Liberals, NDP urge Conservatives not to stall citizenship rights for ‘lost Canadians’

2023/11/16 Leave a comment

The original bill, S-245, focused on the narrow remaining group and small number of “lost Canadians”, born between 1977 and 1981 who failed to reaffirm their citizenship by the age of 28.

The NDP and Liberals abused the regular process by expanding to the scope to essentially gut the first generation cut-off, without the committee being able to go through the normal review process for effectively was a new bill, with far vaster implications for citizenship given the larger number of people affected.

The Conservatives are right to engage in delaying tactics on process as well as substantive grounds given that the government and the NDP initiated “playing political games” by using this backdoor shortcut:

But the NDP’s immigration critic Jenny Kwan accused the Conservatives of stalling its progress and “playing petty political games,” including filibustering debate at committee, to reduce its chances of becoming law.

She accused the sponsor of the Senate bill in the Commons, Conservative MP Jasraj Singh Hallan, of slowing the bill’s passage in the House by twice switching its scheduled third reading debate with another bill. Mr. Hallan and Tom Kmiec, the Conservative immigration critic, would not comment.

“Canada needs to fix the lost Canadians issue once and for all. The Conservatives were wrong to strip the right of parents to pass on their Canadian citizenship to their second-generation-born-abroad children 14 years ago,” she said. “In the case of William and Jack Cowling, it means they do not have the legal status to work in Canada and the family farm that has been in their family for six generations is now in jeopardy.”

Source: Liberals, NDP urge Conservatives not to stall citizenship rights for ‘lost Canadians’

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Amended bill that would extend citizenship rights to some born abroad heads to House

2023/06/09 Leave a comment

CPC objections to process are valid. Practicality of implementing change is also in question as experience with previous retention provisions illustrates:

A committee of MPs approved Citizenship Act changes that allow some born abroad to adopt their Canadian parent’s citizenship Wednesday, despite objections from Conservatives about a lack of due process.

In 2009, the Conservative government changed the law to make it so that Canadian parents who were born abroad could not pass down their citizenship unless their child was born in Canada.

The NDP has proposed a change that would grant citizenship to the child if the Canadian parent can prove they spent at least three years in Canada.

The new rule, which is supported by the Liberals, was tacked onto a Conservative senator’s private member’s bill at the House of Commons immigration committee.

Conservative immigration critic Tom Kmiec called the amendments “vandalism” of the original spirit of the bill, because the changes were so drastic.

“That is a concern to me, that this might happen to any one of us with our bills in the future, where the content might be deleted and replaced with things we don’t agree with,” Kmiec said during debate earlier this week.

The Conservatives are now in the awkward position of sponsoring a bill in the Commons that they don’t support and won’t vote for.

The testimony and drawn-out debate over the bill and amendments at the committee went on for 12 meetings, sparking concerns the Conservatives would prevent the changes from reaching the House at all.

The committee had until June 14 to finish reviewing the amended bill, or else it would have been sent back to the House of Commons without the new changes.

In its original version, Conservative Sen. Yonah Martin’s bill would have granted citizenship to a small number of people who were stripped of their Canadian legal status between 1977 and 1981 because of a quirk in the law.

The NDP and Liberal amendments make much more sweeping changes, including tweaks to ensure that children adopted by Canadian parents from abroad would have the same citizenship rights as those who were born in or immigrated to Canada.

Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner says the bill will now face extra scrutiny and holdups because the proper process wasn’t followed.

She repeatedly expressed concerns about making major changes to the Citizenship Act without consulting experts or even having an idea of how many people could be affected.

Conservatives also pushed for tougher requirements for parents who wish to prove their connection to Canada, but their ideas were dismissed by other members on the committee.

“We came into this all in agreement on passing this bill expeditiously,” Rempel Garner said during the debate earlier this week. “My sense is that is not going to be the case.”

The revised legislation will need to make its way through another vote in the House before the changes are deliberated by the Senate.

NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan said she’s hopeful the changes will be realized, and children born abroad will have a chance at inheriting Canadian citizenship.

“I remain optimistic that at the end of the day, people will put aside the partisan politics,” she said.

