Effective date of Bill C24

[bkara]

An applicant can't make future plans even after the application is submitted for processing, because nobody can be absolutely sure how many years that application will be in process.

The whole process and organisation is a big mess and it's like that for years.

Are we in prison or north korea or something? We are talking about 3-4 years or more postponing a process.

 

[MUFC]

Well basically the intend to reside clause after the submission of the application, might be considered like a prison, because if you go out of the country for vacations or to your country, they might consider this trips like you are in breach with your intentions to reside in Canada.

So there will be two residential requirements to be fulfilled.

The first before the submission of the application.

The second one is after the submission of the application until the oath.

And of course, nobody can say how many years the processing time until the oath will be.

 

[dpenabill]

I don't understand why 4/6 years residency rule should apply to immigrants who have been working/studying/living and paying taxes for years and years.It is very unfair.

A lot of people stay here just because there is equality and freedom. A lot of us give/has given up things for this life.We deserve to become citizens of Canada way before a new PR.

The CIC should ask new immigrants,who become PRs after the 4/6 years rule comes into force, to stay 4/6 years to be able to apply for citizenship

If not,we have the right to go to court and fight against the unfairness.

The number of people doesn't matter.If the judge decides We are right,even if we are 2 people,we can win.

Also,there is still a lot of people who became PRs in 2012 2013 and 2014 or people who became PRs way before but have not apply for citizenship for some reason.

The fairness of a law is a political matter, and thus the battle ground for fighting an unfair law is in the Parliament, not the courts. Judges have no authority to invalidate a law because it is unfair.

To invalidate a law, it must be shown to violate the Charter or otherwise be unconstitutional.

I have seen no rational argument that the amended version of Section 5(1) of the Citizenship Act violates the Charter or is otherwise unconstitutional. It may be challenged in the Courts, and subject to judicial interpretation, but it is highly unlikely it will be struck down or otherwise ruled to be invalid.

In other words, assuming that for PRs who landed and became PRs prior to the law being changed, an application of the amended version of Section 5(1) is indeed not fair, that would be a reason why the law should not have been adopted, or why it should be changed. That is for Parliament to do, to decide. Not for judges.

Judges do not have authority to overrule laws because they are not wise or fair or good policy. Indeed, a law could be very, very bad policy, and the Courts are nonetheless obligated to uphold, apply, and enforce the law as written.

As noted, there probably will be many challenges to how the amended version of Section 5(1) is applied. The vast majority of PRs who landed in the two to three or so years prior to the date that the amendments to Section 5(1) take effect will be affected, will have to wait a minimum of a full year more to qualify for citizenship than what the law prescribed when they became a Canadian PR. Thus, perhaps a half million or so PRs will be affected by this change.

The Courts have resoundingly ruled that the grant of citizenship, as provided for in Section 5 of the Citizenship Act, is a privilege, and at minimum there is no vested right to citizenship prior to submitting a qualified application, and even then what right there is between the date of making a valid application and the date of actually taking the oath, there are only the rights afforded by statute in conjunction with fair procedure rights guaranteed by the Charter. Parliament can change rights afforded by statute.



Reasonable expectations, equitable estoppel, detrimental reliance:

The unfairness you refer to is an issue which the courts have often wrestled with in many other contexts, although usually in the context of claims based on contract or unjust enrichment.

In particular, the law sometimes enforces a principle of equitable estoppel, based on what is sometimes referred to as detrimental reliance, a principle which in effect says that once a person has detrimentally relied on a promise or such, that promise cannot be revoked, the benefit of the promise cannot be unilaterally denied by the promisor.

It comes down to a simple proposition: if a person changes their position relying on a promise made by another, the courts may enforce the promise even if the formalities of a contract are not met.

Example: Joe promises to pay for Dick's daughter's college education if Dick continues to work for Joe for another five years. Dick works (getting paid his usual wage) for Joe for three years and then Joe tells Dick he has changed his mind, the deal-is-off. In this situation, Dick may be able to go to court and get some compensation from Joe, since Dick had continued to work for Joe for three years relying on the promise. Perhaps Dick might even get a court to enforce the promise itself, to compel Joe to pay for the daughter's college education. That is, since Dick gave up opportunities to seek work for someone else, or even to retire, relying on Joe's promise, the court might enforce the promise or at least compensate Dick for the extent to which Joe was unjustly enriched . . . even if there was no formal contract, even if the full performance for five years has not been completed . . . since, again, Dick stayed relying on Joe's promise.

