Lost Canadians

‎In 2007, the UN's Refugees magazine listed Canada as one of the top offending countries for making its own people stateless. In 2009, the Conservatives promised to fix the issue of lost Canadian citizenship with Bill C-37. Unfortunately, this did not happen. Worse still, the Conservatives created a new group of lost Canadians.

Currently, a large group of Canadians are deemed to be second-class citizens due to the Conservative government's first-generation cut-off rule, introduced by the Harper administration in 2009. Bill C-37 ended the extension of citizenship to second-generation Canadians born abroad, causing undue hardship for many families. Some families are even separated, and some individuals are left stateless.

I spoke with Patrick Chandler, a Canadian citizen who spent most of his life in Canada but was born abroad. As an adult, he worked overseas, married someone from another country, and had children. He was later offered a job in British Columbia, but when he moved back to Canada, he had to leave his wife and children behind because he could not pass on his citizenship to his children. He had to go through an arduous process to reunite with them a year later.

Many families are being impacted in this way, and it is unjust. Canadians should not be put in such situations, yet many are suffering through them.

Since being assigned as the NDP Immigration, Refugee, and Citizenship Critic, I have been advocating to resolve the issue of Lost Canadians, including tabling a Private Member’s Bill in 2016.

CTV News: ‘Utterly cruel’: Canadian parents say new citizenship rules hurt kids adopted from abroad

Tens of thousands of children born abroad in the past decade and a half, known as “Lost Canadians,” will now be eligible to become Canadian citizens after a new bill passed the Senate Wednesday and received royal assent Thursday.

Bill C-3 allows Canadians born outside the country to pass on their citizenship to their children who are also born abroad. The Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) says the new law would make at least 115,000 children born outside the country eligible for Canadian citizenship.

‘Lost Canadians’ legislation becomes law after Senate approval

But Canadians living in Canada, who have adopted children from abroad, say the bill leaves out a key change — an amendment that would give their kids the same treatment as children born in Canada.

“It’s utterly cruel what the government has done to us as a family and to other families like us in Canada and it’s just mean,” said Kat Lanteigne, whose 10-year-adopted son Nathanael was born in Zambia.

The new legislation says “intercountry adoptees,” children born abroad and adopted by Canadians living in Canada, must pass a “substantial connection” test to obtain citizenship, including proving they have lived in Canada for three years.

Click link to read or read the news and watch the video - https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/article/utterly-cruel-canadian-parents-say-new-citizenship-rules-hurt-kids-adopted-from-abroad/

CBC News: Bill restoring citizenship for 'Lost Canadians' becomes law

The "Lost Canadians" legislation, which aims to fix Canada's unconstitutional citizenship by descent rules, passed in the Senate Wednesday and received royal assent Thursday afternoon.

The term refers to people who were born outside of the country to Canadian parents who were also born in another country.

In 2009, the federal government changed the law so that Canadians born abroad could only pass down their citizenship if their child was born in Canada, but that was deemed unconstitutional by the Ontario Superior Court in December 2023.

The legislation proposed Canadian citizenship could be passed down to people born abroad, beyond the first generation, if the parents spent a cumulative three years in Canada before the child's birth or adoption.

Both Ontario Liberal MP Nate Erskine-Smith and B.C. NDP MP Jenny Kwan attempted to introduce amendments to clarify the adoption rules, but both were unsuccessful.

When the bill was still before the House of Commons, Conservative and Bloc Québécois members of the immigration committee tried to amend the legislation to state that the three-year period in the substantial connection test needed to take place within five consecutive years.

However, that amendment was removed by Liberal and NDP MPs before the bill was sent to the Senate.

Click link to read the news story - https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/lost-canadians-bill-senate-9.6986432

HANSARD: 3rd reading and adoption of Bill C-3, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (2025)

Click link to see the full voting record - https://openparliament.ca/votes/45-1/47/

iPOLITICS: Liberals, NDP delete proposed changes to birthright citizenship from ‘lost Canadians’ bill

The federal Liberals have helped pass an NDP motion that removes proposed restrictions to birthright citizenship from the government’s ‘Lost Canadians’ bill, despite the Conservatives and Bloc Québécois voting in opposition.

