Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 29th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you. Do you have any comments? Ms. Jarratt?

[Don Chapman, Lost Canadian Organization]

Well, I'm probably the guy who's been at this the longest. I started in 1972, trying to get my citizenship, and everybody along the way for the last 35 years has assured me that they would deal with my case expeditiously.

Just in the last 10 years I've been through three prime ministers and six immigration ministers, and I've watched everybody make the same comments, with no results, so I'm sorry if I'm very skeptical on these statements.

There is only one way I could describe this, and I'm not trying to pick on Ms. Grewal at all--this has nothing to do with you. I'm just simply trying to make a point here.

If I turned to you and said, “Really, I don't want you to be on this committee, because first off, you're not white, and you're a woman” and went on and on, everybody on this committee would be appalled. It would be written up in the papers the next day. Frankly, if that were the law of the land, that you had to leave, they'd change those laws tomorrow.

Well, in 1947, when this act came into force--I am from Vancouver--in Vancouver, if you were Jewish, you couldn't live in the British Properties and you couldn't join the Point Grey golf course or the Vancouver yacht club. There was a “white only” restaurant in Vancouver. Native aboriginals were rounded up and sent to residential schools. Asian, Indo, and native aboriginals couldn't vote. Now that's the law of the land that we're following--immoral laws. That's what we're following today.

Now, 60 years later and 139 years after the original wording of “married woman, or a minor, lunatic, or idiot” was put into the Naturalization Act, I'm being told that we care. Well, everybody's cared along these years and nobody has done this expeditiously. We have the answer: it's Charles Bosdet. Let's get cracking with the answer--now.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you, Mr. Chapman.

Go ahead, Mr. Alghabra.

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, everybody. I don't have a question, but I do have a couple of comments. I want to thank you all for coming, you and the previous panel. We've been hearing stories, very heart-wrenching stories, for the last few months, and it is regrettable. I want to apologize to all of you. It's a very serious matter that needs to be addressed and acted upon very quickly.

Unfortunately, we spend a lot of time arguing over whether there are 400 of you or 200,000 of you. As far as I'm concerned, I don't care if there are only five of you; this issue needs to be addressed quickly.

If you'll allow me to be partisan here, I was disappointed that the government spent a lot of time trying to draft frivolous legislation on exotic dancers instead of drafting legislation to fix this. We've been hearing this issue for the last three or four months, and this committee has been trying to keep this issue at the forefront and hopefully put pressure on the government to act quickly. I know your testimony here today will accelerate that and will help us get that job done.

I want to apologize again for what you're going through. It is regrettable. I hope we can get it fixed quickly.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you.

Are there any comments you'd like to make to Mr. Alghabra?

[Melynda Jarratt]

I'd like to say that I understand where you're coming from. You want your minister to solve this problem because it's so solvable that it's ridiculous. You don't want her to be called Charlie Brown and you don't want Stephen Harper to be called Charlie Brown, because that brought down the Mulroney government.

This is so easy to solve that it's beyond belief. Why it hasn't happened I don't understand. As recently as Friday, while you're telling me on the one hand you want to solve it, and I believe you do, she received two e-mails--left hand, right hand, doesn't know what's going on. On the left hand she's getting a notice telling her she's going to get a grant of citizenship, which is wonderful, because if she, Denise, gets a grant of citizenship, it means Joe Taylor's going to be a Canadian citizen, and that's what we want.

They're born out of wedlock; Joe is too, and they're getting a grant of citizenship, so they'll have to do it for Joe as well. On the other hand, they're sent another letter telling them they have to wait 15 months--and sorry, we feel bad for you for your driver's licence, but you're going to have to take the kids by taxi while your daughter is in the military.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

I think everyone who wanted to speak on this has spoken now. I think in fairness I should go to Mr. Siksay. His party would be the only one in the second round that never got a chance to have a word on this. I'm sure committee members would not object at all if I went to Mr. Siksay for some comments, if he feels so inclined.

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

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

If you feel so inclined.

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

Of course I do.

I do want to apologize for my misinterpretation of our speaking order earlier, Chair. I do appreciate being straightened out by the clerk and the chair on that.

I wanted to say that I appreciate hearing from all of you again, and hope that at some point we're going to move from hearing testimony to finding solutions in this committee. We have heard from so many people with similar stories, it's time we got on with finding the way through all of this and solving some problems rather than just hearing about them.

Ms. Merrette, do you know of other folks who are in a similar circumstance? We've been dealing with people who've been brushing up against this in recent years, but your sister faced this back in the sixties. Do you know of other people who faced it back then and sort of threw their hands up in frustration?

[Pauline Merrette]

I don't know their names. All I know is that Alex Patterson did take my father's case and he tried to help him through immigration. This was the Surrey office. But as to other names, no. In fact, my father thought my sister was the only one.

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

Right. But conceivably it could have happened to other people.

[Pauline Merrette]

Of course.

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

People just accepted the fact that they had no alternative at the time and accommodated, as your sister did.

[Pauline Merrette]

That's right.

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

I think that would be very tragic; there could be other people out there, potentially, who we don't know about and who still have a legitimate claim on Canadian citizenship as a result of that.

