Photo of Canadian flags in Ottawa via Paguma on Flickr
Jackie Scott and Linda Missal De Cock have collectively lived in Canada for over a century. Scott, the daughter of a war bride and Canadian soldier, arrived in Canada from England in 1948, and resided here for over half her life. De Cock, meanwhile, has lived in Canada for 69 out of 70 years. The women, living on opposite ends of the country, went to school, married, and carved a life out for themselves in Canada.
But bizarrely -- even as Canada accepts 250,000 new immigrant Canadians a year -- government has denied such individuals citizenship.
They are among the"Lost Canadians," a group of Canadians who have been denied or stripped of citizenship by federal government due to legal technicalities. While the majority of these cases have been resolved through the 2009 Bill C-37, An Act to Amend the Citizenship Act,some people are waiting years to receive the same citizenship papers that others -- such as Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar -- was granted within weeks.
Lost Canadians: from citizens into refugees
"Canada's doing everything completely backwards," Lost Canadians advocate Don Chapman commented on the issue.
"The objective is to turn immigrants and refugees into Canadian citizens -- not the other way around."
Chapman, who was born in Canada to Canadian parents, has experienced the same situation that he sees others go through today. An airline pilot, Chapman is as Canadian as people come: his great-grandfather was one of the Fathers of Confederation, and the Chapman Learning Commons at the UBC Library is named after Chapman's father, Dr. Lloyd Chapman.
Yet he was among some over 200,000 Canadians who were denied citizenship due to outdated laws -- some still being enforced by the government -- which treats women and children as property of their husband or father.
After years of advocating, Chapman proved that there were tens of thousands of cases like his own and helped push through Bill C-37. But it was an incomplete solution, he said, which inexplicably excluded people born prior to 1947, while creating a whole new category of stateless Lost Canadians born abroad.
Chapman often receives distressed calls and emails from people from Canada and around the world who believed themselves Canadian citizens and recently discovered that they may not be. In some cases, children born abroad since 2009 to a Canadian parent are stateless, causing significant troubles for their families. Without citizenship, passports and travel documents, as well as health insurance and pensions, become difficult or downright impossible to obtain.
CBC report on Lost Canadians who remained stateless after Bill C-37
A "flaw" in the Canadian citizenship system?
In Chapman's view, there is a "fundamental flaw" in the system to deal with citizenship issues in Canada, and it's causing headaches for long-term Canadians who have long contributed to the country.
"I've had military people on this (Lost Canadians) boat," Chapman said. "I've had people say, 'If I'd known that Canada would do this to me, I would have never volunteered to be in the military.' And why would you?"
One particularly sad case, he noted, was Guy Valllière, a Quebec-born and raised former soldier who went to serve in the Second World War.
In 2006, authorities told him that he no longer had citizenship, and was therefore ineligible for health care coverage.
"I had every possible piece of ID imaginable, such as a SIN card, a Canadian birth certificate, the names of my brothers and sisters and my father's papers—in short everything that the Régie de l'assurance-maladie (health insurance authority) was requesting," he pleaded with the government in 2007.
"Yet, I was denied coverage and asked to provide proof of my citizenship. I am at a loss to understand... I feel like a nobody, worse than an immigrant or even a terrorist."
Valllière died in 2009, without Canadian citizenship.
Bill Doobenen, a Canadian-born former Air Force member and engineer, encountered similar treatment as authorities tried to deport both he and his wife in 2008. He still remembers how he -- a legitimate Canadian -- was forced to apply for refugee status to Canada, then nearly deported.
Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney tells war veteran daughter Jackie Scott that her father wasn't a citizen in 1945, explaining why she is denied citizenship to this day.
"They're discrediting my father," Scott said on the rejection of her Canadian citizenship application. This time, she said, even her war veteran father's Canadian status is being...
"The Liberal Party will change this -- I'll attempt to get Minister Jason Kenney to talk about the (Lost Canadians) problem," said Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux, hearing about the struggle of the "Lost...
