Bill S-230 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (granting citizenship to certain Canadians)

This enactment amends the Citizenship Act to permit certain persons who lost their Canadian citizenship to regain it.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

You're open to it.

When Bill S-230 was being debated back on June 16, 2021, the most senior officials there were Catherine Scott, assistant deputy minister, settlement and integration, and Alec Attfield, director general, citizenship branch, strategic and program policy. We heard something different from officials here at committee last week. Some of them said that there were equity issues involved.

Did you hear something like that, that there were any problems? Just a quick yes or no would suffice, because I have a question for Mr. Hallan specifically on this.

[Yonah Martin]

Thank you for the question.

Yes, this is the second iteration of the bill. The first one, Bill S-230, died on the Order Paper. I don't even remember the year, but it was a few years ago. This is the second attempt, and it has reached this committee. I'm very pleased we are here, at this stage, and I thank all members for their attention to this bill.

The lost Canadians issue is decades old. As I said, I came across an individual, Don Chapman, with whom, I'm sure, some of you also met. He's quite a champion, because he was a lost Canadian. From that point of view, he has been very tireless. I've been educated through my meetings with him and in looking at some of the details of how we have groups of individuals who became lost and who need to be reinstated.

There are other categories of lost Canadians, for sure. To look at that separately would require government legislation, perhaps—other bills put forward. I know there have been piecemeal attempts in the past as well. For this specific bill, I decided to start with a very small cohort. It made sense, as they had already turned age 28 by the time Bill C-37 came into effect. Therefore, even though it was grandfathered to those who hadn't yet turned 28, those who did were left out.

That seemed like a natural group to address first. I looked at all the other categories, but this one seemed, I'd say, the least contentious or most obvious. That's why, I think, in the Senate, with my Senate colleagues, and before committee, the first time around, we didn't have any officials raising concerns. They just couldn't answer how many people would get captured, should this bill be adopted.

We don't know the exact numbers. The officials before the committee, last week, attempted to answer some of that. That's why it's very focused. I hope this committee and the House can get behind this bill. We are very close.

[Yonah Martin, Senator, British Columbia, C]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good evening, colleagues.

It's a honour for me to speak to you about this Senate public bill. Bill S-245, formerly Bill S-230, is an act to amend the Citizenship Act to permit certain persons who lost their Canadian citizenship to regain citizenship. The bill is about a group of Canadians. I say, “Canadians”, but they are lost Canadians until we are able to reinstate their citizenship rightfully.

I am a proud, naturalized Canadian. I was born in South Korea and first arrived in Vancouver in 1972. I became a citizen five years later. I understand the value, the symbolism and the importance of our citizenship. I come to you today humbly as a naturalized Canadian and someone who came across this important group of lost Canadians and their plight. I know that there are other groups as well, which I have learned, and I've been able to work on them with Don Chapman, who is here as one of the witnesses today. I know that he is a true champion of lost Canadians.

This Senate bill addresses a specific gap in the Citizenship Act to capture a group of Canadians, or lost Canadians, who lost their status or became stateless because of changes to policy.

In 1977, the Citizenship Act added a new provision that applied only to second-generation Canadians born abroad on or after February 15, 1977. In order to keep their citizenship, these individuals had to reaffirm their status before their 28th birthday. This law was passed and then forgotten. The government never published a retention form. There were no instructions on how an individual would reaffirm their Canadian citizenship, and those affected were never told a retention requirement even existed.

In 2009, the Citizenship Act was amended by Bill C-37. It was one of the first government bills that I had a chance to study as a member of the committee that studied Bill C-37. This change saw the age 28 rule repealed entirely. Canadians caught up in the age 28 rule but who had not yet reached the age of 28 were grandfathered in. However, what I didn't fully realize at that time was that Bill C-37 did not include Canadians who were born abroad between 1977 and 1981, essentially those who had already turned 28 before the passage of Bill C-37 in 2009. Today the age 28 retention rule still remains in effect only for those second-generation Canadians born inside a 50-month window from February 15, 1977, to April 16, 1981, those who had already turned 28 when that age 28 rule was repealed through Bill C-37.

