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.

[Bernie M. Farber]

I have just a very brief comment.

There does remain in place, as I understand it, judicial review on revocation of citizenship. For example, I was talking earlier about an individual who has now gone through 20 years of having his citizenship removed because of his work as a translator in a Nazi death squad. That began in 1998, and he's still a citizen here in Canada because he was able to avail himself of reviews and judicial reviews all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.

I'm not exactly sure where the situation lies in terms of Bill C-6 and Bill C-24 and the issue of protection, but it is clear to me that judicial review is permitted because it's permitted under fraudulent access to citizenship. There is still a way to ensure that justice is being done and is being seen to be done.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I thank all the witnesses for their presentations.

I'd like to focus on the process after grounds have been established, or perhaps categories of individuals whose citizenship would be revoked.

In our previous presentations from other witnesses, the issue around process and due process was key. None of you has really touched on this, so I'd like to inquire whether or not, with the change of Bill C-24, the process is also altered. Bill C-6 does not bring back the process prior to Bill C-24, which is that for the persons whose citizenship is being revoked to go before the Federal Court for a decision, to be assessed on a case-by-case basis in terms of the due process to be followed.

I'd like to ask this question to you, Ms. Lenard, to see what your thoughts are with respect to that aspect of it.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

All three of you have addressed the issue of the revocation of citizenship, and there are obviously different views among the three of you. The comment, of course, that a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian seems to be the justification for Bill C-6 in repealing the relevant section of Bill C-24.

Ms. Saperia and a witness on Tuesday morning raised the issue of the oath, which says:

I swear (or affirm) that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada, Her Heirs and Successors, and that I will faithfully observe the laws of Canada and fulfil my duties as a Canadian citizen.

That's important for dealing with the statement that a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian, because if you're born in Canada, you don't take that oath. If you're a new Canadian, you have a choice. The law, notwithstanding Bill C-6, still allows revocation for fraud and for misrepresentation.

I would like all of you to comment on that. Perhaps we'll start with Ms. Saperia, although most of what I've said has been in her statement.

Maybe I'll go further, however. Is it really proper to repeal the clause in Bill C-24, or should it be amended?

We'll start off with you, Ms. Saperia.

[Bernie M. Farber]

Thank you for the question. The statement I made back in regards to Bill C-24 has not changed.

I would like to reiterate what my colleague Professor Tamara Lenard has stipulated.

When people like immigrants, refugees, stateless people come to this country, they're not looking for ways not to become citizens. They're not looking for ways in which they can throw roadblocks and involve themselves in criminal terrorist activities. It's not to say that the odd one might, but truly we should not be using a cannonball to stun a flea.

The fact of the matter is that if somebody commits a criminal act, and let's make no mistake about it, a terrorist act is a criminal act, then they fall under criminal law, and they should be handled by criminal law. If citizenship becomes the goal that everybody must reach, and there's impediments put in the way, especially if those impediments are pointing at or targeting one specific group of people—and again the professor is quite correct, the group of people that it was targeting in Bill C-24 were the Canadian Muslim population, I've seen no evidence to suggest otherwise—we have to retrench, and we have to look back.

I have to say that I was both amazed and quite gratified that a decision was made by the minister to revoke that concept and put back into law the importance in the power of citizenship.

When my late father came here he was stateless. What does that mean to be stateless? He didn't revoke his Polish citizenship. He was just not interested in continuing to be a Polish citizen, so he became a Canadian citizen in incredible ways. He had a little flagpole in the front of his grocery store, and every Dominion Day, as he called it, he would raise the flag. He became a strong citizen, and everything that I've seen, from Muslims to Somalis to Southeast Asians, all these new immigrants who have come here, all I've seen is them embracing Canada. That, to me, is what we should be looking at: the glass half full, not the glass half empty.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a few questions.

First of all, I'd like to ask Mr. Farber a few questions. Allow me to start off by saying welcome back to Ottawa. We are very happy to have you here, given your rich experience that has obviously informed your work at the Mosaic Institute.

I was going over the testimony that you provided back in 2014, I believe it was, and you were very articulate. At one point, when you were considering Bill C-24, you did say that Bill C-24 will, “make citizenship not a rewarding end to their long and difficult journey, but an unreachable destination filled with roadblocks and diversions.”

I was wondering if you could kindly explain to us if you've had the opportunity to review Bill C-6, and if there was anything in particular that stood out for you and is of interest to you.

[Dr. Patti Tamara Lenard, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa, As an Individual]

Hi, and thank you for inviting me to speak to you again. As the chair just said, I'm an associate professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa. My areas of expertise are in political theory and practice in immigration policy, and also multiculturalism.

