Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm now at point B of the B'nai Brith brief:
B. Statelessness The bill as it stands applies to both citizens and legal residents of a country other than Canada. It would potentially remove Canadian citizenship from either. A person who is a legal resident of another country but not a citizen of another country, on losing Canadian citizenship, would become stateless. Canada is obligated by international treaty to avoid statelessness, the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness to which Canada acceded in 1978. The obligation has an exception worth nothing, that a person may be deprived of nationality even if it creates statelessness where the nationality has been obtained by misrepresentation or fraud. This exception means that the revocation provisions in the current law conform to the dictates of the convention. The possibility of loss of Canadian citizenship now in the bill for someone is a permanent resident of another country but not a citizen of another country should be excised. We note that Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Jason Kenney on March 21 asked this committee to consider an amendment so that only those with dual citizenship would be deemed to have renounced their Canadian citizenship under the provisions proposed in the bill. … We note the observations of former Justice Minister Irwin Cotler in the parliamentary debate on Bill C-425 at second reading on February 15 that a private member’s bill does not go through the same constitutional scrutiny as a government bill before it is tabled in the House of Commons. The right to citizenship is a constitutional right.
It’s important to remember that. The way I see it, these are very important observations that MP Irwin Cotler has made, but it is clear that they are not made unanimously.
Pursuant to section 6 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the right to citizenship is a constitutional right. Later, I will probably compare the bill and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which will let us consider from that perspective the amendments that we want to make to this private member’s bill.
Revoking citizenship for whatever reason of a person born in Canada, raised in Canada, whose primary connection is Canada is arguably a violation of the constitutional right to citizenship.
These remarks, like many others I have read so far, are really crucial. This involves a direct violation of the constitutional right to citizenship, according to section 6 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which stipulates that the right to citizenship is a constitutional right.
A person born in Canada who has a connection primarily with Canada and has little connection with the country of dual citizenship should not become subject to deemed renunciation/revocation of Canadian citizenship under this law.
We are again at the very heart of amendments that some want to make to the bill and that ensure that acquiring and maintaining citizenship is completely overhauled. By the way, if I may say so, these measures are going to create two-tiered citizens. We need to say that the right to citizenship is a constitutional right that can and must be respected.
I will now address the part of the B’nai Brith brief that covers foreign convictions:
d) Foreign convictions The fourth category raises the question of the appropriateness of taking into account a foreign conviction. Many repressive governments label their opponents, particularly their armed opponents, terrorists. We must not take that labeling at face value.
Obviously, we know some democracies, which claim to be democracies but are not, that do this. We have seen it already. Unfortunately, every day certain people are labeled terrorists because they simply wanted to oppose a repressive government in a particular way. So be careful.
Not every act of rebellion against a repressive government is an act of terrorism. The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act denies refugee protection to those subject to “lawful sanctions, unless imposed in disregard of accepted international standards”. There needs to be a similar caveat here. The bill should say that a person could have his citizenship revoked for a foreign conviction for terrorism, “unless imposed in disregard of accepted international standards”. ii) Additional grounds Beyond that, once Parliament is expanding the grounds of revocation, as it is with this bill, why limit the grounds to acts of war, treason and terrorism even more broadly encompassed?… This anomaly, at first glance, may not seem that significant since a person complicit in war crimes, crimes against humanity, terrorism or genocide is unlikely to disclose that complicity on application to enter Canada and, if he or she did so, would likely be refused entry. However, the Nazi war criminal experience has shown us that sometimes it is easier to establish complicity in massive criminality than misrepresentation on entry, since entry records may have been destroyed and memories of entry officials unreliable. If we can prove complicity in massive crimes, but not lying on entry, that complicity should be enough for revocation. Right now the war crimes unit in the Department of Justice has a policy for Nazi era cases that the department would not seek revocation unless the department is satisfied that the person is complicit in war crimes or crimes against humanity. However, that is an internal policy only and not a legal requirement.
