citizenship to lost Canadians, the granting of citizenship to war brides and children of war brides. We heard testimony in this room from people who thought they were Canadians but who had lost their citizenship, and the department moved very quickly, and we had a unanimous report from this committee in order to move it ahead.

One of the recommendations made was that a year from then we come back and look at it. So in that view, Chair, I would like to move this motion and suggest that we also get stakeholders, a couple of people who were here, to testify and to give us their good news stories of how they got their citizenship, of how things are moving along, and to see if there's any glitches along the way that we might want to fix. For example, Mr. Don Chapman was among us last year, and he led the procession of people, so maybe we could start by inviting him to come back and have department officials give us an overview of what's happened in the last year.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

I'd like to deal with number one, sir, with Bill C-37, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act. It was in the last Parliament, and this is about the lost Canadians—

Motions in Amendment

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

moved:

Motion No. 1

That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 116.

Motion No. 2

That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 117.

Motion No. 3

That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 118.

Motion No. 4

That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 119.

Motion No. 5

That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 120.

He said—Mr. Speaker, thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to the bill before us and the amendments I made to that bill.

First of all, I must apologize if my voice is a bit hoarse today. I am so shocked at the provisions in part 6 of Bill C-50 that I can hardly speak, which explains why I am having some trouble today.

But seriously, since this is a serious matter, part 6 of this budget implementation bill deals with immigration and will cause a major change in Canada's immigration system. We condemn the fact that this part has been included in a budget implementation bill when its clauses have nothing to do with financial considerations.

This is just a government trick to limit the debate on this major reform of immigration by burying these changes in a sort of omnibus bill that pertains to a number of completely different subjects. From a parliamentary point of view, we could see the absurdity of this manoeuvre by the government and how the work had to be done in committee. Since Bill C-50 is a budget implementation bill, obviously the Standing Committee on Finance was analyzing its content. But that committee did not have the necessary expertise, knowledge or time to study the immigration clauses.

We received a letter asking the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration to study that part of the bill. We hastily looked at part 6 of the bill, but in the end, we had only a week to hear witnesses and make recommendations. We then had to forward everything to the Standing Committee on Finance, which did not take our recommendations into account because the Liberals abstained once again.

This shows that there was no debate across Quebec and Canada. When the witnesses appeared before the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, what we heard most commonly and systematically was criticism of making such a major reform without taking the time to properly debate or look at the consequences this could have on the immigration system and on Canada's image abroad.

The committee concluded that part 6, the entire part on immigration, should be removed from the bill. That is the focus of the amendments I am proposing this morning in this House. It is the recommendation of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. I hope that all the parties will agree with this recommendation, especially since the committee stated in its report that it was available to sit down with the government and the minister to examine the issue and work with them to develop a real document. A consensus might even be found if we took the time to work together.

The committee did this with Bill C-37, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act, which had to do with Canadians who had lost their Canadian citizenship. There were talks and debates. Everyone worked together, a unanimous report was written, and then came the bill. It was passed very quickly in Parliament and everything went smoothly. I do not see why we could not do the same thing for such an important immigration reform. Obviously, the short term solution is to remove this part of the bill. The proposed measures will be detrimental to our system.

Basically, the bill provides that the minister may decide of his or her own accord and with the consent of cabinet, to change the order in which immigration applications are processed. The minister may even decide which categories of applications will be processed and which will not. Currently, although there are a number of priorities, the general principle—which is about to disappear—is first come, first served.

Under our existing immigration system, those who apply can be sure that their applications will be processed eventually. Valid applications will be accepted. Even though wait times are too long because not enough money is being invested in case processing, the system is predictable. Applicants know that they will eventually get an answer. Under the new system, people will submit applications that may never be processed though they wait their entire lives.

Naturally, that is unacceptable. The minister says that the new system was created to prioritize certain categories of workers in fields in which Canada has trouble finding workers.

On the one hand, the current points system for applications takes into account post-secondary study, master's degrees, and doctorates—which are all worth extra points—but does not put enough emphasis on the technical skills and trades where more workers are needed now. Even though the department processes these cases, people can be no more certain than before that they will be accepted.

On the other hand, there are already so many priorities in the system that nothing will really be a priority after this. I have compiled a little list, which I would like to share with you. With respect to vertical priorities, we have inadmissibility, application of the law, refugees, visitors, students, work visas, spouses, children, and the provincial nominee program. Now we are going to have another priority. Clearly, this system is not working. When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority in the end. We need something much better than this to fix the system.

Another provision in this bill is extremely problematic and involves people applying for permanent resident status on humanitarian grounds. Under the current legislation, the department absolutely must review those applications and if the person is eligible, he or she can obtain that status. If they are not eligible, they will be refused, obviously.

The bill is intended to change the word “shall” to “may”. In other words, the department “may”, if it feels like it, if it is interested, review an application on humanitarian grounds. It is hard to understand how a right could become conditional on the will of the department. A right is a right and if, under the law, one is eligible for such an application on humanitarian grounds, one should have the right to have one's file reviewed.

If not, if the right is subject to the arbitrary decision of immigration officers, then it is not really a right. What is more, a permanent resident application on humanitarian grounds is often used by a refugee status claimant whose case has been dismissed with no chance of appeal before the refugee appeal division—since neither the Liberal nor the Conservative governments have ever implemented it.

The Bloc Québécois has introduced a bill to that effect in order to correct the situation. The bill is currently before the Senate. We hope the Conservatives will stop obstructing it. They always complain about the Liberal senators obstructing work in the Senate; now they are doing it.

Nonetheless, I hope this bill will pass quickly in order to correct this shortcoming. In the meantime, people have been using this process to protect their lives, to be welcomed into Canada on humanitarian grounds, but the government is in the process of closing another door in their faces.

In closing, I hope at least that the parties who supported the report in committee will be logical and consistent and vote in favour of these amendments. Obviously I am counting on the support of the NDP, but more specifically of the Liberals who have been utterly inconsistent on this. They supported withdrawing this reform in the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, but in the Standing Committee on Finance, they kept mum on the matter.

I hope they will have the courage to stand up and vote in this House.

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, honourable members.

