There is a separate thread in this forum about the status of Bill C-6, but by now it has hundreds of pages and it is a big mix of facts, updates, guesses, opinions and tangent discussions. Most recently, the tax filing obligations of refugees are discussed in that thread 
I can imagine that many people are coming to this forum simply to get an update on the status of the bill and to understand the process. But that is hard to come by in that thread.
That's why I want to give an overview over the bill, it's current status and what to look for next.
Note: This post will simply contain the current facts regarding the content and status of Bill C-6, without any personal opinion or guesses of mine. Please don't start another discussion here about what is good or bad about this bill, good or bad about how it's handled in parliament or good or bad about any other field of Canadian politics. There's already a thread for that.
First, some links
Here is the text of the bill. Be warned it is arguably not the sexiest document you will read this week:
http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&DocId=8380792
Here is the status page of the bill on the Parliament website:
http://www.parl.gc.ca/LegisInfo/BillDetails.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&Bill=C6&Parl=42&Ses=1
What does this bill do? (Note this can only be a summary of the most relevant points):
- It reduces the residency requirement from 4/6 years to 3/5 years
- Every day of residence before PR counts as half a day of residence (for up to 730 half days = 365 full days)
- The "intend to reside" is not a requirement for citizenship. This applies even to people who already applied for or received citizenship in the past.
- The age range for the language requirement it rolled back to 18-54
- The minister cannot revoke anymore the citizenship of someone who committed crimes like terrorism if this occurred after that person became a citizen. Those whose citizenships has been revoked because of that clause get it back.
Arguably, the last point is the one that is facing the most heated debate in Parliament and in the general public. Whereas it seems in this forum the first two items are the ones that most people care about.
Through what stages did this bill go in the House of Commons?
- It was read a first time in the House of Commons (= "We have received the bill")
- It was debated and read a second time in the House of Commons (= "Generally this seems OK, let's get to the details")
- It was dealt with in Committee. This is where experts are invited to talk about the bill (e.g. what do immigration lawyers think about this bill? What about immigrant lobby organizations? ...) An amendment (see below) was suggested but then ruled "out of scope" so it wasn't added to the bill.
- The Committee presented its report to the House of Commons
- It was debated and read a third time in the House of Commons (= "We approve this bill and want it to become law")
OK, so now this should be law, right?
No, because there is a second, lesser-known chamber of Parliament, the Senate. It also has to agree to the bill.
What stages did this bill already go through in the Senate?
- It was read a first time in the Senate (= "We have received the bill")
- It was debated and read a second time in the Senate (= "Generally this seems OK, let's get to the details")
- It was dealt with in Committee, with experts' advice (see above). No amendment was formally proposed but someone announced that there will be an amendment once the bill goes back to the whole Senate.
- The Committee presented its report to the Senate as a whole.
What is the current status of the bill?
- It is currently before the senate and being debated for third reading and an amendment has been proposed (see below)
- Some Senators already spoke in the debate but it is still ongoing
What is this mysterious amendment about?
- Bill C-24 (the Conservative government's bill which, roughly speaking, Bill C-6 is trying to repeal) also removed the appeals process for citizenship revocation.
- This means if a CIC officer thinks someone misrepresented themselves in their PR and/or citizenship application (e.g. lied about their place of birth. Or lied about not having committed serious crimes before becoming a citizen), they can revoke citizenship. There is no formal appeals process (e.g. nothing like a court date to challenge the decision. If you ever got a parking ticket and thought about challenging it in court, that kind of "challenging the decision" doesn't exist for citizenship revocation anymore).
- Bill C-6 rolls back many of the policies of C-24, but it didn't reintroduce the appeals process.
- An MP of the NDP suggested an amendment to reintroduce the appeals process in the committee in the House of Commons. But there, the majority decided that it is "out of scope", i.e. too much new stuff to be an amendment. I would have to be a separate bill.
- Now, in the Senate, a Senator named Elaine McCoy suggested an amendment on behalf of a Senator named Ratna Omidvar. This amendment suggests basically the same thing. In the Senate, it hasn't been ruled out of scope (yet).
- The amendment is now before the Senate to be debated.
What does the rest of the process look like under ideal circumstances?
Option 1:
- The Senators will continue to debate this amendment and then vote against the amendment (either because they don't like it or because - as it has happened in the House of Commons - they think the amendment has too large of a scope and it has to be a separate bill).
- After discarding the amendment, the Senators will then debate the whole bill again and vote in favour of the bill as a whole.
- This means the bill has been read for a third time in the Senate and therefore has now been approved by both Houses of Parliament.
- The bill then goes to the Governor-General who gives what is called "royal assent". This is a formal procedure, it is basically always given.
Option 2:
- The Senators will continue to debate this amendment and then vote in favour the amendment.
