Is Your Claim Of Being A Canadian Valid

The shameful citizenship debacle
By PETER WORTHINGTON

The U.S. requirement that all Canadians entering the U.S. by airlines must carry a passport has focused the nation on Canada's greatest shame.

Many Canadians who think they are citizens are not. The rush for passports has revealed this shocking truth to many who thought all their lives that they were citizens: They cannot get a passport because the government says they are not citizens.

Some are people born before 1977 whose parents moved to another country and thereby lost their citizenship. Others were born out of Canada and did not know that if they didn't register before age 24 they were no longer citizens. Some are children of war brides who were told after World War II they were Canadians, but now find they are not.

Andrew Telegdi, Liberal MP for Kitchener-Waterloo and former chairman of the standing committee on citizenship and immigration (the most knowledgeable MP on the citizenship debacle), was not reappointed to the committee after the Conservatives were elected last January.

He estimates as many as one million Canadians will discover they are not citizens when they apply for passports.

Last fall, the House of Commons virtually gave unanimous approval to the standing committee's report that the "new" Citizenship Act would correct grievous flaws that denied some Canadians citizenship.

The Harper government put the new act on the back burner, where the Liberals had relegated it for years.

Not a priority, figured the Tories, who in opposition had railed against the Liberals for not changing the act to correct years of wrong.

By the Americans' insisting that all visitors carry passports -- this year for entry by plane, next year at border crossings -- Canada's neglect has bitten the government on that part of the anatomy susceptible to such bites.

The Sun has scolded this citizenship oversight for nearly five years. The CBC, which up to now has ignored efforts to get it interested in the topic, has discovered that "thousands" of Canadians are being denied their citizenship.

CBC radio and TV are finally "investigating."

While Harper's disregard has led to the crisis, it began with the Liberals who had six (incompetent) citizenship ministers in five years. So far the Harper government has had two -- first Monte Solberg, who was out of his depth, and now Diane Finley, who knows even less.

Why is Diane Ablonczy (the most knowledgeable Tory on citizenship) not minister? And why is Telegdi not the Liberal critic?

As an example of Harper's disregard of citizenship, the government is appealing the case of Joe Taylor, son of a war bride and a World War II Canadian soldier whose citizenship was "restored" by a federal court after the government revoked it. The judge opined that if the appeal is upheld, every war bride and child who came to Canada would no longer be a citizen.

Telegdi says the whole mess could be cleared if the government passed the Citizenship Act and made it "Charter compliant," which the last Parliament had approved.

That is, that the terms of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms are applicable in citizenship cases.

The fear of government bureaucrats is that it would "cost billions" to undo the wrongs of the past.

Lt.-Gen. Romeo Dallaire, himself a World War II baby, born in Holland to a Canadian soldier and Dutch mother, attended the Taylor trial and called those who run the citizenship system, "bureaucratic terrorists."

And now the government is reeling, thanks to the U.S. border regulations which have exposed Canada's greatest shame -- robbing citizens of their citizenship.