Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. It's a pleasure to be back before the committee.
I work for Legal Aid Ontario, or LAO. Legal Aid is the country's largest legal aid plan. Our mandate is to ensure access to justice for the most vulnerable and marginalized Ontarians. We do that through staff legal services, community and specialty legal clinics, and of course, funding private bar lawyers on certificates to represent our clients. Legal Aid Ontario helps almost 4,000 low-income Ontarians each day, accessing justice in the areas of criminal, family, immigration and refugee, and poverty law matters.
Legal Aid Ontario also has a law reform mandate directed to the core goal of access to justice for the most vulnerable. We have a number of key priority areas in the area of refugee and immigration law. Those are, first of all, equal access to and effective protection of charter rights; protection of mentally ill non-citizens; protection and promotion of the rights of the child; domestic implementation of international human rights law; and access to and protection of citizenship, particularly for naturalized Canadians.
We applaud the government today for introducing Bill C-6 so very early in its mandate, and we support much of what's in the bill. We're particularly pleased about the provisions scrapping the intention to reside requirement and removing the power to strip citizenship for national security grounds. We also support the changes to the language and the residency requirements for naturalization.
That said, in our view the bill's not perfect. There are some significant problems and gaps that we hope this committee can address. Of particular concern to us are five areas. I've handed out a summary in English and French of the specific recommendations we have, and I hope those are before you. I'll just go through very briefly what we're suggesting.
The first issue I know has been a topic of a great deal of debate. I'll rely on Professor Macklin on the issue of the revocation process. Legal Aid Ontario shares Professor Macklin's position on the best remedy for that, and I know that Minister McCallum has also expressed interest in looking at how to reform that provision.
The second is with respect to remedies for refused citizenship applications. Bill C-24 stripped refused citizenship applicants of their right to appeal refusals to the Federal Court, and introduced instead a remedy of judicial review by way of leave. That change imposes unjust and costly barriers to access to justice, particularly in an area that really goes to the core of what it means to be a member of society. Leave requirements in Federal Court can double the time it takes to get a remedy and double the cost of seeking that remedy; and leave refusals, as I'm sure you know, are made without reasons by the Federal Court judge, which does an injustice to the individual applicants who naturally will perceive the leave requirement as being arbitrary. They don't know why they get refused. We therefore urge the committee to amend Bill C-6 to reverse the amendments that were introduced in section 20 of Bill C-24 and return to the Federal Court appeal provisions that existed before.
Our third area of concern is with respect to the first generation born abroad limitation. We were very pleased to hear Minister McCallum affirm before this committee that there should be one class of citizen. There's no place in Canadian law, in our view, for provisions that treat citizens born on our territory differently from those who are naturalized. My grandchild will be a Canadian citizen no matter where she's born. Mr. Virani's grandchild—he is my MP—will not be, unless she's born on Canadian territory. That's an unjust distinction. We ask, therefore, that the committee amend Bill C-6 to include a provision that strikes down the first generation born aboard provision in section 3(3) of the Citizenship Act.
The fourth area of concern is with respect to the residency calculation. We supported the change to the residency requirements that were set out in Bill C-6. We ask that they be expanded so that credit can also be given for Canadian residency to those who have made a refugee claim that's been found eligible but are waiting to have their hearing. As you know, there is a massive backlog right now. People are waiting for three or four years to have their claim heard. They should get credit for that time.
As well, those who have been accepted on humanitarian and compassionate grounds at stage one should also get credit for the time. It's a two-stage process, and people sometimes wait for years to get the final approval. That period of delay is not the fault of the applicant; it's a problem at Immigration, which is just taking too long to process them. We ask that they also get half-time credit for that period.
Finally, I'd like to ask the committee to consider seriously the issue of statelessness and how this act can be amended to deal with the stateless within Canada.
We are certainly hopeful that the new government's renewed recognition of the importance of international law and global engagement will result in our signing the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, but there is something that we can do right now with this act to make sure that we are better protecting stateless persons and coming into better compliance with international law and norms.
We have three recommendations.
The first, which is critical, is to include a definition of “statelessness” within paragraph (a) of subsection 2(2) of the act. We ask that this include both de jure or legal statelessness as well as de facto statelessness. Practically speaking, the whole point of dealing with statelessness and assisting stateless persons to get protection is to make sure that every member of society has a connection to a state.
Concerns have been expressed by various people, including in a case in the U.K. called Pham, which shows the problems when we have an overly legalistic and narrow definition of statelessness. We are proposing the following definition, which is also included in the materials handed out. It's that “stateless” means that the person is not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law and includes both de jure and de facto statelessness.
I've handed out a little printout from the website of CIC, which includes this government's understanding and definition of those two terms, de jure and de facto.
The second provision with respect to statelessness is that we're asking for an amendment to subsection 5(4) of the act, the provision that allows discretionary grants of citizenship in special cases. We propose that statelessness be identified specifically within the act as a factor that would justify a grant of citizenship under subsection 5(4).
Finally, we are proposing an amendment to section 10 of the Citizenship Act, the revocation process. We propose adding a restriction on revocation when it might result in a person's becoming stateless, whether de jure or de facto. We believe this would provide a very significant protection against an unexpected result of a revocation decision, and we ask that you seriously consider it.
Those are my submissions.