Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 26th, 2007

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

So we do have what are called two citizens: one is good to be a citizen, and the other need not apply, as this minister doesn't care.

I have a question for Mr. Galloway. You're a professor of law, sir, and you certainly gave a brief. Are there the means, in your estimation, if there's willingness from the government side, to fix this and fix it very quickly, so even if there's an election come spring, we can walk away and say we did the right thing, that we were responsible, unlike the minister, who was irresponsible when she was here and misled this committee about advertising? Is there a fix that we can have?

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

You have 45 seconds, please.

[Donald Galloway]

I think there is a fix. I would much rather it be correct than fast.

One of the things we've done in the past is act quite quickly to solve the problems that are visible. I think we have to think about all the invisible problems that have existed in relation to individuals we don't know about. We have to give it some thought. I think a lot of thought has gone into this. I see the problem relating to citizenships being taken away in the past. I think we can retroactively deal with it.

The problem, as I suggested today, continues. We have to look at the application of section 8 of the Citizenship Act, which automatically takes away citizenship for some individuals.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

My last question before the gavel comes down: Should the government do the right thing and advertise to tell Canadians that they are in jeopardy of losing their citizenship?

[Donald Galloway]

Part of the thrust of my talk is that I think this government has a lot of responsibility that it has been perhaps not shirking but overlooking in relation to promoting the interests of its citizenry.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you, Mr. Galloway.

I'm going to try to get in three speakers. If you don't need five minutes, four might be enough for your questions, so that we can get the full round in.

Mr. Gravel.

[Raymond Gravel, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

This will be quite brief. I'd like some clarification. We talk a lot about Canadians who have lost their citizenship. I'm from Quebec. Is the situation the same in that province? I know that children who were born outside marriage were registered differently. There were a lot of nurseries in Quebec. Nuns took care of those children, and they were adopted. If those youths or adults show up today, if they want a passport, if they want to know whether they are Canadian citizens, even if they were born outside of marriage, is there anything in particular for them? These were often children of young girls, and the nuns took charge of those children and put them up for adoption. Are they full-fledged citizens, or are they declared as having lost their citizenship, at some point, if they make an application?

[Donald Galloway]

My immediate response would be that I think Quebec citizens have faced the same problems with the 1947 act and earlier situations as the rest of Canada. It's a problem about citizenship being automatically removed if certain criteria are met. I think it applies across the board, from coast to coast to coast.

[Christina Godlewska]

In our submissions, we deal a little bit with the situation of making these decisions based on whether or not you're born in or out of wedlock. I'm not sure whether you meant people who have been adopted out of the country and who were born here and then left.

Our basic submission is that a new citizenship act will have to make some hard and fast distinctions. What's clear is that not only that act but also discretionary decisions made now, today, need also to be charter-compliant, so that when people are being denied citizenship based on the legitimacy of their birth, we simply can't have this happen in a post-charter era. That's been a unanimous decision. A1997 decision by the Supreme Court of Canada says that when somebody today comes to ask for a citizenship card or citizenship status, when they're being denied today, that is a post-charter decision that needs to be charter-compliant. Saying to somebody that you're not a citizen because of the legitimacy of your birth is just something we can no longer do in the modern era, the post-charter world.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Okay.

[Raymond Gravel, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

I was talking about an earlier period; I was talking about the 1940s and 1950s in Quebec because there were a lot of adoptions at that time. I was wondering whether it was... It's no longer the case today. It doesn't work the same way, I know.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Are there any brief comments before I go to Mr. Siksay on the comment that was made by Mr. Gravel? No? Okay. We can go to Mr. Siksay, and then on to Mr. Komarnicki.

Mr. Gravel, did you have a comment?

[Raymond Gravel, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

If you estimate the number of citizens who are in that situation in Quebec, how many are there roughly?

[Dr. Barry Edmonston]

There are about 11,000 children in Quebec who report that they were born outside and think of themselves as Canadian at birth.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you.

Mr. Siksay, if you could keep it a bit brief, too, below the five-minute mark, we'd appreciate it.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm glad Ms. Godlewska got to the question of the retroactivity of the charter, because I know it's something that both Professor Galloway and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association talked about in their brief. I think it's a very important piece of what's happening around all of this. I don't know if anybody has anything further to comment on the retroactivity of the charter.

The other question I had for Mr. Gratl and Ms. Godlewska was about the Taylor case and your comments in your brief about speculative concerns being inappropriate in the kind of government response. I'm wondering if you could just expand on that as well.

[Christina Godlewska]

I would urge the committee to take a look at that part of our brief in particular. Our recommendations are in bold, the first one being that current acts done by the ministry need to be charter compliant. In turning people away based on the gender of their Canadian parent, the legitimacy of their birth, even though we're blaming the 1947 act, the truth is that's a current act. It still enforced the ghost of these provisions, which live on because they're referenced and referenced. The Supreme Court of Canada took one look at this. Mr. Yakabuski wrote a very powerful and well-reasoned judgment in 1997. All nine justices agreed, this is called current discrimination, and give the example—and Professor Galloway does as well—that if this were a race issue, if we were saying to people, “Sorry, you're black, and it used to be that black people didn't get citizenship,” then nobody would stand for that. It's the same with respect to legitimacy.

