The new law of citizenship is objectionable to many; therefore, group of lawyers attempted to collect funds for follow-up protests are at higher levels. The law society believe that the new law has not respected the rights of Canadian citizens, who have achieved their citizenship through immigration or born outside of Canada , on the basis of the Freedom Charter of rights.
While first class citizens will never lose their citizenship status under any circumstances, based on the new Citizenship Act, second class citizens could lose theirs in certain situations such as leaving Canada to study or work in another country, having family related issues, or committing crime.
Prior to approval of new law all Canadian citizens, regardless of their place of birth, had all equal rights; however anti immigration trends and non-democratic trends have both weakened the meaning of Charter of Freedom in Canada.
More than 110,000 citizens have signed the online petition, on Change.org, against this new law. Despite all the protests, the central government has started the abolishment of citizenship status for some time now. A campaign to rise funds to fight the new law and taking the oppositions to the court system and higher levels and ultimately to the Supreme Court, has been launched, on www.equalcitizens.ca.
Lorne Waldman, one of the lawyers involved in the prosecution of the petition campaign and another executive member, Karl believe that the deprivation of liberty is legally wrong and with the new law, violates the values of "equality" enshrined in the Charter of Rights, and the freedom of Canada.
With the passage of this legislation, the Conservative government emphasizes on the obvious discrimination in its law, instead of happily congratulating new citizens during the granting of citizenship. Ottawa's law enforcement and immigration officers have the power to revoke the citizenship and saying that those individuals do not belong to this country.
Obviously, this concept weakens the meaning of Canadian citizenship for all citizens and following the oppositions to this law, reminds the government that a Canadian citizen is a citizen and they cannot protect some citizen’s rights while violating others.
Our government, like other governments, recognizes that the highest and most important goal of every government is to protect the rights, security, and the protection of its citizens, however, the passage of C-24 means violating its own charter of rights while abusing the anti-terrorist security reasons.
According to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Canada, this law affects anyone who has another citizenship in addition to Canada's citizenship; therefore, it affects millions of people.
According to the new law, under some circumstances, citizens might lose their citizenship status; therefore, citizens who have earned their citizenship status through refugees program, will be known as first class citizens, and this will be another violation of this law.
Since June this year, the federal government is quietly working on cancelation of the citizenship statuses. New citizens are asked by Canada Immigration and Citizenship officers to sign a paper indicating that they do not have a chance to appeal, in case of losing their citizenship status.
A summary of the complaint and the prosecution to the Supreme Court of Canada are as follows:
Failure to observe the rights of equality and discrimination under Article 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedom of Canada provided to some Canadian citizens who were born in Canada but parents and their relatives were not.
This law violates part 6 of Canadian Charter of Freedom, freedom of traveling, entering, and leaving Canada, because second class citizens must sign a commitment indicating they will never leave Canada to reside permanently in another country, otherwise they will lose their citizenship status in Canada.
According to section 7 of the Charter abolished freedom of Canadian citizenship should be done in court while the bill now provides the authority for officials to do so in Ottawa.
The new law also questions the principle of section 11 of the Charter because the crime by second-class citizens, even after the full time prescribed penalty, the government can revoke the citizenship and new penalties which he doesn’t deserve to face and are unjustly, will be applied.
Penalties such as exile, permanent separation from home and family are cruel and unusual punishments are in contrary to section 12 of the Freedom Charter. On the other hand, due to list of offenses which can cause citizens to lose their status in Canada, there is no obstacle for the government to expand this list.
