:
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for the invitation to appear before you today.
My name is Andrew Griffith. I am the director general of the citizenship and multiculturalism branch, as you mentioned, and I'm accompanied by my team, Nicole Girard and Alain Laurencelle.
[Translation]
I am pleased to be here to discuss Bill , a private member's bill.
[English]
Over the course of the next few minutes, I would like to briefly review the changes made in the Citizenship Act of 2009, which implemented a first-generation limit on citizenship for those born abroad, and I will briefly describe what Bill proposes in relation to those changes. I will also outline some changes that we believe are needed to ensure the current bill achieves its intent.
Let me begin by talking about the changes that were made to the Citizenship Act in 2009. These changes gave a restored citizenship to most “lost Canadians”, persons who lost or never had citizenship.
[Translation]
Also introduced at this time was a first generation limit to citizenship by descent for those born abroad. The intent of this limit was to protect the value of Canadian citizenship for the future and to ensure citizens have a connection to Canada.
These changes meant that children born to Canadian parents in the first generation outside Canada would be Canadian at birth only if one parent was born in Canada, or one parent became a Canadian citizen by immigrating to Canada and later being granted citizenship, or naturalized.
[English]
These changes also include an exception to ensure that children born or adopted outside Canada to a parent serving abroad with the Canadian armed forces, the federal public administration, or provincial public service would be citizens, even if they were born outside Canada, in the second or subsequent generation. However, like all children born outside Canada to a Canadian parent, children of crown servants cannot pass on citizenship to children they might have or adopt abroad as a result of the first-generation limit.
[Translation]
Other countries with a first generation limit, like the United Kingdom and New Zealand, have dealt with this issue differently by ensuring that children born abroad to crown servants are able to pass on citizenship to their children born or adopted abroad. This is what Bill seeks to do.
[English]
Bill proposed to treat children born abroad or adopted outside Canada by crown servants and Canadian Forces personnel as children born in Canada, such that they would be able to pass on citizenship to any children they may have or adopt abroad. The government fully supports the intent of this bill in that it recognizes and values the strong contributions, commitment, and sacrifice of crown servants working abroad and of their families.
Crown servants, including our military, work to serve Canadians abroad. Crown servants serving abroad demonstrate ongoing attachment to Canada in several ways.
First, they are considered residents of Canada.
Second, crown servants pay Canadian taxes while serving abroad.
Third, they rotate regularly back to Canada. This is different from the situation of Canadian expatriates who in many cases are not considered residents of Canada, do not pay Canadian taxes, and may or may not regularly rotate back to Canada.
All of these things demonstrate a strong ongoing connection to Canada.
[Translation]
The government does, however, have concerns with the bill, as it is currently drafted, since it does not achieve its intended objective and would have unintended consequences. I now want to briefly outline these concerns.
[English]
As I have said, the intent of Bill is to enable the children of crown servants to pass on citizenship to any children they have or adopt outside Canada. As currently drafted, however, it does not enable the children of crown servants to pass on citizenship.
At the same time, the bill removes the section of the act that currently provides an exception to the first-generation limit for children born abroad in the second and subsequent generations. Effectively, this would deny citizenship to the children of crown servants in situations where the crown servant parent was also born abroad to a Canadian parent.
The bill also poses problems with respect to adopted persons. Specifically, the bill proposes to confer citizenship automatically to children adopted abroad by crown servants who are born or naturalized in Canada, without regard to the international obligations and requirements under the current law.
The current act already allows anyone who is born abroad and adopted by a Canadian parent who was born in Canada, whether or not that parent is a crown servant, to apply for a grant and become a citizen. The criteria for such a grant respect the international obligations that are there to protect the best interests of the child: for example, to protect against child trafficking and to respect provincial jurisdiction on adoptions.
The problem is that under Bill , children adopted abroad by crown servants would no longer need to apply for a grant in the current manner, meaning they would no longer be subject to the safeguards aimed at protecting the best interests of the child.
[Translation]
For the reasons I have just outlined, Bill does not achieve its intended objective and would have negative unintended consequences.
[English]
The changes, however, that would be required to ensure the benefits of Bill are achieved would be relatively minor. The intent of the bill could be achieved by expanding the current exemption to ensure the children of crown servants, including the Canadian Forces, like children born in Canada, would be able to pass on citizenship to any children they have or adopt outside of Canada. Recognizing their sacrifice, commitment, and strong connection to Canada, there should be no questions about the citizenship of their children, no matter where they are born.
Just to add to this, Mr. Chairman, in June 2010, of course, as people know, the government did introduce Bill , the . This bill contains a number of amendments that would strengthen the process of applying for citizenship, improve measures to address citizenship fraud, and streamline the revocation process.