On Monday, MPs voted on report stage amendments to Bill C-3 initiated by NDP MP Jenny Kwan that sought to reverse previously adopted changes that would require people eligible for birthright citizenship under the proposed law to fulfill residency and security requirements — similar to prospective immigrants.

The bill now proceeds to third reading, where it is expected to pass, before it moves on to the Senate. If codified, the ‘Lost Canadians’ bill would restore citizenship to people born in a foreign country to Canadian parents who were also born outside Canada.

But Conservative and Bloc MPs passed amendments that would introduce additional criteria for ‘lost Canadians’ to receive citizenship during an immigration committee meeting last month. The amendments would require those eligible to demonstrate, among other things, proficiency in either English or French, as well as a basic knowledge of Canadian history.

Though the Liberals opposed the changes, the amendments passed because the NDP no longer have a seat on committees after failing to keep official party status in this past year’s federal election.

During a recent interview, Kwan told iPolitics that the Tory-proposed changes conflate the rights of immigrants with ‘lost Canadians,’ which she said was “sneaky” and “unCanadian.”

“To me, it is absolutely disgraceful… [so] I’m looking to restore the bill to its original form,” she said.

Kwan’s motion passed by a margin of 170 to 163.

Following the vote, she called the result a “victory for every family who refused to give up, for every Canadian denied their birthright, and for the principle that citizenship belongs to the people — not to politicians.”

Click link to read the news story - https://www.ipolitics.ca/2025/11/03/liberals-ndp-delete-proposed-changes-to-birthright-citizenship-from-lost-canadians-bill/

Media Release: After 10-Year Fight, MP Jenny Kwan Wins Major Victory to Restore Citizenship Rights for “Lost Canadians”

OTTAWA — After more than a decade of relentless advocacy, NDP MP Jenny Kwan, the NDP Critic for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, has secured a major breakthrough in the fight for justice for Lost Canadians — families who have been denied their rightful citizenship because of an unjust, discriminatory law. Kwan’s amendments were adopted in the House of Commons — marking a historic win for fairness, equality, and the thousands of families who have fought alongside her for justice.

“This is a victory for every family who refused to give up, for every Canadian denied their birthright, and for the principle that citizenship belongs to the people — not to politicians,” said Kwan.

“For over ten years, thousands of families have been denied their birthright as Canadians because of a cruel and exclusionary policy passed by the Conservatives in 2009,” said Kwan. “That law stripped second-generation Canadians born abroad of the right to pass citizenship to their children. It was wrong then — and it’s wrong now.”

Kwan has stood shoulder to shoulder with Lost Canadians and their allies for over a decade — organizing, pressing governments to act, and negotiating across party lines to fix this injustice. Her fight has always been rooted in one simple belief: no one should lose their birthright to Canadian citizenship because they are global citizens.

HANSARD: Parliament votes on Jenny's amendment motions on Bill C‑3, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (2025)

iPOLITICS: What happens when the House tries to reverse a committee rewrite on the floor?

Shortly after the new session got underway, it made it back onto the notice paper, courtesy of then-freshly-installed Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab — this time, under a court-imposed deadline of Nov. 20, at which point the existing provisions would be automatically deemed null and void.

It was subsequently adopted on division — which, as Process Nerd readers are undoubtedly aware, takes place without a recorded vote — shortly after the fall sitting got underway, at which point it was sent to committee for further review. It was during the final phase of that process that the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois teamed up to add new provisions that would require anyone attempting to claim citizenship under the new rules to meet the same standards applied to all other immigrants, including a working knowledge of at least one of the two official languages, a basic understanding of Canadian history and security checks.

Shortly after the revised bill was reported back to the House, New Democrat MP Jenny Kwan served notice of a suite of amendments that, as she told iPolitics at the time, would effectively restore it to its original format.

