Earlier this month, the House of Commons finished the second reading of a private member’s bill (“An Act to Amend the Citizenship Act, Honouring the Canadian Armed Forces”) that would revoke the Canadian citizenship of dual nationals who commit an “act of war” against the Canadian Armed Forces. According to Citizenship Minister Jason Kenney, the government thinks Bill C-425 should be amended to include acts of terrorism as grounds for citizenship revocation.

As many critics have observed, it’s a bad idea from any policy angle. Treating the citizenship of dual and single-nationality Canadians differently is likely open to Charter challenge. Further, as an opposition MP noted, an “act of war” is not defined under Canadian law; and ‘terrorism’ is notoriously open to disagreement depending on the beholder’s political standpoint. Relying on terrorism convictions handed down by judicially-challenged foreign courts is unlikely to be a smooth legal avenue for Canada to pursue.

As well, the bill is an affront to dual-nationality Canadians. Even though they’re targeted in it only by default (since stripping single-nationality Canadians of citizenship would violate international conventions preventing statelessness), this proposal comes on the heels of other recent acts and comments by the Harper government that can reasonably be seen to foster distrust towards immigrants and dual nationals.

But enough about what critics think of the policy issues; let’s look at what the government itself says on the bill’s behalf. According to its title, C-425 is about “honouring the Canadian Armed Forces,” though the connection is murky. It tacitly involves Omar Khadr, the former child soldier whose current non-deportability (as a Canadian citizen) is seen by some Conservatives as an affront to the gravity of his actions in attacking coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Such explicit logic as the government offers for the bill, stated by Kenney in an interview yesterday, is that it is “largely symbolic.” Elsewhere he’s described that symbolism in these terms: “A Canadian taking up arms against Canadian Forces or committing a serious act of terrorism should be recognized for what they are obviously doing: violently severing the bonds of loyalty essential to citizenship.”

To quote the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, this claim is nonsense on stilts. As abhorrent as attacks against troops or terrorism against civilians are, there’s no reason to see these acts as uniquely antithetical to Canadianness. A symbolic rejection of ties to compatriots might just as easily be seen in any number of egregious violations of Canadians’ security and well-being: pillaging the environment, inciting social hatred or corrupting democracy. So the actions targeted in Bill C-425 aren’t obviously grounds for citizenship revocation unless a plethora of other actions are too — a road no one wants to go down.

The other major rationale the government has offered is that the bill brings Canada in line with other democracies empowered to strip citizenship. “In Australia and the United Kingdom,” Kenney has said, “citizenship can be revoked if it is in the public's best interest — a much lower and vaguer standard than our proposal.” True, “the public’s best interest” is a vaguer standard than an act of war or terrorism; but it’s hardly lower in any meaningful sense, since there’s no tangible public interest whatsoever at stake in this bill. Our government isn’t even pretending that any Canadian soldier or civilian will be the least bit safer by stripping the citizenship from a convicted terrorist or enemy combatant (who will be behind bars anyhow).

The Conservatives would have us believe that symbolic legislation on citizenship revocation is actually a finer thing than laws intended to have a concrete policy impact. We shouldn’t buy that line. If the case can ever be made that something as grave as stripping away Canadian citizenship is justifiable, it should rest on the solid ground of public interest, not the rhetorical froth of “honour” and “loyalty.” A government that believes citizenship revocation could serve the public good should state so clearly, and be prepared to expend political capital convincing the nation that it needs the discretion to strip citizenship for a range of reasons that may not be specifiable in advance.

Better to take that course with integrity than to indulge in the Conservatives’ present charade of honouring the troops by presenting a symbolic bill based on clouds of rhetoric. This bill does no honour to anyone.

Natalie Brender is a freelance journalist. Her column appears on thestar.com every Monday.

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