Source: Amended bill that would extend citizenship rights to some born …

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Conservative filibuster threatens potential citizenship for children born abroad

2023/06/07 Leave a comment

Given the backdoor way this broader amendment was introduced to the focused bill, support the Conservatives in their filibuster, particularly that there are much more significant issues in immigration and citizenship policy.

While comment sections are not representative, it is striking how many have little sympathy for the cases cited:

Andrea Fessler found out her third daughter didn’t qualify for Canadian citizenship – even though her two older daughters did – when she arrived at the Canadian consulate in Hong Kong to register.

She’s one of many Canadians who were born abroad and whose children do not qualify for citizenship unless they are born in Canada because of a 2009 change to the law.

There is hope for a reversal of that change as members of Parliament debate amendments to the Citizenship Act. But an ongoing Conservative filibuster is threatening that hope.

Fessler was born in Israel while her father was completing a two-year post-doctoral degree in the country. Her family returned to Canada when she was two, where she grew up in Vancouver before moving to Ottawa to work as a page in the House of Commons.

All three of her girls were born abroad, but because of the legal change in 2009, Fessler’s youngest daughter, Daria, is the only one without legal ties to Canada.

“Had I known about the change of the law in 2009, it’s very possible that I would have gone to Canada to give birth, but I had absolutely no idea,” she said in an interview from her home in Hong Kong.

The NDP proposed a change that would make people like Daria eligible for citizenship if their Canadian parent can prove they spent at least three years in Canada.

The new rule, which is supported by the Liberals, was tacked onto a private member’s bill at the House of Commons immigration committee.

The committee has until June 14 to finish reviewing the amended bill, or else it will be sent back to the House of Commons without the new changes.

“I have been informing the girls of the legislative process, and how there is a hope and how hopeful I am that at some point Daria will be able to have a Canadian passport,” Fessler said.

Daria, who is now 12, dreams of going to university in Vancouver, where her family takes an annual vacation. But as it stands now, she would need to apply for an international student visa to return.

“She’s very hopeful” that that could change, Fessler said.

The private member’s bill was initially put forward by Conservative Sen. Yonah Martin to address a particular quirk in citizenship law.

The NDP and Liberals seized on the opportunity to pass amendments to the bill that would have much more wide-ranging implications for the citizenship of children born outside of the country.

That irked Conservative members of the committee, who feel the Citizenship Act is being rewritten without the appropriate study or due diligence.

“These are substantive amendments, which materially affect the Citizenship Act. So they deserve scrutiny, and we are scrutinizing them,” said Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner, who serves on the committee.

Ottawa grandmother Carol Sutherland-Brown said the NDP’s amendment gave her hope that her grandchildren will one day qualify for Canadian citizenship.

But that hope has dwindled with every meeting of the committee she’s watched since.

“I felt elated when the amendment went through for the connection test, and then it’s just dashed,” Sutherland-Brown said.

Sutherland-Brown met her husband in Canada before she moved to Saudi Arabia to work at a hospital with him when she was 26 years old. She was still living there when she had her daughter Marisa.

The family moved back to Canada when Marisa was two years old, and she lived there until she moved to Paris after her post-secondary graduation. There, she met her husband, and the two moved to the United Kingdom after that to start a family.

The family realized Marisa’s son Findlay wouldn’t qualify for Canadian citizenship after she started filling out the paperwork.

“He would have been sixth-generation Canadian, and that’s all robbed now,” Sutherland-Brown said.

During the filibuster, Conservative members have also put forward other potential amendments far outside the scope of the original bill, including mandating in-person citizenship ceremonies, which have taken up hours of debate before being shot down by Liberal and NDP members.

The committee has extended meetings and scheduled extra time to debate the bill, but NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan said it may not be enough to beat the filibuster.

“If this continues to carry on the way in which it has, (then) there is that real possibility that the bill would be reported back to the House without us completing the work,” Kwan said.

“I’m still somewhat hopeful – I don’t know why – that this will still manage to make it to the House with the necessary amendments. I’m holding on to that shred of hope.”

If the amendments make it through committee, the expanded bill would still need to clear the House of Commons and the Senate before families like Fessler’s and Sutherland-Brown’s would be able to make their case to pass on their citizenship.