When the minister was here before you, she gave a few reasons for wanting to appeal the Taylor judgment. I don't really hold her particularly to the legality of what she was saying. She cited a few things, such as if we do this for citizens, then when people come to do their taxes they're going to use the excuse of notification. We argue in our brief that's just poor legal reasoning. There seems to be kind of a speculative fear here of what's going to happen if we open the door. That's just not the way to approach citizenship. That's like saying “What's going to happen if we allow equality in our society and we let women into the workplace?” That was the same horn that was being blown when that issue first came before our country. Now we have a different issue, but once again, that kind of speculative reasoning of “Oh, no, what's going to happen if we give people their rights” is just not the way rights should be approached.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you, Mr. Siksay.

Mr. Devolin.

[Barry Devolin, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to the witnesses for being here.

I didn't get an opportunity to ask a question in the first round, but I'd like to thank those witnesses as well.

Ms. Godlewska, I thought you made a couple of very good points for people listening or reading this, or even for me sitting here, the distinction between citizenship in terms of immigrants coming into Canada, that it's a process and it's an ongoing process in the future, and that Canada doesn't have any legal responsibility or obligation to grant citizenship to people who aren't citizens, if they are coming from somewhere else, whereas for people who live in Canada who are potentially lost citizens, it's a totally different situation. This is more a question of status, really, than process. I think some of your arguments regarding the importance of citizenship in a democracy and the role that plays, and the concern that the state somehow would have the authority to take citizenship away from people, ought to frighten all of us, not just those who may find themselves in these situations. I thought you made those points very well.

You referenced that there ought to be, just to start with, three or four fairly simple questions, a few simple questions, to establish whether someone is a prima facie case, such as “Were you born in Canada?” I had the sense that you didn't complete a list. Do you actually have a set of questions that you would argue would be a starting point for this process?

[Christina Godlewska]

My three points are not exhaustive, and I think one of the major tasks before this committee is to enumerate where we want to draw that line. The three things I was pointing to were birth in Canada—these are just basic principles of international law—descending from Canadian parents, and my third was just taking into account the situations we hear of with people.

The situation of Rod Donaldson comes to mind. He was here three weeks ago. It's just a situation where who could have ever anticipated this. He was abducted and he was abducted again. He was adopted by notary publics who forged documents. It's just crazy. So I'm saying that for those kinds of people, for these unanticipatable situations that even amendments to the law can't necessarily foresee, the department should be encouraged to use its discretion to use some kind of common-sense, estoppel approach. Where somebody has been living here and the government has represented to them in several ways--here's your passport, here's your social insurance number, we'll take taxes from you, thank you very much--that citizenship should just be granted on kind of a humanitarian grounds basis.

[Barry Devolin, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

I don't know if anyone else has anything.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Does anyone else have a comment on Mr. Devolin's questions?

If not, we will thank witnesses for appearing here today, both panels. Thank you very much for your attendance. You're making a very compelling case to have this problem dealt with and resolved. This is our fourth meeting, and I would imagine after Easter we will be doing the report, so stay tuned. Thank you again.

We will move to committee business in a moment. We'll give our witnesses a chance to leave the table, and we will go to Mr. Karygiannis's motion of March 20.

Again, many thanks.

We're still public. We're not in camera. I would remind members we're still public, and we'll deal with the first motion by Mr. Karygiannis:

That the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration ask the Minister, the Deputy Minister, and other appropriate officiais from the Department of Citizenship and Immigration to appear before the Committee to further discuss the issue of Lost Canadians and the measures the Government is taking to notify potentially affected Canadians of the retention rule, with regard to the letter from Deputy Minister Richard B. Fadden, dated February 23, 2007, and that the letter be appended to the committee evidence.

This motion is deemed to be in order, so I will go to Mr. Karygiannis for comments, and to committee members as well.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Mr. Chair, as a clarification, I noticed that when we were discussing this motion the last day, there was a postponement to see if the department would consider issuing a press release that this happened.

I'm wondering if the parliamentary secretary, who took it upon himself to move this forward, can advise this committee if there's a press release on the website--I failed to see one a couple of seconds ago--or if there's one coming.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Mr. Komarnicki, do you wish to answer?

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Certainly I'm prepared to answer.

I can advise that the department will not be issuing a press release. A letter has been forwarded to this committee by Mr. Richard B. Fadden that sets out the circumstance and the context in which the answer was given, and the reasons for it. It's quite specific and clear. Certainly it could be read into the record. It's something I am prepared to do, and it clarifies the whole situation.

I don't think it's really up to this committee to instruct someone else to issue a press release. If the committee wishes to do so, that's certainly up to it, but as far as this is concerned, in my view the letter should be read into the record, and I'm prepared to do that.