Rights and Responsibilities of Citizens
According to Citizenship and Immigration Canada, citizens are:
- Entitled to enjoy the rights guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (all persons present in Canada have these rights, regardless of citizenship).
- Able to vote in political elections upon reaching the age of 18 (provided they are not absent from Canada for more than 5 years and intend to resume residency in Canada).
- Able to run for political office upon reaching the age of 18.
- Able to obtain a Canadian passport.
- Able to prevent risk of getting deported from Canada (if the subject born outside Canada, but is naturalized).
- Able to work for the Federal government (where citizenship is usually required/preferred).
- Allowed to live outside Canada indefinitely while retaining the right to return.
- Able to pass on Canadian citizenship to children born outside Canada (to the first generation only).
Citizens are responsible for:
- Serving on jury when reaching the age of majority, and if selected.
- Obeying Canada's laws.
- Respecting the rights and freedoms of others.
- Helping others in the community.
- Caring for and protecting the Canadian heritage and environment.
- Eliminating discrimination and injustice.
Read more about this topic: Canadian Nationality Law
Famous quotes containing the words rights and, rights and/or citizens:
“The rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for, not by the labor agitators, but by the Christian men to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given control of the property interests of the country.”
—George Baer (1842–1914)
“If the veil were withdrawn from the sanctuary of domestic life, and man could look upon the fear, the loathing, the detestations which his tyranny and reckless gratification of self has caused to take the place of confiding love, which placed a woman in his power, he would shudder at the hideous wrong of the present regulations of the domestic abode.”
—Lydia Jane Pierson, U.S. women’s rights activist and corresponding editor of The Woman’s Advocate. The Woman’s Advocate, represented in The Lily, pp. 117-8 (1855-1858 or 1860)
“... the Wall became a magnet for citizens of every generation, class, race, and relationship to the war perhaps because it is the only great public monument that allows the anesthetized holes in the heart to fill with a truly national grief.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)