What follows are a list of some of the articles which have appeared in the press, television and radio about the Lost Canadians. This is by no means an exhaustive list. If you know of an article that appeared in the newspaper, in a magazine or on the radio or television, please let us know by sending me an email at dcinbc@yahoo.ca
Vancouver Observer: February 13, 2014 -Decades-long wait for citizenship coming to end for some Lost Canadians - "I cried when I was reading the (new citizenship) bill. I want to jump for joy, but I'm afraid to allow myself that until I can hold my citizenship card in my hand," said Jackie Scott, the daughter of a Canadian war veteran who has been waiting for nearly seven decades to receive the citizenship she was supposed to have all along. Click here to read more...
CBC Metro Morning: February 10, 2014 -Interview with Lost Canadian Marion Vermeersch - Lost Canadian Marion Vermeersch speaks about about proposed changes to the Citizenship Act that will have a direct impact on her decade long struggle to have her citizenship recognized by the Canadian government. Click here to read more....
The Tyee: February 7, 2014 -'Lost Canadians' Advocate Isn't Celebrating Yet - Changes to Citizenship Act leave Don Chapman 'guardedly optimistic', but court battle continues. - They're known as the Lost Canadians: people who have spent much of their lives in Canada, but have lost their citizenship thanks to a series of bizarre provisions in the country's antiquated citizenship laws. Each case has its own unique parameters: some are Mennonites. Others celebrated their 24th birthday in a foreign country sometime between 1947 and 1977. Many are the children of Canadian servicemen and "war brides" born out of wedlock before 1947, when the Canadian Citizenship Act first came into effect (children born within the bonds of marriage automatically took their father's nationality). Click here to read more...
Daily Gleaner: February 5, 2014 - 'Injustice' to war brides may finally be addressed - A Fredericton author who has written extensively on Canada's war brides is praising a commitment by the federal government to correct what many believe to be a "historical injustice." Melynda Jarratt, author of War Brides: The stories of the women who left everything behind to follow the men they loved, said recent comments by Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander that changes to the Citizenship Act are forthcoming has left her thrilled. "I am over the moon," Jarratt said. "It remains to be seen, but I think they're going to do it." Click here to read more...
February 5, 2014:Rick Howe Show 88.9 FM - Listen to Rick Howe interview Don Chapman on 88.9 FM News Radio discuss proposed changes to the Citizenship Act which could finally solve the problem of War Bride children and children born out of wedlock prior to 1947. Click here to read more...
January 31, 2014:Rick Howe Show 88.9 FM - Listen to Rick Howe interview Don Chapman on 88.9 FM News Radio about the announcement by the Citizenship Minister that the lost Canadian issue will finally be resolved with the introduction of new legislation. Click here to read more...
January 29, 2014:The Royal Canadian Legion Dominion President, Gordon Moore, is encouraged by Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander's statement that changes to the Citizenship Act are forthcoming. In particular, complicated circumstances that have barred War Brides and children of War Brides from obtaining Canadian citizenship will be fixed under new legislation. Click here to read more...
January 27, 2014: Ottawa Citizen - Canadian Citizenship Should Mean More - If there is a recurring theme in the statutory media reviews of the Conservatives on and around the eighth anniversary of their election, it is their fondness for incremental change. ...The exception is citizenship and immigration, which was long the prerogative of Jason Kenney, the most effective minister in this government. His successor, Chris Alexander, is promising “the first comprehensive reform of the Citizenship Act in a generation.” This is something to watch....let it address the injustice of the “lost Canadians” who have been denied citizenship through loopholes in the law. Click here to read more...
January 24, 2014: CBC - Canadian citizenship rules face broad reform in 2014 - The federal government will introduce several changes to Canada's citizenship rules after members of Parliament return to Ottawa next Monday following a six-week hiatus, says Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander. Alexander said the reform will aim to give Canadian citizenship to "Lost Canadians" who had seen it denied from them for one reason or another over the years. "We want to make sure that those loopholes that have done great injustice to a few people for all of those decades are closed, and that Canadian citizenship embraces all of those it should have embraced from the beginning." "Some are children of war brides, some have other complicated circumstances which should never have barred them from citizenship, and we have to fix the legislation," the minister said. Click here to read more...