I have focused the last two years of my research on the so-called power to revoke citizenship across democratic states in Europe and in Australia, and of course, in Canada. Bill C-6 proposes to undo the most controversial change, in my view, to the Citizenship Act adopted during the Conservative government's time in power. That is, the power to revoke the citizenship of those who commit a long list of crimes, including treason, spying, and terrorism.

When the Conservatives opened debate on Bill C-24 at this committee, I was invited to speak, and I spoke against it. I said that the power to revoke citizenship has absolutely no place in democratic states. I believe I used an expression that my colleague used, “a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian”. I believe that. I said that citizens in a democratic state have the absolute right not to be expelled against their will.

It is only slightly an exaggeration that I have held my breath since the election of the Liberal Party, waiting for them to fulfill their promise to revoke the revocation bill. I am gratified by the content of Bill C-6.

I want to respond here briefly to three defences of the power to revoke offered by Conservative MPs in the House when this Bill C-6 was open for discussion. Then I'd like to offer a piece of advice to the Liberal Party about how to announce this bill when it finally passes into law.

The three Conservative objections that I'd like to consider are these: that revocation protects democracies and makes citizens safer; that in adopting a revocation law, we were finally catching up to states that permit revocation, mainly European ones; and that this has large-scale public support.

First, does revocation protect democracy and make a citizen safer? There is no evidence that is true—not one iota of evidence. The Canadian criminal justice system is an excellent one. I think we all agree with that, and it possesses the resources necessary to punish individuals who are convicted of all kinds of heinous crimes.

More generally, and this is important, there is no evidence that states that presently possess the power to revoke citizenship are safer than those who do not. Indeed, recent events in Europe, for example, in Belgium, where the state possesses the right to revoke citizenship, including the right to render its citizens stateless, suggests the opposite. The fact that revocation would have targeted dual citizens only fundamentally undermines the equality to which the Canadian democratic state is committed, in ways in which I'm happy to elaborate in our discussion, and which in my view fundamentally undermines the security of Canadians.

Second, is it true that we were catching up to other states by adopting a revocation law? I have two things to say about this. First, it is profoundly relevant that where European states do permit revocation, these laws have been on the books for decades. In most cases, they were adopted before or after the two world wars.

Second, they are almost, with the exception of the U.K., entirely in disuse. The trend is toward abandoning these laws, not in adopting them, in spite of recent public discourse that makes the contrary appear true. We all know now that France has just recognized this and has backed down from adopting a revocation bill, having acknowledged that it is fundamentally democratic. Of course, it did so in the face of a devastating terrorist attack on its soil.

Truly, the advantage of the Liberal bill before us now is that it can be at the forefront of an international commitment, a recommitment to the right of individuals to their own nationality. It is a commitment adopted in international law to respond to the massive human rights violations, to put it mildly, that followed denationalizations during World War II, which my colleague spoke about earlier.

Three, what should we make of the claim that there's public support for revoking citizenship? It's not surprising that a bill like this would have widespread support. Punishing perceived criminals is very popular, but it is a feature of democratic states that the rights of minorities, especially unpopular ones, are not subjected to majority vote. The strength of the Canadian Constitution, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, are that they protect the rights of all Canadians regardless of how others feel about them.

I teach this in my introductory course on democratic theory. The people who are at issue here are individuals who have committed heinous crimes. They are the most hated of Canadians, but they're still entitled to have their rights protected. The strength of the criminal justice system in a democratic state is determined by whether it protects the rights of the criminal.

Regarding my advice, here is the context. For the past three years, like my colleague, and with the financial support of the Kanishka project at the Department of Public Safety, I have been studying the effects of counterterrorism policies on the Muslim community in Canada. In particular, I have been evaluating their responses to a whole range of policies that have been adopted in the counterterrorism era.

We have interviewed over 100 prominent Muslims from five major Canadian cities about a range of specific policies, including the recent use of security certificates, the expanded range of CSIS investigative powers, the passenger protect list, and of course Bill C-24, which permitted the revocation of citizenship.

We also asked questions about the experience of being a Muslim in Canada right now in this era of counterterrorism. So many of our respondents spoke of being devastated—and that is the language that they used, devastated—by the ways in which the pursuit of these policies has served to undermine the trust of Muslim citizens in the Canadian state.

Further, in their view, these policies, and just as much the discourse surrounding the adoption of these policies, has seemed to them to perpetuate an idea of Muslims as dangerous and disloyal citizens, and that they can and should be treated with suspicion and distress by others. They believe this discourse has created a climate in which discrimination against them has been made legitimate and in which it goes unpunished. They believe their charter rights are not protected.

Fundamentally Muslim Canadians believe the intent of Bill C-24's revocation clause was to permit and encourage discrimination against them. They believed that it would be used only against Muslims, and they could point to public discussions of people considered as possibly eligible for revocation, all of whom were Muslim, and they pointed to that as evidence of their claim.

