On what grounds can some minister or bureaucrat de-citizenize and exile you? It’s no longer because you simply lied on an application. It has to do with vague, shifting matters of loyalty and terrorism. If you’ve been convicted of a loyalty violation and received a life term, or of something “terrorism-related” and got five years or more, you can be banished. These are notoriously unstable, politicized categories. Nelson Mandela was a terrorist right up till he was the most admired man in the world and heads of state begged for selfies (or the equivalent) with him. So just like that, we’re on two slippery slopes: expanding the categories of Canadians who can be stripped; and expanding the grounds for stripping them. Why not add violent crimes, or being perverts and johns, à la the new prostitution bill? It’s at any majority government’s discretion. Why did they do it? Here’s my guess: It’s not enough for them to merely run Canada. They want to define it, and they don’t want any backchat. Some people need to be right, not just powerful. So they’ve turned citizenship into a privilege, not a right, and since someone has to grant a privilege, it’ll be them.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Jul 2014 19:53:15 +0000
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