Mr. Chairman, honourable members, I appreciate the opportunity to address Bill C-50 on budget implementation, which contains our government's proposed amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

As I said to our colleagues at the finance committee, I'm proud to serve as the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration in a government that recognizes that immigration is as important to Canada's future as it has been to our past. Our country was built on immigration, and our future prosperity and success as a country largely depends on it.

To put things in context, by 2012, all of Canada's net labour force growth will have to come from immigration, but at this time there are over 900,000 people in the queue waiting to immigrate to Canada. Many of them have to wait up to six years before their application gets looked at, let alone processed. The stark reality is that if we do nothing to address the backlog by 2012, applicants will face a 10-year wait time to have their applications processed. The lineup of people waiting to get into Canada could reach upwards of 1.5 million people.

Contrary to the previous government, we do not believe the status quo is acceptable or sustainable.

If we do nothing to address this problem, we risk having families wait even longer to be reunited with their loved ones, and we risk losing the people our country needs to other countries, which are in fierce competition with us for the skills and talents that immigrants bring.

The current immigration system is broken and desperately needs repair. The status quo on immigration is simply unacceptable. The current system is unfair to our country and it's unfair to those waiting to come here. Because immigration is so important to Canada's future, we need a modern and renewed vision for immigration, a vision that involves a new and responsive immigration system, one that would allow us to continue welcoming more immigrants while helping them get the jobs they need to succeed to build a better life for themselves and for their families. However, to realize this vision, changes must be made.

In our immigration system today, anyone can apply. That is a good thing, and we will not change that. It reflects the fundamental commitment to fairness that all Canadians share. However, the current system leaves us little flexibility in terms of what we do with those applications.

By law, we have to process every single completed immigration application to a decision, even if a person has moved on to another country or is simply no longer interested in coming here. Our obligation to process every single application to a decision remains, regardless of how many people apply or how many were able to accept.

Furthermore, we are generally limited to processing applications in the order that we receive them. So quite simply, the current system, if left unchanged, is on track to collapse under its own weight.

In the current context, Mr. Chair, we must realize that other countries are not sitting idly by. The fact is that we face serious international competition in attracting the people with the talents and the skills we need to ensure our country's continued growth and prosperity.

Put simply, inaction on the backlog will result in the people we need going elsewhere as wait times to come to Canada continue to increase.

In Australia and New Zealand, where they have the kind of flexibility we seek, applicants get final decisions in as little as six months, not six years. It's important to note that when compared with the United Kingdom, Australia, or New Zealand, Canada is the only country that does not use some kind of occupational filter to screen, code, or prioritize skilled worker applications.

So compared to other countries, Canada's system is just not flexible enough.

Urgent action is required so that we can welcome more immigrants and their families faster while ensuring that the workers we need get here sooner. To accomplish this objective, Mr. Chair, our government has proposed a three-pronged approach.

Number one, we have committed to investing more resources—$109 million over five years. But more money isn't enough. We also have to do things smarter, better, and faster.

So we'll make administrative changes as well, such as centralizing our data entry to free up resources in our overseas missions for more processing. We'll also code applications in the backlog by occupation so that we can refer applications of interest to the provinces and the territories for processing under the provincial nominee programs.

As part of our administrative changes, we'll also send in dedicated teams to our overseas missions to speed up processing in parts of the world where wait times are the longest, and we'll transfer resources from busy to less busy missions. For example, in October, when we lifted visa restrictions on the Czech Republic and Latvia, we transferred resources to the Philippines to help with the backlogs there.

But increasing funding and improving administrative efficiencies is not enough. Systemic change is needed in order to fix the system. That is why we have introduced legislative changes to give us the flexibility and authority to both manage the backlog and set priorities that would match Canada's needs.

Our proposed legislation will allow the minister to identify categories of occupations—not individuals—for processing on a priority basis; that is, the proposed legislation will allow for the processing of applications based on our country's needs, not on one's individual place in the line. To make sure that we get it right, there are several checks and balances on the minister. First of all, the ministerial instructions will have to comply with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Our immigration system will continue to be universal and non-discriminatory.

The instructions will also complement the objectives of IRPA, that is, to support Canada's economy and competitiveness, reunite families, and protect refugees. These instructions will also require broad input.

Prior to issuing the instructions, the government will consult with the provinces and territories and industry and government departments to shape the approach. In consulting with the provinces, we will seek assurance that when they say they need immigrants with certain skills, those immigrants can actually get their credentials recognized so they can work.

Finally, ministerial instructions will be subject to cabinet approval, ensuring government-wide accountability for the decisions taken. And to be completely transparent, the instructions will be published in the Canada Gazette, on the departmental website, and will be reported in CIC's annual report, which is tabled in Parliament.

Mr. Chair, let me be crystal clear on two key points about these proposals. First, contrary to the misinformation that is out there, we will not be placing any limits on the number of applications we accept; Canada remains open to immigrants and anyone can still apply. However, under the proposed legislative changes, we will not have to process every application. Those applications that are not processed in a given year could be held for future consideration or be returned to the applicant with a refund of their application fee—and they would be welcome to reapply.

The result will be that the backlog will stop growing and will actually start to come down. The flexibility in managing the backlog will accomplish three things: it will help reduce the backlog; it will ensure that immigrants have the jobs they need to succeed; and it will allow our country to continue to grow and prosper.

That is what these proposed amendments would do, Mr. Chairman. However, I should also clarify what the proposed changes would not do.

There are some who are suggesting that this legislation will put too much power in the hands of the Minister.

For example, there's a myth out there that the minister would be arbitrarily able to cherry-pick applicants in the queue and override immigration officers' decisions on individual cases. This is simply not the case, as the minister is limited to designating priority categories, not applicants; nor will the minister have the authority to select an application for processing or reject an application that has been processed and accepted.

With respect to concerns expressed about the impact of the legislation on family reunification and humanitarian and compassionate cases, any instruction from the minister will have to respect the objectives of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, which include supporting Canada's economy and competitiveness, supporting family reunification, and upholding our humanitarian requirements.

To be clear, the ministerial instructions will not apply to refugees, protected persons, or humanitarian and compassionate applications made from within Canada. We would also continue to establish clear target ranges for numbers of immigrants that we intend to accept in each category. In the case of family class applications, this means Canada plans to accept approximately 70,000 applicants in 2008.

