Hi, and thank you for inviting me to speak to you again. As the chair just said, I'm an associate professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa. My areas of expertise are in political theory and practice in immigration policy, and also multiculturalism.
I have focused the last two years of my research on the so-called power to revoke citizenship across democratic states in Europe and in Australia, and of course, in Canada. Bill C-6 proposes to undo the most controversial change, in my view, to the Citizenship Act adopted during the Conservative government's time in power. That is, the power to revoke the citizenship of those who commit a long list of crimes, including treason, spying, and terrorism.
When the Conservatives opened debate on Bill C-24 at this committee, I was invited to speak, and I spoke against it. I said that the power to revoke citizenship has absolutely no place in democratic states. I believe I used an expression that my colleague used, “a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian”. I believe that. I said that citizens in a democratic state have the absolute right not to be expelled against their will.
It is only slightly an exaggeration that I have held my breath since the election of the Liberal Party, waiting for them to fulfill their promise to revoke the revocation bill. I am gratified by the content of Bill C-6.
I want to respond here briefly to three defences of the power to revoke offered by Conservative MPs in the House when this Bill C-6 was open for discussion. Then I'd like to offer a piece of advice to the Liberal Party about how to announce this bill when it finally passes into law.
The three Conservative objections that I'd like to consider are these: that revocation protects democracies and makes citizens safer; that in adopting a revocation law, we were finally catching up to states that permit revocation, mainly European ones; and that this has large-scale public support.
First, does revocation protect democracy and make a citizen safer? There is no evidence that is true—not one iota of evidence. The Canadian criminal justice system is an excellent one. I think we all agree with that, and it possesses the resources necessary to punish individuals who are convicted of all kinds of heinous crimes.
More generally, and this is important, there is no evidence that states that presently possess the power to revoke citizenship are safer than those who do not. Indeed, recent events in Europe, for example, in Belgium, where the state possesses the right to revoke citizenship, including the right to render its citizens stateless, suggests the opposite. The fact that revocation would have targeted dual citizens only fundamentally undermines the equality to which the Canadian democratic state is committed, in ways in which I'm happy to elaborate in our discussion, and which in my view fundamentally undermines the security of Canadians.
Second, is it true that we were catching up to other states by adopting a revocation law? I have two things to say about this. First, it is profoundly relevant that where European states do permit revocation, these laws have been on the books for decades. In most cases, they were adopted before or after the two world wars.
Second, they are almost, with the exception of the U.K., entirely in disuse. The trend is toward abandoning these laws, not in adopting them, in spite of recent public discourse that makes the contrary appear true. We all know now that France has just recognized this and has backed down from adopting a revocation bill, having acknowledged that it is fundamentally democratic. Of course, it did so in the face of a devastating terrorist attack on its soil.
Truly, the advantage of the Liberal bill before us now is that it can be at the forefront of an international commitment, a recommitment to the right of individuals to their own nationality. It is a commitment adopted in international law to respond to the massive human rights violations, to put it mildly, that followed denationalizations during World War II, which my colleague spoke about earlier.
Three, what should we make of the claim that there's public support for revoking citizenship? It's not surprising that a bill like this would have widespread support. Punishing perceived criminals is very popular, but it is a feature of democratic states that the rights of minorities, especially unpopular ones, are not subjected to majority vote. The strength of the Canadian Constitution, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, are that they protect the rights of all Canadians regardless of how others feel about them.
I teach this in my introductory course on democratic theory. The people who are at issue here are individuals who have committed heinous crimes. They are the most hated of Canadians, but they're still entitled to have their rights protected. The strength of the criminal justice system in a democratic state is determined by whether it protects the rights of the criminal.
Regarding my advice, here is the context. For the past three years, like my colleague, and with the financial support of the Kanishka project at the Department of Public Safety, I have been studying the effects of counterterrorism policies on the Muslim community in Canada. In particular, I have been evaluating their responses to a whole range of policies that have been adopted in the counterterrorism era.
We have interviewed over 100 prominent Muslims from five major Canadian cities about a range of specific policies, including the recent use of security certificates, the expanded range of CSIS investigative powers, the passenger protect list, and of course Bill C-24, which permitted the revocation of citizenship.
We also asked questions about the experience of being a Muslim in Canada right now in this era of counterterrorism. So many of our respondents spoke of being devastated—and that is the language that they used, devastated—by the ways in which the pursuit of these policies has served to undermine the trust of Muslim citizens in the Canadian state.
Further, in their view, these policies, and just as much the discourse surrounding the adoption of these policies, has seemed to them to perpetuate an idea of Muslims as dangerous and disloyal citizens, and that they can and should be treated with suspicion and distress by others. They believe this discourse has created a climate in which discrimination against them has been made legitimate and in which it goes unpunished. They believe their charter rights are not protected.
Fundamentally Muslim Canadians believe the intent of Bill C-24's revocation clause was to permit and encourage discrimination against them. They believed that it would be used only against Muslims, and they could point to public discussions of people considered as possibly eligible for revocation, all of whom were Muslim, and they pointed to that as evidence of their claim.
The revocation of the so-called revocation bill presents the Liberal government with an opportunity to continue its mission to protect and rebuild an inclusive Canadian identity that can again underpin trust among citizens of all religions, races, and colours.
The language that it has chosen to announce this bill is just as important as the fact of it, if not more. When the Liberal government explains why it has gone forward in this case, it must stand up to declare that Muslim Canadians are full and loyal citizens. The language must be the lofty language of inclusion deployed throughout the entire Liberal election campaign.
I look forward to when the power to revoke has been put to rest.
Thank you.