This bill is from the 41st Parliament, 2nd session, which ended in August 2015.
Chris Alexander Conservative
This bill has received Royal Assent and is now law.
This is from the published bill. The Library of Parliament has also written a full legislative summary of the bill.
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.
All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.
Bill numbers are reused for different bills each new session. Perhaps you were looking for one of these other C-24s:
Pierre-Luc Dusseault NDP Sherbrooke, QC
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her great speech on Bill C-24. She certainly has expertise on the subject of citizenship and immigration.
Like me and a number of experts who have looked at the bill, does she have any concerns about the constitutionality of the bill, especially with regard to revoking citizenship?
Does she think that this bill might be challenged if it is passed in its current form?
Sadia Groguhé NDP Saint-Lambert, QC
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question. Indeed, as far as the revocation of citizenship is concerned, this bill will definitely be challenged.
This is a classic example of two-tiered citizenship. If a person with dual citizenship has their citizenship revoked, they are at risk of becoming stateless. In other words, their country of origin might not take them back and they will be in limbo.
The revocation of citizenship, a power that will be concentrated in the hands of the minister, will constantly be appealed in court.
Jonathan Tremblay NDP Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC
Mr. Speaker, my colleague just touched on something I wanted to ask a question about. She talked about the minister's discretionary powers to deny or approve immigration applications.
What concerns does my colleague have about that, since we are talking about a major overhaul of how this department works? I would like to hear my colleague's concerns about that.
Sadia Groguhé NDP Saint-Lambert, QC
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. As I said in my speech, concentrating powers, such as the power to revoke or grant citizenship, in the hands of the minister, takes us back to a feudal time when seigneurs had the power of life or death over their tenants. Fortunately here we are talking about citizenship.
This raises an ethical problem. We cannot be judge and jury. Before, people had the possibility of appeal, but now they will no longer have that option once their citizenship is revoked. That is quite simply unacceptable in a country that abides by the rule of law as we do.
Laurin Liu NDP Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
Mr. Speaker, could my colleague tell us more about how this bill could be subject to constitutional challenges? We know that the government does not always bother to make sure that its bills respect human rights and comply with the Canadian Constitution. Could my colleague talk about the problems with this bill and how it might not meet constitutional standards?
Sadia Groguhé NDP Saint-Lambert, QC
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question. As some witnesses pointed out in committee, there will certainly be some constitutional challenges, and I think this will likely go to court.
We are all familiar with the universal principle that all human beings are born free and equal. Our country has the charter to protect all citizens, and the provisions in Bill C-24 clearly interfere with those protections. There will obviously be challenges.
Laurin Liu NDP Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-24, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.
I should mention that the Conservatives limited time for debate on this bill. This is really problematic and it infringes on our right to express ourselves on bills that will affect the lives of Canadians and immigrants.
It is more or less an omnibus bill. In fact, it is the first major reform of the Citizenship Act since 1977. We really ought to do our homework to come up with the best legislation possible.
I oppose this bill and I will take my ten minutes to explain why.
I would like to begin by recognizing the work done by groups in my riding that welcome immigrants, such as ABL Immigration, which works in the Lower Laurentians to help immigrants better integrate into our society and country and have access to services that can help them.
My fellow Canadians are ready to welcome newcomers, to have new people come to live here, but this bill goes against Canadian values.
I would like to mention that I was a panellist at a meeting in Montreal on Bill C-24. Julius Grey, a very well-known lawyer in Montreal whose name is probably familiar to all members, and the Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes, which is active in Montreal, also participated in this event.
With the people who took part in the discussion, I was able to see that this bill raises a number of concerns about the Conservative government's approach. There were also concerns about the negative impact of that rather complex legislation, which includes many measures.
Since March 2008, or since the Conservatives took office, over 25 major changes have been made to immigration practices, rules, laws and regulations. We found that not all of these changes have been positive, including the moratorium on sponsoring parents and grandparents.
In my riding I met people affected by this measure. In fact, I meet people from across Canada who are affected by the fact that they cannot bring their parents and their grandparents here. In recent years, fewer family reunifications have taken place. This threatens the well-being of Canadians.
