Evidence of meeting #60 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 39th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was mother.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Jim Karygiannis Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
In order to get your citizenship, you have to get background--
As an Individual
Mr. Karygiannis, my concern is this. We have gotten so many--
Liberal
Jim Karygiannis Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
Mr. Chair, on a point of order, can you ask Mr. Batters, please, to wait his turn?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Norman Doyle
I don't see any interruptions, but in any event, Ms. Cochrane, you have the floor.
As an Individual
I don't understand why we're back to saying....
We received a call Thursday prior to Mother's Day. I'm a florist, so that day was a nightmare for me. My husband spoke with Nicole Campbell after this message, and I wish I had brought a tape recording of the message. The message was, “Of course your mother and aunt are Canadian citizens. We will help you with the paperwork. They simply need citizenship cards.”
Now, if it goes back to citizenship issues, I will, as a child of a British subject.... If my mother is a British citizen and we go through this rigmarole with Canadian citizenship, I renounce my Canadian citizenship. I will not call myself Canadian.
To treat my mother and this gentleman the way we have treated people is nonsense. It's nonsense. I'll move to Britain. I have no problem with that.
My cousin is a British diplomat, and the moment we ran into this issue, I contacted Christine. I said, “Christine, this is ridiculous. What do I do?” She gave me a list and she told me what documents we needed.
Liberal
Jim Karygiannis Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
Lisa, has Citizenship advised you that they will expedite background checks?
As an Individual
No, they haven't. We were under the impression it was simply an application for a card. Basically, they were going to confirm all of the documents that we had provided to them, and it would be a matter of a very short time.
So what is this?
Liberal
Jim Karygiannis Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
There is an individual--and unfortunately, I can't name the individual--who works for Revenue Canada. She was born in the States, moved to Canada. She has all kinds of clearance because she works for the Canada Revenue Agency. Yet right now her fingerprints are sitting with the RCMP.
The question was asked of the officials when they were here last. The question specifically was...and I'm not sure if Mr. Komarnicki, when he said, “We will accommodate....” But the RCMP have not answered yet if there are accommodations for lost Canadians. We're looking at hundreds of thousands of Canadians who are lost, and the minister is going to come and make a statement, “Yes, I'm going to fix this problem.”
But the thing is, can your mother, because she was born out of wedlock--
As an Individual
No, no. My grandparents were married. I have the marriage certificate with me to prove that today.
Liberal
Jim Karygiannis Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
Your grandparents were born out of wedlock. It was a war. Our soldiers were over there. They were meeting young ladies. Some of them were sent across on D-Day and they didn't get a chance to get married. This is normal. This happened during that time. Some of them were not even allowed to get married. And because of that, we're punishing our people.
Now, how would your mother feel if she has to wait another year, if she has to wait to get her citizenship?
As an Individual
You know, what I really resent is the fact that if that's the case, my mother has to get in line behind people who've recently arrived in this country and applied for their citizenship. After living here for 60 years, paying taxes, contributing to the community, actively voting...and from what I understand, she's now a criminal on top of that, so maybe the RCMP will deny her.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Norman Doyle
Okay. I have to shut it down right there to bring our second panel on.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.
I think Mr. Karygiannis is trying to deal with the facts of the case when they're not presented here, and he's trying to alarm these witnesses without necessarily knowing the facts of the case. I think we ought to leave that for another time. It certainly isn't appropriate to do it in the context of the committee here.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Norman Doyle
It's not a point of order, so I'm not going to hear that.
I'm going to just say thank you to the panel members for appearing here today. We want, as a committee, of course, to be part of the solution to this problem, and we will very soon be writing a report, which we will present to the minister and to the department. Hopefully, we will be part of a solution to your problem.
Thank you.
We'll suspend for one minute until we bring on our second panel.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Norman Doyle
Our committee will now come to order. We'll continue our hearing.
We welcome the second panel, with Ms. Melynda Jarratt, for the Canadian War Brides, and as individuals, Suzanne Rouleau and Denise Tessier.
It's very nice to have you here today.
I think you know that from how we operated with the last panel, you can choose to make an opening statement, if you wish, and then we will go to committee members for questions and what have you.
Please be comfortable. We're trying to make it a bit informal, so be as comfortable as you can possibly be here.
I'll pass it over to you, Melynda, Denise, or Suzanne.
Melynda.
Melynda Jarratt Historian, Canadian War Brides
Good afternoon. I'm Melynda Jarratt, for those who have not met me before. This is my fourth trip before the committee in two years and my second trip this year.
First I would like to ask, is it possible for us to be joined by Pauline Merrette, who is here today on behalf of her sister, Elizabeth, a war bride child who had her citizenship stripped in 1968?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Norman Doyle
You've heard the request. Is it okay?
I don't see any dissenters.
Conservative
Historian, Canadian War Brides
I'm in a very unique situation because I am an historian of the Canadian War Brides. I've been doing this for over 20 years now.
