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The Conservatives are asking the Liberal government to end “one-click citizenship” and return all citizenship ceremonies to in-person events.
“Last year over half of the people who became Canadian citizens did so by clicking a box online. That’s crazy,” Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner said Wednesday.
“There is no way to justify this practice,” she said. “With support for immigration at an all-time low, returning to inclusive, nation-building ceremonies is a no brainer.”
Describing the in-person citizenship ceremony as the “essential unifying bedrock of Canada’s civic life,” Rempel Garner said the move would restore the ceremony’s “community significance.”
New Canadians began taking their citizenship oaths through virtual ceremonies in April 2020 in order to adhere to social-distancing guidelines.
In July 2022 the federal government resumed holding in-person ceremonies but kept the virtual option to help get more people through the system.
The federal government said the option took off in popularity; less than 10 per cent of new Canadians availed themselves of in-person ceremonies in the last six months of 2022.
Cutting down wait times
Virtual ceremonies are not exactly “one-click” affairs. According to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), they require a number of steps.
IRCC provides a videoconference link where the person seeking citizenship meets with an official to have their identity verified and watch them cut their permanent resident card up with scissors.
Once that’s done, the person joins a virtual ceremony where they take the oath of citizenship, sign a document affirming they took the oath and send it to IRCC.
In 2023, the federal government floated the idea of having people self-affirm their citizenship oath. But when that idea went out for public consultation, 61 per cent of respondents were against it, and only 36 per cent supportive.
Conservative MP Tom Kmiec endorsed a petition calling for IRCC to revert to in-person citizenship ceremonies as the default.
The parliamentary secretary to the minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship, Paul Chiang, responded to the petition saying virtual ceremonies have helped IRCC cut down wait times for citizenship ceremonies.
