So I've been doing some research for a friend of mine, helping her fight immigration and the deportation of her fiance, and I stumbled upon some unsettling information.
According to Bill C-37, that was passed in 2009, anyone who was not born as of 1947 a Canadian citizen is not a legal Canadian citizen, hence their children and possibly grandchildren are not legal Canadian citizens either. A recent article in a Readers Digest magazine states "Nobody knows exactly how many lost Canadians are out there, Maybe as many as 200,000."
And then on a sidebar to the article there is another quote on the topic, "Most of the people on the list [a list of Canadian celebrities] are probably unaware of the fact, for the simple reason that few Canadians at home or abroad know anything about the issue."
Now why wouldn't the government make some kind of public statement about the concern of its people or who they thought were their people?
These people take part in our school systems as children, these people hold accountable Canadian documentation such as social insurance numbers, Care Cards and even birth certificates. They hold jobs and pay Canadian taxes and some even collect Canadian pensions.
In some rare recent cases some of our elderly have been denied burial on Canadian soil because of this uneducated government law.
Is our government seriously this greedy that they will collect our tax money, but deny us the right to a comforting burial at our deaths based on information they wish to withhold from us until the very last minute in life? If so, I am all of a sudden ashamed of my country and feel it necessary to now do some further investigating into my family's past to make sure I am not one of those 200,000 people who are living here without proper citizenship.
Barbara Holloway
Prince George
