Chris Selley’s cynical dismissal of the proposal to strip Canadian citizenship from individuals who wage war against Canada or commit serious acts of terrorism (“The citizenship talking point,” Feb. 7) is too eager to assign superficial motives while ignoring the deeply rooted and principled reasons for the proposed reforms.
Canada’s 1947 Citizenship Act included the power to revoke citizenship from those guilty of treason. The removal of this provision in 1977 made Canada’s citizenship law an aberration, as most other liberal democracies have the legal authority to strip citizenship for such crimes as treason and terrorism. In Australia and the United Kingdom, for example, a person can be stripped of citizenship if it is in the public’s best interest — a much lower and vaguer standard than what MP Devinder Shory or I have suggested. Just last year, the United Kingdom revoked the citizenship of Mahdi Hashi for involvement in extremist activities.
Mr. Selley writes that, “if you gain citizenship legitimately, it’s yours unless you give it up. You have rights in Canada, and responsibilities to Canada, and Canada has a responsibility to you, including dealing with you if you blow up a bus in a faraway land.” I agree, up to a point.
Like the 1947 Citizenship Act and the Oath of Citizenship, Mr. Shory’s bill is predicated on the idea of reciprocal loyalty implicit in citizenship. If a Canadian passport-holder maintains another nationality while waging war against Canada or committing a serious act of terrorism, this should be construed for what it so obviously is: a violent severing of the bonds of loyalty implicit in the idea of citizenship. Without the possibility of such a sanction, Mr. Selley’s belief in a citizen’s “responsibilities to Canada” is just empty rhetoric.
But I reject the notion that, if someone takes up arms against the Canadian Forces or commits an act of violent terrorism, Canada should be forced to welcome them back as though the fundamental breach of mutual loyalty never occurred. Virtually no other liberal democracy, from France to New Zealand, from Switzerland to Brazil, believes they have such a self-destructive obligation.
Obviously there should be a high legal threshold for triggering deemed renunciation of citizenship, with appropriate legal safeguards. And, given our international treaty obligations, it can only be applied to those who hold dual or multiple nationalities, to avoid creating stateless persons.
Far from being opportunistic or cynical, Mr. Shory’s thoughtful private member’s bill and the amendments I have suggested would bring Canada back in line with the legal norm throughout the free world, and revive the assumptions that have always been implicit in our citizenship law.
National Post – February 12th 2013
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