January 10, 2014: Vancouver Observer - Amid deportation fears, Indigenous Lost Canadian struggles to gain citizenship - In the cold northern town of Dawson City, Yukon, 59-year-old Donovan McGlaughlin speaks with a heavy voice as he describes what it's like to wake up each morning, wondering if the government will deport him. McLaughlin lacks identity papers, and can't prove he is a Canadian citizen. Click here to read more....
November 10, 2013: Vancouver Observer - No More Silence on Remembrance Day - Thousands of legitimate Canadians, including war veterans and their children, have been denied Canadian citizenship due to arcane provisions of the Citizenship Act, some of them blatantly discriminatory. Known as the "Lost Canadians", these people are still waiting for justice from a federal government that has promised change for years while refusing to act. Two minutes of silence on Remembrance Day? Not me. Why? Because I think the best way to honour our war dead is to speak out on their behalf. And they need a voice in the worst way. Click here for more...
August 6, 2013: McLeans Magazine - ‘Lost Canadian’ court action looks to overhaul citizenship laws - Canadian citizenship laws may need to be overhauled if a so-called “lost Canadian” wins her legal battle. Jackie Scott, 68, was refused citizenship even though she came to Canada with her British mother and Canadian father at the age of two. A judicial review of that refusal was scheduled for July, but Scott put it on hold so she and her lawyers could broaden the court action. Click here to read more...
August 6, 2013: CTV News - 'Lost Canadian' court challenge looks to overhaul citizenship laws - Canadian citizenship laws may need to be overhauled if a so-called "lost Canadian" wins her legal battle. Jackie Scott, 68, was refused citizenship even though she came to Canada with her British mother and Canadian father at the age of two. A judicial review of that refusal was scheduled for July, but Scott put it on hold so she and her lawyers could broaden the court action. Click here to read more...
August 6, 2013: Vancouver Sun - 'Lost Canadian' court action looks to overhaul citizenship laws - Canadian citizenship laws may need to be overhauled if a so-called "lost Canadian" wins her legal battle. Jackie Scott, 68, was refused citizenship even though she came to Canada with her British mother and Canadian father at the age of two. A judicial review of that refusal was scheduled for July, but Scott put it on hold so she and her lawyers could broaden the court action. Click here to read more...
August 6, 2013: Halifax Chronicle Herald - ‘Lost Canadian’ widens action in citizenship case - Documents filed Friday in Federal Court in Vancouver show Scott is petitioning for “declarations” from the court that could have serious ramifications for Canadian citizenship, including whether Parliament has total control over who is considered Canadian. Scott said even though she would have loved to settle her own citizenship dispute back in July, her fight has become about much more than herself. Click here to read more....
August 6, 2013: Vancouver Sun - ‘Lost Canadian’ Jackie Scott kicks off citizenship battle in B.C. court - Scott was born in England in 1945 to a Canadian serviceman and a British woman and later migrated to Canada. The government claims Scott’s father was legally a British subject rather than a Canadian at the time because Canada’s first citizenship act did not come into effect until 1947 and because her father and mother were not then maried, Scott cannot automatically be considered a Canadian. Click here to read more....
July 25, 2013: Vancouver Sun - Indian status and citizenship both out of reach for desperate Ontario mom - Despite a Canadian Ojibwa bloodline spanning so many years ago that her grandmother can’t put a date on it, Heather Harnois is considered neither aboriginal, nor Canadian. It means that while she grew up in this country since her teens, the now 25-year-old mother of two can’t get a social insurance number, health-care coverage or child tax benefits even though one of her children was born in Canada. Click here for more...
July 24, 2013: Ottawa Citizen Editorial: Lost Canadians - Jackie Scott should not need to go to court to get the Canadian citizenship that is hers by right, and which she eminently deserves. Scott, who is 68, is one of the thousands of so-called Lost Canadians who have been denied citizenship because of a quirk in the law that should not be countenanced in today’s Canada. Click here for more....
July 22, 2013: Globe and Mail ‘Lost Canadian’ hopes to overhaul Canadian citizenship laws through class-action lawsuit - A woman who has waited years to establish her Canadian citizenship in court is considering expanding her case into a class-action lawsuit to include thousands of other so-called “lost Canadians.” Jackie Scott, 68, was refused citizenship even though she came to Canada with her British mother and Canadian father at the age of two and spent most of her life here. A judicial review of that denial was to have started on Monday, but as the proceedings got under way, Ms. Scott put it on hold so she and her lawyers could broaden the court action. Click here for more...
