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.

[Christopher Veeman, Executive Member, National Immigration Law Section, Canadian Bar Association]

Thank you to the committee for the invitation to appear.

I'm assuming that everybody has the submission. I'm proposing to highlight some of the points that we make in the submission, but it's there for you to review at your leisure.

Over the time I've been practising in this area, it's possible to discern two phases in Canadian citizenship law. The law was largely unchanged after the major rewrite in 1977—with the exception of the lost Canadian issue in 2009—until Bill C-24 came into effect. Leading up to Bill C-24, the perspective of practitioners in this area was that the system was in its “Byzantine” phase, if you can use that word. I say this because nobody knew what the legal test was for residency and how you qualified to become a citizen. There was a problem with the jurisprudence. The courts couldn't solve that problem, the processing times were backlogged, and Canada's interests were not being served by the old system.

The CBA supported the efforts in Bill C-24 to improve that situation. To its credit, Bill C-24 did fix a lot of those problems. The definition of residency was clarified, so we now have the physical presence definition. The decision-making process was streamlined, and also the government committed resources to processing. All those things led to the decline in processing times that we've seen.

Back in 2014 the CBA opposed many of the other parts of Bill C-24. While Bill C-24 brought citizenship law out of its Byzantine phase, in the view of some practitioners it moved it in a sort of Kafkaesque direction where, as we've heard, a person can have their citizenship revoked by a government official without any hearing. In a point that wasn't touched on yet, section 13.1 was introduced into the law, which allows the department to suspend processing of an application essentially indefinitely. These are features that in our view do not support the rule of law. Another thing we heard under the changes that came in with Bill C-24 was that the system of appeals for citizenship matters was changed to judicial review instead. From the point of view of practitioners, that's an inferior system. As we've heard, you need to get leave, and in all cases where you don't get leave, you don't get reasons. People can get an application refused, and they don't have the opportunity to get an appeal with reasons.

Our section supports many of the aspects of Bill C-6 that reverse some of those changes, in particular the national interest revocation. We were strongly opposed to that. Rather than listing all the points that we do agree with, which are in our brief, I want to point out some of the things where we think the bill can be improved.

The first one has already been touched on today by Professor Macklin, and also by the minister in his remarks last Tuesday, which is the question of ensuring there is a fair and independent process for persons subject to revocation of citizenship for misrepresentation or fraud. Professor Macklin outlined that, so I'm going to skip over parts of this. Our solution for this problem is slightly different from what Professor Macklin has proposed. The overall goal is the same, to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to at some point have their case considered on humanitarian and compassionate grounds prior to the revocation of their citizenship. In our view, it may be appropriate to consider granting the department official that discretion when they're reviewing the case and have that decision directly reviewed by the Federal Court on a reasonableness standard.

In some situations under the current law, people can have their citizenship revoked for misrepresentation, and they go directly back to foreign national status. This is the case where the misrepresentation occurred in their permanent residency application, and then they subsequently obtained citizenship.

We say that all persons who have their citizenship revoked should revert to permanent resident status, and then have an appeal before the Immigration Appeal Division to retain that status and try to remain in Canada.

In our brief we have advocated, in terms of the grant of citizenship process, for some residual discretion to grant citizenship in deserving cases where people cannot meet the physical presence test, despite strong connections to the country and a desire to become Canadian citizens. In 2014 we proposed certain definitions that might be used.

I'll just give you a couple of examples of cases that might be problematic. A pilot who lives in Canada but is flying overseas for work may have trouble meeting the three in five standard. Just as an aside, the three in five standard is an improvement from the four in six. It's slightly more flexible, but still, there may be these hard cases that will arise.

[Andrew Brouwer, Senior Counsel, Refugee Law, Legal Aid Ontario]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. It's a pleasure to be back before the committee.

I work for Legal Aid Ontario, or LAO. Legal Aid is the country's largest legal aid plan. Our mandate is to ensure access to justice for the most vulnerable and marginalized Ontarians. We do that through staff legal services, community and specialty legal clinics, and of course, funding private bar lawyers on certificates to represent our clients. Legal Aid Ontario helps almost 4,000 low-income Ontarians each day, accessing justice in the areas of criminal, family, immigration and refugee, and poverty law matters.

Legal Aid Ontario also has a law reform mandate directed to the core goal of access to justice for the most vulnerable. We have a number of key priority areas in the area of refugee and immigration law. Those are, first of all, equal access to and effective protection of charter rights; protection of mentally ill non-citizens; protection and promotion of the rights of the child; domestic implementation of international human rights law; and access to and protection of citizenship, particularly for naturalized Canadians.

