Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 29th, 2023

[Nicole Girard]

In my experience, having coordinated all the implementation preparations for the 2009 legislative amendments to restore citizenship to lost Canadians, as well as the changes in 2015, I can say with confidence that the preparations generally take a year. You normally have IT changes to facilitate the processing of the new types of cases that the department needs to facilitate. It's using existing processes, as the member mentioned, but still IT changes are required. There are generally always some regulatory changes required. The regulatory process takes a minimum of a year, and the IT changes generally as well.

Many other changes are done in parallel to support those two processes in terms of any changes to policy guidelines, training for officers, communications with members of the public who are benefiting and so on and so forth.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you, Ms. Girard.

Mr. Kmiec.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

This is my last one.

Are there dedicated personnel in the department who only handle this? There are so many different immigration streams, but are there dedicated civil service departments that only look at files about regaining citizenship?

[Nicole Girard]

There are dedicated personnel in the department who handle citizenship-related applications. Those can include grants, proofs, standard proofs and citizenship being restored-type proofs. Yes, there are dedicated personnel.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Go ahead, Mr. Redekopp.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to ask a follow-up question. When you were talking about other countries, you had mentioned how this was a novel process. There are two questions really. One is maybe more of a curiosity. Do you sometimes work together with other countries? Do you communicate with each other, share best practices and things like that?

My real question is this: Are there any issues if Canada has a different process from other countries, or is it completely irrelevant that way?

[Nicole Girard]

There are regular exchanges of information, but we wouldn't work with other countries on changes such as this, because our responsibility as public servants is loyal implementation. We take that on, and we're well organized to do that.

I wouldn't say that it creates any issues for Canada to have a somewhat different approach. Every country has its issues with which it needs to contend. However, it definitely can be a point of interest for those other countries in terms of the solutions Canada has been able to implement and the ensuing positive results.

I have had occasion to share that internationally with Migration 5 countries, and a much broader group of international citizenship experts who have taken an interest in Canada's legislation and approach on this issue.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you, Ms. Girard.

Seeing no further debate, we will go to a vote on the subamendment by Mrs. Lalonde.

(Subamendment agreed to: yeas 7; nays 4 [See Minutes of Proceedings])

Next, we have NDP-5 as amended.

Mr. Redekopp.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

On this one we had already demonstrated some confusion about whether this involved adoption or not. First of all, I really need to understand what this amendment is trying to do, and then I have more questions.

Could the officials share with me, from their perspective, what this amendment is actually going to do, how it's going to change, what problem it's trying to solve and all of that?

[Nicole Girard]

I will briefly summarize. It's not dealing with the circumstance of adoptees. It's dealing with the circumstance of natural-born children born abroad in the second generation or beyond. The first element, in terms of the subamendments, is bringing in a transitional amendment, which is necessary to ensure that for those benefiting, where they may have been granted citizenship at some time in the past because the law wasn't considering them citizens as of right, the grant of citizenship is considered never to have happened. As we discussed at the last hearing, they are considered citizens as of right from their birth. The transitional amendment is necessary to undo the effects of that previous grant, and that is in line with legislative remedies from 2009 and 2015.

The second element is more of a technical provision, ensuring that all of those who are becoming citizens through this provision, because their parents meet a connection test, are considered citizens from their birth and not from the coming into force date of the amendments, should they pass.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

One of the questions I asked was what problem we are trying to solve. I'm still not clear on that.

[Nicole Girard]

Madam Chair, these are, as I mentioned before, transitional and technical amendments that are necessary to bring these legislative remedies in line with previous legislative remedies from 2009 and 2015.

They are also to address the issue of equity in treatment for those benefiting from these legislative provisions with those who have benefited from the past legislative amendments from 2009 and 2015, so that those benefiting can be considered to have been citizens from the time of their birth, regardless of whether they were previously granted citizenship. When persons are becoming citizens because their parents meet the connection test, they are also considered citizens from birth and not from the time that the legislation comes into force.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

If I understand, we're not creating a new way to get citizenship here. We're just correcting some inconsistencies and problems from prior legislation.

[Nicole Girard]

That is correct.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

This doesn't impact, for example, some of the amendments or things that we've already done so far in this legislation. This is all related to past legislation.

Do I understand that correctly?

[Nicole Girard]

Yes, it's bringing the remedies in line with those past legislative remedies. That's correct.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

We had an amendment that put in a test of.... I think it was NDP-whatever. It was a previous amendment that we did. Does this affect that one as well, or does it have no impact?

You're going to ask me which one I'm talking about. I think I'm talking about NDP-3 or G-3, maybe. It's NDP-3. That's the one.

[Nicole Girard]

Yes, that's correct.

This is a transitional and a technical provision that's necessary to enable the department to properly and smoothly implement NDP-3. That is correct.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

I think I'm good.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Seeing no further debate, we will go for a vote on NDP-5 as amended.

(Amendment as amended agreed to: yeas 7; nays 4 [See Minutes of Proceedings])

Now we're on NDP-6.

Ms. Kwan, would you like to move that?

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

NDP-6 deals with what I would loosely term as the “war dead”. That is to say they are those who went to war and fought for Canada but were not recognized as Canadians. Many of them died on the battlefield. I thought it was important, symbolically, to recognize them in that sense.

The changes would have no direct effects for Canada whatsoever. That said, I understand that this will not be supported, but it was important for me to put it on the record in any event.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Going straight to the officials, I'd like to hear your thoughts on this amendment.

[Nicole Girard]

Thank you for the question.

Madam Chair, in line with some concerns shared with this committee, with regard to an amendment previously tabled that would have benefited persons who passed away, there are a few concerns for the committee's consideration.

The first being that we cannot estimate the number—the potential thousands of persons—whom this proposed amendment may extend to.

The second, as noted before, is that there's no precedent for this in the sense that, up until this point in time, legislative remedies for lost Canadians have only extended to the living.

That brings us to the third concern shared with the committee before, in that there could be unintended consequences, and it's difficult to know ahead of time what those may be because there's no precedent for this.

One area the department can point to, as previously noted, is the potential for unintended consequences on the citizenship by descent of the persons who would be benefiting from this provision and who are alive today. There is a safety valve clause that the member has mentioned, but we're not convinced, as the department, that the safety valve, in terms of avoiding consequences on the citizenship by descent of the living, is ironclad, so that concern remains.

Those are the four issues for the committee's consideration.

I'll pass it to my colleague from the Department of Justice in case she has anything she wishes to add.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you, Ms. Girard.

[Erika Schneidereit]

Madam Chair, I would just reiterate my previous comments from our last session, which is to say that it's open to Parliament to legislate retroactively, but it's inherently complex because you're talking about a law currently applying to facts in the past. It can be difficult to predict the effects of that, particularly in a case where you're looking at facts quite far in the past—80 years.

Thank you.