C7

By ROBERT ADDINGTON DON CHAPMAN & MELYNDA JARRATT

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This is Citizenship Week in Canada, a time to celebrate the meaning and value of Canadian citizenship. Unfortunately, some Canadians are not invited to the party.

They are lost Canadians - people who have always considered themselves Canadian citizens, but are not.

Lost Canadians are excluded from citizenship by obscure, highly technical provisions of citizenship law because of the date, status and circumstances of their birth.

Despite the passage of Bill C-37, (the so-called "Lost Canadian" Bill), and changes to the Citizenship Act which came into effect in April, their citizenship has not been rectified. They are still lost.

Some are war bride children who were born out of wedlock to Canadian servicemen overseas during the Second World War. Such cases were common and inevitable under wartime conditions.

In the 1940s, a woman who had the misfortune of being pregnant and unmarried was deemed a social outcast, and the child was an illegitimate bastard, according to laws on the books at the time.

Most soldiers and their girlfriends tried to do the right thing, but even when they did marry, the social taboo of having an illegitimate child was so great that fathers and mothers often took their secrets to the grave.

Meantime, the children, unaware of the circumstances of their birth status, arrived in Canada with their war bride mothers and most have lived here ever since. Only now, as they reach the age of retirement and start applying for Old Age Pensions or passports, do they discover that they were born before their parents married and are not entitled to citizenship.

The law governing illegitimacy was repealed 32 years ago. No politician today would defend it. But in 2009 these war bride children are excluded from citizenship because of their birth status, even though their parents married. It doesn't matter if they lived in Canada all their lives, went to school, married, raised a family, paid taxes, voted, had passports in the past, or even if they served their country.

Another identifiable group of lost Canadians are Mennonites who were born years ago in Mexico or South America. They are excluded solely because the religious marriage of their parents, or in some cases grandparents, was not recognized by the civil law of the jurisdiction where the marriage took place.

The children of these unions are deemed "illegitimate" and therefore, not entitled to citizenship. The Mennonite Central Committee has knowledge of some 60 cases in this group.

Lost Canadians are not "Canadians of convenience" who have suddenly arrived on Canada's doorstep claiming citizenship. Many have lived their entire adult lives in Canada as Canadians. They cannot get passports or other documents available only to citizens. Even their right to live and work in Canada is in question.

Their continued exclusion from citizenship after a lifetime in Canada is a national disgrace and an international embarrassment to Canada. We know of no other democratic country that has treated an identifiable group in this insulting, unconscionable and politically indefensible way.

Citizenship is about belonging to the Canadian family. It is not a favour to be granted, withheld or revoked at the pleasure of the minister or his officials. It is also a right guaranteed in international documents Canada has signed.

We call on our fellow citizens to support us in claiming that right by writing letters to the editor and to members of Parliament.

Only with that support can we hope to get the political attention of the government. Without it, the remaining lost Canadians face the disagreeable choice of fighting for their citizenship in the courts, or resigning themselves to living out their remaining years in citizenship limbo, effectively, if not technically, stateless.

No Canadian should have to make that choice.

Robert Addington is a retired federal civil servant living in London, Ont. Don Chapman is the leader of the advocacy group Lost Canadians. He lives in Gibsons, B.C. Melynda Jarratt is a war bride historian living in Fredericton.