Immigration.ca - Canada Immigration News - January 2007
The recent rush for passports has revealed that many Canadians who think they are citizens are, in fact, not. People are unknowingly being robbed of their citizenship due to grievous flaws in the Citizenship Act that should have been corrected decades ago.
From its inception in 1947 to its revision in 1977, an obscure provision in the Citizenship Act automatically stripped citizenship from Canadians who celebrated their 24th birthday outside of the country, without signing the proper form. The 1977 amendment was not retroactive thus leaving an estimated 200,000 people born in that 30-year period without Canadian citizenship.
A further oversight applies to those born during this same period and whose father took the nationality of another country. Under the 1947 Act children were, in essence, property of their fathers. Subsequently, if the father became a citizen of another country his children automatically lost their Canadian citizenship.
The final issue is a current provision - installed in 1977 and reaffirmed in 2006 - that requires second-generation Canadians born outside of Canada to re-register for their citizenship to prove an “attachment” to the country. People born outside Canada to a Canadian parent also born outside Canada must apply to retain their citizenship before their 28th birthday. To this effect, the government has begun to stamp expiration dates on citizenship cards.
As a result of the decades-old provisions that are still being enforced, it is estimated up to 1 million Canadians will discover they are not citizens when they apply for passports. Among them are War Brides from WWII and their foreign-born children and “Border Babies” – children born on the American side of the Canada/US border.
Last fall, the House of Commons gave almost unanimous approval to a report by the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration stating that a new Citizenship Act would correct grievous flaws that denied some Canadians their citizenship. Yet, the Harper government has put the new act on the back burner. The Tories now figure it is not a priority even though in opposition they had railed against the Liberals for not changing the Act to remedy the situation.
Senator Roméo Dallaire recently described the actions of Citizenship and Immigration Canada as “absolutely inhumane.” Ironically enough, Dallaire once found himself tangled in Canada’s dysfunctional immigration and citizenship policies. Born in Holland to a War-Bride mother, Dallaire discovered in 1973 that he was not a citizen while serving as Captain in the Canadian army. He alleges the people at CIC are “bureaucratic terrorists.”
What is happening today in Canadian citizenship law defies logic. For a country that prides itself on respecting human rights, it is hard to believe that so many Canadians are being stripped of their citizenship due to mere technicality and government inaction. Corrections to these obscure provisions are long-overdue. In the words of Andrew Telegdi, former Chairman of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, “rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms must trump archaic bureaucratic regulations when it comes to a person’s citizenship.”
Peter Worthington - Jan 24th 2007
http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Worthington_Peter/2007/01/24/3437881.html
