A POPULAR POLITICIAN IN AUSTRALIA MAKES A ‘SHOCKING’ DISCOVERY: SHE IS CANADIAN. LARISSA WATERS, WHO LEFT WINNIPEG AS AN 11-MONTH-OLD BABY, APOLOGIZED AS SHE RESIGNED FROM THE SENATE.
Popular MP saddened and shocked by news
Larissa Waters was a popular senator in Australia, earmarked as a future contender for the leadership of the Green party.
On Tuesday, she resigned. In a tearful, televised apology, she revealed she had committed a career-ending sin. She was a Canadian.
“It is with great shock and sadness,” she said in a statement on Tuesday, “that I have discovered that I hold dual citizenship of Australia and Canada.”
Waters, a 40-year-old champion for women’s rights who garnered international attention in May by becoming the first to breastfeed on the floor of Australian parliament, was born in Winnipeg to Australian parents who lived there briefly to study and work. Until recently, Waters said, she was under the impression she had to actively seek Canadian citizenship. She didn’t seek it. She hasn’t even been back since she left, with her parents, as an 11-month-old.
“I have lived my life thinking that as a baby I was naturalized to be Australian and only Australian,” she said.
She was wrong. She was a dual citizen of Australia and Canada serving as an Australian senator — a violation of a 116-year-old section of the country’s constitution designed to stop foreign influence from creeping into parliament. Section 44(i) bans anyone “under any acknowledgment of allegiance, obedience, or adherence to a foreign power, or is a subject or a citizen ... of a foreign power” from sitting as a senator or member of the house of representatives.
Waters had been a senator since 2011. She only started looking into the question of her citizenship after a similar scandal forced her New Zealandborn colleague, Green party senator Scott Ludlam, to resign last week. Ludlam was a 10-year veteran in parliament, and only realized he held New Zealand citizenship when a “very interested” citizen did “some digging,” according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
“After Scott’s shock discovery,” Waters said, “I immediately sought legal advice.”
“Canadian law changed a week after I was born and required me to have actively renounced Canadian citizenship.”
It appears her confusion stems from changes to the Canadian Citizenship Act in 1977. In the previous incarnation, from 1947, the Citizenship Act didn’t recognize dual citizenship. If a Canadian became a citizen of another country, they would automatically cease being Canadian, according to a government fact sheet. But the 1977 act — which did come into force exactly seven days after Waters was born — recognized dual citizenship, meaning the way to stop being Canadian was to renounce citizenship.
Her resignation set off criticism about the section of the constitution banning dual citizens. Adam Gartrell, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, called it a “relic of a bygone era, completely out-of-date and at odds with the multicultural melting pot that is modern Australia.”
But the threshold for amending the constitution is “perilously high,” said Andrew Banfield, a Canadianborn professor who teaches political science at the Australian National University. So, the brunt of the criticism in Australia was reserved for the Green party’s apparently lax candidate-vetting processes, he said.
“The sense is, look, the Green party has just screwed this up,” Banfield said. “There is no excuse for making this mistake.
“Interestingly, it was the first time I’ve ever heard someone say sorry for Canadian citizenship.”
In Waters’ and Ludlam’s resignations, the party lost its two deputy leaders — both of whom were the Greens’ most promising parliamentarians, Banfield said. Waters signalled plans to renounce her Canadian citizenship. If she does, she can run again, Banfield said.
Her statement, however, had a sense of finality.
“Farewell dear friends,” it said.
IT WAS THE FIRST TIME I’VE EVER HEARD SOMEONE SAY SORRY FOR CANADIAN CITIZENSHIP.