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/or citizens:
“The common goal of 22 million Afro-Americans is respect as human beings, the God-given right to be a human being. Our common goal is to obtain the human rights that America has been denying us. We can never get civil rights in America until our human rights are first restored. We will never be recognized as citizens there until we are first recognized as humans.”
—Malcolm X (1925–1965)
“It was the most ungrateful and unjust act ever perpetrated by a republic upon a class of citizens who had worked and sacrificed and suffered as did the women of this nation in the struggle of the Civil War only to be rewarded at its close by such unspeakable degradation as to be reduced to the plane of subjects to enfranchised slaves.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)