Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Social Affairs, Science and Technology
Issue No. 16 - Evidence - February 16, 2017
OTTAWA, Thursday, February 16, 2017
The Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology met today at 10:30 am, to continue its consideration of Bill C-6, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act and to make consequential amendments to another Act.
Senator Kelvin Kenneth Ogilvie (Chair) in the chair.
The Chair: Welcome to the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology.
[English]
I'm Kelvin Ogilvie from Nova Scotia, chair of the committee. I will invite my colleagues to introduce themselves.
Senator Seidman: Judith Seidman, Montreal, Quebec.
Senator Stewart Olsen: Carolyn Stewart Olsen, New Brunswick.
Senator Raine: Nancy Greene Raine, British Columbia.
[Translation]
Senator Petitclerc: Chantal Petitclerc from Montreal, Quebec.
[English]
Hon. Nancy Hartling: Nancy Hartling, New Brunswick.
Senator Omidvar: Ratna Omidvar, Ontario.
[Translation]
Senator Cormier: René Cormier from New Brunswick.
[English]
Senator Eggleton: Art Eggleton, Ontario, and I'm deputy chair of the committee.
The Chair: Thank you, colleagues. I would remind us that we are continuing our study of Bill C-6, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act and to make consequential amendments to another Act.
We have two panels this morning. On this panel, which will end no later than 11:30, appearing as individuals are Reis Pagtakhan, Immigration Lawyer, and Craig Forcese, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa. I will invite you to speak in the order I have you on my list, so Mr. Pagtakhan, would you please commence?
Reis Pagtakhan, Immigration Lawyer, as an individual: Thank you. I would like to begin by acknowledging that the land on which we gather is the traditional, unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people.
Senators, today I would like to focus my opening remarks on three areas. The first point I would like to raise is that I would encourage senators to amend the bill in a manner that would adopt Recommendation No. 94 from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. As senators may know, this recommendation would add to the citizenship oath an affirmation that new Canadians will faithfully observe the laws of Canada, including treaties with indigenous peoples.
While senators may be tempted to determine that such an amendment may be beyond the scope and principle of the bill, or may not be relevant to the subject matter of the bill, Parliament is supreme and senators and members of this the house should move on this issue quickly.
Why is there a rush to move on this issue? The simple fact is that, every year, tens of thousands of Canadian permanent residents take their oath of citizenship. The longer Parliament waits to amend the citizenship oath, the longer the issue of reconciliation is kept from being top of mind to new Canadians.
Many new Canadians will not have a background on Canada's history with indigenous peoples. As many new Canadians immigrate to Canada as adults, most will not have had the opportunity to learn about this history through our school system and, as a result, unless we provide opportunities for them to learn about these issues, these issues may not become part of their awareness.
To let thousands more new Canadians become citizens without providing them with information on one of the most important issues of our country would be most unfortunate. If reconciliation is to be achieved, it is important to enlist the efforts of all Canadians, including new Canadians.
With respect to the subject matter of the bill, I would like to address the issue of requiring applicants to demonstrate proficiency in English or French before being granted citizenship. It is my position that language proficiency should not be required at all.
While the bill's proposal to compress the age range of individuals who need to demonstrate language proficiency is a good first step, I believe the requirement that new citizens demonstrate language proficiency should be totally eliminated. This is not to say that language proficiency is not important. However, if the government believes that English or French is necessary to be successful and to contribute to Canada, language proficiency should be a prerequisite to permanent residency, not to citizenship.
Putting a language bar on newcomers to Canada years after they arrive here is unnecessary. If we do not require an individual to be proficient in English or French before obtaining permanent residency, we should not require them to obtain proficiency for citizenship.
Senators are no doubt aware that once an individual becomes a permanent resident, he or she has the right to work, study and live in Canada. In addition, permanent residents have obligations to pay taxes and to abide by Canadian laws. In return, they are able to obtain benefits of our health care system and other social supports. If permanent residents never become citizens, those rights, obligation and benefits will continue regardless of the language they speak.
While refusing a permanent resident citizenship will prevent them from voting, permanent residents have, for years, had an indirect vote in choosing who will be Prime Minister through political parties. While unable to vote in general elections, permanent residents are able to vote in the leadership selection process of major Canadian political parties. As a result, a permanent resident who does not have a vote in a general election has a vote on who will be Prime Minister. This vote comes without having to pass a language test.
When immigrants arrive in this country, we determine, through policy, which immigrants require language proficiency and which do not. If we determine that language proficiency is not necessary, we should not require language proficiency at a later stage — in this case, the citizenship process.
On the issue of revoking Canadian citizenship for dual citizens guilty of terrorism, I remain in support of laws that would see citizenship revocation for those convicted of terrorism, and also treason and espionage, in Canadian courts only. Terrorists convicted in Canadian courts have all the protections of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. They are provided with the right to counsel, the right to appeal their conviction, the presumption of innocence and the necessity of the Crown to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Should an individual be convicted of terrorism in a Canadian court and be a dual citizen, his or her citizenship should be revoked after all appeals are exhausted.
However, I do not believe that Canadians convicted of terrorism outside of Canada should have their citizenship revoked. Outside of Canada, Canadians do not have the protection of our Charter. One only has to look at the case of Mohamed Fahmy to see how determining the equivalency of a Canadian conviction abroad for terrorism could be a political decision. As senators may recall, shortly after Mr. Fahmy was convicted of terrorism in Egypt, the government assured Canadians that his citizenship would not be revoked. This decision was not made by a court of law, but by bureaucrats and politicians, and this is not an adequate enough protection of a citizen's rights.
Senators, I am open to questions on these topics and anything else on the bill. Thank you.
Craig Forcese, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, as an individual: Thank you, and good morning.
I would like to express my thanks to the committee for inviting me to appear this morning on Bill C-6. In my statement, I will focus exclusively on the final issue that my colleague was discussing, that is, the issue of citizenship revocation for terrorism. These were powers that, as you know, were enacted in 2014 and would be repealed by Bill C- 6. I support that repeal.
I will focus on two key points. First, terrorist citizenship-stripping provisions are different from other rules, such as revocation for fraud. Second, they are problematic from a security perspective.
On the first point, those defending the 2014 revocation law sometimes claim that war criminals have citizenship stripped and that the 2014 law is, therefore, no different.
This analogy is misleading. Nazi collaborators have lost citizenship because they lied about their conduct at the time they became Canadians. The revocation is for fraud, not war crimes. No Canadian has lost their citizenship for a war crime committed while a Canadian.
The 2014 law did something different. It used citizenship-stripping as a supplemental punishment to penalize dual- nationality Canadians for things done while a Canadian. In so doing, it effectively converted the many Canadians with dual citizenship into probationary Canadians.
Let me turn to why terrorism citizenship revocation is poor security policy. First, there simply is no empirical basis to conclude that dual nationals pose a more serious security risk than single-national Canadians. Singling out dual nationals for the special risk of revocation is not, therefore, rationally connected to a security objective, a lethal shortcoming from both a security and constitutional perspective. I have left with the clerk a copy of a law review article that talks about the constitutional flaws of the current regime in the Citizenship Act in terms of revocation.
Second, Canada has worked arduously and deployed tools like no-fly lists, passport revocation, peace bonds and outright criminal prosecution to stop Canadians from travelling for the purpose of participating in terrorist activity, but the objective of citizenship stripping is ultimately to deport these people. If truly dangerous people are deported, the net effect may be to speed foreign fighters on their way. Again, this raises questions of rationality.
But third, an irony of the structure of terrorism law in Canada is that citizenship revocation will not be imposed on the most dangerous of people. The manner in which terrorism offences are designed in the Criminal Code means that the persons who are most likely to be charged are plotters, not killers. Once someone becomes a killer, police and prosecutors are much more likely to charge the person with murder, not terrorism offences. That is the reason why Justin Bourque, Richard Bain and most recently Alexandre Bissonnette, at least so far, were not charged with terrorism offences.
Not a single person currently in prison in Canada for a terrorism offence, enacted after 9/11, has actually committed an act of violence. They were pre-empted, and so as pre-empted plotters, they now face the risk of revocation, assuming they are dual nationals; killers would not.
Fourth, revocation would consume huge resources best deployed for different objectives. Setting aside the inevitable constitutional challenges to revocation itself, subsequent efforts to remove these former Canadians would be an arduous undertaking. The risk of maltreatment in foreign countries may be high, placing Canada in the invidious position of trying to remove people to torture.
We have been down this path before with immigration security certificates. At the end of the last decade, the government was spending multiple millions of dollars per year, per security certificate, often in a vain attempt to defend the measures. This was not money well spent. Indeed, more money by a large margin was spent trying to remove people than Canada has spent in total so far on counter-violent extremism and terrorism disengagement strategies.
While these programs are themselves unproven and untested, they are an area in which Canada clearly needs to improve its practices. At the end of the day, even for terrorist convicts, rehabilitation and not displacement to other countries is the most plausible security strategy.
