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.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Immigration]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Vancouver East for raising this important issue in the House and for her continued advocacy on the part of immigration issues as the opposition critic.

This is an important debate on cessation issues in the former Bill C-31 enacted by the previous government, and the impact it has on permanent residents.

The hon. member for Vancouver East has asked a very important question, and has raised this previously with our government. In fact, the government is in absolute agreement with the hon. member for Vancouver East on the need to review this very important piece of legislation and its impact since it was enacted under the former Bill C-31.

We have, in this country, a long and proud tradition of providing protection to those in need. We have one of the fairest and most generous immigration and asylum systems in the world. Our immigration laws are applied impartially, they are based on facts, and they are meant to accord with due process.

The authority of the independent and quasi-judicial IRB, the Immigration and Refugee Board, to determine whether an individual's refugee protection has ceased is not itself a new provision. It actually predates the 2012 asylum system reforms. As well, it is important to specify that the authority to revoke permanent resident status, including the permanent resident status of a refugee, also existed before Bill C-31.

However, what is very troubling about Bill C-31 is that under the 2012 reforms enacted by the previous government, cessation of protected person status was added as grounds for losing one's permanent resident status. That effectively meant it was double-barrelled. That meant that both protected person status and permanent resident status now end simultaneously once a refugee in Canada has demonstrated that they are no longer in need of protection.

The minister, himself, has said in the House that he agrees that the legislation, which has been identified by the member for Vancouver East, is part of a long legacy of matters inherited from the previous government that our government desperately wants to review, and will review.

As members know, we are not at liberty to discuss particulars of a specific case due to privacy considerations, but the minister has expressed public sympathy with the point the hon. member is raising. I can assure the House that the government is reviewing policies and legislation introduced in recent years with a view to developing proposals to improve them.

In a relatively short time, and I will demonstrate to the House a number of measures we have taken in short order to address the legislative initiatives of the previous government that were very problematic.

For example, in terms of the government's respect for the rulings of the Federal Court, the Federal Court had found in December 2011 that the policy requiring the removal of face coverings to take the oath of citizenship was unlawful. We agree with that decision; the previous government did not. We dropped the appeal of that decision to the Supreme Court of Canada. That is the case of Ishaq v. Canada.

Another example of us being more than willing retract and retrench on legislation by the previous government is rescinding the legislation that came in under Bill C-24. We have introduced amendments to the Citizenship Act that members of the House will be familiar with. Bill C-6 makes it easier for applicants to meet citizenship requirements and helps encourage their sense of belonging and connection to Canada. It also eliminates the two classes of citizenship that were perpetuated by the previous government, which we stood fundamentally against and campaigned against.

Another example of our government's review of existing procedures that help to promote greater openness and better processing is our response regarding Haitian and Zimbabwean nationals. On February 4 of this year, the Government of Canada announced that Haitian and Zimbabwean nationals in this country would be provided another six months to apply for permanent residence on humanitarian and compassionate grounds—

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Mr. Chairman, I'd like to speak against clause 14.

This makes the bill retroactive to the date of coming into effect of Bill C-24. Opposition has been expressed in the House, but I'd like to express it again.

Effectively, the bill means that the government will be returning citizenship to Zakaria Amara, who was the ringleader of the Toronto 18 terror group that planned al Qaeda-style violence in southern Ontario to push Canada to abandon Afghanistan. The faction led by Amara built detonators and acquired explosive materials for large truck bombs, which were to be detonated in 2006 near the Toronto Stock Exchange and CN Tower. An Ontario military base was also to be attacked. Parliament was on the list of targets, and the Prime Minister of Canada was a target to be beheaded.

There was a piece in the National Post, Mr. Chairman, on February 25 of this year. I'd like to quote from part of it. Essentially this clause will reinstate this man's citizenship, as outlined here:

The plot by the al-Qaida-inspired Toronto 18 to detonate truck bombs, storm the CBC and the Canadian Parliament, and then behead prime minister Stephen Harper was foiled 10 years ago.

As the trial judge said, the potential for loss of life on a scale never seen before in Canada was “spine-chilling.”

Those were the judge's words.

Right-thinking Canadians everywhere will then, be relieved to learn that the man who masterminded these terror attacks, and was subsequently given a life sentence, is the main beneficiary of the Liberal government’s citizenship act reforms.

Because that's what this clause 14 will do.

Zakaria Amara had his Canadian citizenship stripped under a bill brought in by the Conservative government in 2015.

Under the legislation just introduced by the Liberals, he will have that Canadian citizenship reinstated. The Conservative Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act ensured dual citizens convicted of terrorism, high treason or spying could have their citizenship revoked.

