Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would also like to thank you for inviting me here.
My name is Donald Galloway. I'm a professor of law at the University of Victoria. I specialize in immigration and refugee law. I have published some articles on Canadian citizenship law, which is a very obscure area, believe it or not. I've served as a member of the Immigration and Refugee Board.
I submitted a brief two weeks ago, and in the time that's allotted to me, I want to expand on some of the ideas I expressed there.
I want to propose to you, first, that there is a very simple and very thin conception of citizenship that underlies our Citizenship Act and the various acts that identify the rights of Canadian citizens, such as the Canada Elections Act and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
The simple idea is this: a Canadian citizen is a person in whose name the Government of Canada acts and whose interests the Government of Canada has undertaken to promote. It is these two facets, these two principles, that underlie the Citizenship Act and its predecessor, the Citizenship of Canada Act.
How do we distinguish between a citizen and a non-citizen? It is not that the government has no obligations to non-citizens. Whether somebody is a permanent resident, a temporary resident, a foreign national, or an enemy combatant in war, the government has an obligation to respect the human rights of these individuals. The obligation to Canadian citizens is greater than that. The government has undertaken to look after the interests of Canadians and to promote them, not just to respect them. Similarly, the government claims to act not in the name of permanent residents or foreign nationals; it claims to act in the name of us citizens.
When did the Government of Canada start acting on behalf of Canadians? Was it in 1947, or was it much earlier? The answer, I think, is obvious. The Government of Canada made these undertakings much earlier in our history. Now, that is a simple idea that I think Mr. Justice Martineau, in the Taylor case in the Federal Court, has understood. I don't think it is an idea that the government, which has decided to appeal the decision in Taylor, has understood--that the notion of citizenship, until 1947, was very loose, but nevertheless still existed.
That's the first point, and I think that's crucial to understanding everything that follows.
The next question I want to ask, and it's the first point I make in my brief, is this: Is the government living up to its undertakings to look after the interests of Canadians and to promote them? If we look at the Citizenship Act, I think the answer is no. In the first part of my brief I try to argue that this is a continuing failure. We're not just dealing with historical anomalies concerning people who have arrived in Canada and are being mistreated or people who were born here and were mistreated. It's something that continues.
The idea that a Canadian citizen who is born overseas to a parent who was also born overseas and is a Canadian citizen can lose his or her citizenship automatically, without us hearing any story or any mitigating circumstances--they automatically lose their status at age 28 unless they register, the onus being on them to identify themselves as citizens--is going to lead, in the future, to continuing troubles.
It doesn't matter how transparent our process is or how quasi-judicial or judicial our process is in dealing with citizens or people who have lost their citizenship. If it is an automatic loss, and we don't hear their stories about why they thought their father was born in Canada and why they missed the deadline, if we don't hear these stories and act upon them, then the problem will continue.
That's the first part of my brief. The rest of my brief is in writing, and I will be happy to answer questions on it.