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.

Citizenship Act

[Connie Cody, Conservative, Cambridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, right now the Liberals are criticizing Harper's first-generation limit and claiming they need to fix the system. I decided to go look at Hansard, and the Liberals passed a unanimous consent motion to pass Bill C-37 at all stages on February 15, 2008.

Why is it that Liberals continue to mislead the House? Would the member agree that the Liberals today are a far cry from the Liberals from a generation ago, who believed in all-party consensus on immigration policies?

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Madam Speaker, “broken, broken, broken” has been the refrain this summer, a summer that showed Canadians once again that the Prime Minister and the Liberal government are just not worth the cost. I suspect that was the refrain the Liberals felt last night after a brutal loss in a safe riding in Montreal, where Canadians sent the Prime Minister yet another message to say that his plan is not working. Nowhere is that truer than in our immigration system and citizenship system.

Let us go back to 2015, the last time the Conservative government was in charge. We had a consensus in this country, and it was a multi-generational consensus that existed long before 2015. It was a system that worked for our economy, with inflation low and home prices half of what they are today, and a system that kept our nation safe from terrorist attacks and multinational criminals. It was a system that was truly the envy of the world, through which a person could come to this country, welcomed with open arms, in an effort to build a life better than the one they left behind.

However, in just nine short years, none of that is true today. Housing prices keep going up, reaching record highs in cities small and large everywhere. International students are living seven, 10 or 15 to a basement, or even resorting to homeless shelters and food banks. Opportunity keeps slipping away in the face of higher taxes, more expensive groceries and, yes, more and more people in the way. People who came here after being promised a new beginning are instead finding that their hard work does not pay off, and shockingly, they do not want to stay. In fact, they want to leave. It is all made worse by a government that cannot seem to exhibit a single ounce of competence and organization in immigration. That is why the consensus is broken.

The Liberals lost a million people and still cannot tell Canadians where they are. The Minister of Public Safety, just a couple of weeks ago, insisted that the system is working when a terrorist was given citizenship. The member for Kingston and the Islands, who I missed very much over the summer, claims that the Liberals are delivering results for Canadians. However, Canadians keep sending them the same message that this is simply not the case, because nobody with an ounce of common sense can step back and say that things in Canada are working as they should right now. If this is what the Liberals consider delivering results, then I would hate to see what not delivering results looks like. Even when they do not know where people are, the system still does not work and incompetence still reigns supreme.

The government gave citizenship to a terrorist who appeared in an ISIS snuff video and who somehow passed six security checks while plotting an attack in the country's biggest city. It gave a student visa to a guy planning a massacre of Jews on the anniversary of October 7, all while being exposed for not even checking his criminal record, the record check we do for any temporary resident. This was just in the past month. With each successive blow, the confidence among Canadians and our peers abroad in the integrity of our immigration system, in who we grant citizenship to and in the basic ability of government to get anything done is certainly in question.

No one of us should relish the fact that the Canadian immigration system seems to be falling apart right in front of us. I am a child of immigrants. There are many children of immigrants. There are many immigrants among us, many of our colleagues and constituents. We can testify to the power of a necessary immigration system, but a system that lacks integrity just does not work, and Canadians will not trust it. If not for immigration, my family would have never been able to experience the freedom of opportunity that this country gave us. If not for immigration, our communities would never benefit from the skills and expertise of countless doctors, nurses, engineers, tradespeople and the many people who built this country. If not for immigration, our country would never be strengthened by the values and pluralism of our newcomers, who are rooted in their culture, and what that provides for us.

What happened in less than a decade is nothing less than a tragedy, which is why it is even more disappointing to see the Liberal government plowing head-first into more misguided policies like this one rather than taking the time to fix what is wrong, further extending the reach of Canadian citizenship in the same ham-fisted and incompetent way that we have come to expect. The Liberals cannot even tell us how many people will be eligible under this piece of legislation. Surely, they can come up with a model.

The government cannot possibly believe it still has the confidence of anyone in this country when it simply says, “Trust us. We got this.” This bill threatens the integrity and security of the citizenship system. In December 2023, as we have said here in the House, the Ontario Superior Court declared that the first-generation cut-off rule for the Canadian Citizenship Act was unconstitutional. The Ontario Superior Court itself found a 50% error rate in the Liberal-run citizenship department, with abnormally long processing times and malpractice.

The NDP-Liberals took six months to respond to Bill C-71, showing a blatant lack of urgency, which they claim to have found today. This bill proposes to grant citizenship to individuals born abroad to at least one Canadian parent who has spent 1,095 days in Canada. We know that. This is without requiring that these days are consecutive and without provisions for checks in the Criminal Code. We know that other countries require more time and certainly more consecutive time. I do not think it is out of line to ask for a security check given what we have seen in just the last month in this country, with a public safety minister who says that the system is working as it should.

We see in this debate that the Liberal Party voted in favour of Bill C-37. That is the bill that was here prior to this one, which the Liberals seem to have conveniently forgotten about entirely today and certainly have forgotten that they supported not once, but twice. It was passed at first reading and second reading and there was unanimous consent to pass it. The Liberals voted in favour of the very ideas they are attacking in this bill today. This further erodes the lack of consensus I spoke about that exists in our system.

The Liberals are doubling down on citizenship by Zoom and pushing forward with the present path, even as evidence shows that we are not building enough homes, that we are not credentialing those who should be able to work here in their professions and that we are not doing our due diligence. That is clear. That is a message they should have heard over the summer and is a message they probably heard at the doors in Montreal last night.

Perhaps most egregious is giving people who created this mess even more responsibility in running the government. The guy who used to be the immigration minister, the guy responsible for losing those million people, is now being promoted to the guy who is supposed to build houses in this country. This is a guy who ignored advice from his own ministry and instead chose to pursue a blind political agenda. What happened? He was given a promotion. It is the guy under whose nose blossomed a corrupt and phony international student program alongside a foreign worker program called a “breeding ground” for modern-day slavery. This is the guy who is in large part responsible for the debate we are having today, as the Ontario Superior Court cited bureaucratic incompetence at the IRCC as a major reason for its decision. Spoiler alert, that minister could not run the system, and he cannot build homes either. That should not surprise anyone.

We need to fix this broken system. We need to fix it for those who want to come here and create a better life, for the promise of Canada, for the promise that if they come here and work hard, they can buy a home in a safe neighbourhood. They should be able to work in their profession to the scope of its practice and to the scope of their education, and they should know that when they come here.

What we have right now is a broken consensus in the public because the system does not work. That is because people who come here cannot achieve the dream that we have promised and cannot achieve the dream that so many of us and our constituents have benefited from. That is a shame.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to ask a question about numbers, but I just want to preface by saying to the member that Bill C-37, when it was passed in 2009 and introduced the first-generation limit, was actually supported by all parties in the House twice, on February 8 and on February 15, with unanimous consent votes.

With respect to numbers, I looked at Statistics Canada, and in 2016, a study done by Bérard-Chagnon and Canon said there were four million Canadians living abroad, which was a 36% increase since 1990.

