Beginning July 1, 2010, click here to read 10 part series on Lost Canadians in the Vancouver Observer
Lost Canadians are Canadian citizens who were stripped of their citizenship by arcane provisions of the 1947 Canadian Citizenship Act. In this CBC interview which aired on October 22, 2009, Terry Milewski of The National interviews a group of Lost Canadians on Parliament Hill about the outstanding cases which the Minister of Citizenship, Jason Kenney, refuses to deal with, leaving one six month old baby girl stateless in China.Lost Canadians include:
Canadian born citizens whose fathers and mothers took out citizenship in another country, especially the United States;
War Brides of World War Two and their children who were born in wedlock and brought to Canada on the War Bride ships before and after January 1, 1947;
War Bride children who were born out of wedlock during the Second World War and who came to Canada with their mothers on the War Bride ships before and after January 1, 1947;
Border Babies who were born in hospitals across the border in the United States because there wasn't a hospital nearby in Canada;
Military Brats who were born in Europe while their fathers were serving in the Army of Occupation and NATO in post war Europe; and
Mennonites whose religious marriages in Mexico and Paraguay are not recognized by the Canadian government.
There are hundreds of thousands of Lost Canadians in Canada, in the United States and around the world, citizens whose right to citizenship was taken away from them without their knowledge.
On April 19, 2009, the Canadian Citizenship Act was amended by Bill C-37, An Act to Amend the Citizenship Act. Also known as the "Lost Canadian Bill", Bill C-37 solved most of the problems facing Lost Canadians. However, there are still hundreds of Lost Canadians, including War Bride children, children born out of wedlock during the Second World War, and Mennonites who have been refused citizenship by the Canadian government as recently as Christmas Eve 2009.
