NDP rubs blocked bill in Tories’ faces

OTTAWA — NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair began Parliament’s summer break by boasting about blocking a Conservative effort to strip Canadian citizenship from convicted terrorists.

“We got the end of an odious bill in immigration that would’ve deprived Canadians of their citizenship illegally that would’ve had to be have been fought before the courts,” Mulcair said Wednesday. “It was disgusting what (Immigration Minister) Jason Kenney was trying to do in that bill.”

New Democrats on the immigration committee managed to talk out the clock for more than a week until Parliament rose late Tuesday, preventing the government from amending the private member’s bill.

Conservative MP Devinder Shory’s bill would strip citizenship from anyone who commits an act of war against the Canadian military, but he also supported the immigration minister’s amendment to include a terrorism conviction as a reason to lose Canadian citizenship.

Government House Leader Peter Van Loan shot back at Mulcair by questioning his sense of morality.

“I think when people look at (Prime Minister) Stephen Harper they see someone who understands right from wrong,” said Van Loan. “Thomas Mulcair seemed to think that his biggest legislative priority was protecting terrorists.”

Shory’s bill will proceed unchanged, but Kenney’s office says the fight “is far from over.”