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.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you very much.

First of all, thank you for appearing before us today and for putting up with the very short timeframe we have, given that we had the vote in the House.

We've heard from some witnesses that a short visit and a short work period or study period are not same. I believe that came from the witnesses from Pre-PR Time Counts. In fact, not all who came here for different purposes stayed, and we know that. But 87%, basically, use their permanent residency time to meet their citizenship requirements.

So, Mr. Bissett, my first question is to you. I'd like to hear your comments about the flexibility that Bill C-24 provides by giving a six-year period in which somebody can complete a four-year residency requirement to become Canadian citizens. Can you comment on that, please?

[Maria Smirnoff, Representative, Pre-PR Time Counts]

Second, by eliminating the pre-PR time provision, the new legislation actually favours immigrants without prior Canadian experience. Let me explain this by giving a simple example. Imagine two individuals who receive their permanent residency today. One of the persons has been in Canada for over five years. He graduated from a Canadian university, works for a Canadian firm, and has been fully participating in Canadian society. Another person just arrived in Canada today and received permanent residence at a point of entry. For him Canada is a new country where he does not have any social or economic investment.

Currently, the first person will be eligible to apply for citizenship in just two years from today; the second person in three years. With Bill C-24, both individuals will have to wait at least four years before applying for citizenship, so the individual with the Canadian experience is no more advantaged than someone who just arrived in Canada today. To summarize, Bill C-24 will increase wait time for someone with Canadian experience by two years and only by one year for someone without previous Canadian experience.

Bills that change the playing field equally for all groups are not objectionable. Bills that take away something valuable from one group and not others are the types of bills we need to look more closely at. Therefore we ask, how does the elimination of counting of pre-PR time help strengthen ties to Canada for someone who has lived here for five or ten years? Or how and precisely by how much will the processing time be reduced by eliminating pre-PR time counting?

Our third point is that the elimination of the pre-PR clause puts Canada at a relative disadvantage as an immigrant-accepting country relative to its peers like Australia, U.K., Germany, and others. These countries recognize that former students and temporary foreign workers are the best candidates for future citizens, and those countries allow them to count temporary residence time one for one towards their citizenship application. For example, Australia allows three years of pre-permanent residency time, four years in the U.K., and eight years in Germany.

In conclusion, we ask that the committee make the following recommendations to the government so that the government can achieve its vision of a strengthened Canadian citizenship. We ask the government to implement a transition period for the coming into force of the new residency requirement. This has been a common practice in other Commonwealth countries that undergo a citizenship law reform, for example Australia and New Zealand. We also ask that the government continue to recognize temporary residence time one for one based on practices of other peer countries.

In making these recommendations, we ask the committee to be judicial and to recognize we have lived here, worked here, studied, and paid taxes here. We chose Canada to be our home long ago, and in doing so we have had the opportunity to fully Canadianize ourselves, which is arguably the most important element of consideration when the granting of Canadian citizenship is considered.

Thank you.

[Prof. Elke Winter]

Yes, okay. I have my third point, and then I'm complete.

Regarding those who aim to commit terrorist attacks against Canada, is it doubtful that the proposed law contains anything that would deter them from their actions? Research suggests that perpetrators seldom refrain from heinous crimes due to drastic penalties, not even the death penalty.

Further, the discourse of fear and the raising of suspicion against dual nationals have detrimental impacts upon some communities, particularly upon Muslim and Arab Canadians. With a team of researchers at the University of Ottawa, we're currently investigating the public debates that were kick-started by the honourable MP Devinder Shory's Bill C-425. While our investigation is ongoing, I can already tell you that it led to numerous rants against Muslims in Canada in the print media, online fora, and social media. Bill C-24 extends and amplifies these negative stereotypes.

I will conclude here and send you my notes.

[Professor Elke Winter, Associate Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Ottawa, As an Individual]

Thank you.

I am going to give my presentation in English, but you can obviously ask me your questions in French.

Thank you for inviting me and for giving me the opportunity to speak to you about Bill C-24.