Source: Conservative filibuster threatens potential citizenship for children …

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Standing committee votes to reconnect ‘lost Canadians’ with their #citizenship

2023/04/21 Leave a comment

In parallel with the court case.

The previous retention provisions (age 28) were complicated and difficult to administer consistently and many did not avail themselves of these provisions, whether due to not being aware or not important to them at the time.

Degree of connection tests, while possible, would likely prompt debate over the particular conditions.

And when I last did an analysis of Canadian expatriates using a variety of connection tests – paying non-resident taxes, maintaining a Canadian passport, etc – the number was significantly less than estimates of their overall numbers.

As always, practically impossible to reach all Canadians living abroad with messages regarding citizenship and other policies that may affect them.

When Emma Kenyon tried to file for her child’s Canadian citizenship after moving abroad for work, she was told to travel back to Canada to give birth in a hospital here.

Speaking at a press conference on Monday, Kenyon said this advice was offered at the height of Canada’s pandemic travel lockdown in 2020, and would have resulted in a significant salary loss and posed a health risk to her pregnancy.

Both Kenyon and her husband grew up in Canada, and wanted to pass down their Canadian citizenship to their expected child and the rest of their growing family. Their efforts have been met with lingering bureaucracy.

On Monday, April 17, the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration voted to widen the scope of a new policy change to the Citizenship Act that aims to reconnect Canadians who were born abroad with their lost citizenship.

As it stands, Bill S-245 — which was introduced by Conservative Senator Yonah Martin in May 2022 — only gives some people their citizenship back, but not others.

The NDP’s amendments tabled on Monday will also include people like Kenyon, who fall outside of the bill’s scope — as it stood, the bill only allowed people born abroad between Feb. 15, 1977 and April 16, 1981 to reclaim citizenship.

The amendments were passed with 64 per cent of the committee in favour, while all votes against it came from CPC members.

CPC members opposed to Kwan’s amendment said they would use it as a bargaining chip for the party to push for their own agenda items like the reinstatement of in-person citizenship ceremonies.

“The NDP wants to seize this opportunity to fix ‘lost Canadian’ issues once and for all,” Kwan said in an announcement before the committee meeting.

She spoke alongside subject expert and author Don Chapman, Canadian Citizens Rights Councilexecutive director Randall Emery, immigration lawyer Sujit Choudhry, and people who would be affected by the policy change.

A history of the lost Canadians

In 2009, the then-Conservative government repealed parts of a 32-year-old section of the Citizenship Act that automatically revoked the citizenship of some Canadians when they turned 28, unless they re-applied for it.

But the arcane age 28 rule had not been clearly communicated to Canadians when it took effect in 1977. As a result second-generation kids awoke on their 28th birthday years later without their citizenship and the threat of deportation.

Last year, Opposition Deputy Leader, Conservative Senator Yonah Martin, expedited Bill S-245 through the Senate, to address “a small group of Canadians who have lost their Canadian citizenship or became stateless because of [these] changes to policy.”

It encompasses a specific cohort of lost Canadians that had already turned 28 before the rule was revoked, including only those born within a 50-month window.

On Monday, Kwan and those who spoke with her said the scope of the bill is still too narrow. The NDP’s amendments would include people, like Kenyon, who are currently told not to give birth abroad if they want to pass their Canadian citizenship on to their children.

At Monday’s announcement, Chapman noted the previous changes in citizenship policy reflected a UK-based model of identity laws that used to be popular in British colonies.

“Canada is the last country defending these laws,” he said.

Source: Standing committee votes to reconnect ‘lost Canadians’ with their …

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CBA: Restoring lost citizenship – S-245

2023/04/05 Leave a comment

Of note, like other witnesses, raising the first generation cut-off:

The CBA’s  Immigration Law Section supports retroactively restoring citizenship to individuals who lost theirs under s. 8 of the Citizenship Act. In a letter to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, the Section makes two recommendations to improve Bill S-245, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (granting citizenship to certain Canadians). The CBA Section appeared in front of the Committee to present its recommendations on March 27.

