Bill S-245

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.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

For that, I would like to put the schedule in front of you.

The Honourable Marc Garneau has accepted the date of May 3. He will only appear for an hour. He has confirmed that date.

We have to get through Bill S-245, if we are not looking for an extension from the House. We will finish the clause-by-clause on the 17th. Five meetings cannot happen on that motion before April 30.

I would request the members to please allow to extend the date beyond April 30 to work and fit in those five meetings. Is that okay?

Ms. Kwan.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Just to give a little glance of the upcoming meetings and the budget and some dates we need to be mindful of, this coming Wednesday the Minister of Justice and Minister of Defence will appear with officials for one panel each on the Afghanistan study. That is the meeting on Wednesday, March 29.

We go into two break weeks, so the next meeting after March 29 will be April 17. In order to respect the deadline of April 26, clause-by-clause consideration of Bill S-245 is scheduled for April 17, 2023. We have to take it back to the House before April 26. Amendments must be sent to the clerk by March 31, 2023. That will be this Friday.

Is everyone okay that we do this clause-by-clause on April 17, so that we respect the deadline Parliament has given to us? Good.

Senator McPhedran has accepted the committee's invitation to appear on Wednesday, April 19 for two hours on the Afghanistan study. She is already scheduled in. For Monday, April 24, Minister Harjit Sajjan is unavailable, but he has confirmed his availability on Wednesday, April 26. On Monday, April 26, we are already scheduled with Minister Fraser and officials. They confirmed that they are available to appear on April 26 on the main estimates.

How would the committee like to proceed?

I would like to get the committee's guidance on which study to prioritize. Minister Fraser was scheduled to come before the committee for the mains, but Minister Sajjan has also given the date of April 26.

Mr. Redekopp.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 56 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.

Before we resume the consideration of Bill S-245, I would like to ask for the committee's approval of the study budgets and discuss the calendar briefly so we can schedule the studies.

The first thing I need to ask the committee members is this: Is it the will of the committee to approve a budget of $7,250 for the study of Bill S-245, an act to amend the Citizenship Act regarding granting citizenship to certain Canadians?

[Marie-France Lalonde, Liberal, Orléans, ON]

I tend to agree with my colleague.

I think we all had good intentions when we came here to listen to the officials who had to give us technical information, given the complexity of Bill S‑245. I also thought that we, the committee members, had agreed to work in a rigorous manner. So I want to apologize to Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe. I had no idea what the Conservatives were going to do to hijack this meeting, which we had previously set up.

Had I known, I would have never said that I shared the view that it was better for us to meet in camera at the end. I would have said that we should do it at the beginning, as you mentioned, Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe. Unfortunately, the Conservatives still find ways to disrupt our committee's work.

To go back to my colleague Ms. Rempel Garner's motion, the amendment and the subamendment, I think my colleague Ms. Kwan has raised some good points. We hear some justified hesitation here about whether or not to proceed. We want to see the people who will testify, as we know that it is important to know their point of view. I believe that the ministers will be coming to see us, in accordance with a previously passed motion.

There was one thing I was proud of, Madam Chair. Just before the break last Thursday, the government made a very important announcement about the humanitarian aid that people need in Afghanistan. We know how important that is. I was very proud to be part of that announcement as parliamentary secretary, but it was even more wonderful to hear from the Red Cross, which could be an agency that will be—

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate that assurance that committee members will be able to send in written questions to officials related to Bill S-245.

Getting back to Dr. Lauryn Oates, I had an opportunity to speak with her after the motion was moved, and she expressed her concerns with respect to that. With that as an aside, it may well be.... As much as I appreciate the media and their reporting, there may be times where things that are reported by the media may not necessarily be 100% accurate. There might be nuanced information that might not be captured in the article.

To that end, I think it would be important, given that Dr. Lauryn Oates was referred to in the newspaper, that she be given the opportunity to provide a written submission to us. Of course, as always, committee members can consider at a later time whether they want to invite people back if it's deemed that the information provided was deficient and further work needs to be done. If that's the case, we can all take that into consideration.

I'll leave it at that, Madam Chair. Thank you.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Given that this motion has interrupted our proceedings, and given that Bill S-245 is going to be a bill that we will need to deal with in a timely fashion, because it has to go before the House, and committee members did not get a chance to ask their round of questions, can we have the committee's support to say that committee members can submit written questions to the officials so that we can get those responses back for our consideration as we move forward on this bill?

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Ms. Kwan, if I can interrupt you for a second, I want to let the officials go. I see a speaking list, so I don't think there will be an opportunity to go back to Bill S-245. After you, I have two other members who would like to speak.

On behalf of the members of the committee, I would like to thank you for coming today. I'm really sorry we were not able to utilize your time well and that we had to get into the discussion of other motions. If you want to leave, you can. Again, on behalf of all the members, thank you for taking the time to appear before the committee on important legislation.

I'll give the witnesses a second to leave, and then—

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to thank you for the great presentations and for the questions and answers that are going through.

Even though you are explaining it very well, I represent a riding with people from over 100 countries. People from 100 countries have migrated to Canada, and many of them this bill will either help or not help. I'm going to ask you a few more questions.

Going back to the first generation, I'm sure people like Mr. Laurencelle will understand it better than engineers like me when it comes to this complex legislation. When I read this bill and the presentation you made, my understanding was that this legislation, S-245, would automatically confer citizenship on two relatively small groups of people, some of those impacted by the former age 28 rule. Now it sounds like there's potentially a much bigger number of people that it will affect.

