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Why Bill C-425 deserves far more scrutiny than media have given it.
The foggy language of war: Bill's simple language raises complex issues.
9/11 and the rules of Canadian citizenship.
Why is the federal immigration minister trying to make 3,100 Canadians no longer citizens?
Last spring, Conservative backbencher Devinder Shory (Calgary Northeast) introduced Bill C-425, a private member's bill amending the Citizenship Act. It stirred a brief flurry of debate in Parliament and the media a couple of weeks ago, but an odd silence has now fallen over it. The bill, and the ideas behind it, deserve much more careful scrutiny.
Bill C-425 is admirably concise, with its terms (in both languages) filling only about a page. It has two parts: One gives a permanent resident the opportunity to become a citizen in just two years instead of three if that person has a three-year contract with the Canadian Forces and has finished basic training.
The second says that a Canadian citizen who is also a citizen of another country (or a legal resident of some other country) "is deemed to have made an application for renunciation of their Canadian citizenship if they engage in an act of war against the Canadian Armed Forces."
As a private member's bill, Bill C-425's real purpose is as a trial balloon, testing the political winds. But it also gives us insight into the thinking of Shory and his government. If they think these ideas are worth discussing, that in itself deserves discussion.
Let's take the first point: "Fast-tracking" citizenship is an attractive idea. In the days of the draft in the U.S., young male non-citizens were as draftable as everyone else (unless they'd already served in a NATO military force). As I recall from my own U.S. Army days, noncitizen draftees did indeed get U.S. citizenship earlier.
But as NDP MP Jinny Sims noted in responding to C-425, "the Canadian Forces website and a call by my office to the Ottawa recruitment centre have made it clear that a permanent resident may not enrol in the Canadian Forces. It appears that the only way for a permanent resident to serve is if he or she is authorized by the chief of the defence staff to fill a special need or it is in the national interest."
So the first part of Shory's bill is pointless unless several other laws are also revised. And if they were, we would then have to debate whether recruiting non-citizens into the military was really just a way to hire foreign mercenaries.
What is an act of war?
C-425's second part is far more complicated. First of all, it's phrased in a passive-aggressive form: throw a grenade at Canadian Forces members, and (if you're a dual citizen) you automatically generate the paperwork to renounce your citizenship. One would expect that massive return fire would make the paperwork irrelevant. Or is it still an act of war if the grenade comes through the window of an empty Canadian Forces recruiting office at 3 a.m.?
And what, exactly, is an "act of war"? C-425 doesn't define it. It's hard to find a definition anywhere in Canadian or international law, except as the action of one state against another state. While the 9/11 attacks by a non-state group are also considered acts of war, responding with still more acts of war (especially against Iraq) did not work out very well.
Why limit this undefined act of war to an attack on the Canadian Armed Forces? Canada went into Afghanistan as a member of NATO, coming to the aid of its injured NATO ally the United States. Canadian citizen Omar Khadr reportedly killed a U.S. soldier, not a fellow-Canadian. Surely he would deserve to have his citizenship stripped from him -- except that he was born in Scarborough.
Who decides it's an act of war?
And how are we to be sure that an act of war, however defined, has indeed been committed by a Canadian dual citizen against the Canadian Forces, however defined? Jinny Sims nailed this also:
"The bill is not clear that due process before the law is necessary to determine whether someone has committed an act of war, nor is it clear who would make such a determination. Perhaps this is not surprising, given that the members of the government seem fond of stripping due process with very little accountability.
"Additionally, some key terms are not defined. The terms 'acts of war' and 'legal resident' are not defined anywhere in Canadian law.
"Without a definition for what would constitute a legal resident of another country, the bill would pose a serious risk of rendering Canadian citizens stateless, in contravention of the UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, to which Canada is a signatory."
When are we at war?
Here is where C-425 reflects and expresses a very dangerous muddiness of thought in Canadian politics. If we can't define an act of war, how do we know when to go to war at all?
The United States has launched 297 drone strikes on Pakistan, a country with which it is not at war, but Pakistan (a nuclear power) has not declared itself at war with the United States. Nor did the U.S. go to war against Saudi Arabia after 9/11, though that attack was conducted largely by Saudi citizens.
Recall that in the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon, a Canadian peacekeeper, Major Paeta Hess-von Kruedener was killed by Israeli artillery fire. Stephen Harper shrugged off his death by saying the major should have abandoned his post "during what is now, more or less, a war."