June 6, 2013: Ottawa Citizen - NDP tries to fix "Lost Canadians" quagmire They are men and women who have been denied citizenship because their fathers were technically British subjects when they got their would-be war brides pregnant while serving during the Second World War. Click here for more....
June 6, 2013: Canada.com - NDP makes pitch to fix "Lost Canadian" citizenship The NDP will table a motion before a Commons committee on Thursday - the
anniversary of D-Day, the Allied invasion of Nazi-Germany occupied
France - to recognize that the situation of the remaining Lost Canadians
"has gone unaddressed for too long." Click here for more...
September 22, 2012: The National Post Thousands of ‘Lost Canadians’ struggling to achieve citizenship stuck in legal quagmire - It was a remarkable exchange, caught on tape. Jason Kenney, Canada’s Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, was confronted in June by a 67-year-old woman to whom his department had denied citizenship, thanks to circumstances surrounding her birth. Circumstances that were not extraordinary.
Jackie Scott was born out of wedlock in England, to a Canadian soldier and his British lover, just before the Second World War had ended. She is a war bride child. Canada has thousands of them. Click here for more...
September 1, 2012: Vancouver Observer Kafkaesque bureaucracy denies citizenship to legitimate Canadians - 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 57 years. 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. Click here for more...
July 8, 2012, Toronto Sun: Second World War not over for would-be Canadian - It’s pretty hard to believe that Citizenship Minister Jason Kenney would
tell the daughter of a Canadian war veteran in Vancouver that her
father, who was born in Canada and had never set foot out of the country
until it asked him to go to war, was not, in fact, a Canadian citizen
but a British subject.
Insulting, degrading ... and wrong. This is a theme Kenney and Citizenship and Immigration (CIC) have been
pushing for some time. It’s not just a slip of the tongue or a
misunderstanding, but a considered view to which the government is
apparently committed. Or, as Jason Kenney told Jackie Scott, who confronted him: “(Soldiers)
are heroes, but at the time they were British subjects.” He said prior
to 1947 there was no such thing as a “Canadian” citizen. Click here for more...
May 25, 2012, Toronto Star - Citizenship Insane: Here we go again. This week we ran the story of Lawrence Connelly, born in 1967 to a Canadian military family based in Germany, who found out this year that he cannot get a passport unless he can prove he’s a citizen — and the DND certificate of birth isn’t proof. Click here for more...
Jackie Scott in a recent photo.
The Canadian government will not
grant her citizenship because
she was born out of wedlock.
Jackie Scott with her
parents at Niagara Falls in 1948.
May 10,2012 - Status of Illegitimate Child 1948: A ruling has been
received from the Citizenship Branch concerning the status of an illegitimate
child whose father is a Canadian citizen. The case upon which the ruling is
based is as follows: “A Canadian born citizen was living in the United States out of wedlock with
an American born woman. They had an illegitimate child born in the United States.
Subsequent to the birth of the child (three weeks thereafter) the parents were
married. The father returned to Canada
and his wife and child later applied for entry to join him. Our examining
officer at the port of entry took the view that the child, having been born out
of wedlock, came under Part 1, Section 4, (b) of the Canadian Citizenship Act,
deriving citizenship from his mother. Therefore, the child was regarded as an
immigrant, of American citizenship, and admitted as such. However, when the
facts were submitted to the Citizenship Branch for review the Registrar
furnished the following ruling:-Click here for more....
March 8, 2012: Vancouver Observer - Discriminatory laws against unwed mothers leave Lost Canadian Ken Smith out in the cold - Ken Smith and his wife Liz Johnston love to travel. But recently, planning a vacation has become a nearly impossible task. “Lately, we’ve had some problems at the border because of my weird situation, where I can’t say I’m Canadian but I’ve lived here the majority of my life,” said Smith. The 68-year-old White Rock resident is one of a number of Lost Canadians, excluded from citizenship due to the country’s archaic laws. Despite having lived in Canada since 1945, he’s been rejected twice by Citizenship and Immigration Canada. And ever since border security ramped up after 9/11 he says he’s had terrible experiences with customs officials. Click here for more...