According to the study it was using for the United Nations, dating back to a 2017 study showing the progression, the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada found, in its estimate, that there could be as many as 2.7 million Canadians living abroad. An updated estimate in 2016 said there could be between three million and 5.6 million.

Regarding the last breakdown, I will put the question to the member. They did a breakdown, thanks to the United Nations, the World Bank and the OECD, and they found the following: 51% are citizens by descent; 33% are Canadians by birth; and 15% are naturalized Canadians, like I am.

I am going to put to the member the same question I put to the minister the other day. How many persons living abroad will therefore be eligible to apply to the department for a proof of citizenship document and thereafter a Canadian passport?

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I really do appreciate the shout-out that was given to Don Chapman. As I mentioned today and yesterday, I came to know Don Chapman when I worked for Andrew Telegdi, the former member of Parliament for Waterloo.

I also really appreciated the member's insights at countering this false narrative by the Conservatives regarding Bill C-37, who then are intentionally choosing to forget that former prime minister Stephen Harper basically gave an ultimatum to members to either take this step that lost Canadians were fighting for or none of it would happen. People like Don Chapman were leading the charge to ask for this step to at least be taken, because we were never going to get the Conservatives to truly be inclusive. They are the most uninclusive party possible.

My question to the member is in regard to the Ontario court ruling and the fact that this legislation would make Canadian citizenship more equal, especially when it comes to kids being adopted or who are born abroad. I would like to hear what the member thinks the benefits are of having legislation that would be constitutional. What kind of value does that have when it comes to Canadians and the pride we share?

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I just want to make sure the member understands the 1977 Citizenship Act was amended in 2009. Actually, those portions would not be amended here; that was done way before.

In 2009, Bill C-37 introduced the first-generation limits. It was supported by all parties. It was supported twice by the Liberal Party of Canada, by the NDP and by the Bloc, and yes, it was a Conservative bill.

It is interesting that the member introduces a novel argument that we would violate international treaty commitments, because that was not an argument made at any point by the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship.

If it is the case that it would be a violation, why are the first-generation limits in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom not violations of their international treaty commitments?

[Patrick Weiler, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for London West.

It is a pleasure to rise for the first time in this House after the summer recess to represent the good people of West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country. It is especially important today because we are debating Bill C-71, an act to amend the Citizenship Act. It is very important that we start our session with this legislation because it strikes right at the core of what it means to be Canadian or, rather, how.

What do Mary Pickford, Leslie Nielsen, Ricky Gervais, Jimi Hendrix, Glenn Ford and Roméo Dallaire all have in common? These folks are well known as eminent Canadians, but they are also what are known as lost Canadians. Lost Canadians are individuals who were born in Canada or believed they were Canadian citizens but who lost or never acquired citizenship due to certain provisions in our outdated and confusing citizenship legislation.

For instance, first-generation Canadians born abroad are unable to confer citizenship to their children, and those born to a first-generation Canadian abroad automatically lose their citizenship at the age of 28 due to a cruel and unconstitutional law passed by the Harper Conservative government. The legislation we are debating today would fix these issues by amending the Citizenship Act to extend access to citizenship to descent beyond the first generation.

Once passed, Bill C-71 will automatically confer citizenship by descent to all those born abroad to Canadian parents before the coming-into-force date of the legislation. For those born after the coming-into-force date, there would be a new framework governing citizenship where citizenship by descent can be passed on beyond the first generation if a Canadian parent is present in Canada for 195 days straight, in what is being called the substantial connection test.

Bill C-71 would also allow people born abroad and adopted by a Canadian citizen who was born abroad to have a pathway to citizenship by way of a grant of citizenship. This different process is required because to comply with the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption, which seeks to protect the child's best interest and prevent abuses such as the abduction, sale and trafficking of children, an assessment is necessary to ensure that an adoption complies with international adoption requirements.

Many of those currently affected by this issue are, in fact, children who are unable to access Canadian citizenship and the benefits that we so often take for granted, such as access to universal health care and education. The consequences these children face as a result of this outdated legislation are unacceptable. Take, for instance, the story of 12-year-old Zack Hurstfield. He was born in Mexico to his Canadian father Bert, who was born in the United States and later naturalized to become a Canadian citizen. At the time, Zack's Canadian grandmother could not confer citizenship to Zack's father due to the discrimination against women that remains embedded in the Citizenship Act, which I will get to later in my speech.

Last year, Zack applied for proof of citizenship and was denied. As a naturalized Canadian, Bert was deemed to be born in Canada and thus could confer citizenship to his son, but this was later rescinded by Conservative Bill C-37 when it became law. Under Bill C-37, Conservatives took away the right for Canadians born abroad to pass on citizenship to their children. This law not only separated families, but created an undemocratic tiered system of citizenship and a new class of Canadians.

Today, Zack does not have citizenship in Mexico or Canada, and there is a legitimate question of him being stateless. Zack's father tragically died during COVID and his family in Vancouver wants him to live with them. The problem is that Zack has no legal status in Canada and thus cannot enrol in school, get medical coverage or get a social insurance number. To access these things, he needs to become a Canadian citizen. Under Bill C-71, he would.

To be clear, this is not an issue of immigration, as some members of the opposition claim. This is an issue of citizenship. As we can see from Zack's story, it is also an issue of equality and women's rights.

Prior to 1977, women could not confer citizenship on their children. Instead, children were seen as property of the father if they were born in wedlock, and property of the mother if born out of wedlock. This inequality has lasting impacts on new generations of Canadians born abroad. Bill C-71 would correct this by acknowledging the rights of second-generation Canadians born abroad to obtain citizenship, including descendants of women who previously could not confer citizenship due to these inequalities. This is not only the right thing to do; it is also necessary in order to make sure the legislation is compliant with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Bill C-71 would also bring our laws into compliance with international standards set by the United Nations. Currently our legislation violates the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which states that all children have a right to education. It violates the UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, which outlines the measures countries must take to provide a nationality to those who are stateless. It also violates the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

While the bill is a step in the right direction, there is more work that needs to be done to ensure that citizenship remains protected. However, we know that not all parties in the House share this view. With the passage of Bill C-37 in 2009, the Conservatives demonstrated their willingness to strip Canadians of their rights and identity. In 2014, the Conservatives also passed Bill C-24, which allowed them to revoke the citizenship of dual citizens. This created an entire category of second-class citizens whose status as Canadians is insecure.

Further, we know that the Leader of the Opposition's flagship bill as the minister of democratic reform was to make it harder for indigenous people, youth and less affluent people to vote. We already know that the Conservatives would not care about being out of compliance with international law, because they have openly committed to withdrawing from the United Nations. Even more concerning is that the leader of the Conservative Party has committed to ignoring charter-protected rights and freedoms by invoking the notwithstanding clause. We would not be able to rely on the courts to protect us from the Conservatives' revoking citizenship, which can be changed on a whim.

Let us think of what those whims may be, because we know the tried-and-true playbook that the Conservatives use to ostracize minority groups to create fear in the population of people they do not know, to rally support. We know this is an effective method, but that is why we should be concerned to see the Conservative leader cozying up to white national groups, and it even filters into the anti-trans policy.