Do you have any idea how many people might be granted automatic citizenship if the first-generation limit date is moved?

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Okay. Thank you.

I just want to stay on the topic of how citizenship is important. It's an essential part of this country. I hear from a lot of newcomers in Saskatoon and throughout the country that they're proud to come to Canada, proud to settle here, get a job and make a life for themselves. They're contributing to our country, for sure. They don't take citizenship lightly. They're not coming here to get welfare or the Canada pension plan. They're not coming for some dream of basic universal income where they don't have to work. Newcomers cherish citizenship.

Likewise, some have lost citizenship because of government errors. That's exactly what we're talking about here. Bill S-245 will fix that for a certain small group of people.

Of course, as Conservatives we value citizenship. We're not going to extend citizenship just to anybody who wants it. On the other hand, the Minister of Immigration has announced a plan to devalue citizenship by replacing in-person citizenship ceremonies with a one-and-done click on a website. There would be no ceremony, no physical connection. In fact, you wouldn't even necessarily need to be in Canada to click that button.

Madam Chair, at this time I'd like to just give a verbal notice of motion. I believe this has been sent around. It reads:

That the committee calls on the government to prioritize granting citizenship to new Canadians through in-person ceremonies; allow virtual ceremonies only if specifically requested by the individual when in-person ceremonies are impractical due to health or safety concerns; cease citizenship by “self administer a digital oath by signed attestation” (as announced by the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration on January 31, 2022); have department officials appear at this committee for one hour to answer questions on this topic; and that the committee report this to the House.

I put that on notice.

My question for the officials is about this idea of a self-administered digital oath signed by attestation, as the minister described it. If you agree that newcomers feel a sense of pride and joy when they take that oath of citizenship with other immigrants at an in-person ceremony, why is the government moving in the other direction?

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Thank you to the officials for being here today.

For sure, this Citizenship Act is a complex file, with so many changes over the years that amendments brought to the table often require amendments to the exception to the exception and so on. It's extremely confusing.

From my perspective, first off, I'd like to say that we have before us Bill S-245, and I want to acknowledge and thank Senator Yonah Martin for bringing this before us, because it gives us an opportunity to look into this issue and see how we can fix some of the problems. Maybe it will never be possible to fix all of the problems, but I think it will be important and incumbent on all of us to do our very best to try to fix as many problems as possible.

I appreciate the briefing in terms of your highlighting some of those areas. On the question around unintended consequences, I'd like to probe a little bit deeper into this issue around other countries, where, if you were to confer citizenship to the individual, it might cause them a heap of trouble, because in whatever country they might be in they may not be allowed to, for example, have dual citizenship.

Of course, conferring citizenship automatically in this way was done before. It was done under Bill C-37, it was done under Bill C-24 and so on. Somehow it was dealt with in those previous scenarios. I get it that times might have changed. There might be more people living globally, but nonetheless the premise of that has not changed.

Can you advise us on how officials addressed those issues back then? Why was it okay then to confer citizenship without these concerns of unintended consequences, but now it is a key concern?

[Nicole Girard]

I wouldn't say it will be complicated.

A lot of work was done to modernize programs during the COVID‑19 pandemic, and processing times are improving. We definitely still have work to do, but we still welcomed a record number of new citizens in 2022, which was 374,000.

To reiterate some clarifications, I want to say that, when Bill S‑245 comes into force, people who have regained their citizenship who are covered by former section 8 of the Citizenship Act would automatically be granted Canadian citizenship.

They would have to get proof from the department. That is the application that we are dealing with, finally. So it's not the processing time for their citizenship application that is long, it's the processing time for the proof of citizenship application. Also, processing times are constantly improving.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Yes, absolutely.

You know how long the processing times are for many Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, or IRCC, programs right now. I'm thinking of temporary resident visas, but also of foreign worker programs, foreign student programs, and so on.

There are some structural issues. I understand that the minister is trying to improve things by increasing resources, but, what we are hearing right now, at least in the members' offices, is that it is very difficult to process immigration cases. Constituency offices are currently spending about 80% of their time on these cases.

Given the problems that IRCC is currently experiencing, if Bill S‑245 is passed, do you think the goals will be met quickly? Will it be complicated for officials to implement the bill? Will new officers be needed to respond to the current situation?

[Nicole Girard]

One of the concerns with the bill as drafted is that there is no provision for the Department of Citizenship and Immigration to make the necessary preparations to facilitate the implementation of this aspect of the act.

Normally, the necessary preparations would take a year, as regulations must be created and system changes made in order to process applications. Once the act or Bill S‑245 comes into force, so will the provisions, depending on how the bill is currently drafted. So these people would become Canadian citizens again once the bill comes into force.

One of the other concerns raised, particularly by the Canadian Bar Association, is that the date for resumption of Canadian citizenship is not specified in the bill. Therefore, we are asking the committee to propose that an amendment be moved to clarify that a person who has lost their citizenship should have it restored on the date that occurred. This should be clarified in an amendment.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

Okay.

I would like you to elaborate on something that I found very surprising in your presentation. You said that Bill S‑245 seemingly looks to push the application date of the first-generation limit from 2009 to 2015.

Can you add some comments to that?

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

If these two groups are under the former age 28 rule, will they both see their citizenship restored if S-245 is passed?