Bill C-3

An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (2025)

This enactment amends the Citizenship Act to, among other things,
(a) ensure that citizenship by descent is conferred on all persons who were born outside Canada before the coming into force of this enactment to a parent who was a citizen;
(b) confer citizenship by descent on persons born outside Canada after the first generation, on or after the coming into force of this enactment, to a parent who is a citizen and who had a substantial connection to Canada before the person’s birth;
(c) allow citizenship to be granted under section 5.1 of that Act to all persons born outside Canada who were adopted before the coming into force of this enactment by a parent who was a citizen;
(d) allow citizenship to be granted under section 5.1 of that Act to persons born outside Canada who are adopted on or after the coming into force of this enactment by a parent who is a citizen and who had a substantial connection to Canada before the person’s adoption;
(e) restore citizenship to persons who lost their citizenship because they did not make an application to retain it under the former section 8 of that Act or because they made an application under that section that was not approved; and
(f) allow certain persons who become citizens as a result of the coming into force of this enactment to access a simplified process to renounce their citizenship.

Citizenship Act

[Yasir Naqvi, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I really appreciate the question.

It may be a better solution. That is exactly what the committee process is for. We know that bills go to committee and get amended. If Conservative members feel this does not allow for a substantial connection, then let us have that conversation at committee. That is exactly what we should do.

I was also responding to what I had heard, that this 1,095 days is a made-up number or that somehow we should have an American standard of five years. I disagree with that. If we can strengthen how we calculate the 1,095 days, let us have that conversation.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to my colleague's speech.

He said that it was not their fault and that the Conservative government created the problem. I would like my colleague to tell me why his government did not fix the situation before now if it was so serious.

There were parliamentary reports dating as far back as 2007 on lost Canadians. The issue got media attention. There was even a legal challenge filed in 2021. It took a decision by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice for the government to act.

I would like my colleague to explain why no one at the immigration department noticed that this was not working.

[Yasir Naqvi, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that is a good question.

In my view, I wish we had solved this problem before. Even when I was not a member of this House, I advocated on this issue. As I mentioned, I ran an organization called the Institute for Canadian Citizenship. This is one of the policy ideas we worked on. Perhaps we could have done it, but the moment is here.

It was delayed before, in the previous Parliament, but we have a bill. Of course, all bills need improvement. Let us get it to committee. Let us work fast at committee, make the improvements necessary, bring it back for third reading and pass it.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure the member, just as I have, has attended citizenship ceremonies. It is always a very special moment for the people being sworn in as citizens.

One thing I always talk about is how wonderful it is to be a Canadian. Now the Superior Court of Ontario has highlighted that there is a difference between a naturally born citizen and someone who comes here and becomes a citizen. I wonder if the member could provide his thoughts on the two-tier system that Harper set up and on the reason we have to get rid of it.

[Yasir Naqvi, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this is precisely the point I was making. I thank the member for Winnipeg North for raising this point.

Conservatives were trying to create two tiers of citizenship, one for those of us who are born here and one for those who have been naturalized. Somehow there are different rules for those two categories of people. Well, guess what the courts have told us: That is not constitutional.

I take that very seriously from my own lived experience as somebody who came here at the age of 15. I have two children who were born in Canada. There should be no difference between the citizenship rights I have and those of my children born in Canada. We are trying to fix that through this law.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to rise to speak to this bill for the many reasons I spoke about it in this House in the last Parliament.

I have had the privilege of working with colleagues from all parties on committee specifically on this legislation, which impacts Canadian families. The spirit behind this bill is that Prime Minister Harper, in 2009, basically created a first-generation limit, creating a double system in immigration and causing children born outside of Canada to Canadian citizens to struggle to acquire their right to be Canadians.

First of all, Canada is built on institutions that uphold fairness, strengthen opportunity and provide certainty to its citizens, and today, as we are talking about Bill C-3, we have the opportunity to reinforce one of those foundational institutions, which is citizenship. I want to be clear that this bill addresses a gap between the intent of our laws and the lived reality of Canadian families. Specifically, it intends to restore the ability of Canadian citizens born abroad to pass their citizenship to their kids and grandchildren, ending a policy that left many Canadian families in limbo, unsure of whether their children would be recognized by the country they serve or contribute to and call home.

This is not an abstract policy fix. This is about restoring stability for military families that are posted overseas, for diplomatic corps who have represented Canada with dignity and integrity, and for the countless global Canadians who have lived and worked abroad while remaining firmly rooted in the values of our country.

Citizenship is not a transactional benefit. It is a covenant between the individual and the state, between generations, between past sacrifices and future potential. When we deny that link, we undermine the trust in our system and introduce a risk that erodes the social contract that underpins our democracy.

