Backgrounder - Why amendments are necessary: Outdated provisions in current and former citizenship legislation

Canada’s citizenship legislation, dating back to 1947 and 1977, is based on the cultural and social values of its day. Our values and attitudes have changed and so should our citizenship laws.

The 1947 Act, for example:

• Treated people born abroad after 1946 to Canadian parents differently, depending on whether their parents were married. They could be made citizens directly only if they were born in wedlock to a Canadian father or out of wedlock to a Canadian mother.
• Restricted access to dual citizenship. If you were Canadian (whether or not you were born in Canada) and took out citizenship in another country between 1947 and 1977, you automatically lost your Canadian citizenship. Yet other people who were dual citizens from birth were allowed to hold both citizenships.
• Caused children to lose their citizenship automatically if their parents took out another citizenship on their behalf.
• Had rules governing how you could lose citizenship. A person who immigrated to Canada and became a Canadian citizen (a naturalized citizen) could lose their citizenship if they lived outside Canada for 10 years. Yet such rules didn’t apply to citizens born in Canada.
• Required Canadian citizens born outside Canada to Canadian parents, and living outside Canada on their 24^th birthday, to file documents to keep their citizenship.
• Required Canadian parents to register the birth of a child born abroad with the citizenship department, even if the birth was just across the border in the closest hospital. Children whose births were not registered were not Canadian citizens.

All of these issues would be addressed with the proposed legislation.

The 1977 Act:

• Partially resolved some of the concerns with the 1947 Act, but did not make people citizens retroactively.
• Allows Canadians living outside Canada to pass citizenship on from generation to generation, without ever having lived in Canada.
• Also has provisions that cause some Canadians, born outside Canada to a Canadian parent, to lose their citizenship. If they do not take steps to keep their citizenship by their 28th birthday, they lose their citizenship even if they live in Canada.

The proposed legislation would give citizenship automatically to the first generation of children born abroad to Canadian citizens. Subsequent generations born abroad would no longer be given Canadian citizenship automatically, unless they are children of members of the Canadian Forces or Canadian diplomats serving outside Canada.