Mulcair treating French citizenship like a ‘Kleenex,’ advocate says
An advocate for France’s expatriates living in Canada says NDP Leader Tom Mulcair is making a “big mistake” by vowing to give up his French citizenship if elected prime minister.
“Citizenship is not like a Kleenex you take when you have a problem with your nose and then you throw it away when you don’t need it any more,” said François Lubrina, who is a Canadian representative to the Assemblée des Français de l’étranger (AFE), an elected body that represents the interests of the French diaspora around the world.
Mulcair, born in Canada, qualified to become a French citizen when he married his French wife, Catherine Pinhas. He has claimed he applied for citizenship because it was easier for his family to travel together in Europe with the same type of passports.
Lubrina said both of Mulcair’s adult sons and his grandchildren enjoy French citizenship through their mother.
In his recently published autobiography, Mulcair said that “it stands to reason that as prime minister I will renounce my French citizenship, as did Michaëlle Jean in 2005 upon becoming governor general.”
But there is no reason, other than pressure from the right-wing politicians who don’t like dual citizenship, for Mulcair to renounce, Lubrina said.
“We are in a time when dual citizenship is very common. Mr. Mulcair doesn’t have to say he has to reject it.”
Dual citizenship is popular in Europe and, he notes, even French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has Spanish citizenship. Canadian prime ministers in the past have had British citizenship, he notes.
He called Jean’s decision to renounce her French citizenship upon becoming Governor General “opportunistic” and needless, as other vice-regals had been British citizens, too.
He notes that Quebec premier Philippe Couillard also holds dual French citizenship — his mother was born in France — but has, in Lubrina’s opinion, been hostile to France’s interests in Quebec.
Lubrina has a political connection to the NDP leader: In 2009, Mulcair’s wife, Catherine, sought a seat in the AFE on the same ticket as Lubrina.
Her run for the assembly raised eyebrows, as some members of the same slate of candidates were aligned with then-French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s right-ofcentre Union pour un mouvement populaire (UMP).
But Lubrina disputes any connection between Catherine and the UMP.
“There was not any political involvement, it was just to participate with the French community,” he said. His group was involved in mostly social and education issues, such as helping French citizens obtain scholarships.
“She was never involved in the UMP or anything like that. She had no chance to be elected.”
He said Pinhas was 10th on a ranked list of 16 candidates on the slate and had little chance of being elected to AFE.
But the notion of expats electing representatives appeared to have made an impression on Mulcair. In 2008, the French government agreed to allow citizens living abroad to elect members of the National Assembly and senators who represent foreign constituencies, including one for Canada and the U.S.
“I think it’s an extra incentive to maintain a link (to France),” Mulcair, then a rookie MP in Montreal, said at the time.
Lubrina thinks Canada should consider a similar system of allowing parliamentary representation of expatriates.
But it’s unlikely, even under an NDP government, that the electoral system would be reformed to create new ridings of Phoenix-Tempe-Scottsdale or Tampa-St. Petersburg-Fort Myers.
“We’d be a long way away from being able to institute this system of MPs,” Mulcair said in 2008, “simply because it’s so difficult to get through any constitutional change.”