Nor does it matter whether the offender is a native-born Canadian, a new Canadian who gave up some previous citizenship, or a dual Canadian/whatever passport holder. In the eyes of the law, a Canadian citizen is a citizen, without hyphenation. That’s as should be.
So why then is Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government so anxious to strip Canadian citizenship from people who hold dual citizenships, if they commit these crimes? Whatever perverse impulses motivate such people, they are Canadians, period. They have the same civil rights as any other citizen. Trying to redefine them as foreigners, as the Tories seem anxious to do, is a bizarre act of wilful denial that flies in the face of fact and natural justice.
Yet even so, Calgary Tory MP Devinder Shory has put forward a poorly thought-through private member’s bill in Parliament, C-425, that would strip Canadian citizenship from dual nationals who engage in war against our military, by deeming them to have renounced it. And Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has compounded the muddle by musing about “broadening the scope” of the bill to capture acts of terrorism as well.
This is a knee-jerk reaction, nothing more, to embarrassing reports that a Canadian/Lebanese dual national with links to Hezbollah and few ties to Canada was involved in a terror attack on a bus in Bulgaria last year that killed the driver and five Israeli tourists.
Defending his view, Kenney says “Canadian citizenship is predicated on loyalty to this country and I cannot think of a more obvious act of renouncing one’s sense of loyalty than going and committing acts of terror.” But emotionally satisfying as it might be to lash out at such people, creating a category of second-class citizens makes no sense.
The Tory model would set up an odious and hard-to-justify distinction between Canadian-born criminals whose citizenship can’t be revoked even for treason and terror, and naturalized citizens whose citizenship can be lifted. That might not withstand a constitutional challenge. In effect it creates two classes of citizens, with radically different rights. There’s no reason that people who were born here should be regarded as first-class citizens, while those who acquired citizenship should be seen as second-class.
As interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae put it, “Do we want to have two or three different kinds of citizens?” Let’s hope not.
The Tories seem not to grasp that once we grant citizenship, the person is Canadian in the eyes of the law. Not Lebanese-Canadian, American-Canadian, Italian-Canadian. Just Canadian. It’s our citizenship, and our problem. How would we react to Lebanon stripping Lebanese/Canadian terrorists of their Lebanese citizenship and telling us they are now exclusively our worry? Moreover, how can the Tories justify disenfranchising citizens who commit these grave crimes, without doing the same for mass murderers, serial killers and the like? Where might it all end? With the serial expulsion of our criminals to other jurisdictions?
Rather than deny that Canadian bad actors have a claim to citizenship, the Harper government would do better to follow its natural impulse and haul them before the courts to face the full force of the law. There should be one citizenship and one justice for all.
Original Article
Source: thestar.com
Author: Editorial
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