Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 27th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you.

[Marie-France Lalonde, Liberal, Orléans, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Hayer.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

We will now proceed to Mr. Savard-Tremblay.

You will have six minutes. Please begin.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thanks to all the witnesses for their presentations.

Mr. Chapman, you are what we might call a pioneer in terms of knowledge and recognition of the issue before us today. I would imagine that you have a lot to say about all of the various short-, medium- and long-term consequences on everyone who has experienced it. You even ventured into legal terrain, which I found somewhat surprising.

I know that the time available for your address is limited, and accordingly invite you to take all the time you need to tell us more.

[Don Chapman]

The first thing I'll say is that I learned from the woman behind me, Meili Faille, that Quebeckers, French Canadians, understand the book de famille more than the English side. They understand what it's like to be stripped of their identities and culture, and that's exactly what we're doing with the lost Canadians.

As far as Nicole Girard's comments saying we're going to create new lost Canadians, no, I don't agree with that. The argument that they're going to.... What the gentleman from the the Canadian Bar Association just referred to was that we're going to give them retroactive citizenship, which takes away their ability or their right to say they were born in Canada—like being in a citizenship ceremony. The government didn't seem to have a problem doing that with Bill C-37, because that's exactly what it did to children of lost Canadians who were naturalized. They were deemed to be born in Canada, and then the government retroactively took that right away.

He also made reference to the Supreme Court decision in Benner v. Canada, which was about women's rights and criminality, both of them. What the government did was freeze into law that gender discrimination, so that today women have fewer rights than men to confer citizenship.

This is devastating, and to be really honest with you, I want all of this done. I wanted it done 10 years ago, 20 years ago. I lost my citizenship in 1961, and I've been fighting ever since. I was an airline pilot. I would not leave people behind, and I won't do it now, because we're going to keep fighting. In all honesty, this a choice and the bureaucrats have made the choice to deliberately leave people out. They've been doing this for decades. This is just a matter of sitting down, really checking this out and talking. We can fix this very easily.

There are a lot of people. Pre-1947, the Chinese were considered to be stateless registered aliens. They were not; they were citizens. The government is still, to this day, saying citizenship began on January 1, 1947. Most people do not realize that Mackenzie King stripped the Japanese of their citizenship in 1946 and deported them. Minister Hajdu, just a year ago, announced that the government is going to give citizenship back to those people who enfranchised before 1946. There are huge ramifications.

It's not a small group of people. It's a million to two million people. When Bill C-37 passed, since then, there have been about 20,000 people who have had claims, even though there are a million to two million people. For all these reasons of derivative claims, it's not going to happen.

Thank you for what you're doing. It's very important to fix this bill.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Mr. Savard-Tremblay, you have two minutes.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

As he was alluded to, would the representative of the Canadian Bar Association like to respond or add anything to what we have just heard?

[Amandeep S. Hayer]

No. I'll let Don Chapman's work stand for itself.

[Don Chapman]

Could I add?

The Benner decision was about Mark Benner, who was a convicted murderer from the United States, born in wedlock to a U.S. father and a Canadian mother. It was a unanimous Supreme Court decision in 1997. A lone bureaucrat cancelled that decision in 2004 and immediately went back to discriminating against women. The Supreme Court has answered the question on whether you're a criminal or not a criminal, whether you're born in or out of wedlock. I don't know how the government is not being held accountable for this, because the gentleman from the Canadian Bar Association is right. For the second generation born abroad, by operation of law, it should already be there.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

So my understanding is that Bill S‑245, in its current form, needs the changes that you mentioned, because there are still what might be called some grey areas.

[Don Chapman]

Yes. I can also say that, on the restoration of citizenship, there are consequences when you go to retire. Just because we give it back to you, there could be a period in a pension down the road where they say, “You weren't paying into it or you weren't Canadian for a 10-year period.” We've already gone through that with the war bride children.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

We will now go to Ms. Kwan.

Ms. Kwan, you will have six minutes. You can please begin.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses.

I want to make a distinction about lost Canadians versus immigrants. With lost Canadians, we're talking about when Bill C-37 came in and took away the right of passing your citizenship on to your descendants for second generation born and on. It's the loss of those individuals' birthrights. Immigrants are people like me, who immigrated to Canada, and through the naturalization process became a citizen.

I just want to hear from the witnesses on the distinction between those two things. What are we talking about here when we're talking about lost Canadians? Are we talking about people's birthrights that have been taken away from them?

The question is to both Mr. Chapman and Mr. Emery.

[J. Randall Emery]

Yes, we're talking about Canadians who lost their birthright. In my own family, we came in the 1800s and this has been a recurring pattern for a long time.

[Don Chapman]

This should be a birthright and it has nothing to do with immigration. By the way, when they did take away rights, that goes against what's called the Interpretation Act, which says you cannot obliterate rights, and that's what happened in Bill C-37.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you.

We heard and you both heard from the previous panel: Senator Martin, who brought this bill before us, and of course, the sponsor of the bill in the House of Commons, MP Hallan. Both said that we should not be advancing amendments to Bill S-245.

Would you agree with that and, if not, why not? If yes, you can expand.

[Don Chapman]

This is a tough question because again, as I mentioned to Mr. Savard-Tremblay, I wanted this to be done 10 years ago, but it's not. It's a gamble, really, that's what it is. Do I turn and say, okay, I'll take the bill as is in case there is an election, or do I put it off? To be honest with you, I want the children.... They're the ones who are suffering with suicide, mental problems, families being torn up and forced family separation where they can't even live together. That, to me, is the most important, so I would gamble on this bill just to get those amendments in because I want the children in first.

[J. Randall Emery]

I concur, also. Just to give you a very personal example, my oldest daughter was one year old when the after first-generation exceptions were first put into place and she's a young woman now. In a couple of years she could have children of her own. How much longer do we have to wait?

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Okay, so—

[Don Chapman]

Can I just mention, when Bill S-230 died, it was brought back in the Senate and passed third reading in five days. It was sent to the House and in the first month it was passed. Really, I don't see, if there's an election, that it's going to be any different.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

It's not necessarily the case that we can't shepherd this through. If there's the political will to do so, we can do so. I heard comments about bureaucrats and bureaucrats do their thing, but what happened here with lost Canadians is this. Under Bill C-37 it was the politicians of the day who stripped the rights of Canadians of passing on their citizenship with the second-generation rule cut-off. It's the politicians who did that.

Here we have a situation where we have an opportunity to make changes for the better, to restore the people who've had their rights taken away. Should we not take every chance to make them whole, as was indicated through the impact of the families and how children have been impacted and left languishing because they've lost their rights and been rejected? Should we not take every opportunity, right now, to actually make them whole and to address this question?

[Don Chapman]

Every opportunity—thank you.

[J. Randall Emery]

Yes, absolutely.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

On the question around the stripping of rights, one perspective is to say, give them a grant process so they can apply. Another perspective, as I think has been mentioned by both of you, is to say to do the reverse onus. For those who do not want it, which is their right, they can say they don't want it if they don't want it. Then if they notify IRCC, upon notification could we not then put in changes to say that upon notification their citizenship would be of no force and effect, that is to say, the bill would be of no force and effect for them, for those who do not want the citizenship conferred to them?