Canadian Citizenship Rights and Privileges

"Canadian citizenship is a privilege, not a right.  Anyone who commits an act of war or terrorism against Canada, who acts against Canadians and Canadian laws and values, should be stripped of the privilege of being a Canadian citizen."
Devinder Shory, Conservative MP for Calgary Northeast

And amen on that.  Mr. Shory feels so strongly about the issue that he has tabled a private member's bill.  And he commissioned a poll to weigh the responses of Canadians to the issues his bill addresses.  That private member's bill proposes stripping citizenship from any Canadians who are guilty of committing acts of war against the Canadian Forces.

And the public opinion poll has come away with overwhelming support expressed for his proposal.  Those who commit acts of treason and terrorism should have no rights under Canadian law and citizenship.  There are certain obliging details involved; that individual would have dual citizenship, and it would be his/her Canadian citizenship that would be revoked under treasonous conditions.

The issue speaks to a recognizable problem in Canada and elsewhere in the Western world.  That of immigrant stock from North African or Middle Eastern or Asian countries where landed immigrants or new citizens find themselves at personal conflict with a culture and heritage they have discarded, and the imperatives of a new social contract.

With the currency of Islamism on the rise in most Muslim-majority countries there is also a hostile undercurrent of violent jihad being expressed not only against the more modestly-engaged Muslims who resist fanatical Islam and the imposition of Sharia law, but against those who are felt to influence them; the world of the West.  Recruits represented by home-grown jihadists travelling abroad to engage in conflict are a problem.

Committing themselves as potential shaheeds - martyrs for the cause of triumphant Islamism - the ummah has disgorged any number of warriors for Islam.  These are young men and women fixated on the canard that Western democracies have declared war on Islam, and they are responding as the faithful are fundamentally enjoined to do.  They depart their countries of haven stealthily, to appear in Pakistan or Afghanistan or Iraq to do battle with NATO troops.

And the fear among those Western countries that have fostered care for Muslims fleeing oppression and militancy, is that these jihadists will eventually return to their shores to turn their newfound skills in warfare on their adoptive countries.  And so, with this in mind, although there is also the example, not only of Muslim religious-political war, but that of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka and their homeland supporters in the West, and that of militant Sikhs whose mission it is to challenge India for a (Khalistan) state of their own.

In all three examples, those who have taken shelter in the West have brought with them ages-old ethnic, political and religious strife and nurtured them in their new homes, instead of leaving them as unwanted baggage behind in the homelands they have abandoned.  So it's a fair enough mission embarked upon by Devinder Shory.  Despite that private member's bills only rarely pass.  Perhaps his efforts will inspire Parliament itself to take needed action.

The poll resulted in 13% of those polled expressing resistance to revoking citizenship for treason, though 14% disagreed it be included for terrorist acts.  Overall support for the substance of the bill was overwhelming. Bill C-425 was introduced back in May, and is still in its early stages, working its way through the drawn-out process.  It is coming up for second reading in the House of Commons.

"A Canadian who is also a citizen or a legal resident of a country other than Canada is deemed to have made an application for renunciation of their Canadian citizenship if they engage in an act of war against the Canadian Armed Forces", is how the proposed amendment reads.  The bill, should it be taken up into law could be used against those who travel to war zones like Afghanistan, Bosnia or Libya to fight against Canadian troops.