We saw that the government also chose to punish vulnerable refugees. On this issue, I want to note that Bill C-31 imposes a number of measures that experts deem dangerous for refugees. These provisions give the minister the power to hand-pick which countries are deemed safe, without consulting independent experts. They also give the minister the power to detain asylum seekers for one year, without reviewing that decision.
This bill also contains provisions to deny certain refugees access to the refugee appeal division. Bill C-31 also imposes a mandatory waiting period of five years before legitimate refugees can become permanent residents and be reunited with their families.
As we can see, these are very tough measures that adversely affect the safety of refugees who come to Canada after fleeing unstable situations in their country of origin.
We have also seen that under the Conservative government there has been an increase in the number of temporary foreign workers to the detriment of Canadian workers. Furthermore, and I am sure that I am not the only member to have noticed this, our riding offices are reporting that processing times, which are currently 31 months, are harming our constituents who come to our offices looking for help. Unfortunately, too many of these people want to know the status of their file. The only thing we can tell them is that they have to wait, even though the processing times are unreasonable. Instead of attacking refugees and preventing families from being reunited, this government should instead be tackling processing times. That should be the priority.
I will now focus on the measures in the bill that the NDP members are concerned about. First, we have seen that Bill C-24 concentrates many new powers in the hands of the minister, including the power to grant citizenship and to revoke it from dual citizens. This creates two tiers of citizenship and penalizes people with dual citizenship. It allows a minister to revoke the citizenship of a person who has dual citizenship and commits illegal acts, whereas someone without Canadian citizenship will be punished in the criminal justice system instead.
We believe that this is rather arbitrary. We should not have two tiers of citizenship. I am very proud of my Canadian citizenship and I know that my parents, who immigrated from China, were as well. A Canadian is a Canadian, period. We should not have two types of citizens, those who have dual citizenship and those who have single citizenship.
Under the provisions of the bill, the minister may revoke citizenship if he, or any staffer he authorizes, is satisfied on the balance of probabilities that a person has obtained citizenship by fraud. That poses significant problems because this clause is based on the balance of probabilities. If the minister has reason to believe that the person has obtained citizenship fraudulently, he has the right to unilaterally revoke that citizenship. Clearly, that prevents the individual from appealing to the courts and it places more arbitrary powers in the minister's hands.
This bill is problematic for another reason, namely the provisions related to the declaration of intent to reside in Canada. The minister can arbitrarily choose to strip someone of citizenship if he believes that the individual does not intend to reside in Canada. That penalizes those who obtain citizenship and then perhaps get a job offer elsewhere but still plan on returning to Canada. It penalizes people who find themselves in rather unique situations.
The final measure in this bill that I would like to raise is the fact that the length of time someone spends in Canada as a permanent resident will no longer be taken into consideration for the granting of citizenship.
Clearly, the NDP feels it must oppose many of the measures. I urge my colleagues to oppose this bill as well, for the reasons I have just presented.
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
Mr. Speaker, the member made reference to the issue of people who leave Canada to work. I want to give a specific example of how this legislation would have a very real impact.
I can recall a case where a family from the Philippines came to Canada and the husband was not able to get his credentials recognized as an auditor. Therefore, after his family was settled here, he went to another country and was able to continue on as an accountant. Now, there are serious restrictions within this proposed legislation that would prevent that individual from being able to do that today, even though his entire family is here and the only reason he left the country was to practise that which he was trained to do with the full intention of coming back.
I wonder if the member might want to comment on the fact that, by rushing the bill through, we were not able to have that thorough discussion so that examples such as this would have had much more attention given to them.
Laurin Liu NDP Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
Mr. Speaker, that is not the only example of its kind. When I talked to groups of immigrants in Montreal, they gave me this example: a person gets a scholarship to Oxford or Harvard and has to leave for a period of months or years but fully intends to return to Canada and live as a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil.
These are opportunities our citizens should have. They should not be punished for wanting a chance to live or work elsewhere for a period of time. This bill goes way too far. Clearly, the Conservative government really did not do its homework on this one.
