Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My thanks to the members of the committee for inviting me to appear before you today.
I had the opportunity to have a discussion with your Senate colleagues about Bill C-24. At that time, I expressed serious reservations about the bill, which was subsequently passed by Parliament. So I am pleased to see that a lot of changes are proposed in the bill you are studying today.
I was born in Canada, but my parents were immigrants from Switzerland. I am eligible for Swiss citizenship, as are my two sons. Like many Canadians, we can claim another nationality. But under Bill C-24 and the legislation as it currently stands, we incur a risk that other Canadians do not, and that is not fair.
When I was before the Senate, Senator Eaton told me that all I had to do to keep my citizenship was to refrain from committing terrorism-related crimes. The issue is not whether or not I want to commit terrorism-related crimes. A person who commits a crime has only to give up his other citizenship in order to maintain the stability of his Canadian citizenship. That is not a solution.
So I am really happy that this legislative change is being dealt with today.
I'd like to speak to you in a bit more detail today with respect to some of the things I think would be helpful to see the bill go a little bit further either by going back to the system we had or by making some other changes that have been suggested by other witnesses before this committee. I'm going to focus my comments on revocation.
It's important to understand that in a world of nation-states, and as long as we live in a world of nation-states, citizenship is one of the most fundamental of statuses. It's the status upon which your ability to sit in this committee is predicated. It's the status upon which the ability to choose the people who sit around this table is predicated. It is the right to have rights. It's the right to have full rights as a participating member of Canadian society. It's a fundamental status and it's deeply important to the people who hold it. Many Canadians and many of your colleagues are naturalized citizens. For naturalized citizens to lose that status is one of the most fundamental losses they can have.
Under the current law, there is more procedural fairness built into our law around parking fines and traffic tickets than there is around loss of citizenship. The revocation of citizenship, under the current law, happens with a decision by a single officer. You get a letter in the mail that says, “Please tell us why we shouldn't take away your citizenship”. Then you send submissions to the officer, and the officer can decide whether or not they want to hold an interview. They may interview you or they may not. You may just get a letter in the mail saying that you're no longer a citizen. At that point, you are no longer a citizen. You can go to the Federal Court and you can ask the Federal Court to hear your case and to judicially review that decision from the officer, but you're doing that from the position of a non-citizen. At that point, you may well be in the removal stream. I'll talk about the situation of permanent residents at that point. That process is very fast and one with very few procedural safeguards and very little transparency.
Prior to Bill C-24, the process was very different. You would get the notice in the mail and you would have the opportunity to convince the minister why they should or should not seek the revocation of your citizenship. You could then ask to go to the Federal Court. Then the Federal Court would decide whether the misrepresentation or the fraud upon which you obtained your citizenship was in fact serious enough to warrant the loss of citizenship. Then the Governor in Council would ultimately decide whether to revoke the citizenship.
There are examples of cases that have taken a long time. In the Oberlander case or other cases, there are a number of reasons why there may have been some delays, but the process itself does not require those types of delays.
We have procedural safeguards for the loss of permanent residence that are much more rigorous. In the vast majority of cases, a permanent resident who's going to lose their status will get a notice and an opportunity to make submissions. They then get a hearing before the immigration appeal division, where they not only can present an argument as to why they shouldn't lose their status, but also get an opportunity to present humanitarian and compassionate or compelling reasons for why, despite the misrepresentation, they shouldn't lose their status.
Not all misrepresentations are equal. Some are very serious. Others are relatively trivial. The question is whether a single officer should be making a decision as fundamental as the one we're talking about.
In the law as it currently stands, there is a particular problem with respect to persons who are found to have misrepresented when they got their permanent residence.
Before you get your citizenship, if you are found to have misrepresented when you got your permanent residence, you get access to the immigration appeal division. You get an opportunity to present humanitarian and compassionate factors and to say that despite the fact you misrepresented 20 years ago, you now have children and a family here. Under the law as it currently stands, once you become a citizen, you go straight back to being a foreign national if you are found to have misrepresented when you got your permanent residence. You don't go back to being a permanent resident; you go straight back to being a foreign national. Therefore, your status is more precarious once you become a citizen than it was when you were still a permanent resident.
I would urge this committee to make some amendments with respect to those two aspects.
I thank you for your time.