By Tim McSorley
The ICLMG was among the first to denounce the Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act (adopted in June 2014, formerly Bill C-24) as unconstitutional and anti-Canadian for discriminating against dual nationals by allowing the removal of citizenship for national security reasons. This law effectively created a two-tiered citizenship regime that discriminated against dual nationals, whether born abroad or in Canada, and naturalized citizens. These Canadians had more limited citizenship rights compared to other Canadians, simply because they or their parents or ancestors were born in another country. ICLMG supported a legal challenge against the law, writing:
The ICLMG opposed Bill C-24 since it was tabled in Parliament. The Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act is a step backward for our democracy and rule of law principle. With this new Citizenship Act, Canadians are divided into two classes: those who will keep their Canadian citizenship no matter what and those who can be stripped of their Canadian citizenship if some federal bureaucrats decide so. Thus, if you are born in Canada but you have parents or ancestors from another country, your Canadian citizenship is worth less. It can be revoked not by the court but by the government and this is unacceptable by any democratic standards.[1]
An Act to amend the Citizenship Act and to make consequential amendments to another Act (formerly Bill C-6) was adopted in June 2017 and removed the grounds for the revocation of Canadian citizenship that relate to national security, effectively killing that two-tier citizenship regime.[2]
Tim McSorley is the National Coordinator of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group
Footnotes
[1] ICLMG, “Press release: ICLMG joins other rights groups to denounce the Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act as discriminatory and anti-Canadian,” ICLMG, August 20, 2015.
[2] For more information on the fight against citizenship revocation, see: Macklin, Audrey. “A Brief History of the Brief History of Citizenship Revocation in Canada,” in « Canadian Terror: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives on the Toronto 18 Terrorism Trials », Manitoba Law Journal, vol. 44, no 1 (2021), pp. 425-455.
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