Bill C-24 (Historical)

Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act

An Act to amend the Citizenship Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts

This enactment amends the Citizenship Act to, among other things, update eligibility requirements for Canadian citizenship, strengthen security and fraud provisions and amend provisions governing the processing of applications and the review of decisions.
Amendments to the eligibility requirements include
(a) clarifying the meaning of being resident in Canada;
(b) modifying the period during which a permanent resident must reside in Canada before they may apply for citizenship;
(c) expediting access to citizenship for persons who are serving in, or have served in, the Canadian Armed Forces;
(d) requiring that an applicant for citizenship demonstrate, in one of Canada’s official languages, knowledge of Canada and of the responsibilities and privileges of citizenship;
(e) specifying the age as of which an applicant for citizenship must demonstrate the knowledge referred to in paragraph (d) and must demonstrate an adequate knowledge of one of Canada’s official languages;
(f) requiring that an applicant meet any applicable requirement under the Income Tax Act to file a return of income;
(g) conferring citizenship on certain individuals and their descendants who may not have acquired citizenship under prior legislation;
(h) extending an exception to the first-generation limit to citizenship by descent to children born to or adopted abroad by parents who were themselves born to or adopted abroad by Crown servants; and
(i) requiring, for a grant of citizenship for an adopted person, that the adoption not have circumvented international adoption law.
Amendments to the security and fraud provisions include
(a) expanding the prohibition against granting citizenship to include persons who are charged outside Canada for an offence that, if committed in Canada, would constitute an indictable offence under an Act of Parliament or who are serving a sentence outside Canada for such an offence;
(b) expanding the prohibition against granting citizenship to include persons who, while they were permanent residents, engaged in certain actions contrary to the national interest of Canada, and permanently barring those persons from acquiring citizenship;
(c) aligning the grounds related to security and organized criminality on which a person may be denied citizenship with those grounds in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and extending the period during which a person is barred from acquiring citizenship on that basis;
(d) expanding the prohibition against granting citizenship to include persons who, in the course of their application, misrepresent material facts and prohibiting new applications by those persons for a specified period;
(e) increasing the period during which a person is barred from applying for citizenship after having been convicted of certain offences;
(f) increasing the maximum penalties for offences related to citizenship, including fraud and trafficking in documents of citizenship;
(g) providing for the regulation of citizenship consultants;
(h) establishing a hybrid model for revoking a person’s citizenship in which the Minister will decide the majority of cases and the Federal Court will decide the cases related to inadmissibility based on security grounds, on grounds of violating human or international rights or on grounds of organized criminality;
(i) increasing the period during which a person is barred from applying for citizenship after their citizenship has been revoked;
(j) providing for the revocation of citizenship of dual citizens who, while they were Canadian citizens, engaged in certain actions contrary to the national interest of Canada, and permanently barring these individuals from reacquiring citizenship; and
(k) authorizing regulations to be made respecting the disclosure of information.
Amendments to the provisions governing the processing of applications and the review of decisions include
(a) requiring that an application must be complete to be accepted for processing;
(b) expanding the grounds and period for the suspension of applications and providing for the circumstances in which applications may be treated as abandoned;
(c) limiting the role of citizenship judges in the decision-making process, subject to the Minister periodically exercising his or her power to continue the period of application of that limitation;
(d) giving the Minister the power to make regulations concerning the making and processing of applications;
(e) providing for the judicial review of any matter under the Act and permitting, in certain circumstances, further appeals to the Federal Court of Appeal; and
(f) transferring to the Minister the discretionary power to grant citizenship in special cases.
Finally, the enactment makes consequential amendments to the Federal Courts Act and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question.

Yes, under this system, dual nationals will be punished twice as much as those who hold only Canadian citizenship. They will be stripped of something they had, and that is a double punishment. It does create a two-tiered system.

I will go back to a point I made earlier. I hope that we will get an answer from the Conservatives and that they will stand up to speak.

If I were a dual national, that would not necessarily mean that I was, for example, a Moroccan citizen who came to Canada and got Canadian citizenship. It could be the opposite. I could be a Canadian citizen who obtained citizenship elsewhere. That would make me a dual national. I would be subject to the rules for dual nationals even though, at birth, I was just a Canadian citizen.

I hope we get an answer. Many questions about this bill remain unanswered, and I hope that the Conservatives will use the speaking time they have tonight to respond to these concerns and reassure Canadians citizens and the people of Sherbrooke who are watching us and asking themselves the same questions. I hope that the Conservatives can provide some reassurance in the next few minutes when they have a chance to speak.

[Marc-André Morin, NDP, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House this evening.

