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.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-24, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee, and of the amendment.

Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Revenue and for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on debate this evening on Bill C-24. I have been listening to the debate. It has been a fairly animated and lively debate. This is second reading of the legislation and it is on fast-track and citizenship by descent. I rise today to speak in support of the proposed changes to the Canadian Citizenship Act that would strengthen the value of Canadian citizenship.

Since 2006, Canada has enjoyed the highest sustained levels of immigration in Canadian history, an average of 257,000 newcomers each year, and accordingly, the demand for citizenship has increased by 30%. Furthermore, Canada has the highest rate of naturalization in the world; 85% of eligible permanent residents become citizens.

Last year, Citizenship and Immigration Canada received more than 330,000 citizenship applications, the highest volume ever. Canadian citizenship is highly valued around the world and with the balanced set of reforms in Bill C-24, the government is taking steps to ensure that it stays that way.

Lengthier residency requirements and requiring more applicants to meet language and knowledge criteria would ensure new citizens will be active and contributing members of our communities and our economy. Since the first Canadian Citizenship Act of 1947, it has always been a requirement that new citizens have an adequate knowledge of Canada and of one of our official languages. The language level required is not changing and it is a basic level of English or French, sufficient for everyday communication.

Overall, these changes would mean that new citizens have a strong connection to Canada and are better prepared to assume the responsibilities of citizenship and become active members of Canadian society.

Canadians take great pride in our citizenship. We are taking action to further strengthen that pride and the value of Canadian citizenship with the first comprehensive reforms to the Citizenship Act since 1977. The strengthening Canadian citizenship act would deliver on our government's commitment to reduce backlogs and improve processing times while strengthening the integrity of Canadian citizenship.

Our Conservative government has welcomed over 1.4 million new citizens. That is a record to be commended. These new citizens come from all over the globe. Some of them come here for economic improvement and some of them are refugees who faced difficult times in their home country and have been forced to leave. Canada is a haven for these people and we are accepting more immigrants and more refugees than any other government in Canada ever has. Therefore, we need these changes to the Citizenship Act to modernize it, to allow that backlog to become smaller, and to streamline the process. That is what we are talking about here.

I have heard a lot of questions, and I am sure I will get some after I finish my own speech, saying something is wrong here, in section a, line 3, paragraph 7. We have been told that we have to make that change or the bill is no good, throw the whole thing out. This is the proverbial baby being thrown out with the bathwater.

At the end of the day, these changes are going to be brought in. We are going to streamline the system. We are going to make it faster and more efficient. All of us on both sides of the House have immigration files involving people who want to come to Canada, who want to contribute to our society. We are going to be able to move them through faster. However, we will see who votes in support of this legislation and who does not.

We want newcomers to be welcomed as full members of the Canadian family of citizens, fully contributing to our economy and our communities from coast to coast to coast. With Bill C-24 we propose to strengthen the rules around access to citizenship to ensure that they reflect its true value and that new citizens are better prepared for full participation in Canadian life.

More specifically, Bill C-24 will resolve the vast majority of the lost Canadian cases once and for all.

The Liberals claim to care about the lost Canadians, yet they did nothing to fix the problem of any cases of lost Canadians over 13 long years in their government. Our Conservative government will right a historical wrong by granting citizenship to children born abroad to Crown servants and will honour the service of permanent residents who serve in the Canadian Armed Forces by granting them quicker access to Canadian citizenship. In addition, members of the Canadian Armed Forces would have a fast-track access to citizenship through a reduced qualifying period as a way of recognizing their important contribution to Canada. The bill would ensure that children born outside Canada to, or adopted outside Canada by, a Canadian parent who was serving abroad as a Crown servant are able to pass on citizenship to children they may have or adopt outside Canada.

Members of the Canadian Armed Forces put their lives on the line in order to honour the interests and security of our country and protect the safety of our citizens. This legislation would accelerate citizenship for permanent residents serving in the Canadian Armed Forces. It would also provide for a grant of citizenship for individuals on exchange with the Canadian Armed Forces. Under the proposed changes to the Citizenship Act, those who have served for one year less than the residence requirement would be eligible to apply for a grant of citizenship. Once the new legislation comes into force, the residence requirement would be four years out of six, that is representing three years of service for the fast-track provision.Those who served in the qualifying period and have been released honourably would also be eligible for the fast-track to citizenship.