The instructions must also respect our commitments to provinces and territories regarding the Provincial Nominee Program and the Canada-Quebec Accord.

I know that time is running out, Mr. Chairman and I am looking forward to your questions.

In conclusion, let me just say that our proposed changes to the immigration system are ultimately about people. It's about a vision for our country to make sure that people who have gone through so much to get here succeed at building a better life for themselves and for their family. It's about helping newcomers get the jobs they need to succeed, because their success is our success. And it's about ensuring the future growth and prosperity of immigrants and their families while building a better Canada. These proposals would achieve that vision and would help immigrants continue to contribute to the future of Canada.

I'd like to thank this committee for the fine work you did on Bill C-37, in reviewing that, concerning the “lost Canadians”, and also on the unanimous report you submitted on which that bill was based. I was very pleased and proud of you and your efforts when that bill received royal assent recently.

Thank you for this opportunity to address the committee.

I am now prepared to take questions.

Thank you.

Royal Assent

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

Order, please. I have the honour to inform the House that a communication has been received as follows:

Rideau Hall

Ottawa

April 17, 2008

Mr. Speaker:

I have the honour to inform you that the Hon. Marshall Rothstein, Puisne Judge of the Supreme Court of Canada, in his capacity as Deputy of the Governor General, signified royal assent by written declaration to the bills listed in the schedule to this letter on the 17th day of April, 2008 at 3:01 p.m.

Yours sincerely,

Sheila-Marie Cook

Secretary to the Governor General and Herald Chancellor

The schedule indicates the bills assented to are Bill S-203, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals)--Chapter No. 12; Bill C-298, An Act to add perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and its salts to the Virtual Elimination List under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999--Chapter No. 13; Bill C-37, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act--Chapter No. 14; and Bill C-40, An Act to amend the Canada Labour Code, the Canada Student Financial Assistance Act, the Canada Student Loans Act and the Public Service Employment Act--Chapter No. 15.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Just so we have this in context, I would like to read clause 10:

10. (1) On or before May 31 of each year, the Minister shall prepare a statement setting out

(a) the measures taken by the Government of Canada to ensure that its commitment under section 5 and the targets set out in the target plan are being met, including measures taken in respect of

(i) regulated emission limits and performance standards,

(ii) market-based mechanisms such as emissions trading or offsets,

(iii) spending or fiscal incentives, including a just transition fund for industry, and

(iv) cooperation or agreements with provinces, territories or other governments; and

(b) the Canadian greenhouse gas emission reductions that are reasonably expected to result from each of those measures in each of the next ten years.

Then we have this amendment from Mr. Cullen:

(c) the level of Canadian greenhouse gas emissions in each of the following ten years to be used as a baseline to quantify the reductions referred to in paragraph (b).

We've seen, Chair, eight amendments from the NDP, three from the Bloc, and six from the Liberals. I reckon back to a comment made by the Bloc. When we heard the testimony of, I think, the last group of witnesses, I think it was Mr. Bigras--he can correct me if I'm wrong--who said that maybe this bill should be rewritten.

We heard testimony from Mr. Layton that basically he had help writing the bill, but he was basically setting targets. We heard clearly that there was no policy attached to it, that there was no plan, no costing; it was just wishful thinking to deal with greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

What we've seen resulting from that is witnesses testifying that there are some very serious constitutional issues with Bill C-377 and that it wouldn't stand up. We've heard that it would not achieve anything. Mr. Layton equated it to the impossible dream. He didn't break into song, but I was ready to join him if he did.

In all seriousness, through all the groups of witnesses we heard a common theme: the necessity of an impact analysis. What I shared at our last meeting was the commissioner's statement about how important it is--that in order to have successful action by government, you need to have conducted an economic, social, environmental, and risk analysis. That's all missing.

What I wish we would have heard from the NDP is an admission of what we heard through all the testimony from every group of witnesses, and from what I believe was the vast majority of the witnesses: that Bill C-377 is not going to accomplish what it says it would like to see, which is a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

What I was hoping I would hear from Mr. Cullen is that he would.... With all these amendments--eight of them from the NDP--the bill is basically being rewritten. We don't know the results of the end product that we'll have. It doesn't have any critique other than debate around this table. I think it's important that it be critiqued.

I was hoping the bill would have been withdrawn, rewritten, and presented again to Parliament, because it was so badly written and so faulty. Now the same people who wrote the first draft are writing the second draft of amendments, with the assistance of the Bloc and the Liberals. I don't mean any disrespect, but neither one of those groups has a tremendous history in providing good action on the environment. We heard that also.

The committee has a responsibility to make sure the legislation that leaves here is good and that it's been critiqued. I don't want to repeat myself, but as I've mentioned, we've heard time and time again that it's very important that we have legislation that will take action.

The Government of Canada, with its Turning the Corner plan, has the toughest targets in Canadian history. It calls for 20% in absolute reductions by 2020 and 60% to 70% by 2050. Those are the toughest in Canadian history. What I particularly like about the Turning the Corner plan is that for the health of Canadians it also includes the quality of air that we breathe, both inside and outside. One Canadian death in 12 is directly related to the environment, to environmental causes, so we have a responsibility as parliamentarians to make sure the air we breathe is of good quality; otherwise, it means billions of dollars in health care costs. We also have a responsibility as parliamentarians to make sure we are doing our part globally to attack the issue of a warming climate, and this government is very committed to that.

That's why I take it so passionately that we need to have legislation coming out of this committee and going back to the House that is good. And Chair, because of the testimony we heard, I don't believe Bill C-377 is good.

I had just begun to share some of the concerns that I heard during the testimony yesterday. One of the people who shared at the committee was Mr. Peter Hogg. He was sharing with the committee the importance of the constitutional legitimacy of Bill C-377 and whether it would stand up to a challenge. He shared that he didn't believe it would. He shared that the Constitution Act of 1867 confers on the Parliament of Canada the power to make laws in relation to criminal law. The Supreme Court of Canada has held that a law will be classified as a criminal law if it has a valid criminal purpose backed by a prohibition and a penalty. As far as the valid criminal purpose is concerned, the court has held that the protection of the environment counts as a valid criminal purpose.