The revocation of the so-called revocation bill presents the Liberal government with an opportunity to continue its mission to protect and rebuild an inclusive Canadian identity that can again underpin trust among citizens of all religions, races, and colours.

The language that it has chosen to announce this bill is just as important as the fact of it, if not more. When the Liberal government explains why it has gone forward in this case, it must stand up to declare that Muslim Canadians are full and loyal citizens. The language must be the lofty language of inclusion deployed throughout the entire Liberal election campaign.

I look forward to when the power to revoke has been put to rest.

Thank you.

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

Good morning, distinguished members of the committee.

On behalf of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank focused on national security and foreign policy, thank you for inviting me to appear before you today.

My comments will focus exclusively on the provisions in the Citizenship Act that revoke citizenship for treason, terrorism, and armed conflict against Canada, which Bill C-6 seeks to repeal.

As I explained in my testimony on Bill C-24, I believe it is reasonable to predicate Canadian citizenship 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 seems fitting that one consequence of these crimes might be the loss of citizenship to the country the offender seeks to harm.

However, there are areas where the current law could be improved. Rather than repeal outright the provisions allowing citizenship to be stripped on national security grounds, I would propose several amendments. For instance, I recommended in my previous testimony, and in various newspaper publications, that the law should be amended to stipulate a tighter connection between the terrorist crime and the consequence of losing one's citizenship. Specifically I suggest the stripping of citizenship for terrorism be triggered only by terrorist offences in Canada, against a Canadian target, or when committed in association with a listed entity. Listed entities have been publicly designated by the Canadian government as terrorist organizations and are in effect public enemies of the state. Committing a terrorist act that meets one of those three criteria is, to my mind, a clear attempt to damage Canada, for which loss of citizenship is appropriate. If the terrorist act has nothing to do with Canada, the revocation of citizenship should not be the consequence.

I would also suggest an amendment with regard to foreign terrorist convictions. I can understand Canada giving credence to a terrorism conviction from a like-minded country with legal standards similar to our own, but while the original legislation was clear that the substance of the foreign offence would be examined to ensure its equivalence to a Canadian Criminal Code terrorist act, the law failed to require an assessment of the fairness of the process by which that conviction was achieved.

I would like to take a moment to address Minister McCallum's most vociferous objection to the current law, namely that it creates two classes of citizens: those with dual or multiple nationalities who are at risk of having their Canadian citizenship stripped, and those with only Canadian citizenship who may be punished in a variety of ways but cannot lose their citizenship.

First, that distinction is not arbitrary. It only exists because there is a law that prohibits rendering a person stateless. Second, for dual nationals who have chosen that status, often because of personal connection to, or benefit from, more than one citizenship, this is not a compelling argument. Dual citizenship was not forced upon them, and they are not being subject 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.

In cases where a Canadian citizen is also citizen of a country that does not enable renunciation of that citizenship, that's a different story. In that case, the minister or department could use their discretion to assess the extent of what I call the active relationship to that second citizenship. Does the individual maintain deep ties to the other country? Has the individual invoked any of the rights of that citizenship? Has the individual travelled with the passport of that country, or served in an official capacity only open to citizens? The less active that second citizenship, the weaker the argument the Canadian citizenship should be revoked.

In short, it is simply not always true that a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian. It is not an absolute category. Naturalized Canadians are Canadians only so long as they are not found to have lied on their citizenship application. Those who have committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide can have their citizenship removed as well. Consider also that naturalized citizens must pledge an oath of allegiance to the Queen as the personification of Canada. By committing treason, armed conflict, or terrorism against Canada, are they not renouncing that oath through their actions?

Canadians with more than one nationality have a very easy way to retain their Canadian citizenship under this law, do not commit criminal acts of treason, armed conflict, or terrorism that are directed at Canada as a country.

Lastly, if the government believes that our national security interests are better served by keeping dangerous terrorists in Canada where we can watch them properly, rather than potentially letting them loose in another country, I urge them to follow that commitment through. The safety of the Canadian public demands that if those involved in terrorism are to remain in this country, they need to be closely monitored while they are imprisoned and afterwards. Canada must develop a strategy for preventing convicted terrorists from radicalizing and recruiting members of the general prison population. The threat of Islamist prison radicalization is an important feature of modern counterterrorism, with prison being a unique incubator for violent radicalization. As more terrorists are incarcerated in this country, the related threat of prison radicalization will also rise. This issue is all the more potent now that there are Canadians who have travelled abroad to wage jihad, and whose narrative might be more compelling than that of a foreign recruiter.

If indeed we are going to keep in Canada those who have demonstrated their allegiance to the destruction of Canada, we cannot hide from developing the necessary strategies to protect the public from the consequences.