In my testimony I would like to offer you a sociological perspective based on past and ongoing research. I will start with three statements that are widely accepted in academic scholarship.

First, immigration is a fundamental element of Canadian nation building, and Canada is widely regarded as having practised this type of nation building with great success.

Second, the Canadian immigration system is to a large extent driven by economic considerations. Canada practices what former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has called with much envy—

“ immigration choisie et non plus subie”

—meaning Canada selects a large part of its migrants according to rational economic criteria.

Third, economic migration and nation building only go well together if the harsh, utilitarian selection of migrants is complemented by a warm welcome. In this sense, multiculturalism as a policy, discourse, and form of national identity has done its fair share of signalling this warm welcome to immigrants. The encouragement of immigrants to quickly take up Canadian citizenship extends this welcome. Research has shown that holding citizenship of the country where one resides is a huge factor for achieving employment at one's skill level. There's also evidence that citizenship fosters feelings of belonging. If I'm not mistaken, these are all elements that the Canadian government wants to achieve.

Some elements of Bill C-24 risk undermining Canada's success in nation building. Citizenship should always be viewed as an important step toward integration. By contrast, Bill C-24 seems to suggest that citizenship is an end point, a reward of integration.

From a sociological point of view, this approach has at least three flaws. First, for the less educated, the non-European language speakers, and the economically vulnerable, it makes citizenship much harder to obtain. The more difficult citizenship tests and stricter language rules create barriers, specifically for accompanying family members, often women. The new cumbersome residence questionnaire is particularly difficult to comply with for citizenship candidates who come from politically unstable countries, or from countries with less developed bureaucracies. Some may feel too discouraged to apply for Canadian citizenship due to high application fees and a need to submit income tax assessments.

Bill C-24 also limits credit toward the residence requirement for students, refugees, and former temporary workers. It thereby bars an increasing portion of migrants to Canada from having access to citizenship. This is not only ethically dubious, but also not conducive to nation building.

Second, for the highly skilled and highly mobile, the so-called “best brains in the world” that Canada wants to attract, Bill C-24 also prolongs and discourages the obtainment of citizenship. The longer residence periods may be too long for those who are highly mobile and are looking for a place to settle. Not being encouraged to become Canadian citizens quickly, they may opt to behave as rationally and in as utilitarian a manner as Canada did in selecting them; they must simply leave for a place where they can get better pay for their skills. This is counterproductive to successful nation building.

Those who are highly mobile and able to create offshore business opportunities are particularly penalized by the proposed physical residence requirement. Let us not forget, physical presence in a country is only a proxy for attachment, loyalty, and feelings of belonging. Hence it should be treated with flexibility and a sense of proportion, presumably by a citizenship judge.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe]

Thank you very much.

Once again, I'd like to thank our three witnesses for taking the time to contribute to our study on Bill C-24.

I would also like to thank all the committee members for their cooperation.

Meeting adjourned.

[Prof. Audrey Macklin]

Only in the cases where a person is subject to revocation for misrepresenting or committing fraud in relation to acts done before acquiring citizenship, which are related to terrorism and national security, will a court be called upon to make a declaration that the person so engaged in those acts. It's not a trial. It's just that the court will be called upon to declare that those acts occurred.

Similarly, where the ground for revocation is serving in an armed force that is engaged in conflict against Canada—where that is the ground for revocation—there again a judge will be called upon to make a declaration that the person so served in an enemy force. But again, it's not a trial.

Let me just add something about that latter ground as well. Bill C-24, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts empowers the minister—

[Prof. Audrey Macklin]

The provisions of Bill C-24 that permit revocation for what I will broadly talk of as crimes against citizenship, crimes committed while a citizen—terrorism, treason, and so on—are only applicable against people who are dual citizens, because to strip citizenship from a mono-citizen would create statelessness.

