The Minister has instructed immigration officials to provide citizenship rights

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The Minister has instructed immigration officials to provide citizenship rights to 'lost Canadians' who submit applications.

Immigration Minister Marc Miller has directed immigration officials to extend citizenship rights to "lost Canadians," individuals born abroad to Canadian parents, who submit applications.

On Thursday, Mr. Miller issued this directive to the staff at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) as a temporary measure, aiming to achieve the same objectives as a bill that was unable to progress before the parliamentary session ended.

Bill C-71 was among 26 government proposals halted due to the prorogation of Parliament in January.

"To mitigate the delays associated with the passage of C-71, I am endorsing an interim measure to assist those impacted by the first-generation limit," Mr. Miller stated. He noted that these individuals "will be considered for a discretionary grant of citizenship" under a specific provision of the Citizenship Act.

According to Renée LeBlanc Proctor, spokesperson for Mr. Miller, IRCC officials responsible for processing citizenship applications were informed on Thursday about the new policy allowing citizenship for eligible "lost Canadians."

The change in IRCC policy comes in response to a 2023 ruling by the Ontario Superior Court, which deemed it unconstitutional to deny citizenship to children born abroad to Canadians who were also born outside of Canada.

The government chose not to contest the ruling. Nevertheless, on Thursday, it requested an additional 12-month extension from the court to provide sufficient time for a new bill to be introduced and passed in Parliament.

In her ruling on Thursday, Justice Jasmine Akbarali granted the government just a four-week extension.

She had already granted the federal government three extensions—the last of which runs out on March 19—to give it more time to get Bill C-71 through. Her ruling was originally set to take effect on June 19, 2023.

The bill, backed by the NDP, was designed to reverse a change by Stephen Harper's Conservative government in 2009 that stripped children of a Canadian parent born outside Canada of their automatic right to citizenship.

With an election pending and Mark Carney replacing Justin Trudeau as prime minister and conducting a cabinet shuffle, it was not certain that the bill would be reintroduced within the year.

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In court, the government disclosed its aim to give officials discretion to grant citizenship to "lost Canadians" who apply to IRCC. The granting of citizenship will also apply to adopted children of foreign-born Canadians.

But lawyer Sujit Choudhry, head of Hāki Chambers, who successfully brought the court challenge on behalf of clients of his, said giving Ottawa another 12-month extension to get the bill through is unjustified.

He said the announcement that officials would have discretion to grant citizenship would not mean that all "lost Canadians" who apply would necessarily receive it.

"We have heard in this litigation that there are often very good intentions but very little follow-through," he said. "I am very skeptical about this new interim measure announced two months after Parliament was prorogued."

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Don Chapman, who has been campaigning for decades to restore the rights of "Lost Canadians," said he welcomed the minister's intervention. But he expressed concern that people who apply for their citizenship could still be turned down by IRCC officials processing applications.

He said he knew of cases where some "lost Canadians" are approved, but others in parallel situations are rejected.

"This interim ruling is simply a partial cure. It is not the solution intended by the court to end the discrimination. Only Parliament with the government's support can accomplish that. Nevertheless, the measure approved today by Minister Miller sets into force an outline for the bureaucrats to follow in granting citizenship for affected applicants," he said in an e-mail.

Bill C-71 would not only have ended the second-generation cutoff but also would have also brought in "a substantial connection test." It would have limited who can pass on citizenship to ensure that Canadians born abroad who have spent their entire lives outside Canada would not be able to automatically confer the right to a Canadian passport onto their children. They would have to show, under the bill, that they were physically in Canada for at least 1,095 days (equal to three years cumulatively) before their child's birth.

When the Ontario court ruling comes into effect, it could lead to thousands of people whose parents have never been in Canada automatically qualifying as citizens.

Mr. Miller said that in considering applications from "Lost Canadians" for citizenship, if a "Canadian parent had at least 1,095 cumulative days of physical presence in Canada before their birth or adoption, they will be offered consideration for a discretionary grant on a prioritized basis."

Source@ Global and mall

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