We applaud the government today for introducing Bill C-6 so very early in its mandate, and we support much of what's in the bill. We're particularly pleased about the provisions scrapping the intention to reside requirement and removing the power to strip citizenship for national security grounds. We also support the changes to the language and the residency requirements for naturalization.

That said, in our view the bill's not perfect. There are some significant problems and gaps that we hope this committee can address. Of particular concern to us are five areas. I've handed out a summary in English and French of the specific recommendations we have, and I hope those are before you. I'll just go through very briefly what we're suggesting.

The first issue I know has been a topic of a great deal of debate. I'll rely on Professor Macklin on the issue of the revocation process. Legal Aid Ontario shares Professor Macklin's position on the best remedy for that, and I know that Minister McCallum has also expressed interest in looking at how to reform that provision.

The second is with respect to remedies for refused citizenship applications. Bill C-24 stripped refused citizenship applicants of their right to appeal refusals to the Federal Court, and introduced instead a remedy of judicial review by way of leave. That change imposes unjust and costly barriers to access to justice, particularly in an area that really goes to the core of what it means to be a member of society. Leave requirements in Federal Court can double the time it takes to get a remedy and double the cost of seeking that remedy; and leave refusals, as I'm sure you know, are made without reasons by the Federal Court judge, which does an injustice to the individual applicants who naturally will perceive the leave requirement as being arbitrary. They don't know why they get refused. We therefore urge the committee to amend Bill C-6 to reverse the amendments that were introduced in section 20 of Bill C-24 and return to the Federal Court appeal provisions that existed before.

Our third area of concern is with respect to the first generation born abroad limitation. We were very pleased to hear Minister McCallum affirm before this committee that there should be one class of citizen. There's no place in Canadian law, in our view, for provisions that treat citizens born on our territory differently from those who are naturalized. My grandchild will be a Canadian citizen no matter where she's born. Mr. Virani's grandchild—he is my MP—will not be, unless she's born on Canadian territory. That's an unjust distinction. We ask, therefore, that the committee amend Bill C-6 to include a provision that strikes down the first generation born aboard provision in section 3(3) of the Citizenship Act.

The fourth area of concern is with respect to the residency calculation. We supported the change to the residency requirements that were set out in Bill C-6. We ask that they be expanded so that credit can also be given for Canadian residency to those who have made a refugee claim that's been found eligible but are waiting to have their hearing. As you know, there is a massive backlog right now. People are waiting for three or four years to have their claim heard. They should get credit for that time.

As well, those who have been accepted on humanitarian and compassionate grounds at stage one should also get credit for the time. It's a two-stage process, and people sometimes wait for years to get the final approval. That period of delay is not the fault of the applicant; it's a problem at Immigration, which is just taking too long to process them. We ask that they also get half-time credit for that period.

Finally, I'd like to ask the committee to consider seriously the issue of statelessness and how this act can be amended to deal with the stateless within Canada.

We are certainly hopeful that the new government's renewed recognition of the importance of international law and global engagement will result in our signing the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, but there is something that we can do right now with this act to make sure that we are better protecting stateless persons and coming into better compliance with international law and norms.

We have three recommendations.

The first, which is critical, is to include a definition of “statelessness” within paragraph (a) of subsection 2(2) of the act. We ask that this include both de jure or legal statelessness as well as de facto statelessness. Practically speaking, the whole point of dealing with statelessness and assisting stateless persons to get protection is to make sure that every member of society has a connection to a state.

Concerns have been expressed by various people, including in a case in the U.K. called Pham, which shows the problems when we have an overly legalistic and narrow definition of statelessness. We are proposing the following definition, which is also included in the materials handed out. It's that “stateless” means that the person is not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law and includes both de jure and de facto statelessness.

I've handed out a little printout from the website of CIC, which includes this government's understanding and definition of those two terms, de jure and de facto.

The second provision with respect to statelessness is that we're asking for an amendment to subsection 5(4) of the act, the provision that allows discretionary grants of citizenship in special cases. We propose that statelessness be identified specifically within the act as a factor that would justify a grant of citizenship under subsection 5(4).

Finally, we are proposing an amendment to section 10 of the Citizenship Act, the revocation process. We propose adding a restriction on revocation when it might result in a person's becoming stateless, whether de jure or de facto. We believe this would provide a very significant protection against an unexpected result of a revocation decision, and we ask that you seriously consider it.

Those are my submissions.