When families return home after years of service or work abroad, they should be able to resume their lives without bureaucracy clouding the future of their children. Bill C-3 would deliver that. It would provide clarity where there was confusion, fairness where there was inconsistency and continuity where there was disruption. It says to families that they are Canadian and their children are as well. That is not only the right decision; it is part of our foundation of rights, our charter rights.

Canadians work to pay taxes, contribute to our communities and are civically engaged. They raise their children to be Canadian. In the House earlier, I heard a number of members ask what really constitutes a deep connection to being Canadian. When a Canadian citizen has children, I am more than sure they pass Canadian values to their children regardless of where they find themselves in the world.

Having this conversation when a parent has a child and wants to return home means talking about bureaucracy, reaching out to IRCC and trying to figure out whom they can call, whether it is their member of Parliament or member of provincial Parliament. With that tier of bureaucracy, it is a very confusing system for Canadians who have served us and who, for different reasons, do not have Canadian citizenship.

This bill, in spirit, works to restore stability to help Canadians understand that it is their institutional right to be Canadians and not have the lawmakers of the country having that discussion. If Harper had not created this system, I do not think we would be having this conversation.

I will remind the many colleagues who have asked questions as if we are having this conversation for the first time that this is not the first time we have had this discussion. We have brought Canadian families who belong in the lost Canadian group to Parliament and told them we think it is important that we restore their citizenship. Here we are again having the discussion as if for the first time, questioning the many families that have struggled through this system wondering whether they belong as Canadians or not. We are having this debate today as if the work that has been done for the last number of years is not important, and that is not fair.

We need to protect Canadians, and we cannot afford to put them on pause due to legal technicalities that do not reflect modern mobility or the realities of a globalized world. As we build what we believe to be a fair Canada, we have to be fair to the men and women who have served our country and their children.

We have to be fair as well when we reach out to people to come here to talk to lawmakers and to engage in committees for a number of hours. My colleague from the Bloc Québécois mentioned earlier how many hours he spent listening to filibustering that happened on Bill C-71 when it was introduced in the House in the last Parliament. I can speak only to the last Parliament, because I was here. I was not here when the bill was first introduced, but in the last Parliament, I was here, and I saw the countless hours we spent filibustering, blocking conversations around whether or not Canadian families deserve to be Canadians.

They went through that. They withstood the long conversations. They listened to the banter. They listened to disagreements. They listened to people talk about them as if they were not humans and as if they were not in the room, to get to the end.

We got to the end. We brought the bill into the House. We passed it. It went to the Senate, and for parliamentary reasons, we are back at the bill again, and we are here to discuss it to make sure we can take it to committee, agree on amendments that make sense, and pass it quickly. The last thing we want to do is start conversations on whether or not people deserve to have Canadian citizenship restored.

Unfortunately, I have been here this morning and have listened to colleagues re-question. I have listened to colleagues who sat with me on committee and promised to those families that we would not do this again. They re-question instead of proposing amendments, instead of agreeing that we can send the bill to committee and work together on amending it in an appropriate way and in a fast manner that would actually stop the long delay of Canadian families going through limbo, where they do not know and are re-asking themselves whether they are valued Canadians.

I thought that we had settled that problem. I know that today's Chair was also on the committee. We settled the problem. We settled the issue of making Canadians question whether they belong. We settled the issue of having the banter and the debate that is politicized for Canadians, but here we are again.

I have listened to countless speeches in which people are putting those Canadians back into the debate of “Am I a valued Canadian?” I want to tell them that yes, they are a valued Canadian. I want to tell people like Don Chapman, who spent countless hours working with parliamentarians, working with committees and working with different members of our public service to make sure that we get to a place where lost Canadians are no longer considered lost and to where they are Canadians, as we all in the House believe that a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.

I am very happy to rise and to reassure the lost Canadian families, the many people who came to Parliament to speak to us and to ask us to make sure we pass the bill, that we are going to do that. We are not only going to make sure that we pass the bill; we will also work with all parties across the House to make sure that amendments make sense and that we do not have to put people through the limbo of questioning their value, of questioning whether they can even serve as Canadians and of questioning whether they are Canadian.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to hear that amendments are on the table and that the government is willing to listen to them. One of the things, as the member well knows, is that we are very concerned about the bill's allowing for non-consecutive days in Canada and a fairly weak connection test to Canada.

I would like to remind the member that the rule for becoming a citizen is that people have to have been in Canada for three out of the last five years. I would ask the member whether she thinks that might be a better substantial connection test that could be done as an amendment to the bill.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as the member opposite would remember, he was on that committee, and we worked on amendments that made sense. We passed the bill through the House. We sent it to the Senate. It is back now. If the member has amendments that he wants to propose, we can discuss them in committee, but the reality is that the member has supported the bill in the past.

