Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 15th, 2023

[Nicole Girard]

I believe my remarks itemizing those issues were tabled with the committee in both official languages, as is required. In terms of the technical drafting issues, the follow-up to those remarks is already reflected in the government amendments that have been shared with this committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you, Ms. Girard.

Go ahead, Mr. Kmiec.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Okay. Well, I'm hearing no, I can't have those documents, but I have a problem, because in the last few weeks that this bill has been considered, we've asked lots of questions and haven't received responses yet.

Just today I saw that we received a response to my colleague Ms. Rempel Garner's questions about getting the original form, I believe, from Afghanistan. That was sent over. I got responses to questions that I asked at this committee in November of 2022 on four or five different issues. I've gone through them now, but since that time, I've had to file OPQs—Order Paper questions—and access to information requests. I actually knew the answer before I got the official answer to the committee from the department. For many of those I filed the OPQ, the Order Paper question, and received a response on the same question I asked. I got the OPQ faster than the department was able to get it. Now I'm just worried that the questions we've asked here....

Mr. Redekopp asked a question at committee just a few weeks ago about a test and its methods. There was a commitment there to provide proof guidelines as part of the public record to the committee. Mr. Redekopp also asked about the 1,095 days. The department confirmed some of the details to us. Then there was the trigger point and what the process was for calculations. Ms. Girard offered to provide the details to the committee. We're still waiting for those. There has been ample time, I think, to provide them.

Then I asked for clarification around whether we require people to do day counting and whether they need utility bills to provide residency. I asked if it's been discontinued and is only a declaration. We went into some detail about it. Then there was a commitment to provide the guidelines for decision-making in relation to assessing proof of residency. Many of these amendments are impacted by that information and that administrative burden, or whether there is an administrative burden.

I have a last one here. I have a few more, but I'll find them in my email. Ms. Rempel Garner asked, “Do you have a sense in the department of how many people who would be affected by this subamendment have already applied for citizenship through another stream?” The department hasn't yet responded to that question. We also have another member of the public who sent information about how many lost Canadians could be impacted.

When can the department provide the follow-ups to the information so that as we go through the rest of these amendments, we can reduce the time? A bunch of questions were asked at the committee. There were commitments made to provide information. I do read them. I would like to know when we will get those responses.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Go ahead, Ms. Girard.

[Nicole Girard]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I do recall those exchanges in some detail. I will continue to answer all the committee's questions to the best of my ability as these hearings unfold. I believe I have provided complete answers wherever possible.

By my estimate, I have made two undertakings in the hearings so far to this committee. One was to provide a number of publicly available pieces of information around the residence assessment, which the member mentioned. That information and those links have already been provided to this committee in both official languages. I think that was at least a week ago.

Second, on my appearance last week, I endeavoured to obtain some statistics on the member's request with regard to statistics on applications for grants of citizenship and then grants of citizenship. That work is under way. We hope to be able to provide it to the committee in the near future, in the coming days.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you.

Ms. Rempel Garner is next, and then Mr. Redekopp.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

With regard to this particular amendment, I've been studying the speech history in the House, and I notice that the Liberal speaker on second reading of this bill raised this particular issue about.... I'm just going to quote from it quickly. I think it relates to what this amendment is suggesting. She said:

In particular, on the issue of lost Canadians, history has shown us that making hasty changes can lead to the creation of new cohorts of people who may subsequently consider themselves lost Canadians. ...we should ensure that legislation addresses the [bigger] problem and does not create a bigger issue than the one we are...trying to solve.

She speaks about how “bestowing citizenship on individuals who live in another country descended from a Canadian and who never sought to be a Canadian may create unintended” consequences and how the bill creates “a simplified renunciation process as a result”.

In the context of this particular amendment, can you give us a sense of the scope of how many people might be using this renunciation process? It's something I wasn't quite clear on during the initial testimony on the bill, as well.

[Nicole Girard]

I'll come to that in a moment.

I'll just clarify that this particular amendment is not dealing with a renunciation issue, although we will come to that.

With regard to estimating the number of applications for renunciation that we could receive as a result of the bill, that's not something the department's in a position to estimate, because we have no way to foresee who may not be happy to be automatically accorded Canadian citizenship and to be remedied. That's a matter of individual choice, depending on circumstances. Nevertheless, as it stands, from time to time the department does receive renunciation applications. We could endeavour, in response to the member's request, to obtain those statistics and provide them to this committee, because I understood that this was what the member was asking for.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Thank you. Yes.

