Thank you.
I'm the clinic director of the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic, which is a non-profit community-based organization providing free legal services to Chinese and other Southeast Asian community members in Toronto. I would like to thank the committee for giving me this opportunity to comment on this bill.
Citizenship defines who we are as a people and as a nation. For Chinese Canadians and many others who had historically been excluded from Canadian citizenship, citizenship is as much about equal respect as it is about a sense of belonging. To ensure we do not repeat the historical mistakes of injustice and exclusion, any change to Canada's Citizenship Act must be examined through the lens of equality and respect.
Under Bill C-24 the pathway to Canadian citizenship will become more restrictive and the avenue for the Canadian government to revoke citizenship will be widened. Furthermore, Bill C-24 will disproportionately exclude certain groups of immigrants from citizenship, most notably women, as well as immigrants from certain racialized communities. In the remainder of my time I will summarize why that is the case.
First, the bill proposes to increase the residency requirement from the current three over four, to four over six years, which will automatically increase the time it will take for someone to become a citizen. But more troubling, however, is the non-recognition of the time spent prior to obtaining permanent resident status. This change will negatively affect refugees. It will also affect live-in caregivers who are overwhelmingly women of colour and who have to endure years of exploitative working conditions just to acquire the permanent resident status. It may also affect women who enter Canada as sponsored spouses and are subject to the two-year conditional permanent resident requirement.
Second, not only is the new intent to reside provision unfair, as it only applies to people who are naturalized citizens, not people who are born in Canada, but it could lead to revocation of citizenship from Canadians who are deemed to have obtained their citizenship status by misrepresenting their intent to reside, even when they may have legitimate reasons to leave Canada, such as for employment reasons or family obligations. As well, this provision is potentially in breach of section 6 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees the mobility rights to all Canadian citizens, both native born and naturalized alike, as well as section 15 of the charter, the equality rights provision.
Third, the bill dramatically expands the group of individuals who have to meet the language and knowledge requirement in order to become citizens, without the use of an interpreter, from those between the ages of 18 and 54 to those between the ages of 14 and 64. This will have a serious impact on refugees, as well as new Canadians who come under the family class program, including sponsored women who came as a sponsored spouse, as well as parents and grandparents.
As I noted in my paper, the average age of parents and grandparents at the time of arrival is only 60, so a large majority will be affected by this rule. It will also have a disproportionate negative impact on immigrants from countries where English is not the first language, and the majority of those are racialized immigrants.
Fourth is the new ministerial power to strip citizenship from dual citizens based on foreign convictions of treason, terrorism, and the like. There are two main problems. First, it creates a two-tier citizenship status, separating those who have dual citizenship from those who do not. Second, this provision applies even if the convictions are handed down by countries that have questionable human rights records and don't obey the rule of law. Under this new rule, even Nelson Mandela could have been stripped of his honorary Canadian citizenship status because he was convicted of treason under the South African government during the apartheid era. As one of your previous witnesses pointed out, about 150,000 Canadians are dual citizens by birth; they too will be affected by this change.
The bill also finally proposes to replace the automatic right of appeal to the Federal Court with an application for judicial review with leave from the court. This will not only limit the access for applicants to challenge negative decisions, but more importantly, it will reduce judicial oversight of the ministerial exercise of power.
Along with a number of other changes, including the fee increase and the tougher language requirement, the passage of this bill will mean fewer immigrants can become citizens of Canada.
Apart from considering the fact that there will be more disenfranchised immigrants, we also need to examine what these changes could mean for Canada. The vast majority of Canadians embrace such fundamental values of an inclusive society, such as the principles of equality, rule of law, and democracy, which we all strive to achieve in part by ensuring that every person in Canada has equal access to the most important right of all, namely the right to become a citizen. Denying immigrants that right signals to them that they are not welcome in Canada.
It is in Canada's interest to allow more immigrants to become citizens. Newcomers who cannot become citizens will not see Canada as their home and will have second thoughts about whether they should put down their roots in this country, and both they and Canada will lose.
Rather than moving forward to becoming a more inclusive and equal society by making citizenship more accessible to all immigrants, Bill C-24 will take us back to the era of exclusion and discrimination by denying many immigrants the right to call Canada their home. Therefore we respectfully ask the committee to adopt the recommendations we have highlighted in our written submission, to reinforce the true value of Canadian citizenship while at the same time promoting the interests of Canada.
Thank you.