Clarify the date of citizenship

Until Parliament enacted Bill C-37 in 2009, individuals born outside Canada to Canadian citizen parents in the second or subsequent generations between February 15, 1977 and April 17, 2009 had until their 28th birthday to apply to retain their Canadian citizenship. After Bill C-37, the retention requirements were repealed but only for individuals who had not yet lost their citizenship.

“The CBA Section supports eliminating the requirement to meet the retention requirements by age 28 and retroactively restoring citizenship to their date of birth. However, it is unclear if Bill S-245 will restore citizenship as of the date the Actcomes into effect, or retroactively to the date citizenship was lost. We recommend that this be clarified.”

This is important, the letter adds, because it affects an individual’s ability to pass on citizenship to their children.

Pre-empting potential Charter challenges

S. 3(4) of the Citizenship Act inadvertently treats people differently based on their grandparent’s gender and marital status and Bill S-245 is liable to make that problem worse. The Section therefore recommends either amending S-245 or introducing a new bill to pre-empt a potential Charter challenge to s. 3(4) of the Citizenship Act.

The second potential Charter issue is that current legislation does not allow people who live abroad but have significant ties to Canada and who are born in the second or subsequent generations to become Canadian citizens. “Parliament may wish to consider changes to the Citizenship Act, to permit those born in second and subsequent generations to also become Canadian citizens,” the CBA letter reads.

Source: National – Restoring lost citizenship

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Can new legislation help ‘Lost Canadians’ be found again?

2022/09/27 Leave a comment

Disappointing article on S-245 and “lost Canadians” that essentially uncritically take the position of Don Chapman and his assertion that “thousands” have lost their citizenship when the data does not support that and that the vast majority of cases were addressed in previous legislation.

S-245 addresses a gap: “Bill C-37 of 2008, which repealed the age-28 provision and grandfathered all those Canadians who had not yet turned 28 to be included in the policy change, left out a small group of Canadians who had already turned 28, specifically those born in the 50-month window between February 15, 1977, to April 16, 1981. This small cohort of lost Canadians is the group for whom this bill was brought forward in this Parliament once again.”

At a minimum, the CBC should have noted this rather than just taking Chapman’s statement at face value. CBC could also have asked CBC for data on the special procedures for persons caught in this situation (the data that I have seen on requests for proofs of citizenship indicates that the numbers of persons for which this is an issue has been consistently overstated).

There is, of course, the broader issue of the first generation cut-off where again, CBC should have provided more context for that decision (e.g., Lebanese Cdn evacuation of 2006 and the number of evacuees who had minimal to no connection to Canada).

Future stories on S-245 should address this imbalance by including outside experts, whether legal, academic or former citizenship officials, and ensure a diversity of views.

And articles need to be more data and evidence-driven, rather than relying on personal stories and advocates, a tendency that CBC appears to be increasingly relying upon (have provided these comments to CBC and will see if any substantive reaction):

When Pete Giesbrecht was summoned to his local police station on Halloween 2015, he had no idea he was 30 days away from being deported.

His crime? He had not reaffirmed his Canadian citizenship before the age of 28 under a complicated, confusing and not well publicized section of the Citizenship Act.

“They said, ‘No, actually, you have 30 days to leave the country. And if you do not leave willingly, we will fly you out with bracelets and all,’ ” Giesbrecht recalled recently from his home in southern Manitoba.

He’s one of thousands of so-called “Lost Canadians” — people who, because of where and when they were born, are caught up in confusing sections of the Citizenship Act. It can result in a loss of citizenship that forces them to leave Canada for countries they’ve never really known. Others become stateless.

The House of Commons will vote on new legislation this fall meant to solve the problem faced by Giesbrecht, although it doesn’t address a different issue affecting second-generation Canadians born abroad.

Cut off from Canada at age 28

Giesbrecht hopes the changes are passed — he and his family felt a mix of disbelief and anger over his impending deportation.

“I had carried a citizenship for 29 years. So now to find out that that was done didn’t mean anything. That was a bit of a shock,” he said.

At the time, Giesbrecht was a commercial truck driver living near Winkler, Man. He crossed the border more than 100 times a year for work.