Your argument is similar, essentially that you (and around a half million other PRs probably) immigrated to Canada relying on the promise that Canada would grant you citizenship based on the residency requirement prescribed in the Citizenship Act in effect at the time you actually immigrated to Canada. And therefore, the Canadian government should be compelled to give what it promised, citizenship to those PRs who meet the qualifications as prescribed in the Citizenship Act in effect at the time you immigrated.

That is a good fairness argument.

Indeed, when a few years ago Australia increased its residency requirements for citizenship, it did do this. It implemented a graduated timeline, which allowed those who had immigrated to Australia before the change in law was adopted to qualify for citizenship in effect based on the law at the time they immigrated.

And you are right, that would have been the most fair approach for the Canadian Parliament to take.

But the Canadian Parliament did not take that approach. (No surprise, this is the Stephen Harper government after all.)

Even if the principle of equitable estoppel, based on detrimental reliance, was applicable against the government, which I suspect it is not except, perhaps, in exceptional, very unusual circumstances, there are other obvious reasons why it will not apply to the changes effected by the amendments to Section 5(1) of the Citizenship Act. Key among these is that there is no implied, let alone explicit promise an immigrant will be granted citizenship, based on what the law is at any given time.

As I noted, the courts have resoundingly ruled that the grant of citizenship is a privilege, and thus there is no vested Charter right to citizenship unless and until there is an actual grant of citizenship. That is, there was no promise of citizenship to rely upon.

An immigrant surely may have had a reasonable expectation of being granted citizenship when the immigrant meets the qualifications for a grant of citizenship, based on the law at the time the immigrant came to Canada to live, but the nature and scope of that reasonable expectation is couched in the universal recognition that Parliament has the authority to change the law. That is, yes, an immigrant could reasonably expect the grant of citizenship based on the law at the time of immigrating, but only so long as the law did not change before citizenship was obtained.

The law did change.

And it will come into force sometime in 2015. I don't think there is any doubt that it will come into force before October 1, 2015 at the very latest, but is far more likely to take effect months before that, and possibly even before June 2015 (as discussed above, like PMM, if I was betting in a pool, my bet would be July 1st . . . but I will not be surprised if it happens even two months earlier than that).

Unfair? At least for some, it surely is unfair.

PRs who landed and became a PR in early 2012 (around twenty thousand each month), for example, who understood the law, who regularly returned to their home country for a few weeks a year to stay connected to parents and other family, suddenly found out in the spring of 2014 that their holidays will likely delay their qualifying for citizenship from late summer of 2015 until, at the earliest, the late summer of 2016.

Individuals who had come to Canada on work permits, who lived and worked in Canada for two or more years, paying Canadian taxes, and who decided to make it permanent, applying for and obtaining Permanent Resident status the second half of 2013, who could have reasonably expected to qualify for citizenship by August or so of 2015, now cannot possibly be qualified until a full four years after they became a PR . . . for example, someone who landed August 1, 2013 and who had been in Canada on a work permit for a full two years prior to that, could have reasonably expected to be qualified for a grant of citizenship as of August 2, 2015. Now, assuming the amendments take effect on or before August 1st, 2015, this PR cannot possibly be qualified prior to August 2, 2017, a full two years later.

But, the Courts do not have the power or authority to invalidate a law because it is unfair. The PRs in these examples will not qualify for citizenship until they meet the requirements prescribed in the amended version of Section 5(1). That is how it is now.

The only battlefield left in which to fight this is Parliament. This government is not going to back track on this. Even if the Liberals or the NDP manage to win by enough to form a majority government in next year's election, the new government is not going to change this part of the Citizenship Act any time in the foreseeable future.

It is unfair for many. But it is also a done deal.

 

[marcus66502]

An applicant can't make future plans even after the application is submitted for processing, because nobody can be absolutely sure how many years that application will be in process.

The whole process and organisation is a big mess and it's like that for years.

The nerve of those officials of the Government of Canada to mess up the personal plans of some PRs with these new and annoying residence requirements!

How dare they not ask the prospective applicants IN ADVANCE what their plans are? How can they be so insensitive? Can't they design a set of rules that works AROUND everyone's vacation plans? That would seem to be very practical and obviously the best course of action for everybody.

Come to think of it, the Government of Canada is very inconsiderate all the way to the end of the application process. For example, even when it approves applications and invites applicants to take the oath it does not ask them what they would like to receive with their citizenship certificate. A box of chocolates would be nice for some people, or maybe some curry chicken for others, or (for those whose addiction is alcohol) a nice cold can of [Fill in your favorite brand].

