Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 20th, 2023

[Nicole Girard]

We do not at this time have the ability to have an accurate estimate of how many may be impacted by that change.

It would be all those born abroad between 2009 and 2015. Those aren't numbers that we track, but there are untold numbers. It could be in the tens of thousands or more in terms of order of magnitude.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

What could be the negative consequences of automatically giving citizenship to a much larger group of people?

[Nicole Girard]

As I mentioned earlier, since 2009, those impacted by the first-generation limit do not receive Canadian citizenship automatically and have had to apply for a grant.

Generally, those who obtain a grant of citizenship are able to pass on their citizenship automatically to a child they have who is born abroad. What the bill is doing instead makes those individuals automatic citizens by operation of law. They would be subject to the first-generation limit, which means that they can no longer pass on citizenship automatically to their children who are born abroad, whereas before they could. If the bill passes without amendment, they would no longer be able to.

The concern is that this could create future lost Canadians in terms of children who would be born abroad who no longer have access to that automatic citizenship through their parents.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

Would there be any negative consequences when it comes to security and criminality if we automatically confer this citizenship?

[Nicole Girard]

I'm sorry. I'm not sure I fully heard that. Could you repeat the question?

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

Do you take into consideration security and criminality when you automatically grant those citizenships?

[Nicole Girard]

When it comes to automatic citizenship, those are not considerations because the law confers citizenship automatically.

Those kinds of considerations of criminality or security concerns are looked at when individuals apply for a grant of citizenship, because they are part of the requirements. Individuals are barred for criminality or security reasons when it's on application and it's a grant of citizenship, but the bill does not lay out a grant as a mechanism. The bill provides automatic citizenship as a mechanism.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

It is my understanding that there is a mechanism in place if the government or Parliament wanted to revoke citizenship. Are there avenues available in the act at this point in time?

[Nicole Girard]

There are avenues in the act at this time, but those avenues generally relate to individuals who have applied for their citizenship through a grant, for instance, if they have misrepresented in obtaining their grant. Perhaps they may not have met the requirements, or somehow, despite rigorous checks being done, they may have managed to conceal that they had criminality, which may have made them ineligible for citizenship. Those are provisions that apply to grants of citizenship.

I'm going to turn to my colleague from the Department of Justice in case—

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I'm sorry for interrupting. The time is up for Mr. Dhaliwal.

[Nicole Girard]

I see. Thank you.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair and Director General Girard.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

We well now proceed to Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe for two and a half minutes.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Madam Chair, since Ms. Kwan has been working very hard on this issue since 2015, I will give her my time in the second round of questions.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you so much. I really appreciate that.

Maybe I can get a quick answer first from the officials to my last question.

[Nicole Girard]

I'm sorry, Madam Chair. Could the member just repeat the question?

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Yes. It was, very quickly, around those who are outside of Canada and the issue of doing the reverse onus. Instead of having people apply to have their citizenship conferred to them, we would actually get the people who don't want their citizenship conferred to them to apply, and it would be retroactive to the day of the passing of the legislation.

It's to save IRCC resources by not having them deal with a larger number of applications.

[Nicole Girard]

There is a provision under the bill to allow for simplified renunciation for those who don't wish to have it. I can't speak to whether the bill would provide authority for retroactivity or not, but perhaps my colleague from the Department of Justice may have some comment on that.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

The bill doesn't provide for it, but if an amendment were made to the bill to provide for it, I'd love to here what Justice thinks about that.

[Alain Laurencelle, Senior Counsel, Legal Services, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

If I understand the question, it's about an opt-in versus an opt-out.

Anything can be done with a bill, subject to the will of the committee, the House of Commons and Parliament. There are very few restrictions on legislating retroactively. There are some constitutional restrictions.

I think the question is perhaps more from an operational point of view. Both an opt-in and an opt-out would require an application. In terms of managing the workload, I guess that would be more for the department to determine, but you would have applications for both of the scenarios you've mentioned.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

That is correct.

From Justice's point of view, are you not concerned that if we were to do the opt-out scenario, the unintended consequence would therefore not be addressed? That is my question.

[Alain Laurencelle]

It would be a policy call for this committee and the House of Commons to decide.

I would just note that we have to be careful. For example, for the opt-out, one would have to look at the nationality legislation of the other country in question, because there might potentially still be issues of unintended consequences. Those countries might not recognize retroactivity, for example, as a concept.

It might do away with that problem, depending on the legislation of the country in question.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I think there are a number of ways to skin that cat, so to speak. A person can apply to opt out, or alternatively, for those who wish to opt out, the application of this automatic conferring of citizenship would not apply to them. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm sure there are lawyers who can figure out the language of how that could be done to prevent those kinds of unintended consequences. I just want to note that this issue or concept existed previously and was never really an issue. There are ways to deal with it.

I hope we don't take the perspective that this might be a problem, so we're not going to do anything. If we take that approach, what is the purpose of existing in life, generally speaking? Everything needs to be addressed in one way or another, including getting up to get dressed in the morning.

On a separate piece related to this, one of the issues I hear a lot about is that this bill is not comprehensive enough. That's a major concern among the series of concerns that have been listed. If amendments were to be tabled to broaden the scope of the bill, even though they were deemed to be out of the bill's scope, there is still a provision or way to get around that, which is to go through a royal recommendation, if the minister were in agreement.

If that were done, would the department be opposed to looking at measures that would expand and try to capture those lost Canadians so that we would not be constantly dealing with issue of lost Canadians? At least we could make an attempt to try to catch as many as possible through amendments to this bill.

[Nicole Girard]

I can't speak to the procedure, but as already mentioned, because the bill is benefiting some born abroad in the second generation and not others, from this vantage point it would be preferable during the amendment process to see if it would be possible to have a more equitable approach and solution in the amendments, as the member has mentioned.

As mentioned, there would be ways to come at it and different risks, but rightly, as you mentioned, that is for the committee's consideration.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

That is the time, Ms. Kwan.