Honourable members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today.
Thank you, Madam Chair and honourable members of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.
It is an honour to be here before you today to discuss our national policy on citizenship.
I very much appreciate your time and your commitment to shaping immigration policy in Canada, and I look forward to contributing to this important discussion.
I am a former immigration policy adviser, a government relations professional, a historian and a senior fellow at the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy.
Earlier this year, the Aristotle Foundation published a study of mine on Canadian immigration policy. It is called “Repairing the fray: Improving immigration and citizenship policy in Canada”. The purpose of that study was twofold. It explains why a long-standing consensus in favour of immigration has broken down over the past 10 years and offers some recommendations for improving immigration and citizenship policy and thereby restoring confidence in our immigration system.
One of my main criticisms of recent policy was that Canadian citizenship was not valued highly enough. I made the following comment: “We have the right and the obligation to raise the value of Canadian citizenship, and to demand more of our citizens. Above all...efforts at integration should proceed not from a dislike of other places, but from a love for Canada.”
Canadians take pride in who we are. Over four centuries, settlers and immigrants have contributed to the richness of our country based on a proud history and a distinctive identity. Canada is a constitutional monarchy, a parliamentary democracy, a federal state. We are the only constitutional monarchy in North America. We inherited the oldest continuous constitutional tradition in the world. Canadians are united by a shared commitment to the rule of law and the institutions of parliamentary government.
We have much to be proud of, and we have welcomed many generations of newcomers eager to assist in the building of our great country. It was, accordingly, a shameful error to describe Canada as a “postnational state” having “no mainstream” and lacking a “core identity”. It was strange to hear this from a Prime Minister, and even stranger, as it seemed to me, to refashion citizenship policy to reflect this supposed void in the heart of our country.
The theory that we are a non-nation without cultural norms is absurd, and Canadians rightly rejected it. An easily foreseeable consequence was the breakdown of trust in our immigration system and a rising demand that Canadian culture and institutions be shown greater respect.
This has been born out in recent polling. Nearly 60% of Canadians of all backgrounds now claim that newcomers do not share Canadian values and fail to integrate themselves within Canadian society, while 51% expect government institutions to do more to integrate newcomers and 55% believe that immigrants must adopt broad mainstream values and traditions. However we may feel about that, it seems that Canadians have no doubt that there is indeed something to belong to here, and that citizenship is important and valuable.
Bill C-3 aims to reform Canada's Citizenship Act. It addresses the first-generation limit on citizenship by descent, which has prevented some Canadians born abroad from passing on citizenship to their children born outside the country.
The bill responds to a 2023 Ontario Superior Court ruling declaring the first-generation limit unconstitutional and seeks to restore citizenship to the so-called lost Canadians. This ruling could have been appealed, and perhaps should have been.
Nevertheless, there are perhaps some injustices and problems, which this bill may correct, but as it stands, I fear it will do more harm than good. Removing the first-generation limit without a cap on generational descent will extend citizenship to persons with little or no tie to Canada, perhaps indefinitely. This may exacerbate citizenship tourism, whereby people claim the benefits of citizenship, such as health care or a passport, without contributing to Canadian society.
For a Canadian citizen parent born outside Canada to pass on citizenship to his or her children born abroad, Bill C-3 requires that the parent must demonstrate “a substantial connection to Canada”. These are fine words, but according to the bill, this amounts only to having been present in Canada for a mere 1,095 cumulative days before the child's birth. That is only three years, which may be accrued at any point in the parent's life—
Many Canadians will, I think, rightly wonder whether this really constitutes a substantial connection to our country. Many will expect that the government require more of its citizens.
Thank you again for your attention, Madam Chair and honourable members of the committee. I look forward to your questions.