Here are just a handful of Canadian celebrities or famous people either confirmed or highly suspect of being Lost Canadians that citizenship activist Don Chapman said he knows of....
If no Canadians existed before 1947, what is one to make of the deportation of Japanese Canadian "citizens" during the war, or of government PR around "Canadian soldiers"?
As the world celebrates progress on International Women's Day, Lost Canadians born out of wedlock face gender discrimination due to outdated citizenship laws.
The current Citizenship Act still contains a definition of "parent" that excludes the father when the child is born out of wedlock, unless the child has been legitimated by law.
Bizarre as it may seem, a regulation under the current Act serves to amend the definition of "parent" in the Act by redefining "parent" to mean biological parent but only for persons born after the Act came into force in 1977.
In 2009 Bill C-37 aimed to eliminate marital status of the parents as a condition for citizenship for persons born before 1977. Except ministers have claimed that the amendment does not fix the problem for people born before 1947.
Denial of citizenship to persons born before 1947 is now based on the claim that Canadian citizenship was not defined in law until the first Citizenship Act came into force on January 1, 1947.
A lot has been said about Canadian citizenship in and out of Parliament and the courts. What has gone unnoticed is that Canadian law has never defined "citizenship", for the simple reason that our statute law does not deal in political and philosophical concepts such as the concept of "citizenship".
What Canadian citizenship statutes have defined are the qualifications of persons who are "citizens" without regard to what "citizenship" actually means.
For a minister or a judge to say that the concept of Canadian citizenship was not defined in law before 1947 is as true today as it has always been in the past. "Citizenship" is not the issue that is now before the Federal Court. What is at issue is the definition of "citizen". This is a legal question, not a political and philosophical question.
You recall that the Privy Council did not concern itself with the philosophical or biological meaning of the the word "person" when deciding whether a female could be considered a "person" in law.
So too the court will be asked not to decide the meaning of "citizenship", but only if the word "citizen" as used in section 3(1)(g) of the current Act can include the term "citizen" used in both 1910 Immigration Act and the 1947 Citizenship Act.
This question has been raised by the new section 3(1)(g) that came into force in 2009 as part of Bill C-37. This section makes a person a citizen if either the mother or father was a citizen at the time of birth before 1977 when the current Act came into force.
Children of World War Two veterans ask the question: Was my father a citizen when he served overseas in WWII? If so, and I was born in Europe out of wedlock, then I am a Canadian citizen under section 3(1)(g.)
Minister Kenney says "No, you are not a citizen." Advice from his staff is based on the following arguments. If you were born out of wedlock in Seoul during the Korean War, you are now automatically a citizen because our soldiers were citizens under the 1947 Act. However, Parliament intended to exclude people born abroad to Canadian soldiers out of wedlock before 1947, because Canadian citizenship did not exist before 1947. The word "citizen" as it appears in the new 2009 section of the Act DOES apply to soldiers born in Canada before 1947 but only if they survived until January 1, 1947. They BECAME citizens in 1947 as if they were born in Canada on that date.
The questions that are being asked in Federal Court (among others) are these: Does the term "citizen" apply only after 1947? If a person was born or naturalized in Canada before 1947 were they already citizens from the date of birth or naturalization or did they become citizens in 1947?
WWII soldiers were already defined as citizens under the 1910 Immigration Act. Did such persons stop being "citizens" at the stroke of midnight on December 31 1946 and begin as new citizens under the 1947 Citizenship Act? Or was their status as "citizens" seamless before and after midnight? Did the new Act continue their status as "citizens" or create a new status from nothing?
The 1985 Interpretation Act applies to all statutes past and present. According to the Interpretation Act, the key question is whether or not the definition of "citizen" in 1947 is in substance the same as the definition in the repealed section of the 1910 Immigration Act. For almost all people known as "Canadians", the definition of "citizen" was the same in 1947 as it was in 1946. The definition of "citizen" was not new law but consolidation and codification of prior law.