The purpose of Bill C-377 therefore qualifies as a valid criminal purpose. As far as the prohibition and a penalty are concerned, the question is whether Bill C-377 contains a prohibition and a penalty as those terms have been understood in the case of law. The courts have traditionally distinguished between criminal law and regulatory law, and the Criminal Code is a classic case of criminal law in that the act itself contains--

Citizenship Act

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Secretary of State and Chief Government Whip]

Mr. Speaker, there have been consultations among all parties and I think you would find unanimous consent for the following motion. I would like to thank all parties for the negotiations that took place that would allow this. I move:

That, notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practices of this House, Bill C-37, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act, be deemed concurred in at report stage and deemed read a third time and passed.

(Bill C-37: On the Order: Government Orders:)

February 14, 2008--Consideration at report stage of Bill C-37, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act, as reported by the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration with amendments--Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.

Citizenship and Immigration

[Norman Doyle, Conservative, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the fourth and fifth reports of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.

The fourth report deals with Bill C-37, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act, including amendments.

The fifth report deals with the future House consideration of Bill C-37, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act.

I want to commend all members of our committee for their cooperation in putting this bill through committee with very minor amendments.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

I propose a motion that the following be added to the committee report of Bill C-37 to the House:

That the committee recommend to the House that Bill C-37 be passed at all remaining stages, without further amendment, as soon as possible.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

We do have a quorum in the room, so I would ask people to please come to the table.

I want to welcome the departmental officials back to the table once again. I don't believe I'll bother to introduce them again, as they were here on Monday. So welcome, and thank you for coming back again.

We are going to be considering Bill C-37, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act. The departmental officials are here, of course, to help us in that regard.

I want to welcome legislative clerk Mr. Marc Toupin here today as well. Welcome to the table.

Did I hear a point of order?

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Davidson.

I know there may be some other questions, but I think this would be an appropriate time for me to propose a motion.

I propose that on Wednesday, February 13, at 3:30, the witnesses here from Citizenship and Immigration appear before this committee, and that we immediately proceed to clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-37 until consideration is completed.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have a couple of points. One of the more notable aspects of Bill C-37 is the first generation born abroad cut-off for citizens to be passed on by descent. That is a big issue.

This cut-off was supported by this committee in a unanimous report. The minister, in her remarks to this committee, stated that she would be guided by a number of principles in drafting this bill. Two of them are that citizenship status should be clear, stable, and not require an application; and that Canadian citizens should have a demonstrated attachment to Canada. This attachment to Canada should apply not only to parents of a child before the child's birth, but also by both parent and child after the child's birth.

There is a process, I understand, that is easily used if the Canadian parent wishes their second-generation child born abroad to have citizenship. The process maintains the principle that an attachment to Canada should be demonstrated by both the parent and the child.

Can you clarify for the committee what this process is and how it respects these principles?

[Mark Davidson]

The department has already come forward with an information sheet on the significance of the 419. We've been working very closely with the Department of National Defence as well. Their website also contains clarification of the documentation.

But yes, to be as clear as possible, Bill C-37 will resolve this issue in its entirety.

[Mark Davidson]

The DND 419 is a document that DND never intended to be used as a proof of citizenship. They only issued it for a limited period of time. They only used that document between 1963 and 1979. It doesn't cover the whole period of the 1947 act.

The provision in Bill C-37, in proposed paragraph 3(1)(g), is intended to resolve the problem of the 419 and the confusion that had arisen as a result. If Bill C-37 is passed, the distinction between a 419 and a registration of birth abroad will be eliminated.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Thank you.

I will be tabling a letter from Mr. Taylor for the record. It shows that he is not very pleased with what is happening with Bill C-37. If that could be dealt with, it would be fine.

[Mark Davidson]

Thank you.

Yes, this is a matter that has come up a number of times in the past, and actually is a point that the Royal Canadian Legion had asked us to consider. In fact, there's also a reference to the issue in the standing committee's recent report.

Bill C-37 will in effect wipe the slate clean from this issue by making it so that these individuals will be treated as citizens, not only going forward but also retroactively to their birth outside of Canada, in such a way that the nuance around the DND document, or the registration of birth abroad document, becomes moot. So in the vast majority of these cases, they have an RBA--they have a registration of birth abroad--but in the few cases where they do not, Bill C-37 will, as I said, make the issue moot.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

I see.

Please, can you also address the issue of the DND 419, and the RBA--registration of birth abroad--cards, and how Bill C-37 deals with these issues?

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all for your time and your presentations.

According to Minister Finley, Bill C-37 will deal with about 95% of those people who either lost their citizenship and shouldn't have, or who never had it in the first place but should have. So what about the other 5%? Could you please let us know about that?

[Mark Davidson]

Can I just add that this provision will continue under Bill C-37. There's nothing in the bill that alters in any way the provisions of subsection 5(4) of the Citizenship Act.

[Mark Davidson]

Thank you, Mr. Batters. This issue is covered, actually, in the first issue paper that I spoke about.

Citizenship in Canada was created by Parliament on January 1, 1947. Before that date, individuals in Canada had the status of British subjects with Canadian domicile. So the significance of January 1, 1947, is historical fact. The significance of that date has also been confirmed both by the Supreme Court of Canada in the Benner decision and also more recently by the Federal Court of Appeal in its decision in the Joe Taylor case. So Bill C-37 is continuing that, to recognize that significant historical event that took place on January 1, 1947.

I think it's important to understand, though, that there will be individuals born before 1947, either in Canada or outside of Canada, who will benefit from this bill. These are individuals who did become citizens on January 1, 1947, under that first act, and then subsequently lost their citizenship either because they failed to retain their citizenship or they took out another citizenship and suffered because of the dual citizenship provisions of that 1947 act.

So Bill C-37 will actually assist a number of individuals who became citizens on that day, January 1, 1947.

[Mark Davidson]

Bill C-37 gives individuals back their citizenship if they were considered citizens of Canada and lost it for any reason other than revocation for fraud, renunciation as an adult, or failure to retain it in the second or subsequent generation...in the 1977 act.

