Law would restore citizenship to 'lost Canadians'

The Conservative government announced legislation Monday to modernize the country's citizenship laws and restore citizenship to tens of thousands of people known as "lost Canadians."

The proposed amendments to the 1947 and 1977 laws would retroactively grant citizenship to more than 170,000 people who lost their status - or never received it - thanks to a set of archaic and discriminatory rules.

"We had our identity taken away from us against our will, and now we're going to get it back," said a jubilant Don Chapman, a Canadian-born man who grew up in the United States and has been fighting the law since 1972.


Don Chapman fought for over twenty years to get his Canadian citizenship back after it was taken away after immigration laws where changed in the 1970s.
Vancouver Sun file

I'm a little on cloud nine," he said in an interview Monday. "There are retroactive changes here. How often does any country in the world retroactively change its laws?"

The legislation would adopt the bulk of the recommendations from the Commons citizenship committee, automatically restoring citizenship to war brides and their children. It would also award citizenship to children born overseas to Canadian parents, and to children whose parents moved their families to the U.S., like Chapman's.

Chapman, an Arizona-based airline pilot whose Nova Scotia ancestor, William Alexander Henry, was a Father of Confederation, lost his Canadian birthright after his father took out U.S. citizenship for himself when Chapman was a boy.

A quirk of the Canadian law meant that Chapman was also stripped of his citizenship, a fact he never discovered until he tried to move back to Canada when he was 18.

Chapman is one of an estimated 100,000 Canadians born prior to 1977 who lost their citizenship after moving to the U.S. with their parents.

Other "lost Canadians" affected by the country's obscure citizenship rules include roughly 30,000 war brides and any children born out of wedlock who came to Canada after the Second World War.

The group also includes an estimated 40,000 people born to Canadian parents in foreign countries.

Although many of these people may not yet know it, most lost their citizenship under a set of outdated clauses in the law, according to a parliamentary report released last week.

"These so-called 'lost Canadians' either lost their citizenship, or never were Canadian citizens in the first place," said the report of the citizenship committee, which has been unanimously endorsed by all four political parties.

"In many cases they were not aware that they were not Canadian citizens until they applied for a certificate of Canadian citizenship, often needed to get a passport, or other documentation.

"In addition to the shock and emotional upset many of them felt upon learning their status, they also may have experienced difficulties with work, travel and receiving some social benefits."

Citizenship and Immigration Minister Diane Finley has said only about 450 Canadians have applied in recent years to have their citizenship restored.

But the committee report said tens of thousands had technically been stripped of their citizenship under the law.

"This legislation will deal with 95 per cent of those people who either lost their citizenship and shouldn't have, or who never had it in the first place but should have," said Finley in a statement Monday. "The rest we will be able to handle on a case-by-case basis as we have done all this year."

What the legislation does not do, and what the committee report did not ask for, is award citizenship to children born outside Canada whose Canadian parents were also born overseas.

With the exception of families in the diplomatic corps or the Armed Forces, only first-generation-born-overseas Canadians will automatically qualify for citizenship under the proposed changes.

The legislation also does not recognize Canadians who either renounced their citizenship or obtained it through fraud.

However, Finley said "no one who is a citizen today would lose their citizenship as a result of these amendments."

The government began giving back citizenship through special cabinet certificates to a handful of individuals last month.

Among the "lost Canadians" to receive a certificate was Joe Taylor, the child of a Canadian D-Day veteran and an English war bride who fought a high-profile court case against Ottawa over his citizenship.

Although Chapman says his campaign for a better citizenship law is not over - he wants to see an entirely new act, rather than simply amendments to the existing one - he reflected with pride Monday on the accomplishments of his years of effort fighting for himself and other lost Canadians.

CanWest News