Paul Martin claimed exactly that when he introduced the first citizenship Bill to the House of Commons, except he used the word "clarification" instead of "codification", possibly because the term "codification" has a different legal meaning in Quebec and in the other provinces.
Controversy concerning Paul Martin's Bill was fully documented by journalists and editors from coast to coast and Paul Martin himself described the controversy in essays and his autobiography. Thus, what Minister Kenney is claiming is wholly unhistorical. The Canadian public accepted the Bill that became the 1947 Citizenship Act only because they were assured it would NOT create new law but merely consolidate and clarify existing law.
For persons born, naturalized or domiciled in Canada on December 31 1946 there was no change in status at midnight. A Canadian soldier who served overseas in WWII was defined as a "citizen" under the 1910 Immigration Act as amended in 1927. He continued all his life to be defined as a "citizen" in substantially the same words, but under a different chapter of the Statutes of Canada.
Minister Kenney has been misled concerning the effect of statutory repeal. Until about 1850, repeal of a statute meant obliteration of the old statute. Since then, and as provided in the current Interpretation Act, repeal and reenactment of substantially the same provision in another chapter of the statute book does not create new law or change status.
Does anyone imagine for an instant that the enactment of a federal statute, such as a "Canadian Marriage Act", would annul all marriages under prior federal and provincial law? Would all marriages cease and then start anew at midnight? This is absurd.
So too it is absurd to say that someone, who in 1946 was defined as a "citizen" under one statute, ceased to be a citizen and then began to be a "citizen" again at midnight under another statute.
If the word "person" can describe a female or a male (as the Privy Council decided) then why cannot "citizen" in the current Act not include "citizen" as the word was defined in two statutes of Canada before and after 1947?
Canadian law does not define "citizenship" but defines "citizen". The Federal Court will be asked to declare that the word "citizen" as defined in the 1947 Act was a consolidation and codification of prior law, not new law.
The meaning of the term "citizenship" will be left to the political scientists and philosophers where it belongs.
Minister Kenney is charged with applying the Citizenship Act. Since the Regulations under the current Act define the word "parent" in a novel and liberal way, why then does not the Minister just use the regulations to define "citizen" in a liberal way to include persons who were defined as "citizen under any prior legislation"?
Sorry, I forgot the disclaimer. I do not represent any of the parties to any litigation before the Federal Court and am merely expressing my personal opinions.
Bill C-37 was a large step forward in recognizing a large portion of "Lost Canadians." However, as this article correctly indicates the current citizenship laws have created gaps in it's application creating new "Lost Canadians" and clearly practicing age discrimination by excluding many natural born Canadians merely because they had the misfortune to have born before 1947 such as Jackie Scott.
The Harper Government appears to be putting it's own self interests ahead of fairness, human rights, and several forms of discrimination to avoid amitting they've been on the wrong side of this issue all along. Their selfish interest include trying to twist the laws to avoid future pension pay outs that rightfully are due these natural born Canadians.
The Minister has stated that there were no Canadian citizens before 1947. Like most political statements, that is a half-truth.
It is indeed true that Canadian citizenship as we now know it dates from Jan. 1, 1947, but it was not created ex nihilo on that date. As Fred Colbourne points out, the term 'Canadian citizen' entered Canadian law in 1910 as part of the Immigration Act. It originally meant a British subject who was born, naturalized or domiciled in Canada (this included immigrant British subjects who settled in Canada before 1947).
By the 1940s, with Canada at war, the term had acquired something like its present meaning both in common parlance and in official usage, though not yet in law. A book issued to Canadian soldiers informed them that they would be fighting as 'Canadian citizens'. So if Jackie Scott's father was told in 1943 that he was a Canadian citizen, why is Jackie now being told she is not?
Why do people who are de facto Canadian citizens have to sue the government to carry out the spirit of the law? It seems like a waste of tax payer money to fight legal battles that are already found to be in violation of the Charter. This has no good outcome if the government keeps trying to defend unjust laws that could not be passed nowadays after the Charter.