[Mark Davidson]

Bill C-37 is as outlined by the minister in May, and certainly it is following almost all the recommendations of the committee's report. The committee report does include a number of recommendations that don't deal specifically with the legislation, so I can't say that it is satisfying every one of the committee's recommendations. Some of those--

[Mark Davidson]

To go back to your previous points about section 8, if I understood correctly, you're suggesting that section 8 could simply be replicated in Bill C-37. We know a number of witnesses have appeared before the committee over the past year who have highlighted all of the problems that exist with section 8. What the bill is trying to do is resolve that by eliminating those requirements, by stopping people having to jump through those particular hoops and stopping the government from trying to find them, by making it simpler so that we don't have to try to search for people we don't know about.

[Mark Davidson]

As the minister outlined in the spring, and as was in the bill tabled in December, there are a number of overarching principles. One of the overarching principles I'd like to highlight in answer to that question is the principle of simplicity and of not forcing individuals to apply to have their citizenship confirmed. Bill C-37 says that citizenship should be provided by force of law to individuals and that they don't have to actually apply, fill in a document, and meet a test--a test that may be disputed--in order to maintain their citizenship.

One of the other problems with the present provision, as I said, is that it does require an application process. It requires individuals to meet a number of requirements, a number of standards in the act and in the regulations. The result of that is complexity and difficulty for the individual in understanding what the test is that they have to satisfy.

[Mark Davidson, Director, Legislation and Program Policy, Citizenship Branch, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and honourable members. I do have an opening statement.

My name is Mark Davidson and I work in the Citizenship Branch at Citizenship and Immigration Canada. I am accompanied by Ann Heathcote and Lori Beckerman, and together, we will be able to answer your questions.

I am here today to address Bill C-37, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act. Because of the demonstrated need for stability, simplicity, and consistency in citizenship status, what follows is the basic outline of the proposals CIC considered when drafting Bill C-37, which was tabled by Minister Finley on December 10.

First, nothing in these proposals will take away citizenship from anyone who is now a citizen of Canada. Those who are Canadian citizens when the amendments come into force will remain Canadian citizens.

Second, anyone who became a citizen under the Canadian Citizenship Act of 1947, and subsequently lost his or her citizenship, will have it restored.

Third, anyone who was born in Canada on or after January 1, 1947, and who subsequently lost his or her citizenship will have it restored.

Fourth, anyone naturalized as a citizen of Canada on or after January 1, 1947, who subsequently lost his or her citizenship, will have it restored.

Finally, those born abroad to a Canadian citizen on or after January 1, 1947, who are not already citizens will now be Canadian citizens if they are the first generation born abroad.

The only exceptions would be those who, as adults, have personally renounced their citizenship to the Government of Canada, or those whose citizenship was revoked by the government because it was obtained by fraud.

These proposed amendments would give Canadian citizenship to various categories of individuals. They might have lost their citizenship by becoming citizens of another country, either as adults or as minors. They might have lost citizenship when they took an oath of citizenship in another country, which included a clause that renounced Canadian citizenship. They might have been born abroad and lost their Canadian citizenship under the 1947 act because they failed to take the required steps before their 24th birthday to retain it. So-called border babies, or indeed those DND babies who were born abroad under the 1947 Citizenship Act, also had to take steps to register as Canadian citizens. If they failed to do so, they never became Canadian citizens.

Bill C37 will address past problems and protect citizenship for the future by limiting citizenship by descent to the first generation born abroad. Subsequent generations born abroad would no longer be given Canadian citizenship automatically.

Bill C-37 would also eliminate onerous and confusing retention requirements and confer citizenship by force of law, otherwise known as automatically. There is no application process and no deadline for people to come forward to apply for proof of citizenship or a passport.

Those who are interested in their Canadian citizenship and do not have proof of it can contact our department. We will deal with them as they come forward.

Those rare cases that concern people born outside of Canada prior to January 1, 1947, would not be affected by this legislation. That is to say, their status would not be changed by Bill C-37. The proposal respects the significance of the year 1947, because Canadian citizenship, as we now know it, did not exist before January 1, 1947.

As warranted, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration will still have the authority, with the approval of the Governor in Council, to grant citizenship under subsection 5(4) of the Citizenship Act in special cases. This would also be the case for unforeseen circumstances that CIC has not yet dealt with.

We believe that Bill C-37 will resolve the issue of citizenship for most of those people whose status is currently in question.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Before moving to questions, I'd like to highlight for members the binder we made available to them today. The binder includes a number of documents. There is the bill itself; an overview of the bill; a detailed summary clause by clause, which can be found at tab 3 of the binder; and a key highlights document at tab 4. Tab 5 includes the communication products that were released at the time the bill was tabled on December 10, which includes both the news release and two backgrounders.

I'll highlight that the backgrounder that is found at tab 5(c) is a list of fictional cases or examples of cases and a description of how these would be dealt with by the bill.

As well, there's a deck at tab 6, which provides an overview of Bill C-37, and then eight issue papers that we've prepared, which go into more detail talking about the issues of the 1947 limit, citizenship by descent, the statelessness provisions, the simplified citizenship rules, prohibitions, family class immigration, and the exception for Canadians serving abroad, and finally an issue paper dealing with retroactive citizenship.

With that, Mr. Chair, we're quite happy to answer questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Order, please.

We will resume our consideration of Bill C-37. We will go to our departmental officials here today.

Thank you for coming: Mr. Mark Davidson, director of the legislation and program policy division of citizenship branch; Ms. Ann Heathcote, senior policy adviser; and Lori Beckerman, acting team leader, senior counsel.

Welcome.

I think you know the procedure, Mr. Davidson, and I think you have a statement that you want to make.

[Pierre Allard]

The only thing we can state, I guess, unequivocally is that when we came here and prepared for our appearance, we looked at the bill, we looked at your unanimous report, and we looked at the recommendations in the unanimous report, which said certain things. We quoted them to you and we urged you to pass Bill C-37. If a compromise is possible to amend, so be it. If a compromise is not possible, then we ask that you pass the bill. It's simple.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Good, and hand them out to all the members who aren't members. I'm a member of 530 in Waterloo.

Let me just say we're really having a false argument. For the government to stand up and say we have to pass this bill, that it's too difficult to change.... Look, we had two ministers who didn't even produce a bill. It was the combined efforts of the opposition that made this happen. The irresponsibility of the government not bringing it forward before is inexcusable. We could have dealt with it; this could have been legislation. So let's not play politics around it.