But what this means, of course, is that dual citizens are vulnerable to a kind of punishment that mono-citizen individuals are not. Yet in all other respects one would expect they are similarly situated. For example, there is no reason to think that an offence committed by somebody who is a dual citizen is any more severe, graver, or harsher, as it were, than a crime committed by somebody who is only a citizen of Canada, yet they are exposed to differential punishment. That's a kind of inequality that would breach section 15 of the charter and be very difficult to justify under section 1.

After all, whatever objectives one seeks to achieve through stripping citizenship, apparently you can't do it to people who are mono-citizens. So clearly, whatever the objectives are can't be so significant that you can't achieve them through other mechanisms of punishment. We have lots of ways of punishing people who are convicted of treason, terrorism, and other offences. We have a functioning criminal justice system. There is no reason to think that it is inadequate to deal with people who commit those offences, who also happen to be dual citizens.

[Prof. Audrey Macklin]

Thank you.

I think I have mentioned most of the affected constitutional provisions. I will add only a couple. One is section 12 of the charter that prohibits cruel and unusual punishment or treatment. Now, in a line of U.S. constitutional cases culminating in a case called Afroyim v. Rusk, the United States effectively made it unconstitutional to strip U.S. citizens of their citizenship. In some of those cases, they relied on the U.S. equivalent of the prohibition on cruel and unusual treatment or punishment to do so. So that's one provision, again, one aspect of the charter violations here.

Another is the prohibition on retroactive punishment. We consider it unjust to punish somebody for an act that was not prohibited before the law was passed. So in this case, Bill C-24 would impose retroactive punishment on people who are convicted of the listed offences before section 24 came into effect. So it would also violate the charter prohibition on retroactive punishment.

In addition to that, section 11 of the charter also guarantees the right not to be punished twice for the same offence, so in the listed offences, what you have are convictions for terrorism, treason, etc., and punishments that are meted out in a court of law by an independent judge, like imprisonment, and then, supplementing that, ministerial discretion to add yet another punishment in the form of citizenship revocation and ultimately banishment.

So those are yet more charter violations that are imposed under the provisions of this bill.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Again, good afternoon, and thank you to all the witnesses for being here this afternoon.

My first question would be to Madam Macklin.

Madam Macklin, you pointed out a number of cases where this Bill C-24 is not consistent with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. You mentioned section 15 of the charter. You mentioned other sections of the charter. Is there one section of this particular bill you haven't had a chance to talk about? Would you like to have a few minutes to talk about that?

[Devinder Shory, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

Agreed.

You made mention of immigrants. As I said before, I'm an immigrant. Immigrants have made great contributions to this country. I always say that Canada is built by immigrants. Some came thousands of years ago. Some maybe 500 years ago, and they will keep on coming. But you're right that we are talking about that small portion of people who like to have the right to be Canadian but no responsibility toward Canadian citizenship. That is the key here and that is very important to understand. Lately we see articles like the one from The Globe and Mail just this past February stating that CSIS is tracking 130 Canadians who have gone abroad to participate in extremist activities with known terrorist groups. It's not like they are there just by chance. They know what they are doing.

In your opinion, are we beginning to see an erosion in the value and prestige of the Canadian passport and Canadian citizenship? Do you think that Bill C-24 is on the right track to maintain Canada's reputation on the world stage, as well as to protect the safety of our own citizens?

[Devinder Shory, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for coming to share their views with the committee, which will definitely help us in our study of Bill C-24.

I'll start with Ms. Basnicki.

Ms. Basnicki, I know that your life has been personally touched by terrorism and you have lived through it. I can tell you that no one in this room has the level of understanding of what terrorism is, what effect on one's life terrorism can have, as much as you do. That's very clear in my mind.

I'll also be talking about this revocation part of Bill C-24. When we talk about revocation, we are talking about that group of convicted terrorists who have done a heinous act against humanity. In my view, when we talk about Canadian passports, when we talk about Canadian citizenship, I always say this: I am an immigrant.

I immigrated to Canada only in 1989. I always say that any individual who has the opportunity to come and live in Canada has actually hit the jackpot. This is my belief. We must do everything to protect those values. That is that, in my personal belief—I have seen this.

