Evidence of meeting #38 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 39th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was born.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Norman Doyle
Did you direct your question to any one individual, Madame Faille?
Chairperson, Air Force, Canadian Military Adult Children Citizenship Status, As an Individual
For us, the major issue has always been that we were never told. I think, also, there's the issue of a clarification of what exactly a citizenship card is. Anybody who has come up to me has gotten really angry and said: “I am a Canadian; they tell me I'm a Canadian.” But when I explain to them that a citizenship card is your proof of Canadian birth, it's as though all these lights go on, and they say: well, why didn't somebody tell me? I'm thinking: that's a very good point; we were never told—
Of any of the people who have come to me, not one was ever told that they had to turn in their registration of birth abroad for a citizenship card. It was one of the best-kept secrets, and even though Citizenship and Immigration and DND met in 2006 in September, they still have not made any announcement. It's another best-kept secret. It's going to hit you big time when they all come up for pensions.
Lost Canadian Organization
No, but it was bad legislation. It was very bad legislation that did this. All we're asking for now is equality of rights, equality of denial, and equality of restoration for the new citizenship act.
Thank you.
Bloc
Meili Faille Bloc Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC
I ask the question because the government has appealed the ruling in the case of Mr. Joe Taylor.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Norman Doyle
I think Ms. Castro-Gyr had a comment, and Mr. Janzen had one as well.
As an Individual
To answer your question, I agree that it would be nice to receive information. However, let me give you an example. In May of 2003, Denis Coderre announced that each case would be dealt with separately in order to maintain the integrity of Citizenship and Immigration Canada. However, when I was offered a settlement, I was also ordered not to disclose any of the details.
You may be right, but at the same time, we need to know that the information given to us is adequate. As Ms. Eden and Mr. Janzen explained, often we're told what to do, but unfortunately, when we want to follow these instructions, we're not given the right information.
Conservative
Director, Ottawa Office, Mennonite Central Committee Canada
Thank you.
I would like to express regret that I cannot respond in French well.
Your point about adequate notification is fundamental. The loss-retention provision, as I've indicated, is generous in itself. We have no quarrel with the provision. It's the fact that people were issued certificates that did not have this expiry notice.
We're glad the government has now started putting expiry notices on them; it clarifies everything that's needed for that. But for the last 30 years, that was not done, so there's a huge question. I've read the judgment involving Mr. Taylor, and the court is very strong in saying there has to be adequate notice and clarity; that's a fundamental principle of justice.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
Thank you, Chair.
I want to thank all of you for your testimony this morning. I'm sorry so many of you have had to come back so many times and that we're still working on this. Hopefully, it will draw to a conclusion soon.
I wanted to ask specifically Mr. Chapman, who is at the back, but maybe he can hear me, and Mr. Janzen, and then any others of you, the specific changes you're calling for.
Mr. Chapman, you keep saying paragraph 3(1)(f) would fix it. I wonder if you could tell us specifically what you see paragraph 3(1)(f) saying.
Mr. Janzen, you mentioned specifically some suggestions in paragraphs 11 and 20 of your larger brief. Maybe you could go over those with us.
Then if others of you have specific ideas about legislative change or administrative changes that would be helpful, I'd like to hear from you on those very specific items.
Don.
Lost Canadian Organization
I think every one of you got a packet with the Trinidadian solution. This could be amended to be a little bit better with the Australia solution. It's one paragraph, and you can read it to yourself. Basically, it just says that a person who has lost their citizenship due to the old provisions is deemed to have never lost it. That includes everybody. It fixes it.
Other countries have exercised this as a human right; I can't imagine that Canada can't at least hold its own in human rights with other countries. We should lead by example here. I think that's pretty much it. It's very simple.
The bureaucrats aren't all bad people; a lot of them are very wonderful. They're simply following the job and the orders that you people have given them. Everybody's between a rock and a hard place here.
Conservative
Director, Ottawa Office, Mennonite Central Committee Canada
Yes.
I don't have the current act right in front of me, but if you look at section 8, in my larger brief, at the very end, I refer to a possible amendment to section 8. The first overall paragraph would stay almost as it is, but then there are a couple of subpoints that would simply be eliminated. They would have, as I've indicated in my larger brief in paragraph 21—Maybe it doesn't help if I read what I have there. I'll explain what it means.
Right now citizenship can be passed on to an indefinite number of generations. I'm virtually sure that whenever there is a new citizenship act, whichever party is in power, that generosity will be restricted somehow. It will not be quite as generous as it was made in 1977.
We can live with that. We're not asking for something of greater generosity. We're just asking for it to be workable, to be changed so that people in the second generation would have until age 28 to apply for a certificate, and if they did, then that would remain permanently valid; if they did not, then they would be out of luck. They would have to apply for landed immigrant status after that. At present, people in that second generation have to apply and then they have to re-apply before they turn 28.
Now, if you imagine yourselves being administrators, you're telling someone that they have two options. You're telling someone that they have a certificate that looks perfectly valid but it isn't valid, sorry. You're telling them that they've turned 28 and they should have applied for something. It's not valid any more. That's a difficult message for an administrator to convey to anybody.
A different message, which is a little bit less difficult, is they are not eligible for a certificate in the first place—they're passed the age and so on. So administratively this would be a lot easier than first issuing certificates and then saying they're not valid.
