Allan Richarz: No, a Canadian is not a Canadian. It’s perfectly fine to strip citizenship from terrorists | National Post

“Minor expansion?” No, it is not, nor was it communicated (or marketed) as such by the previous government:

Essentially, opposition to Bill C-24 is more political than principled. Accepting the stripping of a fraudster’s citizenship as a legitimate exercise of government power, but viewing the same action against a convicted terrorist as indicative of Harperian fascism, is logically inconsistent. The more accurate position would be that critics of Bill C-24 accept that the government may strip individuals of their citizenship in certain instances, but that they do not believe terrorism or treason should qualify. Polite political disagreement, however, does not make much of a splash, especially during an overheated election campaign.

This is an issue the Trudeau government will have to address. If the incoming prime minister believes citizenship is inviolable, will he then undo decades of law and policy by closing the fraud and crimes against humanity loopholes as well? If he opposes Bill C-24’s expanded powers for political reasons, will he have the temerity to say so directly and risk the political fallout of being “soft on terror”? Such forthrightness would certainly be a welcome change in Canadian politics. One gets the feeling, however, that Trudeau will simply use the issue to get a few more miles out of the Harper boogeyman.

At the end of the day, the government is well within its rights to add to the list of those who may be stripped of citizenship. It is a legitimate exercise in regard to the fraudster, and it is to the terrorist. Bill C-24 is a minor expansion of traditional categories of citizenship revocation and not a radical departure in Canadian politics.

Source: Allan Richarz: No, a Canadian is not a Canadian. It’s perfectly fine to strip citizenship from terrorists | National Post