Thank you, Mr. Chair, and honourable members. I do have an opening statement.
My name is Mark Davidson and I work in the Citizenship Branch at Citizenship and Immigration Canada. I am accompanied by Ann Heathcote and Lori Beckerman, and together, we will be able to answer your questions.
I am here today to address Bill C-37, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act. Because of the demonstrated need for stability, simplicity, and consistency in citizenship status, what follows is the basic outline of the proposals CIC considered when drafting Bill C-37, which was tabled by Minister Finley on December 10.
First, nothing in these proposals will take away citizenship from anyone who is now a citizen of Canada. Those who are Canadian citizens when the amendments come into force will remain Canadian citizens.
Second, anyone who became a citizen under the Canadian Citizenship Act of 1947, and subsequently lost his or her citizenship, will have it restored.
Third, anyone who was born in Canada on or after January 1, 1947, and who subsequently lost his or her citizenship will have it restored.
Fourth, anyone naturalized as a citizen of Canada on or after January 1, 1947, who subsequently lost his or her citizenship, will have it restored.
Finally, those born abroad to a Canadian citizen on or after January 1, 1947, who are not already citizens will now be Canadian citizens if they are the first generation born abroad.
The only exceptions would be those who, as adults, have personally renounced their citizenship to the Government of Canada, or those whose citizenship was revoked by the government because it was obtained by fraud.
These proposed amendments would give Canadian citizenship to various categories of individuals. They might have lost their citizenship by becoming citizens of another country, either as adults or as minors. They might have lost citizenship when they took an oath of citizenship in another country, which included a clause that renounced Canadian citizenship. They might have been born abroad and lost their Canadian citizenship under the 1947 act because they failed to take the required steps before their 24th birthday to retain it. So-called border babies, or indeed those DND babies who were born abroad under the 1947 Citizenship Act, also had to take steps to register as Canadian citizens. If they failed to do so, they never became Canadian citizens.
Bill C37 will address past problems and protect citizenship for the future by limiting citizenship by descent to the first generation born abroad. Subsequent generations born abroad would no longer be given Canadian citizenship automatically.
Bill C-37 would also eliminate onerous and confusing retention requirements and confer citizenship by force of law, otherwise known as automatically. There is no application process and no deadline for people to come forward to apply for proof of citizenship or a passport.
Those who are interested in their Canadian citizenship and do not have proof of it can contact our department. We will deal with them as they come forward.
Those rare cases that concern people born outside of Canada prior to January 1, 1947, would not be affected by this legislation. That is to say, their status would not be changed by Bill C-37. The proposal respects the significance of the year 1947, because Canadian citizenship, as we now know it, did not exist before January 1, 1947.
As warranted, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration will still have the authority, with the approval of the Governor in Council, to grant citizenship under subsection 5(4) of the Citizenship Act in special cases. This would also be the case for unforeseen circumstances that CIC has not yet dealt with.
We believe that Bill C-37 will resolve the issue of citizenship for most of those people whose status is currently in question.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Before moving to questions, I'd like to highlight for members the binder we made available to them today. The binder includes a number of documents. There is the bill itself; an overview of the bill; a detailed summary clause by clause, which can be found at tab 3 of the binder; and a key highlights document at tab 4. Tab 5 includes the communication products that were released at the time the bill was tabled on December 10, which includes both the news release and two backgrounders.
I'll highlight that the backgrounder that is found at tab 5(c) is a list of fictional cases or examples of cases and a description of how these would be dealt with by the bill.
As well, there's a deck at tab 6, which provides an overview of Bill C-37, and then eight issue papers that we've prepared, which go into more detail talking about the issues of the 1947 limit, citizenship by descent, the statelessness provisions, the simplified citizenship rules, prohibitions, family class immigration, and the exception for Canadians serving abroad, and finally an issue paper dealing with retroactive citizenship.
With that, Mr. Chair, we're quite happy to answer questions.