March 7, 2012: Lost Canadians Say Citizenship a Battle for Women’s Rights - As Canada prepares to observe International Women’s Day on Thursday, some Canadians are still excluded from citizenship solely because they were born to unwed mothers over 65 years ago. They are part of a group known as Lost Canadians: people who are excluded from citizenship or are having difficulty claiming it because of the date or circumstances of their birth. Click here for more....
February 23, 2012: Lost Canadians sue government over discriminatory citizenship - While speaking at a press conference in Surrey, Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney stated that the government does not deny citizenship based on age, gender or marital status. Yet these factors are at the heart of problem for "Lost Canadians", who are taking the federal government to court over its refusal to grant citizenship to victims of Canada's discriminatory laws of the past. Click here for more....
December 2011 - Readers Digest: How Unjust Legal Quirks Rob Canadians of their Citizenship - The world's most read magazine has finally featured the story of the Lost Canadians on its front cover this December, 2011! Written by Drew Nelles, the six page article Lost Canadians: How Unjust Legal Quirks Rob Canadians of their Citizenship, features an interview with Don Chapman, leader of the Lost Canadians and tells the the true life story of several victims, including Guy Vallieres, a Second World War veteran who died in 2009, disenfranchised from his own country. Click here to read more...
November 9, 2011 - Toronto Star: Suit seeks citizenship for ‘Lost Canadians’ - Peter Brammah had always considered himself as Canadian as it gets, enlisting in the Royal Canadian Navy and serving as a police officer in Calgary. But Brammah, now 75 and in poor health, didn’t realize until 2002 that he was not considered a Canadian citizen, even though he has lived in Canada since he was six years old. His parents were both British subjects, but Brammah’s mother came to Canada with him as a child after divorcing his father and then marrying a Canadian citizen. Click here to read more...
November 7, 2011 - Yahoo News! Lawsuit aims to return citizenship to elderly "lost" Canadians - "This has got a lot of tentacles and it's going to affect a lot of people and potentially cost a lot of money," he said, adding the suit is only the first in a series of planned legal manoeuvres. Click here to read more....
November 6, 2011 - CTV: Lawsuit seeks citizenship for elderly 'lost' Canadians VANCOUVER — Peter Brammah sailed with the Canadian navy and later worked for Calgary's police force. Despite serving this country as both a naval and police officer, he can't actually call Canada his own. Click here to read more.
October 28, 2011: Coast Reporter: Back to court for Lost Canadians - The leader of the Lost Canadians, Don Chapman of Gibsons, said he once again intends to take the government of Canada to court over citizenship discrimination. Having taken up the cause of 10 people he said were undeservingly stripped of their citizenship, Chapman described the group’s position as being indisputable. Click here to read more.
November 21, 2010 Frustrated but fighting: 'Lost Canadians' push Ottawa to make them true CanucksBy Diana Mehta, Canadian Press
This article also appeared under the same headline in countless newspapers, radio, tv and internet media across Canada, including the Winnipeg Free Press, Kitchener Waterloo Record, the New Brunswick Telegraph Journal, CTV News, CJAD, 680 FM, 660 FM, etc. etc.
November 4, 2006
Toronto Star
Thousands of former citizens snared in long legal limbo; Fathers became citizens elsewhere Children stripped of citizenship
Exiled John Michael Erison died desperately close to realising a lifelong dream of 'belonging' to the country he loved.
The "devout, gentle and generous" 64-year-old, who lived off Tachbrook Road, in Leamington, worked for the Post Office for 33 years and attended Radford Road church.
But he was also a 'Lost Canadian' - and on July 14 he became the first such person to die awaiting reinstated citizenship since a long-awaited piece of law was passed in Ottawa on April 18.
Bill C37 overturns 1947 legislation which campaigners say robbed up to 250,000 people of their nationality, among them children of 45,000 'war brides'.
These were women like John's mother Violet, who married a Canadian serviceman during the war and returned to his homeland.
It redresses a situation which "broke John's heart", said his wife Dawn, though after 60 years it came just too late.
She said: "His whole being was rooted in Canada - it was always there.
"In November he was diagnosed with cancer and went through all the treatments. When the bill was passed, he had had his major surgery and was getting better. He finally had permission and could have got on the plane and gone home - and then his kidneys failed."
In Mr Erison's case, it was a failure to reside in Canada on his 24th birthday, after settling in Derbyshire when his maternal grandmother was dying, which severed the tie with the country where he had spent his early childhood.