That is because, fifth, displaced dangerous people remain dangerous and indeed potentially more dangerous than if they remained in Canada. They will likely be impossible for Canadian security services to monitor, they may be free of strictures such as peace bonds, and history suggests that dangerous people outside of Canada continue to do harm to Canadians and Canadian interests.
Nor — sixth — would other countries readily welcome the arrival of a person radicalized to violence in Canada, and almost all of those serving terrorism sentences currently are made-in-Canada terrorists. Canada's international anti- terrorism objectives are poorly served if we become an exporter of instability rather than invest in the hard work of terrorist disengagement.
In sum, it is my view that little recommends terrorism citizenship stripping and there is much that condemns it. Thank you for your attention and I welcome your questions.
The Chair: Thank you very much. We will begin questions from senators, and I would remind senators that we have one question per round. We will try to get as many rounds in as the length of both questions and answers permit.
Senator Omidvar: My question is to Mr. Forcese. We heard yesterday about 22 other like jurisdictions — the U.K., other parts of Europe, other parts of the world — where citizenship revocation for dual citizens has been adopted, and the question is always asked whether we are in the company of these jurisdictions. Can you provide us with more details as to what the United States is doing, as to what France is doing, and your assessment of whether the U.K. is actually a safer place because it aggressively deports?
Mr. Forcese: I'll do my best. Turning to the United States, it is essentially impossible to revoke citizenship in the United States as a supplemental punishment because of the constitutional jurisprudence in that jurisdiction. Revocation for supplemental punishment would be a violation of the prohibition in the Eighth Amendment on cruel and unusual punishment. That jurisprudence has been established for the better part of half a century.
Moreover, the U.S. statutory law says that, to the extent that revocation is permissible, it must be essentially undertaken with the consent of the person whose citizenship is being revoked, and so actually there are narrow manifestations of that consent, which at least in principle can include fighting in a foreign armed force against the United States.
But the bottom line is even in those circumstances, due process standards under the Fifth Amendment in the United States require that the standard of proof be beyond a reasonable doubt. In other words, it is essentially the same standard as a criminal proceeding, which means in practice revocation is not a tool that's deployed in the United States. As a matter of fact, it's considered anathema from speaking with colleagues in the U.S. who have worked in anti-terrorism and anti-terrorism tools.
In relation to France, for some time, France has had a revocation provision for naturalized citizens for terrorism offences that endured for a finite period of time. The citizenship can be revoked if, within a finite period of time after naturalizing, one engages in a terrorism offence.
In the aftermath of the Paris attacks, there was a move to broaden that and in fact change the constitution in France to enable further revocations. The French abandoned that effort for fear that it was potentially quite counterproductive both in terms of a counter-narrative, that is, it is potentially quite devastating in terms of a sense of pluralism and inclusivity, but also out of concerns that it would single out dual nationals.
In the United Kingdom context, there is and has been for several years the prospect of revocation, albeit revocation only for dual nationals so you can't render someone stateless. There have been a number of instances where there has been revocation.
On the question as to whether that has made the United Kingdom safer on the ground, I'm not sure that we have an empirical basis to so conclude. I say that in part because it's a relatively new concept, but more than that, at the end of the day, the persons whose citizenships are revoked tend to be foreign fighters who are at the time engaged in armed conflicts in places like Syria and Iraq, and many of these people have died anyway. The issue as to what mayhem they may have promoted upon return is a moot one because they are not capable of returning for obvious reasons.
I'm not sure if that's responsive to your questions.
Senator Frum: Mr. Pagtakhan, I'm very intrigued by the comments you made about language proficiency. You've said some provocative and interesting things, and I want to ask you about this idea that if we are concerned about having citizens who are proficient in English or French, it would make more sense to test for that at the permanent residency stage or not at all.
I presume that the reason we have the system we have, as opposed to the one you are proposing, is because we are giving potential citizens the possibility of learning English or French when they arrive in Canada. We're not setting the bar so high that they can't ever enter Canada as a potential citizen unless they speak English or French. We're saying that you can come here, and it used to be five years and now it will be three years to learn a language. I presume that's the origin of the policy that we have now. Would you agree with that?
Mr. Pagtakhan: That might be the origin, senator, but the whole reason I'm making the recommendation that I'm making is that you don't need to learn English or French to become a citizen of Canada if you're a permanent resident. You can actually wait it out until you hit the age of 64, or with new bill the age of 55. We're telling people that you don't need language proficiency; you can just wait it out.
Most of the people who will come to Canada as economic immigrants will have a language test imposed on them at the front end anyway, so those people are taken care of in terms of language proficiency. Their children will be going through the school system, and it will be almost impossible to go through the school system without learning English or French, so then why put on the bureaucratic requirement to test for language if they become adults within those years of the process?
Also, when we're talking about family class immigrants, and those may be the ones that we would be singling out, and refugees, who don't need language tests to come here, let's look at that demographic. The parents and grandparents are probably going to be over the age of 55, so we're essentially saying you can come here without a language test and you can become a citizen without speaking either language. And then if we look at refugees, we're saying we're bringing you here to protect you, but we're not going to let you be citizens unless you speak the language.
Citizenship, or taking the oath of citizenship, won't be the motivation for these people to learn English or French. The motivation will be, "I can feed my family by getting a job, or I can go to school or communicate with my neighbours.''
Normally, what you would see is that most people who come here, whether they speak English or French or not, will eventually learn it. If we are telling people that you don't need English or French — and that's what we're telling people by compressing the language age, and that's what the last government said when they increased the language age because there is still a language exemption — let's do away this. Let's do away with the cost to the immigrant coming to Canada who has to do this test. Let's do away with the cost to the Government of Canada who has to assess this language ability, when, frankly, we don't require it because we don't require it after a certain age.
Senator Eggleton: Thank you very much, both of you, for your presentations. Both of you have talked about revocation of citizenship on the basis of terrorist acts, but you haven't mentioned revocation on the basis of false representation or fraud. One of the things we've be hearing since we started yesterday to have witnesses is that there is no provision for a hearing or right to a hearing, it's all done by written documentation, and there is no right of appeal and no involvement in the court system. What is your comment about that?
Mr. Forcese: My first reaction is that it's probably not surprising that I believe that more due process is better than little due process, in part because, in keeping with the U.S. jurisprudence in this area, it's difficult to imagine a potentially more dire outcome than removing someone's citizenship. Citizenship, very famously, is called the right to have rights. It is the core that opens the door, for example, for a person to be in Canada. In circumstances where it's removed, it seems only appropriate that there be sufficient safeguards.
This issue has arisen in the past. Revocation for fraud is the one ground for revocation that has been part of our citizenship statute since inception, since the very beginning, and the issue has arisen in terms of due process standards in the past, including whether there are constitutional expectations. The courts have actually split on that issue, at least in relation to fraud.
I'm not sure that there is a strong constitutional obligation per se, but, on the other hand, I think there is a strong policy reason saying that there should be checks and balances that extend beyond simply what happens in the minister's office or the bureaucratic apparatus because of the significance of the consequence.
Mr. Pagtakhan: I totally agree with Professor Forcese. We differ on the issue of revoking citizenship for terrorism, but, when you revoke citizenship for terrorism, they actually have greater protections in the sense that they have be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law before you can go through that process.
Senator Eggleton, I think that the process should have checks and balances. I think there should be appeals. There should be the ability for judicial review when taking away citizenship in any sort of exercise where we take away citizenship. The individual should have an opportunity to show that their citizenship shouldn't be taken away.
Senator Stewart Olsen: You two are making it very difficult, with two opposing views. I would just love to get into it with both, but I have to go to Mr. Forcese. We've crossed swords before. Because of your beliefs — and you're very good at putting down all of the points — have you considered that perhaps revocation is a deterrent more than anything else, if you might face that? We are looking for deterrents to stop things before they happen. In your experience, what would you say about that?
Mr. Forcese: At the end of the day, there are a number of deterrents for a person who might engage in terrorism conduct, including going overseas to participate with a group like Daesh, and the core deterrents are really in the Criminal Code. I'm a firm believer in criminal tools in the area of anti-terrorism and generally suspicious of administrative tools, because I doubt their effectiveness. If I were to invest effort, money and time, it would be to enhance the criminal tool, where we've had comparative lack of success, including in foreign-fighter prosecutions, in part because of the difficulty of marshalling intelligence as evidence. That's a whole other discussion that we might have.
I personally am not persuaded that the supplemental prospect of citizenship revocation actually serves as a deterrent. This is a view that I share with someone like Phil Gurski, who used to work in CSIS and has a very active blog now. On the issue of deterrents and citizenship revocation, his view, based on his experience, is that it is very unlikely that it would have a deterrent impact.
If anything, the countervail to that is: So we have this measure, and if we deploy it, what are the downstream security consequences, both for our allies and for us? At the end of the day, as I have suggested in my remarks, I think they are actually quite dire. Even if it did have a deterrent effect, I think that deterrent effect is probably overwhelmed by the potential negative security downside of actually using it.
Senator Jaffer: Thank you to both of you, and please, Mr. Pagtakhan, convey our good wishes to your dad. Tell him we still miss him very much. He did a lot of work in this area.
