Lawyers argue law to revoke Canadian citizenship is unconstitutional

A case to watch:

“Once you are a citizen, you are a citizen,” said lawyer Rocco Galati, who brought the case before the court along with lawyer Manuel Azevedo and the Constitutional Rights Centre Inc.

Calling Ottawa’s act “an indirect amendment to the Canadian constitutions,” Paul Slansky, who represented the constitutional rights centre, said the government only has the authority over “aliens and naturalization,” but does not have the power to strip the citizenship of Canadian-born people.

“The issue is whether it can be taken away without your consent with the natural-born and naturalized citizens,” he told Justice Donald Rennie. “The government does not have the authority to legislate on this issue.”

Government lawyers asked the court to dismiss the case because the revocation provision has yet to be enforced and any constitutional challenge should be dealt with when an affected individual brings a case forward.

Federal legal strategy interesting – prefer to have this decided through case law.

Lawyers argue law to revoke Canadian citizenship is unconstitutional | Toronto Star.

And Chris Selley reminds us of the counter-productive aspects of revocation:

Now imagine Rouleau’s and Zehaf-Bibeau’s attacks had been thwarted at the last minute. Presumably they would now be facing terrorism charges. And now imagine they were dual citizens. There would now be mass calls to strip their Canadian citizenship and fire them out of a cannon toward whichever foreign capital issued their second passport. And this would be feasible, in theory anyway, under very popular new Citizenship Act amendments passed into law in June.

I have several philosophical objections to those amendments. But the Rouleau case illustrates its most basic practical flaw. Our sensible strategy is to keep the closest possible tabs on terrorism risks — and, if anything, closer tabs, one would think, on convicted terrorists who are eventually set free. Deportation is the very opposite of close tabs.

On the one hand, we’re seizing passports from people we fear may wind up on the ISIS battlefront. The government is actively publicizing this. On the other hand, the government has endorsed precisely the opposite notion: Get rid of terrorists entirely, and we’ll somehow be more safe.

In fact, a fairly common sentiment on Wednesday was that we would be better off not seizing these people’s passports. Fly to Istanbul, head down to Syria, see if we care. They’ll not be long for this world if they go, according to this view; we can cancel their passports once they leave, marooning them in the Levant; and denying them travel just invites them to turn their anger toward Canadian targets.

These two men were Canada’s responsibility. We nearly caught at least one of them

It’s difficult to overstate how churlish this is. It would amount to bolstering the forces of an enemy with which we’re at war. Perhaps 100 or so Canuck jihadists wouldn’t make much of a difference to the overall mission — but they could make an awful lot of innocent people’s lives miserable before finding themselves in the crosshairs of a coalition jet.

The Conservatives aren’t making that case, of course. It would be seen as morally bankrupt, which it is. But its difficult to draw a moral line between that case and the Conservatives’ own stated eagerness to pass off our terrorist garbage on other nations — indeed, the latter encourages the former.

These two men were Canada’s responsibility. We nearly caught at least one of them. We need to redouble our efforts and keep our eyes on the ball, not indulge childish exile fantasies.

Chris Selley: Our bad jihadi apples: Squash them or chuck them?