Thank you again for inviting me to appear before you today. I look forward to your questions.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

My next question is for you, Mr. Bissett. Earlier, you indicated your support for the lengthening of the extended period of naturalization that was created in Bill C-24. We have now had some time since that legislation came into force. What changes in the quality or the other attributes of new citizens have you observed since then that you can link to this change and that justify the decision to make permanent residents wait a longer period before being able to apply for citizenship?

[Debbie Douglas]

The 14- to 18-year-olds are enrolled in our school system. If they came in at that age as new immigrants without either of our official languages, they are often enrolled in English as a second language. But for us, the majority of these kids actually have been in the school system for a number of years and do have English.

The problem is about having to pay for a test to prove they have that language ability, which we find problematic. Also, there is no evidence for why that requirement was put in place through Bill C-24. If parents are applying for citizenship and including their 14- to 18-year-olds and they go in and write their tests, we hope that our school systems are teaching our kids enough civics that they would understand how our country operates. As for the fact that now parents have to take on this extra cost of proving language, we never did understand why that was necessary. That's why we support the changes that are happening in Bill C-6.

Also, as you've heard me talk about, on the other end of the age spectrum we do have permanent residents who come into Canada and who have had such traumatic experiences, especially our refugee seniors, that there is absolutely no way that they will ever acquire enough language skills or be comfortable in writing in either of our official languages, and especially when literacy is an issue. We've heard from Ms. Kwan, whose mother had a grade 6 education. That's not unusual with some of our older immigrants and refugees.

[Ihsaan Gardee]

In terms of the impact, many immigrants to the country from the Muslim community are dual citizens and they're citizens of another country by birth. They may not even want to keep the citizenship. They may not even have the option of revoking that citizenship. So this previous bill, this legislation, Bill C-24, when it was introduced, it made them feel like second-class citizens, and it stoked fear in the Muslim community about being treated as second-class citizens.

As I said earlier, Canadian Muslims are as committed to national security as our fellow citizens and they've paid a disproportionately high price for anti-terrorism measures enacted in the name of national security. We just need to look at the case of Maher Arar, which is emblematic of everything that can go wrong when the balance between legitimate security concerns and civil liberties is treated as a zero-sum game. It's important, from our view, that we move towards a comprehensive and balanced pursuit of safeguarding national security while promoting Canadian citizenship in a manner that upholds the rule of law and protects the human rights of all.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and I would like to thank our witnesses for their patience today.

My question is for Mr. Gardee. Your organization, the National Council of Canadian Muslims, includes as one of its objectives “protecting the human rights & civil liberties of Canadian Muslims (and by extension of all Canadians), promoting their public interests, building mutual understanding and challenging Islamophobia and other forms of xenophobia.”

In this context, could you discuss the impact that the two-tier citizenship aspect of Bill C-24, which Bill C-6 seeks to revoke, has had on the Muslim community in Canada and its perception by other Canadians?

[James Bissett]

The first change in the Citizenship Act came in the 1970s, when the domicile requirement was reduced basically to three years. Bill C-24 extended that. I didn't think it extended it quite long enough. I still would have preferred five years, but I think if you value your citizenship and allow it to other people to apply for, shortening the time period somewhat devalues the concept of citizenship—

[Debbie Douglas]

We've asked, and that was the conversation I wanted to have about issues of disability. There are folks who do have disabilities who may not be able to write, or even speak, or sign about the test. With the introduction of Bill C-24, we were active in advocating, together with some of our agencies who work with folks with disabilities, and then had processes put in place for those who are hard of hearing as an example. There are other folks with disabilities who may also need a waiver. It is certainly something that Bill C-6 is silent on and that we want this committee to take a look at in terms of the barriers that exist for folks with disabilities in being able to meet language requirements or being able to pass the citizenship test.

[Debbie Douglas]

We have a robust language training system here in Canada. Resources are always a problem because of scope and scale, more so than content and quality. It is interesting that you are asking the question, because that was exactly what our concern was when the changes were made to Bill C-24—that it was not based on any evidence, given the many years when we had the language requirement and the writing of the test for those between 18 and 54. The fact that Bill C-6 goes back to a proven system is why we support the changes that were made.

[James Bissett]

No. I was aware that the Canadian Bar Association expressed concern that it might not comply with the charter, but as far as I know, it does comply with the charter. I'm not sure if it's been tested, but certainly, the Department of Justice officials would have looked into that very carefully. If they thought there was a chance that it did not comply, they would have been reluctant, I think, to let the government of the day go forward with that bill.

Of course, there are always two opinions on legal issues of that kind, and I would have thought that Bill C-24 would have been challenged by now. It's been in effect for some time. Indeed, it has been enacted in one case, as far as I know, where one Canadian has had his citizenship taken away.