Campaigner Don Chapman says the little-known clause was just one of many "screwy ways" in which the 1947 act allowed Canada to turn its back on its citizens, breaking the promises made to the war brides when they arrived in the late 1940s.
Mr Chapman said: "It's the biggest form of identity theft and you just shake your head and say 'what has this country done'?"
Mrs Erison lived with her husband in Durham, Ontario, between 2003 and March last year - when they were told to leave following a protracted, failed emigration bid. She now faces a battle for her own Canadian citizenship, which would have been assured had Mr Erison lived.
For now, she will have to return to England after visiting to intern John's ashes in Ontario
She remembered "a good all-round guy" who loved pop music, ice hockey and genealogy and was a keen cricket fan and golf player. At the Newbold Comyn course, he typically claimed his "handicap was owning a set of clubs".
In a eulogy, Dawn wrote of a man who "made me laugh and cry with tears of amusement, joy and happiness".
John leaves children by his first wife Kathleen, Karen and Linda, four grandchildren, son-in-law Will and his brother, Ron
VANCOUVER — A special ceremony today that officially made Joe Taylor a Canadian attested as much to the capriciousness of Canadian citizenship as it did to its inclusiveness.
Front, left to right: Don Chapman, Meille Faille (Bloc Quebecois) Andrew Telegdi (Liberal), Joe Taylor and Frank Wong of the Chinese Canadian Veterans Association, pose for a photograph following Joe Taylor's citizenship ceremony in Vancouver, January 24, 2008.
The son of a Second World War soldier and a war bride, Taylor had his citizenship stripped from him by the 1947 Citizenship Act. He was labelled a bastard in the process.
Taylor's parents weren't married when he was born -- his father's commanding officer had refused Joe Sr. permission to marry -- and at age 24, Taylor didn't reaffirm his citizenship. The Canadian government used both reasons to deny his Canadian-ness until today, when Taylor was granted citizenship on the basis of a special ministerial permit.
Don Chapman, Melynda Jarratt and Joe Taylor, Vancouver, BC, January 24, 2008.
Flanking Taylor as he took the citizenship oath were Chinese-Canadian veterans including Frank Wong. Wong, Taylor's father and 14,000 Canadian troops landed on Juno Beach on D-Day in 1945. Both Taylor's father and Wong had been born here, but Wong wasn't a citizen because of his race.
The act that gave Wong his citizenship, stripped Joe Taylor of his birthright. The veterans were there to bear witness to both being wrong.
Poet and author Roy Miki was another of Taylor's guests. Two decades ago, he led the redress movement for Japanese-Canadians interned during the Second World War.
Hereditary Chief Adam Dick, whose father had also been denied citizenship, blessed Taylor and gave him a Kwagiulth name -- Max Ke Noxw Dzi or big killer whale -- before the ceremony. The Kwagiulth believe the best hunters and providers are reincarnated as whales. The chief believes Taylor's battle to regain his citizenship has provided a way for others.
In his bid to reclaim his birthright, Taylor won a sweeping victory in the Federal Court. Judge Luc Martineau ruled sections of the act were unconstitutional, denied the right to due process and were contrary to the principles of fundamental justice.
Canada won on appeal in November, at which point the government offered Taylor a special deal -- a ministerial permit. Taylor took it rather than fighting a costly and protracted appeal before the Supreme Court of Canada.
Ed Komarnicki, parliamentary secretary to Citizenship Minister Diane Finley, told Taylor today: "Please understand that it was not a personal matter. As a government, we have always had sympathy for your case and your genuine desire to be a Canadian."
But Liberal MP Andrew Telegdi denounced the government for its "continuous deprivation of citizenship rights" to an estimated 400,000 Canadians whose citizenship has been stripped by the 1947 act of Parliament.
"How can the government say that it is granting him [Taylor] citizenship because what happened was wrong and then continue its discriminatory practices against others like him?" he asked.
What Telegdi and others -- including Don Chapman, who has organized the so-called Lost Canadians into a formidable lobby group -- want is quick passage of Bill C-37, which was introduced in December. It would plug the gaping holes in the act. But they'd like a few amendments, including one that would make all of the war brides' children automatically Canadian rather than supplicants for ministerial permits.