There's a fairly simple fix to the whole thing. The Citizenship Act is such a horrific mess. It is just a horrific mess. It's like pick-up sticks. You pull one, and if you're not careful the whole thing comes tumbling down. Mr. Davidson will deal with that. We could very quickly say that those Canadians who are born abroad, fulfilling the residency requirements of the present second generation born abroad requirements, are deemed to be born in Canada, and then we don't have to go beyond first generation.

The Council of Refugees, from whom we're going to have to hear, came out and made a submission. Essentially what they said was this, and this is an example outside of Mr. Karygiannis's.... Suppose, for example, a Canadian couple are spending a few years working abroad and give birth outside Canada to a baby. Let's call her Anna. It could actually be a soldier. She is a Canadian citizen through her parents. The family returns to Canada when Anna is six months old and she grows up in Canada. And we heard from Mr. Teichroeb, who had a similar situation. As a young adult, she chooses to study abroad and finds herself pregnant. If she gives birth to her child outside Canada, the child is not a Canadian citizen under the terms of Bill C-37.

If the baby--let's call her Mary Ann--happens to be not entitled to any other citizenship, she will be stateless. Bill C-37 does have provisions to allow Mary Ann, and others like her, to apply for Canadian citizenship if they are stateless; however, there are a number of conditions that must be met, including the requirement that the stateless child of a Canadian citizen should have resided for three or four years preceding their application. This means the child will have to remain stateless for at least three years.

This bill also fails to explain on what basis Mary Ann would be allowed to enter Canada in order to meet the three-year residency requirement. Even if Anna attempts to sponsor her child as an immigrant under family class, she will face a challenge in finding travel documents for Mary Ann so she can travel to Canada as a stateless person. She is not entitled to a passport.

We, Canada, to our shame, made the United Nations High Commission for Refugees magazine on statelessness and we're featured for some of the miserable conditions that now exist. Now, in fixing this, which is important, we do not want to create another whole class of stateless people. There is a relatively simple amendment—and I'm going to be asking Mr. Davidson when he comes forward—that can be done very quickly and that will eliminate all those problems. We can have a bill that goes through and addresses the needs of Canadians and stops us being featured in magazines like the magazine on statelessness. It's not a difficult fix, but we would be looking for it.

Again, just for the record, it has been the opposition that has consistently pushed this government. We had two ministers, both of whom said they had absolutely no interest in citizenship. I remind you of Roméo Dallaire, who appeared at a press conference, and the question was asked of him, why is this happening? And he referred to bureaucratic terrorism in the department. That's Senator Dallaire, who himself was a lost Canadian.

There is an easy fix, and it can be out of this committee this week, fixed, and it could go through the House. All we need is the political will. I don't want to create any more problems than we now have created. It can be first generation.

[Pierre Allard]

I believe that Bill C-37 deals with this matter in sub-section 2(1) of the legislation, which proposes a new paragraph (g), which reads as follows:

(g) the person was born outside Canada before February 15, 1977 to a parent who was a citizen at the time of the birth and the person did not, before the coming into force of this paragraph, become a citizen;

[Pierre Allard, Service Bureau Director, Dominion Command, Royal Canadian Legion]

On behalf of our Dominion President, Comrade Jack Frost, I would like to thank you very much for inviting the Legion to appear before you today on this very important issue of the “Lost Canadians”. This is, indeed, our second opportunity to appear at your committee, as we were here previously on March 19, 2007. It is always a pleasure to work on a common cause.

I must admit that we are wondering why this issue has not yet been resolved, and why timely action seems to be so difficult to orchestrate. To continue to deny citizenship to war brides and the offspring of Canadian Forces veterans is objectionable. In order to be as constructive as we can be, in what appears to be a highly politicized environment, there appear to be two issues that are seen as obstacles to a quick resolution. These are: concerns related to the second generation born abroad to a Canadian mother or father; and, concerns on actual numbers that may be affected.

We think that both of these issues can be addressed on an urgent basis, without delaying the passage of Bill C-37. The Legion often appears at parliamentary and Senate committees responsible for the Veterans portfolio. We remain truly impressed with the non-partisan approach that is evident in those committees. We remain convinced that this same non-partisan approach can resolve the issue at hand.

We were very pleased with the recommendation contained in your report. Allow me to refer to some of those recommendations.

Rules for determining who is a citizen should be few and citizenship should be a permanent status. People need to be able to rely on the certainty of their citizenship. Anyone who was born in Canada at any time, retroactive to birth, should be deemed a Canadian citizen. Anyone who was born abroad at any time to a Canadian mother or to a Canadian father, is he/she is a first generation born abroad, should also be deemed a Canadian citizen. Citizenship and Immigration should reassess whether there is any pressing or substantial reason for continuing not to recognize the DND 419 form as proof of Canadian citizenship. The registration of birth abroad should be recognized as proof of Canadian citizenship.

The Committee also recommended that the Minister use her discretionary power under the present Citizenship Act to implement the above recommendations before the bill is drafted.

When we did our review of Bill C-37, and looked at the proposed backgrounder and Q&As, we were confident that a resolution was around the corner. Yet, here we are today. Which brings us to what we see as simple but timely solutions that require no modification to Bill C-37, but a strong resolve to move forward based on a non-partisan approach.

On the issue of the second generation born abroad, one of the previous witnesses alluded to what we think is a bona fide requirement to give proof of one's attachment to Canada. There is a simple measure already in place that allows an immigrant born abroad to serve in the Canadian Forces and have his or her application for Canadian citizenship fastracked. That is a simple but meaningful proof of attachment and a willingness to serve one's country. This process requires no amendment to Bill C-37.

As for the numbers, this may be an important factor. However, it is not a showstopper. Surely it should not be seen as an impediment to timely passage of Bill C-37.

Once again, the Royal Canadian Legion feels very strongly that passage of Bill C-37 is an urgent priority that should be embraced by all the members of this Committee. As one of the members of this Committee has said so eloquently, there have been enough studies and enough reports on this issue. What is needed now is a cooperative approach that will bring resolution, once and for all, before those that are affected simply pass away.

Thank you.