When I first started, believe me, the last thing I expected was to be sitting in front of a panel, for the fourth time, talking about stripping citizenship from war brides or war brides' children. Quite frankly, when I first started receiving these inquiries about five or seven years ago, when I first launched the canadianwarbrides.com website, I didn't really want to go there. I even remember saying, that's not my bag; that's not what I'm interested in. I want to be the historian to document the historical experience, to set the record straight about the numbers and the process of transporting war brides to Canada. I felt there was a lot of misinformation out there on the Internet, a lot of mythology and mythologizing about the war bride experience. So that's why I established canadianwarbrides.com, not so that I could be sitting here becoming the champion of war bride children who were getting their citizenship stripped from them. In fact, that's what's happened.
I still do spend most of my time as an historian documenting the war bride experience. In fact, I've just written another book that will be released this month in Britain, which contains an entire chapter about war bride children who are getting their citizenship stripped. You can't help it. If you're dealing with war bride issues these days, you can't help not to be talking about this issue.
Believe me, the Department of Citizenship and Immigration doesn't look good in it. I hate to tell you. When I go on the talk show circuit in Britain, I'm going to be talking about this, and that's next month.
In any case, I'm in a unique situation because I get to hear all kinds of stories. As an historian, it's very important to me that these are accurate, that the information is correct. I've been very lucky in that I've been able to gather all this documentation. In fact, today I have in my two-gigabyte memory a number of documents, if anybody would like to take a look at them.
One of the things that was very empowering to me is when I first met Senator Dallaire. Unfortunately, he cannot be with us today because his mother, who brought him over as a little babe in arms on the Empire Brent, which landed at Pier 21 on December 13, 1946, is quite ill. When I first heard that Senator Dallaire was also told that he wasn't a citizen as a young man because of the 24-year rule, I couldn't believe it. He was very kind, as he is, and he told me that if there was anything he could do to help, to please ask him and he would do anything. So we've taken him up on that offer. He said, use my name, and I'm using his name again today.
Senator Dallaire is mad as hell about this. He was mad 35 years ago and he's mad about it today. He would be here today if it wasn't for the fact that his mother is quite ill. Senator Dallaire was also told that he had failed to meet the 24-year deadline, the birthdate clause, of the 1947 Citizenship Act.
That's just one of the archaic provisions of the act that really throws a loop into the citizenship of children who were born to war brides and Canadian servicemen. The other one is if they just happened to be born out of wedlock, as things happen.
Pre-marital sex occurred during World War II, in case anybody would like to know about it, and people did get pregnant. Due to the exigencies of war, men were called away and the marriage ceremony could not be performed. In fact, what we have are a lot of--I don't like to use the term--shotgun weddings. In fact, there were a lot of those kinds of weddings, which validated the birth status of a child, so that kid was not going to have a problem. In fact, in this room today I know there's a situation where a wedding took place before the child was born, so therefore that child is a citizen and it's not going to be a problem.
We also have two children here today--Suzanne Rouleau and her sister, Denise--who, unfortunately, were born out of wedlock and whose citizenship is now in peril because of this ridiculous, discriminatory, anti-charter 2007 provision in an outdated, anachronistic, dinosaur, Fred Flintstone, 1947 Citizenship Act.
Do you remember the lady during the Brian Mulroney years who went up and told him she had voted for him? She said, I'm not going to do that again for you, Charlie Brown. Well, that's what's going to happen to Stephen Harper. Some little old lady is going to come up to him one of these days. Believe me, there are lots of them. They're going to wag their finger in his face--and to the minister, too--or maybe a cane, if they don't get arrested first, and they're going to say, this is what it boils down to: votes. Charlie Brown, you're not going to get my vote.
And that's what this is. It's so ridiculous, it's almost comic. It has reached comic proportions.
When I tell people about this, they can't believe that in 2007 someone is being told that they're not a citizen because they were born in 1942, out of wedlock. Give me a break. Who in this country does not have a child in their family who was not either divorced or born out of wedlock, or does not have some skeleton rattling in the background? But they don't have their citizenship in peril because of it.
We have these ridiculous situations that are anti-charter. We need to bring the Citizenship Act into being charter-compliant. This is something that our group, the War Brides, and Lost Canadians have been speaking very openly and frequently about.
In fact, Don Chapman, who I wish was able to sit here with us today too--is it possible for Don to come and sit with us?--can talk to that specific issue.
Don, are you going to come and join us?
Is he allowed to come and sit with us?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Norman Doyle
I have no objections, but for the record, I think we're going to have to work out some hard and fast rules on this. The steering committee is generally the committee that makes these decisions, and having requests come forward at the actual meeting seems to create some dissension around.... I will allow Mr. Chapman to come to the table, but I think we have to work out a hard and fast rule on this so that the people who are on the schedule here are actually the people who appear before the committee.
I would ask committee members if we could take this up at another time. We've got a very short time to question these witnesses, and I do have quite a long list of people, and I know what people are going to be asking. Could we agree that we will take this up at another meeting so that we won't eat into the time these individuals have before us today?
Okay. Continue on, Ms. Melynda Jarratt.