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

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am particularly interested in the topic of backlogs, which my colleague talked about in his speech.

He said that the bill will ensure that applications are processed within 12 months. I have great respect for the hon. member, and I apologize for my skepticism, but I have to say that every time the government promises that the process will be sped up, it actually slows down. There are plenty of examples, such as employment insurance, but that is not what we are talking about.

What in the bill will ensure that applications are processed within 12 months and convince us that this is more than just lip service?

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

Mr. Speaker, again, I thank the hon. member for that question. I think that is a pertinent question.

My understanding is that we will be moving from the old system, where we had a three-step process, to a new system, where we will have a one-step process. Quite frankly, there will be more decision-making powers in the hands of the highly trained civil servants who will be looking at this aspect of the act.

It should allow us, and it may take a bit of time to put it in place, to go from a 22- or 23-month backlog to a 12-month process for applying for citizenship and having it granted, if one qualifies.

[The Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Resuming debate. I would remind hon. members that, starting now, the length of speeches will be 10 minutes, not 20 minutes. Members should adjust the length of their speeches accordingly.

The hon. member for Trois-Rivières.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your announcing the bad news with a smile.

Since I will not have nearly enough time to get through all of the points I wanted to make to the House, I will take a few minutes to comment on this paradox: I consider myself lucky to have the opportunity to speak to Bill C-24. It should not be luck, though, it should be a right in the House of Commons. All MPs who want to talk about a bill should have the chance to do so, thereby reflecting the diversity of the citizens they represent. Unfortunately, we are bound by the 65th time allocation, which means that many members who wish to speak will not be able to. That is why I consider myself lucky in spite of it all. I will probably buy a lottery ticket when the House adjourns around midnight.

Let us get back to Bill C-24, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts. Canada is a land of immigrants. The founding peoples built a welcoming country where everyone can feel free to settle and contribute to the nation's prosperity while living our shared values. We are all, to varying degrees, immigrants. Some of our families go back generations, while others are relative newcomers. Canadian immigration laws are therefore an important part of our identity and even of our uniqueness as a country.

In 1947, the Canadian Citizenship Act created a distinction between “Canadian citizen” and “British subject”. It also specified that both Canadian citizens by birth and naturalized citizens were entitled to the same privileges and were subject to the same responsibilities and obligations. The laws were amended in 1977. On February 6, 2014, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration introduced Bill C-24, which would bring about a major overhaul of Canadian immigration laws.

Has the time come to change them? Is our immigration system still dysfunctional? Sometimes, yes. Some of the bill's proposed changes to the Citizenship Act have been a long time coming. They fix problems with the existing system and are very welcome. For example, one provision sets out stricter regulations for immigration consultants who sell fraudulent services at high prices, taking advantage of vulnerable refugees and people who want to immigrate.

I want to be very clear about this: we are urging the government to create strict laws to crack down on dishonest immigration consultants. We support measures that tackle fraud, such as giving the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canada Border Services Agency more resources to detect fraudsters.

However, some clauses really change the rules of the game and have to be denounced. Before getting into the details of some of the provisions of the bill, I would like to caution my colleagues on the government side. Citizenship and immigration policy must not be left in the hands of just anyone. This is an issue that directly affects the collective identity of Canadians and the fragile balance in our multicultural society. Please, let us not play petty politics with such a sensitive issue.

Given the recent election results in the European Union, for example, it would be presumptuous to believe that Canada will never have to deal with feelings of exclusion or xenophobia within its population. Let us not think we are any smarter than the other states that wanted to score political points with immigration issues.

On that point, I unfortunately find it hard to trust the current Conservative government for the following reasons. Citizenship is a matter of law and must be kept out of the hands of politicians as much as possible. The bill in fact proposes allowing politicians, more specifically the minister, to interfere in granting and revoking citizenship. We are seeing a leitmotif, a repeated approach in a number of Conservative bills, which seek to give the ministers more and more powers.

Bill C-24 seeks to give the minister many new powers, including the power to grant or revoke the citizenship of dual citizens.