So far, I have found that all of this has been too complicated. Citizenship is a universal human value. It is a right in all civilized countries. Citizenship is a fundamental human right. We often send our troops to defend that right, to protect a country's citizens and their citizenship, as in Ukraine, for example. Some Ukrainians are going to find themselves with Russian passports without having asked for them.

Citizenship is part of our identity. Citizens of every country, wherever they may be in the world, know that they have a country they can depend on to help them and support them in difficult times. They know that that is an inalienable right.

There are a few exceptions. Some countries have unfair systems. For example, there are people who have been living in Switzerland for five generations who have not been able to obtain their citizenship. A public referendum is required to obtain Swiss citizenship. That is completely unfair.

The Poles have known the greatest suffering that can be inflicted on a people. They have been passed from hand to hand many times since the Middle Ages and have spent time as part of East Prussia, Russia and Ukraine. The borders were extremely fluid, which caused major problems for the Polish people.

There is the case of the Ukrainians, who lived under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Some of them came to Canada with Austro-Hungarian passports and were interned in camps during the Second World War because they were citizens of an enemy power. However, that enemy power no longer even existed because the empire had been dissolved. Canada was unable to sign a peace treaty with that country. These people, who were law-abiding citizens, were interned and forced to work under terrible conditions.

There is also the case of the Kurds in Syria. For 30 years, the Syrian government has refused to issue them identity papers and give them passports and travel documents. These people do not exist.

Our citizenship should be much simpler than that. We should meet the conditions for becoming a citizen and commit to obeying the rules for a certain time for confirmation. If all goes well, then we become a citizen. This should be irrevocable. If we commit a crime, then we should face the same punishment as other Canadian citizens. I do not see why there would be two categories.

Where there are arbitrary decisions, there is always injustice. Crime has to be dealt with by the justice system and the courts. That is what we make laws for. If we decide to punish someone by revoking their citizenship, we are adding extra punishment. That is where we start to violate section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, by imposing the equivalent of extra punishment because we do not consider these people will already have been sentenced by the justice system.

On top of that, they have to go back to a country they once fled, usually for their own safety.

When we think of people convicted abroad for crimes punishable in Canada, that means we may be putting our trust in countries that are not governed by the rule of law. For example, in China, the Uyghur have been beaten, tortured and persecuted by the Chinese government for decades. They end up in prison for completely frivolous reasons. Many have criminal records. They might suffer as a result of such a measure. We must not create more victims. There are already too many in Canada, such as the Italian and Japanese citizens who suffered during World War II.

By making arbitrary decisions and creating a very complex maze, we are making things complicated for people for no good reason. Citizenship is not just a privilege that we give to someone. For example, a British lord who renounced his British citizenship and his Canadian citizenship can become a Canadian citizen again, even when he gets out of a U.S. prison. There are limits. We have to look at whether we are giving the same value to human life and the same rights to everyone, without making distinctions or creating categories.

As for the slow-moving immigration system—and all of my colleagues will likely agree with this—the majority of the work being done in my offices consists of dealing with endless immigration cases, which go on forever. I have seen only one satisfied person in three years. That was last month. He was able to bring his wife of eight years to Canada. He was happy that day because it was the culmination of eight years of working to bring his wife to Canada.

There are plenty of little traps and arbitrary things in this bill. There is a lot of information that is to be kept secret, but that kind of thing should be left to the KGB or its modern-day equivalent. We are not in that kind of country or, at least, we never used to be and we never want to be.

I hope that my colleagues opposite will think things through. It is a waste of time to pass a bill that will very likely be rejected by the Supreme Court. Winning a vote and then screaming like a band of Vikings bursting into a church in the Middle Ages does not lend legitimacy to the bill or the process. It takes frank and honest discussion to create a legitimate law that offers a solution to a problem. The government should not be trying to set traps.

There may be some good ideas in the bill, but the Conservatives usually find the wrong way to do the right thing.

There are still some flaws. For example, it is good that the government is taking action against the fraudsters who exploit immigrants and use extortion. There are some good measures, but we need to discuss all of the other points more seriously.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, I have been sitting here for a few hours today, and it is a pleasure to do that, of course. It is interesting that the member opposite said he wants to hear a frank and honest discussion when we have heard the same two talking points. I think the New Democrats have been handing the same sheet around all day over there because it has basically been the same discussion for the entire time. One is about wait times, and the second about citizenship and whether Canadian citizenship is a right or privilege. I am a little disappointed in the NDP.

Typically we hear this moral equivalence thing that happens over there. Tonight, one of the NDP members was giving an indication that if someone is walking down the street and says, “Oh, oh, oh”, somehow the Canadian government is going to be able to revoke that person's citizenship. Another comment was made that people may find themselves in precarious situations and lose their citizenship. A third one was that people who commit crimes might lose their citizenship.