Again, this amendment is dealing with those who are given ministerial grants and would become citizens under the new clauses of the bill and is confirming that their citizenship is valid.

I think where I was going in trying to pull this together was that in the speech, there was commentary that there already exist some provisions to deal with certain classes of lost Canadians through a ministerial permitting process. By adding all of these extra amendments, to the speaker's point—I think it was MP Ya'ara Saks—there seems to be a cascade effect here that continues to happen. If this amendments goes through, is there anything else that we would need to correct further on with subsequent amendments?

[Nicole Girard]

Yes, the member is correct that there is a cascading effect, especially when citizenship is granted automatically. The effect is particularly on the descendants of those persons who are receiving citizenship automatically through a bill such as this one, as indeed was the case with the remedies passed in 2009 and 2015. This is why this transition provision that's under discussion is so important. One of the key features of it is that it's confirming that when there's a cascading effect, any who are citizens already on the day of coming into force of this bill, should it pass, will remain Canadian citizens.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you.

Before we proceed to Mr. Redekopp, I, on behalf of all the members, would like to wish our colleague and friend Mr. El-Khoury a very happy birthday.

[Voices]

Hear, hear!

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I hope you have a great day.

[Fayçal El-Khoury, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

We will go to Mr. Redekopp now.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Well, now I'm expecting some sweets. Where are the sweets? There should be some sweets here.

[Fayçal El-Khoury, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

It will be on Wednesday.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Okay.

Madam Chair, I want to come back to the documents that Ms. Girard said were sent to the committee.

I don't think I received those documents. I don't know whether something was missed. I'm just wondering if you could check with the clerk to confirm which documents those were. I don't recall the documents, unless I'm confused.

[Nicole Girard]

My apologies, Madam Chair. I thought they had been provided. I misspoke. That's on me and on our side. We will go back and check where they're at so that they can be provided to the committee at the earliest opportunity.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Thank you. That's helpful. I was confused—not that I'm always confused.

The other question I have for Ms. Girard is on the numbers. I want to make sure I get this right.

When you were responding to my colleague Ms. Rempel Garner, did you say that you cannot come up with numbers to estimate the impact of this bill? Is that what you were saying? I know you said that in the past. I just want to make sure that's what you're saying.

[Nicole Girard]

Yes. I was referring to the question about persons who may wish to renounce Canadian citizenship on receiving it automatically. My comment was about not being able to estimate in advance how many people impacted positively by this bill may find themselves in the situation of wanting to relinquish it. That's difficult to say.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

I get that. It's difficult to do. I would acknowledge that. Prior to coming here, I worked as an accountant for many years, in finance and in different roles. The biggest projects we always had to do were budgeting and forecasting. “If we design this product, what's the impact going to be? What are the sales going to be?” There are always tremendous unknowns.

However, I don't accept that you don't have some grasp of that. Obviously, it's a forecast. It's a guess—with all the caveats that go with it—based on these assumptions and that sort of thing. I find it strange that the department hasn't sat down and said, “Well, it could be anywhere from here to here”, or whatever.

Has any of that been done? Are you telling me it's just a straight-up no and you haven't done any of that work?

[Nicole Girard]

Madam Chair, as I indicated when asked this question before by the committee, we estimated that in terms of what the bill and amendments to the bill thus far are addressing, the numbers the department estimates would be addressed by the remedy for the lost Canadians affected by section 8 are a limited cohort. As I mentioned before, the department sees in the range of 20 to 30 such cases per year. There may be a few more who come forward, benefiting from this bill, but it could be in that range.

With regard to the remedies extended through the amendments to the bill discussed thus far, in terms of extending citizenship automatically to second-generation children born abroad to a Canadian, we estimate that number could be significantly larger. It could be in the thousands. As I mentioned before at this committee, it's difficult to know how many of those may come forward to the department and request a certificate of their Canadian citizenship. The bill as amended, if passed, would make them citizens automatically by law—citizens in law. Those who elect to come forward to apply for the proof would be a subset of those untold thousands.

The third point I would mention, to wrap up, is this: For the past legislative remedies combined—the remedies in 2009 and 2015 for lost Canadians—our updated figures, as I shared with the committee before, are that just under 20,000 such persons have come forward for proof of citizenship in the past. It's conceivable that we could be dealing with numbers in the range of a few thousand, or up to that number. However, until we see in what form Parliament decides to legislate and pass the bill, it's difficult to know with any precision.

Those are some of the orders of magnitude that we consider not unreasonable.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Go ahead, Mr. Redekopp.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

I just want simple clarification. When you say “thousands”, are you talking per year? Is that what you mean?