The government has a strong tendency to create laws that concentrate power in the hands of ministers. This way of doing things is not good for democracy. There is no other way to say it.

The NDP does not want people to be exposed to the possibility that the minister will make arbitrary decisions about their case based on political motivations or suspicions rather than on evidence that could be put before a court.

If this bill is passed, I wonder whether the minister will have the courage to disclose the list of people to whom he is going to unilaterally grant citizenship and his reasons for doing so, of course. Unless he does, there will be reason for suspicion. We must have both transparency and the appearance of transparency.

The minister is no substitute for justice. Take for example, cases where people are granted citizenship as a result of fraud. Usually, it would be up to the courts to enforce the law. With this bill, the minister can act unilaterally. This is a serious abuse of political power and proof of the Conservatives' contempt for Canada's judiciary. Unfortunately, this is not the first time this has happened.

Why are we concerned about the recent amendments? The NDP is not systematically opposed to all the amendments and improvements proposed in this bill. However, unfortunately, we know what the Conservatives are up to.

Since March 2008, more than 25 major changes have been made to immigration-related procedures, rules, laws and regulations. More and more changes have been made since the Conservatives won a majority. Coincidence or ideology? I will let people decide for themselves.

Here are a few examples: the moratorium on sponsoring parents and grandparents, the approval of fewer family reunification applications, and the punishment of vulnerable refugees. The sweeping changes that the Conservatives have made to the Canadian immigration system have not made the system fairer or more effective.

As proof, I have many immigration files that I have worked on in my own riding of Trois-Rivières, a city with a population of 134,000. Before I was elected, I mistakenly believed that Trois-Rivières was rather homogenous. However, just a few weeks after I was elected, I discovered just how multicultural this riding really is, and since then, I have been constantly dealing with immigration files, even the simplest of which take a considerable amount of time to resolve.

Many organizations have raised concerns about several provisions of the bill. These are not political organizations, and the vast majority of them practise immigration and citizenship law and are very familiar with this legislation. Why then do these organizations seem so opposed to this new bill? They likely oppose it because it does not address the real problem.

The real problem with citizenship and immigration, the problem criticized by all the groups, is the inefficiency, or rather the slowness, of the system and the decision-making process. We have been debating this bill for a few hours in the House, and I have heard little to assure me that the measures proposed in this bill will effectively enable people waiting for responses to get them more quickly.

Unfortunately, this bill does not provide any real solutions that would reduce the ever-increasing number of delays and the citizenship application processing wait times.

There are currently 320,000 people—yes, 320,000—waiting for their applications to be processed. Right now, the processing wait time is approximately 31 months. In 2009 the wait time was 15 months. The government would have us believe that the minister can wave his magic wand and this wait time will drop to 12 months, but no one knows the details. There is a lot of uncertainty here.

The Conservatives have never managed to solve this problem. The backlog of applications and the processing times have doubled under their watch. Furthermore, cuts to the public service will most definitely not help resolve this problem. That is the most significant problem with our current immigration system. The Conservatives only seem to be taking this problem seriously in their rhetoric. In practice, we hear very little about concrete actions.

Let us now move on to the issue of integration. Arriving in our country and becoming established in our community are very important steps in the life of immigrants. This also represents an individual or family challenge that the government can facilitate. That way, we can make it easier for newcomers to integrate into our country and for all of us to live together.

However, one of the bill's provisions weakens the progressive integration and welcoming of families that arrive in Canada. If this bill is passed without amendment, citizenship applicants between the ages of 14 and 64 will henceforth have to pass a test assessing their knowledge of French or English. Previously, this applied to people between 18 and 54 years of age.

Let us be clear: this is not about questioning the importance of having immigrants speak either of the official languages or even both official languages. I am just wondering why the age at which candidates will have to take the test is changing from 18 to 14. I will go back to my teaching experience, which was not that long ago. When a student failed an exam, the first thing the teacher wanted to know was what he or she could have done to ensure the student's success.