[Erl Kish, Dominion Vice-President, Royal Canadian Legion]

Thank you so much, Comrade Chairman. It's a pleasure to be here.

On behalf of our dominion president, Comrade Jack Frost, first I would like to thank you very much for inviting the Legion to appear before you today on this very important issue of lost Canadians. This is indeed our second opportunity to appear at your committee, as we were here previously on March 19, 2007. It is always a pleasure to work on a common cause.

I must admit that we are wondering why this issue has not yet been resolved and why timely action seems to be so difficult to orchestrate. To continue to deny citizenship to war brides and offspring of Canadian Forces veterans is objectionable. To be as constructive as we can be in what appears to be a highly politicized environment, we see two issues as obstacles to a quick resolution. These are concerns related to second-generation offspring born abroad to Canadian citizens and concerns on actual numbers that may be affected. We think both these issues can be addressed without delay in the passing of Bill C-37 on an urgent basis.

The Legion often appears at parliamentary and Senate committees responsible for the veterans portfolio. We remain truly impressed with the non-partisan approach that is evident in these committees. We remain convinced that this same non-partisan approach can resolve the issue at hand.

We were very pleased with the recommendations contained in your report. Allow me to refer to some of these recommendations: (a) rules for determining who is a citizen should be few, and citizenship should be permanent status; (b) people need to be able to rely on the certainty of their citizenship; (c) anyone who was born in Canada at any time should be deemed a Canadian citizen retroactive to birth; (d) anyone who was born abroad at any time to a Canadian mother or to a Canadian father, if he/she is first generation born abroad, should also be deemed a Canadian citizen; and (e) Citizenship and Immigration should reassess whether there is any pressing or substantial reason for continuing not to recognize the DND 419 as proof of Canadian citizenship. The registration of birth abroad should be recognized as proof of Canadian citizenship.

The committee also recommended that the minister use his discretionary power under the present Citizenship Act to implement the above recommendations before the bill is drafted.

When we did our review of Bill C-37 and looked at the proposed backgrounder and Qs and As, we were confident that resolution was around the corner, yet here we are today. This brings us to what we see as simple but timely solutions that require no modification to Bill C-37 but a strong resolve to move forward in a non-partisan approach.

On the issue of second-generation Canadians born abroad, one of the previous witnesses alluded to what we think is a bona fide requirement to give proof of attachment to Canada. There is a simple measure already in place that allows an immigrant born abroad to serve in the Canadian Forces and be fast-tracked in his or her application for Canadian citizenship. That is a simple but meaningful proof of attachment and willingness to serve one's country. This process requires no amendment to Bill C-37.

As for the numbers, this issue may be an important factor; however, it is not a showstopper. Surely it should not be seen as an impediment to timely passage of Bill C-37.

Once again, the Royal Canadian Legion feels very strongly that passage of Bill C-37 is an urgent priority that should be embraced by all the members of this committee. As one of the members of this committee has said so eloquently, there have been enough studies and reports on this issue. What is needed is a cooperative approach that will bring resolution once and for all before those affected simply pass away.

I thank you, Comrade Chairman, for your time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

The meeting will come to order.

I want to welcome the witnesses here today in consideration of Bill C-37.

As you can see from the agenda, we have two panels. We have the departmental officials first....

Mr. Telegdi, you have a point of order?

Citizenship Act

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, there have been consultations and I believe you would find the unanimous consent of the House for the following motion.

I move:

That, notwithstanding any standing order or usual practices of this House, Bill C-37, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act, shall be deemed to have been read a second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.

(Bill C-37. On the Order: Government Orders:)

December 10, 2007--Second reading and reference to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration of Bill C-37, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act--the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

[Technical difficulty--Editor]...motion officially read into the record.

Order, please.

Do we want to hear the motion? The motion by Mr. Telegdi is that in the opinion of the committee, the government should refer Bill C-37 to our committee as soon as possible, and that the chair report this to the House.

This is what we had unanimous consent for.

(Motion agreed to)

Now, I do believe that Ms. Chow wanted to--

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

We cannot do unparliamentary things. It just doesn't work that way, Mr. Komarnicki. There are rules and procedures in Parliament. We cannot give up our parliamentary responsibilities.

So I'm asking for unanimous consent, from all members of the committee, that we table a report asking the government to table Bill C-37 so this committee can officially start working on a bill that is in front of us.

I hope we all agree on this, and I hope we then spend the time to make sure we get the best possible bill out of this and that there are no unintended consequences that might result from the bill itself.

[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.

[Melynda Jarratt, Historian, Canadian War Brides]

Thank you for inviting me today. This is my fifth appearance before the committee, and I have to say I'm a little disappointed that Bill C-37 has not become reality.

I wrote some notes so I could at least have some thoughts to refer to.

After listening to Bill, I think it's important to clarify the process and who's responsible. It's my understanding that the bill has had first reading and it has to be brought forward to the committee. However, that has not happened yet. Nearly 60 days have passed since the bill was introduced in the House of Commons, on December 10.

I was full of hope in December that we could have this bill passed very, very quickly. As far as I know, everyone is in favour of it. I am. War brides and war bride children are in favour of it, and they're expecting it. In fact they think it has been passed; they don't know that it hasn't.

When the minister, Diane Finley, phoned me on December 10 to explain Bill C-37--as she did with Bill and a number of us who were involved in this issue--I was virtually assured that the passage of the legislation was guaranteed. I wrote down what she said that day because I wanted to remember it; I'm a notetaker, anyway. I asked her how fast this bill could be passed. She said, and I quote, “The ideal is that the committee will push it through as fast as possible. It's entirely up to the committee.”

But the committee can't deal with legislation that has not been sent to it. It's easier for me to travel all the way from Fredericton, New Brunswick, through snowstorms, sitting on the tarmac for an hour, rerouting to Montreal and Toronto, losing my luggage, staying a night in the hotel, and getting here by taxi, than it is for the bill to make its way from down the hall somewhere to this committee.

There is something wrong with the process. We need to get this process speeded up. It's absolutely imperative. It is stalled at the most critical time, given the election fever in Ottawa. I'm not impressed, and neither are most Canadians, that there's talk about an election right when we need to get these very important bills passed that people are waiting for, and they have been waiting a lifetime for in some cases.