So, Mr. Chairman, I just draw it to the committee's attention that by passing this legislation, the citizenship of this man, who intended to do all these “spine-chilling” events, to use the judge's words, to institutions, the CBC, and Parliament, and to behead the Prime Minister, will be reinstated.

Quite frankly, that's not good. In fact, it's terrible.

I urge members to vote against this retroactive clause.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

If I may speak to clause 3 for a minute, and again to get this on the record, Mr. Chair, I'm going to vote against clause 3 because I do think it is fundamentally flawed and an amendment needed to be brought forward. I trust that it will be at a later date.

With that being said, there could have been a better way to deal with an entire bill, which is of course for the government to repeal all of Bill C-24 and then bring forward provisions that are supported within Bill C-24, as opposed to the other way around. That may save us a lot of grief.

In any event, we are here where we are at, and I am going to vote against clause 3.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Chair, I will speak to this amendment.

This amendment is consistent with the original set of amendments I put forward to restore the old Federal Court appeal system prior to Bill C-24. That included amendments 1, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14, 18, and 23, if we were to address this issue comprehensively and to restore the appeal process to what it was prior to Bill C-24. I did not end up moving these amendments because I have some understanding from the minister—in his presentation at this committee, as well as in second reading, and other conversations—that there is interest from the government in pursuing a better path.

That better path would include enhanced amendments that are incorporated in what I call CARL amendments under NDP-10 and NDP-2 that were deemed to be out of scope and out of order, Mr. Chair.

To that end, while I don't disagree with the need to enhance the appeal process, many people have spoken to it, and they've raised legitimate reasons as to why it needs to be dealt with. Given that we have an opportunity to bring in better legislation in this regard, I am hopeful, and I'm going to take a leap of faith that it will happen in short order in the fall sitting of the House. To that end, I will not support this amendment, not because of its intent, but because I think a better amendment will be forthcoming at a later time.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

This amendment seeks to reverse and repair the damage done by Bill C-24 in removing the right of appeal for someone whose citizenship has been revoked. This was supported by numerous witnesses before the committee, including the BC Civil Liberties Association, the immigration section of the Canadian Bar Association, and the Canadian Council for Refugees. The new process under which we're working with Bill C-24 creates a paper process. There is only one opportunity to seek leave to appeal to the Federal Court for a judicial review of the decision, but there isn't meaningful oversight to the decision a minister makes. My amendment is straightforward. It restores what we always had before Bill C-24, which is a right of appeal to the Federal Court to a decision made by the minister under this act.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

This particular amendment seeks to repair the damage done to the citizenship process under the previous parliament and Bill C-24. Prior to Bill C-24, a minister would always consider factors of equitable concerns. In the words of the Canadian Bar Association's immigration law section's testimony at this committee, due to Bill C-24, neither the minister nor the Federal Court has discretion to consider humanitarian or compassionate factors. Some form of safety valve is warranted for deserving cases. The amendment I'm putting forward speaks to this absolutely crucial ability of a minister to exercise discretion. There is no requirement of the minister to stop the renunciation of citizenship. Without this amendment, no matter how much the minister might recognize the situation would create grievous humanitarian and compassionate harm, the minister wouldn't have the power to decide not to renounce, unless you give the minister this discretion by accepting this amendment.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

This amendment, NDP-10, reference number 8222883, attempts to address the lack of procedural safeguards in the revocation of citizenship by creating a new process where appeals and reviews can be made at the immigration appeal division.

This amendment comes with two amendments. The organizations in support of this change are many. They include the Canadian Bar Association, the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, The BC Civil Liberties Association, the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic, the Canadian Council for Refugees, and Legal Aid Ontario. Individual supporters include Peter Edelmann, Stephen Green, Audrey Macklin, and Richard Kurland.

The goal is to ensure that individuals facing citizenship revocation for misrepresentation or fraud should have at least the same degree of procedural fairness and safeguards that are extended to individuals facing revocation of permanent residence or fighting a parking ticket. Prior to Bill C-24, individuals could appeal to the Federal Court. Because of the cost, duration, and availability of the courts, this has been called an inefficient system by many experts. The immigration appeal division currently undertakes similar appeals and reviews of decisions for statuses such as permanent residence. For that reason, this board is adequately situated to handle citizenship cases as well and can handle them more effectively and efficiently than the Federal Court system.

These amendment would institute this concept. It provides for a number of procedural processes in the amendment itself. I won't go through all these processes, but I do want to highlight a couple of them.

One of these allows for humanitarian and compassionate considerations related to the person, particularly in situations where the best interests of a child are directly affected. I feel quite strongly that this ought to be considered.