The New Democrats talked about doubly victimizing people, but I think we need to be clear on what we are talking about. It is not a problem of someone walking the streets who all of a sudden loses his or her citizenship. We are talking about specific acts of terrorism and treason. If I go to another country and get citizenship, I make a commitment and then decide that I do not want to follow the laws of that country, that I want to betray that country or carry out terrorist acts in that country, I would suggest that I probably do not have the right to citizenship.

My question for the member opposite is this. Is it too much for the NDP to ask that someone who has sworn the oath of citizenship refrains from acts of terrorism and treason in order to maintain Canadian citizenship?

[Marc-André Morin, NDP, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is always the same thing with the Conservatives. They try to claim that we side with criminals, terrorists and pedophiles. If someone commits a crime, they should be punished. If that person has not yet been granted citizenship or just recently became a citizen, they could even risk losing their citizenship. That could make sense in some cases. What bothers me is the fact that the government is creating two classes of Canadian citizens and that some citizens would have more rights than others. I find that worrisome.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. The minister says that this bill is meant to reiterate the government's commitment to reduce backlogs and improve processing times while strengthening the integrity of Canadian citizenship. The examples my colleague gave and the ever-increasing backlogs and processing times prove the opposite. Could my colleague give us some examples he has seen in his riding that prove how wait times have had adverse and negative consequences on his constituents?

[Marc-André Morin, NDP, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we see this every day in our constituency offices. Wait times are sometimes so bad that the health certificates sent in with applications expire. This delays the process by several months. No one wins at the end of the day.

I even saw one case in which a citizen was forced to return to his country. After being attacked by fanatical Islamic terrorists, receiving death threats and being attacked in his own home, he left his country and his business. He then tried to return to settle his affairs and recover some of his property. Because he was absent for a few months, he was forced to start the process over. The last I heard, he was still facing deportation.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to stand up as the deputy critic for citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism on behalf of the official opposition to speak to Bill C-24, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

I would like to start by making a few introductory comments and observations about citizenship.

There are a lot of things we debate in this House that we can have varied opinions on whether they are a matter of policy and philosophy, but there are certain issues that I think are foundational. They go to the very fabric of who we are as a country. Our democratic system and electoral system is one. We saw a vigorous debate over the Conservative government's attempt to change the rules about our democratic elections in this House, and how they were forced to back down when Canadians saw the Conservatives trying to use politics to bend the rules of the system to benefit themselves. I think we are seeing a bit of the same thing with citizenship.

Citizenship is something that invokes a feeling of pride in Canadians. There are a number of values that Canadians want to see surrounding the concept of citizenship. One of those concepts is equality. Fundamentally, I think Canadians believe in the equality of all Canadians. It is something that is a benefit of citizenship, and something that once one becomes a citizen, whether it is by being born here or naturalized here, a person aspires to and receives an equality that ought not be taken away from them.

People want to see integrity in our citizenship process. They want to see fairness. Canadians are known around the world, and in our self image, we quite rightfully like to think of ourselves as being a people who believe in the fundamental concepts of fairness and due process. It is something that attracts people to this country. When I think of why people immigrate to Canada, some of what they are attracted to are the concepts of democracy, equality, and fairness.

Canadians also want due process. Fundamentally, we believe in the rule of law. I hear the phrase “rule of law” tossed around and used in this place a lot. I am not sure that we have a lot of discussion about what that means. Rule of law means that decisions that affect people's rights are not taken precipitously or capriciously. Rather, they are done by independent people in accordance with rules that are independent, objective, and impartial. They do not want politics injected.

Another reason that a lot of people like to come to Canada is because a lot of states around the world are marked by corruption. If people want to get their utilities, water or lights, hooked up, they have to know someone or to pay money to a government official. That is the most egregious example of the mixing of politics with the rule of law. That leads to the separation of politics and the judicial/quasi-judicial process.

I have heard successive Conservative ministers of immigration rise in this House repeatedly and say that it is inappropriate for them to rule on or decide individual cases. They will not even talk about them in the House. They talk about having arm's-length, independent, professional civil servants make the rulings on individual cases that deal with immigration or citizenship. The reason I bring this up is because I think this bill contains some things that are worthy of support, but it offends a fair number of the concepts I have just raised.

About eight months ago, I had a conversation with the member for Wellington—Halton Hills. He decried the use of what he called dog-whistle politics. Dog-whistle politics are where we raise a political issue to send a message to people that is not really what we are saying, but it is the message it conveys. I hope it is not the case, but I fear that this bill has underneath it some dog-whistle politics. Messages are being sent to the Canadian public that sow fear, division, and distrust.

