Canadian citizens have a Charter Right to enter, remain in, or leave Canada . . . thus there is NO restriction on how long a Canadian citizen can be outside Canada. Canadian citizenship can NOT be taken away because the citizen is outside Canada, NO matter how long. This is true not only under current law, but this
cannot be changed UNLESS there is a Constitutional amendment to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Clarification regarding right of Canadian citizens to enter Canada: This is indeed a "Right" as prescribed and protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedom. This is prescribed in Section 6(1):
6. (1) Every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in and leave Canada.
See
https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/Const/page-15.html
Clarification as to what is a "right:"
Many refer to various entitlements and privileges as "rights," such as a Canadian PR's
right to enter Canada; indeed, even a PR's
right to keep PR status itself is actually, under the law, a
privilege not a
right. Meaning Parliament can change the law and impose different requirements which can have the effect of taking away a PR's
right to keep PR status. Such privileges are also known as "statutory" rights, meaning they are dependent on a statutory grant of the "right" in contrast to "RIGHTS" specified in the Charter.
Even Charter Rights can be limited, restrained, or effectively taken away entirely, if and when there is an overriding government purpose. Canadian citizens who have been convicted of serious crimes and imprisoned, for example, cannot exercise their Charter Right to leave Canada. And as others have observed in other contexts, Canadian citizens who are subject to extradition for crimes committed in other countries cannot rely on their Charter Right to "remain in" Canada to preclude extradition. That acknowledged, there is a very high bar for any change to the law (statutory provisions and regulations) that will have any limiting impact on Charter Rights.
Bringing this around to statements like "A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian."
GOING INTO THE "WEEDS" . . . (most will want to SKIP the following):
Regarding "a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian," this is political jargon. It was essentially a political slogan raised, initially, in opposition to Bill C-24 tabled during the 41st Parliament and eventually adopted in June 2014, in which the Harper government included a provision which would authorize the Minister to revoke the citizenship of Canadian citizens for, among other things, convictions for certain crimes (very serious crimes). And this political slogan loomed large in the 2015 Federal election, oft repeated by Trudeau and other Liberals, who advocated the repeal of Section 10(2) in the Citizenship Act as amended by Bill C-24 (Section 8 in Bill C-24), and in fact that provision was eventually repealed by Bill C-6 (tabled during the 42nd Parliament and adopted June 2017).
It applied as much to those who were Canadian citizens by birth as well as those who were naturalized. However, since actual revocation of citizenship was also dependent on the individual's "right" to citizenship in another country (even if the individual never claimed that citizenship), in addition to the specific grounds for revoking citizenship (including, as noted, having been convicted of certain criminal offences), it mostly affected naturalized citizens, the children of naturalized citizens (who, for example, were born in Canada but had a right to claim citizenship in one or the other parent's home country), as well as children of immigrants and temporary residents born in Canada.
In the slogan a "Canadian" obviously references a Canadian citizen. In Canadian law, in contrast, a "Canadian" includes BOTH Canadian citizens and Canadian PRs. That is, a Canadian PR is a "Canadian" in Canadian law (as distinguished from "Foreign Nationals," which is everyone other than a Canadian citizen or a Canadian PR; see definitions in IRPA).
And, while the cases never reached the Supreme Court of Canada (litigation was suspended once Bill C-6 was tabled), multiple justices in the Federal Court and the Court of Appeals ruled that Canadian citizenship itself is a "PRIVILEGE," NOT a RIGHT, and thus Parliament could indeed adopt legislation taking away citizenship . . . as much as it had adopted the legislation which grants citizenship. Indeed, the fact that who is a Canadian citizen is prescribed by statute, NOT by the Charter, is a lynchpin in the argument for the constitutionality of Harper's citizenship-revocation law.
In particular, the Canadian courts ruled there is NO birth right to Canadian citizenship. Canadian citizenship derives entirely from an act of Parliament. (In contrast, for example, the U.S. 14th Amendment to its Constitution specifically prescribes that persons born in the territory of the U.S. are U.S. citizens, to the chagrin of many on the far-right who bitterly complain about things like
birth-tourism and
anchor-babies.)
Which in turn leads to some irony: while Parliament can enact provisions which could strip Canadian citizens of their citizenship (noting I am confident that the Supreme Court of Canada would, nonetheless, impose a very, very high bar regarding what would justify such an enactment), IT IS CLEAR that Parliament can
NOT impose a provision that would strip Canadian citizenship based on how long the citizen was outside Canada, since, again, Section 6(1) in the Charter explicitly protects the RIGHTS of citizens to leave Canada.
DISTINCTION: As others have observed, revoking citizenship for misrepresentation somewhere along the path to becoming a citizen is DIFFERENT; as is consistent with principles of law generally, pursuant to which that obtained by fraud may be deemed VOID, this basis for revoking citizenship is largely premised on the illegitimacy of the grant of citizenship itself.