For their part, the Liberals declined to formally endorse Kwan’s proposed changes, put forward two additional amendments, and are widely expected to vote with the New Democrats during the report-stage vote, which could take place as early as tomorrow afternoon.

Click link to read the news story - https://www.ipolitics.ca/2025/10/28/what-happens-when-the-house-tries-to-reverse-a-committee-rewrite-on-the-floor/

HANSARD: Restore Bill C-3 Citizenship Act to its original form

Click below to read the Hansard of the debate

Globe & Mail: Liberals, NDP bid to undo Harper-era rule on citizenship for Lost Canadians

The Liberals and NDP are pushing for a citizenship bill to move forward without Conservative changes that would require security screening and language checks before children born abroad to foreign-born Canadians could qualify for a passport.

Earlier this month, Conservatives, with the support of the Bloc Québécois, voted through a raft of changes to the government’s proposed legislation, known as Bill C-3.

The bill aims to reverse a change by Stephen Harper’s Conservative government in 2009 that stripped people born into this situation, who are often known as Lost Canadians, of their automatic right to citizenship.

But the Conservative amendments to the Liberal bill – expected to go to a vote on Monday – would make people aged 18 to 54 clear several hurdles in order to inherit Canadian citizenship, putting them on roughly even ground with immigrants seeking citizenship.

They would have to pass an English or French language test, be subject to security screening to check for criminal activity and pass a citizenship test demonstrating knowledge of Canadian history.

Bill C-3 requires Canadian parents born abroad to demonstrate a substantial connection to Canada before they can pass on citizenship to a child born outside the country. They would need to spend a cumulative 1,095 days – the equivalent of three years – in Canada before the birth or adoption of the child seeking citizenship.

The Conservative changes would require the 1,095 days to be consecutively spent in Canada within five years, and not made up of a few weeks, months or days over many years.

In a debate in the Commons on Friday, Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner said her changes were “common-sense amendments to try and ensure that people who are obtaining citizenship by descent would have to go through the same processes as somebody who’s obtained citizenship through naturalization.”

But NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan said the amendments made at committee would create “a new class of Lost Canadians.” She said Canadians who travel or work abroad and have children there “should not be penalized for it.”

Experts warned that the Conservative amendments could create stateless citizens and mean Canadians granted citizenship at birth by the bill could be stripped of their passports if they do not meet the criteria once they turn 18.

The NDP and Liberal amendments, expected to be voted on next week, aim to restore the text of the original bill.

The government brought in the bill – a carbon copy of one that failed to become law before the election – in response to a 2023 Ontario Superior Court ruling.

A judge found that it is unconstitutional to deny citizenship to children born in another country to Canadians also born outside Canada. The last Liberal government did not appeal the ruling and the court granted the government a series of extensions – until next month – to make changes to the law. The government is applying to the court to extend the deadline further.

Don Chapman, a Lost Canadian who has been campaigning for decades to restore their rights, warned that the Conservative amendments, if not reversed, could make the bill unconstitutional and could lead to a further court challenge.

He also said the changes could mean that children of Canadians born abroad, granted Canadian citizenship at birth, could be stripped of their citizenship and even made stateless at 18 if they fail to pass a language test, a citizenship test or had a criminal conviction as a teenager.

Click link to read the news story - https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-liberals-ndp-harper-citizenship-lost-canadians/?login=true

Parliament VIDEO: Restoring justice for lost Canadians

🇨🇦 Restoring justice for lost Canadians

In the House of Commons, I spoke on my amendments to Bill C-3 — amendments that would restore the bill to its original form and right a historic wrong.

More than a decade ago, the Conservatives stripped children of Canadian parents born abroad of their right to pass on citizenship to their own children — creating two classes of Canadians, separating families, and even rendering some stateless.

The Ontario Superior Court has since ruled that these laws are unconstitutional. My amendments would make Canada’s citizenship laws charter-compliant, restore equality, and end discrimination against second-generation Canadians born abroad.

No Canadian should ever be treated as lesser because they live, work, or study overseas. Citizenship is a birthright — not a privilege based on geography or politics.