When we start introducing concepts that introduce two-tier citizenship, and when we are being invited to judge who is a real citizen and who is not, who has bona fides and who does not, who can be a Canadian citizen forever and who can lose it, these are fundamental questions that involve the fabric of our country.

This bill does a lot of things, some of which I will speak positively about, and some that I think are problematic.

On February 6, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration tabled Bill C-24, which includes sweeping changes to Canada's citizenship laws. The minister stated that it represented the first comprehensive reforms to the Citizenship Act since 1977. He claimed that it “will protect the value of Canadian citizenship for those who have it while creating a faster and more efficient process for those applying to get it.”

First, it is news to me that we have not had valuation of Canadian citizenship. People in my riding of Vancouver Kingsway do now value Canadian citizenship and always have. This is a solution in search of a problem. I have never heard a Canadian in our country who has said that they do not value Canadian citizenship.

In terms of a faster and more efficient process for applying to get it, with respect, I see very little if anything in Bill C-24 that would speed up the process of citizenship, which, by the way, has been a problem under the current government and the previous Liberal government as well. Wait lists in our country across the board in the immigration system are unacceptably long, and they are getting longer.

Bill C-24 would do a number of things. It would put more power in the hands of the minister, including the authority to grant or revoke citizenship. It would provide no real solution to reduce the growing backlog and the citizenship application processing delays.

It would eliminate the use of time spent in Canada as a non-permanent resident to count toward the residency requirements before one could apply for citizenship. It includes an “intent to reside” in Canada provision whereby an official in government could make a determination of people's intentions to reside in Canada and strip them of their citizenship if they believed that the intent was not there.

It would prohibit the granting of citizenship to persons who had been charged outside of Canada with an offence that, if committed in Canada, would constitute an indictable offence. In other words, we can strip Canadians of their citizenship if they commit an act abroad that is an indictable offence if they have dual citizenship.

It would increase residency requirements from three out of four years to four out of six years, and it would clarify the requirement of physical residence in Canada prior to citizenship.

It includes stiffer penalties for fraud.

It would extend citizenship to lost Canadians.

It would expedite citizenship for permanent residents serving in the Canadian Forces.

It would also implement stricter rules for fraudulent immigration consultants.

It would require applicants aged 14 to 64 years old—previously 18 to 54 years old—to pass a test demonstrating an adequate knowledge of French or English.

Although it is not in Bill C-24 but concomitant with the bill, the Conservative government has tripled the application fees for citizenship.

Everyone agrees that Canadian citizenship is something of enormous value. I do not think anyone wants to see an approach that plays politics with this issue. It is something that we have seen all too frequently from the Conservative government.

With respect to the bill, it is high time that the issue of lost Canadians is addressed. This has been a very unfair situation that has gone on for far too long, and I am pleased to see it addressed in the bill.

However, other parts of the bill are, of course, increasingly and very seriously concerning. For example, the question of revoking citizenship in various scenarios has raised significant legal concerns. We are always concerned about and opposed to the concentration of more power in the hands of a minister of the crown, inherently a political figure.

We were hoping that the minister would commit to working with us to bring real improvements to our citizenship laws, but again, the government has opted to go with a bill that is, in many people's view, likely unconstitutional. The amendments that the official opposition brought to committee were, again, par for the course for the Conservative government, as every one of them was rejected out of hand.

Since March 2008, more than 25 major changes have been made to immigration methods, rules, legislation, and regulations by the government. More and more changes have been made since the Conservatives formed a majority government. These have included a moratorium on parental and grandparental sponsorships, reducing family reunification, punishing vulnerable refugees and increasing the number of temporary foreign workers to meet the requirements of the business sector in our country. However, the extensive changes to the Canadian immigration system have not made the system more effective or fair.

As an MP with a riding that is fundamentally made up of new Canadians, I say we should be making citizenship more valuable. We should be making it more streamlined and faster for those honest, hard-working people who seek it. The bill before us has been rightly described as a bill that makes citizenship harder to get and easier to lose.

People come to our country so they can get a passport, vote, and to participate fully in a democratic society. However, the bill would not do that. When we give the minister power to make decisions on a balance of probabilities that someone has obtained citizenship in a way that the minister does not like and we do not have a court process to check it, that is worrisome. It has no place in a country with the rule of law.

[The Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

It being 11:10 p.m., pursuant to an order made earlier today, it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the report stage of the bill now before the House.

The question is on Motion No. 1. A vote on this motion also applies to Motions Nos. 2 to 13. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And five or more members having risen:

Pursuant to an order made earlier today, the division stands deferred until Tuesday, June 10, at the conclusion of the proceedings related to the business of supply. The recorded division will also apply to Motions Nos. 2 to 13.

The House resumed from June 9 consideration of Bill C-24, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, as reported (with amendment) from the committee.