I have a question for you, Mr. Forcese. What really troubles me about this is that, if you are a permanent resident, you get a hearing if you have committed a fraud in entering the country. If you are a refugee coming to this country, you get a hearing. But if you are a Canadian citizen, the minister will just have the power to take your citizenship away without going to the Federal Court. As you know, in the Federal Court, you also have a hearing on humanitarian rights.
This shows how old I am. We have been this route before, where there were no hearings for refugees. Then, it was held by the courts that there have to be hearings. Under section 7, there has to be an independent, impartial decision maker. Otherwise, it's unconstitutional.
I just think that this is just heading straight to the court if we don't have an appeal to this process. I would like to hear what you have to say.
Mr. Forcese: There are basically three scenarios that could arise under revocation. The first is that the minister revokes on the basis that the person is engaged in foreign fighting, at which point there is a process that goes to Federal Court. There is the prospect that the citizenship would be revoked because the person was convicted in Canada of a terrorism offence, and those were the cases that were ripe at the time this act came into force. Then there is the prospect that citizenship would be revoked based on a foreign conviction.
Of the three, I would agree with my colleague that the least pernicious would be revocation following conviction within Canada, constitutionally speaking, in terms of due process, for some of the reasons he identified, that there has been a due-process standard met within a criminal context in Canada.
Much more problematic, as he also indicated, is revocation in relation to a terrorism offence overseas. Right away, I think you're into difficult constitutional terrain there. As it is likely to be regarded by the court, revocation in this context is a supplemental punishment. If so, it triggers section 11 of the Charter, as well as section 7 of the Charter, in terms of due process expectations.
Right away, for instance, the provision in the current act that says that it's a burden on the individual themselves to show that they don't have dual nationality. That reverse onus is the sort of thing that while not necessarily a slam dunk would attract careful constitutional scrutiny if this is a supplemental punishment. So it's not just the hearing and the absence of a hearing that is significant. It's also the prospect that some of the onus imposed by the act on the individual may be unconstitutional or at least constitutionally doubtful.
Senator Seidman: I would like to address my question to you, Mr. Pagtakhan. It follows from what Senator Frum was discussing with you about the language issue, because you did make some very provocative, intriguing statements. I would like to preface my question by saying to you that, according to Statistics Canada, adults aged 55 to 64 comprise 36 per cent of our workforce, and that is a very significant figure. They potentially have another 20 years in their work lives. If you're 55, you could have 20 more years, and, in this day and age, maybe even more, in your work life.
Is it your understanding that it's more likely that someone immigrating to Canada will have an easier time integrating, working and settling into their communities if they can function in one of our two official languages?
Mr. Pagtakhan: Absolutely. I agree that if you can function in one, or two, or either one of our official languages, you will have an easier time to settle. That's why we do that for economic immigrants at the front end. My position simply is that this is doing a language test at the back end. If we really want to make sure someone is successful, isn't struggling, isn't having a problem finding a job, or isn't having a problem integrating into society, then we should put that language test at the front end and not have to do it at the back end.
There are reasons we don't do it at the front end for some individuals, like refugees and family class individuals, and I agree with those things. The clerk has indicated I should point out that I provided her with some op-eds I had done before on these issues and others. My position is that this is a burden on the applicant and a burden on the government that isn't necessary.
[Translation]
Senator Cormier: My question is for Mr. Pagtakhan, who for the most part just responded to my concern about the language issue.
Let me say to begin, Mr. Pagtakhan, that I completely agree with you about the importance of including information on the treaties with the First Nations and the history of Canada in the Canadian citizenship oath in order to facilitate the integration of new citizens.
Moreover, do you also believe that knowledge of both official languages, or of one official language, provides for a better understanding of Canadian history and therefore facilitates citizens' integration? By that I mean both economic and cultural integration into our country.
[English]
Mr. Pagtakhan: Absolutely. Senator, don't confuse my opposition to having language tests at the citizenship level with a belief that I don't think language is important. I think language is extremely important. I just think that where we test for language should be at the front and not at the back end. I see the back end as a place where it is redundant in many cases or not necessary. At the very minimum, if you take away the language requirements and put in the existing requirements, there will be a requirement to have some proficiency in English or in French because otherwise you can't pass the citizenship test. I do agree that language is very important. I'm just saying that when we're testing for language, we either test at the front end or not test at all because we already put the value on where we need to test for it. We're already allowing these people to live here. If we put a test on language and they don't pass the language test, these people can still live here. They can still work here. They can still study here. They can move to any province or territory because they're permanent residents. We don't create a problem, but we don't solve a problem by putting a language test at citizenship.
Senator Raine: My question is for Mr. Pagtakhan. Do you have any figures on the cost of the language testing program? I'm very aware that there seems to be a shortage of funding for language programs for refugees. If we did away with the language testing for citizenship, could that funding then be moved into language training for refugees?
Mr. Pagtakhan: Unfortunately, senator, I don't have any comments or any data on the costs, but there is a cost to the individual of a few hundred dollars — it could be in the thousands of dollars, depending on the size of one's family — to take the test. I don't know what the departmental costs are so I wouldn't be able to speak to that, but clearly there will be costs. The government has to make the assessment as to whether the person has the language proficiency. Officers will have to be assigned to that. There are criteria and there is work to be done. Whatever that cost may be — and I apologize for not having data — that cost would be eliminated if you eliminate the language test.
By the way, if this bill passes, you're eliminating the language test for people under 18 and over 55. If it doesn't pass, then you still eliminate the language test for the people outside the current age range.
Senator Meredith: Thank you both for your presentations this morning. Mr. Pagtakhan, this question is directly for you, but I want your comments also, Mr. Forcese, with respect to the two classes of citizenship.
In an opinion piece on Bill C-6 published by the CBC, you said in support of revocation that:
While this creates two tiers of citizens, there is nothing wrong with having one tier for those convicted of terrorism, spying and treason and one tier for every other citizen.
This is sort of incorrect in that Bill C-24 created two tiers, dual citizenship and mono citizens. What is the rationale for punishing terrorists differently instead of having more emphasis on the terrorist act here in Canada? Can you elaborate for me?
Mr. Pagtakhan: Terrorists — spies, for that matter, and also people who commit treason — have been convicted beyond a reasonable doubt. They have had the advantages of the presumption of innocence. They have had the protections of all our Charter rights.
Also, according to the Supreme Court of Canada, with respect to immigration — and I think this would also impact and be applicable with respect to citizenship — the courts are allowed to take into account the immigration consequence of a conviction. So the courts, in the criminal context, will be allowed to take into consideration that citizenship can be or would be revoked, depending on what happens with this bill. On that basis, I think there's adequate protection for the individual.
Terrorists, spies and those who commit treason should have their citizenship stripped and should have the ability to prove that they shouldn't have it stripped. I recognize that there are situations like that of the late Nelson Mandela. There should be opportunities to go and say that if someone was at one point in time a terrorist and then they went the route of peace, then these individuals maybe shouldn't have their citizenship stripped.
What I'm saying here is I think they should have their citizenship stripped because they have been convicted beyond a reasonable doubt, and these acts are very heinous acts that affect not just individuals but are attacks on our Canadian society and values — to the extent that one can use the term "Canadian values'' nowadays.
Mr. Forcese: Not to reiterate, but the downside for me in large measure is the security implications of revocation.
On the dual nationality issue, there is an international law reason why the government of the day chose to single out dual nationals. However, in so doing, it instantly opened the door to a section 15 Charter equality rights argument which says that we now have a class of persons who are naturalized to Canada. We're talking about 3 per cent of the Canadian population having dual nationality, of which 75 per cent or so are immigrants. The risk for those individuals is very different from the risk of someone who has only single nationality.
One response to that is people with dual nationality can renounce the other nationality, but in other parts of the world nationality law is governed by individual states and that renunciation is effectively impossible in many states. There is a concept known as "clinging nationality.'' That is, once you have it, you can't get rid of it.
This means that those persons who have dual nationality are at a special peril not shared by others who may be committing equally heinous acts. Again I reiterate that there is no reason to believe that those with dual nationality are more dangerous or more likely to be a potential terrorist than anyone else. If anything, we're seeing an uptake with foreign fighters and people who have no connection to any country other than Canada.
Senator Petitclerc: My question minutes ago was to be on language, and it was for Mr. Pagtakhan. However, it's been answered, so I'm going to ask a broad question of Mr. Forcese. I hope you like it.
I wanted to have not a legal perspective but more of a social perspective on the impact of revocation. Maybe you can help me understand what the social impact, positive or negative, looks like when it comes to the individual, family or community. Do you have examples from data or literature? What does it mean if we go that route versus another one in terms of the social impact?
Mr. Forcese: In relation to revocation, there are basically two narratives. The narrative in favour of revocation is that by engaging in these acts, you've demonstrated a disloyalty to Canada, Canadian society and Canadian values, and therefore this is an appropriate measure, which is a cogent narrative to which one can have sympathy.