It's better to just fix the problem than suffer from the pains caused by this law and then have to deal with the citizenship law someday. Every day the government waits to fix this; it becomes clearer that they are waiting for attrition to take care of this problem, but the 2nd generation is now being affected, and the echo is just as big as the original problem. The buck cannot be passed any longer.
Jenny Uechi is the Managing Editor of The Vancouver Observer. She is a writer and editor with an interest in mixed cultures, art and social issues. She recently worked as a news director at NHK World...Read Jenny Uechi's bio »
Hi Jenny
The current Citizenship Act still contains a definition of "parent" that excludes the father when the child is born out of wedlock, unless the child has been legitimated by law.
Bizarre as it may seem, a regulation under the current Act serves to amend the definition of "parent" in the Act by redefining "parent" to mean biological parent but only for persons born after the Act came into force in 1977.
In 2009 Bill C-37 aimed to eliminate marital status of the parents as a condition for citizenship for persons born before 1977. Except ministers have claimed that the amendment does not fix the problem for people born before 1947.
Denial of citizenship to persons born before 1947 is now based on the claim that Canadian citizenship was not defined in law until the first Citizenship Act came into force on January 1, 1947.
A lot has been said about Canadian citizenship in and out of Parliament and the courts. What has gone unnoticed is that Canadian law has never defined "citizenship", for the simple reason that our statute law does not deal in political and philosophical concepts such as the concept of "citizenship".
What Canadian citizenship statutes have defined are the qualifications of persons who are "citizens" without regard to what "citizenship" actually means.
For a minister or a judge to say that the concept of Canadian citizenship was not defined in law before 1947 is as true today as it has always been in the past. "Citizenship" is not the issue that is now before the Federal Court. What is at issue is the definition of "citizen". This is a legal question, not a political and philosophical question.
You recall that the Privy Council did not concern itself with the philosophical or biological meaning of the the word "person" when deciding whether a female could be considered a "person" in law.
So too the court will be asked not to decide the meaning of "citizenship", but only if the word "citizen" as used in section 3(1)(g) of the current Act can include the term "citizen" used in both 1910 Immigration Act and the 1947 Citizenship Act.
This question has been raised by the new section 3(1)(g) that came into force in 2009 as part of Bill C-37. This section makes a person a citizen if either the mother or father was a citizen at the time of birth before 1977 when the current Act came into force.
Children of World War Two veterans ask the question: Was my father a citizen when he served overseas in WWII? If so, and I was born in Europe out of wedlock, then I am a Canadian citizen under section 3(1)(g.)
Minister Kenney says "No, you are not a citizen." Advice from his staff is based on the following arguments. If you were born out of wedlock in Seoul during the Korean War, you are now automatically a citizen because our soldiers were citizens under the 1947 Act. However, Parliament intended to exclude people born abroad to Canadian soldiers out of wedlock before 1947, because Canadian citizenship did not exist before 1947. The word "citizen" as it appears in the new 2009 section of the Act DOES apply to soldiers born in Canada before 1947 but only if they survived until January 1, 1947. They BECAME citizens in 1947 as if they were born in Canada on that date.
The questions that are being asked in Federal Court (among others) are these: Does the term "citizen" apply only after 1947? If a person was born or naturalized in Canada before 1947 were they already citizens from the date of birth or naturalization or did they become citizens in 1947?
WWII soldiers were already defined as citizens under the 1910 Immigration Act. Did such persons stop being "citizens" at the stroke of midnight on December 31 1946 and begin as new citizens under the 1947 Citizenship Act? Or was their status as "citizens" seamless before and after midnight? Did the new Act continue their status as "citizens" or create a new status from nothing?