The complete and utter silence of the Conservatives on the plight of Palestinians over the last year has been deafening. How safe would someone feel in protesting in support of the Palestinian cause under a Conservative government? We already saw the Conservatives label environmentalists as a violent threat to Canada's security, pass legislation to spy on environmental NGOs and weaponize the Canada Revenue Agency to silence awareness that these groups were raising about the impact of fossil fuels.

How safe would someone feel speaking out about the impacts of climate change? How safe would someone feel about their Canadian citizenship? The answer is that they would probably feel a lot safer in an insurrection to overthrow the government because they might get brought coffee and donuts.

Therefore, I believe that citizenship should be enshrined as a right rather than a revocable privilege, so that we can protect all Canadians, whether dual citizen or not, born in or out of wedlock, adopted or not, from the Conservatives or any future government, from manipulating citizenship laws to exclude those they do not agree with. This risks eroding our democratic principles and turning citizenship into a privilege rather than a fundamental human right.

There also remain questions regarding when citizenship in Canada began. For many, it is assumed it began with the introduction of the Citizenship Act in 1947. However, that would mean that thousands of Canadian servicemen and women who died in the First World War and the Second World War would not be technically considered Canadian citizens. This ambiguity goes beyond just legal definitions; it influences how we remember our history and those who contributed to it.

Citizenship provides us with a sense of duty and belonging to the country we all are proud to call home. With the passage of Bill C-71, the Citizenship Act would have laws that are equally enforced and consistent with international human rights principles for the first time in Canadian history. It would grant citizenship to individuals like Zack, for whom there is genuine fear they may become stateless. It is an opportunity for us to modernize our citizenship legislation to ensure that those who rightfully deserve to be Canadian citizens do not get left behind. I hope all members of the House will support the legislation.

I want to give a special shout-out to Don Chapman, a constituent of mine in Gibsons who has worked so hard to move the legislation forward through the courts, and today through legislation we are debating.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Madam Speaker, what has become clear is that the Conservatives are refusing to acknowledge that Bill C-71 would restore the rights of Canadians that were taken away from them unconstitutionally 15 years ago by the Conservatives. That is what we are talking about. These are not immigrants. They are Canadians. They were deemed to be a lower class of Canadians by the Conservatives.

The Conservatives keep saying that the NDP and the Liberals voted with them on Bill C-37 15 years ago. Do members know why? It is because Stephen Harper, at that time, put out an edict and said that if the bill was not passed unanimously, it would mean that war veterans and war brides would go to their graves without citizenship, and that was wrong.

I wonder if the Conservatives will just take a moment to understand the history and understand that by voting against Bill C-71, they are denying once again Canadians the right to citizenship, unconstitutionally.

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Waterloo, ON]

Madam Speaker, I want to start by sharing that I put my phone on airplane mode to make sure that, if any interference were to in, it would not impact the interpreters. I just wanted to put that on the record as we go through the process of ensuring that our interpreters can do the important work that they do. I am on airplane mode in the hope that there will be no feedback.

I appreciate that we are back to debating Bill C-71 and able to have this conversation. I was on House duty all day yesterday and had the privilege of being a part of the debate. Unfortunately our time came to an end, and I was looking forward to continuing that debate today. Having observed and listened to the emergency debate that took place last night, I was impressed with the calibre of the debate and the discussion taking place in the House of Commons. It demonstrates that we are able to rise above and do important work.

Today, as I finish off my time, I want to come back to Bill C-71 and the fact that this is legislation that has been introduced because the Ontario Superior Court of Justice has ruled that these individuals, also known as lost Canadians, are entitled to their citizenship. These are people who were always eligible for their citizenship but were under the previous Conservative government that advanced Bill C-37. At that time, there were many members in this place, of whom I was not one, but I did get to work closely with some of them. They had advised the Conservative government of the day that we could do better, saying that the legislation, yes, would correct some spaces and some issues, but there would be some people who would be left behind. They advised that they should do it right, but no, that is not the Conservative way. We saw some of those tactics again this morning. It is either the Conservative way, which is helping Conservatives, or, if we do not believe in the Conservative mentality or the Conservative mantra, we are not Canadian enough.

Here is breaking news for Conservatives: Conservatives do not get to determine who is and who is not a Canadian. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects our rights and freedom. People sacrificed their lives for us to be able to have these rights and freedoms and with rights and freedoms come responsibilities. As the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled, Bill C-37, which former prime minister Harper and the Conservative government of the day passed, was unconstitutional. The Superior Court of Justice primarily named mobility rights, as people have the right to come and go, and equality rights, namely women's rights, as they are rights and freedoms that are protected in our country.

I am not going to go down the rabbit hole of why Conservatives do not support women and the fact that they are constantly trying to threaten a woman's right to choose, along with all these battles we have already had.

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-71. I would like to sincerely thank those who spoke before me and defended the interests of Canadians who lost their citizenship due to the complexity and shortcomings of previous legislative amendments to the Citizenship Act.

Today, we will take the next step toward fairness and inclusion.

For me, being Canadian means taking steps to tackle inequality and injustice within our society. We do this not only through our words but also, and more importantly, through our actions. Bill C-71 proposes amendments to the Citizenship Act in response to issues raised in both Parliament and the courts.

In 2007, this place was studying the matter of lost Canadians and Canadian war brides. In March 2007, a witness testified at the CIMM committee and shared how it all started when her brother, by then retired from the Canadian navy, went to get a passport in 2004. That is when she and her brother learned that her family had been stripped of their Canadian citizenship. She thought she was alone, but she soon learned that there were many people like her. They had family members who were World War II veterans and war brides and had learned that they were no longer Canadian citizens. She shared how Melynda Jarratt of Fredericton, the founder of the Canadian War Brides website, put her in touch with Don Chapman and the lost Canadians. Don worked closely with a former member of Parliament, the Hon. Andrew Telegdi, which is how I learned so much about this file.

Today I have listened to a mostly fruitful debate. We know where each party in this chamber stands; all agree that the bill needs to go to committee, but for that to happen, it needs to be called to a vote. Canadian citizenship should not be a partisan issue.

I did not choose where I was born or whom I was born to, but I am proud that my grandfather chose to come to Canada and that I was born and raised in the Waterloo region. I could not imagine someone arbitrarily taking my citizenship.

The CIMM committee witness also spoke about numerous people she met; they had in common that they were lost Canadians. She also shared some of the reasons Canadians lost their citizenship, including being born out of wedlock or being born on a Canadian Forces base overseas. We can let that register for a second: When a person serving in our Canadian Armed Forces had a baby born on a Canadian Forces base overseas, that child could be stripped of their Canadian citizenship.

Bill C-71 proposes to restore citizenship to the remaining lost Canadians, the individuals who either could not become citizens or lost their citizenship because of outdated legislated provisions. While previous amendments helped many, a small cohort of lost Canadians remains, so lost Canadians and their families launched a constitutional challenge in court of the two-generation citizenship cut-off.

In December 2023, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled that it is unconstitutional for Canada to deny automatic citizenship to children born abroad because their parents also happened to be born abroad. It gave the federal government six months to repeal the second-generation cut-off rule and amend the Citizenship Act.