Pierre-Luc Dusseault NDP Sherbrooke, QC
Mr. Speaker, thank you for letting me ask my colleague from Rivière-des-Mille-Îles a question. She spent a few seconds, possibly a minute, talking about wait times, which have gone up considerably in the past few years. Nowadays, it can take 31 months for a person to get citizenship. The government boasted that this bill would reduce wait times.
Does my colleague think that any of the measures in this bill will really tackle this problem effectively? Perhaps the government is saying this just for the sake of argument when ultimately, there is really nothing here that will reduce wait times. Why is it important to tackle wait times in this system? I will not answer the question; I will let my colleague answer it.
Laurin Liu NDP Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his question. I imagine that in his riding office he must also provide services to people who are waiting to get their citizenship.
Since the Conservatives came to power, wait times have doubled and today, 320,000 people in Canada are still waiting for their application to be processed.
Of course, humanitarian cases have to be processed as quickly as possible. My colleague from Halifax mentioned the case of a mother who was waiting to sponsor her children. For the months she had to wait, she lost track of her children who were in her home country. The wait times are unreasonable. They penalize people who live in Canada, who want to be good citizens and contribute to our country. For humanitarian reasons, we have to address the processing times problem.
Alex Atamanenko NDP British Columbia Southern Interior, BC
Mr. Speaker, I am thankful to have a few minutes to speak to Bill C-24. As an interesting coincidence, I was recently reading the latest issue of Novyi Shliakh, or the New Pathway, a Ukrainian newspaper published here in Canada. On page 6 of the May 15 edition, there was an article by the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, and the very fact that this article appeared in the New Pathway to me is a clear indication that there is a concern about Bill C-24 in the Ukrainian Canadian community and, I would venture to say, in many immigrant communities. Readers of the article who had concerns were asked to contact their local member of Parliament.
This article states:
This new law changes core aspects of Canadian citizenship as we know it.
If passed, Bill C-24 will make it more difficult for new immigrants to get Canadian citizenship and easier for many Canadians to lose it, especially if they have dual citizenship. Most Canadians do not understand the ways in which Bill C-24 will undermine their fundamental right to be a citizen of Canada. The Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers has provided a summary of the most important changes to the Citizenship Act.
It goes on later in the same article to say:
In Canada, citizenship has always been secure. Whether native-born or immigrant, once you are granted Canadian citizenship, you are secure. Under the current system, you cannot lose your citizenship unless you obtained it by fraud, and even then, a Federal Court judge must make that decision after a full court hearing. Under the current system, if you do not agree with the judge, you have a right of appeal. Under the new law, there will be several ways to lose your citizenship. As well, the decision as to whether you lose your citizenship will be made by a government bureaucrat who will inform you in writing with no opportunity for a live hearing to defend yourself.
Why will citizenship be harder to get?
New immigrants will have to wait longer before they can apply for citizenship. Older and younger people will now have to pass language and knowledge tests to qualify for citizenship. The citizenship application fees have been tripled. There will be no right of appeal for those who are refused.
Everyone recognizes the considerable value of Canadian citizenship, but we do not want to politicize this issue. We have seen that approach far too often since the current government came to power.
As far as the bill is concerned, it is high time that we resolve the issue of lost Canadians. This is an unfair situation that has been going on for far too long.
Other parts of the bill raise concerns. For example, the revocation of citizenship gives cause for major legal concerns. We are always worried about proposals to concentrate power in the hands of the minister.
Since March 2008, more than 25 major changes have been made to the methods, rules, laws and regulations related to immigration. More and more changes have been made since the Conservatives formed a majority government, changes such as a moratorium on sponsoring parents and grandparents, fewer family reunifications, punishing vulnerable refugees and increasing the number of temporary foreign workers in order to meet the needs of corporations.
The considerable changes the Conservatives have made to Canada's immigration system have not helped improve the efficiency or fairness of the system.
That is what is troubling. All these proposed changes are not necessarily going to make the system more efficient. In a sense, we can understand why the system cannot be more efficient. If we cut people who are working, the numbers of public servants, increase their hours, and make it more difficult for them, obviously the system will not get more efficient.
I would like to argue as an aside that maybe a good way to improve our immigration system is to make it more efficient by hiring more people so we can get the job done and process all the immigrants that we have today.