The bill is not very clear about what will happen if the candidate fails the language test, which will be administered to children as young as 14 and to older adults, for whom learning a second or third language is much more difficult. What is more, the bill is mum on any assistance that might be provided to these people to ensure that they pass the language test.

The NDP contends that the backlogs are the biggest challenge when it comes to immigration. I talked about that earlier. The minister acknowledges that the wait times are increasing, but he is not proposing any real solutions to resolve the problem.

We are against this government adopting increasingly restrictive immigration measures, based on secret and arbitrary decisions made by the minister in cabinet.

[François Pilon, NDP, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague on a great speech.

Given the new powers that the minister would have if this bill were to pass, what are my colleague's thoughts on the following scenario? Two people come to the minister's office with identical cases, but one is a major Conservative Party backer and the other is a union boss, as they like to say. Would the two be treated the same way?

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Laval—Les Îles for his very good question.

The sad thing about my answer is that I cannot answer that question. Of course, I have an idea what the answer might be, and I definitely understand the concern he is expressing in his question.

The real answer is that we will never know why one person is granted citizenship while another has his citizenship revoked, because that will be a secret closely guarded by the minister's office.

This is a definite tendency for this government. It is giving more and more powers to ministers while making all of its decisions more and more secretively. This ends up making governance more and more obscure.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my esteemed colleague touched on a fundamental issue. The Conservative approach involves concentrating more and more power in the hands of fewer and fewer individuals.

To make good decisions, one must consult others and have all of the necessary information, but that is being neglected here. A minister does not necessarily have all of the tools to make good decisions.

It is a real shame that the Conservative government has chosen to defend itself by saying that it is tackling a problem created by the Liberals and that it will shorten the waiting list. I wonder if it is achieving that simply by eliminating people from the list. Their approach should be more compassionate. What does my colleague think?

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for Pontiac for his question.

In many areas, including this one, what works in theory does not work in practice. What the Conservatives are putting in place with their bills, which eventually become law, is not in synch with what MPs have to deal with in their constituency offices.

To date, I do not see anything in Bill C-24, other than the fine principles, to reassure me. It does not contain any measures that I can use as examples to tell my constituents that the Conservatives did their homework and that this bill should be passed quickly because it will finally provide a mechanism to quickly meet their demands. I do not see anything of the sort. My three years in Parliament tell me that I should not expect that it is going to happen.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, one of the things that concerns me in Bill C-24 is proposed section 10, which says that the act will make it so that the immigration minister can strip any Canadian of citizenship if the person is convicted of a terrorism offence, even if it happens to occur outside of Canada.

Right now Mohamed Fahmy, an Egyptian-Canadian journalist with Al Jazeera, has been detained in Cairo and has been charged with terrorism. It seems to me that this journalist could easily be caught up in this particular law.

This has been brought forward by the Canadian Bar Association, but earlier this evening the minister indicated he believed that the Canadian Bar Association was misguided.

Does the member think, given the situation regarding Mohamed Fahmy, that perhaps the minister may be wrong?

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, if I had to choose between the bar's opinion and the minister's, I would choose the bar's, if only because members of the bar got together and came to a clear consensus. The bill before us is steering us down the path my colleague referred to.

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am really honoured to have this opportunity to speak in support of Bill C-24, which would help prevent fraud in the citizenship program. It would protect it from abuse and preserve its integrity.

Poll after poll suggests that people from around the world would choose Canada as the country they would most want to live in. Why not? We have the best quality of life. As former Prime Minister John Diefenbaker said:

I am a Canadian, a free Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship God in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind.

Canada stands as a model of how people of different cultures, ethnicities, religions, and beliefs can live and work together in peace, prosperity, and mutual respect. That is what it means to be Canadian.

