the CanadaVisa Team - 17 July, 2015
After 30 years the rules currently in place that allow individuals who live outside of Canada to hold dual Canadian citizenship are about to be revisited by the Canadian government. This is to be done after the government began calculating the cost of the recent mass evacuation of civilians in Lebanon who held Canadian citizenship during the recent conflict between Hezbollah and Israel.
Rahim Jaffer, a member of the House of Commons, Citizenship and Immigration Committee said that the issue was on the government’s fall agenda. Ottawa has estimated it cost $85 million to evacuate 15,000 of these individuals in Lebanon holding Canadian citizenship. A Foreign Affairs’ report suggests that as many as 7,000 evacuees have since returned to Lebanon.
Ontario Member of Parliament and former Minister of Immigration Judy Sgro said that the benefits for those living abroad with Canadian citizenship, including pension and federal government welfare assistance are "ripe for exploitation."
Statistics Canada estimates there are more than four million immigrants who hold dual citizenship with Canada and at least one other country.
Canada changed its immigration laws in 1977, allowing Canadians to hold passports from more than one country and have not received a major revision since then.
