Published: Thursday, September 21, 2006
OTTAWA - The Conservative government plans to revisit issues surrounding 30-year-old rules allowing people who live abroad to hold dual Canadian citizenship, a senior Conservative has told CanWest News Service.

The review of the laws allowing people to carry a Canadian passport along with the citizenship of another country appears to be on a fast-track, particularly after the government began tallying the costs and results of the mass evacuation of civilians in Lebanon who held Canadian citizenship during the recent conflict between Hezbollah and Israel.

''I think it's going to be something that our minister of immigration (Monte Solberg)... will be addressing in the future because I think there is some interest as these details become known,'' said Conservative caucus chair Rahim Jaffer, a member of the House of Commons citizenship and immigration committee.

Solberg refused requests for an interview and Jaffer did not disclose what other issues relating to dual citizenship could come under review. But Prime Minister Stephen Harper has already expressed his desire to look at changes to the protocol the government follows when evacuating Canadians from foreign hotspots.

Lesley Harmer, a spokeswoman for Solberg, said ''there aren't any plans'' to change laws governing dual citizenship.

But Jaffer said a closer look at the issue was already on the government's fall agenda, and could now happen ''within weeks'' after the burden of moving Canadian citizens out of the Middle East war zone have come to light.

Some 40,000 Canadians were registered with the embassy in Lebanon when the war broke out in July, and Ottawa estimates it spent more than $85 million to evacuate about 15,000 of them to Canada, according to an official in Foreign Affairs who gave what was described as a preliminary estimate. Reports suggest 7,000 evacuees have since returned to Lebanon.

''We've paid all that money to evacuate all those people and now 7,000 of them have gone back,'' Sgro said.

She added the benefits that come with Canadian citizenship for those living abroad including pension benefits and assistance from the federal government in times of emergency are ''ripe for exploitation.''

Statistics Canada says there are more than four million immigrants who hold dual citizenship with Canada and at least one other country. There are no records for Canadian-born citizens who hold other citizenships.

''We need to be loyal to one country as far as your citizenship. Your heart can be where you were born but I think the commitment to Canada has to be strong, and I think dual citizenship weakens that,'' Sgro said.

Canada changed its immigration laws to allow Canadians to hold passports from two countries in 1977 and they have not received a major update or revision since then. Advice from two parliamentary committees from the mid-1990s that it was time to revamp citizenship laws were ignored by the Liberal government of the day.