- After accepting the amendment, the Senators will then debate the whole bill again and vote in favour of the bill as a whole.
- This means the bill has been read for a third time and therefore has been approved by the Senate.
- Since the bill has been amended, it will go back to the House of Commons (they only agreed to the unamended version after all).
- The HoC will debate the bill as a whole, including the amendment, one more time and then vote in favour of the bill.
- The - now amended - bill has been approved by both Houses of Parliament.
- The bill then goes to the Governor-General who gives what is called "royal assent". This is a formal procedure, it is basically always given.
How long will the rest of the process take?
As mentioned earlier I want to keep it to facts and not guesses. So here are the facts:
- The Senate will be back in Session on March 28. This is when they will resume debate.
- It seems to be the consensus based on tweets of official accounts of Senators that this is at most matter of "some months".
- This means under the perfectest of circumstances (I know, "perfectest" is not a word, but still) this bill will become law in April.
- Under the worst circumstances this bill will become law in the summer.
- Anything else regarding the timeline would be just a guess.
- It is very very unlikely but still possible that the bill actually gets defeated and never becomes law. This is not a guess of mine but simply a matter of probability that the Senate as good as never opposes government bills that the HoC passes. We are talking about single digits in recent years.
OK so once this bill becomes law, all the new rules apply immediately, right?
- Unfortunately not.
- Like many bills, C-6 has some "coming into force" clauses.
- That means after the bill becomes law, some parts take effect immediately. The rules you care about aren't coming into effect immediately. Unless you are a terrorist.
- The other parts (including all the parts that you most likely care about) take effect at a date that the Government decides (formally called - in this case - the "Governor-in-council").
- The idea behind this is that the administration has to adjust the process to the new rules (new forms, new IT,...)
- Under the perfectest of circumstances the administration has prepared for the new rules while the bill was discussed in Parliament. In that case it will take weeks after the bill became law for the new rules to take effect.
- Under the worst circumstances the administration hasn't prepared for the new rules at all so far. In that case it will take up to a year for the new rules to take effect.
Oh man, why does this take so long. Isn't this bill like a a year old?
- Yes, even though laws never pass as quickly as one might think, this bill has been exceptionally slow.
- Until now, 99% of the delay came from two sources:
- Firstly, there were longer breaks in the parliamentary schedule (e.g. the Senate doesn't sit in July, August, parts of September, late December and all of January)
- Secondly, the second reading in the Senate was a long debate. It went on for three months. There were only like six speeches, but they were spread out over many many sittings due to the procedural rules of the Senate. Some of the speakers intentionally halted the debate for several weeks to prolong the process. Why they did halt it is a matter of debate (some say the Liberal government wanted to delay the bill, some say the Conservative opposition delayed it because they oppose that the terrorism-revocation clause is going away). Since, again, I want to stick to facts, I'm not going to entertain that debate here. For a fact, though, they debated for a while, whatever their ulterior motives were.
- If the amendment (that has been suggested now, see above) will or will not delay the process significantly is also a matter of debate and I don't want to entertain that debate here.
How can I follow the rest of the process?
- You can find the Calendar of the Senate here: https://www.sencanada.ca/en/calendar/
- If there is a sitting, the Senate Twitter account always posts a link to the live audio stream of the sitting.
- It's a bit hard to follow what is happening in the audio stream. Here, you can see what is on the schedule for each day in the Senate: https://www.sencanada.ca/en/in-the-chamber/order-papers-notice-papers/
- Note that sometimes items are skipped. So don't be disheartened if on a particular day C-6 was on the schedule but then they decided to skip it. However the order of the schedule is always maintained.
- When I'm listening to the debate, I plan to post updates here. I will, again, only post the facts and not personal opinions or assessments of the situation. I ask anyone else here to do the same.
Can I do something to show my support for the process?
- Generally, it can never hurt to contact parliamentarians to let them know about their support.
- However, don't expect to always get a personalized response.
- You can find the contact details of every Senator on the senate website https://www.sencanada.ca/en/senators/
- The sponsor of the bill is Ratna Omidvar
- As a general rule (but there is a significant number of exceptions), the Liberal senators are in favour of the bill, the Conservative senators are against the bill, and it seems that more independent senators are in favour of the bill than against it. Who exactly is hard to tell since many didn't speak in the debate (thankfully, they didn't. Imagine the delay if every senator spoke in the debate )
Should I check all these website or this forum for updates every single day?
- For your sanity (or shall I say "Senate-y" ) I recommend not.
- Maybe check once a week. More is just unhealthy.
OK, that's about it. I am happy (and I am sure others are, too) to answer any questions here.
But again: This is not a thread for guesses, discussions, and personal opinions. This thread is intended for facts only.
Edit: Here are some additional links as suggested by other forum members.
