Ottawa should grant citizenship to people born outside the country to a Canadian parent, provided the mother or father lived in Canada for a given time before the child was born, says a parliamentary report.

The recommendation from the standing committee on citizenship and immigration comes after Bill C-37, which took effect in April, discontinued the practice of giving citizenship to children born outside Canada to parents who are naturalized Canadians.

"It is in Canada's interest for the government to ensure that citizenship is not passed on to `citizens of convenience,'" the all-party committee said in its report released last week. But it added: "We are of the opinion that the parents' attachment to Canada can be measured by the amount of time they resided in Canada before their child was born."

Bill C-37 was introduced in response to the problem of "lost Canadians," people who for technical reasons weren't considered Canadian citizens – something they often learned about only when they applied for citizenship documents.

The simplified rules helped resolve most of those cases. But it also meant that second-generation children born abroad, and children born to people whose Canadian parents adopted them overseas, lost their assumed right to citizenship.

Witnesses told the committee the new law could result in some children born abroad to Canadians being citizens of no country at all.

"The risk of statelessness should not be overlooked, given the complexity of citizenship laws," the four-page report warned.

It recommended that Ottawa grant children adopted abroad by Canadian parents who ordinarily live in Canada the same legal status as those born in the country, to avoid creating "two classes of citizens."