‘An ordeal that doesn’t end’: Lost Canadians’ citizenship at risk with Parliament suspended

More on C-71 and impact of prorogation:

Shortly after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suspended Parliament on Monday, Carol Sutherland-Brown’s phone started ringing.

The calls were coming from other people whose families have been caught up in the longstanding “lost Canadians” fiasco and are concerned about the fate of the highly anticipated citizenship reforms proposed in Bill C-71.

The Ottawa grandmother and others have been fighting to reclaim the citizenship rights taken away from their families under Canada’s current second-generation cut-off rule, which denies automatic citizenship to children born abroad because their parents also happened to be born overseas.

More than a year ago, an Ontario court found the law unconstitutional and gave the federal government six months to change it to make it Charter-compliant. The Liberal government introduced Bill C-71 to fix the problem, but the deadline has already been extended three times, to March 19.

This legislation would automatically confer Canadian citizenship on people born abroad before the changes are enacted to a Canadian parent who was also born abroad. Anyone born outside the country subsequently would need to prove their foreign-born Canadian parent had a “substantial connection” with Canada by meeting a residency requirement.

With the prorogation of Parliament until March 24, the bill has now died on the order paper, and a new one would have to be tabled when the House returns. It would be subject to the legislative process from scratch again.

The lost Canadians’ families fear that if a confidence vote follows, as expected, it will topple the Liberals and usher in a Conservative government. It was a Conservative government that brought in the second-generation citizenship cut-off in 2009 to begin with.

“This has been an ordeal for me and for the other families, an ordeal that doesn’t end,” said Sutherland-Brown. Her daughter was born in Saudi Arabia, and two grandchildren were born in the U.K. As a result, the grandchildren lost their Canadian citizenship rights by descent. “We don’t know what a new government will do.”

Lawyer Sujit Choudhry, who represented lost Canadians in the successful court challenge, said the government has two options: to go before the court for another extension or let the citizenship law be declared unconstitutional.

However, both are problematic.

While there have been similar precedents where the government was granted extensions to comply with court orders, he said the requests were made because Parliament was dissolved and an election was called, and not due to prorogation.

“The question in March will be whether this is the time for this to come to an end , or whether, given the unique political circumstances, some more time should be given,” said Choudhry. “What will the government say in court? Well, they’d say a dissolution is imminent, but it hasn’t happened yet.” 

If Ottawa lets the deadline lapse and the two-generation cut-off is thus voided, affected lost Canadians could just come reclaim their citizenship. If the court cuts the government some slack and grants another extension in light of the circumstances, the uncertainty will continue.

“During that extension period, we could very well be in an election, in which case, no bills could be passed,” said MP Jenny Kwan, immigration critic of the opposition NDP, and a staunch supporter of the bill.

“After the election, whoever forms government would have to take further actions to be compliant with the court decision. We have to remember that it was the Conservatives who brought in this unconstitutional provision 15 years ago.”

In 2009, the then-Conservative government changed the citizenship law and imposed the second-generation cut-off on Canadians born abroad, after Ottawa had faced a massive effort to evacuate 15,000 Lebanese Canadians stranded in Beirut during Israel’s month-long war against Hezbollah in 2006.

The $85-million price tag of the evacuation effort sparked a debate over “Canadians of convenience.” The government abolished the existing “substantial connection” regime and adopted a blanket rule that denies the first generation born abroad the right to pass on citizenship by descent outside Canada to the second generation born abroad. 

Tunisian-born Majda Dabaghi, whose two children were born in France and hence can’t be Canadian citizens by descent, is concerned about a Conservative return to power given the party’s efforts to block C-71 and a similar bill previously. (The Conservative party didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

The cut-off rule “was a racist response to the evacuation of dual nationals out of Lebanon,” said Dabaghi, who has continued to vote in Canadian elections after she left Canada in 2007 for a job in international law in the U.K. 

“They have done everything humanly possible to filibuster the passing of the legislation, both in the form of Bill C-71 and earlier in the form of Bill S-245. They have put their own politics and political gamesmanship above sound policy, people’s lives and our Constitution.”

Calling Bill C-71 “a crucial piece of legislation,” Immigration Minister Marc Miller also blamed the Conservatives for stalling it. While his office would not say if the government will request that the court grant another extension, it said “Minister Miller is confident that a Liberal government would reintroduce this important bill to the House once resumed.”

Although Christina Matula’s two children — born in England and Hong Kong — are Canadian citizens, she said she’s fighting for their rights to explore the world and work abroad without having to worry about where to start a family.

And she said both the Liberals and Conservatives are at fault because the former also failed to prioritize and expedite the introduction and passing of the bill despite the court order in December 2023.

Her children, now 17 and 14, have attended Canadian international schools, participated in Terry Fox runs and visited family in Canada every summer and Christmas, said Matula, whose family now lives in Finland.

“My children are Canadian by descent and have strong ties to Canada,” she said “I want them to have clear and fair criteria to prove their connection to Canada, so they can have the same rights as Canadian-born and naturalized citizens.”

Source: ‘An ordeal that doesn’t end’: Lost Canadians’ citizenship at risk with Parliament suspended