Several constituents within the riding of Waterloo questioned what this ruling meant. It means that the Ontario Superior Court of Justice struck down Bill C-37, the old citizenship law of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government, which prevented parents born outside Canada from passing on their citizenship to children also born abroad. The court ruled that the Conservative bill, Bill C-37, violated these people's rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, namely, their mobility rights and women's rights, or equality rights.

Today, I hear Conservative members saying that the government should have appealed this ruling. To me, this is telling, and I hope Canadians are watching and seeing their position. The Conservative Party of Canada may have changed their leader several times, but they have not changed who they are or what they believe. They believe in two tiers of citizenship. They support people who agree with them; everyone else does not belong in their vision of Canada. This is appalling and should be very concerning.

My Canada is an inclusive Canada. I respect and value the diversity of people, of perspectives, of experiences and so forth. However, I digress.

In response to the courts, in May, our government introduced Bill C-71, which proposes changes to Canada's citizenship laws that would address the concerns of the court and the constitutionality of the Conservative bill, Bill C-37.

As I mentioned earlier, a small cohort of lost Canadians remains. These lost Canadians launched a constitutional challenge in court of the two-generation citizenship cut-off, and they won. The legislative amendment outlined in Bill C-71 respects the court's decision; it would help lost Canadians and their descendants regain or obtain citizenship. As the independent courts have ruled, that is their right. It would also address the status of descendants affected by the Harper Conservatives' first-generation limit.

The revised law would establish clear guidelines for acquiring Canadian citizenship by descent. After enactment of the legislation, the harmful Conservative first-generation limit would no longer apply. Canadian citizens born abroad would be allowed to pass their citizenship to their children, provided they could demonstrate a substantial connection to Canada. Within the legislation, a Canadian parent born outside the country would be able to transfer citizenship to their child if they lived in Canada for a cumulative total of three years before the child's birth. These changes would result in a more inclusive and fair Citizenship Act and would right the wrongs of the Harper Conservative government.

What is more concerning is that, under its new leadership, the Conservative Party continues to support two-tier citizenship in Canada. It is appalling that Conservatives in this place refuse to respect the courts. They refuse to accept that the Conservatives do not get to choose who should or should not have Canadian citizenship. However, this mentality has existed before. It existed with the previous Conservative government, which introduced and passed Bill C-37. At that time, the point was raised that we could make the legislation better. However, the Conservatives refused; thus, the lost Canadians had to accept a small step. We know today that what was passed is unconstitutional legislation. Lost Canadians took this matter to court and won, and that is what brings us here today.

The Conservative opposition repeats the same behaviours. Bill S-245 is sponsored by a Conservative member. This Senate public bill passed the Senate, completed first reading and second reading in this place, and completed consideration at committee on June 12, 2023. Although it should have been called for third reading debate, the Conservatives continue to trade it down so it cannot be called to a vote. Some people will ask why.

To pass a bill while elected, especially as a private member, is a massive privilege. However, do members know what happened? The Conservatives did not get their way. At committee, a bill can be studied and scrutinized, witnesses and experts can testify, members can ask questions and amendments can be proposed. The majority of the members of that committee proposed and passed amendments. I believe all did so except for the Conservative members. However, because the Conservatives did not support them, they refused to see Bill S-245 be debated at third reading. To me, that is disgusting, as well as disrespectful of the work we do in this place.

I am not surprised, as I have seen the Conservative Party in action for a long time. I know the Conservatives love to change their leader, but they refuse to change their ways. Let us remember what I mentioned earlier: Conservatives support two-tier citizenship, and they only support those who think as they do. That is not an inclusive Canada.

I would also like to mention that Bill C-71 would continue to reduce the difference between children born abroad and adopted by Canadians and children born abroad to Canadian parents. It should be noted that any child adopted overseas by a Canadian parent before the law takes effect would be eligible for the current direct citizenship grant for adoptees, even if they were previously excluded by the first-generation limit. With the law in place, the same criteria would apply to children adopted by Canadian citizens abroad, meaning that, if the adopted parent born outside Canada could show a substantial connection to Canada, the adopted child would be eligible for Canadian citizenship. Bill C-71 would restore citizenship to those who have been wrongfully excluded and establish consistent rules for citizenship by descent going forward.

Our citizenship process and rules should be fair, equal and transparent. Recently, it has become clear that the act must be amended to address the 2009 legislative amendments, which excluded individuals because of the first-generation limit. The Ontario Superior Court has been clear: The Harper Conservatives' first-generation limit is unconstitutional in terms of both mobility and equality rights.

Bill C-71 introduces inclusive changes that would address the challenges raised by the courts on citizenship by descent. This applies in particular to those born overseas to a Canadian parent. For example, former senator and lieutenant-general Roméo Dallaire was born in the Netherlands to a Canadian father and a Dutch mother. He grew up in Montreal. When he was 24, he was a Canadian Army officer stationed overseas. Because of the rules in Canada's Citizenship Act, which have since been amended, he found out when he tried to apply for a passport that he was not actually a Canadian citizen. He was, in fact, a lost Canadian.

Today we have a choice. We can commit to addressing past wrongs, take care of those among us who have faced injustice and inequality, be more inclusive and share the benefits we enjoy as citizens with others who deserve to call themselves Canadian too. As proud citizens of this country, we must uphold the commitments that define us as Canadians. Whether we are citizens by birth, by choice or by descent, whether we were born in Canada or in another country, we are bound by our shared values, by our mutual respect for our country and for each other. This matter is very close to my heart. It is something that I have known for a really long time.

We have the ability today to see legislation advance. It is okay for us to disagree. It is okay to propose amendments. This government, more than any government in our history, has accepted amendments at committee, on the floor of the House of Commons and from the Senate. That is important to do. Getting legislation right is important because we are here to serve Canadians. Today, we have the ability to actually see the legislation advance. Perhaps we need another day of debate. That is okay. I wanted to speak to the legislation as well, and it is important for people to discuss and raise points that will actually improve this legislation and raise any concerns.

However, what is concerning is that the Conservatives today keep talking about how many Canadians will benefit from this. The reality is that these people are Canadian. The court is telling the government and every member here that these people are entitled to their Canadian citizenship. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects them. They should have the ability to be Canadian, and the courts are ruling on that. Therefore, the legislation is really about righting the wrongs of the past. We can move the legislation to committee and debate on amendments, but what will be clear is that something of a consensus is being achieved. I heard from the Bloc and the NDP. I heard from and have spoken with Green members. I have heard the points they are raising. I know where the Liberals stand. The Conservatives are actually not the majority of voices today. Just as they did for Bill S-245, they are making sure that we cannot call it to a vote. They will most likely slow it down in this place. They will read their scripted speeches. They will probably try to move some kind of tactic, or whatever else. Once it goes to committee, I am sure there will be a few tantrums thrown there as well.

However, what is important is that we do this right. As I mentioned in my speech, Canadian citizenship should not be a partisan issue. We have a choice in our country. We can actually ensure that we are not following the lead of other countries. We can do democracy well. We can think about the people who fought in uniform for us to have our rights and freedoms. With rights and freedoms come responsibilities, and I hold those responsibilities very near and dear to my heart. When my grandfather immigrated, he would never have imagined that his granddaughter would put her name on a ballot, let alone be elected.

