Delay in Citizenship Act amendment shows government’s lack of urgency
A tiered citizenship system has left thousands stateless and locked out of their home
Those born in Canada are legally entitled to citizenship. (Unsplash/Jaimie Harmsen)
In 2009, then-prime minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government amended existing immigration law to deny citizenship to those born abroad to naturalized Canadians who themselves were born abroad.
To put it another way, if two children were born off home soil, then the one who has at least one Canadian-born parent gets citizenship passed down while the kid whose parents are foreign-born, naturalized Canadians does not.
Canada is a jus soli state, meaning that citizenship through birthright is recognized as legally valid. Understandably, this change in law was, and still is, criticized by immigrants and advocates as creating a two-tiered system for those who have attained citizenship differently and those born to citizens outside of Canada.
Last year, the Ontario Superior Court ruled this policy as discriminatory to foreign-born citizens and set a deadline of June 19 for the federal government to rectify it and give so-called “Lost Canadians” their birthrights.
In late May of this year, Bill C-71 was introduced to amend the changes made in 2009 and grant citizenship to those affected. The federal government may have declined to challenge the court’s ruling, but its track record seems to suggest a bit of feet-dragging is going on.
When the deadline came up, the federal government was allowed an extension to Aug. 9 despite all the time since the ruling. Bill C-71 was not introduced in time before Parliament rose for the summer, meaning that the rights of thousands of “Lost Canadians” will continue to be violated until after Parliament reconvenes mid-September.
There is also the matter of Bill S-245, which was drafted to grant citizenship to the 3,500 “Lost Canadians” born between 1977 and 1981. However, that bill seems to have stalled out in the House of Commons as of June 12, 2023, having not made it to a third reading.
The federal government’s sum-total interest in reforming an active charter rights violation appears to be distressingly low. All things considered, it is quite likely that the Citizenship Act amendments will not get royal assent until late 2024 or early 2025. With an election coming up late next year, there is the additional question of how long the amendment bill will stick if the next federal government decides to undo or modify it.
Restoring citizenship to “Lost Canadians” is an entirely worthy effort, especially since many of them already live in Canada along with the many others who are abroad. They are needlessly punished for their parents being arbitrarily identified as second-class citizens. Like the so-called “Dreamers” in the U.S., the “Lost Canadians” are in a situation that they never had any control over and now must navigate a society that has suddenly done a 180-degree turn against them.
During a time where anti-immigration sentiments persist and an uncomfortable renormalization of xenophobia continues onwards, it is frustratingly easy — and exasperatingly reductive — to declare these efforts as being yet another case of “foreign invasion” into Canada.
We must reject these simplistic divisions and false assumptions when understanding the “Lost Canadians” phenomena and plight, and also when discussing immigration in general.
Rejecting these unhelpful mindsets allows you to examine and understand the true harshness of the two-tiered citizenship system’s consequences — consequences that the judiciary have rightly declared unconstitutional, but the legislative and executive branches cannot be bothered to make haste in taking care of.
The government has made its priorities clear, and that, along with its many other faults, have more or less sealed its fate in the next coming election, as polls have repeatedly shown. This failure lays squarely at the federal government’s feet, and there is no dodging that.
