Cathie Roy
Forty-seven years after being stripped of his Canadian citizenship, Gibsons' resident Don Chapman is on the cusp of having his citizenship restored, thanks to Bill C-37.
The Bill, an amendment to the citizenship act, passed third reading unanimously April 16 in the Senate. The Bill gained royal assent, making it law, on April 17.
And while the road to this stage in his life has been an arduous one, and Chapman cautions that the entire citizenship act needs to be rewritten to make it Charter compliant, this marks a victory for the outspoken crusader.
Chapman's citizenship saga began when he was six and his father had to become an American citizen as a requirement of his job. At that time, the early '60s, children and women were considered possessions of their fathers and husbands, so when the elder Chapman became an American citizen, so did his wife and three children.
At age 18, Don Chapman decided this was wrong, and what started out as a personal effort to regain his citizenship over the years escalated into a Holy Grail. Ironically during this time, Chapman has become an authority on the citizenship act as was witnessed when he testified before the Senate committee on April 10.
One of six people to testify before the committee, including Diane Finley, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration (CIC), Chapman spoke eloquently of the need to restore his and others' citizenship.
"Very few people in Canada ever recognized our problem. As a matter of fact, they have been thinking I have been a nut case all these years trying to correct this," he told the senators.
For years, people who have been stripped of their citizenship (whom he dubbed Lost Canadians) have been contacting Chapman.
"[Lost Canadians] live all over the world but the greatest number are here in Canada," he said.
In her opening remarks, Finley told of the need to correct instances where people were born Canadian and later had their citizenship lost through no fault of their own. The new bill would also restore citizenship to those who qualified under the Canadian Citizenship Act of 1947 but later lost the right under subsequent legislation.
This provision would cover people such as Joe Taylor, the man born out of wedlock in Britain in December 1944 to a British mother and Canadian father. Taylor, since granted citizenship by ministerial powers, was brought to Canada by his war bride mother in 1946 but was returned to Britain later that year when the marriage failed. The 1947 Act required the parents to be married at his birth in order for Taylor to have automatic citizenship. Even if his parents had remained married, the same would have held true.
Two people spoke about concerns they had with shortcomings to the legislation. Professor Donald Galloway from the faculty of law at the University of Victoria expressed both his frustration at the ambiguity of the law and the difficulty he, an expert, has in interpreting parts of it and his concern that denying automatic citizenship to any children beyond the first generation born abroad will create another set of Lost Canadians.
Janet Dench, the executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees, echoed Galloway's concern that denying such rights to second generation and beyond could create stateless persons. Currently many countries such as France and Germany do not automatically confer citizenship on people born in their countries, requiring instead that the parents be citizens of the country. Therefore a Canadian citizen not born in Canada who gave birth in a country such as France would have a child with citizenship in no country.
Finley stated the provision was made because previous legislation had passed citizenship on through many generations, whether or not the person had ever been to Canada or even heard of it.
"We think that is a devaluation of the value of our citizenship," the minister countered.
In addition to Chapman, two others spoke championing the Bill and urging its prompt passage into law.
Bill Janzen, the director of Mennonite Central Committee Canada, and historian, Melynda Jarratt also spoke.
Jarratt has appeared five times previously before parliamentary committees on the subject of war brides and the impact of the Citizenship Act on that group of women and their children.
Although the women and their children were told they had citizenship when they first came to this country after the Second World War, everything changed with the 1947 Citizenship Act. From then on they had to apply for citizenship.
Jarratt said for many war brides who lived in rural Canada and did not follow current events, this has posed a hardship.
"The oldest women, who are now in their late '80s and into their '90s, are worried that they will die and their citizenship and that of their children will not be sorted out," she told the senators.
Ultimately the Senate committee decided to recommend passage of the Bill with recommendations to the Bill rather than amendments, which would have effectively killed the Bill.
That set in motion the passage of the Bill in the Senate this week and Chapman's jubilation at the result.
And although the Bill became law on Thursday, April 17, it will still be a full year before it is implemented - enough time for the crusader to help write a new Canadian Citizenship Act.