I just wanted to comment on the whole issue of security checks for people who are trying to restore their citizenship or confirm their citizenship. In the last Parliament, when we were looking at issues of lost Canadians--and we looked at a particular example of that, which Don and others brought to us at the time--we had a big debate about whether people should be subject to security checks at that point.

I think the sentiment of the committee at the time was that this was completely unnecessary. If these people were Canadian citizens and they were criminals, they were our criminals. We needed to make sure that their Canadian citizenship was the primary issue and we had to accept them, even if they had gotten into some trouble over the years.

In terms of clarifying your citizenship or restoring it, if you have a legitimate claim on it, I don't accept that the security certificate should be an issue. I'm sure in most cases that won't be a defining issue. I know we've heard of the case where a number of folks, border babies and folks in the family who didn't have a criminal record, have had their citizenship clarified and restored, and the one person who did is being considered for deportation, which I think is an absolutely outrageous situation.

So I just wanted to make those comments. Thank you again for appearing. I appreciate your taking the time.

I think Don has one comment he'd like to make in light of that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Mr. Chapman.

[Don Chapman]

On that, I have to make a comment about member of Parliament and Privy Council member, Marlene Jennings, who came before this committee. There was a question about her citizenship and it was resolved in three days. If that's not special favours, I don't know what is.

I would like the committee to really investigate this: why is she Canadian? Because I don't think she is. She took out an Italian passport as a Canadian adult, exercised her right as...you know, when dual citizenship was not allowed at the time.

So I'd really like to ask the question, why is she Canadian? By what process did they allow her citizenship but not other people? Similarly, how can these people be getting citizenship and Joe Taylor isn't? There are a lot of problems here.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you.

Sorry to be rushing it along, but I have three people who want a couple of minutes. I think we have a couple of minutes each for Mr. Komarnicki, Mr. Karygiannis, and Mr. Telegdi. Then we'll break to consider the motions before us.

Mr. Komarnicki.

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

There's no question that many of the individual cases are compelling cases that need attention and need to be looked at. There needs to be expedition on that. But let's get one thing clear: this problem existed for a number of years--the 1947 act, the 1967 act, 13 years of Liberal government.

Mr. Alghabra indicates that he wants a solution right away. And there should be a solution; we do need to fix it. But let's not be mistaken: we have a member of this committee who was a chair of this committee...a vice-chair of this committee. We had a government that knew these problems existed. The problems didn't originate just now, and they did nothing about it, absolutely nothing.

I agree that we've identified the categories. We've done that through a number of meetings. This committee, which continues to hear individual cases but has yet to make a recommendation to the minister, when she asked for recommendations and solutions, has failed to do that because they're playing politics with a very sensitive issue, making comments that are putting some concern and alarm into people's minds.

They know this requires some legislative intervention, requires something to be done, and yet—and yet—they take great glee in politicizing an issue that actually requires some work to be done and a solution to be brought forward so that you don't have to deal with this on an individual basis.

Mr. Chapman has been here about five different times, I think, and has identified all of the categories, saying here is the problem, and we need to work out some solutions. That's what needs to happen. He has some suggestions on how that might happen, and I think we have undertaken that we will address the situation. We're going to do it in a logical, legitimate fashion, without playing on people's emotions for political gain, which has happened here time and time again. I think that's absolutely wrong. When they were in the position to do something about it, they did nothing. We will do something about it.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you, Mr. Komarnicki.

Mr. Karygiannis, and then Mr. Telegdi.

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

Mr. Chair, I'm going to read what I got back from Immigration and Citizenship today.

I'm going to ask a question, if I can, to Mr. Komarnicki, because he's the parliamentary secretary.

This is in response to a question I put, and it comes from Betty Robinson, who works for Citizenship at St. Claire Avenue, in Toronto. It says:

Hello, Mr. Karygiannis

In answer to your question sent to Ann Lai about a procedure to deal with special cases of certain people living in Canada without status, an operational bulletin (OB) will be published within the next few days. As soon as it has been finalized, I will forward it to you.

The purpose of this OB will be to provide instructions for handling the special and unusual hardship cases of people who, for the most part, have lived or are living in Canada under the mistaken belief that they are Canadian citizens. All incoming applications at CPC Sydney will be screened to identify cases that should be facilitated, including cases that require urgent processing and cases that may potentially lead to a refusal. Identified cases will be forwarded to a special team with CPC Sydney who will evaluate them. Specific procedures are outlined in the OB to deal with the various types of cases that we expect to receive. When you have received and reviewed the OB, please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

This is already out there. I know the minister is coming to make an announcement this afternoon. My question is this. Has there been a deal struck with the minister responsible for RCMP and CSIS to fast-track these things?

We're not playing politics here, Mr. Komarnicki. If you have something and you know something, spit it out and spit it out now. This is already out there. Let's not play with these people.

Your minister was at this committee and a question was asked on whether or not they advertised. She said yes. Then later on she turned around and wrote a letter to us apologizing that they hadn't done so. Who's playing politics? We're not, but you are.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Okay. Time is up. But in any event, you should address your comments to the chair.

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

I did.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

No, you didn't. Going back and forth between committee members causes a rift, and the chair doesn't want to see it happening.

Mr. Telegdi.