That would be a change. Then the other changes that we've recommended, and I'm not sure that they would be in the legislation, would simply be a policy of not recalling those certificates if the only reason why you might recall them is that a grandfather or grandmother has been found to have been born of parents who were married only in a church, not in a civil marriage. I think that's a regulatory change that could be done.
It's not only that it makes sense, but the fact is that when these people are in Canada, usually, as my colleague outlined, the government will find another way of letting them stay. But it takes, as Mary mentioned, half a dozen years and through permanent residence and immigration processes and questions about work permits and health coverage and so on. The end result is that people have usually been able to regain status, but many people just stay under the cover—they don't apply. So they're out there. They're not really citizens but they have certificates. It's a very messy situation. It doesn't honour the idea of Canada's law.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Norman Doyle
Thank you.
You have about a minute left, if you want to continue.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
I don't know if Ms. Eden had any further comments about an administrative solution to the circumstances.
Chairperson, Air Force, Canadian Military Adult Children Citizenship Status, As an Individual
I would just like to say that given the computer technology of the world today, there should be some way this government can pull up the names of all of the people who were registered abroad and notify them that they are in this scenario.
I can only say that whoever goes to fix any of these problems, could they please be somebody who has a real working knowledge of what the problem is.
Thank you.
Conservative
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
Thank you very much for taking the time and appearing before this committee and giving us your individual circumstances and perhaps some more general ones.
There's no doubt that a lot of what you have to say is very compelling. It certainly is emotional to you, because it affects you individually as it would affect others in a more general way. Certainly we hear what you have to say. There's no question about that.
I know one of the issues is whether you approach it en masse and do a complete overhaul of the Citizenship Act, or whether you try to take bite-size pieces and deal with some practical issues as Mr. Janzen has suggested. It is something certainly we're looking at.
I know the minister on the short term has indicated—and perhaps, Mr. Janzen, you've alluded to it as well—that she's looking at working with individual cases to see if they can be expedited. Perhaps some of you have received positive responses, at least in respect to your individual cases, and some may not have. Regardless of that, it's certainly a temporary band-aid fix.
She's also invited the committee to look at suggestions specifically as they may relate to the issues of your citizenship, how that could be looked at in the broader sense, and what this committee might offer in terms of where we go. If we can reach, finally, some unanimity among us, perhaps we can actually address the situation for those who follow in your footsteps.
I know a mention had been made of the 450 cases. We obviously realize those are just individuals who have identified themselves on any particular dedicated line in the question, but nobody suggests for a moment that those are the numbers of people affected. Obviously, as Mr. Janzen says, just in your own instance there are a whole lot of others who are affected in one way or another.
One thing I hear from most of you is that the citizenship was lost either because of not residing in Canada on your 24th birthday or some date, or you were born out of wedlock, or perhaps you didn't realize you had to file some documents for retention, or you've now found that the date is past and you can't undo that part. Perhaps better information and better knowledge might have helped.
I know the minister has created a dedicated unit in the call centre, and there is also a program officer to look at specific cases. That, on the short term, is of some help. The problem obviously didn't arise overnight and it's not necessarily partisan; it's been there for a long time. It's a question of what you do about it, so I'm looking at what the solution is to some of these problems.
I know that Mr. Janzen in particular—and I have some questions for others, if we have the time—had suggested that religious marriages, if they were performed, should be recognized for what they are through a policy directive or regulatory matter. Then your suggestion, as I understand it, is that on a go-forward basis, citizenship for those Canadians born outside of Canada would have to renew before the 28th birthday.
Wouldn't that pose the same type of potential problem, if they hadn't renewed before the 28th birthday? Am I understanding you correctly on your third solution there, on the go-forward basis? You were going to limit the citizenship to those who are 28 years of age and who have done something. If they've done nothing, they would end up losing their right to citizenship for the generations going down, while now it can go ad infinitum. Aren't we creating a bit of a problem in that suggestion for those who don't renew by the 28th birthday?
Director, Ottawa Office, Mennonite Central Committee Canada
I think it would be an improvement on the present, simply because what exists now is that people have certificates and then are told they are not permanently valid. Some officials have told them that yes, they are permanently valid, but the law says they're not permanently valid.
If it were changed, then if you made the application before turning 28, you would get a certificate, but all certificates would then be permanently valid. There would be no such thing as a certificate that is not permanently valid.
Now you have—and we use a rough guess—30,000 people who have received certificates, but they're not permanently valid, and these people will be turning 28. Every year there will be a couple of thousand. Some of them will apply for retention before they turn 28, but some of them won't; they'll just go undercover and continue with life.
I think it would be an improvement if it were reversed so that if you don't apply, then you lose your right to apply at age 28, but if you do apply, then your certificate will be permanently valid. I'm sure there would still be problems—people would come along and say they were 29 and didn't know about it—but those cases would be easier to deal with than they are now, when people say, “My certificate looks good.”
Lost Canadian Organization
I do have one thing. On a call centre, that number is only good in Canada, so if you're outside Canada you can't call it. You have to change that. You have to allow people around the world who are affected the right to call, because right now they can't even call. It just doesn't work.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
There is no question that the essence of what I'm hearing here is that systemically you would like notification to be done in a far better way than it is now internationally and within Canada, because obviously it affects people--
Conservative
Lost Canadian Organization
But remember, you call up, identify yourself, and the next minute you're Barbara Porteous or Magali Castro-Gyr or Joe Taylor. So why the hell would anybody want to call up and say, “Hey, look, I think this is me”? It's a whole lot better to remain silent and cross your fingers than to get kicked out of your country and put on trial.