But suppose one of the Israeli artillerymen in that event had also been a Canadian dual citizen. Should that soldier have been stripped of his Canadian citizenship? Was he committing an act of war against the Canadian Armed Forces, or just the boring old United Nations?
These are not rhetorical questions. We went to war in Afghanistan, and declined to go to war in Iraq, because our treaty obligations required the first but not the second. Devinder Shory's C-425 ignores both Canadian and international law. It defines war and peace, citizen and enemy, as political expediency requires.
So C-425 is a way for the Harper government to see which way the wind blows: Can we stigmatize our Muslim Canadian citizens, make them feel more alienated? Can we make other Canadians more suspicious and fearful of their fellow citizens? Can we go back to Sept. 12, 2001, when any crime against anyone, breaking any law, was justifiable because of the crime of Sept. 11?
Might we even go to the transcendent point where the prime minister, or some senior bureaucrat, could order the assassination of obnoxious Canadian citizens without trial, as Barack Obama and his government do with Americans?
It may seem a consummation devoutly to be wished by some in Ottawa, though it won't happen just yet. But the passage of Bill C-425 would bring that day much closer than most Canadians can now imagine. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
Read more: Rights + Justice, Federal Politics,
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frank2
17 weeks ago
Harper's agenda could best be
Harper's agenda could best be served by asking the US for Canada to become the 51st -- or the 51st to 64th -- US state, with an effectiveness date AFTER a scheduled Federal election.
alive
17 weeks ago
Divide and Conquer.
The idea seem to be that you cannot win every vote, so gofor thesegment that is most likely to buy your story, by stigmatizing the rest.
It worked wonders for Hitler too!
Hakuin
17 weeks ago
Muslim Canadians?
Is "Muslim" a country now?
As to "who decides"; der fuhrer will decide.
Boris Badenov
17 weeks ago
This is designed for people like Omar Khadr and his family.
If it is, it should be considered
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Khadr
A very good point.
Van Isle
17 weeks ago
It seems that the typical
It seems that the typical Conservative doesn't like details when writing up laws. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the inner chambers of the Supreme Court where the Chief Justices collectively say "Which fucking idiot/idiots wrote up this law?"
Amor de Cosmos
17 weeks ago
Time to ban dual citizenship
I believe that the time has come to ban dual citizenship completely.
I don't believe a person should be able to be a Canadian citizen and serve in a foreign army. I don't care if that army is France, Israel, Palestine, or England.
I also STRONGLY oppose letting people gain citizenship more quickly if they serve in the army. I agree wholeheartedly in banning all non-citizens (or dual citizens) from not just the military, but from all branches of government.
With respect to higher levels of government, it may be that this should be extended to include wives and children of politicians as well (we don't bat an eye at having arm's lengths rules in our income tax act).
If Mulcair wants to be a politician for Canada, he should have to renounce his French Citizenship.
Irwin Cotler should not have been able to be in the Canadian Cabinet after/while his spouse served Likud members of parliament and his children served in the Israeli army.
Rather than obfuscate the issues in details, I think the best solution would be to ban dual citizenship altogether.
There should also be even stricter rules which ban from cabinet or the Privvy Council all those with close familial ties to any foreign country.
While this would affect many immigrants, I believe that anybody who wants to run for government in our land must be committed to one country only. It would also help immigrants be more warmly accepted into the country as there would be no debate about 'Canadians of convenience'.
Ban dual citizenship altogether!
I should also disclose that I am a dual citizen who would be affected by such rules.
Hakuin
17 weeks ago
Conzi don't write laws, Van
This latest insult is just more dog whistle for their racist base.
Paul Forseth
17 weeks ago
Citizenship
The above article is far too cynical. It unreasonably attributes mean-spirited motives to Conservatives. In other words, the article is typical “NDP speak”, that seeks to undermine others, but does not help the larger agenda. The government is now looking more deeply at implications of the Bill to perhaps make it one of its own. The international law experts, and the Department of Justice drafters are reviewing the implications, to more comprehensively deal with the central issue. The main point is one for which even NDPers should be willing to consider, and that is about “citizenship of convenience”. Canada has a duty to defend the value of our citizenship status in the international community. We should appropriately respond to the malevolent who acquire Canadian citizenship for the purpose of cover to assist in terrorism and war. Operatives trade upon Canada’s good international reputation in order to facilitate international travel to pursue violence. Canada needs to do a better job at minimizing that possibility, but it is clear we will have no help from the NDP.
Hakuin
17 weeks ago
the only operatives I see
trading on our good name are in the Conzi Party. If we wait much longer our flag will be spat upon around the world. It may already be too late.
