Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. Thank you for allowing me to come from England to address you today.
My name is Joe Taylor and my father was born in Nanaimo, British Columbia, as was his mother. He lived in Canada all his life and he died in 1996. My father volunteered to fight for Canada in the last world war, and the things he saw during that horrific war ruined his life forever.
My mom was a British war bride and I lived my whole life proudly believing that I was half-Canadian and half-British. When I applied for proof of citizenship in 2002, I thought it was merely a formality. I didn't realize there were mean-minded bureaucrats in CIC who would fight tooth and nail to refuse citizenship to the dependants of Canada's brave soldiers.
They struggled to find anything they could use against me, including the fact I was born out of wedlock. They knew there was a war on and Canada's military officers were under orders to refuse men permission to marry. My parents were married as soon as they could do so, three days before the end of the war. But I was four months old then, a cardinal sin in the eyes of CIC, even in the year 2007.
When that argument started looking dubious for them, they moved on to the fact that I didn't fill in a form asking to retain my citizenship by my 24th birthday, although no one had informed me or my parents that this was now required.
I am one of many such dependants, war brides and their children, who are being rejected. What would these brave men who fought in the war think of this appalling treatment of their own wives and children? I wonder how Canada's going to treat the dependants of its soldiers currently fighting in Afghanistan.
Prime Minister Harper issued the following statement on his official website on the anniversary of D-Day:
Today, as we mark the 62nd anniversary of the D-Day landings, we recall the thousands of brave Canadians who played their part in this historic event.
They came from every part of Canada, from every walk of life, to risk their lives for freedom. Many would make that ultimate sacrifice.
Let us never forget them, and let us never fail to defend their precious legacy.
Yet it is Mr. Harper who's supposedly in charge of a department that's taking bitter legal action against me to try to prevent me from even laying flowers on my father's grave in the Legion's Field of Honour in Port Alberni, British Columbia.
It's most upsetting to me that Mr. Harper can say one thing and then do the opposite. He urged all Canadians to never fail to defend their precious legacy and then he allowed his own government lawyers to try to destroy me.
CIC is still refusing to accept that I'm a Canadian, despite the fact that I won a financially crippling court case presided over by Justice Luc Martineau, which cost me over $30,000. The court awarded me costs, but CIC have only offered me approximately $9,500. A month later, they've still to pay that.
One Tuesday, late in September last year, Mr. Harper's government announced that it was eliminating the court challenges program, which was designed to assist in funding cases like mine. Then on the Friday of the same week, CIC stated that it intended to appeal the decision in my case. When I received the appeals submissions from CIC, they contained a threat that should the government lose the appeal, they intended to drag me through the Supreme Court.
Having removed the only source of possible funding for me, they were effectively saying that if I wished to continue to fight for my birthright, I must be prepared to bankrupt myself while the government could use vast resources paid for by taxpayers' money. All the time my agony continues—and you can't imagine what that agony's been like for five years of this struggle—I watch Canadian politicians scoring points off each other over which party is to blame. I just wish they would stop and consider the effect all this is having on the life of one human being who Justice Martineau confirmed is a Canadian citizen.
I have been treated so badly while just trying to claim my rightful citizenship. Canada's current citizenship laws are discriminatory, cruel, and un-Canadian. I never imagined I would be treated like this by Canada, of all countries.
The only proper solution is a totally new citizenship act as soon as possible: it's more than overdue. But until there's a new citizenship act, it seems that a Canadian certificate of citizenship isn't worth the paper on which it's written.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.