"Neutral? How can he be neutral?"
Don Chapman, founder of the Lost Canadians, an advocacy group for people who have lost (or were never granted) Canadian citizenship, expressed disbelief when hearing that David Tilson, the chairman of Citizenship and Immigration Committee chairman said he was neutral on the issue. "The Lost Canadians problem is a human rights issue," Chapman said. "What public good is being served by Tilson's neutrality?"
Stonewalling
Tilson is a conservative, and although he’s leading the group of elected officials who debate citizenship and immigration officials, his approach to the Lost Canadians is coldly dismissive.
“I believe that issue was resolved in 2007, with Bill C-37, a private member’s bill by Liberal Member Ujjal Dossanjh," Devin Baines, his assistant, told the Vancouver Observer. When asked what is being done for the remaining five per cent of Lost Canadians left out by the bill, Baines replied simply that “(Tilson) has decided to remain neutral on this issue”.
Neutral? About granting a Canadian war veteran citizenship? Chapman is indignant. He cites cases where people have served Canada for years, only to be denied citizenship when it came time to collect on pensions. Take the case of Sandra Burke. Burke lived in Canada and enjoyed the benefits and responsibilities of a Canadian for six decades, only to be denied her pension when she was 65 on the grounds that she was not a citizen.
“It was long and dragged out, but I got my citizenship. They [the judge] did a little speech at the end of it and told everybody that I fell through the cracks and explained how it happened and everybody clapped and I felt good...I’m now from Canada. I became very proud. It was a great relief,” she said.
But people like Jackie Scott haven't been so lucky.
If Jackie Scott were born in wedlock, she would be Canadian. Unfortunately for her, her Canadian soldier father wasn’t able to marry her British mother until after the end of World War II. Never thinking this would be an issue, Scott lived half of her life in Canada as a Canadian citizen, until one day Canada took that citizenship away.
As reported by VO last year:
Scott is a self proclaimed Lost Canadian, a term used to describe Canadians who, through a series of antiquated and sexist citizenship laws, are denied the citizenship that most of us take for granted. Over the years, some of the obscurities in Canadian citizenship law have been eliminated, like having to be in Canada on your 24th birthday or be stripped of your nationality, but not all of it. The law that keeps Scott out is still on the books.
That law is the 1947 Citizenship Act. It says that children of Canadian soldiers stationed overseas are the chattel of their foreign mothers and not their veteran fathers if the children were born out of wedlock before 1947. Jackie was born out of wedlock in England in 1945. And though her father and mother eventually married in Canada after the war ended and raised Scott in Canada from the age of two, the 1947 out of wedlock provision stands. Because of that law, Scott is the only member of her family who is not a Canadian. Even her grandchildren are Canadian. If not for her American status by marriage, Scott would have no country at all.
Numerous questions about Tilson’s stance on the Lost Canadians issue moved Baines to anger. The chair was neutral and could say no more, he insisted. He flatly rejected a request for Tilson to speak in person to the Vancouver Observer about the Lost Canadians when he returned to the office.
“(Tilson) makes it a policy not to return media calls on this type of thing,” he explained.
He insisted that all questions be directed to Rick Dykstra, the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Immigration. Tilson would never go on record about the issue.
Lip service?
When presented with Tilson’s stonewalling, Dykstra said that the Conservative government took the Lost Canadian issue “very seriously”.
“I empathize,” said Dykstra. “As the son of (Dutch) immigrants, I realize how important this issue is to the Lost Canadians.”
Saying that his father stressed the importance of Canadian citizenship before passing away, Dykstra said he fully understands the issue, and wishes to help the Canadians who have “slipped through the cracks”.
“I say directly to the Lost Canadians, I understand this is not an easy time, and we will do everything to work with them so that the title of Lost Canadians is removed.”
Dykstra said that his Conservative party was the only one truly engaging in the Lost Canadians issue, and said that a new piece of legislation, Bill C-37 (An Act to Strengthen the Value of Canadian Citizenship) would restore citizenship to those unjustly stripped of their citizenship. Now that the Conservative government had a majority, Dykstra said, the Lost Canadians would be seeing the bill passed very soon.
A “garbage bill”
Chapman, however, said the new legislation was a “garbage bill” that did nothing for the majority of Lost Canadians.
The bill, he said, merely grants Canadian citizenship to a tiny group of second-generation Canadians born abroad: it did not resolve the issue for the most significant group of remaining Lost Canadians.
“It doesn’t include people who were born prior to 1947,” he said. “You know who’s starting to be denied pension? The elderly. ”
In his view, the lawmakers don’t understand that their new bill doesn’t fix the citizenship problem for elderly Canadians because they don’t adequately know their citizenship laws. He said indignantly that despite Dykstra’s expressions of goodwill, he has always refused to meet with Chapman to discuss the Lost Canadians question.
Canada denying rightful pensions to the elderly?
Tilson’s stance of neutrality bothers many supporters of the Lost Canadians.
Tilson’s stance (or lack thereof) on the Lost Canadians issue is a break from that of previous chairs of the Citizenship and Immigration Committee.
Chapman said Tilson's predecessors, Andrew Telegdi and Joe Fontana -- former chairpersons of the same Citizenship and Immigration Committee were "anything but neutral."
A search of Hansard Services shows that Chapman is spot on.
"I found it quite shocking and certainly as a member of Parliament let me start by apologizing because this (the Lost Canadians situation) clearly should not be happening," Fontana said.
Peg Bosdet, a long-time supporter for Lost Canadians in New Brunswick, said she was stunned to hear Tilson's respsonse.
"We've talked to several committees -- at least five or six, and this is the fist time ever, ever that I've heard something like this," said Bosdet. She suggested that committee members were lacking interest in Canadian citizenship, and were skirting the issue in order to avoid having to pay out old age pensions.
"All Lost Canadians are of a certain age," she said. "They're a finite number of people, they're getting a bit older, so why change it? The government is thinking if you did, you have more people who suck off the system."
Lost Canadians are victims of an "obscure, unfair law" that "no politician today would defend," Robert Addington, a retired public servant in Ontario, said in an email to the Vancouver Observer.
Thousands of Lost Canadians received citizenship in a 2009 amendment to the Citizenship Act, but hundreds of cases remain unresolved.
Going to the grave stateless
Seven members of the Canadian Citizenship and Immigration Committee did not respond to emails from the Vancouver Observer inquiring what is being done to remedy the situation for the Lost Canadians, while phone calls were met with either confusion or suggestions to look elsewhere for answers.
"Uh..." long pause..."can I get back to you on that?" an assistant said, who answered the phone for Kostas Menegakis, one of the members of the Citizenship and Immigration Committee.
Dykstra wrote in an email that the Conservative government has not forgotten about the remaining Lost Canadians, and that they would be dealt with on a "case-by-case" basis.
Chapman fears that for many Lost Canadians in their eighties and nineties today, the process may be too late. "Why did four Lost Canadians recently go to their grave disenfranchised from Canada, despite promises by the current government that they would be granted citizenship?" he asked.
"Let's assume that the Lost Canadians are not forgotten. That means just one thing -- the government is ignoring them."
NDP member Don Davies, critic for the Citizenship and Immigration Committee, said that he did not think politicians were avoiding the Lost Canadians issue for economic reasons.
"I haven't heard anybody raise an economic reason to avoid the topic," said Davies. "I think it's just a combination of bureaucratic rigity and weird historical elements and policy perspectives that you grapple with." The Citizenship Committee was still very new, and that because it's a complicated issue, "people are probably a little reluctant to talk about it," he said.