Global Courant
OTTAWA –
Andrea Fessler discovered that her third daughter was not eligible for Canadian citizenship – although her two older daughters were – when she arrived at the Canadian Consulate in Hong Kong to register.
She is one of many Canadians born abroad whose children are not eligible for citizenship unless they were born in Canada due to a 2009 law change.
There is hope for a reversal of that change as members of parliament debate amendments to the Citizenship Act. But a persistent conservative filibuster threatens that hope.
Fessler was born in Israel while her father was completing a two-year postgraduate course in the country. Her family returned to Canada when she was two, where she grew up in Vancouver before moving to Ottawa to work as a page in the House of Commons.
All three of her girls were born abroad, but due to the 2009 law change, Fessler’s youngest daughter, Daria, is the only one without legal ties to Canada.
“Had I known about the 2009 change in the law, it is entirely possible that I would have gone to Canada to give birth, but I had absolutely no idea,” she said in an interview from her home in Hong Kong.
The NDP proposed an amendment that would make people like Daria eligible for citizenship if their Canadian parent can prove they have spent at least three years in Canada.
The new rule, supported by the Liberals, was tacked onto a bill from a private member of the House of Commons’ Immigration Committee.
The committee has until June 14 to finalize the amended bill or it will be returned to the House of Commons without the new amendments.
“I briefed the girls on the legislative process, how there is hope and how hopeful I am that Daria will get a Canadian passport at some point,” Fessler said.
Daria, now 12, dreams of going to college in Vancouver, where her family goes on annual vacation. But as it stands, she would need to apply for an international student visa to return.
“She’s very hopeful” that that could change, Fessler said.
The initiative bill was originally introduced by conservative Senator Yonah Martin to address a particular quirk in the citizenship law.
The NDP and Liberals seized the opportunity to pass amendments to the bill that would have far-reaching implications for the citizenship of children born outside the country.
That angered conservative members of the committee, who believe the Citizenship Act is being rewritten without proper study or due diligence.
“These are substantive amendments, which have a material impact on the Citizenship Act. So they deserve close scrutiny, and we’re scrutinizing them,” said Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner, who sits on the committee.
Ottawa’s grandmother, Carol Sutherland-Brown, said the NDP’s amendment gave her hope that her grandchildren will one day qualify for Canadian citizenship.
But those hopes have dwindled with every committee meeting she has attended since.
“I felt elated when the amendment went through for the connection test, and then it just got cut off,” Sutherland-Brown said.
Sutherland-Brown met her husband in Canada before moving to Saudi Arabia at the age of 26 to work with him in a hospital. She still lived there when she had her daughter Marisa.
The family moved back to Canada when Marisa was two years old, and she lived there until she moved to Paris after graduating from high school. There she met her husband and the two then moved to the United Kingdom to start a family.
The family realized that Marisa’s son Findlay would not qualify for Canadian citizenship after she went to fill out the paperwork.
“He would have been a sixth-generation Canadian, and that’s all been robbed now,” Sutherland-Brown said.
During the filibuster, Conservative members also proposed other potential amendments far beyond the scope of the original bill, including mandating in-person citizenship ceremonies, which took hours of discussion before being shot down by Liberal and NDP members.
The committee has held longer meetings and scheduled extra time to debate the bill, but NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan said it may not be enough to defeat the filibuster.
“If this continues,[then]there is a real possibility that the bill will be reported to the House without us completing the work,” Kwan said.
“I still have a little bit of hope – I don’t know why – that this will still make it through the House with the necessary amendments. I’m holding on to that glimmer of hope.”
If the amendments make it through committee, the expanded bill still needs to be approved by the House of Commons and Senate before families like Fessler’s and Sutherland-Brown’s can make their case for passing on their citizenship.
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on June 6, 2023.