Organic_Seawater
17 weeks ago
Ban Dual Citizenship
Just ban dual citizenship. People should choose their loyalties and stick with them.
Hakuin
17 weeks ago
on the other hand
multiple citizenships ought to make war-fighting harder. Time we rethought the whole concept anyway, maybe individuals will be able to contract "citizenships" privately and leave the whole primitive tribal thing behind altogether. I think Charlie Stross wrote some interesting stuff about that.
wanderingraven
17 weeks ago
Amour de Cosmos, I disagree
Vast numbers of Canadians benefit from dual citizenship while providing an advantage to both countries.
Yet dual citizenship has become a talking point for conservatives based on three highly publicised incidents, two of which wouldn't even apply. (One natural born Canadian wouldn't lose his citizenship, and in the other case identities were stolen by Israeli secret police).
When the Conservatives floated the trial balloon of getting rid of dual citizenship they found out how many votes they would lose. Yet they continue to whip up their most agitated base with attacks on other Canadians.
Skywalker
17 weeks ago
Paul Forseth
Is what you posted "Conservative Speak" or "Harper Speak'?
Booker
17 weeks ago
loyalty
Why don't we institute loyalty oaths. We could form a Committee of Un-Candadian Activities to grill those shifty dual-citizens. Who wants those citizens-of-the-world-types to pollute our Canadian pure-laine polity? Eh?
_________________
The idea of privileging those who become soldiers is a bad idea. Why soldiers? A single social worker does more good than an entire army regiment. Let them get the fast track. I'm sick of the soldier-worship that has become fashionable over the last decade. Yes, we should give them the respect they deserve, but the profession of arms is not superior to other vocations.
lynn
17 weeks ago
Dear Mr. Forseth,
How ironic is that the Harper Cons are presenting themselves as defending Canadian citizenship? I mean, really, has any government done more to undermine the rights of Canadian citizens than the present gang in Ottawa?
And of course, Paul Forseth, brings up the big 'T' word.....terrorism.....perhaps we should define what are terrorist actions. Is it selling out your country? Is it secretive deals and covert operations that sell out the rights of Canadian citizens to another country? Is it legislated grand theft? Is it the dismantling of the democratic process? Is it the installing of fear tactics where dissent ( the core of the democratic process) is portrayed as a terrorist act and the good citizens of a country smeared as enemies of the state? Is terrorism the covert surveillance of citizens online and on their home ground? Is terrorism the dismantling of the rights of living beings/citizens in order to give those rights to dead/inanimate things like corporations? Is terrorism a system that is fueled by lies and lies to the very citizens whose duty it is to represent?
Forseth in his comment above talks about "Canada's good international reputation" and about the need to defend "the value of our citizenship status". "Good international reputation"? Oh, not anymore, Mr. Forseth. Nope, it's been seriously devalued, blighted, mired by the government you support. Read the human rights reports...the environmental degradation of Canada of late.
As I said, it is highly ironic that this proposed banning of dual citizenship is based on a need for loyalty.
Loyalty? Where art thee?....... Attawaspiskat? The progueing of Parliament...again and again? Robo calls? Secretive treaties with Chinese companies? The right to secretively sue Canada? Labelling Canadian environmentalists as terrorists? Luxury expenditures on London hotel suites? Heliocopter rides on personal whims? A tacky and exorbitantly priced artificial lake recklessly built on the hard-working citizen/taxpayer's dime?
I don't see much loyalty to the rights of us, the Canadian citizens of this once great country?
Why is that, Mr. Forseth? Are the real operatives already inside the gates?
Please, sir, tell me in detail... list if you will the loyal actions of the Harper Cons in defending the democratic rights and processes that are central to 'the citizenship' of Canadians?
pwlg
17 weeks ago
simply put but with complex consequences and...
This is simply a waste of parliament's time...and the court's time if it passes.
Can it get any weirder?
Imagine, Canadian embassies overseas recruiting for Canada's Armed Forces attracting prospective warriors with the promise of citizenship after 2 years!
Will they be required to speak English?
I hear there's a surplus of Libyan fighter pilots available since NATO destroyed their air force. Canada will need test pilots to see how well the stealth component of those Boondoggle F-35's hold up to the new Chinese and Russian mobile missile launchers.
