Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 15th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

I want to again welcome Mr. Davidson, director and registrar, Department of Citizenship and Immigration, who is going to give us a briefing on the Citizenship Act that is being introduced today.

[Mark Davidson, Director and Registrar, Canadian Citizenship, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The bill that the minister introduced this afternoon, which is an amendment to the Citizenship Act that has been in place since 1977, is intended to minimize the distinction that presently exists in the context of citizenship between children born to and those adopted by Canadian citizens abroad.

It's intended to eliminate the present requirement that children adopted by Canadian citizens in Canada must become permanent residents before they can apply for citizenship. The new citizenship process that's envisaged in this bill will permit a citizenship application to be made and processed overseas so that the citizenship can be granted even before the individual returns to Canada or even without a requirement to first come back to Canada as a permanent resident.

There will be a number of safeguards set out in this legislation. The safeguards are very similar to safeguards that now exist in the context of adoptions under the Immigration Act and immigration regulations. Those safeguards include: the provincial or territorial government must give agreement; the adoption must be in the best interests of the child; a genuine parent-child relationship must exist; a legal adoption must take place under the laws where the adoption took place, as well as the laws of the country of residence of the adopting parent; and the adoption must not be an adoption of convenience, an adoption intended to overcome either citizenship or immigration rules.

The bill as it now exists in the immigration context does pause at the possibility of an adult adoption—in other words, an adoption that legally took place after the adopting child was an adult—but only if there had been a parent-child relationship between the adopting parents and the individual before the individual turned 18.

As I said, one of the main purposes of the bill is to minimize the distinction between children born to and children adopted by Canadian citizens abroad. In order to continue the reduction of those distinctions, the adoptees will not be subject to prohibitions under the Citizenship Act, nor will they be required to take the oath of citizenship.

As you are no doubt aware, adoptions in Canada are a provincial responsibility. This bill recognizes the primacy of provincial authority when it comes to adoptions, and the bill has the support of provinces and territories.

The final clause of the bill talks about the coming into force, and I only want to briefly talk about that. There will be a requirement for regulations that will have to be amendments to the citizenship regulations and that will have to follow this bill. The coming into force of the amendments to the Citizenship Act can only happen once those regulations have been promulgated by the Governor in Council. The bill and regulations will come into effect at a single date, once the bill has received royal assent and the regulations have been finally approved, following the opportunity for public comment.

I'll leave my brief briefing at that level. As I say, the bill is intended to reduce the distinctions between children who've been adopted by and children who are born to Canadians abroad.

The department will of course be more than willing to give the committee a more in-depth briefing at a time to be set with the committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you for the briefing. We look forward to your coming back to give us a more extensive briefing.

Yes, Mr. Telegdi.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Chairman, I wonder if I could get in just one question.

Is this bill any different from the one tabled in November?

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Is the bill any different from the one tabled in the House today, or the last one that was tabled in the House?

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Not the one from the House, the one that was tabled in November.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

So Bill C-76.

I guess we'll allow that one question.

Is it any different from Bill C-76?

[Mark Davidson]

The bill before Parliament was developed for a number of years by parliamentarians, by the government, and by the department.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

But is this bill any different from the one that was tabled in November? That's the question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

So is the bill any different from the one that was tabled in November?

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Yes, Bill C-76. Is there a difference?

[Mark Davidson]

My understanding of the presentation today, Mr. Chair, was that we were to provide a brief overview of the bill, not to go into details.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

More or less a courtesy call, then; you'll come back for a more extensive briefing.

[Jim Peterson, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

With all due respect, Mr. Telegdi asked a question that has a very simple answer--yes or no.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

In fairness to the officials, I don't believe they came today with the intention of answering any questions.

[Jim Peterson, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

They could just say they don't know.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

I think the intention was that they were to come back and do a further, more extensive briefing for us in the future.

Was that the understanding?

[Mark Davidson]

Absolutely.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

I think as a courtesy to officials we should respect that, or we should bring them back at a further date to answer all of the questions the committee might have. Okay?

Dismissed.

Members, can we go to future business?

[Jim Peterson, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Boy, have they been politicized. This is a....

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

No, I don't believe.... It's just that the officials weren't prepared to come today to do a very extensive briefing for committee. They wanted time to prepare for it, and I think it's only fair that we give officials time to prepare.

[Jim Peterson, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

They could have said they didn't know.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

I guess we'll have to wait until they come back to find out for sure if they knew or not.

At any rate, can we get down to motions?

We'll start with the motion that was moved by Mr. Lui Temelkovski:

That whenever an Order in Council appointment is referred to the Committee, the Clerk obtain and circulate to each member of the Committee a copy of the said appointment with the appointee’s curriculum vitae.

That motion was never formally adopted. By unanimous consent it was allowed to stand. Will we adopt the motion now?

(Motion agreed to)

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

We'll now go to Mr. Siksay's motion, which reads as follows:

(1) That the government of Canada develop skills and competence-related criteria for all government appointments, including Board Members and senior Officers of Crown Corporations and other government agencies, for which the Standing Committee has reviewing responsibility; and that these criteria specifically address the non-partisan nature of these appointments. ( 2) That the government then submit these criteria to the Standing Committee for consideration, and approval with amendment if necessary. (3) That the Government of Canada then publicly release, including publishing in the Canada Gazette, the committee-approved criteria for each appointment. (4) That the names and background of each nominee for appointment be referred to the Standing Committee prior to the date of their appointment, with an explanation of how each nominee has met the established criteria; and, that the Committee, unless it unanimously decides otherwise, shall have at least one full meeting every two months (while the House of Commons is in session) to review the nominees.

Discussion of the motion?

Bill, please.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Chair, this was a motion that was passed in the last Parliament by the previous standing committee. We had a discussion around accountability for government appointments. There has been concern in the past around appointments in the area of citizenship and immigration, primarily around the Immigration and Refugee Board.

I know the previous government took some measures to improve that process, and that was noted in the discussion we previously had at the committee. But the last committee believed there was room to do an even better job on those things, particularly around having skills and competence-related criteria for each of the positions, so that we had a benchmark to judge the applicants who came before the committee. We thought that having some commentary from the government on how those applicants met the established criteria would also be very important.

I think it was a fairly straightforward attempt to give us the information that we needed to do due diligence on the review of the appointments that came before the committee. As you can tell, it's a general motion—I don't know if there are any crown corporations that apply to our interest in citizenship and immigration—so it was the one that went to a number of committees last time. We passed this and reported it to the House. At one point, I think it even got concurrence in the House as well.

I'd like to suggest that it merits being done again, and I'd recommend it as a process to the government from this committee.