Lost Canadians, a citizenship advocacy group, is challenging the government’s version of the history of Canadian citizenship before 1947.
Part-time Gibsons resident Don Chapman, the leader and founder for Lost Canadians, said recently that a spokesperson for Citizenship and Immigration Canada stated that the legal concept of Canadian citizenship has existed only since Jan. 1, 1947.
“History does not support that assertion,” Chap-man said. “The government’s position seems to be that Canadian citizenship was created out of nothing on Jan. 1, 1947. In fact, the term ‘Canadian citizen’ has been part of the statute law since 1910, not 1947. It originally meant a British subject born, naturalized or domiciled in Canada.”
Chapman said historically, the evolution of Canadian citizenship between 1910 and 1946 parallels the gradual accession of Canada to full nationhood during those years. An important milestone was the Canadian Nationals Act 1921, which defined Canadian nationality for the purposes of Canada’s membership in the League of Nations. It incorporated the 1910 definition of Canadian citizen and included children born abroad to Canadian fathers. By the 1940s, with Canada at war, the term Canadian citizen had acquired something like its present meaning in both common parlance and official usage, though not yet in statute law.
Archival documents assembled by the Lost Can-adians group show clearly that the term Canadian citizen was in official use by the government of Canada during those years, and not only for the purposes of the Immigration Act as the government maintains. (These documents may be viewed at www.LostCanadian.com).
“This debate is essentially a three-way collision between history, politics and law,” Chapman said.
“The case of Jackie Scott, now before the Federal Court, turns in part on this question: was the Canadian Citizenship Act 1947 a complete break with the past, or did it build on what came before? And if Canadian soldiers of the Second World War (including Scott’s father) were told that they were fighting as Canadian citizens, why is the government now telling us they were not?
“The government is effectively accusing Lost Canadians of trying to rewrite the history of Canadian citizenship. If the Minister and his officials really want to know who is rewriting history, they should look in the mirror.”
