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

[An hon. member]

Sure they can.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

No, Mr. Speaker, they cannot get a Canadian passport--

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

Order. There is just too much chatter in the House. I know you will all find it surprising, but I am having some difficulty hearing the member for Winnipeg North. Could we keep the chatter down please?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, people cannot get a Canadian passport until they get their Canadian citizenship, so if they are waiting for three years to get their citizenship and their country of birth passport has expired and they have an emergency and have to leave Canada, that means they are obligated to get the passport renewed by their country of birth. That is costing people time, money, and resources, because the government has not been able to reduce the processing period for citizenship. Those are the types of real issues people are having to deal with because the government has been negligent in terms of processing times for citizenship.

Another example is the provincial election in Ontario. Whether it is the provinces of Ontario, Quebec, or British Columbia, there have been tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of individuals who have not been able to vote in provincial elections, because the government has allowed the citizenship processing time to hit that two to three year mark. If the government had done its job and kept that processing time to 12 months or less, we would have had more Canadians participating in our democracy. There are hundreds of thousands of people who call Canada home and qualify for citizenship, and the government's priority has not been to try to get into the hands of those individuals their citizenship.

Even by the minister of immigration's own admission, this bill is designed to reduce the processing times. We did not need legislation to reduce the processing times. It might help, but we did not require the legislation to do it. What we require is that the minister and the government have the political will to reduce processing times for citizenship. Although the current minister of immigration would argue that we have a huge demand of 333,000, some of the lowest demands on the citizenship branch in the last 15 years were while the former minister of immigration, his colleague, was responsible for the department and the processing time was making its greatest jumps. Therefore, the argument the minister of immigration was using this evening is bogus. That is the reality.

The reason we have the legislation in the first place, the government and the minister of immigration will tell us, is that it is all about reducing processing times, at least in good part. I would argue that the minister has not. That is why I suggested at the beginning of my comments that what the government is good at doing is talking about fixing problems, when what it does not tell people is that the problems it needs to fix are the problems it has created. The biggest problem for the government is that it creates problems in immigration, whether it is the processing times for citizenship or issues relating to the temporary foreign worker program.

The Liberal Party did create the temporary foreign worker program, but the problem was created from that government. We did not have a problem. We did not have the calls that we have today.

When the Liberal Party was in government, the average was about—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Order, please. I want to remind members that there will be a question and comment period in just about five and a half minutes. If they could just hold off all their comments until then, I know the Chair would appreciate it. I am sure the member for Winnipeg North would appreciate it as well.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

I appreciate your intervention, Mr. Speaker. The point is that the government is constant in spreading misinformation. It created the problem within the temporary foreign worker program. That is why the Conservatives have had to make the changes today. They created the problems with the backlog in immigration. That is why they have to do things such as hit the delete button on the skilled worker program, which wiped out the applications of 300,000 skilled workers. The former minister of immigration created half of those in three months when he issued his ministerial instructions on the skilled worker program.

It is the government that has created the problems within immigration and there is no difference in this legislation. Why do I say this? Because I believe there are important issues that need to be dealt with in regard to immigration and the government has been unable to address many of those issues.

Let me give a good example of one that comes up every week at my constituency office. It is the issue of visiting visas. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of visiting visas that I believe ultimately should have, and could have, been approved if the government had done its work and improved the system.

I have a very difficult time when, for example, people are in a hospital on their deathbeds and they cannot get a sibling into Canada to visit them. These types of cases happen far too often. It is about priorities and the government has not been doing a job in addressing these priorities.

When I look at Bill C-24, it deals with the issue of citizenship, but it also deals with other issues that will have a fairly profound impact. We are establishing a two-tier citizenship. If the government were to take that aspect of the legislation out of Bill C-24 and have a free vote on the issue, I would suggest that it would not pass. I know there are a number of Conservative members of Parliament who are uncomfortable with the bill. We saw a sampling of that when a minister stood in his place and challenged the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration in regard to that very issue.