Because Canadian citizenship is so valuable, many people are prepared to misrepresent facts to make it appear that they qualify for citizenship. For example, they may pretend to live in Canada, when in fact they are living abroad. Ongoing large-scale fraud investigations have identified more than 3,000 citizens and 5,000 permanent residents linked to major investigations, a majority of them related to residence. In addition, nearly 2,000 individuals linked to the citizenship fraud investigations have withdrawn their applications.

More than 85% of citizenship fraud involves falsifying residence. In typical cases, permanent residents have used the services of crooked consultants to circumvent the law to fraudulently establish evidence of residence in Canada while living abroad most, if not all, of the time.

Media reports in recent years have highlighted some of the actions taken to simulate residence in Canada. Some of the most common examples are creating home addresses by using the address of a friend or relative in Canada; paying a building owner to rent an address, usually by a consultant, or using a postal service outlet; purchasing telephones and having someone in Canada use them to create a record of incoming or outgoing calls; opening a bank account, maintaining a healthy balance, and giving the ATM access card to someone in Canada to perform regular in-Canada transactions on the account.

Canadians know that citizenship sits at the heart of our democratic institutions. The Canadian people expect their government to protect the integrity of the citizenship process. Even a small number of crooked consultants who facilitate this type of fraud represent a substantial problem, as this undermines the program and the integrity and value of Canadian citizenship. That is why Bill C-24 proposes measures to help combat fraud and to protect the citizenship program from further abuse.

In short, the strengthening Canadian citizenship act would give the government the legal authority to designate a regulatory body whose members would be authorized to act as consultants in citizenship matters. This would ensure that citizenship consultants were held to the same professional and ethical standards as immigration consultants and would help prevent fraud in the citizenship program.

Another serious issue is that the penalties for fraud in the current citizenship act have not increased since 1977 and are ineffective in deterring individuals from committing citizenship related offences, such as misrepresentation. The current penalty for citizenship fraud is a mere $1,000, the maximum fine, which is $4,000 in 2014 dollars, or one year in prison, or both.

We need to prevent fraudsters from becoming citizens, and the introduction of stiffer penalties would help deter people from committing citizenship fraud.

The proposed new penalty for fraud is a fine to a maximum of $100,000 or five years in prison, or both, which would modernize the penalty for fraud in the Citizenship Act. It would also be the same as the penalty for the equivalent offence under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, or IRPA, thereby bringing the citizenship program in line with the immigration program.

The proposed legislation would also add a provision to refuse an application for misrepresentation of material facts and to bar applicants who misrepresent such facts from reapplying for five years. This would help deter fraud and would also bring the Citizenship Act in line with the IRPA.

Revocation is an important tool to safeguard the value of Canadian citizenship and to protect the integrity of our citizenship program. Bill C-24 would streamline the process for the government to revoke citizenship from those who are discovered to have lied or cheated on their citizenship applications. This is important, because the current revocation process can be complex and cumbersome. It can also take an inordinate amount of time to take citizenship away from someone who should not have obtained Canadian citizenship in the first place. If we want to get serious about cracking down on those who seek to undermine the value of our citizenship, it is imperative that we be in a position to revoke their citizenship in a timely manner, as proposed under Bill C-24. Individuals who have had their citizenship revoked for fraud would also be barred from reapplying for 10 years following the revocation order, up from the current bar of five years.

Our government is concerned about the recent discovery of a dual national committing a terrorist act abroad. In cases where dual nationals commit gross acts of disloyalty, such as treason or terrorism or taking up arms against our Canadian Forces, they too will lose the privilege of Canadian citizenship. We all have an interest in sending a message to such misguided individuals. They are committing serious crimes, and their actions have consequences.

Let us not forget that it was our government that introduced the Combating Terrorism Act, which will make it a criminal offence to leave Canada to commit terrorist acts. Let me remind all Canadians watching at home right now and those here in the House that it was the NDP that voted against this important, overdue protective measure.