He had a Canadian passport, which he received before turning 28, but let it lapse because he had a FAST card, which certified he’d been pre-cleared to cross the U.S.-Canada border.

His case was flagged when he re-applied for the card in August 2015.

Since 1977, second-generation Canadians born abroad had an automatic right to citizenship, but those children had to meet certain conditions and apply to retain their citizenship by the time they turned 28. If they didn’t, they automatically and unknowingly lost citizenship.

Legislative amendments in 2009 were supposed to fix that, but the changes didn’t apply to everyone and created new problems for others.

Bill C-37 introduced a rule limiting citizenship by descent to the first generation born abroad. People born abroad in subsequent generations now have to become immigrants, or in some cases they can apply for a grant of citizenship, which can take years, and there’s no guarantee they’ll be accepted.

The changes only affected people who had not yet turned 28 and didn’t help anyone who’d already lost citizenship.

That’s where Giesbrecht got caught — he was born on Aug. 11, 1979, in Mexico. His parents were Canadian, but they were born in Mexico to Mennonites who had moved there to have less government interference in their lives. However, when he was seven, his family moved back to Manitoba near where his Canadian grandparents were born.

Don Chapman, head of the Lost Canadians Society in B.C., says the problem was compounded because those affected weren’t told about the retention requirement.

“Here’s the problem: He got a citizenship certificate. There was no mention on that citizenship certificate that he had to reaffirm,” Chapman said.

New legislation aims to fix age-28 rule

New legislation coming before Parliament this fall is meant to reinstate those affected by the age-28 rule who weren’t covered by Bill C-37.

Bill S-245 has already passed in the Senate and passed first reading in the House of Commons before it recessed for the summer. If it becomes law, it will eliminate the requirement for people to reaffirm their citizenship by age 28. Those affected would be considered Canadian back to their dates of birth.

“These are individuals who were born to Canadian parents and who only know Canada as their country,” said Sen. Yonah Martin, who represents British Columbia and is currently the deputy leader of the opposition in the Senate. She introduced Bill S-245.

“They’re taxpayers. They had lived their lives as Canadians until this age-28 rule caught up to them because it wasn’t clearly communicated.”

Giesbrecht’s Canadian-born wife started the process to sponsor him for citizenship. As a permanent resident, he had to prove a long-time connection to Canada. He’d spent thousands on lawyers when he heard about Chapman and the Lost Canadians Society from other Mennonites going through the same process.

Chapman started advocating on his behalf and on Oct. 17, 2017, Giesbrecht received his Canadian citizenship — for a second time.

“It means security. It means a future. It means hope for the children and a place that we are free,” he said.

Pete Giesbrecht was told he had 30 days to leave the country after he unknowingly lost his Canadian citizenship due to a problem with the Citizenship Act.

Giesbrecht knows of others he says are afraid to come forward, worried they’ll be deported and lose everything.

“They have a life. They also have families. They have work. They have to give that all up,” he said. “That’s a very risky, very difficult thing to do.”

Chapman says many Lost Canadians don’t find out about their status until they apply for a passport, move provinces and apply for health benefits or a driver’s licence, or are convicted of a crime.

“Pete, he’s one of the lucky ones,” Chapman said.

“There are thousands of people, actually many thousands of people in Canada, that are affected and might still not know it. And this [legislation] will make it so they are whole, as though they never lost their citizenship.”

New rule created new Lost Canadians

But, there’s another category of Lost Canadians the new legislation won’t address.

The “second-generation cut-off” is a rule under Bill C-37 that permanently denies the first generation born abroad the ability to automatically pass on citizenship to their children if they are also born outside Canada.

It also eliminated the ability to gain citizenship by showing a “substantial connection” to Canada. Now, those second-generation children have to be sponsored by their parents to come to Canada as permanent residents, then apply for citizenship like any other immigrant.

Critics say it has created two classes of Canadian citizenship — one for Canadians born in Canada and one for those born abroad.

“What’s discriminatory about the Citizenship Act is that there is no way that people can rid themselves of this second class status no matter how close and deep their ties to Canada are,” said Sujit Choudhry, a constitutional lawyer in Toronto representing seven families living in Canada, Dubai, Hong Kong, Japan and the United States, who are all affected by this rule.

