Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for North Island—Powell River.
At the Standing Committee for Citizenship and Immigration, I had the opportunity to hear witnesses from across Canada and they offered their expertise on how we could make Canada's immigration laws better.
As a result of those important testimonies, I tabled 25 amendments to Bill C-6, an act to amend the Citizenship Act and to make consequential amendments to another act. Significant amendments were required because Bill C-6 failed to remedy many of the problems created by the Conservatives' Bill C-24.
One gaping hole in Bill C-6 is that it failed to address the lack of procedural fairness and safeguards for individuals facing citizenship revocation. This is because Bill C-24 eliminated the right for an independent and impartial hearing. Furthermore, Bill C-24 also eliminated consideration of equitable factors or compassionate and humanitarian factors that could prevent a legal but unjust outcome.
The system we have defies common sense. How could it be that individuals fighting a parking ticket are afforded more procedural fairness than the person having their citizenship revoked? Yet this is the case.
On June 9, 2014, the minister, while in opposition, stated, “We object in principle to the arbitrary removal of citizenship from individuals for reasons that are highly questionable and to the very limited opportunity for the individual to appeal to the courts against that removal of citizenship.”
Fast-forward to today, the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship has further reconfirmed that the lack of judicial appeal and review rights for those in the citizenship process still needs to be addressed, yet this concern was not corrected by the government in Bill C-6. Because Bill C-6 failed to address this, I tabled substantive amendments to ensure individuals who face citizenship revocation have the right to a fair and independent hearing and an appeal process.
If passed, the amendments would have created a system modelled after the current process being applied to permanent residents who are subject to deportation on the grounds of misrepresentation. This system, which uses the immigration appeal division, would not only have provided the rights to an independent appeal process, but is also considered more cost effective and efficient than the old system.
Despite broad support to achieve this goal from experts that appeared at the committee such as the Canadian Bar Association, the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, the Canadian Council for Refugees, Legal Aid Ontario, and others, the narrow scope of Bill C-6 resulted in these important amendments being ruled inadmissible.
I have asked the minister to adopt my amendments in a government bill in the fall and I hope that happens.
In the meantime however, the unfortunate reality is that some individuals currently in the citizenship system faced with revocation will still lack the judicial fairness provided to people in Canada fighting a parking ticket.
On the issue of procedural fairness, Bill C-6 also failed to address the minister's ability to indefinitely suspend citizenship proceedings. The former Conservative government under Bill C-24 added section 13.1 to the Citizenship Act, which permits the minister to suspend citizenship applications and other proceedings indefinitely while additional information or evidence is gathered.
Under this process, someone could literary die before a decision is made about their citizenship application. I know that recent Federal Court decisions demonstrate the need for a statutory time frame for making decisions to avoid inordinate and unexplained delays. Again, I had attempted to resolve this issue through amendment at committee, and again, the narrow scope of Bill C-6 prevented me from doing so, and the amendment was deemed inadmissible.
Another misstep of Bill C-24 was to place all justice systems around the world on equal footing. This was done by barring individuals from citizenship if they have been charged with or convicted with offences equivalent to indictable offences in Canada.
While this might sound reasonable, it is incredibly important to remember that not all justice systems in the world are equal. Most importantly, some countries deal with corruption at various or even multiple levels of the justice and political system, from local police to lawyers and judges to national leaders. This can, and does lead to unjust charges and convictions. In my view, these situations should be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.
In its submission to the committee, the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic wrote:
Implementing additional immigration and citizenship penalties for individuals being charged or with convictions is inherently dangerous in that it leads effectively to situations of double jeopardy—that the individual will be punished once by the criminal justice system and then a second time through the immigration and citizenship system.
There are many countries around the world where rule of law is underdeveloped or completely inadequate, or where individuals are charged and convicted for purely political reasons.
While those appearing at committee used the example of Canadian citizen Mohamed Fahmy as an example of how not all justice systems reach the same verdicts as ours, I would also like to draw to the attention of this House that, in 2001, the House voted almost unanimously in favour of awarding Nelson Mandela honorary Canadian citizenship. Under the current laws, if someone like Mr. Mandela immigrated to Canada, he would have been automatically barred from applying for citizenship to Canada through the regular channels.
At the committee, the issue of minors coming to Canada without parents or legal guardians was highlighted to members as an area of significant concern. Unless applying for citizenship as part of the application with parents or guardians, individuals must be 18 years of age or older to become Canadian citizens. While the government argued that there is already a remedy in place to address this, at issue, as explained by Justice for Children and Youth, is as follows:
Section 5...allows for an applicant to make a request to the Minister on humanitarian grounds for a waiver of the age requirement. ...this humanitarian exemption poses a generally insurmountable barrier for children wishing to access citizenship and is not a reasonable limitation or a satisfactory solution to issues raised by the age requirement provision.... The provision in effect restricts access to Canadian citizenship for children—solely on the basis of age—who otherwise meet all the requirements. It restricts access to citizenship for the most marginalized children, i.e. unaccompanied minors, children without parents or lawful guardians, and children with parents who do not have the capacity to meet the citizenship requirements or do not wish to apply.
My proposed amendment would have provided a pathway to citizenship for youth under 18 years of age without a parent or guardian who is, or is in the process of becoming, a Canadian citizen. Addressing this issue was supported by organizations such as Justice for Children and Youth, the Canadian Council for Refugees, and UNICEF Canada, among others. Unfortunately, the amendment was not adopted by the Liberal members on the committee.
While we are on the subject of minors in the citizenship process, in a brief submitted by Justice for Children and Youth, it was noted that the citizenship process fails to adhere to the principles of the Youth Criminal Justice Act. It states:
Youth criminal justice records and ongoing proceedings before the youth criminal justice court cannot and should not be considered for the purpose of citizenship applications because to do so is contrary to the Youth Criminal Justice Act..., specifically violates the privacy protections afforded to minors by the YCJA, and is inconsistent with the fundamental purpose of the YCJA.
Once again, the narrow scope of Bill C-6 deemed this amendment inadmissible.
On the theme of pathways to citizenship, another issue that was brought in when Bill C-24 was tabled and was not rectified by Bill C-6 is the issue of double-testing in language. There is no doubt that acquiring skills in one of Canada's official languages is an important aspect of building a successful life here. However, under changes made by the Conservatives, the knowledge test of Canada required to obtain citizenship now amounts to a double-testing of language skills.
Prior to the Conservatives' changes, individuals had the ability to take the knowledge test with the aid of an interpreter. Due to the changes, the interpreter is no longer provided, and this amounts not only to second language testing, but to a language test that, as we heard from experts who appeared at committee, is arguably more difficult than the actual level of English or French someone must have to pass the actual language test.
My amendment to address this problem and go back to the old system, which would have been the case had the Liberals followed through on their election promise to repeal Bill C-24, was rejected by the committee. I do think this is most unfortunate, as the current rules only serve to maintain the barriers for the pathway to citizenship.
I am pleased that I was successful in advancing and passing two amendments to Bill C-6, which will now enshrine in the law the duty for reasonable accommodation, ensuring that the citizenship process adheres to the principles of the Canadian Human Rights Act for those with disabilities. This will make disability accommodation a right, not something provided out of mercy or on the basis of compassion, as it formerly was.
My amendment clarifies the requirement of the duty to accommodate those with disabilities as they navigate through the citizenship process. Currently, vague words of required “proof” and discretion around accommodation can lead to individuals, who would otherwise be able to become Canadian citizens, being denied due to a lack of disability accommodation.
There is much more to—