Many of these individuals were raised in Canada from a young age. They were born abroad. Some, like me, came to Canada much younger, such as at two months of age. They went to school in Canada, they raised their families in Canada, and they worked and paid taxes in Canada, yet they turned 28 without knowing that their citizenship would be stripped from them because of the change in policy from that previous bill I spoke about. Bill S-245 will allow these Canadians to continue their lives without fear, knowing that they are valued and supported by reinstating them as Canadians.

Again I would like to acknowledge the work of Don Chapman, a tireless advocate and champion for lost Canadians who will appear before you later today.

Colleagues, Bill S-245 received unanimous support in the Senate, and today I invite your support of this bill here in the House of Commons committee.

I would also like to acknowledge MP Jasraj Hallan, the sponsor of the bill in the House of Commons, and thank him for his work and dedication to helping lost Canadians and to this bill, which will reinstate citizenship to a group of lost Canadians who have always been Canadians and rightfully deserve to be given back their citizenship.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention MP Jenny Kwan, who has also been a tireless champion on this particular issue.

Thank you, colleagues.

Citizenship Act

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Madam Speaker, since these are the last speeches before we go spend a week in our ridings and many members have already left the House to go be with their families and constituents, I would like to commend all those stalwart members who are sticking it out to the end. There are not very many of us, judging by the number of empty spaces there were in the parking lot this morning and by how easily I was able to find an EV charging station. There are very few of us here this Friday, but I would say that what we are lacking in numbers, we are making up for in quality.

The last thing we are talking about today before leaving for our last week in our ridings before Christmas is Bill S‑245. I do not really have any kind of an inside scoop to share since my colleague from Lac‑Saint‑Jean already announced just two weeks ago that the Bloc Québécois would be supporting this bill. I like to contradict my colleague from Lac‑Saint‑Jean from time to time just to tease him, but I will limit my teasing to his clothing choices rather than a bill that has such a significant impact on some people's lives. In short, I will also be supporting Bill S‑245.

I think my colleagues have already realized that the Bloc Québécois does not tend to be overly partisan. If a bill is good for Quebec, we vote for it, no matter who introduced it. If it is not good for Quebec, we vote against it. We always explain the reasons for our decision.

Bill S-245 does not really fit in that framework. It is about Canadian citizenship. It affects people who may live in Quebec, our constituents, but it also affects people who may live elsewhere in Canada or even elsewhere in the world. This bill is fundamentally connected to a person's right to Canadian citizenship. While it may seem a little counterintuitive for a Bloc member to defend Canadian citizenship, the principle I am defending today in supporting Bill S‑245 is that no one should have their citizenship arbitrarily taken away just because they have reached the not particularly venerable age of 28.

I would like to start by outlining the contents of this bill and its purpose, but I also want to offer two brief editorial comments about this bill's predecessor, Bill S‑230, and the immigration file in general because no bill should ever be analyzed in a vacuum without context and broader considerations. If we take too narrow a view of this bill in debate, we are likely to miss opportunities to improve not only this bill but also future bills.

Now back to Bill S‑245. What is this bill all about? Bill S‑245 seeks to close a gap, a loophole in the Citizenship Act. The bill concerns a small group of Canadians who lost their Canadian citizenship or have actually become stateless due to government policy changes over time. This small group of Canadians is called “lost Canadians”, and there are about 100 to 200 of them.

Here is a little background information. The federal Parliament passed its first citizenship legislation in 1947, but it was flawed from the beginning. Citizenship was not considered a guaranteed right at the time, but rather a discretionary power of Parliament. For instance, although it was set out that the children of a Canadian parent would also be Canadian, under this system, when the responsible parent took the citizenship of another country, his or her children lost their Canadian citizenship.

