Arcane Law Continues To Strip Canadians Of Citizenship

More on the ‘Lost Canadians’ issue and the few remaining cases.

While one can always do more to communicate changes – and there were efforts to do so – it is not surprising that some people only become aware when they are confronted, through renewing a passport or moving back to Canada:

The [retention provisions of the 1977 Citizenship Act] law was drafted in the 1970s out of concern that citizenship could be passed along indefinitely to generations abroad who were less and less connected to Canada, said Audrey Macklin, a law professor at the University of Toronto.

Macklin said it wasn’t necessarily unfair, at least in theory, to require someone twice removed from being born in Canada to prove a connection to the country.

The problem, though, was rooted in the government’s inability to identify and inform those people that their citizenship would “evaporate” if they didn’t take specific steps to retain it, she said.

Lindsay Wemp, a spokeswoman with Citizenship and Immigration Canada, said in an email that the immigration minister can offer discretionary citizenship in extraordinary circumstances on a case-by-case basis.

Funk said she contacted Minister John McCallum’s office in July and has yet to receive a response.

Citizenship statuses on ‘narrow hinge’

Donald Galloway, a University of Victoria law professor, said he didn’t think the government has taken the necessary steps to let people know “the narrow hinge” their status was hanging on.

“I think it’s quite shocking to live in a country where the government creates these byzantine rules and says ‘Well, it’s up to you to know the details,'” he said.

Source: Arcane Law Continues To Strip Canadians Of Citizenship