Everybody knows that a Canadian passport is very highly regarded around the world. When I fill out that landing paper anywhere, when I write “Canadian”, it reminds me of the day when I talked to the CBSA guys for the first time, and I'm very thankful for that day and very thankful to this country. Very thankful to God as well.

Here we are talking about the reputation of Canada as a safe country and a law-abiding nation in the world. We see more and more Canadian passports being used to fly under the radar and commit terrorist acts abroad.

Could you give me your opinion on Bill C-24 and what it proposes to do to combat those actions and those individuals?

[Professor Audrey Macklin, Professor and Chair in Human Rights Law, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, and Executive Member, Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers]

Thank you very much.

Thank you for inviting me to join you today via videoconference.

I am going to give my presentation in English.

I will take questions in English as well, but I look forward to the committee's inquiries.

I'm going to confine my presentation as well to the revocation provisions. Within that I will limit myself more narrowly to the legality of those provisions.

First, I'd like to clarify the provisions regarding revocation for fraud, misrepresentation, or concealment of material facts.

I understand that you have heard testimony from the minister that the inclusion of a condition requiring an applicant to intend to reside in Canada after citizenship is a provision that would not be applicable after obtaining citizenship. Perhaps the minister is there expressing the way he would desire or intend to use the law that is proposed, but I'd like to clarify that's not, in fact, how the law presently drafted is written.

What Bill C-24 does is take existing conditions for citizenship by naturalization. These are: that one reside in Canada for a certain length of time, that one pass language and knowledge of Canada tests, and that one have, broadly speaking, a clean record. The way these conditions work is that if they are not fulfilled or if an applicant conceals, misrepresents, or commits fraud with respect to any of those conditions, then citizenship obtained through that means can be revoked after the fact.

The proposed law adds a requirement that one intend to reside in Canada after acquiring naturalization to the conditions of citizenship acquisition. It follows from the structure of the provision that, if the minister takes the view that one committed fraud or misrepresentation or concealment of facts in one's intention to reside in Canada after citizenship acquisition, then the minister could, in principle, seek revocation for fraud or misrepresentation. Whether the minister chooses to do so or not, of course, is a matter of his discretion, but I'd like to insist here that the law, as presently drafted, does grant the minister power to seek revocation for an individual who, after obtaining citizenship, the minister believes did not honestly state his or her intention to reside in Canada after obtaining citizenship. So that's one clarification about the law and the legality.

Secondly, I'd like to turn to the constitutionality of the revocation provisions. Here I'm going to begin not with the revocation on grounds of fraud or misrepresentation, but the provisions that our two previous witnesses testified about, which is revocation for misconduct as a citizen; in other words, the use of citizenship revocation as punishment.

Here I think it is important to understand that we have a jurisprudence in Canada that deals with the constitutionality under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms of certain forms of punishment. The most relevant case for our purposes today is a case called Sauvé. In Sauvé we had a law that denied the right to vote to inmates of Canadian prisons serving more than two years. In other words, they were denied their constitutional rights under section 2 of the charter to vote for the period of time that they were prisoners.

This law was struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada as a violation of section 2 of the charter that could not be justified under section 1 of the charter. I'd just like to reference a couple of parts of that judgment that are particularly relevant to considering revocation as punishment here.

Can you revoke somebody's citizenship in order to punish them for what we'll call crimes against citizenship? Let me draw to your attention what the Supreme Court of Canada said, because it goes directly to this claim that was made by the two other speakers about this idea of the social contract, this idea that it's a part of the social contract that people do not commit certain kinds of crime, and if they do, they have broken their part of the social contract, and it follows from that they could have their citizenship revoked from them.

Here's what the Supreme Court of Canada said about that kind of approach:

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.

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. It isn't constitutional to deny somebody the right to vote, just in order to punish them. That's one right under the charter. It seems to follow that denying them of all constitutional rights, which is the effect of stripping someone of citizenship and exiling them from Canada, could not be constitutional either.