Furthermore, the legislation provided that children born abroad would receive citizenship only if their parents registered them within two years of their birth. It also included an obligation for these children to be domiciled in Canada on their 24th birthday if they were born to a Canadian parent who was born outside Canada. This meant that many individuals, even if they lived in Canada for part of their lives, may have unknowingly lost their citizenship status.

Finally, the legislation discriminated against certain children based on the circumstances of their birth. In order to have Canadian citizenship under the law, a child had to be born to married parents. The main purpose of the 1977 amendment was to simplify the citizenship regime. Once again, however, the amendments were far from perfect.

Although the new legislation did away with the requirement to file an application for a child within two years of their birth and stopped discriminating between children born to a married couple and those born to a common-law couple, it continued to differentiate between children born to a Canadian parent who was born in Canada and those born to a Canadian parent who was born abroad.

Under the 1977 legislation, Canadians who were second-generation or more and were born to parents who were born abroad were required to submit an application in order to keep and confirm their Canadian citizenship.

The legislation required these Canadians to apply by their 28th birthday or they would automatically lose their Canadian citizenship. One of the problems was that, having repealed the requirement for parents to register their children before they turned two, the government no longer had a list it could use to inform the citizens in question that they needed to confirm their citizenship before their 28th birthday. Some of these people who were born abroad returned to Canada, grew up here, worked here, raised a family here, and paid taxes here, all while oblivious to what they needed to do before their 28th birthday in order to avoid losing their citizenship.

Some criticized the government for not doing enough to publicize this requirement both here and abroad, so that citizens would be aware that their citizenship could be taken away. It is said that ignorance of the law is no excuse, but that does not mean that a citizen must be familiar with all existing laws. Immigration laws are particularly impenetrable.

In short, many people born while the 1947 law or the 1977 law was in force were at risk of losing their citizenship at some point in their lives without even being notified. They might only find out when they applied for a passport. They are the ones who came to be called the lost Canadians.

This situation came to light largely through the efforts of Don Chapman, a former United Airlines pilot who brought their plight to the attention of the public. Don Chapman discovered that he had lost his citizenship when his father had emigrated to the United States. He demonstrated that this problem affected many Canadians, even some as well known as Roméo Dallaire, and forced the government's hand.

If we think about it, these people suffered the same fate as those whose citizenship is revoked, which happens only if someone committed fraud, made a false representation or knowingly concealed information material to an immigration or citizenship application. This same extreme punishment was being meted out to people who had committed no offence whatsoever.

To remedy the situation, Canada adopted a series of legislative reforms in 2005, 2009 and 2015. Those three attempts notwithstanding, some people still slipped through the cracks. Despite being reformed three times, the act still requires people born between February 15, 1977, and April 16, 1981, to reapply for citizenship before they turn 28.

I am confident that this bill will pass unanimously, and at this point I would like to offer my first editorial comment on the bill's background. In the last Parliament, an identical bill, Bill S‑230, was passed unanimously in the Senate, but it did not have time to get to the House because the government called an election in the summer.

When the election was called, what I told my constituents who complained about the cost of the election, which members will recall was estimated at over $600 million, is that there were even more serious but lesser-known costs associated with the election and that was the cost of all the work that was done on a whole pile of bills in the House and committee that ended up being for nothing. Unfortunately, Bill S‑245 is another glaring example of that.

My second editorial comment is about the government's management of immigration in general. As we see here, many reforms were necessary to solve the problem and many citizens have been left in the dark for years. Nothing has changed, and the machine is still broken.

Despite all that, the government is announcing that, because of the labour shortage, it wants to increase the number of newcomers to 500,000 a year, when it is already incapable of managing passports, when applications for permanent residency are piling up and taking forever to be processed, and when it is almost impossible to get a work permit in 12 to 13 months.

When I ask businesses in my riding what would really help them with their workforce issues, the answer is not for the government to add 500,000 people to the waiting list. The answer is for the government to start managing the applications that are already in the pile more effectively.