Perhaps the Conservative member from Mars who submitted Bill C-425 could submit an alternative bill which would allow all the law abiding refugees and their families who have taken refuge in Canadian churches for years permanent residence in Canada.
pwlg
17 weeks ago
great comments
Lynn, you go...let's see I think you forgot Harper's Contempt for Parliament and how he manipulated the system to prevent his own censure. Mr. Forseth care to comment? OR how about the dual personality of our PM when he was dead against Senate appointments and now has the record of any modern PM for the most appointments, 58!, gutting of environmental regulations, removal of regulatory decisions in favour of unelected corporate stooges in the PMO. It may not be terrorism, but to me its treason!
Booker, you go...you forgot to mention the other fast tracks to Canadian citizenship, the business class...front of the line if you have the bucks, the hell if you are suffering, have walked across a desert, lost most of your family along the way, rifles, bombs at your heals...nope, front of the line for the wealthy. Perhaps any special granting of citizenship should require community service instead of having to serve in Harper's Canada Goose Waddling Blueshirts. The new Canadian Armed Forces motto on Canadian Embassy walls overseas, "Protecting Canadian Mining Company Interests"
I can hear the music in the Embassy hallways, "It's Springtime for Harper and Canada"
ireckon
17 weeks ago
Who dun what
You have long memory Crawford, and you are putting it to good use. Can I be on your team?
Otto Rant
17 weeks ago
Foreign Worker program spreading to Armed Forces?
Sounds like accelerating the citizenship process for immigrants who join the armed forces is another form of using foreign workers to lower the wages and living standards of Canadians.
Better call the B.C. Fed to help organize our military personnel to resist the decline in pay and working conditions that could be caused by this new initiative.
Hakuin
17 weeks ago
who exactly
are these foreign mercenaries being hired to kill?
catchingupagain
17 weeks ago
Questioning loyalty to nation..Whose justice? Which rationality?
Does Bill C-425 diminish and subvert Canada's sovereign independence and is it not contemptuous of the capacity of Canadian courts to perform due process for those accused of crimes of 'war', 'terror, etc.?
What justice system has the legitimacy of rationality if an extra-territorial accusation of ‘x’ is sufficient reason to revoke citizenship? Is this a 21century phantasmic mélange of Kafkaesque legal apparatus without agency, Hayeki/Weberian evisceration of the democratic separation of independent legal power stripped to the core real-politic state monopolization of violence, catapulted over to whatever state will claim to accuse? Is Canadian justice to be a feudal pawn/appendage of other global entities? While the legal tribunals enshrined in trade treaties like NAFTA, ChinaFIPPA, CETA & TPP may reduce Canadian law to second fiddle, is it really time to jettison citizens to whatever ‘Gitmo style tribunals’ stand outside Canada and accuse at whim? Doesn’t C-425 imply habeas corpus has no real meaning in Canadian law for dual-citizens if they are accused? Isn’t that discriminatory against dual-citizens? Perhaps repudiating Canadian sovereignty and the due process of its law is not the real intent behind this Bill, perhaps fomenting discrimination between citizens is the real agenda, and perhaps it is all of the above.
The UK's Gordon Brown put Iceland on the list of terrorist states because, in the aftereffect of the 2008 credit crisis, Iceland prioritized to service domestic account holders in its banks. Foreign account holders: Municipal, police pension fund, and individuals in the UK and the Netherlands were refused compensation ahead of Iceland’s citizens. Just a week before the late January 2013 ruling of the EU’s EFTA court in favour of Iceland’s actions to prioritize domestic accounts, Iceland’s courageous president said Gordon Brown’s indictment of Iceland as a terror state will long be remembered by the people of Iceland, for centuries; we ought do so too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BotyxdQyQaA
When this was going down, were I, as a native Canadian, on contract in some function to Iceland’s banks or government, and were C-425 in effect, and too, were my second passport British, then, on Gordon Brown’s word, whose citizen would I then be? Whose gulag would house this link to terror?
Its hard not to remember too the Israeli special assassination squad found traveling with fake Canadian passports, but perhaps Canada’s current leadership prefers to forget state abuses of Canadian standing.
It does pay to remember international standing and security, like the counterfeit Chinese microchips which threaten to suddenly weaponize silence behind the dashboards of Canadian military aircraft, is a dynamic thing, and democracy wants stability like water wants the low point: It is easily moved to rush there.
catchingupagain
17 weeks ago
Standing on guard against multi-national corporation exploits
–Good news: that the G7/G20 may act, after nearly a century’s yada-yada to limit multinational-corporate income tax avoidance: Google, Starbucks, Amazon and the like ought to contribute to the nations whose citizens generate their revenue. A C-425 for corporations to limit tax arbitrage?
