Justice minister rebuffs Tory push to end birthright citizenship

OTTAWA — Federal Justice Minister Sean Fraser says he supports the continuation of birthright citizenship, calling it a bedrock of equal rights, in response to a Conservative MP’s push to end the practice.

“I believe that we should maintain birthright citizenship in Canada, and I don’t know if I can be any more direct than that,” Fraser told reporters on his way to a Liberal caucus meeting on Wednesday.

“I think when you start to pick and choose who amongst Canadians gets the full benefits of citizenship, you obviously enter into a very troublesome conversation. One of the things that’s very important to us is that governments don’t get to pick and choose which Canadians get to have their rights fully realized, and to the extent that we can have certainty in the law guided by the rights that accrue to all citizens,” said Fraser.

Fraser’s comments came after a proposed Conservative amendment to the Liberal government’s new citizenship bill , withholding birthright citizenship from children born in Canada to temporary residents, was voted down in committee.

The amendment would have required at least one parent to be a citizen, permanent resident or protected refugee for citizenship to be automatically granted at birth.

Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner, who sponsored the failed amendment, told the National Post that Canada must curtail birthright citizenship, with temporary arrivals surging in recent years .

“There are three million temporary residents in the country right now — seven per cent of the population — who are having children, and those children are using services at a rate that the government is not accounting or planning for,” said Rempel Garner.

She stressed that this doesn’t even account for children of the up to 500,000 undocumented immigrants currently in Canada.

Rempel Garner noted that some Canadian hospitals have reported levying childbirth fees for non-resident, non-insured patients, suggesting a strain on hospital resources.

“You have hospitals that are issuing edicts that they’re having to charge temporary residents who are giving birth. This is unprecedented,” said Rempel Garner.

The federal government doesn’t track the migration status of all new parents, but the number of live births to women in Canada on visitor visas has grown seven-fold since the Liberals took office in 2015. These still accounted for less than half a percentage of all live births in 2024 (1,610 out of 367,347).

Rempel Garner said she’s been made aware of videos circulating social media advertising giving birth in Canada as a “loophole” for permanent residency.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has said he’ll cap the number of non-permanent residents to five per cent of the population.

The failed Conservative amendment would have been added to a Liberal government immigration bill seeking to create a pathway to citizenship for so-called “Lost Canadians,”  who were born abroad to to Canadian parents who were also born outside of Canada.

The bill will go to the House of Commons for approval, after passing the committee stage on Tuesday.

National Post rmohamed@postmedia.com

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