Ottawa, ON – This week at the Committee on Citizenship and Immigration (CIMM), the Hon. Michelle Rempel Garner, Conservative Shadow Minister for Immigration, put forward a simple change to the Citizenship Act to fix Canada’s outdated automatic citizenship rules.

Right now, anyone born in Canada gets Canadian citizenship – even if both parents are only here on short-term permits or have no status at all. Canada is now an outlier on this issue. The UK, France, Germany, New Zealand and Australia all require at least one parent to be a citizen or a permanent resident. 

With over 3 million people here on temporary visas and an already backlogged system, this outdated rule presents yet another strain on our immigration system that Canada can’t handle.

This is not on immigrants; people are following the law. The responsibility sits with the Liberals, who broke the system and pushed a post-national view that shrugs at the notion of a shared Canadian identity and the duties that come with it.

The Conservatives’ amendment proposed that someone born in Canada gets citizenship if at least one parent is a citizen, permanent resident or a protected person under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

This would ensure citizenship requires a real connection to Canada. It will end birth tourism, where people travel to Canada with the express purpose of having a child, just to get them citizenship, which has skyrocketed by 590 per cent under the Liberals.

But even this whopping figure does not account for the number of children born to two non-permanent resident parents, such as international students or Temporary Foreign Workers. With over 7 per cent of Canada’s population here on temporary status – and arrivals massively outpacing the capacity of our housing, healthcare and jobs markets – something needs to change. 

“Being a Canadian is a great privilege. We need clear rules that protect the value of our passport and help us welcome people the right way,” said Rempel-Garner.

Restoring the value of citizenship would not only improve healthcare, make housing more affordable and prioritize jobs for our youth (who currently face an unprecedented unemployment crisis), it would also ensure expectations and pride go together; rights and responsibilities.

Shamefully, the Liberals voted this common-sense amendment down. They chose the broken status quo over a fair fix to their chain-migration Bill C-3 that is projected to add at least 115,000 people to Canada’s population over the next 5 years.

While government MPs blocked this important motion, Conservatives passed key amendments to fix many of the most egregious aspects of C-3. These included requiring background checks, citizenship tests and language requirements for those between 18 and 55 applying for passports under the Bill’s provisions, as well as more stringent requirements for time spent in Canada and more accountability to Parliament.

Only Conservatives will restore the value of Canadian citizenship and the immigration consensus that the Liberals broke by fixing our broken immigration system and setting clear rules.