Duly Quoted: Josh Paterson, on Bill C-24

BCCLA executive director Josh Paterson criticizes Canada's notorious Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act, otherwise known as Bill C-24.

By Sarah Duong

“All Canadian citizens used to have the same citizenship rights, no matter what their origins. Now this new law has divided us into classes of citizens—those who can lose their citizenship and those who can’t. Bill C-24 is anti-immigrant, anti-Canadian, and anti-democratic. It undermines—quite literally—what it means to be Canadian.”

—Josh Paterson, executive director of the BC Civil Liberties Association, speaks against Bill C-24, the Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act. According to the Conservative government, Bill C-24 was introduced as a means to “update eligibility requirements for Canadian citizenships, strengthen security and fraud provisions, and to amend provisions governing the processing of applications and the review of decisions.” The bill, which was enforced in June, has been criticized as discriminatory and unconstitutional; both the BCCLA and the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers filed a judicial review application and statement of claim to overturn the new law. Paterson added, “All Canadians are equal. It doesn’t matter where we’re born. Once you’re Canadian you should always be a Canadian. Period. Everybody’s citizenship is weakened when we design a system that makes some of us less worth Canadians than others.” An online petition demanding to overturn Bill C-24 has gathered more than 110,000 Canadian signatures.