With respect to the question around the numbers, I have heard many people ask, “How many is it?” We have had that conversation in committee. With respect to any question the member has had this day, we have had that conversation. We are saying that we are happy to bring in amendments that make sense, in committee, and work together with all parties to make sure that we do not put Canadian families through this limbo as—

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Rimouski—La Matapédia.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as my colleague said earlier, the Bloc Québécois is obviously in favour of this bill. We want to finally move on to something else because what we are doing this morning is recycling. I have to let honest workers and taxpayers know. This problem has existed since 2009, when the Conservative Party changed the legislation. We know the problem, and we know the solutions; now is the time to act.

My question for my colleague is this. If this issue is so important, why did her government not resolve it when it had a majority? The Liberals had a majority from 2015 to 2019. They had four years to do it, and nothing has been done.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think my colleague understands very well how Canadian democracy works when Canadians want an election. There were frequent calls for an election for several months in the House of Commons while I was here. Let us also remember that we were not a majority but a minority, and that our colleagues opposite continued to call for an election, which we gave them.

I think my colleague also understands that the Liberal government came back with 44 Quebec seats, so he understands that democracy works, in a way. I also appreciate the fact that his fellow party members will be able to work with us to pass this bill very quickly.

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I believe it is good legislation, and it is very similar to the legislation that was in the previous Parliament. It is actually better legislation than two times ago, so we have made improvements, and the process at committees is working. We need to move forward to committee so we can call the question and consider any amendments.

I would like the member to reiterate whom the legislation would impact. We are hearing from the opposition side about the number of days and whether it should be similar to obtaining Canadian citizenship. I understand that the legislation would be actually dealing with Canadian citizens, and once someone has earned the privilege, the right to be a Canadian citizen, they are a Canadian citizen, and this is in regard to people having children abroad, the second generation abroad, but who are proud Canadian citizens.

I would just like the member to reiterate what the legislation is, why it needs to advance and the importance of it.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as I said in my speech, a Canadian is a Canadian, whether someone is a Canadian by birthright or became a Canadian through naturalization, which is how I became a Canadian. I came here as a young refugee. I grew up here, and I worked hard to become a Canadian citizen. I am a Canadian citizen.

Imagine if I were able to serve outside of Canada now for a number of years; I would fall into the double-tier system the Harper government created to divide Canadians and make it so some are valued Canadians and some are not valued Canadians. That is what we want to get rid of. There are many service members like Don Chapman, whom I mentioned earlier, people who served our country and have been part of the lost Canadians, who want to make sure this does not continue to happen.

We are committed to making the legislation happen, because we believe a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to split my time.

This might be a new Parliament and a new Prime Minister, but we are tackling the same old problems with the exact same fraught solutions, and we have heard a lot about that today. What is worse is that the Liberal government cannot even admit the failures that every single Canadian now, no matter whom they voted for, can see exist.

I am going to cut right to it. The current government broke the Canadian immigration system. It broke the 100-year consensus of our system, and it has taken a system that was once the envy of the world, of so many people who have come to call Canada home, and made it a system that is now rife with abuse and incompetence. Frankly, it was not that way 10 years ago. The vast majority of Canadians, and any rational person, would look at this and say the exact same thing: The immigration system needs fixing. We need something to restore the trust and integrity that it once had.

However, now we have an immigration minister who cannot answer the most basic questions. In fact, there are members on the other side of the House who spoke today who probably read the legislation, who were at committee, and who have answered every single question better than she could. I learned that first-hand last week when the minister could not say how many people we have welcomed to Canada. She could not tell us whether they would ever complete proper security checks. She could not tell us who was going to leave, when they were going to leave nor how they were going to do that.

It seems like members of the Liberal government at this point are crossing their fingers. They are throwing anybody who has not yet been in the role of the immigration minister into the fight, hoping the problems just go away. That does not make our country safe. It does not ensure that people can access health care. It does not give people the opportunity to find jobs, does not help them find homes and does not keep the offenders or, frankly, terrorists from entering our country. Members may have noticed that the most reasonable people in this country on immigration are no longer walking on eggshells about the issue. They have called it out for what it is: a deeply broken system that the government over the last 10 years broke.

Here is what I have to say to the seven ministers in 10 years who have added to the breaking of the system in Canada and the consensus we once had with the system: The bill does not solve the problems that it was intended to solve. It actually creates more of them. That is what we need to ensure that the House understands.

Immigration levels have been far too high for the last number of years. I certainly think so. Municipal leaders think so. Provincial premiers think so. Even non-partisan civil servants think so. They have said as much. The proposed fix cannot be to have 100,000 people become citizens with a stroke of a pen or a vote of the House. Maybe it is 100,000; the government does not even know the number. We have heard multiple estimates from multiple members on the other side. That is irresponsible.

