Merci. Thank you for the opportunity to address the committee.
I thought I'd begin with a reminder about Canadian history. Although it is the case that in the 20th century stripping of citizenship and deportation or exile of citizens is uniquely associated with the Nazis and the Soviet Union, Canada has its own experience doing that. In 1946, after the Second World War, the Canadian government stripped the citizenship of 10,000 Canadian citizens and “repatriated” them to Japan, a country that many of them had never been to. At that time, John Diefenbaker, who was in opposition, referred to this initiative as the very antithesis of the principles of democracy.
The proposal to strip citizenship of Canadian citizens is presented through the language of deemed renunciation. But, of course, as predecessors have pointed out, that is a legal fiction. In effect what is being done is removing or denying people certain rights guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Those include the right to life, liberty, and security of the person, under section 7; the right to be free of cruel and inhuman treatment or punishment; and section 15 equality rights.
To use the language of deemed renunciation, then, is to create the illusion that people have somehow voluntarily, through their own actions, waived their constitutional rights. In fact, the Supreme Court of Canada has enunciated a fairly strict test for proving that somebody has waived their constitutional rights. It must be voluntary, and it must be done with full knowledge of the consequences of that waiver. I think it is very unlikely that one could look at the provisions of this bill and construe deemed renunciation as a voluntary waiver of constitutional rights.
Reference has been made as well to the practices of the United States. I'm not sure why the view has been expressed that the United States actually strips people of citizenship for so-called unpatriotic acts. That's simply incorrect. In a series of Supreme Court of the United States judgments in the 1950s and 1960s, the Supreme Court of the United States effectively found unconstitutional the U.S. equivalent of this deemed renunciation. It's called in the United States “expatriation”. In a famous case called Trop v. Dulles, involving someone who was stripped of citizenship for desertion under one of the so-called expatriating acts, the Supreme Court of the United States Chief Justice Warren said:...the deprivation of citizenship is not a weapon that the Government may use to express its displeasure at a citizen's conduct, however reprehensible that conduct may be.
In other words, he was saying—