HANSARD: Debates of the House of Commons, 44th Parliament, 1st Session, October 20, 2022

 

CITIZENSHIP ACT

Mr. Jasraj Singh Hallan (Calgary Forest Lawn, CPC) moved that Bill S-245, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (granting citizenship to certain Canadians), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

He said: Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill S-245, an act to amend the Citizenship Act (granting citizenship to certain Canadians).

I want to thank the hon. senator from British Columbia, Yonah Martin, who brought forward this important bill. She introduced this originally as Bill S-230 in the last Parliament in the other place to address the lost Canadians whose citizenship was revoked without their knowledge and without warning simply because of the wording in the Citizenship Act.

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HANSARD: Addressing the issue of Lost Canadians, Jenny Kwan, NDP Vancouver East

 

 

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.

Click here to read more on Jenny Kwan's, NDP website

CBC: The ‘Lost Canadians’ who fell through cracks of citizenship loophole

 

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

If passed, Bill S-245 will fix one issue in the Citizenship Act, but others are still in limbo

by Karen Pauls

When Pete Giesbrecht was summoned to his local police station on Halloween 2015, he had no idea he was 30 days away from being deported.

His crime? He had not reaffirmed his Canadian citizenship before the age of 28 under a complicated, confusing and not well publicized section of the Citizenship Act.

"They said, 'No, actually, you have 30 days to leave the country. And if you do not leave willingly, we will fly you out with bracelets and all,' " Giesbrecht recalled recently from his home in southern Manitoba.

He's one of thousands of so-called "Lost Canadians" — people who, because of where and when they were born, are caught up in confusing sections of the Citizenship Act. It can result in a loss of citizenship that forces them to leave Canada for countries they've never really known. Others become stateless.

Click here to read original article on CBC.ca

The Senate: Bill S-245: To Have Inadvertently Lost Citizenship Because of Bureaucratic Missteps is Unimaginable

 

The Senate: Speech on Bill S-230: It's Time to Restore Citizenship to Lost Canadians | Senator Omidvar

 

Canadian Studies Centre: The Lost Canadians, with author Don Chapman

 

 

CBC: Why this Canadian can't officially prove his citizenship

 

Ottawa Citizen: Heather Harnois Has Been A Lost Canadian For Years

 

Canadian Enyclopedia: The Lost Canadians

 

The term “Lost Canadians” refers to people who either lost the Canadian citizenship they had at birth, or didn’t qualify for citizenship that would normally have been theirs by right in Canada. This was the result of various haphazard and discriminatory laws and attitudes surrounding Canadian citizenship since Confederation. Much progress has been made reforming the law in the 21st century, however, some Lost Canadians still remained without citizenship as of 2017.

Click here to read the original article on The Canadian Encylopedia.