Bill C-3 talks about citizenship for people who have hardly spent any time in this country, just 36 months, which do not have to be consecutive. That is the number one problem with it.

What about security screenings? We have not talked a lot in the House about security screenings, the ones that the minister could not describe last week. She did not even know what they entailed. Bill C-3 would extend citizenship without basic security checks, without a single background check and without a single interview.

What about the backlog in our system that we have not talked much about? It has kept literally millions of people in line for years. The backlog of asylum claimants alone is nearly 300,000, while the citizenship backlog is about a million. Bill C-3 would obviously add to that backlog. There needs to be concern about a system that has lost all of its integrity and has lost the confidence of Canadians. We would want to ensure that the backlog does not get worse. Our own budget watchdog tells us that it will take $21 million, but he is handicapped on understanding the bill, as they do not know the numbers, how many it would affect, or how this would happen.

However, those are all secondary issues. Not only is the bill far away from what this country needs on immigration, but it is also a big step in the wrong direction. I think it would make the problems that the Liberals have created over the last number of years worse, so nobody should be celebrating.

I will make this clear: Nobody should be celebrating that our immigration system is broken. It has built this country. It has ensured that people like my parents can come here and flee the place that they do not even want to talk about anymore for a new life in Canada, where their first-generation child can become a member of Parliament, something that they would never have dreamed of. It is resilient. It makes our country unique, and it is part of our cultural and economic strength.

The country needs immigration, but it also needs to work for Canadians and to work for Canada. Right now, it does neither of those things. It works for nobody. It does not work for the young people, the old people, the first generation or the sixth generation. It does not work for people who cannot afford a home, people who cannot get in to see a doctor when they need one, people who cannot get a job when they have to or the people who have spent years languishing in lines, waiting their turn without any idea of when any of this would actually happen. It does not help the people who were scammed by the fake colleges or foreign-cash-addicted universities that, under the watch and the encouragement of the government, have gotten out of control. It does not serve the people who came here for the promise of this country.

About 40% of our newcomers already say that they want to leave. We cannot pretend that using a hammer, in this case, is going to fix something that could be fixed with a scalpel.

Based on this, it should come as no surprise that, despite promising a lower amount of newcomers, the government is still issuing a record number of permits. This year, there have been nearly 100,000 study permits and 50,000 temporary work permits. This should be expected from an immigration minister who told this country, in her previous job as the immigration minister for Nova Scotia, that she wanted absolutely no caps on immigration. She has denied that. It is not a great track record to engender confidence in the new seventh minister in 10 years.

If the members opposite actually want to take an interest in making this better, I have some advice to make it better. While we do need to fix the wrongs of the past, the former bill did that. If there are elements and specific cases where it did not, we could find ways to do it with a very targeted approach. We supported fixing the lost Canadians via the targeted bill that we saw from the other place, Bill S-245, but Bill C-3 goes too far.

Bill C-3 actually weakens Canadian citizenship. It would devalue Canadian citizenship for everyone else. It would open the door by eliminating the ties to Canada as a requirement, or at least the strength of the ties to Canada as a requirement. It would eliminate the first-generation limit. It would grant citizenship to those born abroad with one parent who has spent 1,095 consecutive days here.

We have heard a lot of conversation about this, and I am glad to hear that the members opposite, the Liberals, are open to amendments to changing that, to substantiating it into a test that makes sense. They are not required to have substantial ties.

Again, the vague substantial connection test allows multi-generational foreign residents to claim citizenship with minimal presence in Canada. That devalues the citizenship. It devalues not only the rights that are afforded to every other citizen but also the responsibility that citizens have in making sure that they are citizens.

I want to make Canada's immigration system the envy of the world. We cannot do that if Canadians do not believe in the integrity of the system. We cannot do that if we look out onto our streets today and see what is happening, while we are saying no to security vetting, to any kind of interview or to making sure that criminal record checks are conducted. We cannot possibly stand up today in this country and say that is not necessary.

I look forward to hearing what the Liberals' thoughts are on an amendment that would ensure security and vetting are taken seriously, something that the Liberals have not done in our immigration system. It is something that has played out on our streets here in Canada, something that has been shown in case after case of people being charged before they committed a terrorist act in this country. I want to see a government take this responsibly, and I want to see citizenship mean something in this country.

We have a bill without its amendments and the provisions the government currently has with the minister, who knows nothing about the bill, who has presented it in the House. I want to see those changed. I look forward to having that conversation, but I look forward more to the Liberals accepting those amendments.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we have heard Conservative after Conservative get up to talk about a substantial connection. A lot of provinces have substantial connection rules too. For example, the Province of Alberta says that someone cannot run as an MLA unless they have had a substantial connection of at least six months.

I am curious if the member believes that Pierre Poilievre should have a substantial connection to Alberta before he runs as a member of Parliament in that province.