Making The Effort

"These competencies must be established before citizenship can be granted."
"This interpretation also ensures that the privilege of Canadian citizenship is granted only as intended by Parliament."
Federal Court Justice Donald Rennie

"One would expect that citizenship applicants would be vetted extensively for compliance with residency, security and knowledge testing."
"It is amazing that such a vetting process appears to have been a comedy of errors in this case."
"One is left to wonder about the level of competence and care that some Citizenship and Immigration Canada employees may be demonstrating. ... It is unclear how often these mistakes happen. This situation merits a thorough investigation of internal policies and practices."
Sergio Karas, immigration lawyer, former chair Ontario Bar Association immigration section

"These safeguards worked in this instance as we found the error and fixed it. The certificate was cancelled in November 2013 and the Federal Court upheld our process."
Sonia Lesage, spokeswoman, Citizenship and Immigration, Canada

A woman lost her Canadian citizenship after it was granted in error despite failing the language test. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

Shaheen Afzal believes she should have Canadian citizenship granted to her. It seems she cannot be bothered to exert herself, on the other hand, to demonstrate she is worthy of that citizenship. Taking language classes, for example, as a start. And finding out information about the country she is so anxious to become a citizen of, apart from just living there as a Landed Immigrant. Yet a series of administrative errors almost granted her desire with little effort on her part.

She attempted on three separate occasions to qualify for the granting of citizenship. But on each occasion her performance was so dismal she failed the most basic requirements of citizenship when put to a simple enough test. A level of basic fluency in either of the two official languages of Canada for starters and responses to knowledge questions relating to Canadian history, customs, values. First time around she scored 2/6 on language and 8/20 on knowledge.

That first time was her best effort; the following were even worse, her scores falling from the first time. Despite the fact that the citizenship judge noted that she had failed the tests and thus failed to qualify he erroneously checked the "granted" box on the decision form and from that point onward the bureaucracy moved forward to having her swear an oath to the Queen before a citizenship judge in Hamilton and then taking possession of a citizenship certificate.

A citizenship clerk soon after the ceremony had taken place noticed the error. He followed that revelation by attempting to contact Ms. Afzal, leaving messages which weren't returned. Two months afterward, CIC cancelled the certificate, effectively withdrawing citizenship rights. And Ms. Afzal decided to retain a lawyer over the issue who argued that the bureaucrats at CIC hadn't the authority to cancel citizenship.

The presiding Justice, Donald Rennie, ruled that to be absurd. Since the onus is on the applicant to demonstrate linguistic competence and an adequate knowledge of social, civic and political norms in Canada, he ruled against Ms. Afzal retaining citizenship under the circumstances. "Canadian citizenship is granted only as intended by Parliament" stated the judge.