Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll try to remember not to apologize for actually wanting to participate in the debate and to explain why I am not going to be supporting this motion that's before us to extend the time of debate on Bill C-425 here in our committee.
The topic I'd like to discuss now, Madam Chair, is the fact that Bill C-425 before it was amended—this bill as it is—would actually create people who become stateless. We heard from many witnesses. I'd like to first discuss what we've heard from the UNHCR. I have high respect for the United Nations and I thank them for coming to help us in our deliberations and study of this bill. I'm going to read to you from the actual bill. It says that there is a deemed application for renunciation of Canadian citizenship where that citizen engages in an act of war against the Canadian Armed Forces and that same citizen is also a citizen or legal resident in a country other than Canada.
That's clause 2 regarding proposed subsection 9(1.1) of the Citizenship Act. I had already touched on, but didn't speak in depth, the fact that “act of war” is not defined in our laws so we don't know what that means. Legal experts who came in front of this committee don't know what that means. I did touch on that, so I don't want to go into it right now. Possibly later I might want to come back to the act of war topic, Madam Chair.
We've learned that there are two ways of losing citizenship. One is voluntary revocation, voluntarily relinquishing one's citizenship, and the other is having it revoked or taken away from you by the state that gave it to you. We're not talking about voluntary relinquishment of citizenship here when it says that there is deemed to be application for renunciation of Canadian citizenship.
I want to make sure I read the words correctly so that I don't get interrupted again, Madam Chair.
In this case what we learned from the representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was that renunciation is the voluntary act of relinquishing one's citizenship or nationality while deprivation is carried out by the authorities of the state. So those are the terms I'll use to go back and forth: renunciation of citizenship and deprivation or revocation.
I'd like to look at the countries that we generally compare ourselves to. When we do many of our studies we like to compare our laws to those of the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia, and sometimes also the U.S.A. because the United States is our next-door neighbour and is very similar to us with respect to also being an OECD country and being the global north in the western hemisphere.
The UNHCR had mentioned that the renunciation of nationality or citizenship in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia is carried out through the initiation of a formal procedure by the individual wishing to renounce their citizenship. In the case of the U.S.A., six of the seven methods of renouncing citizenship require that very similar filling out of a formal procedure along with an application to the court.
Also, they mentioned that in the U.S., if you serve in the armed forces of a foreign state that's engaged in a conflict against the U.S, then you are deemed to have renounced your citizenship.
They also helped us understand what deprivation of citizenship is, and that deprivation of citizenship is possible in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia. This concept is possible in these three countries we compare ourselves to.
In the United States of America, Congress has no power under the U.S. Constitution to revoke a person's U.S. citizenship, unless of course that person voluntarily relinquishes it. When we speak of the forced deprivation of somebody's citizenship or nationality, the U.S. Congress does not have that power under the U.S. Constitution.
We have seen this happen in Canada, so we know that in Canada, the minister.... I mentioned very briefly the increased discretion for the minister in this bill and how much we've spoken about that. That will be another reason, Madam Chair, that I will not be supporting the motion before us to extend the debate on Bill C-425. I do believe those topics have been studied sufficiently in this committee. I'll make that very clear later on in my speech. I think ministerial discretion is number seven or eight on my list of items I'd like to go through. I'm on number two right now, Madam Chair.
Once again, coming back to the concept of statelessness and looking at the three countries we are talking about, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia, all of them contain provisions within their nationality law that provide—I'm going to read this really slowly—“One of the most important safeguards against statelessness is that...”.
Of course, all three of those countries are signatories or parties to the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. Of course, I should point out here, Madam Chair, that Canada is also a signatory to that convention..
This convention provides an international framework to ensure the right of every person to a nationality by establishing safeguards to prevent statelessness, whether it's at birth or later in life. What we've learned will happen and what we've debated in committee already in the 60 days that were allotted, is this bill would create a state of being stateless later in life for Canadian citizens. If they are citizens of another country, then Canada would deprive them of their citizenship. If their citizenship in another country is not recognized by that state because of that conflict or whatever it might be....
A great example is that many people I have spoken to in Scarborough—Rouge River have fled instances of conflict, have come to Canada as asylum seekers or as refugee claimants, and have lived as refugees or permanent residents, and then have moved on to become Canadian citizens. They're from the country I was born in, Sri Lanka. People who have left the country and have been active and have spoken out loudly, or who have spoken out about the state-sanctioned human rights violations in that country, generally there have been examples where their passports have been taken away because it's been said they are not a true national. They've conducted or said things that are contrary to the state, and so they can't travel or be recognized as a national.
According to Canada, one would think they still have their citizenship from that country, and if Canada were to revoke their Canadian citizenship for any reason, the person would be left in limbo because they've now lost their Canadian passport—