Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 27th, 2023

[Yonah Martin]

Okay. The second part of what I was going to say previously is that the date reflected in subclause 1(3) is the date of the coming into force of those subsections, the changes made in Bill C-24. While it could be made more clear, as written the bill does not purport to have retroactive effect. That would need to be explicit and cannot be implied. Without retroactive effect, anyone born between April 2009 and June 2015 would be governed by the Citizenship Act as it read prior to the enactment of this bill.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

The time is up, Ms. Kayabaga. Thank you.

We will proceed to Mr. Savard-Tremblay.

You have six minutes. Please begin.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

It's a pleasure for me to be sitting on this committee for the first time, temporarily replacing my colleague from Lac-Saint-Jean.

Thank you for your presentation, Senator.

First of all, would this bill guarantee that there will no longer be any more of what we might describe as lost citizens, meaning no more shortcomings, oversights or people who are left out.

[Yonah Martin]

Thank you for your question.

This bill will specifically address those who were captured in the age 28 rule. Hopefully, that cohort will all be captured by the passage of this bill, but there are other categories of lost citizens. I know that there are members who are interested in amending the bill beyond the scope of what this bill is putting forward.

Therefore, no, the answer is that there will still be other groups, and we do need to be vigilant. Maybe as a government the entire Citizenship Act needs to be reviewed carefully. It's a very thick act. It's quite complex. These are in essence piecemeal corrections. My bill attempts to address a very small cohort. There will still be other lost Canadians. I am aware of that, and I want to correct that in the future.

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

I understand why you are recommending that this committee should, at a later stage, carry out a review in greater depth. The purpose of your bill is to deal head-on with the situation in which these lost citizens find themselves. I think that summarizes what you have been saying.

Should a mechanism be introduced to ensure that there is proper follow-up action for the group affected by your bill?

[Yonah Martin]

Yes. I think that is a very good point. It was also raised in the Senate. Once this bill is adopted, if it is enacted, how do those individuals know that this change has been made? It will be the purview of the government of the day and the department to use various mechanisms, online as well as other campaigns. There will need to be a multipronged approach to get the information out. In the past when laws changed, people weren't aware and they lost their citizenship.

We do need to ensure that this kind of communication is done effectively. Thank you for raising that point.

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

Of course it's easy to understand how loss of citizenship could have a number of negative impacts.

Based on what you know, concretely, has this loss of citizenship had any other negative consequences for those targeted in the bill?

[Yonah Martin]

My hope is that, with this focused bill, there will not be a negative impact. I know what was raised regarding the moving of the date to June 2015, that it could potentially create—

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

What I was actually talking about was those who had previously been victims.

[Yonah Martin]

I missed the first part of your comment.

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

I just wanted to clarify my question. I wasn't talking about what would happen following the adoption of the bill, but rather about those who were victims of being forgotten in the past.

[Yonah Martin]

Yes, hopefully this bill will absolutely address that issue in the cohort we're aiming to address, and they would be reinstated as Canadians.

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

Does the bill also provide some form of compensation for those past victims?

[Yonah Martin]

No, there's nothing regarding compensation in the bill. There's just the citizenship itself, which is very important.

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

Do you think it would be useful to add some form of compensation for past victims in the bill?

[Yonah Martin]

It's not something I envisaged. It was more that everyone knows that citizenship is what is the most valued. It's invaluable, so to speak, so there is no compensation component that was considered, nor is it in this bill.

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

How much speaking time do I have left, Madam Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

You have one minute and twenty seconds.

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

All right.

I'm going to reword my earlier question.

You were saying that it's citizenship itself that has the most value. Beyond the loss of citizenship, have any other unfortunate outcomes from this situation been identified? Have you heard about any cases in which the loss of citizenship caused genuine harm?

[Yonah Martin]

Yes, there is much suffering, as you can imagine, if one realizes that the country that they've known for most of their lives is no longer accepting them as a citizen.