Generally speaking, Canadian citizenship is a requirement for enrolment in the Canadian Armed Forces, but permanent residence may also be employed in exceptional circumstances. The problem is that one's lack of citizenship gives rise to challenges related to security clearances and passport arrangements and can therefore make it difficult to deploy him or her for service abroad. The United States and Australia already have a similar fast-track mechanism for members of the military as a way of honouring their service and addressing deployment challenges.

Introducing a fast-track citizenship for permanent residents serving in and for individuals on exchange with the Canadian Armed Forces as proposed in Bill C-24 would honour their service to Canada and make their deployment abroad much easier.

Another advantage is that it could provide an incentive for newcomers to Canada to enlist in the Canadian Armed Forces.

Citizenship legislation is extremely complicated. Many of the amendments that came into force in 2009 were retroactive, adding another layer of complexity. Amendments are desirable under Bill C-24 to ensure that the law supports consistent implementation of the first generation limit to citizenship by descent and it does not bar access to eligible applicants.

Currently, the Citizenship Act contains an exception to the first generation limit for children born to or adopted by a parent who is a Crown servant. The exception means that children born outside of Canada to serving Crown servants, including military personnel, would always be Canadian at birth, irrespective of what generation they were born outside of Canada. However, these children are not able to pass on citizenship to any children they have or adopt outside Canada as a direct result of their parents' service to Canada. This includes children born prior to April 17, 2009, such as the nearly 4,000 children born between 1983 and 1994 at the Canadian Forces base in Lahr, Germany. Under the current law, these children are not able to pass on citizenship to the children born or adopted abroad.

The first generation limit creates distinctions between family members of Crown servants depending on where the parents were serving when the child was born. It also acts as a disincentive to serving outside Canada for persons of childbearing age and creates a disadvantage when compared to public servants serving in Canada.

For all these reasons, we propose to amend the Citizenship Act to ensure that children born or adopted outside Canada to serving crown servants, including military personnel, are able to pass on citizenship to any children they have or adopt outside Canada. It is that simple. It truly is.

We have this huge gap out there, from 1983 to 1994. Children born to Canadian parents serving in Lahr, Germany, were not Canadian citizens, even though they were born on a Canadian Forces base to Canadian parents. That is the lost generation. Somehow we have to correct that. The bill would do that.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if there has been any research done by the government as to how these measures would be impacting the Canadian population. I have a specific interest in whether there would be different impacts on different ancestral groups and whether groups with different ethnicities would perhaps be disproportionately affected by these new measures. If these studies have been done, perhaps they could be tabled for us to review, since we have such a short time for debate.

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

Mr. Speaker, I think what we have to look at is that this is a bill that would be results driven. I think the hon. member would concur and agree with me that we have to improve the Citizenship Act. This would allow citizenship applications to be approved within a one-year timeframe. Canadian citizenship is valuable. We have more applications now, 330,000, than we have ever had before. We are processing them more quickly. However, we understand, as a government, that we have a responsibility to do a better job.

This would not penalize any one group of immigrants to Canada. It would not penalize any ethnic group. This would be a fairer, rules-based citizenship act that would treat all immigrants the same.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad my hon. colleague, the member for South Shore—St. Margaret's, spent so much of his speech focusing on one part of the bill that I really do support, and that is the part dealing with the issue of lost Canadians. It has taken too long. It has proven complex. I know that the previous minister of citizenship thought they had done the job, but it is an enormously complicated area. I know a lot of the remaining lost Canadians are grateful for that.

My concern, though, remains, and I have phrased it in the House before, that the bill is designed to do something that no previous piece of Canadian legislation has ever done, which is strip citizenship from someone born in Canada for offences committed that, everyone would agree, are abhorrent offences but for which Canadian law is perfectly adequate to mete out punishment in a Canadian prison.

I ask the hon. member if he is not worried that we are creating a slippery slope with two classes of citizenship for people born in Canada.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for that question, because it is a serious question. It is one that was struggled with in the last incarnation of the bill.

My understanding is that this part of the bill, and I am not an expert on the bill, is for dual citizens. It would only affect dual citizens who actually are citizens of Canada but are also citizens of another country in the world. If people in that class of individuals commit treason against this country, they cannot expect to keep Canadian citizenship. I think that is fair and understandable, and I think most Canadians would agree with that approach.

[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, Conservative, 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?