Feds warned about citizenship-stripping law, advocate says
VANCOUVER— The Canadian government was warned repeatedly years before an arcane law began stripping longtime Canadians of their citizenship, says a man who spent decades lobbying for change.
Bill Janzen, the former head of the Mennonite Central Committee’s office in Ottawa, said he and his colleagues met with the federal government throughout the 1980s and 1990s to find a fix to the so-called 28-year rule.
The provision was part of a1977 law that automatically removed citizenship from people born abroad to Canadian parents who were also born outside the country.
“The government holds a big responsibility for this,” Janzen said. “They’ve created a mess.”
The law applies to people born between Feb. 15, 1977, and April 16, 1981, no matter how quickly after their birth they moved to Canada. It was rescinded in 2009, but the change didn’t apply retroactively.
The only way to prevent the automatic loss of citizenship was to apply to retain it before the age of 28 — a detail that legal experts contend the government failed to adequately communicate to those affected.
Janzen said he has heard numerous stories of people going to citizenship officials and being told they had never heard of the law.
“They said, ‘Don’t worry about it. Go home and enjoy Canada . . . Once a Canadian, always a Canadian,’ ” said Janzen, who has helped more than 180 people navigate the expensive process of regaining their citizenship over the years. Immigration Minister John McCallum could not be reached for comment, but a spokesperson for Citizenship and Immigration Canada said in an email the government advised those affected “when pos- sible” of the need to apply before the age of 28 to retain their citizenship.
“As we do not have data on the number of individuals who might have been impacted, we were unable to advise people systematically,” Sonia Lesage wrote, adding that the number of people who remain affected is “very small.”
Lesage said the minister has discretionary authority to grant citizenship in “cases of special and unusual hardship” and she encouraged anyone who thinks they might be affected to contact the department.