invisible. Canada’s laws and policies read as if statelessness does not exist outside the refugee
context”.11
Since Confederation in 1867, Canadian citizenship law has been directly based upon and modeled after
British nationality and citizenship law, resulting in several provisions that have left thousands stateless in
Canada and elsewhere. Over the years, Canadian legislation and policy have contributed to statelessness
in several ways, including:
Limiting Canadian citizenship to first generation children born abroad;
Denying Canadian citizenship to "minors, lunatics, and idiots" as classified ‘under a disability’;
Children caught in gaps between Canadian and foreign adoption law;
Children whose births are not registered in Canada (e.g., many indigenous children fleeing
residential schools, and non-indigenous children born close to the American border);
Children born to military service people abroad who fail to register their births abroad;
Children born in Canada to those working in the service of foreign diplomats or their offices
who, as a result, are ineligible for Canadian citizenship; and
Those who are convicted of specific criminal activity and either possess, or who are perceived to
possess, dual nationality, may be stripped of their Canadian permanent residency or
citizenship.12
Stateless persons in Canada are made up of a complex and diverse group of people and statuses
including Canadian born indigenous persons, refugee claimants, protected persons, and permanent
residents. They may reside in communities whilst an investigation into their citizenship and/or
immigration claims is conducted; they may be detained temporarily while awaiting either resolution of
their immigration issues or deportation; or worse, they may be detained indefinitely whilst the Canadian
government deliberates about how it should proceed. Regardless of their circumstances and legal
statuses, which are often fluid and precarious, stateless persons in Canada can largely be described as
living in limbo.
III.
Research Problem
Two major investigations have been conducted into statelessness in the Canadian context.
In 2003 UNHCR Canada commissioned a report by Andrew Brouwer titled, Statelessness in the Canadian
Context, and an updated version of the paper was published in 2012. Brouwer analysed Canadian
legislation with respect to avoiding statelessness, determining statelessness, naturalization and
immigration processes, and the detention and removal of stateless persons. Brouwer concluded that
Canadian federal legal mechanisms “are insufficient to protect stateless persons in Canada."13
In 2015, Gregg Erauw conducted for the UNHCR an investigation into the compatibility of Canada's legal
framework with the 1954 Convention on the Status of Stateless Persons. The report took aim at Canada’s
contention that “there is no need for it to accede to the 1954 Convention because Canadian law
contains all the necessary safeguards to cover adequately the situation of stateless persons."14 It found
that the “Canadian legal framework does not appear to safeguard all the rights of stateless persons in
11
Brouwer 2012, 64
CCS, 2016
13
Erauw, 2015, 3
14
Erauw 2015, 115
12
3