The other narrative, of course, is that by singling out dual nationals, 75 per cent of which are recent immigrants, you are creating a counter-narrative that says that these people are especially dangerous, and more than that, they're not truly part of Canadian society because they have merely probationary status.
For those people who work on counter-violent extremism, and I'm a student of these people who do research in these areas, they raise concerns that that sort of narrative, saying "You're not quite one of us,'' is exactly the sort of narrative that is deeply detrimental to the integration and counter-radicalization effort that should be front and centre in terms of our efforts to stave off radicalization to violence.
You can see both sides of the coin, but the one I'm most sympathetic to is the concern that by singling out this subset of the population for this special peril, we're playing into a propaganda discourse that is detrimental to our ultimate security objectives.
The Chair: Just before starting the second round, I'm going to comment on Mr. Pagtakhan's responses with regard to language. I'm not going to ask you a question; I understand very clearly your point.
I want to point out that this committee has studied social determinants in cities in Canada and the difficulties that people have in our large cities adapting to Canadian life and improving their opportunities, and we have determined that language is one of the most important issues for determining your ability to succeed in that area. I'm just going to make the observation that I personally disagree with the approach you would take. I think there's another way to go, but that's not for me to argue here. I'm going to just put it on the record.
Senator Omidvar: I'm really intrigued by this new language idea, but I'm not going to go there right now.
I'm going to ask Mr. Forcese another question about the CSIS review of Bill C-24. I understand that you filed an Access to Information request to see how CSIS security rationale responded to Bill C-24. Are you able to tell us about their response?
Mr. Forcese: Obviously, in thinking through the security impact of Bill C-24 and the revocation provisions, I was interested in knowing what kind of policy diagnostic was done in support of the changes in 2014. I had spoken to people formerly in CSIS. They raised doubts. In fact, I have some newspaper clippings where people like Ray Boisvert raised some of the concerns. Ray Boisvert used to be senior in CSIS and raised some of the concerns that I also expressed.
I wanted to know whether there was official paperwork on this, so I filed access requests over the last three years with CSIS and a number of other departments. It's difficult to extrapolate from what one gets through access requests, but I found no indication that there were any broader policy considerations to the security impacts of this measure. In fact, the document I got from CSIS consisted of a single page, of which there was a single paragraph effectively saying that CSIS will perform its appropriate role in implementing the policy of the Government of Canada.
So there was no impact assessment, no evidence of an impact assessment that I could find through use of Access to Information, which I find troubling, in part because it's quite easy to enumerate the potential security downside of this.
Senator Frum: I'd like to ask both witnesses for a legal opinion on whether you consider it would constitute the crime of fraud if a new citizen took the following oath:
I swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty the Queen . . . Her Heirs and Successors, and that I will faithfully observe the laws of Canada and fulfill my duties as a Canadian citizen.
and then commits or attempts to commit an act of terrorism. Have they committed fraud?
Mr. Forcese: The concept of fraud is the situation that existed at the time of the oath. So that's the war crime scenario: "Were you a Nazi collaborator?'' "No, I wasn't a Nazi collaborator.'' "Oh, you've lied. That's now fraud.''
Senator Frum: I will observe the laws of Canada.
Mr. Forcese: If you want to demonstrate that to be fraud, you would have to show that the person, at the time they swore the oath, had the intent to breach the oath. You'd have to show their state of mind. Fraud depends, in our criminal law, on not just the action but the requisite mental state. In many instances, when we're talking about revocation, we're talking about people — for example, those associated with the Toronto 18 — who came here as very small children, radicalized to violence in Canada and in at least one instance was actually born here.
Senator Frum: And one person came at the age of 14, the ringleader.
Mr. Forcese: The bottom line is we're talking about applying a standard of revocation to persons who may never have sworn your oath in the first place.
Senator Frum: When parents swear it, they swear it on behalf of their children.
Mr. Forcese: I think, as a matter of law, it would be very difficult to attribute the fraud from the parent to the child.
Mr. Pagtakhan: I wouldn't see that as fraud, if one committed a crime subsequent to taking the oath. I agree with Professor Forcese. It's at the time that you make the oath.
If you're talking about people who violate the oath, it does talk about adhering to and observing all Canadian laws. If my wife, who was a permanent resident and now a citizen, gets caught for speeding, that's not observing the laws. I really don't think that's the tool that one should use. If what you want to do is revoke citizenship for terrorists, I think the tool is the existing tool that's already in the current law.
Senator Eggleton: I want to change to another aspect of the bill, and this deals with the question of physical presence in Canada from the time the person has been admitted to the time that they applied for citizenship.
In tightening up the provisions in that area, the previous government was in part concerned about what they called "a port of convenience'' where people would be really spending most of their time living in another country, maybe the country of their birth, as opposed to in Canada, although they want to have Canadian citizenship.
This particular bill now changes the requirement. Instead of four out of six years, it changes it to three out of five years. It also provides for a half day for every day spent by a temporary resident, such as somebody here for education purposes. It also has removed the "intention to reside'' provision as well.
The whole objective here is the attachment to Canada. But nowadays, in this globalization situation we have in the world, people get jobs offshore quite frequently. It's recognized here that if they're working for the military or if they're working for a Canadian entity, government entity, that that would be exempt, but they could be working for NGO organizations, business corporations or academic institutions. A lot of people are moving around the world a lot more than they used to.
I wonder if you could comment on this whole issue of attachment to Canada as it is in the provisions here. Are these the right changes to be made, or do they go too far or not far enough?
Mr. Pagtakhan: I supported the change that came in the last bill with respect to residency. The big change that I think was important there, and isn't being changed here, is the physical presence test. I think there should be physical presence. If there is physical preference for three years out of five, as opposed to four years out of six, it is still significant. I don't have a big objection to that.
I also don't have an objection to providing half-time credit in the way that it's proposed in the bill for people who are temporary residents before they become permanent residents, unless these temporary residents are here as tourists. I don't think you should get credit if you're here as a tourist, but certainly as a temporary foreign worker, as a foreign student or an international student, you should get that sort of a credit.
In terms of the intention to reside, I agree that this should be taken out. I think it's great that people should intend to reside in Canada, but, senator, I agree with you that we are in a global society and we encourage Canadians to go across the globe. Our educational institutions encourage that; our trade deals encourage that.
The focus should be on getting rid of the intention to reside, which I think is a good idea; reinserting the half-time credit for temporary residents who aren't tourists; and with respect to the three out of five years versus the four out of six years, while I supported four out of six, three out of five is okay with me as long as it's a physical presence test and not the old residency test where one could be resident but not actually physically present.
Senator Jaffer: My question to both of you is on immigrants and terrorism. A 2010 study conducted by CSIS obtained by The Globe and Mail reveals that born Canadians are more likely to become radicalized than immigrants. Is focusing on citizenship as punishment a distraction from other counterterrorism, counter-radicalization strategies?
We have lots of discussion about dual citizenship in the chamber, and as you both know, dual citizenship can happen without a person knowing. For example, those 17, some are taken to be Pakistani even though they never themselves have had any contact with Pakistan, nor did they even know they had Pakistani citizenship. Pakistan and Iran, I understand if you are a child of a parent who is Pakistani, you automatically become Pakistani.
My challenge is that we're focusing on the wrong area. We should be looking at what is happening to our children here, and we are putting our resources in the wrong place. I'd like both your comments.
Mr. Pagtakhan: I don't think it's a distraction simply because of this: In order to get to citizenship revocation, you've already had to go through the entire criminal court system. So you have to go through the enforcement mechanism first. For that reason, senator, I don't think it's a distraction, to answer your question directly.
Mr. Forcese: I think it is a distraction. I'll give you one example. Mr. Mohamed Hersi was the first person convicted of attempting to travel for the purpose of participating in a terrorist group. What was the terrorist group? Al-Shabaab in Somalia. He's serving a 10-year sentence for trying to join al-Shabaab in Somalia. Rumour has it that he was on the next tranche of persons whose Canadian citizenship would be revoked, which would render him then a Somali, and so upon serving his sentence, he would be removed to Somalia. In that circumstance, we are now sending someone back to the very place that they were trying to get to for reasons of which now they are serving 10 years in prison. Notwithstanding current developments in Somalia, which are quite promising in terms of a new government, it seems likely we were speeding him on his way to join al-Shabaab, which can be deeply destabilizing.
This is where it's a distraction. The concern is that on information and belief, Corrections Canada took the view that a lot of their rehabilitation issues could be solved simply because these persons would be removed upon serving their sentence and they were no longer a Canadian problem. That, it seems to me, is untrue because in many instances, even if we revoke citizenship, it wouldn't be possible to remove these people because of the torture fear.
But more than that, it was a deterrent for us to invest seriously in what is known as terrorist disengagement. At the end of the day, we have to invest in that because, frankly, even if we had citizenship revocation, a large number of persons will not be dual nationals, and we need to develop tools for rehabilitation in terms of terrorist disengagement. Other states are struggling with this right now, and I think we're behind on this in part because we were looking for a shortcut.
