Prof. Audrey Macklin - "Conservative citizenship-stripping bill barbaric and pointless"

The Conservative government stands poised to pass a law empowering the minister of Citizenship and Immigration to expedite the citizenship of certain permanent residents and to strip Canadians of their citizenship for misconduct as citizens. This is part of a larger campaign to increase the value of Canadian citizenship by making it harder to acquire, harder to pass on to your children, harder to retain, and easier to lose. Each is a solution in search of a problem: Has Canadian citizenship been devalued? By what measure? In comparison to what? What tangible (as opposed to symbolic) benefits will these changes confer, on whom, and at whose cost?

The expedited citizenship provision will lop a year off the residency requirement for permanent residents who serve in the Canadian Armed Forces. Under existing citizenship law, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration already has the discretion to expedite the citizenship application of people considered exceptionally deserving, including those who serve in the Canadian military. Moreover, a quick trip to the Armed Forces recruitment website reveals that the first requirement for joining the Armed Forces is Canadian citizenship, so the gesture is not only redundant, it is meaningless.

The more pernicious part of the bill revives the medieval punishment of banishment into contemporary law. Canadian citizens who commit acts that, in the view of the minister, demonstrate repudiation of "Canadian values" warrant revocation of citizenship and expulsion. The list of offences that qualify for such punishment are provided by the minister in his version of the proposed law, which were introduced in committee and will never be debated in Parliament. They include terrorism, treason, membership in an armed group engaged in conflict against Canada, etc. The problem with the list is not only that it is vague and arbitrary, but that it is radically underinclusive: The list of criminal offences that are “inconsistent with Canadian values" is potentially endless. One could just as easily argue that the acts of the child abuser, murderer, embezzler, drug trafficker, rapist demonstrate repudiation of Canadian values.

The point, of course, is that we deal with this conduct through the criminal justice system. Banishment was popular in antiquity and medieval times, before the rise of penal systems that enabled states to segregate, punish and rehabilitate wrongdoers within the state. For good and obvious reasons, no liberal democracy empowers its executive to try people accused of crimes, to convict them, and to sentence them. This is a practice rightly associated with tyranny. The separation of powers demands that that we assign those tasks to an independent judiciary. Appointing the minister of Citizenship and Immigration to act as prosecutor, judge and executioner for alleged “crimes against citizenship” is, to borrow from the language of his recently revised Citizenship Guide, a barbaric practice.

Whatever practical purpose banishment might have served has long since evaporated. By the 20th century, citizenship revocation and exile were associated with Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union. But Canada also indulged in it, and in 1946 coerced over 10,000 Canadians of Japanese descent into surrendering their Canadian citizenship and deported them to Japan in 1946. Most had never even been to Japan. It is a shameful episode in Canadian history for which Canada has rightly apologized. Indeed, opposition MP and eventual Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker recalled how he opposed the “iniquitious” revocation of those Canadians' citizenship as “the very antithesis of democracy.” How ironic that today's Conservative government seems so determined to repeat the mistakes of history. No doubt it is as convinced of the righteousness of its actions as was the government in 1946.

The minister of Citizenship and Immigration has falsely claimed that citizenship stripping of the type he promotes is commonplace in other countries, including the United States. In fact, the only western state to make use of it in the last few years is the UK, and it is an outlier whose use of it should serve as a cautionary tale. Citizenship stripping has been unconstitutional in the United States for over 50 years. The words of Chief Justice Earl Warren remain as true in the face of today's iconic menace – the terrorist – as they were in the face of the threats of yesteryear – the communist, the deserter, the traitor:

“Citizenship is not a license that expires upon misbehavior. … And the deprivation of citizenship is not a weapon that the government may use to express its displeasure at a citizen's conduct, however reprehensible that conduct may be.”

Stripping a person of citizenship on grounds of alleged misconduct is arbitrary, medieval, and serves no valid purpose, whether or not the person is a dual citizen, a naturalized citizen, or a citizen by birth. The value of Canadian citizenship is diminished – not enhanced – by reviving this disgraceful practice in its name.