2 Daiva Stasiulis Introduction Statelessness is an exceptional phenomenon in a world where having a nationality is not only a human right but also the statistical norm.1,2 It is a phenomenon more familiar in transitional regions of state dissolution, succession or breakup, involving structural discrimination against peoples and minority groups in Asia, Europe, Africa and the Middle East (Mandel & Gray, 2014). By way of contrast, statelessness appears to be a relatively foreign concept in the Canadian context. In comparative perspective, Canada’s citizenship laws have been regarded as among the most liberal and generous in the world, offering multiple avenues to full citizenship – jus soli and jus sanguinis at birth, and through naturalization for immigrants who as permanent residents already enjoy many citizenship-type rights. Yet, as I explore here in the case of a Canadian-born stateless man, Deepan Budladkoti, statelessness exists in Canada. As importantly, mechanisms and reforms in Canadian law and administrative practices serve to produce statelessness. Gradational citizenship, where the rights specifically to retain citizenship have been differentiated between Canadian- and foreign-born, as well as by race and ethnicity, is nothing new in the Canadian context. Indeed, as Anderson (2008, p. 88) points out, “the basic tension between the equality of all citizens and the authority of the state to revoke the citizenship of foreignborn Canadians has existed since Confederation.” Citizenship revocation and deportation have variously targetted “dangerous European” labour radicals in the interwar years (Avery, 1979), Japanese Canadian citizens during World War II, and Nazi war criminals since the early 1990s (Anderson, 2008, p. 88). Nonetheless, the contemporary reputation of Canadian citizenship has been of “statefullness” (Kerber, 2007, p. 7) whereby full and permanent citizenship status has been either automatic at birth or relatively easy to gain and nearly impossible to lose. Yet, recent reforms in Canadian citizenship legislation and procedures during the near decade of Conservative rule (2006-2015), couched in language about “strengthening Canadian citizenship” and “protecting the security and safety of Canadians,” have again made citizenship a conditional privilege that is more difficult to acquire and easier to lose (Government of Canada, 2014b, 2014a, p. 1; National Immigration Law Section, Canadian Bar Association, 2014). Citizenship stripping reforms introduced in the Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act (former Bill C-24), implemented in 1 There is no consensus on the difference between the two terms “nationality” and “citizenship;” the distinction between these terms also varies from country to country. They are frequently used synonymously to refer to full legal membership in a nation-state. The latter convention will be adopted in this paper. 2 Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations, 1948) states: “1. Everyone has a right to a nationality. 2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.” Studies in Social Justice, Volume 11, Issue 1, 1-26, 2017