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.

HANSARD: Addressing the issue of Lost Canadian

Madam Speaker, for decades some Canadians have found themselves to be stateless due to a number of convoluted immigration laws. Some have found themselves all of a sudden losing their Canadian status and they do not know why.
In 2007, the UN listed Canada as one of the top offending countries for making their own people stateless. In 2009, the Conservatives said they were going to address this issue with Bill C-37. In fact, Jason Kenney was the minister of immigration then. Sadly, Bill C-37 did not properly address the lost Canadians issue. At the time, even Conservative minister Diane Finley acknowledged that Bill C-37 would not fix all of the cases of lost Canadians.
In fact, Jason Kenney created a brand new set of problems. For the purposes of this discussion, I will not get into the issues of how the Conservatives eliminated people's right to appeal when the government revoked their citizenship. I will simply focus on the issue of lost Canadians.

CBC: Can new legislation help 'Lost Canadians' be found again?

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

The "second-generation cutoff" 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.

iPOLITICS: Feds find no evidence of significant number of Canadians in citizenship limbo

Since 2010, 384 people have received a discretionary grant of citizenship under the Act, the memo says; 326 were Lost Canadian cases, with almost all involving people who “failed to take steps required by the previous law to retain citizenship.”

Amendments made to the Citizenship Act in the Harper government’s 2009 bill (C-37) and 2015 bill (C-24) were meant to give citizenship to people who lost it or never had it, and generally simplify citizenship rules.

But the memo acknowledges there are still examples of Lost Canadians “not fixed” by both pieces of legislation.

Critics have argued Bill C-37 added a new elements of discrimination that the Liberals chose not to touch in their Citizenship Act-amending legislation, Bill C-6, which received royal assent in June.

One was the creation of a first-generation limit by descent (FGL), whereby the children of Canadians born abroad became ineligible for citizenship.

Bill C-37 also eliminated requirements under the 1977 Citizenship Act that included submitting an application prior to turning 28, but some individuals continue to be affected by the old law.

Byrdie Funk is one. On July 1, Funk — born in Mexico to Canadian parents — regained her citizenship after having it stripped as a result of the now-repealed 1977 Act provision.

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NDP MP Jenny Kwan introduced a private member’s bill in December 2016 that would, among other things, “allow a person to acquire Canadian citizenship despite being born outside Canada to a Canadian parent who was born outside Canada if the person establishes that the parent has or had a substantial connection to Canada.”

The Kwan bill is also addressed in the memo, but Morgan’s comments are redacted under the Access to Information Act section that covers advice to a minister and consultations or deliberations with a minister or their staff.

Don Chapman, the most outspoken advocate for Lost Canadians, thinks the entire Citizenship Act needs to be scrapped.

When Funk regained her citizenship this past Canada Day, Chapman celebrated the victory but told The Canadian Press drastic changes were needed.

“The laws have become so convoluted,” he said. “We need to not just close the gaps, we need a new citizenship act.”

Click link to read the news story - https://www.ipolitics.ca/2017/07/06/feds-find-no-evidence-of-significant-number-of-canadians-in-citizenship-limbo/

Squamish Chief: Squamish woman regains citizenship, vows to fight for other ‘lost Canadians’

Squamish’s Byrdie Funk will soon be a Canadian citizen, once again.

The local counsellor has been fighting to regain her citizenship, and change the Canadian Citizenship Act, for close to a year.

“I am thrilled that this has happened,” Funk told The Chief on June 7 after she found out she would no longer be stateless.

Funk was born in Mexico and moved to Canada when she was two months old.

She was shocked to discover, in April of 2016, that she had lost her Canadian citizenship due to an arcane law that required citizens born outside of Canada between Feb. 15, 1977 and April 16, 1981 to reapply for citizenship prior to their 28th birthday.

Unaware of the rule, Funk didn’t reapply. Nothing seemed amiss until she received a letter from the federal government in the spring of last year that she was no longer a citizen, and hadn’t been since 2008, when she turned 28.

In the intervening years she had lived, worked, bought a home, voted and travelled on a Canadian passport without incident.

Section eight of the 1977 Citizenship Act was overturned in 2009 but wasn’t retroactive, so an unknown number of Canadians who were 28 or older and born abroad are caught up in this gap.

Those left stateless are known as “lost Canadians.”

Link: NDP MP Jenny Kwan To Table Bill To Close Citizenship Law Gaps Creating “Lost Canadians”

“It is absurd that Canada continues to have gaps in our citizenship laws that lead to groups of ‘Lost Canadians’ suddenly finding themselves without status in Canada. What’s more, it’s 2016, why is Canada persisting with a multi-year court case on the strength of a law that the Supreme Court of Canada has already ruled to unconstitutional?”

After a series of consultations with stakeholder groups and immigration law experts, MP Kwan will be tabling a Private Member’s Bill to address gaps and outdated provisions with the Citizenship Actthat resulted in people who should be Canadian citizens losing or never receiving status in Canada. In some cases, impacted individuals find themselves stateless all of a sudden.

Media Release: NDP MP Jenny Kwan to table PMB to close citizenship law gaps creating “Lost Canadians”

Media Release: No Celebration for “Lost Canadians” on Citizenship Week

Vancouver – October 10 – 16, 2016 is Citizenship week. Yet for decades, some Canadians have found themselves rendered stateless due to a number of arcane laws. In a press conference with victims of Canada arcane laws, NDP critic for Immigration, Citizenship, and Refugees, Jenny Kwan stated, “It is absurd that as we celebrate this important occasion, a group of ‘Lost Canadians’ suddenly found themselves without status in Canada. What’s more, it’s 2016, why is Canada persisting with a multi-year court case on the strength of a law that the Supreme Court of Canada has already ruled to unconstitutional?”

Mr. Fadi Yachoua, Attorney to Mr. Kyle Lopez explained, “Kyle’s story is a reflection of the saga that continues because of a discriminatory policy base on gender. Even though the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that there should be no differential treatment between children born to Canadian fathers or mothers, the current Liberal Government is still fighting a multi-year legal battle against Mr. Lopez’s right to assert his Canadian citizenship. “The Prime Minister said he is a feminist. I hope he recognizes that had gender discrimination not existed in the Immigration Act, Kyle Lopez’s father would have been considered a Canadian at birth and he would have been able pass his citizenship on to Kyle. Kyle would not still be in court today fighting for his rights”, said Kwan.

Globe: Children born abroad to Canadians may end up as ‘Lost Canadians’

NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan, who has met with other affected families, called the policy "discriminatory" against Canadians who choose to work abroad, especially in today's global economy.

"The Prime Minister himself has said on many occasions now, 'a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.' This also applies to second-generation Canadians born abroad as well. They shouldn't be treated as second-class citizens," Ms. Kwan said.