Official Twitter accounts of Senators supporting the bill
https://twitter.com/ratnaomi
https://twitter.com/SenElaineMcCoy
https://twitter.com/SenJaffer
I can imagine that many people are coming to this forum simply to get an update on the status of the bill and to understand the process. But that is hard to come by in that thread.
That's why I want to give an overview over the bill, it's current status and what to look for next.
Note: This post will simply contain the current facts regarding the content and status of Bill C-6, without any personal opinion or guesses of mine. Please don't start another discussion here about what is good or bad about this bill, good or bad about how it's handled in parliament or good or bad about any other field of Canadian politics. There's already a thread for that.
First, some links
Here is the text of the bill. Be warned it is arguably not the sexiest document you will read this week:
http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&DocId=8380792
Here is the status page of the bill on the Parliament website:
http://www.parl.gc.ca/LegisInfo/BillDetails.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&Bill=C6&Parl=42&Ses=1
What does this bill do? (Note this can only be a summary of the most relevant points):
- It reduces the residency requirement from 4/6 years to 3/5 years
- Every day of residence before PR counts as half a day of residence (for up to 730 half days = 365 full days)
- The "intend to reside" is not a requirement for citizenship. This applies even to people who already applied for or received citizenship in the past.
- The age range for the language requirement it rolled back to 18-54
- The minister cannot revoke anymore the citizenship of someone who committed crimes like terrorism if this occurred after that person became a citizen. Those whose citizenships has been revoked because of that clause get it back.
Arguably, the last point is the one that is facing the most heated debate in Parliament and in the general public. Whereas it seems in this forum the first two items are the ones that most people care about.
Through what stages did this bill go in the House of Commons?
- It was read a first time in the House of Commons (= "We have received the bill")
- It was debated and read a second time in the House of Commons (= "Generally this seems OK, let's get to the details")
- It was dealt with in Committee. This is where experts are invited to talk about the bill (e.g. what do immigration lawyers think about this bill? What about immigrant lobby organizations? ...) An amendment (see below) was suggested but then ruled "out of scope" so it wasn't added to the bill.
- The Committee presented its report to the House of Commons
- It was debated and read a third time in the House of Commons (= "We approve this bill and want it to become law")
OK, so now this should be law, right?
No, because there is a second, lesser-known chamber of Parliament, the Senate. It also has to agree to the bill.
What stages did this bill already go through in the Senate?
- It was read a first time in the Senate (= "We have received the bill")
- It was debated and read a second time in the Senate (= "Generally this seems OK, let's get to the details")
- It was dealt with in Committee, with experts' advice (see above). No amendment was formally proposed but someone announced that there will be an amendment once the bill goes back to the whole Senate.
- The Committee presented its report to the Senate as a whole.
What is the current status of the bill?
- It is currently before the senate and being debated for third reading and an amendment has been proposed (see below)
- Some Senators already spoke in the debate but it is still ongoing
What is this mysterious amendment about?
- Bill C-24 (the Conservative government's bill which, roughly speaking, Bill C-6 is trying to repeal) also removed the appeals process for citizenship revocation.
- This means if a CIC officer thinks someone misrepresented themselves in their PR and/or citizenship application (e.g. lied about their place of birth. Or lied about not having committed serious crimes before becoming a citizen), they can revoke citizenship. There is no formal appeals process (e.g. nothing like a court date to challenge the decision. If you ever got a parking ticket and thought about challenging it in court, that kind of "challenging the decision" doesn't exist for citizenship revocation anymore).
- Bill C-6 rolls back many of the policies of C-24, but it didn't reintroduce the appeals process.
- An MP of the NDP suggested an amendment to reintroduce the appeals process in the committee in the House of Commons. But there, the majority decided that it is "out of scope", i.e. too much new stuff to be an amendment. I would have to be a separate bill.
- Now, in the Senate, a Senator named Elaine McCoy suggested an amendment on behalf of a Senator named Ratna Omidvar. This amendment suggests basically the same thing. In the Senate, it hasn't been ruled out of scope (yet).
- The amendment is now before the Senate to be debated.
What does the rest of the process look like under ideal circumstances?
Option 1:
- The Senators will continue to debate this amendment and then vote against the amendment (either because they don't like it or because - as it has happened in the House of Commons - they think the amendment has too large of a scope and it has to be a separate bill).
- After discarding the amendment, the Senators will then debate the whole bill again and vote in favour of the bill as a whole.
- This means the bill has been read for a third time in the Senate and therefore has now been approved by both Houses of Parliament.
- The bill then goes to the Governor-General who gives what is called "royal assent". This is a formal procedure, it is basically always given.
Option 2:
- The Senators will continue to debate this amendment and then vote in favour the amendment.
- After accepting the amendment, the Senators will then debate the whole bill again and vote in favour of the bill as a whole.
- This means the bill has been read for a third time and therefore has been approved by the Senate.
