Alberta separatists claim independence means holding onto a Canadian passport. We asked legal experts (www.cbc.ca)

submitted 20 hours ago by vinceman@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/canada@lemmy.ca

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Experts say an independent Albertan wouldn’t be entitled to Canadian citizenship

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[-] ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 2 points 18 hours ago

Citizenship is granted to everyone born in Canada, as well as children born to Canadian parents who are born abroad. There is no real legal mechanism for revocation.

Canadian passports are issued to Canadian citizens.

This seems like a pretty valid legal question?

[-] kahnclusions@lemmy.ca 8 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

There is no real legal mechanism for revocation.

There is. Parliament has the right to control how citizenship is obtained and lost, it's governed by federal law. If Alberta actually passes a referendum and gets it past the clarity act, you can expect that Canada will be looking into updating the Citizenship Act. They can create whatever legal mechanism they want as long as they don't leave people stateless or apply it in a way that is unjust (according to the supreme court and constitution).

It would be a huge legal battle but it's something that the federal government will hold over the province in a secession negotiation, and the final settlement between Canada and Alberta would include an agreement about how to handle citizenships.

[-] ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 2 points 17 hours ago

They can create whatever legal mechanism they want

Which means, by definition, there isn't one now, which is what I said.

[-] FaceDeer@fedia.io 3 points 18 hours ago

I mean, it's a valid legal question but it arises after the end of a long chain of "assume that this nonsense bullshit happens first and Alberta separates." So it's kind of like asking physics questions about stuff going on in Narnia.

Personally, I am an Albertan who is staunchly opposed to separatism and have been actively working against it. If by some lunatic miracle the minority moron contingent actually manages to "win" and Alberta separates, I would expect to remain a Canadian citizen. I would reject and renounce any stupid "Alberta citizenship" the separatists tried to issue to me. If the Canadian government told me that it was revoking my Canadian citizenship as well then I guess I would conclude that the whole entire country had gone mad and who knows what I'd do then. It's like asking what I'd do if I discovered that everyone's secretly lizard people, it's such an insane scenario that it's impossible to predict details like that. Maybe I'd head to Hans Island so that I could cross the border to Denmark and seek asylum there.

[-] Omgpwnies@lemmy.world 3 points 17 hours ago

The Canadian government could offer a choice - accept the Alberta citizenship and revoke Canada's or stay Canadian and reject Alberta's

[-] FaceDeer@fedia.io 1 points 17 hours ago

There's no legal mechanism for that either. This is all just wild "what if magic unicorns showed up and started stabbing everyone" speculation. The only way Canadian citizenship can be revoked is if you committed fraud when getting it in the first place, Canada would have to pass new laws specifically for this purpose.

Technically, the Citizenship Act is a regular act of parliament and could be revised by a similar act of parliament. But not really. There's a bunch of Charter rights involved - mobility rights, security of person, equality rights - so an act like this would instantly run into numerous constitutional challenges.

There's also precedent. During the 1995 Quebec referendum, the federal government's official stance (and the consensus among constitutional lawyers) was that even if Quebec voted to separate, Quebecers would not automatically lose their Canadian citizenship. Because citizenship is an individual right granted by federal law, the separation of a territory doesn't magically dissolve the individual legal status of the people living there.

Frankly, spending even this much brainpower thinking about this matter is a victory for the separatists. Their whole thing is idiotic lunacy from the ground up and the only thing worth spending energy on is "how can we smack them down even harder" rather than "what if they somehow succeeded?"