With respect to making a report to the appeal division, this amendment calls for the minister to provide the person, before that report is made, with a written notification that specifies a) the person's right to make written representation, b) the period within which the person may make his or her representations and the form and manner in which they must be made, and c) the grounds on which the minister is relying to make his or her decision to make a report. The minister shall provide his or her decision on whether or not to make a report to the person in writing.

Bringing forward these procedures allows for a better approach to revoking someone's citizenship. With something as serious as citizenship, it is important for notification to be provided to the individual as well.

I won't go through every aspect of the amendment, but that's the thrust of it. I would move this amendment, amendment NDP-10, reference number 8222883.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Again, it's hard for me to put into words how devastated I am by the motion that was passed, so I will put on the record that I'm here under protest and would have preferred to have tabled my amendments at report stage.

However, I do want to commend the Liberal government for this bill overall. I didn't get a chance to speak to it—I speak to these amendments one at a time—but let me say how thrilled I am to see that the damage done in BillC-24 has largely been removed and that citizenship is citizenship is a principle. Much in this bill is to be celebrated. It's doubly hard for me to be so sad at a moment when I thought I would be enjoying a sense of restoration of good principles in our Citizenship Act.

Let me move quickly to this particular amendment before I run out of time.

This amendment seeks to deal with criticisms that you've heard in committee testimony, particularly from the Canadian Bar Association, about injecting, as we do here, in subclause 1(4) the bill....

My amendment is very simple. It essentially removes subclause 1(4), which sets out requirements for income tax returns and ties income tax returns to applications for citizenship. The Canadian Bar Association brief was very clear on this point in its concern that any innocent mistake in an income tax return could have a negative impact on citizenship applications or could even cause confusion such that someone either delayed applying for citizenship or delayed filing their tax return because of an unnecessary linking of the two.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

In fact, this amendment comes with a number of others: numbers 1, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14, 18, and 23. This first one is actually a consequential amendment to the main changes. It was aimed to bring back the old federal appeal court system prior to Bill C-24.

I will actually not be moving this set of amendments because later on I have another set of amendments, amendments NDP-10 and NDP-21, that will propose a better appeal system that I would wish the committee to consider. It may be that the latter amendments, numbers 10 and 21, when I move them, may be deemed to be inadmissible, but we will deal with it at that stage.

If they're not admissible, I am very much hopeful that the government would consider taking those amendments and putting forward new legislation, perhaps in the fall, to address the issue of ensuring that there's an appeal process in place that addresses the many issues that witnesses have brought forward.

To that end, Mr. Chair, for the clarification of committee members, I will not be moving amendments 1, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14, 18, and 23. All those amendments deal with a package of changes to bring back a federal appeal court system related to this bill.

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

Thank you to all for being here today.

My first question is for Ms. Go and Mr. Green.

Some constituents of mine have come here. Their families are Canadian citizens, but unfortunately one of the members who has to travel overseas is not. Could you give the committee examples of what you've encountered where otherwise desirable or worthy citizenship applicants would be unable to acquire citizenship as a result of Bill C-24's restrictions and physical residency requirements?

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'd like to ask a question to Mr. Green and Mr. Kurland, in particular, and it has to do with subclause 1(8) of Bill C-6, which repeals the requirement that a person intend to reside in Canada if granted citizenship. This was established in Bill C-24. Are you concerned that Canadian citizenship might be sought by those looking for a citizenship of convenience, without the intent of living in Canada once it's obtained?

It appears there are many citizens who get their citizenship and then they're gone. They go to Saudi Arabia and make a lot more money there. I don't mean to pick on Saudi Arabia, but they go to another jurisdiction where they make substantially more funds than they do here.

One of the witnesses in the first round gave the example of Lebanon. In July of 2006 there were 34 ship evacuations of Canadian citizens who left Lebanon. That's ships; that's not individuals. There were 34 ship evacuations and 65 air evacuations. It's interesting to know that many of the people who had the air evacuations, even though it was paid for by the Canadian government, wanted the travel points. That amounts to approximately 15,000 Canadians at a cost of about $75 million. Many of those people returned to Lebanon when things settled down. That's just one example.

That section is gone. I think it was raised by Mr. Wong about this whole issue of citizenship by convenience. It's a great thing to have a Canadian passport. Many people on this planet would love to have a Canadian passport.

Those are my questions for Mr. Green, and then Mr. Kurland.

[Vincent Wong, Staff Lawyer, Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic]

Thank you. I'll dive straight into the issues.

