Dual Citizenship

If you want to enjoy the benefits offered by Canada then it seems logical that you should become a Canadian citizen. You are free to practice your religious beliefs, enjoy your culture, etc. and all we are asking is that you make a decision and swear loyalty to the country YOU adopted.

EDITORIAL: ‘Fix’ doesn’t deal with dual citizens

Leave it to government to tackle a legitimate problem and come up with a “solution” that makes things worse.

That’s what seems to be happening as the feds try to do something about the large number of Canadian citizens who use their ties to this country as a matter of convenience, instead of as a right and privilege to be cherished.

We saw first-hand last year an example of what can happen when we’re too generous with our citizenship rules. When fighting broke out in Lebanon last summer, the Canadian government announced plans to repatriate our citizens from the war-torn country, only to discover 50,000 people claiming Canadian citizenship were in the small, Middle Eastern nation.

Many of them, it turned out, made their full-time homes in Lebanon but were only too happy to be “rescued” and brought back to Canada.

The sea and airlift shone the spotlight on the issue of dual citizenship, under which we allow people born abroad to retain a formal link with their countries of birth, even after they swear allegiance to Canada.

Sun columnist Peter Worthington argued at the time that we should scrap dual citizenship, save for Americans. If someone wants to be a Canadian, that person should give up citizenship in his birth country, Worthington argued.

We believe Canada is a place worth pledging your allegiance to. Those who would treat it merely as a stopping-off point, a place to hang their hats on the way to somewhere else, or as their “Plan B” in case of emergency, are welcome to visit. But citizenship comes with responsibilities.

Having said that, we’re perplexed by the federal government’s apparent solution to the problem, dusting off a decades-old provision under the Citizenship Act that deals only with people born outside Canada to a Canadian parent also born outside Canada.

Such Canadians, as Parliamentary reporter Kathleen Harris has reported, would have to take steps to “retain” their citizenship before their 28th birthday or have it stripped from them.

This seems a clumsy, inefficient way of addressing the problem. This initiative should be scrapped by Immigration Minister Diane Finley. Let’s try and get it right, next time.