Senator Meredith: Mr. Forcese, that's sort of my line of questioning along with my colleague Senator Jaffer with respect to the necessary investments. You talk about more monies by large margins being spent trying to remove people than Canada spent in total so far on counter-violent extremism and terrorism. We talk about radicalization and the engagement of young people. They're attracted to ISIS or al-Shabaab or Boko Haram.
What should be done? What's the financial impact in terms of dollars that have been spent? Can you give us those numbers? What should we be doing now? Both of you can comment on this as well, because I believe that's the crux of it.
I sit on the Defence Committee as well, and we talk about interruption in terms of not wanting to see something come to fruition, but we're at the forefront of it to ensure that something doesn't happen, which costs us more. We look at our institutions where individuals are incarcerated. We spend more on incarcerating than we do on ensuring they are not incarcerated, so talk about the rationale for that kind of financial impact on Canada.
Mr. Forcese: I'm going to cite the figure off the top of my head, but I'd have to validate it. My recollection of the amount of money the Government of Canada was spending on five anti-terrorism security certificates, non-Canadians subject to removal, in the last part of the last decade over a two-year span was $60 million. There were novel constitutional issues in play, but a lot of the cost was in constant 24-hour surveillance and all sorts of other measures that CBSA was employing.
In comparison, up until 2015, we were trying to get off the ground an RCMP counter-violence extremism program, the budget of which was $2.5 million nation-wide. The current government has pledged $10 million ongoing over a five-year span, I think, and then renewed. Even now. as we're moving forward on counter-violent extremism at the federal level, the relative spending is still, in my view, out of whack.
The issue is that counter-violent extremism is a novel area. The social science is rudimentary in the area. There are a lot of interesting projects under way across the world. It seems to me that this is an area where we need to invest substantially. To use the cliché, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The pound of cure is very expensive when you talk about removals.
Mr. Pagtakhan: I agree with the comments of Professor Forcese. I think citizenship revocation is a tool, but that's only one of the tools, and I would rather see a situation where we don't have people become terrorists because we can de-radicalize them and provide whatever interventions we can provide earlier. I think that's where the investment should be.
Don't confuse my support for citizenship revocation for terrorists as the one and only solution for this problem. There are clearly many solutions before we even get to a person being charged with a terrorist offence and then of course convicted. In that sense, I do agree with Mr. Forcese. I think the intervention should be earlier and that's where the investment should be. The protection of Canadians is the important aspect here.
The Chair: We've had some great questions. We've had some very interesting answers, and certainly it's going to contribute to our ability to analyze this bill as we move through it.
Colleagues, I'm pleased to welcome our next two witnesses, who we are familiar with. I'm going to identify them in the order they're listed. I will first welcome Avvy Yao-Yao Go, Clinic Director, Metro Toronto Chinese & Southeast Asian Legal Clinic. Ms. Go, please proceed.
Avvy Yao-Yao Go, Clinic Director, Metro Toronto Chinese & Southeast Asian Legal Clinic: Thank you. Good morning. I want to say a few words about our clinic. We are a non-profit organization based in Toronto that provides free legal services to low-income members of the Chinese and Southeast Asian communities. We were established in 1987, so we have been around for almost 30 years. Our clients are mostly non-English-speaking and face linguistic and other barriers in accessing legal services.
I want to thank the committee for giving us the opportunity to comment on Bill C-6. In my submission this morning, I'm going to highlight a couple of issues concerning the bill and its impact on the clients that we serve. In particular, I want to address the issue of the language and knowledge requirement and the application fee.
As a starting point, I would like to support the positive changes included in Bill C-6, which reverse some of the more troubling provisions of the previous bill, Bill C-24. In particular, we support resetting the language and knowledge requirements so that they apply only to applicants aged 18 to 54 instead of the 14 to 64 age group, as in Bill C-24. This is a welcome change that will benefit many clients of our clinic by expediting their pathway to citizenship.
However, as it now stands, an applicant must still demonstrate at the front end of the application proof of adequate language skill, without which Citizenship will not process their application. This requirement adversely affects permanent residents who do not speak English or French as their first language, many of whom are racialized or visible minorities.
While we understand the rationale behind the stringent language requirement is to ensure that citizenship applicants have good enough language skills, which will help reduce their marginalization, unfortunately these requirements create the exact opposite effect of their stated intent.
We have been around since 1987 and have served literally tens of thousands of low-income immigrants and refugees who work in precarious jobs. Many of them do not have the language proficiency to pass the citizenship test. Some of them have low literacy even in their own language. They often have to work extremely long hours just to make ends meet and simply do not have the luxury of time or resources to improve their language skills. Many have just enough language skills to get by living and working in Canada, contributing by being a worker or volunteer, but because they don't have language skills, it does not mean they are any less Canadian.
Immigrant women in particular are adversely affected by the stringent language and knowledge skills as they are more likely than men to have come to Canada as sponsored spouses without having to pass through the English or French language requirement and have fewer opportunities to upgrade their language skills because of their child care and other family responsibilities. Applying the strict language test to these individuals would simply mean denying their citizenship, which will not make them any more empowered.
If the government is serious about uplifting marginalized communities, then I think the best thing to do is to substantially increase investment in language classes for newcomers with income replacement benefits and child care subsidies so that more low-income immigrants and refugees can actually take advantage of language classes. We therefore recommend the policy of requiring up-front written proof of language and the requirement that the applicant take the knowledge test in one of the official languages be repealed.
For the same reason, we also call on the Senate to extend the ministerial discretion to grant citizenship by waiving the language and knowledge requirements for individuals who, due to various circumstances, will not be able to meet the requirements.
On the application fee, of course we are very concerned about the tripling of the fee over the last few years. The exorbitant rate has priced citizenship out of reach for a significant portion of the population, especially those who are low income, and of course marginalized groups such as women, people with disabilities and racialized groups are highly represented among the low-income groups, so they are the ones who bear the burden of the fee hikes.
In conclusion, we want to stress that the Citizenship Act is one of the most important pieces of legislation in Canada. Citizenship defines who we are as a people and hence what Canada is as a nation. Historically, many racialized group members were explicitly barred from becoming citizens. We of course have come a long way from those days, and to ensure that we don't repeat the same historical mistake, any change to Canada's Citizenship Act must be examined through the lens of equality and inclusion.
It is in the interests of Canada to encourage and allow more immigrants to become citizens. Removing barriers to citizenship will achieve that goal and will benefit both Canada and immigrants alike. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you. I will now invite Ms. Taub, who is an immigration lawyer and is appearing as an individual.
Julie Taub, Immigration Lawyer, as an individual: Thank you. I would like to thank the members of the committee for inviting me here to speak about Bill C-6, which I do not support.
I'd like to start with a quote. Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada's first Prime Minister, said the Senate was to be a place of sober second thought so that legislation would receive proper and careful consideration before finally becoming law. That is why I am here. I'm requesting that, based on some of the observations I will be making, the analysis will be based on objective criteria and not on partisan politics.
I'm addressing two issues in particular: the shortening of the residency requirements and the repealing of the possibility of revoking citizenship for convicted terrorists and serious criminals.
Now, it has been argued that the sooner a permanent resident may obtain his or her citizenship, the more attached they become to Canada. Well, that is true perhaps in the majority of cases, but in too many cases, they become citizens of convenience who live and work elsewhere while enjoying all the benefits and conveniences of a Canadian passport and using Canada as an insurance policy in case of political strife in their home countries, such as the classic example of the 26,000 Canadian citizens of convenience living in Lebanon who came here when the war broke out between the terrorist group Hezbollah and Israel and then promptly went back when the dust settled.
By way of personal background, when my family immigrated to Canada in 1949 and I was an infant of six months, five years was the mandatory requirement, during which time my father or any immigrant had to be gainfully employed. There was no welfare. There were no exceptions. My late mother and late father and my much elder sister were all Holocaust survivors. They learned the language, they contributed to Canada and they passed the test. All that was free for them were English language courses. That's it, and they became gainfully employed, contributed and stayed in Canada.
At this point, reducing it back to the old system under the previous Liberal government does not benefit Canada in any way. I don't believe there is any other immigrant-receiving country that has as short a residency requirement as the present government is now proposing, that is, three years out of five. For example, in the United Kingdom, it is five years, requiring nine months per year in the country; the United States, five years; Germany, eight years and a command of German — and that is not an easy language; I learned it in high school; Switzerland, 12 years of residence; Australia, four years, like ours; Norway, seven years; New Zealand, five years. So these are just some examples of other Western democratic immigrant-receiving countries.
The Chair: I would just mention that you've used four minutes of your total of seven minutes, at which point I will cut you off.
Ms. Taub: In a quick referral to the Auditor General's report of May 2016, where they were talking about immigration fraud and citizenship fraud, Canadian citizenship may be granted to fraudsters without checks. That's from the Auditor General, done under this government. The Auditor General's office reviewed files from July 2014 to October 2015, three years after the previous Conservative government launched a public crackdown on citizenship fraud by announcing it was going after 1,800 people it believed lied to lay claim to the maple leaf. In 2012, the government expanded that number, saying nearly 11,000 individuals had been linked to residency fraud investigation.
