Mr. Speaker, as members know, Bill C-3 responds to a court ruling. I will provide a bit of background. In 2009, the Harper government amended the Citizenship Act to prohibit passing on citizenship beyond the second generation. On December 19, 2023, the Superior Court of Ontario struck down certain provisions of the Citizenship Act, ruling that they violated the section on mobility rights, which states: “Every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in and leave Canada”. The provisions also violated a section of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms with regard to equality before and under the law and the equal protection and benefit of the law.
The parties challenging the Citizenship Act represented seven families that had been discriminated against by the legislation. The court recognized that the ban introduced in the act was unfair, particularly for women who had to choose between the birthplace of their child and the ability to pass on citizenship. Take the case of the Brooke-Bjorkquist family's child. That child was born in Geneva in 2010 to Mr. Brooke and Ms. Bjorkquist, who were working for the government abroad. Despite the fact that the child was born to two Canadian parents and returned to Canada at age one, the child could not, under the current provisions of the act, follow in their parents' footsteps by working abroad and having a child abroad, because they would not be able to pass on citizenship to their child. That is the problem that was raised in court. This is an absurd situation because the birth of that child in Switzerland is a circumstance due to their parents' work abroad in service of Canada, and practically their entire life has been and should continue to be spent in Canada.
Bill C-3 is an identical copy of Bill C-71 from the 44th Parliament, which did not pass. It is also similar to Bill S-245. In 2023, the court gave the government six months to pass legislation to fix the problems. Despite the deadline having passed, here we go again.
I would like to briefly review certain aspects of the history of Canadian citizenship. It is a relatively recent development in the country's history. When Confederation came about in 1867, Canadians were British subjects. It was not until the first Immigration Act was passed in 1910 that citizenship was first mentioned. It defined Canadians as persons born in Canada, British subjects living in Canada, or immigrants naturalized as Canadians. The objective was to facilitate their passage across borders.
In 1921, the Canadian Nationals Act was passed, defining Canadian nationality for immigration purposes for the first time, but without establishing Canadian nationality status. Other laws were also passed, such as the naturalization acts of 1906 and 1914 that sought to govern naturalization, as their names suggest. It was not until Mackenzie King, who became the first Canadian citizen, introduced the Canadian Citizenship Act, 1947, that Canadian citizenship was finally defined for the first time and granted to women as a matter of right.
However, the 1947 act was not perfect. At the time, citizenship was not considered a guaranteed right, but a discretionary power of Parliament. Many situations, particularly those involving naturalization and citizenship by descent, were covered incompletely or not at all. For example, under this regime, when the responsible parent took the citizenship of another country, their children lost their Canadian citizenship. Other obscure provisions, such as the requirement for Canadian children born abroad to reside in Canada during their 24th year, resulted in many individuals living in Canada not officially having citizenship.
The act was next modernized in 1977, and this iteration attempted to simplify the previous citizenship regime. However, the regime remains unfair for several groups, particularly children born abroad. For example, under the 1977 Citizenship Act, individuals who obtained citizenship by descent had to reiterate their desire to retain their citizenship before the age of 28 or risk having it revoked. Because of this little-known requirement, many individuals living in Canada lost their citizenship without even knowing it.
The government failed to communicate this requirement to its citizens, and it was only when the affected individuals had to prove they were citizens, to apply for a passport, for example, that they discovered that they no longer had Canadian citizenship. Some people had been living in Canada for generations. Their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and so on had been living in Canada, yet they found themselves stateless. These people continue to experience problems, and Bill C-3 aims to fix some of these issues.
These individuals who lost their citizenship as a result of certain obscure, unfair or discriminatory rules are known as lost Canadians. It is a diverse group, consisting of military spouses, children, soldiers, second-generation children born abroad, children of immigrants, border babies, orphans, indigenous Canadians and Chinese Canadians, to name but a few.
The House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration establishes four categories of lost Canadians. The first is war brides, meaning women who married Canadian soldiers fighting for Canada in World War II and who immigrated to Canada during or after the war to join their Canadian husbands. The second is people who were born abroad to a Canadian parent before the current Citizenship Act came into force in February 1977. The third is people who lost their citizenship between January 1947 and February 1977 because they or a parent acquired the citizenship and nationality of another country. Lastly, there are second- and subsequent-generation Canadians born abroad since the current Citizenship Act came into force in February 1977.
Their plight was brought to the public's attention thanks to Don Chapman, a former United Airlines pilot who found out that he had been stripped of his citizenship when his father emigrated to the United States. By deftly showing that this problem was affecting many Canadians unbeknownst to them, he forced Parliament's hand. Even General Roméo Dallaire was affected by the problem. To address it, Canada adopted a series of legislative reforms in 2005, 2009 and 2015.
Errors and inconsistencies persisted, however, and Bill C-3 seeks to correct them. Obviously, the Bloc Québécois supports the principle of the bill before us. There will be some very important discussions in committee and amendments will be proposed to improve the bill and allay the fears and uncertainty that have been raised in the speeches in the House. For the Bloc Québécois, these are technical adjustments being made in the interest of justice that seek to harmonize the application of laws and to correct injustices committed in the past. To us, it is a matter of principle.
This bill, which I believe is technical in nature and responds to a court ruling, should, in our opinion, have been passed within six months of the ruling. When it comes to citizenship, and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration in particular, there are still a number of ongoing problems and irregularities that need to be addressed. I cannot describe in parliamentary language how this department functions. It should be thoroughly reviewed and improved.
In each of our constituency offices, we receive numerous calls, emails and requests almost every day from people asking us to speed up the process, deal with lost documents and provide assistance. In most cases, these are heart-wrenching stories. These are people who are living in uncertainty and facing challenges. Our immigration and citizenship legislation needs to be completely overhauled to simplify and clarify the process. The department needs to speed up the process, because in most cases, it is inhumane.
