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… read more

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.

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Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure I to rise to address what I think is an important issue. I always enjoy the challenge of trying to hold the current government accountable on the immigration and citizenship file.

Over the last number of years, the current government, more than any other government that has preceded it, has been fantastic when it comes to Conservative spin. The Conservatives like to create a crisis and then try to fix the crisis. The whole area of citizenship, I believe, is a great example.

Let me expand on that. When the Conservatives took office a number of years ago, people had to wait a certain period of time to get their citizenship. After that period of time, they would put in the application. They would meet the criteria, put in the application, and roughly 12 months later, would have their citizenship. That is what it was prior to the current government taking office.

There might have been a certain percentage of cases that took over a year. There was some concern at the time. We wanted to address what appeared to be an increasing number of days to have them processed. At the time, the Paul Martin government allocated close to about $75 million in the budget to speed up the processing time so that people who had qualified for citizenship could anticipate waiting from eight to 12 months. That is the type of situation the current government took over. It was not more than 12 months for most cases, and there was a serious investment to reduce it to a more reasonable timeframe.

What has actually transpired? Ever since we have had the Conservative government, the waiting period for processing has become worse. Month by month, it has continued to grow. Today it is well over two years before--

[Wladyslaw Lizon]

No.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Yes, Mr. Speaker. It is well over two years, and I am being generous.

[Massimo Pacetti]

It's almost three years. Check the website.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, if we were to look into the residency issue, we would find that it is four years, and that is being generous. On many occasions, people are having to wait six years for processing.

However, if people put in their application today, they can anticipate that it will be at least two years before they are going to get their citizenship.

[Massimo Pacetti]

Thirty-one months.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thirty-one months is what the website says, Mr. Speaker. That is completely unacceptable. It is not justifiable. The Conservatives have made a crisis. What do they say? They say that they have legislation that is going to speed up the process.

When I posed the question to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, what did he say? He said that by 2016, because of this legislation, we are going to have a one-year processing time. Not only is the after the next election, but the Conservatives' goal, through legislation, is to try to get it to where it was when the Liberals were in government. That is their goal.

I think we should raise the bar a bit. It is 12 months, with new legislation.

Remember when the Liberal Party gave a financial commitment of close to $75 million? One would think the Conservatives would not have had a problem keeping it under 12 months. One questions why they made such a mess of it. Their priorities are all wrong is what I would argue.

What are the ramifications? We hear of the citizenship issue and the processing time. Let me give a couple of real examples that are taking place across this land, from coast to coast to coast. Oh yes, to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, these are real situations, and I am sure his office would be aware of them.

Imagine a landed immigrant who has been here for three, four, or five years, who has met all the requirements and is excited about becoming a citizen of Canada. He or she puts in an application but then finds out that they will be waiting two and a half or close to three years before being given citizenship.

I will use the example of the Philippines, a country I am very passionate about. For many of my constituents from the Philippines and India, particularly those two countries, I am constantly dealing with immigration-related issues, including citizenship.

There are many people across Canada who are in the queue for their citizenship and are anxiously waiting for it to arrive. It happens that they are using the passport from the their homeland country, whether Philippine or Indian. However, if that passport expires and they do not have citizenship, and they cannot get Canadian citizenship even though they are often more than qualified for it and have been waiting for more than a year—they are unable to travel outside of Canada unless they get the passport from the country of their birth renewed.

I get cases on an ongoing basis--

[An hon. member]

You're making me sympathetic for the minister.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Well, Mr. Speaker, I feel very sorry for the member who does not appreciate how many of our constituents are affected by the Conservative government's poor performance.

In reality, we end up with individuals who are not able to travel if an emergency were to occur, and this happens far more often than what some members might think. They are now put in a bind. Let us say there is a death in the family, and they have to travel back to the country of their birth, but they do not have a valid passport. They cannot get a Canadian passport, because they are waiting in queue.

[An hon. member]

Sure they can.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

No, Mr. Speaker, they cannot get a Canadian passport--

[The Deputy Speaker, Joe Comartin]

Order. There is just too much chatter in the House. I know you will all find it surprising, but I am having some difficulty hearing the member for Winnipeg North. Could we keep the chatter down please?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, people cannot get a Canadian passport until they get their Canadian citizenship, so if they are waiting for three years to get their citizenship and their country of birth passport has expired and they have an emergency and have to leave Canada, that means they are obligated to get the passport renewed by their country of birth. That is costing people time, money, and resources, because the government has not been able to reduce the processing period for citizenship. Those are the types of real issues people are having to deal with because the government has been negligent in terms of processing times for citizenship.

Another example is the provincial election in Ontario. Whether it is the provinces of Ontario, Quebec, or British Columbia, there have been tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of individuals who have not been able to vote in provincial elections, because the government has allowed the citizenship processing time to hit that two to three year mark. If the government had done its job and kept that processing time to 12 months or less, we would have had more Canadians participating in our democracy. There are hundreds of thousands of people who call Canada home and qualify for citizenship, and the government's priority has not been to try to get into the hands of those individuals their citizenship.

Even by the minister of immigration's own admission, this bill is designed to reduce the processing times. We did not need legislation to reduce the processing times. It might help, but we did not require the legislation to do it. What we require is that the minister and the government have the political will to reduce processing times for citizenship. Although the current minister of immigration would argue that we have a huge demand of 333,000, some of the lowest demands on the citizenship branch in the last 15 years were while the former minister of immigration, his colleague, was responsible for the department and the processing time was making its greatest jumps. Therefore, the argument the minister of immigration was using this evening is bogus. That is the reality.

The reason we have the legislation in the first place, the government and the minister of immigration will tell us, is that it is all about reducing processing times, at least in good part. I would argue that the minister has not. That is why I suggested at the beginning of my comments that what the government is good at doing is talking about fixing problems, when what it does not tell people is that the problems it needs to fix are the problems it has created. The biggest problem for the government is that it creates problems in immigration, whether it is the processing times for citizenship or issues relating to the temporary foreign worker program.

The Liberal Party did create the temporary foreign worker program, but the problem was created from that government. We did not have a problem. We did not have the calls that we have today.

When the Liberal Party was in government, the average was about—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Order, please. I want to remind members that there will be a question and comment period in just about five and a half minutes. If they could just hold off all their comments until then, I know the Chair would appreciate it. I am sure the member for Winnipeg North would appreciate it as well.