Canadians see citizenship ‘evaporate’
Arcane law, since abolished, leaves some stateless
• Byrdie Funk had what some would call a quintessential small-town Canadian upbringing.
At two months old, she moved from Mexico with her Canadian parents to a farming community in southern Manitoba. She learned to skate on a backyard pond and trudged between snowdrifts to school, where she would stand with fellow students to sing the national anthem before class.
She used her Canadian passport to travel to South Africa, toting a suitcase sporting the Maple Leaf, and was later married at a historic trading post on the banks of Winnipeg’s Red River.
But earlier this year the 36-year-old’s life was upended when she received a letter from Citizenship and Immigration Canada informing her she was no longer a Canadian citizen.
“It took my breath away,” Funk said in an interview from her home in Squamish, B.C.
“I had no idea that anything like this could even happen.”
She is one of an unknown number of people ensnared in an arcane law that automatically revokes the citizenship of certain Canadians who fail to officially apply to retain their nationality before the age of 28.
The little-known policy applies to anyone born abroad between Feb. 15, 1977, and April 16, 1981, to Canadian parents who were also born outside the country.
The rule was abolished by the Conservative government in 2009, but the change wasn’t retroactive, so it didn’t include anyone who had already turned 28 by then.
Funk said she only learned about the law this spring after trying to renew her passport.
The law was drafted in the 1970s out of concern that citizenship could be passed along indefinitely to generations abroad who were less and less connected to Canada, said Audrey Macklin, a law professor at the University of Toronto.
Macklin said it wasn’t necessarily unfair, at least in theory, to require someone twice removed from being born in Canada to prove a connection to the country.
The problem was rooted in the government’s inability to identify and inform those people that their citizenship would “evaporate” if they didn’t take specific steps to retain it, she said.
Lindsay Wemp, a spokeswoman with Citizenship and Immigration Canada, said in an email that the immigration minister can offer discretionary citizenship in extraordinary circumstances on a case-by-case basis.
Funk said she contacted minister John McCallum’s office in July and has yet to receive a response.
Donald Galloway, a law professor at the University of Victoria, said he didn’t think the government took the necessary steps to let people know “the narrow hinge” their status was hanging on.
“I think it’s quite shocking to live in a country where the government creates these Byzantine rules and says ‘Well, it’s up to you to know the details,’ ” he said.
Funk isn’t alone. Eva Friesen of Steinbach, Man., became stateless after losing her citizenship at 28. She had to officially immigrate to Canada after living as a Canadian since she was six.
The now-37-year-old heard about the rule by word of mouth when she was 27, but she said that didn’t give her enough time to arrange the necessary paperwork before the deadline.
“I think that’s totally unfair, especially if you grew up here and you know nothing else,” she said.
The policy is another chapter in the story of lost Canadians, made up of residents whose citizenship was either revoked or never granted in the first place due to kinks in Canada’s laws.
Over the years, the government has legislated corrections for the oversights, normally by retroactively offering citizenship to affected groups, from war brides to the children of soldiers born overseas. But recourse was never offered to those affected by the 28-year rule.
Galloway estimates there are hundreds affected by the law, many of whom are likely unaware. An Immigration Canada spokeswoman said the exact figure is unknown, but small.