To represent the good people of the riding of Waterloo is truly an honour and a privilege. To hear their voices and represent the diversity of their perspectives is something I take seriously day in, day out.

I have been here since the day started and have been very impressed with a number of points raised in today's debate. I have really appreciated that even with differing views within our political parties, at the end of the day, we have all been talking about Canadian citizenship and the importance of respecting the independent judicial system.

I believe we should have the question called sooner rather than later. I hope the committee is anticipating this legislation so we can hear from experts and witnesses who can help us ensure this legislation is right. It is the time to do it.

I look forward to receiving some good questions and having the emergency debate that will take place after we adjourn for the day.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to re-enter into debate on Bill C-71.

What is this bill about? It is about a group of Canadians whose constitutional rights were stripped by the Conservatives 15 years ago. Bill C-37 was brought in by the Harper administration. Through that process, the government tried to fix some of the issues of lost Canadians, which Bill C-37 did in part.

However, in that process, the Conservatives also created a brand-new class of lost Canadians. That is, they brought in a provision that took away the rights of first-generation Canadians born abroad to pass on their citizenship to their children who are also born abroad. By doing that, the Conservatives essentially indicated that some Canadians are more equal than others. Second-generation Canadians born abroad did not have the right to become citizens.

This has caused untold harm, pain and suffering to Canadian families. I have met lost Canadian families whose children, as a result of this unconstitutional law, were born stateless. I have family members who have faced deportation as a result of this unconstitutional law. I have met families who were separated, the parent torn away from their children, as a result of this unconstitutional law. This law went on for 15 years.

I joined the House of Commons back in 2015. One of the first things I did was to draft a private member's bill in an attempt to fix this problem. The then minister John McCallum was a minister who, while in opposition, said this needed to be fixed. Successive Liberal ministers have failed to do so until now.

I will grant the minister some recognition for bringing this bill forward. It was not without a fight, because I do not think the government was going to do it. As the NDP critic for immigration, refugees and citizenship, I had to lobby, endlessly, successive Liberal ministers to get us where we are today.

There was an opening to get this dealt with when Senator Yonah Martin brought in a private member's bill, Bill S-245, in the Senate. The bill would fix only a very small portion of the lost Canadians issue, what they call the age 28 rule. I will not go into all of the details around that, because most people already know what it is. That bill, in my view, and I said this to the senator at the time, was deficient because it did not deal with a variety of other lost Canadians resulting from the Harper Conservatives' punitive bill, Bill C-37. I had every intention to move amendments to her private member's bill to fix it.

Most notably, I wanted it to ensure that the new class of lost Canadians the Conservatives created, the second-generation Canadians born abroad, would have the right to citizenship, albeit subject to a substantial connections test. They have the right to be recognized as Canadians and their children have that right. We went through this whole process at committee.

Some 30 hours later, the vast majority of the NDP amendments I negotiated with the government were adopted. Where the government supported my amendments, they were passed. However, the Conservatives filibustered that committee for 30 hours over 12 committee meetings. I have to say that committee meetings are precious because we only get two a week. Sometimes we lose them, depending on the calendar day; it could be a stat holiday or whatever the case may be. It is precious time and an important time to get work done.

The Conservatives filibustered that bill for 30 hours. Even then, we persisted and managed to get it through. The amendments were adopted and the report was tabled in this House with a wrong recommendation. Then what happened? The sponsor of the bill from the House was a Conservative member, because Yonah Martin is a Conservative senator. The member for Calgary Forest Lawn was the sponsor of the private member's bill, Bill S-245, which was supposed to be brought back to the House of Commons for third reading debate more than a year ago.

Then what happened? The Conservatives traded the order of precedence for the bill to be brought back into this House eight times. They traded it over and over again to delay the bill from coming back to the House for third reading debate and a vote. To this day, it has not been debated. When I saw that indication, it was as clear as day that the Conservatives had zero intention of doing what is right, despite the court ruling, by the way, that the provision was unconstitutional. Even then, they would not do the right thing.

Then I approached the current Minister of Immigration to say that the government must bring forward a government bill because Bill S-245 would never come back to the House of Commons, as the Conservatives would continue to use delay tactics. After much discussion, the minister agreed and we worked together to bring Bill C-71 here. That is how we got here.

Just to be clear, what did the courts say? I want to put this on the public record. The court decision by the Ontario Superior Court, in a 55-page ruling, found that the second-generation cut-off rule violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms because it "treats Canadians who became Canadians at birth because they were born in Canada differently from those Canadians who obtained their citizenship by descent on their birth outside of Canada.” The ruling went on to say that “the latter group holds a lesser class of citizenship because, unlike Canadian-born citizens, they are unable to pass on Canadian citizenship by descent to their children born abroad.”

The second-generation cut-off rule denies the first generation born abroad the ability to automatically pass on citizenship to their children if they are also born outside of Canada. In her decision, the judge accepted claims that women are particularly impacted because the second-generation cut-off rule discriminates on the basis of gender, forcing women in their reproductive years to choose between travel, study and career opportunities abroad or passing citizenship to their children.

One family member, who was one of the appellants in the case, was actually told by officials that all she had to do was go back to Canada to give birth. That was during COVID, by the way, when travel was not safe, and she had no family doctor here to follow the pregnancy. She would have had no health insurance and, of course, no family support because her husband was abroad, continuing to work. That means she would have had to give birth by herself here. She would have had to seek an extended leave from work to facilitate that. It makes zero sense to even suggest such a thing, yet there we have it. Her child was born stateless.

That is the reality of what we are talking about. Those are the impacts, real impacts, on the lives of Canadian families. I am so happy the court made this ruling and made things clear. I urged the government at the time not to appeal the ruling, and I am also grateful the government did not.

We heard the Conservatives say earlier they would have appealed the court ruling. Of course they would have. They were the ones who brought in the unconstitutional law to begin with 15 years ago. We also heard from the Conservative member for Calgary Shepard, who said they would apply a criminality test to this issue. Are the Conservatives going to apply a criminality test to Canadians who are born here? It is absolutely absurd to make these suggestions and to hold true to the idea that some Canadians have more rights than others.

This has been struck down by the courts. It is time to do not only what is morally right but also what is legally required by the courts.

The amendments I put through in committee on Bill S-245 essentially call for a substantial connections test for parents who are the first generation born abroad to be in Canada for at least 1,095 days. That would mean the connections test would be extended to the second generation born abroad and subsequent generations.

My amendments also restored those impacted since the second-generation cut-off rule was enacted in 2009, and we would also apply the same amendment to adoptee families. It took some work, a lot of work, to negotiate and get to where we are today with this bill. It took at least 10 years of my time, but that is nothing in comparison with people like Don Chapman, who has dedicated his entire life to this. He was deemed a lost Canadian. He has fought for this and helped so many families regain their citizenship and other families who have suffered, those who have been lost because this law was never fixed.

