The Liberals have a puzzling double-standard on citizenship. Gordon,
Al t hough t he Li berals’ shocking payout to Omar Khadr has eclipsed all other stories this month, the government’s recent passage of Bill C- 6 is actually far more consequential. Unlike the Khadr settlement — which provides a generous monetary payment to a single Canadian in unique circumstances — Bill C- 6 will reward any number of convicted terrorists with something invaluable: the right to retain their Canadian citizenship.
Specifically, Bill C- 6 repeals parts of the Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act, which was brought in under Stephen Harper’s Conservatives in 2014, and which allowed the government to revoke the citizenship of dual- national Canadians if they were convicted of acts of terrorism or treason. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had promised to repeal this legislation during the election campaign, famously asserting that “A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.”
Yet, the Liberals clearly don’t stand by this statement in all circumstances. While the government can now no longer strip the citizenship of individuals who want to randomly slaughter innocent civilians ( and has even retroactively restored the citizenship of the Toronto 18 ringleader), it remains empowered under the Citizenship Act to revoke the citizenship of individuals who have become citizens through fraud or misrepresentation. According to a February 2017 article in this paper, the government has moved to revoke the citizenship of an average of 17 people per month on these grounds, whereas the Harper government revoked the citizenship of a total of 65 individuals between 2007 and 2014.
Trudeau has justified revocation for fraud or misrepresentation on the grounds that citizenship was obtained under false pretences. “When people have lied on their applications,” he said, “those applications get rescinded, even years later.” And certainly, there are cases where revocation on this basis may be justified. But as the government’s own actions suggest, revocation in these cases may have less to do with the fact of the lie, than the nature of the act that the lie tried to conceal.
For example, Canadian authorities are currently fighting to revoke the citizenship of Jorge Vinicio Sosa Orantes, a man who is believed to have played a horrific role in the 1982 Guatemalan military’s massacre of its citizens (Orantes is said to have used a sledgehammer, gun and grenade against fellow Guatemalans). Canada’s immigration authorities are seeking to revoke Orantes’ citizenship on the grounds that he concealed this pertinent information about his past in his citizenship application.
But evidently, it is the underlying crime that Orantes is believed to have committed that the authorities take serious issue with — more than the mere fact that he concealed it. Otherwise, the authorities would take a consistently harsh approach to all acts of fraud or misrepresentation — which we know the government does not do. For evidence of this, one need look no further than the case of former Minister of Democratic Institutions Maryam Monsef, who was born in Iran — and not Afghanistan — as her parent had claimed in Monsef ’s immigration papers. In late 2016, Monsef confirmed that immigration authorities were not taking steps to revoke her citizenship.
If the government is going to not revoke the citizenship of individuals whose fraud or misrepresentation is relatively trivial, it should be required to be consistent about it. Currently, it’s not clear that it is. A young woman of Egyptian origins, for instance, is reportedly facing revocation years after becoming a Canadian because her parents provided false ( but relatively trivial) information on her application when she was a child. Her circumstances sound an awful lot like Monsef ’s.
And if the government is will- ing to revoke the citizenship of very bad men or women — such as Orantes — it is nonsensical that the government would not also be willing to revoke the citizenship of individuals who are found guilty of terrorism or treason. These are society’s worst crimes.
Consider the case of the June 21 attack by Canadian citizen and Tunisian native Amor Ftouhi on Lt. Jeff Neville at the Bishop International Airport. Ftouhi snuck up behind Neville, stabbed him in the neck with a 12- inch knife while yelling “Allahu akbar!,” and was only prevented from killing him thanks to the heroic intervention of a maintenance worker. It’s impossible to justify a man like Ftouhi being allowed to remain in the country, while a woman whose parents committed minor fraud is removed.
Or at least it’s impossible to justify if you do not entertain bleeding heart notions about terrorists. Following the Boston Bombing attack in 2013, Trudeau tried to justify the attackers’ actions in an interview with CBC’s Peter Mansbridge, noting, “But there’s no question that this happened because there is someone who feels completely excluded, completely at war with innocence, at war with a society, and our approach has to be … where do those tensions come from?” It later turned out that the Tsarnaev brothers were young, middle- class men with bright futures ahead of them.
Canadians should ask why the Liberals are willing to treat a terrorist’s citizenship as sacrosanct, yet also willing to strip individuals of their citizenship for a range of infractions, both serious and trivial. This double standard cannot be logically explained. Dual nationals who commit society’s worst offences should not be permitted to remain Canadian.