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

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Order, please. The minister is correct in the sense that there is a rule of relevance in this place, but I think all hon. members are familiar with the practice that a significant amount of leeway is given to people in terms of context and examples.

Consequently, I will give the floor back to the hon. member for Rivière-du-Nord to complete his speech.

[Pierre Dionne Labelle, NDP, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will continue talking about deportation. What does this government have against Mexicans who want to become Canadian citizens? I have had a list of five or six families in the past four years who have been threatened by drug traffickers and who were deported.

We do nothing. We do not keep those families that want to integrate, become good citizens and work. I know that the minister prefers to bring in Mexicans to work in the fields, temporary workers, and then send them back. He is okay with this policy.

However, what help does the government provide to Mexicans who flee from difficult situations and who want to become good Canadian citizens? The Reyes Mendez family was deported in 2013, the Seguras in 2014, the Picazo family in 2011, not to mention the Pavon-Aguila family.

I will come back to the basis of the decision. Since he did not want to let me speak, I will continue on this topic. What was submitted in court by the department was that the head of the cartel, El Mas Loco, who was threatening the family in the Michoacán region, was killed in 2010. The military had announced that it had killed this leader. Oddly enough, in the March 9, 2014 edition of the Associated Press, the army said that this same leader had just been assassinated. The family was told that it was no longer in danger in Mexico because the leader had been killed based on the 2010 statement by the military. Now the Mexican police is saying that it killed him in 2014. We have reliable information. These people are leaving in four or five days. They could lose their lives. I am holding the current Minister of Employment and the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration personally responsible. If something happens to these children or these people, they will be held personally responsible.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Employment and Social Development and Minister for Multiculturalism]

Mr. Speaker, I found the hon. member's speech strange.

First, the New Democrats are always saying that they want more time to debate bills, but they just moved a motion and forced a vote with the sole purpose of delaying proceedings and avoiding debating a bill. Then, we just heard a speech from the member that had nothing to do with the bill. He did not even mention the subject in question, which is the reform of the Citizenship Act. The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, which manages the asylum system, is something completely different.

I am going to ask two questions. First, does the member agree with the 63% of Canadian immigrants who indicated in an Angus Reid poll that they support the section of the bill that seeks to revoke the citizenship of people who are found guilty of terrorism or treason?

Second, does he not agree that the asylum system is the responsibility of the independent, quasi-judicial tribunal, judges, and courts, not politicians?

[Pierre Dionne Labelle, NDP, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the minister knows full well that when it comes to terrorism, we have our court system and all the mechanisms needed to prosecute these people and find them guilty in Canada. We do not need to give a minister sitting in his office more powers.

What I would like to say tonight about my speech is that I also took the opportunity to plead with the Conservative ministers regarding the Zamudio family, who are going to be deported in three or four days.

Can you show some compassion and expedite this file in order to offer them refugee protection on humanitarian grounds?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I will single out one aspect of the legislation that is very important to recognize, and that is the area where we have seen exceptional growth in the processing times for people who want to become citizens.

Back in the days of Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, one could anticipate a wait of about 12 months. Today that waiting period is now closer to two and a half to three years. That is only as long as that individual does not have to go through the residential calculator. If that happens, then we are talking about four or five years, or more, in processing times. Now the government is saying that the legislation would do a lot in reducing the processing times.

Does the member believe, as we believe in the Liberal Party, that the processing time could have been dealt with in an earlier and more prompt fashion by providing adequate resources that would have allowed processing times to be far more reasonable, shooting for that one-year mark?

[Pierre Dionne Labelle, NDP, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the tone of my colleague's question, which is a change. I think he heard my message tonight, and that is good.

The objective of the bill is to reduce the processing time from three years to one year. Those are good intentions. However, the government is also cutting $119 million from human resources at Citizenship and Immigration.

Maybe the minister will put in some overtime in his office to decide himself who will get citizenship, but I do not think that this will work.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise a second time to speak to this bill, and I will start by saying that this bill is yet another example of the Conservative ideology. There is no need to worry. I can back up what I am saying.

The Conservative ideology is not just the party line or the party's policies. It is also about how they act and how they view society. Since the Conservatives took power—since they got a majority—the House has passed a number of measures, and we have seen a moratorium on sponsorship for parents and grandparents and a decrease in the number of family reunifications, which appears to be a concept that the Conservatives have essentially scrapped, not to mention the punishment of vulnerable refugees.

I remember that one of the very first speeches I made in the House after I was elected was on Bill C-4, which would have enabled government officials to imprison children. The Conservative ideology is not just the party line. This bill would also put children in jail. The Conservative ideology can once again be found in this bill.

The bill does not deal at all with the issue of backlogs. Come to think of it, how did the Conservatives handle that problem? As my colleague explained, they told the 280,000 people who had been waiting to get their Canadian citizenship that they should pack up their bags and go away, then come back some other time and take their place in line.

That is how the Conservatives decided to deal with the backlog. We obviously should not expect the bill to address the problem then, since they already took care of it.

A number of people from my riding have been in my office, feeling desperate because they have been waiting for months, or even years, for their children or parents to be allowed into Canada. Some have been waiting for over two years, which, let me tell you, is very distressing for Canadians. The backlog issue is really not a priority for the Conservatives, let me assure you.