The 1985 Interpretation Act applies to all statutes past and present. According to the Interpretation Act, the key question is whether or not the definition of "citizen" in 1947 is in substance the same as the definition in the repealed section of the 1910 Immigration Act. For almost all people known as "Canadians", the definition of "citizen" was the same in 1947 as it was in 1946. The definition of "citizen" was not new law but consolidation and codification of prior law.
Paul Martin claimed exactly that when he introduced the first citizenship Bill to the House of Commons, except he used the word "clarification" instead of "codification", possibly because the term "codification" has a different legal meaning in Quebec and in the other provinces.
Controversy concerning Paul Martin's Bill was fully documented by journalists and editors from coast to coast and Paul Martin himself described the controversy in essays and his autobiography. Thus, what Minister Kenney is claiming is wholly unhistorical. The Canadian public accepted the Bill that became the 1947 Citizenship Act only because they were assured it would NOT create new law but merely consolidate and clarify existing law.
For persons born, naturalized or domiciled in Canada on December 31 1946 there was no change in status at midnight. A Canadian soldier who served overseas in WWII was defined as a "citizen" under the 1910 Immigration Act as amended in 1927. He continued all his life to be defined as a "citizen" in substantially the same words, but under a different chapter of the Statutes of Canada.
Minister Kenney has been misled concerning the effect of statutory repeal. Until about 1850, repeal of a statute meant obliteration of the old statute. Since then, and as provided in the current Interpretation Act, repeal and reenactment of substantially the same provision in another chapter of the statute book does not create new law or change status.
Does anyone imagine for an instant that the enactment of a federal statute, such as a "Canadian Marriage Act", would annul all marriages under prior federal and provincial law? Would all marriages cease and then start anew at midnight? This is absurd.
So too it is absurd to say that someone, who in 1946 was defined as a "citizen" under one statute, ceased to be a citizen and then began to be a "citizen" again at midnight under another statute.
If the word "person" can describe a female or a male (as the Privy Council decided) then why cannot "citizen" in the current Act not include "citizen" as the word was defined in two statutes of Canada before and after 1947?
Canadian law does not define "citizenship" but defines "citizen". The Federal Court will be asked to declare that the word "citizen" as defined in the 1947 Act was a consolidation and codification of prior law, not new law.
The meaning of the term "citizenship" will be left to the political scientists and philosophers where it belongs.
Minister Kenney is charged with applying the Citizenship Act. Since the Regulations under the current Act define the word "parent" in a novel and liberal way, why then does not the Minister just use the regulations to define "citizen" in a liberal way to include persons who were defined as "citizen under any prior legislation"?
Sorry, I forgot the disclaimer. I do not represent any of the parties to any litigation before the Federal Court and am merely expressing my personal opinions.
The Minister has stated that there were no Canadian citizens before 1947. Like most political statements, that is a half-truth.
It is indeed true that Canadian citizenship as we now know it dates from Jan. 1, 1947, but it was not created ex nihilo on that date. As Fred Colbourne points out, the term 'Canadian citizen' entered Canadian law in 1910 as part of the Immigration Act. It originally meant a British subject who was born, naturalized or domiciled in Canada (this included immigrant British subjects who settled in Canada before 1947).
By the 1940s, with Canada at war, the term had acquired something like its present meaning both in common parlance and in official usage, though not yet in law. A book issued to Canadian soldiers informed them that they would be fighting as 'Canadian citizens'. So if Jackie Scott's father was told in 1943 that he was a Canadian citizen, why is Jackie now being told she is not?
Why do people who are de facto Canadian citizens have to sue the government to carry out the spirit of the law? It seems like a waste of tax payer money to fight legal battles that are already found to be in violation of the Charter. This has no good outcome if the government keeps trying to defend unjust laws that could not be passed nowadays after the Charter.
It's better to just fix the problem than suffer from the pains caused by this law and then have to deal with the citizenship law someday. Every day the government waits to fix this; it becomes clearer that they are waiting for attrition to take care of this problem, but the 2nd generation is now being affected, and the echo is just as big as the original problem. The buck cannot be passed any longer.