Citizens of convenience live in Canada for the minimal amount of time and leave. They live and work elsewhere, pay their taxes elsewhere, or if they are in the Gulf States, do not pay taxes at all. However, they will send their children back to Canada to go to school at our expense, without paying taxes here, or to university at subsidized rates as for those who live in Canada. By returning to the old system under the previous Liberal government, it's highly probable that we will return to increased numbers of citizens of convenience. That will all be to the detriment of Canada.
I'm going to skip through some of it to get to the revocation of citizenship for dual citizens convicted of terrorism or treason. That should not be repealed. We know and it is accepted that it's reasonable to revoke citizenship for fraud and misrepresentation. Then surely terrorism and serious criminality should be justifiable reasons to revoke citizenship. After all, new citizens take an oath to uphold Canadian law and their allegiance to Canada during the citizenship ceremony, and by committing terrorism or serious criminality, they have broken their oath.
Now, it is very easy for applicants to commit fraud because it is very difficult to ensure that a permanent resident has fulfilled the residency obligation either for citizenship or for maintaining their permanent resident status. That is because the permanent resident card is not a smart card. It is more difficult to get into any athletic club with their membership card, which is a smart card, than the Canadian permanent resident card.
The Chair: Could you please finish up?
Ms. Taub: Yes. There are no exit controls, so one does not really know if a permanent resident has lived in Canada during the time they say they have, and we know there are citizens of convenience living in the Gulf States, Lebanon, and in Hong Kong. There are even citizens who never lived in Canada who have bought properties in Vancouver and Toronto, maintained them, kept them empty and then claimed their citizenship.
The Chair: I will now turn to my colleagues with the usual caveat, beginning again with Senator Omidvar.
Senator Omidvar: I'm going to stick with language provisions and language competency of older individuals. We don't call them "senior citizens'' because 50 is the new 30, or whatever it is. I certainly feel that way even though I'm older than 50. But I do know that if I had to learn a new language — I'm trying to cope with not knowing French here and trying to learn it — I see the difficulties. Can you comment on how older immigrants, 55 and over, contribute to this country even with little or no English or French?
Ms. Go: Thank you for your question. I think that just based on my experience — I can only talk from my clients' perspective — they contribute in two different ways. One is by actually working in the workforce. I think one of the senators mentioned earlier that if you are 55, you might be working for another 20 years these days, partly because the clients we serve are low-income. They don't have pensions, and even if they are 65, they may or may not qualify for CPP or OAS, depending on how many years they have been in Canada, so many of them are still in the workforce.
Even those who are not in the workforce contribute by providing the support so that their families can go into the workforce. According to the CIC evaluation of the Family Unification Program, 97 per cent of the sponsored parents and grandparents provide emotional support; 92 per cent provide support by helping to raise their grandchildren; and 43 per cent provide support so that the sponsors or the spouse can go out in the workforce, work more hours or upgrade skills. Many of them are contributing economically both directly and indirectly or contribute by other social and cultural means.
If some of them come to Canada as an older adult and they are not well educated in their own language, it will be extremely difficult for them to acquire a new language. I find it difficult even with my three degrees to learn a new language, so I can really imagine why it's difficult for some of my clients to actually be proficient enough to pass the citizenship test.
Ms. Taub: Just one comment about languages, and I agree that those who cannot speak English usually work in lower-end jobs, so would it not be advantageous to new immigrants to improve their language skills so they can improve their job opportunities and work in higher skilled positions once they acquire either English or French? By not learning one of the official languages, they are destined to remain in the lower-end positions during their lifetime and their working years in Canada.
I agree 100 per cent. There are not enough language classes. There are long wait lists. We should be spending a lot more money and expanding English or French classes to give immigrants an opportunity to learn English or French so they can improve their chances of getting higher skilled jobs.
Senator Frum: Ms. Taub, as you know, one of the provisions in Bill C-6 is to remove the intent-to-reside provision that the prior government put in place with Bill C-24. We heard that that provision is symbolic in nature because it is unenforceable to follow up on an intent-to-reside. So is it meaningful whether this provision exists?
Ms. Taub: I think it's meaningful that it remain in the legislation symbolically, and I think that coupled with a four- out-of-six years residency requirement together will reduce this phenomenon of citizenship of convenience.
By openly stating that you must spend three years in Canada, or we will give you 50 per cent for the time you're a foreign student or worker, that will count towards the three years; put in your minimal time, we'll give you a passport, vote for us and go do what you want, because that's what it amounts to. I know. I lived through this since 2001. I have been dealing with clients from all over the world who are saying, "I put in my time; do the application for citizenship for me.'' I never would do that on principle even though it was legal. I absolutely refused to take on such clients because I found it abhorrent and counter to Canadian interests.
Ms. Go: The previous witnesses have also mentioned it's not enforceable because it's part of the Charter. I understand the concern about citizen of convenience, but in my practice — or maybe just because of the clients that we serve — citizen of convenience only happens if you actually have the resources. For the majority of people, they live, work and stay here. They do not have the luxury of travel around the globe while trying to maintain a residence without actually having to rent it out. I think you're talking about a small number of people.
There are other ways of dealing with that. I would suggest, and perhaps this committee wouldn't agree, that you should just tax people on their international income. If people are coming here using our resources and living elsewhere, I agree that that is not good for Canada. By tackling it from the point of view of citizenship, you may end up penalizing people who are not in that situation, so just go after people who are doing that through the tax system.
Senator Eggleton: Ms. Go, you raised the issue of fees. I find that to be a matter that, while not covered in the bill, it nevertheless looks like it's creating some problems. I read in the newspapers that citizenship applications are way down. Just two years ago, an application was $100. Today it is $530. There is an additional $100 fee on top of that for the application to be granted as citizenship. What are you hearing from clients in terms of their ability to be able to pay this? It would certainly seem to me to be an impediment for low-income people.
Ms. Go: I will give a concrete example. Just before Bill C-24 came into effect, we ran a clinic to allow some of the clients who are 55 to try to get citizenship before the new law came into effect, rather than waiting until the law was changed and they wouldn't quality because the language proficiency was absent. When we opened up the clinic, a lot of clients contacted us, but once they heard how much it costs to actually apply, many in fact did not do so.
An individual is $630. For a family of four with kids, you're looking at $1600. If you're low income, $1,600 might be your monthly income. It is a lot of money. I'm sure you heard statistics during your study on social inclusion about who are the poor. You're penalizing the marginalized — women, people with disabilities and visible minorities — so it has a disproportional impact.
Ms. Taub: I don't know if the reduced number of applicants is due just to the increase of citizenship fees. Don't forget that this current legislation increases the residency requirements to four years and three income tax statements. That could have reduced the number of applicants because they were not eligible to apply. Also, the stricter language requirements could have had an impact on the number of applicants. I think it is far-fetched to say it is only the increase in fees.
The fees have to be maintained because Canadian taxpayers should not be subsidizing these citizenship application fees. The government is not making a profit on this. They are covering their costs. Lower income immigrants who really cannot afford it should be subsidized, but they would constitute a minority of the applicants. Otherwise, the fees should stay as they are, with subsidies to established proven low-income with income tax statements or notice of assessments required, but they have to be maintained because it is not supposed to be paid for by Canadian taxpayers.
Senator Jaffer: Thank you to both of you for being here. Ms. Go, I welcome you again. You serve us so well when you appear in front of us. You really give a voice to those clients that you serve, those who are the poor. You always set out everything so clearly for us and really do serve the Senate as well. Thank you for your contribution.
We've heard about all the things that immigrants are not doing. You work with them every day, the poorest of the poor, who are struggling and who are building our country, as did other immigrants who came here. We have a history of immigrants having built our country.
I would like you to please explain, when you delay citizenship, what you are doing by disenfranchising those citizens. What are you doing to the older immigrants?
Yesterday we heard Ms. Caruso who was articulate when she said that grandmothers contribute to the well-being of Canadian children. You deal with it first-hand. Can you explain that?
Ms. Go: It's not just older immigrants. The language requirements, if the law changes, once you hit 55, you're not subject to it.
I will give an example of one of my clients. She came to Canada. She has four Canadian-born children. She had some post-partum depression and some other health issues. She was the only one in her family who was not a Canadian citizen. Her husband had better English so he was able to get citizenship. When she tried to apply for citizenship, she submitted a doctor's report to say she has issues with learning English. She had tried. In addition to supporting the family, looking after the kids and working part time in a restaurant, she was not able to master the language enough to pass the citizenship test. The citizenship judge was kind enough to pass her citizenship.
The Department of Justice decided to appeal the decision. That's when she came to see us. We went to the Federal Court and tried to convince citizenship again, based on the information that we have about her medical issue. The whole thing takes about three years. In the meantime, she is doing her job just like any other woman. She's raising her kids despite her disability. She was trying to work part-time in a restaurant to help support a family and was trying to integrate at the same time. That's why she wanted to become a citizen. It doesn't matter how hard she tried, she was not able to pass the citizenship test.