We have to do what is right, and I hope Conservative members will not filibuster. They said to the family members that they will support this provision, but actions speak louder than words, and all of the actions to date indicate otherwise. I am going to give them another chance now to do what is right, because we have to get this passed. We have to make this law, according to the courts, and because it is the morally right thing to do.

At this juncture, I ask for unanimous consent for the following motion: That notwithstanding any standing order, special order or usual practice of the House, Bill C-71, an act to amend the Citizenship Act, be deemed read a second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.

I am asking for this because it would expedite the bill, get it to committee so we can hear witnesses, make this law and do what is necessary and what is right for the people of Canada.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am very happy to enter this debate on Bill C-71. Because the House will be getting ready for statements and question period, I will be interrupted in my speech, so I am going to put a few things on the public record.

To the member from the Bloc's point that this is not about partisanship, I think it is important to put on the public record the history of what happened with respect to lost Canadians. Members will know that, 15 years ago, the Conservatives brought in Bill C-37 for an act that was supposed to fix a lot of the lost Canadian issues. It did fix some of those issues, but in that process, the Conservatives also put a poisoned pill in the bill, which was the first-generation cut-off rule deeming those of the second generation who were born abroad would not be able to receive their citizenship from their parents. That was incorporated into Bill C-37.

At the time, I was not here, but those who watched that debate saw what happened. The Harper government was clear to say that, unless Bill C-37 passed in its entirety, the bill would die. They would get rid of it and kill it. That is information from Don Chapman, who is the king of experts on lost Canadian issues because he has dedicated his life to addressing this injustice. That is the knowledge that he brings to this floor by sharing with me what happened. That is why the NDP and the Liberals had to vote for it.

They voted for it because they had no choice. If they had not, what would it have meant? It would have meant that thousands upon thousands of Canadian World War II vets, along with tens of thousands of Canadian war brides and their children, would have gone to their graves disenfranchised from their own country. A 20-year-old war bride in 1946 would be 98 years old today. Most of the Canadian brides and their World War II soldier husbands are now dead. If they had not accepted the first generation cut-off limit under Bill C-37, all these folks would have died without citizenship, all because Harper would have killed Bill C-37.

That is the reality. That is why people were jammed to do that. Despite that, the critic for the NDP at the time, Olivia Chow, put this on the public record: “We could get this bill done very quickly and accommodate this element by doing something very simple, by just amending subclause 2(2), or actually taking it out of the bill, because right now it limits citizenship to the first generation born to, or adopted by, Canadian parents.”

The NDP tried to raise the issue, and Olivia said that we should get rid of the first-generation rule that the Conservatives brought in, but that was not allowed to take place because it was the poison pill that the Conservatives put in the bill. Otherwise, they would have taken away all of those rights for war veterans and the war brides. That is the reason, and that is the history.

Is this partisan politics? No, it is not, but it is an important part of the history to know what happened, where the lost Canadian issue stems from, why we are here and why the Superior Court has ruled that it is unconstitutional to take away those rights.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his collaboration and co-operation at committee on Bill S-245. I was delighted to work with him and to see that he supported the NDP amendments. That is the right thing to do, to restore the rights of Canadians, the rights that the Conservatives took away.

I want to ask the member a question. He may not have been elected at that time, and neither was I, but to my understanding and to the knowledge of Don Chapman, who is an extremely knowledgeable guy on the lost Canadian file, when the Harper government brought in Bill C-37, it actually put forward an edict for all the parties that, if they did not support it in its entirety, it would take away the bill. That meant that the Conservatives were able to put a poison pill in that bill with the first-generation cut-off rule.

Would the member agree that is the wrong thing to do on an issue as important as people's basic fundamental rights?

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Madam Speaker, the member well knows, as the parliamentary secretary on the government side, who speaks often in the House, that we will only use it with respect to justice bills. This is not a justice bill; this is the Citizenship Act.

I want to remind the member, because again he implied or basically said that there is a taking away of rights here, that the Liberal Party of Canada, on February 7, 2008, voted in favour of Bill C-37 at second reading and referred it to a committee. On February 15, it was again the same thing, seeking unanimous consent. It was not for unanimous consent and a vote on division, but for unanimous consent to simply proceed with the motion at third reading, to pass it at report stage and to have it concurred in. The Liberal Party supported the 2009 first-generation limit at the time, so it cannot now back away from it.

We just want legislation that is reasonable, not reckless, where the numbers are provided to parliamentarians so that we know what we are voting on and we know what the impact would be on Canadian citizenship and on Canadians in general.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is interesting that this is the first day back, and I think I have been heckled more as a member today than I have, probably, in the entire last session. I am not a member who does the heckling. I hope you will agree. I try to restrain myself. I am not always perfect. I have a member next to me who sometimes does the same.

With respect to the committee work and the amendments, we proposed substantive amendments that would improve the bill. I told the members of the committee that if we could seek consensus on our amendments, we would vote in favour of the legislation, but we could not find it.

Police record checks are important. Making sure a person has a substantive connection to Canada is important. At the very minimum, it should be consecutive, not just spending a few days in a year. There is also the question of how would one prove 1,095 days in the previous 40 years of their life if they started having kids when they were 40? These are important administrative questions. The minister recognized that, but he could not answer how many people would be impacted.

I will just remind the NDP that they voted for Bill C-37, with a first-generation limit, back in 2008.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Madam Speaker, to continue what I was saying, when we had Bill C-37, the first-generation limit was introduced, and the Liberal Party of Canada voted in favour of those changes, twice. The Liberals cannot now claim that it is a charter violation and that they have changed their minds. They supported it then for the reasons they had, and I do not know exactly what those were, but they did, twice, so it was not a mistake.

I believe that with this legislation, the key is what the impact would be on our citizenship system and our immigration system, and how many people it would impact. The minister is incapable of answering, and I think it is a critical question that Canadians need to know the answer to.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Madam Speaker, the member is heckling me now. If she would allow me, I will give a thoughtful answer, as best I can.

Her own party voted for this legislation twice, back when it was Bill C-37, the first-generation limit—

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.

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.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise to speak. Some issues I really enjoy having the opportunity to talk about because I can relate them to my constituency. In this case, I can relate it not only to my constituency, but to having been a former critic of citizenship and immigration for the Liberal Party when it was in opposition as the third party and being very familiar with Minister Kenney, even though I was not around when he made that specific change.

I want to share a few thoughts. One is directly on the issue before us and another on citizenship in general.

The member across the way gave a personal experience, and that is great. We can really learn a lot when members share personal stories of how something affected them. I appreciated what my colleague from York Centre had to say. It really makes the issue relatively simple to understand.

Let us say the member for York Centre, a Canadian, has a child in Israel. Two years later, that child lives in Canada with the member. The member then has a second daughter, who is born in Canada. The only difference between her two daughters is that one spent the first two years of her life in Israel. Imagine that her two daughters are growing up and, for whatever reason, maybe one of them decides to leave Canada and spend some time in Paris, a wonderful city no doubt. If it happens to be the member's first daughter and that daughter has a child in Paris, that child would not be a Canadian citizen, whereas if her second child were to move to Paris and have a child, that child would be a Canadian citizen.