- Since the bill has been amended, it will go back to the House of Commons (they only agreed to the unamended version after all).
- The HoC will debate the bill as a whole, including the amendment, one more time and then vote in favour of the bill.
- The - now amended - bill has been approved by both Houses of Parliament.
- The bill then goes to the Governor-General who gives what is called "royal assent". This is a formal procedure, it is basically always given.
How long will the rest of the process take?
As mentioned earlier I want to keep it to facts and not guesses. So here are the facts:
- The Senate will be back in Session on March 28. This is when they will resume debate.
- It seems to be the consensus based on tweets of official accounts of Senators that this is at most matter of "some months".
- This means under the perfectest of circumstances (I know, "perfectest" is not a word, but still) this bill will become law in April.
- Under the worst circumstances this bill will become law in the summer.
- Anything else regarding the timeline would be just a guess.
- It is very very unlikely but still possible that the bill actually gets defeated and never becomes law. This is not a guess of mine but simply a matter of probability that the Senate as good as never opposes government bills that the HoC passes. We are talking about single digits in recent years.
OK so once this bill becomes law, all the new rules apply immediately, right?
- Unfortunately not.
- Like many bills, C-6 has some "coming into force" clauses.
- That means after the bill becomes law, some parts take effect immediately. The rules you care about aren't coming into effect immediately. Unless you are a terrorist.
- The other parts (including all the parts that you most likely care about) take effect at a date that the Government decides (formally called - in this case - the "Governor-in-council").
- The idea behind this is that the administration has to adjust the process to the new rules (new forms, new IT,...)
- Under the perfectest of circumstances the administration has prepared for the new rules while the bill was discussed in Parliament. In that case it will take weeks after the bill became law for the new rules to take effect.
- Under the worst circumstances the administration hasn't prepared for the new rules at all so far. In that case it will take up to a year for the new rules to take effect.
Oh man, why does this take so long. Isn't this bill like a a year old?
- Yes, even though laws never pass as quickly as one might think, this bill has been exceptionally slow.
- Until now, 99% of the delay came from two sources:
- Firstly, there were longer breaks in the parliamentary schedule (e.g. the Senate doesn't sit in July, August, parts of September, late December and all of January)
- Secondly, the second reading in the Senate was a long debate. It went on for three months. There were only like six speeches, but they were spread out over many many sittings due to the procedural rules of the Senate. Some of the speakers intentionally halted the debate for several weeks to prolong the process. Why they did halt it is a matter of debate (some say the Liberal government wanted to delay the bill, some say the Conservative opposition delayed it because they oppose that the terrorism-revocation clause is going away). Since, again, I want to stick to facts, I'm not going to entertain that debate here. For a fact, though, they debated for a while, whatever their ulterior motives were.
- If the amendment (that has been suggested now, see above) will or will not delay the process significantly is also a matter of debate and I don't want to entertain that debate here.
How can I follow the rest of the process?
- You can find the Calendar of the Senate here: https://www.sencanada.ca/en/calendar/
- If there is a sitting, the Senate Twitter account always posts a link to the live audio stream of the sitting.
- It's a bit hard to follow what is happening in the audio stream. Here, you can see what is on the schedule for each day in the Senate: https://www.sencanada.ca/en/in-the-chamber/order-papers-notice-papers/
- Note that sometimes items are skipped. So don't be disheartened if on a particular day C-6 was on the schedule but then they decided to skip it. However the order of the schedule is always maintained.
- When I'm listening to the debate, I plan to post updates here. I will, again, only post the facts and not personal opinions or assessments of the situation. I ask anyone else here to do the same.
Can I do something to show my support for the process?
- Generally, it can never hurt to contact parliamentarians to let them know about their support.
- However, don't expect to always get a personalized response.
- You can find the contact details of every Senator on the senate website https://www.sencanada.ca/en/senators/
- The sponsor of the bill is Ratna Omidvar
- As a general rule (but there is a significant number of exceptions), the Liberal senators are in favour of the bill, the Conservative senators are against the bill, and it seems that more independent senators are in favour of the bill than against it. Who exactly is hard to tell since many didn't speak in the debate (thankfully, they didn't. Imagine the delay if every senator spoke in the debate
)Should I check all these website or this forum for updates every single day?
- For your sanity (or shall I say "Senate-y"
) I recommend not.- Maybe check once a week. More is just unhealthy.
OK, that's about it. I am happy (and I am sure others are, too) to answer any questions here.
But again: This is not a thread for guesses, discussions, and personal opinions. This thread is intended for facts only.
Edit: Here are some additional links as suggested by other forum members.
Official Twitter accounts of Senators supporting the bill
https://twitter.com/ratnaomi
https://twitter.com/SenElaineMcCoy
https://twitter.com/SenJaffer