I would say the same thing about many of my other clients. It's not that they don't want to become proficient in English, but if it's a choice between being able to work today and put food on the table versus having the chance of someday becoming a citizen after you pass all the tests and pay the $630, I think the majority of them will choose putting the food on the table today. They cannot give up the job and take the language class. Most employers would not let them take time off during the day to take language classes. We don't have a system whereby people will be receiving income replacement while taking language classes, so there is really not a choice when it comes to immigrants and refugees who are low-income.
Ms. Taub: I would like to talk about the experiences I've had in my practice with the clients I have met.
I have not been receiving any of these calls from prospective applicants for citizenship who are working abroad or who just want to put in their minimum time and get their passport. That ceased with the change currently in existence. Somehow these citizens-of-convenience applications did not come my way anymore, but I fear they will come again.
Being a permanent resident, rather than a citizen, is not exactly a disaster. I've had many friends and acquaintances from European countries and the United States who have been living in Canada successfully and happily without ever acquiring citizenship and being permanent residents because they simply couldn't be bothered. That did not stop them from travelling; that did not stop them from working; that did not stop them from enjoying their lives. They eventually did because I kept bugging them: "Get your citizenship. You've been living here 20, 25 years.'' They did it. It was simply because they didn't want to bother. But being a permanent resident has all the rights of being a citizen except the passport and the vote. Otherwise, a permanent resident has all of the rights of a citizen.
Senator Jaffer: Ms. Taub, doesn't citizenship mean that you're invested in this country? Isn't that something that we Canadians want somebody to have?
The Chair: That's a question for further issues.
Senator Meredith: Ms. Go, to echo Senator Jaffer's sentiment about the work you do to engage the Asian and South Asian community with respect to getting citizenship, it's so essential. As an immigrant to this country, I'm proud to be here in the Senate of Canada, now looking at Bill C-6 and to engage others.
Ms. Taub, you seem to believe that we should go back in time with respect to the time limits that are set for immigrants to attain citizenship. Why are you so opposed to the three out of five with respect to their presence here in Canada to acquire citizenship, which is so valuable to engage them in the political process and vote? Yes, there are benefits that come with just being a permanent resident. However, there is a greater value and importance placed on citizenship with respect to the political process and being engaged in this country in a fulsome way, whether you live here or abroad. Those contributions are still made to Canada. Why are you opposed to this three out of five? You referred back to when your parents came and their involvement in Canada.
Ms. Taub: I'm not going back in time. I am asking to maintain the status quo. I'm actually in the present. As I stated before, no other Western country has so short a residency requirement. What is it that we know that they don't know?
Secondly, four years out of six is not all unreasonable, and the stringent criteria that come with it. Shortening the period and, in particular, allowing people to use their time spent in Canada as a foreign student or foreign worker does not contribute to their attachment to Canada. It facilitates fraud and the phenomenon as citizens of convenience. I know through my clients that there are hundreds and thousands of them.
Senator Meredith: Do you have any statistics on the fraud scenario, Ms. Taub?
Ms. Taub: No, it is not just fraud.
Senator Meredith: That's a blanket statement you're making.
Ms. Taub: It is not fraud to be a citizen of convenience. That is not fraud, but that is facilitated when you downgrade, when you loosen the criteria to become a citizen.
To become a citizen of Canada is a privilege. Working abroad does not contribute to Canada if you don't pay taxes here. Having a Canadian passport and only spending the minimum amount of time — three years — in Canada and then just living abroad and paying taxes elsewhere, or not paying taxes, as in the Gulf states, does not contribute to Canada in any way.
Ms. Go: Going back to my earlier comment, we don't see that kind of problem, just because of the clients that we have. It's unlikely that they will have the option of doing that. What we see instead is how hard it is to become a citizen, even including the residency requirement. I don't know if any of you have gone through the residency questionnaire. I had a hard time filling it out because it asks a lot of questions. It requires people to have kept very good records of every single travel they have made outside of Canada. For instance, some of them may not have all the passport stamps or whatnot. If you go to the United States, you don't always get stamped. We don't have exit controls, so you don't get a stamp leaving. Just going through that process is extremely difficult. I find it hard to get citizenship because of the residency requirement and the proof of residency requirement.
I'll give you an example, yet another case where we had to go to the Federal Court. I had a client who came to Canada as a refugee. She didn't have a passport because she feared persecution from the country that she came from. She didn't want to apply for a passport. When she came, she was smuggled here, and she didn't want to apply for a passport from that country. She was accepted as a refugee and given permanent residence status without a passport.
When it came time for citizenship, they wanted her to produce a passport she doesn't have, and her application was denied. In the meantime, the law was changed, and she suddenly had to meet the three out of five. We had to go through Federal Court and come back again.
It's a difficult process. It's not easy at all, even with the current residency requirements.
Besides, there is a very stringent residency requirement for permanent residents as well. Your permanent resident status can be taken away if you don't keep your residence in Canada.
Sometimes we see clients where, for reasons such as having to take care of family back home because they are the only child, or because they just can't find a job in Canada, they leave their wife and kids here and they go back to China to work. They can lose their permanent resident status because they are outside of Canada for too long. It's not easy.
Senator Hartling: Ms. Go, thank you very much for your work. It sounds like you're a real anchor and advocate for the people you're working with.
It sounds like what you're saying is families are really important, and people are taking various roles in the family to make the family function, but I'm wondering what the impact is on the family if one of the members is disenfranchised or citizenship is delayed. How does that affect their mental and physical health?
Ms. Go: I'll go back to my client as an example. She was the only one in the family who was not a citizen. Making it hard for her to become citizen, using the language requirement, is not going to change that. In fact, it will just continue that pathway. She will never have the capacity to learn enough English, so she would have to wait until she is 55 if the law is changed or 65 if the law is not changed. So for her, it is very hard. She wanted to become a citizen, just like the rest of her family.
From my point of view, I'm just trying to find a way to make it easier for her. The language requirement is not making it easier for people like her.
Senator Hartling: Is there stress and things like that involved?
Ms. Go: Yes. As I mentioned, she has depression and the sense that she is treated differently from the rest of her family. She feels she is not accepted as part of society, as an equal, which also adds to that depression and anxiety as well.
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you both. It's very interesting. My question is for you, Ms. Taub, but feel free to join if you want, Ms. Go.
I'm struggling with how strongly you feel about the whole intent to reside, citizen of convenience and residency periods. I'm struggling because I hear perhaps more of the negative examples and possible frauds, but I want to hear more about the positive examples. Maybe you can help me with that, because this is a global world. People are going to school, people are starting businesses, and people are bringing back so much to Canada from everything they learn by having the freedom of going other places.
The reason I think about that is because in a former life, I was an athlete representing Canada. I have many examples of athletes travelling and being away six months a year, and yet we cannot deny that they surely contribute to Canada, not only for the taxes and wearing the Canadian maple leaf.
I want to understand a bit of that other side and also how you support and do not fear losing those opportunities? Does that make sense?
Ms. Taub: Yes, I understand what you're saying. If somebody leaves Canada for six months to a year or a couple of years and someone else spends three years in Canada and then the rest of their lives outside of Canada, it's not the same thing.
I am not referring to short durations abroad. I'm talking about clients I've had who deposited their families here and have gone back to the Gulf states to work not because they cannot find employment in Canada, but because it's very lucrative in the Gulf states, very lucrative in Hong Kong. Their families stay here. They do not go on welfare because they support their families, however, working abroad. I have encountered thousands of such situations, because I've helped them immigrate to Canada, and then bye-bye breadwinner. He does not pay taxes in the Gulf States. I'm not quite sure whether he pays in Hong Kong or not, but they are not paying taxes in Canada. Their families become citizens. I've helped them with the citizenship applications, but other than paying municipal taxes, the mothers do not have to work because they're getting an awful lot of money from their husbands who work abroad and visit them periodically. They do not pay income tax to Canada so I'm not sure how Canada benefits.
Regarding residency requirements, yes, they are difficult to establish. You need to keep a record. That could be so easily solved by a smart permanent resident card. Then you wouldn't need a passport. You wouldn't need to keep your airline tickets or your stamps or anything. Swipe when you leave; swipe when you come back. End of story. You have a perfect record of your time spent in Canada and you wouldn't need these residency questionnaires.
This technology of a smart card states back to the 1970s or 1980s. It is not a revolutionary new technology. All athletic clubs have smart cards. Why isn't Canada's permanent resident card a smart card? It would facilitate life for immigration officials and CBSA and for applicants who wouldn't have to keep suitcases of records of their travel.
Ms. Go: I guess I'm repeating myself. I think the solution for those kinds of situations is international tax as opposed to trying to deal with it on the citizenship front. And certainly the family members here should get citizenship. They fulfill all the requirements. But at the same time, recognize that there are circumstances where people do have to go abroad, either to promote Canada or for personal reasons that I have mentioned.