Our government also introduced the Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act to make it easier to remove dangerous foreign criminals and to make it harder for those who pose a risk to Canadians to come to the country. However, both the Liberals and the New Democrats opposed this bill, and they have said repeatedly that they believe terrorists should be able to stay in Canada under humanitarian and compassionate grounds. The NDP member of Parliament for Parkdale—High Park said her discussions in Lebanon a while back led her to believe:

....that it is just not helpful to label them [referring to Hezbollah] as a terrorist organization. If the political parties in Lebanon who may disagree with Hezbollah...can figure out a way to work with Hezbollah and try to get along internally, then perhaps we should take a cue from that.

The opposition members have the opportunity right now to correct their mistakes and support our government's proposals to protect Canadians from ruthless terrorists. If they do not support this bill, the New Democrats reaffirm that they are soft on terrorists and organizations like Hezbollah.

We already know the Liberal leader's admiration for dictatorships, making light of Russia's annexation of Crimea. Worst of all, he said, on the Iranian embassy closure here in Canada, “It's important to talk to each other and it's especially important to talk to regimes that you disagree with and that disagree with you to make sure that there is means of communication”.

This is the same Iranian regime that seeks nuclear weapons, that seeks the destruction of Israel, and that funds terrorist organizations around the world. It is the same regime that murdered Canadians such as Zahra Kazemi. This is the regime the Liberal Party wants to reward with diplomatic status and engage in communication with.

I just want to conclude by saying that it is imperative that the opposition parties rally themselves, rise above their own partisan interests, and do what is right for Canada and support Bill C-24.

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am disappointed in my colleague. I thought he would have listened attentively to my speech and noted that the most important point is the constitutionality of the bill. My colleague surely recognizes that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms constitutes the foundation of our Canadian democracy and our beautiful country. I hope that he will support this first statement.

I would like to quote a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada on the revocation of citizenship:

The social compact requires the citizen to obey the laws created by the democratic process. But it does not follow that failure to do so nullifies the citizen’s continued membership in the self-governing polity. Indeed, the remedy of imprisonment for a term rather than permanent exile implies our acceptance of continued membership in the social order.

According to Professor Macklin, the Supreme Court of Canada clearly stated that the revocation of Canadian citizenship is unconstitutional.

What does my colleague have to say about the Supreme Court ruling and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms?

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to her remarks earlier, but they did not make a whole lot of sense, so I am going to have to give her an answer she may not agree with but that she should be prepared to listen to in any event.

The NDP should really learn to rise above its ideological blinders and do what is right for Canada. It takes the side of being soft on terrorists and terrorist organizations, and is on the side of those who would harm our Canadian Forces or those who would betray their own Canadian citizenship by taking up arms to fight in foreign lands.

These are the kinds of people the NDP chooses to support, rather than those hard-working people who come from all over the world to our great country of Canada. They come here for hope and opportunity. They come for opportunity for themselves, and more importantly, for their children. It is so important that these are the kind of people we embrace, these immigrants who embrace Canada.

We should not be supporting terrorists and those who seek to take up arms not only against those here in Canada but against our Canadian Forces abroad. The New Democrats should really be ashamed of themselves.

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my hon. colleague from York Centre for the best speech I have heard tonight on the issues of fraud and disloyalty to Canada and how they affect our citizenship programs.

I am very proud to be on a government side in the House that is not only saying the right things and explaining in detail why this bill should move forward but is also showing how democracy works by disagreeing with one another. I am very proud of the member for Calgary Southeast and his huge contribution to shaping this bill. I am also proud that the member for Calgary East, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, took a different opinion on one aspect of the bill. That is the strength of this side. We are able to express our own views. We are able to differ and yet come together behind an important piece of legislation like this.

Could the member for York Centre please remind the House why it is so important to point out to Canadians how vulnerable the system has been to fraud and how important it is to fight terrorism, when basically, all the opposition has done tonight is defend spies, traitors, and terrorists?

[Mark Adler, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by saying that I want to thank the finest Minister of Citizenship and Immigration that Canada has ever had. He deserves all kinds of credit for the hard work that he has done, putting his heart and soul into Bill C-24 to make Canada a better country. We should all be proud of our Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.

Just let me say quickly—