So it seemed to me that reading the Sauvé case provides a fairly complete answer to the constitutionality of banishment as a valid punishment under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

But certainly if one wants to go further and consider other aspects of citizenship ratification under the charter, there are certainly other dimensions of it that also appear unconstitutional on their face. For example, it is required under section 11 of the charter that if somebody is going to face a penal consequence for their actions—in this case, punishment by citizenship revocation—they're entitled to certain procedural rights.

Those rights include, under section 11 of the charter, the presumption of innocence. In the present legislation, the presumption of innocence is violated in the following way. If the minister believes that the person is a dual citizen, and therefore exposed to the risk of denationalization through citizenship stripping, the minister puts the burden on the citizen to prove that he or she is not a citizen of another country, in other words, to prove a negative in order to escape the consequence of citizenship revocation. A reverse onus violates section 11 of the charter and has been found to be unconstitutional. Bill C-24 contains a reverse-onus provision.

The charter requires that before somebody is found guilty and sentenced to a crime and punished, that person be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Bill C-24 requires no such standard of proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Our charter requires that if somebody is going to be punished, that they be tried in an open and fair trial before an independent and impartial tribunal. The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration doesn't qualify as an independent and impartial tribunal. He's a government minister, not a judge.

[Sheryl Saperia, Director of Policy for Canada, Foundation for Defense of Democracies]

Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, and thank you for inviting me here today.

I want to give credit; many of the ideas I'll be discussing today were formulated with my friend Danny Eisen, who's with the Canadian Coalition Against Terror. I just wanted to mention him by name.

My comments will focus exclusively on the provisions in Bill C-24 that deal with the revocation of citizenship for treason, terrorism, and armed conflict against Canada. As I have stated in previous testimony, I support these provisions conceptually. They amount to a 21st-century updating of the social contract that has always existed between Canada and its citizens. This contract, common to liberal democracies, broadly refers to the understanding that citizens consent to abide by certain obligations towards the state in exchange for other benefits. Bill C-24 suggests that Canadian citizenship, whether bestowed by birthright or naturalization, is predicated on a most basic commitment to the state: that citizens abstain from committing those offences considered most contrary to the national security interests of Canada.

Treason and armed conflict against Canada are actions clearly intended to damage the country as a national entity and political community. It is therefore fitting that one consequence of these crimes may be loss of citizenship to the country the offender seeks to harm.

What about terrorism? One could make a persuasive case that terrorism, as a unique crime—it’s not me saying this, it's the Canadian courts who call terrorism a unique crime—is so antithetical to Canadian values that anyone choosing to embrace such violence has effectively declared that his or her allegiance lays elsewhere.

Nonetheless, I personally would recommend that the bill stipulate a tighter connection between the crime and the consequence of losing one’s citizenship. Specifically, I suggest that revocation of citizenship for terrorism be triggered only by either terrorist offences in Canada or against a Canadian target elsewhere, or in association with a listed entity. Listed entities have been publicly designated by Canada as terrorist organizations, and in effect have become public enemies of the state. Working with a listed entity in the commission of a terrorist act is a clear statement of allegiance to forces acting to damage Canada.

The bill provides that revocation can stem not only from a domestic terrorism conviction with a sentence of five years or more, but also from a foreign conviction. When the conviction comes from a like-minded country with legal standards similar to Canada’s, this makes sense. But what about a country whose legal system we don't trust?

I understand from last week’s hearing that Minister Alexander envisions a two-step process in his ministerial discretion. The first step would be to examine the substance of the foreign offence and whether it is equivalent to a Canadian Criminal Code terrorist act. This is set out in the legislation. But the second step of the review, which was described as an examination of the fairness of the process by which the conviction was achieved, is not mentioned anywhere in the bill. I would recommend an amendment in this regard.

One option is for the minister’s two-part analysis, which was described by his officials last week, to be codified in the legislation—to be explicit, in other words—that both the substance of the act and the fairness of the conviction would be factors taken into account when deciding on a terrorism revocation case. Alternatively, revocation resulting from a foreign terrorism conviction could involve both a ministerial recommendation and court approval, which would take into account whether, for example, the conviction was politically motivated or the judge was truly independent.