[Mary-Ann Hubers]

There's nothing in Bill C-6 that talks about the first-generation limit, but there is in the law a first-generation limit that applies to children born abroad to a Canadian citizen. There were a number of reforms done that gave citizenship back to lost Canadians. The first one was in Bill C-37 in 2009. Then there were additional changes in Bill C-24 that gave citizenship back or gave it for the first time to a number of other lost Canadians. There were a number of individuals who were fixed by those provisions.

For those who are impacted now in terms of being themselves first generation born abroad, and they have a child abroad who's therefore not eligible for citizenship by descent, there are some avenues available to them. For example, they can sponsor that child for a permanent residence to Canada. If the child is stateless because they don't have access to any other citizenship, there's a grant in the Citizenship Act for stateless children of Canadians.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Also, I want to thank you for the energy you've brought to the task and for the important and timely changes you are making to the Citizenship Act. This was a very lively issue in my riding of Willowdale, so it's very nice to see that some of the excesses of Bill C-24 have been addressed in Bill C-6.

Now if I could, I will focus my question on the credit that is being provided to those who are temporary residents in this country and who intend to apply for citizenship. I find that to be a very useful change, and I have every confidence that it will have a discernible impact on attracting some of the best and brightest from around the world to apply for Canadian citizenship. One could think of international students, or of course, people who are experienced workers.

I had an opportunity to look at the changes being contemplated and to compare them to provisions that are also available in the American and Australian citizenship system. My colleague had a chance to ask you whether there was some consideration of providing more than 50% credit for that period.

My question is whether there was any consideration of having a cap that would not be for 365 days, but actually for a two-year period. Is that something that was contemplated?

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Through Bill C-24, convicted terrorist Zakaria Amara lost his Canadian citizenship. Is that correct?

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

My next question, Mr. Minister, is in regard to the revoking of citizenship.

Through Bill C-24, convicted terrorist Zakaria Amara lost his Canadian citizenship. Is that correct, Bill C-24?

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Minister, for being here.

Minister, you appeared in the committee on February 23, and I congratulated you for restoring the interim federal health program for refugees. I just want to thank you once again for restoring that.

Then I asked you when you would reintroduce the legislation to repeal Bill C-24, and you responded, “In the coming days, and not very many”. Then two days later, you introduced Bill C-6, so again I want to congratulate you for that.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for joining us today as we examine this important legislation, Bill C-6.

This is a very important issue for me and for my constituents in the riding of Scarborough Centre. After the Conservatives passed Bill C-24, effectively creating two tiers of Canadian citizenship, as a mother I had to explain to my two sons why they were second-class citizens in the country they have grown up in. They love their country.

This was wrong, and it went against the fundamental values of the country that has shaped them into the fine young men they have become. As a mother, a parliamentarian, and a Canadian, I am proud to see the integrity of Canadian citizenship restored. Could you please explain why it is so important to defend the integrity of Canadian citizenship, which is a beacon for people around the world?

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I would urge the minister to look into this issue. Hopefully, action will be forthcoming.

Let me move onto another issue. Bill C-24 eliminates the right to a judicial hearing for anyone who could have their citizenship revoked. Those involved with the civil liberties movement are calling on the government to make changes in this regard. Bill C-6 leaves this provision untouched.

Would the minister agree with the Canadian Bar Association that someone who is about to lose their citizenship should always have the right to a hearing before an independent and impartial decision-maker?

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you.

I would advocate for a change. Even though it's not part of Bill C-24, it's still part of the set of legislation that we're dealing with in respect of Bill C-6.

With that, I want to move on to another area, which is the fees issue. Under changes to regulations that were made by the previous government, fees were increased to such a degree that a family of four could expect to spend nearly $1,500 on citizenship processing fees. On top of that, there's a $100 right of citizenship fee as well. For many families, this is equivalent to greater than a month's rent. It's significant.

I wonder whether or not the government has any plans to examine the high fee structure. Is there any action that the minister might be undertaking to correct that?

[Catrina Tapley]

The changes to requirements to provide upfront evidence of language at the Canadian language benchmark 4 level were a change that was made prior to Bill C-24.

I believe, Mary-Ann, that it was about a year before Bill C-24?

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

I'm told that change came before Bill C-24.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Was the double-testing a new concept under Bill C-24?

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Prior to Bill C-24, what was the language proficiency level?

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

Okay.

Bill C-6 also allows time spent in Canada as a temporary resident to count towards the residency requirement for citizenship. Periods of temporary residence had been eligible prior to Bill C-24 as well. Before the provisions excluding time as a temporary resident came into force, approximately what percentage of citizenship applicants included periods of temporary residence in their application?