Citizenship a major election theme
A quarter-century ago in Madrid, airport security staff noticed something unusual about the Canadian man seeking to board a plane, so they pulled him aside.
Tom Mulcair, then a Quebec civil servant, was travelling on a Canadian passport, but his wife Catherine Pinhas and their two young sons also had French papers.
Mulcair, now New Democratic Party leader, was troubled by the interrogation, so he took French citizenship, as was his right as the spouse of French woman, to be more like his family as they travelled Europe.
The episode took on a peculiar relevance this week as citizenship — how it is ceremonially granted, how it may be stripped from criminals, and what it even means for everyone else — emerged as a major theme of the federal election.
If someone like Mulcair can claim citizenship so casually, at the whim of events, for emotional reasons or even just convenience, and later pledge to renounce it if he wins an election, can it really be an inexorable part of his identity?
On the other hand, if a person is born and raised in Canada, to Canadian parents, and later commits a terrorist crime in Canada, is it really possible the Canadian government can suddenly decide he is now Pakistani and try to deport him, as is happening to Saad Gaya, one of the Toronto 18 plotters?
Deportation of foreigners who have served their criminal sentence is routine. Deportation of Canadians, outside of extradition proceedings, is more than novel. It is revolutionary.
So voters and leaders alike are struggling with this question of what it means to be a citizen of Canada, beyond the shifting legal rules. Is it like a club, into which one can be welcomed by mere bureaucratic fiat and from which one can be expelled for bad behaviour? Or is it more like a family, a designation that reflects a natural fact, that someone belongs, no matter what?
Are some Canadian citizens more or less so than others? Or is citizenship like pregnancy, a condition that famously does not come in degrees?
Those ideological battle lines are now drawn, between Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s position, channelling Gertrude Stein, that “a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian,” and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s position that there are, indeed, two classes of Canadians: those who have forfeited their citizenship via terrorism or war crimes, and everyone else.
In its previous legislative action against “Canadians of convenience,” “birth tourists,” and all manner of suspected passport cheats, the Conservative government has for years been laying groundwork for a campaign fight on the value of Canadian citizenship.
Now is harvest time. Not only has a court decision dropped the issue of wearing a niqab while swearing a citizenship oath into the campaign debate mix, but a senior bureaucrat’s decision to strip the citizenship of several convicted terrorists — including Gaya and the Toronto 18 leader Zakaria Amara — has given urgent relevance to new changes to citizenship law, known as Bill C-24.
Key among them is the ability to revoke Canadian citizenship for terrorism and other serious crimes like treason, which can be done only to people who hold dual citizenship, or are eligible for another country’s citizenship but are unable by law to renounce it, such as in Iran. (Known as “lingering nationality,” this latter condition was one reason Canada legalized dual citizenship in 1977.)
Revocation, then, allows banishment or exile, an age-old punishment enjoying a resurgence in the age of global terror. It happened first in Britain, where citizenship can now be stripped from anyone, even if it leaves them stateless. Australia followed, with a law described by an expert as “extraordinarily draconian,” as it requires only a ministerial opinion, rather than a formal court finding, in a legal system that defines terrorism quite loosely.
“It’s washing our hands of our terrorists,” said Ben Saul, professor of international law with a focus on counter-terrorism at the University of Sydney. “It’s Canada saying, ‘ We’re disclaiming any responsibility for the terrorists we’ve created.’ “
Banishing terrorists is giving up in the fight on terror, in which all these countries have pledged to play their full part. It is, Saul said, the counter-terrorist version of NIMBYism, unloading undesirables onto countries with less highly developed security establishments, oversight capacity, or prospects for reform.
In Amara’s case, deportation to Jordan would put him in the hands of a foreign kingdom that is stable compared to its neighbours, but is the subject of concern by Amnesty International about “torture and ill-treatment in detention.”
Saul also cautioned widespread citizenship stripping could trigger a legal “arms race” in which countries race to rid themselves of their terrorists, lest they have to keep them.
For the Conservatives, revocation of citizenship followed by likely deportation is a fitting punishment for terrorism or treason or war against Canadian troops. These are direct attacks on Canada, its people, and its values. Opposition to it on the grounds that it creates two tiers of citizenship is, in Harper’s words, “political correctness on steroids.”
This kind of motivation is key to the law, said Christian Leuprecht, a political scientist and senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
It is what sets terrorists apart from other horrible crimes. It is the reason Amara and Gaya are at risk of losing their citizenship, but Mohammad Shafia, who killed his family to protect his honour, is not.
This, however, could change. Harper said as much in a radio interview this week, that he would consider extending the punishment to dual-citizen murderers and rapists.
Harper has pledged citizenship stripping would be reserved for the worst of the worst, and the targets are, by nature, few and extreme.
By comparison, Canada has about 500 murders a year, most of which lead to convictions. So there is great potential for growth in the citizenship-stripping business.
Barring a Conservative electoral loss, all this seems destined for court and legal challenges have already been filed.
It’s Canada saying, ‘We’re disclaiming any responsibility for the terrorists we’ve created.’