 

[bkara]

Thank you dpenabil for your post.

 

[MUFC]

This is what I am saying too, the government doesn't care about the personal plans of the applicants. I was trying to explain that until the oath, there no plans to be made.

For many people the Canadian citizenship is important for future job related positions and I am feeling sorry for them.

For me it doesn't really matter if I am going to become a Canadian soon, because I have another valuable passport and when I compare the passport I already have with the Canadian passport ... well I don't see a big difference.
And that's why for me is funny when I see "The privilege of the Canadian citizenship" statement.

Yes it is a privilege if the applicants are coming from poor countries with low standard of living.
And the government like to play with the feelings of this people, and I uderstand the concern of these people because this is a game with their hopes and dreams.

 

[dpenabill]

The nerve of those officials of the Government of Canada . . .

This characterization is unwarranted hyperbole. There are hundreds of thousands of PRs who have made a considerable investment in time, effort, and money, who really did have reasonable expectations regarding the path to citizenship, based on the letter of the law. And there is no doubt about the government deliberately holding out the carrot, the path-to-citizenship, to attract immigrants to Canada. Then, for hundreds of thousands of new immigrants, the government moved the goal-posts after they already made the investment and immigrated.

And there is no getting around the extent to which thousands, probably tens of thousands, who took reasonable holidays to visit family in their home country, who suddenly in 2014 had their path to citizenship delayed by a year or more because they took those holidays, largely relying on the law as it was.

That is, many of the complaints of unfairness are well-founded.

In contrast, some of the rhetoric here from the complaining side is also unwarranted hyperbole, and some of it total nonsense.

For example:

Are we in prison or north korea or something? We are talking about 3-4 years or more postponing a process.

This hyperbolic rhetoric is way, way over-the-top. Being a PR in Canada bears no resemblance to imprisonment. And PRs in Canada are, in particular, free to leave Canada to live elsewhere.



To be clear about the scope of how unfair the changes are:

For many, for many thousands actually, yes, the changes are unfair.

How unfair, however, should not be exaggerated.

The vast majority of those detrimentally affected face a delay of approximately one year. Basically a PR who landed between 2012 and January 2014, thus prior to this law being tabled (after that, any new PR had overt knowledge of what the new law would prescribe), might have reasonably expected to become qualified for citizenship in three years (plus time absent in the meantime). Now the soonest the majority of these PRs will become qualified is one year longer away.

Not three or four years more.

Note: while as of the date Bill C-24 was tabled, everyone had overt notice of what the new law would prescribe, and thus no expectation of a path to citizenship without meeting the 4/6 requirement, frankly it was widely known that these changes were coming for years before then, and had explicitly been promised to be in effect by the end of 2013 . . . so anyone becoming a new PR in 2012, and certainly by 2013, should have been aware of the prospect that the path to citizenship could become significantly more onerous than what was prescribed by the current law . . . back in 2013, for example, speculation was that the requirement might become five years, not a mere four years.

No PR is facing a delay of more than two years due to the change in the law.

PRs facing a two year delay, at the very most, are those who were living in Canada prior to becoming a PR and who, under the current residency requirement, would be entitled to half-day credits for every day spent in Canada prior to the date of landing but still within four years of the date of applying. No one could possibly get more than one year's credit for time in Canada prior to landing. So the longest impact taking this credit away could have is one year, and that would be only for a PR who never left Canada overnight once during the full four years prior to applying for citizenship.

This, up to one year delay, is in addition to the additional delay of up to a year due to the increase of the minimum residency period to four years from three.

While it is difficult to even guess at the numbers affected this way, it is undoubtedly not a huge number.

Bottom-line: yes, many thousands of PRs have had the path-to-citizenshp goal posts unfairly moved on them since they became a Permanent Resident, by adding approximately a year to the residency requirement (up to two years for a small percentage of them).

The number affected, however, could have been much larger if Bill C-24 provided that the changes to Section 5(1) were to take effect as of the date of Royal Assent -- the nearly year and a half delay between when the Bill was formally tabled, and when these amendments will come into force in 2015, gave formal notice of the expected path-to-citizenship for anyone who decided to permanently immigrate to Canada after February 2014. And, as I noted before, as a practical matter Jason Kenney and then later Chris Alexander had been promising changes to the residency requirement for years prior to the tabling of Bill C-24 in February, so there was a lot of informal notice going back to at least 2012 that these changes were coming.