That is not necessarily an anomaly. A number of those situations have arisen because of legislation, which has already been referred to, Bill C-37, that the Conservative Party under Stephen Harper brought in and passed. Many people are in that position and, sadly, as the former speaker just highlighted, would not even know it. They would be going along in their own way thinking they are Canadian citizens until a day when maybe they need to communicate with the federal government, perhaps about a passport or some other issue that would require citizenship, and then it might come to the surface that they are a second generation and, therefore, should not have Canadian citizenship. The Canadian citizenship would then be taken away.

I do not think anyone among us would deny the opportunity for the member for York Centre's first-born daughter to move to Paris and spend a few years or however long there. Not having her child classified as a Canadian citizen would be unfair.

In looking at the legislation today, it is interesting, but we need to recognize that ministerial discretionary authority is already in place. I could not say with 100% certainty how all-encompassing it is, but from what I understand, there are dozens of cases of lost Canadians that the minister is able to deal with. I am very encouraged by that because I was not aware of that happening when I was the critic for immigration and citizenship for the Liberal Party when it had third party status. I know for a fact that over the last couple of years, citizenships have been granted to lost citizens.

Is there a way this can be improved upon? That is why we are having this debate today and there will be another hour of debate. Suffice to say that I generally believe that individuals inside this chamber understand and appreciate the importance of Canadian citizenship. As the member quoted, he has his own citizenship card. Many, possibly all of us, in terms of the pandemic, have had the opportunity to see that sense of pride that immigrants often display during citizenship courts.

Canada is a country that is very dependent on immigration. In my own home province of Manitoba, the population would have decreased if it were not for immigration to our province in the last 15 years. Immigrants have built our country. We need to have well thought-out policies and a system of fairness, a system that ensures that permanent residents become citizens.

I enjoy it when I have an opportunity to participate in citizenship courts. I remember, very vividly, a young lady being sworn in of Filipino heritage with a Canadian flag wrapped around her as they sang the national anthem for the very first time as a Canadian citizen. It brings tears to the eyes of many when we witness that. Citizenship is the greatest thing that we can provide. People will wear the Canadian flag with pride when they travel to Europe or other countries around the world as Canada is seen as the greatest country in the world to live. We might all be somewhat biased.

These are the types of issues that come up when we think of citizenship and everything that is acquired. I go back to the residents of Winnipeg North, with many first generation immigrants participating in those citizenship courts. Virtually every weekend I am meeting with permanent residents who I know some day will become Canadian citizens.

It takes 1,095 days to become a Canadian citizen. That means three years. There is a bit of a calculation. Technically, it is a minimum of three years in the last five years from the moment when one puts their application in that one has to reside in Canada. There are some issues even within that. I have brought up the issue, for example, of long-haul truck drivers, ones that drive back and forth between Canada and the United States. I want to ensure that people, and families in particular, are provided that opportunity to get citizenship because I have seen the value of that. I understand and appreciate Canada's diversity. It is second to no other country. I want to make sure that we get it right.

We have to ensure the integrity of the citizenship process. That is, in fact, priority one for me in recognizing how important it is that lost Canadians are, in fact, being provided the opportunity to have that citizenship as quickly as possible. That is why I believe in ministerial discretionary authority. If there are examples that members have, they should not hesitate to bring up those examples with the minister in question, no matter what happens in terms of debate on this particular piece of legislation. We all want to make sure that the people who are entitled to have it should have it. There are examples that I think we really need to work through.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Madam Speaker, for decades some Canadians have found themselves to be stateless due to a number of convoluted immigration laws. Some have found themselves all of a sudden losing their Canadian status and they do not know why.

In 2007, the UN listed Canada as one of the top offending countries for making their own people stateless. In 2009, the Conservatives said they were going to address this issue with Bill C-37. In fact, Jason Kenney was the minister of immigration then. Sadly, Bill C-37 did not properly address the lost Canadians issue. At the time, even Conservative minister Diane Finley acknowledged that Bill C-37 would not fix all of the cases of lost Canadians.

In fact, Jason Kenney created a brand new set of problems. For the purposes of this discussion, I will not get into the issues of how the Conservatives eliminated people's right to appeal when the government revoked their citizenship. I will simply focus on the issue of lost Canadians.

How did Bill C-37 not effectively deal with the age 28 issue with lost Canadians? When the government of the day did away with the age 28 rule with Bill C-37, in its wisdom it only applied it going forward. As such, those who turned 28 before 2009 were left behind. That means they remained as lost Canadians.

Affected Canadians caught up in this did not even know their citizenship was cancelled somewhere between 11 years and 15 years ago. For many it only came to light when they applied for something that required proof of citizenship, such as a Canadian passport. In some cases, because of Canada's archaic immigration laws, they discovered they were stateless. Others were faced with deportation, even though they were Canadians in every way prior to turning 28. It is just absurd.

I have met many lost Canadians whose lives have been turned upside down because of these unjust laws. Imagine someone who has lived all their life as a Canadian, has voted in elections, and one day wakes up to be told they no longer are Canadian.

I had the pleasure of meeting Byrdie Funk a number of years ago. She was caught up in this. She is a third-generation Canadian and had to fight this. It took her almost a decade to regain her citizenship, not because the law was changed; she had to shame the government to give her a special grant and to give her citizenship back.

Bill S-245 would fix this age 28 rule, and that is a good thing. However, this bill does not address the other issues for lost Canadians. Through Bill C-37, the Conservatives ended the extension of citizenship to second-generation Canadians born abroad, effectively creating two classes of Canadian citizenship. Preventing Canadians born abroad from passing their citizenship to their children if they were outside of Canada means the breaking up of families.

In the case of Patrick Chandler, when he was offered a job in British Columbia, he moved back to Canada, but he had to leave his wife and his children behind. That is the reality he was faced with as a second-generation Canadian who was born abroad. This is just plain wrong.

In another situation, a woman named Victoria Maruyama received her Canadian citizenship through her father as an immigrant from Vietnam. At 22, she moved to Japan to teach English and met her husband, a Japanese national. Her children were born in Japan, and as a result, they do not have citizenship through her, even though she had moved back to Canada. This is their reality.

In another situation, Gregory Burgess, a first-generation Canadian, and his wife, a Russian Canadian, were on a work visa in Hong Kong. Their child was born there and now their son is stateless. They tried to get their son Canadian citizenship, but the Government of Canada would not allow Mr. Burgess to pass on his Canadian citizenship to his baby. The government told them to apply to Russia, to get Russian citizenship through the mother. It is true. The government told them this right now, when there is a war that Putin is waging against Ukraine, an illegal war. It is unbelievable.

The message here is clear. Somehow, second-generation born-abroad Canadians are less worthy. These Canadians lost their ability to pass on their citizenship to their children. That is no thanks to the Conservatives and to Jason Kenney through Bill C-37.

Even though Bill C-37 was meant to fix the lost Canadian issues, many of the issues were not fixed, even though, in another situation, then ministers Jason Kenney and Chris Alexander had both asserted that Canadians were all British subjects prior to 1947.

