Thank you very much for inviting me here today.
My name is Magali Castro-Gyr and I'd like to start by thanking you for having me. I've come to Ottawa four times to address the committee. Don and I have been working very hard to sort through this whole mess. This is 2007 and this year marks the 60th anniversary of the Canadian Citizenship Act and the 25th anniversary of our Charter. How very interesting that things have come this.
I hope that the story I'm about to tell you about how I was unfairly treated and the problems I faced in my dealings with Citizenship and Immigration Canada will help you as you investigate the case of Canadians who, like myself, were stripped of their citizenship.
I also hope that you will recommend some legislative amendments to the Citizenship Act and to the Charter to do away with archaic, discriminatory legislation that dates back 61 years.
I was born in Montreal. My mother was a Quebecker and I am a tenth generation Quebecker. I am a descendant of Pierre Gagnon, one of the first four Gagnons who settled in Canada. As I said, I was born in Canada and I have a Canadian birth certificate. I have also had three passports over the course of my life that stated that I was a Canadian citizen. My SIN card and number also confirmed my Canadian citizenship. I lived in Canada. However, in 1964, my parents decided to immigrate to the United States.
In 1975, my Canadian father became an American citizen. My mother, a Quebecker born in Montreal, never renounced her Canadian citizenship. She did not become a U.S. citizen when my father did. My Canadian father became a U.S. citizen. According to Citizenship and Immigration Canada, that's when I lost my citizenship because of laws assigning the right to a nationality to the father. The rights of my Quebec mother as well as my own rights as a child were completely ignored, something that I consider unacceptable.
Years later, I moved to Europe. I vacationed in Quebec, worked in Quebec City and in Montreal, and paid taxes in this country. I'm a teacher and I've always maintained strong ties with Canada. However, at one point, I decided to try something different. I went to Europe where I met my husband who is a Swiss-American. In 2001, we decided to return to Canada. My himself applied to immigrate. We sent the papers to Ontario. We were informed that because I was a Canadian, I could sponsor my husband. That is what I did. We came to Canada and two months later, I received a letter from Citizenship and Immigration Canada, further to my applying for citizenship cards for myself and for my children.
I received a letter from Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Later, Samy will send you a copy of this letter. I want to share with you my experiences and the problems I encountered. Upon reading this letter, you will note that it contains four spelling mistakes as well as a number of factual errors. The letter notes the following:
When your father acquired U.S. citizenship in 1958, you were a dual national (Canadian and French).
Because I was a minor child, I lost citizenship.
It's interesting, because first of all it was not in 1958, it was in 1975. And I was not even born then. I was born in 1959, so I could not have been a dual citizen in 1958; I was not even born yet.
There are also spelling mistakes in this letter. One of the first ones is that the woman who signed this, Beverly Foggoa, spelled Canada as “Camada”. She spelled my children's names wrong. She spelled our family name wrong. This is the kind of bureaucracy I've dealt with—sloppy.