39th PARLIAMENT, 1st SESSION
Friday, October 6, 2006
Points of Order
Citizenship Act--Bill C-14
[Points of Order]

The Speaker:
The hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration has a point of order he wishes to raise. I will hear him now.

Mr. Ed Komarnicki (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order in regard to Bill C-14, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (adoption). It is the government's view that an amendment adopted by the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration to add a new clause to the bill should have been found out of order by the chair of the committee. I would ask, Mr. Speaker, that you find that the amendment is indeed out of order.

As Marleau and Montpetit note on page 661-2:

The admissibility of those amendments, and of any other amendments made by a committee, may therefore be challenged on procedural grounds when the House resumes its consideration of the bill at report stage.

The amendment in question added a new subsection to clause 2 of Bill C-14. It reads:

Any decision of the Minister under this section may be appealed to the Immigration Appeal Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board.

This amendment we suggest is inadmissible for three reasons. First, the amendment goes beyond the principle of the bill adopted by this House at second reading. As noted by Marleau and Montpetit at page 645:

If the bill has already received second reading, the committee is bound by the decision of the House and may not amend the bill contrary to its principle.

Speaker Fraser clarified this in a ruling on April 28, 1992. He said:

The committee is restricted in its examination in a number of ways. It cannot infringe on the financial initiative of the Crown, it cannot go beyond the scope of the bill as passed at second reading, and it cannot reach back to the parent act to make further amendments not contemplated in the bill no matter how tempting this may be.

The amendment would provide new powers and a new mandate to the Immigration and Refugee Board beyond what is provided in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act which creates the board and limits the board's role to immigration and refugee matters but would not involve citizenship.

The principle of Bill C-14, as adopted by the House, was to allow for a grant of citizenship to foreign adopted children without first requiring them to be permanent residents. It was not to provide a new role for the Immigration and Refugee Board.

Second, the amendment is incomplete. As Marleau and Montpetit note on page 656:

As well, an amendment is out of order if it refers to, or is not intelligible without, subsequent amendments or schedules of which notice has not been given, or if it is otherwise incomplete.

The Immigration and Refugee Board, to which the amendment proposes appeals be made, operates under the statutory authority of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, not the Citizenship Act.

Even though I believe the amendment to be outside the scope of the bill, the sponsor neglected to include further amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that are necessary to make this amendment intelligible and operational, perhaps in attempting to move an amendment that would not be seen to be out of order on those grounds.

The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act does not provide for, and the amendment does not address, providing the Immigration and Refugee Board with the power to hear citizenship appeals, establishing potential grounds for appeals, specifying the relationship between appeals to the board and existing rights to judicial review, providing the board with the power to rule on the appeal, for example, by granting citizenship which the amendment's reference to an appeal process is meaningless.

These critical authorities are established in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act for other types of appeals heard by the board and its divisions. Similar legislative provisions would be required for the board to identify its mandate and be able to make orders to resolve appeals of a citizenship decision.

Third and finally, the reason this amendment is out of order is that it requires a royal recommendation. On May 9, 2005 the Acting Speaker ruled that a new purpose for an existing appropriation requires a royal recommendation: He stated:

The royal recommendation is also required where a bill alters the appropriation of public revenue “under the circumstances, in the manner and for the purposes set out” in the bill.

What this means is that the royal recommendation is not only required in the case where more money is being appropriated, but also in a case where the authorization to spend for a specific purpose is being significantly altered. Furthermore, on February 8, 2005, the Chair ruled:

Where it is clear that the legislative objective of a bill cannot be accomplished without the dedication of public funds to that objective, the bill must be seen as the equivalent of a bill effecting an appropriation.

The same principle applies to amendments. Since the board does not currently deal with citizenship decisions, any existing royal recommendation for the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act could not possibly cover this new purpose.

Moreover, the addition of a new type of appeal hearing could not be implemented without additional public funds, for example, for more board members to hear cases of new policy and administrative resources to support these hearings. The amendment, therefore, requires a royal recommendation.

Given those three reasons, I submit that the amendment is out of order.