Chapman, who is not yet Canadian, has become expert in citizenship law after more than 35 years of trying to regain his. One flaw he sees in Bill C-37 is that it could create another generation of Lost Canadians because children of Canadians born outside Canada who turned 28 in 2005, 2006 and 2007 won't appear to have the opportunity to assert their citizenship rights.
Another is that some children of Canadians could be rendered stateless. If a first-generation Canadian, who was born outside Canada, were to have a child in a country like Japan that doesn't automatically confer citizenship, the child would be stateless.
Finally, Chapman believes the bill allows "naturalized Canadians" -- immigrants -- more citizenship rights than than native-born Canadians.
Here's how that would work: A person becomes a Canadian citizen at age 10. At age 30, he or she goes to the United States and has a child. The child would be entitled to Canadian citizenship. A Canadian citizen, born in the United States to Canadian-born parents, comes to Canada at age 10. At 30, he or she moves outside Canada and has a child, who is not eligible for citizenship.
Even though in each example, the parent spent 20 years in Canada, the bill says citizenship ends with the second generation born outside Canada.
Yet even if Bill C-37 is amended and passed, Chapman, Telegdi and others want a completely new act because the revised act will still not comply with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That's because it will retain Section 7, which allows the government to revoke the citizenship of six million, naturalized Canadians in closed door sessions without the public having any knowledge or recourse. It's Hitler-esque.
Most Canadians take their citizenship for granted.
We need Taylor and all of these others to remind us how precious it is; so precious that first nations, Chinese- and Japanese-Canadian soldiers fought for the country even before it would even deign to call them citizens.
As Taylor said simply: "It means everything to me."
OTTAWA | Nov. 2 , 2007 — Tears streamed down Guy Valliere's face as his daughter read from the document that brings the Canadian veteran one step closer to becoming a Canadian again.
This was how Michelle Valliere described her 81-year-old father’s reaction to the temporary residency he was granted after a year of being lost in his own country.
"Somebody, somewhere should realize that there's a lot of people like him and a lot of families like mine," she says.
Valliere is one of the so-called "Lost Canadians" who were stripped of their citizenship because of a little-known clause in the 1947 Citizenship Act.
Like Valliere, Canadians whose fathers were citizens of another country effectively lost their citizenship if they left Canada. Under this law, women and children were considered chattel of the father. The law also affected border babies, war brides and their children if they failed to register their citizenship before their 24th birthday.
The law was repealed under the 1977 Citizenship Act but it left possibly thousands of Canadians, including veterans and their children, unable to call this country their homeland.
Being rejected as a Canadian citizen was hard for Valliere and his family, says his 53-year-old daughter Michelle. But the emotional burden became a financial one on Oct. 15, when Valliere suffered a stroke that landed him in the hospital. Doctor after doctor told the two that Valliere was not covered under Canada's public health-care system because he was not a Canadian citizen.
Valliere was born in Quebec to an American father and a Quebecois mother. After a brief stint in the military in the 1940s, while he was still in his early 20s, he left Canada for the U.S. in search of a wife and a better job. With his health deteriorating, he returned last year to live with Michelle in Pointe-de-l’Ile, Quebec. But Michelle says her father, "a true Quebecois," was made to feel like a stranger in his own country.
Lost, but not alone
Don Chapman, another "Lost Canadian," has led a decade-long campaign to vindicate all those affected by the law. He met Valliere in Ottawa when Valliere told his story at the citizenship hearings held by the federal government earlier this year. When Chapman heard that Valliere was being denied medical benefits, he immediately started making phone calls and writing letters to the government, urging that something be done to avoid "the Conservative government bankrupt(ing) a Canadian war veteran." Valliere and his mother
Valliere, seen here posing with his mother, is no longer a citizen of the country he once served.
"If Guy died tomorrow he would die a non-Canadian" in the country that he served, says Chapman.
Chapman and Francine Lalonde, the Bloc Quebecois MP in Valliere’s constituency, were able to negotiate a settlement with the government. It granted the 81-year-old a two-year temporary residency and agreed to cover his medical bills, backdated to the day he arrived in the emergency room.
Timothy Vail, a spokesperson for Citizenship and Immigration Minister Diane Finley, says he could not comment on Valliere’s status due to privacy laws.
He adds that each case is dealt with individually.