Simply put, there is no shortage of problems for the immigration department to fix, and Bill S‑245 addresses one of them.

I would like to conclude by humbly inviting the government to finish the work of fixing and improving the immigration department before even considering getting involved in any new project.

[Ya'ara Saks, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Families]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House to speak to Bill S-245, seeking to make amendments to the Citizenship Act and address concerns raised on past citizenship.

I would first like to extend my thanks to Senator Yonah Martin for her advocacy and for bringing forward this bill, as well as its predecessor, Bill S-230. I would also like to thank the member for Calgary Forest Lawn for sponsoring this bill and giving us a chance to speak about it in the chamber.

In 1977, Canada introduced a new Citizenship Act to replace the one from 1947 and amend our citizenship rules. It maintained that individuals born outside of Canada to a Canadian parent or grandparents were citizens as well. However, as was the case since 1947, there were conditions.

Canadians born abroad in the second generation or beyond had to file an application to retain their citizenship. The 1977 act required these Canadians to do so before they turned 28 years old. Failure to do so meant they would lose their Canadian citizenship automatically on their 28th birthday.

The legislation also made another critical administrative change. Canadians who had children abroad no longer had to register their children born outside of Canada for their children to qualify as citizens. This change, removing the requirement for registration of births abroad, meant the government did not collect the names of children born overseas to Canadian citizens. It also meant there was no list of Canadians born abroad in the second generation or beyond who needed to take steps to retain their citizenship.

Some of these individuals born abroad ultimately moved back and grew up in Canada, totally unaware that they had to take steps to retain their citizenship status before their 28th birthday, and because the government did not have a list of who was affected, there was no way to inform a born-abroad Canadian citizen in advance or prompt them to take the steps they needed to take in order to retain their citizenship before they turned 28 years old.

It has been noted that the government of the day could have made more information available in Canada and abroad so that Canadians with children born abroad were aware and could know they needed to take action. When these children turned 28, if they had not taken the required steps, they automatically lost their citizenship and may not have even known it.

The issue of automatic loss of Canadian citizenship for those born abroad in the second generation or beyond would come up only when something would trigger a review or a confirmation of their citizenship. In certain cases, they found it when they applied to work overseas, sought a military commission or a security clearance, or even just applied for a replacement citizenship certificate.

In 2009, the Citizenship Act was amended to address this issue and simplify the rules around citizenship. The 2009 amendments removed the requirement to apply to retain citizenship by age 28 for those born abroad to a Canadian parent in the second generation or beyond.

At the same time, the Citizenship Act replaced those rules with a first-generation limit, something that is quite personal, as I explained here to the member. It is a citizenship by descent, which meant that automatic Canadian citizenship by descent could be passed down for only one generation by a Canadian parent who was either born in or naturalized in Canada.

This first-generation limit remains in place today. Children born to a Canadian parent outside of Canada in the first generation are automatically Canadian citizens from birth. However, children born abroad to a Canadian parent in the second generation, where the Canadian parent was also born abroad or beyond are no longer automatically Canadian. As I mentioned, in families like mine, suddenly not everyone is equal, and this is why discussion, debate and careful thought are really needed on this bill as we go on through the evening.

Citizens like my daughter can apply to come to Canada and become citizens through our immigration and citizenship programs. The 2009 changes also ensured that anyone who was born after the 1977 legislation but had not yet turned 28 when the changes took place was allowed to maintain their status, was not required to file an application, and remained a Canadian citizen.

In 2009, and then again in 2015, the government introduced a number of amendments to the Citizenship Act to restore citizenship to groups of people who had lost their citizenship or who had never become citizens in the first place because of the rules in the first Canadian Citizenship Act of 1947, which we now recognize was discriminatory.

These people are known as the “lost Canadians”. Between 2009 and 2015 approximately 17,500 individuals came forward and were issued proofs of Canadian citizenship related to the amendments to the act.

