The fight for citizenship for Lost Canadians is getting political again as the Liberal candidate for West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country is joining in the fight with Gibsons resident Don Chapman.
Dan Veniez is calling on the Harper government to introduce legislation to correct long-standing discrimination in the Canada Citizenship Act that still leaves thousands of Canadians in citizenship limbo. According to Veniez, the legislation would correct the remaining injustices found in Canada's most basic human rights document - the Citizenship Act.
Veniez is also seeking to create an independent citizenship ombudsman to focus solely on the thorny issues of gender and marital status discrimination that have been raised through the efforts of Chapman, who has been a champion for the Lost Canadians issue for years.
Lost Canadians are individuals and their children who lost or never had citizenship due to discriminatory provisions of Canadian laws. Calling it 'a product of its time,' Veniez said prior to 1947, Canadian laws treated women and children differently from men, stripping status from Canadian women who married foreigners, but not from Canadian men who married foreign women.
The 1947 Act prevented Cana-dian women who married foreigners and then had children abroad from passing on Canadian citizenship to their children. At the same time, Canadian men who married foreign women and had children abroad could pass on their citizenship without problems.
Chapman said despite many amendments to the act over the years, including the Lost Canadian Bill C-37, enacted in April 2009, the discriminatory provisions dating prior to 1947 remain in effect and continue to discriminate against women and children on the basis of gender and marital status.
'In the year 2010, it's unbelievable that the Conservative government refuses to make our Citizenship Act Charter compliant, but the evidence is overwhelming and the stories too tragic to ignore,' said Veniez.
While Bill C-37 did restore Canadian citizenship to hundreds of thousands of Lost Canadians, Chapman said it left behind thousands of other Canadians still affected by arcane provisions in the Citizenship Act, who have either inadvertently lost the Canadian citizenship they once held, or - though they have spent their entire lives thinking they were Canadian - they never actually held citizenship in the first place.
According to Chapman, most affected are people born in or out of Canada to a Canadian mother and non-British status father prior to 1947, people born abroad to a Canadian mother and non-Canadian father between 1947 and 1977, some war bride children who were born out of wedlock prior to 1947, certain second-generation, born-abroad Canadians who didn't reaffirm their citizenship by their 28th birthday and some second-generation children born abroad to a Canadian parent.
You can learn more about Chap-man's journey and that of thousands of other Lost Canadians by going to www.lostcanadian.com.
Chapman lost his status as a Canadian as a nine year old when his parents moved to the United States and his father took out citizenship there in 1961. Chapman led a decades-long fight to get his citizenship back and with the implementation of Bill C-37 last year, he was finally able to reclaim citizenship for himself and his family. However, Chapman said, there are still many other Canadians, including children born abroad, who are being refused citizenship due to the gender and marital status discrimination.
He said the discrimination is becoming inter-generational, as further generations of Canadian women are having children born abroad.
'If their connection to Canada is through a man, no problem. But if it's through a woman, they're out of luck,' Chapman said.
Conservative member of Parliament John Weston said he applauds Chapman's commitment to the issue.
'I'm very familiar with Don, and he and I share a common commitment to citizenship issues. We both put importance on this issue and the security of giving people citizenship,' Weston said. 'I met with Don twice last week and was with him when he spoke with Stockwell Day, and I've met him in Ottawa and worked with him on citizenship and immigration issues.
'Great progress has been made on this issue, but at the same time, there is still work to be done. I look forward to continuing to work with Don, communicating with Minister [Jason] Kenney and working on this important issue.'
Of particular concern to Chap-man and the Lost Canadians is the 'born-out-of-wedlock' war children who were born overseas before their parents married, which prevented them from inheriting the citizenship of their Canadian serviceman father.
Despite Orders in Council granting them citizenship, the Harper government continues to ignore their rights, Veniez said.
Veniez said he feels it's an insult to the memory of Canadian veterans and their war bride wives, as most of these children have lived their entire lives in Canada since arriving as babies with their mothers on the war bride ships in 1946.