http://www.oecd.org/newsroom/oecd-urges-stronger-international-co-operation-on-corporate-tax.htm
–Bad news: ‘Forms of attack’ have been recorded by Canadian government agencies and security forces among assembled public. Maybe anticipating C-425?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/14/canada-environmental-activism-threat?CMP=twt_gu
Hakuin
17 weeks ago
It's very simple Catch
A terrorist is anyone weak enough to be killed.
jdornski
17 weeks ago
Two points
1. Whoever is writing history gets to decide the difference between a today's terrorist and tomorrow's freedom fighter. Who classifies those "rebelling" in Syria today? It is not just "who" is deciding, it is also "when" that muddies the rules for revoking citizenships. (eg MP Rob Anders attempt to block Nelson Mandela's honourary Cdn Citizenship)
2. Harper is embarassing Canada on so many issues that any concern about 2 terrorists with a tenuous and dated relationship to our country seems trivial.
Another bone for the Conservative base.
RockyRacoon
17 weeks ago
to Die For
Federal officials are investigating claims that Israeli agents posed as Canadians during a spy operation in Gaza that reportedly used sexual blackmail to collect intelligence used to assassinate a Palestinian militant leader. In a similar incident in 1997, Canada recalled its ambassador to Israel after undercover Mossad agents were caught using falsified Canadian passports during an assassination attempt on a Palestinian militant leader. Israel apologized at the time and promised not to do it again. The new reports emerging from the Gaza strip have Canadian officials worried that Israeli agents may have resumed adopting fake Canadian identities -- a tactic that could jeopardize the safety of Canadians who work or travel abroad.
Hakuin
17 weeks ago
If the Mossad is capable
Of strangling one of their own in a Mossad prison cell, then yeah, they are obviously capable of anything.
snert
17 weeks ago
Simple
Those who are not citizens by birth are granted their status as a mutual act of good faith. If they choose not to live up to their end of the bargain, so long. If Canada doesn't meet their expectations they are welcome to leave. Win/win. Or, they can stay and tough it out like the rest of us.
Hakuin
17 weeks ago
:)
so, am immigrant brought here at the age of one can make a choice, eh?
dorothy
17 weeks ago
that's just until they suddenly don't
"Vast numbers of Canadians benefit from dual citizenship while providing an advantage to both countries. "
When there suddenly is a conflict of interest, it's too late to discuss. We should care about Canadian Citizeship being meaningful as opposed to Mickey-Mouse. As a 'naturalized' canadian (same thing you do with tulip bulbs in your lawn), I have sworn allegiance to Canada, or rather, to HM Elizabeth the 2nd and all her descendants. Same thing until it sudeenly isn't. Always wondered whether I should get that updated or what. I come from a place where one doesn't have to have a contract in writing for it to be valid and enforeceable, as well as no one would dream of repeating their marriage vows (weren't they serious the first time?), so I cannot wrap my head around bearing allegaince to two national entities, Zionist or otherwise. Where would I be if someone could suspect me of trying to subvert Canada's claim to half of Hans Island? It doesn't bear thinking of. I will end with my favorite quote, "pick one and be that", courtesy of Shachi Kurl, from an article in Vancouver Sun, which did discuss dual citizenship as far as I recall. Its charm lies in its almost universal applicability.
dorothy
17 weeks ago
Act of war
It's not so difficult to figure what an act of war is. If an unlawful act is directed towards an obviously self-serving purpose, carried out against individuals, it's just a criminal act. But if it is directed at the integrity of the state, it is an act of war, if it is not done by a citizen of that country, in which case it is merely a subversive act. Someone who has left his/her own country and not gained citizenship in another is, for the purpose of deciding 'act of war', an independent agent. So yes, an individual can commit an act of war in that case.
Hakuin
17 weeks ago
Our Dear Leader then
Commits acts of war every day.
snert
17 weeks ago
Hakuin (:
I don't think anyone is worried about the choices that are made by one-year-olds. As they get older they should be made aware of their status and respect it. If not, bye.
dorothy
17 weeks ago
Hakuin (:
He doesn't, as he is a Citizen here, but I have seen political moves and legislative ones too, which I would perceive as subverting Canada as I have understood it. Example: omnibus bills.
Hakuin
16 weeks ago
Treason then
We used to hang people for that
LGoddess
16 weeks ago
'Act of War' needs definition
Now that governments have relabeled environmental activism as 'terrorism', it is not far-fetched that the definition of 'acts of war' could be expanded to include civil-disobedience where soldiers are present.
Silencing dissent is a common theme for conservative governments. This could prove an effective way to quietly remove dissenting voices.