The Canadian government announced today that it will reverse the changes made by the previous executive to the citizenship law, so that persons accused of terrorism and other serious crimes will not lose citizenship.
EFE
The previous government of then Prime Minister Stephen Harper conservative, approved in 2015 a controversial new law on citizenship to strip Canadian citizenship to people with dual citizenship convicted of terrorism, even if they were born in Canada.
Today, the Minister of Citizenship of the new liberal government, John McCallum, announced that it will change the law and return Canadian citizenship to people who lost by the changes implemented in 2014.
"We strongly believe that there should only be one class of citizens, that all Canadians are equal," McCallum told reporters in Ottawa to announce the new measures.
The Liberal Party of current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, won the general elections on October 19 with an election platform that promised to cancel changes to the Citizenship Act made in 2014 by Harper and the Conservatives.
McCallum argued that the judicial system is responsible for punishing people convicted of terrorism and that the government should not create "two classes of citizenship" to penalize those who commit serious crimes.
The changes announced today by McCallum were criticized by the main opposition party, the Conservative Party, he said at a news conference in Ottawa that the government "has not fully thought" in its consequences.
But advocacy groups applauded the human rights measure.
The Civil Liberties Association of British Columbia, who went to court to consider unconstitutional legislative changes in 2014, said in a statement that "applauds" the Government of Trudeau.
"The law was discriminatory and unconstitutional. Canadians divided into different classes receiving different treatment, making millions of Canadians in second-class citizens, "said the representative of the group, Laura Track.
The new citizenship law, which must be approved by the Canadian Parliament before its entry into force, will also reduce the time that immigrants have to spend in Canada before they can obtain citizenship and relaxes the demands of knowledge of English or French for newcomers.
Currently, an immigrant must physically spend six years in Canada before they can become Canadian. The new law will reduce the term to three to five years.