‘Utterly cruel’: Canadian parents say new citizenship rules hurt kids adopted from abroad

Kamil Karamali reports on Canada's new 'Lost Canadians' legislation and how this praised bill could negatively impact children adopted abroad in Canada.

Tens of thousands of children born abroad in the past decade and a half, known as “Lost Canadians,” will now be eligible to become Canadian citizens after a new bill passed the Senate Wednesday and received royal assent Thursday.

Bill C-3 allows Canadians born outside the country to pass on their citizenship to their children who are also born abroad. The Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) says the new law would make at least 115,000 children born outside the country eligible for Canadian citizenship.

• ‘Lost Canadians’ legislation becomes law after Senate approval

But Canadians living in Canada, who have adopted children from abroad, say the bill leaves out a key change — an amendment that would give their kids the same treatment as children born in Canada.

“It’s utterly cruel what the government has done to us as a family and to other families like us in Canada and it’s just mean,” said Kat Lanteigne, whose 10-year-adopted son Nathanael was born in Zambia.

The new legislation says “intercountry adoptees,” children born abroad and adopted by Canadians living in Canada, must pass a “substantial connection” test to obtain citizenship, including proving they have lived in Canada for three years.

Parents of these children say the law is discriminatory because adoptees who were born in Canada don’t have to face the same test.

“They’re essentially saying to our son and other children like him: ‘Are you sure you’re Canadian? Are you really sure?’ And that is just so mean and totally unnecessary,” said Lanteigne. “Our son did not immigrate to this country, he’s not an immigrant. He is our son and we are Canadian citizens.”

‘Senate felt that they didn’t have enough time to deal with it’

The “lost Canadians” bill also makes Canadians born abroad, with biological children also born outside of Canada, to go through a “substantial connection” test by proving the parent has lived in Canada for three years.

It aims to undo a 2009 law implemented by the Stephen Harper Conservative government that took away the ability for those children to gain citizenship.

Lanteigne and other parents of adopted children born abroad, are baffled as to why that “connection test” that’s in place for those Canadian parents born outside of Canada, is being placed on children adopted from abroad.

“These are children brought into Canadian families through a lengthy, highly-scrutinized adoption process, children for whom Canada’s obligations under the Hague Convention require equality of status with domestically adopted Canadian children,” said Saskatchewan Sen. David Arnot on Wednesday before the bill was passed. “Yet, Bill C-3 risks creating new barriers that fall unfairly and uniquely upon that group.”

An amendment to the law was introduced earlier this year that proposed eliminating the “substantial connection” test for children from abroad and adopted by parents residing in Canada -- but members of the Senate said they didn’t have enough time to include it in the bill before it passed.

They argue that after an Ontario supreme court struck down the original law from 2009, it gave the federal government until November of this year to pass the new legislation.

“It is a simple, straightforward, legal legislative remedy,” said Arnot. “It is an amendment that I would have brought forward had I been allowed to with more time.”

“Unfortunately, the Senate did not go through that process and I think that they fear the timing of it was going to be problematic because right now, as it stands, the last Canadian issue is such that it... violates the Charter, added federal NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan.

“The Ontario court has actually made a ruling to say that the government has to address this and gave them several extensions, the latest of which was in Nov. 20, and the government had to get that bill passed. So I think the Senate felt that they didn’t have enough time to deal with it,” said Kwan.

Implications for children adopted from abroad

Kwan, who championed the amendment, alongside Ontario Liberal MP Nate Erskine-Smith, says there are also real-life implications for adoptees born abroad.

“These ‘intercountry adoptees,’ obviously, they’re abroad, they’re born abroad in a different country, and so when they come to Canada, they would require various visa application processes. And when they leave Canada, they may also require visas and so on, which creates an entire set of barriers for them for travel as well,” said Kwan, saying it may cause complications if they want to study or work abroad.

Immigration lawyer Sujit Choudhry says the new law could also make it complicated for adoptees born abroad to pass on their citizenship to their children if they’re also born abroad.

“It might be that that child at some point decides to have kids of their own abroad and so the ‘substantial connection’ test, is something that might pose a barrier to that kid, passing on citizenship abroad,” said Choudhry.

Now, Choudhry and his colleague, Maureen Silcoff, have retained for a potential Charter challenge, representing Lanteigne and parents of other intercountry adoptees, arguing they should be treated like adoptees born in Canada and not have to face a “substantial connection” test.

“It received royal assent on Nov. 20. It will have to be proclaimed in force and then once it’s proclaimed in force, we will begin to take next steps to gather evidence, prepare a case - and then, if we decide to move forward, to pursue that challenge,” said Choudhry.

“But we are open to dialog with the government. It seems to me that this particular issue is capable of a narrow legislative fix, and I would not be surprised in the wake of the Senate hearings, if there were some, willingness, hopefully, on the part of parties, to perhaps put aside their partisan differences and look at this particular class of children, and rally around the idea of nondiscrimination and international law and bring perhaps a specific amendment to the act that addresses their their case.”

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) tells CTV News that “going forward, citizenship by descent will be governed by a clear, fair, constitutionally sound framework that acknowledges that families can live, work, and contribute abroad without losing their deep sense of Canadian identity.”

“More details on the coming-into-force of Bill C-3 will be shared in the weeks ahead,” said IRCC spokesperson Laura Lee Blondeau. “As she committed during the Senate committee meeting, going forward the Minister (Lena Metlege Diab) and her team will engage with adoptions stakeholders on the issues raised during testimony."