Choudhry filed a constitutional challenge in December 2021, asking that his clients’ children be granted citizenship and that this section of the Citizenship Act be struck down. The case will be before court in April 2023.

‘I’m not Canadian enough’

Victoria Maruyama is angry about the way her family has been treated because of where she and her children were born.

“I grew up [in Canada] like everybody else. Why am I being treated this way? Why are you treating my children this way? And why can’t we just come home like everybody else?” Maruyama, one of Choudhary’s clients, asked in a recent interview from her home in Nagoya, Japan.

Maruyama was born in Hong Kong and received Canadian citizenship through her father, who had previously immigrated from Vietnam. When she was a toddler, the family returned to Edmonton, where she attended school. She later got a degree at the University of British Columbia.

When she was 22, she moved to Japan temporarily to teach English and met her husband, a Japanese national. They married in 2007.

She was seven months pregnant with their first child when Bill C-37 took away her right to pass on citizenship to her children unless they were born in Canada.

“The shock of it, like, ‘Oh my God, I’m not Canadian enough,’ ” Maruyama said.

Their second child was also born in Japan two years later. The family has moved back to Edmonton from Japan several times so she could apply for citizenship for her children and sponsor them as immigrants.

All of those applications have been denied.

“Their grandparents helped build the stupid railroad … It makes me angry. Really angry.– Victoria Maruyama, whose children aren’t considered Canadian because they, and Maruyama, were born abroad”

A 2018 letter from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said the children were rejected because “they are not stateless, will not face special and unusual hardship if you are not granted Canadian citizenship and you have not provided services of exceptional value to Canada.”

They returned to Japan in July 2019 because her husband had a job offer, but she says the family would like to live in a more multicultural and accepting society and be closer to her aging parents.

The children are “very aware that Canada is rejecting them,” Maruyama said. “[But] they feel Canadian. It’s just part of their identity.”

“Their grandparents helped build the stupid railroad … It makes me angry. Really angry.”

Stateless babies

In an even more extreme case, if a Canadian born abroad has a baby in a country that doesn’t provide citizenship at birth, that child is stateless.

This means no country is responsible for their legal protection and they can’t get a passport. They have no right to vote and they often lack access to education, employment, health care, registration of birth, marriage or death and property rights.

That’s the situation for Gregory Burgess, who was born in the U.S. to an American father and Canadian mother. He got citizenship through his mother, grew up and went to school in Alberta where his ancestors settled after fleeing what is now Ukraine many generations ago.

“It’s basically bureaucratic terrorism … I believe Canada is better than this.– Gregory Burgess, on the various applications needed to get his infant son Canadian citizenship”

He and his wife, a Russian citizen, are on work visas in Hong Kong. Their son was born there last October. Since neither parent is a citizen or permanent resident of Hong Kong, their son has no status.

“The children are the victims,” Burgess said recently.

Burgess says because he was born outside Canada — and can’t automatically give his child Canadian citizenship — he was told by an IRCC agent that his wife should apply for Russian citizenship for the baby. If that is rejected, he can then go through the process with Canada. However, there are no guarantees it would be successful.

However, Burgess doesn’t want his son to have Russian citizenship; he wants him to be Canadian.

“It’s basically bureaucratic terrorism. It’s horrible. It’s adversarial,” he said of the various applications he’s already made on behalf of both his son and his wife. “I believe Canada is better than this.”

Burgess is one of Choudhry’s clients and part of the constitutional challenge. The lawyer says Canada could fix the family’s situation if it would add back the ability for a second-generation child born abroad to prove a “substantial connection” to the country.

“This law creates hierarchies of Canadians based on where they were born,” Choudhry said.

In the meantime, he said Citizenship and Immigration Minister Sean Fraser could grant Burgess’s son citizenship by acknowledging the “special and unusual hardship” the family is facing.

CBC requested an interview with Fraser several times, but a spokesperson said he was unavailable.

However, in a statement, his department said there is a “discretionary mechanism” for anyone who doesn’t qualify for citizenship, including a special process if someone is stateless. The department said those cases are assessed individually.

Source: Can new legislation help ‘Lost Canadians’ be found again?

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