Report: Law Strips Thousands of Their Canadian Citizenship
Passport applicants find they’re not Canadian
Up to 20,000 Canadians may have unknowingly lost their citizenship by failing to celebrate their 24th birthdays in Canada, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported Wednesday. An obscure provision in that nation’s Citizenship Act ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ on the books from 1947 to 1977 ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ automatically stripped citizenship from Canadians who celebrated their 24th birthday outside the country within those dates without signing the proper form, CBC News said. Now as Canadians rush to get passports to comply with regulations requiring them for entry into the United States, some are finding they are no longer Canadians in good standing.
To quote a line from a song by Canadian Alanis Morrissette, “Isn’t it ironic?” Wouldn’t it be fun to figure out which pointy-headed bureaucrat came up with this law…and then use him (or her) for a pinata? The simple act of being outside Canadian territory on your 24th birthday, and Voila!!…instant statelessness. Yeah, I know…WTF???
I imagine that this silliness made sense to someone somewhere, and probably for some obscure reason…like maybe there were just too damn many Canadians? It’s easy to poke fun at this, but imagine being in a situation like this:
The law states that if you lived outside Canada on your 24th birthday and failed to sign the right form, you automatically lost your citizenship.
Barbara Porteous applied for a passport last year and was told in a letter from Citizenship and Immigration that she would have to apply to become a landed immigrant after spending most of her 70 years in Canada.
“These documents confirm you were a Canadian citizen, but you ceased being a Canadian citizen on June 14, 1960, the day following your 24th birthday,” the letter read.
A Canadian born in the U.S. to a Canadian father, Porteous has lived in Osoyoos, B.C., for the last 46 years and even worked as a returning officer for Elections Canada.
Imagine being 70 years old, and discovering that you’re no longer a citizen of the country you’ve lived in most, if not all, of your life? These poor folks even have a name: “Lost Canadians”. Yes, as big as Canada is, I suppose it would be easy to get lost in the wilderness, but this sort of bureaucratic clusterf—k goes above and beyond the call of duty, even for Canada.
At least some in government recognize that this situation defies logic. What I fail to understand, though, is why even a “fast track” process means waiting for eight months to apply for Canadian citizenship that never should have been lost to begin with? Then again, this is Canada, where government, even at it’s speediest, moves at a pace that can only charitably be described as glacial.
G’day, eh…we’re from the Canadian government, and we’re here to….ah, fuhgeddaboudit, eh?