From the 2015 amendments, another 600 cases came forward and received proof of their Canadian citizenship as a result. However, there is a remaining group of those who refer to themselves as lost Canadians. Those are persons born outside of Canada in the second or later generations who had already turned 28 before the 2009 changes and had already lost their citizenship due to the old rules that required them to apply to retain their Canadian citizenship before their 28th birthday.

We know this has impacted those who were born abroad in the second generation between 1977 and 1981, but there is no way to tell for certain how many people make up this cohort. We do know it is a limited group. It does not impact anyone born after 1981. Those Canadians could not have yet turned 28 before the 2009 legislation was passed. It does not include anyone born before February 1977, when the changes were made to set the 28-year-old retention requirement. It is only a limited group of people who were born between February 1977 and April 1981 and did not take the steps to retain their citizenship before turning 28 years old and were born abroad to a Canadian parent in the second or subsequent generation.

Bill S-245 represents a remedy for this group of lost Canadians. However, a possible solution already exists for this group. The Citizenship Act provides the minister with the discretionary authority to grant citizenship on a case-by-case basis. It is used to alleviate cases of special and unusual hardship or to reward services of an exceptional nature to Canada. To date, IRCC has granted citizenship to approximately 130 individuals affected by the former age 28 rule through this use of the minister's special discretionary authority. The department receives an average of 35 to 40 requests per year related to the former age 28 rule.

As members of this House review Bill S-245, I believe it is very important that they take the appropriate time, effort and care. Anyone who has spent time in the chamber can likely recall reviewing issues, omissions or oversights that can come from legislation that was drafted with good intentions, but where amendments that were missing a critical detail or consideration led to unintended consequences, such as in my own family.

In particular, on the issue of lost Canadians, history has shown us that making hasty changes can lead to the creation of new cohorts of people who may subsequently consider themselves lost Canadians. As lawmakers, we should ensure that legislation addresses the problem and does not create a bigger issue than the one we are already trying to solve. The legislation seeks to address such an issue. For example, bestowing citizenship on individuals who live in another country descended from a Canadian and who never sought to be a Canadian may create unintended problems for them. I note that the bill includes a simplified renunciation process as a result, which would be a very important element to have in place.

We should put in the required effort to get this right. I encourage the members of this House to be thorough and thoughtful in their work and to speak with legislative experts, department officials and citizenship experts. We should be looking carefully at how the legislation needs to be written and do our homework so that there are no unintended consequences. Rather than compounding one problem with a new one, I hope the House can work together to maintain the integrity of our citizenship system.

Once again, I would like to thank Senator Martin for bringing this bill forward and advocating for lost Canadians, who we all agree should be brought back into the Canadian family. I hope the senator, the member for Calgary Forest Lawn and all members of the House can work together to resolve some of the challenges.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

moved that Bill S-245, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (granting citizenship to certain Canadians), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill S-245, an act to amend the Citizenship Act (granting citizenship to certain Canadians).

I want to thank the hon. senator from British Columbia, Yonah Martin, who brought forward this important bill. She introduced this originally as Bill S-230 in the last Parliament in the other place to address the lost Canadians whose citizenship was revoked without their knowledge and without warning simply because of the wording in the Citizenship Act.

I am excited to hear from the member for Souris—Moose Mountain, who will be sharing his experience of almost being a lost Canadian. If he chooses to do so, maybe he can share a picture of the card he carries around.

While Bill S-230 passed unanimously through the other place in the 43rd Parliament, the unnecessary and selfish election of 2021 killed the bill before it could get to first reading here. That is why I was happy and hopeful to see it pass unanimously once again in the Senate and reach second reading here in this place.

I want to thank Senator Martin for her continued work on this file, along with former Senate Speaker the hon. Noël Kinsella and former senators David Tkachuk and Art Eggleton, as well as Mr. Don Chapman. He has worked tirelessly with our colleagues in the other place to advocate for lost Canadians and this much-needed change to the Citizenship Act.

