It’s pretty hard to believe that Citizenship Minister Jason Kenney would tell the daughter of a Canadian war veteran in Vancouver that her father, who was born in Canada and had never set foot out of the country until it asked him to go to war, was not, in fact, a Canadian citizen but a British subject.
Insulting, degrading … and wrong.
This is a theme Kenney and Citizenship and Immigration (CIC) have been pushing for some time. It’s not just a slip of the tongue or a misunderstanding, but a considered view to which the government is apparently committed.
Or, as Jason Kenney told Jackie Scott, who confronted him: “(Soldiers) are heroes, but at the time they were British subjects.” He said prior to 1947 there was no such thing as a “Canadian” citizen.
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Two unsuprising things
1) The CPC taking this sort of stance.
2) The booming lack of criticism from those CPC supporters gathered here.
CIC’s primary function? Step One get as many foreigners into this country as humanly possible. Step Two get those same people their citizenship as fast as humanly possible. No I am not surmising. No I am not guessing. CIC will cut through bureaucratic red tape like a weed wacker through the dandelion patch to get some 3rd world refugee who arrived here three short years ago (the majority after destroying any and all personal identification enroute I hasten to add) into a Citizenship Ceremony. These new and now vote eligible citizens are incredibly important. To all parties. As for people like Jackie Scott or her father. They unfortunately belong to a tiny and thus insignificant group of people with zero political benefit to offer to any political party. Thus they have been ignored and will be continue to ignored. By all parties. Shame.
If past political history is any indicator, after a story like the LPC, who ignored the issue, will find a stump, climb up on it, and start beating their chests in righteous outrage.
“(Soldiers) are heroes, but at the time they were British subjects.” is an odd stance for a Cabinet Minister and party who have been pushing the War of 1812 as hard as they have…… under that line of thinking the defenders of what ultimately became Canada were so far from being “Canadian” that they shouldn’t merit mention let alone commeration.