Firstly, it's our position—and we support Mr. Green's eloquent arguments on this—that an overly rigid application of the physical residency test would leave otherwise deserving applicants unfairly barred from citizenship. We see these cases all of the time for clients who spend time abroad for business or schooling, but what I would outline is that it's also for those situations of compassionate care, for example, cases where clients go back home to take care of their ailing parents.

Therefore, we recommend that whatever test the committee deems appropriate in this situation, whether it be the Koo test or the centralized mode of existence, really gets at the heart of providing that flexibility in situations where it's deemed just. We believe that putting in a deemed residency test that focuses an analysis on a centralized mode of existence would get to the heart also of the concerns surrounding so-called citizens of convenience. We also submit that putting in a deemed residency test will balance the interests of legal clarity and processing efficiency on one hand, with concerns of fairness and equity on the other hand.

The second issue that I'd like to get into is that we recommend the right of appeal to be reinstated for all citizenship decisions. Previously, the Citizenship Act allowed for an automatic right of appeal to Federal Court for essentially all citizenship decisions. Bill C-24 replaced this automatic right of appeal with a far more limited judicial review only with the permission or leave from the court. We submit that it is of critical importance for the rule of law that there be proper judicial scrutiny of all citizenship decisions to ensure that they are legally sound and that discretion is being exercised in a reasonable fashion. This is only possible when effective avenues exist to challenge these decisions.

Finally, my third point relates to that of the policy of requiring an upfront language test to prove language skill for citizenship, and we recommend that this policy be completely scrapped. The reason is that the policy is a double whammy for immigrants because it erects a language barrier, but also a financial barrier to citizenship in that applicants would actually have to pay for testing as an a priori matter before their application is even processed by CIC. We recommend that it be placed within a pre-Bill C-24 system, which allows decision-makers to determine whether there is sufficient knowledge of language through an oral hearing or interview.

We also recommend that the requirement of a written knowledge test to be taken in French or English be repealed, as this requirement essentially amounts to a second language test, which we heard a little earlier about. We agree with the CBA submission on this that, “Language competency required to pass a knowledge test is significantly different than that required to live and work [practically] in Canada.” Previously, language requirements have always focused on practical listening and speaking skills. Requiring applicants to pass a written test in English or French creates additional reading comprehension and written language requirements, areas that historically, prior to Bill C-24, had not been deemed necessary for naturalization.

Now, I appreciate that there are members of the public who, out of good intention, want to promote acquisition of English and French among immigrants in order that they can better improve their socio-economic outcomes. We agree that language acquisition is an important goal for successful settlement; however, this is a situation where you already have the carrot, you don't need the stick. When you use the stick, unintended consequences may happen. Many immigrants and refugees arrive at the bottom of a socio-economic ladder. They don't have time when they're working multiple jobs and taking care of family to get formal language testing done.

[Avvy Go, Clinic Director, Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic]

Thank you.

My name is Avvy Go. I'm the clinic director of the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic, which is a not-for-profit, community-based organization providing free legal services to low-income people in the greater Toronto area. With me is Vince Wong, who is a staff lawyer at our clinic. We're very pleased to be here and we thank you for the opportunity to comment on the bill.

For us, the Citizenship Act is one of the most important pieces of legislation in our country. Citizenship defines who we are as a people and therefore what Canada is as a nation. Being able to become a Canadian citizen is important, particularly for many immigrants, because our legal system reserves certain benefits, rights, and privileges to those with citizenship status, and of course, the most important, which is the right to vote.

Citizenship also gives immigrants to Canada a sense of belonging and it reaffirms their place in the country they call home. It's important for many of our clients at the clinic—many of them are racialized, many are non-citizens—to be reassured that our Citizenship Act does not promote injustice and exclusion. In fact, I will argue it's in the interests of all of us in our country that our citizenship law signals to all of our immigrants that Canadian society is a welcoming place for all people, regardless of their race, gender, socio-economic status, and so on.

We are pleased to see that Bill C-6 repeals many of the provisions that previous Bill C-24 had put in, for example, resetting the language and knowledge requirement so that they only apply to applicants aged 18 to 54, repealing the intent-to-reside provision, and reinstating a half-day credit for time spent prior to acquiring permanent resident status. These and others are positive changes, but many serious problems still exist with the current framework, and I'm going to turn to my colleague to address some of those problems.

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

Good.

Currently there are two organizations that have launched a lawsuit. They argue the current process for citizenship revocation under Bill C-24 is not only problematic for the stated grounds that are related to national security, but they argue that charter rights are violated. They believe these elements of the current law are out of line with a free and democratic society.

What is your opinion of their claims?

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

What was the system before Bill C-24?