The point is that a measure as severe as the revocation of citizenship needs to be drafted carefully to ensure conformity to Canadian laws and values and of course our international obligations. To that end, I do credit the bill for its consistency with the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. Bill C-24 provides that if a person holds only Canadian citizenship, it is not possible for that citizenship to be revoked, regardless of the crime, because no person can be stateless.

However, this has opened up the argument that the bill unfairly creates two classes of citizens: those with dual or multiple nationalities, who are at risk of having their citizenship stripped, and those with only Canadian citizenship, who may be punished in a variety of ways but cannot lose their citizenship.

For dual nationals who have chosen that status, often because of personal connection to or benefit from more than one citizenship, this is simply not a compelling argument. Dual citizenship was not forced on them. They are not being subjected to discrimination as a result of any inherent trait. It is a choice they have made, just as they can choose to renounce their other citizenship so as to be solely Canadian and therefore not subject to these provisions.

But what about countries that do not permit renunciation of citizenship? If the government is reluctant to uphold the legal status of a citizenship that a person has unsuccessfully tried to renounce, the following could be considered as a solution.

When someone commits terrorism, treason, or armed conflict, and his or her other citizenship is from a country where renunciation is not allowed, the minister could use his discretion to assess the extent of what I've called “active relationship” to that citizenship. For instance, does the person maintain deep ties to that other country? Has he invoked any of the rights of that citizenship? Has he travelled with the passport of that country, or served in an official capacity only open to citizens? The more active the citizenship, the weaker would be any claim that it was forced on him.

I should note that while stripping away citizenship is one tool to deal with those convicted of the most serious crimes against Canada, preventive or disruptive action should be taken to prevent, in the first place, a situation leading to citizenship revocation. Counter-radicalization programs are essential, and I am heartened to hear that a federal program is set to be unveiled in the near future.

Stronger exit controls are another option. Ray Boisvert, who is a former assistant director of intelligence at CSIS, suggested last year, I believe, that:

There has to be an easy way to trigger a denial of a passport—or the removal of somebody's passport—if there is sufficient information to demonstrate this person has become highly radicalized and/or made threats, or done things to threaten lives or the welfare and well-being of others.

This could apply equally to sole and dual citizens, and unlike citizenship revocation, which is reactive, the removal of a passport might actually prevent Canadians from engaging in terrorism or armed conflict abroad. The RCMP's recently disclosed high-risk traveller case management system, which is intended “to prevent radicalized youths from leaving for conflict zones like Syria, Somalia and North Africa”, seems to employ just such a mechanism.

Western security agencies are concerned that their citizens are travelling to these countries to participate in jihad, gaining the skills and motives to pursue similar acts in their home countries. At least one study has found that terrorists with foreign experience are far more lethal, dangerous, and sophisticated than are purely domestic cells. If the citizenship revocation provisions in Bill C-24 help prevent bloodshed from being exported to or from Canada, they are worth parliamentary consideration. Let us remember that it took only 19 hijackers to perpetrate the 9/11 attacks.

I have one last comment. If this bill goes through, perhaps it should be accompanied by a change to the application for a Canadian passport. Anyone who is 16 years or older should be required to acknowledge on paper the terms of citizenship. The document would clarify to the applicant that engaging in treason, terrorism, or armed conflict with Canada entails the possible revocation of citizenship. It essentially becomes a contract, and if you break the terms of the agreement, you are subject to the penalties.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe]

Thank you.

Unfortunately, that's all the time we have.

I would like to once again thank the three witnesses for appearing before the committee to contribute to our study of Bill C-24.

I am now going to suspend the meeting and ask our next panel of witnesses to take their seats.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Your organization works with many cultural ethnic groups from various economic backgrounds. Do you think Bill C-24's proposed increase in time for residency requirements will affect citizenship applications equally?