 

[marcus66502]

This characterization is unwarranted hyperbole. There are hundreds of thousands of PRs who have made a considerable investment in time, effort, and money, who really did have reasonable expectations regarding the path to citizenship, based on the letter of the law. And there is no doubt about the government deliberately holding out the carrot, the path-to-citizenship, to attract immigrants to Canada. Then, for hundreds of thousands of new immigrants, the government moved the goal-posts after they already made the investment and immigrated.

And there is no getting around the extent to which thousands, probably tens of thousands, who took reasonable holidays to visit family in their home country, who suddenly in 2014 had their path to citizenship delayed by a year or more because they took those holidays, largely relying on the law as it was.

dpenabill,

I was being sarcastic in my post "The nerve of those officials ...." but it seems like neither you nor MUFC got the sarcasm; understandable in a forum.

In regards to your response, I must say that when it comes to CIC and its application processing, there can be no such thing as "reasonable expectation". CIC has mysterious ways of operating. Experience has shown that two almost identical cases can have processing times that are as much as years apart without any apparent explanation for it.

I've personally given up on making sense of the process. When I applied for permanent residence, CIC-Sydney took six months to clear my case for further processing at a time when, for other applicants who sent their application at the same time as me, they were only taking 2-3 months.

More importantly, anybody who makes plans by relying on the law as it currently is should understand they're gambling. Essentially they're betting that the law won't change. As with any bet, sometimes you lose. I understand that people are inconvenienced when they lose and this leads to frustration but, in terms of legal recourse, they have no standing whatsoever to demand anything. Laws can and will change. Every reasonable person understands that and should plan accordingly.

This last situation is a lot like the crying you hear from former international students now on Post Grad Work Permit. They're angry that the new Express Entry system requires a Labor Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) in order for their current job to fetch them the extra 600 points that will guarantee invitation to apply. You hear them complain about how they came to study in Canada with the promise of permanent residence under the CEC class, and that now the Government has screwed them.

Well .... No! Foreign students were never promised permanent residence (or any other benefit for that matter) in writing by the Government of Canada. They came here to study, making that decision of their own free will, and understanding that the CEC category was only part of the current law, which might change.

Bottom line, you're never really promised anything. If you don't plan on laws changing, .... tough luck.

 

[Raman_Ram]

Oh yeah dang the pgwp folks that's actually quite brutal. Even when they had exception to LMIA, the employers still had to get LMO at the completion of the pgwp to retain their employee. And i know many employers simply didn't want to expose themselves to the hawkish eyes of Service Canada. I can only imagine what the pgwp guys will be going through. GOD. I now realise the few friends who hit jackpot at the oil patch have to go back! Man that's brutal. Compared to them we are all still golden.

 

[gqx]

Raman,

When are you eligible for applying?

 

[na123]

Hey guys,

I am eligible to apply in May 2015, and I have been in Canada since August 2009 (Student). Do you guys think I will be able to make it? If not then I will have to wait until the second half of 2017

Thanks.

 

[CanadianCountry]

Nobody can say that you will be eligible or won't.

Either sit back and keep fingers crossed, pray that you will be eligible, or, take action which in your opinion will have some impact on the implementation date. Get in touch with people in power, voice your concern, talk to advocacy groups who are willing to act on your concerns.

Hey guys,

I am eligible to apply in May 2015, and I have been in Canada since August 2009 (Student). Do you guys think I will be able to make it? If not then I will have to wait until the second half of 2017

Thanks.

 

[gosia]

The nerve of those officials of the Government of Canada to mess up the personal plans of some PRs with these new and annoying residence requirements!

How dare they not ask the prospective applicants IN ADVANCE what their plans are? How can they be so insensitive? Can't they design a set of rules that works AROUND everyone's vacation plans? That would seem to be very practical and obviously the best course of action for everybody.

Come to think of it, the Government of Canada is very inconsiderate all the way to the end of the application process. For example, even when it approves applications and invites applicants to take the oath it does not ask them what they would like to receive with their citizenship certificate. A box of chocolates would be nice for some people, or maybe some curry chicken for others, or (for those whose addiction is alcohol) a nice cold can of [Fill in your favorite brand].

lol ;D ;D ;D

 

[Raman_Ram]

Raman,

When are you eligible for applying?

Right now and terrified

 

[CanadianCountry]

Man, you are sitting pretty.

Right now and terrified