Backgrounder - Strengthening the Value of Canadian Citizenship: Amending the Citizenship Act to protect the integrity of Canadian citizenship

The legislation tabled today would:

1. Add legal authority to regulate citizenship consultants and to crack down where they help people gain citizenship fraudulently.
   • Currently, citizenship consultants are unregistered and unregulated.
   • As part of the Government’s effort to deal with unscrupulous consultants, the amendments would create the authority to designate a regulatory body to regulate citizenship consultants.
   • Currently, citizenship consultant involvement with an application for citizenship is not regulated.
   • The amendments would require that applicants use an authorized consultant, and create an offence for unauthorized consultants who are providing representation or advice, or offer to do so, and create consistent penalties between citizenship and immigration programs for citizenship fraud.
2. Increase the penalties for citizenship fraud to a maximum of $100,000 or up to five years in prison or both.
   • The current penalty in the Citizenship Act for committing fraud is a fine of a maximum of $1,000 or one year in prison for both. That penalty was enacted in 1977 and is out of line with the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
   • The new penalty for fraud is a fine to a maximum of $100,000 or five years in prison or both, which modernizes the penalty for fraud in the Citizenship Act and is the same as the penalty for the equivalent offence in IRPA, thereby bringing it in line with the immigration program.
3. Strengthen the rules around citizenship residence requirements so that people applying for citizenship would have to be physically present in Canada for three of the previous four years.
   • Currently, adult applicants must reside in Canada three out of the previous four years. However, “residence” is not defined in the Citizenship Act. As a result, it is possible under the current Act for someone who has not been physically present in Canada for three years to become a citizen.
   • The Government proposes to amend the Citizenship Act to require physical presence of the applicant in Canada for three of the previous four years before their application.
   • The intent of the requirement for physical presence in Canada is to support newcomer integration into Canadian society.
4. Prevent foreign criminals - people charged with or convicted of a crime outside of Canada or serving a sentence outside Canada - from becoming Canadian citizens.
   • Currently, the Citizenship Act bars applicants from citizenship where they have been charged or convicted of any indictable offence in Canada, or where they are serving a sentence in Canada. It has no similar bar for foreign criminality.
   • The Government proposes to expand prohibitions to include people who have been charged or convicted of similar crimes abroad from obtaining citizenship.
   • This would mean that a person would not be granted citizenship while being convicted of, or subject to a criminal proceeding for certain foreign offences, or for serving a sentence outside Canada.
5. Ensure that the law supports implementation of the first generation limit to citizenship, so that it does not unintentionally bar access to eligible applicants, and expands the exception to the first generation limit so that children of Crown servants can pass on citizenship.
   • The Government proposes to amend the Citizenship Act so that the first generation limit is applied consistently in line with the intent of recent Bill C-37 amendments.
   • The Government also proposes to extend Canadian citizenship beyond the first generation limit for the children of people who were born, or adopted, abroad while their parent was working abroad for the federal, provincial or territorial governments (Crown servants).
   • This amendment would ensure that children born or adopted outside Canada to serving Canadian Crown servants are not adversely affected by their parents’ service to Canada and are able to pass on citizenship to any children they may have or adopt outside Canada (one generation only).