That means that war heroes who fought for Canada are deemed British subjects, even though in 1943, for example, the Department of National Defence gave them documents indicating that they would be fighting the war as Canadians, as citizens of Canada. That is what was in the documents handed to those soldiers. The Conservatives would not recognize that.

Those war heroes have been left out as Canadians. They have been left behind. Some have passed on, but we should honour them and recognize them and their families. They were very much a part of Canada and should be recognized as Canadians.

Others were being discriminated against because of their age, gender and family status. Another individual, a Surrey resident, Jackie Scott, who was born in 1945 to a Canadian veteran and a British woman, was repeatedly denied citizenship despite having lived for decades in Canada. She was raised in Canada, effectively, and voted as an adult, and yet when she applied for her citizenship certificate in 2005, to her shock, she was told that she was not a Canadian. She had to launch a lawsuit against the federal government before the government would even take action to address the situation. Even though she voted previously and pretty well lived all of her life in Canada, she found herself, all of a sudden, without citizenship.

I could go on with a list of issues. I should note that when asked about lost Canadians in opposition, the now Prime Minister said that Minister Kenney needed to understand that the principles of Canadian citizenship need to be administered with compassion and openness, and that he simply was not addressing these Canadian issues.

The Liberal government had a choice to fix this problem and it did not do it, not since the 2015 election. That is why there are so many people who have lost their citizenship and now are lost Canadians. This needs to be fixed once and for all.

We need to address this issue. I have tabled a private members' bill to this effect. We can take that bill and work from there. We can make amendments to this bill, if they are not deemed to be out of scope or deemed to be out of order.

We do need to fix the lost Canadian issue. We have seen the havoc that it has created in people's lives and it needs to stop.

I want to thank all of the advocates, including Don Chapman, Randall Emery and so many others who have been fighting for Canada to right these laws and do away with these unjust discriminatory practices in our immigration laws.

Let the lost Canadians be recognized now.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Madam Speaker, even though I do not always agree with my colleagues from the other parties who sit here in the House, I tend to avoid getting into partisanship. I think I am even transpartisan, and often being transpartisan allows me to do my work properly for the people of my riding, who, since 2019, have allowed me to proudly represent them in my corner of the country, Lac‑Saint‑Jean.

Today I will speak not only for Quebeckers, but also for a good number of Canadians whose files at IRCC have fallen through the cracks for far too long.

Today, as the Bloc Québécois critic for immigration and citizenship, I want to talk about Canadian citizenship. Yes, members heard me correctly, because this affects everyone here. More specifically, I want to talk about Bill S‑245, an act to amend the Citizenship Act. It is a continuation of Bill C-37, which was unanimously passed in the House.

That is an example of cross-party co-operation. First, I want to quickly explain what this bill is about for those who are watching at home. Bill S‑245 seeks to correct a historic injustice by allowing Canadians who lost their citizenship because of past changes to the Citizenship Act or little-known regulations to regain it. We are talking about children of Canadian parents who were born abroad and who had their citizenship revoked simply because they failed to meet the requirement to apply to retain their citizenship before the age of 28, which is absolutely ridiculous.

These are people we now refer to as “lost Canadians”, those who were stripped of their citizenship because of an often little-known but truly ridiculous provision. According to the Department of Citizenship and Immigration's estimates, there are still between 100 and 200 people who have still not regained their citizenship. They are referred to as “lost Canadians”.

This bill corrects an oversight in the 2009 act, which missed a golden opportunity to do away with the requirement for people to apply to retain their citizenship when they turned 28. In fact, the main message of Bill S-245 is that we should be giving citizenship back to all of the people who lost it because of provisions in previous Canadian laws that were overly complex, unfair, sexist or even racist.

At the risk of ruining the surprise, I will say right away that the Bloc Québécois is in favour of Bill S‑245. If we think about it, this bill is perfectly in line with what our contemporary vision of citizenship should be. Once citizenship has been duly granted, it should never be taken away from an individual, with some exceptions. Only a citizen can freely renounce his or her citizenship.

Like all parties in the House, the Bloc Québécois supports and defends the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It states that “all are equal before the law”. In fact, citizenship is an egalitarian legal status given to all members of the same community. It confers privileges as well as duties.

In this case, the Canadian government has failed its citizens. This is a matter of principle. I do not believe I am alone in thinking that it is profoundly unfair that, even in 2022, people can lose their citizenship for reasons that they probably do not even know exist. These provisions are from another time, a time long ago when there were questionable ideas about what it meant to be a citizen of Canada. Time has remedied the situation and, if the reforms of the past have not been instructive enough, then politics must weigh in.

As we know, the process for recovering citizenship is much too complicated. There is no denying that the federal bureaucracy is not exactly super-efficient when it comes to handling immigration, refugee and citizenship files. I believe we have said quite a lot about this since returning to the House in September.

Just how slow is the government? The act was reformed in 2005, again in 2009 and yet again in 2015. How many reforms does it take? Many citizens were overlooked every time the act was reformed: men and women, soldiers' wives and children, children born abroad and members of first nations and Chinese-Canadian communities. The government did not do a good enough job of fixing the act, so these people were left out in the cold.

Let us look back in history. Don Chapman, a retired United Airlines pilot, fought to bring the plight of these citizens to the public's attention. Don Chapman discovered that he had lost his Canadian citizenship when his father immigrated to the United States. Thanks to his astute demonstration that this was a problem affecting many Canadians, including Roméo Dallaire, he was able to force Parliament to remedy the situation and pass the suite of legislative reforms before us today.

Bill S-245 seeks to ensure that the mistakes of the past are not repeated. I would also add one thing. Every time we check, the government backlog is worse. It seems to me that it would be a good idea to prevent problems from occurring in the first place and making us wait once again for the federal machinery to make things right.

What does it mean to “make things right” in this case? It means ensuring for once and for all that the constituents in our respective ridings get what belongs to them. It is not right that in 2022, 17 years after the first reform to correct the situation for lost Canadians, we are not getting anywhere. In a situation like this, it is up to the government to offer a solution to the individuals to regularize their status so that they can have their dignity for once and for all, like every other citizen.

Whether this bill affects hundreds of claimants or thousands makes no difference to me. It is a matter of principle. In no way does that stop us from taking action for the good of the people we are fortunate to represent and who put their trust in us. I will say it again: It is a matter of principle.

At the risk of repeating myself, I would like to conclude with this. Most of the time when I have the opportunity to speak in the House, it is about suggestions that come from the opposition. I think we are all on the same side when it comes to helping people, and rightly so. When the government listens to us and we all work together, it usually results in better programs.

As parliamentarians, we must tackle the problems facing our constituents with a great sense of duty, and we must set partisanship aside to do so. The people of Lac‑Saint‑Jean, whom I have had the honour to represent since 2019, along with all Quebeckers and Canadians, must be considered on an equal footing.

The situation facing the so-called “lost Canadians” should never have happened. I will say it again: Citizenship must be equal for all. Let us make one last reform, once and for all. We have to get it right this time, for reasons of equality, justice and principle, but also simply because enough is enough.

[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.

[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.

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.

Royal Assent

[The Deputy Speaker, 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.

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.

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.