Speech on Bill S-230: It’s Time to Restore Citizenship to Lost Canadians

On June 1, 2021 Senator Omidvar spoke to Bill S-230, an Act to amend the Citizenship Act (granting citizenship to certain Canadians). Watch her speech:

Hon. Ratna Omidvar: Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to Bill S-230, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (granting citizenship to certain Canadians), introduced by our colleague Senator Martin.

Before I comment on this bill, I would like to mark June 1 as a transformational day in the Senate. We have passed Bill S-4. We have held on to tradition where we have needed to, but we have also gone with confidence into the future. I want to thank our colleague, Senator Marc Gold, for his dedication to bringing this to our chamber.

I am the official critic for Bill S-230. I always think of a critic as someone who has something to object to. In truth, there is very little to object to in this bill, so I stand very much as a supporter of this long overdue piece of legislation.

When I became a senator in 2016, I started to get emails from Canadians who knew of my interest in citizenship. I heard the term Lost Canadians for the first time. I have to be honest, I was, frankly, lost when I heard that terminology because those of us who have found Canada know what a privilege it is to be Canadian. To have inadvertently lost your citizenship — because of what I can best describe as bureaucratic missteps and fumbling and lost opportunities — is unimaginable to me.

In June 2016, I rose in the chamber as the sponsor of the citizenship bill, Bill C-6, and I drew a picture of Canada and its citizenship as a house with a strong roof, a strong door, a lot of windows to let the sunshine in, but also to keep danger out. I believe that metaphor still stands today, but the foundations of this house are grounded in a few principles.

First and most important is equality amongst citizens. Equality sees all Canadians — by birth or naturalization, mono-citizens or dual citizens, whether citizens of 50 years, 10 years or 1 month — treated equally under the law. Equal rights, equal responsibility and, when necessary, equal punishment. These are not aspirational goals. This is the floor; the absolute foundation of how equality is expressed in Canada.

Second is the principle of facilitating citizenship, making it accessible for those who qualify. I think of this again as the main family room of the house: a big fire blazing to keep out the wretched cold and a big, welcoming door. However, for a few Canadians, the fire has lost its warmth, and they were inadvertently expelled, banished, so to say, from this house.

Many have lived in Canada for years, as Senator Martin has pointed out, without even realizing they may not have Canadian citizenship any longer. Although legislative fixes have tried to bring citizenship back in different ways, it has never captured everyone. This is a true example of the unintended, negative impact of legislation that we deal with in so many different ways.

When I rose to speak on Bill C-6, which was an omnibus citizenship act, former senator Willie Moore, who was with us, asked me whether or not Lost Canadians would be brought back into the fold. Sadly, I had to say to him, no, that was out of the scope of the bill.

After Bill C-6 was passed, former Senator Eggleton took it on and was almost ready to table the bill when his resignation date approached. Again, the bill was left orphaned, in a way. Since that time, Don Chapman and others have been talking to Senator Martin, Senator Jaffer and all of us to try to bring this back to our attention. I am incredibly grateful to Senator Martin for taking this bull by the horns and bringing our attention to it.

As we know, and as Senator Martin has explained, our immigration system is incredibly complex. Immigration law is complex. Within immigration law, there is citizenship law that is incredibly complex. It sometimes catches people in a net from which it is hard to escape.

As Senator Martin has explained, it’s a narrow bill. In 1977, the government introduced a new Citizenship Act. Under that act, children born abroad on or after February 14, 1977, received their Canadian citizenship if one of their parents was a Canadian citizen, regardless of their marital status.

However, if that Canadian parent was born outside Canada and, therefore, the child was what we would call second generation, the child had to apply for citizenship by the age of 28. If they did not put an application by age 28, their citizenship was taken away from them, often without them ever realizing it.

Later, in April 2009 — many years later, still trying to catch up on the problem — Bill C-37 changed the Citizenship Act again and repealed the age 28 rule. However, the bill didn’t completely deal with Canadians who were born abroad between that narrow window of 1977 and 1981, and who turned 28 before Bill C-37 became the law. Some of these individuals were well informed enough and applied for their citizenship. Others simply fell in between the cracks.

Senator Dalphond asked the question, how many are these? I’m also curious. My information is that there are definitely not thousands. There may even be just a few hundred. But I hope we all recognize, even for just a few hundred, how important it is to be able to be franchised as Canadians.

Many who were born overseas but raised in Canada had an entrenched life in Canada. They went to school here; they have jobs and families here. Their roots are firmly here. They have paid income taxes. But they were unaware of the issue — just as I’m often unaware of when my driver’s licence expires, and then I have to really struggle to regain it — which certainly happens to people. We are talking, as I said, about a few hundred people, at most.

The government relies, as Senator Martin has stated, on ministerial appointments. Every time I’ve spoken to every successive immigration minister, they have said, “It’s not a problem. I can deal with it. Send me the file.” But, colleagues, that is not a systemic way of dealing with an injustice of this kind. We need a law. Even though Byrdie Funk — someone whom I admire a great deal — and Anneliese Demos — the same — even though they had the agency, the voice, the capacity to advocate for themselves, I worry about those who do not, who cannot get the minister’s attention or that of his department. I think it is time for us to fix this in a systemic manner.

There are severe consequences for having to wait to get formal recognition back. While waiting to get your citizenship, you can’t have a social insurance number. You may not be able to get a job. You may not be able to travel. Likely you’re not able to travel because you don’t have a passport. You have limited access to health care. All this at the same time when there is always the threat of deportation hanging over you.

In the case of Byrdie Funk, it is not clear whether all her years of contribution to the Canada Pension Plan will be honoured when she gets her pension.

Bill S-230 will allow citizens who were born abroad and have built a life here to prove that they are Canadian and that they have the right to pass citizenship onto their children. It will not lead to a perpetual passage of Canadian citizenship to generations who may never live in Canada. This does nothing for third-generation Canadians.

Honourable senators, I urge you, in short, to support this bill and send it to committee for further study. Lost Canadians have already waited too long. Let’s bring them back into the Canadian fold sooner than rather later. Thank you.