However, I will return to my speaking notes. Bill C-24, as I said earlier on, gives the minister many new powers including the authority to grant or revoke the citizenship of dual citizens.
As we know, the government has a pretty strong tendency to develop legislation that concentrates more power in the hands of ministers. Obviously if we have ministers who understand the situation and I would hope they do, things could work okay, but there are people who do not. We on this side condemn this practice. We cannot trust the Conservatives or any government by giving a minister new powers because we open the door to arbitrary politically motivated decisions.
I guess we all should know that there are politically motivated decisions in any government. What we as parliamentarians have to do is to ensure that we take those politically motivated decisions away from people making decisions.
Let us look at revocation of citizenship. The very idea of giving the minister the power to revoke citizenship raises serious questions and it is on this principle that we should be looking at the bill. Canadian law already has established mechanisms by which we can punish individuals who commit unlawful acts. It should not be the job of the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to make these judgments.
Another problem with revoking the Canadian citizenship of dual citizens is that it creates a two-tier citizenship where some Canadians could have their citizenship revoked, while others would be punished by the criminal system for the same offence.
As an aside, let me say a few words about dual citizens. We have already seen discrimination by the government against Canadians who are subject to U.S. tax laws. My colleague, the MP for Victoria, has raised the issue of FATCA and the problems it poses for U.S. dual citizens and family members of dual citizens. I would say that once a person is a Canadian citizen, he or she should have the full protection of our government. It does not matter if one is born here or somewhere else, once one is a Canadian citizen, we should all be on the same level playing field.
There should be no question, for example, of the U.S. government obtaining banking information or for a Canadian citizen to file unnecessary U.S. tax forms when a person already pays taxes here in Canada and fills out the forms. We have had that debate earlier on in this session.
Coming back to this bill, under the provisions of the bill the minister may revoke citizenship if he or she, or any staffer he or she authorized, is satisfied in the balance of probabilities that a person has obtained citizenship by fraud. Until now, such cases have all typically gone through the courts and cabinet, which makes sense. It will not be the case anymore. This aspect poses serious issues to the extent that the minister would have the power to revoke a person's citizenship solely on the basis of suspicion without an independent tribunal to rule on the veracity of the allegations. This is not the case in the United States where that person has the legal right to have the issue resolved in a court of law.
In closing, the bill, although it has some good provisions in it, is another slow erosion of our rights as democratic citizens and for this reason we should oppose the bill in its current form.
Strengthening Canadian Citizenship ActGovernment Orders
Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo B.C.
Conservative
Cathy McLeod ConservativeParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Labour and for Western Economic Diversification
Mr. Speaker, I do not know if my hon. colleague is aware, but currently many permanent residents wait for four years to make a decision. I have met many people at citizenship ceremonies for whom it was 20 or 30 years before they made that decision. Choosing to become a citizen of Canada is a very important decision and people learn to feel an attachment to the country.
Does the hon. member really believe that people with little or no connection to Canada, who have spent very little time in Canada, should really be handed Canadian citizenship? Sometimes it is through fraudulent means. Is he objecting to having some time limits around people getting to know us before they make those decisions?
Alex Atamanenko NDP British Columbia Southern Interior, BC
Mr. Speaker, the bottom line is that we have a system in place that works. The overwhelming majority of people who apply for citizenship and become citizens under our current system become good Canadian citizens. My parents are immigrants. Many of us here have family members who have immigrated. The current timeline in place is a workable timeline, and I do not really see why we need to change the system. What we need is to ensure it becomes more efficient, and that implies hiring a few more people to increase the efficiency so that we can process more immigrants at a faster pace.
Pierre-Luc Dusseault NDP Sherbrooke, QC
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his speech on Bill C-24. He mentioned some of our concerns about this bill.
I would like to hear him talk more about the constitutional aspect of this bill, given that the government has been told three or four times to change course, if I may use that expression, or go back to the drawing board. A number of bills have already been rejected in part by the Supreme Court.
Does he think that the same thing could happen to this bill? That is obviously a hypothetical question. A number of experts have already commented on this. Does my colleague have the same concerns as the experts who appeared before the committee and said that they were concerned that the Conservative government is again passing a bill that will very likely be challenged, with good reason, before the different courts?