Canadians of Convenience - Amendments To Citizenship Act - Criticism of New Citizenship Rules

Criticism of New Citizenship Rules

New rules have had the consequence of denying citizenship to children of Canadian expats, if the parents were also born outside Canada. New Canadian exclusionary citizenship rules limit the scope of those eligible for citizenship. In contrast, some other countries have citizenship laws that favour ancestry as well as birth. For example, Israel's Law of Return confers Israeli citizenship to all those with Jewish ancestry wishing to reside in Israel, for example, in the case of Persian Jews, some of whom have not lived within the bounds of the modern State of Israel for 2,700 years. Also, German Right of return allows persons of German descent living in Eastern Europe from as early as 18th century such as Volga Germans to return to Germany and claim German citizenship. Russia offers citizenship to individuals descended from Russian ancestors who can demonstrate an affinity for Russian culture and, preferably, speak Russian. Concern about Russia's shrinking population prompted the program. (See main article Right of return). A non-exhaustive list of at least 27 countries and a Palestinian National Authority have favourable citizenship rules based on ancestry as well as birth.

New restricted citizenship rules may also exacerbate population ageing in Canada. Canadian parents of children born abroad (and unable to come to Canada) may choose not to return to Canada themselves rather than go through the hassle of obtaining a visitor visaor Permanent Residency for their child. Statistics Canada own population projection study published in December 2005 states that: Canada's population is ageing fast and senior citizens would outnumber children in about a decade, according to new population projections. In all growth scenarios considered for this study, seniors aged 65 and over would become more numerous than children aged less than 15 around the year 2015. This would be an unprecedented situation in Canada.

Another criticism the bill has attracted arises because of the proposed "first generation limit" cut-off described above. Under the bill, a person who is the second or subsequent generation born abroad to a Canadian parent may be stateless if he or she does not acquire citizenship of the state of birth, or through his or her other parent. Canada is a contracting state to the United Nations’ Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.(34) Under article 4 of that Convention, a contracting state is required to grant its nationality to a person not born in the territory of the contracting state, who would otherwise be stateless, if the nationality of one or both of the person’s parents at the time of the person’s birth was that of the contracting state. Such a grant of nationality may be subject to certain stipulated conditions, however. The provision included in Bill C-37 to deal with statelessness is compliant with the Convention, but only minimally so.