The irreparable damage that this would have emotionally and mentally really is immeasurable. I understand that there are stories of various families—even those that are outside of this scope—who are suffering because of the rules that have been changed in the Citizenship Act. There are people who are lost Canadians.

That will still exist and we have to address that as a nation. You're absolutely right that the damages are grave and they're great. I don't know—

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I'm sorry for interrupting, Senator. The time is up.

We will now proceed to Ms. Kwan.

You can begin, please. You will have six minutes.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the senator for bringing this important bill forward. I appreciate its giving us an opportunity to look at the issue of lost Canadians. As you've indicated, Senator, the scope of the bill is very limited. That means that many people will still be left out in the situation of lost Canadians.

You were just mentioning the suffering that people have to endure as a result of that. What we do know, of course, is that the second-generation rule cut-off from the previous administration took place in 2009. Consequently, a class of people—Canadians—all of a sudden lost their right to be Canadian and were deemed lost Canadians and second-class citizens in that way.

That said, we have an opportunity to fix this. I get that the scope of the bill only deals with the 28-year rule. Do you have any objection to the idea of fixing the other lost Canadians on the second-generation rule where people have been cut off? That's one piece.

The other piece is to fix the rule for those who were born before 1947—the war heros, if you will, who fought for Canada and died for Canada and were never recognized as Canadians.

Would you agree that we should actually try to fix those? Would you have any objections to that?

[Yonah Martin]

First of all, I want to thank you and recognize the work that you have done on this issue for years.

The two groups that you mentioned—the second-generation cohort and those before 1947—I am aware of these groups of lost Canadians. It's very important to look at them. I would say that as a committee.... I'm not sure if this committee has studied the lost Canadians issue in great length. Maybe those could be looked at together, whether it's the government of the day or yourselves or maybe even me from the Senate. We could work together and look at these categories separately.

This bill, which is very narrow in scope, was purposely designed that way so that everyone.... For all the other groups you're talking about, there will be much debate about these categories. I know that in the Senate, the bill was unanimously adopted. These are all things that will have to be looked at carefully.

I would say that I support it in spirit and it's something that we could do afterwards, but for the purpose of this bill, keeping it narrow is the what I would recommend.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you.

Of course, luckily, we will actually have experts who will come after this panel. Don Chapman, as you mentioned, has spent his entire life, virtually, fighting for this issue. He has actually brought, to share with all of us, this nifty little thing to tell us all about it. The matter, of course, has actually been looked at by committee at different times, with Bill C-37, Bill C-24 and so on. This has been debated over and over again.

What we do know is that there is a group of citizens who lost their “Canadianness” because of Bill C-37 repealing their right, so we need to make them whole. In fact, as a result of that, a group of Canadians are suing the government at the moment. As we speak, people's lives are being destroyed because of being separated from their loved ones. They can't come to Canada to live their lives.

I appreciate that we have time, but really we don't because people's lives are being impacted. I feel the urgency of the families who want to bring this forward.

What I'm hearing from you, though, is that you don't object to trying to fix this. Therefore, I certainly hope we at the committee will try to do that, because I think it is important to try to fix things so that people's lives are not being destroyed.

With respect to the age 28 rule, with the amendments you have brought forward there are still a couple of gaps, which the officials indicated when they presented to us last week. If the committee members were to bring amendments to fix those gaps for the age 28 rule, would you have any objection to that?

[Yonah Martin]

I'm not sure what amendments.... First of all, in terms of this bill, I would urge the committee to look at it in its current scope and to look at the other issues separately.

In terms of whether the amendments are going to clarify what's in the bill specific to this cohort, I am open to hearing what that will be. As I said earlier to the question from one of the members.... Regarding some of the gaps that have been pointed out, I did answer to one regarding those who have applied who were rejected. We don't know what those reasons were, so we should leave it to those who haven't yet applied.

Regarding the other issues that were raised by the officials, if the amendments themselves clarify the bill, then I would be open to that.