Some observations and historical context:
While the Conservatives will undoubtedly refer to the various pieces of legislation they have adopted as accomplishments, including the SCCA, there are many other higher priority issues looming in the coming election campaign which totally overshadow the changes to the Citizenship Act, which by the way, even though not yet fully in effect, so far as public perception goes is a done deal, as in that was 2014.
From the Duffy duffiness trial and ongoing Senate scandalese in bad taste, like chilled camembert and crumbling crackers one might say, to the dark economic clouds rising from the collapse of oil prices, from budget wars and woes to overreaching security measures, from Cabinet members in flight to a suddenly and uncharacteristically gaffe plagued Defense Minister (Kenney, one of only a few Harper insiders still in the inner circle), lingering problems with Canada's rail system deeply mired in serious safety issues and declining infrastructure, with other immigration issues (the temporary workers looming largest) overshadowing fading memories of the claims there was widespread if not pervasive fraud in grants of citizenship (yesterday's problem one might say), not to mention the simmering resentment of many in the media, especially at CBC, due to limited access to information and axe-like cutting of budgets . . . there is a lot brewing in this election pot, and so far as I have seen, even Canada's most perspicuous pundits are hesitant to predict what the key issues will be, except that changes to the Citizenship Act are not on the radar.
Thus it is highly unlikely that election year politics are driving decision-making relative to the timing of fully implementing the amendments adopted into law in 2014.
Harper appears to want the election to be about who will keep Canada safe from threats of terrorism. The office pools are buzzing with bets about how Harper approaches the economy-related issues. And of course personalities themselves, especially Conservative efforts to paint Justin Trudeau as insubstantial if not immature, loom large. Among the other potential issues.
Details about qualifying for naturalized citizenship is out of range.
Top-down Harper government and more historical context:
Make no mistake about how top-driven this government is. The "Governor in Council" is really the Prime Minister's Office in consultation with some (not anywhere near all) Cabinet members. The decision as to the coming-into-force date is or will be made at the very top. These are decisions Stephen Harper either makes himself or delegates to a very small circle of close advisers.
Most indications are that even the implementation of OB 407 in 2012, which was a major overhaul of how citizenship applications are administratively processed, entirely an internal CIC function, was conceived, designed, engineered, and adopted down to the minute details from within a very small group of close advisers to the PM in the PMO (many think that it was almost entirely the work of Benjamin Perrin, PMO lawyer and one of Harper's most trusted and influential insiders until 2013; and while Bill C-24 did not get tabled until February 2014, there are suggestions that Perrin had a lot of input in the initial design of what would become the SCCA), and then in effect dumped on a CIC totally unprepared for the dramatic revision of processing implemented by the procedures prescribed in OB 407. Result was a disaster, largely due to the near total lack of any real or practical consultation with those in CIC who actually do the work.
Anyone who has watched video of Minister Chris Alexander talking about the SCCA should readily recognize he hardly even knows what the Act says let alone what its more complicated provisions mean or are intended to accomplish. That is because, like most of what Stephen Harper's government has done, Bill C-24 was probably written in the PMO, not by those working in CIC, and probably with minimal consultation with CIC.
For those of us following this story back in 2011, when Harper was rewarded for being the first sitting PM to be found in contempt of Parliament (Harper made the vote a "confidence" vote, thereby triggering the 2011 elections when the vote was against him) by winning a majority government in the election, and part of the platform was a promise to fix the Citizenship Act, scores of us were following that just as anxiously as many are now following the news about what the coming-into-force date will be. At that time I was among those potentially affected. The forums were rife with unsubstantiated reports and unfounded speculation, some saying that any day the government was going to put a pause on new citizenship applications while it adopted draconian new requirements, some saying they would be as severe as requiring five out of six years physical presence, or six out of eight years, among a wide range of other proposals, including a large number of posts asserting that it was certain the new requirements would be retroactive, applying to not just those who were already PRs but even those who had applications already in process.
The speculation continued right up to February 2014 when Bill C-24 was finally tabled. Despite the years of promises, statements, questions, and speculation, right up to the day before Bill C-24 was tabled very, very few had much of a clue, let alone any real knowledge, about what its provisions would be. I'd bet that Chris Alexander himself, Minister of CIC, barely got a glimpse of the proposed legislation until weeks before it was tabled. Nothing against Chris Alexander, but that is just how Harper has always done the government's business, very deep in-house.
After the 2011 election, despite Jason Kenney's repeated promises that a Bill to fix the Citizenship Act was coming soon, the years went by and Chris Alexander became the Minister of CIC and he too was making similar promises. In the spring of 2013, for example, just before Alexander became Minister of CIC, Kenney gave a talk to a group of immigration and citizenship lawyers, promising big changes before the end of the year, and the lawyers asked some very detailed questions about things like how many years of residence would the new law require. Kenney was extremely vague. None-the-less, articles in the media at the time parsed every vague insinuation, some commentators confidently reporting their version of what the new law would be, and nearly all of them confident the legislation was about to be tabled and would be law by the fall of 2013.
In retrospect, going back to the statements Kenney was making in the spring of 2013, which were soon echoed by Chris Alexander after he became Minister (July 2013), it appears less that Alexander was holding-his-cards-close-to-the-vest and more that he really did not know much more than what he was saying, largely parroting what Kenney had said previously. Alexander knew the PMO had some proposed version of what would become Bill C-24 in development, but probably knew virtually nothing of it in detail.
And this pattern has persisted throughout Harper's administration, from budgets which even most Conservative MPs had little clue about their content until the formal budget was tabled, to legislation like Bill C-23 last year, the legislation which amended the Elections Act which was rushed through the legislative process even more so than Bill C-24.
All that said, the answer is coming soon. Will not be long now, no more than ten or twelve weeks probably, at the most, and we will know.
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