A bill to reinstate rights for what are known as lost Canadians could create around 115,000 new citizens in the next five years, according to a report by the Parliamentary Budget Officer.
The report, published on Thursday, also estimates that it will cost the government $20.8-million over five years to implement the change, with $16.8-million coming in 2025-2026. The PBO presumes the law will come into force in April.
Bill C-71 was introduced by the government earlier this year after an Ontario court ruled it is unconstitutional to deny citizenship to children born overseas to Canadians also born outside the country.
The bill reverses a change by Stephen Harper’s Conservative government in 2009 that stripped children of a Canadian parent born outside Canada of their automatic right to citizenship.
The 2009 change was designed to crack down on what Conservatives called “Canadians of convenience.” It followed an outcry after Canada spent more than $80-million to evacuate 15,000 Canadian citizens from Lebanon in 2006 during the Israel-Hezbollah war.
It has led to Canadians working abroad being denied the right to pass on their citizenship to their children. It has also meant that some “border babies” – born a few kilometres away in the United States – and Indigenous children born in communities straddling the border do not qualify for Canadian passports, despite living here.
The government, which has reduced its targets for the number of permanent residents to reduce pressure on housing and other services, has never publicly said how many new Canadians it expects the change in the law will create.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer based its 115,000 figure on estimates of the number of Canadians by descent living outside Canada and assumed that their numbers grow at the same rate as the Canadian population. The PBO included people who were adopted by a Canadian who could become citizens under the change.
“The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates a total net cost of the proposed amendments to the Citizenship Act to be $20.8-million over five years, beginning in 2025‑2026. The total number of persons that would be affected is estimated to be around 115,000 over the same period,” the report said.
Don Chapman, who has been campaigning for decades to restore rights to lost Canadians, said he did not think that all those gaining the right to citizenship under the bill who live abroad would opt to come to Canada. He said a lot of lost Canadians were already living in Canada, including children.
“It’s likely that most people who are eligible will not apply,” he said.
Mr. Chapman said the estimated $20-million price tag “to correct a historic wrong” could have been higher had the government waited longer to change the law.
This week, an Ontario Superior Court judge “reluctantly” gave the federal government another three months to pass the law.
The PBO assumes that the bill will come into force on April 1, 2025. But prolonged filibustering in the Commons led by the Conservatives has stopped government bills in their tracks.
This week’s political turbulence, including the resignation of Chrystia Freeland as finance minister hours before she was due to present the fall economic statement on Monday, has increased the likelihood of an earlier than expected election. That could also prevent legislation progressing through the necessary parliamentary stages to become law.
The PBO cautioned that the “data on Canadians living abroad are estimates and therefore subject to uncertainty.”
“As a result, the total number of individuals that would be affected by the bill also contains a level of uncertainty. Furthermore, the take-up rate may be impacted by different factors, which will affect the cost of the bill,” it added.