Why am I here for a fifth time to speak about this bill? It has still not been brought forward to the committee. It has been 60 days now. It's inexcusable. It's an insult to the 43,454 war brides and their 20,997 children, who they brought to this country in 1946, that it has not been brought before the committee. The committee cannot deal with legislation that has not been brought to it.

It's a national disgrace that these elderly women and their children, especially those who are now in their sixties.... It's these 20,997 children. They are the ones who are most affected by this. These kids--they're not kids anymore--are now 63, 64, 65, and they're approaching CPP and OAP time. Many of them, for the first time in their lives, have been confronted with the reality that the status of their citizenship is in doubt. It's upsetting. I don't have to tell you how upsetting it is. They're afraid. The war brides are afraid to come forward. The ones who never ever left the country, never applied for passports, and who've never had an issue with their citizenship are afraid with all this talk now. They're afraid to come forward with all this uncertainty.

And believe me, I know first-hand about the very personal impact this is having on their lives and how they fear applying for a passport in case their citizenship status is detected by some ill-informed bureaucrat within the department. For example, I know of an 86-year-old woman who was stopped at the border between the United States and New Brunswick two and a half months ago, and she was told to go back. She wasn't allowed in the country because she didn't have her citizenship card.

And there are the children. Let's face it, most of the elderly ladies have dealt with it by now. Those who haven't are going to hide their heads in the sand. They will go away very quietly, and they will die away. But the children have a good long life ahead of them. They've had their lives turned upside down when they found out, after living here all their lives, since the day they stepped off the boat as babes in arms, as Senator Roméo Dallaire did on December 13, 1946.... He arrived here on the Empire Brent with his mother, a Dutch war bride. He found out when he was 21 years old that he was not a Canadian citizen.

It's infuriating to them that they're told they can't vote, that they have to apply for permanent resident status, or they're a subsection 5(4), a special discretionary grant from the minister.

These people have worked all their lives in Canada. They've voted in every election. Some of them have worked as enumerators, for goodness' sake. They've paid taxes. They've even served in the military. Their fathers served Canada with honour during World War II. Their mothers are Canadian war brides. Is this the way we treat the children of war brides?

Subsection 5(4) is not an answer. And it's not the rule of law; it's a special favour of the minister. That's not the way citizenship should be dealt with in this country.

If their fathers were Canadian veterans and their mothers were British war brides, and if they came to this country with the mass transport of war brides at the end of World War II, they are Canadian citizens. If you take the temperature of Canada on this subject, Canadians are going to agree with you on that one.

The surviving war brides and their children don't want to hear any more excuses. They've waited long enough. They've waited 62 years. It's long enough, wouldn't you agree? Their children especially, the war bride children, the 65-, 66-, and 67-year-olds, want to move forward. They want to have a future. They want to make plans. They want to get their lives in order. They want to apply for their Canada pension. They want to apply for their OAP. They may want to take a trip and get a passport. Guess what? It's all held up.

They absolutely have to have this very central part of their identity straightened out so they can get ahead with their lives, make these applications and go on trips, but they're afraid they can't. They don't want to be used as political pawns. They're upset. They're nervous. They're worried. They're fed up. That is not the feel-good story that should be coming out of the very good, hard work of the people of this committee.

You guys have heard a tremendous amount of emotion poured out in front of you here at this committee, the heart and soul of individuals across this country. So many good people from the four parties have sat here and listened to that. They're heart-wrenching stories from people who have cried here. We've had to watch helplessly as the tears in their eyes just spilled out like a flood, and they've been spilled in front of you here in this committee.

It's not the story that politicians want to hear on the eve of an election, which, I tell you, I don't want to hear about, and I don't think the war brides, and their children especially, want to hear about, especially if this bill doesn't pass. The Canadian war brides and their children are not props to be used for political advantage. They are a Canadian icon. They are the most revered and respected citizens, whom Canadians have fallen in love with. The story of love and war, of passion and tragedy, of overcoming so many obstacles, of courage and strength in the face of adversity--it has been the subject of Hollywood movies, of television documentaries, of countless radio interviews, of innumerable print media, Internet articles and books, including my own: War Brides: The stories of the women who left everything behind to follow the men they loved .

I have an entire chapter on the issue of Canadian children of war brides and the issue of citizenship. It's gone out of print. It sold out in Britain. I'm going to be rewriting chapter eight, and I would like to have a happy ending to this story, and I'm sure you guys on this committee, who have worked so hard, all of you—Andrew Telegdi, Meili Faille, Bill Siksay, Ed Komarnicki, Norman Doyle.... There are so many people. I've seen the same faces over and over again here. It's very sad. At this point, all of you have worked so doggedly for the citizenship of people you don't even know, and you knew it was the right thing to do. You can be the heroes of the day. But if this keeps up and the committee does not get the bill immediately—this process I was referring to earlier—I'm not the one who's going to be saying very nice things. I'm not. I'm not going to say nice things, because you guys are in control of the process and you haven't done what you're supposed to do.

Who's “they”? Well, you figure it out yourselves.

Two months ago, I praised the minister when she introduced Bill C-37 in the House of Commons. Just last week I was in Vancouver for the citizenship ceremony of Joe Taylor, who was granted a subsection 5(4). In an interview with Curt Petrovich of CBC's national news, I said, “I've got to give credit where credit's due.” The Tories introduced a bill when no one else would do it. And that is true. I have to give credit where credit's due.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Since it's 3:45, we will bring our meeting to order. Our apologies for keeping our witnesses waiting. We did have votes in the House today so we're a bit late getting here. I'm sorry about that.

We do want to welcome you here today for the pre-study of Bill C-37, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act, and we have with us today, and I want to welcome on behalf of our committee, from the Lost Canadian Organization, the person who needs no introduction to us--he's been here before on a number of occasions--Mr. Don Chapman.

Welcome, Don.

Representing Canadian War Brides is historian Melynda Jarrett.

You have been here before too, Melinda. Welcome to you.

And of course Mr. William Janzen, director of the Ottawa office of the Mennonite Central Committee, is a familiar face as well and has been here on a number of occasions.

Thank you.

So we'll pass it over to our witnesses, and I think, Mr. Clerk, it's a 10-minute opening statement from each of the individuals.

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-37, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)