There are issues within citizenship such as the cash grab. When the government introduced the fact that it would bring in this legislation, it dropped the legislation and dropped the increase at the same time to the public. The Conservatives are going to increase the application fees. When we say 300,000 a year and get an extra $200-plus from each individual, we are talking about a significant cash grab.

When we say we have to get English language testing done, or IELS tests, who pays for that? What was the problem? Was there a huge outcry saying that we had to force people to get the IELS exams done? There will be a substantial cost for that.

The Conservatives are making it more difficult for individuals to acquire their citizenship. I do not understand it, and I have not heard the argument for that from the them. They seem to stand in their place and say that this bill is all about patriotism, about Canada and how wonderful it is to be a Canadian, and how proud we should be. That is their only justification for all of their increases and changes.

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have been listening to the member relating how many immigrants the Liberals had on their list and how many we had on our list. I have been in the House for 10 years. I was here when the Liberals were in power, and I was here well before the hon. member. When we took over in 2006, the Liberals had 800,000 people on their list. The prediction was it would take six years to get through that list.

At the moment, our list is 350,000, and if the bill is passed, we will get it done in two years.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member has an issue because he is listening to the Conservative spin.

I may not have been in the House of Commons for as long as the member, but I have been an elected official for over 20 years and I have been dealing with immigration and citizenship throughout that period.

Even as an MLA, I dealt with it. Manitoba excels in the provincial nominee program more than any other province per capita. I understand the way immigration works The absolutely worst increase to the backlog was when the former minister of immigration brought in the special ministerial instruction for skilled workers. Then the worst action ever taken against immigration is when that same minister hit the delete button on skilled worker program, deleting 300,000.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, this whole mess of backlogs was created by the Liberals first, then compounded by the Conservatives.

Let me tell the House how the Conservatives want to solve this. If an individual is on a waiting list to have surgery, the Conservatives say they want to reduce the waiting list, but we do not want anybody else getting on the waiting list. That is how they want to reduce the backlog.

I heard from many citizens, from England, Romania, Germany. Their concern is that if they are convicted in our country, they be deported back to where they migrated from.

Could the hon. member answer that question for me very clearly? Unfortunately the government is not answering the question.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, based on the legislation, if it passes as it is, in certain circumstances, those who are dual citizens will in fact be deported, because they will be stripped of their citizenship.

Let me get to the member's first comment, because he saw fit, as other New Democrats do, to take shots at the Liberals. I can tell the member that the worst increases in backlogs in the provincial nominee program, which is an immigration program in the province of Manitoba, occurred under the NDP administration. Even though the New Democrats have never been in office in Ottawa, they should at least attempt to try to give the impression that they would do better.

I can assure the member that when the Liberals were in government, the only area in which there was a lengthy backlog was in fact being improved upon, and that was through the parents. That is because we believe, as Liberals, that it is important to have a family class. We were very critical when the government of the day, the Conservatives, froze that program.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Winnipeg North mentioned the fact that he was having trouble getting visas, or some visas were not being accepted for family members who were sick or ill and wanted to have siblings come and visit them.

Our office in Montreal is aware of a lot of young immigrant families having children. In some cases both parents are working, or there is already more than one child, or the other spouse is probably working two or three jobs just to keep the family afloat. Therefore, there are a lot of requests to have the parents come over. Nine out of ten of these requests are refused.

I am not sure if the hon. member sees the same thing happening in his neck of the woods.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question. It gets right down to the issue at hand. There are some very important immigration issues we should be dealing with and the government has failed in dealing with them in a fashion.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

Name one.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member asks me to “name one”. There is the very issue that my colleague just mentioned. We have family members who are living abroad and want to come to Canada to visit, to support families, to provide care for their grandchildren, or to be in Canada while a sibling is dying, or to participate in a marriage of a child. There are numerous reasons.

It is amazing. We are not talking about hundreds. We are talking about thousands who are being denied that opportunity. In some cases what this is saying is that a brother will never be able to see his brother who is dying in the hospital. That is just wrong. These are the types of changes we need to push for, reforms of our visitors visas.