Lalonde says as soon as Michelle came to her about her father, she was determined to help.
"We saw how desperate he was," she says. "He is a sick man. For him, all his past is crumbling."
"We were almost traumatized that Immigration Canada didn’t want to do anything," she says. "I think that finally when we decided to go public it became too hot for Minister Finley."
"Our hope is that he will finally get his citizenship papers because that is what he is entitled to as a citizen," says Lalonde.
Legistlation would vindicate Lost Canadians
Temporary residency is bittersweet for Michelle, who admits she is disappointed that her father is now an immigrant in his own country.
"The paper that he received, he was like an immigrant," she says. "The real papers are coming."
"I want him to be happy. I want him to be taken care of properly," she says, her voice cracking.
Chapman admits this is the first victory in the bleak story of the "Lost Canadians," but he is convinced it’s not over.
It will be over when the government passes a proposed law that will restore citizenship to most of these lost citizens, he says.
Finley has said she will introduce her bill in parliament this fall, but Vail could not say when this might be.
Citizenship and Immigration says they know of just 450 people who have lost their citizenship.
But University of Victoria demographer Barry Edmonston, also a "Lost Canadian," puts the number a lot higher. Based on 2006 census data, he says there are 250,000 Canadians who fall under the criteria laid out in the 1947 law that could strip them of their citizenship. Many who were affected may still not know it, he says.
Opposition calls the situation a 'disgrace'
Andrew Telegdi, a Liberal MP and vice chair of the House citizenship and immigration standing committee, recently denounced the Conservative government’s throne speech because it failed to mention the severe flaw in the citizenship law.
Referring to Valliere’s ordeal, Telegdi calls it a “disgrace” that a 10th generation Quebecker has been turned into a first generation Canadian.
"What is clear is that issues of citizenship and immigration are not important to the Conservative government," he says.
"Here we are saying we should honour our veterans and on the other hand we’re denying the birth right of their kids."
Finley should have tabled the bill by now, says Telegdi, and he can’t help but worry that an election could topple the minority government, pushing the issue to the back burner.
A delay in the bill or an election would reignite a year-long nightmare for the Valliere family, Michelle says. Valliere wants to die a Canadian, just as he was born, she says.
“I think we won something very, very big...but I’m still hoping it’s not too late for my father.”
I am Don Chapman, the leader of the Lost Canadians. I was born in Vancouver, British Columbia and when I was six years old I lost my citizenship. I've been fighting for it ever since.
August 6, 2013: McLeans Magazine - ‘Lost Canadian’ court action looks to overhaul citizenship laws - Canadian citizenship laws may need to be overhauled if a so-called “lost Canadian” wins her legal battle. Jackie Scott, 68, was refused citizenship even though she came to Canada with her British mother and Canadian father at the age of two. A judicial review of that refusal was scheduled for July, but Scott put it on hold so she and her lawyers could broaden the court action. Click here to read more...
June 6, 2013: Canada.com - NDP makes pitch to fix "Lost Canadian" citizenship The NDP will table a motion before a Commons committee on Thursday - the
anniversary of D-Day, the Allied invasion of Nazi-Germany occupied
France - to recognize that the situation of the remaining Lost Canadians
"has gone unaddressed for too long." Click here for more...
July 8, 2012, Toronto Sun: Second World War not over for would-be Canadian - It’s pretty hard to believe that Citizenship Minister Jason Kenney would
tell the daughter of a Canadian war veteran in Vancouver that her
father, who was born in Canada and had never set foot out of the country
until it asked him to go to war, was not, in fact, a Canadian citizen
but a British subject.
Insulting, degrading ... and wrong. This is a theme Kenney and Citizenship and Immigration (CIC) have been
pushing for some time. It’s not just a slip of the tongue or a
misunderstanding, but a considered view to which the government is
apparently committed. Or, as Jason Kenney told Jackie Scott, who confronted him: “(Soldiers)
are heroes, but at the time they were British subjects.” He said prior
to 1947 there was no such thing as a “Canadian” citizen. Click here for more...
March 16, 2012: Vancouver Observer: Lifelong Canadians face discrimination by their own government...still - Advocates for Lost Canadians – those excluded from citizenship because of obscure legal loopholes – are asking questions after citizenship and immigration minister Jason Kenney seemingly admitted to discrimination recently at a press conference. Click here for more... 
