Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Dec. 8th, 2010

[Andrew Griffith]

What I always find intriguing with these types of cases is how very different people's circumstances are. You have to take people's circumstances and so forth into account.

As public servants, we try to come up with an approach that works for the majority of people but includes enough exceptions to cover those cases where the current rules do not apply. Essentially, that is how it works.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Ms. Chow.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Similar to the discussion a minute ago, have we calculated how many expats outside Canada are already second generation, i.e., born from a parents who are Canadian but are not born inside Canada? They're naturalized citizens. If these expats have kids overseas, their kids will not be Canadians. Do we have an estimate of how many people would be impacted?

[Andrew Griffith]

I haven't seen any good estimates. We have estimates in terms of the total number of Canadian expatriates abroad, which really come from the Asia-Pacific Foundation, of 2.8 million or something like that. But we don't really have a generational division of those figures, so it's very hard.... What we don't seem to find is that we're getting a lot of demand in terms of the 5(4) applications—

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

What's “5(4)”?

[Andrew Griffith]

Subsection 5(4) is the exception that allows you to make a special request for citizenship if you don't meet all the other criteria. We're not getting a very high demand under it.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Would their kid be able to apply, if they were born outside Canada—let's say in Hong Kong—for this 5(4)?

[Andrew Griffith]

In those special exemptions, the ones we use for some of the lost Canadians, for people who don't necessarily fall within all the various exceptions, it's almost a general exception that allows a case to be made and to go to the minister and the like.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Maybe it's because they don't know about it. I didn't know. I know that a lost Canadian can apply for this, but I didn't know this.... The expats, if their kids are no longer Canadian...I didn't know you could apply for that.

[Andrew Griffith]

There needs to be a demonstration in terms of hardship and service to the country. There are some special provisions there. Again, it's like an exception—

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

How many applications do you have so far in front of you?

[Andrew Griffith]

For this one, I think the current inventory is in the order of 150. So it's a relatively small number.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

It would take quite a bit of work to process them, right? If people knew they could apply for this, I could perceive your having a good number of applicants.

There are any number of expats who have kids. The question is whether they fly back to Canada to have their kids and then fly back there to continue their work or studies or any number of situations. A lot of them studied in Canada and their parents are in Canada, so they have very firm ties with Canada. It just happens they're working overseas.

Have you predicted how many could be impacted by this? This law is fairly new, this lost Canadian law that was put in place two years ago.

[Andrew Griffith]

We do the best predictions we can based upon the data we have, the information in terms of numbers. There are some data gaps here.

Again, when the previous Bill C-37 came into being, we had certain projections of volumes, because we have to do that from an operational perspective to make sure we have the resources lined up. In fact, I don't have the numbers on hand, but there seemed to be less demand than we had expected, for whatever reason. We actually had a fairly extensive public education campaign in terms of the video and everything—

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

But people are just not applying. So on this one, would you be able to make some kind of prediction so that we won't find out five years from now that all of a sudden there is a huge problem, a vouching problem?

[Andrew Griffith]

What we can do is to go back and do a bit more digging to try to see what information is out there, to try to give the best information we have. We're happy to do that.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

The U.S. and Australia have residency, and the United Kingdom and New Zealand have place of birth: have you compared those two different styles? Our country is similar to all four of those countries. They are two very different approaches. Is there some kind of fairly comprehensive analysis of their approaches? I know that we picked birth rather than residency, but the same could be argued for following another model. Is it really just simplicity?

[Andrew Griffith]

You correctly noted that they are all countries with which we normally compare ourselves, so it is kind of interesting when there are divergent approaches. When we actually go through the detailed comparisons, sort of step by step and situation by situation, there is no really clear picture that emerges with regard to which approach is better for all situations. That is why we have seen two different approaches emerge.

Each of the approaches is different. Depending on the situation, some have a few advantages in some areas, and some have advantages in others.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Do you have any studies you can share with us?

[Andrew Griffith]

We don't have studies that are publicly available, but we have our own internal analysis. For example, the first generation in Canada tends to be one of the most open, in a sense; you don't actually have to do any registration. It's an automatic kind of thing. That is one area in which we're more open than others. That, of course, is combined with our relatively open approach to citizenship in general in terms of a relatively short residency period and everything like that. It's a very complex mix. Really you have to go situation by situation, country by country, and try to figure it out. It is not as though there's an overall--

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Sorry, but I have a last question and I know he's going to cut me off.

So there is no overall pattern, right? How many stateless kids are there now? The media has focused on a few who are born of Canadians but who are stateless because of this.

[Andrew Griffith]

Yes.

Nicole, do we have any statistics on that? I haven't seen any.

[Nicole Girard, Director, Legislation and Program Policy, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

I don't think we really have any way to know, because, as I'm sure you appreciate, though there is the odd case that's drawn to the department's attention, individual family circumstances vary. We don't have any way of knowing for someone who is first generation abroad whether their spouse was born or naturalized in Canada or might have another citizenship through another country and what have you, so--

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

You don't know.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You can finish your sentence.