Senator Raine: My question is for Ms. Go. I certainly appreciate what you're doing with your clients. What assistance is given currently for people in low-income situations with regard to English or French language classes? Is there an ability to use distance learning or audio-visual language programming, and also audio-visuals that will teach them about Canada? Is this being done by our citizenship and immigration community? It's a bit the same as talking about a smart card for permanent residency. That's modern technology. We have modern technology for language learning and other forms of learning through audio-visuals that could be done at home.
Ms. Go: On a different issue, I can tell you a few years ago we did a survey of our clients who come here to seek help about family law matters, and for a month, we asked every single client, "Do you access websites to find out information about family law?'' Of all the clients that we talked to, only two of them did. It is just not something that is used widely. I think the audio-visual website kind of thing is for a more educated, younger generation, and maybe people with English and French as a first language are more likely to use them. If you have a language barrier, the website you access will not be the website you and I access, to begin with. I'm not a teacher, but I tend to think it would be easier to learn a language when you interact with someone else. It's preferable to have in-person language classes.
The problem is, of course, because of all the funding cuts, settlement agencies are having a hard time dealing with settlement work. I may be wrong and senators may know the figure more correctly, but if I'm correct, in 2011, $40 million were cut to the settlement services in Ontario. I don't know if other provinces had the same cuts. It has affected the ability of many settlement agencies to deliver services as well, all of which impacts on access to language classes and resettlement services by low income people.
Senator Raine: I wasn't thinking about Internet access for language training. There are some very good DVDs or CDs, but now we're talking about DVDs —
Ms. Go: You assume somebody has the machine at home to use it and knows how to use it.
Senator Raine: These machines are down around $50. I presume immigrant services could use these programs if they had them, but funding cuts are obviously impacting them.
Ms. Go: Yes.
The Chair: We're going to start a second round.
Senator Omidvar: As I'm listening to both of you, I'm struck by the fact that you both live in different worlds. You deal with different clients who have different needs, aspirations and realities. I'm trying to compromise, and I'm going to ask you, Ms. Go, to deconstruct your response to Bill C-6 from a class lens.
Ms. Go: I think the current system does disadvantage people who are low income from a number of perspectives. One of them is, of course, the application fee. That's an obvious one. There's the language requirement as well, because of the burden that is put on the individual without recognizing that people from different socio-economic stratas have different differential access to the ability and capacity to acquire a new language.
People like us have the luxury. If we want to learn, we can hire a private tutor. Some of my clients work below minimum wage because they're so vulnerable that employers don't even care about the employment standard law. So they have to work really long hours. Seven days a week is not unusual for many of my clients. They simply do not have the time to learn the language, and they cannot give up the job to learn the language. Having this requirement does disadvantage those people who tend to be low income. So there is a class dimension added to the dimension of race and gender in particular.
Ms. Taub: It should be noted that I am a legal aid lawyer as well. I have many legal aid clients, and I was on the immigration legal aid panel in Ottawa for many years, until they cut the funding to it. So this is not a class distinction. I have dealt with clients from all class levels, from those who are on welfare to very rich businessmen who roam the globe looking for tax havens. My experience has been at all levels, just to correct a misconception before this committee.
Senator Frum: Ms. Go, I understand that with the current language requirement pegged today at the age of 65, there's a logic to that in that it's tied to the age of retirement. By lowering it to age 55, that seems a little bit arbitrary to me. I don't know what it's based on — what rationale. Do you think 55 is the right number? Do you think there should be any language requirement at any age?
Ms. Go: I understand why we have language requirements. That's why we are recommending you allow people who are not able to meet the language requirement to have a way out.
I don't know why it's 55 or 65. So what if it's age of retirement? I don't understand that rationale either. Fifty-five has been the age for a long time, so I don't know what the rationale was before. Maybe it's the recognition that if you have lived here long enough — let's say you're 35 and you aren't able to learn the language, by the time you're 55, you've lived here 20 years. That's long enough to earn the right to become a citizen.
You earn the right to become a citizenship in many ways: working, helping your family and volunteering. A language test is not a very good test. I think of my mom. She came with me at the same time in 1982, and she became a citizen when she was like 70-something. She learned. She actually went to citizenship class and tried to learn. Of course, we were there to support her. She was very proud to be a Canadian citizen, but I would have hoped that she didn't have to wait that long. I feel the same way for many of my clients.
Senator Frum: Do you have any thoughts about why they picked the age of 55?
Ms. Taub: Maybe there is the incorrect assumption that the older we get, the more mentally incompetent we become, but I happen to disagree. I don't think our brains stop functioning at 55. I'm past 65, and I'm relearning German, and I don't think that I'm incapable of it. I speak French and English. Both were acquired languages. My mother tongue is Hungarian. I find it rather offensive to senior citizens to assume that "Oh, at 55, we can't do it. At 65, we can't do it.'' I disagree.
If somebody has lived here 20 years and they've been active in society, how does one not learn the language? But I agree that there should be exemptions for medical reasons. I agree there should be exemptions for psychological reasons. But making the assumption that our brains stop functioning at 55 or 65, from my perspective, is very offensive.
The Chair: With regard to this issue, we've got to realize that from the time the original rules were put in until now, there's been an enormous social transition in terms of how people behave and function in society. The issue is that 55 to 65, although several people today have referred to that as retirement age, it is no longer a retirement age. As we've heard, over 30 per cent of the workforce today is in that decade. The idea of life expectancy has changed dramatically, not just in numbers but in terms of how people perceive their role in life. I won't go into how senators perceive their roles in life and are experiencing all of that. I'm not making an argument here. I'm simply pointing out the context. Ms. Go, you asked where it came from. I think there's been a change in how we perceive life expectancy and our roles as we go through. I'm just putting that out for observation.
Senator Eggleton: In response to that, rigid rules are perhaps part of the problem. We need more flexibility in some of these rules to accommodate different situations.
I want to ask about flexibility in terms of the physical residency test, Ms. Go. You've raised that as a concern, and you cite cases like caring for an ill member of a family abroad and that kind of thing. I might add that now, with globalization, we've encouraged people to provide services in other countries through the trade agreements that this country is involved with — people going back and forth, working a few years here and there, coming back into the country and bringing a lot of expertise. The flexibility perhaps is not there. You suggested perhaps going back to the deemed residency test. Tell me the differences between the two that need to be covered.
Ms. Go: Without the flexibility, you're looking solely at physical residence and not capturing the case where a person has strong ties to Canada but for reasons like family, employment or whatever, they are not able to fulfill the physical residency requirement. In some of those cases, unlike the cases that Ms. Taub talked about, they do have strong ties in Canada, so why not give them their Canadian citizenship? The only way to do that is to have flexibility and look at the issue of deemed residence.
The CBA made a similar recommendation in their submission as well to allow for cases that are "compassionate'' — or different words. At the same time, we want to avoid situations we had before where different judges use different tests. That's why we think we ought to have a test that is flexible and, as CBA mentioned, allow appeals to the Federal Court of Appeal. Allow the Federal Court of Appeals to set the test so there will be one test for everybody and we know what that is. Hopefully, it will be flexible.
The Chair: Ms. Taub, do you have any comment on that?
Ms. Taub: That is why they changed the law to begin with. It became so flexible that you could have a case of a volleyball player who came from, I think, it was France, came to Canada, lived here a few months and then went back to another country to play professional volleyball, because she couldn't get a position as a professional volley ballplayer here. It was my colleague who did this. After only having spent a few months as a permanent resident in Canada, the federal court decided she could obtain her citizenship. She never came back to live here. She went from country to country playing professional volleyball until she was too old to do so, but she'd only spent a few months in Canada.
No. I disagree. There has to be a solid residency criteria, as there are in the countries that I mentioned in my presentation. If you have family elsewhere, if you have a job elsewhere, then what are your ties to Canada, other than getting a passport of convenience and coming back to visit the doctor once in a while?
The Chair: This has been quite fascinating. I've heard some interesting things. The smart card concept — frankly, we seem to be very backward in Canada in regard to using electronic technology. An electronic health record you would think, for example, would be so obvious today. We spent billions and haven't got to first base in terms of a national electronic health care record.
Ms. Go, I was fascinated by your idea about the tax mechanism to look at your responsibilities with regard to your Canadian citizenship. I think it's an interesting one. I believe there are some interesting examples in the world, maybe even one not so far from here, that deals with issues like that.
I did want to say, however, that some of us here heard your testimony before with regard to issues in inner cities around language and the difficulties that spouses, in particular, had to get there. You made a number of observations with regard to how to help get that. I believe you recognized at the time that language was an important factor. The issue was how to find ways to encourage this. If you check our reports, you will see that we did listen to your observations. In fact, it was through that study that we identified that language is an absolutely critical part of the determinants of ability to progress within the social environment. Finding ways to help, as you helped us understand at that time, is clearly one of them.
Colleagues, once again this has been very interesting, with good witness responses on these. There were two very different sides of this issue. Those are the issues that Canadians are seized with in terms of their experiences. I'm glad we've had them before us. We have to take them into consideration.
(The committee adjourned.)