Canadians who lost their status or become stateless because of these changes to the act are Canadians in every way except technically under the law. They pay their taxes, contribute to their communities and uphold the values of what it means to live in our beautiful country.

From 1947 to 1977, the law of the land was that children born abroad received citizenship only if their parents registered them within two years of their birth. In addition, their parents must have also given birth to them in wedlock, with at least one of the parents being a Canadian.

In 1977, the then government introduced a new Citizenship Act, changing the law so that children born abroad on or after February 14, 1977, received their Canadian citizenship if one of their parents was a Canadian citizen, regardless of their marital status. However, if the Canadian parent was also born abroad, a child had until turning 28 to apply to keep their citizenship. If they did not, it would be taken away.

When the law passed in 1977, the government made no effort to inform Canadians affected by this change. No form was published, no instructions were given on how someone could reaffirm their citizenship and no one affected was told that this requirement even existed.

Finally, in 2009, Bill C-37 was brought in by the Conservative government to make changes to the Citizenship Act to rectify past mistakes. When it came into effect, the rules for citizenship changed for people born outside Canada to Canadian parents who were not already Canadian citizens. The changes saw the age 28 rule repealed, and Canadians caught up in the rule previously who had not yet reached that age were grandfathered into the amended law. However, the wording of Bill C-37 created an unfortunate gap for a small group of Canadians who were born between 1977 and 1981. Those who turned 28 before Bill C-37 became law in 2009 were also excluded.

In the committee review of this bill at the Senate's social affairs committee, senators asked IRCC officials how this could take place, what was being done to inform those who did not know they were lost and why the government was not being proactive in finding them. The answer from the IRCC officials was, “It’s fair to say that given the small number of applications...we are not out looking for Lost Canadians.” In reality, IRCC relies on lost Canadians to figure out they were stripped of their citizenship due to bureaucracy and paperwork.

Some lost Canadians knew about the change and either applied to keep their Canadian citizenship or let it lapse. These are Canadians who in many cases were raised here, who grew up attending school here and who have worked here their whole adult lives. These are Canadians who started families in this country and paid their taxes on time, but for one small change to the wording of the Citizenship Act, they lost their Canadian citizenship. When they turned 28, there was no letter from Citizenship and Immigration Canada and there was no warning. It was just gone.

All of us in this place know that Canadian citizenship is not identified by each person as one tangible idea. On the contrary, it is deeply personal to each of us. It makes up our identity and sense of belonging to a broader idea. For my community and me, Canadian citizenship is a goal. It is a marker for achieving the Canadian dream.

Being an immigrant myself and coming to Canada when I was five, I experienced first-hand the journey to achieving citizenship. My family grew up economically in poverty, lining up in the rain for low-income bus passes and having both parents working jobs just to survive. My family always had that goal to reach for Canadian citizenship. I saw my parents work themselves to the bone for my family. Because of their hard work, my brother, sister and I are where we are today. We achieved our dream of Canadian citizenship after having to work hard day and night, coming from little and knowing that the road is not easy. However, we know that the blood, sweat and tears we experienced on that journey were worth it. We are Canadian citizens.

That is why, standing here as a member of Parliament, I cannot imagine what it would be like to lose one's citizenship arbitrarily, especially for those who worked hard and even served in uniform for this country, to one day lose something they believed so much in. This is not just an issue for the many people this bill would help to reinstate citizenship to; it is an issue for all of us. As Canadians and representatives of Canadians, it is our responsibility to help preserve what it means to be a citizen of this country and fundamentally what it means to be a Canadian.

I ask my fellow colleagues to do the right thing and support this bill to reinstate citizenship for lost Canadians.

Message from the Senate

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I have the honour to inform the House that a message has been received from the Senate informing this House that the Senate has passed Bill S-230, an act to amend the Citizenship Act, granting citizenship to certain Canadians, to which the concurrence of the House is desired.