When Marion Galbraith applied for her first passport for a trip to England in June she got the shock of her life: a clerk at the Halifax passport office informed her that she wasn't a Canadian citizen, even though she has lived here since she was three years old.
After much paper work, document searches, pleas to local politicians, and lengthy phone calls and emails to Citizenship and Immigration Minister Diane Finley's office, 60-year old Galbraith will finally receive her hard-won Canadian passport, although her trip had to be postponed until August.
Galbraith's older sister, Annette Braine, who came to Canada at the same time as Galbraith, discovered that she's not a citizen either and therefore not entitled to her old age pension, even though as a taxpayer she paid into the program all her working life.
The daughters of a war bride who arrived in Canada in 1946, Galbraith and Braine never thought to question their status as Canadians. According to Liberal MP and Vice-Chair of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, Andrew Telegdi, there may be as many as 200,000 individuals, including war brides, living in Canada in the same situation as Braine and Galbraith.
"It has slowly come to light that all across Canada war brides and the children they brought with them on the war bride ships are being told they are not Canadian citizens when they apply for passports," Telegdi told the House last May.
Telegdi informed the House that by a Privy Council order of 1944, the war brides and their children were given Canadian citizenship upon landing in Canada. But with what critics describe as archaic and discriminatory aspects of Citizenship Acts of the past still in effect today, "loss of citizenship" provisions apply to at least six categories.
"Citizenship law is arcane. It contains many complex provisions that are difficult to comprehend. Unlike Ariadne, citizens do not have a thread that allows them to navigate the labyrinthine provisions of current and former legislations to discover the truth of their legal status," said University of Victoria law professor Donald Galloway in a brief to the Committee.
New Brunswick historian Melynda Jarrett, creator and manager of Canadianwarbrides.com, says most war brides and their children are not aware and have not been informed by the government that they have to apply for a Certificate of Retention of Citizenship by age twenty-four.
She says there are currently more than 400 people whose applications for citizenship are being held up due to the Joe Taylor case.
"They have applied for citizenship since the Joe Taylor decision in 2006, but the Minister will not make a decision on their applications until the Joe Taylor case is resolved and that could be as long as two years," says Jarrett.
The son of a World War II Canadian soldier and a British war bride, Taylor was denied his citizenship because he was born six months before his parents were married. He took his fight to court, and $40,000 later he achieved a legal victory.
In September, Federal Court Justice Luc Martineau ruled sections of the Citizenship Act unconstitutional, and ordered that Taylor be issued citizenship papers without delay.
But Taylor's victory in British Columbia is being appealed by the federal government. Minister of Human Resources and Social development, Monte Solberg, said in the House in October that when there is a court decision "that has implications for hundreds of statutes, dozens of departments and could cause tens of billions of dollars…we have a duty to appeal."
Bill Siksay, NDP critic and a member of the Standing Committee, has urged the government to end its fight against Taylor and get on with fixing the problems in Canadian citizenship.
"Government's dealing with individual cases is not the way to go. I think it really is important that we be proactive about it and not wait till we have thousands of cases waiting; that we take measures legislatively so that there just won't be a problem when they get to that stage."
Jarrett says a Citizenship and Immigration Department affidavit "admits to having rejected about 3,500 persons in the last six years."
"With those kinds of numbers, we have reason to believe that the Department has been refusing war bride children like Joe [Taylor] at the rate of about 400 per year for who knows how many years."
In one "double whammy" case, after her application for a driver's license was refused, Suzanne Rouleau found out that she and her sister not only weren't Canadian citizens but had been born out of wedlock to her war bride mother.
Rouleau's father, a Canadian soldier, and his war bride came to Canada in 1946 in a government-sponsored one-way trip by sea. But "loss of citizenship" provisions in the 1947 Citizenship Act meant illegitimate children couldn't be Canadians.
After much paper work, including filling out a form for illegitimate children and paying a higher fee of $200, CIC finally gave Rouleau her legal papers. The fact that her parents married later remains legally irrelevant.
In a January research paper, University of Victoria statistician Dr. Barry Edmonston lists several categories of people who may be impacted by existing citizenship laws: Lost Canadians (85,000), War babies (5,000-10,000), U.S. Border Babies (10,000), and several thousand Born Abroad Babies.
He estimates that there are between 25,000 and 35,000 war brides and children still alive today whose citizenship could be jeopardized by a negative decision in the Taylor case.
"People don't have any idea how much is at stake," says Jarrett, who will testify before the Standing Committee next Tuesday along with Senator Romeo Dallaire.
Feeds