Canada passes legislation to restore citizenship status to Lost Canadians

The Canadian Parliament has finally passed proposed amendments in country’s existing Citizenship laws, which will become law no later than a year following Royal Assent.

These amendments in Canada’s citizenship laws were proposed by the Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) few months earlier to retroactively grant or restore citizenship to those who have lost or never had Canadian citizenship because of several obscure provisions in existing and former legislation.

The need to overhaul country’s existing citizenship laws was first arose just after the Lebanon evacuation crisis in 2006 and following the introduction of US travel rule (WHTI) in the beginning of 2007, when many of the Canadians who were applying for passports for the first time found out that they were unknowingly stripped of their citizenship. Commonly knows as ‘Lost Canadians’, these people either had their citizenship denied or unknowingly allowed to expire due to several little-known particularities in Citizenship Act, which was last replaced in 1977 after its introduction in 1947. The obscure provisions under the Citizenship Act were installed in 1977 to "safeguard the value of citizenship," but only began to potentially affect people as of February 15, 2005.

Just how many people across Canada risk falling into the category of Lost Canadians is one of the key questions. A CBC investigation put the number of "lost Canadians" at roughly 200,000. These were include (a) Canadian-born children who have lost their citizenship because their fathers became citizens of another country at a later stage; (b) The law from 1947 to 1977 required people living outside of Canada on their 24th birthday to sign a form to keep their citizenship; (c) Immigrants born in a hospital south of the border, or abroad, were not considered citizens unless they later registered as Canadians; and (d) Some immigrants were stripped of their citizenship because they or their ancestors were considered illegitimate.

After its implementation, the new Citizenship Act will restore citizenship to anyone born in Canada or who became a Canadian citizen on or after January 1, 1947, and then lost his or her citizenship. This includes women wed to Canadian men during World War II (war brides) who have not yet become Canadian citizens. It also includes those born in Canada prior to 1947 who became citizens when the first Citizenship Act took effect. It does not, however, include those who renounced their citizenship with Canadian authorities, those born in Canada to a foreign diplomat, or those whose citizenship was revoked by the government because their citizenship was obtained fraudulently. Those who were born abroad to Canadian parents on or after January 1, 1947, if not already a citizen, will be recognized as Canadian citizens from birth, on condition that they are the first generation born abroad. The exceptions would be those who renounced their citizenship.

The government has no estimate on the number of people who will take advantage of this legislation after it becomes law, but it has been estimated that new legislation should take care of 95 per cent of those people who either lost their citizenship or shouldn't have, or who never had it in the first place but should have, while others will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.