The bill would give the minister the authority to grant or revoke citizenship. A number of my colleagues have already spoken to that. In fact, the bill would create a two-tiered citizenship, something the Conservative government does not find troublesome at all.

The Conservatives spend their time driving a wedge between urban and rural Canadians or between regular and seasonal workers. We all know their style of governance. Nothing that I say will come as a surprise. Everything they do revolves around dividing people and keeping them in the dark to better govern. That is the Conservative ideology. Every time they introduce a new policy in the House they attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of Canadians.

This bill creates two classes of citizens, those who are Canadian citizens and those who are dual citizens or who may have been born abroad.

We are creating a double standard where two people guilty of the same offence may get very different sentences. One of those people could wind up in jail while the other, found guilty of having committed the same offence, would lose their Canadian citizenship and maybe even be deported. One never knows with the Conservatives.

We already have the means to punish criminals who have broken the law, means that are beyond the control of the government and the executive branch. There is no need to give the minister the power to personally decide who is guilty and who is not.

What is even more ridiculous is that they do not even abide by the courts' criteria, such as proving an accused's guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt”, the burden of proof, or “reasonable and probable grounds to believe”. The minister gives himself the right to revoke a person's citizenship on the basis of mere suspicion, without allowing an independent court to review his decision. I must say, out of respect for people who are fighting against a dictatorship in their country, that the Conservatives' intentions are obvious. They want to give themselves all the powers and decide the fate of Canadians.

In his speech, the minister said that the Canadian citizenship was held in high regard before 1977. He even talked about World War II. He wants to bring us back to before 1977, and perhaps even to just after World War II. I knew this was a backward-thinking government, but it is beyond comprehension. They want to take us back to 1950. Now, this is another illustration of the Conservative ideology.

Things have changed since the end of World War II. This is 2014 and the government wants to take us back to before 1977, as the minister said in his speech. Revoking the Canadian citizenship is a huge step backwards on many fronts. I will talk about the constitutionality of this kind of measure, and of this kind of power, which a minister can definitely not give himself. Indeed, according to the Supreme Court of Canada, this is unconstitutional. I am aware of the Conservatives' contempt for our democratic institutions. We know how they have been treating Parliament since they got a majority. They imposed time allocation 70 times. Therefore, they may criticize our motion today, but nobody believes what they are saying.

The Supreme Court was clear about the fact that stripping a person of citizenship is unconstitutional. I would like to read an excerpt from a Supreme Court decision:

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.

Professor Macklin explained:

In other words, the Supreme Court of Canada stated quite clearly that punishing somebody by depriving them of their constitutional rights, indeed, by denying them all constitutional rights and casting them out in the name of the social contract, is not constitutional.

I clearly recall the first time I spoke in the House about this bill. The minister told me that citizenship existed long before the Supreme Court and that the court did not, in any case, have the right to contradict him. Just as an aside, I understand how disdainful the Conservatives are toward our democracy and the nation's highest institution, but it has been stated quite clearly that revoking someone's citizenship is unconstitutional.

Once again, the Conservatives are going to talk to us about the beauty of Canadian citizenship and our Canadian society, but unfortunately, they will then continue to express contempt for the highest institutions that make this country a democracy and a haven for newcomers. If the Conservatives love their society so much and are so attached to Canadian citizenship, why are they not even able to respect the human rights of Canadians and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Employment and Social Development and Minister for Multiculturalism]

Mr. Speaker, to begin, I would like to correct some of the misinformation we heard in that last speech.

First, the hon. member stated that there is a moratorium on the sponsorship of parents and grandparents. There is no such moratorium—quite the opposite. When I was minister, the government increased the number of family reunifications, and the number of parents and grandparents who came as permanent residents went from 17,000 to 25,000, a 60% increase. She also said that the number of family reunifications went down when it actually went up. The figures are there in black and white on the Citizenship and Immigration Canada website.

The member said that the bill before us will create two classes of citizens: those with multiple or dual citizenship and those with only Canadian citizenship. That is incorrect. The current law contains that same distinction because we clearly have the authority to revoke citizenship if it has been obtained fraudulently. However, we can only do that for people with dual citizenship because we have obligations under the Convention relating to the status of Stateless Persons.

Is the member suggesting that Canada should violate the international convention on stateless persons?

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to correct the minister. I want to point out that I never said that the NDP supported people who commit immigration fraud.

I remember hearing one of the minister's colleagues talking about someone who had made a false statement and who had forgotten to fill out some of the boxes on his application. In the end, it was discovered that he had committed fraud. These people cannot come to Canada if they do not even fill out their application properly. We agree on that. The information that the Conservatives are giving Canadians is false. They are giving Canadians false information.

On that note, I would like to add that Amnesty International, the Canadian Council for Refugees and the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers are opposed to this bill and think it is unconstitutional. What more do the Conservatives want? Does this need to be taken before the Supreme Court? It will be and they will be chastised. That is how the Conservatives work. They are trampling on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Fortunately, the highest court in this country prevents them from getting too big for their britches and brings them back down to earth.

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

It being 11:38 p.m., pursuant to an order made on Monday, June 9, 2014, it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the third reading stage of the bill now before the House.

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.