Specifically, Bill proposes to: add legal authority to regulate citizenship consultants and to crack down where they help people gain citizenship fraudulently; increase penalties for fraud; strengthen residency requirements to require a physical presence; improve the government's ability to bar criminals from becoming citizens; and ensure the law supports the implementation of the first-generation limit.
Similar to Bill , Bill also proposes changes to the current crown servant exception to the first-generation limit. Consistent with the objective of Bill C-467, the proposed changes to the crown servant exception in Bill C-37 would ensure that the children of crown servants serving abroad are not disadvantaged by their parents' service to Canada and are able to pass on citizenship to their children born or adopted abroad.
[Translation]
Thank you again for the opportunity to speak before you. I would be happy to take any questions you may have.
The bill deals with a pretty specific issue. It does not cover a whole lot of cases, but all the same, the committee has already studied it.
Why has the department never considered, in previous reforms, the bill before us today or some other measure, making the residence requirement much more important when granting citizenship, rather than focusing almost exclusively on the place of birth requirement, as is the case right now?
We have seen other countries take the residence requirement into account when determining whether to pass on citizenship by descent. Canada does not take that requirement into consideration. Why did the government exclude that consideration?
Do you think that is something the committee should pursue further?
At the end of the day, could we not solve all those cases simply by giving more weight to the place of residence, without having to worry about who the person's employer was while they were abroad?
:
That is a good question. Actually, we are considering that. There are a number of possibilities.
In the past, we tried applying a connection test, but we found that it was a bit too complicated to administer. Not only was it complicated for us, but it was also complicated for applicants. And, to some extent, it resulted in quite a few lost Canadians, precisely because the rules were too complicated and people did not apply within the prescribed time limit.
Furthermore, many countries are having the same debate we are, in other words, whether to take a residence-based approach or a generational one. Two countries did what we did and opted for the generational approach because it is easier for everyone to understand. It is clear and simple.
Other countries, including Australia and the United States, took a residence-based approach. In overall comparisons, we generally find our approach, which implements the first generation limit and allows parents to apply for citizenship for children born abroad, to be more flexible in certain regards, and the approach taken by other countries to be more flexible in other regards. So it is constantly a matter of finding a balance.
:
Maybe I can start and Nicole can supplement. Again, with respect to adoptions, as you know, there are two approval processes.
One is the domestic approval process, which is really run by the province, and the second one is the international one, which is done on our immigration side. The second one requires confirmation that the host country's regulations have been followed and that local laws and procedures have been followed, etc. That's really to make sure that from both aspects we cover the best interests of the child.
Certainly in the case of Haiti, the adoptions we were able to accelerate were the ones that had already been approved at the provincial level. Then we got a special provision to get essentially the head of the country to approve their going abroad. It was very unique.
One of things when we look at adoptions, of course, is that we have to ensure that we're always trying to compare the same situation, and this is where it all.... So the comparison, really, if you're born abroad, whether to Canadian parents or as somebody who's going to be adopted...those cases have to be treated equally in terms of ensuring that we're following Canadian law and comparability, and that's where it becomes a bit tricky.
There are other situations where you have border babies. In New Brunswick, for example, they sometimes go across the border for birth, so you also have to compare that kind of thing.
That's the challenge in trying to do this.
Nicole, do you want to elaborate a bit further on that? No?
Mr. Rick Dykstra: Okay. Thank you.
:
So what you're saying is that there may be cases where that same standard would in fact apply even though the individuals happen not to be employees of crown corporations.
I like this whole idea of a residency requirement, and I think most crown employees would be able to meet residency requirements, but in your presentation, you initially said as a separate point that they were considered residents, and then you qualified that to say it was a meld of the first and second points, in that they're considered residents for tax purposes. I think it would be helpful if you could provide us with some sort of brief explaining what is the legal understanding of residency in those cases and how it differs when it's just for tax purposes.
I know that when it comes to diplomacy, there are international covenants and agreements that exist. Diplomats will often not be charged criminally in certain countries for certain activities. Is it because they are considered residents? I'm very unclear about how this applies. Because we're dealing with birth location, if in fact the diplomats are considered residents of Canada in certain ways, does that extend to spouses and, theoretically, does it extend to their family members, including children?
Then we have this whole idea that they're often working in embassies or consular sections that are considered the territory of their country of citizenship. Is a child born of someone who is a diplomat actually...? It's almost as if the children are cross-border babies. Is there some way that those particular birth locations are marked or noted differently?
We're getting into a whole series of areas where I'm not quite sure how we define our residents and residency requirements. If you could provide us with a brief, that would be tremendously helpful.